Terminal (4 page)

“It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

He shrugged, and I felt like punching him in the face. How could he be so nonchalant? He had cancer, for fuck’s sake!

“The doctor’s pretty positive that they got it all. I’ve got a few more treatments, then we’ll know for sure, but I think that I’ll be sticking around a while longer. Somebody needs to run this place. And I’ve got a grandbaby on the way— our first. Don’t want to miss that!”

“Oh. Well that’s good.” I felt like puking. My fingers clenched the chair arms, digging deep.

He was quiet for a moment. He shuffled some papers around on his desk, took a sip of coffee, and dropped a pen into the pencil holder. Then he sighed, sounding a lot like my doctor had before he’d delivered the bad news.

“Tommy, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Here it came . . .

“Look, Mr. Strauser, if this is about what happened with Juan, he was the one that—”

“Relax, Tommy. I heard what happened, and it sounds to me like you were justified— though don’t you dare quote me on that, because I’d deny it. Juan will be getting written up later today for not following safety procedures. But this isn’t about that.”

A new headache started up then, centered in my left temple and spreading like fire.

“Tommy, I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve been having some problems. The economy is down, and as a result, so is our production. You’ll recall a that few months ago we laid off everybody with three years or less tenure?”

I nodded, not liking where this was going.

“Well, that hasn’t had the desired effect that senior management hoped it would have. As the economy worsens, so does our profitability. So now they’ve made the decision to have another round of layoffs. This time it affects those employees with four to six years of tenure. Unfortunately, you fall into that group.”

“I— you’re laying me off?”

“I’m sorry, Tommy. I really am.”

“Shit!”

“It’s not just you, Tommy. I’ve got the unhappy duty of telling thirty-three more of your fellow workers this afternoon. It takes effect at the end of the shift today. Believe me, that’s not my decision. Management says studies show if you terminate an employee or lay them off on a Friday, there’s less chance of workplace violence. Not that I think we have to worry about that with any of you guys, but again, it’s not my choice.”

I sat there, speechless.

“You’ll need to turn in your time card, and any safety equipment or company tools that you have in your locker or at your machine.”

“Okay.”

He reached in a drawer, pulled out an envelope, and slid my paycheck across the desk to me.

“Here’s your check for this week and next week, as well as your severance pay and payment for your unused vacation time. I hope it will help.”

“I’m out of a job.” It wasn’t a question. I was just stating it out loud, trying to get used to the sound of it.

He lowered his head. “I’m sorry, son.”

“Damn. Well, I guess that’s it then.”

I started to rise, but he held up his hand.

“Tommy, wait a moment. Can I tell you something?”

I sat back down, nodding.

“I’ve worked here a long time. In fact, I started out on the Number Two line, just like you. Back then, we only had three lines total, and two men per line. Believe it or not, your father worked with me. Do you remember much about him?”

“I remember that he was an asshole.”

Charlie grinned. “That he was. That he was indeed. He was a drunk, and he liked to fight. I never got along with him, and neither did anybody else. In fact, when you applied here, I was hesitant to hire you. Like father, like son, you know? That’s what they say. Odds were you’d be an asshole too. But I did take you on, because we needed workers. I figured maybe you’d last a month before we had to fire you for calling in sick and missing days. Or maybe insubordination.”

I stared at him, listening.

“But we didn’t. You surprised me, Tommy, and after about six months, I realized just how unfair I’d been to prejudge you like that. You’re nothing like your father, and I want you to know that. You look like him, yes. God, you look so much like him that sometimes I almost call you by his name. But you’re not him. You’re a good man, and a good employee. Be proud of that. I’m very sorry to lose you. I’ve got to tell this to a lot of people today, but I wanted to tell you first. I felt that I owed you that much.”

“I appreciate it, Charlie. Thanks.”

“I know that right now things must seem pretty grim. But they won’t be for long. Of that you can be sure. You’re a young guy and a hard worker. You’ll be able to find a job. I’m positive of it. And I’ll be glad to give you a reference, tell them that you were a model employee. The important thing is to not let this get you down. Too many guys in this town, guys like your father, would use this opportunity as another chance to get loaded and beat up on their families or knock over a liquor store. You’re better than that. Don’t dwell on it. If there’s one thing that this fight with cancer has taught me, it’s not to dwell on the bad things in life.”

I was gripping the chair so hard that my fingers had gone numb.

“That’s all,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that.”

I stood up, shook his hand, and walked to the door.

“Thanks again, Charlie. Thanks for being straight with me, at least.”

“Like I said, Tommy. Don’t dwell on it. You’ll be fine. You’re young and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

I closed the door behind me, then I ran. I ran down the hall and into the foundry. I ran to the bathroom and exploded through the doors. I almost didn’t make it in time. The puke and blood sprayed between my fingers as I lurched into the first stall and collapsed to my knees. There was a lot of it. The soup I’d had for lunch, blood, spit— and more of my insides. This time, it was something gray, like an uncooked sausage, covered in blood and what looked like diluted motor oil.

You’ve got your whole life ahead of you . . .

I puked and I cried and I puked some more. I crouched there until I felt like an empty skin. I looked at the piece of myself floating in the water and I howled. Charlie echoed in my head some more.

Don’t dwell on it. You’re young and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

I was young, twenty-five. I’d never live to see twenty-six. My whole life. I had my whole life ahead of me.

And that added up to not much time at all . . .

* * *

On the way home, I stopped at the bank to cash what would be my last paycheck. Five hundred dollars. That’s what I was worth. One week’s pay, five years’ worth of severance, and my unpaid vacation. Five hundred bucks. And once the immediate bills were paid, that would leave us with two hundred.

The line at the bank was long. It was Friday and everybody else in town had gotten paid too. Apparently, like me, none of them trusted direct deposit. I got stuck between a thin, jittery woman with three crying kids, and a wheezing old man that stank of arthritis cream. It took a while, and as we shuffled slowly forward, I counted the security cameras to pass the time.

Then I counted them again, along with the tellers, the exits, the windows, and everything else. I counted four nondigital cameras; six tellers; one exit (though I was guessing that the employees had a fire exit somewhere); two windows, plus the drive-thru. This bank, my bank, was less than ten minutes from two major highways, plus dozens of back roads.

“Fuck it.”

The skinny woman gawked at me, pulling her three kids close to her.

I grinned until she looked away.

“Fuck it. Fuck ’em all.”

I moved forward and the cameras watched me silently.

I didn’t care. Grinning, I gave them the finger.

* * *

The guy who said that money isn’t everything was obviously never poor. Money is everything— the root of all happiness. I read in a magazine that the number one thing married couples fight about is money. People lie for money, cheat for money, steal for money, and kill for money. They kill themselves and each other for dead presidents on pieces of paper. Money is what makes the world go round. Lying on your deathbed, you might be judged by the company you kept while alive or the way you treated your family or what those you love really thought about you; but even this stems from money. Maybe it seems like the two are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. The more money you have, the better you can treat your family. Money allows you to provide more of the things they need. The friends you have around you are determined by the size of your wallet. Do you think Donald Trump hangs out with homeless guys and crack addicts all day long? In the end, it’s all about the green. To paraphrase the Beatles, “and in the end, the love you make is equal to the cash you make.”

Want a roof over your head? That takes money. Want to eat? Money. To get the money, you’ve got to have a job, but even that takes money. How are you going to get to work every day? Drive? The car costs money: gas, insurance, repairs. Take mass transit? Those bus tokens aren’t free. Ride your bike? Hey, even most service stations are charging a quarter for the air pump these days.

It’s very simple. In our society, you can’t live without money. I wasn’t going to be living much longer, but Michelle and T. J. would be. I was sick and tired of seeing Michelle wear worn-out panty hose with runs in them and fashions from five years ago. Tired of getting T. J.’s toys at yard sales. Tired of buying generic brands that tasted like cardboard. Tired of saving aluminum cans to turn in for beer money. Tired of living from paycheck to paycheck and never getting ahead or saving money for the future. Tired of us being poor just because of where we lived and how we’d grown up.

My wife and my son could have better lives after I was gone. They deserved it. I wanted T. J. to go to college and be somebody smart— not work in a dirty foundry like his old man and his grandfather had done. I wanted them to be happy.

Happy.

Happiness equals money. Money equals happiness. It’s fucking arithmetic.

When I look back on it now, I don’t know. Would all of this have happened, would I have come up with the idea if I hadn’t been dying? Probably not. Instead, I would have busted my ass five days a week for shit pay, until alcohol’s soft middle age crept up on me and I died of a heart attack, probably while on a fishing trip with John and Sherm or sitting in the bleachers, cheering on T. J. as he made the winning touchdown for the school (because I had no doubt that he’d be a quarterback when he got to high school). Even a heart attack would have been preferable to the cancer— but then again, what chance at a better life would I have been able to offer my family? That guy, the older guy who remained a white trash loser and went on to die, he could have never given them the chances that I wanted to provide. And those chances— that better life— could only be paid for with money.

The cancer was killing me, eating away at my insides. In a few weeks, it would leave me a husk, like the shells that locusts leave behind on the trees, a hollow shell that used to be Tommy O’Brien. But while it was doing that, while it was gnawing away, it was also liberating me— freeing me to take risks that I would have never taken before. Allowing me finally to do something to make our lives better.

I drove home. It was bingo night, and Michelle had already taken T. J. over to her mother’s house, so I was alone in the trailer. I undressed, and took a good long look at myself in the mirror. I looked like shit. Two black, puffy circles hung beneath my eyes. My skin was pale, feverish; and my jaw and neck were swollen. My cheeks were puffy too. It looked like I had the mumps. My teeth hurt, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the cancer or the fact that I hadn’t been able to afford a dentist in five years. I’d lost weight— like an anorexic on the Atkins diet.

Most of all, I just looked tired. Beaten.

I wasn’t beaten, at least, not entirely, but I was tired. Tired of this trailer and thrift shop clothes for my wife and yard sale toys for my son. Tired of this way of life. I was sick of it all, and I was going to do something about it.

I stepped into the shower and let the water wash over me. It seemed to help my headache, so I leaned into the spray, letting it pound against my temples and forehead. My skin had gotten sensitive over the past week, and the stream felt like sandpaper against the sore parts, like it was grinding away the old Tommy and revealing what lay beneath. It felt like a baptism.

I thought about the bank.

I was going to do something. What was the worst they could do to me if I got caught? Life in prison? Lethal injection?

Those sentences both added up to less than a month . . .

Sherm grinned, took another swig of beer, lit up a cigarette, and said, “Fuck me running. They laid us off, boys!”

From the battered jukebox in the corner, the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin Man” had segued into Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.” I lit up a cigarette of my own and wailed along with Marvin inside my head— wanting to holler and throw up my hands while inflation grew and bills piled up. Marvin Gaye had known what time it was. He died young too.

“So what are we going to do, you guys?” John stared into his shot glass, as if the answer could be found there. In a way, I guess it could.

“I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re going to stand in the unemployment line and get our asses signed up. Shit, dog, we got the whole summer free! We can sleep all day, party all night, and let the government send us a fat check every two weeks.”

“That’s all right for you, Sherm,” John scoffed, “but I got fucking bills to pay. You know how little money you get on unemployment? Bobby Ray Hall was on it for six months, and he only got a quarter of his hourly pay.”

“Bobby Ray Hall swept floors and scrubbed toilets for a living, and he got minimum fucking wage. We’ll do okay. Better than him at least.”

I said nothing. Instead, I lit up a smoke and signaled Angie to bring us another round. Angie was a damn good waitress, the best Murphy’s Place had to offer— and she still took good care of us despite the fact that Sherm had fucked her a few times, then dumped her. Hell, there weren’t many women in this town that he hadn’t slept with, except for Michelle— and maybe John’s mom. And to be honest, I’m not even sure about that last one.

It wasn’t that he was good-looking. He wasn’t. Well, okay, he wasn’t butt ugly or anything, but he wasn’t Brad-fucking-Pitt either. His nose was too big for his face, and his wiry frame was more coiled than muscled. He always wore a battered Ford cap, usually backward, and his hair stuck out from underneath it. Most of the time, his fingernails were black from the foundry dirt and grease underneath them. Despite all this, women seemed to really dig Sherm. I think it was his attitude— he had that bad boy thing down to a science and it worked for him. The women he slept with fell into two categories: those who thought they could change him and those who were just freaks.

The freaks were every weekend— and never the same girl two weekends in a row. Sherm liked it rough, and he’d give it to the freaks that way. Once, when he was really drunk, this girl from the video store dug her nails into his back, raking them down as she came. They went so deep that she left scars; right through one of his tattoos. Sherm, in the heat of the moment, punched her in the jaw. He didn’t mean to do it, he claimed later, and he felt like shit immediately after it happened, but that still didn’t make it right. Any woman with an ounce of sense would have gotten the hell out right then and there. But not this freak. Nope. She not only liked it, she begged him to do it again. So he did. He hit her again. Later on, he told us that it was the best nut of his life.

The women who thought that they could change him usually fared worse than the freaks, at least on an emotional level. Sherm’s serious relationships had a shelf life of about one month, and they always panned out the same way. Girl meets Sherm. Girl is attracted to the hurting little boy she thinks is hiding inside the bad boy image, the soft heart beneath the “I-don’t-give-a-shit” exterior. Girl tries to heal the little boy. Girl gets hurt after investing all her love and emotions, finding out that somewhere along the way, Sherm got fucked over so badly by a woman that he doesn’t trust anything with breasts, especially her. Girl is destroyed. Girl is devastated. Girl is ruined for life. Girl leaves in tears and Sherm loses himself in another freak until the next relationship.

Did he treat them like shit on purpose? I don’t know. Probably not. But I do know that the dude could get pussy, and that was one of the reasons we hung out with him. If you’re a guy, you’ll understand that.

Women thought Sherm was broken, and immediately they wanted to fix him. And maybe they were right. Maybe he was broken. But what they failed to understand was that Sherm didn’t want to be fixed. He liked the way he was.

I watched him squirm in his seat. He was always twitching, and talking a little too loudly, like he was trying extra hard to have a good time. I always had the impression that just underneath that party hard exterior, there was a guy waiting to snap and go postal. But he made me laugh. I think that’s why we loved him so much. Sherm could make you laugh like nobody else. That was how John and I first met him. He moved here four years ago, all the way from Portland. He never told us the whole story, but I got the impression that he’d been in some trouble out there; he knew a lot about guns and shit. Maybe he came east looking to get away from whatever it was. He got a job at the foundry, and the first time we saw him, he was standing behind us at the time clock, making sarcastic comments under his breath about everybody who walked by. He had us laughing so hard that tears literally ran down our faces. We introduced ourselves, invited him out for a beer, and that was all it took.

Sherm could make you laugh— but he could piss you off just as quickly. He could cut you with his words; his tongue was like a razor, and he knew how to use it. One comment from Sherm could slice your jugular. He was good at tearing things down— things you cared about. He’d borrow money and not pay you back. He liked to pick fights when he was really drunk. He was always right about everything, even when he was clearly wrong. And sometimes, just sometimes, you got the impression that he’d sleep with your wife if he knew that he could get away with it.

Half the town wanted to hug him, and the other half wanted to strangle the living shit out of him. With the exception of John and my family, I’m closer to Sherm than I am with just about anyone else in the world, and I’ve wanted to do both. But the bottom line is this. He may have been crazy, he may have been completely fucking mental and immature and cocky, and sometimes he may have pissed me off so bad that I wanted to shoot him, but at the end of the day, he was my friend, and that’s all that mattered to me. Him and John. My best friends, guys I’d take a bullet for.

I had to tell them.

Angie showed up with another round, and set the beers and shots down in front of us. She started to speak but then flinched, as if she’d been goosed. Still holding the serving tray, she reached behind her back and grabbed Sherm by the wrist.

“Hey,” she called out to the bar, “did anybody lose a hand? Because I found this one halfway up my crotch!”

She held his arm up for all to see. The room erupted with laughter, and Sherm grumbled something under his breath. Then everyone returned to their conversations, their dart games, the pool table, and who was going home with whom later on that night. I asked Angie to take a round over to Juan and his crew to make up for our fight earlier in the day. Somebody fed another dollar into the jukebox and now it segued from Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” to something new by Method Man. Like I said before, it was that kind of town and that kind of bar.

John chuckled into his beer. “She busted you, Sherm! Angie got you good!”

“Shut up, Carpet Dick . . .”

John. Good old John. Nobody, other than me, had ever treated him with any respect. Not his family. Not his teachers. Not the other kids. How many times had he been called stupid in his life? Way too many to count. But that’s because he really was stupid. I’ve known John most of my life, and I’ve never known him to be clever. When we were kids, I was always bailing him out of trouble. Like the time he threw rocks at Mr. Nelson’s trailer, breaking all of the windows in the front. I confessed to it and took the rap just to keep him out of trouble, and Old Man Nelson marched over to my house, foaming at the mouth, and demanded that my mother pay for the damage. She just laughed and, after he stormed away, she beat the shit out of me. Later, when I could sit down again without wincing, I asked John why he did it.

I don’t know, Tommy. I guess I just like the sound of breaking glass . . .

That was John in a nutshell. Old Man Nelson hadn’t done anything to him. He hadn’t done it to be malicious. He just liked the sound of breaking glass. He didn’t know why he did things— he just did them. But I loved him anyway. Sherm, crazy enough to drink gasoline and piss on a fire; and John, dumb as a fucking fencepost. I loved them both, though I would have never told them that.

But I would have to tell them about the cancer. I had to tell somebody. Both the secret and the disease were eating me up inside.

I took a sip of beer and my nose started running. I wiped at it and my index finger came away glistening and red. John and Sherm both got quiet and I looked up to find them staring at me.

“Yo man,” Sherm pointed, “your nose is bleeding and shit.”

“Fuck! Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t either of you drink my beer.”

I shoved a soggy napkin up my nostrils to stop the flow, got up from the table, and weaved toward the bathroom. Juan caught me, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and slurred out a drunken half-English, half-Spanish apology. I told him that it was okay, peeled him off of me, and waited in line for the bathroom. Eventually, the door banged open and a fat, drunken redneck in a beer-stained flannel shirt stumbled out. I slipped inside, carefully avoiding stepping in the puddle of piss on the floor.

I stared into the mirror and what I saw didn’t look good.

“Son of a bitch . . .”

I ran some paper towels under the cold water, then wadded them up and held them to my nose. I leaned my head backward, giving me an unobstructed view of the dingy bathroom ceiling. Somebody had managed to scrawl graffiti up there, between the dim lightbulb and the spiderwebs; SUICIDE RUN KICKS ASS and NUKE GUMBY and that popular old standby EVELYN IS A HO, along with the phone number where you could supposedly reach her for a good time.

After a few minutes, the bleeding slowed to a trickle and stopped completely. I cleaned my face and washed my hands, then wiped the droplets of blood from the sink and garbage can. Considering the bathroom’s filthy condition, it was useless, but I did it anyway.

The nausea hit me with no warning just as I was finishing. I bolted for the stall and the hot bile erupted, spraying through my fingers, spattering the walls and running down my forearms. Something hard pushed itself up through my throat. I fell to my knees, and the stench from the toilet made me puke more. The bowl was caked with brown and yellow stains and I noticed that I was kneeling in something wet. But what I threw up was even grosser.

Unless I was mistaken, I’d just thrown up my own feces. It seemed impossible, but that’s what it looked and smelled like.

Just the sight of it— the very thought— made me puke a third time. There was enough force this time to cause a splash-back effect, and brackish toilet water hit my face, dripping from my nose and eyes and cheeks. I stayed there, heaving and crying and gagging, until there was absolutely nothing left to come up. My stomach cramped and my throat burned, like I’d drunk battery acid. I knew it would only get worse in the days to come. This was only a taste of what the cancer had in store for me.

For the second time since entering the bathroom, I cleaned myself up as best I could. My mouth tasted like shit (literally) and I lit up a smoke to correct the problem. Then I returned to the table. John and Sherm had ordered another round while I was gone, and now I had two beers in front of me. The cold soothed my throat. I made quick work of them both, and signaled Angie for another. She arched her eyebrow in concern, but took the order.

“Coke?” Sherm asked.

“No, another beer.”

“No man, I mean your nose. You been doing coke?”

“I don’t fuck with that shit. You know that. All I do is weed.”

“You sick then?”

“Yeah. I’ve been a little under the weather. Look, it was just a nosebleed, Sherm. It’s no big deal.”

“You should get that shit checked out, dog,” John mused. “I once heard about a guy that bled to death from a nosebleed.”

“That’s just an urban legend.”

“What does that mean?”

“An urban legend? You know, like alligators in the sewer and the hook-handed killer at lover’s lane. Shit like that.”

John looked surprised.

“You mean they made that guy with the hook up?”

I sighed and took a sip of his beer.

“Hey, that one’s mine!”

“Thanks.”

Sherm watched two girls wiggling next to the jukebox. “I still say it’s coke.”

“It’s not coke, dammit!”

“Yo, tell that bullshit to someone else, Tommy.”

“Let’s drop it, okay?”

“Shouldn’t be fucking with that white powder, man. It’ll make your dick shrink.”

“I said it’s not coke, you asshole!”

“Well what is it then?”

“It’s not coke. It’s fucking cancer!”

John choked on his beer. Sherm stared at the girl’s ass a moment longer, then slowly turned to me.

“Say what?”

I lowered my voice. “I’ve got cancer. There, you satisfied now?”

“That shit ain’t funny, Tommy.”

“Do I look like I’m joking, Sherm?”

The words hung in the air, but I was happy to be free of them. I felt lighter somehow. Lighter, but guiltier too. I’d lied to Michelle about it, only to turn around and tell my best friends.

In the background, somebody was playing another somebody-done-somebody-wrong song on the jukebox. John sat speechless, looking like someone had punched him in the stomach. Sherm fumbled with his Zippo, lit another cigarette, snapped the lighter shut a little too loudly, and shook his head.

“You’ve got cancer?” he repeated. “Since when?”

“I found out yesterday.”

John set his beer down and shifted away from Sherm’s cigarette smoke.

“Is it from smoking? I bet it is.”

“Maybe. Who knows? I don’t know what it’s from, John. But it’s not good.”

“So what are they going to do?”

“Nothing they can do, according to the doctor.”

Sherm twitched in his seat. “You mean the shit is terminal?”