Going Nowhere Faster (7 page)
Actually, no, he won’t. That’s dumb. A boy talking to a fish? Who wants to see a movie about a boy talking to a fish?
THE GRAPES and other unpleasant varietals OF WRATH
On Saturday morning my mother woke me to say I was working the counter at Smith’s Natural Foods.
“Prarash called. He’s going to be late. I need you to cover.”
It was five in the morning. Smith’s Natural opened early so that the local market owners could buy their produce for the day, at least in theory, since local market owners inclined to stay in business never bought anything, more than once, from the store.
“No,” I said. “I refuse.”
“You’ve got twenty minutes to be elbow-deep in produce,” she said, ducking her head and leaving the door open.
It was warm under my blanket. It was cold not under my blanket. I stared at the ceiling and considered my options.
1.
2.
3.
Nineteen minutes and forty seconds later, my arms were submerged in a galvanized bucket, washing yams.
“No. I
refuse,
” I told my reflection.
“Sure you do, chickenshit,” my reflection answered.
I sighed. Only six hundred more yams to go.
In the distance, I could see my mother in the lettuce patch, busily directing her team of gardeners, a trio of Guatemalan brothers, all of them named Roberto. Apparently their father was not only a huge fan of Roberto Duran but also suffered from attention deficit disorder. To ease the confusion, the brothers (with the creative weight of dad coursing through their veins) had adopted the nicknames Uno, Dos, and Tres. They were an odd sight, cutting at lettuce heads with sharp knives, while my mother towered over them, even with her legs in the furrows. She was a firm believer that there was
spirituality in hard work,
and no one got off easy. The Robertos referred to her as
“La Amazonia,”
at least when she was more than twice a safe listening distance away. I liked Uno, and Tres was okay, too, but Dos and I were friends. Sometimes on weekends I would hang out at the house they shared with their families, which my father had also built, parts jutting out for no reason and the whole thing leaning kind of sideways over the edge of our property. Roberto called it
“La Casa Loca,”
and thought the extra staircases were hilarious. I called it “The Dangerous and Inevitable Lawsuit,” and thought the whole thing needed to be torn down. My father had promised to “straighten” the house, but was too busy inventing extra-long beds for my mother or cutting tracks into the ceiling so her head didn’t hit the rafters. Anyway, Mrs. Dos would make a huge meal and Roberto and I would just sit in the sun laughing or kicking around a soccer ball with his kids. My Spanish was bad and his English was bad, but somehow it seemed like just by smiling and pointing I’d told him more about myself than I’d ever told anyone else.
“
Hola,
Stan!” Dos called, when he saw me in the shop. He walked over and handed me a crate of lettuces ready for washing.
“
Hola,
amigo.”
“I hear you
muy
drunk
la otra noche!
” He laughed, holding his stomach. Dos was a big laugher. There may not have been a thing ever said, in the history of the world, that he didn’t think was funny. Apparently my being drunk was pretty funny.
“Dios mio!”
I said, hitting my forehead with my palm (which actually contained a yam, so it hurt). “How you know?”
“You is singing
muy bien
!” He laughed. “Also loud.”
“Sorry,” I said, blushing. There were maybe nine billion people in the world I hadn’t apologized to yet.
“
Es
okay. I
gusto
Los Beatles!”
He picked up a shovel and launched into a quick impression of someone playing guitar, really more heavy metal than George Harrison, but still, you had to appreciate the effort.
“I’ll bet.”
“Mi esposa?”
He grinned. “Maybe she no like so
mucho
.”
“Tell Mrs. Dos I’m sorry, too.”
My mother looked over and saw us talking. She wore an orange jumpsuit and an enormous sun hat that made her look like a deck umbrella. Dos looked over, seeing my mother seeing us talking. My mother frowned, seeing Dos seeing her seeing us talking. He winked and then shrugged, picking the gap between his front teeth with the lettuce knife, and carried his empty crate back to the field.
I went back to my bucket. The water was freezing and my hands had turned formaldehyde blue. Only two hundred more to go.
“Okay, let’s get crackin’,” I told my reflection, and began flying through yams.
Amazingly quick.
Efficient.
Machine-like.
As the underdog at the World Yam Cleaning Finals, I’d gamely fought through the lower rounds. Despite a painful wrist injury and a lack of corporate sponsorship, I’d somehow, against all odds, continued to win.
STAN!
collectibles sold briskly at the concession booth. The crowd had, of course, adopted me as their favorite,
oohing
and
aahing
as I tore through the final pile, hypnotized by my sorting skills, the display of brazen tuber-handling. The clock was running out. A dropped yam would disqualify me, giving the championship to Chad Chilton, who smoked a cigarette, calmly working on his own pile. “GO,
STAN!
” the crowd chanted. Blond quintuplets, the co-presidents of my fan club, who coincidentally all looked like a bustier Uma Thurman and wore tight pink T-shirts that said
STAN’S ARMY!
(although it was hard to read because they were jumping up and down so much), cheered and danced in a choreographed routine, exhorting me to”GO FASTER!”
“Five . . . yams . . . left . . . ,” I told myself. “Must . . . concentrate. . . .”
Four yams.
Three yams.
Chad Chilton looked, for a split second, nervous. He was falling behind.
Two yams. I could smell victory.
One yam. I could taste it.
Then I dropped my brush.
It fell in the dirt.
A horn sounded and I was immediately disqualified. Chad Chilton was led to the medal podium. He lit a Marlboro.
The crowd cheered him.
The crowd booed me.
The quintuplets went home weeping.
“That’s more like it.” My reflection grinned.
I’d been beaten in my own fantasy. My hands were freezing and raw. Prarash still had not shown up. I threw the last yam at a fence post, wishing it was Prarash’s head, and missed. Then I stretched my back and started on the squash.
Was Fred a worse name than Stan?
Unlikely. There was no worse name than Stan. Still, Fred was bad enough to be in the running, which was a small consolation. Prarash’s real name, after all, was Fred Buckle.
Years ago (at least as he [frequently] tells it), Fred quit his job as a cell phone salesman in Manhattan, stormed out of his office, and handed his tie and Rolex to a cab driver. He gave away his other belongings, adopted his
true
name, grew his hair long, and thumbed out of the city. After a few weeks in his sleeping bag, under the stars (“Wondrous! Beautiful! Spiritual!”), he somehow ended up in Millville and was drawn, like a crystal magnet, to Smith’s Natural Foods, immediately striking up a conversation with my mother. Undoubtedly the word “karma” was bandied more than once. Certainly, the concept of Zen was discussed.
Then my mother invited Prarash to lunch.
In the span of one serving of bulgur and carrots he managed to thoroughly annoy my father (nearly impossible), who left the table midspoonful and retreated to his basement lair. Olivia cried and refused (almost never) to drink her milk. Chopper loosened (not that unusual, but still) a truly damning gust. I sat, with my arms crossed, amazed. My mother, oblivious to the mounting evidence, offered to let Prarash sleep on the couch.
And he just never left.
He built a yurt in the woods behind the arugula patch, bought a lifetime’s supply of white sheets and sandals, and within a year managed to convince himself he was Hindu. Or Tibetan. Or something. He also memorized many sayings and aphorisms, most of which sounded like he’d read them off a tub of margarine, but wasn’t shy about sharing them, especially with displeased customers. His method of staving off the clamor for returns and refunds was amazingly effective. He would smile beatifically and tsk-tsk and tut-tut and reel off a few sayings, “The force of Veda moves in one direction only, my friend,” and before long, the customer would be too embarrassed or confused to continue.
Prarash worked full time at the counter, assuming, of course, as part of the definition of full time you overlooked the innumerable hours he missed because he was late. It was just that, occasionally (three mornings a week), he was a bit slow making it out of the yurt. Prarash-time had a life of its own. I suspected Fred Buckle-time wasn’t all that precise either. I once suggested to my mother that ol’ Fred may not have walked out of his cell phone job so much as been pushed out. She gave me a look that could have withered a brick. It was amazing the blind spot my mother had, a woman who could spot a less-than--perfectly-cleansed yam from a hundred yards but at the same time so readily accepted his excuses. Prarash got away with more than Chopper did, which was really saying something.
FIVE BETTER NAMES FOR PRARASH:
1. RumpleNeckSkin
2. The Mollusk
3. Curly Sue
4. Gonzo
5. Special Ed
Anyway, I stocked the chard and kale and mustard greens. I washed off the counter and counted in the register and worked out the bank deposit slips. (Picture Depression-era cartoon of Bugs Bunny opening his wallet and moths flying out.) I dusted the dried apple-head dolls and the incense sticks and the ginseng vials. There was only one customer, if you counted a lost couple in a convertible Saab stopping in to ask directions back to the highway. The woman felt guilty and bought one (1) zucchini, 62 cents of pure profit. I pointed the way for them, and then watched her drop the mushy vegetable out the window as they drove off the lot.
Prarash rolled in about noon.
“Stanley, my friend,” he said, hands rustling under the sheet that was cinched around his belly with a friar-like length of rope.
“Namaste.”
He took his time getting to the counter, and then settled onto his vinyl stool by the register, letting out an enormous sigh of relief. I showed him what had been done (everything), and then what he needed to do (nothing but sit on his vinyl stool by the register), and got ready to leave.
“The ant is a fine worker,” he intoned, “but it takes an enlightened bee to embrace the past.”
“That makes no sense,” I said, trying not to breathe his scent, which was more aligned with organic fertilizer than a neighborly swipe of Ivory.
He smiled generously at my inability to understand higher concepts. “Or perhaps, my friend, does it make
all sense
?”
His chubby fingers smoothed his sheet, after which he sniffed them, confident he’d made his point. We stared at each other.
“Fred, you have Twinkie crumbs in your beard. Are Twinkies enlightened?”
Prarash’s smile didn’t waver, but his eyes, following me to the door, were definitely a harder shade of gray.
Outside, Uno, Dos, and Tres saw me cutting across the rutabagas and began singing “Eleanor Rigby,” badly, in Spanish. I gave them the thumbs-up. My mother said something and they went back to their lettuce. I had twenty minutes before my shift at Happy Video.
SPLENDOR or something equally as unlikely IN THE crumb-strewn GRASS
On Sunday morning I stood in the sun and scratched myself in a pair of uncomfortable pants. Why had I worn uncomfortable pants?
Dr. Felder would have said I was
mentally willing myself to fail.
Miles would have said,
Stop scratching and think of something cool to say.
My father would have said,
Why aren’t you wearing the Teflon pants I invented?
Chad Chilton would have said,
You think THAT hurt? Try THIS.
“What’s her name again?” Olivia asked, a pair of spelt loaves under each arm. She had on a frilly white dress and black Mary Janes.
“Eleanor. Ellen,” I said nervously. The ducks milled around our feet, ignoring the bread. They also milled around Chopper, whose leash was tied to the bench post. Neither tooth posed much of a threat. After a while, a bird landed on Chopper’s head, casually pecking around. He looked up at me, tired, long-suffering. I pictured him wearing a toga and an olive branch.
“Maybe she won’t come,” Olivia said.
“Entirely possible,” I agreed.
Chopper woofed. Not a single bird moved. It was already hot at eight in the morning, the sun low and strong. It was also very late, as far as prime duck time was concerned. By nine they generally huddled in the center of the lake and more or less ignored people, bread-laden or otherwise.
“Stanny?”
“Can you call me Stan, hon? At least in front of Ellen?”
“Sorry,” Olivia said. “I forget.”
“Forgot. It’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Ellen asked, emerging from behind a pair of oaks, carrying a loaf of Wonder Bread.
“You’re here,” I said. A statement.
“She’s here!” Olivia yelled, and then did a little jump.
“This is the Big O,” I said, introducing Olivia.
“No, it’s not! That’s not my name!” she cried.
“Hi, Big O,” Ellen said, and gave Olivia a big hug.
I wanted a big hug.
Chopper woofed softly. He did, too.
Olivia gave me the thumbs-up, over Ellen’s shoulder.
“What a cute dog!” Ellen said.
Chopper was not cute. He was the mathematical opposite of cute. He was ugly. As sin. Or uglier. I began to question Ellen’s taste (quick analogous formula: If Chopper is to Cute as Stan is to Datable, then Stan = ____ ).
“C’mon, Ellen!” Olivia yelled, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her toward the water. Ellen looked back, allowing herself to be led, and gave me a smile. It was a smile that dispelled all doubt. It was a smile that caused car accidents and inspired sculptures and made grown men gnash their teeth. It should have been illegal. I was officially ruined.