Tom Schreck: On the Ropes

“Look, Claudia, do you have something for me to sign? I realize you would prefer it if I began to shake, soil myself, and weep out of fear, but I just don’t have the energy this morning,” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I do. This is a written warning. Today is August 16. If in four weeks your paperwork isn’t caught up, you will be terminated,” she said, sliding a formal-looking memo across the desk.

“Why don’t you just can me now? There’s no way I can get my files caught up in a month,” I said.

“That’s up to you, Duffy,” she said.

I left the office realizing that in one month I’d be back in her office giving her the satisfaction of firing me. That was the worst part of it. I’ve been fired plenty of times; I just didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I should have figured today was going to suck. It’s the anniversary of Elvis’s death and every year something unlucky has happened on this date. I’ve been in car crashes, been knocked out three times, and even caught a case of crabs on August 16. Giving Michelin the pleasure of firing me would be worse than the crabs. The crabs I had were friendlier, easier to get along with, and, frankly, better looking.

It was the start of a great week.

I thought I’d take a look at the files Claudia was bitching about. I had just sat down when I realized I’d be in a much better frame of mind if I got some nutrition in me. Being a human service agency filled with overweight, issue-filled professionals, there were always large quantities of simple carbohydrated, fat-laden treats in arm’s reach. I once thought that if you could somehow deep fry sugar and salt you could keep many social workers happy for a very long time.

This particular morning I was in luck. There was an in-service in the multipurpose room with an outside trainer on “Multicultural Nonverbal Communication.” Technically, I was supposed to attend, but Trina the office manager always hooked me up with the attendance sign-in sheet just before she turned it in to Claudia. I figured being on the attendance sheet entitled me to a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee.

Just before the trainer started his exercise-breaking the room into discussion groups of threes to make nonverbal multicultural hand puppets-I slipped out of the multipurpose room and headed to my often little-purpose cubicle. Before I left, I waved to the trainer who clearly never quite disengaged from the sixties. He was bald on top of his head but maintained a brownish-gray ponytail. He had on army fatigues with lots of pockets and his gut hung over the top of them. The best part was his sandals with the separate loop for his fat and hairy big toe. Topping off the look was a toenail on the hairy big toe that looked like it was last trimmed right around the time Richie Havens left the stage at Woodstock.

I grabbed a stack of about ten files, took a sip of the lukewarm, brownish, cardboard-tasting coffee, and looked at the first file. I opened Eli Allison’s chart and noticed that the last session note I charted was eight weeks ago. Eli is a fifty-one-year-old black guy who keeps getting arrested after he’s had a couple of Olde Englishes, the potent malt liquor found in drug stores and gas stations in ghetto neighborhoods. With that added alcohol content, two forty-ounce bottles are equivalent to more than a six-pack of regular beer.

Eli’s last arrest came six months ago when, after his customary two or three OEs, he asked the Pakistani owner of the Mobil station where he got the forties if he and his wife wanted to have some sort of three-way sexual Twister game. When Mr. Endou declined, Eli got so pissed he knocked over the Slurpee machine and took off all his clothes. The judge released him into counseling.

While I was trying to make up some notes for the four times I met with Eli in the last eight weeks, the phone rang. It was Mike Kelley, my cop friend.

“Duff, you better get over to Walanda’s house,” said Kelley. “We have to arrest her and she’s losing it. Worse than I’ve ever seen her.”

Walanda is a thirty-four-year-old crackhead with a dash of schizophrenia. She has a tendency to get loud and more than a bit wacky.

“Why are you arresting her?” I asked.

“Outstanding warrant for shoplifting. The DA is having one of his crackdowns. She’ll probably have to do thirty days.”

“She stole some hair extensions from the Dollarama, for crissakes.”

“Duff, we can talk about it later,” Kelley said. “Right now I could use some help.”

Kelley was good people. He wasn’t a bleeding heart, but if he could do his job just as easily by being decent, he did. He called me when he was involved in an arrest with someone on my caseload and he needed a calming influence. I filed Eli’s and the rest of the unopened charts and headed to Walanda’s house. She lived in Jefferson Hill, about two and a half miles from the office. It is the kind of neighborhood where you’re better off not stopping when you hit a red light. I was in a hurry so I didn’t plan on stopping anyway.

In the early part of the century, “The Hill,” as it is known, was home to the city’s blue-collar Irish and Polish. The city went through its own version of the Newark riots in the late sixties and the early seventies, suffering through the growing pains of the civil rights movement. Today there’s only a handful of old Irish and Polish on The Hill, the ones too old, poor, or stubborn to leave.

My ’76 Eldorado convertible’s V-8 had plenty of power, but it was a tad temperamental. Just the same, to me there was no finer automobile in the world than this car. Burnt orange body, velour seats, and a deep-pile orange carpet, it was a little heaven here on earth. The eight-track player made it tough to get new music, but that didn’t matter. I only listen to Elvis and while he was alive, so were eight-tracks.

The King was getting into his second chorus of hunka-hunkas when I came up on Walanda’s house. It was a mess, as only ghetto houses paid for by welfare can be. The screen door on the porch was banging off the wall, three of her four front windows were broken, and there was a washing machine on what there was of a front lawn.

Walanda was rolling around with Kelley near the washer, screaming a slew of expletives that would’ve made Nixon blush. Kelley’s uniform was covered in dirt and gravel and his hat had found its way to the middle of the street. At a less than solid two hundred thirty pounds, Walanda was no easy restraint, at least not at first. Her stamina wasn’t the greatest, even when she was getting wacky, so she would tire before long.

I’d seen her go off before, but something was really getting to her this morning. She kept screaming something over and over, but it was hard to make out because of the wrestling match between her and Kelley.

“Mornin’, Kel,” I said. “What’s new?” I was standing above the two of them, not sure how or if I should intervene.

“Thanks for the help, Duff,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Kelley and I had done this before, but on this particular morning it was going to take a little more than humor. Walanda was wound up.

“Duffy, my baby’s gone,” Walanda half screamed, half growled at me. “That Webster’s got my baby, Duffy.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she kept screaming it over and over and over.

“Fuckin’ Webster! Stop him!”

Kelley finally had her flipped over face down and was sitting on top of her ass, bending her arms to cuff her. I think fatigue had gotten the better of Walanda. Kelley’s chest was heaving, his shirt was ripped, and he was covered with dust, gravel, and dirt.

Walanda was crying so hard it looked like she was going to choke. Her chest was heaving as she continued to cry, and she had bits of gravel from her front yard stuck to the tears on her cheeks. In the doorway to her house, a big, fat, long-eared, short-legged hound appeared. The hound saw what Kelley was trying to do and started to howl with his nose pointed to the sky. The howling was loud enough to hurt your ears.