Reed Coleman - Hose monkey

He slipped on his thick woolen socks. Then he slid his skinny chicken legs-that’s what Frank called them-into his thermal long johns. Next came his favorite piece of clothing on earth, his kelly green Mayday Fuel Oil, Inc. t-shirt. Though Cain liked the logo of a white tanker truck encircled by a life preserver on the front of the shirt, it was the back of the cotton tee that he loved best. He held it up before him:

KING KONG

HOSE MONKEY

He was smarter than a lot of people he had met in the homes. He could read. Sometimes he didn’t understand all the words, but he could say them. Once he’d shown the shirt to his parents. It made his father sad and his mom had gotten all angry about the hose monkey. He tried to explain that they weren’t making fun of him, that ‘hose monkey’ was what oilmen called a guy who rode shotgun on the truck and pulled hoses. They called you that whether you were retarded or not. He never showed them the shirt again. Cain pulled on the shirt and admired himself in the mirror.

There was a knock on the door. The imposing figure of the home aide everyone called Mr. French filled the doorway. Cain didn’t much like Mr. French. The feeling was more than mutual. Their disdain for one another was immediate, but had deepened recently after Cain made a joke at Mr. French’s expense in front of a cute occupational therapist.

“Do all people from Haiti hate other people like you do?” Cain had asked.

It hadn’t helped that the therapist had laughed at Cain’s pun on hate and Haiti.

French had a reputation for getting rough with the residents. He hadn’t hit Cain, not yet, anyway, but he was riding him pretty hard lately, pushing him, trying to get him in trouble. Cain had told Joe Serpe about Mr. French. Joe, one of Frank’s drivers, had once been a cop, though he didn’t like other people to know that. Joe had promised to come down and have a talk with the health aide if he got tough with Cain, and Cain had told Mr. French as much.

“Man, it stink in ‘ere.” Mr. French held his nose. “You ‘ave two minutes to get to breakfast, ‘ose monkey,” he snickered. “‘ose monkey, indeed. The monkey is much smarter, no?”

Cain could feel himself getting worked up. He didn’t need the mirror to see his face was burning red.

French stuck out his chin at Cain. “Come on, boy, you would like to ‘it me? Your cop friend won’t be able to ‘elp you, monkey boy.”

The back of Cain’s left hand slashed across the rich black skin of Mr. French’s cheek.

Bob Healy rolled over in bed. Eyes still closed, he reached instinctively across the bed for Mary. He’d dreamed about her. They were at Plumb Beach, alone at the shoreline in the semi-darkness, lazy planes gliding overhead toward JFK. He cradled her freckled face in his sandpapery palms, her green eyes sparkling as they had when Bob saw her that first time at the CYO dance at St. Marks.

She sighed as she always sighed when he first slid inside her. Just the sound of her, that soft sigh, the very thought of it could drive him to distraction. Even now, after thirty years together, he got hard imagining Mary’s sigh. He had been no saint, straying every few years only to be disappointed at the results, always returning to Mary’s side. Sometimes he lay paralyzed in bed in the dark and silence, wondering if Mary knew of his dalliances. If she did, she never let on. He was lucky to have her.

His arm fell across vacant air. Mary was gone. The sheet was cold where his wife had once slept. The best part of Bob Healy’s day had come and gone in the span of a few breaths. The time between semi-consciousness and the realization that Mary was dead were the only pain-free seconds of his life. It had been six months now since he and the kids had buried her, but he hadn’t adjusted to the loss. He wondered if he ever would. Some weeks were better than others. Days would go by without a misstep and then he’d dream of her or smell her perfume on a woman passing him in the aisle at Waldbaums. For the first few months, he’d lied to himself that his transition would have gone more smoothly had the kids still lived at home, but nothing on God’s green earth could smooth over the loss of Mary.

This morning, Mary’s side of the bed was particularly cold. The whole bed, the covers, the pillows, too, were icy. Bob touched the tip of his nose.

“Christ!”

He stumbled over to the thermostat, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes so that he might read the temperature. It was 58 degrees in the house. When was the last time he’d checked the oil? Bob Healy was truly lost without Mary. He couldn’t balance a checkbook. He hadn’t even written more than a handful of checks until six months ago. He hadn’t ever shopped for food or socks or underwear, for that matter. Although checking the oil tank was his responsibility, it had been Mary who would make a notation on the calendar and remind her husband.

As he trundled down the old wooden stairs to the basement, Bob could feel a case of the ‘maybes’ coming on. It always happened this way when he’d go into a spin over Mary. First came the hurt and then the maybes. Maybe if he hadn’t put in his papers. Maybe if he hadn’t ruined so many other cops’ careers. He always feared there’d be a price to pay for his years in Internal Affairs, for the cops who’d chosen suicide instead of facing disgrace and jail time, but he thought he’d be the one picking up the tab, not Mary. Of course he understood it was completely irrational for him to connect his work to Mary’s pancreatic cancer. God, as cruel as Bob knew him to sometimes be, wouldn’t have done this to Mary. Still…

The red float indicator on the tank gauge was flush with the top of the tank. Empty. Just to make sure, Bob rapped his knuckles against the black steel tank. It rang hollow like the rest of his life. Upstairs, he couldn’t find the number of the oil company. Calling for deliveries was Mary’s job. Not anymore. Disgusted with himself, frustrated at his ineptitude, he reached for the Pennysaver. He flipped to the pages where all the oil companies advertised.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo…” he recited, “my mother says to pick this one!”

The faint ghost of the winter sun was hanging low over the western L.I.E. The smell of snow mixed in the air with that of diesel exhaust. Joe Serpe was done for the day. Say Hallelujah! Say Amen! All told, he’d done twenty-five stops, loaded twice and pumped 3,453 gallons. At ten bucks a stop and ten a load, that was a neat 270 bucks cash in his pocket. It was a lot more in Frank’s pocket, of course, but Joe didn’t sweat that the way the other drivers did. He could do the math. With prices the way they were, Frank was grossing between fifty and sixty bucks a stop. Multiply that times three trucks and it’s a nice chunk of change.

Sometimes, Joe enjoyed listening to the other drivers grouse about how much profit Mayday Fuel Oil, Inc. took in on a winter Saturday. It was an October to April ritual, a weekly big boys bitch-fest at Lugo’s Pub in Ronkonkoma. Joe would just smile, empathetically nodding his head every now and then to show he was still listening. Sure, Frank made good money, but he had taken the risks, bought the trucks, rented the yard and office, paid for advertising, etc. At Lugo’s, Joe would drift off trying to calculate how many millions of dollars he and his partner Ralphy had logged into evidence over the years. The numbers were staggering. He didn’t like thinking about Ralphy.

“Ah, shit!” he screamed at the cell phone buzzing and beeping in his pocket. He had been schooled by the other drivers on the art of the tactical lie, but had chosen to ignore their advice. Now he was going to pay the price for that decision. He had done enough lying as a cop. In the end, it was what had ruined him and Ralphy both.