David Handler - The sweet golden parachute

Pete woke well before dawn and sat up in his sleeping bag and tried to remember what day it was. He had his regular morning routes and it really did matter. Knuckling his eyes, he tried to recall where he’d been the day before. The Historic District, that’s where. So yesterday must have been Tuesday. And today Wednesday, which meant Route 156, upriver from the Big Brook Road business district.

There, that wasn’t so hard.

Shivering, Pete reached for his pint bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and drank down several thirsty gulps, peering around in the dark at the dented, moldering Silver Streak that he called home. The old trailer sat out behind Doug’s Sunoco in the empty lot where Doug stashed the beaters he rented out by the day to folks in need. Doug’s was an old-time service station. Two licensed mechanics on duty six days a week. A twenty-four-hour towing operation. Doug even employed acne-encrusted high school kids to pump gas.

Aside from Doug, none of the guys there had anything to do with Pete, since everyone knew he was crazy and you were supposed to stay away from him. They didn’t even know his real name-just called him what everyone else in Dorset called him: the Can Man.

Still swaddled in his sleeping bag, Pete shuffled his way over to the tiny kitchenette, where he kept his cans of chili and Beefaroni and the like. He kept his Crown Pilot crackers and Wonder Bread inside an old saltines tin or the mice would tear into them. He opened some pork and beans and ate them cold right out of the can with two slices of Wonder Bread. Washed it all down with more Captain Morgan and six aspirin. Then, slowly, Pete wriggled his gaunt self out of the bag, groaning from his aches. He pulled on his wool hunting shirt, heavy wool pants and pea coat, fingers fumbling from the arthritis. Stepped into his cracked, ancient work boots. Ran a hand through his iron gray hair, which he trimmed himself with shears; likewise his beard, which was mostly white. His blue eyes were deep set, his nose long and narrow. He had once been quite handsome. The girls had really gone for him. But it had been years since they’d looked at him that way. Or at all.

He was invisible.

This was perfectly okay by him. As long as people stayed away from him, Pete was fine. He just wanted to live his life his own way-no driver’s license, no credit cards, no bank account, no phone, no keys. He was a free man. Didn’t need the hospital. Didn’t need his medication. He had his trailer, his Captain Morgan and his morning rounds. He got plenty of exercise. Kept his mind busy with his numbers. He was fine. Hell, he was probably the happiest he’d ever been.

He hobbled inside. It was barely 6:00 A.M. but Doug was already filling the till and turning on the pumps. Pete rinsed his face in the work sink and drank down a cup of Doug’s strong, hot coffee. By then it was time to saddle up.

Pete made his morning rounds on a mountain bike that he’d found at the dump. It had only one serviceable gear, but it moved. His trailers, a pair of rackety grocery carts that he’d liberated from the A amp;P, were chained to the book rack behind his seat, one behind the other. Doug had put red reflectors on the back of Pete’s trailers and installed a battery-powered headlight on the front of his bike. The beam was feeble, but it gave the early morning drivers some indication that he was there.

It was still dark out when Pete started his way along the shoulder of Big Brook Road. Pete was not quiet. People could hear him and his empty trailers coming from a half-mile away in the predawn country silence. He pedaled, wool knit cap pulled low over his eyes and ears, jacket buttoned up to his throat. It was maybe a degree or two above freezing, and the headlights on the occasional passing car revealed a dense early morning fog. It was supposed to turn warm today, maybe warm enough to melt some of the hard, grimy snowbank that the plowman had built up along the shoulder.

When he reached the river he turned right onto Route 156, a narrow, twisting country road that ran its way north of Dorset into gentlemen’s farm country. He pedaled along through the foggy darkness, a half-pint of Captain Morgan snug inside his jacket pocket. His right knee still throbbed despite the aspirin. He tore cartilage in it playing rugby a hundred million years ago. And his left hip never stopped aching. He’d broken it when he flipped his Porsche late one night in the Italian Alps. The girl with him hadn’t made it. Pete couldn’t remember her name. Didn’t want to remember her name.

He was happy that winter was passing, because the snow hadn’t stopped falling last month and a lot of roads had been plain impassable. Pete got edgy without enough work to do. Mostly, he sat in his trailer all day poring over his personal bible, The World Almanac. Pete just loved The World Almanac. He had studied the bushel production of ten different agricultural products for all fifty states. Charted the distances by car between various cities. From Amarillo to Omaha it was 643 miles. From Cincinnati to New Orleans 786. Pete was very into numbers. As long as he kept his head crowded with numbers he could keep his demons shoved inside of a box, his full weight pressed down on top of the lid. The demons would try to pound their way out. But they were locked inside as long as he concentrated on his numbers. It was only when people started talking to him, asking him things, that the box would spring open and out would pop the demons.

As far as Pete was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this world that could not be solved by staying away from other people.

He pedaled. Dorset’s recycling truck made its rounds by around eight. Pete would have come and gone by then. The town picked up bundled newspapers and flattened cardboard, which were of no interest to Pete. It was the empty beer and soda cans that were. The bottles, too. Each one carried a nickel deposit on it. And a lot of the rich folk put them out for the Can Man-knowing that this was how he fed himself. Some of them even bagged them separately for him.

He pedaled, steering his little vehicle onto Bittersweet Lane, a cul-de-sac of million-dollar homes that had been built a few years back in old man Talcott’s apple orchards. At the foot of the first driveway he came to, Pete stopped to pick his way through the plastic recycling bins. He left the sardine cans and milk jugs. Took only the soda pop and beer empties, computing the nickel valuations in his head as he stuffed them inside his black plastic trash bags… Ten, fifteen and one more that’s twenty. Twenty-five, thirty…

Pete kept his cans separate from his bottles, and divided his glass bottles from the plastic ones. This saved him time when he hauled his load to the machines at the A amp;P On a morning like this, he might clear twenty dollars… seventy-five, eighty… He’d use it to buy his groceries and his Captain Morgan. Then he’d head back to his trailer for a nap. Maybe mosey on over to the Congregational Church for the free soup kitchen lunch.

Once the weather got warmer, he’d spend his afternoons on a bench in the town green with the sun on his face, feeding the squirrels stale bread until the kids got out of school. He had to steer clear of the kids in town. Some of the boys liked to taunt him and throw rocks at him. But Pete could not defend himself or that tall black trooper lady would descend on him. The little girls were even more worrisome. Even though Pete always tried to mind his own business, all he had to do was look at one of them and the nice ladies in town would send him back to the hospital.

Pete made out like a bandit on Bittersweet this morning. Already, he had $5.90 worth of empties, and he was just getting started. He clattered his way back onto Route 156, heading north.