Daniel Orozco - Orientation - And Other Stories

The father followed his son into the house, then into the kitchen. “Are you hungry, Pop?” the young man asked. He slid the heavy box onto the table in the breakfast nook and examined its contents.

“I could eat, I guess.”

In addition to the turkey, there were two cans of cranberry sauce, two cans of candied yams, a quart of mashed potatoes, a loaf of soft white bread, and a pint of gravy. The son peeled back several layers of foil from the turkey to reveal a patch of crisp browned flesh, which he probed with his finger. It was still warm.

“Smells good, huh?” he said. He moved the box to the kitchen counter, lifted the turkey out, and put it back on the table. His father pulled plates and silverware out of cupboards and drawers. The boy took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. He unwrapped the turkey until it sat brown and glistening on a bed of shredded foil. He gingerly grasped a drumstick and tugged. The turkey had been steaming in its wrapping for some time, so the leg came off easily. He set this on his father’s plate and pulled the other drumstick off for himself.

The older man had since removed his coat and now sat opposite his son. “I’m really not that hungry,” he said. But he began to eat anyway. He used his knife and fork to slice off small pieces, which he chewed thoroughly. His son meanwhile was holding the drumstick with both hands, biting off hunks of meat that hung out of his mouth. While the younger man appeared to be eating faster, it was the father who finished first. He ate at an unceasing pace, methodically cutting and chewing and swallowing until only a naked bone remained on his plate. He sighed and pushed it away. He patted his belly thoughtfully as he watched his son gnawing on his own drumstick. Then he got up and peered into the box on the counter.

“Do you want any of this other stuff?”

His son looked at him and grunted. So he took an opener to the cranberry sauce and candied yams, opened the mashed potatoes and gravy, and dumped their contents into separate plastic containers, microwaving each until they bubbled and steamed. The boy had gotten up and pulled two sodas from the refrigerator. He had difficulty popping the tabs with his greasy hands, and he grappled with these as his father brought all the trimmings to the table. They both began working on the turkey now. They peeled off strips of meat with their fingers and dipped them into the gravy. They spooned sauce and yams and mashed potatoes. They sopped up turkey grease from their plates with hunks of bread. They discovered a mother lode of stuffing within the turkey’s cavity. “Jackpot!” the boy cried. They both lit into it, excavating with serving spoons, then abandoning decorum and reaching into the bird with their hands to pull out the stuffing in gray-brown glutinous masses. They finished two more sodas apiece, then started in on the milk, passing the half-gallon container back and forth. They stripped the bird of its meat, broke its carcass apart, and gnawed and sucked at its bones until only splinters remained scattered on the table and floor.

The window at the breakfast nook was misted from the heat of their activity. Their white dress shirts were spattered with cranberry sauce and gravy. The cuffs of their rolled-up sleeves were dark with grease. Their eyeglasses were flecked with bits of food. Their chins were shiny. They both sat dazed, gaping at each other. “Jesus H. Christ,” the father gasped.

The boy scraped his chair toward the open refrigerator, seated himself in front of it, and proceeded to rifle its contents. His father hobbled over and joined him. They found a foil-wrapped package in the freezer, hairy with ice. “Brownies!” they cried. They threw the slab into the microwave and ate it hot, with milk. They found leftover lasagna in a Tupperware container and ate it cold. They found a fried pork chop and ate it immediately, one bite each. They licked out a mixing bowl of leftover cake frosting. They ate the gluey remnants of an indeterminate pie, the dregs of a congealing ham-and-bean soup, the desiccated remains of a forgotten noodle-cheese casserole. They pushed whatever they could find down their gullets until — engorged at last — they dropped to the floor and undid their belts and waistbands and rolled carefully onto their backs, breathing shallowly through their mouths like wounded animals. A square of sunlight moved over them and slipped up the wall and disappeared into the kitchen ceiling. They gazed for some time into the corner where the light had gone, cradling and stroking their englobed bellies — their comfort against the gathering dark of a new and alien evening.

I’m up early. I’m usually awake before my alarm clock goes off, and the first thing I do is get down on the floor and stretch. I start with my legs, with the ankles and calves, then the upper hamstrings and quads. I work the muscles around the hips and the lower back. I work my neck and shoulders last. It’s slow and tedious, but there’s no way around that. I do the same bends and reaches in the same order for forty minutes every morning. This is my routine. This is how I wake up.

When I get outside, it’s still dark. It can get pretty chilly, but I don’t bundle up. Shorts and shoes and a tank top — that’s all I need. I like the discomfort at the beginning of a run, when sometimes it’s so cold you can’t stop shaking, and every breath cuts into the back of your throat. Your knees and ankles crack and give, and the cramps stab hard. But then you find the rhythm of the run, or more accurately, you feel it find you , slipping into you like it was waiting for you along your route, and its heat spreads through you like a flame flaring up, and then the endorphins kick in and the pain is gone and everything is steady and true. There’s no traffic at this hour. I run through the blinking yellow lights. I go along the boulevard under the freeway, then head into the neighborhoods above it, where the rich people live. A few of them are just getting up. I can hear their alarm clocks beep, see their lights flick on. I can see the steam rolling out of their bathroom windows. I can smell their coffee brewing. I keep going, up where the roads are unpaved and the houses are farther apart, deep in the trees. Except for the occasional yapping dog or the rumble of garbage trucks down below, it’s just me up here — my breathing, the pulse in my neck, and the slap of my feet on the ground.

When I get home, the sun is out and the rest of the city is awake. I have plenty of time to cool down, stretch again, then eat and get to work by seven-thirty.

* * *

I’ve been at the warehouse for ten years. I started out of high school. I work on the stock floor. We’re called Central Supply, and we assemble and ship orders for the county school district, everything from chalk and erasers to lightbulbs and toilet paper and basketballs on up to filing cabinets and desks. I used to be the newest guy until Ruben was hired. But they still call me the New Guy. Some kind of joke, I guess.

Ruben is about my age, and every afternoon he disappears with one of the drivers to smoke a joint out back behind the dumpsters. Ruben is Mexican, and when he first started here, he corrected us when we called him Ru ben, telling us that it should be pronounced Ru ben . From then on everybody made sure to call him Ru ben, which is what he goes by now.

The rest of the guys have been at the warehouse forever. Dave has been here the longest. Our foreman, Mack, says Dave came with the building — he was seventeen when he started, and it’s been twenty-four years now. In a way I owe my life to Dave. With the exception of Ruben, the men I work with are old and unhealthy. They’re all overweight, and they smoke constantly, even while they eat. Dave is the worst of them. I’ve watched him get older and sicker — he had cancer surgery a while ago — and after a few years he started getting to me. I drank a lot then, nights after work, weekends in front of the TV. You could say I was another person back then. I lived with my folks rent-free. Nothing was expected of me. I thought I had it made. But I started worrying about things. I was afraid the warehouse would be my whole life, like it was for Dave. I counted the cigarettes he smoked and the cups of coffee he drank. I counted the sugar cubes he ate. He grabbed them by the handful and snacked on them. “Sweets for the sweet,” he’d say. I watched him lick the mayonnaise off his fingers from the sandwiches his wife made him. I watched him hop down from the loading dock — a three-foot jump — and then stoop for a minute to catch his breath. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, and he got annoyed. “Am I making your heart go pitty-pat?” he said. In a way, he was. I started running that night. I went out after dark so nobody would see me. I didn’t even make it around the block before I ended up puking in somebody’s bushes. I thought I was going to die. My folks thought I was nuts. I kept at it, though, probably the only thing I’ve ever kept at.