They opened the blue door of the maintenance building. The men were strung in a line down the hall, at the end of which hung the time clock. It ticked and the first man dipped his card into the slot and went out the door. The line moved forward.
As each man left the building, he went to the crew shop where the boss assigned the day’s work. The hierarchy placed electricians at the top, followed by carpenters, painters, landscapers, and garbagemen. Off to the side and on their own were the custodians of individual buildings, quiet men who moved slowly, ignored by students and faculty. Virgil headed for the garbage dock. He cut through the main building instead of going around, walked down a hall, and came out a seldom-used door. He closed it very quietly. He stepped around the corner and stomped his feet. Two men turned quickly, half-rising from their seats. Footsteps from that direction could only mean the Big Boss.
“Don’t get up, boys,” Virgil said. “I know you all are studying on important stuff.”
Rundell spat coffee. “I wish to hell you’d not do that, Virge. Damn near woke Dewey here up.”
“I ain’t asleep,” Dewey said.
“You were asleep and you know it. You’re the only man I ever seen who can sleep standing up.”
“I don’t talk the wax out of a man’s ears,” Dewey said. “Now let me alone.”
Virgil opened the door to the garbage crew’s tiny office. Inside was a desk, three chairs, and an industrial coffee machine that had been salvaged from the trash. He filled a styrofoam cup and went outside.
“You’re on wheel, Virge,” Rundell said.
Rundell had run the garbage crew for twenty-three years and divided all aspects of the work equally. Four men could fit in the cab of the truck, and each week they rotated among driver, cabman, outside man, and gearshift man. Rundell was set to retire in a year and he’d marked Virgil as his successor.
“Where’s Taylor at?” Virgil said.
“Ain’t here yet,” Dewey said.
“I can see that. But is he on the job?”
“Well.” Dewey gave him a sly look. “His card got punched.”
“Then we got to wait on that sorry son of a bitch.”
“He’ll be here.”
“Now I ain’t trying to tell you what to do, Dewey,” Rundell said. “But you’d best watch punching him in that way. If you know he’s coming late, it ain’t nothing. But that Taylor, he’s likely to be in the jailhouse as in the bed. Get caught fooling with his card and you’re out of a job. I’ve seen it happen, boys. More than once.”
Across the back of the lot, Taylor came slipping through the gate.
“Look yonder,” Virgil said. “If it ain’t the old girl hisself. Watch this.”
He ducked into the office and hid all the styrofoam cups but one. He used a finishing nail to make a series of small holes around its brim and set the cup by the coffee machine.
Taylor came slowly across the lot, walking in a stiff way to keep his head level. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and his lips were cracked.
“Boys,” he said. “Somebody shoot me. I can’t stand this no longer.”
He went in the office and closed the door. He kept a half-pint of whisky inside, but as long as Rundell didn’t see a man drinking on the job, he could deny it. Taylor came out of the office upright. The whisky had given his face some color, his eyes a little life. “Who’s got a smoke?” he said. Dewey tossed him a cigarette and Taylor put it in his mouth and pulled out a Zippo. He leaned his head away and tilted the lighter at an angle opposite his head. The flame shot six inches into the air. Taylor sucked hard and capped the lighter. “My hat on fire?”
The men chuckled and shook their heads.
“Boys,” he said. “I feel like I been shot at and missed, shit at and hit.”
He sipped the coffee. It came out of the holes onto his chin and a few seconds passed before he registered the burn. “Goddam you son of a blue-balled bitches. Every one of you!”
He jerked the cup away from his face, sloshing coffee onto his hand. He passed it quickly to his other hand, but held on to the coffee because of the whisky he’d dumped in it. He lifted the cup and bit off part of the rim to get rid of the holes. He spat the styrofoam and drank, lifting his eyebrows to Rundell over the cup.
“What are we waiting on?” he said. “Time to hit a lick, ain’t it.”
Dewey smiled, dark gaps speckling his mouth where teeth should be. Rundell clamped his lips like two bricks because his laugh was a high-pitched giggle that embarrassed him. Taylor choked his laughter off, lifting his hand to his forehead, his face twisted from the pain.
“Don’t,” he said. “Damn it. You boys are harder on a man than a preacher. I knew I shouldn’t have come in.”
“Why did you?” Virgil said.
“Hell, I wrecked my car last night. I woke up still in the ditch and I was closer to work than the house. I just come in for a drink to feel better.”
The men laughed on the cement dock, blowing white gusts of breath into the chilly air. The sun showed above the eastern hill. After a few minutes, they began drifting toward the truck. Virgil climbed behind the wheel, marveling at the way they moved as a group with no clear sign from Rundell, like a flock of geese. Other crew bosses had rituals that told everyone it was time, such as looking at a watch, or standing, or simply a nod. With Rundell it was an attitude. He assumed an air of resignation, as if he didn’t want to be the one to say, but he had to, which prevented him from having to speak at all.
Virgil used his old driver’s license to clear frost from the inside of the windshield. The dashboard was covered with items of potential value that the men had found in the trash, including a headless Barbie doll and a one-legged GI Joe that Taylor put into sexual positions. Virgil shifted to first and the truck jerked forward.
Taylor finished his coffee. He held the brim with his teeth so that the cup covered his nose and mouth. He nuzzled Dewey, grunting like a hog. Dewey slapped the cup away, flinging coffee dregs through the cab.
“Goddam it, Dewdrop,” said Taylor. “You got something against hogs?”
“No. Just that you ain’t one’s all.”
“You saying I ain’t a hog?”
Dewey nodded.
“Then what am I?”
“You know what you are.”
“He’s a cuckolder,” Rundell said.
“Did you call me a cuckolder?” Taylor said.
“Sure did.”
“Think I ort to let him get away with that, Dewey? Calling me a cuckolder, by God.”
“I don’t know,” Dewey said. “Maybe not if he called you it twice.”
“He’s a cuckolder,” Rundell said.
“He done it,” Taylor said.
“I’d not let him call you three cuckolders,” Dewey said. “He’s lucky it ain’t me he’s calling one. I ain’t never held nobody’s but my own.”
“No,” Virgil said. “The world’s lucky you ain’t one.”
“What is one anyhow?” Taylor said.
“Well,” Rundell said. “A cuckolder is what you’re give up to be half the time.”
“Hell, it must mean drink whisky,” Taylor said.
“No,” Rundell said. “It more or less means a man who fucks another man’s wife.”
Virgil rounded a curve and junk slid along the dashboard. Last year’s leaves still clung to the hardwoods, while the maples were beginning to bud. Ground fog rose as if drawn by a fan.
“Well,” Virgil said. “Nobody here’s married except Rundell, and I’d say Taylor ain’t got him worried too bad.”
“That’s right,” Rundell said. “The old lady’d shoot him for looking at her funny.”
“What does she use to shoot with?” Taylor said.
“Ever what’s laying handy.”