The Maintenance Man's Lament

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1

As I circle the building towards the rear of the grocery store, past the loading docks where the shadow of the motor room reaches its eerie tentacle across the asphalt parking lot, the putrid smell of the produce dumpster greets me. As I drive past, a pigeon takes flight from the rim of the fetid container. Continuing down the length of the store, at last I pull my service van pulled into an inconspicuous, shaded cubbyhole. My tool bag in my right hand, with my left I climb the metal ladder attached to the rear of the building.

Atop the roof, my footsteps echo on the hollow steel floor of the motor room as I walk down the line of seven giant, rattling compressors. Checking the patient's vital signs: no obvious leak presents itself; the system's suction pressure is holding steady; head pressure is a tad high (to be expected on a hot summer's afternoon); but the refrigerant level is minimal. Well, I'll just have to keep on eye on that refrigerant level, during the surgery. No sense in pumping expensive Freon into a leaking system, as long as the suction pressure holds.

Satisfied with the pre-op, I step outside and light a cigarette. My Marlboro Red tastes dirty, like licking an ashtray. I only smoke because I have to. Truth be told, the first butt of each day, the one that accompanies my morning coffee as I sit in the kitchen, starved for nicotine and dreading the day ahead- that one tastes pretty good. But the rest of the twenty some-odd cigarettes that I smoke each day are simply nerve medicine, sandbags in a leaking levee that must be periodically reinforced if withdrawal pangs are to be kept at bay. How did that tobacco executive refer to cigarettes? "Nicotine delivery devices", I think it was. Dirty bastard. Miserable pencil-pushing corporate whore.

The cigarette finished and my demon sated for the moment, I return to the motor room. Immediately inside the door I snatch up my tool bag, and tote it the length of the building to where the offending compressor sits. Placing the bag on the floor beside me, I begin to work with the system still running, closing valves with a large crescent wrench, disconnecting hot wires with a small Philips screwdriver whose handle is wrapped in black tape. As I labor, I break the bad news to the patient: "Sorry, pal, but your days of loyal service are finished. Having given your all in devotion to the company's bottom line, we shall now discard you like a moth-eaten shirt. Toss you onto the scrap pile, alongside the blackened light bulbs and soiled toilet paper and employees whose health has gone south. However, as a token of our ongoing esteem, company policy does provide you with the following words of wisdom to carry forward into all your future endeavors: 'don't let the door hit you on the ass, as you're leaving'."

Actually, the compressor will be shipped back to the factory and rebuilt, given new seals and valves and various other internal organs, then returned to service. Only workingmen are tossed onto the trash heap at the first hint of malfunction. Sweating now from the heat and the effort and the anger that accompanies my thoughts, I trip into a coughing fit. Stranding and breathing tentatively, I notice that the phone at my side is lit up. Hearing it ring above the din of motors is impossible, but I have trained myself to look at the telephone's face periodically. My boss's number shows. Well, he'll just have to wait.

The ailing compressor is now valved off, hermetically isolated from the rest of the giant refrigeration system that chills the bacon and ice cream and frozen TV dinners for the grocery store below. However, a small amount of Freon remains in the compressor itself. Federal law states that this residual Freon must be recovered, rather then vented into the atmosphere, lest the ozone hole over the Artic Circle continue to expand. A serviceman caught by EPA watchdogs venting Freon into the cosmos, rather than recovering it, may lose his technician's license, or even face jail time. However, recovering the refrigerant from a single compressor can take anywhere from one to three hours- and three hours is the total time allowed by the company for the entire compressor removal, from arriving at the store, until the massive steel hulk is pulled from the rack. No one in the management chain ever gives an employee a direct order to vent Freon into the atmosphere: they simply leave him no other choice.

After looking out the front door and verifying that I am alone, I shuffle the duly licensed and certified Freon recovery machine into a corner of the metal building. Returning to the motor rack, I loosen a fitting on the dead compressor's high side. A thick, acrid mist begins to fill the room. Hurrying, with my sleeve across my face, I belatedly open the back door. As many times as I have performed this operation, and still I forget.

While the motor room fills with the evidence of my crime, I exit the enclosure and stroll across the sweltering pebbles carpeting the roof, past rooftop cooling units and ventilation fans and empty plastic jugs and one faded porn magazine, to the front of the store. Soaked with sweat, I peer over the marquee into the sprawling parking lot, to watch fat women perspire as they push buggies full of chicken and crackers and pie shells from the store's air-conditioned ambiance to the cooled inner sanctums of their automobiles. Once again I imagine a rifle in my hands, picking off customers with the alacrity of a veterinarian putting down injured cattle. My phone rings. The boss, again. Answering: "Yeah, yeah. What the hell do you want?"

2

By the time Aaron gets down from the roof and joins me in the truck, I am already tearing into my sandwich, a roast beef hoagie with lettuce and bell pepper slices spilling from the sides. "Jeez, Barry, no appetite today?" Aaron quips, as he climbs in beside me.

Aaron and I work for a service company that performs maintenance for a supermarket chain. So we visit the same stores time and again, until at last we know the individual quirks of each machine, and the quirks of the employees and managers as well. "Helen said you should stop by and see her," I report, "when you get a chance. Got something she wants to show you. Something big… I mean, something important." Aaron chuckles. Helen cooks in the store's delicatessen, a woman as good-natured as she is obese. We like her, but she is not spared our witticisms.

"Man, you doin' a number on that sandwich. Tammy not feed you last night?"

"She cooked, but I didn't eat much. Drank a lot of beer. Had a touch of the shakes this morning. First time in a while."

"Well, I ate a pastry while I was fixing the stove in the bakery…"

"Paid for it, I hope."

"Yeah, right. Sure I did. So anyway, I'm gonna skip eating lunch, step outside and get a couple hits off this joint. You want some?"

"No thanks. But if you'll promise to go inside and get the ticket signed at the end of the day, I might have a cold one. After this sandwich."

Aaron pauses. "You sure you wanna do that?" He looks at me intently.

"What, man?" my mouth full of smoked meat, lettuce on my chin, eyes bloodshot.

"Aw, nothin'. Ain't none of my business. Yeah, go ahead. Eat, drink, and be merry, I'll get the ticket signed. Do whatever you want to."

He steps out to smoke, and I produce a twenty-four ounce can of beer, in the only brand that I will drink: made with union labor, and no additives or preservatives. After a moment's hesitation, I return the can to the brown paper sack, leaving only the top sticking out, and open the tab. Oh, that'll fool 'em, I snicker. Some store manager sees me drinking out of a brown paper sack, he'll never suspect it's a beer. No, sirree. After a quick survey of the surroundings, I take a long pull. Oh my god, that is soooo good. I lay the sandwich down on my lap and take another long drink, closing my eyes to savor the experience.

"You ain't gonna shoot off, are you?" Aaron is back in the truck, smelling of prairie mesquite, with a twinkle in his eye. "Tell me something, Barry. How come you don't smoke dope anymore, anyway?"

"It's like this, Bubba. Dragging those damn compressors around messed up my back, after the first couple of years. Now I hurt, everyday, whether I'm working or whether I'm loafing. Meanwhile, dodging store managers and putting up with Larry Thompson's bullshit keeps my nerves in a frenzy. So when I get high, I don't want a dose of something frilly. I don't want something that has paranoia side-effects. I want painkiller, with a side of nerve medicine. And that means…"

"Heroin and valium?"

A hint of a smile. "I wish, brother. I only wish." Turning my beer up, I note with dismay that it's nearly gone, already. I desperately crave another. But I can't, not and finish the day. So I light a cigarette instead.

"Where the hell is Hector, anyway?" I ask. We are cleaning condenser coils today, a chore that requires three men. Hector is the unskilled Mexican laborer who rounds out our crew. For weeks now, I have been reaching out to Hector, trying to make him feel welcome, a part of the gang. But my overtures have been largely rebuffed, met only with silence and stony stares. Perhaps the language barrier remains unsurmounted. Or maybe Hector just hates gringos. Could hardly blame him, if that's the case. At any rate, the man is a hard worker. Our biggest problem with Hector, is getting him to take his breaks.

"Who cares where Hector is?" Aaron responds, caustically.

"I care, goddamit. Must be over a hundred degrees up there. We'll need him close by, when we start back to work. So if he gets a break, it's gotta be now. And if he doesn't get a break, he's liable to have a heat stroke."

"Greasers don't have heat stokes," Aaron scoffs. "Hell, he probably come from the deserts of south Chiapas, where he walked for three days in the blistering sun, in between squeezing a single drop of water out of a cactus button." I don't bother to correct Aaron, to point out that Chiapas tends more to rainforest, than to desert. "Besides, you sure do worry a lot about that wetback. He some kinda kin to you? Gonna marry your sister, maybe?" Poking me in the side.

"Fuck you, man. He's part of this crew, and we're supposed to look out for each other. Cause if we don't, the bosses won't." This topic has been covered before, repeatedly and in depth. We know that we disagree about the merits of Mexicans, and that neither of us is likely to change his mind. But we go through the motions of arguing, anyway.

"I know, Barry. I know. We're all in this together. We need to form a union. Get ourselves fired from this job, in a noble, futile gesture of defiance against the evil bastards that despoil the earth and oppress the masses. Solidarity forever. Preach it to me, brother." Aaron drops his head in penitence and raises his right hand to the sky, "Forgive me, father, for I have sinned against my class. I have committed the blasphemy of racism."

"Let me put it this way, smart ass. Who you got more in common with, Hector, or Larry Thompson? Huh? Whose side you on, the boss, or that poor, broke wetback up there, sweating his ass off right beside you? Right beside you, what I mean. There ain't no middle ground. Which side you on?"

Aaron says nothing. He hates Larry Thompson, our boss, at least as much as myself. Finally Aaron, in his own inept way, extends an olive branch. "Well, I guess working with ole Hector is better than working with some lazy ass nigger, anyway."

Exasperated, with Aaron and with Hector and with the job and the heat and the store and with my life, I climb out of the truck and stalk from the shade where it sits parked, out into the sunshine at the foot of the ladder. "Dammit, I'm not gonna climb that ladder again, just to tell Hector to take a break," I complain. "Did he know you were coming down?" I shout back at Aaron, still seated in the truck's passenger seat. Aaron cuts his eyes at me, but makes no reply. "Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch with a full litter of puppies," I mutter, as I begin the long, tiring climb up the ladder to the roof of the store, to insist that our brown young friend who speaks no English and wears Brylcreem in his hair, join us for lunch. But then, looking up, I see Hector at the top of the ladder, peering quizzically over the side of the roof. At last. I wave, motioning for him to come down. He nods. Good, now I can finish my lunch.

God almighty, do I ever wish I could drink another beer.

3

Aaron's father worked construction as a carpenter, whereas mine owned a hardware store. The difference in our backgrounds largely explains the differences in our attitudes. Coming from a middle class background, I am troubled by the destruction visited upon the environment by the monster refrigeration systems that we maintain. Not so, Aaron: he just shrugs off my concerns, and looks both ways for the EPA man. He does get pissed off, about the fact that the employee assumes all the risk, while the company reaps all the profit. But he is certain that nothing can be done about it. Twas ever thus, and "the poor have been among us always", toting water for the rich folks unto the third generation (in his family, anyway).

In my family, on the other hand, us kids were raised to have a certain sense of entitlement. We were taught that we had "rights". So when I left my Dad's store and struck out on my own, only to see firsthand the royal shafting that working folks get, I got mad. I been mad ever since.

What, you may ask, is a middle class lad like myself doing anyhow, climbing ladders and pulling compressors and baking on the roof of a supermarket in the fierce Tennessee sun? Good question. I tell folks that I quit college and went to work, for the same reason that I quit high school football: to piss my ole man off. Which is partly true. I mean, I never began college to begin with, so I never really "quit". But my decision not to pursue an education really did follow from my revulsion towards my old man's twisted, materialistic values. And I quit high school football for similar reasons, because the culture of elitism disgusted me.

But those weren't my only reasons. Not really. Another factor was, that things like athletics and academics have been known to interfere with a man's drinking. What can I say? I like bending my elbow with blue collar types. So here I am.

Anyway, like I said, Aaron come from a working class family, but I was raised by a somewhat more well-to-do set of parents. As a result, Aaron putters though most of his days fairly content with his lot in life. Because he never expected much to begin with. Me, I walk around with my fists balled up, a low-grade blue flame of anger constantly burning. I rarely explode, but the pilot is always lit, the potential always there.

To my way of thinking, us workers get a raw deal, every day. Aaron, on the other hand, was taught from day one that just having a job was the most that a man could aspire to. So the only thing that he gets mad about, is Mexicans "taking our jobs" (meaning, getting hired for jobs that would otherwise go to white folks). For my part, I don't see what's so all-fired wonderful about these damn jobs to begin with, that us white folks should be so possessive of them.

So Aaron and I don't agree on a lot of subjects. I think the recent surge in union organization among Latinos is the last, best hope for the American working class; Aaron thinks that machine guns should be mounted all along the nation's southern border, to discourage immigration. I think our employer should be sent to prison for a couple of decades, as just deserts for the ecological carnage that he has wrought in pursuit of his filthy lucre; Aaron thinks that the EPA should butt out and let a working man make a living, without adding to the hassle he has to endure. But there is one thing that Aaron and I do agree on: the boss man, Larry Thompson, our immediate supervisor, is a real sack of shit.

4

Another sweltering day; another store, identical to the rest; another set of nasty condenser coils to clean. Aaron has finished spraying acid on the last set of coils and retreated, into the shadow of the motor room to escape the blistering rays. Hector finishes hosing down the next-to-last set of coils, and starts rinsing the last. He has removed his shirt and wrapped the bright red garment around his head against the sun. The tolerance of his back and chest to sunlight never ceases to amaze me. Aaron or myself would be cooked by now, but as long as Hector protects his head, he seems capable of withstanding the scorching beams indefinitely. Perhaps his history is as Aaron says: perhaps he really does come from the desert.

I begin to gather the empty acid jugs, and to roll up the portion of hosepipe that is no longer needed. Even though the afternoon is not spent, and we have no emergency calls to run, already Larry Thompson has called twice to ask if we are finished, whining- not accusing outright- but insinuating that we are coasting on the clock. The temperature must be ninety in the shade, yet that insufferable bastard acts like we are on vacation, lolling on the beach in Florida instead of cooking our brains on top of a supermarket in Hell's Acre, Tennessee.

To heck with this, I decide, flipping the spent jugs into a cardboard box and tossing the hosepipe back down onto the tarmac. We'll take a break before we clean up, in defiance of that thieving, slave-driving bastard. I join Aaron in the shadow of the motor room, and catch him toking up. He seems happy enough, pleased that the day's labor is behind us, while I'm in ill humor, put out that Larry keeps calling. When I complain, Aaron replies, "That's what bosses do. They bitch. What do you expect, a commendation? A medal?" Another day in refrigeration paradise.

Hector finishes rinsing the last coil; without pausing, he begins to roll up hosepipe. Jesus, why do I have to force that boy to take his breaks? Does he not see that no one else is working? Has he still not figured out that me and Aaron are not bosses, but rather worker bees like himself? I approach Hector from the side, making a breaking motion with my hands. But he doesn't see me, instead remaining intent upon his task. When I place my hand on his bare, brown shoulder in order to get his attention, I find it slick with sweat. He looks up suddenly, startled. I motion for him to join us in the shade. Slowly, with seeming reluctance, he follows.

Hector is a smoker. I have noticed him puffing the same brand as myself. But today he seems to be without, so I offer one of mine. He shakes his head in declination. Stubborn little mule. What will it take to reach this guy? Again I hold out my pack of smokes in his direction, insistent. "Go ahead, amigo. Por favor. Usted me amigo. Jefe is malo, pero Hector es bueno." Not perfect grammar, I figure, but close enough to establish communication. Got to start somewhere. But Hector says nothing, just sits staring down at the roof beneath his feet. Again, "Jefe es malo, pero Hector es bueno. Comprende, amigo? Entiendas?"

Suddenly, for the first time in the several months that I have known him, Hector looks me dead in the eye, and hisses imperfect English through stained teeth: "Why you no lee me lone, huh mahn? Why you no lee me lone? Me no you fuckee queer boy!"

As I sit with my face reddening while my tongue stumbles over my teeth in a desperate search for an appropriate response, a clever rejoinder that will straighten out this horrible, ridiculous misunderstanding, Aaron howls with laughter and slaps his palm to his knee. "Way to go, Hector! You tell him, Buddy! Put that dirty lil faggot in his place! I be damm, boy, you may turn out alright, after all…"