When I was ten or so I practiced to be a garbage man in my back yard. My wooden wagon was my garbage truck. Me and Manny Martelletti parked the red wagon in front of my basement window and proceeded to throw my toys, my brother’s toys and my sisters’ toys out the window into the wagon. The wagon had a metal handle for easing pulling and removable wooden slats for walls allowing us to pile toys high. Manny and I filled the wagon and carefully wheeled it across a yard pounded into a series of hardened dirt circles by years of football, baseball and war games. Our objective was the oversized Sears swing set jammed into the back corner of our yard. Though not its intended use, the swing set acted as our practice garbage compactor.
I doubt the engineers or marketers responsible for producing the swing set had our family in mind when launching the product. Standing over 10 feet tall it sported a steel ladder at one end, a long slender slide at the other end and a catwalk spanning a 12’ length of supporting piping. From the steel piping hung two chain-link swings and a booth-like contraption capable of holding four children on two metal benches. The swings allowed us to harness momentum and leap off as we tried to jump over friends or, in one ill-considered effort, land on our bikes. When not leaping from swings to land on the backs of friends or smashing our balls on banana bicycle seats, we turned our attention to the booth contraption.
Bored with simply swinging the booth back and forth, we created a game of chicken involving the contraption. One or two of us jumped into the booth and swung back and forth in ever widening arcs while a child of lesser age or, perhaps lesser intelligence, attempted to bolt under the booth as it reached its highest point on the arc. The booth cleared the ground by 6”. The cost of losing the game of chicken was severe as you risked being crushed against the hardened earth or being struck by the flying contraption on the return swing. Play time often ended at the booth. It was the 1970s and child safety, not to mention playtime injury litigation, was still a thing of the future.
About a half dozen kids in the neighborhood received stitches at the hand of the swing set, with the greatest disaster visiting our young neighbor James when he was knocked to the ground by the swinging booth only to rise to his knees in time to be struck again on the return swing, wedging his head between the metal flooring of the booth and the hardened dirt. Following the search for the missing part of James’ ear less dangerous activities such as making believe the swing set was a garbage compactor gained favor.
On this morning, though, I was not focused on the hazards of the booth. I was preparing for my future. Manny and I pulled the wagon to the base of the swing set’s ladder and methodically carried or tossed the toys up onto the catwalk. Once piled at the top of the ladder we lugged them across the catwalk to the slide. Climbing over the catwalk railing I jumped to the ground, rolling to a stop. Brushing myself off, I pulled the wagon from the base of the ladder to the end of the slide. Once the wagon was in place Manny shoved the toys down the slide, crashing them into the wagon. We were practicing to be garbage men.
As the toys clogged the bottom half of the slide we imagined the worst and, fearing an atomic garbage explosion, took turns holding each other’s feet or wrists to lower one another towards the logjam. Kicking or pushing, we tried to clear our jammed garbage shoot. In the end one of us inevitably fell, usually head first, clearing the slide of toys. After many practice runs toys began to break. My sister’s Barbie camper was crushed and eventually set on fire before being rolled down the slide on a final childhood romp.
Looking back, I suspect Manny was jealous of our toys. His father was ill and unable to work. Though I did not know it as a child, money was tight and toys dear at Manny’s house. He simply enjoyed breaking as many toys as possible to even the score. To me, damage to the toys was the cost of preparing for my future gig.
Following our third garbage shoot run, my mother flung open the kitchen door, tea cup in hand, “Beasley what the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? You’re gonna break those toys. My God, that’s your sister’s new Barbie camper! Stop it! Stop this right now.”
“Mom, I’m practicing to be a garbage man. That’s what I want to be when I grow up.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, I have raised a goddamned idiot. I don’t know what to say except I’m sure you’ll get your wish, Beasley. Just keep it up and you’ll get just what you’re asked for, acting like this.” The door slammed shut.
About six years later the door to my dream of being a garbage man reopened. I guess mom didn’t realize it at the time but apparently she was in the process of raising a garbage man prodigy. I reached my childhood dream with my first job as a garbage man in a New Jersey shopping mall. At 16 I began part time work just before school ended, logging full time hours during the summer and returning to part time work when school restarted in September.
In the late 1970s the enclosed shopping mall was more than simply the death of Main Street; it was the place to be. The mall teemed with a mass of kids, moms, disco-shopping twenty somethings and seniors, most of whom smoked indoors and threw their butts on the floor or left them burning in the trash receptacles. My title was Maintenance Man and I was charged with walking around the mall with dustpan and broom. I picked up every piece of shit tossed on the ground.
In addition to my ongoing broom & bin work, every two hours I wheeled an enormous plastic cart through the teeming masses to the various garbage cans located within my assigned area. On weekends the crowds were crushing and I was forced to pull the overstuffed cart through a sea of shoppers. As I yanked the cart forward I thought of my long gone wagon, destroyed in a collision with a parked car. After soaring downhill, I had swerved to avoid oncoming traffic and careened into a driveway. The front of the wagon splintered upon impact with the car. My parents refused to replace it and I was left with a memory.
My memory of the wagon fading to black and white, I wandered my assigned area at the mall. To inform me of garbage emergencies I was given a pager. Receiving a page meant I had to stop what I was doing and make my way to the main office for an assignment. There I was given a hand-written message by the secretary or supervisor informing me of my next task. “Spill at Chick Filet” translated into a kid puking up a milk shake or chicken sandwich or 16 oz. Coke. The never ending pukes were remedied by dumping sawdust on the puke and sweeping up the mess and accompanying trails of puke forged as shoppers unwittingly traipsed through the barf. “Clog mens room” usually meant some giant guy had laid a kangaroo tail down, clogging a toilet with a horrible dinosaur shit and covering his misdeed with wads of toilet paper, a paper towel or two and perhaps a soda cup tossed in for good measure. Such clogs were devastatingly risky and required a skilled plunger. One wrong move and a spray of stool water was unleashed upon your shirt or face.
I came to dislike my pager and was forced though a number of them as I periodically lobbed them into the trash compactor, acting shocked when my boss grabbed my arm demanding to know why I had not responded to his page. “Jesus, sir, I am so, so sorry. It was right here, on my belt. I must have lost it during rounds this afternoon. You want me to go look for it?” They replaced each one.
Our mall’s maintenance crew was organized into a strict hierarchy comprised of three strata. Bosses in suits representing mall management were at the top. I only responded to their specific questions. I did my best to avoid them as they were full of requests. “Take this scraper and get all the gum off the floor, young man.” “Traffic is light, Kinkade. Go mop the men’s room.” “Hose down the compactor shoot; make it sparkle, Kinkade. Make it sparkle.” I kept my distance. The suits all reported to Mr. Dinkler, the Mall Manager.
My immediate bosses, the crew supervisors, reported to the suit guys. The supervisors partied with us. They had usually crash-landed as a mall maintenance super after losing their job, going on parole or realizing leaving high school in the eleventh grade was not the best career move. The supers were usually running some sort of scam; stealing supplies from the mall in order to sell to one of the many store owners, selling drugs or trying – and mostly succeeding – in screwing the high school girls working at the mall. They were the top of the pecking order amongst the workingman at the mall.
I was a member of the third level of our hierarchy; maintenance worker. We were responsible for cleaning the mall throughout the day and mopping up after closing. My workmates represented a constellation of the surrounding county’s most ill-behaved, drugged out and mentally slow young adults. We were an all-star team of druggies and behavioral train wrecks. While working at the mall we were exposed to best practices of the worst behaviors, spreading our activities like enablers of a behavioral virus attacking fundamental societal norms. If a worker from Paramus knew how to make a bong out of his sneaker and a baggie, he showed us and we spread the technique to all corners of the county. If someone knew how to roll over a VW Bug with just one friend, Bugs were soon rolling in every neighboring town. We were the bottom of the pecking order and did not have much further to fall. We acted accordingly.
Supers and workers got along just fine. We took care of each other, partied together and shared our partying materials. Routinely, we pushed our huge garbage carts through the crowds, screaming out Doors lyrics, laughing or asking random shoppers to help us locate an ostrich or whatever else appeared during hallucinations. We were often reported to the bosses in suits and they rained down on the supers. The supers gave us a kick in the ass but protected us. Many of us logged years there. We grew close to each other, fell in and out of love and enjoyed being on the all-star team, even if, deep down, we knew we were on a team of social failures.
Among the supers Clancy became a fast favorite. During his first evening on the job he called a handful of the existing crew together, apparently selecting those looking most burnt out or ill-behaved and asked us to step outside by the garbage dumpster. I was among the small crowd he selected.
Walking single file we made our way outside and formed a little circle. Arms crossed, Clancy looked us over. “Who here is on drugs? Gentlemen, you are going to get one fucking pass and this is it. You look like a bunch of fucking burnouts so don’t go telling me you’re not baked right now. Which one of you is stoned, huh? Who? This is your onetime hall pass. You better take it.”
We looked at each other then looked at our shoes. We were at work; we were all drunk or stoned. We remained silent. He continued, “Ok you bunch of fucking mutes, tell me this; where do people get high?” I shrugged.
“Jesus, H. Christ,” he yelled, “anyone carrying right now?” Sully, the drinker of the crew and the closest thing I had to a big brother, was rocking back and forth by now. He pulled a flat bottle of Jack from his back pocket, “I got this. Want a hit?”
Sully was stoic Irishman. Strong like a bull, he lived behind his alcohol and a mask of acne ravaged skin. My first night on the job I shadowed him after a suit handed me a dust bin and broom and then handed me off to Sully. “Sully this is the new guy, Kinkade. Kinkade, this is Sully.”
“Follow me, kid” was all he said. We walked up and down his assigned area as he flipped butts and rubbish into his bin. I followed suit. He led us down a back hall behind the stores to the garbage compactor area.
He did not seem happy to have me on his tail and I wondered if he would try to throw me in the compactor. We crept behind the compactor to a long slender area about two feet wide, covered in years of greasy dirt. He yanked a bottle from his back pocket and downed a good quarter of the pint.
He nodded at me, “Want a hit?” “Sure, Sully. Thanks.” I gulped down some Jack, shivering as I did so. I returned the bottle with a mumbled thank you.
“How long you been drinking, kid?”
“Just a few years. I mostly drink Bacardi and Southern Comfort, though. It’s pretty cool that you can drink on the job, huh?”
He took another hit and stepped forward. I could see the hundreds of craters and crevices on his moon shaped face. I smelled Jack on his hot breath. “Those are pussy drinks. How old are you? What’s your fuckin’ name again?” I stiffened doing my best to stare him down, “My name is Beasley and I’m 16. And I’m not a fuckin’ pussy, man.”
Sully smirked, “Calm down there killer.” He looked me up and down, “You’re all right, kid.” I was relieved as being tossed in the compactor was preferable to fighting this Sully guy. He was thick as a bear, scarred and sported homemade ink across the back of his fingers.
He leaned against the grimy wall and closed his eyes for a long time, opening them with a cold, dead man’s stare. “Do you think I want to drink? Do you think I want to be a fucking maintenance man, Mr. Beasley?”
Caught off guard, I shrugged, “If you’re asking, I guess not.”
“Fuckin’ A,” he yelled out. He slowly tilted his head forward touching his chin to his chest, then purposely he banged the back of his head against the wall with a dull thud. “I’d be drinking wherever I was, Beasley. Wherever the fuck I am; I drink.” He downed the rest of the bottle and smashed it on the floor. “Think I owned that little bottle there, Bease? Fuck no. It’s the opposite. That bottle owned me.”
He chest was heaving and he was breathing hard now. He reached out and put a paw on my shoulder, squeezing the base of my neck. He had a vice grip on me. I put my hands up preparing to fight. “You don’t want to be here, kid. You don’t want to end up like me.” He released me and gently patted my face with a calloused hand. His fingers lingered for just a moment as he looked down before turning to leave the compactor area.
As we became friends I learned Sully wanted to be a super in the worst way but his drinking kept him from reaching his goal. His life consisted of drinking, working, fighting at bars and returning home where he lived with his widowed dad. This was Sully’s circle of life.
Clancy nodded at Sully’s honest response and grabbed the bottle of Jack. He took a long swig, causing Sully to release a rare smile. Looking at the skinny maintenance man next to Sully, Clancy asked. “Are you carrying?” The skinny kid, Dirk, pulled a bag of bud from the front of his pants. Clancy, beamed, “Alright, now. Where’s the best place to get high?”
Sully led our little band inside the building. We made our way up a set of stairs in the back hallway behind the second floor stores, soon arriving at one of the mall’s two service elevators. Knowing Sully’s routine, I pressed the elevator button and waited. Sully tussled my hair and shoved me. The elevator arrived and I stepped into the cab, pressed the # 1 button and quickly stepped out, sending the empty elevator to the first floor. As the elevator descended I pulled a Chick Fillet pen from my pocket and slid it into the hole at the upper middle corner of the external elevator door, tilting the pen up and finding the mechanical lever. As planned, the elevator stopped between the first and second floors. Sully was the strongest among us. He pealed the outer doors open and looked over at Clancy, “Hop on, dude.” Clancy hesitated so I jumped onto the carriage of the waiting elevator. The crew followed and we huddled on top of the elevator. Clancy looked up at the dark space above the elevator; about two floors of space. Sully smiled again, “You asked, chief. You asked.”
Dirk looked at Clancy and held his fingers to his lips. “Don’t fuckin’ say a word.” We let the external doors close and the elevator resumed its trip downward. The top of the elevator was dark, with light peeking in from the slits under two floors of doors. There was a single bulb at the top of the shaft, like a dying star reaching out with a final bit of energy towards us. The top of the elevator carriage was equipped with a box allowing you to control the elevator from the top perch, an alarm bell and two steel beams on which we sat.
Sully, started chugging his Jack. He was a bull and required much drink. We each took a swig. Sully saw me shiver and leaned over to me, banging me with his shoulder, “Pussy,” he whispered. I gave him the finger and he smirked, shaking his head. We sparked up, filling the shaft with lingering smoke. For five minutes or so, we traveled up and down as the passengers below us got in and out of the elevator. Some commented on the smell, “Nice aroma, douche bags,” said one fellow maintenance man knowing what was happening above him. We finished smoking and enjoyed traveling up and down with our new boss, Clancy. Then, without warning, Mr. Dinkler stepped into the elevator.
“Jesus Christ, this place smells like an opium den.” The elevator doors closed and we heard him squawking on his ever present walkie-talkie, “Get security back to service elevator two. Some kids are in the back halls smoking pot.” I flipped the switch on the control box to “top” and took control from Dinkler. We had to move fast as security would arrive in a couple of minutes. I stopped the elevator. My heart pounded as I heard Dinkler curse below us, “What the hell? God damn it.” I moved the elevator upwards towards the second floor via the controls. Silently, I took my pen and popped the outer doors open leading to floor two. Dinkler tried to ring the alarm bell. Before exiting the top of the elevator into the second floor hall way, I had twisted the alarm handle backwards, leaving it vibrating wildly but missing the actual bell. We scurried out to safety, leaving Dinkler stuck between floors and our relationship with our new super off to a good start.
Clancy lasted about six months. He was caught, stoned out of his mind, in a mall office screwing a mall girl. We were sorry to see him go. As a super, though, he was easily replaced. His replacement was an ex-military guy, about, 24, named Edward. Never Ed or Eddy. Edward. He was hard core, took no shit and confronted the maintenance workers one by one during his first week on the job. When the suit introduced me to my new boss he stared me down. After the suit left Edward grabbed me by the shirt sleeve, “Party’s over, jerk off.” I yanked my arm away, “Get the fuck off me, asshole,” was all I could say. He was hard and I was not going to be knocking down this guy any time soon.
When Sully heard what had happed, he confronted Edward, “Keep your fucking hands off my crew, jarhead.” Edward glared, “Your crew? You work for me you fuck’n drunk. Get the fuck out into the mall and clean up. One more word and you’re fired. Two more and I beat the shit out of you.” They locked eyes as Sully stared him down, warning Edward, “You and me, jarhead. You and me. We’re gonna have at it.”
Within a week they did have at it. I was off work at home with my mom and dad and I heard the details the next day. Sully ignored a day’s worth of pages and requests from the suits. At the end of the shift Edward called him out. They met in the parking lot as night fell. Sully charged him like a wild bull, knocking Edward backwards. Edward kept his balance and got a hold of Sully’s hair. He landed a flurry of rights to Sully’s head, dropping him to the ground in a bloody mess. With the girls in the surrounding crowd screaming, “Stop it, Sully. Please stop it, Sully!” he got up and charged Edward again. Edward side stepped and struck Sully once to the neck. Sully fell, turned blue and, two minutes later, died in the arms of his crew.
I put on one of my father’s suits and drove my parents’ station wagon to the wake. The outer stairs, entry way and lobby were sprinkled with pockets of crying friends and the stone faced Irish. The line to the casket snaked past a bunch of cardboard poster boards filled with photos of Sully as a child and teen. There were few adult photos. I stopped in front of a homemade poster and found a black and white picture of little Sully pulling a wooden wagon full of stuffed animals. There was a bear and an elephant and a bull. His skin was smooth and he was beaming. I started to cry. A stranger behind me rubbed my back.
Waiting my turn, I followed the line leading to Sully’s casket. I knelt down in front of my friend. His eyes were closed and his face was artificially smoothed. He was big and filled the casket. The overhead light fell on his face and highlighted tiny flakes of drying make-up. I wanted to touch his hand but couldn’t bring myself to do so. I put my hand on his arm. It felt wooden. “I’m sorry, Sully, I’m so, so sorry. You were my big brother, you know that right? I miss you, big brother. I miss you, Sully.”
Pulling myself up I turned to the back of the room and found his father, a weathered old man with a blotchy red face, standing alone. He watched silently as burnouts like me paid respects to his son. He stood motionless, hands clasped in front. What was he thinking? What could I say? I approached him hoping something would come.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sullivan, my name is Beasley.” I was trying to be strong, to hold back tears.
“I worked with Sully at the mall. He took care of us; all of us. He was … he was like a big brother to me. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I’ll remember him. Mr. Sullivan. I will. I promise. He’s in here right now,” I said, putting my hand to my chest. I was in uncharted territory and began to cry again.
Mr. Sullivan leaned forward and grabbed me with both hands, pulling me into a tight hug, squeezing me hard. I heard him gasp a hidden breath. He had been drinking. He released me and put a hand on my shoulder, “Thank you for coming, young man. Thank you for remembering my son, my irreplaceable son.”
He stared at me with eyes of the living dead, “My precious little boy is gone, never to return.” He sighed and looked over my shoulder. “Now all I want to do is join him.”
He returned his gaze to me, “Will you remember him for me, Beasley? After I’m gone will you take a moment and tell someone about him? Will you do that for me? ”
