The Downhill Slide Chapter 3

        I was tired from the lack of sleep the night before, but I had to go to work. I had worked at three different jobs since coming from Oklahoma. I pumped gas at a service station, worked in the produce department at a grocery store, and I even twisted a few wrenches working on cars. All my bosses were wonderful people, I couldn't have been luckier in that regard, and I learned something important from every one of them, but something inside of me never felt right while I was working there. I felt restless like I knew I wasn't at home.

        I quit the mechanics job because I didn't feel like was giving Doc Arnold equal value for what he was paying me. He tried to talk me out of leaving because he liked me and didn't  want to see me jobless. One of the guys I met playing cards at Ernie's was a cracker-jack mechanic named Leo Jones who had just gotten laid off because the shop where he was working couldn't afford to keep him on. Leo also had two kids and a wife. So, I took him to meet Doc, and it was love at first sight. They took off to jabbering about engines and gear-ratios and I managed to slip out of the garage without them noticing. Even though I was now jobless myself, I felt pretty good because I had hooked up Leo and hadn't left Doc in the lurch.

        I didn't have a car then and still don't, but I had picked up a used Schwinn bicycle to get to work and back and when was riding it home, Doc's shop was only about four miles from where I lived, and started getting close to where I lived, I saw this old guy wearing a battered straw hat who had pulled this battered looking old truck over to side of the road to pick up an shabby looking sofa somebody had tossed out. He was, grunting, sweating and wrestling with the thing trying to get it up into the back of his truck, so I stopped and asked him if he needed a hand. He held out his hand for me to shake, told me his name was Garret Fitzgerald and that he did, in fact, need a hand.

         "Are ya blind or daft, Son? Do you not see me here wrassling with this forlorn piece of crap? Why would ask such a useless question?"

       When I started to explain that I was just looking to help, he stopped me before I could even get a  word out.

        "No need to explain or apologize, Laddie. It's you that is a helping. I was just making a very poor attempt at humor. If you would help get this sofa unto the back of my truck, I would, for a fact, be very appreciative."

         That's how I met Old Man Fitz, soon to be my next boss. I was barely five minutes away from leaving Doc's employ and the universe seemed to have reached out and spoke to me by saying,"Errol, I just can't have you out there just bouncing around out there at random."

          Outside my own Pa, Fitz quickly became the most influential man in my life. He had actually been born in Ireland and him and his dad had migrated first to Boston then came out to the West Coast because of the condition of his father's lungs. When I asked him about a mother and siblings, he told that his mam and his sister Kelley had died right before he and his dad had sailed across the ocean. He was a stout but rather portly gentleman with a great white shock of hair and long white beard to match with piercing blue eyes and big red cheeks. Fitz could  be taciturn at times and come off as grumpy, especially when you first met him, but once he warmed to your presence, it would often be like talking to your dad, a priest,  a college professor, a newspaper reporter, and a door-to-door salesman rolled into one. The reason that he was out picking up trashed furniture from the side of the road was that it was how he made his living. I helped him wrestle that old sofa onto to his truck, and he made me an offer.

       "Sonny, I'll pay you if you would come with me to my warehouse and help me to take her inside my workshop. Normally, I have a helper but I just fired the lad for being lazy, and my wife, who's at home, has a bum ankle." He pointed in the direction of a hill to the west of where we were, "It's just over that hill right there, and I'll bring you right back. I'l even throw in a sandwich and a pop."

        So, I threw my bike on to the back of the truck being careful not to scratch it and went with him. True to his word, in a couple of minutes, he turned his truck into the driveway of this large brick warehouse situated in a fairly substantial grove of Eucalyptus trees. Over an open double-wide garage door was a large sign saying Fitz's Resurrection Warehouse in large green letters outlined in gold.

        While we were lugging the sofa into the open doors, I questioned him, "Is this some kind of ministry or something?"

        He was huffing and grunting some but answered, "Don't be daft, Son. Gather your facts before you question things, else they won't be obligated to give you a correct answer. Also, your question mark should have been placed after the word ministry. Or something is a redundancy."

         After we placed the sofa down where he wanted it, I felt the need to explain that I felt my question was relevant considering there was a large red cross painted on the sign, but once again he checked me before I started talking. He simply held up the back of his hand as he began walking toward work bench where he picked up a lunch pail and started walking back toward me. He gestured toward a table and chairs and motioned for me to sit.

         "In that cooler there, they're a couple of pops on ice. My wife has this wonderful machine that makes ice. Amazing, huh? Could you be so kind as fetch me one? You can have the other." I did as I was told, and he opened up the lunch box and took out two rather large Roast Beef sandwiches and handed me one. He sat down in one of the chairs and let out a big sigh, and after we got situated, he began again. "Hortensia's sandwiches aren''t as good as my last wife's, but they're not bad. Go ahead and dig in."

         He ate a couple bites out of his sandwich and took a big swig off his pop. The sandwich was not just great, it was one of the best sandwiches I'd ever eaten. I wanted to tell him so, but I was afraid he'd cut me off again. Instead, I just said, "This is pretty good." 

         He nodded and gestured at all the stuff that was around us. "There's your resurrection, Son. I fix old things, bringing them back to life you might say. I haven't sat between the walls of a church since we buried me mam and my sis. That's not to say I don't respect and believe in the message of Jesus. I just don't like the fat priests who tell it. As you can see, I've spent a great deal of my own life bringing things back to life, not to believe in a resurrection, and you might one of those fools, who'll say,'They're just things Fitz, they are not living beings. But, the way I see it is, a thing is a thing, it occupies both time and material space as well as a space in our mind, and I consider what I do, much like what Christ did in his own time."

        I looked around and was totally amazed. The entire space, and it was a big warehouse,  was full of things like repaired vacuum cleaners and old radios he had rescued from the trash. There were chairs, tables, floor lamps, sofas, and bedposts. Oddly, the whole western wall was covered in flattened tin cans and looked like a piece of art. The East wall was almost entirely made up of glass windows that he had colored so that the sun coming in the morning filled the space with multi-colored light like a rainbow, or one of them great cathedrals in France. The thing that most caught my attention was the front of what had once must have been a rusted out truck that had been painted and converted into a beautiful sofa. The whole thing, all of the objects, the colored lighting, the tin-can wall, along with the portly, red-cheeked Irishman with his flashing blue eyes seemed so magical, and so full of life, I didn't to leave. Something inside of me shifted, and there was suddenly nothing more in life that I wanted to than to get a job and work for this crazy old Irish man. I so desperately wanted to ask him for a job, but was afraid of the possibility of a rejection.

         Instead, I told him the story of how I come to be on that road where he had found that sofa. When I came to the telling of why I left Doc's employ, I noticed some moisture welling up in his eyes. I finished and felt embarrassed about being so open with someone I had barely met, so I swallowed the last of my pop, placed the bottle on the table and looked down at my hands.

       "Well Errol, it seems like we've been placed on a path of convergence. I just fired my helper, a Mexican boy named Arturo, last evening. He was too lazy and didn't want to work. It was a hard thing for me to do because I truly liked the lad, and I really liked his mam, and I know his family needed the money. I thought that he needed the lesson of getting fired more than he needed the job. Then Mathilda, his blessed mother, came this morning before I opened, and told me it was he best thing I could have done. She said they had long talk and he had decided to get a part time job and return to school. At this point, Fitz  broke out his pipe, stuffed some tobacco in it, and lit it, took a huge puffs and blew out two huge smoke rings. "When you said that you walked away from the job because you didn't feel that you were giving that man Doc a good return, I knew right away that I wanted you to work for me. I meet so many hungry men in these desperate times looking for work who'll tell you they can drive a nail straight into piece of granite and then you find they don't even know how to hold a hammer, or read an alarm clock."

      I found myself a real home at the Resurrection Warehouse. It didn't pay as much as the mechanic job, but Fitz told me that after hours, I was free to work on projects of my own if I wanted to make some money on the side. He was also teaching me the skills I need to repair and refurbish things. On top of that, it came with lunch and a pop.

         "There'll be a doughnut or two from time to time and some coffee in the morning. Of course, Hortensia would be expecting you to have dinner with us from time. She don't get out as much because her knees gives her problems and she likes to know what's going on at the shop. Now, if gets a little nosey about something I don't want to know about yet, I'll clear my throat or cough. She knows the game, and won't be getting mad at you if it happens."

         The last thing he told me that morning has stuck with me ever since he said the words, and it will be there when I die, and maybe, if I'm lucky enough someday, be able to pass down. It came after I asked him why he was so brusque with me at first.

       "It was for your own edification, Lad. You saw me wrestling with that sofa and asked me if I needed help, and I know you were just being polite, but a good man wouldn't ask. There's such a thing as being too polite."

       When I got to work that morning, Fitz was just finishing a piece that we had found put out on a sidewalk outside of apartment complex. It was an old roll-up desk in such horrible condition I questioned  even if he could work his magic on it. He just chuckled and said, "How would you like it, if people just gave on you?" It was drying from the last coat of varnish, and it was stunning! I had no doubt that someone would buy that desk for hundreds of dollars. He was feeling good about the results and wanted to have some coffee before we went out on our junk run. I decided to tell him about my dream and my problems with Giancarlo.

        "I've been married three times before this one, and every one of them ladies paid me a visit after they passed on. My first, Mary came back just to say hello. Marta, the second, was angry because we had never gotten around to having kids, and she felt cheated. Hilda, the last one, a fine German lady, was just trying to scare me a little."

          I asked him which of the wive's was his favorite; he just chuckled and said the one that's in the kitchen cooking us lunch. Hortensia, his current bride, was a widow of a truck driver, and she was a little on the portly side herself. His first wife had been thin, so when I asked him which body type he preferred, he said, "You like 'em boney when you're a younger man because you're boney too and there's a lot more room in the bed. When you get older though, you like 'em with a bit more heft because they're softer when you're trying to sleep. There's nothing worse than getting an elbow to the liver when you're counting the sheep."

       Our conversation became much darker when we discussed about what I should do about Giancarlo. Fitz rose from the table and slowly wandered over to a large, gun-metal gray metal closet standing in a corner. He rummaged around in it a bit, and unlocked a footlocker and withdrew something wrapped in a red cloth and brought it back to the table where he placed it and unwrapped it. It was a shiny chrome, pearl handled .38 pistol.

          He grimaced as he spoke, "I'm going to lend you this pistol till your problem is solved to your satisfaction, Errol." I started to protest but he just held up his hand, "My Uncle gave me this in Boston and Boston back then, was a dangerous jungle for a young Irish man fresh off the boat. Now, I'm agin killin a man as much as anybody, but a far worse thing is ending up on the other side of that equation. This man wants to do you harm and travels around with two gorillas. It's one thing if you knew for certain the full extent of his intentions toward you, but you don't, and they involve a woman who might need protection too. And as my uncle said when he gave me this gun, 'It would better to have a gun and not need it, then need one and not have one because you were so enamored with the false illusion that human beings are all naturally good.'"

         I had to admit that argument made a lot of sense, so I reluctantly accepted the gift. He told me that the six chambers were fully loaded and then reached into his pocket and handed me six more bullets along with a bit of advice that he had apparently culled from a dime-store novel about Wyatt Earp which was to make sure you took your time and aimed carefully before you pulled the trigger.

         As, it turned out, I almost had to heed his advice that very day. At quitting time, I had to figure out a way to get that pistol home. So, I unloaded it and put six bullets in either pocket on both sides of my jacket. Then I carefully wrapped the gun back up in the red cloth and tied it down inside the basket behind the seat using an old shoe string.

    I got about a mile from my house and turned the corner on a road leading up a hill, when a car full of evil intentions, two ape-like creatures, and oily, wannabe gangster was barreling down that same road.  They saw me as they whizzed past me and then slammed on their brakes at the bottom of the hill where there was the only place wide enough to turn around after putting the car into reverse a few times. There was copse of trees at the top of the hill, and I tore out toward it as fast as I could peddle. I almost made it too, but right before I reached it, Giancarlo's car came brushing by, knocking me off the road and into the rocky field that adjoined it. I fell, ripped the knee out of the right leg of  my jeans and tore the right elbow out of my blue flannel work shirt. I also hit my head on a rock and was bleeding from a wound on over my right eye.

     I was somewhat dazed, but I could see Giancarlo and the twins dismount the car and start sauntering my way. The two thug-like brothers flanked Giancarlo. They each had a large wooden baton and were slapping them into their palms to make a loud noise. Giancarlo was dressed from head-to-toe in white linen and was stepping gingerly so he wouldn't step on something that would foul his clothing and his shiny, two-tone brown and white shoes.

       Boot, the bigger of the twins was yelling, "Hey Mister Look at the Naked Woman,' your little tricks ain't going to work no more. We ain't as dumb as you think we are, are we Butch?" Then he looked over at his brother who was having a time figuring out what his brother had said, then you could see the understanding finally unveil in his head, and he yelled, "Oh yeah, time for you to suffer 'Mr. Look at the Naked Woman!'" Then he tried to slap his baton a little extra hard, but he stumbled, and almost tripped and fell which caused Boot to roll his eyes and slap his hand against his head and clearly forgot he had baton in it and almost knocked himself out.

     Giancarlo shook his head, but wasted no time getting to the point."Well, what do we have here, Boys? Looks like a little rabbit don't it? Look at the little rabbit, how vulnerable it looks. Tiny little rabbit so pitiful and afraid. Is it a girl rabbit or a boy rabbit?" Giancarlo stopped abruptly, and the two dummies ran into his back and almost caused him to fall forward. He turned and glared at both of them before he resumed the abuse. "Damn, look at all that blood on its head; that must hurt a lot, huh?"

        Boot was impatient, "Come on, Boss, let us work him over. We'll mess him up good and proper. He'll look like a mud puddle when we're done! What d'ya say?"

      I don't know why Giancarlo didn't, but he didn't. He was apparently satisfied for the moment with drawing my blood; he gave me a very strict warning to stay away from Rosie DeLeon, and emphatically stated that she was his girl, and if I knew what was good for me, I would stay away from her. Rosie was a pretty girl and mother of one who lived across the courtyard from me at Cohen's Court and often moonlighted waiting on the poker tables. He had mentioned something about an unnamed female in his initial threats, but I wasn't seeing anyone at the time, so I didn't know who or what he meant.

   So, when he named Rosie, the motive for his anger suddenly came clear. She was standing behind me when I had caught him bluffing with a pair of fours and raked in a huge pot at his expense. He got up and left the table in a huff, but didn't say anything at time, so I didn't put two and two and together. A couple of weeks later though, he walked in the bar where I was sitting, sat down beside me and acted like he spilled his beer on me by accident.

   I stood up to protest, but then the two mountains rose up behind him, and I hesitated for a second. Thankfully, it was Ernie who broke it up by ordering them outside. Giancarlo was still mouthing off as he went by me and was going on about how he was going to get back at me. He said something about a girl, but I didn't hear him clearly. Then when he mentioned her by name, I remembered that I had taken a shiny silver dollar from the pot and flipped to Rosie for bringing me luck.

       I was so relieved to watch them fools walk away and crawl back into Giancarlo's car and drive away. Not because of the beating that never happened, but because it meant that I could finally release my grip on the pistol I had reloaded as I watched them approaching.