Catfish

After being off for five days, I didn't want to go back to work. But when Monday came, I rose in the dark, showered, dressed, and headed in with a heart full of lead.

I was to report to the fellow who had called me on the phone after the accident. I walked across the muddy and rutted parking lot and through a slough of trailers asking people if they new which one he was in. I found it and walked up the metal steps and into a small air conditioned trailer. The fellow there was young and dressed in slacks and a buttoned down shirt. He introduced himself and said his name was Bob, then asked me how I was. I showed him the slip from the doctor excusing me from manual labor while my fingers healed. He looked at my hand which did not look bad at all, really, a small splint on one finger and the other taped to it. He made me feel like a scammer a little when he grinned and told me I'd be working down here with him. He would find things for me to do.

And so I spent the rest of the day sitting about the little air conditioned trailer drinking coffee and watching people come and go. I couldn't figure out what Bob's job was, exactly, but men would come in and hand him papers and he would look at them and thank them or hand back another bunch. Bob spent most of his time, though, looking at papers on his desk and scribbling down figures in a paper with columns on it.

We spent the day like that, and when it was time to go, he looked at me and said, "I'll find something for you to do tomorrow." I didn't like the sound of that, really, for I had enjoyed sitting in the little trailer all day watching people come and go. It was much better than working up in the hotel in the heat.

I went to the hotel's entrance to wait for Tommy watching the workers walk by tired and ready for home. When Tommy showed up, he asked me what I did all day, and I told him I sat around a little air conditioned trailer and did nothing. He looked at me as if I were an alien. He, too, made me feel like a scammer. Wrapped up as they were, my fingers looked like a small injury, nothing threatening. Tommy didn't like working anyway and didn't like being the one left up in the hotel. He told me some stories about what had happened that day, but I was already losing interest in the working life of hardhat laborers. Over the weekend I'd decided I'd had enough for a lifetime.

The days went on like that, me driving Tommy to work and then heading for the little trailer. My new job was transporting people back and forth to the medical clinic, the same one I'd gone to when I got hurt. Why didn't they take me in the van I was now driving, I wondered? But that was not all I did. I took trucks to the car dealership to be worked on, dropped things off, picked things up. I was a driver and liked doing that just fine.

I was still making the same money, working ten hour days, getting time and a half and double time on Sundays, without getting dirty, and I enjoyed that. All day, I was around men in regular clothes who never got dirty, and I guess I began to feel myself one of them. We chatted and joked and watched the workers come and go. When I went to the coffee cart, I would hear their rough, stupid talk, and I knew I didn't want to go back. Each day, Tommy looked more disappointed and worn with it, and I think he truly resented my "luck."

There was one fellow who came to the office several times a day. He must have been a foreman or something, and he was a cocky southerner who thought a lot of himself. Each day, he would come in and tell stories that made him a minor hero. He was a volunteer policeman who rode in a squad car on the weekends. And he didn't like me. At first, each time he came in the trailer, he looked at me quizzically. Soon enough, he would direct the odd comment to me, and with time, they became more and more acerbic. He was a rough looking guy but older, maybe in his fifties, with thick fingers and forearms and a trim waist. He had a crew cut and made it clear that he didn't like hippies. One day, I had had enough of him and sent a sarcastic comment back his way. And after a minute's chatter, I said to him something I'd heard my father say before: "You know what the trouble with you is?" I asked him. "You're like a catfish." I let it stand at that, but he couldn't help himself. "What do you mean," he snarled at me. And then came the dangerous part.

"You're all mouth and no brains."

I could feel the electricity that sparked as one of the other fellows in the trailer chuckled. In truth, nobody liked this guy. How could you? He was one of those mythical assholes from the asshole factory, stupid, arrogant, and sure.

And I thought I'd won a victory when suddenly I felt my head yanked back by the hair. I was staring into his big, raging face too close to mine. This was no act. I could see his life had been filled with violence. He just held me there, staring at me for what seemed too long before he said, "You'd better watch your mouth, boy, or something bad's going to happen to you." And with that, he flung my head and let me go. The others in the trailer were all looking elsewhere now as my eyes scanned the room. There was no help there.

My voice sounded weak when I told him, "Yea, you're tough when a guy has a broken hand." Yea, it was weak. Really weak.

"You'd better shut your mouth NOW, boy, or I'll beat you right here."

I looked at him and didn't say anything. It was talk, I knew, but he was close. If I wanted to, I could put him over the edge. I didn't want to but I couldn't let him have it that way.

"My hand won't be broke forever," I said.

When he left the trailer, nobody said anything. I could feel my scalp tingling where he had gripped my hair. My hands shook with the adrenaline hangover. I tried to tell myself that I had not been afraid of him, but I knew it wasn't true. So did the fellows in the trailer. I'd tried to make a show, but that was all.

After work, I didn't mention any of that to Tommy. I didn't mention it to my father that night, either. It was a story that I would have to live with, not one to tell.

That night, I realized that I hadn't seen a movie all summer.