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“Cigarettes? From where?” Michael asked.
“One of the car loaders, Blue Ribbon Distributors.”
“What’s a car loader?” Larry asked.
“A warehouse with a railroad siding. It transfers freight between rail cars and trucks.”
“Can’t be from Triple-T. We don’t haul smokes, or booze either,” Michael said.
“We do now. My new boss, Guy Salezzi, is the nephew-in-law of Mr. T.T. Tortello, so I guess he can change the policy. They’re going to start using us on cigarette loads to the BPM warehouse in East Bridgewater next week. I’ve called on Tony Bentini in the Blue Ribbon traffic office for fourteen months and never got a sniff of the work. Why? Because company policy is we won’t take cigarettes, and he won’t give me any other loads unless we take them too. Nobody wants the smokes. But Salezzi went to Fordham with Bentini. So now we’re getting business because they’re pals. They’re going to give us one load, see if BPM is okay with us. If so, we’ll get more.”
Larry smiled at his older cousin. “You got some balls, man. You want to knuckle a load the first week?”
“We better act while we can, right? What if we lose the account?”
Michael said, “I guess we’re going to ignore the fact-”
“The rumor,” Paul cut in.
“-that Mr. T.T. Tortello is a member of the Gambino family.”
“Tortello started that rumor so no one would steal from him,” Paul said. “This is good for forty grand. Split evenly. We each put ten in our poke.” Paul leaned toward TJ. “Think: forty thousand bucks. A few like that and we quit. Become homeowners, family men, good citizens.”
“God bless America,” Michael said.
“I spent six months at the farm,” TJ said. “Watching corn and punkins come up out of the ground. I’m not going back. How long you think you can steal from your company before they start investigating and whatnot?”
“They’ll look at the Teamsters,” Paul said. “I’m management.”
They stared at Michael the Teamster. He snapped open his Zippo, touched the Winston to the flame, and inhaled. Then he smiled around the cigarette and clapped the lighter closed.
“Is Michael going to get this load?” TJ asked.
“No, they pick up at 3 p.m.,” Paul replied. “He starts at 6 a.m. He’s on OT at 3. They’d give the pickup to a straight time guy. We have fifty drivers that start at 8.”
“Good chance I’ll deliver it, though,” Michael said. “There’s only two of us at 6.”
Paul nodded. “BPM wants all loads backed in and ready to unload when their crew starts at 7 a.m. Which means the driver will come from the 6 start.” He looked at his brother. “If Rosie gives you the P &G or the Jordan Marsh load, you call the apartment, let the phone ring once, and hang up. If you get the right load, don’t call. Even Rosie might notice if you did. If you don’t get this one, we’ll have to hope you get the next, assuming there is a next.”
“And listen, Michael,” Larry warned, “lay off the booze! Someone might smell you.”
Paul turned to Michael and raised his eyebrows but didn’t look directly at him. “He makes a good point, Mikey. Work has to come first. By the way, go see Ma today, will you? Eat something, take a nap, and go see her.”
Michael pulled the GTO up behind the old man’s Rambler, across the street from the house, a small brown bungalow with a screened porch. A strip of sidewalk and a patch of grass separated the house from the street. If an eighteen-year-old kid who stood six feet tall tripped in the gutter and fell forward, his head would bounce off the bottom cement step. The morning after the night that Michael proved that, his father had thrown him out.
Paul leaned against the kitchen sink holding a glass of water, while their father sat in his chair at the same spot at the same table they’d had since Michael was a small boy.
“Here he is, Dad,” Paul said. “I’ll go slay the fatted calf.”
“Michael. How’ve you been?” His father stood and offered his hand.
“Hey, Dad.” They shook. “You say that like you haven’t seen me in years. I was here, what, two weeks ago?”
“Yeah? Seems longer.”
“How’s Ma?”
“Go up and see. She’s awake, we just put her in the chair.”
Upstairs in the front bedroom, their mother was propped up in her wheelchair looking out at the street. While on chemo for breast cancer, she had a stroke, or a shock, as his aunts called it. Her left hand had curled into a claw, and her whole left arm was as rigid as the left side of her face was slack.
“Hi, Ma.” He kissed her forehead and put his chin on the top of her head. His eyes stung, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose until it hurt enough to stop the tears. He kissed her cheek and sat at the foot of the bed, hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, as they both peered out the window.
“Michael?” Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed shards of glass, and the way she said his name broke his heart. “When will it stop?”
Michael stared down at his feet. “Pretty soon, Ma.”
It was a warm day and the windows were up as life passed by on the street below. Kids on Sting-Ray bikes with towels draped around their necks hollered at each other on their way to Wollaston Beach; young mothers pushed strollers carrying big-headed toddlers; cars rolled by, windows down, volume up, sharing the thump with one and all, like it or not.
It was hard for Ma to speak, but his three sisters were here every day, and their kids visited several times a week, so she had more family news than he did. The result was Michael stretched out sideways on the bed with his hands folded on his stomach, talking to her about his softball team, which was just fine. What he said didn’t matter, she just needed the comfort of his voice.
He heard the steps squeak and a few seconds later his father came into the bedroom. He sat in an armchair and they talked about Yaz and the Red Sox. If Michael wanted to avoid the AA jive he had to stay on his toes. When the conversation began to slow, he moved rapidly to other safe topics, like politics, war, and religion. Yet the old man could spot the smallest opening and race through it, turning an i
His mother was snoring softly in her chair. She’d sleep on and off until late evening. Most nights she’d lie awake in the dark, listening to Larry Glick on the radio.
“She’s been asking me if I think you’re going to stop soon,” his father said.
“Yeah, I’ll stop by again soon.” Michael looked at his watch and stood up. “Now I gotta scoot. I’ll be back in the next few days, okay?”
“Yeah,” his foiled father said, a note of resignation in his voice. “Okay.”
Paul was still downstairs and he walked out with his brother.
“Did you ever deliver to Pat’s Vending down in Providence?” Paul asked.
Michael looked up to his mother’s window as they walked across the street to his car. “A number of times. New candy and tonic machines, mostly.”
“They own a ton of cigarette machines too, in bars and strip joints. The owner’s son is going to take the Blue Ribbon load. He’ll get top dollar in the machines.”
“This won’t do your new boss Salezzi any good, will it?”
“Probably not.” Paul smiled and shrugged. “It’s a tough game.”
At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Rosie the dispatcher handed Michael the BPM delivery papers. “You get our first load from this shipper, Mosely. Try not to screw it up.”
Michael walked out of the terminal into the truck yard and climbed up into his tractor, a spotless red U-model Mack. He turned the key to the on position and pushed in the black rubber nipple on the dash, kicking the diesel to life. At the top of the long sideview mirror he saw dull gray smoke roll out of the stack. He fed the noisy beast some fuel, and the smoke, now thi