Truck

Truck had a hard time remembering. Things and where he put them, the names that went with faces. Where he was supposed to be and when, or sometimes if he’d already been there and done the thing he was supposed to. Which block to turn down when all the row houses looked the same. What time he dropped a nickel in the meter. Did he remember to plug the meter? The fine was two bucks. A waste. He could drink all night on that! Didn’t matter; he didn’t drive anymore. Finding his apartment would be a struggle if it wasn’t located above a pharmacy, with its neon Rx sign and the mortar and pestle, although he didn’t know they were called that. At least the ringing in his head stopped. Or maybe he just forgot that too.

They called him Truck because he hit like one. But he couldn’t go ten rounds. If he didn’t take you out quick, he was done. He fought the champ once. Before he was champ, but still. Knocked out in the second round. But still. No shame in losing to the guy who went on to be champ. Truck had forgotten his name, but was sure he could remember it if he saw him again. But the champ was dead; he’d forgotten that too. Truck was no dancer in the ring, no Sugar Ray or Pep or Clay. But he could glide, slip, and shuffle, cut off the ring or backpedal out of danger. He even skipped rope. Now he walked like a man afraid to fall.

He still gripped a cigar, long since extinguished, between his teeth. His breath came in foggy puffs in the morning cold—early for most, but for him, the end of a long night. His jacket was rumpled, his toupee askew, as if he’d slept in both when he hadn’t slept at all. The hairpiece was a remnant from a time when he still had vanity, when hiding his baldness made him feel less ridiculous; now it achieved the opposite effect. The sign for the Car-Ruth luncheonette flicked on, attracting him like a bug. Named after its owners Carmine and Ruth—smart, he thought, having a sign that reminded people of your names just before they headed inside to use them.

“Carmine,” he said, his voice gravelly from shouting over the jukebox last night.

He lifted himself onto a cushioned stool at the end of the counter. They were just opening and Carmine wiped down the countertop in front of him. He could hear Ruth scraping the grill behind the swinging door to the kitchen.

“Morning, T,” Carmine said. “Eggs?”

“Six. Sunny. Toast and bacon. Don’t Jew me on the butter.”

Their young son Mark stopped spinning on his stool to stare at Truck, mesmerized by his lumpen, disheveled form, face pounded flat, eyelids asleep with scar tissue. Truck stared back, unable to recall the boy’s name. Too bad he wasn’t also on the sign outside.

“How are things at Jimmy’s?” Carmine asked.

“Ah, I had to toss a coupla bums couldn’t hold their liquor. I think one of ’em broke my jacket.”

He strained to look at the sleeve of his suit, separating from the shoulder. Carmine put a glass of water in front of him as Mark continued to stare. Truck farted loudly. He turned to look at the boy and broke into a smile. He rasped a deep, choking laugh. Mark grinned. This is something grown-ups just don’t do. He hopped down from his stool, taking the one next to Truck.

“Don’t bother the customers, Mark.”

“Ah, he’s all right,” Truck said.

They sat in silence for a long moment. A woman entered, took one look across the room at him and then chose a table far away.

“You got a girlfriend?” he asked the boy.

“No,” the boy said.

“Well...” he muttered, thinking of what else to say. “Stay in school.”

Carmine dropped a full plate of food in front of him: six eggs, four slices of toast, eight strips of bacon. Truck sank his cigar in the water glass. He ate slowly, deliberately, taking small bites. The opposite of what one might expect. He turned with a small forkful to Mark, who accepted it. Carmine and Ruth exchanged a look. Disconcerting, but kind of sweet. A gentle act that reminded Truck of its opposite, when he once shoved a great hunk of wedding cake into his new bride’s mouth. She laughed then, and gave back as good as she got. As the years passed, Mary laughed less and then not at all. He thought he should pay her a visit, apologize again. She’d like that.

Truck stood over Mary’s grave at the cemetery. He wouldn’t be long, overstay his welcome. Didn’t like to stand too long. They should put out folding chairs, he thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all that stuff.”

He saw some money; they had some laughs. Truck had no complaints about his life. Maybe if he’d beaten the champ before he was champ, the champ would have had to give Truck a rematch after winning the title. Or maybe if Truck had beaten him, he never would’ve been champ? What-ifs made Truck’s head hurt. But he could’ve done better by Mary.

A rib-skinny dog limped over, and they stared at each other.

“What do you want?” Truck asked, and waited as if expecting an answer. “You piss on Mary’s grave, I’ll kick a hole in ya.”

A bottle broke near them, and the dog scampered away. Truck looked up to see three neighborhood kids on the other side of the fence, looking around for more things to throw at him.

“Rummy dummy! Smelly Nelly!” They shouted in unison.

“I’ll kill you kids!” he shouted back, without exaggeration, and they scattered.

He ran after them, clumsy and huffing, grateful for the distraction that cut his visit with Mary short. After he apologized, he never had much else to say. He continued down the street, the dog trailing him, coming on a cluster of Italians loitering on the stoop in front of their social club. They sat in folding lawn chairs and Truck thought, Yeah, those would be great at the cemetery.

“Hey, T,” one of the men said. “You gonna watch Clay fight tonight?”

“Ah, the guy can’t fight even a little bit. Liston’ll kill him.”

“You woulda beat ’em both,” another offered, not believing it for a second.

“On the same night,” Truck declared.

“You gotta dog?”

“Nah,” Truck said, and kept walking.

The four men watched him trundle down the street, the dog trailing with a similar side-to-side gait.

“Guy was a monster,” one man said. “He hit you, you stayed hit.”

“Now look at him.”

“Look at him? Look at you,” the third man said. “What’d you ever do, ya mook?”

The other man swung at him and missed, and they fought clumsily without rising from their chairs.

Truck found himself standing outside Jimmy McGee’s and wondered if he should have been inside. He looked at his watch, which offered no clue. He went inside anyway, the dog following. This wasn’t a jovial place when it was busy and dark; lights up full, wear and tear fully illuminated and empty of clientele, it seemed even more joyless.  Jimmy was behind the bar setting up. Truck remembered once staying in a hotel for a fight in Detroit against a guy whose name he couldn’t recall. The hotel had a bar open to the lobby, so the bottles had to be taken down every night and put back up again the next day. What a pain in the ass. Jimmy was smart not to open one of those.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

“T!” Jimmy said, surprised to see him. “Hey, what’s with the dog? I don’t want no fleas in here.”

“He ain’t mine.”

“Go on, get outta here, mutt!” Jimmy shouted, shaking the bar rag at it.

The dog scampered behind Truck.

“Hey, leave him alone!”

“You said it weren’t yours.”

“I might keep him,” Truck shrugged.

“Yeah, well give him a friggin’ bath,” Jimmy said. “And you could use one too.”

He resumed giving his glasses a cursory cleaning.

“What are you doing here so early, T?”

“It’s payday, ain’t it?” Truck guessed.

“I paid you last night. Don’t tell me you forgot?”

Truck looked down at the dog while he thought. Either he forgot, or Jimmy was taking advantage of his forgetfulness. But he had money in his pocket this morning at the luncheonette, so maybe he forgot.

“We gotta do this every week?” Jimmy said, laying the bar rag across his shoulder. “Lay off the sauce at work.”

“Guys wanna buy me drinks, it’d be rude to decline.”

“So what did you do with it?”

He shrugged. “How about an advance? C’mon, a few bucks on the cuff.”

“On the cuff...” Jimmy muttered.

Jimmy glared at him, a look that quickly dissolved into pity. Which was worse. He turned to the register and counted out a few bills, laying them on the bar.

“Here, buy yourself a new jacket. That one’s startin’ to look like roadkill.”

 “Thanks,” he said, gathering them, a little sheepish. 

“You know, I pay you to keep the peace in here. Three fights last night, you started two of ’em. I should pay you not to come in, is what I should do.”

“I would take that,” Truck said, on the off chance it was a real offer. “Hey, how about a shot?”

Jimmy stared at Truck. Guy fought the champ once, he thought, and poured them both shots.

On his walk home from Jimmy’s, Truck guessed most of the turns correctly but missed the last one. It took him three blocks out of his way and he was relieved finally to see the pharmacy sign that hung outside his window. The dog didn’t seem to mind the extra blocks or the steps to his apartment, but Truck was tired. Maybe he’d take a nap before the Clay fight. Jimmy would need him; the fights on TV brought out the worst in guys. Riled them up, set them on edge. He’d quiet any trouble in a hurry. They knew he could still hit.

He stripped down to his undershirt and turned on the small black and white TV on wheels, knowing it would take a while to heat up. He opened a can of corned beef hash and heated it, still in the can, on a hot plate. The dog watched expectantly. Truck steadied it with a cooking mitt on one hand and alternated his other hand stirring occasionally and bringing a can of Stegmaier to his mouth. The TV was warm now and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show was on. When the hash started to bubble, he took it in the hand with the oven mitt and sat on the edge of his pullout sofa. The dog followed and sat. Truck took a spoonful from the can and chewed it. Shari Lewis was on the Ford show with her goddamn puppet, but changing the channel meant getting up again. He took another heaping spoonful, blew on it, and plopped it on the floor where the dog lapped it up happily. Shari Lewis yielded back to Tennessee Ernie Ford, who told a joke and sang a song. Both stunk. Trunk plopped more hash on the floor. Since he was up anyway for a second beer, he changed the channel. After a third and fourth, he fell asleep on the sofa.

Truck took a beating in his last fight, the kind meted out to longshoremen who bucked the union. An unnecessary one, as he had no chance of winning. He should have just gone down. But Mary was there, ringside—she wasn’t always—and he didn’t want to be counted out in front of her. So he ate leather, hung on, clinched, wrestled his man into corners where he could pound him below the belt, the referee unable to see from behind him. His opponent, a decade younger, peppered him with blistering punches, splitting his lip and nearly closing both eyes. Truck closed one of the kid’s eyes too with a thumb in the clinch. Detached his retina. The guy maybe never fought again, Truck couldn’t remember. He held on for the distance, ten rounds, blood everywhere. Hard to imagine this was better for Mary than seeing Truck on his back and the ref count to ten. After, his hands were so swollen he couldn’t see his knuckles. He couldn’t close his hands, couldn’t grip the steering wheel to drive them home. It was Mary’s idea to walk, even in her fancy shoes. It wasn’t far. They passed a bakery, her heels clacking, the lights on, the smell of fresh bread wafting to the streets. Mary remarked how nice it smelled. Like bread, Truck thought but didn’t say it.

Truck didn’t know what time it was. His watch said 4:00. But it was dark out, so that meant it was morning? The next morning? Shit. He’d missed the Clay fight. Jimmy would be pissed at him. But he had a vague memory of Jimmy telling him he’d pay him not to come in, and wondered if he should take him up on that. He’d have to think about it. He wiped at the clod of hash on his undershirt with the oven mitt, still on his hand. There was something on the floor. That’s right, he had a dog now. He wanted to call it over but couldn’t remember giving it a name. So he walked over and reached down to pet it. But the dog didn’t move because it had died in its sleep. It was as if, having followed Truck to his place of work, and then walked him home and up the stairs where they ate together in front of the TV, the dog realized this was pretty great and might not get any better, and decided it was enough.

It was early, the sun peeking up, and Truck waddled down the stairs with the dead dog under his arm like a bundle. Not stiff yet, its head bounced a little and its legs swung like clock pendulums. He stepped inside the pharmacy, setting the tiny bell above the door ringing. The owner looked up, horrified at the sight of this awful man and his dead dog.

“You can’t come in here with that!”

“I just want a bag.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to—”

“A shopping bag!” he shouted. “Gimme a bag for my dog!”

The man froze for a moment before heading back behind the counter. He placed a large shopping bag gently on the counter.

“Just take it and go.”

“If you could hold it steady...” Truck asked, presenting the dog.

The man opened the bag and turned his head away as Truck slid the dead dog inside.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, taking the bag under his arm and heading for the door.

He hadn’t expected to see Mary again so soon. But he’d run off on her yesterday chasing those kids. Was it yesterday? He got down on his knees with a spade, dug a small hole near her grave.

“Sorry, Mary,” he grunted another apology.

A cemetery worker approached. He’d seen Truck struggling in the dirt, and couldn’t miss the dog’s legs sticking out from the bag. Truck ignored him and continued to dig.

“Excuse me... Sir, you’re not allowed to bury anything here.”

“I’m just plantin’ some flowers.”

“Really,” the man said, understandably skeptical. “What kind of flowers?”

“Dogwoods.”

It took the summoning of a pair of police to stop him, and things escalated when Truck took a swing at the closest one. It had taken both to subdue him, and now he sat in a holding cell. His toupee was gone, left behind at the scene along with the dog in the bag. When asked if there was anyone he wanted to call, there was no one Truck could think of. But he hadn’t gone unrecognized. The desk sergeant had seen him fight once, and later arrested him for running an illegal card game when neighbors complained. He approached holding a fedora and unlocked the cell door.

“C’mon out, you.”

Truck got to his feet and shuffled to the open cell door.

“The guys took up a collection,” the sergeant said. “Paid your fine. We passed the hat, and... well...”

He presented the hat. There were still a few bills and some change in it.

“There was more than we needed,” he continued. “Go ahead, take it.”

Truck looked inside the hat. He took it, shook out the money, and stuffed it in his pocket. The sergeant reached for the hat but Truck continued to hold onto it.

“What did they do with the dog?” Truck asked.

“Don’t ask that,” he replied. “You don’t want to know that.”

Truck stood there a moment, wondering what to do next. He felt at the top of his head, his hairpiece gone. He pulled the hat onto his head, and hobbled away.

Truck’s stomach rumbled and he followed it to the Car-Ruth luncheonette. Later than usual, it was busier now than he was used to. Heads turned. Truck wasn’t one to know embarrassment, but dressed only in his undershirt, he felt a twinge. At least he had the new hat. He took a seat on the last barstool, and the boy perked up and came over to sit with him.

“Eggs?” Carmine asked.

“Six. Scrambled. Toast and bacon.”

“You got it, T.”

Carmine set a glass of water in front of him and Truck drank thirstily. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours. He got a dog and then it died, socked a cop and got arrested, and maybe lost his job. Breakfast here at least was back to his routine. Maybe from here, things would get back to normal. He looked down at the boy—Mark? He thought he was sure now that was the boy’s name. 

“Mark,” he said. “You got a girlfriend?”

KEN PISANI is a published author, playwright, and former sports TV producer. He has written and produced for ESPN, NBA Entertainment, FOX Sports and Sports Illustrated Television, among others, earning an Emmy nomination for his work on NBC's Olympic Preview “A Prelude to the Games.” Pisani’s debut novel AMP’D was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and runner-up for the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Pisani has published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Salon, Publishers Weekly, The Huffington Post, Literary Hub, Washington Independent Review of Books, Carve, Cedar Hills Press, The Writer, Defenestration, Stymie, Flash Fiction Online, and the anthology “More Tonto Short Stories.” kenpisani.com @kpsmartypants.bsky.social