By Chris Dungey
Hector Fritch held the side door open with his knee. He needed both hands to lift the 10 gallon jerry can over the doorsill. He glanced back through the rear passenger window and gave a thumbs-up to Wesley in his car seat. “Are we cool? This’ll just take Daddy a minute.”
One step at a time, he waddled the fuel can down the basement stairs. Heavy as a kettlebell. Yeah coach, I’m bending my knees. Oh, quit whining. Doris had to roll out in the chilly house, in the dark. His wife was scheduled for the breakfast shift at her waitress gig.
Fritch scuffed and scraped the fuel oil into the furnace room over the darkly stained concrete floor. Probably coal piled in here years ago. He left the can at the base of a wobbly stepladder he kept next to the 300 gallon tank. If the damn tank had shorter legs under it, I wouldn’t have to…Needs a coat of Rustoleum, too. He saw the back of the car out the ground-level window. He might even hear Wesley if the boy called out for him. Those loose panes needed to be caulked. Wes won’t panic. He can probably see me.
There was just enough light in the furnace room to read an approximation from the gauge atop the tank. The needle was just dropping into the red. How much fuel actually remained once it was well into the red? At that moment he heard the furnace ignite. Well, I guess we’re good for now. I’ll be dumping this later. Wes has gotta come in.
The little boy, just turned four years old, hadn’t had time, yet, to become anxious at being alone. Fritch unbuckled him, hugged him out of the second-hand Mercury station wagon then gently kicked the door closed. It made a squawking noise and did not slam tightly. Another hinge that needed his attention. Later. Later. Hinge, caulk. “Lead the way, buddy.” Wes took long steps up the four stairs and went into the kitchen. Fritch heard his little boots scamper into the bathroom. Good job.
The boy enjoyed his own table and chair a safe distance from the black-and-white television. He tromped there next. Fritch spread some old newsprint under and around Wes’s chair. Now, what was on the tube that might keep him occupied? What was there for him to watch?
“So, buddy. What’ll it be for breakfast?”
“Fwuit Loops!”
“Can you say ‘Fruit Loops?’ Frrr-ooot Loops?”
“Fooo-woot Loops!”
Fritch made a fingernails-on-a-black-board face at the boy who mugged his own in return. “Know what? That’s close enough. Daddy’s on a tight schedule today. Toast, too, okay?”
“Toas’ an’ I want jelly!”
“Comin’ right up. Toes and jelly.”
“Not toes,” Daddy!”
“And what’ll it be for your morning viewing pleasure?” The TV had warmed and brightened. Fritch began to slowly turn the channel dial.
“You talk funny, Daddy.”
“So I’ve heard.” Thank goodness it was Saturday with an assortment of animated dreck to hold the boy’s attention. “That one, that one!” Wesley pointed at the screen.
I want Lassie!”
It wasn’t the living, breathing collie, but a cartoon. “Lassie’s Rescue Rangers. You’re sure? You’re the boss for the rest of breakfast.”
“Yay, Lassie!”
Can I engage him for long enough to pour the fuel? But, it’ll take too long. I can’t keep an eye on him. Would he sit at the dining table long enough for Fritch to study a few pages until Doris came home? Did she say she was staying through lunch? The extended layoff had enticed him into returning to college. He was starting small after being out for three years—just one History class at U of Michigan, Flint campus. Italy During the Risorgimento. Garibaldi. Heard of him in high school. Will this be of any use teaching high school Social Studies? World History? But, it was a three credit course on the right days and at a convenient time.
Wesley’s toast popped. Fritch buttered two pieces and added strawberry jam. He poured milk over the rainbow rings of cereal. Won’t tell him it’s the knockoff A&P brand.
“Here ya go, sport.” He placed the bowl and plate in front of the little boy. “Eat. Before your toast gets cold. You don’t like mushy Loops.”
Wesley took his eyes off a commercial for a different cereal being pushed at the elementary school demographic. “Mussy Loops?” He laughed at his own word play.
Is he screwing with me? Fritch was momentarily proud. “You talk funny.”
The dining table wasn’t far from Wesley’s little table. Only the end of the living room carpet defined the border of the dining room. Fritch opened the Risorgimento text. He skimmed four pages of his own yellow Hi-Liter notes, then thought he should read them again. Guilt and the unfinished chores were distracting him.
That fuel oil needed to be dumped and his debt somehow paid. Fritch didn’t want to look like a total deadbeat to Arnie Bergeron, owner of Bergeron Mobile and Fuel Services. If he wasn’t already. Arnie had pointedly brought it to Fritch’s attention. The station was only two blocks down the hill of Main Street but now Fritch was avoiding it. He drove to the other end of town for the heating oil and to wait in a different gas line. On top of that, Arnie was a friend of Fritch’s father. How long would it be before the word eventually circled back to him?
Next unemployment check? He should also be getting a Trade Readjustment check soon because he’d been displaced by the Energy Crisis. Doris had some money squirreled away somewhere for a short vacation. So I’m a deadbeat and I’m also using hard-earned tip money AND taxpayer dollars. Maybe I’m all the way into the scumbag category. Gotta quit partying all weekend, beginning tonight. Friends taking advantage because I can purchase alcohol. Even the A&P generic beer began to add up.
“Hey, pal. Are you eating, all gone?” Where did that come from? The kid’s not two anymore and in a highchair.
“Mmm, hmm.”
“Don’t spill your cereal milk. You know it’s the best part. Want a mug?”
“No, Daddy.”
Fritch rose from his unfocused studies to have a quick look. The boy was, at that moment, lifting and slurping from the cereal bowl without too much collateral damage. What other behaviors was he apt to mimic? Fritch needed to be careful of his language now that Wesley was going to pre-school (don’t call it nursery school) on Grandma’s dime.
“Listen, my son, my son…”
“You talk funny, Daddy.”
“Finish your toast,” Fritch said. “Listen. I have to pour that furnace oil into the big tank.”
“Yup. Big red can of frool oil.”
“Say it like fu-el oil. Can you sit on the stairs and watch for a few minutes?”
“Yup.” The boy came out of the living room, jam-sticky lips trailing and crumbs. “I can help?”
Fritch went after a wash cloth from the downstairs bathroom. “You will keep me company. That’s the help I need. C’mon.” He mopped the boy’s face.
There was no door between the kitchen and the landing at the back door. He slowed, waited for Wes to follow. They turned at the landing then went down a short flight of stairs into the furnace room. They paused for Fritch to explain, again, the presence of the mammoth, concrete cistern, known to the boy as the sis-urn.
“They drinked the wain water.”
“Maybe not, though, buddy. But they did use it to wash clothes and for a bath.”
As Fritch understood it, rain water collected from the eaves troughs and funneled down to here. How sanitary could that have been. Who knows what trash is in there now. He just wanted it broken up and gone, like all of its plumbing apparatus. The walls of the damn thing were two feet thick and rose almost to the ceiling.
“Mommy want a wash machine in it?” Wes asked.
“Sure, after the walls are gone. More easy for her.”
At the moment, the appliances were installed at the other end of the basement in what had been some kind of recreation room. But why were they plumbed in there? A little table-tennis ‘till the load was dry? I should try again. He’d used a sledge hammer, cursing whatever concrete mixture had been used back at the turn of the century. Ferrous,
Bunker material. How about converting it to a bomb shelter? “Okay. Let’s get this chore done. You sit right here.”
The boy sat down on the third stair-step from the bottom. “Keep company?”
“You’re doin’ a good job so far.” Fritch pulled a dangling bead-chain for the one bulb in the furnace room. Outside, the March overcast had darkened. Rain drops spattered on the drafty window.
Fritch lifted the red can by its bucket handle. He had to use his right hand to stay at all steady climbing the five foot ladder. He used his left arm like a tight roper’s pole, occasionally touching the can lid. Up one, up two. With both feet on the third step, he muscled the container up onto the broad platform on top. His right arm throbbed. He unscrewed the cap on the tank. He placed a plastic funnel into the hole. Jesus, I’m out of shape. One thing you can say for assembly line work….Here’s the moment of truth. Fritch took a deep breath. He lifted the fuel can nearly to the funnel and began to tilt it.
That’s when his left foot found an older spill of oil on the third step. His whole left leg shot out from under him and through the gap beneath the platform step. “Woah, shit!”
He let go of the can and tried to roll away from its crashing descent. His left leg, now on the wrong side of the ladder, was going to drag it, too, down on him. His right hand flailed but there was nothing to grab on the smooth steel of the tank. All Fritch could do was drag his palm down the side, try to reduce his momentum. His right elbow hit the floor first, followed by the smack of his hand. “Fuck!” exploded along with his breath. Pain shot up his arm from the so-called funny bone leaving him speechless. Has Wes heard that one before? I’ve broken my fucking arm. The red can landed on its side, clanging like a mission bell without a clapper.
Wesley didn’t scream but was weeping at full blubber when he reached Fritch. “Daddy. (Hiccup, wail.) Where’s you boo-boo?” The boy crouched over Fritch, about to drizzle snot on him, “Boo-boo everywhere,” Fritch groaned. His eyes were winced tightly, his teeth clenched over more expletives. “You heard words Daddy shouldn’t say,” he gasped. He tried to lift and pull his left leg out of the ladder’s closed jaws. What should he ask the boy to do?
“Wes. Wesley…” We need to teach him how to use the phone. Should I send him next door? The Waldon girl was one of their babysitters when they could afford to go out. But in the rain? What if there’s no one home? Maybe I can try to get up.
“Keep company?” Wes sniffled.
“Yup. Yes, buddy.” Fritch wiggled his fingers. Well, my back isn’t broken. He wrapped his left arm around the boy. “Lemme just catch my breath. I’ll try to get up.” I don’t seem to be concussed.
Then he heard the front door close upstairs, the Christmas jingle-bell they hadn’t taken down. “Thank you, Lord.” Fritch groaned. Great. Only a five hour shift. If that’s Doris and not Grandma. Someone walking around up there.
“Hello? Where is everybody!” It was Doris, who must be searching, puzzled by the TV playing without an audience, the empty cereal bowl and the sippy-cup nearly so.
“Go get Mommy,” Fritch told Wes. “Don’t run on the stairs.”
Fritch began to get up but could not rest on his left elbow. He tried the right, wriggling his left leg free of the collapsed ladder.
Doris soon stood over him. “Are you okay? Can you stand?”
“Remains to be seen,” Fritch said. “At least a broken arm will be paid for.”
Doris crouched to put her arm under him. “Do a sit-up. You’re bleeding at the elbow.”
“I think it’s just a scrape. A sit-up? I don’t know. My conditioning has become a disgrace. Oww, oww!”
Doris pulled him into a seated position. “I’m really sorry, Hector. I guess this can’t go on. Anyway, we don’t need a vacation until you’re back to work, anyway. I have a check today from work.”
Fritch sighed. “I appreciate it. Do you think we can get this can in, between us? I’ll get a bucket and you can dump it one gallon at a time.”
“Let me change my clothes. Shouldn’t you see a doctor first?”
“Later. We’re gonna run out sometime today.” Fritch raised his right arm and turned it over then flexed a bicep. “Doesn’t feel broke.” His right arm was tingling back from numbness and his right palm needed to be cleaned up, dressed with some iodine if they had any.
“Keep company?” Wes hugged him around the hips.
“Yeah, pal.” Fritch limped toward the stairs. “We can take a walk down to Mr. Bergeron’s gas station.”
“Buy pop?”
Fritch always let the boy put coins in the soda vending machine by the station’s entrance. Doris had the vacation fund hidden somewhere in the place. She dug it out without letting Fritch see where. She autographed her paycheck.
The palm of his hand cleaned and bandaged, Hector brought a wash pail in from the enclosed back porch. He dumped rubbing alcohol on the step-ladder and rubbed out the oil splash with a rag. Doris came down the stairs in jeans. Fritch poured the first gallon into the bucket. His elbow throbbed but seemed only to be bruised. He steadied the ladder while Doris carefully poured the fuel.
“Where’s Wes?” he helped with a second gallon until he felt that the red can was light enough for her to handle.
“Believe it or not—asleep on the couch. What’d you do to him?”
Fritch held the ladder again. “We were busy and he was awake before me. I told him I was still tired and to read to me in bed. I told him to just look at the pictures and make up his own words. It was actually quite relaxing.”
Doris climbed down and took the paycheck out of her hip pocket.
“I appreciate it. I’ll be right back.”
“Great. I’d like not to freeze.”
“Try not to wake him up, okay? Let me get some studying done?”
“Or. Or,” Doris began. “You could come upstairs and keep me even warmer.”
“Hmmm. Interesting thought,” Hector said. “But you’ll have to be on top.”
“I meant I could spoon up to your body heat while you read,” Doris said. “Well, I suppose it might lead to something.” She poured the third gallon on by herself.
***
Bergeron looked up the bill. Fritch saw him take it from a green file box labeled Past Due. “I knew you wouldn’t let this go too long.” The grease stained fingers rang open the cash register. It appeared that Fritch had a few dollars change coming back. “You wanta schedule a delivery?”
Fritch told him that he preferred to wait until his next Unemployment check and when the other money came through. “Your call, Hector. You’re still good for it if you change your mind.”
Back up the hill, Hector trudged with a hitch in his step and his elbow burning. The settled debt had lifted one weight but the oil procuring task remained—that kettle bell of a red fuel can. But, after his fall and with nursing his injuries, he could expect more help from Doris. She probably deserved all the body heat he could manage.
—
Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides a mountain bike and a Honda scooter for the planet, and follows Detroit City FC and Flint City Bucks FC with religious fervor. More than 75 of his stories have been published online or in lit mags. Most recently in Revolver, Discretionary Love, New English Review, and Post Box. Forthcoming in New English Review.