A Couple of Laughs Before You Drive Home

The simple ending to a simple day for a couple baggage handlers.

The airport smells like fuel this time of day. Not just one part but the whole thing. Plane after plane gassed up for the final flights of the day, scattering businessmen back to Chicago or San Francisco, taking unhappy families to Disney or people home to the funerals of relatives they haven’t seen in years. R.B. always makes up where they are going, watching through the terminal windows from the tarmac. Everyone looks smug or tired or both. He wants to toss their luggage violently like a man removing a drunk from a bar but the benefits with the airline are too good, so he never does. The petrolieum ripe air usually signals the end of R.B’s day, the final few minutes before retreating home in the fleeting light of the New England fall where he will feed his dog, order a pizza, drink a few Miller Lites and pass out in his armchair watching the Bruins or hip-hop videos on BET. Eventually, he will come to in a blinking daze and drag himself to bed for the last few hours of sleep. He can’t go to his bed without sleeping in that chair first.

R.B is sitting with Bert in the hangar waiting for the next flight, the next random assortment of duffle bags and suitcases to sort and redirect to another airport, exotic letter combinations, places they imagine in their mind are much like their own airport but better. Somewhere else is always better.

“You see that game last night?” asks Bert.

            “Which one?”

            “The Pats game.”

            “Naw. I watched the Bruins. I don’t watch football.”

            “Why not?”

            “I don’t know. Something about it seems wrong to me.”

“Like what? That sounds like something a p***y would say. ” Most people prefer to avoid Bert, especially the women in the front office. Other employees dread any interaction with him no matter how small. He has a tendency to be offensive in smell and conversation topic.

            “I don’t know. They let those guys away with murder out there. F*****g thugs.”

            “But you watch hockey?”

            “So?”

            “That’s just as bad.”

            “Not really.”

            “Fights? I mean no fights in the NFL. Well other than elevators with your wife.” Bert punctuates this with a hearty laugh. “Man, he knocked that b***h out. She deserved it too. You can’t hit a man and expect him to not defend himself.”

            “Fighting is just part of the game.”

            “Fighting is a part of everything.”

               R.B. doesn’t answer. He foresees the conversation dissolving into nonsense. Bert changes the subject.

             “What’s the deal with this flight? Why so special it has to delay my trip to The Strip? You should come with me today. They got some real cute new girls. 97’s. That young s**t gotta taste good.”

            The Landing Strip is the local gentlemen’s club. Bert often pleads with R.B to go drink a few beers with him and “slap some asses”, preferring to identify the girls by birth year like a car or a classic Super Bowl. R.B. has been there before and the place unnerves him although it always smells nice. The girls aren’t half bad but he never knows what to do with his hands or eyes. Can’t put them in his pockets because he thinks people will assume he’s touching himself; can’t stare at the girls because it feels rude although he’s not sure if it’s rude not to. He never can figure it out.  

            “I don’t know, all I know is it has to be unloaded tonight and it’s not a commercial. Some random s**t. Probably not luggage.”

            “Not luggage?” Bert says, wrinkling his face.

            “Yeah. Not luggage.”

            “Why us? Denny and Zeke could’ve stayed.”

            “They said me and you. Something about it being a delicate job. They needed the best”

            “Bullshit. F*****g bullshit. The best. Any moron can unload a plane. Don’t patronize me, you front office f**k heads.”

Bert walks over to a silver metal desk covered in various papers and a small green desk light, retrieving a copy of the Hartford Courant. He sits down next to R.B. and lights a cigarette.

            “You know you’re not supposed to smoke in here anymore.”

            “F**k ‘em,” Bert grunts, butt clenched between tortoiseshell teeth. “I’m staying late, I’m smoking in the bay. It’s 25 degrees out. I have rights you know.”

            Bert leafs through the paper as R.B. stares at the pink and oranges in the December sky through a window at the top of the bay. There is a layer of dirt and exhaust finely built up on it. This isn’t the first time R.B. has noticed. He wonders why no one ever cleans it. Whose job is it anyway? The clouds and sky are dark purple. He hates this time of year.   

            “Did you see this, man?” Bert says after a few minutes. “These kids that got killed in this accident?”

            “Yeah, man. Holy s**t, huh? Poor kids. Real bummer.”

            The past weekend three kids had been killed in a car accident in Vermont. They were on the soccer team and had traveled up to celebrate their state championship. All three were college bound, two on scholarships. They were supposed to go skiing and pick up girls but they ended up smashing headfirst into a logging truck, the gray Volkswagen they were in shredding like pencil shavings, curved and dull across the snowy road. They found a box of booze in the back of the vehicle, most of the bottles broken, the cardboard soaked in liquor. R.B. had seen their parents on the news, looking lost and picked apart like wet stuffed animals on the side of the Turnpike. The report described the boys as “good kids” and their families as “high-profile.” Turns out one of their fathers used to play for the Whalers; one of the others, a judge.

            “Poor kids? Drunk driving at 17 in Vermont going to daddy’s ski house? Gimme a break. Those kids were f*****g stupid.”

            “They were kids, man.”

            “Spoiled no doubt,” Bert continues. “Probably had everything handed to them their whole lives. Glastonbury. They certainly learned a lesson, didn’t they? Their families too. People like this kill me,” he says slapping the paper with a backhand. “This teacher going on and on about how important they were to the student body. They were obviously outstanding young men, especially the brainiac who was double the legal limit and decided to drive his friends around. Their parents are really the ones to blame. Maybe it was too many hugs, too many participation trophies. They won’t ever see it that way. I hope they do. Maybe they can go on a speaking tour and warn other rich families. Or write a book about it. Make a little money.”

            “You’re out of line, man. You are talking about things you have no f*****g clue about.”

            Bert looks up from the paper.

            “I mean, you drink and drive all the time. You never made bad choices as a kid?”

            “That’s different.”

“How?”

“Cause I know what I’m doing. These kids wanted it all. They were probably told they could have it too. The getting fucked up with out the f**k ups. Well, I can tell you that for sure is impossible. Better off.”

 “I still think it’s sad.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t but it is what it is.”

“What if it was your kid?”

“I don’t have any kids. Well, ones I see.”

Silence for a second.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok. I haven’t seen them in a while.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t be weird about it, f*g. Their mother moved them to Montana and that was that. I sent them money till they turned 18, so at least I’m not a deadbeat. That was two or three years ago now. F*****g brats. Never hear from them. They were both headed for trouble anyway. The boy was only 12, already smoking and f*****g. The girl was 9.” He pauses and his eyes take on softness, looking somewhere R.B. can’t. “I hope she turned out alright. She was sweet.” He continues staring for a few seconds at whatever mirage he has conjured, “I’m going out for a smoke.”

Bert gets up and walks out the small door cut from the middle of the larger bay door. The sun is completely down now but R.B can see the top of Bert’s head through a round window, a caged industrial light bulb illuminating his orange wool cap. Smoke and steam pour from his mouth.

R.B picks up the paper and thumbs through it noting an article about a raccoon some elementary school had adopted as it’s school pet. He scans the early season NHL standings although he already had checked them that morning on his phone. He looks at the comics and notices they still publish Family Circle. He had a friend in high school that hated the strip with such passion, he actually tracked down the home phone number of the author just to prank call him. He would spend hours dialing the creator over and over. The cops eventually got involved. He was a good kid. He went to UHart on a scholarship and joined a frat. Somewhere towards the back, he recognizes the picture in one of the obituaries as one the kids from the accident. It’s the same picture they used on the news, a yearbook photo taken the past summer. He stares at it for a minute before folding the paper up and tossing it into a trashcan.

Bert comes back in and shudders, his face red, eyes wide.

“Holy s**t, it’s cold out there.”

“Yeah, man. Only early December too. Gonna be one of those winters.”

Bert looks at R.B. and kind of laughs.

“Yeah, they usually are, aren’t they?”

“What?”

Bert rolls his eyes. “Everyone in New England and probably anywhere else with a winter says the same f*****g thing every year. “Probably gonna be one of those winters.” You mean s**t-can cold, gray, and a variety of frozen precipitation falling from the sky? Like every other one we ever had? It’s just such an obvious thing. Yeah, it gets cold and we freeze and we shovel and we have heart attacks.”

“At least it gets warm again.”

“Yeah but it takes so long. And it’s not like you ever forget it’s coming back. I’ll be playing nine at Airways after work on a beautiful July day and just randomly, I’ll think of how in six months the place will be covered in snow and I’ll be freezing my a*s out on the tarmac, watching people go somewhere like Florida.” He spits on the floor.
“Fuckers.”

Airways is the local blue-collar golf course. The two of them play in a baggage handler’s only league on Wednesday night in the summer. The course is in decent shape but often has large brown patches of dead grass. R.B. dated the beer cart girl for a while till some of the others told him she was “kind of a s**t”. He would see her sometimes flirting with other guys on other holes. He stopped calling her. He wishes he hadn’t; she was kind of a nice girl, pretty too. He would of kept dating her but she just fucked too many guys. At least he heard she did.

Bert continues, “I hate this s**t so much.” He gestures towards the window in the door. The purple sky has swollen shut to black.  He blows hard into his folded hands. “The cold just makes me feel a certain way. I just drink it off normally.” He’s quiet a second. “Always have,” he says again, laughing a laugh that becomes a cough.. It sounds like it hurts.

R.B. excuses himself to pee although he doesn’t need to. It’s almost 5:30, they have not heard from air traffic control and Bert is in rare form today. All of this exhausts him. He just wants to go home. He makes his way to the men’s room and sits down on the toilet with the lid closed. There are a few magazines that don’t really interest him but he flips through them idly. He learns a few things about fly-fishing and the best type of barley legal ammo to load an AR-17 with. He exits the stall, washes his hands, dries, and pretends to play basketball with the brown coarse paper towel, nailing a dead swish in the center of the trashcan. The same clock he passed earlier now says 5:43. Bert is scowling and grumbling into a walkie as he reenters the hangar.

“Yeah…He’s here now…Ok…Ok…10-4. Where the f**k did you go, man?”

            “I told you. The toilet.”

            “What the were doing in there, man? Jerking off? If you want a handy you can just come to The Landing Strip with me, don’t do it when we’re waiting for some late a*s flight.”

            “No…no…I was…”

            “Were you avoiding me?”

            Sound ceases. An engine whooshes in the distance.

            “No. No. Of course not.” R.B.’s mouth goes dry.

            Bert looks at him, lips tucked tightly in their usual half frown. He punches R.B playfully in the arm. “I’m kidding. Relax. Everyone loves me. They said that flight has an ETA of 8 minutes. Let’s get out there and get this done. I think I can make it for happy hour still.”

            “Why do you think they call it that?”

            “Happy hour?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I mean isn’t it obvious?”

            “I guess.”

            Bert looks at R.B. and thinks about the question, harder than he’s thought about anything a long time.

            “A couple drinks, a couple girls, a couple laughs before you drive home to the kids or wife or nothing. There’s something warm about it. It makes me happy. I guess that’s all that matters, right?”

            “Yeah. Do your do.”

            “What the f**k does that mean anyway?”

            “You know. Whatever floats your boat, smoke’em if you got’em, something along those lines. I saw Lil’ Wayne say it in a Taco Bell commercial once.”

            “You smoke pole. And so does this faggity conversation.  If you don’t mind...”

            Bert opens the door to the tarmac and holds it. A hard draft blasts through the gape, cold and sterile. It has the fading scent of autumn and traces of ice. Soon it will snow again, the sides of the runways and the corners of the buildings lined with drifts, hardened and sand stained, pieces of pebble embedded in the white like buckshot. The wind will blow, pushing loose flakes into the air, tiny sharp pellets that sting when they touch the skin. In small doses, this type of exposure is fine but after many hours, the exposed spots get raw and red, burning as they return to warmth. Some times you end up frost bit and the skin blackens then dies. It returns but inevitably the feeling is lost and never does.