There's Always Opportunities

There’s Always Opportunities

The brakes screamed an irritating falsetto as Mitch pulled into the parking lot of the State Liquor Store. He stepped out of his pick-up and looked at his watch, 9:54, the open sign wasn’t glowing in the window so he lit a cigarette and leaned against the rusting, yellow tailgate. The morning sky was gray and the damp air hung over him like an old sweater. He sucked on the cigarette as the sign clicked on. When he saw someone come to the door to unlock it, he lifted his large frame off the truck and walked to the front door making no effort to avoid the puddles, kicking through them as he dragged his limp leg like a bag of wet rags.
When he got to the front door the manager, Pete, a man with graying hair and a full, bristly moustache, was waiting for him. He held the door open with an outstretched arm and stopped Mitch with the other, “Come with me.”
He led Mitch passed the shelves of alcohol to an office in the back of the store. Mitch followed as if he had no idea of what was coming. Pete held open the door to the office and motioned Mitch in, his moustache rising and falling as he took quick, deep breaths. “Sit down,” he locked the door, “I want to show you something.” He grabbed a VHS tape out of a drawer in the desk and put it in a small television with a built-in VCR.
Mitch rubbed his knee and rocked restlessly in his seat. Pete pressed play and turned to face Mitch. Playing behind him was the surveillance tape from the previous day. The image was cloudy on the little black and white TV but Mitch immediately recognized himself when a man pushed through the front door. He took a deep breath and looked at Pete, then to the screen.
The man on the screen tottered across the floor as hastily as his stumping leg would let him. He grabbed a bottle off the shelf and headed toward the check stand; making no regard to the other customers, even bumping his shoulder into a college student with his arms full of wine coolers and Malibu Rum. Mitch mumbled, “Bartons,” to himself as the figure twisted the cap and chugged from the bottle. Mitch remembered the vodka spilling over his lips down his throat as the man on the screen wiped his mouth with his sleeve. When he got to the cashier he slapped a bill on the counter and lurched out. The muted clerk screamed something and waved her hands, dropping an old woman’s change on the ground.
Pete turned the video off and Mitch looked as if he had no idea who the character was, his lips tight and head shaking. He looked at Pete who sat silent, never taking his eyes off him during the movie. Mitch was held in disbelieve, wanting to plea his case, as if any explanation could excuse the actions on the screen. He lowered his head and said nothing.
Pete sat in silence for a few moments, Mitch adjusted himself two or three times, “What do you think of that?” Pete’s hands tightened like vice grips.
Mitch rubbed both hands over his face, “I don’t know what to think,” he lied. He knew exactly what he thought. He thought that if this bridge was burned then he was going to have to drive twenty-six miles, nearly every day, to the next closest liquor store. He sat like a child about to be reprimanded.
Pete shook his head, “You might want to think about a few things,” he lined up his fingers and counted off, “like felony, DUI, open container, public intox. You ever heard of these things Mitch? I make one phone call and you got all that shit on you.”
“I know Pete, I’m sorry.” Again, his childlike mannerisms revealed as he twisted his hands over one another.
“Sorry is bullshit. That doesn’t mean anything at this point. Janis doesn’t want to see you, Mange is disgusted, it’s gonna take some time before they get passed it.”
“I know Pete.”
Pete stared at the pin-ups on the wall, messages, a whiteboard, a calendar, and said nothing for a few minutes. He finally sat back and dropped his hands in his lap. “Now you an I both know this is bull. I know you’re going to tell me that it’s not going to happen again, but I don’t even want anything similar to this; no breakdowns, no belligerence, no nothing.” He sat forward and looked Mitch in the eye. “I don’t even want to see you come in here drunk, which has been the case more than a few times. This is absolutely the last straw Mitch. I’m not fuckin’ around here.”
“I know.” Mitch’s head hung low and looked like he was in pain with each breath he took.
“If you got something going on you need to get off your chest, give me a call. But this cannot happen again. All of us here could have lost our jobs; the store could have been fined, even shut down, do you want that for us? Just so you can prove some bullshit point getting a little attention?”
Mitch nodded his head and said, “No, it won’t happen again.”
“I don’t mean to come off like an ass but you got to understand. You know all the people that work here like you.” His voice softened as he leaned back in his chair, “You’re a good guy Pete, I mean that, but you got to get a hold sometimes. All you had to do was not open the bottle, that’s it, and nothing happens. It’s like you wanted to get busted.”
“I didn’t want that, it was just a rough day and I was a little drunk.”
“A little? Mitch, you were stumbling.” He paused and looked down at Mitch’s leg. “More than usual.”
Mitch smiled and replied, “You take this thing for a spin,” patting his leg, “then tell me about stumbling.”
Pete stood silent for a moment before he grinned and said, “Come on.” He stood, opened the door and they walked out. As Mitch stumped past him, Pete slapped him on the shoulder, “Now, get you somethin’ to drink.” He said, “You got the day off?”
Mitch paused, “Yeah,” he lied, “the leg’s been acting up again.”
“Well,” Pete said, “get some of that medicine on you,” as he nodded toward the whiskey.
Mitch looked over at Janis who was watching him like a prisoner during yard time. He knew them all by first and last name; he knew Janis Baker had three sons, all aspiring athletes, Pete Gledhill loved to hunt and last fall had an elk’s head mounted above his stairs. A man they all called Mange, an old wino with a white, sandpaper beard and messy silver hair who was a master of sixty second relationships, stayed silent, pacing behind the shelves of liquor like a caged lion.
Mitch could feel them looking at him, these people, his people, the people with whom he was most comfortable, staring him like an old friend that stole a watch. This is where he came for conversation and booze, his solace, his peace. It was the only place where he could converse freely about something as simple as alcohol without judgment or accusation, without the term “alcoholic” being mentioned. He’d given up on bars a long time ago, slobbering rhetoric spilling over the wet lips of a barstool lush no longer interested him. Besides that the local bars and taverns had long since been run over by college students, anywhere else was a smalltime dance club or a posh beer-bar with eight dollar wells and connoisseur on hand to admire the rich, full hops that tickled the pallet with a smoky aftertaste in the IPA. Drinking on the porch, watching a dying sunset after a tedious day on the road was an easy decision to make. There he sat alone night after night, pint after pint, fifth after fifth, tucking the empties in a shadowy corner of the small wooden porch, next to his front door until the sun began to bear witness to and give record to his consumption; only then would he haul the bottles, clanging like broken wind chimes, to the garbage cans at the back of the driveway.
He saw Mange on the other side of the store. He looked at Mitch, picked up a box and turned away. Mitch grabbed a pint of Jack D. for breakfast and a half-gallon of Jim Beam; he didn’t want to come back for a couple days.
Mitch did in fact have to work, but not till eleven, so he got three Egg McMuffins and drove to a park to eat. He sat sideways on the bench and pulled his left leg up in front of him. He finished the pint before he started the last McMuffin. The Jack sped through his veins and he rubbed his knee, as if to direct the alcohol where it was needed most. He wolfed down the last sandwich and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He left the trash under the table and tossed the Jack bottle into the soggy volleyball court. The half-gallon was wrapped in a green flannel shirt in the cab of his pick-up truck.

* * *

Mitch had been working for the same shipping company for nearly all his life. Three days after he graduated high school a man handed him a pamphlet as he walked out of a grocery store.
It was for Hansen Shipping Co. a new branch was opening up and they were looking for “Opportunistic young men seeking to build a career with a reliable company.” He called the number, heard the wages and started in a week. He started out on the dock taping and loading boxes and eventually moved up to tracking orders. In two years he was the dock foreman and kept the numbers of every item shipped on a clipboard. The money was good and getting better, his fellow employees respected him and it kept him out of the office and out of a tie.
One day he was keeping an eye on a new forklift driver, he’d already dropped one load after only working there for a week. Twelve fifty-gallon barrels of cleaning solvent needed to be in Denton that afternoon; only an hour drive but the loading team was running late. The man on the forklift, raised the barrels, spun the wheel and popped the clutch. The barrels started tipping and Mitch dropped his clipboard and tried to hold them up. A man on the other side pushed the barrels moments before Mitch got there and the drums rattled like six, two hundred gallon gongs. They tipped, Mitch lost his step and a barrel fell; his leg cracked like pallet wood under a truck tire.

After six months of disability leave he came back to find his clipboard, a peace sign scratched in the back by one of the loaders before the accident, in the hands of guy named Bruce. Mitch clenched his fist around his single crutch and walked over to him, “Nice clipboard,” he scowled, “so you’re the temp they got to fill in for me?”
Bruce looked down at the clipboard, “I don’t know about temp, but yeah, I’m your replacement I guess. Name’s Bruce.” He held his hand out and Mitch turned his shoulder.
“Well look who’s back.” A young man tipped the brim of an old hard hat.
“Nice to see you Danny, “ Mitch said, “where’s Eldon at?”
Danny pointed behind Mitch at the stringy man in a shirt and tie walking out of the office. “Mitch, you look well. How’s the leg?” Eldon smiled like he was hiding a knife and shook Mitch’s hand. “Come check out the new couch in the office,” he said, ”I bet you wanna get off that thing.”
“The legs fine, I’ll be running marathons in no time.” Mitch adjusted the crutch under his arm and followed Eldon. They stepped into the office and Mitch sat on the plush, vinyl loveseat, nodding his head toward Bruce, “So is this joker going to be on my team or what?”
“Easy Mitch, this guy’s good people and he keeps the boys in check.”
“I keep the boys in check, I keep them moving too.”
“Mitch you gotta understand,” Eldon sat on the desk, folding his arms, “a lot has happened in the last six months. I know I told you that you were always welcome to come back here, but in your condition you can’t run the dock.” He slid behind the desk and sat deep in his chair. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but you gotta be able to move out there. When hell starts ragin’ I need a foreman that can be a loader in an instant, like you used to do. Bruce holds it together out there and everything gets there on time.”
“So I get nixed?”
“No you don’t get nixed. I got a few ideas, but it’s all I can do, you got to understand that.”
“Let’s hear ‘em.”
“The first; you take a transfer up to Clayton. Hanson is opening up a new warehouse up there and they could use someone to show them the ropes on the dock.”
“A foreman?”
“Not a foreman, like I said before that’s not in the cards right now, but someone to get them on their feet. The hang-up is it’s only a six-month gig or so. After that you might have to go to the office.”
Mitch leaned forward and straightened his leg, “I’m not going to sit in an office.”
“At this point you don’t have many options.”
“So, what else?”
“There is this.” Eldon reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a pamphlet. He shrugged his shoulders and handed it to Mitch.
“You want me to drive? Oh lord.”
“Mitch read it. I think this is the best option. This is the school Hansen puts all their guys through and they’re pretty damn good if you ask me. It’s a three-month training course and given the nature of your accident and your history with us, I could get corporate to pay for all of it.” Eldon leaned back as Mitch flipped through the tri-folded pages. “It’s not a bad deal, Mitch.”

* * *

“You’re late.” His manager threw the keys to the truck at Mitch.
Mitch wiped his lips and looked at the clock on the wall, 11:18, “It’ll get there on time.”
“You get one more ticket and you’re suspended, you get it there late and I’ll have your ass; so you and God better be on pretty good terms.” His manager sucked air through his nose and shook his head, “And try showering every now and then, the guys all bitch when they get your rig.”
“Go to hell Dennis,” he said as he adjusted the bulky green flannel under his arm.
Mitch wobbled out of the office like a pregnant woman and made the way to his truck. He climbed in and roared the engine. He pulled away and saw Dennis with his hands on his hips standing at the edge of one of the loading docks. Mitch threw up his middle finger and lit a cigarette.
Before he reached the highway he finished the neck of the Jim Beam. He turned up the stereo and felt the classic rock pour out of the buzzing speakers and fill the cabin; the Jim sat under one arm, cradled like a lost child. The familiar scenery changed from business buildings, to neighborhoods, to sparse, little houses next to massive barns. Eventually even those faded and there was nothing but brown grass and occasional trees. Old oaks and poplars swayed in the ever-present wind. Littered across the farmland sprinklers twisted and sprayed arcs of white mist. Mitch tossed a half finished cigarette out the window and looked at the dying grass along the highway. He thought to himself, What if it lit on fire? What if all of the dry grass ignited and raged back toward town, consuming every tree, every house, everything in its way?
When he got about seventy miles away, approaching a small turn-off leading to only a few farms, traffic slowed to a crawl and eventually stopped. In the distance Mitch could see smoke, hear the faint echo of sirens and the long moan of frustrated drivers pushing their horns; Mitch rubbed his leg.
He looked at the Jim to his side and grabbed the familiar handle of the jug. He took one swill from the bottle and washed the cracked, dry taste of nicotine from his mouth. He stared at the bottle like the barrel of a gun and took another drink. The cars around him floated through his blurred consciousness like apparitions. The clock on the radio read 1:04; the shipment had to be there by two-thirty, he was still eighty miles out. A few minutes passed and a red and white helicopter landed and lifted off again. The traffic began to pick up and impatient drivers swerved in and out of the lanes. Mitch took the next rest stop and habitually parked the truck and let the engine idle like a sleeping giant.
He walked over to the bench outside of the restrooms; soda machines, a drinking fountain and a map with a big red dot reading “YOU ARE HERE” kept him company. Mitch looked around the blank horizon and said out loud to himself, “You are here.” The wind pushed his greasy, matted hair across his forehead. A picnic table sat under some juniper trees strategically planted to give the rotten table a pastoral setting; a useless attempt to block the wind and sun. He went over and took a seat on the bench. The ground was covered with wood chips; in some parts they were kicked onto the sidewalk, revealing the black tarp underneath. He held the Jim in his hand like an old friend and he noticed how easy it was to wield the bottle to his mouth. A car pulled up and an old man stepped out, his wife in the car. He went into the bathroom and in a few minutes came out. He noticed the bottle of whiskey next to Mitch. “You driving in teams or something?” Waving a finger at the bottle.
“Yeah, one person can’t make this trip alone.” Mitch moved the bottle to the opposite side of his leg.
“You’ll get in trouble if they find that on you.” The old man stood stretched his back and slowly twisted side to side.
“Only if they find it.”
“Well, it’s been my experience that they’ll take any opportunity to stick it to you,” he tapped Mitch on the shoulder, “and there’s always opportunities.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I hope you hear that.” Mitch nodded his head and the old man went on his way.
The sun showed itself and the gray of the morning was lost, as if a different day altogether had been born. Mitch propped himself up on the picnic table and laid out flat, taking in the heat like a crocodile in the sunset.
Mitch slept.
He dreamt he saw a man walking through leaves; wet, saturated leaves that clung to his feet with each step. The faster he tried to move his feet the more the leaves would slow his step until the man was stopped. He then saw the man walking through bushes up to his thighs, thorn bushes scratching the skin and leaving no mark. He looked at Mitch and Mitch looked back, they said nothing.
Mitch awoke. He didn’t remember the dream.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and grabbed the bottle with one finger. When he got into the cab of his truck he noticed the clock, 3:18. His cell phone beeped, he had six missed calls. Mitch put the truck in gear and drove the opposite direction of his cargo’s destination. A few minutes later his phone rang. The screen read “Work” and he took the call.
“Hello?” He pressed the bottle of whiskey between his legs.
“Mitch, where the hell are you? You’re an hour late on that delivery and I need that truck back here. Make the drop and get back now.”
“Is this Dennis?”
“Who the hell do you think this is? Yes it’s Dennis, now get back here with my fucking truck.”
He shook his head, trying to wave off the overwhelming sleep and fright of consciousness, “Dennis, I’m glad you called. I’ve been meaning to tell you that it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What?”
“Everything go’s away. My leg doesn’t hurt anymore.” Mitch gripped the wheel with one hand and pressed hard on the gas pedal. “I’m going to drive this truck right up your ass and you can keep the leg for free.” He fumbled to end the call with his clumsy fingers and suddenly threw it out the window. He moved his truck into the left lane, racing down the highway, pulling on the horn like a child, pulling from the bottle like a baby.
The trip home flashed by at eighty-five miles per hour. When he got into town he drove passed the turn to Hansen’s, then the turn to his apartment. He rolled into the parking lot of the State Liquor Store and thought about his phone sitting to the side of the freeway, ringing. His truck sat dead in the parking lot, an eyesore and inconvenience to the customers trying to park. He stumbled out of the truck and felt the alcohol slosh in his belly like a bag full of jell-o.
“Pete?” He looked into the neon haven before him and yelled, “I came for Peter. I want to talk to Pete.” He leaned against a white sedan in the parking lot and a man stepped out and told him to get off his car. Mitch hoisted himself onto the trunk and said, “You get Pete and then I’ll move. You get Pete, I’ll move. That simple.”
The man shut the door and went inside. Pete came out while Janis stood at the door holding it open but no one came in; Mange peered through the blinds.
“Mitch, what’s going on?” Pete said, concerned.
Mitch hopped down from the car, “I’ll tell you what’s going on, this. It will never happen again Pete, never again. I’m done Pete; I’m through, finished.”
“Mitch what are you talking about? Give me the bottle, come inside and we’ll call someone to get the truck.” Pete reached for the bottle, “Come on Mitch.”
“Don’t touch it. This,” he held the bottle up, “is coming with me.” Mitch stepped back and swung the bottle as if it were tied to a string. “If you give ‘em the opportunity, they’ll take it. They always take every single thing they can Pete”
For a moment Mitch stayed silent, staring at Pete’s legs. “ You ought a give this one a try.” Punching his crippled leg. “No one wants this one Pete.”
“Mitch, I’m giving you one last chance, give me the bottle and we’ll get someone for the truck.”
“Fuck the truck. I want to know if you’re on good terms with God. Are you on good terms with God?”
“Mitch this is bullshit, come on.”
Mitch took a few steps back, turned to the west and felt the dying sun on this face and said, “I’m not giving in this time Pete. I did once but I won’t anymore.”
Pete turned to Janis and told her to call the cops. He tried again to take the bottle from Mitch but he cupped it under his arm and hobbled away like a wounded animal.
“You don’t want this Pete.” He dropped the bottle to his side, “This isn’t what you’re looking for.” He hurled the bottle and it smashed against the side of the liquor store––shattered glass and the stench of Kentucky bourbon.

Whiskey bled down the side of the store as Mitch’s body drooped and sank into a broken pile in the parking lot. “It won’t happen again Pete.”