Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [59]
If nothing else, living in Sarge’s world by Sarge’s rules made people seek creative means of vengeance. I can remember one night, late in my stay at the shelter, when two guys were arguing about a sleeping spot. A new guy had checked in and occupied the sleeping space of a guy who had been staying at the shelter for quite some time. The new guy was raising a ruckus about the fact that there were no assigned sleeping spots (“It says so right here on the Shelter Rules and Regulations”), so he was going to remain where he was. The shelter veteran just stood there and said, “Okay, fair enough.” We all knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. So, when the new guy hit the showers, the veteran went to the dining room and grabbed all of the tables and chairs and stacked them in the new guy’s sleeping area. I’m talking to the ceiling. The new guy was pissed off big time when he got back from the showers, and he actually ended up getting sent out for the night when he wouldn’t calm down. The veteran felt so content with his retaliation that he didn’t even mind sleeping in another spot for the night.
Some guys, though, didn’t care if they got kicked out of the shelter. As a matter of fact, some guys actually preferred to live Odare.
“Odare?”
“Odare under the bridge! Ha! Man, that never gets old.” I heard that at least fifteen times while I lived in the shelter. It got old.
One of the guys that I had met at the mass baptism, whose path I would cross quite often at the library, was convinced that if you could learn how to survive on the streets, it was better (even safer, he felt) and certainly more liberating than staying at the shelter.
“Ain’t nuttin’ like sleepin’ outside, lookin’ up ’er at the Big Dipper,” he told me.
To each his own, I suppose.
Yeah, there was plenty of excitement to keep me occupied, but all I needed to keep my mind at peace was Fast Company. No matter what happened or what kind of stress I encountered, it was important that I went to work every morning with a smile on my face and a hop in my step, which wasn’t that difficult to do. While it surely wasn’t easy to get amped up about hauling dressers and boxes around all day, I was energized by the idea that my time as a mover, however long it may be, was finite. Every day led me one more step in the right direction, and that was right where I wanted to be.
TEN
ADVENTURES IN MOVING
Thursday, August 10
By day four of my new job, I had already been assigned a permanent partner to work with. I had my very own crew.
Shaun Caldwell was atypical of most of the movers at Fast Company and unquestionably my exact opposite. He was thirty-nine years old, short, loud-mouthed, cocky, and very much a control freak. When he walked, he strutted from side to side and swung his arms back and forth—a walk that made you wonder as he approached you how much money you owed him or what you may have done lately to cross him. But, while he meant business in everything he did, he was also very likable and enjoyable to talk to. Some of the guys at the shop questioned his late-night habits, but they all loved socializing with him in the office in the morning before we would go out on a move.
And his driver had very conveniently resigned on Wednesday, just two days after my start at Fast Company.
The first thing we would do every morning around 8:00 on our way to the move (and the habit that kept many people from wanting to work with him) was stop by the gas station around the corner for his “spinach.” With his spinach, he was juiced up, his senses were magnified, and he could move anything. But without it, he was cranky and irritable and difficult to be around. His spinach cost $1.09 (times two or three on most days) and came in twenty-four-ounce cans with the words “Natural Light” printed on the outside. After we made the stop, he would hop back in the truck, crack open the top, and proclaim,