Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [62]
LAMSON’S SPA was on Winter Street, a convenience store with cardboard in the windows, some of them cracked, duct tape holding them together. Inside, the shelves were largely empty and half the ceiling lights were out and everybody knew the place was a front for bookies and drug dealers. South of it was a sub shop and American Ace Hardware, the Greek church on one side, a Catholic church on the other, and farther down the hill were Mediterranean Pizza and Dunkin’ Donuts, their fluorescent light spilling out the windows onto the parking lot next to the gas station where five days a week I worked from seven to four pumping gasoline into the trucks and vans of tradesmen. I’d take their cash and go into the tiny glass booth and make change. I’d hand it to them, then slide the booth door shut to keep out the cold. There was an electric space heater under the plywood shelf the register sat on, and it was like the one we had back in the tree hut, the one we kept going with extension cords we’d snuck into our basement, our mother always confused as to why the electric bill had gone up so much, and now, as I worked forty hours a week and knew how much of my day and week and life I had to put into just making money, I felt badly about that bill, about stealing from my hardworking mother like that.
The man who hired me was older than my father and drove a late-model Cadillac Seville. He had dark skin and wore polyester pants, shining shoes, an overcoat, and sweet-smelling cologne. Every afternoon at exactly four o’clock he’d drive up to the pumps to lock up and take my deposit bag and credit card receipts. When he first hired me, he looked me over and said, “This place gets robbed sometimes. If they got a gun, don’t try nothin’. But, there’s this, too.” On the booth’s metal windowsill was a homemade club. He picked it up and held it out to me. It was some kind of hardwood, about three feet long, the length of it covered with carved initials and ink markings. Late into my first day, tired of looking straight out the window at the brick machine shop there, or to my left at the black iron trestle above Winter Street, or to my right at the repossessed cars in the lot, I picked up the club and began to read who loved whom 4-ever, who sucked, what number to call for great head, then, in black ink, the letters neat and perfectly aligned, Life is like a dick. If it’s hard, you get fucked. If it’s soft, you can’t beat it.
Just before Connolly’s closed down, Ray Duffy walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy two 50-pound plates. They were spray-painted silver and fit right onto my barbell at home and that’s where Sam and I worked out together now three days a week, Sam back on the weights, his hockey career doubtful. He was so much stronger than I was, and during the bench press we had to strip 80 to 100 pounds off the bar for my sets. Still, I could push close to 250 pounds off my chest, and in the shoulder and back movements, I was almost as strong as Sam. On off days, we drove to Kenoza Lake where you could drive to the top of Kenoza Hill along a winding gravel road, but there was also a steep dirt trail through the trees. It was sixty yards long and nearly 45 degrees, and Sam and I would take turns grabbing 20-pound dumbbells and running up that trail as hard as we could. Just before the top, an invisible hand yanking the air from your lungs and the earth itself trying to pull you down, we’d reach the crest of the hill where there was an incline of open grass and we’d run on for another thirty yards. We worked up to doing this ten times each.
I’d hung a heavy bag down in the basement, too, and every day after a workout I’d wrap my hands and pull on hitting gloves and hit the bag as hard as I could. The Everlast logo was the height of a man’s face, and I’d jab it, then throw a straight right to the nose, a double left hook to