Fried Chicken and Coffee

Slick with sweat, Sweets stops at the cargo train tracks to catch his breath and fan him­self with the Mobile Press Reg­is­ter.  He shuf­fles under the welded arch of the main entrance to the Alabama Dry Docks and a uni­formed guard directs him to the employ­ment office.  Sweets already knows the way.  He care­fully chooses a path through piles of rust­ing scrap and crosses long, dark shad­ows cast by cranes.  Sweets repeats his qual­i­fi­ca­tions aloud over swollen lips.  Near the dock, he stops in front of the tug boat, Lit­tle Ben, and catches his breath.  The tug glis­tens with fresh paint and hand-rubbed teak.  The owner of the ship­yard, Ben­jamin Kale, tags his dead son’s name to every­thing he builds. Sweets removes his hat and grips it to his chest.

“Hey now, look at olé Sweets,” Wish­bone shouts. “Goin’ again!”

Wish­bone is lean and tall with hair cropped close.  He holds up his weld­ing mask with one hand.  His black torso swells with muscle.

The other men look up. They clap and whis­tle at Sweets from a cracked oil tanker prop.  Wish­bone drops his mask and relights the acety­lene.  A cloud of sparks, soot, and steam rises from his torch, then van­ishes into white hot sky.

Sweets resumes walk­ing, eyes focused for­ward.  At the back­door of the office, he tucks in his faded blue work shirt and mops his face with a rag.  Inside, unem­ployed men work the maze, try­ing their luck at each glass win­dow.  Sweets rubs the foot of a rooster between fin­ger and thumb in his pocket. He slows his breath­ing to even, con­trolled breaths, then opens the door.

Hours later, Sweets emerges from the build­ing. He sits on the first step. His hips and knees burn.  He strug­gles to breath. Sweets enters and exits by the back door every Mon­day.  The other appli­cants sit out front.  Among them, a young man with smooth almond skin slaps his thigh. He says: No parades, no bond ral­lies, no jobs. Can’t even shuck oys­ters.  The oth­ers nod.  Some say amen.

At the back door, Sweets looks up to Wish­bone, black­ened with soot.  He sits down beside him. Both men drip with sweat.

“I’ll get over to Dauphin Street,” Sweets says.

“Kazoola’s might need you.”

“Sho might.”

“Ain’t no way to tell,” Wish­bone says.

“Got damn,” Sweets says. “Maybe they’ll be havin another war.”

Ben­jamin Kale sits behind an ornate mahogany desk in suit and tie.  He swivels in his chair and watches Sweets and Wish­bone through the third story win­dow.  He watches Wish­bone move, shirt­less, and presses his palm against the glass.  Wish­bone says some­thing, ges­tur­ing with his hands, and Sweets nods.  Cold air blows through newly installed air vents.  From this dis­tance, Wish­bone could be any man.  He could be white.  He is young and strong and vir­ile.  He might be a navy boy, home on leave.  Sweets might be his father.

Sud­denly, the air feels over cold and Ben­jamin closes the vent.  He opens the win­dow and leans out as far as he can.  He closes his eyes.  On the desk, a black and white pho­to­graph of his son lies face down against the wood.  In the pic­ture, Ben Jr. sleeps on a river­boat bunk, his arms crossed behind his head.  In another pic­ture, still upright, twin baby boys peek out from under blan­kets in a bassinet.  Ben Jr.’s wife will take them away.  She will take them to her fam­ily in New Eng­land.  They will be raised with­out a south­ern accent.  They will not know that Ben­jamin hired Sweets to drive his pol­ished black car, despite the slide in rev­enue. They will not know that Wish­bone will use Sweets to break into the Kale fam­ily home.

What they will know is this: A man known as Wish­bone split Ben­jamin Kale’s skull with a fire iron and only got away with his gold watch on a chain. He was never found. My father will dis­cover the watch in a pawn shop thirty years later. In thirty more years, he will die, and I will find it in his desk.  I’ve got it in my right hand, right now.  My name is Ben.  The watch does not keep time.

Mur­ray Dun­lap’s fic­tion has appeared in the Vir­ginia Quar­terly Review, Post Road, Night Train, New Delta Review, Red Moun­tain Review, Silent Voices and Smoke­long Quar­terly and oth­ers. His sto­ries have been twice nom­i­nated to the Push­cart Prize and to Best New Amer­i­can Voices, and his first book, "Alabama", was a final­ist for the Mau­rice Prize in Fic­tion. After very nearly being killed in a ter­ri­ble car wreck, the writer uses this site to vent: http://​www​.mur​ray​dun​lap​.com/.