Oxford Town, fiction by William Trent Pancoast

The lit­tlest black girl came breath­less from run­ning and stopped by my desk in the laun­dry office.

You need to come quick. Ricky’s gone crazy.

I saw the alarm and fear in her face and got up and fol­lowed her the hun­dred feet to the bank of com­mer­cial wash­ing machines lin­ing the wall of the plant. In front of the bleach bar­rel Rickey stood unsteadily with the bleach pad­dle cocked like a ball bat ready to hit the other wash­man Dar­rel. It was a hot Sep­tem­ber day in the laun­dry where even in win­ter the tem­per­a­ture would be over 90 degrees.

Ricky had looked a lit­tle drunk when he came in but I hadn’t cared. I’d have been drunk at this place too if I could have been. As I neared he kept hitch­ing the pad­dle back behind his right ear like he was at bat. Dar­rel had his eyes locked on Ricky’s and I fig­ured he would do a take­down when the swing came. Dar­rel had been all Ohio in wrestling and at tail­back for the Talawanda Braves in Oxford Ohio.

Excuse me I said to the ladies in the cir­cle around the two wash­men when I pushed past. There was me and six or seven black girls from the neigh­bor­hood down the hill on the north side of town and five hill­billy ladies from the coun­try­side plus a cou­ple of Miami Uni­ver­sity coed dropouts stuck in Oxford like lint on a piece of laundry.

Give me the pad­dle I told Ricky. He dropped it sev­eral inches right away and I could see in his eyes that he was relieved. He knew Dar­rel was going to kill him if it came down to it and he handed me the pad­dle mak­ing sure I was between him and Darrel.

I knew that the pad­dle was a light­weight balsa sort of wood and wasn’t going to hurt a whole lot even if some­body got hit with it. Not like it was oak or ash and heavy enough to bust a head.

Go clock out I told Ricky and he was sober­ing up now from the adren­a­lin and backed up a few steps then walked up past the office to the time clock. It was silent till he was gone then the black girls gath­ered chirp­ing around Dar­rel. The foot­ball coach had told him to put on 15 pounds of mus­cle and get in top shape along with get­ting his ass enrolled at Miami Uni­ver­sity and he would let him walk on next fall for a tryout.

You’re a hero one of them tossed my way. The oth­ers cooed assent know­ing that if Ricky had swung the pad­dle they and Dar­rel would prob­a­bly have been blamed any­ways since black folks in Oxfor­dO­hio in 1974 were still used to tak­ing the blame for most every­thing involv­ing con­flict with white folks.

I was half crazy from lack of sleep and the work­load I had taken on. I was doing my stu­dent teach­ing all day and man­ag­ing the com­mer­cial laun­dry on sec­ond shift. The col­lege and my spon­sor teacher had told me I couldn’t do what I was doing and I’d said okay and went ahead with it any­way. What were they going to do? Throw me out of school because I had to work my way in the world? My days started at six and ended about 12:30.

All I wanted was for these folks to get the fuck­ing laun­dry done so I could be fin­ished for one more day. I didn’t even have time to drink any­more. I was sur­rounded in this col­lege town by beer and drugs and pussy and I spent my days with a class­room of eighth graders then tons of bloody hos­pi­tal laun­dry from DaytonOhio.

Let’s do the laun­dry I told every­one. They grum­bled as they made their ways slowly to their assigned areas. The first loads of hos­pi­tal gowns from the dry­ers had just hit the fold­ing tables and I put half the sorters over there. The big steam roller press we ran the sheets through was run­ning good tonight. All eight of the wash­ers were churn­ing suds except for the cav­ernous four hun­dred pound capac­ity behe­moth that Ricky had been pulled from and tossed like a bag of laun­dry across the con­crete floor.

He’d called Dar­rel a fuck­ing nig­ger then made the mis­take of turn­ing back to his work of stuff­ing a fifty pound mesh bag into the washer like it was busi­ness as usual after the insult. I have no doubt that Dar­rel had first called him a cracker like I heard later but I didn’t really give a fuck. There was laun­dry to be done so I could go home and guys call­ing each other crack­ers and nig­gers I didn’t have time for. Some­body some­where along the line should be respon­si­ble for telling all humankind that some moth­er­fucker sooner or later was going to call them a cracker or a nig­ger or wop or dago or a sono­fabitch and that the cor­rect response was to grin and say that’s not nice and walk away. But no. Young men and old men had to beat each other with bleach pad­dles and other blunt objects when some­body called them a name. Sticks and stones motherfuckers.

They were all back to work and I headed to the office and tomorrow’s les­son plan. We were going to lis­ten to Richard Nixon’s res­ig­na­tion speech from the spring of the year. Clas­sic dip­shitese. God help us that a piece of shit like Nixon could have been elected pres­i­dent. There would be a writ­ing reac­tion to his speech and I was jot­ting down top­ics when the lit­tlest black girl was back again breathless.

Rickey’s mom is here.

The lit­tlest black girl was hot and I loved it when she pressed up next to me. When I had first seen her and the oth­ers together the first night I saw that she was the lit­tlest one and that’s what she always was in my mind—the lit­tlest black girl. Her real name was Cindy. She wore over­sized glasses. I liked her cute lit­tle ass and her nice boobs. She pushed close to my desk eye­ing my les­son plan. I could feel heat escap­ing from the neck of her white blouse and smell a nat­ural sweet­ness through her Ivory soap. I really was start­ing to like her.

You the man­ager? I heard gruffly from the doorway.

I am the tired moth­er­fuck­ing man­ager I wanted to say but instead said yes ma'am.

I learned in the next fif­teen min­utes from Ricky’s mother that Ricky was a fine upstand­ing youth with a fam­ily to sup­port and he damn well needed this job and she damn well expected him to keep it or she would use her con­sid­er­able clout as assis­tant head of house­keep­ing of women’s dor­mi­to­ries on the South Quad to damn well make my life hell at Miami University.

We had walked out of the office to the laun­dry area and she kept look­ing down the aisle at Dar­rel and he kept track of where she was look­ing and I wished there had been some gravel to kick. They were the Oxford Hen­leys I was told. Gen­er­a­tions of them had lived on the same farm and lit­tle Ricky was des­tined for some form of great bull­shit. I took in all she was say­ing. I didn’t want trou­ble with anybody.

 ***

I never aspired to be a laun­dry man­ager. I saw an ad in the Oxford Press for sec­ond shift help for min­i­mum wage at the Oxford Laun­dry down the hill on Col­lege Avenue. I didn’t real­ize till I got there that it was a com­mer­cial laun­dry. They did one hun­dred per cent hos­pi­tal laun­dry that I was soon to find was gross as punc­tured intestines. There were some­times fin­gers or other ampu­tated body parts wadded up in the bloody sheets or organic items no one even wanted to try and iden­tify. Mostly it was just bloody.

I usu­ally helped at the hor­ren­dous job of sort­ing. Help with some of the shit­work. Show the ladies I was one of them. And get them started on it. They would stand and look at it some­how think­ing they could avoid what they knew they had to do. All of them had to say eww at least twice and exam­ine each bas­ket­ful as if siz­ing up the enemy.

I usu­ally said let’s sort this shit and grabbed a tan­gle of gowns and sur­gi­cal garb and they squawked like teenagers which half of them were. The black kids were all under age 20 and the white ladies were older pick­ing up a few bucks for their fam­i­lies for Christ­mas. When­ever pos­si­ble I assigned the older folks to this job. Hav­ing learned that bulling ahead was the best way to deal with bad shit in life they would get it done quick.

It was a nice June day when I applied for the job. My breath was sucked from me when I entered the place. Heat radi­ated off every item in the plant. Wash­ers and dry­ers, Steam boil­ers and presses. But I came to find that it was a dry heat like they say Ari­zona has and was some­thing a per­son could adjust to.

Min­i­mum wage was $2 an hour. That would feed me. I had a thou­sand dol­lars saved up from my stint as a sales­man and only needed to get through another nine months. Turns out they were putting on a com­pletely new sec­ond shift to take care of a con­tract for a Day­ton hos­pi­tal and the owner wanted me to be the night man­ager. I had only wanted to work about twenty hours a week but he offered me $200 a week salary. I could hardly turn down a job in a col­lege town dur­ing the Viet­nam War at two and a half times the min­i­mum wage. I took the job and it nearly killed me.

***

My les­son plan was fin­ished and I was help­ing Dar­rel load the wash­ers. I enjoyed heft­ing the floppy fifty pound mesh bags into the open­ings of the wash­ers. It was good exer­cise and I didn’t have to do it if I didn’t want to.

I was prob­a­bly respon­si­ble for the mess with Ricky and Dar­rel. The wash­man duties amounted to a per­son and a half job and we had two peo­ple to do it. They had been alter­nat­ing on the shitty part of the job with one of them at any given time sit­ting for extended peri­ods while the other worked. The boss had noticed this when he stayed over a few times and told me he wanted them busy. So I told them to work together think­ing that they would only make each other mis­er­able. Not get stu­pid about it.

I tossed a bag into the medium washer in the mid­dle and saw a man enter the rear of the place through the fire door. He headed for the lit­tle roller press where Dar­lene was feed­ing pil­low­cases and an argu­ment ensued. Dar­lene was one of the hill­billy ladies. She seemed glad to be here at work every night and did a great job help­ing get the laun­dry done and me home.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head no all the while tug­ging tan­gled wet pieces out of the basket.

There’s no fuck­ing sup­per I heard him say.

She was telling him what was at home to fix for him and the kids and he stood look­ing down at the gray enam­eled con­crete floor.

I took a step closer and he turned his head toward me. And you bet­ter just stay the fuck out of this he said.

Before I could react to what he said Dar­lene cut past me and was plead­ing for a few minute break to get her goofy half drunk hus­band out of there.

No prob­lem I assured her and headed back to the wash­ers. I kept my eye on them near the back door and in five min­utes all the shout­ing was over and he stood look­ing at her with his lower lip quiv­er­ing and I swear he wiped a tear from his eye before she pushed him out the door into the park­ing lot.

Dar­lene hur­ried over to me. Thanks she said. We need the money from my job. It won’t hap­pen again.

I stood nod­ding my head and watch­ing her hurry back to her job. With an edu­ca­tion she would have made a good nurse or maybe a teacher. Folks worked hard. Every­where I’ve ever seen it’s the same. Peo­ple hump ass all day and night what­ever it takes to make a liv­ing. Bet­ter than grow­ing turnips for the king I guess but the work­ers always seem to get the short end of things.

I smelled John and turned to find the old man lean­ing on his broom. He was a human cloud of BO. Hot tonight he said blow­ing the sweet scent of Boone’s Farm Apple wine over me. That’s good wine he had told me one day. Bet­ter than that rot­ten Moger Daven he called the MD 20/20. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t even real wine. But Boonie’s was pretty friendly stuff for a dol­lar twenty-five. In high school we called it liq­uid acid. A bot­tle of that stuff would set you free. Some­times I envied old John his daily Boone’s Farm.

John had been a medic on Guadal­canal. The first 24 hours left him crusted in a layer of blood and dust and sand and he had started shoot­ing up with the mor­phine from the emer­gency kits of the dead men. It was the only way he could keep going and do what a man and a sol­dier needed to do. After that he would never again go another day with­out being fucked up on drugs or booze. Set­tling on the Boone’s Farm as he entered old age was prob­a­bly one of the bet­ter choices he had made in thirty years.

The evening was mov­ing along nicely now. The last of the dirty stuff was in the wash­ers. The work­ers were all doing a great job. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Dar­rel and didn’t really know what to talk to him about. Today was pay­day and every pay­day Thurs­day I treated myself to a pizza and some beer. The laun­dry paid in cash and I fin­gered the $157.36 in my pocket and envi­sioned the pizza. I headed back to the office think­ing maybe I could get a lit­tle nap.

But first I needed to sketch out the rest of my courses to com­plete my Mas­ter of Arts in Edu­ca­tion. That’s right. Mas­ter of Arts in Edu­ca­tion. Miami had devel­oped a pro­gram to lure folks like me with a BA in Eng­lish to come and take a few more Eng­lish courses and the usual lame ass edu­ca­tion courses in order to allow them to step inside an Ohio classroom.

Never mind that a BA in Eng­lish was far supe­rior to a degree in Eng­lish edu­ca­tion. I had started on the edu­ca­tion route as a col­lege fresh­man and lasted fif­teen min­utes into my first class. We were actu­ally sup­posed to divide into teams and cut out paper dolls. Yes. We would learn team­work that would be demon­strated by this child­ish exer­cise and would apply all the way to high school Eng­lish instruction.

In my time here at Miami I had seen things. Behav­ioral objec­tives was one of them. I had sat lis­ten­ing in amaze­ment to an exprin­ci­pal turned col­lege pro­fes­sor explain how we would learn to write our les­son plans couched in terms of behav­ioral objec­tives. It would never be good enough to say we will read Neigh­bor Rosicky and dis­cuss it in class. No. We would say that the reader of Neigh­bor Rosicky will learn the mean­ing of com­pas­sion and hope­fully become com­pas­sion­ate. Hah. I’ve seen plenty of peo­ple who will never com­pre­hend com­pas­sion and civility.

One such indi­vid­ual was in the grad­u­ate sem­i­nar in mod­ern poetry that spring. I was a writer of short sto­ries and had a novel under­way but the poetry sem­i­nar was what was avail­able. The logis­tics of the course escaped me and before I knew it I had ended up with Yeats and my pre­sen­ta­tion would be the first.

I was a Robert Frost kind of guy if I were to under­take poetry at all and was befud­dled as we went around the con­fer­ence table intro­duc­ing our­selves. When it was my turn I said my major was Mas­ter of Arts in Edu­ca­tion. One long­haired draft dodger thought that was funny and burst out laugh­ing. I was get­ting ready to become a high school teacher to earn a liv­ing and this moth­er­fucker was rub­bing my nose in it. A gray-haired lady poked him with an elbow and he shut up.

So I’m mulling over my dis­con­tent remem­ber­ing being made fun of because my daddy didn’t have blank checks for Miami Uni­ver­sity and bags of pot. Think­ing about how I’m even going to sur­vive the next eight fuck­ing weeks of 20 hour days when the lit­tlest black girl stood breath­less again by my desk. I inhaled her sweet­ness and fra­grance. I wanted just me and her to go somewhere.

She leaned into me and said Darrel’s uncle is here.

I looked quizzi­cally up at her.

Do you think I’m smart enough to go to col­lege? she asked.

I stood up and saw my chance to give her a hug and did. Yes I said you should go to col­lege. She hugged me back and I was ready to see Darrel’s uncle.

Henry was a lit­tle shorter than Dar­rel but twice as wide and his breath smelled like garbage. I could not imag­ine what cheap form of whiskey could smell so foul.

I’m sure he had a noble pur­pose when he made plans to inter­cede at the laun­dry after he and the rest of the neigh­bor­hood heard of the fight. But now that he was here he didn’t seem to remem­ber why he had come.

Dar­rel my nephew he said.

I shook his hand and it was like grab­bing hold of a potato masher all hard and so big around I didn’t feel his fingers.

Equal­ity he shouted belch­ing a fog of garbage gas over me. We been through a lot.

I looked at Dar­rel to maybe see a way out of this but Dar­rel seemed as scared as I was becoming.

Jus­tice the uncle thun­dered and brought his right fist down like a pile dri­ver on the stain­less steel work table buck­ling its cen­ter and leav­ing it concave.

I stepped back as much to get away from the stench of his breath as any­thing and he stepped right with me.

It ain’t agonna hap­pen again he said.

This was a big man. Prob­a­bly 350 pounds and not a lot of fat. I learned later from Dar­rel that night that Henry had played defen­sive tackle for the Steel­ers in the mid fifties.

Henry’s growl­ing and thump­ing went on for another five min­utes until Darrel’s aunt got there and started slap­ping Henry in the back of the head. Then she had the bleach pad­dle that had ignited this whole mess spank­ing his back­side and chas­ing him across the floor as he held his hands over his ears and finally tum­bled out the back door into the park­ing lot.

I looked at Dar­rel and he shrugged and I shook my head. I sat along the wall for a few min­utes watch­ing the folks work. The lit­tlest black girl was by her­self push­ing bas­kets to the back of the plant and this told me the rest of the fold­ers were sit­ting. Let them sit. Let the work­ers of the world sit when they can I decreed.

It was after eleven when I went out and fired up the box truck and backed it into the load­ing dock. Tonight three of the black girls vol­un­teered to help push bas­kets and racks to the dock. Dar­rel and I sized up the load and got started.

I had always tried to be friendly and fair to Dar­rel and Ricky. They were dif­fer­ent but both were hon­est and did their jobs. We were about half way done load­ing the truck when I asked Dar­rel what happened.

He called me a nigger.

And?

I grabbed him.

You made con­tact first?

He was drunk.

Yeah I said.

I wish I could have got Dar­rel and Ricky sat down together. It would all just have been all right. They both would have jobs and be mov­ing ahead in what­ever they saw as the paths of their lives. But Ricky’s mother and Darrel’s uncle had mud­died that up. I didn’t ever want to see any of them again.

After we had fin­ished and stood lean­ing against the dock I told Dar­rel this was his last night too.

He fig­ured that was com­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion we had had while load­ing the truck and nodded.

I heard the girls argu­ing about what kind of three two beer they were going to get at the car­ry­out. One of them had her dad’s pickup and they were going spot­light­ing on the road to Col­lege Cor­ner to see what was out in the coun­try at night.

Hey I hollered across the cin­der park­ing lot to the lit­tlest black girl.

Hey what?

I shrugged.

She ran up to me and gave me a seri­ous and squishy kiss then bounced gig­gling across the lot to the wait­ing Z71.

I shut down the boil­ers and locked up. Down the block I stopped at Domino’s and ordered a pizza. I drove out to Mil­ville where I bought a six pack of real beer and drank one on the way back to get the pizza.

William Trent Pancoast's nov­els include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His short sto­ries, essays, and edi­to­ri­als have appeared in MONKEYBICYCLE, Night Train, As It Ought To Be, Sol­i­dar­ity mag­a­zine, and US News & World Report.  Pan­coast is retired from the auto indus­try after thirty years as a die maker and union news­pa­per edi­tor. Born in 1949, the author