J.J. Alo
CH. 4 - JOURNEY MAN
Now beginning to sweat, Curtis snapped off the heat and shimmied out of his jacket using a knee to hold the steering wheel. The windows had fogged, so he cracked his and the slider in the back glass behind him, then figured it was a good time for a smoke. At forty degrees, it was still reasonably cold at that hour, but the air was just enough to clear the fog and cool him down.
The return commute was a breeze at that hour, just missing the excruciating and unruly build-up over I-93 through Boston; however, much of it was northbound as people headed into the city. Southbound was smooth sailing. He continued his journey home, passing Providence, heading west, a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other. Every few minutes, he’d put the coffee down and run his fingers through his wavy, dirty blonde hair—a compulsion in an attempt to try to stay alert. And as he did, his mind drifted—as it usually would—now pondering his time working freelance projects for C/Z Corp, a private telecommunication company.
Curtis was a journeyman—a tradesperson, twelve years in the field, more specifically, a low-voltage technician. Journeymen were usually equipped with one to three different licenses, and he was exclusive, certified with a C-6 combination license, which encompassed a variety of fields he had experienced over the years. From electronics circuitry repair and live sound/audio technician work all the way down to installation jobs, mainly consisting of security alarms as well as data wiring, involving cable/fiber optic communication systems. He was quite talented. Management of computer networks was also a newly acquired skill, albeit something he had yet to be certified in, but it made him a more valuable hire.
For the better part of the last two years, he’d spend weeks, even months at a time, working third shift at various franchised department stores converting their systems over to digital format. It usually consisted of tearing out their old coax cable system and replacing them with fiber optic wire, followed by installing software and reconfiguring Point-Of-Sale systems. Tedious work as it was but didn’t require much brainpower. Because just about anybody could physically perform these duties, many companies, mainly private, preferred to illegally hire unlicensed techs at lower wages, which Curtis found highly frustrating, especially when submitting resumes for freelance openings.
The majority of contracts Curtis picked up required him to travel out of state for extended lengths of time. Many of the jobs were in Massachusetts, while others spread throughout New England in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The various locations would require him to take up a temporary residency in cheap hotels sponsored by the contract holder. Each contract would have a two-month deadline and would necessitate two to four tradespeople to complete depending on the project’s size. At most, the distance from home to work was between two and three hours, but it was feasible for Curtis to stay on location due to the commute and long overnight shifts. Lately, he didn’t mind it.
Mondo-Mart was a large box store located on the north side of the Rockingham Park Mall in the Merrimack Valley, just over the New Hampshire border. The job had required three tradespeople, but before the project commenced, one of them had been arrested, and it was too late to hire a replacement. Curtis and Miguel were tasked to complete the project in eight weeks, which didn’t leave much downtime. This fact immediately stressed Curtis, who was just coming off a one-week break from the last job where he had spent two months away in Maine.
To make matters even more unpleasant, he seemed to lose the lottery of co-workers with his current partner Miguel after hearing one of the prospective two had “loads of experience.” Miguel was exceptionally laid back, to say the least. It wasn’t necessarily his fault; his recently acquired skills weren’t quite on par with Curtis’s. And although, he did exhibit some knowledge of having labored in the field, his cavalier attitude contrasted Curtis’s balls-to-the-wall work ethic. Sure, he was a barrel of laughs and a fun person to shoot the shit with, but he didn’t instill much confidence in Curtis they would finish on time.
Most nights were the same; Curtis and Miguel would show up at the mall and either grab dinner in the food court before it closed, or they would sit bar-side at either one of the two franchised restaurants inside the mall. Curtis would choose a large coffee to go with his usual plain, alarmingly undercooked pub-burger, and Miguel would usually consume two or three beers along with a plate of buffalo wings, cheese fries, and anything else on the menu that screamed, clog-my-fucking-arteries, yo! And on top of that, Miguel always found time to get high, which Curtis usually didn’t mind, but it would considerably slow Miguel down for the remainder of the shift, adding to Curtis’s building stress.
And even though Curtis found Miguel to be annoying—utterly annoying, there was one thing he admired that seemed to always hold true: Miguel’s perceived happiness. No matter the given situation, the man always had a smile plastered across his pencil mustached face. Nothing could bring him down. Curtis, one evening right before work, overheard a phone conversation with his girlfriend, receiving depressing news of a cousin murdered in prison; it didn’t seem to change his overall demeanor that shift, even though Curtis, if anything, noticed he was slightly less chipper. But that smile—that smile never faltered. Whether it was a defense mechanism or a perpetual state of denial, or just blissful ignorance, whatever the secret was, Curtis envied it.
The days grew long for Curtis as each night, he would lay in bed, tossing and turning. He wasn’t getting great sleep to begin with at the start of the project, and now with each night that crept closer to the deadline, his sleep subsequently became less frequent and restful. He grew so desperate for a good day’s rest, he actually replaced the curtains in the hotel room with blackout curtains purchased from Mondo-Mart. At most, he would drift off for two to three hours, but even then, it was consistently interrupted by the daily activities outside the hotel and within the rooms on either side of his. If he could manage it, he’d try to squeeze in fifteen or so minutes during the few breaks he allotted himself at work.
As Curtis hit the ‘Connecticut Welcomes You!’ sign on the Route six turnpike—a barren stretch of lackluster road with sprawling, hilly, heavy forests on either side for miles—he finished his coffee, dropped the cup on the passenger seat floor, and snapped on the radio. Sam and Dave, “Land of 1000 Dances” was on. Unsure of which station this was, too tired to flip through pre-sets, he just cranked the volume, then rolled down the windows so the cold, damp breeze would blow in, the sound of deep whooshing and upbeat music keeping him alert. Soon, he was on I-395, another empty highway in the central-eastern part of the state. Every few miles—or at least it felt that way—he’d come across a Mobile gas station and rest area and would be tempted to stop for another coffee, but instead pressed on, knowing home wasn’t much further.
Curtis got off the interstate and shot down West Main with increasing speed until he connected to Asylum Street, which at that hour became heavy with daily commuters. Exhausted and irritated, he just wanted to get to the house, find a bed to shut his eyes. From Asylum—the town’s main artery, he skidded onto the desolate stretch of Forest Street—a half-mile-long, dead-end street tucked away behind downtown Norwich, along the edge of the Yantic River.
His eyelids grew heavy. They began to shut, then quickly open as he fought, each time closing longer than the last. He finally surrendered, reposed behind the wheel, his head slumped over. A deep pothole jolted him, and by sheer defiance, he jerked his eyes open only to see the flash of a bright object dart out from the front of his truck. He slammed on the breaks, skidding off the side of the road into the brush. A small, metal toolbox shot from the bed through the back glass into the cab right past Curtis’s face; it bounced off the dashboard, cracking the windshield.
Hyperventilating, heart pounding, he tried to catch his fleeting breath. His head tipped back against the headrest, his eyes shut. It was a moment or two before they opened to shards of glass everywhere, all over the cabin, himself and the open toolbox on the floor below along with drill bits, a spanner wrench, and various sized sockets spilled. With a quick glance around the truck to assess the damage, he was continuously lured to a fresh softball-sized spider crack in the center. It was hard to miss. Movement in his peripherals, reflecting back in the rearview mirror, drew his attention behind—several cats loitering across the street around the fenced-off entrance of Laurel Hill Drive, two of which were lying in the center staring at him, tails gently shaking.