what we can glean from the dirt
I was standing outside, watching the rain cascade under the parking lot lights. My uniform was black and greasy. My striped apron had mustard and ketchup stains that resembled an island chain if I squinted my eyes. I took it off and threw it over my shoulder. It was late, and I was stuck walking home. My black non-stick shoes were disgusting, as if I had used them to clean our grease traps. In reality, I dropped the grease bucket when I was going outside, and it splattered on my shoes, apron, pants, in my hair, and under my fingernails. It was everywhere, and I smelled terrible. Now, my uniform was both wet and stiff from the spoiled grease, existing in superposition not unlike the light that reflected from the LED poles that illuminated the rain. The rain only grew louder the more I thought about my walk home.
I looked at my phone and read the time. 2:53. I clocked out just moments before, and my manager and the other closer had already peeled out of the parking lot, angry it took as long as it did to close the store, on the eve of a holiday, no less. This close was brutal. Our dishwasher decided to smoke up by the garbage cans in the back shortly after midnight, slowing his already lackadaisical pace to a crawl. It was me. I knew I shouldn’t have smoked, but in my mind, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I was 17 years old and still in school. I was working full-time at this Wendy’s, begging the general manager for more hours. The week prior, he pulled me into his cluttered office and broke the news: I was being promoted to the closing crew. He cut a 4-ounce burger patty with a plastic knife and asked me if I could work until 2 a.m. on school nights. Yes. I would really like that.
It was not a promotion. The pay was minimum wage. The hours felt brutal. Four to close meant anything from a 9- to nearly a 12-hour shift. But I was excited. When I started in the summer, the closing crew was cool. They smoked weed; they showed up to work still drunk from the night before. By November, they had all burned out, quit, got fired, or just stopped showing up to what everybody agreed was the worst shift at our store. Hence, my promotion.
I loaded up a podcast and started walking. It was dark, and the road was slick. The trees menaced the sidewalk, so I walked in the street. Using my apron to cover my head as the rain pelted me, I had miles to walk. I wouldn’t be home until nearly 5 a.m., and even then, I had an early shift the next day, on Thanksgiving. The weed in my pocket was calling to me. So I packed my bowl in stride, not to lose any precious time.
I was somewhere between completely noided and paradoxically relaxed when I saw the headlights in front of me. I walked toward the infinite darkness to my left, hyper-aware that the not-fun-kind-of wildlife was most active this time of night. The lights blinded me and sped past. I turned and saw red brake lights. My heart stopped. Whoever that was, whatever they wanted at 3:30 in the morning, I sought no part of it. The car pulled around, and I recognized it. It was Janson’s car, the other closer with me that night. He pulled up on the wrong side of the road and rolled his window down.
“Some fuckin’ night for a walk. Are you stupid?”
“Yeah, I am real fucking bright,” I laughed.
I could smell the weed and alcohol on his breath and in his car. He offered me a nip of Fireball. I took it fast, and it burned, and it was his turn to laugh.
“That is absolutely disgusting. You drink that?”
“It gets me fucked up. You’re not a pussy, right?”
Janson was an older dude. Ponytail, prison tattoos. He reminded me of the men my mom would bring home when she was still dating, the type to pick up my mom on their Harley Davidsons and bring her home late and confused. The type she would yell at if they said a bad word about me or my brother. They always had something to say about me and Dan.
I hated working with him. He was the type to show up an hour late to every shift and bitch about the job, the customers, his wife, his back, his coworkers. But I liked him. For one, he was funny. But more importantly, he saw something in me, and he was explicit about that. When we went outside to smoke, he spoke to me with a desperation to connect, and I listened with a similar desperation, to find those nuggets of beauty in his life, to redeem him in my naive eyes. He recounted tales of his military service to drug abuse to petty crime to jail to rehab to prison. He was out now, for good, or so he claimed.
“Get in,” he said with the directness of a drill sergeant. So I obliged. Stepping around his black Cadillac, I opened the door and fell into the black leather seats. They were heated. I was grateful.
“Where you going?”
I gave him the address, and he cackled.
“What?”
“I’m your neighbor.”
It was my dad’s apartment. When I explained this, his eyes lit up.
“Jimmy is your dad?” He slapped the dashboard and looked at me, still on the wrong side of the road.
“Yeah?”
“He’s a good dude.”
He offered me another nip, but I declined. This was too much for me already, and I could see his firearm jammed between the seat and the center console. I tensed up. Janson could sense it because he kept forcing conversation.
“Do you think Jessica’s a bitch?”
“Who?”
“Jessica, the new girl up front. The one who left at 10.”
“Oh, I mean, I guess. She seems nice enough, though. I don’t think she’ll last.”
He agreed and kept driving.
As we got closer to our destination, Janson said he had to make a stop. I sighed, and he told me to shut the fuck up. “You’d still be in the rain if it weren’t for me, bitch.” I couldn’t argue with his logic.
“Wait in the car.” He grabbed his firearm and a small bag from the backseat. He was gone for maybe five minutes. I knew better than to ask when he got back. He drove us home, and we walked into the building together, said our goodbyes, and retreated to our apartments directly across from each other.
Thanksgiving came and went. Work was slow, obviously. Friday came, another day to close. Another day working with Janson and my manager and Jessica. When I got there at 3:30 p.m., my manager asked why I was early, as if I wasn’t always early. She looked concerned. Sad, tired. I clocked in and started cleaning the grills.
“We’re getting out at 1:20 tonight. You hear that? ONE. TWENTY.” She laughed a fake laugh and went to her office. She had to make a phone call.
It was nearly 5:00 p.m. when Janson came. There were a pair of uniforms waiting for him. They cuffed him right there in the lobby. He stood up straight and looked me dead in the eyes. He was going back to prison. We weren’t getting out at 1:20 that night.
I learned that Janson was selling drugs from the back parking lot. The cops had been onto him for weeks. My manager snitched on him. That was it. He’d have to start over again when he got out.
I think about all of this a lot. Why did I seek redemption in these types of people? Especially when he peddled the same shit that was tearing my family apart, that was tearing me apart.
In reality, I knew this was a temporary phase in my life. I knew that this would be the only time in my life that I could be unapologetically myself; I could be scum. Nobody expected more from me. It was in this transition, between youth and adulthood, between menial labor and my desperate search for meaning, that I learned about myself. I saw myself in Janson’s red, recessed eyes. It was a precious time that would inform every moment thereafter. I wish I held on just a bit longer. There was still more beauty to glean from the dirt.