The Bloody French

 

Lisa would cover for her mom when her mom couldn’t be at Miller Disposal to dispatch. Because there was quite a bit of downtime, I got to know her. She was about my age. She was cute and we would flirt.

Kevin didn’t like it but he wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t like my flirting with his wife until I told him my girlfriend thought he had a nice ass. After that I could flirt with Lisa as much as I wanted.

My girlfriend didn’t come by the office very often, but the first time she met Kevin she was bowled over by his six foot four, blond haired, blue eyed physique and told me so. Telling Kevin my girlfriend thought he had a nice ass was the best thing I could have done for our relationship.

I spent a lot of time in the office because, when there were no roll-offs to run, I refused to do work that Kevin wouldn’t pay me to do. Curly would be sweeping the shop or replacing mud-flaps on trucks, but I’d be lounging around in the air-conditioning.

There was only one time I would do work for free and that’s if NOT doing it prevented me from picking up containers. If I broke down on my route somewhere I would help the crochety old mechanic repair my truck just so I could get rolling again. I was mechanically inclined so I was pretty handy. If he was in the shop working on someone else’s truck I refused to help him because Kevin wouldn’t pay me.

Kevin Miller had a strained relationship with his father, Oscar Miller.

I was in the yard one day when Kevin burst out of the office with his father hot on his heels. Oscar was yelling at Kevin about moving his bowels in the office restroom.

Kevin yelled, “I’m not going to shit in the shop toilet, I manage this company.”

The problem was one of plumbing and the size of Kevin’s bowel movements. The office sewer line was too small and too far from the main sewer line and it couldn’t transport Kevin’s production all the way to the main sewer line without professional help. They were always calling someone to have the sewer line cleared.

Oscar would sit in his office with the door open. He could see when Kevin left his office to use the office toilet. If Kevin turned left as soon as he breached the threshold there was only one place he could be going: the bathroom.

Oscar would shout from his seat behind his desk, “Kevin!”

Kevin used to fight his father but he would just slam the door and lock it, knowing there would be a fight later. He’d be damned if he would get caught by his employees baking brownies in the shop terlet.

Kevin wanted to spend upwards of ten thousand dollars to have the lot dug up and a larger, more accepting sewer line installed but Oscar held the purse strings and wouldn’t allow his company to spend that kind of money just so Kevin could poop in the office bathroom.

That was part of the charm of working for a small company, you really got to know the people who worked there.

I didn’t drive trash trucks very often but I did from time to time. I didn’t have to know much about them because the helpers would run the trash compactor.

We were driving in the country picking up trash one day when the helper said he needed to climb into the bulkhead. He took a box and a roll of paper towels through the little access door with him. He told me to wait outside and not get back in the truck until he came out.

I guess he thought I knew what he was doing in there. I didn’t have a clue. After a while he handed the box out and told me not to look in it, just throw it in the hopper.

I walked to the hopper and, of course, I took a peak. I have no clue what I thought I would see in there, but of course it was a turd. I didn’t tell him I looked.

You learn something new everyday.

Kevin didn’t like to think of himself as managing a trash company that had faulty plumbing. He liked to think of himself as somehow above it all. So when he told me he needed my help picking up trash on a few streets I knew he’d be edgy. He didn’t want anyone to see him behind the wheel of one of his own company’s trash trucks. He wanted, even less, to be seen in the passenger seat.

He would drive because when he was a kid his father made him pick up trash in the summer and made him ride on the back. There was no way, as the manager of Miller Disposal, Kevin was going to ride on the back of a trash truck.

I love to play practical jokes on people. From time to time I would grease Curly’s truck. I don’t mean in the conventional sense, but in the practical joking sense.

I would rub my finger on a freshly greased roller, then smear grease on the backside of his door handle. He wouldn’t know I’d done it until he tried to open the door of his truck.

I would put a little grease on the underside of his steering wheel. Under the shifter handle. On the air switch for the PTO, making sure he couldn’t see the grease from the driver’s seat.

The first time I got ‘greased’ I thought the mechanic had done it accidentally but I kept bringing my hand back with grease on my fingers. I’d turn up the AC fan and I’d get grease on my fingers. It was very annoying.

While Kevin and I were picking up trash I kept looking for a ball to put between the duals. It would nest in there until the driver pulled forward. The resulting pop sounded like a tire had blown. The driver would jump out and look at his tires while his helpers laughed.

I couldn’t find a ball that I was sure someone wouldn’t miss, so I decided to startle Kevin in another way.

If you’ve ever watched a trash truck go down the street it stops a lot. It moves forward thirty feet, men jump off the sides and fill up the hopper with trash, grab a shifter handle and make it eat up all that trash. Then they climb back on the sides and the truck moves forward another thirty feet. Over and over again.

When there’s only two men on a truck the process is even slower because the driver will get out at nearly every stop to help put trash in the hopper.

While Kevin and I were picking up trash in a cul-de-sac, or circle drive, I decided to run to the front of the truck after filling up the hopper and turning on the trash compactor.

When you’re running two people on a truck it takes longer for the truck to move to the next stop because the driver has to get back in the truck, settle himself, check his mirrors, then pull forward. Usually the helper will just run to the next house.

I squatted down in front of the cab of the trash truck and watched Kevin get in through the windshield and settle himself. I watched him check his mirrors and wait for the hopper to grind through it’s cycle before he put the truck in gear.

When I felt the truck lurch I knew he'd put the trash truck in gear so I hit the front of the cab with the flat of my hand. It made a loud boom!

Kevin’s eyes popped open wide and he jumped out of the truck and chased me around for a minute while I laughed my ass off. After he realized people could see him running around like a lunatic he stopped and got back in the truck.

Kevin didn’t like to be startled. It made him feel small, so I quit doing it. There were a lot of things that I quit doing while working at Miller Disposal. Telling jokes, flirting with his wife, giving him good ideas and generally enjoying myself.

Kevin’s wife Lisa was a cutie-pie and she would ask me what I thought about how she was dressed or if I liked her hair.

One day she came in to dispatch with braided hair. She turned around and waggled her hair at me and asked me what I thought of it. I acted like the sight of her hair made me want to vomit.

“Ugh,” I said. “I hate French braids! It looks like your spine is crawling up the back of your head!”

I did. I really hated French braids. I don’t know why.

My reaction made Lisa want to French braid her hair everyday. She thought I was a hoot.

That I had grown quiet made Kevin think I’d grown compliant. Though I wasn’t as servile as Curly Jones, he thought maybe I wouldn’t openly rebel and make him look like an ass.

Kevin was the youngest of the three sons of Oscar Miller and the last one to try managing the day to day operations with his father in an office on the other side of the lobby.

Kevin’s elder brothers would stop in at the office from time to time. I knew them by their cars because I’d never actually met them. Shake hands with a driver? Perish the thought!

Kevin’s eldest brother John had pulled in to the parking lot and Kevin walked over to chat with him. They leaned on the bed of his pickup truck and stood talking about this and that.

I had pulled my truck into the shop to work on it because the mechanic was working on another truck. I was in a foul mood because I had asked Kevin to have the mechanic drop what he was doing and work on my truck. He flatly refused my request.

It delighted Kevin that I worked on my truck for free even though it made me furious.

It was summer and the shop was hot as balls with all the overhead doors open and there wasn’t enough light in there. I had a greasy part in my hands that I’d just pulled off my truck. The part I’d pulled and my arms were covered with grease. I stepped into the parking lot, into the bright sunlight, to get a better look.

I could tell John and Kevin were watching me turn the greasy part over and over in my hands. I could also tell that Kevin had a shit eating grin on his face.

Had Kevin been alone, leaning on his truck watching me work, I would still have been furious but I wouldn’t have cared. John being there made Kevin want to show off. John’s presence made him want to prove his dominance over me in front of his big bubby.

My hair was a couple of feet long. Kevin hated it but would never tell me I had to cut it. He would just make snarky comments.

Lisa told Kevin with a giggle how much I hated French braided hair, so they all gave me trouble about it from time to time. That was a few years before this day.

Kevin remembered my aversion to hair styles from countries that speak a romance language and he shouted across the parking lot, “Hey Elvin, why don’t you let me French braid your hair?!”

On my best days I’m a smart ass with the quickest turn around of anyone with a witty comeback. When I’m in a bad mood my instinct is to go immediately to DEFCON 1. No hesitation, I push the button.

Hidden doors slide back on silos buried deep in the mountain side and nuclear warheads rise out of the ground preparing to launch: preparing for global thermo-nuclear war. Klaxons sound and the emergency alert broadcast is engaged, warning citizens in the area that this is not a test.

I looked up from the part I was turning over in my hands. I looked John and then Kevin in the eyes. Then I shouted, “Why don’t you French kiss my ass?!”

I looked back to the part in my hand, then walked back into the shop knowing my world had been forever changed.