Willie, Time to go.

From my ogoing on-line novel "Willie".

For me it’s just another long, hot, summer day, working with my big buddy Willie. We’re fabricating iron on a pneumatic steel bender, in the brutal Arizona sun, in the gritty industrial district of old south Phoenix and will do so for the rest of the day… or so we think.

Willie Benson is 34 years old. An Anglo, that stands six foot-two inches tall, 240 pounds, without a drop of fat. He’s a big, friendly looking man, with penetrating steel grey eyes and a Paul Newmanesq grin that never leaves his face. Willie’s the kind of man that other men find likeable and a little scary, both at the same time. With a sandy blond, full head of curly hair, a classic bad boy, women find him irresistible. He’s also a self described “Rounder” or career criminal.

I’m fifteen years old and big for my age. He works with me in the steel yard my family owns. This is my third summer working with Willie, who needs a straight job to meet his parole requirements. Every Friday, he has to stop by and show his caseworker at the Department of Corrections his pay stub, and it better say 40 hours. The funny thing is, he never cashes the checks. He considers it a matter of honor that he earn his living through his chosen vocation… crime. He is quite proud of his vocation and discusses with me often. This morning he’s telling me how to steal TVs.

“I tell you kid, televisions are a great way to pick up a little quick cash. I mean who doesn’t want a better TV. On a good day I can unload eight or ten of em.”

I’m a little confused. “Just how do you get a hold of eight or ten TVs?”

At heart Willie is a big kid. He smiles with a twinkle in his eye, like a he’s stealing candy.

“Shit…grabbing TVs is easy. You wander into the Monkey Wards or any big store. All you need is a receipt. If you can’t find one in the trash or on the ground, just buy something that cost a few bucks. Walk on back to the TVs and fold the receipt so the store name is in plain sight. Tuck the receipt in your mouth, pick up a set and head for the door. You can’t talk and nobody is going to ask a guy with a receipt in his mouth if he paid for the TV. Shit… the manager will usually get the door for you. And if he gets wise and starts asking questions, you can always throw the TV on him. The problem with them getting the door is they may want to help you to your car. You really want to avoid that. It gets a little sticky when you’re trying to explain the six or seven TVs in the back of your station wagon.”

To me Willie is a great big guy with a lot of funny stories, who also happens to be a criminal. He’s not a threat. Like a big uncle, I always feel safe around him. But today, I will see first hand, just how afraid others are of my big friend.

Years later when talking with my father about Willie, he tells me he has seen his Criminal record, which states: When apprehending use extreme caution, he is to be considered, usually armed but always dangerous.

The bender we are working at is situated between two driveways that sit about twenty five feet off of the oily dirt road that runs in front of the steel yard. Trucks come and go all day, in and out loaded with steel reinforcing bars. The neighborhood is a combination of dirty, run down motels, shacks, old two room adobe houses and Industrial plants. It’s also the home of the poorest of the poor, numerous gangs, street people, junkies and drunks. So, it doesn’t seem odd when the two drunks start arguing just outside the gate on the other side of the bender.

They look like street people, unkempt, dirty long hair, several days of stubbly beard. Both in dirty work pants, one wears a sleeveless Levi jacket and the other an old, faded, sweat stained, tee shirt that say’s, “American Graffiti.”

The guy wearing the sleeveless jacket starts in, in a very loud, drunken voice.

“Jimmie, You didn’t even like that chick. I don’t need you shit!”

They’re so loud that most of the men working in the yard sort of stop what their doing to see the show.

The shaggy man in the “American Graffiti” tee shirt looks over and starts talking to Willie and me with an intoxicated slur, while his friend stumbles on seemingly unaware.

Approaching us from the front, he blirts out, “Like her… Can you believe him? She was my cousin! I’ve known her all my life!”

We’re starting to laugh at the developing scene when the other man notices that his friend has wandered through the first gate into the yard. He is now standing at the second gate, just behind us, so he wanders on over.

Extending a friendly hand, he appears to be the classic happy drunk.

He mumbles to Willie, “Hey man, that’s Jimmie, I’m Sam, how you doin?”

Willie smiles and turns to shake his hand. We are both snickering.

As Willie turns I noticed the man standing across from us reaching behind his back, as if to tuck his shirt in.

Suddenly, time slows to a crawl and all sound seems to disappear. I see the next few seconds like an instant replay in some sort of twisted, slow motion movie. I watch the look on the man’s face change from a lazy smile, to deadly serious. In a seemingly choreographed move, he pulls out a big stainless steel revolver. Grasping it with both hands. He is now pointing it directly at Willie’s head.

This movement causes Willie to turn back to the man. The barrel of the pistol looks huge and hollow and is about eight inches from center of Willie’s forehead. Meanwhile, the second man produced his own gun. Grabbing Willie by the shoulder, I watch as the barrel is firmly pressed just under my friend’s right ear at a slightly upward angle, causing him to carefully tilt his head to the side. Willie’s hands instinctively, slowly, rise, signaling surrender. The man on the other side of the bender say’s in very low, but deliberate, staccato voice“ don’t-even-breathe you big, dumb, motherfucker… F-B-I.”

It seems so surreal. In the same instant that the men are grabbing Willie, several Police cars and unmarked white sedans descend on the yard with lights flashing. Agents wearing blue blazers with F.B.I. in big yellow letters printed on both the front and back appear out of nowhere, all of them pointing shotguns or pistols directly at Willie. He is cuffed and shoved to the ground in seconds.

One of them say’s, to me, in a clear voice “Son… get over hear now!”

Scared to death, my heart pounding and starting to tear up, I immediately walk towards the officer.

As I do, I heard another agent say, “Willard Benson, you are under arrest for interstate trafficking of narcotics, fraudulent schemes and receiving stolen goods. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…”

In a way that makes me feel sick to my stomach, it’s just like some crime drama on television.

Another group of police and FBI agents are taking Willie’s car apart, cutting the seats and spare tire with a razor knife. I don’t know what they are looking for but, they don’t seem to find anything.

They immediately take Willie to a waiting car. A tow truck backs up and hooks on to his old station wagon and in an instant they’re both gone. Just a few cops are left behind, talking with Chuck our foreman.

As they drive away, I catch a glimpse of the side of Willie’s face. He’s seated in the back of an unmarked white sedan. Sitting slightly forward, obviously because of the handcuffs behind his back. Although he’s still smiling, trying show he’s not been beaten, all color has left his face. He looks as if he has aged twenty years in just a few minutes, like a caged dog on his way to the pound. This is the last time I will see my friend for just over eight years.

Willie Road Trip

This is from my ongoing on-line novel Willie I was told this story when I was about 17 by Chuck the old foreman that ran our crew when I was an iroworker. Those were hard years, but I look back on them fondly.

Road trip

The hard plastic phone rings on the cluttered, oak desk. A middle-aged cop picks it up.

He clears his throat and then answers with a gruff tone, “Spokane Police Department, Can I help you.”

“Yeah, this is Detective Carl Whitlow, I’m with Rock Springs P-D. We’re located in Southern Wyoming. We got a circular from you on an armed robbery and I’ve got two youth offenders in our lock-up that match your description.”

“Okay, let me transfer you up to the Lieutenant.”

A minute later a different man comes on the line, sounding a little annoyed, he say’s, “Robbery, Did you get any names out of those little bastards.”

Whitlow replies, “I got a Joseph white and a Willard Benson. They can’t be more than 12 years old”

“That’s them… hold on to em, we’ll send a car out. It’ll be a couple of days.

Whitlow, hangs up the phone. Shaking his head he looks across his desk at the two boys, sitting quietly, handcuffed to the heavy bench, with a look of deep concern on their faces. They are both wearing dirty, white tee shirts, worn out jeans and work boots. A couple of scrawny little shits that look like they should be playing baseball or doing yard work, or… anything… anything else. It’s hard to think they’ve robbed a grocery store, and even harder to picture these two using a gun. Maybe it’s this damn depression. Times are hard. The whole country has gone bust.

Chuck, our old foreman, stops with his story for a minute and leans back to light a cigarette. We are a small group of ironworkers, sitting in a dusty, plywood job shack on a construction site, in south Phoenix. The air is thick with the smell of grease and stale cigarettes. It’s over 100 degrees in the shack. Too hot to eat, everyone is drinking as much Gatorade as they can get down in the 15-munite break. Dripping with sweat, at least we are out of the brutal Arizona sun. Chuck is dark and wrinkled from years of the heat’s damage. His hands are badly crippled, from being smashed so many times by the iron, but he can still get over two tons an hour, per man. In short he’s one tough old rodbuster.

He takes a deep drag and slowly blows out the smoke. As it billows across the room, he goes on, “That was back in 1935 or 36. In those days they would send a couple of older beat cops in a car across country to pick up lower level crooks they wanted.”

I break in and ask Chuck, “Did you know Willie back then?”

“He was older. We used to say there were 10 men for every job and there were no jobs. So everyone was always broke. But if Willie was around… well, things were different. I remember one time Willie was at my cousins house. We wanted to drive out to the lake and go swimming with our girlfriends. So we were all pooling our money. It just wasn’t enough to buy gas to get to the lake and back.

Willie said, “Everybody go get your swim suits, I’ll meet you back here in about an hour.”

An hour later Willie shows up. He’s got a case of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a ham, some bread and a bunch of other shit for a picnic. Then he takes us to the gas station to fill up my cousin’s gas tank. I think it cost a few bucks. Willie had a twenty and a five. That was a lot of money back then. We all went to the lake and had a great time.

The next day my old man’s reading the newspaper. There is a story about a local store being robbed. It seems the thieves got away with a case of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a ham, some bread and twenty-five dollars in cash.” Chuck staring at the floor like he could still see the scene shakes his head as he lets out a little snicker. Then he looks me in the eye and says, “Willie… he simply refused to go with out. He was going to be okay, or he was going to be dead.”

“So what happened with the cops in Wyoming?” I ask.

Chuck takes us back into the story; “The way they got back to Spokane was, after the cops picked Joe and Willie up, they would drive all day. You need to remember there were no freeways in those days, so it was backcountry roads all the way. At night the cops would put the boys in some little small town jail and then go to a diner and sleep in a motel. In one of the jails, Willie had a few bucks hidden in his sock, that the cops hadn’t found when they searched him. He bought a knife.

The next day Willie and Joe are sitting in the back seat, and the cops are up front. They’re trying to make good time, maybe doing 60, which is quite fast in one of those old cars.

A beautiful spring day, sailing down the road in central Idaho. A ribbon of highway, gently rolling through a carpet of knee high, bright green, potato plants as far as the eye can see. The cops are enjoying the trip. They’re relaxed, foolishly dropping their guard. To them Willie and Joe are no threat… just two scared little kids. Remember no cage between the driver and the back seat. Out of the blue, Willie leans forward. He grabs the driver by the hair and quickly reaches around his neck, pressing the homemade blade to the tough, old cops throat.

Willie says, in his most menacing 12-year old voice, Okay motherfucker, pull the car over or you’re dead.

The two old cops are torn between the seriousness of the knife and the irony of this 80-pound child acting like Al Capone. The driver lets out a little snicker. The other Cop’s belly starts shaking, and then trying to hold back, he breaks into a low whine, which causes the driver to uncontrollably roar with laughter.

Without a second’s hesitation, Willie slices the driver’s throat wide open. A shower of blood sprays all over the driver’s window, the dashboard, and the inside of the windshield. In the same instant the driver instinctively lets go of the wheel and grabs at his throat. The car lurches on to the dirt shoulder and then the front wheels suddenly catch the edge of the asphalt. In seeming slow motion, the car lifts into the air. After silently rolling over a few times, it explodes when the rear end hits the blacktop. Mangled metal and glass are flying everywhere as the smashed up squad car goes flipping down the highway. The car finally skids to a stop upside down, the roof totally crushed in. Everyone inside is drenched in the driver’s blood with multiple broken bones. Stuck in the smoking wreck, fading in and out of conceseness, it was hours before some local cops could cut them out. ”

Chuck stops and thinks for a second. He goes on ”The driver died. They charged them both with the murder. Because they were minors they were released on their 21^st birthday. ”

Chuck with an odd little smile says, “After that… those boys weren’t real popular with the cops around Spokane.

"Alice" a Chapter in my up coming Novel Willie

This is a chapter in my up coming Novel Willie. Please send any comments that you may have or share it with friends that might like reading this.

Alice

1642 words

by Daigneault

“Joe, it’s Bill, I’m in the city jail on Trent Avenue. They want $85 for bail, could you go to my place, I’ve got a few bucks stashed behind my TV inside an old chessboard. Just bring the box with you and I’ll make it worth your while.”

Joe finds the key under the mat just where Billy had said it would be. He opens the door, walks over to the big, wooden television cabinet and feels around behind it. The wooden box with the chessboard printed on the lid was there, just like he had said. Joe walks back to the door, opens it and starts to step out.

He hears the distinctive metallic click of a shotgun slide, jacking a shell into its chamber. He instinctively, slows to a snails pace, raising his hands.

“That’s right… nice and easy. Step out slowly and keep those hands up,” says a big, rugged looking, detective, that is holding the pump riot gun, dead center on Joe. There are five other men, two more in suits and the other three wearing police uniforms. All have their guns drawn. Joe has a bad reputation.

While the first detective keeps the shotgun on Joe the two other detectives carefully approach. One takes the chess set away from Joe, while the other slaps the handcuffs on and grabs Joe firmly by the back of his shirt and pushes him toward a waiting squad car. One of the detectives opens the chess set and pulls out a plastic bag of small, black capsules. He utters, “Black beauties… must be 300 here. Pal you’re in for some time.”

Immediately Joe knows two things; first if they do a record check on him he’s gone for at least five years without this bullshit charge, and second, Billy sold him out. Billy’s reward from Joe could wait he had bigger problems.

Back at the station, Joe calls Alice and fills her in. Without being told she knows what to do and as soon as she hangs up with Joe she calls the lawyer.

“Look honey, I won’t bullshit you. He’s fucked. He’s looking at a minimum of seven years,” says Joe’s lawyer.

The year is 1964. Alice, twenty–eight years old, thin and unassuming, wipes down the long white counter, straightening the stainless steel napkin holders, plastic bowls filled with packets of sugar and the pancake syrup as she works her way down to top off his coffee. She is wearing a pink dress and an apron with black trim.

The lawyer keeps wiping off the beads of sweat, that are forming on his huge, bulldog like face. Red-eyed, peering at Alice over the top of his black-rimmed glasses and looking like he crawled out of a laundry hamper, his gray suit and dark blue tie need pressing. He’s been representing Joe for the past 15 years. Although she has never meet him before, she has heard plenty, about all the times he’s gotten Joe out of serious beefs in the past. She also knows if he drove all the way from Dallas last night to make the arraignment, this must be bad.

“What about bail” she asks?

“Bail… yeah the judge offered bail. Five thousand and he can get out until the trial. You wouldn’t have five grand lying around would you?” he asks.

“We don’t have that kind of cash, we don’t have $500”, says Alice.

The cook taps the bell on the counter, “Order up, Alice,” he says, as he slides two, dinghy plates of ham, eggs and hash browns into the service window. Alice turns around and stacks the plates on one arm along with two smaller plates of buttered toast. Grabbing a coffee pot with her free hand, she takes care of her customers and comes back to the lawyer.

“How long does he have?” she asks.

“I’d say three or four days… after that his paper will start to catch up with him and they’ll rescind the bail offer. How are you holding up,” he asks?

“Well… I’m married to a man that lives in a world that I’m not supposed to know about. I thought he was working again… when he left yesterday morning… something in the way he was moving when he walked out the door… I could see he had something on his mind. Like he was being overly careful… apparently not careful enough! He has friends with that kind of money but I don’t know them. I’ve never been to jail or in any real trouble. I’ll be fine… if we can just get him out we could disappear.” The words tumble off her lips as a distant thought. Suddenly she snaps back into the coffee shop and has a look of clarity as she tells the lawyer, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine… we’ll be fine.”

Two hours later, across town Alice is wearing a scarf over her hair, a tan, full length, rain slicker and a pair of large, round, black sunglasses. Parking on the side of the building, she knows there is no turning back. She leaves the car running. Stepping from the car, with her heart almost jumping out of her chest, she tries to catch her breath, finding it hard to concentrate over the deafening rush of blood in her ears that sounds like a thundering locomotive. Walking into the bank, through the heavy glass doors, time is bending…moving sideways. Crossing the room, she feels like she’s wading, uphill, through a wall of honey. She watches what looks like someone else’s hand give, the teller the note. He reads it and reaches for the drawer… for the money. Yes… he’s putting the bills in a bank bag. Then she watches him slip his other hand under the counter. Lucidity gone, she barely registers the ringing of the alarm and wave of commotion. People start ducking and running in a slow-motion panic. And then like a sudden slap on a cold face in the dead of winter, the bank comes into sharp focus. The alarm is screaming. Every eye is on her. She is staring down the length of her arm, across the span, of the shiny black barrel, of an enormous revolver, that she is now pointing directly into the anxious eyes, of the bank teller, who is holding out the bag of cash. She grabs the bag and runs to the big glass door. Reaching for the brass push plate, she sees a massive fist, flash into the corner of her eye. The room suddenly flips sideways with a sickening crunch that throws her off her feet. Flying into the immense, plate glass door, face first, another smashing sound is followed by the warm rush of blood in her eyes and mouth.

She hears, “Don’t fucking move!” along with the distinct ‘click’ of a cocking pistol that is being pressed firmly against the back of her head. The blood dripping from her mouth, tastes like wet copper. Pain is shooting through the side of her smashed face and jaw. Oddly the marble floor feels cool… almost comforting to her cheek. Someone takes the pistol from her hand and then the bag of money. She is slowly rolled over by a bulky, middle-aged man, wearing a guard’s uniform. She hadn’t noticed him while entering the bank.

“A woman… it’s a goddamn woman! Just what were you thinking?” he mutters, while shaking his head.

Her trial was a mere formality. The judge gave her three years like he was sending her to summer camp. Doing three years in a State of Georgia work camp for women is like 50 years in the modern joints around the country. Alice was familiar with hard work. She had been working since she was 14, but this was something different. Her cellmates were mostly poor, angry blacks, bull dykes, and mentally ill housewives that had been thrown away by their husbands or hookers and junkies, any of whom will cut your throat, rape you or give you a beating in the showers as soon as talk with you. And then there are the guards; prison guards are the very bottom of the barrel. And women’s prison guards in Georgia are the worst of the worst. For the most part they are a bunch of uneducated, rednecks that love the idea of having control over a large group of trashy women that are in need of favors. Favors like; a shower once a week or seeing the doctor when they have a wound or a fever, or access to their lawyer.

In a women’s joint there are only a few forms of currency, drugs, cigarettes, weapons or violence and when all else fails for these women…the thing they’ve been trading all their lives, pussy.

Alice is a hard woman, but she has to fight almost everyday just to stay alive. The feds waited three months before coming to have a chat with her. She shows to the interview with a swollen lip and fresh, dark, bruise over her left eye and cheek.

“Look honey, all we want is the names of your husbands friends around the country. You give us five names that check out and we’ll arrange for there to be an error in your trial transcripts. You’ll go home and no one will ever know, not even Joe. We know that he’s connected. If you don’t go along we’ll make sure that you do every fucking day of your time in this shit-hole, no parole, no probation,” says the squeaky clean, fed wearing a gray suit and Ray-ban sunglasses.

Alice looks the fed that is doing the talking straight in the eye and says, “You must be mistaken… I have no idea what you’re talking about. So if we’re done I’d like to go back to my cell now.”

###

Willie (ongoing blog chapters saga)

This is the first part of the chgapter "Puke and Weeds" I posted a few days ago. Let me know what you think.

Willie

By

Joe Daigneault

Creative Writing

Life is hard. My father tried to protect me from the world, but also knew that one day I would have to stand up and fight. My life up to that point was one of swimming pools, ice cream and ponies. I was thirteen years old and the hardest thing I had ever encountered was not being chosen for basketball or loosing at monopoly.

I was sitting, in the living room, on the big brown couch, with my father, watching television. Most of my friends had paper routes and always had pocket money. I wanted a summer job.

“Dad”

“Yes son”

“I was wondering if you might have some work for me?”

“Well, we could use someone picking up the wire down at the fab yard.”

My father owned a rebar fabrication yard in South Phoenix. Rebar is, sort of, the skeleton of a concrete building or structure. In the office, detailers take the architectural drawings and figure out what load and stresses will be on the various components of the building. They design a rebar frame that is engineered to meet that load. They create a set of plans and cut sheets that list the quantities and various lengths or shapes needed to build the columns, beams or floors in the high-rises, bridges, dams, power plants or whatever is being built. The fab yard then takes stock lengths of rebar, cuts and bends it into the required lengths and shapes. It is then loaded onto trucks and shipped out to the construction site.

I remember thinking ‘how hard could that be?’

I said, “Thanks dad, that would be great!”

“Okay Joey, get some sleep and I’ll wake you up. We leave at four.”

“Four!” I had never got up that early. “What time do they start?”

“At five, it gets hot early”

The next morning while we were riding to work, he gave me a little talk.

“Joey these guys are real men, they don’t screw around. They don’t want to be your friend; they just want to get the work done.” He went on, “It’s been my experience that in life there’s always a whip. It will either be in your boss’s hand or in your own head. Trust me it’s a lot easier if you hold the whip.”

We got out of the car on the oil-covered dirt road in South Phoenix’s old industrial district. I was sticky and sweating and the sun wasn’t even up yet. There’s a smell in that part of town, chemical, steel, iron, dirt, sweat, and the smell of years of men working on the same piece of sun-baked ground.

A few minutes later an old truck pulled up and a short unassuming man in his mid-forties got out. He was wearing a faded yellow cowboy shirt and had a friendly little smile on his face.

Yawning and stretching he mumbled, “Morning Joe”

“Good morning Chuck, Joey this is Mr. Reeves.

“Good morning Mr. Reeves.”

“You can call me Chuck, Joey, It’s nice to meet you”

Then my dad asked if I had any money. I said, “no”.

“Well, here’s a few bucks, A truck will come around at nine and then again at noon. The foods not too bad. Don’t eat too much in this heat, it will make you sick. I’ll pick you up at two.” He knew I was a little nervous and added, “Just do what Chuck tells you… you’ll be fine!” Then he got back in his car. Chuck and I watched as he drove down the street to the old two-story, red brick house that served as his office.

As soon as he was out of sight, Chuck turned to me. The kindly look on his face had disappeared. With more anger than I had ever encountered, staring a hole right through me, he screamed, and he did so without raising his voice.

“Listen to me you little mother fucker, your daddy might have gotten you this god damn job, but he can’t keep it for you. Where are your fuckin hand shoes?”

“What?” I squeaked out.

“Your hand shoes… your gloves, goddamn it! You little son of a bitch, you show up on my time without your fucking tools. Ya know, I don’t give a rat’s ass… when your hands look like raw fucking hamburger go whine to someone else. Are you going to stand here bullshitting all day or are you here to work?”

I tried to answer but before I could he went on,

“I want every fuckin piece of wire in that yard in that dumpster before the end of the day.

In the fab yard they received up to ten trucks loaded with forty thousand pounds of steel each, every day. The bundles are tied together with rusty wire called bundle wire. It’s as thick as a pencil, so thick I couldn’t even bend it. All this wire is cut off the bundles and tossed into piles, after the cutting and bending the rebar is retied into smaller bundles and shipped to the job site. Wire is the lifeblood of a steel yard. Needless to say it would be impossible for one person, let alone a thirteen-year-old boy, to keep ahead of the piles and piles of rusty wire generated everyday.

I had no idea what I had done to make Chuck so mad, and I didn’t want to find out. I started picking up wire as fast as I could. The bundle wire looks like big spiders about a foot across and the tips of the legs are razor sharp. They get all tangled together and I had too pull as hard as I could to get them free. On the second or third bunch, as it broke loose it sliced deep into the palm of my hand. The blood oozed, and I howled, “I’m cut, I’m cut… Chuck help, help!!! I’m cut.” Chuck came running over.

“Let me see… Well shit boy you aren’t hurt, what kind of a pussy are you? You aren’t fuckin lucky enough to die… Get your ass back to work!”

I was crying, scared to death and quite sure I would need stitches, when the biggest man I had ever seen walked over and handed me a brand new pair of White Mule leather work gloves.

He was about six two, two hundred and fifty pounds, not a drop of fat with reddish blond hair, a sunburned face and steel grey eyes. He stuck out his huge hand and as he grabbed mine he smiled and said “Hey kid, give those a try… my names Willie!”

Willie

From my up-coming novel "Willie" (ongoing blog chapters saga)

By Mad Coyote Joe ©2004

Life is hard. My father tried to protect me from the world, but also knew that one day I would have to stand up and fight. My life up to that point was one of swimming pools, ice cream and ponies. I was thirteen years old and the hardest thing I had ever encountered was not being chosen for basketball or loosing at monopoly.

I was sitting in the living room on the big brown couch with my father watching television. Most of my friends had paper routes and always had pocket money. I wanted a summer job.

“Dad”

“Yes son”

“I was wondering if you might have some work for me?”

“Well, we could use someone picking up the wire down at the fab yard.”

My father owned a rebar fabrication yard in South Phoenix. Rebar is, sort of, the skeleton of a concrete building or structure. In the office, detailers take the architectural drawings and figure out what load and stresses will be on the various components of the building. They design a rebar frame that is engineered to meet that load. They create a set of plans and cut sheets that list the quantities and various lengths or shapes needed to build the columns, beams or floors in the high-rises, bridges, dams, power plants or whatever is being built. The fab yard then takes stock lengths of rebar, cuts and bends it into the required lengths and shapes. It is then loaded onto trucks and shipped out to the construction site.

I remember thinking ‘how hard could that be?’

I said, “Thanks dad, that would be great!”

“Okay Joey, get some sleep and I’ll wake you up. We leave at four.”

“Four!” I had never got up that early. “What time do they start?”

“At five, it gets hot early”

The next morning while we were riding to work, he gave me a little talk.

“Joey these guys are real men, they don’t screw around. They don’t want to be your friend; they just want to get the work done.” He went on, “It’s been my experience that in life there’s always a whip. It will either be in your boss’s hand or in your own head. Trust me it’s a lot easier if you hold the whip.”

We got out of the car on the oil-covered dirt road in South Phoenix’s old industrial district. I was sticky and sweating and the sun wasn’t even up yet. There’s a smell in that part of town, chemical, steel, iron, dirt, sweat, and the smell of years of men working on the same piece of sun-baked ground.

A few minutes later an old truck pulled up and a short unassuming man in his mid-forties got out. He was wearing a faded yellow cowboy shirt and had a friendly little smile on his face.

Yawning and stretching he mumbled, “Morning Joe”

“Good morning Chuck, Joey this is Mr. Reeves.

“Good morning Mr. Reeves.”

“You can call me Chuck, Joey, It’s nice to meet you”

Then my dad asked if I had any money. I said, “no”.

“Well, here’s a few bucks, A truck will come around at nine and then again at noon. The foods not too bad. Don’t eat too much in this heat, it will make you sick. I’ll pick you up at two.” He knew I was a little nervous and added, “Just do what Chuck tells you… you’ll be fine!” Then he got back in his car. Chuck and I watched as he drove down the street to the old two-story, red brick house that served as his office.

As soon as he was out of sight, Chuck turned to me. The kindly look on his face had disappeared. With more anger than I had ever encountered, starring a hole right through me, he screamed, and he did so without raising his voice.

“Listen to me you little mother fucker, your daddy might have gotten you this god damn job, but he can’t keep it for you. Where are your fuckin hand shoes?”

“What?” I squeaked out.

“Your hand shoes… your gloves goddamn it. You little son of a bitch, you show up on my time without your fucking tools. Ya know, I don’t give a rat’s ass… when your hands look like raw fucking hamburger go whine to someone else. Are you going to stand here bullshitting all day or are you here to work?”

I tried to answer but before I could he went on,

“I want every fuckin piece of wire in that yard in that dumpster before the end of the day.”

In the fab yard they received up to ten trucks loaded with forty thousand pounds of steel each, every day. The bundles are tied together with rusty wire called bundle wire. It’s as thick as a pencil, so thick I couldn’t even bend it. All this wire is cut off the bundles and tossed into piles, after the cutting and bending the rebar is retied into smaller bundles and shipped to the job site. Wire is the lifeblood of a steel yard. Needless to say it would be impossible for one person, let alone a thirteen-year-old boy, to keep ahead of the piles and piles of rusty wire generated everyday.

I had no idea what I had done to make Chuck so mad, and I didn’t want to find out. I started picking up wire as fast as I could. The bundle wire looks like big spiders about a foot across and the tips of the legs are razor sharp. They get all tangled together and I had too pull as hard as I could to get them free. On the second or third bunch, as it broke loose it sliced deep into the palm of my hand. The blood oozed, and I howled, “I’m cut, I’m cut… Chuck help, help!!! I’m cut.”

Chuck came running over. “Let me see… Well shit boy you aren’t hurt, what kind of a pussy are you? You aren’t fuckin lucky enough to die… Get your ass back to work!”

I was crying, scared to death and quite sure I would need stitches, when the biggest man I had ever seen walked over and handed me a brand new pair of White Mule leather work gloves.

He was about six two, two hundred and fifty pounds, not a drop of fat with reddish blond hair, a sunburned face and steel grey eyes. He stuck out his huge hand and as he grabbed mine he smiled and said “Hey kid, give those a try… my names Willie!”