Short Story: A Day's Bit Of Work

Short Story: A Day's Bit Of Work

The three old men were sitting at the bar of McFadden’s Saloon with their backs to the door and their faces to the television. The television picture was grainy, and the sound was broken off every so often by a crackle of static that sounded like a phonograph record skipping across its grooves. Swaths of cigarette smoke hung over the bar, blue and unmoving, like a sky in a child’s painting. Brilliant bands of sunlight slipping through the semi-circle of glass above the front door revealed dancing specks of dust along this ceiling of smoke. It was morning, Saturday, and despite the heat and humidity, the three old men had arrived early for the breakfast of free donuts and coffee that McFadden offered his regulars each morning before the start of their day-long drinking. The three old men were telling stories of the houses they had emptied of furniture following the death and wake of friends.

“McGarrity,” Timothy Hanlon began, before interrupting himself when his lower bridge of ill-fitting, tobacco-stained teeth suddenly lifted, and sunk into his jelly-donut. After readjusting his bridge with his tongue, he continued to tell the other two men that, “McGarrity had no furniture to speak of. Unless you call that China-closet a piece of furniture.”

“What did you say?”

“Door half-hanging off its hinges, as it were.”

“Still,” Jimmy Tumulty offered, “the consol television was a beautiful piece of wood, was it not?”

“Reminded me of that old Philco I carried out of Mrs. Malone’s apartment, that consol did,” said the third old man, Terry Moffet.

McFadden replaced their coffee mugs with whiskey glasses; the steaming thermos of coffee was exchanged for a bottle of Four Roses whiskey. He reached up and switched off the TV. In just moments the television static gave way to the growl and throaty rumble of a broken muffler or exhaust pipe. The gunning of the engine before shutting down seemed to explode through the front door of McFadden’s Saloon.

“B-Jesus, what a racket,” Jimmy Tumulty remarked.

Timothy Hanlon swallowed a double shot of Four Roses before ambling to the front door. The open-bed pickup truck was parked half-way on the sidewalk, half-way in the street. A piece of tailpipe had been discarded at McFadden’s side entrance. Timothy Hanlon greeted the driver with a wave of his free hand, while taking a swallow of beer from his mug before returning to the bar.

“Sounds like that Puerto Rican guy with that jalopy of his,” one of the two said without looking up from his drink.

“One and the same,” Timothy Hanlon answered. He poured another double from the bottle of Four Roses. McFadden refilled his mug from one of the four beer-taps behind the bar.

“Got anything good on that truck?” the third old man asked. Terry Moffet repeated his question as he walked to the front door to have a look.

“Got himself a couple of kitchen sets,” whispered Timothy Hanlon. “Tables and chairs. And they ain’t exactly pieces of junk either.”

Terry Moffet returned to his stool at the bar. The three old men free-poured whiskey into mugs half-filled with beer. They drank in silence for at least ten minutes before Terry Moffet offered matter-of-factly, “Could pay my room rent, my groceries, and my bar-tab with what those tables and chairs would bring from any of those used-furniture stores on the avenue.”

Terry Moffet, the eldest of the three, had silver hair, and arms that were covered with purple bruises. “Indeed,” he added, as he scratched vigorously at one of the larger bruises close to his wrist.

Jimmy Tumulty walked to the door, peered out, and then returned to his barstool. “Why, the chrome legs of the one set glistened to the point of blinding me,” he agreed.

The three old men continued their drinking well into the afternoon. Occasionally, one by one, they would walk over to the door and look at the kitchen tables and chairs that had been left on the open truck-bed. Each would return to the bar to comment anew about the kitchen sets. Finally, they joined one another at the door, and peered through the semi-circle window. The driver had reappeared and was now untying the tables and chairs and repositioning them.

Back at the bar they reconfirmed their earlier appraisal.

“Hardly look used very much. From a small family, no doubt,” Jimmy Tumulty reasoned.

“Definitely not junk, wouldn’t you say?” Terry Moffet said.

“And the chrome legs on the one table appear recently polished, wouldn’t you say? A beautiful sparkle in this blazing sunshine, don’t you think?”

By now the three old men were drunk. Timothy Hanlon tongued his dentures now and then. Jimmy Tumulty coughed violently between cigarettes. And Terry Moffet rubbed and scratched at the purple splotches on either forearm.

The three old men pretended not to notice the Puerto Rican truck driver when he walked into McFadden’s wiping his brow, face, and thick neck. He sat at a stool at the far end of the bar and ordered a shot of Corby’s, and a glass of beer as a chaser.

As the afternoon wore on, Terry Moffet’s breathing became more labored. Timothy Hanlon’s eyes became rheumy. And Jimmy Tumulty wet his pants twice.

Terry Moffet fingered his beer mug incessantly, as was his custom when he had something on his mind. After a while he repeated, “I’d be set for a month with the money the kitchen sets would bring from any of them used-furniture stores on the avenue. Why, that Knick and Dent store over on Knowlton by the El would pay plenty to take them off my hands, I should say.” His two drinking partners nodded in agreement.

The three old men lighted their cigarettes from a single match. One by one they handed the bottle to one another and poured whiskey into their beer glasses.

Finally, Terry Moffet lifted himself from his stool. He stood before his stool in perfect posture, though he did grip the scarred, beveled face of the bar for support. The smoke from his dangling cigarette curled up into his eyes. A dribble of urine escaped into his underwear.

At seventy-six years old, Terry Moffet was rather strong, as attested to by his burly neck and still broad shoulders. But his life-long need to drink had caused his once handsome face to desert him. His eyes had become cloudy over the years. And it was his swollen drinker’s-nose, the discolored tip as round as a knob, that had become his dominant feature, not his muscular forearms with their purple bruises; and not his deliberate and straight-as-a-board posture.

“Give him Corby’s and a beer,” Terry Moffet shouted down the bar to where McFadden sat reading his newspaper. When McFadden looked up, Terry Moffet gestured with his beer mug in the direction of the Puerto Rican truck driver.

“And put it on my tab, why don’t you,” said Jimmy Tumulty.

“God bless a hard-working man who deserves a bit of rest on a day as hot as this,” added Timothy Hanlon. “To say nothing of the humidity,” he attached as an additional pleasantry.

The three old men had spent more then half their lives drinking together at McFadden’s. They had been drinking friends for so long that they had formed something akin to what exists in a long-term marriage. In short, one seemed to know at an instant what the other was thinking. In this case, of course, the symbiosis was three-fold, not two.

There had been no need to pass furtive looks to one another, or to whisper the details of any conceived plan. The three of them had already become astutely aware of what needed to take place. They had been looking at the blank television screen when the final piece of the unspoken plan fell into place.

Terry Moffet and Jimmy Tumulty knew that Timothy Hanlon would be the one to engage the Puerto Rican truck driver in a barroom conversation, while they nonchalantly walked out of McFadden’s Saloon using the back door, The Ladies’ entrance. And in the time that it would take Timothy Hanlon to tell one of his stories—they were all lies—to the Puerto Rican truck driver, Terry Moffet and Jimmy Tumulty would pilfer the two kitchen sets, tables and chairs, and carry them nonchalantly down the sidewalk to the small, dead-end street known as Moon Alley.

When the ex-boyfriend of Soapbox Cathy Malloy staggered noisily into McFadden’s Saloon, Jimmy Tumulty and Terry Moffet calmly drifted out to the street.

“Could the Phillies have a winner this year?” asked Timothy Hanlon to the young man, guiding him to the stool next to the Puerto Rican truck driver.

Outside the sun shone brightly. The two men wiped their foreheads with their handkerchiefs. Together they lifted the glistening kitchen chairs from the truck, and placed them on the sidewalk. Each man took two of the chairs and carried them across the avenue to Knowlton Street, and then on to Moon Alley. Terry Moffet led the way to his daughter’s tiny back yard. He kicked open the wooden door that led to the square, weeded lot that backed up against the small dilapidated row house. Jimmy Tumulty followed with the other two chairs.

“B-Jesus, look how those legs shine,” Jimmy Tumulty said proudly, as he struggled to catch his breath.

The men returned to the truck and removed a kitchen table. They took either end of the table and walked it back to Moon Alley, back to Terry Moffet’s daughter’s backyard.

“Light as a feather,” Terry Moffet remarked on the short walk back to the truck to secure the other kitchen table. He shot great bursts of breath through his nose. “It’s the humidity,” he remarked to his friend.

“And the August heat as well. They say that if you can live in Philadelphia in August with its terrible heat and humidity, why then, you can live anywhere in the world,” Jimmy Tumulty said before heaving and coughing and pulling a deep breath.

Their task now completed, the two old men returned to McFadden’s Saloon to find Timothy Hanlon sitting at his stool, and staring at the blank television screen. The Puerto Rican truck driver was happily engaged in a drunken conversation with Soapbox Cathy Malloy’s ex-boyfriend. They were speaking in Spanish.

Terry Moffet and Jimmy Tumulty silently poured whiskey from a new bottle of Four Roses. They watched the whiskey plunge down the center of their mugs, causing the beer to erupt over the glass and slide down the sides into a puddle of foam.

The jabber of sounds from the Puerto Rican truck driver drifted down the bar to the three old men. Soapbox Cathy Malloy’s ex-boyfriend began to jabber along with the Puerto Rican truck driver. They were singing a song in Spanish. Both seemed to know all of the words.

“Do you think McFadden will get the TV picture back anytime soon?” Terry Moffet questioned, lifting his chin toward the television set.

“Well, surely for that Notre Dame game coming up two weeks from Saturday,” speculated Timothy Hanlon.

The Spanish singing at the other end of the bar had stopped. The Spanish chit-chat had slowed enough to allow the Puerto Rican truck driver to sit hunched over, chin to chest, eyelids dropping to a close. “Si, mi amigo, es muy, muy …HOT!”

Soapbox Cathy Malloy’s ex-boyfriend reached over to the Puerto Rican truck driver’s money, and slid the bills next to his glass of whiskey. He motioned McFadden to refill his shot-glass and mug of beer.

The Puerto Rican truck driver’s labored breathing was occasionally interrupted by his pig-like snore.

“A hard-working lad, that one,” commented Jimmy Tumulty between coughing fits.

After he was convinced that Jimmy Tumulty’s coughing fit had ended, Terry Moffet swiveled his stool slightly, and said to Timothy Hanlon, “Which one did you tell him?”

“I told him the one about Father Murray and the spring musical of some years back. Told him that it was held in the church hall, and that I was there to witness it,” he answered.

The three old men smiled. Each reclaimed personal memories of their favorite priest.

After a short while, Terry Moffet spoke. “And which one is that, I wonder? Refresh my memory.”

Timothy Hanlon drank the contents of his beer mug, cleared his throat, and said, “Made the entire story up right on the spot. Pieces of a lie here, pieces of other lies there. And that’s how I do it,” he said, in a singsong. “No doubt I’ve heard pieces of the same story somewhere over time, I suspect.”

Jimmy Tumulty and Terry Moffet swiveled their stools in his direction.

“Well, according to the piece of paper that tells you the talent program for the event, it states that Mary Alice Begeen is to perform a splendid tap-dance and baton-twirling routine to music of her choice. Mary Alice walks out to the stage to take her place as scheduled. Somebody starts to fiddle around with the record player that’s set up on table off to the side.

“No sooner does Mary Alice take up her baton, there comes the rowdy voices from a group of those teenagers who hang out at ‘Eats,’ and who happen to be there in the rear of the hall, bellowing out for all to hear, boos and hisses and catcalls like the monkeys that they are.’ And an unkind reference to Mary Alice’s big ears is not the last of it.

“A shocked silence fills the hall. Mary Alice runs off the stage and behind the curtains. And Father Murray, bless his soul, walks out to the center of the stage; why, he doesn’t so much as bat an eye. He simply stares at the boys in the rear of the hall; one of them is now up out of his chair and gesturing wildly with both his arms like the ignoramus that he is.

“And then after the boy has at last calmed down, and still not as much as a breath is heard throughout the hall, Father then asks if any of the teenagers would like to come to the stage and engage him in an arm wrestling match. The boys sit down, ‘drop to their chairs like stones’ is how I put it. Just to spruce up the story, that is.

“Since there are no takers, as you might expect, Father motions to the side of the stage with a wiggle of his finger, and still a bit ruffled, out steps Mary Alice. Father says not a single word to her, but takes a few steps behind Mary Alice who is now standing tall with her baton at the center of the stage. Well then, Father folds his arms across his chest and signals Mary Alice to begin her tap dance and baton twirl soon as the record player starts up. And she does her tap-dancing and baton-twirling in fine fashion, I might add.”

The three old men had clicked their glasses, and had laughed so loud that they did not hear the Puerto Rican truck driver’s head hit the top of the bar after his chin had slipped from his hands.

A prolonged silence then fell over the three old men. They had returned to their private thoughts, though their collective gaze had become fixed on the blank television screen.

Terry Moffet was prepared to comment on Mary Alice, so he turned to his two friends, but opened and closed his mouth without a word. He saw that Jimmy Tumulty and Timothy Hanlon had both slipped into a drunken nod. Eyes closed. Mouths hung half-opened. He turned back to his whiskey glass, back to his mug of beer, and thoughtfully closed his eyes. He allowed himself to feel the pleasure of his aching muscles, and the pleasant stiffness that returned to his lower back. “Heat or humidity notwithstanding,” he told himself, “there is still pleasure to be found in a day’s bit of work.”

For the present he no longer felt the needles of pain that stabbed the purple bruises that pocked his arms. He no longer felt the need to rub and scratch and tear at his skin.

Terry Moffet put the whiskey bottle to his lips and swallowed easily. Then he positioned his arms on the bar and waited patiently until he too was claimed by a drunken nod. Eyes closed. Mouth hung half-opened.