He learned economics in the shade
of a truck, a flatbed owned by the man
he worked for, who owned as well the tons
of concrete on it, owned the farm never farmed
but mowed, the Ford dealership in town,
a great white house across the way, and a daughter
there with her friends, sunbathing by the pool.
A ton of cement in hundred-pound bags
he’d already stacked on pallets in the barn.
It was Saturday, after lunch, sun seared
his neck and shoulders, flickered
from the drops on the girls by the pool,
and shone in the suffocating dust
he saw through. Though his eyes were closed
when the kick hit his heels,
he wasn’t sleeping. He was awake
and dreaming in the splashes and laughter,
resting in the dust and truck-scented shade,
leaned against a gritty rear wheel.
And so it was the joy he imagined
tied then to the owner’s sneer
and warning. Joy, and the rage he let build
through a ton-and-a-half of lifting
and lugging, the loathing for a man
who owned all the world he could see
from high on the back of a flatbed truck,
sweeping dust into the air
and watching when that man came out
to the pool, soft and flabby,
and grinned through an oafish cannonball
that made the girls laugh, applauding like seals.
It was a rage that cooked in his old
black car, that ground in its slow start,
and lunged like its badly slipping clutch.
He longed in his sweat for speed and oblivion,
the thrum of good tires, the deep-lunged roar
of power, a wheel in his hands
like a weapon, turn by premeditated turn.
‘You best work, boy, or your whole life’ll be
as shitty as today.’ When the kick had come
he flinched, involuntarily. His one knee rose,
his left arm blocked his face, and in the grit
of his right glove his fist closed on
the readiness to hit. He was ashamed
to be caught, ashamed for his flinch,
ashamed he could not, as the owner glared down
at his startled eyes, leap to his feet and murder him.
He was ashamed by his silence, by the ache
even then in his back and arms, the guilt
he could never disprove. The route home
that day derided him, maddeningly slow
through marginal farms and identical suburbs.
His mother’s howdy-doo repulsed him,
and his father’s little wink seemed the grimace
of a ninny. It was Saturday night,
he had no date, but did not sleep until morning,
when he rose anyway, hating his face in the mirror.
Monday, washing as always the endless line
of new cars, he began to understand
the limitations of revenge: murder, fire,
the daughter’s humiliation at school—
these were risks he couldn’t take. Even scratches
here and there on the cars. He cursed his luck
and scrubbed, twisted the chamois so tightly
it tore, and Sven, the old one-armed Swede
he worked with, shook his head and sighed.
‘You just wash, Hercules,’ he said. ‘I’ll dry ’em.’
So he went on, lathering and scrubbing,
quiet, Sven telling dirty jokes to cheer him,
analyzing the bouquet, the savor of women,
offering his wisdom in every field
until the boy threw down his sponge, spit,
looked the old man deeply in the eye
and asked in all his feeble goddam brilliance
what the hell was he doing here, washing cars
a half a buck a crack with a boy.
And when he saw Sven’s expression
it almost came out, all the simply story
about sweat and mistakes, cement and rage
and the long ride to nowhere through a life
he couldn’t stand. What would it have taken
for the shame to come out, the shame
now for wounding an old man, for kicking,
like any cool and flabby man who owned a world?
Instead the boy worked, behind him
Sven mopping up, silent until the last three sedans,
when he flipped the chamois on a hood and said,
‘Here, goddam ye. I’m tired. You finish ’em.’
And so he was alone at the end,
when the owner’s daughter arrived, brown
and gut-hurtingly beautiful in a shiny new car.
She waved to him and smiled, Sven was gone,
his blood sped in his veins, and he knew
she’d come no nearer to him ever in his life.