The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(60)
Drew was hired from bum tryouts. After Cannon Fire Steve quit, we went without a working man for the next ten days to save a little bit of money, which meant that Big, Big Ben had to do twice his regular work—both acting as a ticket man and doing all the repair and labor jobs. Before we showed up in Wisconsin for the first meat-grinder, Tommy had posted an ad on Craigslist, and a handful of down-and-out-looking folks seeking temporary employment—under the table, no questions asked—showed up. The boss chatted with them, asked them to help for an hour or so with setup to see how they moved, checking if anyone looked tired or like they thought the labor was difficult, which it was. He’d given each of them ten or twenty bucks for that hour of work and then hired the one who looked like he had the most staying power. Drew looked promising. He had worked hard and kept quiet and barely broken a sweat.
The first day, he claims bad allergies as he grinds his knuckles into his eyes again and again like he can force the irritant out of himself. Allergies are the reason for his narrowed eyes, he says, and also the reason why whenever we pause our labor, he falls asleep.
He looks very tender asleep. Most of his neck and arms and hands are covered in tattoos, many of which look homemade, like he was a pad of paper on the lap of a child who kept doodling spiderwebs and skulls and unintelligible words. I have always loved people who fall asleep at unexpected times, or in surprising places. On a bus, midtest at a hospital. I like the idea that the brain can’t quite keep control over the body, that the body gives up its defenses. That they suddenly rejoin the world of the awake with wonder.
The second day, Drew arrives forty-five minutes late, sweating, puffy-faced, a red rash across his cheeks, swaying, his eyelids barely open.
“I’m sorry,” he says to Tommy. “It was my daughter. She couldn’t sleep last night. Sick.” He rocks gently back and forth, his hunched shoulders making little empty caves in his collarbones. Damn daughters.
“What happened to your face?” the boss doesn’t ask Drew, but I wish he had. Instead, he whispers “strike one” as Drew passes, but his tone is almost apologetic. Drew goes right to work, hauling wood behind the show that needs repainting, hustling behind Big, Big Ben even as Big, Big Ben very openly rolls his eyes at the tardiness and excuses.
“I don’t do drugs,” says Drew, slurring. “I used to have a problem, but not anymore.”
His face is so red and swollen, it looks like he has been beat up pretty badly or caught a serious case of poison oak, all in the eight or nine hours since we’d quit work last night. As the first hour passes, the puffiness doesn’t go down at all, and it is hard to tell if he can see anything out of the slits between the meat puffs of his eyelids.
*
It is opening day at the Wisconsin State Fair, and I am taking one last shift on the bally stage with the snake, waiting for the crowds to flock. The late morning sun is growing hotter, and Drew is in the ticket booth nodding off. Ticket taking is the working man’s other duty, the only requirement for which is to stay awake and be able to count out change. I can help him with one of those.
“How old’s your daughter?” I ask him.
“Three,” he says. “She’s a princess.” I nod, make eyes at a passerby. “Or four,” he says, moving his lips suddenly into a tight circle. His tongue is moving against his cheek on the inside of his mouth. He lifts his hand to his lips and spits out a tooth. “She’s four.”
“Where is she right now?” I ask, trying to eye the tooth. This is not my business, but these are the kinds of details I can’t help but barrel toward. The intricacies of other people’s lives. Their confessions.
“My mom is looking after her,” he says.
The tooth is dressed in a sheen of spit and lies nested in his half-closed fist.
“I’m making money so I can help her out. Take care of my little girl myself.”
His eyes begin to close but he jerks awake. “She’s a real cutie,” he says, sitting tall on the stool and continuing to talk like he’s been telling the same story in his sleep and just keeps on telling it. But it doesn’t take long—fifteen or twenty seconds—and his eyelids slide closed again. He works for a few flutters to pull them back up toward his brow, to continue his story, until the words slur and the fight against gravity becomes too much for his upper lids and they find the lower. A few more words come out, impossible to understand, and then a few seconds of total rest before he nods back awake, still talking. He manages to not fall off the stool.
Lost tooth as wishing stone.
*
The evening before, after setup, a few of us loaded into the van and went to a sandwich shop. Drew headed right into the bathrooms. Cassie and I ordered and sat down at a booth, where I tried to scooch far back into the bench to make evident space beside me. We ate our sandwiches, and after coming out of the bathroom Drew ordered, keeping his voice low and soft, keeping his teeth in his mouth as far as I could tell. He sat at the booth behind us.
“Do you want to join us?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“That’s okay,” he said, and the purple crescent moons beneath his eyes caught a glint of neon light from the window’s sign. He was quiet despite my continued harassment, carefully pulling a chip at a time out of the bag and eating it in small bites until, half a bag in, he said he was full. The sandwich remained untouched.