Honey, the Movers Are Here

By Bruce Hunsberger

When retired furniture mover/trucker Mitch Curtis is asked back to the struggling Browns Express for a days work, he ends up buying its old rusty truck and golden movers license. After years working for others, he sees a chance to have his own business and create a place where hed like to work: the coffeepot always on, the beer fridge filled for happy hour, and the customer not always right. Set several decades ago in a midsize city called Essick, Mitchs narrative focuses on his workers and the running of his business. The crew he attracts are not those men who make the world go round but the kind he has always been drawn to: the ones who do not go round but wobble on their cosmic axle.

Held together by alpha male Jake, an ever-changing cast of characters enlivens the pages of this novel. Its tales are both humorous and poignant and often infuriating, documenting the secret lives of the movers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984533999

Bruce Hunsberger

Bruce Hunsberger was a native of Pennsylvania and graduate of Kutztown University who worked as a laborer, entrepreneur, and writer. He authored two novels, Railroad Street and Honey, the Movers Are Here and published stories in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Redbook, and various literary journals including Nantucket Review and Seattle Review. Bruce’s wife is publishing this novel posthumously.

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COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY BRUCE HUNSBERGER.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:         2018906700

        ISBN:         HARDCOVER          978-1-9845-3396-8

        SOFTCOVER                   978-1-9845-3397-5

        EBOOK                             978-1-9845-3399-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 07/13/2018

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CONTENTS

1 My Clifford

2 Corkie and the Old Yellow Truck

3 Too Long at the Zigzag

4 My Road to Brown’s

5 Back in the Saddle

6 January Thaw

7 Crafting

8 The Dirty Demmies

9 Nesting Places

10 Where’s My Tapes?

11 The Kid

12 Johnny on the Phone

13 Ernie and Jamal

14 Numerology

15 Not One Cent

16 Spanish 101

17 Too Much Pulpo

18 Looking for Work

19 The Pothead Chronicles

20 Carny Guys

21 Silverado

22 Sign Here

23 The Happy Family Gig

24 Higher Education

25 The Gift

26 Getaway Weekend

27 Chief

28 Signs of the Times

29 Somebody, Call a Cop

30 The House across the Street

31 A New Beginning

ONE

MY CLIFFORD

Four thirty in the afternoon. Ten men needed for the following day: two furniture-moving crews of three men each and a Western Telephone scrap tear-out for four men. The furniture movings got top priority in scheduling experienced manpower; the scrap job was bull labor, no experience necessary. I had run out of phone numbers for part-time help and was still two men short.

I chewed my pencil as I stood at my big front window, staring blankly at passing traffic. What to do? What to do? I asked myself.

Then something I’d seen so often that it had ceased to register came into focus: those two young men always sitting on the steps of that row house across the street. I looked at them critically, like a recruiter. The big fella was standing now. Six two? Two fifty? Twenty-five years old? A young bull. The other, seated on the top step, was smaller but looked muscular.

Johnny came in from the break room, and I called him to my side. We’re still two guys short for tomorrow, I said.

So?

I nodded toward the pair across the street. What do you think of those guys?

Not much.

I continued studying them—big, strong. They probably wish someone would offer them a job.

They’re unemployable.

No one wants to give them a chance to prove themselves.

To prove they’re idiots, you mean? You can tell by looking at them.

I think it was the word idiot that sold me on them. It reminded me of the lessons in life instilled in me by my mother. She was a caseworker with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Assistance. She felt the greatest good on earth was to help those in need. While other children were learning to say Mama and Dada, I was learning compassion and empathy. When I’d see someone less fortunate than myself, she’d squeeze my hand and have me say, There but for the grace of God go I.

I almost followed her into social service but somehow wound up in the trucking game. Still, her lessons in life were never far beneath the surface—which probably accounted for my keeping people on the payroll long after a real businessman would have shitcanned them. How would I feel if I got fired? I’d ask myself. I was forever walking a mile in the other man’s brogans.

My mother had a potpourri of stories about her clients—which I enjoyed hearing again and again—illustrative, as it were, of the ins and outs of human existence and its many pitfalls and foibles. One story in particular shaped my business ethic. It had to do with an underpowered (in a mental sense) oversized young man named Clifford. When his neighbors learned that Clifford was on the dole, they became angry. What in the hell was this young bull doing lounging around the house all day at taxpayers’ expense? They were so inflamed that they held a meeting and chose one of their number to go to the welfare office and hold someone accountable for this outrage. (When she’d tell me this story—as she did many times—I’d see in my mind’s eye the neighbors gathering at night like the villagers in the old Frankenstein movies, waving their torches and pitchforks and finally charging the castle. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, Clifford loomed large in my memory.)

The neighbors chose Mr. Gensemer to represent them and sent him to the welfare office to register a complaint. He was directed to Clifford’s caseworker, my mother. He sat across the desk from her and demanded that Clifford be dropped from the dole. And what would he do for money? my mother asked.

Get a job like everyone else.

You’re a businessman, she said. You operate a coal yard. Why don’t you hire him?

"I’d never hire him, Mr. Gensemer said. He’s an idiot."

That’s what everyone tells me, she said. That’s why he doesn’t have a job. And that’s why he stays on welfare.

Every time my mother told me that story, I almost cried. Poor Clifford, no one wanted him. I felt his pain. To make myself feel better, I’d imagine myself as Mr. Gensemer in that scenario; and when it came to the part where my mother said to Mr. Gensemer, "Why don’t you hire him? I’d jump up and say, Yes, I will." And I felt happy, warm, and pleased with myself.

As I grew older, I knew there was nothing I could do to help my mother’s Clifford, but I vowed that if I ever owned a business, I’d find my own Clifford and give him a job just to make things right. So it was Johnny’s use of the word idiot that sold me on the pair across the street. Johnny was playing the role of the old Mr. Gensemer in my little psychodrama, and I was playing the role I’d always dreamed of—the new Mr. Gensemer, the man who rewrote history, the enlightened one.

I’m going over there and talk to them, I said.

You’re the boss. Johnny shrugged.

Hey, I said, they’ll only be handling scrap. What harm can it do?

They eyed me warily as I introduced myself. When I asked their names, the one seated on the steps said Dean, and I swear the big guy said Clifford. It took but a moment to see that both were … challenged. That was why they sat on the steps all day. The old Mr. Gensemers of this world wouldn’t hire them. I became excited. I was in a position to offer them that chance in life so long denied them.

I own that trucking company across the street, I said.

We know, said Clifford, and Dean nodded.

I wonder if you fellas would like to work for me tomorrow. They eyeballed me in silence. Earn a couple of bucks, I said, you know, money.

I saw they were going to be a tough sell, so I thought I’d spice up the deal with the prospect of a couple of hours of window time, the movers’ term for traveling time when all you do is sit in the truck looking out the window and collect your hourly rate. I told them they’d be riding in the truck for about 150 miles, three or four hours of paid inactivity.

I’ll have to ask my mom, Dean said. Ask his mom? The kind of people who worked for me, I didn’t think they ever had moms. If they did, they’d never asked permission for anything.

Off in the distance, I thought I heard faint strains of the Twilight Zone theme. So ask her, I said, and he stood up and went into the house.

How about you? I asked Clifford. You could use a couple of bucks, right?

I guess so, he said, cocking his massive head to one side and closing one eye to ogle me balefully with the other.

Atta way to go. I clapped him on a beefy shoulder. Eight o’clock tomorrow, right?

The wide front window slid open, and Dean’s head popped out. My mom wants to know how long I’ll be gone.

All day, I said, about eight hours.

His head retreated, and the window closed. I stood with hands in pockets, awaiting his return. I glanced at Clifford. He was still ogling me with one eye. The Zone music was getting stronger.

The window slid open, and Dean’s head emerged. She wants to know how far it is.

All told about 150 miles.

His head retreated again, and the window slid shut. I didn’t look at Clifford, but I could feel that eye boring into me.

The window opened yet again, and Dean’s head appeared. She wants to know what I’ll be doing.

I looked at that face. The nearest look-alike I could think of was Robert De Niro. I mean, this guy looked like he wouldn’t ask his mother the time of day. Tell her you’ll be loading scrap telephone equipment onto a truck and taking it to a reclamation center. Mostly, you’ll just be riding in a truck.

He disappeared again, and the window closed. Then he reappeared at the door and once again took his seat on the top step. I can’t go tomorrow, he said. My mom says I have a doctor’s appointment.

Not a very original excuse, I thought but said nothing.

Then I asked Clifford, How about you, big guy? Still on for tomorrow?

Eight o’clock, he said, both eyes open now.

That’s in the morning, I reminded him.

I was pleased when Clifford arrived the next morning fifteen minutes early, all spruced up and ready to roll. I called my contact at Bell Tel and found that a three-man crew could handle the scrap job—especially with a giant like Clifford on the scene—so I sent him out, with Kevin driving and Johnny as a helper.

At about eleven o’clock, the phone rang. It was Johnny. We’re loaded and leaving for Montgomeryville, he said.

How’s Clifford working out?

He’s useless. Doesn’t want to get his sneakers dirty. But it’s not as much stuff as expected, so Kevin and I can handle it.

Glad to hear it, I said. See you when you get back.

Hey, listen, get this, Clifford said it’s good you didn’t send Dean on this job with us because Dean’s legs are loaded with blood clots.

Clots?

That’s right. His mom takes him for treatments once a week. That’s why she wanted to know where the truck was going so she’d know where he was at in case anything happened on the job.

Happened like what?

The doctor says if he exercises, the clots could break loose and kill him.

Kill him?

On the spot. He’d be dead before he hit the ground.

Oh my god. I felt faint.

Yeah. The reason she asked all the questions yesterday was to tell the welfare people who he was with and what he was up to.

Welfare?

He’s on some kind of program that pays for all his medical bills. They keep a close eye on him in case he gets a job so they won’t be held liable for his medical expenses.

Who would be liable?

The employer, you. Hey, got to run. Kevin’s blowing the horn out front.

With a trembling hand, I hung up the phone and wiped the perspiration from my brow. That was a close call. All I wanted to do was offer a man a couple of hours’ work, and I could have been held liable for his medical bills for the rest of his life, which might not have been all that long had his blood clots broken loose and killed him on the jobsite.

At twelve thirty, Johnny called in another update. We’re at a gas station on 309, pit stop, actually, our second stop. First was just for water.

Truck overheated?

No. The water was for Clifford. We’re no sooner out of the Bell building than he’s bugging Kevin for water. Kevin is really ticked because Clifford didn’t do any work, and we had to load the truck alone, so to punish Clifford, Kevin wouldn’t stop.

That’s childish, I said.

That’s Kevin for you. Anyway, Clifford got really agitated. He was squirming around and whimpering, and then he got like frantic and shouted, ‘I gotta take my pills! I gotta take my pills!’

Pills for what? I asked.

That’s what Kevin asked him. Then Clifford shouted, ‘I’m a paranoid schizophrenic, and I need my pills!’

"Paranoid schizophrenic?"

He swears he’s okay as long as he takes his pills. So Kevin swings in at the next gas station and buys Clifford a bottle of water.

Was he all right then?

Yeah, the pills calmed him down. He got like this dreamy look on his face, and then he says, ‘I hope your boss hires me full time so I don’t have to go back to the nuthouse.’

I groaned.

Did you know he’s nuts? Johnny asked.

I didn’t think to ask.

Oh, and another thing—

Please no more.

He’s upset about his finger.

Oh no, what about his finger?

It’s nothing but a scratch, but he’s carrying on like it’s been amputated. I don’t even know how it happened. He didn’t do any work. Anyway, he says he has to report his ouchy to the welfare people.

He’s on welfare too? Why was I surprised?

He says he has to go into the welfare tomorrow and show them his finger. He said they’ll be upset about the ouchy, but they’ll be happy to know he got a job.

I laid the phone aside, took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then screamed, "I don’t believe it! I don’t fucking believe it! This can’t be happening! There go my insurance premiums through the roof! A paranoid schizophrenic on the payroll with an ouchy, and he’ll put me out of business! The welfare bureaucracy will crush me beneath its grinding wheels for putting this man in jeopardy!"

I picked up the phone again to hear Johnny say, Kevin’s mad.

What the hell’s he mad about?

Well, right after Clifford took his pills, he kind of lifted his leg and—brrrrap!—ripped off this horrendous fart. I mean, it was awful. The stink was excruciating. Then before the truck had time to air out—brrrap!—he rips off another one and then—brrraap!—again. He’s been doing it for most of the trip. Kevin hollered at him, but Clifford said he can’t help it. The pills make him feel better, but they also make him fart. Kevin’s been driving with his head out the window.

I hung up. I couldn’t take it anymore. Why oh why did I not heed that ethereal music yesterday that warned me I was entering the twilight zone? Why did I dismiss it as an auditory hallucination and not recognize it for what it was, an omen?

A couple of hours later, the phone rang again. Don’t answer it, a voice inside me said. It will only upset you.

But in my business, I cannot ignore a ringing phone. I had no walk-in trade, so the phone line was the umbilical cord that linked me to the world of commerce. Maybe, I thought, maybe on the other end of that line is a rational human being who wants to hire a mover.

It was Johnny. We’re at Montgomeryville. He came in the office with us.

No! I cried out. You didn’t take him into the building!

Kevin had to go in for the paperwork, and Clifford just followed him in.

You should have stopped him!

He’s an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. He goes where he wants.

The office at the materials reclamation center consisted of a long counter behind which stood the weighmaster, in this case a woman. She weighed the loaded truck as it entered the compound and the empty truck as it was leaving. Behind her were several secretaries at desks and, farther back, some executive offices. The truck driver must sign invoices and weight slips.

You didn’t call just to tell me he went inside.

No.

You called to tell me what he did when he got inside.

Yes. I braced myself. See, what he did, as soon as he was inside, was walk to the far end of that counter, and—brrraaap!—I mean, he let rip a house rocker. All the girls looked up, and they’re looking around at one another like, ‘What the hell was that?’ I mean, it was so loud it was hard to recognize it as a fart. Then he comes back to our end of the counter again—I guess he couldn’t stand the smell—and—brrraaap!—he lets go again. I mean, it hurt your ears. One of the secretaries ran into the boss’s office to get him, and just as the boss is coming out his door—brrrrraaaap!—Clifford lets the big one rip. Kevin grabbed him by the arm and hustled him out the door to the truck. I stayed inside to finish the paperwork.

Know this: Western Telephone was staid and proper. They did not tolerate behavior like this, even from paranoid schizophrenics. I could see my semilucrative contract with that communications giant heading south, thousands of dollars down the tubes. Western didn’t warn you or reprimand you; they just never used your company again. They could do it that way because the contract was nonexclusive.

What did the big honcho say? I choked.

Nothing. But I could see he’s pissed. So are the secretaries. You’ll get a phone call on this one.

I wept. By the time the crew returned, I had myself under control and wearing a happy face. While waiting for them, I had formulated a plan: Say nothing to Clifford about anything but the ouchy on his finger. Convince him that it’s nothing to be concerned about and that he need not report it to the welfare people. Pay him in cash, hustle him out the door, and never use him again. Destroy all paperwork related to his employment.

The plan worked well. Clifford was gleeful at the wad of cash I stuffed into his shirt pocket and, seeing that he couldn’t remember which finger had the ouchy and there was no physical evidence to provide a clue, promised not to report the finger. He said he’d had a very good day but doubted that he’d ever work for me again because the work was too dangerous. I agreed and praised his decision. We parted with a hearty handshake.

When I was sure he was gone, I addressed the crew in the break room and told them the following: "There is no record that Clifford ever worked here. If—god forbid—someone should question you regarding today’s events, you must tell them that you never heard of Clifford. Deny everything. The man is a certified lunatic, and his caseworker will think he was off his meds and hallucinated the whole episode. With any luck, we’ll dodge the bullet."

And dodge it we did. If Clifford ever reported a job-related ouchy, his caseworker probably did attribute it to pure fantasy. After all, who’d be nuts enough to hire the guy?

TWO

CORKIE AND THE OLD YELLOW TRUCK

The term trucking company would call to mind arrogant tractor trailers and tall chrome exhaust stacks belching fire, smoke, and deafening diesel blast; barreling down highways and byways; intimidating all in their path. Banish those nightmares. In its 120-year history, Brown’s Express never owned a tractor or a trailer. It was a local moving and delivery service, a pismire on a hill of fire-breathing army ants. Still, it had its niche. And the location of this niche, authorized by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), was determined to be an area in the southeastern section of Pennsylvania.

As with any business, there were periods of expansion and contraction. I bought Brown’s Express in what appeared to be its final period of contraction. Death throes, some might say. One (old yellow) truck and two employees—Jake and Corkie—worked out of a rented storefront in a blighted center city. Yet thanks to contracts with Western Telephone and the AT&T installers that dated back to those sepia days when Brown’s, with horse-drawn wagons, delivered the first telephone poles erected in town, the business was viable and not the bargain one might expect.

That old yellow truck was an upgrade on a horse-drawn wagon but not by much. In dog years, that dog of a truck would’ve been about a hundred years old and was painted, appropriately enough, lemon yellow—painted, it appeared, with a broom.

One might expect that a trucking company with but one wheezing geezer of a truck, working out of a ramshackle storefront in a moldering area of a city on the ropes, would have for its employees life’s losers who couldn’t find work elsewhere. Not so. After only a few minutes in Jake’s presence, I recognized a true alpha male and said to myself, This is the rock upon which I shall build my business. As for the other employee, Corkie … well, that was another story.

To gain an understanding of Corkie, it was important to know some things about him. Even an alpha male had no effect on a Pennsylvania Dutchman like Corkie. It was not that he marched to the beat of a different drummer because that would imply there was a drummer out there setting his cadence. With Corkie, he himself was his own drummer. Being an alpha male like Jake was tough when you were leading a detail embedded with someone like Corkie. Not an anarchist or a dissenter, a rebel with or without a cause, he simply did things his own way, not to be disruptive but because that was the way he operated.

On the job, Jake called the shots with the crew. But the crown did not rest easy on his head. He shunned the leadership role and railed against it. Yet there it was. On the job or in the break room, as the crew swelled to five and sometimes a dozen or more men, everyone took his cue from Jake—except Corkie. He did things his way, not Jake’s—and certainly not mine as I soon discovered.

Though a stubborn Dutchman, Corkie was totally competent in any assigned chore. Despite having a tad less-than-average height and weight, he possessed uncommon strength, deceptive because he lacked bulging biceps or Popeye forearms. If something needed to be moved—a semiportable office safe, for example, or a small keg of nails—he picked it up and carried it away without comment. Customers gasped in disbelief at these displays of vigor. His strength made him a valuable employee.

His driving skill increased his value. His dexterity in backing up and his depth perception were, like his strength, exceptional and important when backing up on Brown’s tiny downtown truck lot where a miscue could mean dented fenders and broken taillights. And his résumé, though slender, included a valid driver’s license, a document I learned not to take for granted among truck drivers.

Corkie’s most valuable asset, however, was his mechanical skill. Because he was a resourceful field mechanic, no on-the-road breakdown was beyond his capacity to patch up. His family, now just his uncle Willard, operated a junkyard—in current parlance a used-parts center—where he’d spent his formative years crawling over and under wrecked cars and trucks, salvaging parts with a wrench in one hand and a large ball-peen hammer in the other. (California hot rodders of years gone by dubbed such a hammer a Mexican speed wrench. In Corkie’s case, it was a Pennsylvania Dutch speed wrench.)

During the months between the times the Brown’s Express deal was settled and the state of Pennsylvania was transferring the mover’s license from Arnie to me, I thought it best to get to know my employees and felt that working some jobs with them would