Valentine’s Day seemed like it happened yesterday. Easter, the third busiest holiday, is only a week away. The men who work in the warehouse are bustling around the dock as the clock strikes 6, picking and packing flower orders and breaking down boxes of flowers, vases and other floral products to their respective door. Each delivery run has its own door. Every Thursday door one is dedicated to LCT (Lower Connecticut), LNM (Long North Malone) at door two, SN (Short North) at door three and SW (Southwest) at door four. Seagroatt Riccardi is a wholesale distributor of flowers for florists in the Northeast United States.
Sweating
in their shirt and tie as a result of the day’s end of work, the operations
crew is behind schedule tonight. The delivery staff makes their way into the
steel door leading into the warehouse. Of course, Jim is the first one to walk
in the door. Jim has a tendency to come in about an hour early each day that he
works. There is no dress code for delivery staff, but the 60-year-old’s
day-to-day outfit gives the appearance of a uniform: light blue faded jeans
with a baby blue Lake George sweater and a large rosary necklace that dangles
loosely around his neck.
“Good
morning, everybody!” he says as he walks in front of the will call desk, making
his way to the punch-in clock. Though the sun has already gone down, the day
has just begun for Jim who has just woken up two hours ago.
His
voice is raw and hoarse as a result of smoking Marlboros. Though a fairly small
and thin man standing at about 5 feet, 4 inches, his voice is boisterous enough
for a giant.
“Sorry,
Jim, you have a huge load tonight,” Tom the warehouse supervisor said in an
apathetic kind of way.
“Figures,”
Jim said. “I always get fucked over at this place.”
At
this very moment, imagine somebody approaching Jim after having just worked an
eight-hour shift and saying, “Hey, Jim, I’ll go on your run with you for $10
and Denny’s.” It happened.
“You’re
kidding, right?” No sir. Only having enough money to buy cigarettes on the
road, Jim left to go grab more cash back at his apartment in Cohoes about 10
minutes away.
The
other truck drivers began approaching, shooting bribes of all-you-can-eat
Denny’s. But what they didn’t know was that this wasn’t actually about $10 and
Denny’s — it was about Jim’s story.
Every
last box was loaded onto the southwest truck as tall as a 6-foot man,
stretching to the end of the truck with only a couple feet to spare. Jim had
just gotten back.
“So
you’re really going with me?” He kept asking this question several times. Jim
had always tried persuading the operations crew to go on his run, especially
during busy holidays like Christmas, by paying them $80-$100 out of pocket, but
for someone to help him for virtually nothing seemed like a gift from God to
him.
The
truck was parked outside waiting in the parking lot. Jim poked his head out of
the window and yelled, “Hey! Do you smoke?!” Assuming he was talking about
cigarettes, the response was “No.”
Expecting
the passenger’s seat to be unoccupied, the presence of Deon, one of the local
drivers, was surprising. Because he shares a car with his girlfriend and both
of them were at work, Deon needed a ride to her job in Niskayuna, just down the
road from Seagroatt’s.
“We
just have to drop Deon off real quick,” Jim explained to me. “Wherever you can
find room, go ahead and pop a squat.”
The
space between the two seats of the truck provided the capacity necessary to
curl up in a ball on the floor.
Deon
was wearing a flannel with a black puffy vest layered over it, giving more
shape to his already portly body — winter’s bitterness was still lingering.
“I’ve
got a big load tonight, huh?” Jim said to Deon.
“Yo,
Jim, you still got big loads atcho age?” Deon quipped back.
“I
like to think so.”
This
ride isn’t going to be like this all night, is it?
The
topic of conversation quickly took a turn from sexual innuendos to Jim’s past.
His wife, Kristin, had passed away from liver cancer in May 2012.
“You
know, Jim, I’m really glad you’re back to normal and happy again,” Deon said in
a genuinely sincere manner. After Kristin’s burial, Jim spent the first few
nights sleeping next to the headstone in Hudson View Cemetery in Mechanicville.
The spring nights still brought temperatures in the 40s. Jim didn’t care.
“I
was miserable,” Jim said. “That’s why I had to move out of that house. I didn’t
know what the fuck to do with myself. When people tell me to go to hell, I tell
them I’ve been there.”
Arriving
outside of what appeared to be a cell phone store, Deon got out of the truck
and walked in front of the truck to cross the road. Jim pulled the string
attached to the top of the cab, boisterously sounding the horn three times.
Everybody in the store, including Deon’s girlfriend, looked outside to see what
was going on. As Jim was waving his hand with an ear-to-ear grin on his face
more times than Miss America, Deon had a look of embarrassment on his face.
“Deon
really has a heart of gold, you know that?”
Deon
would call Jim after his wife died to check up on him even during the night
when nothing seemed like it should be checked up on.
The
first two stops were Hannafords: one in Niskayuna and one in Altamont. The
process for delivering Hannaford product was the same for each stop: Back the
truck up into a space that seems virtually impossible to fit in and unload the
boxes with the sticker labeled with the appropriate Hannaford location written
on it. More importantly, just make sure the number of boxes you pull off the
truck matches the piece count on the driver’s manifest. The product is stacked
two boxes high on a U-boat cart and is then wheeled out through the receiving
area into the produce section.
Seeing
where and how pallets of food are stored for shoppers to buy is quite a weird
sight. Nobody would notice if Jim were to just take a Gatorade for the road,
but if he were to try this out in the grocery store, there would be an arrest
made in aisle two.
The
stops weren’t hard. Driving an hour in between each stop was the most
challenging part. Similar to Wes Craven’s “Nightmare on Elm Street” films, the
goal was staying awake.
“Now
I have to warn you about one thing,” Jim said as he just merged east onto Interstate
88 toward Stamford Florist. The tone of his voice was frightening. “Sometimes I
micro-nap while I’m driving. Do you know what that is?”
Micro-napping
is when the driver falls asleep at the wheel for less than a second — long
enough to feel the sensation of dreaming. According to a poll conducted by the
National Sleep Foundation, 103 million people have actually fallen asleep at
the wheel. Jim better not make it 103,000,001 tonight. Jim is mandated by
Seagroatt Riccardi to pull over every three or four hours to rest for 15
minutes. What was that going to do?
Jim
took his first nap at about 11 p.m. near Oneonta. He rested his legs on the
dashboard and sank into his seat, his body leaning on the side of the door for
support. For any ordinary person, the position was beyond uncomfortable, but
for Jim, these naps were a luxury. The grimy looking New York Fire Department
hat that appeared as if it was a lighter shade of gray back in its day was
gently placed over Jim’s face. Only God knew what Jim was dreaming about.
The
sound of the reefer, which keeps the product cold, awakened Jim. The next stop
was in Binghamton.
“This
year would have been our 40th anniversary,” Jim said. Nothing had
been said prior to this statement to make him say this. He had been dreaming of
her — it only took 15 minutes.
Last
year, Kristin went to the doctor for what seemed like a normal check-up. But
the doctors had found a tumor near her liver. Jim took her to the Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute in Boston, one of the best cancer treatment facilities in the
United States. After running several tests, the doctor came back into the
examination room with a grim look on his face.
“The
doctor said, ‘You really wanna know how much time you have left, Kris? Two
weeks.’ And she said, ‘Two weeks?! That long?!’ I fell to the ground bawling my
eyes out.”
While
Jim was hyperventilating and pacing back and forth not knowing what to do,
Kristin just laid there content in her bed with a smile on her face — she was
ready. Kristin would pass away surrounded by family exactly two weeks later at
St. Peter’s Hospice in Albany.
“I
had never seen so many people crammed into one room like that before,” Jim
said.
Following
Kristin’s death, Jim was emotionally unstable living by himself in the house he
once lived in with his wife. A letter came in the mail from Social Security
saying, “Your marriage was ended by death.” The harshness of just six little
words possesses enough power to affect anybody’s psyche. One night, Jim made
his way into the bathroom and opened up the medicine cabinet. Kristin’s cancer
medication stared Jim straight in the eyes. Looking back at the pills that
exhibited all shapes, sizes and colors of the rainbow, he contemplated
swallowing these pills in order to end his own life until he thought about the
rest of his family.
“If
it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
Right
before the next Hannaford in Binghamton there was a Denny’s on the same road.
“You
want to stop here or find another one later?”
Afraid
that there wouldn’t be another one, the answer was “yes.” We walked inside at
about 1 a.m. The night crew at Denny’s is — well, different. Our waitress who
was wearing more eye shadow than a drag queen showed us to our seat. The diner
was promoting some special called Baconalia, an entire menu filled with
bacon-based foods.
“Now
I’m going to be sick to my fucking stomach,” Jim said. “Do people actually eat
this shit?”
Though
Jim was exaggerating, his analogy wasn’t far from the truth.
“You get
whatever you want, OK? I don’t care how much it is.”
Nobody had ever
helped Jim on a run before. And as a matter of fact, he had never stopped to
eat “breakfast” on the road in all his years of driving trucks. The ceramic
coffee mug depicting the Denny’s logo on it had a quote written on the opposite
side that read, “It’s always sunny side up in a diner.” I jokingly told Jim
that I wanted to take it with me as a souvenir.
“How much do I
have to pay you to take one of these coffee cups?” Jim asked a waitress who was
not responsible for serving our table.
The waitress
looked at him with a blank stare. I could tell she had never heard anybody ask
this question before. Extra napkins or sugar packets were one thing, but for
someone to bribe a waitress for a coffee cup? Jim took his New York Fire
Department hat and hid the mug in it. When he paid the bill he passed me the
hat underneath the table and told me to wait for him in the truck. We were
outlaws on the run in the middle of the night.
Jim’s work cell
phone rang and he looked over at me as if to say, “Well, aren’t you fucking
going to pick it up?” I picked up the archaic flip-phone and answered it.
“Uh, hi is Jim
there?” the woman’s voice asked.
Handing the
phone over to Jim, his smile immediately radiated the darkness of the cab. It
was Laurie, a woman from the Lake George village who Jim had been dating for a
couple of months now.
“That was
Chris,” Jim explains. “He’s helping me on my run tonight. I didn’t think people
like him existed anymore.”
Jim met Laurie
through a mutual friend. Laurie had called him, asking if he wanted to go out
to get a cup of coffee sometime. Not feeling comfortable dating another woman
just months after the death of his wife, Jim politely declined. That is, until
he had a change of heart and asked to take her out the second time around.
“Guess where we
stopped to eat?” Jim, still talking on the phone, asked Laurie. “Denny’s.”
Their first date
had been at the Racino, a casino and raceway in Saratoga. After a night of
gambling, Jim and Laurie had decided that they were hungry and wanted to eat
somewhere. Though it doesn’t seem like a romantic place for a first date, they
ate at a nearby Denny’s.
Whenever Jim is
out on the road, Laurie makes him leave her a voice message on her cell phone
at 5 a.m. so that she can wake up to his voice every morning even though he’s
not there.
“I’m starting to
run out of things to say,” Jim said as he was thinking of new ways to hone his
poetry skills.
“I’m the
luckiest motherfucker out there, you know that? I lucked out twice in my life.”
Jim had just
finished leaving Laurie her voice message and the truck was en route back to
the warehouse. It must’ve been a little past five when I felt my eyes starting
to blur and get heavy.
The weight of my
body whipped me forward. I woke up to see Jim frantically cranking the wheel to
the right. Jim drove over the wakeup strips for about five seconds until the
truck came to a complete stop with the help of the air brake.
“I fell asleep,”
Jim confessed.
Seagroatt
Riccardi made me stay on the clock for liability purposes. Handing all of my trust
over to Jim, I thought the idea was trivial — until now. For the first time, I
had realized how difficult staying awake can really be even if pots of coffee
flow through your bloodstream like Jim’s. We slept double the amount allowed by
the mandated resting periods.
The truck pulled
into the parking lot after twelve hours on the road. Friday morning’s operations
crew already clocked in and had received a shipment that just came in from
Miami.
Spending the
night on the road next to Jim was a life lesson. I saw the sun rise for the
first time in years. I had learned the importance of coffee and how good it
tastes after being deprived of such a delicacy. But most importantly, I had
gotten to know Jim.
“I want to thank
you for going on this run with me,” Jim said to me. I could tell this was his
heart speaking and not the truck driver in him.
“Hopefully we
can do this again sometime when you’re home for the summer.”
He could see how
tired I was based on my bloodshot eyes and the one-word responses being given
to him.
“I’ll tell you
what,” Jim started. “What I want you to do is just get out of this place, get
in your car and go home."
And I did just that.
But there was something different about the road I was driving home on. It was
missing something. The road back home lacked the heart and soul compared to the
road I traveled on with Jim.
