The plaque

If you started at the cabinet shop as a 100’s smoker, you ended as a king size smoker.  There were 2 breaks during an 8 hour shift (not including lunch).  The first one was 2 hours into the shift.  The second, 2 hours after lunch.  If you smoked 100’s, you couldn’t easily get 2 cigarettes down before break was over.  So everybody smoked king size.  The bad logic of it all never really occurred to anyone.  We all just wanted to get 2 smokes in on one break. 

If you didn’t smoke, you just sat there staring off into space, inhaling and exhaling with no smoke in the process at all.  Bo-ring!

There was no whistle or bell that I recall that signified the beginning of break.  The notification would sort of sweep from the manager’s office outward with the sense of the room getting quieter as machines were shut off.  If you looked up from your machine, you’d see people pantomiming the action of breaking a stick in the air.  This meant “Break”.

I always smoked the soft packs because even though I gave up on the 100’s, I still wanted to get a little more for my money and the soft pack cigarettes were roughly 1/32 of an inch longer than the boxed smokes.  Bargain.

The shop dumpster.  This was the coolest thing about the shop.  It was the sort of thing you always see parked in people’s driveways for spring cleaning.  It was filled with scrap wood.  For the most part, management didn’t care if you scavenged around in there for something you might want.  They encouraged creativity, and let us use shop resources from time to time for small personal projects.

Of course there were a few who abused the dumpster privileges.  They would throw away perfectly decent big chunks of wood or several feet of crown molding, just to pull it out and take it home.  

“What are you doing in there,” Boomer asked as I dug through the shop dumpster one break time.

“You’ll see,”  I said, all mysterious like.

“Smoke?”  Boomer said.

“Yeah – just a minute,”  When I found what I was looking for, a nice squarish piece of oak paneling, I penciled “CUBE” on the back, set it over by the table router/shaper and went out for my ultra smooth Winston King size …

“Ah, nothing like a lung full of smoke on top of a lung full of sawdust,” Boomer observed as all the smokers sat on the curb of the west side of the building.

A few workers absentmindedly pinched and squeezed at the day’s new splinters in their palms.  I brushed some of the sawdust off my jeans and said, “So I think I’m going to make a little plaque for Chico’s bar.  Just kind of a ‘no hard feelings/sorry we talked all loud and stuff in your bar’ sort of a gesture.”

“Place is a freak show,” Boomer laughed, “They all just sit there like zombies.”

“No – not right!”  Suddenly Renaud was jumping into the conversation.  His thick Creole accent making him difficult to understand.

“You been to Chico’s,” Boomer asked, very surprised.  Chico’s had been a neighborhood bar called Donny’s for years.  Boomer could never remember seeing anyone from outside the neighborhood, let alone, from Haiti, in there.

“No, not Chico’s.  Renaud not wallow in self-pity.  Renaud know Zombie though.  Big Zombie population in Haiti,” but when he said “Haiti”, it sounded like “Hi-80”

“Well I don’t think Boomer here meant the clientele of Chico’s eats your brains.  Or did you Boom…”

“No!  Zombies not Joke,” Renaud insisted, attracting attention as a small curious crowd began to form, causing the sky to appear to darken in an ominous sort of way.  Now Renaud’s face was mostly covered in shadow as he began to tell us why he left Haiti.

Luckily for all of the cabinet shop workers, Renaud’s narrative was in first person but strangely, much easier to understand than his regular choppy English.  As Renaud recounted the horrific events of his childhood in Haiti, his audience visualized with 100% accuracy, the events he described.  It was as if they were watching a scene from a movie …

~

My Mother Was a Teenage Zombie, By Renaud Delacroix

When I was a small boy of about 8 or 9 years old, my best friend in the world was Jaybee.  He was a schoolmate of mine, but in the times when there was no school, I would run the long road to his farm from my parents’ farm.  It was about 4 miles, but I thought of it more as 50 miles.  I knew that someday I would be a great marathoner because I could run 50 miles in 45 minutes.    

I had a strict curfew of 5:00 P.M.  Papa m always got home from his work at 5:30 and if I was not home by then, I had better not come home at all.  Manman m was a little easier.  So as long as I returned by 5:25 or so, there was not a problem.

Sometimes Jaybee and I had to do Olympics at the field by his home.  This was where we ran events with others and gave out medals to winners and signed autographs for our fans.  This was our most favorite pretend game and we usually lost track of the time.  One day, while I was receiving the gold medal for the fastest human ever to beat a tiger in a footrace, I noticed that the sun was dropping below the tree line to the west.  I began to panic because I knew this meant it was already 5:00 PM.   If I ran my fastest, I would only get home in time to receive a violent beating from papa m.

Jaybee saw my fear and had an idea, “You could take the forest shortcut,” he said.

“Jean-Baptiste!  Are you crazy?  Manman m says that’s where the zombies live.  I must never go there,” But I was already considering taking the risk.  I knew I could get home in about 15 minutes if I cut through the forest. 

“Zombies are not real, Renny.  I can’t believe you think so.  I run through the forest all the time.  I never seen any zombies.”

That settled it.  I would go through the forest and get home before papa m.

I have never run faster.  Even though Jaybee convinced me that there were no zombies, I still was not sure.  Each hill I climbed through the thick vegetation I thought would be the last one before I could see the clearing.  I had run for 12 minutes and still no sight of the familiar area that my home is in.  Finally as I crested one last knoll, I saw the clearing and village that I knew so well.  I had about 200 meters to go before I was safely out of the forest when I was being thrown into the air, a rope around my ankle as I set off some trap left obviously by hunters.

I screamed for help and thrashed about, but it was useless.  There was no help coming and even if they did, I would be late for dinner and I would have to explain why I risked going through the forest. 

I hung there for I don’t know how long.  The pain in my ankle deepening.  Throbbing to numbness.  I tried to climb up myself and get a hold of the rope for relief, but it was no use.  As darkness fell, I became cold and scared.  Would I survive the night hanging from a branch, with my home in sight but no one to rescue me.  I began to cry.

Then I became silent.  For a greater fear than not being rescued settled on my mind as I heard approaching footsteps.  What if there are Zombies out here?  Twisting toward the direction of the approaching zombie, I saw the occasional glint from a flashlight illuminating the trees all around.  I was then immensely relieved.  I don’t know how I knew, but I did not think zombies carried flashlights.

“Need a little help nephew?” It was my uncle.  We never really talked to him because he lived in the forest.  He was the apprentice to the witch doctor who lived in the woods.   He was strange, but I was happy to see him.  He took a machete from his belt and swung it at the tree, severing the rope holding me aloft.  I curled up to avoid breaking my neck as I fell to the forest floor. 

“Thank you uncle, but I am very late.  I must go now,” I attempted.

“Oh no, I cannot leave you alone in the dark, little one.  You must come to my place and spend the night.  We will tell your parents when we get there”

The last thing I wanted was to go to uncle’s house.  It was scarier than the forest.  Manman m always said, “Stay away from uncle you.  He practice dark magicks.”

“I will be fine.  I will just go now,” I began to run, but uncle grabbed the back of my shirt and I could not get free.  Then, I twisted out of the shirt and took off.  But the damage to my ankle slowed me and uncle caught me again.  This time he rubbed some magical powder on my elbow and I began to get tired.  I saw dreams with my eyes open.  I thought oh no, uncle is making me a zombie.

“What the hell are you guys doing?”  Break’s been over for 10 minutes,”  Oops.  Looks like we all got caught up in Renaud’s tale, “Get back to work you lazy so and so’s!”

So we got up and made some cabinets until lunch time.

To be continued …