Believe me, picking up hitchhikers, as a personal policy, falls squarely in the “never” category. Generally, that’s a no-brainer. I also never operate a toaster oven in the shower nor have I ever been known to wire dime one to Msabwe Gwabindoo of Zaire and cyberspace, no matter how dire and unintelligible the situation appears to be there for him and his Honorable and Respected family of former cabinet ministers. That’s simple.

But even the no-hitchhiker rule has some obvious exceptions, when you get down to specific cases. The totally hot (non-teenage-runaway-looking) young lady in a miniskirt standing by her broken-down Lexus: fine. Hop in. Even dropping down the scale a little in that category—I would probably stop for a semicute thirty-something in a ratty sweatshirt whom I could convince myself wasn’t merely grimy, but an art student (despite being far from most of Michigan’s prominent university towns.) And I suspect I wouldn’t be alone in allowing these loopholes.

Another exception, though perhaps not as titillating, is a situation you might never consider unless you were to come upon it, as I did one gray morning. And in this case you stop because (a) it seems harmless and (b) you’re curious. This is a guy walking in the early morning drizzle wearing a tuxedo.

The image didn’t compute at first—the thumb out, the ruffled cuff—and so at first glance, they combined as one motion: the guy was checking his cufflinks. But no, he kept turning back into the wet wind to face the road, then walking on. The classic hitchhiker shuffle.

Now, the thought is possibly crossing your mind, as it did mine as I pulled onto the shoulder and leaned over to open the other door, watching in the mirror as he broke into a gallop through the mud puddles to catch up, that if he were a bad guy, bent on cross-country mayhem, investing in an off-the-rack tuxedo would be a hell of a way to appear disarming and really rack up the body count. Then again, how serial could you get, sticking out like that? The news channels would have a field day with their clever little monikers: the Tuxedo Slasher, The Tuxecutioner, The Killer Plus One. Nancy Grace would be airing live feeds from every formal occasion rental shop in the Midwest.

Calm down, I told myself. There’s no killer that shrewd. Even Ted Bundy only went as far as grinning charmingly at his victims and being slightly handsome. Then again, Gacy did own the clown outfit . . .

“Thank God you are saving me!” he said, getting in, huffing from his sprint, sending out sprays of water from his wet face. He carried only a cardboard Amazon box wrapped in a clear cleaner’s bag, which he shoved into the backseat. Though the rain had subsided, he was drenched. I could see now that his white dress shirt was soaked through to his undershirt and I wondered how long he’d been stranded along 31. This was only the first week of June, which means you need to picture the first week of May pretty much anywhere else, like downstate in Ann Arbor where I lived once, a lifetime ago. It was a little early for the tourists, the Fudgies, as we call them up here. Other than a few farm trucks, he wouldn’t have seen a lot of other opportunities for catching a ride.

And to be even more fair to me and my questionable judgment, it’s strange, even in the best weather, to see anyone walking along that stretch of single lane state road. Even with all the massive construction, mostly of luxury homes, going on in the Grand Traverse Bay area, there are still long breaks in the blight, like this, where you can go for miles and see nothing remarkable at all except the winding grids of some of the world’s best fruit orchards, and the ruins of stoved-in barns, and the occasional road-kill deer or wild turkey, and the long blue strip of Lake Michigan which is one of the most sought-after views you can imagine, and in between, way in the distance, jarring new houses and condos, looking like they’d been dropped from on high like Stanley Kubrick’s obelisk, along the final edge of the state, overproportioned, as if the blueprints had been misread, though made of wood in an attempt to appear rustic (never mind that the hues give away the lumber’s secret: it, too, comes from places far way.) But you’ll rarely ever see a human walking—unless it’s a sweaty kid, midsummer, pushing a bike with a flat tire, or a lost-looking Hispanic migrant picker, trekking back to an orchard clutching a small sack of groceries.) But never will you see a soaked but otherwise elegant-looking man in a tuxedo. Certainly not in May—we’re more likely to get snow than something like that.

Maybe in tourist season. Maybe. But if it were the tourist season, I’d probably be less inclined to show the guy some mercy. I’d figure, let the other invaders from downstate pick him up in their Saabs and SUVs.

And because even before he got in and opened his mouth and revealed the fact that he talked funny, you could already tell he was going to talk funny, his chance of catching a break from a farmer would be even slimmer. Locals in northern Michigan don’t generally welcome with open arms those who, even theoretically, just at a distance, appear to talk funny.

I turned on the heater and aimed the vents at him. “Not exactly dressed for hitchhiking, are you? Not in this weather!” My hope was to demonstrate to this possible maniac that I was capable of empathy; that he should show mercy just this once and spare me and go on to kill another day.

“Last night,” he said. “It is a wedding I am attending. But I have no other clothings, you see. So . . .” He shrugged, as if it all made perfect sense now. I was vaguely aware of something shaking or trembling about him and I flicked up the heater full blast, assuming he was chilled from the rain.

With a little more prodding, I pieced together that this wedding had been in Charlevoix, which he pronounced like we were in France, not Michigan, and now he needed to get down to Traverse City, which he pronounced like it was a verb, “traverse.” I made no attempt to correct him. I could tell it was already quite an accomplishment to make himself as clear as he was, and also I got the strong impression he wouldn’t be spending a lot of time here, anyway, so what would it matter if he botched the local pronunciations? His name, he said, was Casimir something or other. He’d been stranded, left high and not so dry by the woman whose date he’d been. There’d been a fight, apparently, and he had no way to get down there. It was a straight shot south, but even in dry weather, he couldn’t walk it, even if his plane left at twelve midnight, rather than noon. I judged it to be close to fifty miles.

I told him I could take him halfway. I was only going as far as Elk Rapids, where I was supposed to lay tile at a construction site. They’d ordered fancy handcrafted Pewabic for an outdoor deck and hot tub backsplash on some multimillion dollar mess going up on the bayside. (Three colors—an iridescent seagrass green, butternut, and cinnamon; multiple sizes, plus custom-designed ornamental trim pieces, decahedronal, featuring jungle animals. Not North Woods animals, to sort of fit in—not bears and wolves and moose.) The project was running seventy days behind schedule—partly due to the week the developer spent in jail working out some wetland misunderstanding with the feds—so they were working weekends now, trying to catch up. I would get time and a half, since we were working Sunday. If I could work. Since the main tile work was outdoors, I wasn’t sure if they still needed me today, given the weather. I hadn’t been able to reach the contractor, Gary, so there was nothing for it but make the drive and hope they’d covered up the deck or had something inside, in the kitchen or baths, that they needed me to do instead. Add to the bad economy the fact that there were plenty of other tile guys far more experienced than I, and I had plenty of reason to be nervous. The work was precarious enough without the recent revelation, made by the foreman, Emmet, that my ex-wife, the mother of the daughter I’d torn up roots downstate to live near up here, was his second cousin’s kid. Marce, my ex, and I were civil enough—she’d even sent along a batch of her famous blondies on my daughter’s last weekend that I knew couldn’t have been completely baked by my daughter alone. But relatives don’t recognize these subtleties and nuances. They just see exes and villainy, black and white. And since Emmet was the foreman, right under Gary in the chain of command, things were getting even more precarious for me, workwise.

“She is a bitch and a half, this woman I am meeting last night,” my hitchhiker proclaimed. He said this as if it were the most original and witty thing he had ever uttered, this business of fractional bitchiness. “Not just one bitch, no. One bitch and one half. You see?”

I didn’t really go for that kind of talk. In my old job—in my old life—it would’ve gotten me thrown out of the university. Just for sitting still for it, for not pushing him out of my truck. But I guess I’ve gotten used to it in the years since I was an adjunct ceramics instructor. Guys in the trades don’t tend to quibble over what’s PC.

And I was curious: how did he meet her last night if he was her date and they flew here together? How did that make sense? The more he talked, the less clear the story seemed.

“Okay, yes. Yesterday afternoon, I am meeting her, that is correct. Together to fly to here from Chicago, Illinois, just over the Lake Michigan, yes? For to be her date. Last night it is the wedding she takes me to, you see? We come straight from airport. So is all one date, with airplane ride, but for the first time we are meeting, in the person, only yesterday—last night, yesterday afternoon . . . what have you.”

For a second, I wondered if he was some kind of gigolo. A paid escort. I didn’t say that, of course. I just shook my head and made some comment about that being a pretty high-
pressured first date—going to a wedding with a complete stranger.

“Welllllll,” he said, “we are meeting all the time before that, for many, many times, on the swing dancing chat room, yes? Of the Chicagoland surrounding areas.”

“Oh, okay. So you went dancing with her before. Or met her dancing or something . . .”

“No, no, no. Online, we are talking all the time. About swing dancing. In the swing dancing of Chicagoland chat room. Not in the person.”

I suggested that maybe they should have tried a test run. Especially if they were both into dancing. Shouldn’t they have gone dancing one night before flying to a wedding together?

He made a sour face, bobbling his head as a physical embodiment of vacillation. “Not so much do I care for this type dancing. Not so much. The people are very fun, the swing dancers. They are the type peoples who really know how to have fun and whoop it up, yes? And I like this. I enjoy very much this types—people who ‘fly by the seats of their pant.’ But not the dancing. Not so much. I prefer more traditional stuff: tango, disco, river dance . . . things like this.” He pulled a wad of papers from his inside pocket, all wrinkled and streaky and rolled into a scroll—a wedding program, a napkin with scribbling, some e-mail printouts. “The name of the airport I am going to . . .” he said, checking, as if there were more than one choice up here, “. . . is the . . . Cherry Capital Airport? This is correct?”

I grunted.

“Why would it be this—Cherry Capital Airport? Why this name? Is strange, yes?”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s Traverse City. Kind of the place for cherries . . .”

“It’s good? It’s good place for growing the cherries or just . . . ?”

“Yeah. Growing them.” What did he think I meant—a good place for eating them from a can?

“Why is this? How do you know this?”

“Well,” I said. “It’s . . .” How did I know this? The fact was, even after living here four years, I knew nothing about the biggest part of the local economy—other than tourism; not even what made the soil just right. “It’s . . . you know . . . the Cherry Capital of the world. That’s all.”

He seemed to need to mull over my explanation.

Suddenly he sat upright, leaning forward in his seat and peering through the wipers in such a way, I thought he’d spotted a hazard ahead—deer or wild turkeys crossing the road or an accident caused by the rain. But the approaching car kept coming, and he turned to watch it pass, grinning, and it was just a Jeep with two blonde girls behind the wheel. He had one fist in the air like he’d scored a goal in some game I failed to understand, and he blurted, “Yes!” I thought, Maybe this is some sort of driving game where he comes from. Like license plate bingo.

“I love in this country the blonde womens, yes? I come here the most for the blonde womens. Is fantastic, yes?”

He seemed to really be pushing for an opinion here, so I told him I could really take or leave blondes, that I tended, historically, to date mostly brunettes. At first, I thought he didn’t understand the term, then I thought he was going to be sick in my car.

But he was only making a disgusted retching sound. “Uchh! Hair like mud! Hair like the fur of an old dirty animal in the woods, what you like! The bear! The bear has such hair!”

“Ooookay!” I said, wondering what sort of lunatic I’d picked up. “Settle down.” I began searching the road ahead, considering various emergency maneuvers. I thought he might become violent.

“You live in United States—born in United States—and yet you do not appreciate the blonde womens?”

“They’re all right,” I said, adding, “I like women . . .”

“Is fucking fantastic, the blonde womens!”

I decided the shaking wasn’t the chill from the wet clothes; that he was probably tapping his foot or keeping time to some internal dance number, patting the side of his leg. Or maybe he was on drugs or had ADD and couldn’t sit still.

Not thirty seconds later, another car passed, with a young blonde woman at the wheel and the guy reached over, with no warning, and honked my horn.

“Seriously,” I said, pushing his hand away from the steering wheel. “I need you to settle down.”

He raised his hands as if showing he was unarmed. “Relax, please. Is no problem at all. There is no reason to becoming emotional, my friend.”

He peered out at the flat orchards rolling toward Grand Traverse Bay. It was all slate gray today. Not the postcard blues of tourist expectation. He was shaking his head. “So much rains. Five or six kilometers I am walking.”

“Man,” I said. “She dumped you out of the car that far back, in a rainstorm?”

“You are not understanding. No! Never this morning am I even in her rentaled car! Before I am completely awake, she drives away. Leaving me at the house we are staying where I know exactly no one.”

Originally, I’d pictured him dumped on the shoulder, right on 31. “So you walked from the house? You set out in the rain with only that on?” I imagined this guy just pulling the door closed behind him and stepping out into a monsoon in his tux. It seemed a little retarded. Even in a panic, wouldn’t you try to bum an umbrella or raincoat?

“No! I am walking already five or six kilometers when boom! Whoosh! Very much rains! I did not see it coming. Completely not!”

I wondered again if he was crazy. Or maybe just very hung­over. We hadn’t even had a sunrise that morning. Between the rainbursts, it was very overcast.

Squirming in his seat, he dug around in his pockets till he produced something that crinkled. I took it to be a slightly smashed cigarette pack of some unfamiliar brand. I told him I didn’t allow smoking in the car. “Of course not!” he said, as if it were the final indignity. “There is not smoking allowed in all United States! You must drive up to Canada or down to Mexico if you are wanting please one fucking cigarette!” He wadded up the pack and shoved it back into his tux pocket. “Ach, they are ruinous anyways, from all these rains.”

He was silent for at least a full minute and the sudden calm in the car seemed shocking.

“So much waters,” he said. “Everywhere I am looking, all around, there is waters.” He’d been wiping at his steamed-up window, squinting out at the strip of gray bay, and now he turned uneasily, craning his neck toward the rear windows and my side, beyond me, as if getting his bearings or perhaps expecting to see yet another Great Lake just on the other side of the road. Or behind us, gaining on us, trying to pass. “I have been many places, many of United States, but I am never been a place like this where you are not coming here except on purposes. Unless you are having a reason.”

I started to tell him it wasn’t really that bad, defending the place.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “I am not meaning bad, I am meaning on purpose. So much waters around is making it so you are only with planning coming here. You do not wander here if you do not mean to be here. Nobody is saying ‘Dee-dee-dee . . . Oops! Hello! I was just passing through! Goodness fucking gracious, I must be in Michigan state now . . .’ It is what they call a ‘pennsylvania’—only, for who knows why, Pennsylvania state is not being like that, is not having the waters all around it . . . No place is like that, where the waters make you to having a reason to be being there.”

“Peninsula, you mean. It’s a peninsula. Two peninsulas.” I guess I’d never really thought of it like that—if I was in fact even close to correctly understanding his point.

What you have to understand is I’m not used to riding to work with even a relatively normal passenger—I don’t carpool with the rest of the crews who usually have slightly different schedules than I do, as a tile setter. Besides, they react to the news that I once taught college as if it were a communicable disease or I should be preserved in a secret government morgue in Area 51. So usually I ride in silence to work—work being a significant break in my solitude, though the hubbub of that always feels like it’s happening off to one side; that I’m merely an observer—and then I ride in relative silence home, back up to Petoskey, where I see out the last shred of my long day back in my solitude. They are lonesome nightfalls, full of quiet list-making and plans and delusions of new leaves and they are not without the element of alcohol.

In the summer, I’m busy working. I don’t jet ski or own a boat. In the winter, I don’t snowmobile or ice fish. My coming up here, I thought, the one good thing would be the cheaper real estate, that I could afford a place where I could have a studio as well. But it’s not cheaper—not unless you were born here or bought a place a couple decades back. In the end, in the interest of saving more money for the child support, I wound up with another carpet-mold apartment more cramped than the one I’d moved into back in Ann Arbor, when we first separated. So now, what extra time I have, when not working or spending time with Liza, is spent watching the TV that barely picks up anything. There aren’t many broadcast channels up here—the guys I work with all swear by giant satellite dishes. But not wishing to encourage myself in that direction, I settle for the crackle and wavering fuzz. And I watch the sunsets, seen at a sharp angle from my false balcony, a tangerine sliver wedged between the privacy hedge at the end of our parking lot and the giant fudge slice on top of the tourist shop next door. So the mold is the same, the TV is worse, but the sunsets, at least, are better up here.

In the colder months, which are of course the majority, I have several thick, comforting sweatshirts, each emblazoned, in bold varsity type, with the catch-phrase names of some of the local spots—Charlevoix, Torch Lake, Petoskey, even once humble Elk Rapids has developed its snob appeal, mostly due to the fancification of the marina there and all the new condos going up. I purchased them in tourist shops, intentionally going to places I would never frequent, where I knew no one would know me, and I bought them at post-season discount prices a full month after Labor Day, after the Fudgies had left. I tell myself I don’t care what the sweatshirts say, they’re just warm and I got a good deal, but the fact is, I only wear them in my apartment at night or on the rare occasion I drive back downstate and see a few old friends from my time at the university. I know, honestly, they think I’m living now in a style that is more to my choosing—that I’ve got a nice little arrangement going; that I live simply but still have my art and I can see my kid all the time and, mostly, that I live in a calendar art paradise where most people feel lucky to occasionally visit. I know that’s part of the deal with the sweatshirts. Has to be. But when I leave my apartment in Petoskey, I usually take them off or turn them inside out. No real local would wear the name of his town across his chest.

My passenger was turned away looking out his window, and when he finally spoke again, it was as if he were talking to the window, addressing the glass. “Your skies is completely different here. Completely. I do not recognize them, your skies. Even your food which you say is Polski—from my country, ‘Polish,’ yes? Polish?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Even that is not the same. Completely different. Toooo-tally.”

“Really?”

“Tooooo-tally. I do not recognize nothing.” He sounded so sad in that moment, like an old man at the end of his days, rather than—what?—I couldn’t tell how old he was. Probably not much older than me.

“And not only are my sockings and shoes wet as the fish, also there is the things they throw.”

I was lost. I pictured fish throwing something . . . ? No. I had nothing.

“The things they throw at the wedding.” He made an overhand tossing motion. “Choo! Choo! At the man and woman.”

“Rice?”

“Ah! Yes! Right? You are correct, yes? It should of course be rice!”

I asked him how it got in his shoe. Anyone would have.

He was bent over now, hooking his fingers in under his heel, grimacing. “Because is tradition, I take off my shoes. You humble yourself before the happy couple. You remove please the shoes.”

“Really? This is a tradition in Poland or something?”

“Well, in my village, is tradition. It is a very special place, my village. The people there, they do things in a way, believe me, they do no place!”

“They don’t wear shoes to weddings?”

“No, no. Only when the man and woman they go off to the wagon or cart or car or whatever—when they go off to—boom-boom—” He pounded his fists together. “To make the union, yes? And that is when you are taking off your shoes. Maybe, I think—originally—it is to show that you will not chase after them and watch them through the window while they make the union, because you do not have no shoes on, so they are safe, the man and woman. They can run away and you cannot chase where they go. That, I think, is what it used to be meaning. And then everybody, they throw the rice at them. At least we do. We throw the rice.”

“Yeah, that’s here, too.” I said. “Sometimes. I guess sometimes they throw other things these days.”

“Birdseeds! These people last night, they are throwing birdseeds. And now the tiny little specks of this birdseeds is wet, yes? From the rains. And each one, each little tiny birdseed, becomes big with water so now everything is huge down in my shoe. Do you understand? Very painful.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“I am not sure you can. Forgive me. But it is literally impossible to imagine how painful this is.”

I suggested he take his shoes off and dump them out; wipe them out with his hand; shake them out the window. He frowned, but wrenched them off and began doing just that. He looked annoyed. They were dress shoes and very wet.

“I do this,” he said, “and yet, every time, again, there is still more birdseeds! And I am sure when I’m walking like crazy person through the airport because it is so painful with the birdseeds, no one will know this, they will not know what is going on with my feet and they will only think only what they will think, that I am crazy person.” He sounded so frustrated. “But . . . !” He smiled, as if remembering something. “On the other end of my body . . . something fantastic will be going on!” Twisting around in his seat, he retrieved his package from the back. He was grinning now, excitedly unwinding the plastic bag where he’d been gripping it, and gathering it down around the box which seemed to be duct-taped closed.

“That’s all you have?” I asked. “That bag there?”

“I bring with me of course a luggage, yes? But the bitch and a half, she drives off this morning with the rentaled car and in it is the luggage which contains also my other clothings. My day clothings. Can you believe this? So I am stuck out in the rainstorms, with no day clothings, only my dress coat which is very nice and should not be out in a rainstorms for one minute, never mind for three quarters of an hour.”

He was peeling off the duct tape but he paused in order to more properly address this issue.

“This is strange way to treat a guest you are taking to whole other state for wedding, yes? To leave me standing there in the rainstorms, thinking, hello? Where is please my luggage? Where is my day clothings? Where is all my stuff? I have no rentaled car, I have no way to get home, I do not know where I am, I do not know the name of any of these places, I do not have even the ticket for the airplane I already missed because it is in my luggage which is who knows where now with the bitch and a half!”

Finally he returned to opening the box and I saw it contained a straw cowboy hat. Removing it as though it were crystal stemware, he eased it onto his head, sinking lower in the seat so he wouldn’t bump it against the car’s headliner. He flipped down the vanity mirror and grinned at himself.

“Nice,” I said.

He practically whooped. “She said it is stupid, but I tell her is not stupid, is fucking fantastic! Is perfect for Michigan, yes?”

Actually, it looked much more appropriate to East Texas, but I didn’t want to argue. Still, I wondered why he hadn’t put it on when he was caught in the rain and I asked him.

“I did not know would it ruin this hat, the rains. I am not familiar at all with such hat and I did not wish it to be ruinous. So, better save than sorry, yes?” He took it off and inspected it, picking at some flaw in the hatband I couldn’t see from where I sat. Then he put it back on his head, as dignified and deliberate as a coronation. “I wear it to the reception only. Outside. I do not wear it inside, during the servicing. So what is big fucking deal, right? But, oh, she is so embarrassed! So upset! ‘I am going to college with these womens many years ago and I do not see them forever and now what is it they are thinking when they see me with such person with such hat? Oh how terrible . . . !’ Please! Is fucking excellent hat, yes?”

He looked a little like Hoss from “Bonanza”— if all the actual Hoss part, from the hat down, had been out in the rain too long and shrunk.

“And she is talking all the time her old boyfriends. Her exes, yes? Like the song—‘All my exes they are living in Texas.’ You know this song?”

I said that I did, just to make it easier. Plus, I was fearful he might do the whole song and I couldn’t handle that. Not without a little more coffee. But I still didn’t have the story straight. “So she was talking to her old boyfriends and you got jealous or—?”

“Bah!” He actually said bah. I’d never heard anyone say bah out loud before, and I have to say, it was pretty effective. You see it written on the page once in a while and it doesn’t seem all that hot, but in the right situation, take my word for it, a good bah really cuts through. “Jealous?” he said. “Please! You are joking! You are totally joking!”

The way he said it, obviously he was jealous. “I don’t mean jealous,” I said. “I mean you thought it was rude.”

“Yes! Very rude! In-con-siderate!” He wiggled around in his seat, trying to get comfortable and I could hear the squish of that tux. “She was not talking to them, you know, these old boyfriends, okay? They were not even there, I think. But she is talking very much of them. To all her friends. They are telling all these good olden time stories about this happened and that happened, remember? And asking her does she ever talk to this one anymore or that one and whatever happened to this other one . . . Please! I am standing right there, am I not? Do I need to hear all through the time so much about the exes? Rude, like you say. In-con-siderate. I agree very much. One hundred percents.”

Maybe, I thought. It sounded a little insensitive, sure. But could the guy really expect all her friends who haven’t seen her for some time not to want all the gossip and updates? The guy seemed a little possessive for what sounded like a first date. I wondered if it was some sort of Old World nonsense, this possessive attitude.

Then I realized he was pointing at me. “Finally! To talk to someone who has some senses and understands why was I so pieced off and yes, maybe then began to drink a little too many drinks. Finally! You understand, my friend, because you are smart! Common senses, you have, not like this bitch and a half blonde female woman who drives off with the only rentaled car, the bitch and a half that she is!” He threw up his hands, exasperated, and then bent to work his wet shoes back on. “Can you imagine how am I feeling last night, wandering around this wedding party? Like the lost little monkey is how am I feeling.”

I must have made a face that showed that I, not unlike this aforementioned monkey, was lost. Especially about the monkey.

“Like the story,” he said. “For children—‘The Lost Little Monkey.’ Yes? Just like that! You understand. You know how am I feeling.”

We were coming up on the outskirts of Elk Rapids and I slowed as we got to the job site, hoping to get a sense of what was going on there. I saw Gary’s truck—the contractor— and a couple others. I couldn’t tell if they’d tarped the deck.

“Boy! I thought I was wet but I would not like it so much being in those guys’ shoes.” He made a snickery little snort. “This is what they say ‘good gig.’ Yes? Who is working in such weather except for of course a sucker?”

I didn’t appreciate the tone. What the hell did he do, anyway—teach ballroom dancing? Work the rodeo circuit? Seduce rich lonely women on the Internet? It felt odd, taking abuse for being a blue collar grunt when normally I was kept at bay by the rest of the work crews for not being a blue collar grunt, for walking among them as an impostor. I told him, “You’re looking at a sucker I guess.”

To his credit, the gaffe at least seemed to register with him. He lay his fingers across his mouth; let his eyes go wide. “Oh. Oopsy. Pardon! I am taking it then that this is where you are wanting to be this morning?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. Just where I have to be.” I checked my watch and gunned the engine, heading on toward River Street and the bench out in front of the party store where the bus would pick him up to continue down to Traverse.

“You are wanting, I’m sure, something for the gas . . .” He made a move toward his pocket, but I waved him off. I hadn’t gone out of my way to help him, really. My finances were bad, but I could certainly afford to treat him to the extra drive from the jobsite on down to the bus stop, half a mile away.

“Forget it.” I formed a smile, waved a hand. “Good luck getting back home.” I didn’t mean it to come out as dire-sounding as it did, but why sugarcoat it? He was going to need luck: he still had a way to go to even get as far as the airport and he was only armed with his makeshift hat box and his very limited charm and social and language skills to help get there.

“If not money from me you will take, you must please have as my gift, this.” From an inside pocket of the tux he pulled another big wad of paper napkins and unwrapped a little silver satin goody bag. I could tell they were Jordan almonds from the wedding. They had a couple’s name printed on the bag, with the date of the day before and the words Together Forever. “They are candy,” he announced, “and they are ex-treme-ly delicious! You would not think so maybe from looking, but there is more going on inside these candy than you would ever know, my friend! They look at first like maybe sissy colored mints, yes? The colors of . . .” He seemed to be searching for a word.

“Easter?” I offered. “Pastels?”

“Homosexuals!” he said with glee. “Which is okay, fine, but not my thing, yes? Not for me. And so I think, ‘Great. Some candy. Big whoops.’ But I try one, and goodness-fucking-gracious, they are delicious! They have I think some chocolate and a nut meat, maybe a what you call it—”

“They’re Jordan almonds,” I explained, trying not to be impatient. I told him thanks a lot but he should keep this as well. I had a feeling he might be needing an emergency snack soon, if his bad luck continued to hold. But he kept forcing them on me.

“I will not take your nose for an answer! You are the only one to reach out and help me in a foreign lands. Well, not in the whole foreign country, but here, in this state now, in this rains.” Then he added, “I keep them dry in my dress coat, if that is what you are worrying. They are tooo-tally dry. I would not never give you my ruinous candy, my friend.”

So I took the bag of Jordan almonds. And I couldn’t help feeling I was warming to him a little. Even if he was making me a little late getting to the jobsite and even if he was somewhat crazy.

He got out with a squish, closed the door and leaned down to grin back at me through the window. He gave me a big thumbs up, then turned and headed in to get a bus ticket.

The car sounded empty. I flicked on the radio. Pulling a U-turn in the middle of town, I headed back down River Street and up onto 31, backtracking to the jobsite. Bob Seger, coming out of the classic rock station out of Mancelona, was moaning about the hookers down on Main Street, which took me back in my mind to my old hometown downstate, the seedier edge of that street heading out of Ann Arbor, the actual spot Seger was talking about, supposedly. It was a lonely song, even on a Sunday afternoon that would be spent with boisterous men and ringing saws. The grumbling sky, still gray overhead, only added to the feeling as I stepped out into the muck of the jobsite.

The way Gary was grinning at me, I had an inkling right off I’d come down there for nothing. “Too wet on the deck,” he said. “Looks like you got no work today, Teddy. Sorry.”

My name is Ted. At times in my life, I’ve been called Theo. Gary and the crew call me Teddy—when they’re not calling me Professor or Joe College. “Really,” I said. “So I miss a day of overtime ’cause nobody thought to tarp up. That’s great.”

He didn’t drop the grin. “You think maybe I’ve got my hands a little full without worrying about how every little thing affects you personally?”

I heard a snort and a snicker from somewhere just behind him and I knew before peering in through the open unframed front door that I would see Emmet the foreman there, grinning his little weasel grin.

I’d gotten more than enough grief from all of them back when they only knew I once taught college. That was enough of a strike against me being one of the guys; part of the team. But Emmet’s discovery that I was the ex-husband of kin—he’d definitely seen that as a line in the sand and made it more than clear that I would probably never have an easy time of it, as long as I kept taking jobs with Gary. He and his cronies were capable of all kinds of nonsense that was, in its mildest manifestations, senseless pranks.

I felt like going over and telling Emmet to do the math—the more he screws with my ability to work, the more he is only jeopardizing the welfare of a member of his family: writing the child support checks is only step two. Step one is earning enough money to pay the damn child support.

These guys aren’t like the guys I grew up with; the people I got used to as faculty colleagues and social acquaintances in my earlier life—meaning they prefer to simplify everything, boil situations down to basic categories, not overanalyze and particulate. They drink the beer they drink because it is the beer they drink and don’t reconfigure their loyalties when bouquets of colorful microbrew labels pop up like wildflowers in their local party store, even if they actually taste better. Those are the beers that others drink. And when the candidate they bumper-sticker their four-bys with turns out to be an incompetent pinhead, culpable for every new dread in their lives, no retooling occurs in their brains to adapt to the new information. So if I’m an outsider and the ex of one of their kind, I’m never to be allowed in, even if it means making life more difficult for a seven-year-old girl who is probably already starting to sense the strain herself; to wonder if she fits in here.


 
But come to think of it, maybe they’re no different than anyone, really, the way they keep up this unwavering segregation. No different than people back in my old life. When you’re an adjunct instructor, your colleagues don’t exactly throw their arms around you. You’re not even expected to attend department meetings. You can, but it’s optional, and they glance up at you when you enter the meeting mostly with the look you’d summon if a stray dog had padded into the conference room—which is going some, considering the state of disarray and aromatic funk of even the tenured art instructors.

They made gestures of inclusion, when pressed, but they always rang false. I remember my first Christmas holiday with Marce, my ex. We’d just been dating a few months, but I was nuts about her and wanted everyone to be, even those I didn’t know all that well. One of the bigwigs, the head of the print department (you’d recognize him if you own a lot of modern art coffeetable books)—posted a flyer in the art faculty mailroom for a holiday open house at his home—all faculty, junior faculty, adjuncts, instructors, and staff—even the TAs—were welcome, it said. But when I showed up with Marce—looking great, I thought—in this wild semi-elf costume I’d coaxed her into—(not really a costume, just a mid-length basic A-line in green velveteen with long sleeves and faux ermine cuffs with tiny red glass ball tree ornament earrings—tasteful, actually, undeniably less wacky than the over-embroidered Cosby sweaters I saw on some of the women—with intricate pine trees and packages and wreathes glopped all over in horrid, yarny 3-D, and the Currier and Ives print stockings, so that the black stallions pulling a sleigh looked extra muscular and hardy trying to get around those big calves)—everyone gave us a look.

Well, maybe not her a look—it wasn’t because of her outfit. Like I say, she looked great. She wasn’t even showing then—we had no idea at that point. We’d only just moved in together. And as for the issue of her being a student—she was older than most and no one would have guessed. They were giving me the look—the “a stray mutt just wandered into our important presence” look. Because, despite what the flyer said, they were all full professors there. The head secretary of the department was there, camped out by the punch bowl looking drunk enough to fall in, but she was okay: none of them knew how to work any of the complicated technology of the department office, nor the ins and outs of the bureaucracy it took to keep them out of danger with the Board of Regents and all those forms and filings to the administration building. Daily, she was the left brain savior of their right brain bacon. She was practically royalty.

Before we left, the head of the print department wound his way over to us and said how glad he was that I’d come. But he wasn’t.


 
They were laughing at me now. I could see them up there in the unfinished sunroom. Emmet had climbed the rail-less stairwell, with its opaque sheets of Visqueen rattling in the breeze, and he was chuckling in a little huddle like they were on some goddamn high school sports team and I was the art nerd who had to take their abuse. He’d obviously scampered up there to tell them how I’d been screwed today. They all might have arranged it on purpose, actually. I caught a few of them glancing down at me and then I locked eyes with Emmet and gave him the finger. The jobsite erupted with whoops and catcalls. A few smartasses stared lobbing little scraps of 
two-by in more or less my direction. They landed harmlessly a few feet from me, but the whole area was so muddy, I did get splashed. I turned my back to them and threw both fingers to the sky like obscene goalposts as I walked back to my car. The whooping only grew louder.

I took off my hardhat at the car and thought how this really sucked. I considered driving back over to River Street and getting a big cup of coffee at the bakery and some of their fruit turnovers and coming back here and parking across from the jobsite. I could sit on the hood and enjoy myself, crank up NPR on the radio and make a big show of relaxing and watching them toil. Just be a smartass like them. But the bakery only has day-old doughnuts on Sunday, and it didn’t seem worth it. I considered, for a quick second, parking and eating the Jordan almonds and watching them like a tourist. But I didn’t think it would have the same effect. For one thing, the Jordan almonds weren’t big enough. The guys wouldn’t even be able to see what I was doing. Some might think I was pretending to have something to do, miming it, and that was just pathetic.

I hesitated at the car, doing some calculations—how lean things would be without the overtime I’d expected and if we didn’t pick up the pace here so I could take on other jobs, when I heard a single shrill whistle—Emmet’s danger call—and looked back over at the jobsite and there was my hitchhiker. He’d walked past the orange tape and was well on the premises, talking to Gary who didn’t look happy to see him there, uninvited, with no hardhat. Without really thinking about why, I moved behind a panel truck parked behind me. I could move a little closer to hear without being seen. I heard Casimir saying, “I am looking please for my friend who is today working here.”

“Working here?” Gary said. “I don’t think so.”

“You looking for the high school prom?” Emmet called down, cackling. Someone else called him Liberace. I peered around the back of the van and saw them all up there, jeering. As if wearing a tux made him gay or something.

“What’s his name, your friend?” Gary had him by the arm, trying to ease him back off the site.

“I do not know his name, this friend of mine! If I can come in please and look for nearly only one minute—” He made a move to step forward, across the plywood plank into what was becoming the foyer.

Gary’s arm came up, blocking his entry. “Whoah! Hey! Okay, now! You can’t just wander around in here. You’re not insured and you could get hurt.”

As if to demonstrate this, another chunk of two-by came hurtling down. It had to be Emmet. I decided I’d better cross the street and show myself.

I yelled hey to Casimir, he turned and saw me and yelled, then the jackasses up on the second floor saw that we knew each other and they hooted with delight, and began raining debris down. None of it was aimed to hit us but I moved in, physically pulling him back. Squares of Tyvek came sailing out like Frisbees, catching the crosswinds and floating down in harmless helter-skelter barrel-rolls. He was stepping backwards, away from the attack, glaring up at them, and he stumbled a little, coming off the plank walkway, stepping into the cordoned-off part of the front yard the landscaper was trying to seed. There was straw down, but it was more or less a mudhole. He lost his grip on his makeshift hatbox and it landed in the mud. When he bent to retrieve it, a solid chunk of pressure-treated four-by hit the box, almost hitting him. A growling sound came out of him and he was spinning around, tux coat flapping, frustrated between defending himself and getting out of there with his treasured hat intact. I grabbed the open end of the cleaner’s bag and pulled the hatbox out of there, holding it out at arm’s length because it was so muddy. Meanwhile, he was turning in circles, with mud on his hands and well up his pant legs, calling them what I assumed were Polish obscenities and making some clumsy broad gesture with his forearm, which only got his sleeves muddier. “Come on!” I said, pulling him with my free hand, wanting him to step back onto the walkway. His tux felt like a sponge. He seemed unable to focus, still glaring back at the crew like he was going to fight them all. “Stop it!” I told him. “Don’t screw with these guys. What the hell are you doing here?”

The look on his face—I couldn’t tell if he was going to cry or call me some of those same names. “There is running today no bus to Traverse City or nowhere thank you because it is of course Sunday and also they are not having no taxi cabs 
in this TEENSY FUCKING RIDICULOUS ONE-WHORE VILLAGE!”

Emmet was halfway to the ground already, scurrying down the unfinished staircase like something that lives in the trees. For a little guy, he loved to puff himself up, and he was doing it now, standing just behind Gary, jabbing his chin at Casimir and then at me, glaring. “Hey! Tell your pal to watch his tongue there!”

The thing is, with these guys, they could swear their asses off in front of a packed Sunday school bus and not think anything of it. But if you’re from some other place, you’re seen as bringing a certain element into the community. And the part where he was running down the village—that was worse to Emmet, I’m sure, than the actual profanity.

Casimir put his hands together, in prayer or supplication, nodding first toward Emmet and Gary, then at me, beseeching, saying, “Pardon! Pardon!” and then to me, just “Please, my friend. I am at my whip’s end.”

I wished he wouldn’t make such a gesture. With his accent and that quasi-bowing, he might be mistaken by these goons as Middle Eastern, no matter how pasty and red-nosed he was.

I got him back over the property line and marched him across the street. There was a rumble of thunder; a reminder of the oppressive gray ceiling of the sky. My luck, it would rain all goddamn week.

“Please, my friend. You are kind and understanding and you know how am I feeling. Yes?”

I looked at my watch. I thought about it. If I wasn’t making any money today, I didn’t really want to spend it chauffeuring this maniac down to TC and back . . .

While I was still debating with myself, leaning toward what the hell, I caught him squinting up at the sky, shoulders hunched, brow furrowed, and that cinched it. I could see it. He did look like a lost little monkey.