In honor of Labor Day, I'm sharing an excerpt from the BryonySeries novel Staked! that gives a slightly (emphasis on the "slightly") exaggerated look at the what delivering newspapers seven days a week in the middle of the night looks like.
With more and more publications making the transition to web only, this excerpt gives you a rare look at an entire industry that will someday be no more, an industry in which my entire family and I used to work.
What makes this piece especially fun is that the main character, John-Peter Simotes, is completely fictional, and his "Uncle Ed" is not.
For the back story of how that actually came to be, check out my Calkins Day Address from 2020.
John-Peter wearily pulled the pallet jack down
the row of hastily assembled plywood work tables in the large warehouse, neatly
dodging the zombie-like carrier pushing a shopping cart of newspapers toward an
exit to load into vehicles. Despite the service doors opening into the night,
the air hung heavy and lifeless with the overwhelming heat and humidity the
building effectively trapped by day. It had been a long, laborious week, not
one filled with the reading and relaxation.
At the
dinner table Monday night, Kellen had unveiled a list of chores for John-Peter
to complete that week at the Happy Hunting Grounds funeral home because
Kellen’s secretary was on vacation. None of the tasks were difficult, only time
consuming. John-Peter had spent the last three days filing and running brochure
orders to and from the local printer, as well as tearing apart and cleaning the
display cases before refilling them with souvenirs and then carefully dusting
the enormous picture of Agnes Scofield, the first client of Happy Hunting
Grounds. Kellen had once told John-Peter that Agnes, a ninety-three year old
resident of Jenson Nursing home, had given Kellen the permission of feasting on
her blood in exchange for being forever immortalized as "the first."
Tomorrow,
John-Peter would return to Thornton
with his mother for a physical—two physicals to be exact—before beginning
school on Monday. Then John-Peter could only help Uncle Ed on weekends and
school holidays. Between running newspapers with Uncle Ed by night and helping
Kellen by day, John-Peter had not read anymore of Grandma Marchellis’ diary.
Any free time he had acquired, whether at home or riding in the car, was spent
in sleep.
“Hey,
John-Peter!” a large, burly man called from across the aisle. “I didn’t get my Thornton Times!”
“Count?”
The man
stretched his tight and faded blue T-shirt over his hefty belly, trying to
cover the last inch of skin and failing. “Thirteen.”
John-Peter
handed them to the man who belched in reply. He couldn’t blame the carrier, or
any of the other drivers, for being grouchy tonight. Their boss, Joe Reece, had
tucked a policy change into their paycheck envelopes stipulating that only a
certain number and colors of bags would be distributed. If carriers required
more than that amount, the cost would be deducted from the next week’s pay.
That move
prompted Uncle Ed to express his displeasure with a limerick:
There
once was a cheap boss named Reece
Whose supplies to carriers decreased
When
the carriers cried, “Foul!”
Reece
spat as he howled,
“I’ll
make you share one sleeve apiece!”
“Someday,”
Ed said, leaning close to John-Peter and dropping his voice, “people will refer
to cheap acts as ‘doing a Reece.’”
No negative
situation existed where Uncle Ed could not compose an appropriate limerick.
“The
limerick is the most superior kind of poem,” Uncle Ed had often him. “Not only
can people pronounce it, they can remember it and it flows freely from the
tongue. This sort of poetry works in two ways. The words I say create fear in
others, fear of how they will be remembered. This fear then promotes a
willingness in your enemy to compromise, to confront you in more friendly
terms, or maybe to ally with you.”
But if Joe Reece, or anyone else for that
matter, cowered in terror before Ed Calkins, he never showed it. Even the
carriers themselves rarely expressed the respect and appreciation John-Peter
felt was due Ed for his hard work.
Ed printed
and sorted route books, oversaw the unloading and distribution of entire
truckloads of products, including bag shipments and fifteen different publications
totaling over ten thousand newspapers. In addition, Ed fielded complaints,
dispensed bags, retrieved and carried garbage to the dumpsters, and swept the
warehouse. This was in addition to his regular, carrier responsibilities. Ed
delivered newspapers to the outlying and remote areas no driver wanted to
touch, including Munsonville.
On school
days, if John-Peter rose early, he'd grab a jug of water and sprint barefoot
down to Main Street under the early morning sun, just in time to catch Ed
Calkins filling the newspaper boxes outside Sue’s Diner. If Ed had a few
minutes to spare, which he always seemed to have, he'd share an Irish joke,
adjust John-Peter’s leprechaun, and point to John-Peter’s watch.
“Bet you can’t say ‘Irish wristwatch’ ten
times.”
And
John-Peter could, every time.
“John-Peter, if you want to make an
Irishman laugh on a Monday, tell him a joke on a Friday.”
“John-Peter,
while at the wake of his atheist friend, the Irishman said, ‘Poor lad. All
dressed up with no place to go.'"
“John-Peter,
do you know it takes four Irishmen to change a light bulb? One removes it from
the socket and the other three remark, ‘What a grand, old light bulb it was!’”
If Ed was
running late, he’d acknowledge John-Peter’s existence with a jovial nod before
he dropped the bundles at the machine, fully expecting John-Peter to fill them.
John-Peter,
of course, always did. He understood newspaper deadlines. He had grown up with
them. His father, Professor Simotes, not Kellen, had delivered a country route
under Uncle Ed’s authority. John-Peter not only accompanied John on the route,
he helped prepare the papers for delivery and consulted the route book when his
father had a question about the location of an obscure address, a delivery
instruction or code, or which combination of publications a particular customer
might receive.
The
problem? John-Peter did not remember any of it.
He had been
too young, a tender twenty months of age when the professor had died. His
memories of the newspaper business centered around Uncle Ed, who was not really
his uncle, but a man who had been a good friend, as well as the boss, of John
Simotes.
Ed
seriously undertook his news agency responsibilities, even referring to himself
as a “ruthless dictator” who expected compliance within his ranks, although he
rarely obtained it. The carriers snatched extra newspapers from the pallets,
invented excuses for customer complaints, and stole inserts, hooks, and bags
from each other’s stations. Never did one week pass without a carrier calling
Ed with a crisis of why he could not deliver his route that night, and could Ed
please do it?
And of
course Ed did, while hard at work composing a penalty limerick, which that said
carrier would hear upon walking in the warehouse door the following night.
However, Ed did not limit his control tactics to mere verse. No new carrier
slipped through the ranks without at least one request to sign Ed Calkins’
petition. Ed’s birthday fell between Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s
Day, a fact significant enough, Ed felt, to warrant a three-day national
holiday.
“The time
will come when everyone around the world will eagerly anticipate the Ed Calkins
Day parade,” Ed always said, beaming, as he pressed both paper and pen into the
hesitant carrier’s hands.
In the
meantime, Ed himself offered the joys and excitement of his parade to the elite
crowd fortunate enough to deliver newspapers in the middle of the night from
the Jenson warehouse.
For as long
as John-Peter could remember, he celebrated each February thirteen watching a
carrier pull Uncle Ed through the building on the pallet jack, one John-Peter
had decorated with green streamers and balloons for the occasion, while an
exuberant Ed waved to his constituents with one hand and tossed bite-sized,
wrapped pieces of candies from the other one toward the work stations.
So although
John-Peter had no time to read the diary this past week, he could and he did
spend much time reflecting upon what he had read as he busied himself with his
required duties.
Had Grandma
Marchellis really lived part of her life inside Simons Mansion
or was the entry simply the ramblings of a demented mind? Surely if she'd had a
connection to the musician, his mother, grandparents, or even Kellen would have
mentioned it. Besides, who knew if her son Frank even had read it? Grandma
Marchellis chronicled the tale in her personal diary. Maybe she went completely
senile before she shared it with Frank.
“John-Peter! Where’s my Detroit Daily News?”
“In
transport.”
“Late again?”
“Afraid so,
Dave.”
John-Peter
dragged the jack back to the dock. He had nothing left to disperse until the
final truck arrived for the night. He closed his fingers around the leprechaun
before heading toward Uncle Ed’s work station.
With
lightening speed, Ed bagged the Jenson
Reporters for a carrier who took his year old daughter to the emergency
room last night. Eyes down at his work, Ed said to John-Peter, “Stuff all the
papers for Munsonville, and bundle my papers for Sue’s Diner.”
John-Peter refilled his jug from the water
fountain and then went in search of an empty grocery cart. He found one
overturned near Joe’s office, in front of the rusted, dented metal shelves
holding back issues of the previous week’s publications. The cart worked better
than he had guessed. Its handle only slightly wiggled and three of the wheels
actually rolled.
He stacked
the newspapers from Ed’s work area into the cart and dragged the load to the
strapping machine. Three other carriers stood in line to belt their store
drops. One short, round woman fidgeted with growing impatience.
“Hurry it
up, Kurt. You’re not the only dang carrier in this building.”
But Kurt
ignored her and continued strapping bundles with a steady pace. Soon the
metered beep-beep of a truck’s back-up alarm broke into the carriers’ low,
rumbling chatter.
“’Bout
time,” groused a tall, thin man as he scratched under his scraggly, bronze
beard. “Gotta go to work this mornin’. Boss said if I’m late again he’ll can
me.”
John-Peter
wondered if John Simons ever paid that promised visit to Grandma Marchellis. If
he did, John-Peter doubted the musician entered through the front door. He
believed the story of the magic music box. He might even have seen it.
Ed tugged a
pallet jack full of Detroit Daily News
bundles past John-Peter as the boy strapped the last bundle.
“John-Peter! Get that cart back to the station
and help me get these Detroits
passed.”
“Affirmed, sir.”
Carriers
swarmed the dock and Ed’s pallet, opening bundles and grabbing stacks of papers,
heedless of Ed’s loud orders to wait their turns. Joe Reece charged five
dollars for every newspaper a driver delivered late. John-Peter plopped onto a
work table, fished inside his other pocket for an apple, and wished the
princess had given it to him. He took a bite and leaned his weary body against
the table’s back. As punishment for disregarding his stern commands, Uncle Ed
would be tormenting offenders tomorrow morning with a fresh supply of
limericks.
“John-Peter!”
The boy
woke with a start. The apple core lay on the floor. The warehouse was devoid of
carriers. Uncle Ed must have already loaded his car because he looked ready to
leave.
The first
rays of dawn were breaking through the dark the sky as the pair entered the
parking lot. No chance of a nap this morning before he and his mother would
leave for Thornton.
“What time
is your appointment?”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Hmm.” Ed frowned and looked at his own green
wristwatch. “I’ll hit the country roads later. Let’s deliver Jenson, and then
I’ll take you back to Munsonville. You’ll never survive the day without a nap.”
“Much
obliged, Steward, much obliged.”
With a
light heart and a steady supply of apples in his left hand, John-Peter threw
newspapers into the driveways of Jenson’s neighborhoods and fumbled for
whatever publication Uncle Ed needed with his right. He was glad to skip the
country roads. The joggers who inhabited them at three o’clock in the morning
made him uneasy. Once, Ed nearly collided with a man who rode his bike straight
at Ed’s car. Other carriers might have signaled their anger with a finger or
colorful language. Instead, Ed soothed his jangled nerves with a limerick.
O cyclist who rides in the night
Making
sure you’re hidden from sight
One
day you will find
A
driver’s who blind
Who’ll
flatten you without any fight.
“John-Peter, did I ever tell you
about the four great treasures of the Tuatha
de Danann?”
Ed had just reached the part about the
endless food supply of the Cauldron of Dagda when he threw two
newspapers out the window into the driveway of the house before the stop sign.
“Wait,
Uncle Ed,” John-Peter said, reaching above the visor for the route book. “The Jenson Reporter is a vacation stop.”
“What about
the Thornton Times?”
“Active, your honor.”
John-Peter ran across the road to pick up the
extra newspaper. Although the sun was now fully up, the absence of traffic made
delivering papers almost a joy. After tossing the renegade paper back into the
smudged, cracked laundry basket that held its clones, John-Peter, gradually
perking up under the brightening sun, grabbed a handful of Munsonville Weeklies.
“Can’t
understand why that newspaper is still in business,” Ed complained. “How much
news can that village report in a week?”
“The Daltons
bought a parakeet.”
“Three more blocks and then we can do the
stores. Keep up with me because I want to stop at Eircheard’s Emporium before
we go back to Munsonville.”
“Anything
in particular you’re seeking?”
“Another
tin whistle.”
Ed Calkins
saved the pawn shop’s bundle for last, after first pulling off the road to
adjust John-Peter’s leprechaun, a pocket-sized creature with a leering face,
tiny black eyes glinting below a pair of bushy red eyebrows, and a thatch of
wild red hair sliding out from under its tall green hat. In the center of its
belly, a series of numbers in the billions spiraled downward. The lull in the
action always caused John-Peter to nod off, but he always reawakened feeling as
refreshed as if he’d slept the night. By waiting until daybreak to deliver the Eircheard’s
Emporium, Ed could be certain that Eircheard himself would have unlocked the
front door, prepared the tea, and, if the wizened shopkeeper was feeling
particularly ambitious that day, prepared a loaf of warm, Irish soda bread--using
vinegar instead of buttermilk and a vegan spread from Brummings in Shelby to
top it--out of respect for John-Peter.
But no
whiff of freshly baked bread greeted John-Peter’s nose that morning, only the
pungent scent of the tobacco that emitted from Eircheard’s clay pipe. When
John-Peter was a small boy, the sight of this leprechaun-like old man
intimidated him and became the source of a recurring nightmare. Since early
childhood, John-Peter had often dreamed of the shop keeper, sitting on a tree
trunk and carving a misshapen piece of wood with a long-handled knife. A series
of incantations followed the store owner’s act of jamming the wood into the
ground. While Eircheard chuckled in glee, John-Peter’s leering face emerged
from the top of the wooden post.
But the Eircheard’s fearsomeness now only
existed in John-Peter’s dreams. Inside the pawn shop, he was simply an old man
making a dime from those wanting a quick buck and parting with their
possessions to obtain it. The one-room, wood shop was not large, but Eircheard
had filled it to bursting with all manner of furniture, knickknacks, clocks,
lamps, signs, clothing, wall hangings, books, record albums, toys, dishes,
household furnishings, and so forth, all stacked haphazardly and without category
consideration.
“No tin
whistles today,” Eircheard said, leaning back in his desk chair, puffing on his
pipe, and gesturing to a side table. “But some fellow brought in a whole stack
of records. All bagpipe music.”
Uncle Ed
made a dour face and recited:
A pygmy did sit in his chair
Luring
the innocent into his lair
He
said, “Why not you stay
And
buy something today?
If
it’s garbage I really don’t care.”
Eircheard
grinned around his pipe and watched Ed weave through the card tables, laden
with assorted figurines, plaques, and jewelry, to flip through the albums.
John-Peter poured a cup of tea, popped his
vitamin, and polished off the remnants of yesterday’s bread while Eircheard
puffed and watched some more. The boy wished he had topped off his jug before
leaving the distribution center. His parched throat screamed for water.
“Saved the
last from yesterday. Had a feeling you gents would stop this morning.”
“Thankee,
Mr. E.”
Eircheard smiled through the black gaps
between his broken teeth. “Anytime.”
Ed looked
up from the stack of records.
“Want to
drive Kellen nuts?”
“I’ll pass,
Uncle Ed.”
Kellen’s
disparaging remarks about classical piano music were the bane of John-Peter’s
life. No need to blare bagpipes, too.
Ed selected
three albums and brought them to the counter. Eircheard rose painfully to his
feet to ring up Ed’s purchases.
“That will
be five dollars even.”
“You drive
a hard bargain.”
“Got to
keep a roof over my head, same as you.”
Ed picked
up the records and turned to John-Peter, who spread margarine on this third
chunk of bread. Three-fourths of the loaf had disappeared into the boy’s
growling stomach. “Let’s drop Munsonville, and get you home.”
“Think
Reece will be mad the country route is late?”
“Not mad
enough to find someone else to take it out.”
The
combination of the sun’s glare off the windshield and the warm snack sent waves
of sleepiness through John-Peter's numb brain. Twice he nodded into slumber
against the window glass before he and Ed reached Munsonville.
Ed parked
his car in front of Sue’s Diner and reached for the newspaper bundle. “You
rest. I’ll fill the machines.” In less than five minutes, Ed was turning onto
Bass Street over John-Peter’s objections.
A customer wishes the real Ed Calkins best wishes on the very last day of his newspaper route earlier this year.
