Love In The Town of Caine

The kid hadn’t been working there long but he knew the weight of a monkey wrench like he’d been born with one in his hand. His father was a mechanic. Had his own work shop on the outskirts of Boarville, in a village called Arno, but what with so many emigrating to the city for work and there being absolutely no way he was going to stay in Boarville, he moved to the city and McCormick’s was the first job he found.
    McCormick was self made. Opened his first workshop in the city way back in the 70s. Now he had a monster of a workshop, servicing upwards of twelve vehicles at one time with a small outfit of eighteen employees all loyal to him to the core. McCormick’s philosophy on that was simple: if you take care of your employees they’ll take care of you. 
    One Friday night the sun bathed the car park in glittering promises of gold as the neon of the amethyst city began to emerge like the dark soul of man rising from an ancient underbelly. The sound of birds twittering began to fall apart and give way to the mist filled hum of the serpentine files of vehicles wheezing and whirring a wretched race away from the confines of another working week. Friday always gave way to feelings of dread and expectation. Expectation for the wild ferocity, the letting loose of inhibitions, nights they said they’ll never forget but inevitably drift into purple moments of poor recollection. The Dread is for those who’d inevitably get hurt along the way, upon the roads of misused time, the ones paved with bittersweet fruit the gods of good times grow and demand a price for their picking, a price that we all must pay from time to time, a price some must pay more and more often than others. 
    The kid was yet to go out on a weekend and McCormick noticed it. Whilst Marge, the secretary and all the other lads had already clocked off from work to head out for the night the kid was staying behind to work under the hood of an old Dodge Challenger that kept stalling whilst idle. McCormick hobbled over. 
    “Home time, son, we’re closin’ up” he lilted. Despite the many years he’d spent in Caine Town he hadn’t lost anything of his Irish heritage. 
    “Just need a little longer, sir”, said the kid, “I’ve been working on this thing all day but for the life of me I just can’t seem to work out what’s wrong.”
    “You checked the airflow?” 
    “Yes, sir” 
    “Gaskets all functioning fine, fuel injectors clean?” 
    “Yes sir! I really can’t work out what’s going on...”    
    “Hmmmm...maybe a time out will help us gain some perspective. Here,” he offered him one of his Chesterfields, “have a smoke.” 
    “Thank you, sir.” 
    They both lit their cigarettes. 
    “You know, you don’t have to call me ‘sir’. ‘Mac’ is fine.” 
    “Ok. Mac.” 
    “So you’re from Boarville?” 
    “Around there, yeah.” 
    “Where’s your family originally from?” 
    “France originally, sir. My grandfather came during the oil rush.” 
    “Yeah, well, if there’s one thing this area is known for it’s its rushes. The oil rush, the silver rush, the iron rush, the lead rush, the rush of the Marque Mile. You’re not one of them types, are ya kid? Stage types. Got dreams of the stage?” 
    “No, sir. Uh, I mean, Mac.”  
    “Good. The Marquee Mile...Caine Town’s answer to Broadway, ya know! What a load of old codswallop. I don’t know why those kids don’t just head to New York or London and be done with it. Anyway, this area has certainly had its share of booms. We’re a little overdue one, if you ask me. Been a good fifty years since the last one. From what I hear the Old Outposts are drying up like nobody’s business. Ain’t much work around for the younguns like you.” 
    “Not really, sir....Mac!”
    “So what’s your plan?” 
    “Oh I don’t want much. I’m not someone who dreams big. In this day and age I don’t think there is much room for that sort of thing. I’m happy with a job I enjoy, covers my rent.” 
    “You got yourself a girl?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Want one?” 
    “Of course. But I’m sure the right one will come along.” 
    “Not if you’re spending all your time in the work shop she won’t! Why don’t you go out tonight, son? Enjoy yourself. Might meet the girlie you’re looking for.” 
    “Thanks, but I ain’t looking for that type of girl, sir...uh, Mac.” 
    “What? Nice girls don’t enjoy a drink with their girlfriends on a Friday night after work?” 
    “Well no, I’m not saying that...”
    “Relax, kid. I’m just teasing you.” 
    Mac looked at the kid and saw so much of himself in him. For some reason he felt something he hadn’t in a long time not since his own kids had left for university.
    “You know, son,” he began, “you seem like you’ve got a really mature head on your shoulders and I admire that. I used to be a lot like you. When I was growing up they used to call it ‘all work and no play’. I mean, I did my fair share of playing, don’t get me wrong, but you know running a business like this, well...you don’t really have the same cut of time that some of your friends have for leisure. And I was alone, here, for a long time. Was doing it all, really - at least all of the administration side of things once I hired my first couple of lads. Even then I was still under the cars. Took me a long time to learn to wind down and let someone else in the office, take the pressure off a little bit.” 
    “What brought that on?” 
    Mac gazed into nothing. An image welled up in his mind like an oasis flooding through the cracks of a concrete desert, an image of her lying, sleeping on the sofa in their first apartment with the TV on, the dinner she’d cooked sat on the kitchen top, a bowl covering it, awaiting his arrival so that he could heat it up. He wrestled with the tears and pushed them down. He hadn’t spoken of her in so long. 
    “My wife,” he said. 
    “Yeah, my dad had something similar with my mom. He could be a bit of workaholic himself.” 
    “Ah yeah?” 
    “Yeah. My mom told him he was missing me and my brother grow up. I think I must have been about three. From there he started spending more time at home. He’s a good father.” 
    “Sounds like it. Sounds like he realised it in time, too.” 
    “Didn’t you?”
    Mac paused. “My wife never nagged me about it. Sometimes I wish she did. God knows I would’ve listened. But she never used to say a word. We always knew that, whilst I was building this business, there was going to be this period of working my arse  off. I had years of sixteen, seventeen, even eighteen hour days building this business, son. You know, she always used to wait for me when I finally got home in the evening. The boys would’ve  already gone to bed. 
    Most nights I’d get home and she was there asleep on the sofa waiting for me, dinner just waiting to be microwaved. I’d heat it up and we’d sit and talk into the final hours, well -  usually hour - of the day. She’d tell me all the outlandish stuff the boys would come out with at the dinner table, how their studies were going, the gossip from her work at the school where she worked. She’d tell me about the books she was reading. The film she started watching while she waited for me. I didn’t realise it at the time but, those hours listening to her were some of the happiest of my life. Not once did she tell me I was never around. Even after I collapsed on the bed only to wake up again in four, five, six hours just to go and do it all again. She knew there was only one place I was going to be if it wasn’t our first workshop: there. Home. With her and those boys. 
    The goal was always to get the business to the point where someone else could run the damn thing a little bit more, so that I could be home a little more. But by then it was too late. She was diagnosed in ’89. I hired Marge to come and work in the office so that I could come be at home more, take care of her and the boys. We had six months like that. Then she went. It was only then that I realised we could’ve reached our goal years ago. If only I’d been willing to get out of my own way a little bit, if I could’ve just let go - I could’ve been around more. 
    We could’ve lived.”
    Silence reined, now, as the slow rhythm of trees re-awakening in the evening wind hushed and attempted to soothe the hearts of the broken looking to listen. 
    “Kid, it’s good that you want to work. It’s important. But don’t forget what work is for: building a better life. Work? That’s for working. Life? That’s for living.”
    Mac stood up and scruffed the kids hair. He went back in the office and began to finish off some paper work. As he did so he watched as the kid was again bent over the hood of the Dodge but his eyes were darting around as if tracking an invisible fly. Finally, after a few minutes, the kid closed the hood. It was dark now. He went and washed his hands, dried them and then cautiously walked over to Mac’s office. 
    “Is it ok if I head home, Mac?”
    “Of course it is, kid! Get yourself out of here. I’ll see you Monday. There’s a good lad.” 
    “Thanks Mac.”
    “See ya kid.” 
    The kid walked in a way that almost seemed to suppress running. Mac watched the kid as he stopped before opening his car door to take in the evening breeze, the moonlight shining, the amethyst city beyond, before getting in his car and driving away.
    Once Mac had finished the paperwork he began to close up. He put the paperwork away, locked the office, switched off the lights. But before he switched off the main light in the workshop he saw the Dodge there. Mac opened the hood and took a guess — throttle body adaptation. Ten minutes later, the Dodge purred like it always should have. He smiled to himself, then turned the ignition off. 
    Some things just need a moment to breathe.