mangozeen: HEAD OUT ON THE HIGHWAY by Peter Nolan Smith

Throughout 2017 I worked in Greenwich, Connecticut on a $4 million house for Mumbles. The Washington DC native considered himself very smart in business. I would have felt the same, if I was living off a trust fund, but Foakley was too smart for his own good and the project languished with his every indecision.

Mumbles had hired me as a highly unskilled laborer and ended up as the GC at $20/hour without any overtime. Mumbles was smart about being cheap at the cost of others.

I said nothing.

I had a large family to support in Thailand.

A fifty-hour work week made all good in the world.

My wages should have been better, except labor had been destroyed by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Old Dutch had fired all the air traffic controllers on strike.

The GOP had cheered this victory and strangely they were joined by the working class.

No one foresaw the destruction of the American Dream, mostly because any protest against the elite was registered on your permanent record, however the wealth of the few was not to be shared by the masses, especially the nouveau-riche living on credit cards.

Our rights and privileges disappeared to pay for the tax cuts for the rich.

I didn't blame Fat Donald for the collapse.

People got what they deserved, but I wasn't one of them.

My Yankee side of the family had arrived with the Mayflower.

My Irish Nana had sailed from Cork in the Year of the Crow.

We believed in hard work.

Foakley was not a believer.

He was rich, but not rich enough to pay me every week.

At least I had a place to stay and I commiserated with my good friend AP.

Seven years ago we traveled with Foakley to France and toured Paris as cultured Americans.

AP visited Le Corbusier's house.

I saw old friends.

Old girlfriends too.

In Monaco we stayed at Le Heritage and rode in motor boats to view multi-million dollar yachts. AP and I dined on oysters. Foakley ate a burger and fries. He didn't drink alcohol, but loved to order us the best wine. I loved it too.

We trained to Nice. The old city was filled with life. AP and I feasted on a delicious bouillabaisse. Foakley had roast chicken. His tender stomach fought any detour from bland.

There was nothing wrong with AP's and my stomach.

We could eat everything.

Especially on a rich man's cuff.

They were good times.

Mumbles had commissioned AP to design a modern beachhouse in Amagansett.

I was appointed the writer-in-residence at an embassy in Luxembourg.

Sadly good times don't last forever.

The architect hadn't spoken to the Washington millionaire for months and said, "Foakley is his own worst enemy. He chisels people out of the original agreement and tries to barter them down in price. If he doesn't get his way, then he'll cut you out, until he needs you again."

Mumbles hadn't needed AP in a while.

He only called when he needed someone.

But things were not working out for Foakley.

The construction of a new house in Greenwich was beset by cost overruns and the market in Connecticut was collapsing with the tax flight of filthy rich, who had nothing to gain by paying their fair share of the pie.

My dreams were dominated by mansions on flames.

Burning wealth could really light the night.

Every day I toiled at hard work. I deserved better pay and quit work as soon as Mumbles drove back to his lovely wife and beautiful daughter at their Park Avenue apartment.

I lived on food stamps, because rich people pay slower than a dead man.

They can spent $300 on a bottle of Echo de Lynch-Bages 2012, but stiff the workers for $100 and feel good about it.

In April Mumbles was a month behind in my wages.

$3000.

I said that I needed to send money to my family.

"Why don't you give some of your kids up for adoption?"

I was holding a shovel and my Mexican co-worker said, "Don't hit him in the head."

Foakley backed up without an apology.

I drove him in the rented car to the train station.

Again I asked for my wages.

He gave me $40.

"La Revolucion siempre," said Juan upon my return.

"And today too."

The property belonged to us workers.

We drank Modelos at the end of the day.

One each.

The nearest store was an hour away by foot.

I rarely left the grounds.

Suburban cops loved arresting workers, since they couldn't touch the rich.

Mumbles disappeared to Europe.

I sold scrap copper pipes to a metal shop.

$5.40 a pound.

$327 worth.

I considered it the 'Vig'

That weekend I was going to see Judas Priest at Nassau Coliseum.

Rob Halford was a star.

Forty years after HEAD OUT OF THE HIGHWAY.

Rock on mother fucker.

My date.

Maz.

Mr. Warmth's cohort.

Foakley wouldn't understand Judas Priest.

He thought he was white.

All Trump supporters believed the same.

I considered them Nazis, but held my tongue. I was hoping to get paid at the month's end.

I was wrong.

Mumbles stayed in Paris.

At the Four Seasons.

What else could you expect from a rich man's son?

The afternoon of the Judas Priest concert I sold more copper and filled the tank.

The ride south was easy.

No traffic until the FDR. I sat in traffic.

HEAD OUT TO THE HIGHWAY was on the radio.

I tried to contact Maz to share the song at the 2nd Avenue red light.

A policeman knocked on my window.

The thick-necked pig called for back-up.

His comrades acted like I was the Second Coming of 9/11.

I tried to explain about Judas Priest.

"I don't need an excuse."

He was juiced on steroids.

His right hand gripped his 9mm.

It held fifteen rounds.

The 12 liked to shoot them all.

The Muscle Juice Monkeys have been trained by the Israelis to treat all Americans as the enemy. They wanted to kill. Mostly anyone who wasn't white. The officer wrote out a ticket and I muttered, "Thanks for nothing, pig."

Maz and I reached the concert at Nassau Coliseum and parked in a hotel lot rather than pay $40 for stadium parking. Judas Priest was Judas Priest. Their crowd was the dregs of the working classes. Every male was over forty.

We cheered Rob Halford's performance, but I was disappointed that they hadn't played HEAD OUT OF THE HIGHWAY.

Back in the city Maz and I drank at the 169.

We were metal heads for the night.

I was a worker forever.

The next day Mumbles returned from Paris and showed up in Greenwich. He asked about the concert. I said it was great.

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Not that he cared. Foakley liked Toto.

I explained about the ticket.

"You should fight it."

"I want to pay it."

Mumbles owed me over $3500 dollars.

He said he would take care of the fine.

"What about my money?"

"I'm running short." I was tired of hearing this.

Broke for the rich was different than broke for the working classes.

Summer came and I traveled to Hong Kong to drop off a bag for Foakley. He paid me $500.

I was to bring a $100,000 Hermes Birkin bag to a Chinese banker as a favor to an Arab prince.

Like Mumbles they were all cheap.

They hadn't even included breakfast on the hotel bill.

I expected nothing less from the filthy rich and pondered snatching the bag. I had to be able to sell it somewhere, but I was more honest than the rich. Anyone is.

After the delivery I flew to Bangkok to see my clan.

Angie.

Wey-Wey.

Noy.

Pam-pam.

And my boy Fook.

The people Mumbles said that I should offer for adoption.

My hands itched for a shovel.

I hugged my children, wishing I had ripped them off, then I could have stayed in Thailand with my family for years. The rich have no idea about where anything is in the Ban-Nok.

My wife wished I had robbed them too. She hated being alone. My stay was too short.

By the time I came back it was pumpkin season.

I kept my mouth shut around Foakley.

I pilfered more from the construction site, but thieving wasn't in my heart.

Not like it is for the rich who steal from everyone.

Winter was coming and I was supervising tree-cutting in Greenwich. Big trees. I had Foakley give me the money for the loggers. They weren't fools. Not after dealing with the scum of Greenwich for generations.

It was a $700 job.

"I need money."

"Next week."

"Okay." I was counting on the $4000 to visit my family for the holidays.

Foakley paid nothing.

Clearly he had run through his trust fund on the house.

He asked me to burn it down.

"$100,000. Up front."

"I don't have it."

"Then the house stands."

The guesthouse had no heat.

Winter got cold in February.

I burned wood outside.

I heated water on the fire.

March was cold too.

Foakley still had no money.

The bank was taking over the property.

I cleared the house and returned to the city.

In July I was working in Hudson New York clearing a cellar.

Dirty work, but Old Yeller and I were good friends.

Her boyfriend and I went back thirty years. She paid me $20/hour. I worked harder than that.

Hudson was a quiet town, but I was working too much and one night I headed over to Lowe's to pick up supplies. I should have gone nowhere.

I took a wrong turn.

Down a one-way street.

The police stopped me.

A single cop really.

I discovered that my license was suspended.

Mumbles had never paid the fine.

I made no excuse to the officer. He wrote me up for a moving violation and a criminal driving misdemeanor. People usually get arrested for that charge, but he allowed me to drive a block back to Old Yeller's house.

"You were lucky you were white," said Shannon. He had lived here a long time. "White people get treated differently for blacks."

"That's for damn sure."

I didn't risk driving for a month.

I had a court date.

The penalty for my charge was a max of $1000 and a month in jail. I paid off the previous fine and cursed Foakley.

"Fuckin' Foakley."

In truth I couldn't care less, because I should have never believed a rich man.

I showed up at the old Hudson courthouse.

8:30.

The judge sat at 8:40 and promptly heard cases. Everyone in the courthouse was poor. Some were charged with open beer containers. Others failed to pay child support. More than a few were there for harassing ex-lovers. Almost all of them wore shorts. Their cases amounted to problems of $100 or less. Drugs were still a major crime and the town's police captain regarded oxycontin overdoes as a major challenge to public safety.

A public defender presented my case.

I said nothing about Mumbles or about not having any money.

These were a given.

I was cut loose with a $125 fine.

I celebrated my freedom with a bottle of wine.

From the South of France.

The first sip tasted of Nice.

At one time I had lived there.

I had had dreams.

Of a better life.

Both Mumbles, AP, and I had gone through some tough times, but we all ended speaking in the end. Life is too short to cut off everyone for nothing or even something. Life is too short to carry a grudge forever.

Or maybe not.