Teacher Man. Frank McCourt

the exams for the teacher’s license but I didn’t think I was cut out for the life of a teacher. I knew nothing about American teenagers. Wouldn’t know what to say to you. Dockside work was easier. Trucks backed in. We swung our hooks. Haul, hoist, pull, push. Stack on pallets. Forklift slides in, lifts the load, reverses, stacks the load in the warehouse, and back to the platform. You worked with your body and your brain had a day off. You worked eight to noon, had a foot-long sandwich and a quart of beer for lunch, sweated it off from one to five, headed home, hungry for dinner, ready for a movie and a few beers in a Third Avenue bar.

      Once you got the hang of it you moved like a robot. You kept up with the strongest man on the platform and size didn’t matter. You used your knees to save your back. If you forgot, platform men would bark, Chrissakes, you got a rubber spine or sumpin’? You learned to use the hook different ways with different loads: boxes, sacks, crates, furniture, great chunks of greasy machinery. A sack of beans or peppers has a mind of its own. It can change shape one way or another and you have to go with it. You looked at the size, shape and weight of an item and you knew in a second how to lift and swing it. You learned the ways of truckers and their helpers. Independent truckers were easy. They worked for themselves, set their own pace. Corporation truckers prodded you to hurry up, man, lift the damn load, let’s go, I wanna get outa heah. Truckers’ helpers were surly no matter who they worked for. They played little games to test you and throw you off, especially if they thought you were just off the boat. If you worked close to the edge of pier or platform they’d suddenly drop their side of the sack or crate hard enough to pull an arm from its socket and you learned to stay away from the edge of anything. Then they’d laugh and say, Faith an’ begorrah, Paddy, or Top o’ the mornin’ with a fake Irish accent. You’d never complain to a boss about any of this. He’d say, Whassa matter, kid? Can’t you take a little joke? Complaining only made matters worse. The word might get to a trucker or a helper and he might accidentally bump you off the platform or even the pier. A big new man from Mayo took offense when someone put a rat’s tail in his sandwich and when he threatened to kill whoever did it he was accidentally toppled into the Hudson and everyone laughed before they threw him a line and hauled him out dripping with river scum. He learned to laugh and they stopped bothering him. You can’t work the piers with a long face. After a while they stop picking on you and the word goes around that you know how to take your lumps. Eddie Lynch, the platform boss, told me I was a tough little mick and that meant more to me than the day I was promoted to corporal in the United States Army because I knew I wasn’t that tough, just desperate.

      I told my classes I was so uncertain about teaching I thought of simply spending my life at Port Warehouses, big fish, small pond. My bosses would be so impressed with my college degree they’d hire me as checker and promote me to an office job where I’d surely rise in the world. I might become boss of all checkers. I knew how it was with warehouse office workers or office workers anywhere. They pushed papers around, yawned, looked out the window at us slaving away on the platform.

      I did not tell my classes about Helena, the telephone woman who offered more than doughnuts in the back of the warehouse. I was tempted till Eddie said if you even brushed against her you’d wind up in St. Vincent’s Hospital with a dripping dick.

      What I missed about the piers was the way people spoke their minds and didn’t give a shit. Not like the college professors who would tell you, On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, no, and you didn’t know what to think. It was important to know what professors thought so you could give it back to them at exam time. In the warehouses everyone insulted everyone else in a joking way till someone stepped over the line and the hooks came out. It was remarkable when that happened. You could see from the way the laughs faded and the smiles got tighter that some bigmouth was getting too close to the bone and you knew the next thing was the hook or the fist.

      Work stopped when fights broke out on piers and loading docks. Eddie told me men got tired of lifting and hauling and stacking, same damn thing year in year out, and that’s why they insulted and pushed one another to the edge of a real fight. They had to do something to break the routine and the long silent hours. I told him I didn’t mind working all day and not saying a word and he said, Yeah, but you’re peculiar. You’re only here a year an’ a half. If you did this fifteen years your mouth would be goin’ too. Some of these guys fought in Normandy and the Pacific and what are they now? Donkeys. Donkeys with purple hearts already. Pathetic donkeys in a dead end. They get drunk over on Hudson Street and brag about their medals as if the world gives a shit. They’ll tell you they’re working for the kids, the kids, the kids. A better life for the kids. Jesus! I’m glad I never got married.

      If Eddie hadn’t been there the fights would have been worse. He was the man with eye and ear on everything and he could sniff trouble in the wind. If two men started to go at it Eddie would stick his great belly between them and tell them get the hell off his platform and finish their fight in the street. Which they never did because they were really grateful for the excuse to avoid the fist and especially the hook. You can handle a fist but you never know where a hook is coming from. Still, they’d keep on muttering and giving each other the finger, but it was all gas now because the moment had passed, the challenge was over, the rest of us were back at work and what’s the use of a fight if there’s no one to see what a killer you are?

      Helena came from the office to watch the fights and when they were over she’d whisper to the winners and invite them to a dark place in the warehouse for a nice time.

      Eddie said some of those rotten bastards pretended to fight so Helena would be nice to them, and if he ever saw me in the back with her after a fight he’d throw my ass in the river. He said that because of the time I had a fight or nearly had a fight with the driver Fat Dominic, who was dangerous because of rumors he was connected to the mob. Eddie said that was bullshit. If you were really connected you weren’t driving and breaking your ass unloading rigs. The rest of us believed Dominic probably knew people who were connected, or even made, so it was a good idea to cooperate with him. But how could you cooperate when he sneered, Whassa madda, Paddy? Can’t talk? Maybe a dummy humped your momma, huh?