An Unfinished Novel-Chapter 2
It was close to midnight when Sean and Eric backed the truck up to the front door of the new house. Kathy and Samantha had arrived a few minutes before so they were already in the house ready to direct the move and set up the living room. The couples assumed their traditional roles as the men did the lifting and the women told them where to drop their load.
Even though the ranch house on Hampshire Drive was larger than their old apartment, there immediately seemed to be a lack of space for all of the belongings. The ladies seemed to feel that this was a larger problem than the guys did. Sean and Eric just wanted to get the stuff off of the truck but Karen and Samantha were determined to have the couch in just the right place, and every time the boys walked through the living room they were required to move the couch or a table a few feet or across the room.
This created its share of tension, outwardly and loudly expressed by the Simpson’s and in the form of nasty glares by the O’Connor’s. On the other hand, the four children could not have been happier. For them running around in emptied living quarters in the middle of the night and playing with a large box emptied of its contents was joy in its purest form. To the horror of the strict and impatient mothers, Sean and Eric encouraged the kids to run around and have a good time.
In a few hours the truck was emptied and the house was filled. The only thing that looked the same was the refrigerator with all of its items carefully transferred from Hamlin and placed orderly in their appropriate spot.
Sean and Eric drove the truck back to Hamlin and left the women back at the house to continue the process well into the early morning hours.
Sean and Eric finally finished the process and dropped the rental truck off and drove back to the Simpson apartment to knock off a few beers. To agnostic Eric, as Sean jokingly referred to him, a few beers usually meant 18 to 24 in one sitting. In spite of the mass quantity ingested in one sitting the alcohol never seemed to faze him unless he started a second case. His brew of choice was usually the cheapest swill available, and Sean had a very difficult time drinking more than two or three in a sitting.
Sean’s drinking had been an issue during the couple’s marriage. It was not that Sean drank too much; it was Samantha’s insistence on controlling Sean’s consumption to the point where it made him resentful, but it was Sean that allowed Sam to control every aspect of his life. He assumed that would make her happy.
The only time Sean was allowed to drink was when Samantha was present, or if he was with Eric, because Eric promised to monitor the situation.
It was early in the morning after a long night of moving, so after a couple of beers Sean asked Eric if they could get going to the house. Eric was Sean’s ride.
“Man, you need to stop wearing the skirt and grow some balls,” Eric joked.
“It has nothing to do with that, I am just tired.”
“Bullshit, she has got you by the balls. Don’t think that I’m fooled by her act I have been listening to her lies for years and I see right through her. You need to grow some nuts or she’s going to screw you over again. I get why you stay with her, because of the kids. But you are crazy of you think she has changed. ”
Eric’s words stung because deep down inside Sean knew that Samantha had not exactly been a saint in the marriage. She had befriended the Simpson’s at a time she was deeply involved in one of her many extramarital affairs, the latest was with her best friend’s former live-in boyfriend.
In typical fashion, Samantha attempted to portray herself as the victim, not the betrayer, only to be forced to recant to her new friends when she begged Sean to come back in her life.
Sean did not like to be reminded of his wife’s indiscretions. The last affair was a particularly painful period in his life and resulted in the loss of a job he loved, and it destroyed many friendships.
When Sean decided to take her back he was warned by everyone who could get his ear that people don’t change and it was likely she wouldn’t truly change. That went against everything that the faithful God fearing lay preacher believed.
Surely a loving God would not allow a faithful servant like Sean to suffer any more humiliation; Samantha had changed by God’s grace, she once was lost, but like everyone, she was a sinner who repented. Sean was also led to believe that the affairs were his fault because he was not the master of his house.
It was as clear as day in the Bible, “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive,” it said in Timothy 3:4. And if that were not enough, he had memorized “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” in Ephesians 5:25.
There were few people in Sean and Samantha’s life who knew about the affair, and that suited Sean. Unfortunately Eric knew all too much and while he tried to be supportive, he didn’t want to sit idly by while Sean’s marriage imploded again. To Eric, Sean was a fool who didn’t learn from his mistakes.
“Let’s just get going,” Sean begged.
“Do you want me to grab some ointment for those whip marks?”
“Screw you Simpson.”
“I’m just busting your balls…if you have any!” Eric said as he let out a hearty laugh.
“Very funny.”
They got into Simpson’s car, the one they drove in to work together everyday, an old Cadillac with a digital speedometer and two dashboards, one that Simpson had to pop in place so he could start the car and another that he put in after the car started so he could actually see how fast he was going.
A ride in Eric’s beat up Caddy was always an event; you never knew what was going to malfunction first, the driver or the vehicle.
Sean’s move to Albion meant that he and Eric would no longer be sharing a ride to work. Presumably the two of them would have to find another outlet for their rants about “the old lady,” their co-workers and the weekly analysis of the NFL.
Once they arrived at the household Eric grabbed his wife and kidsand Sean thanked him profusely for being the only person that helped him move.
“See you at work on Monday,” Eric said.
“Thanks E, I really love you man.”
“Don’t get like that Sean.”
“I’m serious dude.”
“So am I, don’t go homo on me! Ha ha ha, just kidding bud, you know I love you too. I’ll see you Monday and don’t be late!”
Eric and Sean worked at a factory in Rochester that remanufactured industrial sized copier parts. It was thankless, and dangerous work that involved the use of harsh chemicals and powders that were used to coat the parts. It was also mindless work, and thus it inspired Sean to become a voracious reader of books, and bury his head into a Bible.
Sean’s move to Albion meant that his commute would be even longer.Eric was Sean’s boss and when they rode in together they were always late and on occasion Eric would call Sean into his office to give Sean what seemed like a legitimate verbal warning for being late. Sean would takeit personally and after Sean got all worked up Eric would finally admit he was just joking.
Once Eric left, Sean was alone with Samantha in their new house. As was always the case the first thing Sean did was to walk into the boys room kiss them goodnight and stare at them for a few minutes and pray over them. Not long afterward Sean went to bed with Samantha in their new house.
“Goodnight Sean.”
“Goodnight? Don’t you want to “break-in” the new house?”
“Very funny, get some sleep you’ve been drinking.”
“I had two beers at Eric’s...”
“I don’t give a shit if you had one sip of fucking beer or a gallon of wine,you know the rules, and there is no drinking alcohol when I am not around.”
“Ok dear.”
“Just go to sleep, I’ll take care of you in the morning.”
True to her word Samantha “took care” of Sean every morning, She approached it as if it was her wifely duty, more like a sex worker at a massage parlor than a loving wife. It was difficult to tell if she really enjoyed it or not. Sean’s libido made him forget about the impersonal aspect of it, and in many ways it was in Sean’s mind, one of Samantha’s few redeeming qualities. Sean also knew when she stopped doing it, she was in the midst of an affair. In her own perverse way, Samantha could not “cheat” on a paramour.
In the evening Samantha used sex as a weapon, only rewarding it to Sean for compliance or when she was in a manic faze which usually indicated that she was in the early stages of an emotional affair that was about to become physical. During one of their many attempts at resolving problems through marriage counseling, Samantha freely admitted she would simply imagine she was with someone else when she was in bed with Sean.
That Sunday, Sean went to church like he always did. It was a big old white church, filled with beautiful tributes to Jesus, but barely ever half-filled with worshipers.
They allowed Sean to periodically give sermons during a contemporary service. Sean loved public speaking, and even though attendance was sparse, he had a small following of friends that would stroke his fragile ego each week. That kept him going.
The topic of his sermon that Sunday was how God had blessed him with a new house. He usually studied for the sermon during the week, and in his typical last minute fashion, Sean wrote the outline to his sermon in the car on the way to church.
When they lived in Hamlin, it was only two miles from church, so cramming together an outline for a whole sermon proved to be a challenge. Nonetheless, Sean lived in a world where he could not function without a clearly defined deadline to force him to action, another of his paradoxically beneficial and detrimental personality traits.
To the attendees, Sean exuded confidence, and the only time he stumbled was when he tried to interject any form of humor into the sermon. Even though he led a contemporary service, many members of the congregation held the church as a sacred and solemn place.
Monday arrived and Sean confronted work with a new vigor, now he was working to pay for a house instead of, as in the words of his critical in-laws, “pissing money down the drain by renting.”
Sean’s main job at Alkor Manufacturing. was to coat large metal rollers, which looked like rolling pins, with Teflon. This involved the use of highly toxic paint and other chemicals. The process was fairly simple. A spray gun mechanism rolled across a bar shooting out Teflon paint as the roller spun on a contraption in the booth, a fan took away the bulk of the fumes. Sean and other painters like him had to wear paper respirators as protection.
The respirators did little to prevent the noxious fumes from entering the operator’s lungs, which on a busy night would actually ache at the end of the shift. There was little use in complaining about the lack of safety measures or protective equipment, unless you had a good lawyer to sue the company on your behalf. If you had that kind of money you wouldn’t be working at Alkor in the first place.
To add insult to injury, in the years before Sean found God he smoked a lot of cigarettes. The combination of inhaling paint fumes and the previous damage smoking caused to his lungs, resulted many a sleepless night where Sean would be coughing up phlegm filled with blood. That stopped when he quit smoking.
The process was completed by baking the steel rollers in an industrial oven. The rollers were placed on a conveyor belt and rolled, spinning, over a series of high intensity bulbs. They came out the other end very hot looking like a deformed Teflon coated frying pan. The grunt was in charge of loading them onto a huge rack on wheels for cooling.
The cast of characters at Alkor were a solid basis for a prime-time sit-com. There was Sean’s spiritual adviser Mike Miles, a heavy set black man and former heroin addict who found God and kept him as close by as he used to keep the needle he used to inject himself.
Aaron Counsel, another African American whose talents included the ability to talk like either Mr. T or Colin Powell, depending on the situation. Phomphet Chisouvangh, an ambitious Laotian with a hot temper and a warm heart. Jimmy Carrack, the long blonde haired male who perpetuated the dumb blond stereotype and Steve Theophilus, a heavy set greasy Greek with bad teeth.
They were all led by Rick Stephens, a grey haired, gravel voiced chain smoking Elvis Presley look alike, if Elvis had lived to be 60 years-old..
It was Rick who was the first to give Sean shit about his new house; then again Rick lived to dish out as much grief as he could.
“Hey there Mr. Homeowner.” Rick greeted Sean with his gravel voice.
“Hey Rick.”
“Hey guys the homeowner actually acknowledged my existence. So what is it like to be better than the rest of us?”
In spite of the fact that Rick had worked at Eastman Kodak for the better part of twenty years and owned a luxurious house at one point of his life, in 1996 he was living alone in a small apartment complex, the same complex Sean had left the previous weekend.
Rick’s life had been turned upside down by a propensity to drink, and a vindictive wife. Rick emerged from his divorce deeply bitter. No one could blame him, in spite of his personality flaws, he was a hard worker and a good father.
“It’s all right; we have a lot of work to do,” Sean quipped.
“It’s all right to be better than the rest of us?” Rick screamed at the top of his lungs. “I bet it is. Maybe you’ll let me hold your dick when you take a piss or wipe your ass after you take a shit.”
Rick paused, “Oh…I’m sorry did I offend you preacher boy?”
With his “preacher boy” comment Rick burst into laughter. The rest of the crew burst into laughter with him because they knew that if they didn’t then they may wind up becoming the target of his attacks.
Rick was could be ruthless to his crew, and yet when he dealt with upper management, Rick was an ass-kissing lap dog who feigned absolute loyalty in their presence but as soon as the higher ups left the room he was the first to verbally lambaste them.
“You didn’t offend me Rick,” Sean said quietly.
“Of course I didn’t offend you; I wouldn’t want to offend the guy who sucks Eric’s dick every weekend, after all he is my boss.”
The group burst out into laughter again. Rick had identified a weakness in Sean. Even though Sean was fiercely loyal to his best friend Eric he was not willing to turn Rick in for his reprehensible behavior which included his smoking in the building after management left, and falsifying timecards.
Sean held a lot inside while he was at work, including his frustration that he for a crew leader who had the intellect of a gnat. But Sean was not in a position to judge Rick considering the fact that Sean was a high school dropout. Sure, Sean had gotten his General Education Diploma in1992, but a GED didn’t exactly make someone look intelligent, if anything it showed an inability to complete something.
Rick was Sean’s supervisor when a temporary employee, a Laotian friend of Phomphet’s, whose grasp of the English language was very limited, had a crush on Sean. To the rest of the crew it was a harmless joke and they encouraged him to grab Sean’s ass and to address him as “gorgeous.”
At first Sean thought it was harmless but when the guy insisted on a kiss Sean decided that he had to protest, he reported the co-worker, whose name he did not even know, to management. A report to management in Sean’s case meant telling Eric over a few beers.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow and I promise this will stop.”
“E, I don’t want to get the guy in trouble.”
“C’mon Sean, the guy is grabbing your ass. I know I bust your balls about being gay but this is serious. I promise I’ll take care of it.”
Rick and the rest of the crew had their share of laughs at the expense of Sean. The “gay Laotian” situation was simply more fodder for them which is why up to that point Sean had been reluctant to report the situation.
After Rick had joked about Sean’s newly acquired house he felt that. Sean felt more emboldened and he reported his co-worker.
The situation resulted in Sean getting called into the office of the head of human resources, Patrick Senate. Although Pat acknowledged the situation and admitted it must be difficult to contend with, his main goal was to inform Sean that since it was male to male contact that there was no basis for a sexual harassment lawsuit. Basically Pat was doing damage control for the company.
Working at Alkor became a greater burden with Sean’s move to Albion. The commute was thirty five miles, none of which was on an expressway. The job paid very little and the only way Sean was able to make ends meet was to work fifteen hours of overtime and six days a week.
On a bad winter night the commute could take upwards of an hour. Even though Sean hated the work he had lots of free time when the machines weren’t working or after the head honchos left the building.
Rick would often let the crew take hour and a half long breaks as a way to screw the company for paying him too little. This gave Sean a lot of time to study the Bible and practice guitar but not much time at home with his family.
Within a year the company would receive an influx of grant money to expand their business into Silicone Rollers for laser printers. The new specialty meant that new managers and engineers were coming in to tinker with the factories processes, and the staff.
Rick was the first to go when Eric found out he had been leaving as much as three hours early. Rick’s early exits were discovered when the night alarm malfunctioned and Eric reviewed the burglar alarm records and noticed that the time that Rick was signing out of the system and setting the alarm was well ahead of the scheduled departure time. Sometimes by as much as two hours.
Eric was terminated a few weeks later when he had a run in with a newly hired female engineer named Erin.
In spite of the influx of cash via grants and new investors, it was becoming evident that the new engineering crew was driving the business into the ground. As the days progressed, orders were late and less than twenty percent of the product the factory produced passed inspection.
Aaron sensed impending layoffs and he went on workmen’s comp, the same way he had many times before. Aaron knew how to work the system; he actually received money from the state for babysitting his own children. They were able to accomplish the feat by having Aaron’s live-in enroll in school full-time and so the state paid for a babysitter.
Since the couple was not married Aaron accepted the payments and no questions were asked.
Sean had a hard time staying out of trouble once Eric was gone. It was evident that the engineer that had batted heads with Eric was gunning for Sean because of the fact that Eric and Sean were friends.
After a few weeks Sean was suspended from work for damaging some rolls that were prototypes. When he returned the female engineer demanded that he apologize to her and to the vendor, when Sean refused she put him out again and he never returned.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Sean and Samantha had used what little money they had in savings to pay for the house. Samantha worked part-time as a rural postal carrier, but that was not enough to pay the bills.
The situation created more fodder for Samantha’s family to paint Sean as a loser who couldn’t take care of his family.
Alkor fought Sean for his unemployment benefits and even though Sean eventually won them, the couple had fallen way behind on all of their bills.
Sean found out later that the fiasco cost the engineer her job at Alkor, and her husband left her. Sean found some satisfaction in her troubles, but he also felt guilty for not being a good Christian and forgiving her transgressions.
Alkor stayed in business only a few months after Sean quit, because their main vendor moved its factory to Germany, closer to Alkor’s number one competitor. In the span of a few months the company experienced massive growth and a massive collapse. Maybe it was a blessing that he did not have to suffer the fate of his former co-workers. At least he had a head start in the job search.
Sean now found himself unemployed in a house he had less than a year and a wife who only worked part-time, delivering mail. The couple had enough income to barely survive week to week as long as the unemployment insurance and food stamps kept coming.