Tex

MICHAEL PHILLEY TEX

It is two hours before sunrise, their breath vapors illuminated by the porch light. They make their way to the station wagon parked out front and scrape windows glazed with ice. Tires crackle against frozen snow as the ’53 Mercury lumbers onto a road shrouded by early morning fog. The temperature is near zero, yet Tex opens his window a crack before lighting a Lucky Strike. A plume of smoke leaves his lips and curls over the glass into the darkness. While Tex drives, the boy pounds a baseball back and forth into his new mitt – a Christmas present – the leather smelling strong and burnished with linseed oil. By spring the pocket will be deep and molded to the boy’s left palm, and he imagines snaring hard grounders and intercepting long fly balls.

Tex takes a final drag from his cigarette and flicks it out the window. They turn a corner and the Mercury’s headlights reveal the two story brick walls of the bakery. Christmas lights still frame the garage entrance, giving the heavy metal door a reddish green hue. Tex says, “Mickey, you’d better ditch that mitt under the seat. I’ll need your arms and hands free to work the shelves.” He parks the car, and as they walk to the garage he tugs on the visor of his hat. The boy’s father in uniform – felt trousers, jacket and military style hat – all blue, with “Tex” embroidered above the front pocket of the jacket and “Sunbeam Bread” decaled on the hat.

The garage houses at least twenty bread delivery trucks. They are painted bright yellow and blue and

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each side displays a smiling girl with curly golden locks, holding a loaf of Sunbeam Bread. Upstairs, on the second level, machinery drones, and the sweet, thick aroma of freshly baked bread wafts down to where the fleet of trucks sits idle, their engines still silent.

The truck drivers start arriving and workday banter begins. “Hey, Tex, how did an ugly cuss like you turn out this good-looking kid?” “Tex, can I book your assistant for tomorrow’s run?” Fidgeting, the boy sees Phil, a thick black mustache jutting from his upper lip. He is embarrassed because Phil knows the trouble between Tex and the boy’s mother. Phil and Arlene dropped by the day after Christmas and witnessed yet another argument. The boy’s mother was in tears and went with Arlene for a drive. Tex and Phil watched an afternoon football game on TV, not saying anything the entire time their wives were out. That’s when the boy started pounding the baseball into his new mitt.

Tex walks over to a large delivery board mounted on the wall and pulls a clipboard from a peg. It’s time to load the truck. He brings a dolly from inside the truck and they head for the bread stacks. They make several dolly runs to load what seems like an endless number of cardboard sleeves – open at the ends, each sleeve containing a dozen loaves of Sunbeam white bread, the loaves wrapped in waxy white paper, and on each side a smiling girl with golden locks exclaiming, “Perfect for Sandwiches!”

The boy’s job is to carry the cardboard sleeves three or four at a time and help place them in rows along the inclined plywood shelves inside the truck. After the white bread, they load several sleeves of darker wheat bread, and then some specialty breads – buttermilk,

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rye, and potato. After the breads, they load the buns and pastries. When they’ve finished, Tex tears open a package of jelly-filled doughnuts and says, “Eat up, Mickey, there’s more work ahead.” He climbs onto the driver’s seat, starts the engine, grips and turns the big steering wheel that looks just like the one on the bus the boy rides to school. The boy sits shotgun on a cushioned ledge above a shallow stairwell and landing board. Without seatbelts, their bodies twist and toss as the truck comes down a ramp and settles onto the street. The boy likes riding high, looking down at the world and waving at the cars passing by.

The sun rises as they make their first stops – a Piggly Wiggly supermarket on the south edge of town, the 24- hour diner down by the river, a corner grocery across from a park and ball field. The boy likes the quiet of early morning, the spaciousness and texture of a waking world. Tex carries the inventory clipboard and calls out for the boy to bring in bread and bakery items to restock the shelves. They settle into a rhythm as the day wears on, and the boy feels elated and important to be doing a man’s work.

At a small food market, a paperboy wearing his high school letter jacket brings in a bundle of the Rockford Morning Star. The headline reads, “Ike Healthy For Second Term.” A radio plays in a back room; Elvis Presley is singing “Don’t Be Cruel.” The boy has seen Elvis perform on TV – the Ed Sullivan show. “Jailhouse Rock,” is showing at the Coronado Theater downtown.

By noon they’ve finished the rounds. Sitting in the truck, they eat Spam sandwiches drenched in mayonnaise. On the way back to the bakery, Tex stops the truck at a roadside bar in a rough section of town.

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There is no bread to deliver and the bar isn’t yet open. Tex asks the boy to wait in the truck. Through a window the boy sees him talking with someone inside. After a few minutes Tex opens the door, walks toward the truck, pauses and turns as a slender woman wearing a red cocktail dress appears in the doorway. She smiles and waves. Tex says something to her that the boy can’t make out, then climbs into the driver’s seat.

They drive along in silence for several minutes. The boy wants to ask his father about the woman back at the bar, but he feels he already knows what isn’t being said. He is not yet thirteen, his innocence still there for all to see. But he is becoming aware that the world can change quickly, that things are not always what they seem, that love between a man and a women can gradually slip away despite their best intentions.

They come to an intersection where there is heavy construction. Traffic is being routed onto a rough graveled road where a makeshift detour sign points the way between two rows of plastic cones. Tex looks straight ahead at the sign for a moment until someone honks behind him. He steers the truck onto the gravel, then pulls over to the side and stops. He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. The boy has never seen his father cry.

Back at the bakery, several drivers have arrived and are beginning their checkout. They sit on stools by large raised tables arranged along a wall. All are smoking, filling large round ashtrays with stubbed out butts. A veil of cigarette smoke hovers just below the ceiling. Tex and the boy mount stools at an end table and soon Tex is adding numbers in his small black account book. He asks the boy to double-check the figures, just as he often does at home. The boy is happy to do this for his father;

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he looks at the columns of numbers and practices doing the math in his head. He finds a mistake, makes the correction, and shows Tex what he has done. Tex says, “Good job, Mickey. Let’s go home.”

Tex left Mickey’s mother two weeks later, soon after the boy’s thirteenth birthday. The pocket of Mickey’s mitt had deepened by then, yet he continued to pound a baseball into it, as if shaping the mitt gave him something to hold on to.

It has been half a century since Tex left, and in all those years the boy – now a man – saw Tex only a few times. Once, more than two decades ago, Tex parked his trailer home in front of Mickey’s house in Virginia and rang the doorbell. His thinning white hair was styled in small curls that made him look younger than 68. He told Mickey that Bush should bomb the hell out of Iraq. His third wife, Bernice, gave Mickey’s wife a houseplant. Tex lifted Mickey’s daughter, and then his son, onto his shoulders and carried them around the living room.

Tex died 14 years later. His stepdaughter called from Arizona to say his heart had finally given out. The last time they talked on the phone, Mickey reminded Tex about the bakery and helping him with his work. There was a long pause as if Tex was trying to recall something. Then he said that he appreciated that Mickey remembered. As they ended the call, Tex said to Mickey that he loved him. It wasn’t easy, but Mickey told his father that he loved him too.

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