The Pizza Boys

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The Pizza Boys - book excerpt

Chapter 1

Woodstock

Working at a pizza restaurant delivering pizza is an excellent thing for a high-school kid like me to do. Driving around town getting paid is cool. I am in the 10th grade, and this is how I make my spending money. The year is 1983, and I am 15 years old, enjoying my first real job. It enables me to memorize the streets, so I can deliver pizzas fast to the customers. Several of my buddies work at Mr Gravits pizza, and they talked to the manager about giving me a job. Randy, my friend from school, mentioned that they were hiring at the restaurant, so I applied, and the boss gave me the job.

Mark, Barry and Rod are my other friends who work here. Randy got them the job as well. Drivers get paid $3.35 an hour, which is the minimum wage, plus 50 cents per delivery. The more deliveries, the more money the drivers take home at the end of the night. The trick is getting several pizzas moving to the same area of town. Barry is the master at this.

I drive a ’76 Mercury hand-me-down that Kenny helped me buy from a neighbor. Kenny is the man who has raised me. I consider him to be my father. I spend nights driving the city streets, trying to deliver as many pizzas as possible. Some nights when I cash out, I have 80 or more dollars. Most of us drivers arrive at work at 4pm. and get off around 2am on the weekends. After work, we often sit around drinking and playing the video game Galaga until the sun comes up. I go home, sleep, and do it all over again. Trenton, my supervisor, is in his mid-twenties, but that seems old to us.

Kenny applied for a work permit for me, and they granted it. The state also allowed a hardship driver’s license for me to drive during working hours.

Darla, Kenny’s daughter, is 18 and works at a fashion boutique. It’s doubtful Darla will ever get out of Werchet. She is what people around Werchet refer to as white trash, but actually she is a wonderful person, just a bit misunderstood.

Monday mornings are tough because I don’t get off work until 11 on Sunday night and then go to school next morning. I often doze through Mrs Brown’s first-period record-keeping class. The teacher likes me, and I like her, but she rides my ass. She even went to Kenny’s work once, telling him how I am throwing my talent away because I don’t apply myself. I’m not super-intelligent or anything, but bright enough to recognize what I have to do to pass the 10th grade. The only interest I have is just getting by.

Kenny was my mother’s best friend when they were in kindergarten until she died in a car crash on my first day of school in the first grade. The principal and the school counselor came into the class to get me that morning. As they walked me to the office, I felt the principal’s hand on my shoulder as he walked by my side. I thought I was in trouble for something, and I did my best to think of something wrong I had done, but nothing came to my mind. I remember hearing the principal’s heels clacking on the tile floor as he walked. I liked the sound and, looking down, I saw he was wearing brown dress shoes with shiny gold-colored buckles. We reached the office, and my grandparents and Kenny were waiting. My grandparents were sitting in front of the principal’s desk, Kenny was standing looking out of the window. When I walked in, Kenny walked over to me as my grandparents stood up. The principal walked behind his desk, taking a seat in his huge leather chair. Kenny dropped to his knees, making eye contact with me, and he told me the news.

“Woodstock. After your mother dropped you off for school this morning, she had an accident with another car. She passed away. Do you know what that means?”

“Like my dad?”

“Yes, hon, like your dad.”

The news devastated me, and I cried and screamed as I fell to my knees. The anguish was crippling and suffocating.

I lived with my grandparents for the next year until I was seven. Grandpaw and grandmaw were getting old, so Kenny asked them if I could live with him. I loved Kenny and had been around him my whole life, so I wanted to. I went to stay with Kenny and his daughter Darla. Kenny always embraced me. He is a great man. After two years, I started referring to Kenny as Pops. Kenny treats me like a son, so calling him Pops makes sense. The man is the only father I’ve ever known. Kenny is a good provider for Darla and me. I see unhappiness in his eyes and I wonder if he feels stuck in Werchet. I want to get out of Werchet some day, but I don’t hate the town. Darla does. She fucking despises this place. Guitar playing I see as my avenue out so, hopefully, I will never be stuck here. However, if I stay here, I will not necessarily view it as being stuck.

Mrs Brown, my record-keeping teacher, always says I am quite the dreamer.

“Yes, I am,” I respond.

She thinks the world of me as I do her. Students see her as hip. Mrs Brown is always going to Kenny’s garage, talking to him.

A fling may be in their future. It doesn’t bother me any. Pops needs to get his like the rest of us.

I pay close attention and realize most people are unhappy. Most search for more in life, regardless of what they have. Some use alcohol and drugs, hoping to fill a hole in themselves. Well, I ain’t clear what life does to a person but, based on what I’ve observed, I ain’t sure I want to be an adult. It seems adults find jobs, which they hate, get married to a wife or husband they aren’t happy with, and bitch about each other until they die. Many adults appear miserable. At least my friends and I think so. One day after class, I asked Mrs Brown what was the matter with adults. She responded by saying: “The youth of the time. That’s what’s wrong with us.” She loves to be sarcastic. Then she asked me what I meant, and so I told her they all seemed unhappy, aside from her.

“Mrs Brown, why do you seem happy when no other adults do?”

“Why do you assume most adults are unhappy?”

“The way they look and carry themselves. Even people I deliver pizzas to look unhappy.”

I told her how I heard couples fighting, cursing each other like dogs when I made deliveries.

“So you think I live a peaceful life?” she asked.

“Yes. What do you do to be happy?”

“Simple. I feel content and thankful with what I have, and I don’t owe more than I make.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s the answer.”

“Wow! Rock on.”

I thought about what she said, not owing more than she makes. Mrs Brown is right. As I drive through the neighborhood looking around, I notice that people have so much shit in their garages that there isn’t even enough room to park their cars in them. That’s what Mrs Brown meant by having a bunch of crap you can’t manage and don’t need. Mr Watkins, my neighbor, is a sanitation worker with a new Mustang. Ain’t no way he can afford that on his salary. At this moment, I decide as an adult I intend to be like Mrs Brown. On Monday, I will tell her my goal as it will make her happy. She will still fail me in her class, however, for not doing the assignments. That’s OK because I don’t need her class to graduate. I am just taking her class because she is so rad. Mrs Brown always asks me if I know what I am doing credit-wise. What she means is, am I sure I have calculated everything correctly. I’ve added up the credits and understand what I need to pass the tenth grade and high school.

I ask if she will go over the credits with me.

“Hell no, that’s your problem, not mine.”

Mrs Brown has looked at my credits, however. The student office aide is my cousin, and she said she saw Mrs Brown with my file one day.

Mrs Brown always seems calm, but I saw her get mad once. My friend Stan and I were sitting in our cars in the parking lot drinking beer during lunch. Stan had one or several too many, and when he returned to class, he heaved up all over his desk. Mrs Brown fumed. The stench of puke and alcohol captured the room. She sent him stumbling down the hall to the nurse’s office. Mrs Brown never told the principal, I guess, because Stan never got in trouble. She acts cool like that; she understands kids.

This incident was the talk of the school. I told my friends that Stan and I were drinking baby buds in the parking lot, and Stan drank too many, and he threw up all over his desk in class. We laughed so hard for several minutes. The next day, the principal called me to his office. Mrs Brown was there also. I got suspended for having alcohol on school property.

“Why did you report me and not Stan?” I asked Mrs Brown.

“Stan will never amount to anything. With him, it doesn’t matter. If you have guidance and discipline beginning now, you will. That’s why.”

***

It’s Friday evening, and the rain is pouring down in sheets, which means work will be busy. Every person in town will call to have a pizza delivered. I should make good money in tips. The first pizza to hit the delivery shelf is for Mr Lazaro, and he is a big tipper. He lives over on Warren drive, about 10 miles from the pizza place. The old dude seems to be a good man in his sixties, and he’s the only person I’ve ever met who served in the Second World War. Mr Lazaro was a prisoner of war. Randy, my co-worker’s dad, knows him, and he says Mr Lazaro suffered torture and beatings by the Germans for more than a year. You wouldn’t think it, although I ain’t sure what a beat man is supposed to act like, it is strange to think someone would torture Mr Lazaro. His wife was a teacher at my high school. Mrs Lazaro retired the year before I entered.

Mr Lazaro always orders a large pepperoni with extra cheese, and he has me stop and get him a six-pack of beer. Mr Lazaro calls and tells the owner of the Quick Stop to sell beer to the pizza-delivery kid. Once or twice Mr Lazaro has given me a beer.

I arrive at Mr Lazaro’s house in good time.

“Hey, how are ya, Woodstock?”

“Fine, and you?”

“Not bad for a rainy night.”

Mr Lazaro gives me the money for the pizza and beer and a three-dollar tip. Driving out of the neighborhood, I plan to take a round or two uptown before going back to work. Uptown is a strip that we kids cruise called Victory Drive. It is about three miles long, beginning at a roundabout by Kroger’s, going west with a detour through the Sonic. It continues west to the Dairy Queen, where we turn around and drive the opposite direction where it starts over, and we do this for hours. There is also a store parking lot where we will pull in to talk with one another. Cops come through and keep us from assembling. It’s known as the pig lot.

The point is that if I didn’t fuck around so much during deliveries, I could make more money. Sometimes I make special deliveries that generate more money. These deliveries comprise a pizza along with a bag of weed to specified individual customers. Customers requesting special distributions are clients of my employer. I bring the bills back to Trenton, and he gives me 20 per cent, which means I end up with extra dollars a night added to the gas pay and regular tips. I am the only one that my boss trusts for special deliveries.

Another regular customer who calls in on Friday nights which Trenton almost always delivers himself is the Corral Club. This place is open during football season and it’s where all the high-school kids go after the games. It has live music, air hockey, and pool table games. A woman named Mrs Hawthorne runs it. She runs a tight ship. Only 11th and 12th graders can go out into the parking lot. Everyone else has to stay inside. Mrs Hawthorne knows what grade every kid is in. There is no sneaking anything by her. My boss delivers her pizza because, if any of us delivers to the Corral Club, we will hang out and lose track of time and be late returning from a delivery. Trenton is only 25. I think he likes delivering there to see the high-school girls.

Mrs Hawthorne’s husband is a coach at the local college. Both do a lot with youngsters in the community, keeping kids busy. When Trenton can’t deliver for some reason, he sends me to the Corral Club to make the delivery. Girls always ask me to dance when I go, but I don’t know how, so I don’t let myself into that situation. Something I like about the club is Skip Hankins plays rhythm guitar in the band. What a fantastic guitar player. Skip dated Darla for a while. One time I walked into her room and she was going down on him.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Fuck ya,” she responded.

Darla is easy, a good girl but has slept with every boy in her class and mine.

Everybody loves Darla. One night, after closing the pizza place, we were all sitting around drinking when Trenton, my boss says: “Woodstock, does your sister have a boyfriend?”

“No, why?”

“I would love to knock the bottom out.”

“Darla will let you whether she has a boyfriend or not, but you are like 25 and she is 18. Can’t you get someone your own age?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Just ask her to screw. Cut through all the crap,” I said.

Rod’s older brother comes into the pizza place to bullshit sometimes. He says not to waste time giving a girl many lines – just come right out and ask her to do it. I thought about that approach, but I don’t have the guts. He says it works and I suggested Trenton use this line with my sister Darla.

Darla isn’t my real sister. I refer to her as such because it makes things less complicated. If I tell people she is the daughter of Kenny, the man who raised me, I have to go into the whole story of losing my mother and father when I was little. I miss my mother and think of her often. I can’t remember much of my dad. Almost everything I know about either of them Kenny has shared with me. I do remember a special moment walking through town with my mother one day when I was very young.