Marine Park

HEAVY LIFTING





Lorris turned the key in the garage door lock, and I pulled the door up. Look, said Lorris. Icicles, he said. They were hanging from the metal runner on the bottom.

            There were three shovels in the back of the garage and Lorris picked two, grasping each at its center to test the weight. He handed me the longer one, the slightly heavier one, for breaking up ice patches. He was too small for that. Then we closed the garage door.

            Outside, on Avenue R, the snowdrifts went up as high as the information boxes on the bus stop poles. The fire hydrants were completely buried. We tried to put our boots in the few footsteps in the middle of the street. If we dug down we’d be walking on the double yellow line. The plows weren’t out this early. I carried the shovel on my shoulder, blade up. Lorris dragged his behind him. Every once in a while he’d pick it up to knock off the snow sticking to the end.

            At the first house, Lorris waited at the bottom of the stairs. You go, he said. I took off my glove to ring the bell. Shovel your walk? I asked the old woman who answered. Kenneth, she yelled behind her, before she disappeared into the warmth. A man appeared in his undershirt. Move along now, he said.

            We only went to houses with driveways, for the possibility of extra work. Ones with cars in front, to say that someone was home. Often the windows with no Christmas decorations, because non-Christians paid better for this kind of thing. The rest of them shoveled little pathways down their own steps on the way to mass. Lorris was good at spotting mezuzahs nailed to the wooden frames.

            At the third house a little girl answered the door. She was even younger than Lorris. She still had her pajamas on. Is your mom home? I said. Lorris looked up from the bottom of the stairs. A beautiful lady came up behind the girl, wrapped in a wool blanket. Is something wrong? she asked. Do you need some shoveling? I said. I pointed at my shovel with my bare hand.

            The lady looked behind her, into the house. What’re you charging? she said.

            Twenty bucks, I answered. I could hear Lorris suck in his breath.

            I’ll give you ten, she said.

            I need fifteen, I told her. She played with the hair on top of the girl’s head. Clean our driveway out too? she asked.

            We were always good shovelers, Lorris and I. I think we came out of the womb doing it. Lorris used the small one for finesse work—the stairs, the edges under railings, the wheel paths of cars. He did the salt, if people had it for us, though he made me carry the bags from their doorsteps to strategic central locations. I didn’t like my gloves getting blue from the chemicals. I was the heavy lifting man, could carry three times my shovel’s maximum load.

            At the corner of Quentin, off Marine Park, a Jeep was stuck in the crosswalk. There were other crews of kids carrying their shovels on their shoulders. A big-chested man rolled down the passenger-side window and shouted into the cold: Twenty-five bucks if you get us moving. Two crews raced across the street to get there first, and because they made it at the same time, they both just started digging. A couple of early drinkers came out of the Mariners Inn without coats on, trailing steam behind them, to watch. Lorris pulled on my sleeve and said, I think Red Jacket’s the best. We leaned on our shovels while the Jeep’s wheels spun and shrieked, the gray slush shooting up into the shovelers’ faces. One kid was jamming the shovel blade right into the rubber of the tire, and the passenger-side window rolled down again, and the man said, Hey, knock that off.

            Once the Jeep lurched forward a little, a twenty-dollar bill came flying out the window and landed in the snow. Two kids dove on top of it. One of them had a Hurricanes football sweatshirt on. On the back it said, GIVE ’EM HELL. The Jeep screamed away, toward Avenue U and the Belt Parkway. Come on, Lorris, I said.

            It was twelve o’clock when we finished our usual streets. Someone with a snowplow was revving his engine on Thirty-Sixth, ruining our business. A group of three men, in heavy blue sweatshirts, jogged by us with shovels. The one in the front had hair on his face. ’Ta boys, he said. Can we go home now? Lorris whined, hitting my back with his shovel handle. Almost, I said. He unwrapped the Rice Krispies bar he kept in his pocket for emergencies.