The Hotel Eden(59)

“I’m through with accidents,” I told him. “Don’t worry. This is my third. I’m finished.”

The next day I was drafted to drive one of the two medical oxygen trucks. One of the drivers had quit and our foreman, Mac Bonner, came out onto the dock in the morning and told me to see Nadine, who ran Medical, in her little office building out front. She was a large woman who had one speed: gruff. I was instructed in a three-minute speech to go get my commercial driver’s license that afternoon and then stop by the uniform shop on Bethany Home Road and get two sets of the brown trousers and short-sleeved yellow shirts worn by the delivery people. On my way out I went by and got my lunch and saw Victor. “They want me to drive the truck. Dennis quit, I guess.” This was new to me and I was still working it over in my mind; I mean, it seemed like good news.

“Dennis wouldn’t last,” Victor said. “We’ll have the Ford loaded for you by nine.”

The yellow shirt had a name oval over the heart pocket: David. And the brown pants had a crease that will outlast us all. It felt funny going to work in those clothes and when I came up to the loading dock after picking up the truck keys and my delivery list, Jesse and Victor came out of the forest of cylinders grinning. Jesse saluted. I was embarrassed and uneasy. “One of you guys take the truck,” I said.

“No way, David.” Victor stepped up and pulled my collar straight. “You look too good. Besides, this job needs a white guy.” I looked helplessly at Jesse.

“Better you than me,” he said. They had the truck loaded: two groups of ten medical blue cylinders chain-hitched into the front of the bed. They’d used the special cardboard sleeves we had for medical gas on all the tanks; these kept them from getting too beat up. These tanks were going to be in people’s bedrooms. Inside each was the same oxygen as in the dinged-up green cylinders that the welding shops used.

I climbed in the truck and started it up. Victor had already told me about allowing a little more stopping time because of the load. “Here he comes, ladies,” Jesse called. I could see his hand raised in the rearview mirror as I pulled onto McDowell and headed for Sun City.

At that time, Sun City was set alone in the desert, a weird theme park for retired white people, and from the beginning it gave me an eerie feeling. The streets were like toy streets, narrow and clean, running in huge circles. No cars, no garage doors open, and, of course, in the heat, no pedestrians. As I made my rounds, wheeling the hot blue tanks up the driveways and through the carpeted houses to the bedroom, uncoupling the old tank, connecting the new one, I felt peculiar. In the houses I was met by the wife or the husband and was escorted along the way. Whoever was sick was in the other room. It was all very proper. These people had come here from the midwest and the east. They had been doctors and professors and lawyers and wanted to live among their own kind. No one under twenty could reside in Sun City. When I’d made my six calls, I fled that town, heading east on old Bell Road, which in those days was miles and miles of desert and orchards, not two traffic lights all the way to Scottsdale Road.

Mr. Rensdale was the first of my customers I ever saw in bed. He lived in one of the many blocks of townhouses they were building in Scottsdale. These were compact units with two stories and a pool in the small private yard. All of Scottsdale shuddered under bulldozers that year; it was dust and construction delays, as the little town began to see the future. I rang the bell and was met by a young woman in a long silk shirt who saw me and said, “Oh, yeah. Come on in. Where’s Dennis?”

I had the hot blue cylinder on the single dolly and pulled it up the step and into the dark, cool space. I had my pocket rag and wiped the wheels as soon as she shut the door. I could see her knees and they seemed to glow in the near dark. “I’m taking his route for a while,” I said, standing up. I couldn’t see her face, but she had a hand on one hip.

“Right,” she said. “He got fired.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. I pointed down the hall. “Is it this way?”

“No, upstairs, first door on your right. He’s awake, David.” She said my name just the way you read names off shirts. Then she put her hand on my sleeve and said, “Who hit you?” My burn was still raw across my cheekbone.

“I got burned.”

“Cute,” she said. “They’re going to love that back at … where?”

“University of Montana,” I said.

“University of what?” she said. “There’s a university there?” She cocked her head at me. I couldn’t tell what she was wearing under that shirt. She smiled. “I’m kidding. I’m a snob, but I’m kidding. What year are you?”