The Turnaround Read Free

black. Black girls demanded to be satisfied. They were like wildcats when they got tuned up. That’s what Billy and Pete said.
    “You want somethin to eat, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go on down and talk to your father,” she said, with a head motion to the register area. “I’ll fix you something nice.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I get hungry, too.” Darlene chuckled. “And I would just . . .”
    Alex blushed and, unable to speak, moved along. He passed Inez, who was bagging up a rack of delivery orders, preparing to move them over to “the shelf,” where Alex would get his marching orders. Inez did not greet him.
    Farther down the line, he said hello to Paulette, the counter girl who served the in-house customers. She was twenty-five, heavy everywhere, large featured, and very religious. After lunch she commandeered the radio for the gospel hour, which everyone endured, since she was so sweet. With her high-pitched, soft-as-mouse-steps voice, she was nearly invisible in the store.
    Paulette was filling the Heinz ketchup bottles with Townhouse ketchup, the inexpensive house brand from Safeway. Alex’s father shopped at the Safeway every night for certain items that were cheaper than the offerings from the food brokers.
    “Morning, Mr. Alex,” she said.
    “Morning, Miss Paulette.”
    Alex met his father down by the register. Only John Pappas and his son rang on the machine. A D.C. tax schedule was fixed to the front of it, beside two keys rowed by dollars and cents. If the tab hit twenty dollars, which it rarely did, the ten-dollar key would be punched twice. On the sides of the register were Scotch-taped pieces of paper on which Alex had handwritten bits of song lyrics that he found poetic or profound. One of the customers, a pipe-smoking attorney with a fat ass and an overbite, assumed that Alex had written the lyrics himself, and jokingly told John Pappas that as a writer, his son “made a good counterman.” Pappas replied, with a smile that was not a smile, “You don’t need to worry about my boy. He’s gonna do fine.” Alex would always remember his father for that, and love him for it.
    John handed his son some ones and fives. He pushed rolls of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies along the Formica.
    “Here’s your bank, Alexander. You’ve got a couple of early orders.”
    “I’m ready. First I’m gonna grab a bite to eat.”
    “When those orders hit the shelf, I want you outta here. I don’t want you to get behind.”
    “Darlene’s makin me a sandwich.”
    “Quit screwin around.”
    “Huh?”
    “I got eyes. I told you before: don’t get too familiar with the help.”
    “I was just talking to her.”
    “Do what I tell you.” John Pappas looked toward the shelf over the dishwashing unit, where Junior was pulling down a drop hose with a power nozzle, preparing to hand-clean a pot. Inez was nudging him aside, placing a couple of tagged brown paper bags on the shelf. “You got orders up.”
    “Can’t I eat first?”
    “Eat while you’re walkin.”
    “But Dad —”
    John Pappas jerked his thumb toward the back of the store. “Get on your horse, boy.”
    ALEX PAPPAS wolfed down a BLT back by Junior’s station, then grabbed two bags off the shelf. A light green guest check was stapled to the front of each. On the top line was written, in Inez’s florid, lucid script, the delivery address. Below was the detailed order, itemed out, with prices, taxes, and grand total circled. Alex liked to guess the tax based on the subtotal. It wasn’t easy, as the D.C. tax was always a percentage and a fraction, never a whole number. But he had figured out a way to do it by stages of multiplication and addition. He had struggled all his life with school math, but he had taught himself percentages by working the register.
    Working here was more beneficial than school in many respects. He learned practical math. He learned how to get along with adults. He met people he would otherwise never have met.