The Paperclip

It was a quiet evening at Grandma’s house. The adults were still sitting at the post-dinner table discussing some topic that had no interest to seven-year-old, Billy, who had wandered off in search of more exciting endeavors. He was sitting, alone, upon a built-in window seat covered in cushions and pillows that seemed too stiff and unused and clean staring out the window at the twilight encompassing the cul-de-sac. Outside, a man walked his dog, a solitary robin sat in a purple plum tree, and a blue minivan rolled by.

Boredom began to swallow Billy bite by bite as the grown-ups talked about Ronald Reagan or taxes or something and it was at that moment he noticed it. A small brown wire running from behind one of the stale blue pillows. Billy followed the wire and found it lead to a lamp. He reached under the shade, found the rigid black switch, pinched and turned. Billy felt the plastic tear at his fingertips, but soon the switch clicked and a soft 40-watt glow illuminated the room.

Next to the lamp there was an ancient ashtray. Clean and unused, like the pillows, its only current function was to hold a half-dozen, or so, paperclips and three pennies. Glancing into the dining room, Billy saw the grown-ups still seated, engaged in a heated discussion. He was, for the moment, unsupervised. He slid his hand over the surface of the ashtray. It was smooth and cool to the touch. The paperclips and pennies bumped into each other and Billy liked the different textures he felt. He ran his fingernail over the Lincoln Memorial and liked the clicking it made as it passed from one pillar to the next. Slyly, he put each of the pennies and two of the paperclips, one-by-one, into his pants pocket.

He followed the wire back to the window-seat and perched on the hard cushions. He lied down on his side, head on a stark pillow, and stared into the evening and wondered what to do next. He removed the treasures from his pocket and, with his index finger, followed the loops of the paperclip. Around once and a half and back, Billy’s finger ran. He wedged his finger into the upper loop and slid it between the metal until the metal gave and bent and Billy had made a hook. Delighted, he continued to bend the paperclip until it was nothing more than a nearly straight wire. He liked the way it felt between his fingers, feeling the bumps where the more distinct curves had once been.

The man with the dog, now heading the other direction, marched by the window. The dog lunged in the direction where the squirrel had been, but this time the man yelled, “Sophie,” and yanked on the leash and Sophie stopped pulling. Billy, sitting, watched as the man continued to his driveway and went inside his house. Inside, Billy heard the clock chime seven times and sat up abruptly.

The stiff pillow he had been leaning on fell toward him exposing an electrical outlet, the lamp’s power cord, and two slightly exposed copper-colored prongs. Billy, once again, glanced at the grown-ups who were settling down, but still engaged with one another and then at his snaking former paperclip. 

Still holding the mangled paperclip he lied down on his stomach staring at the outlet. He bent his knees and his tiny bare feet shot upward. He alternated knees and his feet made 45-degree arcs back and forth. Once, he slammed his right leg all the way down into the stiff, Papa Bear cushion and he turned and saw a small cloud of dust rise, but still garnered no grown-up attention.

He again looked at the electrical cord. He knew electricity was dangerous, knew it could shock him, but didn’t know why or how. Clearly, it was time for experimentation. He gave the cord a gentle tug. It remained fixed in the outlet, but the two prongs were much more exposed than they had been before. He smiled. He pinched his fingers together over the twisted paperclip wire and felt its smooth, now warm, texture all the way from end-to-end. He held the wire with both hands, one at each end, over the two exposed prongs. Another quick glance into the dining room showed that the coast was clear. He dropped the wire onto the prongs.

It was altogether fantastic and terrifying! All at once there was a pop, the lamp went out, and a tiny, but petrifying, flame sparkled from the outlet scarring it with a small black welt. The faint scent of burnt plastic filled the air in the vicinity of the plug. Acting quickly, Billy brushed the paperclip onto the floor, pushed in the plug, and replaced the pillow, but Dad was coming. In a final act of heroism, Billy picked up the paper clip, bent it, and deposited it back into his pocket before being picked up off the window seat and hauled, wailing loudly but without much physical resistance, into the spare bedroom detention center where he would await his sentencing. 

The Desert

Lisa put down her book and herbal tea and rolled her eyes when she heard the car door slam. With a deep breath and a fake smile, she opened her front door. Still smiling intently, she took in the warmth of the sun, the gentle, but haunting, coo of the mourning doves, the paddles of the prickly pear, and, of course, Jeremy.

His hair was carefully spiked and his salesman smile stretched across his face always ready for his next pitch, which, in this case, was selling himself to her. She could tell he’d visited the Summit Hut in preparation for the hike she had planned. He wore new zip-away hiking pants, which still had the plastic strip indicating they were size XL. He wore a short-sleeved collared shirt with the sleeves rolled just far enough to expose his ridiculous Celtic cross tattoo. He claimed to be half Irish and never resisted an opportunity to tell anyone. He was already sporting his Camelbak and a pair of Oakleys were perched on his spiked hair like a bird upon its nest. Flip-flop Teva sandals rounded out his hiking regalia.

She leaned against her doorframe taking in the show as he ambled up her walk. As usual, he was the first to speak.

“Hey, sexy thang! Let’s get out and see all them Saguaros.” She’d been dating him for three weeks and had found out the weekend before over a happy hour glass of wine at the B-Line that he had never been hiking before. He had also never been into Saguaro National Park. Both facts she considered intolerable and with such incompatible lifestyles she knew yet another break-up was inevitable, but she had decided to stick it out at least long enough to leave him with an appreciation of Tucson’s natural beauty.

“Morning, Jeremy. Looks like you’re feeling better.” He had shown up last night at midnight after a birthday party for one of his former fraternity brothers pounding on her door, drunk and disoriented, the front passenger-side wheel of his Ford Escape on the curb. He’d come in, put his hands on her shoulders, slurred some line like, “You’re the best, baby girl,” and then darted for the bathroom, but not without first passing his hand over both her breasts. She turned the TV on loud to drown out the sounds of his vomiting. He reemerged after about ten minutes without his pants, his shirt unbuttoned. “Hey, babe, I found your Listerine, so I’m minty-fresh and ready for some lovin’.”

Disgustedly, she helped him back into his pants and drove him home in his car, which he had demanded, probably in a last-ditch effort to get lucky, where she called a cab to take her back home.

Now, here he was, seemingly hangover-free and inexplicably free of remorse for any of the overindulgence of last night. She figured he at least owed her twenty bucks for the cab fare, but decided to save that point for later. She really did want him to have a good day outdoors.

“Yeah, it was a bit of a rough night for me, I don’t even remember getting home!” he said, almost proudly.

“I do,” she retorted. He completely missed or intentionally ignored the two words and continued with his natural audacity.

“Anyway, girl, I was thinking I just got my car washed and I’m kinda worried about the chrome on my custom rims getting scratched so I think you should drive.”

“Fine, but remember the rule. My car, my music,” on a recent drive to Phoenix she had put in the soundtrack to the movie Once. She loved the beautiful vocal blend of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. She couldn’t entirely explain why, but each time she heard the album she felt a strange combination of empowerment and gripping sadness and she thought Jeremy could stand to expose some of his self-oppressed emotions. After two songs he’d told her it was boring, indie-radio crap and played a bunch pop-rap hip-hop albums he had burned specifically for the trip. He had told her the music, “Puts me into a boning mood.” She suffered though the entire hour and a half drive listening to men who felt that the words bitch and ho and whore were completely synonymous with the word woman. It disgusted her and placed her about as far as possible from being in a “boning mood”.

“That’s fine, girl, I’ll give your indie-crap another chance.” She grabbed Once and, out of pure spitefulness, cleared every other CD out of her Civic.

Saguaro National Park East and the Douglas Spring Trail were roughly an hour from the Feldman’s neighborhood home she’d lived in since college. She wasn’t looking forward to the drive. There were much closer hikes, but she liked that one a lot. She loved that the trail had no specific destination and the joy of being on the trail was simply for hiking itself.

In the car, Jeremy never stopped talking. He talked about his management position and about future business ideas he was planning. He talked about furnishing his apartment and how he was the only single guy he knew that had completely matching dining ware. He talked about how Phoenix was so much more exciting than Tucson and how, even at age 32, he could hit Mill Ave and nail just about any co-ed he laid eyes on there. Then he started going on and on about how he had to get back home by 5:00 so he wouldn’t miss the Cardinals’ game. It was an important match-up, apparently. When he started droning on about his fantasy football team, she turned the music up, which Jeremy responded to by speaking louder. Not even Glen Hansard could save her.

They drove on East Speedway past Harrison and Houghton, past Tanque Verde and Freeman and finally made the trailhead. It was a perfect Sunday for this and there were many cars in the parking lot. Jeremy got out of the car, stretched and yawned. As he stretched he made sure she would see his stomach muscles flex.

“You’re going to want better shoes than those flip-flops, your feet will get torn up.” She had somehow overlooked his miscalculated footwear until this moment. He, of course, had no other options, but swore he’d be fine and they set out to the rhythm of rubber slapping the skin of his heel with every step.

When Lisa registered their hike, Jeremy insisted his name be left off because, “It’s just the government tracking its free citizens.”

Her gait was graceful and smooth and effortless and she liked to hike quickly while taking in the sounds of the desert. Jeremy, behind her, continued his conversations about investments and his real estate license and his sandals slapped his feet and she couldn’t stand it. Jeremy would be Jeremy anywhere and she had been foolish to think otherwise. They went down a small hill into a wash and climbed out the other side. When Jeremy, for the second time, began telling her about how he’d nabbed the kicker David Akers for his fantasy football team she took off. She decided to stay just far enough in front of him that he would see her on long straightaways, but she would be clearly out of earshot.

She took in all the sounds of the trail. The wind playing musical notes on the Saguaro needles, the tapping of Gila woodpeckers, her gentle footsteps upon the shale stones that make up the trail. The trail climbed along the side of a canyon, switchbacking through the beautiful Saguaro forest. Looking forward, the imposing fir-crowned Rincon Mountains rose before her, behind her she saw glimpses of Tucson corralled in every direction by mountain ranges: the Santa Catalinas to the north, the Santa Ritas to the south, the Tucson Mountains to the west.

She finally rose above the Saguaro forest and into grassland spotted with scrub oaks and alligator junipers and mesquites. She listened to the cicadas and the sound of the breeze and her footsteps, which sounded softer now as the crunch of the rocks was replaced with the padded sound made by dirt and a fine layer of southwestern dust.

She had seen many animals on this trail in the past. Javelinas were common as were lizards and birds, of course, were everywhere. She’d once been sitting quietly and a Gila monster crawled slowly over a rock and stared at her briefly before continuing on its daily errands. As she rounded a bend, a tarantula ran out of the grass several feet in front of her and cruised down the trail. She didn’t like spiders in her home, but here, it seemed so natural. The spider was sharing its home with her and she appreciated that. The trail was so quiet she could actually hear the patter of its tiny feet as it maneuvered the trail before abruptly turning left and dashing back into the grass. She continued in a Zen-like trance enjoying every moment of being outside and feeling a true sense of freedom.

A shrill scream from behind her broke the spell. When the screaming continued she decided to investigate. She raced in the direction of the screams and could see Jeremy, quite a distance away, jumping and running like a maniac. He held a large stick and was smacking it against the ground haphazardly. She sprinted forward, her pony tail making brush strokes against her upper back. When she reached Jeremy, he was bent over and breathing hard, his left hand cupping his knee while his right hand extended, middle finger up, gesturing to a small black spot in the middle of the trail.

“Take that, bitch,” he said toward the spot before wheeling around and noticing her for the first time. “This son of a bitch came out of nowhere and attacked, I gave it what it deserved,” he explained.

Lisa leaned in and saw the spider, dead and flattened. Without saying a word she picked up the stick and carefully scraped the body off the trail, depositing it gingerly amongst the swaying brown grass. She felt rage burning behind her eyes as she looked at Jeremy. She could have killed him for taking her desert Zen away. Shaking her head she turned and headed back toward the car as fast as she could go. She could hear Jeremy yelling something at her back, but she didn’t care.

She reached the parking lot, climbed in her car and left. Glen and Marketa were belting out their harmonies and she took in the haunting sounds and she looked at the magical purple glow of the Santa Catalinas and she thought about Jeremy alone on the trail and that he’d probably miss at least part of his precious football game and as she passed Freeman and Tanque Verde and Houghton and Harrison a real smile, a smile of empowerment and freedom and happiness and independence, spread across her face and nothing, not even the surrounding mountain ranges, could contain it.

Schweck: A Short Story

“Here, try this,” offered Victor. He held a small bowl with a reddish pepper-looking powder that barely dusted the white enamel.

“What is it?” asked Christian hesitantly.

“Just try it, don’t be a weenie. Fill a spoon with it and then put it on your tongue. You’ll be soaring through the clouds in no time.”

Christian did as he was told. He tasted a unique flavor, like lemon juice and table pepper. It was potent and the boy’s mouth began to water. He began losing feeling in his tongue while he felt saliva seeping out the corners of his mouth. He grimaced at the embarrassing thought of explaining the drool to Victor. Christian would do anything to avoid looking like a fool.

Involuntary tears formed in Christian’s eyes as he looked at Victor, who was leaning back in the middle of his ancient couch arms stretched wide behind him, reaching in each direction, grinning like he’d just won the lottery. He began laughing, almost uncontrollably, the Adidas logo on his white tee bouncing in and out as he leaned forward to catch his breath.

“How’re you feeling?” Victor squeaked through peals of laughter. “You just downed more Szechuan pepper than I’ve ever seen. You’re tongue’s gonna be numb for a while, but one thing you ain’t gonna get is high. I’ve gotta take a leak, turn on the Xbox, I’m ready for some Black-Ops. Also, grab the vodka in the kitchen, let’s do a few shots. My mom will never notice.”

The boy hated being duped, but he liked Victor. He was three years older, a junior in high school. He had given Christian his first cigarette, first beer, first joint. The boy felt special around him. He enjoyed the thrill of feeling both rebellious and grown up and Victor could provide that more quickly than anyone else the boy knew.

While Victor peed, Christian grabbed a fifth of Popov sitting on the counter next to a rack of spices. He saw a bottle of unground Szechuan pepper and nonchalantly slipped it into his pants pocket. His mom hated his baggy pants, but the extra fabric could conceal just about anything, including a small bottle of Chinese spice.

After a few rounds of video games, some throat-burning shots, and several of Victor’s playful, but painful, clouts to the upper arm, Christian was spent. His apartment was across the Quaking Aspens complex. He checked for his spicy treasure, slipped on his jacket, and Victor sent him away with one more smarting blow, this time on the left side of his chest. “Just a badge for you to remember me by,” Victor countered to the boy’s exclamation of, “Ouch!”

Quaking Aspens was a large apartment complex full of a curious mixture of people. Many were down on their luck, living there for only a few months at a time taking advantage of moving-in specials that usually amounted to one or two months of reduced rent. Others were starting their adult lives and were financially located somewhere in between living with their parents and having enough to put down 10% for a house. The boy didn’t quite fit into either of those categories. His mother, Amber, was a widow and had turned to alcohol after the death of his father, but managed to hold her job of swing-shift produce manager at Safeway. Her income was just enough to pay the monthly bills as long as there were no unexpected expenses. They were able to eat fairly well given her ability to take home questionable produce free-of-charge despite the practice going against corporate policy.

Despite her drinking habits and the unflattering work uniform of a red polo shirt, black slacks, an apron, and the black baseball cap she wore five days a week, the boy’s mother was undeniably attractive. Five-foot-seven and physically fit, blonde with dazzling blue eyes. Her eyes had possessed a magical sparkle that had perished shortly after her husband. Now they were more often blood shot and at the corners where small wrinkles used to make her eyes seem like they were smiling themselves had taken on a hint of sadness even during rare happy times. She continued to wear the engagement ring Christian’s father had given her, which she said she did to fend off horny male customers, but anyone who knew her could tell she was desperately clinging to whatever was left of him.

Despite the sparkle’s death, Christian’s mother was known throughout his middle school as Ms. Milf. A moniker he absolutely despised, but felt powerless to change. He combatted it by doing his best to keep his mother away from the school, but despite his best effort, he was still harassed about it relentlessly.

The boy entered his apartment and saw his mother sitting on the sofa. She was watching TV, holding a glass of clear liquid on the rocks. She didn’t really have a drink of choice, and despite her financial situation she had an extensive liquor collection so the boy never really knew what she was drinking.

“Hey Chris, where’ve you been?” asked his mother, “It’s my day off, I thought we were gonna make it a movie night. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s all good,” replied the boy. He had forgotten it was Wednesday and his mom was off work. She used to fill the time during mid-week off days to volunteer at the boy’s school, but that practice had ended during the first week of middle school when an eighth grader had asked the boy if he could have ten minutes in the utility closet with her. The boy carefully word-smithed his way into convincing his mother that Mrs. Davis, his homeroom teacher at the time, didn’t really need parent help. “I’ve got lots of homework to do,” the boy added, “I’m late because I decided to try out for the school play.”  

“That’s great! I didn’t know you were into acting,” his mother desperately wanted to be more involved in his life, but her work schedule meant she missed connecting with him most evenings. “Maybe I can help out with the production when it starts.”

“No, I don’t think it’s for me. I thought there’d be a lot of girls there, but there aren’t, and anyways I don’t think the drama teacher needs help. I’m gonna go do my homework.”

“Well, thought I’d offer,” Amber sank back into the couch, took a long pull from her glass, ran her fingers through her blonde hair, and let her boy leave the room.

In his bedroom, Christian got right to work. He removed the Szechuan pepper from his pocket and set about filling sandwich bags with what he assumed was about a gram of the powder, but in actuality was far less. He figured he could sell the baggies for five bucks a pop. He’d call it schweck and would promise his buyers the instant feeling of numbness. He was sure it’d work.

After filling the bags, he ate a couple of apples, kissed his mom goodnight, and went to bed. He couldn’t wait for school tomorrow.

Mr. Benson was Christian’s favorite teacher by far. He taught social studies and Christian loved his sense of humor. He had a way of making even the most boring, insignificant incidents in American history seem wildly interesting. Christian had been governor of his colony in a simulation unit and had done a masterful job organizing his classmates into roles that would best suit “Providence Plantation” while making wise trades that would keep peace with Native Americans and the other colonies. When the class was assigned its first research paper, Christian had asked how long the paper should be to which Mr. Benson replied, “It should be like a mini-skirt. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.” Christian had gone red in the face, but appreciated the joke.

Mr. Benson also loved fundraisers and donating to charitable causes. It seemed like there was always a reason to raise money for something. The current project was Coins4Kids. The goal was to have people donate change in order to fund research to help kids with some kind of cancer, Christian couldn’t remember what type. Mr. Benson had set it up so each of his six classes were competing against each other. Coin amounts counted for positive points for each class, but other classes could put dollar bills in the boxes which acted as negative points. It was close at this point, but Christian’s sixth-period class was sixth out of six. The winning class had been promised a pizza party, which Christian wanted more than just about anything else he could think of.

It didn’t take long before word got out about Christian’s schweck. After selling 20 bags of the stuff, his only regret was not charging ten dollars for each one. All 30 bags were gone by lunchtime and Christian was left with $150, all in five-dollar-bills, in his gigantic pocket.  

The first thing Christian did in history class was to place six five-dollar-bills into each of the other classes’ Coins4Kids collection boxes. The second thing he did was turn around and see a red-faced Ms. Martinez, the school’s assistant principal, standing directly behind him. “Christian Cavanaugh?” she asked flatly before commanding, “You’re coming with me.”

Ms. Martinez had a small office next to the principal’s. She was a small woman, but had a fiery personality. She had long curly black hair that would flirt with the small of her back if she didn’t always keep it in a thick braid. At five-foot-one and 97 pounds she wasn’t a physical force, but could level any tween and wannabe teen with her famous scowl and furious look of unforgivable disappointment. Christian was seated upon a hard wooden stool trying to avoid eye contact by looking at an inspirational poster with a picture taken looking up into some tall trees. Below the picture the word “Grow” was written in large green letters, below that were words that were printed too small for Christian to read. His ears and cheeks felt hot, his stomach was upset, and he was trying to keep his emotions in check. He knew his mother was at home and he wasn’t sure what her reaction to this would be, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.

“So, why do you think I pulled you out of class?” asked Ms. Martinez. Christian hated being asked questions that would solidify his guilt, so he responded by simply shrugging his shoulders. She reached into her desk drawer and removed a bag of schweck. “Maybe this will help jog your memory,” she said holding the bag between Christian’s eyes and the Grow poster. He turned his gaze to the floor and shrugged once more. “You can tell me what’s in these bags, or we can get the cops in here and have a nice little chat. Your choice. What’s it going to be?”

“It’s schweck,” replied Christian as he continued to look at the pink dots organized in even arrays upon the green institutional carpet. “It’s nothing, really.”

“I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds like drugs to me. I’m calling the police.”

“No, please, it’s a Chinese spice. It’s Szechuan pepper, that’s all it is. I sold it to people for five dollars because it makes your tongue numb.”

“And how many people bought it?”

“Thirty.”

“So you made about $150 on this stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see the money. You’re going to be giving it back just after you call your mom and explain everything.”

“I don’t have the money anymore. I donated it all to charity. I wanted to win the pizza party in Mr. Benson’s class. That’s the only reason I sold it in the first place.”

“Well, that’s definitely not going to happen. You’re staying here until after school, then we’ll have a conference with your mom and Mr. Benson. We’ll decide what to do about all this during that meeting.”

After school Mr. Benson decided to give the pizza party to the top finisher of the five other classes. He assured Christian he would not tell his class about the incident, but also told him he made an incredibly poor choice for such a smart kid. He told Christian that his trust had been lost and until it was restored, he would not be allowed to help out with fundraisers. Amber showed up flustered, she had not ever been called to school for something like this before and didn’t know what to make of it. At first she had been angry with Ms. Martinez, but then started to blame herself and her parenting for Christian’s mistake. Ms. Martinez decided that two days of in-school-suspension would be an appropriate consequence during which time Christian would write an essay about the evils of drug use. She decided the money Christian had collected could be sent to the Coins4Kids charity, since those who bought it weren’t up to any good either.

Despondently, Christian began his essay as soon as he got home. He worked through most of his mom’s shift before falling asleep. He was awoken by her opening the apartment door. He listened as she turned on the TV and poured herself a drink. He could hear the ice clinking on the sides of her glass. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes he pulled himself up, stumbled to the living room, and without saying a word sat on the couch next to his mother. They sat silently for a long time. Slowly, he looked into his mother’s eyes and she into his, sadness traveling between them. As Christian leaned in to hug her, he felt the warmth of her neck and he thought about what he’d done that day and his friendship with Victor and letting down Mr. Benson and of his dad and as his mother reached a gentle arm around his shoulder he could feel her love for him and he couldn’t stop a tiny tear from falling off his 14-year-old cheek into her drink.   

Salmon Showers

There are bad parts about every job. It really doesn’t matter what line of work it is, there is always something that no one wants to do. These undesirable activities could range from cleaning the bathroom to writing a weekly newsletter to taking scrupulous product inventory. Many jobs out there have this one bad task, but the remaining duties are, at the very least, just decent enough to stick with it. Other jobs, however, have no rewarding duties and the ones that stand out as being particularly disagreeable are downright awful.

During the summer of 2009, I was in a small fishing village in southwestern Alaska called Naknek. I had taken a mid-management position at one of the many fish canneries there. It was my job to walk through the plant and ensure that everyone was following proper safety protocol in order to pass all health inspections, of which there are many. There were occasions where I had to remind someone to put on a beard net or to take out their earbuds and put in the mandatory ear plugs and sometimes I had to go wake someone up who didn’t show up to work on time. Occasionally people would be agreeable, sometimes they begrudgingly obeyed, and many times I thought I was going to get punched in the face. As unpleasant as that was it didn’t take more than four hours of my 16 hour workday and I often found myself looking for other things to do. One of the duties bequeathed to me was that of destroying cans that were unsuitable for sale. While this may sound innocuous, it was by far the worst part of my lousy job.

A can of salmon must go through many stages in the cannery before it’s ready to be palletized, loaded in a shipping container, and then sent to Seattle for worldwide distribution. Along the way there are hazards that can lead to contamination of the product that must result in a can’s demise. By far the most common is a can getting itself stuck in the machinery whereupon it gets completely mangled to the point of puncture. Another fatal move for a can is to fall on the floor immediately after being removed from the retort ovens. Due to the potential risk of bacterial contamination, these cans must be destroyed. Some cans fall off a pallet while being shrink-wrapped, get stuck in the shrink-wrap oven, and get cooked hundreds of times a day before being discovered. Finally several cans a day fall off the machinery before being cooked and sit, unnoticed by cannery workers, for up to several days while bacteria slowly eats away at the product. These were, by far, the worst to destroy.

One of my first days on the job, after doing my safety rounds, I was handed a box with about fifty cans, two, very standard, dollar-store-bought can openers, one with black handles and one with white handles, and a pair of exceptionally dull tin snips. I was instructed to open each can, dump the contaminated product into a bucket, which I would later dispose of in the grinder, and then put the empty cans, after being rinsed, into the dumpster. I could not simply throw the entire can, fish and all, into the dumpster for two reasons. First, was the liability of a cannery worker finding a dumpster full of cans, eating one, getting sick, and deciding to seek legal action against the cannery. Second was that bears are attracted to dumps in Alaska like college students are to a plastic Dixie cup kegger. As a result, the local dump required canneries to remove the fish from the cans completely before disposing of them.

After an excruciating five minutes with the black-handled opener where I failed to open a single can, I switched to the white one which was only slightly better. Even the thriftiest homemaker would have chucked either one of these openers into the dumpster years ago, but I was stuck with them and had a job to do, so I continued to power through. After a while, I was doing pretty well with the opening. I had figured out the perfect angle to hold the opener, which involved me leaning over the top of the can just slightly. If the cans were too mangled, they required the dull snips and creativity as the snips couldn’t cut through more than one layer of tin, but for many of the cans, the opener worked.

About halfway through my box of cans, I pulled out a harmless-looking unscathed can. I was happy because I had figured out how to maximize efficiency with the white-handled opener and I could open an unscathed can in less than half the time it took me to complete a mangled one. I angled myself just right with my face slightly above the lid of the can, squeezed the handles together and began to turn the cutting wheel. First I heard a small hissing noise coming from the can. Thinking nothing of it I kept turning and within seconds the seemingly innocent can turned into a six-foot geyser of rancid, bacteria-infested red salmon shooting into the Alaskan twilight as well as directly into my face.

I have had many malodorous encounters in my life from overflowing outhouses to stumbling upon a beached dolphin in Mexico, but this putrid stench was by far the worst and now I was covered in it with about 25 cans left to go and another twelve hours on the clock before I could shower off. I had discovered the lousiest part of my lousy job. I cleaned myself off as best I could and then set back to work ensuring this time not to lean over the cans despite losing the best angle for the worthless opener.

After several weeks on the job I learned to recognize cans by their slight bulges and knew when a stink-bomb was coming up. I learned that cans that fell into the shrink-wrap oven ballooned like a pan of Jiffy-Pop and the fish turned into a brown liquid that could be drained with two screwdriver punctures. I got exceptionally crafty with the snips and could cut my way through just about any mangled can in a matter of seconds and I learned to angle the geyser cans away from my body to avoid as much of the stench as possible which made the remaining hours of every day more manageable. I finished my obligation to the cannery in about five weeks, came home, and washed all my clothes many times. Despite the washing, the Carhartt pants I wore that summer still have a faint fishy odor nearly two-and-a-half years later. 

There are days when lessons don’t go well or students aren’t behaving or parents are complaining or meetings are dragging endlessly and those days can make me want to look for other lines of work. But on those difficult days I get home and look at my old Carhartts, take a deep breath and remember can disposal duty and getting a fetid salmon facial and I simply think, “Hey, it could be worse. At least I’m not in Naknek.”