The Janitor's Helper

Grace Paulson took advantage of a free period shortly before noon and ran across the street to the Kentucky Fried Chicken. A colorful sign in the window trumpeted: ‘Today’s Special: Chicken Pot Pies only $2.55!’ Inside another cardboard display propped on the counter repeated the bargain. A bleary-eyed youth behind the counter took her order. “Whadayawanna drink?”

“Nothing, just the pie,” Grace said.

The clerk rang up the order. “That’ll be four seventy-nine.” Grace pointed to the sign next to his elbow. The youth scowled and punched in the correct price on the keypad. No apology. Not even a hint of embarrassment.

It was a few minutes past noon when Grace returned, and most teachers at Brandenburg Middle School were eating lunch in the staff dining room. Ed Gray, Chairman of the English Department, entered. The man was a bit of an oddity at Brandenberg. Gaunt and high-strung, he kept apart from the rest of the staff but was not unfriendly. Under his left arm was a tattered, hard-covered volume which he placed on the table as he sat down next to Grace. The binding of the book was coming unglued, the spine just barely holding the frayed, yellowed pages together. “Didn’t see that on the menu,” Ed remarked with a wry grin, indicating the chicken pot pie.

Grace plunged a plastic fork through the flaky golden crust and speared a wedge of chicken floating in a creamy, vegetable broth. The previous Tuesday, the KFC was sold out of chicken pot pies well before noon and she had to settle for a plate of Colonel Saunders’ original recipe fried chicken with a side order of lukewarm potato wedges and a crumbly biscuit.

“How is it… the pot pie?” Ed’s voice jolted her back to reality.

“Quite good,” Grace replied nibbling on a succulent carrot. She told him about the incident at the KFC.

“An innocent mistake,” he said. “The fellow probably forgot that the pies were on sale today.”

“Perhaps,” Grace countered, “but then he wasn’t the least bit concerned about ringing up the wrong price and actually seemed offended when I pointed out his mistake.”

Ed shrugged and pursed his lips but had nothing more to say about the matter. Grace, on the other hand, couldn’t let it rest. She had a nagging suspicion that, out of pig-headed spitefulness, the next dozen customers to order the chicken pot pie would be charged full price.

She broke off a section of the papery crust, swirled it around in the thick broth and deposited the soggy dough on her tongue. Regardless of price, the pie was awfully tasty. “Now that’s an ancient artifact,” Grace gestured toward the damaged book. She was teaching eighth grade English and worked with Ed on the curriculum committee during the summer.

"A collection of Pushkin's short stories," Ed replied, turning his attention to the food on his plate.

Grace wracked her brains. She possessed a decent grounding in Russian literature—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov. She had even read some Turgenev and a smattering of Gogol but no Pushkin.

After a moment Ed raised his head and noticed Carl, the janitor’s helper, staring at the cloth-bound object by his tray. "It’s a literary masterpiece," Ed said. His thin, delicate fingers danced over the torn binding.

Carl’s face went blank and then the hint of a smile formed at the corners of his lips. The smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared. "I’m familiar with Pushkin."

There was an uncomfortable pause, as though some code of etiquette had been breached and no one in the dining room quite knew how to set things right. Ed Gray smeared the watery brown gravy from his meat loaf onto the mash potatoes with the flat side of his knife. "You’re familiar with Pushkin?" He repeated the man’s words without bothering to look up.”

"The father of modern Russian writing.”

Tapping his fingers in rhythmic staccato, the Chairman of the English Department opened the front cover of the book and began turning pages at random. His forehead furrowed and lips tightened in a thin, bloodless line. "But that's not possible," Ed countered in a slightly petulant tone. "Pushkin wrote during the early eighteen hundreds. There was nothing modern about his prose. Perhaps you have him confused with someone else."

Carl glanced up at a florescent light that had been flickering erratically then resetting itself throughout the meal. The corners of the bulb had turned a sickly bluish-orange; no more life was left in the mottled tube. “Pushkin broke with the romantic tradition. Everything changed after that."

Dead silence. Those teachers who, for the sake of propriety, had averted their eyes, now stared intently at the janitor in the blue coveralls. Ed Gray blanched; he had the look of a man free falling through space. No one spoke for the remainder of the meal.

Grace finished her chicken pot pie, sopping up the last remaining peas and carrots with a piece of crust. She glanced curiously at the janitor’s helper. How long had Carl been employed there? She couldn’t recall when the wiry man first appeared at Brandenburg Middle School. It may have been in the spring of 2004, a particularly cold year with numerous snow storms and an endless series of illness that thinned the classes by half on any given week. Or it might have been the following September. No one really noticed. Nor did they care.

The janitor's helper. Teachers sometimes used the term interchangeably with his name but not in a mean-spirited way. There was technically no such thing as a janitor's helper. But the man was too old, in his late thirties, to be a career-minded recruit. He swept the floors, scraped and painted old furniture. He washed the windows and emptied the trash. He did whatever Bob Watson, the head janitor for the past fourteen years, told him to do. He did his job quietly, unobtrusively. Hardworking and dependable, you both noticed him and didn't at the same time.

A nonentity to most of the staff, Carl brought a sandwich and a piece of fruit to work in an old-fashioned lunch pail and sat in the far corner of the dining room, most days, with the cafeteria workers and bus monitors. Lean and muscular with a perpetual scowl, he ate his food without looking up or taking part in the general conversation. Neither liked nor disliked by the rest of the staff at Brandenburg Middle School, he was the janitor's helper. When the meal was done, Carl rose abruptly and grabbed his lunch pail. "After we set the gap on the boiler," he said over his shoulder, directing the remark at Bob Watson, “I'll change that dead bulb.”

"No hurry," Bob replied with a dry grin. "Whenever you get to it."

Once word got out that Ed Gray, head of the English Department, had been bested, one-upped, made a fool of - take your pick - by Carl Solomon, the teaching staff were divided in their loyalties. Those who disliked Ed and viewed him as a pretentious windbag got sadistic satisfaction from of the incident, while strangely refusing to admit that the janitor's helper could score any higher than dull normal on a Stanford-Binet. Those who supported Ed Gray, which included most of the senior teaching staff and the head librarian, Miss Curson, felt that Ed had been duped; in all likelihood, Carl was talking off the top of his head and never read a damn thing worthy of literary consideration.

Later that evening, Grace told her husband, Stewart, about the incident in the teachers' dining room. Stuart sold cars at Delaney’s, the largest Ford dealership in South Eastern Massachusetts. Together they earned a comfortable living.

"Good for the janitor's helper!" he snickered. "Clever son-of-a-bitch!" They were in the bedroom getting ready for sleep. The man had just removed his pants and was headed into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Through the open door she could see Stewart bent down over the sink scraping the toothbrush back and forth. He had soft gums, the pink tissue having receded precariously in several places. First his hairline, now his gums. Stewart's periodontist had instructed him to pay special attention to those problem areas; as with most things, Stewart tended to take this advice to the extreme.

"What do you mean?"

"How many freakin’ janitors do you know who read Russian literature? Give me a break!" Spreading his lips apart with the pinky finger of either hand, he surveyed his dental work searching the tissue for any fresh erosion. "When, for that matter, was the last time you read any Russian literature?" There was no response. "I rest my case." Stewart hung his toothbrush up to dry and grabbed the floss. He was even more aggressive with floss than the brush, rasping the thin twine across the inflamed tissue with a fury bordering on the maniacal. It occurred to Grace that her spouse approached his dental hygiene with the same all-consuming passion that he applied to his work. For good reason, Stewart had been voted top car salesman three months running and was already well ahead of his quota for the current period. "How many times do you think a salesman at Delaney’s has to outfox some smart-ass customer trying to buy a car for less than cost?"

"It's not the same thing." Grace countered.

"It isn't?" Stewart ran his tongue over his teeth, a precautionary measure. "The janitor's helper is a first class bullshit artist. Believe me. I know what I'm talking about."

"Let's not argue," she said, climbing into bed.

Stewart flicked off the light. "I'm on probation again," he said casually lying there in the dark with his hands cupped behind his head.

"What for?"

"Same as last winter," he replied.

The previous year, several of the salesmen visited a tavern around the corner from Delaney's and gotten soused. The incident took place on a Wednesday during lunch. When they returned, the owner sent them home. One man was fired. There was no possibility of that happening to Stewart. He was Delaney Ford's top banana, their ace salesman. For the sake of appearances, though, Mr. Delaney made a blustery scene and docked Stewart's base salary. The next week, without breaking a sweat, Stewart sold four, mid-size cars, three vans and a fully-loaded truck.

"You're drinking again?"

"No, not really."

Grace could feel a sickening lump growing in her throat, an unrelenting, throbbing sensation, more annoying than painful. She tried clearing her throat and brought up some loose phlegm, but now the lump was even more entrenched.

"Do you want to do it?" Stewart asked playfully. Apparently the verbal sparring had aroused him sexually.

"No, not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I choose not to," she said turning away and pulling the covers up around her shoulders.

The next day, Grace went to the library. There was nothing by Alexander Pushkin on the shelves, but a volume by the author was available at a neighboring branch. She had the reference librarian order the book. When it arrived, she read the introduction and half a dozen short stories written in a simple but straightforward style. The prose was lean and muscular with a sharp, realistic edge. In one of the stories, a Mongol chieftain from an Eastern Province had staged an uprising against the local ruler and was put to death. Was the tale meant to be taken literally or was there something more - a childish parable masking a deeper, hidden truth?

In the weeks that followed, talk about the incident died away. Ed Grayson ignored Carl just as he had prior to their brief encounter. The teachers were negotiating a new contract with the school committee and discussions were going poorly. In December just before the holidays, a number of teachers refused to attend a parent-teacher's conference. The act of defiance, which was written up in the local press, backfired and was interpreted as a slap in the community's face. Many of the parents who previously were sympathetic toward the teachers felt betrayed. Between the teachers who attended the conference and those who stayed away, a rift developed; best friends were no longer on talking terms, and an ugly mood had settled over the school unlike anything Grace could remember.

She saw little of Carl during this time. He no longer ate his lunch in the staff dining room and was either working snow removal or doing repairs in some other wing of the building. One afternoon when the children had been sent home on early release, the janitor's helper came quietly into her classroom. He walked with the weight of his body far back on his heels - the strong, earthy gait of a man used to doing heavy, physical labor. His expression was flat, opaque. "I have to wash the floor. Do you want me to come back?"

Grace looked up from the pile of papers she was correcting. His face was framed in the habitual scowl, but the tone of voice was unmistakably polite - almost, but not quite, friendly. "No. That won't be necessary. I'll be out of your way before you reach the front of the room."

Stacking the chairs and desks to one side, he left the room and returned with a mop and pail of water. His eyes had shrouded over, turned dull and inward as he leaned into his work. Rinsing the water after each pass, he swabbed the wood down with smooth, muscular strokes paying special attention to the baseboards and space under the heating vents. When half the floor was washed, he dragged the dirty liquid from the room and returned with a bucket of clean water. Moving all the furniture to the other side, he repeated the process.

"You're getting a new floor," he said, leaning on the mop handle at the far end of the room. The entire space between them was still quite wet. For the second time, Grace put her pencil down and looked up. The classroom floor was covered in linoleum tile, except for a smaller section toward the rear of the room that was solid oak. The wood was originally installed as a purely decorative feature—decorative and utterly impractical. Over the years, the finish had been eaten away and the damaged boards reduced to an eyesore. "This weekend I'll be sanding away the finish to the bare wood."
"This white oak," he said, tapping the floor with the head of the mop, "is in reasonably good shape. Come Monday morning, you'll have a brand new floor." Carl rubbed his chin meditatively. "We're using a water-based sealer that dries real fast and leaves very little odor." Having said this, he lugged the filthy water back out into the hallway and disappeared.

In the morning the children would be back with their dirty feet and untidy habits. Once more the scuff marks, bits of scrap paper torn haphazardly from spiral binders and other bits of educational debris would litter the floor - the disorder and chaos of half-formed minds.

On the ride home, the image of Carl's deadpan face and his cryptic, oddly visceral language kept floating back to Grace with obsessive force. Then with equal insistence, another image presented itself, that of Ed Gray, the neurasthenic Chairman of the English Department. She imagined him dressed in blue coveralls and steel-toed work boots laboriously swinging a mop back and forth across her classroom floor. With his dark-framed bifocals perched on the tip of his nose and the tattered copy of Pushkin's short stories protruding from a back pocket, Grace pictured the middle-aged academic flailing away with the string mop, splattering grimy water everywhere.

Where this bizarre fantasy came from or what it meant, she hadn't a clue. For sure, Ed Gray was an odd duck, but he wasn't a bad person. He certainly wasn't malicious like some people.

Like Stewart.

Stewart could be hateful and cruel. When they married, he seemed so full of enthusiasm and spunk. Misdirected enthusiasm. Self-serving, opportunistic spunk. Grace Paulson began to cry and wept continuously in the car all the way home.

On Monday as Carl had promised, the classroom floor had a bright new look. All the scrapes, gouges and discolorations were gone. The oak had lightened to the color of golden wheat. An odor rose from the high gloss finish but it was slight and inoffensive. Even the blackened stain - India ink - near the coat rack was mysteriously gone, the wood fiber sanded flush then bleached back to its original color before the final, satiny film was applied.

Later in the day when the children were gone, Grace sat for an hour staring at the new floor and wondering at the allegory: The dirt and dust swept clean; the blemishes and discolorations undone; the multi-textured grain of each, thin board stripped, restored, made whole again.

A new floor. A new life.