Tow Up

I spent Christmas Eve with Gianni. We ate at Honest John's, under the neon glow reading "Men Lie."

Afterward, we went to Gianni's apartment across the
street and I started drinking a bottle of Caxasa I had
bought in Brazil.  Maybe if I got really drunk, I
could write down the events of the past few months. 
After a paragraph and half the bottle, I saved a draft
of nonsense and gave up.  

I asked Gianni if he wanted to chill at my new place
on 4th St.  We walked to my 94 Plymouth Sundance, two
door, four cylinder, manual transmission.  After a
couple attempts at pulling out, we discovered that the
most we would do is spin tires in that far right lane.
 The car was trapped by the hardening of a plow-made
snowbank powdered by a fresh onslaught of snowflakes.

I can only imagine that the mix of exhaust, smoking
tire tread and steam attracted them.  We were a lost
cause until an 83 Chevy pickup appeared beside us in a
cloud of smoke, trailing through the snow a rusty chain
tied to a strip of canvas.   "Merry Christmas" introduced
us to Thomas and Rebecca, Ghetto Extraction Service
Limited, working Christmas Eve and anytime it snows.

Thomas backed up through the snow and attached the
hook to the underbelly of my car.

"Gotta get some money somehow," he said. He and his
wife had been driving around all day un-sticking
people, collecting their due, doing their duty.

"Hey man, I only got $2," I said.

"How much?" he asked incredulously. The air was dead.
By the look on his face, this was challenging the
man's integrity.  Then, with a half-priest, half-Rambo
demeanor, with his callouses balled in a fist raised
to shoulder height, he exclaimed, "Fuck it, it's
Christmas!"

On his first attempt, the canvas untied from the
chain.  He double knotted the canvas strip, but then
the truck stalled and wouldn't start. Thomas was under
his hood yanking something to rev the engine, his wife
turning the car over.  Gianni was fidgeting.

"Dude, I'm going upstairs," he said, perhaps
suggesting that I should go with him. I was too drunk
to give up.   As if in answer, the pickup roared to
life.

A second attempt with the chain failed. The truck just
couldn't pull us through the hardened snow bank.
Thomas jumped in the pickup and exercised a doughnut
in the middle of 2nd St.

"Ain't happenin." He had given up and wanted to at
least push my car back into its space. Rebecca was
half cheerleader, half air-traffic controller, guiding
him in this task.

In a moment of stillness, Thomas pondered, haloed by
thumb-sized snowflakes.  He was a visionary
approaching a point of revelation.

"Give me your keys," he commanded, his yellowed eyes
fixed far in the distance, not on the car, not on
anything in this world. 

He majestically stepped into my Sundance, sat and
paused with his arms held stiff like deer antlers.

"Shit, this is a stick, this ain't shit! Watch this."

Rebecca was like "Go baby, you got this shit. Hell
yeah!"

And then he did it. The instant Thomas put his holey
sneaker to the gas, my car turned into a snow Porsche.
Rebecca was cheering in the middle of the street.

"You almost got it baby! This ain't shit!"

The car whipped out into the middle of 2nd St amidst
whooping and sighs of relief.

Thomas jumped out, slammed the door and strutted "You
know it, You know it, that wasn't Shit!" 

Rebecca said matter-of-factly, "You can do anything
with a stick.  GOOD JOB BABY."

Thomas collected my two dollars and Gianni's loose
change, the victory dance guiding the swing of his arm
into his pocket.

He gave us a big hug, each of us in an arm, and said
"Merry Christmas" through missing teeth.  He was more
drunk than we were. 

As they pulled out, going the wrong way down one-way
2nd street, Rebecca yelled,

"You can do anything with a stick!"

because great problems of humanity can be so easily
rectified.