suitor

"I really appreciate this." He was wrapping a cord around one of the massive pieces of iron. "Hey, I don't want to impose, but I would like to take you out sometime. For lunch or brunch or dinner or something...?"
His head is big. It's like a tan basketball. He's a large guy. Professional football large. His facial features are small. He looks Southern, like Elvis Presley-Southern. You know how Elvis had great facial features, but still managed to look slightly retarded? That's what I mean. He looks Native American to me. His skin is an even tan color. He's standing on the bed of a pick-up that looks like it was towed up from the seventh circle of hell. He just single handedly lifted three 18 feet long solid iron support beams onto a pick up truck. He is the neighborhood scrap metal guy. You know, the guy that drives around and looks for metal all day and then sells it at a salvage yard. I am being asked out by the scrap man. The first offer in well over a year, and it's from Basketball Head, the junk man.

Life is a series of humiliating moments dropped amidst spans of mind-numbing, soul-crushing, spirit-breaking tedium. I once had a friend who was a friend of an author and winner of an Iowa Award. He would often make an observation and punctuate it with these two questions, "Why do we go on? How do we go on?" I pondered those questions now...
"Oh, that's O.K., really...It's no big deal." I started up the stairs quickly. A day before I'd shown Ol' Scrappy the beams and asked my landlord if he could have them.
"Alright, I just thought I'd ask..." He turned and started to strap in the second beam. I just hurt the feelings of the scrap metal man. His life had to suck. He looks for garbage all day. I am such a bitch. Who the hell am I? I am unemployed and batshit crazy.
"So, Arthur, what's your last name?" I call down.
"Lee!" he calls up.
"Lee?"
"Yeah."
"Are you from here?"
"Yeah. I graduated from PalookaNorth in '88. Then I went to Midwestern I State for four years."
"Oh my God! I graduated from PalookaSouth in '88. Then I went to Midwestern I state for two years! Where did you live at State?"
"I lived off campus with my aunt and uncle. I didn't join a fraternity or anything."
"Wow! That's pretty crazy. We both graduated the same year and went to the same school."
"Huh! Yeah, that is!"
Arthur went on to tell me about majoring in Criminology, leaving State and becoming a Palookaville Police Officer. He sustained an injury while on duty and decided to quit law enforcement. He then went to work for a company that went under. He started a business of his own, but it didn't take off.
"Now, here I am...Out here like Sanford and Son!" he gestured to his truck.
"At least you don't have a boss!" I offered.
"Hey, why don't you consider going out with me sometime? Just for coffee or something?"
I shrugged as if to say maybe.
"Alright, the next time I'm in the neighborhood, if you're out with your dog, I'll stop and talk to ya."
Did I just consent to going out with the scrap guy?
I needed to confer. I called Siobhan. "I just got asked out...by the garbage man."
"Whaat? What garbage man?"
"You know, the guy I told you about, Basketball Head-the scrap guy."
"Oh, yeah! Wait, what's a scrap guy?"
"You know, one of those guys who drives around looking for scrap metal all day."
Siobahn cracked up. "Katherine! Ezra does that! Not on a small scale like those guys, but basically when he does a demo, or buys a lot of older work trucks at auction, he takes what he needs and scraps out the rest for thousands of dollars."
"That's different. Ezra has a legitimate business. These guys are digging through garbage."
I wanted to believe that the economy of this cesspool of a town has forced this former police officer into a life of scrap metal salvaging. I had to give him credit for working. I imagined remaking the scrap metal guy into a successful entrepeneur. With my encouragement, Scrappy could become a legit business owner. We could marry and be millionaires. People would say, "She met him when he was digging through the garbage, and look at them now!"
I consulted Ezra. "Do you know a guy who scraps with a big basketball head and a white truck that looks like it came from the Thunderdome? Name's Arthur?"
"White guy?" Ezra asked and spit the seeds from an apple over the stair rail. Ezra exists on a diet of mostly fruit. If you drive through our town and see an orange peel in the driveway of an historic home or a construction site, it was from Ezra. You can bet money on it. Siobhan can track his whereabouts by the fruit peels left behind.
"Yeah, kinda tan and big like a lumberjack."
"Yeah, I know him."
"Is he shady?"
"Well, we had a situation at one of our demo sites. Thousands of dollars worth of metal was removed from the site. We looked into it, checked around at all the salvage yards and found out it was him."
"Oh my God!" I was exasperated.
Ezra grinned. "Now, wait a minute...when we talked to him, he said our father had given him permission. We asked Dad and sure enough, he'd told him to take anything he wanted."
"So he's not shady?"
"Well, there was another thing that happened. He cut the (some mechanical sounding jargon followed that I can't even begin to recreate for you)out of the (more mechanical stuff I think was about industrial air conditioning units). That's illegal."
"So he is shady!"
Ezra grinned again. "Well, I wouldn't say that, but I will tell ya this...everybody I've ever dealt with who scraps, steals."
Siobhan got down to business. "Should katherine go out with him or not?"
Ezra gave us a pained expression and shrugged his shoulders. I suspect all hetero men are bound by some kind of honor code that states, Thou shall not cock block. I let Ezra off the hook. "I'm not going out with somebody who steals."
"But, Katherine! You don't know that! You don't have all the facts!" Siobhan was giving me her serious face. She reserves this face for making points in discussions. Her head is tilted and her brow is furrowed and her mouth takes on a different shape.
These people were of no help.
I set off to the Palookaville Library. I went to the referrence librarian. "Do you have High School Yearbooks?"
"Yes, we do. We used to keep them in the stacks, but they were being stolen. What year do you need?"
"1988."
"What school?"
"PalookaNorth."
She disapeared around the corner and returned with the white bound book.
I looked through the rows of names in the Seniors section; Lantz, Lark, Laughfrey, Legros, Lemons, Leonard...no Lee.