Irv took his timecard from its slot and slid it into the time clock, sighing impatiently when the mechanism inside sat inert. He didn’t want to lose minutes on his timesheet just because the machine was grimy and old. He shoved the card in again, harder this time, and exhaled as the machine clicked and mashed a red smudge onto his card that faintly spelled out the time and date.
As he changed into his jumpsuit, the other guys sat in front of a row of old metal lockers, razzing Freddie. On the wall opposite the lockers was a series of maps dividing the city into odd little shapes and color-coded to remind the guys which alleys would have trash on the curb, and on what day.
“You wrote her another letter?” Joey laughed. Joey was round and pale with cheeks that flushed whenever he laughed. The guys could always read the colors on Joey’s face. Pink meant he was amused. Apple red meant embarrassment. And deep scarlet signaled that he was mad enough to get himself kicked out of the union. “She’s never gonna write you back, man.”
“A letter to who?” Irv asked.
“Betty Crocker!” Cliff grinned, showing off his gold incisor. For a young guy, Cliff sure had bad teeth. “Why’re you so crazy about Betty Crocker, anyway, Freddie? She’s got grey hair!”
“Only a little,” Freddie said, quietly. Something about Freddie reminded Irv of a fellow he knew in the Army -- one of the Earthquakers who didn’t make it back stateside after the war. Missing in action. Freddie was tall and reedy with hair that piled up on the top of his head; if he turned green he’d be asparagus. Irv kept that thought to himself.
“Freddie, if you have to write letters to someone famous, why not Sophia Loren? Or Marilyn Monroe? You know somebody…somebody sexy?”
Freddie clenched his jaw. Unlike Joey, Freddie didn’t change color, but Irv knew they were getting on his nerves. “Marilyn Monroe will be an old lady one day,” Freddie said. “And then that’s all she’ll be. Betty…Betty will always have cake.”
Cliff slapped Joey’s back and laughed, his jaw hanging open wide enough to show the rest of his metal teeth. Joey’s pale ears turned red on top. Finally, their laughter slowed and became long, loud gasps.
“I’ll bet you fifty dollars that you never hear back from Betty,” Joey said.
“Ooh, cut me in on that action,” said Cliff.
“Fine,” said Freddie, defiantly. “She’s not only going to write me back. She’s going to say yes when I ask her to marry me.”
Cliff and Joey traded glances. “Ok,” Joey said. “Make it a hundred bucks.”
“A hundred,” Freddie said, extending his hand to shake.
“You want in?” Cliff asked Irv, who shook his head. Being the old man of the crew meant he had to hear their jokes sometimes, but it also meant they took him seriously when he told them no.
“Come on, boys,” Irv said. “This city’s full of garbage, and if we don’t go pick it up, nobody will.”
As the sun burned off the morning dew, a slight humidity rose from the half-dead grass that edged the lot. A thick patch of birdsfoot trefoil bloomed near the corner of the lot, its yellow flowers like spilled popcorn after a parade. Barbed wired ringed the lot to keep thieves and vandals away from trucks, but Irv knew that it would take a real nutjob to want to break in. Even when the trucks were empty, they reeked like onion skins and diapers and rotten milk. But the job came with a city pension, so nobody complained.
Irv groaned a little as he swung up into the driver’s seat. He’d been a driver ever since the war when he drove a jeep across North Africa.
“What’s the matter, Irv?” Joey asked as he climbed into the cab. Irv slid his key into the ignition and the truck started with a rumble. “Why didn’t you put up any money?”
“Because the bet ain’t on the level,” said Irv. He glanced in the mirror at Freddie who gripped the back of the truck.
“How do you mean?”
Irv looked over his shoulder and whipped the wheel around to back the truck out of the lot. As he pulled out onto the street and straightened the wheel, he said, “Betty Crocker. She’s not real.”
“What do you mean, not real? They got her picture on the cookbooks!”
Irv reached over and turned on the radio, searching for music in the middle of all the static.
“It’s just a picture, Joey.”
Joey scratched his scalp and wiped the hairs that came loose on his jumpsuit. “So, what are you saying?”
Irv sighed. “I’m saying there ain’t no such person as Betty Crocker. The company made her up. She’s like the little girl on the Morton Salt package or the Jolly Green Giant. Freddie has a better chance with Marilyn Monroe because she’s real.”
Joey sat back and rested his head against the window. “I never would have thought she wasn’t real.”
“The point is, it ain’t fair. It’s like betting against the Black Sox.”
“The what?”
Irv turned to Joey and stared, his jaw sagging. “The Chicago White Sox? 1919? The crooked World Series? I thought you went all the way to 12th grade. They didn’t teach you anything, sounds like.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem. If I’d left in the 10th like you, I’d remember more. Those two extra years pushed things out.” Joey grinned, his cheeks bright like a Kewpie doll’s. Irv smiled without looking at Joey and turned up the radio. Irv had left school in the 8th grade but told the army recruiters different when he enlisted in ‘41.
They didn’t let him out again until ‘46.
The theme from “A Summer Place” flooded the cab with violins and flutes. Irv grimaced. The song played on the radio so many times, he knew every last girly note.
“Find the ballgame, would ya?” he asked Freddie, who leaned forward to tinker with the dial. The violins faded into static and the roar of a crowd rose in their place. Halsey Hall’s voice came over the waves, announcing that a Red Sox batter had just gone down swinging.
“I liked the Millers,” Freddie said, “But isn’t it great to have a Major League team? A real team that can beat the Yankees?” It had been almost two years since the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota, changed their name, and started playing in a brand-new ballpark out in Bloomington.
Irv nodded as he turned the truck down the first alley on their route. “It’s great,” he agreed. He wasn’t so sure about them beating the Yankees, but that Harmon Killebrew was a good hitter.
Hours later, after they unloaded trash at the incinerator, Joey shoved his sticky gloves into his pocket and asked, “You’re not going to say anything, are ya Irv?”
Irv sighed. He was the old man of their crew. “I’m hoping you’ll wise up before you take any money from the boy.”
After he clocked out, Irv changed out of his jumpsuit because he didn’t want it stinking up his Rambler. He smiled when he heard the engine purr, but switched the radio off when the strains of “A Summer Place,” filled the car.
When Irv got home, he showered off a day’s worth of cheese rinds and vegetable peels. Then, he joined his wife for dinner. His oldest girl was out of the house and his boy worked at a restaurant a mile or so down the road. Most evenings, it was just Irv and his wife in the house. Irv appreciated the quiet.
“There’s a show on tonight about the war,” his wife said as she dished up a plate of cold chicken salad. She made it with tiny noodle rings, mayonnaise and celery. Little flecks of paprika reddened the top of it.
He remembered the hot, dry wind that pelted him with stinging sand, the choking stench of burning jet fuel, the black plume of smoke that rose up from where his commander’s plane went down after the Nazi sons-of-bitches shot it out of the sky over Algeria. He remembered guys moaning, blood turning to jelly on their uniforms, while they waited for a medic to carry them off to a MASH, where they’d get a Purple Heart -- if they were lucky.
“I’ve seen enough war,” Irv said as he shoveled the salad into his mouth. The cool, creamy salad hit the spot after a day of working in the sticky heat, chasing flies and yellowjackets away from dripping sacks of trash. She did make one hell of a chicken salad.
Later, the sound of machine gun fire echoed from the TV as Irv climbed the creaking stairs and shut the bedroom door, and cranked up the air conditioner.
The next day, Irv hoped Cliff and Joey would keep their traps shut about the whole Betty Crocker business. But when he clocked in, he found Cliff holding an empty bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s. He’d taped a napkin to the back of the glass woman’s head and she even had a bouquet of miniature flowers stuck to her hands.
“Mrs. Butterworth and me are getting married,” Cliff joked, shoving the bottle into Freddie’s face. “Come on, kiss the bride,” he said, the bottle grazing Freddie’s lips as he backed away and fell against the lockers, wincing, a hollow metal ring echoing throughout the small room.
“Knock it off, you two,” Irv said, but Cliff and Joey ignored him. He’d pound the both of them if they wanted to act like brats.
“When I get engaged to Miss Chiquita, we can have a triple wedding!” Joey said.
“Oh, shut up, Joey,” Freddie fired back as he stood up and straightened his jumpsuit. “When’s the last time you ate a banana that wasn’t in a cream pie?”
Dark red patches bloomed across Joey’s face. The color reminded Irv of the burgundy irises that his wife planted in her garden. War Chief, they were called.
Joey’s fists curled into white balls but he backed off when Freddie took a step forward, his chin tilted up and nostrils flaring.
Irv felt a bloom of pride for Freddie, but it quickly faded when Freddie said, “Besides, Betty ain’t a banana and she ain’t a bottle of syrup. I don’t care what you all say. Betty is real and she’s going to write me back.”
A memory flashed through Irv’s mind of the kid he knew during the war, the one who always lost at cards and carried a sack that was too heavy because he refused to burn any of the letters he got from home. Irv remembered seeing him walking away from the mess tent one night and that was the last anyone ever saw him. That was in Tunisia…or maybe Egypt. The war years were becoming one long murky river in his mind.
“Look, just take the money back, Freddie,” said Cliff. “The bet’s off. Irv set us straight. Betty Crocker isn’t real, so there’s no bet.”
Freddie glared at Irv, his pale blue eyes narrow. Irv flashed again on that kid in Tunisia, shadows falling across his back as he walked away from the mess tent until all anyone could see was the backs of his combat boots.
That kid and Freddie. They’d both get lost on the way to the toilet in their own house.
Later that afternoon, Halsey Hall announced that the Twins were up on the Yankees, 6 - 2. Irv and Joey had finished their last round of pickups and were headed back to the city lot.
“Look,” Irv said, “I know Freddie’s a little slow, but that doesn’t mean you all gotta treat him like he is.”
“Oh, come on, Irv. We gave him his money back. We ‘fessed up. How’s it our fault that he acts like a dweeb?”
They rode in silence for a few moments, with only the hum of the road and the baseball game between them.
Finally, Irv said, “I knew a guy like Freddie when I was in the Army. He --”
Before Irv could finish, Joey hushed him and leaned forward to turn up the radio. A news bulletin had interrupted the game.
Actress Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home today, said a voice on the radio. The apparent cause is barbiturate overdose. The coroner has ruled it a suicide.
Joey sat back, his eyes wide and his cheeks warming to a coral color. “I guess you were wrong, Irv. Freddie has a better shot with Betty Crocker.”
That night, Irv sat on the couch with his wife, watching a news story about Marilyn Monroe.
On Monday, Joey called in sick, and Cliff looked like he’d been on a three-day bender. Freddie brought in a square cardboard box tied with a string.
“Sour cream cookies,” Freddie said. “I made ‘em myself. First time I ever baked. Betty’s recipe.”
Irv bit into a vanilla-scented cookie and it crumbled softly in his mouth. “Not bad,” he said.
Irv leaned over and looked into Cliff’s glazed, sunken-eyed face. “Cookie, Cliff?”
Cliff shook his head, looking every bit like a basset hound that ate himself sick in the rhubarb patch.
Irv grinned. “Well, come on boys. We’re a man down so we oughta get an early start. The city’s full of trash, and if we don’t collect it, who will?”