Today it’s washers and dryers day. We filled the truck last night, the loading dock shining with sooty light. Appliances puzzle-pieced in place according to reverse unloading schedule. Drive an hour and a half to the farthest place first. The sun not up yet. The roads dim and sparse. Arrive in Battle Creek to deliver the new front loader Whirlpools, load up an old Kenmore and matching gas dryer. Speed Queens in St. Joseph exchanged for Maytag, the Sears special back in the day. Dolly balanced, straps wrapped around lower back, arm muscles bulging, slow through the doorways, can’t bump the drywall, dare not graze the doorframe or it’s deducted from my pay. Imperfect people expecting perfection.
Install in laundry rooms shiny with subway tile, right off the garage. Sometimes down the stairs in the farthest back corner by the basement furnace. A couple times up the stairs in closets by the bedrooms. Always, shut off the water. Sometimes the old gate valves get stuck. Got a new washer but no water to try it out. Call a plumber, they have to. Not my problem, not in my contract. Starting out, I used to feel bad. Can’t even help a person. Turns out, most people will suck the help out of you until you’re dry and then they’ll report you ’cause it didn’t turn out how they wanted. Nah, I put my hands up. Not licensed for that, I say. I’m the install, that’s it.
I’ve got my truck full, always full. Exchanging new for old. Hauling out the scratch and dents comes with the deal. Potbellied, gasket busted, pipe-burst: I take ’em all, replace with top-of-the-line, or the occasional economical basics. These days though, the ones who can afford new can afford the best. Jig-sawing scratched-up side-by-sides and outdated top loaders, shuffling back, forward, the slowest game of musical chairs pivoting tired machines behind the shiny new. Keep ’em accessible.
Sometimes the homeowners tip, twenty, forty dollars. A hundred is a good one. I hand my protégé twenty percent. That’s eighty for me, twenty for him. Sucks to be green. He’s there to learn, to rip the cardboard, to peel the plastic wrap from shiny stainless, to check the clipboard chart boxes, hand the pen to me for signatures, do the back trot and heavy lifting.
Me, I’m the instruction manual. All the brand installation quirks locked in my brain, the way Bosch vents out the middle and LG provides the plastic clip for the drainage hose. Electrolux and Haier go in the fancier houses where no one’s watching except the pool guy or the cleaning crew. Leave a smudge on the floor and we’ll hear about it two hours later via the supervisor on call. The higher-end places got those marble entries, so clean it’s like no one lives there. The air light and rising. On the move, somehow, without a fan blowing. You’d think they’d share the cash but no. Measly little tip, mostly none. The extra you get there is the gawking, the imagining that some people live like this, all polished and gleaming.
Grab lunch and a whiz at McDonalds, put the fries between the bun and the meat, eat the burger with one hand on the wheel.
Stop at the next suburb, do the jig: washer off, dryer off, old washer and dryer on, scrape-pushed to the back, the high-pitched squeal of something not wanting to move against the metal floor, pulling the new stuff forward, the old stuff back. Each one moves, every time.
End of day, we exit off the I-96 in Sparta, drive past the farms to the grid of rural stop signs, two miles off the highway where the grass grows long and the road runs gravel. Unload the dented, snapped-hosed, clanging ball-bearinged derelicts into the appliance graveyard. Wipe the sweat. Check out the old avocado refrigerator sitting by the tall weeds that’s been there since the beginning of time. Saw the exact model in a ‘60s TV show. Fix this one up on the outside, ship it to Hollywood—shoot, if only I had the connections. They love that kind of thing out there—make some real money for a change. Shiny, new, that’s all anyone wants around here these days. Bells and whistles. But this old-timer? Funky chrome handles, small capacity—don’t need more than that.
No one gets out of junkyard purgatory. Admire the rust, wonder what these old machines saw in their day, who pulled their knobs, turned their dials. Walk the grassy aisles, think of dispensing some history to the protégé. He’s dancing on the balls of his feet, still has energy after the day of lugging, tugging, lifting. Enough energy to do more than beer and TV. Toss him the keys. One-hundred-fifty miles round trip. He’s shiny and new. He’ll be first one off the truck back at the dock.
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Wendy BooydeGraaff‘s short fiction, poems, and essays have been included in X-R-A-Y, Brink, phoebe, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.