For Fernando
One day Fernando is here, the next day he is gone, like a Middle Eastern restaurant in rural Alabama.
We sing songs to honor the two days he spent with us, straining his guts out to lift forty pounds of metal off a rack.
Fernandooooo!
Gone but not forgotten
That lazy Guatemalan
Fernandooooo!
We hardly even knew you
Though hard work made you boo hoo
Fernandooooo!
When the job dictates we lift cylinders larger than we are comfortable handling, we mouth the words “for Fernando.” Viggo Mortenson could not have spoken those two words with any more melodramatic weight than I applied.
Despite Fernando’s utter inability to understand simple instruction or engage me in the usual philosophical discourses, his absence vexes me. Because now I’m forced to do all the hard work.
Austin asks if my son turned in his application.
“He’s still working on it,” I admit.
Austin has only been with the company nine months. He easily recalls the process of filling in his name and address.
“A week seems like more than enough time.”
I admit “on the surface it would seem excessive but keep in mind, my son is a creature of indomitable laziness. I’ve given him a list of defunct local businesses to pad his meager resume, but the boy is limited by a lack of imagination. Under reasons for leaving, rather than claim he was seeking better opportunities elsewhere, or it’s a fucking Middle Eastern restaurant in the middle of rural Alabama with a name like Babylon Gardens run by a dodgy Italian from Michigan, of course it shut down in less than two weeks, he presents bullshit like his supervisors treated him unfairly because of his Polish heritage. He claimed he lost his KFC job because they refused to give him Juneteenth off.”
“Nobody gets Juneteenth off around here.”
“Well, because our great, great, great grandpappy, Corncrib Koweski, was one-eighth black, it has become a point of contention whenever any of the Koweski clan is forced to work on Juneteenth.”
“Is that true? One eighth?”
“Why would ancestry.com lie? I mean, my brothers refuse to believe it. They wanna know if that’s true, why are we all running around with two-inch dicks, but I’m not going to enlist these hurtful stereotypes. I had to deal with enough of that shit when I thought I was all Polish. Hell, I put myself out on the line submitting DNA, anyway. An enterprising cop could very well link me to the case of the masturbating janitor at the Gober Nursing Home out in Elkmont.”
“Fuck.” Austin considers this a moment. “I’m getting tired of these twelve hours shifts, man. Fernando was supposed to be able to spell us out.”
“Don’t let the sixty-five-hour work weeks embitter you. That’s just time fucking with you. Do what I do. Time moves a lot quicker when you spend half your shift in the goddam bathroom. I found that out when I was supervising in assembly. And, you know, it’s actually illegal to kick in a stall door to catch an employee playing on their cell phone. At least in the woman’s bathroom, anyway.”
Not to get on a masturbation kick, but what’s left unsaid is that there’s actually an employee currently on the Hydra payroll whom we call Jerk-Off Joe. He’s taken his extended bathroom breaks to its logical conclusion, flailing on his dong for all he’s worth. Now, I’ve never actually been privy to his strenuous hand wrestling excursions. Several co-workers have made the claim. These are guys who are ordinarily wildly outspoken on such topics as woman’s place in the kitchen and Trump’s God-ordained infallibility, yet when presented with a scenario where a co-worker desperately hand pounds his joy gristle two feet away in the hopes of alleviating even a fraction of the unrelenting stress that Hydra places on its employees as a matter of course, they remain unnaturally silent during the act itself.
Anyway, that’s why I don’t go kicking in stall doors in the men’s bathroom.
And, then, just as suddenly, Fernando reappears a week later as if nothing ever happened. Though, honestly, he always appears that way, as if nothing ever happens.
“Fernando, where the fuck you been?”
He open mouth smiles, nods his head.
It’s the supervisor, who ordinarily knows fuck all, who fills me in.
“He’s on light duty for the rest of the week.”
“What the fuck’s a light duty?”
“It’s when you can’t lift more than five pounds so you gotta take it easy.”
I gaze across the entire expanse of the hydraulics factory. Nothing weighs less than five pounds. The straps we attached to the hoists weigh more than five pounds.
“What can you do?” The boss says, which is a very stoical turn of phrase coming from a man who demands giving one’s life over to a state of constant labor. “He strained his stomach muscles picking up sleeves. He says you guys wouldn’t help him.”
“Do I ask for your help when I walk across the factory floor? Of course not. I’m a grown ass man and should be able to walk across the floor all by my goddam self.”
“We’re doing random drug tests next week. Just saying.”
Now, when we pick up heavy parts we shout “fuck Fernando.”
Meanwhile, Fernando sits in his little cubby where we take turns switching into our work uniforms provided by the company because they got tired of getting their eyes blistered by my Hawaiian shirts. He straddles a narrow bench staring at the ceiling, pointing at things in the ether I’m incapable of perceiving and counting in a language I’m too culturally apathetic to understand.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Austin hisses. “What’s he counting up there? There ain’t nothing but electric conduit.”
“Maybe he’s counting all his Mayan ancestors looking down on him with disappointment because he can’t lift fucking forty pounds without sobbing. Imagine carving hearts and kicking severed heads around for five hundred years, building temples and wearing feathers and shit only to see this guy with a fake gold chain from the mall kiosk stand in the corner whimpering while a goddam Polish conquistador with 2.3% black African blood coursing through his veins and whatever the fuck you are gotta do all the goddam work.”
“Your son fill out his application?”
“Yeah, I turned it in finally.”
“What’d the boss man say?”
“He said the last thing he needed was another Koweski running around here leaving empty beer cans all over the place.”
“Damn.”
“It all came across as mildly racist, to be honest. Like he done hit his quota, or something.”
“Well, at least he speaks English.”
“Eh, English adjacent, I guess.”
We finish kitting the eight-inch sleeves. We’re looking at a hundred and twenty pounds for each component. I hold the bottom and he begins to lift the top.
“For Fernando?”
“Fuck, Fernando. I’m tired of talking about him.”
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
