“I sold them the whole company, Stan,” I said, and I set the paper down beside his can of Genesee. “Varga Lift and Rental went in February for eight million nine hundred thousand dollars. A hundred and forty machines, both yards, and sixty jobs that the buyer promised to keep. Line sixteen is the orange JLG telehandler that your son has hidden behind his garage with a price sprayed on the boom. It belongs to the buyer now. So do the two forklifts and the scissor lift that Tyler carried off on Tuesday night. I would like to hear how a man sells what he does not own.” The accordion was silent, and not a single pierogi moved.
Tyler tried to laugh it off. “Uncle Rudy, it was only a loan. I was going to bring everything back after I got my first contract.” “Sal called me at six this morning,” I said. “He told me you showed up with a lowboy and a story that I had signed off. I signed nothing. Sal has run my yard on Walden Avenue for twenty two years, and he does not lie for anybody, least of all for the son of the brother of my wife.” I looked around the garage at two hundred faces in red and white. “You told them all it was a gift, Tyler. A gift from a man you thought was finished.”
Theresa came and stood beside me. She did not say a word. She laid her hand on my sleeve, and I felt it tremble. Stan climbed down from his chair as slowly as an old man leaving a pew. “Tyler,” he said, “you told me your uncle wanted you to take over the equipment. You said he was embarrassed to ask.” “I thought he would not mind,” Tyler whispered. Stan took off his hat and held it in both hands. The polka band had stopped in the middle of a song, and the only sound was a pussy willow branch rolling slowly across the concrete floor.
An orange telehandler with a price sprayed on its boom gave one nephew the weekend to bring his uncle back to the party in Buffalo.
I kept my voice as even as a level on a new slab. “Here are my terms. By Sunday night the telehandler, the forklifts and the scissor lift go back to the yard on Walden Avenue. Sal checks each machine against the schedule. Tyler pays for the lowboy and the fuel. The sign comes off the boom tonight. And the name Wojcik Lift Solutions never gets filed unless the buyer says so in writing. If everything comes back in one piece, I will let it lie. I would rather have a family at Easter than a lawyer in March.” Tyler nodded, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. Stan laid a heavy hand on the table.
On Saturday I drove to the yard, and I found a surprise waiting. Sal had told the drivers, and thirty seven men and women who had delivered machines for me over the years were standing in the lot in their orange vests. Nobody had asked them to come. They helped Tyler unload the telehandler from the lowboy, and they guided it to its old spot by the fence as gently as men carrying something precious. A grizzled driver named Walt took off his hard hat. “Rudy,” he said, “you drove the first forklift yourself in nineteen eighty four. We never forgot who built this.”
The money consequences came quickly. Stan had put up the bakery on Broadway as security for the loan on the new business, and the bank called it the moment the machines went back. He had to sell the delivery van and half the ovens to cover the balance, and for the first time in his life he asked his wife for a loan instead of giving one. The supplier of fuel for Wojcik Lift Solutions sent a bill for twenty three thousand dollars. It took Stan almost two years to pay it off, and he did it without a single complaint, which surprised me more than anything.
I did not want to be a hard man in my old age. With part of the sale money, I started a program for the people who keep Buffalo moving. The Varga Trades Fund pays for training and certification on forklifts, cranes and heavy equipment for any young person in Erie County who wants the work and cannot afford the course. Twenty four students signed up in the first month, and six of them were women. I told them that I had started with one used forklift and a loan, and that the best day on any job site is the day you lift something heavy and set it down safely.
Stan came to my house on a cold Wednesday night, alone, carrying a box of chrusciki. He sat at my kitchen table, and for a long while he said nothing. Then he told me he had called me the fork jockey for thirty five years because he envied my hands. I said I had envied his bakery, the smell of it at four in the morning, and the way every neighbor stopped to wave. He laughed and then his eyes filled. “Rudy,” he said, “I am sorry.” I said, “Eat a chrusciki,” and we ate the whole box together.
Tyler reported to the yard at five in the morning on the first Monday, as I had asked. Sal gave him a pressure washer and pointed at a scissor lift that had spent the winter in the mud. For six hours he blasted off the dirt and the grease until his arms shook. At lunch he sat on a bucket with his sandwich and stared at his raw red hands. Sal sat down beside him. “It is not about the machine, kid,” he said. “It is about whether the man on top of it goes home to his family.” Tyler nodded slowly. I watched from the office window, and I saw him grow up a little.
The following Dyngus Day, the Wojcik house on Paderewski Drive was full again, with pierogi and kielbasa and pussy willows in every vase. The polka band struck up, and Stan climbed onto his chair with a can of Genesee. “A toast!” he shouted. “To my brother in law Rudy, who lifts everything in this family, and never once dropped us!” The whole garage cheered, and Tyler, standing beside the telehandler in a clean orange vest, raised a glass. Theresa slipped her arm through mine. “Na zdrowie,” she said. I tipped my cap, and the accordion began to play.
