CoffeeBeanShop

Eligibility

by Lance Hendrickson (bio at end of story)

I generally don't drink coffee. Once in a great while, sure, but I don't think I've ever once had a secretary get me any, and when Janie makes -- made, rather -- cappuccino or latte or whatever the hell it was in the morning, I went for juice instead. So, I think the mug collection and the Braun should go with her, and I'll just keep the juicer and the glasses. We haven't talked about it, but it sounds about right, and I think she'll go along with it.

My dad, though, he used to take a Thermos full of black Maxwell House to work with him every day. Not your garden-variety Thermos, either -- it was a tall, round, green metal lunker, with a handle that looked like it belonged on a tackle box, and a chrome-plated screw-on cap that would hold at least two normal-sized cups of coffee. Even empty, it seemed heavy enough to brain a horse (or at least a Shetland pony) with one good swing.

Of course, I knew that its various nicks and dents must've been caused at his job sites, but sometimes when I'd see it in the evening, erect on the counter next to the Mr. Coffee, my ten-year-old imagination would transform it into a war relic, scarred by use in pitched jungle battles by some ersatz GI Joe, who bludgeoned platoons of enemy soldiers seriatim as they charged and screamed bloodcurdling war-cries (in languages we'd never actually heard in the Midwest) before receiving unerring Thermos-blows to their foreheads and falling down in good order. "Banzaiiiii!" Thwack! "Kamikazeeeeeee!" Thwack! "Dee dee mao, you numba ten, gee eye!" Thwack!

Weapon or not, this was a bad-ass Thermos, no doubt about it, and it rode shotgun every morning at 5:30 in my dad's El Camino. Now, dad's rule was that whoever helped him with the cars that week could call "all time shotgun" (and ride with his elbow out the window like he did, too), so I learned how to change the oil and the air filter on that El Camino. I remember one Saturday on the way back from getting haircuts, he taught me how to pump gas and check the oil and clean the windshield, and I was so embarrassed when I realized I'd left a big streak on his side that I nearly cried. But even I couldn't begrudge the Thermos its pride of place. It went to work every day, too. It belonged there.

Anyway, I digress. Let's put all the pots and pans and dishes and china and all the other kitchen stuff in her column, and I'll just take the grill and the blender. Hell, I never eat in anyway, except when the guys and I do steaks and beer and football in front of the big-screen (which I also want; give her the stereo and both the cameras and all the CDs and videos and stuff -- she'll be cool with that). Oh, and she can have the silver. I'll take the microwave that doesn't go with the house.

You know, now that I think back, by some cosmic coincidence my folks' old Mr. Coffee and the construction industry both went up in smoke sometime in 1978 or '79. The former happened before my eyes -- it was very exciting for us kids, I'll tell you. Lots of blue sparks and smoke just erupted towards the ceiling one afternoon, and we finally got a chance to try out the chemical fire extinguisher that had been hanging in the broom closet for years. It was a white metal cylinder about the size of a half-gallon of milk, and when I pulled the pin and squeezed the red plastic trigger, a jet of chalky white powder shot out of the damned thing at high velocity and billowed throughout the kitchen like Apollo 17 was lifting off. When things settled down, I looked like Casper, my younger brother looked more like the Pillsbury dough-boy, and except for the charred remains of Mr. Coffee, the floor and countertops all looked like New Year's Eve at the Escobar mansion.

Sadly, it took me about another six or eight years to get my mind around the latter. That damned Joe DiMaggio never warned us about either one.

I told the story about the exploding coffee maker to anyone who would listen for weeks afterwards, but my folks didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal. Maybe they had expected it, somehow. Maybe it was because Mr. Coffee already had been laid off for a while, too -- the M.E.S.C. office didn't open until 9:00 a.m., and the people with the most secure jobs in Michigan already had a big picnic-sized urn of coffee made over there. Maybe it was because mom and dad had lots of other things to fight about; who's to say.

In any event, to this day I don't know which must've been more humiliating: the nationwide Mr. Coffee recall, or my dad's 26 trips over to unemployment.

At some level I guess I have to understand, because the state had to make sure people weren't just mooching, and back then dial-in eligibility reporting was still much farther off than the death of disco. Hell, our town didn't even have very many touch-tone phones yet. But to me, the math seems pretty simple. Nobody borrows money at 21% to build new skyscrapers (or any commercial buildings, really), therefore, nobody needs overhead sprinklers installed. Ergo, no overhead-sprinkler companies need foremen (or even pipe-fitters) to work on the installation contracts they aren't getting. Socrates is mortal, whatever. Really, couldn't even the most addleminded bureaucrats have figured that out, and just mailed him the damned checks? Come to that, towards the end they theoretically could've saved postage by putting every other one in with the food stamps that arrived by mail around the first and the fifteenth.

But no. Every Thursday morning at 9:00, there were papers my dad had to fill out, lines he had to stand in, people behind counters he had to face (who probably thought he wasn't looking for work hard enough), and finally a pale yellow check he had to take straight over to the bank... where he found more papers, more lines, more counters, and more people (who probably thought he wasn't looking for work hard enough).

So it goes. Back to business. Let's give Janie the good clock-radio; I just need the alarm clock. Towels and sheets and stuff... hers. I'll buy new. We actually talked about the exercise stuff last time, and I can't imagine she'll complain if we just divide it up like we were going to do back then. I'm sure she's gonna want to take the treadmill, the stairmaster, and her bike, and I'll be keeping the weight bench and my bike, and all the weights and tools and crap that go along with them.

Furniture... uh... shit. I don't wanna do this today (as if you couldn't tell already). I'm sorry to waste your time. Fuck it. It's just -- it's like this. Remember out on number six last weekend, when you lambasted that three-iron by accident and your ball bounced off that guy's cart and into the bunker? I knew you could never hit it that far from that spot again if you tried, and you knew it for damned sure, too. We all did. Except for that temporary gravitational failure or whatever the hell it was, you'd have never hit that cart, and you'd have never wound up in the catbox. Res ipsa loquitor, like you lawyers say; the thing speaks for itself. So, you got a mulligan by consensus, right? Right. A clearly justified do-over, no question.

This is gonna sound stupid at first; just hear me out. I wonder -- if my mom had filled that Thermos for my dad on those Thursday mornings, would I have had so many beer cans to clean out of the El Camino on Sunday? Might they have fought less often, or said fewer things they couldn't take back? Get this -- shouldn't a dead Mr. Coffee and an economy that started circling the drain right after the mortgage was signed have qualified both my parents for do-overs?

I mean, for example, if she'd gone ahead and boxed up Mr. Coffee and sent his barbecued carcass back to the factory for a new one, and maybe brought that Thermos back in from the sandbox -- I think right before dad moved out, we'd been pretending it was a cement mixer -- maybe they could've patched things up, pale yellow checks or no. Maybe they should've tried, anyway.

I'll call you. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go to a high-tech coffee place and learn what that half-caf double-latte business is about, and then I'm gonna call Janie and ask if she'll have cappuccino with me -- raised pinkie and all. It's worth a shot, anyway, isn't it?

© Lance Hendrickson. All Rights Reserved.

$200 Finalist - Eligibility by Lance Hendrickson

Lance Hendrickson, 32, is an attorney living in Roseville, California. Lance received a B.S. in Political Science from Central Michigan University in 1990, and a J.D. from the Arizona State University College of Law in 1993. In his career, he practiced corporate law on an Indian reservation in western Arizona, he spent five years as a solo practitioner in his home town of Hesperia, Michigan (where he also was elected to the school board), and most recently he litigated complex commercial cases for a Sacramento law firm. Presently, he is deciding whether to pursue writing on a full-time basis.

Editor's Note: "Eligibility" was chosen for the first round for the following reasons: The title pulled us in. After we read the story, we realized the significance of "Eligibility." We didn't know Lance was an attorney, so we were impressed with the Latin, as well as with the attention to detail. This serves him well throughout this read, as two tools of coffee serve as metaphors for two marriages. Correct punctuation, no spelling errors, authentic voice. "Eligibility" made the cut with all the above, plus humor and an individual voice. Great ending, and a handsome read.

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