One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist Read online

  “Who would have thought that stories about work could contain such magic, such music, such imaginative universality, so many desperadoes who cling to their jobs as madly as winos to their bottles? Dustin M. Hoffman has made a dazzling debut.”

  —Jaimy Gordon, author of the National Book Award–winning Lord of Misrule

  “Heartfelt and humorous and always keen to the ways our working lives serve to reveal our more personal hopes and dreams. I won’t soon forget these stories, which thrilled and moved me page after page.”

  —Matt Bell, author of Scrapper

  “Utterly unique and so very important.”

  —Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff

  Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction

  Editor Kwame Dawes

  One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist

  Stories

  Dustin M. Hoffman

  University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

  © 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

  Cover designed by N. Putens

  Author photo courtesy of Carrie Ann Hoffman

  Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear in Acknowledgments, which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hoffman, Dustin M., author.

  Title: One-hundred-knuckled fist: stories / Dustin M. Hoffman.

  Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. | Series: Prairie Schooner book prize in fiction

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015047729

  ISBN 9780803288546 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN 9780803288966 (epub)

  ISBN 9780803288973 (mobi)

  ISBN 9780803288980 (pdf)

  Subjects: LCSH: Blue collar workers—Fiction. | Working class—Fiction. | Middle West—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.O477666 A6 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047729

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Carrie

  All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are.

  —George Orwell

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Pushing the Knives

  One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist

  Sawdust and Glue

  Can Picking

  Everything a Snake Needs

  The Fire Chasers

  Subdivision Accidents

  Ice-Cream Dream

  We Ride Back

  The Shepherd’s Work

  Conch Tongue

  One More for You

  Strong as Paper Men

  Building Walls

  Workmen’s Compensation

  Touching in Texas

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to all the magazines and their editors who first supported and shaped the stories in this collection:

  Black Warrior Review for first publishing “Pushing the Knives”

  Juked for “One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist”

  Sou’wester for “Sawdust and Glue”

  Phoebe for “Can Picking”

  Quarter after Eight for “Everything a Snake Needs”

  Blue Mesa Review for “The Fire Chasers”

  Witness for “Subdivision Accidents”

  MAKE for “Ice-Cream Dream”

  Cimarron Review for “Conch Tongue”

  Yemassee for “One More for You”

  Copper Nickel for “Strong as Paper Men”

  Midwestern Gothic for reprinting “Strong as Paper Men”

  Puerto del Sol for “Building Walls”

  Fourteen Hills for “Workmen’s Compensation”

  Threepenny Review for “Touching in Texas”

  Thanks to the editors and wonderful folks at Prairie Schooner and University of Nebraska Press: Kwame Dawes, Ashley Strosnider, Elizabeth Nunez, Bernardine Evaristo, Courtney Ochsner, Marguerite Boyles, Joeth Zucco, and Jeremy Hall. Your faith in this book and the hard work you put into it mean the world to me.

  Thanks to my professors at Bowling Green State University and Western Michigan University who helped me find my voice, especially Wendell Mayo, Lawrence Coates, Michael Czyzniejewski, Theresa Williams, Jaimy Gordon, Thisbe Nissen, Jon Adams, and Nancy Eimers. Thanks to my first writing teacher and great friend, Adam Schuitema.

  Thanks to my inspiring, talented friends who made my years at BGSU so precious, especially Aimee Pogson, Megan Ayers, Stephanie Marker, Anne Valente, Jacqueline Vogtman, Brad Modlin, and Matt Bell. Thanks also to my brilliant friends from WMU, especially Dan Mancilla, Jeffrey Otte, Katie Burpo, Elissa Cahn, Laurie Cedilnik, David Johnson, Annie Strother, and Bridget Dooley. Thanks to Brandon Davis Jennings for reading everything I’ve ever written and for always making me do it better. And thanks to Joseph Celizic, my magic editor, for always believing in my work stories.

  Thanks to the tradesmen and tradeswomen who told me stories while we painted or roofed or sanded drywall, especially Jason Griffin, Jeremy Brown, Quincy, Tom, Craig and Margot, all the Pats, Rob, Brent, Chandler Anderson, Celia, Doug, and Matthew Jeffrey. And thanks to my colleagues who showed me a different kind of work, especially Glenn Deutsch, Jacqui Nathan, Donna Nelson-Beene, Steve Feffer, Kim Ballard, and the amazing folks from the English departments at Albion College and Winthrop University.

  Thanks to my family of strong women—my mom, Linda, and my sisters, Heather and Holly—and to my dad, Michael, who first trusted me to swing a paintbrush and run a saw. Thanks to the Binger family. Thanks to my brother-in-music Daniel McDonald. Thanks to my inspirations, my reasons to keep working hard, Evelyn Josephine and Alison Jane. Finally, thanks to my best friend, my love, the hardest worker I’ve ever known, Carrie.

  Pushing the Knives

  He’s supposed to be pushing the knives. Thrusting them up to the humming tube lighting of the supermarket so the polished steel sparkles, so you can almost hear the reflected twinkle slide across the blade. But gazing into vast ceilings, pure white girders grazed by boxed and shrink-wrapped bulk products towering in twenty-foot-tall aisles, makes him dizzy. He’d prefer to keep his head down. He should be showing off the sexy curves of the fillet knife, flaunting the no-nonsense power of the bulking cleaver. Instead, he runs his fingers over the name tag pinned to his white chef’s uniform complete with the white hat that poofs at the top like an atomic mushroom cloud, his thinning hairline tightly concealed underneath the explosion. His name tag is bright gold. The grooves of his name are sharp and cut skillfully, deeply. It reads, “Wyatt.” But how can he live up to “Wyatt” engraved in gold, sparkling in tube lights like the knives should be?

  A woman with short brown hair barely stretched into a ponytail and wearing gray sweatpants pushes a cart toward his stand. One of the wheels squeaks shrilly. It reminds Wyatt of the tenor in his trainer’s voice, the guy with the sharp triangle of black facial hair below his lower lip who wore the managerial navy-blue chef’s uniform. His two weeks of training just ended yesterday, but he can still hear his trainer shrieking, This is your target audience! Midthirties, slightly overweight, listless eyes that wander over shrink-wrapped ground chuck looking like red brains. Reel her in, Wyatt. Make the sale!

  But he can’t bring himself to do it. He is a pathetic salesman. Shy, terrible at talking. He feels lost in a forest of aisles the height of redwoods. He’s glad to be standing near the meat, near squat, refrigerated troughs less daunting. Still, in front of him, colorful displays and bar codes stack to the ceiling, obscuring his v
ision, and he wonders if there are actually more people somewhere in this store. Is this lady in her sweatpants his lone audience member, his only shot? If he had any courage, he might scale an aisle, perch atop stacked two-hundred-unit diaper boxes, and proclaim his sales pitch.

  The woman is close now. Almost to the steaks, near where his promotional stand sits, painted blue with a big yellow lightning bolt and a sign that reads THUNDER BLADES: STRIKE CULINARY PERFECTION. He wishes he had the wit and intensity his sign promises. She inches toward him, squeaking closer. This is his big moment, his first potential sale. He thinks back to his training manual, how he should approach this customer.

  Ma’am, a moment of your precious time?

  (Don’t wait for her. Take it!)

  Has your cutlery gone dull, uninspired, pointlessly pathetic? This is a common tragedy that befalls nearly nine of every ten households in America. A fact!

  (Keep it up. Don’t relent now. You’ve got the facts down; now show her the blades.)

  Ha! Your troubles are solved!

  (Brandish the Electroshocker Chef’s Knife. But don’t brandish too much; you don’t want her to think you’re a serial killer.)

  On this planet, you won’t find a sharper, more balanced knife. As if forged in the fires of Olympus, it slices with incomparable power and accuracy. But I could talk all day. The proof is in the results. Observe as the Electroshocker slices with perfection. There! Impossible? No. Amazing! And so easy a child could do it.

  (Note: Don’t sell knives to children under the age of ten. These things are sharp!)

  A finer edge and I’d be splitting atoms. But there’s more. So much more . . .

  (Attaboy! That’s how we do it!)

  But he can’t begin the pitch, can’t dredge the words from his quivering abdomen. Standing so close to the steak troughs is freezing him. The frigid temperatures that keep grade-A meat fresh stop him cold. This seems like a valid excuse. He must remember to not be so hard on himself, but he always is.

  And now she’s front and center, her eyes looking him up and down. Him, not the knives, up and down. He straightens his posture, pushes out his flat pectorals, tries to smile with his yellowed teeth. It makes him worry. In training, they explained how important appearances are, how you’re not just selling products, but yourselves. He remembers how desperately he needs tooth whiteners and Chuck Norris’s abs machine. She looks away. He can’t blame her. Her cart squeaks on toward the ice cream and frozen key lime pies. She is gone. No sale. No commission. No money for whiter teeth and abs of steel. It’s okay; he’ll get the next one. He’s still learning.

  “Why didn’t you get that one?” His supervisor, Lee, bursts from his hiding spot at the endcap of the cereal aisle, scattering cardboard toucans across the tile floor. He is a good hider. Wyatt didn’t even know he was there. It’s an impressive skill. Lee is a fat man, but short. He must have rolled up like a hedgehog to stow himself in the bottom shelf behind all those cereal boxes.

  “You didn’t say a damn word.” Lee is breathing hard. Droplets of sweat form on his round, bald, baby-faced head. Wyatt doesn’t mean or want to disappoint him. He wants Lee to like him. But Lee will never be his friend until he starts making sales.

  “Are you at least sawing the sledgehammer?”

  Wyatt completely forgot about the sledgehammer. He fidgets with his name tag.

  “Well, damn it.” Lee pushes Wyatt out from the knife stand. He reaches under for the sledgehammer and thunks it down on the stand’s massive oak cutting board. “You should be. You should have worked up a nice pile of shavings at this point. Start sawing for Christ’s sake.”

  Wyatt unsheathes the serrated knife, the Thundertooth. Why didn’t he remember the sledgehammer? It’s sure to draw in customers. How could he be so absentminded? He draws the blade across the head of the sledge a few times, a few more. Metal sledge shavings sprinkle the cutting board, his fingers, his hands.

  “That’s the ticket! Show them what the knives can do. How they’ll never go dull, even when it’s steel against steel.”

  Lee squeezes himself back into the bottom shelf of the endcap. He indeed does look like a balled-up hedgehog, tucked knees clutched in his hairy arms. His face is less red now, but he still looks nervous. Lee has two teenage girls and a baby boy on the way. His kids’ welfare depends on the sheer selling prowess of his regional salesmen. So much depends on Wyatt’s sales pitch. Lee’s daughters will not wear designer clothes and hence will never find lovers. The baby will not utter genius giggles at educational mobiles and will grow up dull-eyed, uninspired, and stupid. Wyatt hates the pressure piling up like the metal shavings. A light-gray line forms across the sledge head, where metal meets metal. A layer of shavings covers the stand top.

  “Good. Great. Go get ’em, Wyatt. We’re all behind you, rooting for you,” Lee says, balled up in his hiding spot. “Now, before you get too far, cover me up with the cereal boxes again.”

  Wyatt picks the toucans off the floor and stacks them around Lee in a colorful, tropical igloo. He leaves a slot for Lee to peep through, even though he doesn’t want to. He’d rather not have Lee watching him so closely. His presence is pressure, a reminder of all the lives at stake. He focuses on sawing.

  He wonders if he’s really cut out for this vocation. Before Thunder Blades, he worked in a nursing home called The Best Is Yet to Come. The residents thrived off his listening skills, stringing their stories along for hours. So many stories. But too many of the residents died in a freak outbreak of heart attacks and strokes and aneurysms. Everyone’s circulatory system just went wonky one week, twenty-three all on one Wednesday. Clogged up or burst, and the nursing home staff needed to be cut in half. These things happen. Hearts explode or just stop. There was no one to blame, Wyatt tried to convince himself. But there must have been more he could have done, more stories he could have listened to, kept record of in his mind like a Venus flytrap of dead men’s tales, which might have lessened the loads on their strained hearts.

  One resident in particular, Mr. Henderson, never told him a story deep enough. He didn’t want to share his family tree with Wyatt or to talk about children or even to reveal his first name. Instead, he told Wyatt about cars: his bright-yellow Bel Air with the sexy tail fins; the Crown Vic lined with red velvet upholstery, so sleek no ass deserved such classy cushioning. He told him about slinking California blacktop, windows down at sunset next to the ocean, not a bump in the road. Then, the roads in Michigan for the second half of his life—cracked-spine concrete, potholed, blowing out his alignment, windows shut tight in winter. This was all that Wyatt learned before Mr. Henderson’s heart swelled to two times its original size and eventually stopped. A massive, useless organ. Wyatt wished he could have dug deeper past the cars to whatever made a heart swell so big.

  After The Best Is Yet to Come, Thunder Blades hired him over the phone. They didn’t want experience. They didn’t want skill. Blank slates preferred. Lumpy masses of clay to be sculpted into an army of unstoppable salesmen. Wyatt came to know a world of products, each one more amazing than the next. Products, his training stressed, that no one could live without. Products, he realized, he’d been living without. This was surely why he lived alone, why he had no girlfriend or best friend or a close relationship with Mom and Dad. He had dead people’s stories, but he needed stuff. Stuff and money. Everything was about money, commission, sale, paycheck, purchase.

  By the time the next customer rounds the corner, swinging a shopping basket merrily, Wyatt has made a nice groove into the head of the sledge. The knives really are amazing. He likes the sound of the knife sawing back and forth, like the sound of old men’s labored breathing as they near sleep on a comfortable mattress. He can feel Lee’s eyes behind the boxes urging him. Saw like the wind, Wyatt. Make an impression. He saws more vigorously, sledge shavings accumulating like a metal blizzard, drifts of dust rising around the head of the sledge.

  The customer reaches the cheese display, just before the m
eat troughs where Wyatt saws. He has messy brown hair and freckles, a dusty face with a thick shadow of stubble. He wears an orange reflective vest over a black T-shirt, asphalt-splotched jeans. A road paver, probably a city worker, the guys who blur past his car windows at the side of the road on his way to work. The customer picks out a quart of small-curd cottage cheese and plunks it into his basket. Then he’s on his way, Thunder Blades directly in his path.

  Wyatt is lactose intolerant, and watching the man at the cheese display puts him all in knots. It starts in his stomach and creeps into his arms fast at work, now cramping. How long can he last? How long until his arms melt into butter or cream cheese or small curds? How long until the blade goes dull?

  Thunder Blades never go dull! Put your trust in the product. A master salesman is filled with faith.

  Remembering his training rejuvenates his confidence, gives him a burst of sawing speed. The customer stops, stares, rubs his sandpaper cheeks. Wyatt has captured his attention, is finally doing something right.

  We got our hooks in him now. Don’t stop. Saw that son-of-a-bitch sledgehammer right in half! If he’s impressed now, wait until he sees the rest. Break out the tomatoes!

  From the deep pockets of his apron, Wyatt produces a bright-red tomato. He holds it up for the customer, rotates it left and right. It might be the biggest, reddest tomato the man in the orange vest has ever seen. The man scratches his head. He should be explaining what he’s about to do, how the blade will still slice with Excalibur sharpness. But his tongue is tar. The words catch like stones in his throat.

  Pushing back his nerves, Wyatt slides the serrated blade over the tomato, and it sinks through as if the sledge were nondairy butter. He breathes a sigh of relief. The customer widens his eyes with recognition, nods. Yes, it all makes sense now. The pieces are coming together. These are the best damn knives you’ll ever see or want or need.