Working the Dirt by J Bradley Minnick

Mighty Broom left the first notch in the dirt at three that afternoon: the first of hundreds of parallel lines exactly five feet apart across the width of the halls that started in front of the Janitors Closet and ran the length of Weatherspeake High. Wilson never had to measure the rows. He had the five-foot knack.

Twelve o’clock, midnight was quitting time. Wilson never looked forward to quitting time because then he had to go home to his mother, who loved him more than anything else in the world and was all smothery and lonesome and insisted on giving him five pats and five hugs and five kisses for luck before he went to bed. 

Carl, his boss, was nice enough to let him take Mighty Broom home for the weekend. “Keep that dirty thing out on the porch,” his mother always said, but she didn’t really mean it.

Wilson usually went upstairs to his room and turned on Mr. Train that ran like a subway around and under his bed and through his collection of pop cans that lined the walls and made a strange shadowed city he wished he could visit in his dreams. 

He would try to stay awake and watch the part of the city where the baseball stadium was, but when he fell asleep, the city stayed shadows, and only his mother appeared. “Goodnight Wilson,” she said, and kissed him once more on the forehead. Later, he sneaked out to the porch and rescued Mighty Broom and leaned it against his bedroom wall and put a shadowed wig on the city.

On Saturday, his mother took him on the subway train to a Phillies game. The subway tunnel was dark and scary and filled with unhappy ghosts. At the stadium, he bought a program for a dollar. While the game was going on, Wilson saw a young boy sitting in the row in front of him making marks with a pencil on a page in the program. Wilson puzzled over the blank scorecard in his program and the symbols at the bottom of the page. “Do you want mustard on your hot pretzel?” Wilson’s mother asked.  

Wilson spent most of Sunday making signs on large rolls of paper while his mother sat in front of the television. “I’m knitting my will,” she said. Before he could complete the signs, his mother always fell asleep. 

“Finished!” Wilson yelled. 

The signs were for sports teams that had to play the next week at Weatherspeake High. He hung them all around the gym: ‘Boys Football, Wilson wishes you victory.’ ‘Girls Basketball—Wilson wishes you Wins.’ ‘Boys Wrestling—Wilson Wishes You Well.’ ‘Girls Volleyball—Wilson Sends Well Wishes.’ He felt proud when he shifted the words around because that made them matter more.

Monday morning he said to his mother, “Friday’s forever and a day away.” Tuesday he said to Principal Whorl, “Friday’s more than two days and another day away!” Wednesday he said to Carl, “Friday’s comin’, day after tomorrow.” Thursdays he said to himself, “Friday’s comin’, be here soon.” 

Thursday night, while he was sweeping up the library, he borrowed a book of baseball stories. It was the first time that Wilson had ever taken anything from the school that really counted. All the teachers talked about how books really counted, not like the candy for the taking in the glass jars on their desks or the half-empty pop cans sitting on the heater vents or the food in the refrigerators. 

“That’s stealing, Wilson,” his mother would have said, and Wilson knew that it was stealing, but called it “borrowing,” the same way the kids did. Wilson hid the baseball storybook under his jacket so his mother wouldn’t know and went directly to his room. 

That night, he kept score of the stories he read. The players never played full innings and, after a while, he could never tell which inning the players were in at all. Wilson realized that baseball stories weren’t about baseball in the same way that stealing wasn’t about “borrowing” and pop cans weren’t about cities. “God bless you, Wilson. Go to sleep now.” 

That night Wilson had dreams that Principal Whorl called him down to the Front Office over the big voice box in the ceiling. Everyone knew the principal was calling because Wilson was a “no-good stealer.”

While he sat in one of the chairs that he always ran Pete the Sweeper under, the pretty secretary went “Tsk, Tsk, Tsk, Wilson!” Principal Whorl stood straight and tall at his door and was holding out his hand, palm up. Wilson smiled and tried to give him a high five, but Mr. Whorl slapped him in the face. 

Wilson woke up all sweaty and felt like he was about to throw-up or Mr. P.P. Tinkle on the floor. He grabbed the baseball storybook that he had carefully hidden behind the shadowed city and shoved it way down in his workpants.   

Friday morning, Wilson felt terrible and nervous. The butterflies had been at him all night. He had a strict schedule he was expected to follow. His boss, Carl, a red-faced man, yelled at him because he loved him so much. “Now listen, Wilson, I hand-printed the schedule and put it on the wall of the cafeteria. It’s here every night now! This is where to look!” The schedule was printed in pencil because sometimes Carl needed to make changes.

Work time usually passed quickly, and Wilson kept himself busy. Besides, he had Pete The Sweeper, his not-so-trusty vacuum cleaner, to keep him company. Pete the Sweeper always trailed behind, it’s nozzle attached to his belt and noisily whispered, “Borrow the baseball book; nobody will miss it,” while Wilson was in the library, or it vacuumed, “Eat the colorful candy from the pretty secretary’s desk, Wilson. She likes you” while he was cleaning up the Front Office, or it screeched, “Food is in refrigerators” while he was in the cafeteria looking at Carl’s hand-printed schedule, or it scraped, “There’s a valuable pop can sitting on one of the drafting tables in the shop room; take it, Wilson. Just take it.”

Mighty Broom was another story. It never interrupted him when he spoke like Carl or his mother or Principal Whorl. It walked in front of him down the halls, and he obediently followed. It told him which teachers were in the building, and if Mr. Whorl was there late; most of all, it worked the dirt in parallel lines exactly five feet apart, leaving doubts about the dirtiness of dirt.

“You look like a boy who’s lost his marbles somewhere in his pockets and is trying to find them,” Carl gave Wilson the ups-and-downs. “Why are you standing on one leg, Wilson? You gotta’ pinch a loaf?” Carl’s big eyeballs bulged, and his face got even redder like when he drank the “Night Train” behind the dumpsters on cold nights.

At six o’ clock, Mighty Broom found its way into the theatre. The students were busy practicing for their latest production, moving about on the stage, saying their lines, and the lights were flashing colors that hurt Wilson’s eyes. He was fascinated by the auditorium that was painted to look like the big city with skyscrapers, roads and a tunnel for a subway train. Wilson stood in front of the tunnel. Mighty Broom stopped but Pete the Sweeper trailed along behind and whispered, “Listen, Wilson. There’s a train coming. I can hear it. You better hurry, or you’ll be late.”

At seven o’ clock, Mighty Broom stopped in front of room 11. Gim Truit, the senior History teacher, had spent thirty years of his life in this room. “This room is my history, Wilson,” Mr. Truit said. Mr. Truit was old and often sick.  

Wilson knew there were two types of teachers at Weatherspeake High: Sad Lives and Secret Selves. 

Sad Lives took their work home with them on weekends the same way that he took Mighty Broom home. They always talked about the school and told Wilson the same stories again and again. They stayed late on Fridays and came in on weekends. They went to all of the sporting events: sold tickets and soda and candy and disappeared at half-time and spent the remaining hours alone in their rooms. They complained, “Students take and take, Wilson, and they rarely give back. I’m flat-out empty.” 

Wilson knew that Sad Lives loved to complain and wouldn’t have it any other way. They would always be sad.

The other type had Secret-Selves locked in a deep place and far away that no one could see. Secret Selves spent a lot of time away from the school and rarely worked late. They took long trips during the summers. They didn’t want to become imprisoned in the pictures in the trophy case or to become ghosts destined to roam the halls; when they finally went away for good, they never came back for a visit, ever. They didn’t even send postcards.

Mr. Truit was so old that students called him Plato because he had read every book in the Weatherspeake Library. He told Wilson that he had to go into the army to fight the Korean War. He told Wilson that the Korean War was one of the bloodiest wars that had ever been fought. He told Wilson that the history books said that it hadn’t even been a war but that the history books were wrong. “Blood flowed like a river onto the battlefield, Wilson.” Wilson could see that river of blood and men being swept away, sinking down under the red waves. “Now listen, Wilson. Listen to me like your life depended on it. Listen to me because there’s a war on, son—a war with our secret selves—a war with time.”  

Mr. Truit pointed to all of the paintings, sculptures and posters that lined his room. “This represents history, Wilson. But, it isn’t history, don’t you see?” Wilson shook his head. “Of course you do! Look, I know you understand. I watch you read that dirt. I know your secret.”

It was then that the baseball book let loose and slipped all the way down his pants, and when Wilson shook his leg, the book flew out and hit the floor. “I tried to wish it away to but it let loose anyway,” he apologized to Mr. Truit. Wilson quickly swept up the baseball book with Mighty Broom.

“There’s more history in that dirt than all those books put together, isn’t there, Wilson? Why you can tell more about all of us than we know about ourselves. You understand the dirt. You measure it into what matters.” Mr. Truit’s voice pushed Wilson and Mighty Broom and the baseball storybook down the hall.

Friday, eight o’ clock was Wilson’s favorite time. At eight o’ clock, he swept the gym. Wilson had wanted to sweep it from the first day. Carl had said, “Wilson, sweeping gym floors is the most responsible job of all. You got to take care not to scratch the varnish. And for Christ’s sake don’t leave the water fountain button on after you take your whale-sized drinks. Then, we’ll both be up a crick without a paddle”    

Alone with Mighty Broom, Wilson swept the gym’s varnished floorboards and listened to Julie Andrews sing Christmas music over the voice box in the ceiling, even when it wasn’t near Christmas. The old record bounced merrily through its grooves on the beat-up stereo that came down out of the wall, and music washed over his head. 

Wilson always stopped in the dead-middle of the gym floor and admired his signs. “You been staring at them walls for fifteen minutes, Wilson. You’d think there was a picture of Miss U.S.A. hanging up there instead of your crummy signs,” Carl said.  

At 9 ‘o clock, the hallways of Weatherspeake High were filled with the ghosts of students come and gone. As Wilson swept past the trophy case, he always stopped to look at the pictures of all of the children smiling at the camera. Once in a while, they came back to visit but that was usually only after the first year. Sometimes they came back after a long time, and Wilson called them by name as if they had never left. They always looked amazed that someone remembered them.

“Them years coming faster; they’s gaining on the future, but by then I’ll be dead and you’ll be gone, too,” Carl said at least once a week. “Each year we get older, and each year the students stay the same,” Mr. Whorl said on alternate weeks. “I heard that in a movie, Wilson, and it’s stuck with me.” Pete the Sweeper whispered, “Keep the colored pencils you find on the art tables, Wilson. Nobody notices strays.” Mighty Broom admonished, “Keep sweeping, Wilson. Pay them no mind. We both plan to be around forever.”

It was 11 ‘o clock, and Mighty Broom hurried Wilson through the dark halls, startling all of the ghosts who lurked in the corners. Together they all passed the Front Office, and stopped at the front doors. Wilson shook the lock three times and said “Lock, lock, locked.” 

Mighty Broom entered the library, and Wilson laid the baseball storybook he had borrowed on the floor and marveled as Mighty Broom scooted through the library with a mind of its own and swept the baseball storybook back onto bottom shelf so that nobody, not even Mrs. Stipend, the mean librarian, or Mr. Whorl, the Principal, or Carl, his boss, or his mother would know that he had once borrowed what counted, if only for a little while.

When the day he tried to wish away finally came to an end. He squatted down next to Mighty Broom and said to that last slash mark in the dirt, “I tried to wish it away, but here it is anyway.” He said to Pete the Sweeper, “Friday’s here. Be good in the Janitors Closet and don’t borrow anything anyone will notice.”

Wilson opened wide the Janitors Closet door to put Pete the Sweeper inside. To his surprise on the shelf next to the paper towels he found a library book, The History of Baseball with a note. “Wilson, I thought you could take care of this book for me over the weekend and return it to library on Monday. I borrowed it and didn’t want the students and the teachers of Weatherspeake High to miss it. Your Friend in History and otherwise, Mr. Truit.”

At 12 ‘o clock, midnight Wilson heard the choo-choo train on its way out of Weatherspeake, its horn echoing through the midnight air. 

J Bradley Minnick

Image by Maria from Pixabay – Brush head lying on a wooden floor