slippery when in debt

Charlie Sosnick

About five years ago, I was working for the CSX railway, piloting trains full of cobalt ore from the pit mines outside Yellowknife to the Smucker’s peanut butter factory, where the cobalt is processed and used to make the product chunky. It was a well-paying gig with good benefits; I could snack on the cobalt whenever I pleased and, if I had the time, was free to head back to the cargo cars to carve Buffalo nickels and bump uglies with the vagabonds and bindlestiffs. But you can’t ride the rails forever. On one pleasant spring day, I was lollygagging with the itinerants in the caboose, gambling on who could sniff the most benzedrine and still take a cat nap in the sun. Turns out, I played a slugabed with great elan and saw wood all the way from Sabanero to Keasbey. I suffered my recurring nightmare about a counterman at Liebman’s Delicatessen who refuses to serve me any more salami because of a glib comment I made about his goiter, until I was shaken awake by my compadres. Our train had been mistaken for a tugboat and plunged by well-meaning bystanders into Lake Superior. Though CSX policy allows for one catastrophic derailment per conductor per annum, I had neglected to punch my timecard during the sinking and was subsequently fired for swimming recreationally on company time. 

Ever since being let go, my life drums along to a slower beat, a tempo you can move your hips to somewhere between bachata and a Viennese waltz. First thing every day, I step out in my bathrobe to collect the newspapers. Next, I throw out the newspapers. (I am trying earnestly to declutter.) After that, I put out some suet for the warblers, who gripe without fail that they do not enjoy the suet, to which I reply, “I do everything in this house. I do the cooking and the cleaning and the least you lousy, ungrateful, hollow-boned birds could do is eat the damn suet I put out for you.” This exchange usually leaves me so rankled, I must draw a hot bath to unrankle myself. Later, I might drive to the cinema and see what’s playing before turning beet red upon realizing that I forgot to change out of my bathrobe. The prudent reader might catch that through all this, I have never bothered to check the mailbox, which is precisely how I missed a fine assessed by the United States Department of the Interior for damages to the Lake Superior ecosystem totaling $212,000. Though I could not fathom this sum at first, I soon learned that in the case of industrial accidents, damages to seafood stocks are charged at market price. 

Of course, throughout that daily routine I have also neglected to work, so I have no means with which to pay this exorbitant fine. What’s that old saying about the government? Ah yes, they give to the rich and steal from a hardworking train conductor who made one small oopsie whoopsie on the job. I wrote to Gartholemew Krebbs, CEO of CSX, the heralded captain of the company who won much acclaim for making the brand’s image sexy again. I petitioned that the company pay the fine from its capacious coffers, seeing as I would not have had much business transporting cobalt transnationally by rail were it not for them. Mr. Krebbs, to his credit, was a gentleman about the matter and cordially took hold of my throat, throttled me until my chest went numb and my vision narrowed to the equivalent of Dizzy Gillespie’s embouchure,  then politely explained how my proposal would result in a modest but nonetheless intolerable loss in shareholder dividends and was thus nothing more than codswallop. I cowered out of his office feeling like a complete nonce and wrapped my ascot around my collapsed windpipe to conceal the bruises. 

So, I am footing the bill myself, although it would be more accurate to say that the bill is footing me. It would be even more accurate to say that the bill is kicking, punting, walloping, dragging me behind the shed and unleashing a can of five-alarm whoop-ass on me. As if the incredible guilt and shame of causing one of the most cataclysmic steam-train fiascos in the Great Lakes region were not enough, I am now pinned under the rib-crunching crush of debt. I am too poor now even to buy suet for the warblers, who have moved on to my next-door neighbor, the latest sucker to be taken for a ride by the songbirds. I have even more horrendous night terrors now, far worse than the curt counterman at Liebman’s. I often awake trembling and drenched in sweat, fearing that strange men are in my bedroom appraising the furniture. Even worse, my nightmares are always true and I must then get up and deal with the repo guys. By the time the Department concluded plundering my home, I was left with only a few treasured heirlooms hidden beneath the floorboards. There was my grandmother’s diamond, which she swallowed during the Nazi invasion of Vienna. (She was in Jakarta at the time, competing in a diamond-swallowing tournament.) I found the Cilice of St. Gowanus, patron saint of whitefish salad, which he wore to atone for the sins of those who make it with too much celery. And finally, I had Benjamin Franklin’s badminton set, which I won in a gin rummy game, though it was never used because the sport was not invented until several decades after his death. I dragged all that down to Gold & Copper Pawn Shop, where I received $8.71 and an al pastor taco in exchange. 

This is all to say, if you have an aching, burning itch to break into the cobalt lugging game, get your CDL license.