Wrong Frequency

by Bill Capossere
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Hey, College Boy” the guy with the foam gun would say, scornfully because I only made the boxes, and was a journalism major instead of something “useful,” and Foam Gun Guy was the big man around there. “Whaddya gonna do with all those words?”

As if they were tangible things to hold in the hand, hard and heavy, and I were collecting them like rocks or coins, piling them atop pallets like the field radios stacked around us, waiting to be dropped into boxes I “shaped and taped” every fifteen seconds and placed on the roller to be sprayed, filled, resprayed, sealed, then settled onto a different pallet for shipping.

Bound for the military, the radios came in two colors—olive or tan—solidly squat boxes built to withstand all sorts of assault: jungle rot, parachute drops, rain and sand.

And bullets of course. Fired from real guns, not this contraption Foam Gun Guy aimed into the box, pulling the trigger to shoot out white goo that hardened into a protective cocoon, the opposite of what a gun does really. But he held it tucked tight against his shoulder, squinting as he swung its barrel across space like he was mowing down enemy soldiers. The warehouse Rambo.

I hated Foam Gun Guy.

Hated his tobacco reek and body’s bulk, his dirty jokes and bar brawl sagas. His off-brand jeans and steel-toed boots, both spattered and stained. And especially that smirking sobriquet.

“College Boy’’ I was all summer in that job I also hated, for its repetitive unthinking nature, its windowless setting and the rollers’ constant clacking noise, for its too-early start only a few hours after I’d called it a night so I often worked hungover or even a little buzzed. I hated it too for the pressure of having gotten the good-paying work via my Aunt Mary, who after I had called in “sick” a few too many times was pulled into the supervisor’s office and advised to talk to me about how it was only her good employee history keeping me on the payroll, dead sister’s son or not. Which she did while I squirmed and fidgeted and said all the right things, looking anywhere but in her disappointed eyes. That afternoon I stole the stapler off the supervisor’s desk.

One day Foam Gun Guy couldn’t make it in and it fell somehow to me to operate the gun. It was heavier than it had looked cradled in Foam Gun Guy’s broad hands, and thanks to being tethered to the long tube carrying the foam, ungainly as well, unexpectedly difficult to maneuver. Most of the morning went by before I got the hang of how to aim it, how much and how long to depress the trigger so just the right amount of foam was deployed, how to guide the barrel around the box’s perimeter so the radio would be safely encased without wasting material, and though I moved faster after lunch the number of units boxed that day was woefully slim.

The next day Foam Gun Guy was back, and I waited all morning for the inevitable mockery about the scanty production. The topic never came up, though, not until the supervisor passed through and tossed out a line about how he was glad to see I was back making boxes, given yesterday’s slow output. Foam Gun Guy just grunted, which I took as contemptuous assent, but when the supervisor was out of sight he turned to me and rasped in fierce indignation, “Hey College Boy, fuck that guy. What’s he think, you’re here to get good at this? What the fuck he think you’re going to college for?”

Later, when he took his break, instead of having me continue to make boxes so things would move quickly when he returned, as he’d always done, he handed me the gun and told me to take over while he went out on the dock to chain-smoke, the butts dropping like spent days at his feet until he finished, scraping them all over the edge with the thick toe of his work boot, and then leaning out to spit before heading back in.

In a few weeks I was done, happy to leave that place and that world behind, sparing it no thought when I left for my sophomore year to continue learning “all those words” that over time I would collect like rocks or coins, pile on pallets in my head, moving some here and others there across a raft of stories, though none I could string together magical enough to send through time and space to my smug earlier self, no message he would hear through the sure static of youth, of grace in unexpected places, and the ungainly weight of lingering rue.


Bill Capossere Contributor
Bill Capossere’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, In Short, and Man in the Moon. Recognitions include the “notable essays” section of Best American Essays and several Pushcart Prize nominations. He holds an MFA from the Mt. Rainier Writing Workshop and currently works as an adjunct instructor in Rochester NY.

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