McCaffrey's Pickle

McCaffrey’s Pickle

McCaffery was free.

He hadn’t been free when he woke that morning, when the he’d hit the button at five seconds past six to silence the news headlines coming from his yellowed FM radio alarm.

The alarm had woken him every morning for twenty years, after seven to eight hours of reasonable rest in an under-occupied queen-sized bed. It was eight hours every night, except for Thursday, because on Thursdays he went to his group, but the radio alarm made no allowances for the lost hour. When the digits flickered to o-six-hundred the static-fringed chords of the local news program played and his first action of the day was triggered. 

He hadn’t been free when he ate his usual oatmeal from the bowl with the blue stripe and read the news headlines on his phone. He hadn’t wanted to get a mobile phone, but it seemed he had no choice. People had phones. People ate breakfast, and McCaffrey ate oatmeal for breakfast, because his doctor had told him to, because it was good for his heart. McCaffrey’s coffee was black, in a cup with a blue stripe, that came with the bowl. He used to have cream in it, but that involved an extra trip to the store, a trip that was unnecessary if he stuck to his list of oatmeal, coffee, and frozen dinners.

He was certainly not free as he waited for the train to the depot. His travel card took him through the turnstiles, the ratchet clank blocking any retreat from the escalator which lifted him past the advertisements for cruises and Mercedes and deposited him on the cold platform where he stood until the train arrived, usually three to five minutes after its scheduled time. Then the tracks took him to the depot on Lomond Street and the start of his shift.

The start of his shift made McCaffrey’s lack of freedom tolerable. On logging in to the system he began to be paid for his un-free time. The system told him he had gone one hundred and sixty-seven days without absence, without even being late. The system had been installed one hundred and sixty-seven days ago. McCaffrey had not missed a day, or even the start of a shift, since before records began.

He had no strong feelings about his job and had become competent enough to avoid challenge. He liked that they’d got him a special chair, because of his back-thing. Although, to be truthful, whether he liked it or not, he didn’t have much choice about remaining in his acceptably paid employment. He needed the money. At his age options were limited, and nothing was free. 

Lunch was at twelve thirty. Half an hour during which McCaffrey had to get his lunch from the Lomond Street Deli, eat it on the bench under the tree by the entrance to the park, walk back to the office in time to use the facilities and get back to his desk to log back in for the afternoon. He logged off and left his cubicle.

Lomond street was short, mainly taken up by the depot and its offices and a few businesses which huddled by the intersection. The Lomond Street Deli was between Lee’s Dry Cleaners and a shop selling phone accessories, just past the metal gates to the public park. Outside the gates, under the crow-studded canopy of a large, leafless sycamore, was McCaffrey’s lunch bench. The undesirable bench was always free (who would want a solitary bench outside the park?). He passed it every day on the way to pick up his lunch and then sat on it to eat on his way back to the depot.  

Today, the bench was not free.

On one end of the bench sat a woman in a purple overcoat. Red hair spilled over her collar, which was turned up against the autumn chill. Her chin was buried in a wedge of yellow scarf as she looked down at a paperback held in green mittened hands. McCaffrey was looking at the person sitting on his bench when she looked up from her book and met his eye. She didn’t smile at him, she was already smiling, she just raised her face to show him the expression she already wore. She wasn’t pleased to see him, she was just acknowledging a grey coated man who might be about to share her bench. But then she did smile at him.

Her happiness flared and was directed at him. The creases at the corners of her bright eyes deepened, and her round cheeks flexed, flashing her white teeth. He had no idea why she would want to smile at him, but he knew it was ok to sit on the other end of their bench. As he passed the bench he hurried to the deli. It felt important that he should get his lunch quickly and get back to the bench.        

He had no intention of talking to her. He didn’t want to disturb her reading. What was she reading that made her so happy? Maybe he should start bringing a book to the bench? He had a few in his apartment, some bought and unread. Maybe he could get some more? He’d used to like reading. He had time to read in the evenings, except Thursdays, when he had his group. She didn’t need to know about his group, not yet. She wouldn’t know about anything, because he wasn’t going to talk to her. He would mind his business and let her be happy with her book. But he wanted to get back to the bench all the same.

The queue in the unpopular deli was short and moved quickly, made up as it was of other workers from the depot with limited time and options. It struck McCaffrey that a smile from a stranger could change his day more than he had the power to change it himself. He stared at the chalk-board menu above the counter. Why did he want to get back to the bench? Why was he wondering how old she was? What business was it of his?

“The usual?” said the man in the apron behind the counter.

“No,” said McCaffrey. The smile-feeling had turned into a desire to order something different for his lunch. This day of strange smiles and shared benches would be marked by a different, more indulgent lunch than heart-healthy tuna on brown. “Pastrami, please. And a pickle. Please.”

“No pastrami. The delivery guy’s got a back-thing.”

“Oh, ok then, so, the usual. But with a pickle.”

So McCaffrey had his usual, but with a pickle, on a bench which was his alone by the time he got back to it. But McCaffrey was free.