Pilgrims

  they had been forced to look on himself in sixty years: elderly

  and dying, calling to his daughters and his granddaughters,

  calling them all to him, calling them all Babette.

  146 ✦

  At the Bronx Terminal

  Vegetable Market

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  ✦

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  Jimmy moran was still very young — barely over forty —

  when he started having serious back pains. His family doc-

  tor told him that he probably needed an operation on a disc,

  and a second doctor (an expensive specialist) confirmed it. Both

  doctors agreed that Jimmy would need to take six months off

  from work. He would need to lie on his back and do absolutely

  nothing at all for six months, and only then would he have a

  chance at complete recovery.

  “Six months!” Jimmy told the doctors. “I’m in the produce

  business, buddies! Are you kidding me?”

  Six months! He made his doctors an offer of four months,

  which was still much more time than he could afford to lose.

  They finally came down to five months, but only grudgingly

  and with obvious disapproval. Even five months off was ridicu-

  lous. He’d never taken as much as a week away from the Bronx

  Terminal Vegetable Market since he’d started working there as a

  loading porter, in the summer of 1970. Five months! He had a

  wife to support and so many kids at home that it was almost

  embarrassing to say the full number. But there was no getting

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  p i l g r i m s

  around any of this. His back was injured and he needed the

  surgery, so he went ahead with it. And here’s how they survived:

  his wife, Gina, took extra hours at her job; they emptied their

  small savings account; his brother Patrick gave them some

  money. Things were not as bad as they might have been.

  As it turned out, Jimmy Moran ended up accomplishing two

  important things during his time away from the market. First of

  all, he bought a gorgeous 1956 blue Chrysler sedan, which was

  in great shape and drove like a luxury ocean liner. Gina didn’t

  agree with the investment, but they needed another car, and

  the Chrysler was a lot cheaper than anything new. Besides, he

  bought it off an old man in Pelham Bay who hadn’t taken the

  thing out of the garage for decades and had no idea what it was

  worth. Honestly, the car was a steal. It really was. Jimmy had

  always wanted a beautiful old car. He’d always felt that he

  deserved a beautiful old car, because he would appreciate it and take good care of it and when he drove around town he would

  wear a good-looking, old-fashioned kind of brimmed hat, just

  like his dad used to wear.

  His second accomplishment was that he decided to run for

  president of his union local.

  The current president of the Teamsters Local 418 was a guy

  named Joseph D. DiCello, who had the obvious advantage of

  being an incumbent and an Italian. Most of the union members

  at the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market were Italian, and if

  even half the Italians voted for DiCello, Jimmy Moran would

  get whipped like a bad dog, and he realized that completely.

  Jimmy, however, still believed that he had a chance to win.

  Reason being, Joseph D. DiCello was basically an idiot and a

  corrupted, useless fuck.

  DiCello drove a big Bonneville and hadn’t successfully de-

  fended a worker’s grievance in six years. He barely even showed

  up at the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market at all anymore, and

  148 ✦

  At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market

  when he did show up, he’d always be sure to bring some prosti-

  tute with him, picked up from around the gates outside. A

  Chinese prostitute, usually. DiCello would ask some tired, over-

  worked porter, “Hey, kid? You like my wife? You like my new

  wife, kid?”

  And the porter, naturally, would say something like “Sure,

  boss.”

  Then DiCello would laugh at the poor guy, and even the

  Chinese prostitute would laugh at the poor guy. Therefore, and

  for numerous other reasons, people were basically getting sick

  of Joseph D. DiCello.

  Jimmy Moran, on the other hand, was a well-liked person.

  The few Irish workers left at the market would vote for him out

  of instinct, and Jimmy got along with most of the Italians just

  fine. Why, he’d even married an Italian. His own kids were half

  Italian. He had no problems with Italians. He had no problems

  with the Portuguese, either, and did not think in any way that

  they were thieves by nature. He also had no problems with the

  blacks (unlike that sick bigot DiCello), and he was actually

  quite popular with the Hispanics. Jimmy had held many differ-

  ent jobs over the years at the market, but he’d recently been

  hired once again as a loading porter, which meant that he

  worked mostly with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Who were

  all very decent and fun-loving individuals, as far as Jimmy Mo-

  ran could see.

  When it came to the Mexican vote, this would also be no

  problem. The older Mexicans would remember that, years and

  years ago, Jimmy Moran had worked at the typically Mexi-

  can job of handling and packaging peppers. (And not those

  sweet Italian bell peppers, either, but pitiless Spanish peppers

  — jalapeños, poblanos, cayennes, chilies, Jamaican hots —

  fierce peppers that only Mexicans usually handled, because if a

  person didn’t know what he was doing, he could really get hurt.

  When a person got the oil from one of those peppers in his eye,

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  p i l g r i m s

  it honestly felt just like getting punched in the eye.) Although pepper-handling was easy on the back, it was no job for a white

  man, and Jimmy had quit doing it years and years ago. But he

  still got along fine with all the older Mexicans, and with most of

  the younger ones, too.

  As for the Koreans, Jimmy had no experience with them.

  Neither did anybody else, though, so it really didn’t matter. It

  wasn’t like Joseph D. DiCello was best friend to the Koreans or

  anything. The Koreans were strange people, and you could just

  forget about the Koreans. The Koreans had their own market

  within the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market, and they only

  sold to each other. They talked to each other in Korean, and

  besides, they weren’t even in the union.

  There was another thing that Jimmy Moran had in his favor.

  He was actually a true union man, and not some phony local

  gangster’s kid like DiCello. He wasn’t even from the city. He

  was born in Virginia, and his people were real coal-mining

  people and honest-to-Christ workingmen. Back in Virginia,

  when Jimmy was only ten years old, he’d watched his grandfa-

  ther overturn a company coal truck and empty a shotgun into

  the engine block during a workers’ strike. His uncle was mur-

  dered by company detectives, his other uncle died of black lung,

  his ancestors organized against U.S. Steel, and Jimmy Moran
br />   was a true workingman in a way that an affluent cheat like

  Joseph D. DiCello, for instance, could never be true in a thou-

  sand corrupted lifetimes.

  Jimmy Moran gave his potential candidacy one evening’s

  thought. This was four months into his recovery from back

  surgery. He considered all the advantages and disadvantages of

  staging a campaign, which would be his first. Gina wouldn’t be

  nuts about the idea, but Jimmy’s back didn’t hurt anymore, he

  was the owner of a beautiful 1956 Chrysler, and he felt really,

  really capable. He couldn’t think of any reason that he — with

  his good labor background, his decent personality, and all the

  150 ✦

  At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market

  different jobs he’d held at the market over the years — should

  not be the president of the union.

  Yes, he gave his candidacy that one evening’s thought, and

  when he woke up the next morning, he was decided. Convicted,

  even. It was a great feeling. It was like waking up in love.

  And so Jimmy Moran returned to the Bronx Terminal Vegeta-

  ble Market after only four months of recovery. His plan was

  to campaign for a few nights, and then come back to work

  officially. He arrived well after midnight, as the delivery trucks

  were pulling in to load up. When he came through the entrance

  gate, he stopped to talk with Bahiz, the Arab woman who

  checked identification cards. She was a fairly attractive woman,

  so everybody flirted with her. Also, she was the only woman

  who worked at the entire market, or at least as far as Jimmy

  Moran had ever noticed in nearly twenty-five years.

  “Bahiz!” he said. “Who let you out of the harem?”

  “Oh, Jeez. Jimmy’s back,” she said. She was chewing gum.

  “‘Jimmy’s back!’” Jimmy repeated. “‘Jimmy’s back! ’ Hey, don’t say anything about Jimmy’s back, sweetheart. You should say,

  ‘Jimmy Moran has returned. ’ Jesus, I don’t want to talk about Jimmy’s back. You like my new car?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Guess what year it is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just give it a guess.”

  “I don’t know. Nineteen sixty-eight?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “What is it, ’sixty-six? How should I know?”

  “Bahiz! It’s a ’fifty-six! It’s a ’fifty-six, Bahiz!”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Use your eyeballs for once, Bahiz.”

  “How should I know? I can barely see it.”

  “The ladies love it, sweetheart. I’ll take you for a drive some -

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  p i l g r i m s

  time. You never would’ve refused me all these years if I was

  driving a car this nice. Isn’t that right, Bahiz?”

  “Oh, Jimmy. Just go to hell.”

  “You got a dirty mouth, Bahiz. Listen. How about some

  figs?”

  Sometimes Bahiz had the greatest figs with her. The dried

  figs that were widely available at the Bronx Terminal Vegetable

  Market were mostly mission figs, from California. And after

  eating Bahiz’s figs, Jimmy Moran was certainly never going to

  eat any dried California mission figs again. Some of the better

  houses at the market carried imported Spanish figs, which were

  pretty nice, but they were expensive. Also, Spanish figs were

  kept packaged in plastic-wrapped crates, so it was almost im-

  possible to steal just a handful for free sampling.

  Bahiz, however, sometimes had the most incredible Israeli

  figs, and she would always give a few to Jimmy. Bahiz’s mother

  shipped the figs to her by air mail all the way from the Middle

  East, which was very expensive but worth it. It was a well-

  known fact that, throughout all of the entire history of man-

  kind, Israeli figs have always been considered the most valuable

  figs in the world. Israeli figs taste like granulated honey. They

  have skins like thin caramels.

  But Bahiz didn’t have any figs that night.

  “Forget about you, Bahiz,” Jimmy Moran said. “You worth-

  less old bat.”

  “I hope somebody hits your dumb-ass car!” she said, and they

  both smiled at each other and waved good-bye.

  Jimmy parked his car in front of Grafton Brothers, which was

  his most recent employer, one of the biggest wholesale houses in

  the market and a good place to start his campaign. Grafton

  Brothers was a very profitable house, and here was why: Salvi

  and John Grafton bought overripe produce with no shelf life for

  the lowest, giveaway prices. Then they hired porters to pick

  152 ✦

  At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market

  through the produce — most of which was rotten — toss out

  the rotten stuff, and repack the rest of it. Grafton’s could triple

  its investment on a cheap shipment of vegetables while still

  underselling the rest of the market. It was practically a hoax.

  Salvi and John Grafton might have gotten to be rich men this

  way, with big horse-racing farms down in Florida, but their

  wholesale empire still smelled like compost from all the ripe

  food they threw out, and there were more rats at Grafton’s than

  at any other house in the market. Grafton’s produce was gar-

  bage.

  There were specialty houses at the market that took produce

  very seriously and sold only beautiful fruits and vegetables.

  There was a Russian Jew in the north docks who flew endive in

  every day from a small family farm in the middle of Belgium,

  and that was the finest endive in the world. There was a Filipino who sold blackberries in February for five dollars a pint wholesale, and buyers were happy to pay, because the blackberries were fantastic and it was worth it. Grafton’s was not such a

  house.

  Jimmy Moran had worked for Grafton’s off and on over

  twenty-five years as a porter, a driver, a vegetable sorter, and in

  practically every other kind of job. The only thing was, he’d

  never been able to get any kind of desk job inside the barracks

  of Grafton’s offices. Office jobs at the Bronx Terminal Vegetable

  Market were always a little harder to come by. There was a lot of

  competition and a lot of pressure, and it helped, apparently, to

  be good at math. In any case, Grafton Brothers had hundreds of

  dock employees, and Jimmy knew nearly all of them.

  Jimmy Moran walked along the Grafton Brothers docks, carry-

  ing on his back a heavy burlap sack filled with the campaign

  buttons he’d had made up the day before. The buttons said:

  dicello’s not on our side, so let’s put him on the

  outside. vote for jimmy moran, president. They were

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  huge buttons, each approximately the diameter of a grapefruit,

  with black lettering on a yellow background. He moved around

  the stacks of crates and the vegetable displays and the tractors,

  and he gave buttons to everybody and talked to everybody. He

  tried to speak as personally as possible.

  He’d say, “Hey, Sammy! Your wife still cooking you those

  dinners?”

  He’d say, “H
ey, Len! You still taking all those naps?”

  He’d say, “Hey, Sonny! You still work with that other crazy

  bastard?”

  Passing out buttons, shaking hands, passing out buttons,

  shaking hands, passing out more buttons. Jimmy Moran felt

  really good. His back wasn’t bothering him at all. He felt rested

  and capable, and it took him several hours to get through

  Grafton’s.

  He saw his old friend Herb talking to a young porter, and he

  said, “Hey, Herb! Who’s that, your new boyfriend?”

  He saw a porter, not much older than his own son Danny,

  smoking marijuana behind a melon display, and he said, “Police!

  You’re under arrest, you dope!”

  He saw his old friend Angelo playing cards on the back of a

  crate with some other guys and he said, “What is this, Angelo, a

  casino?”

  Angelo and the others laughed. Everyone asked after his

  back and hoped he was feeling better. Jimmy Moran had always

  been popular at Grafton’s, and everyone was happy to see him

  back. He used to do a funny trick when he was working in the

  cucumber cooler there. He’d pretend to be a blind man. He

  would stare off into space and put his arms straight out and

  stumble around, bumping into everybody. He’d say, “I’m the

  blind vegetable man . . . Excuse me, sir, could you tell me where

  the cucumbers are?”

  There was only one guy who never laughed at that trick, and

  that was a quiet and serious Haitian porter named Hector.

  154 ✦

  At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market

  Jimmy got to the point where he would do the blind-vegetable-

  man trick only if Hector was around, trying to get Hector to

  laugh even once. Jimmy would stumble over Hector’s feet and

  feel up Hector’s face, and Hector would just stand there, with

  his arms crossed, not smiling. Eventually, Jimmy would quit it

  and say, “What is it with you, Hector? Maybe you’re the one

  that’s blind.”

  “Where’s that Haitian guy Hector?” Jimmy asked his old

  friend Angelo. Jimmy’s sack of campaign buttons was already

  half empty. He felt the campaign was going well.

  “Hector?” Angelo said. “Hector’s a distributor now.”

  “Get out of here! Hector’s a distributor? ”

  “He’s in broccoli.”

  “I go away for a few months and Hector’s suddenly a dis-

  tributor? ”

  Jimmy headed down the Grafton docks to the huge ware-