by Jay HOLLEY

I met a med­ley of char­ac­ters dur­ing my month-long stint as a pro­fes­sion­al ‘tree man,’ hock­ing ob­scene­ly-priced Christ­mas trees on 3^rd Av­enue. There was Jim­my — a home­less man who car­ried his life in a squeaky-wheeled shop­ping cart and who’d been a drunk for so long that the brown of his iris blend­ed in­to his white scle­ra in a quar­ter-inch gra­di­ent. He stopped by the tree stand every day, of­ten bring­ing me and my fel­low tree men pas­ta in huge trays dis­trib­uted by the lo­cal church. Cyn­di Lau­per’s re­tired man­ag­er was a sweet­heart — she tipped me ten dol­lars for set­ting up a Dou­glas Fir while she chain-smoked men­thols and talked of the nine­teen eight­ies. There was the mil­lion­aire rap star who took ten min­utes se­lect­ing a three dol­lar wreath for the grill of his Bent­ley. Over De­cem­ber, 2001, I met hun­dreds of char­ac­ters. Ron was the strangest.

Ron walked up to me and my cowork­er Frank and in­tro­duced him­self. We start­ed our pitch on the su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty of our Cana­di­an Balsams.

“You’re not go­ing to get trees this nice at Home De­pot,” Frank began.

I took my cue: “Bend the branch­es like this,” demon­strat­ing, “they’re so strong be­cause the sap’s still so fresh. These were chain cut a week ago in No­va Scotia.”

“So they’re not go­ing to dry out in a week like the trees you’ll get down the street,” Frank broke in.

This was our ban­ter. Our vast knowl­edge of the conif­er­ous came from half a page of 16-point Hel­veti­ca dou­ble-speak, but the cus­tomers nev­er had many ques­tions. They ei­ther bought or passed. Ron was the on­ly cus­tomer to ever stump us with a query:

“You guys get hard all the time be­cause of the scent?”

Frank and I looked at each oth­er, then at him, un­sure we’d heard correctly.

“What do you mean ex­act­ly,” I braved.

“Hard,” he con­tin­ued, “you know, an erec­tion. Some­thin’ about the smell of Christ­mas trees that just does it to me. A lot of guys I think — my broth­er too.”

Frank’s face con­tort­ed. He looked at me, telepathing What the fuck is this guy.

I start­ed, “Has­n’t re­al­ly been a prob­lem. I don’t think…”

“Some­times even Pine Sol’ll do it for me.”

Frank was ner­vous­ly rock­ing on one foot, “Um, well…”

“I’ll just be clean­ing up. Scrub­bing the tile or what­ev­er, and whoosh, like a rock. Hard. And then you got­ta do some­thin’ about it.”

“Nev­er hap­pened to me,” Frank curt­ly in­ter­ject­ed, end­ing his part in the con­ver­sa­tion by walk­ing away.

“Pine Sol, man. You know what I mean?”

I’d been bomb­ing pitch­es all day and was still hop­ing for a sale, so I did­n’t fol­low Frank.

“Nev­er hap­pened to me ei­ther,” I said be­fore lead­ing to, “how high are your ceil­ings? We’ve got some nice eight-foot­ers over here.”

“I don’t know how you guys stand it.”

“It’s easy,” I said, “this one here’s a hun­dred twen­ty, but worth every penny.”

He quiv­ered as he bur­rowed his nose in­to the branch­es of an eight foot Bal­sam. Head buried in fo­liage, he quiv­ered, “You guys deliver?”

We did, for a ten dol­lar fee. I knew I could bill him the ten but leave it off the re­ceipt, pock­et­ing the sur­charge for my trou­ble. De­liv­ery meant a tip too. Thir­ty dol­lars to­tal, I said to my­self. I looked at the bulge in Ron’s kha­ki pants, gulped, and con­sid­ered the risk. I was a head taller and flac­cid, so I rea­soned I could out­run Ron should he have dark deeds in mind. “Fif­teen dol­lar de­liv­ery charge,” I said.

“Okay,” he mum­bled, look­ing em­bar­rassed by my glance. He reached in­to his pants to wedge down his erec­tion. “Let’s get this ba­by home.”

Filed under Non-Fiction on July 28th, 2004

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