Chapter 12. Fred Chickweed Delivers a Pizza
For Fred Chickweed, the only middle-aged pizza delivery boy in Lone Tree, it had been a long night. Friday nights were always long nights, for a pizza delivery boy, especially if that pizza delivery boy was in his forties, somewhat overweight (though not as overweight as he appeared in the three layers of clothes he inevitably wore), and didn’t truly have the modicum of social skills necessary to the job of showing up at a stranger’s house and asking for a ten dollar bill in exchange for a pizza.
Families, Fred noted, often arrived at home hungry on Fridays, as they did every day, but something about it being Friday meant that they didn’t feel a need to cook for themselves. Young men and women, just because it was Friday night, often got together for movies and pizza, which as often as not required Fred and his services. Parties seemed to spontaneously erupt on Friday nights, eventually resulting in wired, hungry people. Fred, because he had never been invited to that sort of party, resented being asked to bring the pizza and stand outside on the porch with all the noises of merriment and mayhem wafting out from within.
Truthfully, Fred would rather have had a morning shift as a pizza delivery boy, when the orders were few and far between, and only the occasional lonely housewife would have him come by with one of Petey’s Perfect Pizza Pies to get her through the day. Alas, however, it was not to be. Friday night it was.
Fridays, Fred noted, arrived with a distressing regularity.This Friday, however, didn’t stretch out to all hours of the night. At about 8:30, Fred was sent to deliver a pizza to an unusual location: Lone Tree High School. Specifically, the principal’s office. That was a first. So far as he knew, no one inhabited the high school after 3:00 or so, especially on a Friday.
He hoped it wasn’t a prank call, which was the bane of any pizza delivery boy, but especially bothered Fred. He never knew if the prank was a general one—just one of an endless litany of phone pranks that everyone of a certain age seemed to think funny—or if it was a prank intended specifically for him. To make him look foolish. Clueless. The butt of the joke.
Once or twice a year, he would be asked to deliver a pizza to an obviously empty house. A house, say, with a For Sale sign in front, and no furniture inside. As he stood ringing the doorbell of such a house, Fred always felt like an idiot. He always wondered if there was a hidden camera, perhaps behind a bush or a lamp post.
On occasion, too, he would be asked to deliver a pizza to an address that didn’t exist. A prank? A clerical error on the part of the order taker? A legitimate order placed by a hungry, yet confused, person? One never knew. Nevertheless, there he was, driving a Petey’s Perfect Pizza Pie van up and down the street, looking for an address that he would never find. It always left him wondering if the caller were inside one of the surrounding houses, chuckling behind the curtains.
Fred, it must be said, was slightly paranoid. If we’re to be fair, however, we’ll note that throughout the course of his life, Fred had acquired by fair means the knowledge that paranoia sometimes suited reality better than did the healthier states of mind. He hadn’t had an easy childhood, Fred Chickweed.
The high school? On a Friday night? He considered the likelihood that this was another of those prank calls. Those calls, in fact, came only rarely, but that didn’t stop them from constantly weighing on his mind.
Yet, there was nothing for it. He was just a pizza delivery boy. It was his destiny to deliver pizzas. Or, if not his destiny, at least it was his job. He delivered pizzas; he had no control over whether or not anyone was there to receive them.
This time, as Fred drove along the lakeshore toward the high school, he was pleasantly surprised. The school, though most of it looked awfully dark, showed some sign of human habitation. As he pulled the big yellow Petey’s van into the student parking lot, he saw faint lights coming through the windows of the main doors. The central office. He considered parking in one of the spaces reserved for students, but instead, feigning confidence, pulled right into the bus lane.
“How do you get rid of a high school graduate standing on your front porch?” It was a joke Fred sometimes heard. The answer? “You pay for the pizza.” Ha ha, Fred thought. Ha ha hah.
It felt funny, approaching his old alma mater. He hadn’t been in the building for...what? Twenty years? No, more than that. More like twenty five years. A quarter of a century!
He got out of the van and headed toward the door.As he walked, pizza in hand, Fred looked upon the brick façade of the building. Truly, he didn’t remember much about his time here. He had been a quiet student, mostly invisible to his peers, and equally invisible to his teachers. He evidently hadn’t learned enough there to get a better job than delivering pizzas, he pondered, though he had gotten mostly As and Bs in his high school career. And, truthfully, he didn’t remember much of what they had taught him. If landing a good job required the knowledge one might gain in high school, they were right not to hire him. Trigonometry? He barely remembered what the word signified, much less what that mathematics described. Still, he could see not remembering trigonometry after all these years. When had he had an opportunity to use it? Never, that was when. Or “the Exports of Many Lands,” which seemed to be the sole interest of his history teacher, Miss…well, he didn’t remember her name either.
But Fred also didn’t remember the stuff one might think one would remember. The practical stuff. If Mr. Fairlane could see his car now, in pieces that were strewn about the floor of his garage, he might reconsider the B he had given Fred in auto shop.
Well, at least he remembered Mr. Fairlane’s name, he noted. Which was more than he could say about Miss Exports of Many Lands.
Oh well. There was nothing for it now. There was pizza to deliver, right through those double doors. What now? Should he just knock, as if this were someone’s house? Should he march right in? It was a public building, after all.
Once upon a time, Fred pondered, delivering pizzas had seemed glamorous. But that had been many years ago. Maybe it was the school itself that prompted the memory. Then, back in the dark ages when he went to high school, delivering pizzas had been the one light in his life. He had been sure, then, that it would be enough light to drive the rest of the darkness away. He had been fifteen years old, and the first one he knew to have a driver’s license. He had acquired it due to a hardship clause, because he was the only person in his family, after the accident at his dad’s plant, to be bringing in any money. He had left this very building every day after school, driving off in his dad’s old Chevy with a change maker belted to his waist. He didn’t get to keep much of the money…it was needed for the house payment…but still he had more money than his few friends did. And the keys to the car. And an excuse to stay out late. He had felt very grown up then, very worldly, as only a…well, as only a pizza delivery boy…could.
Now, of course, he was well into his third decade as a pizza delivery boy, and making about the same amount of money. Where his slim earnings had been enough to cover the house payment when he was a boy, they barely paid the rent these days. Moreover, it just wasn’t fun any more. Pizza. Followed by another pizza. Followed by an endless round of pizzas, each one much like the pizza before. And, if for some reason an interesting pizza might come through the chute, which it never did, it was still Friday night. He signed in exhaustion, and pulled the handle of the big metal door.
It was locked.
Fred Chickweed looked behind him, scanning for cameras. But he didn’t see anything except the yard lights of the school. They weren’t bright, those lights, but they were bright enough to illuminate the large lawn that bordered the school, and that sloped downward to the lake. If there were someone filming him, it was from a distance. Perhaps they wouldn’t be able to photograph any personally identifying details. He sighed again, and turned back to the door. He knocked loudly.
Still nothing. The office light was definitely on, however. He could see it through the wire-meshed windows set in the door. Probably, he thought, the lights were left on through the weekend as a security measure. They didn’t necessarily indicate that someone was there to receive his pizza.
But then he saw a shadow moved across the floor. There was definitely someone there. His mood lifted an infinitesimal bit. He knocked again.
This time, a haggard-looking man emerged. He stood at his office door, looking (if Fred was reading him correctly) a little scared. Nevertheless, Fred held up the pizza box. It was the universal sign for “Your food is here, come give me some cash and I’ll be on my way.”
The man in the rumpled suit stumbled forward and opened the door for him. He waved him in, while he peered out the door, scanning the horizon.
Something within Fred responded to this. Responded strongly enough, in fact, that he did something he had learned long ago to avoid: he spoke a sentence outside of his regular pizza patter. “Are you afraid of cameras too?”
“Oh God, you don’t know the half of it,” replied the man. “Who knows what they’ll photograph next!”
“Right,” said Fred. He looked at the order slip taped to the pizza box. “Principal…Klieglight is it?”
The man stood up a bit straighter. “Principal Klieglight, at your service!” he said. He gave a little salute. Then he said, inexplicably, “I’m just glad you’re not the mayor!”
Fred puzzled over that comment for a moment, but couldn’t make sense of it. This, however, was not an unusual situation for him, so he got to business.
“I brought your pizza,” he said, once again holding up the box in front of him.
Klieglight looked confused for a moment. Fred suddenly felt sure that this had been a prank after all. That was a good one, wasn’t it: calling in a pizza order, pretending to be a high school principal. Hilarious. A stitch. But then Klieglight brightened. “Oh! Right! I remember ordering a pizza. I’m starved. Famished. I’ve been about town all day collecting papers.”
“Wow,” said Fred, impressed. “When I was in school, the students had to hand in their papers themselves.”
A light bulb seemed to turn on over Principal Klieglight’s head. “That sure would simplify things, wouldn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that.” He brightened again. “But I’ve done rather well. I suppose I have 1500 papers or so. Maybe 1600! Though only 600, of course, were actually printed.” He gave a giddy, half-mad laugh. “I wonder how many are left?” He laughed again, his eyeballs bulging a bit with every harsh syllable. Then he stopped laughing and shook his head, confused by his own math problem. “To tell the truth, I don’t know what’s up or down right at the moment.” He repeated his earlier phrase: “I’m famished.”
The principal stopped and thought for a moment, then asked, “You wouldn’t have a Diet Coke, would you?”
Fred shook his head. “Only the pizza.”
That woke something within Principal Klieglight. “Pizza? That sounds good. You wouldn’t mind sharing it with me, would you?” He said it again: “I’m famished”
Fred shrugged. “Actually, I brought the whole thing for you. That’s usually the way it works.”
Principal Klieglight crinkled his forehead.
Fred, in an attempt to be helpful, said, “I guess I am a little hungry, though.”
“Good, good! Fine!” said Principal Klieglight. Come right on in my office, won’t you, Mr…. ah…Mr….”
“Chickweed, sir,” said Fred. “Fred Chickweed.” He extended his hand, the one not carrying the pizza, to shake. Unfortunately, it was the left hand. Principal Klieglight stuck out his right hand, looked confused for a moment, then stuck out his left hand. Fred took an awkward moment to transfer the pizza to his left hand so he could proffer his right.
Principal Klieglight, with much evident relief, took that hand and shook it vigorously. “Ah yes. Mr. Chickpea,” he said. Pleased to meet you.”
“Chickweed, sir,” offered Fred.
Fred Chickweed, as he was shaking this man’s hand, suddenly wished that Klieglight had been around during his tenure as a high school student. Who knows what he might have accomplished, with such a kindred spirit in charge. Perhaps he would have been somebody.
Principal Klieglight dropped the handshake and took the pizza from Fred. “Why don’t we go right into my office, Mr. Garbanzo Bean? I’ll grab us some paper plates.”
As Principal Klieglight walked toward his office, Fred noticed that his suit, ill-fitting enough to begin with, was not just rumpled, but actually looked as if he had slept in it. That gave him another warm moment of recognition. It wasn’t just every man who wore his clothes to bed, ready for anything that might arise. Though Fred couldn’t think of what kinds of emergencies might arise for a high school principal, he well knew the sorts of personal emergencies that befell him. He had more than once woken up, only barely functioning in the world, and was glad that at least he was already dressed. He followed Klieglight into his office.
Principal Klieglight set the pizza on the desk, and then began poking around the office. He checked in his middle desk drawer, then the filing cabinet. “There must be some paper plates here somewhere,” he said, as he looked behind a rather tall potted plant. Fred, though, didn’t care about paper plates. Fred was drawn to the unbalanced pile of newspapers strewn across the desk.
He would later think back on this moment as a turning point in his life. The moment had a gravity of destiny about it, somehow. The rest of the world quieted as a thrum of anticipation hummed in the air around him. The room seemed to darken, except for a tunnel of light between him and the desk. Fred floated down that tunnel, blissfully unaware of the drab surroundings that had come to define his world over the past years.
When he reached the desk, he didn’t see any of the detritus that tends to accumulate upon an administrator’s workspace. He didn’t notice, for instance, any of the many absentee reports, the notepads with “From the Desk of Principal Klieglight” printed on the top, or the perhaps dozen Diet Coke empties. At that moment, Fred could see nothing but an upturned Gazelles Gazette. All he could see—nearly a full day after everyone else in town had had a good long gander—was those stony heads staring back at him with those stony eyes. He picked up the paper with both hands, and held it before him at eye level.
As he gazed upon the paper, Fred Chickweed felt himself wake up. It was as if upon the paper were printed some holy icon. He experienced a sort of communion, as he never had previously with anything consisting of newsprint. His legs strengthened beneath him. His heart started beating, perhaps for the first time in years. Adrenaline coursed through his body, bringing his brain out of a full decade of gauzily aware numbness. This was his moment: the moment that the world, and his mission within it, finally, finally came to clarity.
And none too soon. He was still staring at the photograph when his awareness of the outside world once again kicked in. Principal Klieglight, having given up on finding any paper plates behind the potted plant, was staring out the window. His jaw hung slack for a moment as he stared. “Now what exactly,” he said, “do you suppose that is?”
Out the window facing the lake, Fred could make out a dark shape lumbering toward the school. The top fifth of the dark shape, he noted, looked not unlike the stony creature in the photograph. This was the final key that unlocked the secrets of the universe for Fred.
Principal Klieglight turned to face the aging pizza delivery boy, and said, “Have you ever in your life seen such a thing?”
But Principal Klieglight found that he was talking not to a pizza delivery boy, but to an empty space where once a pizza delivery boy had stood. Fred was gone. The only sign that anyone had been there at all was the pizza, still on the desk in front of him, and the sound of the big metal doors of the school shutting on automatic hinges.