Sam

You could hear Sam snorting and grunting from the electrical aisle. In the break room Little Dave, the Puerto Rican forklift driver, had him laughing.

“How about Ricky? Can you whup him, Sam?”

“I-I-I can whup Ricky,” said Sam. “I-I-I c-can whup Ricky up and down the lumber aisle.”

He saw me sit down and went silent.

“Sam, can you take Patrick?” Little Dave asked.

I caught him staring at me and he looked away.

“I can take Patrick,” he mumbled. He was looking at the floor.

“Sam. Show him the Elephant.” Little Dave winked at me. “C’mon, Sam. Do the Elephant.”

Sam glanced at me and I smiled at him and he smiled back weakly. He wasn’t sure he should do it.

“Do the Elephant, Sam.”

Then he stood up and extending a hairy, bulky arm as a sort of trunk, he cupped his mouth with his other hand and began to trumpet like an elephant. He raised and lowered his arm as he trumpeted and then he bent over and dragged the knuckles of his trunk along the floor. Little Dave and I were laughing. Sam was smiling broadly.

“I-I-I got another one,” he said to me. “I-I can do the Turkey Dance.”

“Do it, Sam. Do it,” said Little Dave.

He stuck out his head, and with his eyes opened wide he shook his head violently from side to side while flapping his arms. Shaking his head had the effect of swinging the flesh of his double chin like a turkey wattle. He stomped one foot as he flapped and shook. He performed the dance for almost a minute before collapsing in his seat in exhaustion.

We were still laughing when Sam said to me: “Ron, he says--he says, I’m the best lot attendant he--he’s ever seen.”

He also said Ron the Store Manager had made him Department Head of the parking lot. He was proud of this appointment and I congratulated him. After Sam left to retrieve shopping carts, Little Dave explained that the parking lot was not officially designated a department and could have no Department Head, but that Sam was not to know this. What Little Dave told me next I was not ever to speak of either.

The previous summer Romanian Cris had invited a few co-workers, including Sam, to his bachelor party at a strip club. It was Sam’s first time around strippers and he had been very nervous until after a few drinks, and the attention of one stripper, Romanian Cris had paid to send him to the champagne room. No one saw Sam after that and the party ended without Sam turning up. Sam did not return to work until the middle of the following week and he refused to talk about what had happened. Sam avoided the break room and would not sit down. Jim Bondi from millwork noticed Sam was walking more slowly than usual and with some prodding, and Bondi’s promise to tell no one, Sam explained what had happened.

In the champagne room the stripper told Sam to take off his clothes. She put a blindfold on him and had him get down on all fours and told him not to move or make any sound. The stripper then inserted an extra large black plastic vibrating dildo inside his rectum. Sam let her work the dildo on him even though he wasn’t sure about it and it hurt. She used it on him until he had to leave the room and afterwards he went straight home. For days he couldn’t walk or sit down without pain. Jim Bondi recommended the next time Sam insist upon some sort of lubricant. Lubrication worked wonders, Jim Bondi said, and he encouraged Sam to try it again. Sam did not seem convinced.