We all stared, dumbstruck, as Julie said this.  She and Big Willy owned the place, but they obviously had no clue what the hell went on at the tent company.  This was a perfect example--Don Waits did, indeed, have one hell of a grin, as well as an uncanny resemblance to a beardless clone of Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, but if you spent more than five minutes with him, you certainly didn't expect him to start playing "Panama," never mind go around lighting up a room...

 

The tent company was not a permanent stop for many men.  Big Willy and Julie owned the place--but even their sons, Little Willy and Paul, were uncomfortably direct about not wanting anything to do with the place once they moved out of the house.  Roy, Lord of the Tents, had his awe-inspiring tent-making platform, on which he sat each day sewing tents and commanding his small army of elderly ladies who put the finishing touches on Roy's labors of love.  And Bill the Welder was only half-aware of the world beyond his fire and metal nook in the corner, anyway.

 

The rest of the tent company fell into two camps--guys growing up who needed a little money to get out into the real world, and guys who got knocked around a bit once they did grow up who needed to get their shit back together.  Don Waits fell squarely into the second camp.

 

Don was the strongest man in the tenting world--he may have been the strongest man in the entire world for all we knew.  After all, Magnus Vers Magnussen, the legendary Icelandic strong-man, had never walked across the threshold of the tent company shop to challenge Don, and Don never found himself on a Kenyan airstrip carrying refrigerators or pulling cargo planes.  Still, it would have taken a pretty big refrigerator to stop Don. 

 

Don would summon his strength, like any good super-hero, from out of nowhere, when it was needed most.  If hurricane-strength winds were blowing 30-foot tent poles around like twigs, Don would somehow wrestle them into submission.  He would single-handedly lift and carry hundreds of pounds of wet canvas bags full of tents around the shop like they were grocery bags.  And if the rest of us found ourselves too stoned, hungover or both to lift a sledgehammer in the summer sun, he would become the human jackhammer, pounding the tent stakes into the asphalt mercilessly.  Like any good superhero, though, his strength also came from pain.

 

Don wasn't one to wear his story on his sleeve, though, and not just because he hardly ever wore sleeves.  No, even if he had chosen to leave one of his home-made V-necked muscle shirts in the closet one morning, he'd still be a bit of a mystery.  And, for the most part, none of us fucked with him.  He was the quiet, confident type, for the most part--the one who carried the clipboard, which meant that only a guy with a walkie-talkie could trump him at a job site.  In the fucked up food chain of the tent company, Don was the lion; most of us were hyenas.

 

Like a prisoner who finds himself back in Oz after living life on the outside for a while, Don had a look in his eyes that screamed, "I can't believe I'm back..." as well as the quiet confidence that repeated silently, "first chance I get, I'm the fuck out of here..."  Everyone who ever had to come back to the tent company had the same look, but none had it more clearly than Don.

 

His story was a mystery to us, for the most part.  We knew simply that he'd gotten out and was back in.  That was that.  Don wasn't much for "opening up" or "sharing."  He made no excuses and didn't take any shit.  Mopey-assed bitchboys didn't last very long at the tenting world.  (Although I certainly managed to sneak by...)

 

One day, though, one of the Old School tenters made a special guest appearance--Geoff Harris, back in Mass for a few weeks from "out West" and short on cash.  Geoff's "devil balancing on an 8-ball" tattoo suggested he wasn't raising money for schoolbooks...

 

Geoff and Don went way back, and while they were opposites on the outside (as Geoff looked more like he could be a sledgehammer than he should be swinging one), they gave each other the respect any true Tent-arian would show another.  Namely, a lot of shit.

 

As we sat eating lunch one day during an otherwise unremarkable day setting up a couple of huge tents in a field, Geoff figured it was as good a time as any to answer the unspoken question...

 

"Don, what the fuck are you doing back at this shithole company?"

 

Don looked up from mid-bite of his sandwich, his arms still flexed and his eyes full of that "don't fuck with me while I'm eating" look that even zoo animals have.

 

"Seriously, Don.  I thought you had gone to school or some shit like that..."

 

The tension hung in the hot, dry air while Don chewed and stared at Geoff.  Finally, mid-chew, he said, "Seriously?  You don't know?"

 

"Seriously.  I've been getting into too much of my own shit to worry about anyone else's these past few years.  What the fuck happened, dude?  Didn't you go to chef's school or something?"

 

"Yep--I did really well, too.  Hotel jobs, restaurant jobs, better restaurant jobs.  The money kept getting better, and Cindy and I got engaged."

 

"Oh, yeah, Cindy.  What ever happened to that girl?"

 

"We got married..."

 

"No shit."

 

"Yeah, and right around the time I got married, I got offered a sweet chef's job on a cruise ship.  Sick money, easy work, enough to set us up quite nicely for a while."

 

"So what happened?"

 

"Well, things went really well.  I made a mad amount of cash, which I kept shoveling into the bank."

 

"Awesome."

 

"Yeah, right?  Then the job finished a few days early.  So I figured I'd head home and surprise Cindy..."

 

"You're a regular Don Juan, you know that..."

 

Don didn't even hear Geoff, though.  He was obviously right back in the story, as he'd slowed down and gotten so quiet that we all had to lean in to hear.

 

"Anyway, I walk in the house that morning...  and find her in bed...  with another guy..."

 

"No fucking way."

 

"Yep.  I just fucking stood there, dude.  I didn't know what to do, what to think, what to say.  I just fucking stood there."

 

"I'd have killed the fucking guy and then beat the shit out of her..."

 

"I couldn't fucking move.  I just stood there.  And then they got up and left me standing there...."

 

We all stared at Don as he stared off into space.

 

"She never came back."

 

"Fuck, dude."

 

"Oh, it gets better.  She made sure to clean out our bank account while she was on her way out of my life."

 

"No fucking way.  She stole your money?"

 

"Well, technically it was our money.  Her name was on the account, too..."

 

"Holy shit."

 

"Yep."

 

"Wow.  That fucking sucks."

 

Don just nodded and took another bite of the sandwich, as if he was still digesting the story himself.  Satisfied that it did, indeed, fucking suck, he turned to the rest of us.

 

"You guys know what I learned from that whole experience?  I learned three very important things, and they are three rules that you should live by...

 

"First and foremost--no joint bank accounts.  Ever.

 

"Secondly, anal sex.  If she's into it, make sure you do it...

 

"And thirdly--and most importantly--never, never turn down a threesome.  Ever." 

 

At that, Don got up to throw away his trash from lunch, still shaking his head, now talking to himself.

 

"I turned one down, she never brought the idea up again, and I've never stopped kicking myself..."

 

Even superheroes have their regrets.