Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 1

BLUE COLLAR,.

WHITE COLLAR,.

NO COLLAR.

Richard Ford.

INTRODUCTION.

When I was growing up in Mississippi, in the 1940s and '50s, my father worked as a traveling salesman. And you might say we-my family-lived in a world dominated by work. My father had gained his job during the heart of the Depression, in 1935, and kept it until his dying day, in 1960. It was a source of considerable pride to him-not to mention relief, and the sponsor of most of our family's material well-being-that he had one job through the Depression, the World War, and all of the 1950s. His job meant viability to him-and to us as well. It meant self-esteem. It meant he was a producer. It suggested important self-knowledge and self-mastery. It implied some hold on good character. It solidified him as a family man. Work-having a job, being employed, making a living-became virtually synonymous with its gifts, and as such became a virtue in itself. Yes, the days were long, loneliness palpable and oppressive; the pay wasn't very good. There were no benefits. The work was sedentary and repet.i.tive and humdrum. But those things didn't matter when stacked up against the alternatives: no job, low self-esteem, fragile viability, no pay, no nothing. His job, in other words, defined part of his moral world view.

In this environment it always mattered (and was inevitably p.r.o.nounced) what a man did for a living. Ed Manny worked for Nabisco. Lew Herring sold furniture. Ish Smith was a manufacturer's rep. Rex Best traveled for General Foods. Barney Rozier worked in the oil patch and wore a silver hard hat. What you "did" might not have meant who you were. But what you did sure made who you were more plausible. And not having work made the whole contraption of human character fairly unsteady on its pins-more unsteady than usual.

This inst.i.tution of my early life-the transcendent significance of work-eventually and not surprisingly became a factor in my later life and vocation: writing novels and stories. Of course, there was the standard dilemma (Th.o.r.eau suffered it, too) of writing not being considered as actual work by the world around me-a view I secretly shared but didn't admit I shared, and in fact worked hard at disproving. In the late seventies, when I was thirty-five, and after writing two novels, each of which brought some credit to me, I was offered a fairly low-level, no-future teaching job by Princeton-a fact that wasn't so impressive to me but caused my mother virtually to swoon. "Oh, Richard," she rhapsodized, "I'm so glad you're finally getting started." Not that I hadn't had jobs before then. I'd had plenty-being a locomotive switchman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad at age seventeen, being a house detective in a bilgy old drummer's hotel in Little Rock. And that wasn't all. But as a "working writer," I thought-very much like the young novelist in Nicholas Delbanco's story "The Writers' Trade"-that I'd already made a start, had even made some substantial strides. Except to my mother, a young wife of the Depression, work ("getting started") meant something else: it meant all those things I've been talking about, and that came with a steady paycheck and a future you could see playing out in front of you. I lacked the paycheck and the future, and possibly I was shaky on the other parts, as well. My mother loved me and told me so often-but I was never quite plausible to her after that, never totally solid, love aside.

The other significance that work's validating force imposed on me was that in the process of writing made-up characters in novels-my type of work-I discovered that unless I could say (usually right in the story) what an important character did for a living, then that character didn't achieve the kind of persuasiveness I needed, the kind to make "him" or "her" "real" to me so that the character could carry moral weight, create consequence, transport the reader, be "round," as Forster said good characters should be.

Even for the fictional characters I was merely reading-those flimsy fascicles of somebody else's words and imputations that try to register as people on my mind's screen-work packed a big wallop, carried a payload of artful plausibility, was (still is) a need-to-know ingredient in making characters take hold. Surely it's one of the great pleasures and impacters in Elizabeth Strout's majestic story "Pharmacy" that the princ.i.p.al character is a small-town druggist, patiently seeking a prescription for complex life-his own, and others' as well. Likewise in Charles D'Ambrosio's subtle and nuanced "Drummond & Son"-wherein a loving typewriter repairer unsuccessfully seeks to shelter his grown-up, schizophrenic son in a halfway house-the story's almost prayerful, physical environment plays out in the language of . . . well, typewriters: Platens. The resistance of querulous keys. A type bar falling back "with an exhausted plop before it reached the paper."

Yes, I'm completely confident there are plenty of stories and novels wherein we never learn how the main character earns his or her keep. But at the moment I can't think of one. The elegant, harrowing James Salter story in this volume is much about people who seem not to have jobs, or who lose them; but that's merely the other, possibly direr side of the same moral coin.

To engage the issue of work, then, as all these luminous stories variously do-some concentratedly, some symbolically, some peripherally, some only as a small, bright detail by which to flesh a character up out of dim abstraction-is to put into imaginative play all of those provident concerns my father (and his son) drew strength from or suffered in his lived life. These are stories that in one way or other seek to imagine how human viability is found and held onto; how self-mastery comes about or doesn't; how moral good is identified and corroborated, loneliness combated or succ.u.mbed to; or-in the case of the cla.s.sic Donald Barthelme story "Me and Miss Mandible" (in which an insurance investigator takes the client's part and is sent back to the sixth grade)-what it means to be a producer.

Fiction, indeed, has plenty to tell us about work and its stamp on us. For one thing, fiction performs for the inst.i.tution of work (labor, job, paycheck, vocation, career) exactly what it performs for all of its considered subjects: it elevates what we might've thought we already knew, or what we'd overlooked or consigned to the oubliette of conventional wisdom, and focuses a new gaze upon the matter. In some instances it re-dignifies its subject, or in others reappraises it, or attaches different consequences to it from the ones we'd previously entertained or presumed or just ignored. In other words, literature that engages the subject of work thereby reproclaims work to be a proper subject of our notice-ultimately a moral transaction.

F. R. Leavis, in an essay about D. H. Lawrence, helpfully points out that one of literature's chief jobs is to provide us readers with a "new awareness" about our lives. The stories in this collection manage in every instance to make us newly aware of many important things-one being our work: our starkly ambiguous feelings about it (which reveal us); work's centrality (. . . or absurdity) as a component in our private and national characters; about work's basic intransigence as a preoccupation we struggle with and seek to understand along the way to understanding ourselves. And more. G.o.d knows, there are plenty of sociological and philosophical treatises on work ("Miss Arendt, it's time for your close-up"). But Umberto Eco is surely correct when he said in his recent Paris Review interview that what we can't theorize about, we must narrate. Work-always present somehow, always close to our thinking lives-is itself near enough to us that theorizing can miss the grainy, interesting, unexpected bits and take us only part way round to the truth. We make up a story, then, to get in as much as can be told, and in so doing manage to create the whole truth we seek.

A couple of years ago, at one of those early-evening c.o.c.ktail-parties-on-the-white-banistered-porch-with-a-bay-view that take place up and down the American seaboard (this one was in Maine), I found myself talking to "our host," an extremely affable, quick-witted seafaring type of about my age-expensive, sockless deck shoes, white duck trousers, blue linen blazer sans coat of arms, a nice haircut and tan. After a certain period spent coddling iceless drinks and chatting about who-knows-who, the Democrats' then burgeoning hopes, my personal aversion to sailing and his belief that this was easily curable, I began to notice this man hadn't once mentioned work-unusual and notable in Americans; probably unusual and notable everywhere. It was all the more conspicuous to me because this fellow wasn't retirement age and seemed to be completely loaded with dough (I now realize how naive I truly am). I was raised, as I've already said, with a heightened awareness of what everyone did, and its importance in the grand scheme of things; but also-since a man's occupation was central to who he was and what he was morally worth-with a near obsessive drive never to inquire about such sensitive things, even in the most casual and harmless of ways. Far too impolite. Too aggressive. Too coa.r.s.e and obvious. It was as if in doing such a garish thing one would basically be saying, "Well, now, Locklear, what makes you so G.o.dd.a.m.n sure you're solid on the earth?"

However, after a third trip to the drinks table, during which time it was revealed that I wrote books and that my host happened to have at least one of them open on his bedside table at that moment, I felt freed up enough to say-in a mock-accusatorial, Humphrey-Bogartish, noir kind of way-"So. Okay. Spill the beans, P. J. What do you do for a living?" Whereupon P. J. grinned at me, widened his blameless blue eyes, cast a glance to the darkening heavens, put a heavy, confessional hand on my shoulder, drew me to him so that our collar points conspiratorially touched, and in a mock whisper said . . . "Richard, old son, I don't work. I don't work a lick. And what's more, I intend for things to stay that way. There's no future in work. Hah! You're a writer. You know that as well as I do."

My embedded point in telling this story (which you might think I just made up, but I promise you I didn't) is that my sense of this perfectly decent man was forever cemented in a way that probably wouldn't have been true if he'd confessed to me he'd gone outside his marriage with a flight attendant, or that his daughter had Asperger's, or that his father'd just died as the oldest Medal of Honor Winner in Rhode Island, or that he'd just the day before decided to dedicate his life to the Lord Jesus Christ and was becoming a Dominican and moving to Flagstaff. How I might narrate and imagine how I came to feel what I came to feel about P. J. would certainly require a svelte little short story to work out-and I don't have time for that now. But it certainly would involve mingling my nascent respect and probably my envy of my host, along with my own att.i.tudes toward work (bred-in by my parents), plus my previously mentioned naivete about sizing up others and how poorly that augurs for me ever to be a good writer. Fiction can bring together a mighty lot of life's frail filaments and produce surprising results.

To my mind, it was the significant subject of work which hit me amidships: its effect on me as a pure attention grabber, as a moral direction pointer, and as an ignition mechanism for illuminating and identifying something important and up-to-now unknown about humankind.

To get swiftly, then, to the end so the stories can have their way: It's at the heart of this book's conception that stories of work-offered at this particular moment in our nation's history (a time of shortage), and on behalf of 826michigan, an organization deep in the thick of life here in our American state most closely identified with the working woman and man-that this was a proper alignment of needs and supplies, demands and enthusiasm. We imagined the book from the start as a suite of stories expressly collected for Michiganians. Yet we soon realized that it was a book for anyone who feels the urge to apply the consolations of literature to the complex, often perplexing matters of earning a paycheck, showing up on time, getting the job done, taking the job home, getting hired, laid off, promoted, demoted, recla.s.sified, sent home, or of just plain being fed up and ready to take a hike. Work, as you will see, is imagined broadly in these stories-as labor, as ch.o.r.es, as business, as duty, as habit, as memory, as art, and as a priestly vocation. The idea here is that, within the wide array of everything work may be said to encompa.s.s, one finds a vital connective tissue to be the thriving human spirit. V. S. Pritchett once wrote, "I have wished I had spent my life in industry. The sight and sound of traditional expertness is irresistible to me." The great story-writer, of course, may have been slyly conceding my mother's argument from years ago-and that in her mind, I always lost: that writing is not really work; it's at best a figment we writers hold out as true, much as we do our own stories. But what was irresistible to VSP is irresistible to me: that work, however we do it or define it, is near the heart of human things; and as with all we know of the heart, its truth is most tellingly found in the acts of our imagination.

Max Apple.

BUSINESS TALK.

James and I have been worrying about things. I'm bored, restless, and in late afternoon always depressed. He tries to be helpful. The children are not too bad. My education is more than adequate. I understand what's happening as it happens. Still, I'm powerless. At four I get morose, by five I am tearful. When James comes home I look as if I've been pinched by devils all day long.

"Every day is driving me crazy," I say. "I don't want to fall victim to the malaise of the times."

"You need to get out. You need to do something. A job," he says.

"What about a business?" I say. "Something small enough to afford, big enough to make me proud of my achievement and aware of my responsibility."

James is a solid man. Around him I shouldn't be so sad. "I'm open for anything," he says. "Give it a try. But first let's get down to bra.s.s tacks." We discuss insecurity, the care of the children, guilt, the dinner hour, vacations, the minimum wage, tax brackets, the effects of the climate on perishables, growing old, profits, and free time.

"What the h.e.l.l," James says, "small business made this country. I'm with you one hundred percent."

I call my friend Jeannie, who wants to be my partner. She has no children but is going crazy anyway. In Peru, where she grew up, there was always a clutch of servants to iron her pure cotton clothes. Here, she has no help and can't get used to permanent press. Everything she wears is heavily starched. You can hear her fabrics moving down the hall.

"I'll be a partner to anything," she says. "My father grew up on the pampas of Argentina. He skinned cattle and walked among bulls. I can't go two blocks from my apartment without worrying about some black man cutting my throat. Also, being out in the world will improve my English. We have two thousand dollars saved for a Christmas trip to Peru. I'll risk it."

"What about Bill?" I ask.

"He doesn't want to go anyway. He is just going along to please me. He would rather go to a convention in Las Vegas. I'll save him two hundred dollars."

I talk about renting a s.p.a.ce in the Gypsy Market, and then just before the health inspector comes I dream that I find the rotting carca.s.s of a dog underneath the sink. I know even in the dream that it is the same dog I have been seeing for weeks at the corner of University and Greenbriar when I jog past every morning right after carpool. I've called the city four times but n.o.body picks up the body. So now that dog enters my dreams and makes me apprehensive about going into business.

James laughs it off. I remind him about Caesar's wife. "Literary references," he says, "belong in the cla.s.sroom, not the real world. Anyway, Caesar's dream was life and death. Yours is just about a health certificate. If necessary you can bribe the inspector."

"I'd never do that," I say.

"In business sometimes you have to resort to the underhanded. Wait. You'll see."

Jeannie calls and is nervous. I will go it alone if necessary. She is strengthened by my resolve. We decide to gather as much information as possible and talk to a lawyer before we sign a lease. Jeannie wants us to be a corporation with stationery and a logo. I spend the early morning calling long distance until I find out that there is a distributor right here in Houston. I leave my name.

At ten, Norman the food distributor answers my message. "You can still jump in early," he says. "Frozen yogurt is going to vanquish ice cream. It's got the texture of Dairy Queen, the taste of Baskin-Robbins, and is loaded with vitamins and beneficent bacteria. There's also low start-up costs and a product that has a fifteen-day fresh life. That's a h.e.l.l of an advantage in the food business. Ice cream loses flavor after a week no matter what the temperature. And Dairy Queen never has any taste to begin with. You ought to be able to clear a hundred a day just about anywhere."

He makes an appointment to come over in an hour.

Jeannie is too nervous to meet him. "Take notes," she tells me. She has always done badly at job interviews and doesn't want to jinx our business. She thinks it's because her English turned bad in Peru. "You be the public relations person," she says. "I'll do a traffic survey of the location."

Norman brings me a sample, strawberry, in a little carton. It has melted. I put it in my freezer. We await its return to form.

"I didn't know you were this young and attractive," Norman says. "Most of the housewives who want to go into the restaurant business are old ladies h.o.a.rding some secret recipes that they think will make them rich. It's nice to see young mothers getting into the business world. Who will take care of your kids?"

"You too?" I say.

"Wait a minute, don't get me wrong." He runs to his station wagon, returns with a paperback copy of Playing Around: Women and Extramarital s.e.x. He touches my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and tries to move me toward the couch. "It gives people confidence to know they are desired," he says. "It's good business psychology."

I go to the freezer for my product. It's not bad. "A little too sugary," I tell him.

"We've got to sugar it. Bacteria is bitter. The health nuts and anti-sugar people are only a tiny fraction of the market. Believe me, we've got the data. Only fifteen percent of the population has tasted yogurt. But in this new shape it will hit everyone. This will do to ice cream what television did to radio."

Norman is about forty. He talks quickly. I know that he would scare Jeannie.

James calls to tell me that he is deeply involved with the Saudi Arabians and may have to go to Antarctica. "It sounds crazy but they want to move an iceberg to the Middle East. They can't drink oil, and they think this may be cheaper than desalinization. Who knows? Anyway, they want us to do a feasibility study. I'll be in charge. It's a twelve-million-dollar contract but I'll have to spend two months in Antarctica.

"Don't change your plans," he says, "everything will work out." He has to take the Saudi Arabians to lunch. "They love the topless places but in the long run it saves money. A few years ago you would have had to take them to wh.o.r.ehouses in bad neighborhoods."

"I'm going to the Statue of Liberty Bank at one thirty," I tell him, "to inquire about a loan. I hear that they're receptive to female entrepreneurs."

"I'll be at the b.o.o.bie Rock just across the street," he says. "Peek your head in if you have a chance."

Norman offers to accompany me to the bank. "I'll help you sell them on the idea of frozen yogurt as the backbone of a little natural-food dessert shop. You've got everything going for you. They'd be nuts to turn you down for a small loan." While I drive, Norman tries to rub my leg. "I have to spend most of my days with men," he says. "Getting women into the business world is the best thing that could happen. After all day in the office I'm too tired for my wife. If she could just be there at noon dressed as a waitress, our marriage would be much better." He wants me to tell him everything about James. He is even envious of Antarctica. "Food is OK," Norman says, "but the real money is in heavy things. If you need cranes and a lot of equipment, then it's easy to hide costs. I'm hoping for a job as a steel salesman; that's where the money is. When you sell tons rather than cases, you're in the big time. Jesus, you've got wonderful legs. I love to watch your muscle when you hit the brake."

At the Statue of Liberty Bank, Mrs. Fern Crawford, V.P., talks turkey to the ladies.

"Face it, sister," she says, "you're talking about a one- or two-woman operation. A three-thousand-dollar machine and a kinky product. On the next block are thirty-one flavors, the Colonel, and Roy Rogers, with Jack-in-the-Box and Burger King within walking distance. Who's going to blow a buck twenty-nine on frozen yogurt with wheat germ and sesame toppings, followed by herbal tea and a fortune cookie?"

"Everybody," Norman answers. "We're already in malls and supermarkets from coast to coast. We're moving in inst.i.tutions and package sales as well."

Fern Crawford taps her heel with her pen. "Still, it's a fad."

"So was lipstick," Norman reminds her, "and the Frisbee."

"Frankly, we're looking for women who want to go into previously all-male areas like auto parts. Just this morning I approved a woman for tool rental, and a former elementary school music teacher for an electroplating shop. Fast food has had its day." Still, she says that tomorrow they'll loan me $3,000 using my IBM stock as collateral.

When we leave I walk across the street to see if James is in the b.o.o.bie Rock. I see absolutely naked girls carrying trays. The three Arabs are in traditional dress. James isn't there.

"These expense account guys have it made," Norman says. "When I take someone to lunch it's at Taco King, and that b.i.t.c.h tells you fast food is dead. G.o.d, how'd you like to eat here every day, with all that stuff watching you? Still, I like you lots better. I prefer serious people."

Jeannie has been talking to David Simmons, our prospective landlord. He remodeled an old house in barn wood and has turned it into a tiny mall and restaurant. His wife left him last month. He lives in the attic and eats his meals in the restaurant. We think we could get his restaurant customers to buy our frozen yogurt for dessert.

David wrings his hands. He is always worried. Two gay cooks and a waiter run his restaurant. They are constantly arguing. They buy their ingredients fresh every day. David drives across town to the Farmers' Market for the vegetables. He has already had three minor accidents on the freeway. When he returns they stop arguing and cook whatever he buys. The staff all hate David for his inefficiency. His wife hates him because he is not successful. In the attic he caught gonorrhea from a waitress who was converting to Judaism.

"You can have a room for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, one-year lease, first and last month in advance, and you're responsible for all improvements." Jeannie writes down the terms. She thinks her ties to the Spanish community will also bring in a little business. David Simmons thinks we would be smarter to open a gem and mineral business. "I know an absolute dummy who made fifty thousand his first year in a store as big as a s...o...b..x. But he didn't pay any taxes and they took it all away." David's wife is suing him for everything. "She'll probably evict me from the attic," he says.

There are already two potters named Bob, a leather worker, and a Scandinavian importer in the Gypsy Market. David himself sweeps the floors and does the general maintenance. He wants to put an art gallery in the dark hallway. People complain that there is only one restroom and everyone has to stand in line during the noon rush.

"I don't like it," Jeannie says. She thinks we would do better to pay more rent for a better spot. Bill thinks so too.

James comes home with the three Arabs. For the children they bring a two-foot wooden figure of King Faisal. For me a digital watch with an Islamic face. The children run wild, break the figurine, eat, take a bath, and are in bed by seven thirty. Alma goes home at seven twenty. She waits for her bus in the rain. The Arabs want James to leave for Antarctica next week. They have plane tickets hidden in their loose robes. James tells them about my plans for a small tearoom featuring frozen yogurt. The idea of freezing anything makes them talk more about Antarctica.

When they leave in a yellow cab I tell James all about Norman and the business possibilities.

"Men are like that," he says. "They aren't prepared to treat you as an equal in business. It will take another generation. You are in the forefront."

I tell him that Norman has been fondling me.

"Typical salesman," he says. The Arabs have been driving him crazy buying souvenirs of Texas. He will have to buy a winter wardrobe tomorrow. He doesn't even know where in Houston to look for arctic gear. He will call Neiman-Marcus in the morning.

I shower, shave my legs, and begin to read the book Norman gave me. Jeannie calls to say that maybe we should take the Gypsy Market location after all. Not doing anything for all these months has probably warped her judgment, she thinks. Bill suggests that we both take a course in real estate.

In the morning after Jessica goes to school and Alma takes the baby for a walk, I sit down to think things over. I think about how I sat through all those awful hours of school and college, how I fell in love with James and several others, and how quickly the children are growing. I wonder if a business will make me a more responsible person. I check my navel to see if that dark line down my middle that appeared after Sam was born has become any fainter. James calls it the equator. Dr. Thompson says it is perfectly normal but I don't think I'll ever wear a bikini again.

Jeannie has a friend who is a lawyer. He specializes in charity work and will check our lease for $125. She and Bill now think that even if the business doesn't earn any profit, it will be a good experience for both of them. I wear my new Italian T-shirt and soft flannel slacks. When I get to the Gypsy Market the cooks are already unpacking the vegetables from David's car. Jeannie and David are talking about the lease. At ten thirty Norman arrives looking for me. "I can't stand it," he says. "All I did last night was think of you. My wife thinks I'm coming down with a cold. I had to take a sleeping pill." He and David talk about the restaurant business and retailing in general. Jeannie's friend, the lawyer, meets us for lunch and looks over the standard contract. "Are you making any money here, Simmons?" he asks David.

"I'm making money, but what good is it?" David says. He wrings his hands. "I haven't seen my kids in three weeks."

"I'm going before the parole board this afternoon on behalf of a man who hasn't seen his kids in eleven years," the lawyer says. We all have spinach salad and eggplant Parmesan. David doesn't offer to treat as a gesture of goodwill. Norman suggests it. Jeannie and I sign the lease, then David tells the waitress to give him the check. Jeannie gives the lawyer a $125 personal check. Norman orders a bottle of champagne. We go into the room that will be ours. As a surprise Norman has already put the frozen yogurt machine on the counter. It is about twice the size of a microwave oven and is shiny as a mirror. Jeannie is so excited that she kisses the bright surface and says "I love you" in Spanish to the machine. We all drink a toast.

"To a new life and a new business," Norman says.

"Actually," the lawyer says, "a corporation is a legal individual. You really should be a corporation."

I call James at the office. He is already wearing a sealskin coat over a down jacket just to see how it feels He congratulates me and sounds excited for us.

Norman wants to come home with me. For the time being I put him off. Jeannie is already planning the decoration of the room.

At night when the children are asleep and James has put away his atlas, when I've washed my face with Clinique and he has clipped his fingernails and we estimate if we have any energy for each other after all the activity of the day, I ask him if he ever thought that I had any talent for business and whether he considered me a frivolous person who is just going from one thing to the next in constant search of release from the boredom of daily life, which shouldn't be so boring, should it?

He is thumbing through my book, reading courtesy of Norman about the extramarital adventures of twenty-six New York women over a fifteen-year period.

He looks up from extramarital adventure. The frozen tundra is on his mind. He scratches his chin. I wrap my arms around my knees. Next month he'll be at the bottom of the earth and I will be an entrepreneur, making change.

"You want a business," he says. "I want a yacht and sunshiny carefree days. Jeannie wants good diction. The Arabs want topless girls and an iceberg. Everyone wants somebody else's husband and wife and all their possessions. And the kids are the worst cannibals of all."

"It's true," I say, thinking already of gingham tablecloths and big stacks of dollar bills stuffed into the blue sacks that the bank gives to business people. "I'm excited," I say, "but apprehensive about everything. I could lose the money or run off with Norman, or begin to bicker with Jeannie, or neglect the children. And you might get the comforts you want in Teheran or Riyadh and send me a meager alimony. Lots might happen when I leave the house."

"Business is business," he says. We sigh like cats.

I get the lubricant, he the prophylactics. Sometimes we're old-fashioned people doing the best we can.

Russell Banks.

THE GULLY.

The young man called Freckle Face, whose true name was Naldo de Arauja, was a bus driver with a dangerous route-through the Gully and along the waterfront to the airport and back, turning around at Central Square, where all the buses turn around, and doing it again, four times a day. He was only twenty years old, unmarried and making good money as a driver, and despite his many freckles and reddish hair, he was attractive to the women, possibly because he had lots of money to spend on taking them dancing, buying them Johnnie Walker Red and giving them little presents, such as nylons and stuffed animals. He lived for the women, as he himself often said, and when he was robbed in his bus in the Gully in the middle of the day twice in one week, he was angry enough to kill someone for it, especially after the cops laughed at him and the dispatcher at the bus depot told him that if he got robbed one more time this month he would be fired.

"It's company policy, Freckle Face," he said. "Three times in a month, and you're gone, man." The dispatcher stood in the garage holding his clipboard, waiting for the keys to the bus.

"Why?" Freckle Face asked. "What the h.e.l.l good does it do to fire the driver? Tell me that."