WHAT CAN YOU DO by Edward Hower
Shoulders hunched, I burned a hole in the floor with my stare and tried to hide in it. But a familiar shape was drifting my way, a hot air balloon in a purple cable-knit sweater. The man’s massive height, his roiling confusion of black curls, his loafers squashed down at the heels but so brightly polished that even the tassels looked enthusiastic – this was Ollie O’Flanagan. We’d met a year earlier when I’d returned to Ithaca to take a high school teaching job that hadn’t been renewed.
“Hey, you’re looking great, pal!” he lied. I hadn’t shaved in a week and badly needed a haircut.
“Thanks, Ollie.” I shook his huge mitt. “You do, too.” His face was puffy, with deep lines around his eyes. We didn’t ask each other why we were standing here – house rules at Unemployment Compensation offices. Ollie just shrugged, a gesture I remembered well: his head bonking over to one side, his palms up – as if to say: This is life, what can you do?
After we’d collected our checks, we skidded on snowy sidewalks to a nearby diner. Ollie ordered coffees and a big plate of doughnuts. “Still writing books, are you?” he asked, chewing.
“Not . . . lately.” My first novel had turned out to be a letter in a bottle floated out on the tide in a vain search of readers, my agent had dumped me, and I hadn’t finished another project in a very long time.
“Well, then, you could come in on this new business of mine.” He beamed and tossed a card onto the table. Under his name I read, REGIONAL MANAGER: ALL-AMERICAN MEAT & POULTRY, INC. On top was a smiling cartoon turkey, the company logo. Ollie showed me a printed price list for cuts of meat a customer could buy frozen, a six-month supply at a time. “We help clients sign up for a major credit card, for the payments. It’s a breeze!” His hand made a soothing wave in the air. “Just now, I’m expanding the sales force. I figure you could ace a job like this.”
“Me? Come on – I’ve never been in any kind of business!” At Cornell, the university at the top of the hill I now sat at the bottom of, I’d majored in World Literature.
“Just think it over –” Ollie reached across the table and gave my shoulder a squeeze.
I spent the next three weeks trying to keep from thinking over Ollie’s offer. All day, grayish snow piled on my apartment window sills, trying to seal me in. I scribbled late into the nights, filled my waste basket with wadded‑up paper. Finally I read my bank book. It had the most appalling plot I’d ever seen.
* * *
The All-American Meat & Poultry company’s sign was on a road in corn-stubbled country where farmhouses leaned precariously against the frozen sky. Once the sign had announced the titles of drive‑in movies, and the screen still stood high on a snow-dusted field, a blank billboard. Rows of rusted speaker-poles stood like an orchard of denuded dwarf trees. The popcorn stand had been replaced by a low cinderblock building. In Ollie’s office, a semi-circle of folding chairs waited around his desk.
“Take a look at this beauty! It just came today.” He pointed to a black-dialed steel safe set like an altar against the wall. It squatted waist-high on four sturdy legs, the door locked tight.
I tapped the top with my knuckles. “Solid,” I said.
“For sure.” Ollie stood up and lumbered toward the door. “Come on, I’ll show you your office.”
It was one of six cinderblock cubes furnished with metal desks and chairs he’d picked up at an auction for a terrific price. Through the window, Ollie pointed to the storage building. Its lockers would fill up as soon as the sales force began bringing in orders.
“Where is everybody?” I asked. It was very quiet out here.
“The fellows I interviewed, well, they haven’t called back yet. So just for now, it’s you and me – straight commission.” Ollie handed me some brochures with photos of steaks, chops, chickens and, of course, golden roast turkeys. “Start with questions.” He pointed to the phone on my desk. “It’s a survey. You ask, Do you like steak? Would you like to save money? Get them answering yes over and over, so when you ask them if they’d like to set up an appointment, yes is the first word that jumps into their mind.”
Learning the pitch was easy. I dialed Mrs. Aadling, the first name in the directory, picturing a plump Scandinavian housewife with a long, blonde braid. “I got a load in the dryer,” she said. Clunk, bzzzzzzzzzz: the lady vanished. I dialed the next name, Aalvag, and a man said he had a cousin who’d lost his shirt with a wholesale food outfit in Arizona. A few people told me to go fuck myself before hanging up. Clunk! Clunk! Bzzz! Dial tones swarmed, hornets scraping my eardrums raw with their wings. Then, startlingly, a man said he’d be willing to “hear me out” at his house, but for “not a millisecond” longer than fifteen minutes. Smiling, I leaned back in my chair, holding the phone as if I were shaking a maraca in a dance band.
I figured that only professors used words like “millisecond.” Damn – suppose he’d taught me years ago and now asked me why someone with my education was selling frozen meat? To his house I wore ironed slacks and a sports jacket no one could tell came from a thrift shop. My rusted car, which looked as if it had a bad case of eczema, stayed parked well out of sight as I walked up the man’s drive with my Get-Acquainted Special Gift package of bacon. He really was a professor, but fortunately I’d never taken his courses. In his Danish modern living room, he tried for two hours to prove my deals were phony, and when he couldn’t, left my contract unsigned and showed me out, chuckling. “Well, a pleasure meeting you.”
“The pleasure was all yours,” I said, and stepped off his doorstep into the slush.
That week, though, I closed two deals. I was on the team, which had expanded; Ollie hired three more “associates,” as he called us. “Smart-dressing quality guys – like you!” He gave my forearm a squeeze.
* * *
My clients weren’t dissatisfied with the meat they’d already been buying, so I needed to convince them that their whole lives would improve significantly if they signed up with AAMP Inc. A Chilean graduate student liked my price lists he could check off without having to stumble over English words at the supermarket. An elderly piano teacher loved having food delivered to her home in treacherous winter weather. On my appointments, when I saw sports equipment in a house, I talked about hockey games I’d made a point of reading about in the morning paper. I studied the TV schedule, too, though I didn’t own a set, so I could ask people with big-screen consoles how they’d liked a show the night before. It was fun playing new characters in different scenarios.
The new salesmen liked sitting around the office talking and munching sugar doughnuts. “I guess I ought to boot these fellows out on the road,” Ollie said. “But Charlie’s just lost custody of both his kids. And Bob’s wife’s had to go back for more chemo.” He sighed. “You got to give the sales force some encouragement. Isn’t that what we all need?”
It was what a new guy called Lester needed, Ollie told me one day. Lester was a spade-faced man in a pale green sports jacket with matching socks. He’d worked in truck sales, but not for a few years. “I need you to show him the ropes,” Ollie said. “You’re my number one closer.”
“I didn’t know that!” And after only a month I was being trusted to train a new man. I said I’d do it.
On the evening Lester and I were to go out on an appointment together, he rattled up to the office in an old car finned like an overweight space ship. Stepping out, Lester combed back his hair into a duck-tail the way kids in an early rock-’n’-roll movies did. Close up, though, he looked about forty-five, with pitted skin. My car’s dashboard lights turned his jacket the tint of pond algae. As we rode along, his lips moved silently as if he were having an argument with himself that he wasn’t winning.
“What was it like selling trucks?” I asked finally.
“Who told you I sold trucks?” His eyes darted sideways at me. “It was truck accessories.”
I said I didn’t know what “truck accessories” were. For twenty minutes, he told me. They were the big rubber mud guards embossed with silhouettes of kneeling naked girls that swung behind the back tires of eighteen-wheelers. They were the orange flame decals on the sides of the cabs. They were those funny bumper stickers that said, If you don’t like my driving, dial 1‑800‑FUCK YOU.
Lester said, “F-blank-blank-blank you. That’s what truck accessories are, man.”
We rode on in silence. The marbled sky stained iced-over fields a purplish red. Then they vanished as the sun burrowed behind a long stand of pines.
“Nothing but wide open spaces and hillbillies out here.” Lester shivered, rubbing his forearms. “It’s freaky – no sounds, nothing. One of these hillbillies could run you through with a pitchfork and nobody’d ever know. But I’ll be okay.” He patted the side of his sports jacket.
I glanced at him. “What’ve you got there?”
He pulled aside the jacket and slipped a pistol from the waistband of his slacks.
“Holy shit!” I skidded onto the shoulder, just missing some posts. The gun barrel poked out of Lester’s hand like a ferret’s nose. “Listen, you can’t bring that inside with us!”
“Just protection, man. I never hurt nobody. I’m a good citizen, word is bond.” He slipped the pistol into his pants again. “We almost there yet?”
We were. Silhouettes of trailers appeared up ahead: Meadowlands Court. I pulled over onto the frozen grass, sweat beading the back of my neck. “You leave that thing in the car, or we don’t go in,” I said. “When I tell Ollie tomorrow why we didn’t keep this appointment, you’re out of a job. You want that?”
Lester sat straight, his leg jiggling. Up ahead, the headlight beams glittered on slivers of ice along a wire fence. “All right, all right.” In a movement too fast for me to see clearly, one of his hands yanked opened the glove compartment, the other hand dove in and out of it. He slammed it shut. “Let’s go!”
In the trailer park, shutters clanked against metal sidings, protesting the biting wind. I rang the buzzer at #9, and the customer, Mrs. Everett – I was into the E’s by now – opened the door. A wave of heated air and cinnamon scent rushed at me. The woman wore a house coat over blue jeans. Her heavy glasses seemed to make her lean forward. I introduced myself but she didn’t step back to let me in.
“My husband’s asleep. I can’t sign no papers without his say-so.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Everett.” It wasn’t, really, but I wanted to get inside “Would you mind if I brought along my associate, Mr., uh, Lester?”
Lester stood at attention, the padded shoulders of his sports jacket making him look like a green action-figure toy. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” he said, and stuck out his hand.
A smile crossed Mrs. Everett’s face. She shook Lester’s hand and let us in. Two teenage girls were draped over an armchair staring at a huge television screen where kids in gold outfits were tormenting screams out of electric guitars. I knew I wasn’t going to sell a single pork chop – Ollie had warned me about this – if I couldn’t get that TV turned down. Mrs. Everett brought us to a small, worn couch next to the set. Lester and I squeezed in. I felt his leg jiggling beside me.
“You boys like some coffee?” Mrs. Everett asked.
“Thank you, that’d be great,” I said.
“Yeah, me, too.” Lester glanced around the room without moving his head.
One of the girls squinted up at her mother. “Who’re these dudes?”
“Salesmen,” Mrs. Everett said.
“They come to the wrong place,” the other girl said. “We’re broke.”
“You’re rude, is what you are,” their mother said. “Now move your butts on out of here and get your homework done!”
With surprisingly little argument, the kids disappeared down a corridor beside the kitchen area. Lester jumped up and sat down hard in the vacated chair. A deer-shaped china lamp rocked on the end table beside him. Mrs. Everett brought in two steaming mugs of coffee for us. I told her I was having some trouble with my hearing, and she silenced the set. She liked the frozen meat deal but had questions. I’d learned that the quickest way to ruin a customer’s confidence in me was to say, “I don’t know.” So if she asked something I didn’t have an answer for – “Where do the turkeys come from?” – I reassured her with a creative answer – “A big farm up near Syracuse. Beautiful country up there for raising poultry.”
Mrs. Everett was especially eager to hear about the MasterCard I would help her apply for. “Sometimes at stores,” she said, “when the clerks ask if it’ll be charge or cash? They look down their long noses at us when we pull out cash.”
“It ain’t right, people doing you that way.” Lester suddenly leaned forward in his chair.
I could see she was startled, but she nodded. “That’s true, mister.”
I said, “Lester, let me tell Mrs. Everett about how we back up card applications for our customers.”
“Heck, you don’t got to get snooty with me – ” Lester leaned back in the chair. His elbow struck the spotted Bambi lamp. Its face looked shocked as it toppled backwards off the table, smashing to the floor. “I’m sorry!” he fell to his knees, gathering up the pieces of china. His face was contorted into a grimace, the points of the sideburns sucked into his cheeks. When Mrs. Everett brought a dustpan and broom, he tried to push some dollar bills into her hand.
She backed away. “For Heaven’s sake – don’t worry!”
I heard a deep laugh from the kitchen. “That was th’ugliest damn lamp we ever had!”
We all turned. A mountain of a man in bib overalls stood there. Lester slapped his hand to his side. Suddenly I knew that he hadn’t left his pistol in the glove compartment of my car.
“How do you do, Mr. Everett?” I stepped between Lester and the husband, my hand out. “I’m Edward, from All-American Meat and Poultry. Your wife probably told you we’d be dropping by –“
“She didn’t tell me nothing!” Mr. Everett shook my hand, his flesh hard against mine. “We don’t need to buy whatever it is you got.”
His family was suddenly shouting about credit cards. Without them, Mrs. Everett insisted, they’d have to keep buying things at garage sales. The stuff was dusty. There’d been bugs in a mattress they’d had to spray a dozen times. The two kids chimed in: if the family had a credit card like everybody else in the whole country, they could go into K-Mart, they could pick out a nice living room set. And a TV that got more than two channels. Finally Mr. Everett sank onto the couch with his hands over his ears. His wife dropped the contract into his lap.
“You better sign this, Randy,” she said, “if you ever want any of that cake I just made.”
Suddenly everything smelled like cinnamon. Randy turned to me. “Where do I put the signature?”
* * *
On the ride back, Lester sat rigid. “You’re just mad because of the gun,” he said finally. “Okay, so I didn’t leave it in the car.”
“You lied.”
“So who doesn’t? Turkeys in Syracuse, beautiful poultry country?” He waved his hand in front of his face as if he’d just smelled a fart.
“If you can’t tell the difference between lying and creative . . .” Never mind – I was sure Ollie would fire Lester as soon as I told him what had happened, so there was no point in arguing with this jerk. We passed a school where kids were playing basketball in a flood-lit playground. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Lester slipping the pistol from his waist band.
“I’ll let you in on something,” he said as he cranked down the window. “It ain’t even loaded. Look here –” He sighted along the top of the gun barrel at the kids on the court.
“Hey! –” I rammed my foot down hard on the accelerator.
Click! – click! – click! went the gun. “I told you.” Lester sat back in the seat, smiling.
“Will you put that fucking thing away!” I pictured the kids screaming to their coach about the man in the car with a pistol – a description of my car going out on police radios – roadblocks, flashing red lights ahead. . . .I swerved down a side street; the tires screeched against the asphalt.
“Slow down, man – you don’t want to get a ticket!” Lester said. “And watch your language, will you?”
* * *
When I phoned Ollie he said he’d have a serious talk with Lester. “Ollie, you’re not going to keep him on, are you?” I asked. I wanted to tell him: If you keep Lester, I go. But I didn’t have anywhere to go.
“Trust me, pal, I’ll take care of things. But hey –” Ollie’s voice had that familiar happy boom again. “Congratulations – what a terrific closing!”
The next afternoon, the usual gang of salesmen – minus Lester – were eating Ollie’s doughnuts and filling his office with guffaws and cigarette smoke. I went straight to my cinderblock cube to make calls. Then I heard the word “Everett” from Ollie’s office. “N.G. – again?” he said into the phone.
I rang him to ask what this meant. He came over and stood in my doorway, his belly sagging in the purple sweater. “N.G., they’re the hardest letters in the alphabet a salesman can hear,” he said. “They mean No Good – the client’s got a bad credit rating.”
“So if the Everetts don’t qualify for the credit card, the meat sale’s cancelled?” I asked.
Ollie sighed. “I haven’t wanted to tell you these things when you were just starting out.”
“So this isn’t the first time one of my sales didn’t go through?” He shook his head slowly. He had dark bags under his eyes today. “But you’ve been paying me my commissions,” I said.
“Got to keep up sales force morale.”
I slouched farther down in my chair. Six of the eleven closings I’d made, Ollie confessed, had come back N.G. This was happening to the other fellows, too. Something had to be done.
I phoned Mrs. Everett to tell her that she didn’t qualify for a credit card, apologizing over and over again. In a flat voice she told me not to worry, it wasn’t the first time. I started to thank her again for her coffee and cake, but she’d soundlessly put down the receiver.
Only one of the next six families I signed up in Meadowlands Court came back N.G. Ollie peeled off bills for my commission. “Big changes coming up around here!” he said, his cheeks puffing out in a smile.
* * *
He called a “Sales Motivation Meeting” in his office. I was surprised to see Lester there. None of the associates looked any more like winners than he did. Many were overweight – not mountainous and jolly like Ollie, but squashy-faced, with close-set eyes like marbles pushed into dough. There were shiny suits and stained neckties, vein-mapped boozers’ noses and comb-overs. Ollie was talking to a new man who had the office next to his; I saw framed photos on the desk. He was the smallest person in the room. Also the best dressed: a three piece maroon suit, off-white tie with white shirt, and half-boots with pointy toes. He stepped into the center of the semi-circle of chairs. All conversations stopped.
“Hello, men,” he said, “I’m Jefferson Allen Farley – Jeff, to you – and I’m your new sales manager. From now on, I’m the one who keeps track of your work.” He pointed a short, varnished stick at a white board where Sales Associates of the Month was written in blue marker. “I’m also the man who pays your commissions and . . .” he paused, “. . .writes your salary checks.”
The salesmen all smiled. We must be doing great if we are offered salaries now, someone whispered.
Slipping his pointer under his arm like a swagger stick, he lit a thin cigar. “From now on, you’re going to be earning like you never did before!” He passed around a new list of meat prices.
I could see that all our products now cost significantly more. Nobody else seemed to notice. “These prices are going to make selling a lot harder,” I said.
“I doubt it, Edward. They’re still below what a lot of supermarkets charge.” Hearing Jeff speak my name made me grit my teeth. I glanced at Ollie in the doorway. He was watching Jeff and nodding.
The sales manager had a surprisingly deep voice for his size; it sounded as if it came out of an expensive speaker system. He knew, he said, what a pain in the ass it was making cold calls to set up appointments. So from now on, those calls here were history. “We’re too professional an outfit for that Mickey-Mouse shit – right?” The salesman burst into clapping. Jeff said he’d hired a firm of “solid professionals” to make calls for us. We’d pay a small amount – to be determined – out of our salaries for them. “Each time a call leads to a sale, the call’s a freebie for you. But let’s be up front. Anyone who don’t like the new arrangements, he’s free to drive away right now!” Jeff shoved the office door open wide. Cold air rushed in. No one moved.
He shut the door and used both palms to smooth down his hair; the sides had been blow-dried and looked like bantam rooster wings. His voice lost its edginess; he was our friend now. He knew how hard our jobs could be, he said, but how rewarding, too – once we learned to really believe in ourselves. He moved around the desk and sat in Ollie’s chair. The springs gave off a rippling chord.
“I’m thirty-four years old,” he said. “And I been selling since I was seventeen. Now I’m earning a good living for me and my family. I got three kids, and they’ll never want for nothing the way I did coming up – never! You know how I know that?” He rocked forward. “It’s because I believe . . . in my ability . . . to understand what people need!” He paused. “And you know what people need more than anything?”
Jeff tried to let a silence hang, but Lester jumped in. “Prime ribs!” he said, grinning.
“Hell, yes – but more than that. Something much bigger.” Jeff stared at Lester, who seemed to be holding his breath. “Hope, my friend!”
The men nodded.
“How many of you’ve spent time in New York City?” Jeff asked. Everyone but me looked as if he’d asked if they’d visited Saturn. “Well, I’m telling you, there’s no place that’s harder to sell in than New York City!”
He took out an ironed handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Okay, here’s a story, men. I was twenty years old, and the territory assigned me was called Spanish Harlem. As you can picture, there weren’t a lot of people on those streets that looked like me.” He touched his white cheek. “But I banged on doors all along those dark and dingy tenement hallways. I stuck my feet in those doors – ” He pushed out one of his boots – “and by God, I got orders. Week after week! Now how did I manage that?” Jeff focused on the red ember at the end of his cigar. “Okay, I’ll tell you. I remember one day a lady called Mrs. Rodriguez opened her door a crack. Behind her I could see a bunch of other Puerto Ricans sitting on a long couch. I kept looking until I saw the right person – the one I wanted to sell. Her name was Maria. Eighteen years old. She had long black hair and big eyes and a smooth, sweet face. I had something very special for Maria, and I was determined she was going to have it!” Jeff pressed his lips together and nodded.
“I was representing a school that trained air hostesses,” he went on. “That outfit guaranteed its graduates interviews with the best airlines in the United States of America. When I said that to all those Rodriguezes, I saw Maria’s face light up like a sunrise. But her mama kept telling me, We got no money, mister!” Jeff smiled. “Did I let that stop me? Hell, no! My pitch rolled on. It spun round and round. I’m telling you, men, it was like a carousel glittering with colored lights and singing like a calliope. But my song wasn’t about spinning, it was about flying. It told Maria and her Mama all about the amazing future the girl would have high up above the clouds!
“Maria, can you picture one of those big planes taking off? I asked her. And can you picture the women in charge of the passengers on that plane, those women in their dignified blue uniforms with the silver wings right there on the lapels?” Jeff squeezed his own lapel between his thumb and forefinger. “Now, Maria, those women are going places – important places! San Juan, Caracas, Buenos Aires!” I could already see the bright lights of the cities shining in her eyes. “That’s you, Maria – flying off in that sleek silver plane into the sky-blue heavens!” Every man in the room watched Jeff’s hand swoop up, up, up.
“But mister, we got no money! Mama said. I just smiled at her and kept talking about that training course – learning to help mothers change their little babies, even learning how save a passenger’s life if one of them got a heart attack. Do you think you could save a person’s life, Maria? Do you think you could wear that uniform? Maria gripped the school brochure tight. Everyone crowded around her to look at the pictures of proud women in their beautiful blue skirts and blazers.
“I gave them all a brochure – grand-dad in his undershirt and granny in her black dress and even the kids. I’m telling you, I smelled the excitement in that room! I knew I had what that family needed to get out of that dingy tenement! I had hope for them! And Maria had hope, now, too. She was that family’s hope! She was going to fly them to a whole new life!” Jeff whacked his fist into his palm. “And men, hope is the most powerful thing in the world you are selling. Once people glimpse it, they have to have it!”
He took a deep breath. “Well, you know what happened? Mama and grand-dad and granny and all those Rodriguezes shoved their couch away from the wall. And right behind it. . . .” Jeff squinted sideways, and the salesmen did, too. “. . . hidden in that bare plaster wall – was a hole! Mama reached in . . . and out came a nylon stocking that was stuffed with money! There were twenties and fifties and even hundreds. Maria gazed up at me and said, That’s Mama’s whole life savings, mister, I looked her straight in the eye, and you know what I told her?” The corners of Jeff’s mouth rose. “You’re worth every cent, honey!”
* * *
Soon the phoning service in Omaha, Nebraska, started setting up appointments for me, but I still didn’t know how much I was paying for them. When I went to the office, Ollie was often out and Jeff was busy interviewing new salesmen. Once, I looked through the window and saw him sitting beside an elfin blonde child – his daughter, I assumed. She wore a neat jacket and vest, like his, with a plaid skirt and patent leather shoes. He held her hand steady as she reached out to deal him a card from a deck on his desk.
I hit a string of No-Sales. At my appointments, people were stubborn, distrustful, rude. On the first of the month, no paycheck was in my drawer. When I phoned Ollie’s house, his wife, Fiona, said he’d delegated the bookkeeping part of the job to Jeff. Ollie was out on appointments just now.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “He’s supposed to be running the place.”
“Oh, you know how he loves selling!” Fiona laughed.
On my next trip to the office I found it empty. On the Associates of the Month wall-board, the thirteen salesmen’s names were written in grease pencil, eight more since Jeff had become sales manager. #1 was awarded a rib roast bonus, #2 a pork roast, and #3 – me – a frozen chicken. A damned chicken! I remember all the times Ollie had cooked me big steaks. Now I had to compete for these bonuses? What bothered me more, though I didn’t want to admit it, was that I’d slipped to #3. Lester was #13. Lester? I phoned Ollie’s house again. Fiona said he was laid up with a migraine. As soon as he was better, he’d be in touch, for sure.
Two days later, I found a check and a statement in my drawer. I’d been charged $25 each for eleven appointments, only two of which I’d closed on. This meant nine calls were deducted from my monthly salary, bringing it down to $12.28. Through a window in Jeff’s office door I saw him sitting back in a black leather chair. I knocked hard and pushed open his door. He scrambled to his feet.
“You don’t walk into my office like that, Edward,” he said, quickly hanging up his phone.
“I don’t like the way you did my check, Jeff. The $25 you charged me per appointment call.”
“I didn’t charge you. The company we use charges everybody.”
“I don’t want to use that company’s set‑ups. I’ll make my own.”
“Not any more. It’s our policy now – the sales force is out selling, not hanging around the office making phone calls and eating doughnuts.” He narrowed his eyes at me, as if spotting crumbs on my jacket. “Changes have to be made if an outfit’s going to keep operating. You went to college, you ought to know that.” Jeff picked up the phone. “You got an appointment in twenty minutes. Good luck with it, Edward.”
I didn’t like that he knew my schedule, but I did have to leave. Turning on my heel, I headed for the parking lot. I called Ollie’s house again later. Fiona told me he was down with another migraine, his fourth that month, but he’d be going into the office very soon. When I drove in the next day, only Lester’s weird vehicle and Jeff’s Cadillac were in the lot. From my front seat I saw Lester step outside and slam the office door. His face was drained, his teeth clenched hard. I noticed his bare arms in his short-sleeved shirt; they were tattooed with filigreed, homemade crosses, the kind that men in prison take months to make. He walked over to my car.
“I worked my tail off for this outfit! Ollie’d never of canned me!” Lester heaved a sigh. “Hey listen, man, I want to thank you for not saying nothing to Ollie about, you know, the pistol.” He leaned forward to talk softly through my window. “I ain’t supposed to even own one.”
Shit! After what I’d told Ollie about the gun, he’d not only kept the guy on, but had never even spoken to him about it! “That’s okay, Lester,” I managed to say. “But why don’t you ditch the pistol now?”
“Because what if I need it?”
I couldn’t answer that.
He squared his shoulders. “I’ll tell you something, maybe help you out, too,” he said. “You remember the story Jeff told – about selling that training course to the Puerto Rican girl?”
Something like a toad jumped in my chest. “It wasn’t true?”
“Jeff made the sale to her, all right. But one time when Ollie wasn’t around, I heard Jeff telling the guys – that stewardess school never got a single interview with an airlines for its girls, including Maria.”
I dropped my forehead hard against the steering wheel.
“I told Jeff I didn’t think much of this. He says to me, ‘But the point is, you got to believe in yourself – even if what you’re selling don’t even exist! You’ll never be a salesman if you can’t understand that.” Lester shook his head. “I guess he could tell I couldn’t understand it. Cause here I am – outa work again.” He reached out his hand. “Well, anyway – good luck, man.”
“Lester, same to you.” I reached up and shook his hand.
He got into his huge vehicle. It careened off toward the big movie screen, tires skidding. The bumper mowed down half a dozen rusted speaker-poles with loud clangs that made me grin. Then Lester peeled off toward the road.
* * *
On the phone, Fiona told me that Ollie had gone to bed right after dinner. He’d be in the office first thing tomorrow. In my apartment, I scribbled away all night taking notes for sketches of Ollie, Jeff, Lester, Mrs. Everett. This was the best work I’d done in a very long time. One person was still missing, though. I wanted to keep writing my way toward him, but as light flooded my window, I sensed I still didn’t have what I needed to make him appear on paper. Finally I put down my pen and drove to the office as fast as my clattering car would go.
Snow was melting all along the fields, leaving stripes of damp earth beside the road. In the strange quiet I heard a sound I’d almost forgotten existed – the chittering of birds. Several were perched like spectators on the remaining speaker-poles. Ollie’s Camaro was parked at a strange angle. I stared at a boxy police cruiser beyond it.
Ollie slumped at his desk when I walked in. Then he dropped his head into his hands. Two state troopers in gray uniforms faced him in folding chairs munching doughnuts, wide-brimmed hats resting on their knees. At first, Ollie’s office looked the same as always. Then I saw the bright new safe. Its door gaped open.
“Ollie?” I asked. “Did Jeff. . . . ?”
“He took it all.” Ollie’s fingers slid away from his eyes. They were shiny wet. “The funny thing is, I don’t know how much was in the safe. I keep telling these fellows,” he nodded at the troopers, “I hadn’t been keeping real good track of the books. I know we had a lot of checks from the credit card company to pay for meat the new customers ordered.”
“Farley cashed all the checks this morning, in Syracuse,” one of the policemen said. (“Beautiful poultry country,” I recalled.) “You’d signed a form authorizing him to do that, Mr. O’Flanagan.”
“I guess I did.” Ollie nodded slowly. His purple sweater stretched up his belly.
“Doesn’t MasterCard know what they sent us?” I wanted to smash his desk-top to get his attention.
“They said they’re missing about $11,000, so far.” Ollie’s voice was wobbly. “We’d been doing terrific sales since Jeff came on.” He shut his eyes tight. “Oh, Jesus – none of my men are going to get paid, now! You, either, Edward. I’m so damn sorry!”
A groan caught in my throat. It was his face I felt like smashing, but the way his eyelids were quivering made me shove my fists deep into my pockets. “I’ve got a little money saved,” I said.
“The people you sold to won’t get their food orders,” he said. “The company still owns most of them, what we haven’t got stored in our lockers – “
“Aw, shit!” I slumped down in a chair. “Can’t we make it up to them – after future sales?”
“Our franchise’s credit’s N.G., big time.” Ollie sighed. “That’s why I hired Jeff. He was sort of a specialist in rescuing businesses.”
“I bet he was.”
“This wasn’t Farley’s first job,” one of the troopers said. “We pulled up his record.”
“Oh, God!” Ollie dug his fingers into his scalp, his black curls writhing.
“Never mind,” I said. “Try and take it easy now.”
I answered the troopers’ questions, then got my things from my office. Outside the window, the huge blank screen stared back at me from the hillside. I could see tufts of grass poking up around the base.
The police cruiser drove off. Ollie climbed slowly into his Camaro. I walked over to the driver’s side and gave his shoulder a squeeze. He turned to stare up at me.
“I got to tell Fiona.” His voice croaked with fatigue. “I guess she won’t be too surprised. I’ve been awful tense lately. It’s been hard on her.”
“She told me about your headaches.”
“I had some bad ones. Throwing up, flashing lights. But you know what?” He rested his palm down carefully on top of his curls. “The migraine – it’s completely gone!”
“Maybe its name was Jeff.”
“Hey, that could be!” He smiled. “I think I’ll get Fiona some flowers.” He started the engine with a roar. “We’ll stay in touch, pal. For sure.”
“For sure, Ollie.”
And then – I don’t know how he managed it, squashed as tight as he was into the seat – he gave me one of his great shrugs: head bonked to one side, both palms rising into the air.
* * *
As I listened to the Camaro’s engine fade, the fresh smell of damp earth blew in across the fields. I backed my car around the storage building. On the meat lockers’ shelves were frozen paper-wrapped packages of beef and pork loins. They banged like rocks as I tossed them into my trunk, knocking rust-flakes loose. I filled most of my front seat with turkeys, leaving just enough room for me behind the wheel.
At Meadowlands Court, I stacked meat and poultry on my customers’ doorsteps. What I left would last the families a few weeks. After their full orders failed to appear and nobody answered their phone calls to the office, they’d probably forget the whole deal.
I never did. I still remember the feel of thawing paper in my fingers as I piled up the parcels.
Edward Hower is the author of several books of fiction, including the novels A Garden of Demons (Ontario Review Press, 2003), Shadows and Elephants (iUniverse, 2010), and The Storms of May (Ontario Review Press, 2005). His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The American Scholar, Smithsonian, Five Points, and Epoch.