He was crying again, sitting in his cold dark car and crying like a baby.
George, it’s more than the highway, more than the move. I know what’s wrong with you.
Shut up, Fred. I warn you.
But Fred wouldn’t shut up and that was bad. If he couldn’t control Fred anymore, how would he ever get any peace?
It’s Charlie, isn’t it, George? You don’t want to bury him a second time.
“It’s Charlie,” he said aloud, his voice thick and strange with tears. “And it’s me. I can’t. I really can’t…”
He hung his head over and let the tears come, his face screwed up and his fists plastered into his eyes like any little kid you ever saw who lost his candy-nickle out the hole in his pants.
When he finally drove on, he was husked out. He felt dry. Hollow, but dry. Perfectly calm. He could even look at the dark houses on both sides of the street where people had already moved out with no tremor.
We’re living in a graveyard now, he thought. Mary and I, in a graveyard. Just like Richard Boone in I Bury the Living. The lights were on at the Arlins', but they were leaving on the fifth of December. And the Hobarts had moved last weekend. Empty houses.
Driving up the asphalt of his own driveway (Mary was upstairs; he could see the mild glow of her reading lamp) he suddenly found himself thinking of something Tom Granger had said a couple of weeks before. He would talk to Tom about that. On Monday.
November 25, 1973
He was watching the Mustangs-Chargers game on the color TV and drinking his private drink, Southern Comfort and Seven-Up. It was his private drink because people laughed when he drank it in public. The Chargers were ahead 27-3 in the third quarter. Rucker had been intercepted three times. Great game, huh, Fred? It sure is, George. I don’t see how you stand the tension.
Mary was asleep upstairs. It had warmed up over the weekend, and now it was drizzling outside. He felt sleepy himself. He was three drinks along.
There was a time-out, and a commercial came on. The commercial was Bud Wilkenson telling about how this energy crisis was a real bitch and everybody should insulate their attics and also make sure that the fireplace flue was closed when you weren’t toasting marshmallows or burning witches or something. The logo of the company presenting the commercial came on at the end; the logo showed a happy tiger peeking at you over a sign that said:
He thought that everyone should have known the evil days were coming when Esso changed its name to Exxon. Esso slipped comfortably out of the mouth like the sound of a man relaxing in a hammock. Exxon sounded like the name of a warlord from the planet Yurir.
“Exxon demands that all puny Earthlings throw down their weapons,” he said. “Off the pig, puny Earthmen.” He snickered and made himself another drink. He didn’t even have to get up; the Southern Comfort, a forty-eight ounce bottle of Seven-Up, and a plastic bowl of ice were all sitting on a small round table by his chair.
Back to the game. The Chargers punted. Hugh Fednach, the Mustangs’ deep man, collected the football and ran it out to the Mustangs 31. Then, behind the steely-eyed generalship of Hank Rucker, who might have seen the Heisman trophy once in a newsreel, the Mustangs mounted a six-yard drive. Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs’ 46. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut had so shrewdly pointed out. He had read all of Kurt Vonnegut’s bonds. He liked them mostly because they were funny. On the news last week it had beeen reported that the school board of a town called Drake, North Dakota, had burned yea copies of Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which was about the Dresden fire bombing. When you thought about it, there was a funny connection there.
Fred, why don’t those highway department fucksticks go build the 784 extension through Drake? I bet they’d love it. George, that’s a fine idea. Why don’t you write The Blade about that? Fuck you, Fred.
The Chargers scored, making it 34-3. Some cheerleaders pranced around on the Astroturf and shook their asses. He fell into a semidoze, and when Fred began to get at him, he couldn’t shake him off.
George, since you don’t seem to know what you’re doing, let me tell you. Let me spell it out for you, old buddy. (Get off my back, Fred.) First, the option on the Waterford plant is going to run out. That will happen at midnight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Thom McAn is going to close their deal with that slavering little piece of St. Patrick’s Day shit, Patrick J. Monohan. On Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, a big sign that says SOLD! is going up. If anyone from the laundry sees it, maybe you can postpone the inevitable by saying: Sure. Sold to us. But if Ordner checks, you’re dead. Probably he won’t. But (Freddy, leave me alone) on Friday a new sign will go up. That sign will say:
Here We Grow Again!!!
On Monday, bright and early, you are going to lose your job. Yes, the way I see it, you’ll be unemployed before your ten o’clock coffee break. Then you can come home and tell Mary. I don’t know when that will be. The bus ride only takes fifteen minutes, so conceivably you could end twenty years of marriage and twenty years of gainful employment in just about half an hour. But after you tell Mary, comes the explanation scene. You could put it off by getting drunk, but sooner or later-
Fred, shut your goddam mouth.
–sooner or later, you’re going to have to explain just how you lost your job. You’ll just have to fess up. Well, Mary, the highway department is going to rip down the Fir Street plant in a month or so, and I kind of neglected to get us a new one. I kept thinking that this whole 784 extension business was some kind of nightmare I was going to wake up from. Yes, Mary, yes, I located us a new plant-Waterfond, that’s right, you capish-but somehow I couldn’t go through with it. How much is it going to cost Amroco? Oh, I’d say a million or a million-five, depending on how long it takes them to find a new plant location and how much business they lose for good.
I’m warning you, Fred.
Or you could tell her what no one knows better than you, George. That the profit margin on the Blue Ribbon has gotten so thin that the cost accountants might just throw up their hands and say, Let’s ditch the whole thing, guys. We’ll just take the city’s money and buy a penny arcade down in Norton or a nice little pitch 'n' putt out in Russell or Crescent. There’s too much potential red ink in this after the sugar that son of a bitch Dawes poured into our gas tank. You could tell her that.