Chapter 6

I was standing in line, trying to squeeze in through the door; well, it was fucking cold outside, and the line meandered a hundred yards around the corner this time of day. A guy in a navy blue blazer was kinda staring at me. The blazer was one of those things the leaders in the Salvation Army wore in cold weather. I knew who he was. Didn’t really know him exactly, but he’d been pointed out to me before. He was the top honcho. Why he was looking at me was a mystery. But it was looking like it might not be a mystery much longer; the man came toward me.

“Hi, Mister Clausen isn’t it?” he said. “I’m Captain Traynor, I kinda run this place.”

“Uh, yes, I’m Clausen. I didn’t do anything wrong did I?” I said. “I knew I hadn’t.”

The man smiled. “No, absolutely not. But, if you could see your way clear to sit with me for a few, I’d appreciate it,” he said.

I didn’t know the man, but he was in charge of feeding us, us losers, so maybe I’d be well served to talk to him.

“Okay, I guess, sure,” I said. He pulled me out of the line and led me out and around to the side of the building and inside. We adjourned to a smallish office in the back of the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” he said, brightly. I did as he asked.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked to speak with you,” he said.

“That would be a good bet,” I said.

“Yes, well, a couple of friends of yours put me up to it,” he said.

I only had two close friends that weren’t bartenders: Sammy and Henry. I knew that Rodney and Claire would likely have described themselves as my friends, but I doubted that they’d have enlisted the services of the Salvation Army to convince me of that.

“My friends?” I said.

“Yes, Henry and Sammy,” he said. I sagged back in my seat. I was right. So, Sammy and Henry knew where I was too. Big surprise. One of them, or maybe both, it likely was that cued my ex-wife and her husband as to where I was living; well, if what I was about could be described as living.

“Okay?” I said.

“Well, they seemed to think that me sitting down with you might be useful. Said you’d had a tough time of it. Divorce and what all went along with it is what they said,” he said.

“Reverend...” I started.

“Captain,” he said.

“Huh?” I said.

“In the SA we have ranks in the army of Christ,” he said. “We don’t describe ourselves as being reverend or father or anything like that.”

“Oh, okay, I didn’t know.

““Captain, I don’t know if anything you or anyone can say would make any difference. My best friend for forever took my wife away from me. And, I just found out that the last night she and I were together I’d gotten her pregnant. And now there is a six year old little girl out there that I have never met that’s mine. Kind of makes it a tough nut to get by all of that wouldn’t you say?” I said.

Now, the man across from sagged back in his seat. “Wow!” he said. “I will say you do make a good case for the way you feel about your situation. Still, what’s happened to you has happened to a lot of other people in times gone by; and the Lord can and does help those who come to him even with problems as large as yours, larger even.”

“I appreciate your concern, uh, Captain, but I just don’t know...”

“Would you do me a personal favor?” he said, interrupting me.

“A favor?” I said.

“Yes, come to chapel this Sunday. It’s at 11:00 A.M. just four blocks down the street,” he said. “We have a bit of social time after services too. Kind of a get to know each other time if you know what I mean.”

I looked at the man as if he were nuts, but for some reason or no reason I decided to test the waters.

“I guess I could come once or twice,” I said. In the back of my mind I wondered if I might actually meet a woman there who I could maybe entice into talking to me on a personal level. And another thing rolling around in the back of that same mind was a mission I was going to be on to pin a couple of friends of mine who had the unbelievable brass to set me up like this. Oh yeah!

Marie greeted me like some long lost relative. Well it had been a couple of years now or close to it. She let me know that my targets wouldn’t be in until after 9:00 P.M. That suited me; I would need a couple of drinks to be in shape to talk religion to the two bozos. I was looking, no doubt, kinda ragged, but she didn’t pay that any apparent mind.

“Incoming,” said Marie. I turned to see my two long lost buds not quite holding hands as they entered laughing. The laughing died in kind of a hurry when they saw me.

“And here they are the local evangelists,” I said.

“Jimmy, how the hell are you, man,” said Henry. Sammy just smirked.

“He told you didn’t he,” said Sam.

“If you mean Captain Traynor, why yes he did,” I said, responding to his opening salvo. “He said you two were worried about my soul.”

“Well, not exactly your soul, but pretty much everything else about you, yes,” said Sam.

Then the word war, and then some drinking, and then the word war again was underway.

“Anyway, yes we did talk to the Captain,” said Henry. “Frankly we have indeed been worried about you. You just disappeared and we had no clue how to find you until Sam here happened to see you downtown at the soup kitchen.”

“Yeah well, they serve pretty good coffee,” I said. “And yes, I am going to be looking for a better situation down the line, and the man has convinced me to try out his church, so I will be.”

“Wow! Maybe there is hope for you,” said Sammy, meaning it.

I’d decided, I guess, to go to church. Well, if there were a God, it might do me some good. If not, well, the food would be good at the least. And, I’d made another decision: I was going to see my daughter. Six years old she was and she’d never seen her daddy, her real daddy, just the interloper. I wondered if they had known she was mine from the beginning. According to them, not, but did I believe them. I guess I did, but the truth was I was guessing; I didn’t really know. That’s what lost trust will do to a person.

At any rate, it would be tough on me being around them knowing I didn’t have a chance in hell of having my baby live with me, but at least they’d not be cutting me out of her life. I was pretty sure of that much. I was also sure she’d without a doubt see me as the lesser of her two daddies.

No matter what I did, I could never match up with his situation: money and mommy were his tools into the baby’s heart. Me, I had poverty, no wife, and no prospects. What was to choose? Whatever the baby would think of me would be what the two cheaters wanted her to think, no more no less. Nevertheless, I’d take what I could get for the near term; I didn’t figure I had any choice.

I had no cell phone, and I didn’t even have their phone numbers if I had had one. I was going to have to visit them in person. And, there was a small problem there too; I didn’t know exactly where they lived. She’d said something about living maybe a mile and a half from Franklin’s that time I’d bumped into her in the supermarket, something called The Towers, something like that. I hadn’t wanted to know where that was at the time, now I had this problem and I had to figure out a way to contact them. Then, I had it. I did know where he worked. Pollard Associates was located in the Ralston Building downtown, ninth floor if I remembered rightly; I’d been there a few times in the distant past.

I did have thirty-eight dollars in my pocket, saved from my clean up jobs at Marnov’s. Still, I wasn’t going to be using that. I’d not be taking a taxi to the man’s workplace; I needed my money little as it was. Ten miles was too damn far for me to hoof it but I would be anyway; and no, I had no intention of calling his business and asking for a ride which I’m sure he would have condescended to grant me; the key word being condescended. I was taking nothing from him that wasn’t mine his willingness to grant me mercy in those respects notwithstanding.

The walk wasn’t as bad as I’d feared it would be. I’d started early and I’d made it in under four hours. I looked up at the clock on the bank building across the street when I got to the Ralston Building. It was 10:33A.M. He’d be in, I was pretty sure.

A security guard stopped me, and looked me over pretty good. Well, I was dressed in row-chic. “Name’s Clausen. I’m here to see Rodney Pollard, ninth floor,” I said. The guard tendered me a sour look, stepped behind a bank of monitors, picked up a phone, hit a button, and waited. He talked to somebody on the other end.

“Okay, you’re cleared to see Mister Pollard,” the man said. His look told me he couldn’t believe it and was mildly miffed because he couldn’t do anything about it. The upshot was that I was miffed because he was miffed.

I took the elevator up and stepped off and into the upscale suite of offices. Several people were milling around apparently busy making the big man richer than he already was.

“You’re Mister Clausen?” said a way too old to be a receptionist, receptionist.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. The lady had to be seventy. I had to believe that she was way too good at her job to be replaceable.

“You can go right in, sir,” she said, pointing to a door at the end of a very short hall. I nodded and wended my way there.

I paused at the door with my hand on the knob as second thoughts assailed me. I entered.

He rose and came around his desk to greet me. He was all smiles. I was not, all smiles that is.

“Jimmy, I am so glad you came,” said Rodney Pollard. I nodded.

“Okay if I sit down,” I said. “I’m kinda tired.”

“Certainly, certainly,” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Water, I could really use a drink of water,” I said. I hadn’t had a drop in the whole ten mile trek. I’d left early and had forgotten to take any water with me. I could have bought something along the way, but by the time I had actually gotten thirsty, I’d decided to just tough it out and get a drink when I got to my destination.

He hurried to the back of his desk where a small refrigerator was located. He brought me a bottle of the precious liquid. I downed the whole thing in a gulp.

“Man, you were thirsty,” he said.

“Yes, kinda,” I said. I got right to it. “I decided to take you up on your offer to let me see my little girl,” I said. His face showed a slight change in attitude when I said what I’d said.

“Problem?” I said. “I mean you’ve changed your mind?”

“No, no, of course not,” he said, recovering his smile before it became grossly evident that he’d really rather have scowled; well, that’s how I read things.

“I wouldn’t have bothered you here, but I didn’t have any way to contact you and I don’t know where you live,” I said. Something seemed to occur to him.

“You didn’t know ... oh my God,” he said. “We didn’t give you any of that when we met at the kitchen did we! Jimmy, I had no idea. I just assumed. I didn’t think! Oh my God.” Something else seemed to have occurred to him just as I set the empty water bottle on his desk top.

“Jimmy, how did you get here?” he said.

“I knew where you worked of course. I was here a few times in the distant pass if you’ll remember,” I said.

“No, no, I know that. What I meant was how did you get here: car, bus, what?” he said.

“Walked,” I said. He walked back behind his desk and fell into his swivel throne.

“Sweet Jesus! That had to be ten miles anyway,” he said.

“No big deal,” I said, “don’t make it big deal, okay,” I said. He nodded, but he did so slowly, meaningfully.

“You won’t be walking back,” he said, “and that is an absolute fact. Okay?” he said. I wanted to tell him that I’d do my own transporting, but the truth was I wasn’t sure that I could make it; ten miles, okay, but twenty on the same day? Not real likely. I shrugged my surrender.

He wrote something down on a post it and handed it to me. Our numbers and our address,” he said. You can come any time, but you best call first in case we’d not be home. Is that all right with you?” I nodded.

“Yeah, sure, that’s fine,” I said. “Well that’s all I came to say. I just need you to tell me when you will allow me to see her. I’ll come then.”

“Jimmy, you can come whenever you want, but for this first time, how about right now, today,” he said. I had not expected that.