Chapter 21

Walter came home at around nine o'clock and went straight to his room. I saw the look on his face and decided not to bother him. The look alone told me that his talk with Carla hadn't gone too well. I had been sitting at home the whole time telling myself that I needed to get out and start making my life happen. I had come to the conclusion that I hadn't been trying to live my life, ever since Audrey and I broke up. I was just going through the motions, pretty much wasting the past six years.

In my mind at least, breaking up with Audrey had been the one act that had changed everything for me. I had drawn a lot of my energy from the excitement that I had been able to create from activities surrounding her. Walter's relationship with Carla was different than mine had been with Audrey. He loved her, and she him, but they weren't good for each other. I think Carla had always known that, at some level, but I don't think Walter ever so much as thought about it.

At the time that I broke it off with Audrey, it was because I didn't want to end up worse than Walter. I was twenty two years old now, and had practically stopped living any kind of life at sixteen, giving up a lifestyle that I really enjoyed, with nothing to fall back on. Did giving her up the way that I did, help Audrey? I had no way of knowing about now, but, during our last two years of high school, she had seemed just as much adrift as I was. She was more social, to be sure, but she wasn't any happier than I was. We had spent enough time together after the break up, that I was sure of that. I had a lot of thinking to do. I needed to get myself a job too.

I got up from my bed and walked over and knocked on Walter's bedroom door.

"Walter, can I come in?"

"Not tonight Barry. I'd rather just be alone right now." I thought about that for a minute, standing at his doorway, and then I turned the handle and walked into his room. He was laying on his bed, in the dark, with all of his clothes on. He didn't like it when I turned his light on either. He sat up in the bed. "I told you no Barry, Get the fuck out of here."

"I can't do it Walter. I need to talk to you. Did you see your son?"

"Yeah, I saw him. Carla wouldn't even let me in to talk to him. I had to stand by the door and look over her shoulder at him."

"Are you satisfied that he's your kid?"

"I'd have to be, wouldn't I? Same hair, same eyes, he looks a lot like I did at three or four."

"So, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Carla and I still can't get along. She doesn't even want to try."

"How long were you standing at her doorway talking?"

"I don't know. Maybe three hours."

"She was trying Walter. If she wasn't, she wouldn't have kept that door open for so long. I bet she had a lot of stuff that she needed doing, but she stayed there and talked to you."

"Half of that time she was threatening to call the police if I didn't leave. She never let me even hold my kid, that's not right."

"Walter, you've got to earn that from her. She wants you to earn it. This time she isn't just going to hand it over to you. That kid is very important to her."

"That's bullshit, Barry. That's my kid."

"You got any money saved up Walter?"

"Maybe five hundred, why?"

"Get the money and stick it in an envelope, and take it over to Carla. Tell her it's for little Walter. That would be a good start."

"I'm not going to do that Barry." I turned around, turned off his light, and went back to my room, closing his door as I left. I took off my clothes and got into bed. I was almost asleep, a half hour later, when Walter came bursting into my bedroom, throwing on my light.

"So, I give her my money Barry, and then what?" I waited until my eyes got adjusted to the light again.

"And then, on your next payday, you take over some more and give it to her too. After awhile, you ask her again if you can spend some time with little Walter. To Carla, little Walter is more important than you and her are. She isn't likely to just let you into his life until you've proved to her that you deserve that. Even if you and Carla don't have any further relationship Walter, you can still do the right thing for your son."

"I want her too Barry."

"Walter, take care of your kid. It's the right thing for you to do. If you do that, Carla will probably see that you've finally grown up. It's the only way you have any chance to get her back." Walter stood there for a minute, not really looking at anything, and then he turned off my light and left my bedroom and went back to his. I had to get up and go shut my door again.

I stayed awake for the next two hours, wondering why it was so easy to figure out what Walter needed to do, and so difficult to get my own life back together. I decided that I needed to get myself a job first. That's what I'd do in the morning. I fell asleep with that thought. The next morning I got up and went down to the Human Resources office and got in line to get an appointment with a job counselor. It was almost eleven before they called my name. Three hours just to get in to see somebody about getting some work.

The guy I went in to see, had a little cubbyhole of a partitioned office space, maybe eight by eight, and introduced himself as Mr. Gavin. He was about forty years old, balding, with bad complexion and a beer belly. His handshake was like shaking hands with a wet dishrag. I sat down in an uncomfortable folding chair and waited while he read the paperwork that they had gotten me to fill out.

"Mr. Glass, according to the information that you provided, you've never held a job, other than with the Air force?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"You had a lot of training in electronics I see, and spent almost three years with hands on experience?"

"Hands on a typewriter. I took care of the duty roster for the GATR site that I was assigned to. I was a glorified clerk I guess you could say."

"And that was all that you did? This duty roster scheduling?"

"That's it."

"Have you ever considered a career in the fast food industry?"

"No."

"Insurance?"

"Selling? No."

"I don't have anything else for you that you'd be qualified for."

"What about a job like yours?"

"You need a degree to do my job Mr. Glass."

"So, that's it then? You have nothing for me?"

"I do have a referral here for a company called Cactus Jack's Wholesale Snacks, it requires a valid driver's license and a minimum age of twenty one for insurance purposes. It doesn't say what the job is. I was going to call them later to get further particulars."

"Can you set up an interview for me? I do have a driver's license." He wrote something on a three by five card and handed it to me. It was an address and a man's name, and that was it.

"Have him call us if he fills the position." I left there, wondering what help they were to other people. I wasn't too impressed with what I'd gotten from them. I drove over to the address on the card. It was located in a run down industrial park that had small office buildings in front with warehouse room in the back. I looked through the window in front and didn't see anybody. I walked around to the back, and the big bay door was open, so I went over to look inside. There was a guy in there moving boxes around. He was about fifty years old and looked to be about fifty pounds overweight. I stood in the door opening for a minute, waiting for him to notice me. Finally, he did.

"Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, I'm looking for a Mr. Jim Davis."

"That's me, what can I do for you?"

"They sent me from the Human Resources to interview for a job."

"You like beef jerky?"

"Not really."

"You like pepperoni sticks?"

"No, too greasy."

"How about smoked beef sausage?"

"Never tried it." He reached over to a large maroon Naugahyde bag and pulled out a two foot long round sausage, like a Hickory Farms sausage that you see around Christmas time. He cut it in half, and then sliced off a small piece from one of the open ends. He handed the meat to me. It didn't seem too hygienic to pass food around that way, at least, not to me, it didn't.

"Stick that in your mouth and tell me what you think." So I did, careful to first tear off the casing. It was good, tasty, and didn't taste salty like I thought that it might. I finished the rest in another quick bite. "Well?"

"It's good, what is it?"

"That's the world's best smoked beef sausage, made up in Oregon, cured with brown sugar and spices, and slow smoked over maple wood. They cost $14.95, how many would you like?"

"I came to see about getting a job. I don't have any money."

"So, how come you're looking for a job?"

"I just got out of the Air Force last week."

"You originally from around here?"

"Born and raised, not two miles from here."

"You're a good looking boy. You like women?"

"Sure, I like them. You selling them for $14.95 too?"

"It's just that this job requires you to be able to deal with women. So, do women like you too?"

"I don't know. I guess a few of them do."

"If I can show you how to make a couple hundred dollars a day, working six hours a day, would you be interested?"

"That depends on what it is that I'd be doing."

"You'd be doing to people what I just did to you. Getting them to taste the sausage, jerky and pepperoni. In this town, you'd be Cactus Jack. I'd only stay here two or three more days to train you, and then you'd be on your own after that. You'd need to hire another three or four people to do what you do too. People can't all handle this kind of work, they get beaten down by rejection. You'd always be hiring and training new people."

"Is there a salary that goes with the job?"

"Hell no boy. I'm not paying somebody to do nothing. That's what a salary is for. You make money by selling. You make a little more from training, because you get a dollar override on anything the person you train sells too. You don't sell, you don't make any money. You want some training or not?"

"I'm not a salesman." He looked at me for a minute, like he was trying to decide.

"Grab that red and white cooler and let's go out to your car. What's your name?"

"Barry. Barry Glass."

"Let's go Barry. It's almost ten o'clock, and people are starting to get hungry." He grabbed three boxes and walked behind me to my car. I put the cooler in the trunk and he put one of the boxes there, and the other two in my back seat. He went back and got two of those Naugahyde bags. They had straps like a big purse, and the bag part was about two and a half feet long and about eighteen inches high. The strap was padded. One was blue and the other was maroon. "The rent on the building is $400.00 a month. I rented you a pallet in a cooler at a butcher's shop over on Iverson for the sausages. That's another fifty a month. Utilities on the warehouse should be less than fifty a month. Your total overhead is about $500.00 a month. You got insurance on this car?"

"I'm not sure that I can sell anything. Maybe we should hold off until we find out?"

"Barry, the product sells itself. Your job is just to get people to try it, and let them sell themselves. As long as you aren't a quitter, you'll do just fine. Now, take me to some small strip centers. We need to get us some money for lunch."

From ten o'clock until one o'clock, I drove him around and carried jerky and pepperoni jars in my bag. I'd go into businesses behind him and watch him as he got people inside to try his sausage, jerky and pepperoni. He had a lot of different things that he'd say, but he usually got at least one person to try his sample. He always started out with the sausage, but would sample the jerky or the pepperoni once he had someone interested in it. In that three hours, he sold seven sausages, three jerky jars and three pepperoni jars. Each of the jars had 40 pieces of jerky or 36 sticks of pepperoni in it. It was steady selling, but it wasn't anything tricky or fancy. I shut up and watched him. Everything was the same, $14.95. He would sell half sticks of the sausage for $7.50 each if someone complained that they had no use for a whole one. We stopped at one o'clock, and went into a Mexican Restaurant and we both had a burrito with sauce and a draft beer.