Bookman

by Ed Baldwin

  “Did you write an order?” she said before she even got all the way into the room. That kind of summarizes sales for those who are not involved in it. Either you do or you don’t. For them there is none of the nuance of the stalk; the thrill at the moment of the close. We can relate to them the near misses and the gambles that don’t pay off, but the final end product of a days work is still, ‘Did you write an order?’”

  For the first time in a long time I wanted her to really care about me and not the money I was bringing in. I wanted her to see how tired I was, how much brainpower I was putting in, how independent I was. Hell, I don’t know. Of course I didn’t tell her any of these feelings. I just said, “I went out didn’t I?” and smiled. She got the message. I guess it’s all she really wanted to hear, because once she’d poured herself a glass of milk, she gave me a peck on the forehead and went back to bed.

  “Your order went down,” Lanny said as he greeted me in the morning.

  “What do you mean ‘went down’?”

  “When the branch manager called this morning to verify it the guy said he didn’t want the books. Something about water marks all over the sofa.” Lanny was grinning like a chimp.

  “You’re shitting me, aren’t you,” I said hopefully.

  “Nope. He also said something about being surprised that he’d have to pay for his books, thought he would get his money back after they arrived,” Lanny said, serious now.

  “I told him he’d get his money back in ‘educational benefit’ when the books arrived.”

  “You must have been really desperate on that one. The husband out of a job, not even $12 in the checking account.” Lanny was smiling again.

  “Well, the chips were down, weren’t they?” I said glumly.

  “I appreciate the effort, but we don’t get paid on bad orders.”

  “Yeah, I know. Say, while I’m thinking about it. I want to ride with Barney for awhile.”

  “With Barney? Why?”

  “Maybe I could perk up his crew. Also, it’ll give me a chance to hear some great book stories. I hear he’s got some real yarns,” I said, only half seriously.

  “I have given Barney the dregs. Maybe this will be the break he needs to finally do something for this office. OK, but don’t pick up any bad habits. Remember what I told you yesterday. And if you go three days without an order, you’re back in my car.”

  I worked my butt off that night to get an order and came up with nothing. When I arrived at my pickup point that night Barney was already there, sitting in his car reading the paper and finishing a beer. He offered me one of the three remaining cans in the six pack. I accepted and broke the bad news. “I blanked.”

  “Me too,” he said, not seeming to really care. “Tell the other guys you got one. It’ll keep morale up.”

  Byron, the new man, showed up next. “I got one!” he said, happily waving the signed form in the air. He was warmly congratulated and driven home. I tagged along with Barney when he went down to the office to drop off the order.

  “You had an office once, didn’t you, Barney?” I asked as we got to the elevator at the Sterick Building.

  “Office, hell. I had a district. Had a $30,000 week in ’59. That’s the most they ever got out of Birmingham, to this day. I used to make the ‘Sheet’—that’s the top 20 salesmen in the company. It comes out once a week and I used to be on it once or twice a month. For a DM that’s pretty spectacular.” Barney was really rolling now as we unlocked the door and put the order on Lanny’s desk.

  “What happened?” I asked, curious how so much success could turn around so completely.

  “I got lazy. It’s a lot easier to get a bet down on a baseball game, sit in a club somewhere, and watch what happens than it is to get out of that car at 5:00 and start looking for another mooch. Besides, I was gettin’ overrides on 30 guys, all out there hustling. I must have coasted like that for six months. Then the shit hit the fan all at once.”

  The conversation continued across the street at the Holiday Inn bar. This was the usual meeting place. Lanny had gone to Jonesboro, Arkansas and wouldn’t be back for awhile. We were expected to wait until midnight. At this late night meeting he would get reports from his field managers about how everyone had done. The ass chewing and the back slapping were usually done over a pitcher of beer.

  “My wife caught me banging one of the secretaries in the office. She must have been tipped off by someone, because in five years of marriage she had never once come down to the office at night. That secretary was the finest piece of blonde meat you ever saw.” Barney sat in silence for awhile, thinking of times past I suppose, then said, “The wife wasn’t half bad either.” He laughed himself into a near coughing fit. I just sat there. I knew there was more to the story.

  “Then the cops in some podunk town in south Alabama picked up my best crew and held ’em in jail for five days,” he started up again. “They were on the road and I didn’t know where they were. When they didn’t check in I started calling the whole south part of the state. I knew they were in jail, but it took me four days to find out where. Most of ’em blamed me for that and moved to the Atlanta district.”

  “Shit, Barney, that wasn’t fair.” I tried to sympathize, thinking I would have bagged him, too.

  “Morale really fell after that,” he went on, shaking his head. “My wife hired a lawyer and was squeezing me for everything she could get. One day some guy from Canada came in and said he was the new district manager, and that I should call Al Caruso in New York. “Big Al”—he was the regional manager and vice-president. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even wait until I made the call before he took over my office, called in all the field managers and fired ’em and then took the rest of the salesmen to lunch.”

  Obviously still pretty steamed about the whole thing, Barney broke off his story long enough to order another pitcher. Then he went to the men’s room. The waitress came by again while he was gone and said it was last call. I ordered another pitcher on top of his.

  Barney came out of the men’s room still pulling up his zipper and continued his story as if he had never left. “Then he offered me the trainer’s job. Shit, been in the business 10 years and he wants me to be the fucking trainer. So I left and went to Atlanta. I had a crew there and didn’t do too bad. Al Caruso was never satisfied with the production in Atlanta and kept shifting the managers. There was always some kind of turmoil so I came here.”

  “Do you have to get a transfer or what?” I asked, startled to hear my own voice.

  “Naw. Just leave. When you show up at the new office they just call and verify your sales number and you’re on the team. Usually you know some of the people if you’ve been around very long. You might not step into a crew right away, but there’s always something opening up if you’re hot.”

  Barney went back and gave a blow by blow account of his experiences with the blonde secretary and then it was closing time. He drained the remaining beer in the second pitcher without bothering with a glass and we left.

  The blue light came on behind us before we had gone a block. “Goddamn cop! Must have been sittin’ right by that bar waitin’ for some sucker to come out,” Barney said as he pulled over.

  “Good evening,” said the officer, polite as you please. “Would you both carefully get out of the car and stand with your hands on top of it? May I see your operator’s license?”

  “What’s the matter, officer? Were we speeding or something?” Barney was trying to sound casual, but it came out slurred and tense. He pulled out his wallet and spilled the contents on the street. There were pictures, a few credit cards, an expired Alabama fishing license, but no driver’s license. The policeman made no effort to help Barney with his personal effects.

  “What is your name, sir? Do you have any identification? Do you have the registration certificate for this vehicle?”

  Barney, on his hands and knees picking up his stuff, said nothing, and when it became evident that he wasn’t going to be any
help, the policeman allowed me to remove my hands from the top of the car so we could both look through the glove compartment for a valid registration.

  A pretty patient guy, the officer had Barney and me wait, with our hands back on top of the car, while he took the registration back to the cruiser and talked on the radio.

  “Do you still live at 2534 Pine Street in Birmingham?” The officer asked when he returned.

  “Uh, no. I live in Memphis,” was Barney’s mumbled reply. He was fading fast.

  “Your Alabama license plate has expired. If you are a resident of Tennessee you have 30 days to get a valid plate transferred. An expired plate is an immediate violation, of course.” He paused to let that sink in.

  “I just moved here a few weeks ago and haven’t had the time to get things changed,” Barney lied badly.

  “Mr. Baker, have you been drinking?”

  “Well, my business associate and I did have a beer with our supper. No harm in that is there?”

  “Mr. Baker, I would like to perform a sobriety test to determine your ability to operate a motor vehicle.”

  The officer had Barney walk along a crack in the sidewalk and hop on one foot, then walk backwards. He did all right on the straight line, but couldn’t walk backwards. When he hopped on one foot he urinated in his pants.

  “Mr. Baker, you appear to me to be intoxicated. You have no driver’s license and your license plate has expired. I am going to have to take you to the precinct station and book you for these violations.” Then, turning to me, he said, “Have you been drinking, too?”

  “Only a little,” I said, and produced my driver’s license. I performed the sobriety test without difficulty and the officer took my license back to the cruiser to check me out over the radio.

  He was back in only a few minutes. “If another officer stops you on the way home, show him this copy of the citation and he’ll let you off for tonight,” he said, “but you’d better not drive it again until he gets a valid plate.” Then he gestured toward Barney. “He’ll be in jail. The bond usually runs $200 and you can get him out in the morning.”

  With that he handcuffed Barney and led him into the back seat of the cruiser. I watched him pull out into traffic and disappear around the corner toward the city complex a few blocks away. I drove the car back to the Sterick Building parking lot, which we had just left, and waited for Lanny to return.

  “That drunken bastard! That’s the one thing I hate about this business. You have to look after every detail for every salesman in the office or something like this comes up. Last week I had to tell Barney that he needed a new pair of shoes; I never thought to look to see if he had a valid driver’s license!” Lanny talked non-stop as we walked back into the building and up to the office. “Last week one of those wild-eyed idiots in Gerald Hamilton’s crew began putting on an English accent and telling everyone he was from Liverpool. If he didn’t write so many orders, I’d get rid of his ass. I always know where they’ve been because someone will call the office and ask to speak to that cute boy from England. Shit, claims he knows the Beatles.”

  Lanny called the police station and used his charm to no avail on the desk sergeant. Barney was passed out in the drunk tank and bail wouldn’t be set until morning.

  “Did you deliberately get Barney drunk?” Lanny asked after he had sat quietly looking out at the lights of town for a few minutes.

  I was a little hurt, and then almost a little flattered. Lanny actually thought I was ambitious enough to do something underhanded like that. “Barney doesn’t need help to get drunk,” I replied, trying not to sound too indignant.

  “Yeah, that’s true. OK. You take the crew tomorrow. Do you have a decent car?”

  “Sure, Honey’s convertible. Where do you want me to go? How about a road trip to take everyone’s mind off of Barney’s bad luck?”

  “No, no, you haven’t been in the business long enough for me to trust you out of town, much less on the road. Work those apartments out around Memphis State. We usually don’t let the summer crews work them. We save ’em for bad weather in the winter. There should be a fair number of teachers here for summer school. This is your chance. Lanny rose and shook my hand. “Don’t blow it.”

  Even though it was just the two of us in the office it seemed to be an auspicious occasion—to me at least. We walked down together and Lanny drove me home.

  The week before my check had been over $200 and Lanny had taken me over to Lansky’s, a clothing store, that did a lot of business with the Collier people when times were good. He had supervised the buying of a suit, shirts, ties and a belt. Lanny had said, “When you’ve got the money, buy some clothes. You have to look good to get into the right kind of doors.”

  I was up early the next morning to wash and wax Honey’s car. I wore my new suit and showed up at the office by 10:00, two hours before my salesmen would come in. Lanny gave me the money and I went over and bailed Barney out. It was a dirty and contrite Barney I met in the screened enclosure where the prisoners were released.

  “I guess the crew is gone,” were Barney’s first words. I didn’t answer.

  “Hey, did they treat you all right?” I asked, trying to be solicitous of the old guy, while I barely hid my enthusiasm for taking over his job. “I’m sure sorry about last night. I didn’t realize you were so tight.”

  Barney said nothing all the way back to the office.

  When we returned he got a brief tongue lashing behind closed doors and was sent home for a few days to get his affairs in order. He was to be the new trainer and ride in Lanny’s car when he came back. Terry Howell had gone back to the Arthur Murray studio across the street.

  My crew consisted of Byron, new but with a verified order on the books, and two guys who fit right into Barney’s mold. They had been around a little longer than I had but had produced only a subsistence level of income for themselves. My three orders the week before were more than the whole bunch plus what Barney had done. They were hopeful of better days.

  Lunch was on me, at Anderton’s, a better cut of restaurant than we usually frequented. I talked about success and money. Barney was not mentioned.

  “Listen guys, I’m in this business to stay. I’m not going back to any college in the fall. This is it for me, and I plan to make more money at it than you guys with your college degrees sellin’ insurance or teaching school. You produce for me, you help us both. Lanny says there’s an empty office in Little Rock, just waiting for someone who can run it. That’s gonna be me!” I said this with a defiant determination.

  No one commented. In fact, they had forgotten to eat and it was getting cold. “So I’m a manager,” I said to myself as I started in on my chopped sirloin.

  “It’s easy to see why Lanny saves this stuff for bad weather,” I said as we rounded a corner a few blocks from Memphis State. The street was lined with eight to ten unit garden apartments; each was fitted onto a single house sized lot. There were a few of the large old houses left, but they were cut up into apartments. I could see license plates from Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Missouri as well as local ones.

  “Teachers men. In town for summer school, working on their masters degrees. Mooches, small kids, red Ramblers, young couples, swing sets back home, good solid orders, no bad checks, husbands home early. Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  As I shouted this I slammed on the brakes, squealing the tires even though we weren’t going more than 10 miles per hour, and jumped out to open the trunk lid where our briefcases were kept. With the lid up I gripped Byron by the arm and said softly but with great emphasis, “$75, Byron. Again!” I slapped him on the butt and jumped back into the car. I laid a streak of rubber halfway to the corner and went to work on the next salesman out.

  “Jesus Christ! This is the best territory I’ve ever seen. If Byron doesn’t write three, it’s because he’s hiding behind a tree playing with himself. Bert! Grab your balls with one hand and your briefcase with the other and hit the street running. This is y
ours!” I repeated the sudden stop and beat him to the trunk.

  “Listen, asshole. Quit loafing and do what we both know you can. You’re riding with winners now!” Ten seconds later I was out of sight, leaving only some black streaks in the street and a salesman already halfway to the first door.

  Lanny had instructed me to take one of the salesmen with me to show him an order.

  Either the territory was really as good as it looked or I had gotten carried away by my own pep talk, but I scored an order before it even cooled off, much less got dark. After showing him how easy it was I turned him loose on one side of the street and I worked the other. I noticed that he seemed to be working diligently, but got into very few doors. He moved quickly down the street. Into another presentation before too long, I lost track of him. When I finished, at about 9:00, I found him sitting on the corner waiting for me.

  “Well?” I already knew the answer by the way he sat on the curb.

  “I just couldn’t get any presentations; everyone was too busy,” he whined.

  With Collier’s you don’t have to fire someone who doesn’t do well; they either starve or find other employment. I tried to cheer him up with the good news of my closing two deals, but he only got more morose. He didn’t show up for work the next day.

  With my two deals and the overrides from my own and the ones Byron and Bert wrote I made $250 my first night as field manager. There were eight orders written in the office and half had come from my crew. There would be good days with Colliers, but not as sweet as that night.

  The summer was more than half over and there were no more college students answering the ads. The next week or so saw Barney with mostly empty training classes or struggling with losers who blew after only a day or two in the field. Gerald Hamilton wanted to absorb me and my crew of two into his for “efficiency,” and more money for Gerald Hamilton but Lanny refused. I worked mainly Memphis with occasional forays into West Memphis and Southhaven, safe suburbs, even though located in Arkansas and Mississippi. Our production was steady, though not as exciting as that first night. I was ready to hit some of those small towns.