Bookman

by Ed Baldwin

  Billy Schatz went with me that first night. He was in a hurry to go to work, and I could see no point in dragging out his training to three days. The other new man went with Barney.

  West Memphis is a sort of bedroom community across the river in Arkansas. It was reasonably free from police interference and I had always done well there. I was determined to show Billy an order and wanted to make it look easy. He was to be the nucleus of my own organization.

  We practiced the interview on the way across the bridge, and he seemed eager to learn. There was almost no small talk as he went over it again and again to memorize. When we started knocking on doors he asked clarifying questions between houses and was more attentive than any new man I’d ever had. Within an hour he was giving door openers himself and got us into several homes where I gave the interview. We gave an unsuccessful presentation and had no good prospects to hit by 9:00. I moved us into some garden apartments, and we finally hit a young single school teacher at 10:00.

  She was just out of college and fat. Her roommate wasn’t bad at all but was married to a serviceman stationed overseas. I focused all my attention on the fat single one. Her order would be accepted, the married one’s would not. Billy must have sensed that or was just following my lead, but we both flashed so much charm on the fat one that the other went to bed.

  She offered us some beer and I hesitated only a second before accepting. When we got to the end of the presentation, I made a big point of telling her how hard the bookcase was to put together and how I would come over from Memphis and help her. She closed without trouble and managed to find enough in her checkbook for a “full front” or deposit. We had another beer and promised to bring our own when we returned in two weeks to put the bookcase together. By the time we left she looked a lot better to me, and I thought maybe I really would check back in a couple of weeks.

  Billy had not received the conversion talk to convert from salary to commission so I gave it to him on the way back to Memphis and he accepted. I also tried to explain that single people were not what we were really after, but his enthusiasm was so great that I didn’t make a lot of impact.

  We guzzled a pitcher while we waited for Barney, and Billy copied the last half of the presentation. Barney never did show up so we went home when the bar closed.

  Lanny’s week in Japan was followed by a trip back to New Orleans to visit his family and Joe Palenske, his old District Manager. When he finally did show up the first week of October, I was fully in charge. Between the hours I was willing to work and Barney’s experience and hiring interview, we had two full crews working. Barney’s was at about half speed as usual.

  “While you were gone it was me who kept this place going, hired the staff you have now, and kept your man, Barney, from drowning in beer. I want an office,” I said, pacing like a caged animal. I had practiced this speech in front of Honey and the mirror for a week. It was Lanny’s first morning back and he had sprung for the coffee and donuts. We were in his office going over the new men, the couple of jailings we’d had, and a letter from the Better Business Bureau regarding a complaint from a dissatisfied customer.

  “You’ve got a great situation here now. What do you want with an office?” Lanny said.

  At least he hadn’t said ‘no’, I said to myself, then aloud to Lanny, “Ten dollars more override per order and a chance to show some people what I can do. I want this district someday.”

  “Shit, you make more money than I do now,” he laughed. Then he tried to change the subject. I jumped right back to it.

  “Lanny, you know I can do it. Why not give me Little Rock and if I do well, you’ll look good, too. You said yourself there’s an office over there just waiting for the man who can run it. That’s me.”

  “Tell you what, Phil. Let’s wait a week to see how that new bunch of yours works out. If the production from your crew stays up enough to equal what should come from a new office, you’ve got it. If not, we’ll start training you for it for some future date.”

  When Lanny said this he got up and came around the desk and shook my hand. It was just the two of us there, but it made the moment a little more auspicious.

  I hadn’t expected it to be that easy. Honey was thunder struck when I told her we were moving to Little Rock to take over the office there. The newest guys in my crew, some on board for only a day or two didn’t really grasp the significance of the promotion, but Billy Schatz did.

  “I hope you’ll take me with you to be on your crew,” he said right away, then smiling added the stipulation, as long as he could continue working Parkin, Arkansas, a little town of only a couple thousand people that had produced an order for him each of the last three times he d worked it.

  “Sure!” I said, enthusiastically. I was high as a kite.

  But somehow a malaise hit the office. In spite of my enthusiasm about the promotion there wasn’t a lot of spirit. Lanny hadn’t written an order in a month. Barney was borrowing lunch money, and the other two men they’d had in their crew failed to show up for work after one of them got arrested. Two of my guys quit, too, probably from my pushing too hard.

  “Sure, you can write orders, but can you hire? Train? If I open the office in Little Rock, it’s got to go from the start,” Lanny said, giving me the bad news.

  Rather than precipitate an argument in the office, he was giving it to me at the Holiday Inn—just the two of us.

  “Shit Lanny! I’ve trained every salesman in this office in the last month. I’ve heard your’s and Barney’s hiring talk enough to give it in my sleep. What more is there to do? Tell me and I’ll do it?” Nearly everyone in the place turned and looked at us.

  Lanny sat there looking at his beer for a minute or two, then sighed. “Phil, you came along when we were riding high. Before you and the other guys this summer we’d spent a long winter with nothing more than we have now. Most district offices produce three times what this one does, and I had a sales office in Baton Rouge that had three full crews year round and produced $6,000 a week minimum—in the winter.”

  “Oh,” I said, seeing the picture now.

  “If I send you to Little Rock, with only seven orders on for the week, they’d all have a good laugh and then they’d can my ass. I wouldn’t be here now if Burt had anyone else to put here.”

  We finished our beer in silence and left. On the way home I pondered this new revelation. Not the one about the office I had thought was so successful really being a loser, or the one about Burt not having anyone else to run it, that would come later. Lanny was the surprise. He was not the confident winner he had been, or seemed to have been in June when I first met him. He was down. Negative. Defeated. His talk that had lit my fire was just that—talk. The enthusiasm in the office in those early days had been as much from Gerald and his crew and from the sheer numbers of exuberant college students as from anything Lanny did or said.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  Sandy D’Angelo was 21 and wanted the whole town to know about it. Bennie, her husband and our neighborhood tavern keeper had brought a keg over from his establishment and was providing refreshments for the whole apartment complex. It was the only time I ever saw Bennie give anything away.

  Blonde, with shoulder length hair and arresting green eyes, Sandy had been a model of some success in Memphis. In fact, she had appeared on television a couple of times in an ad for a fancy restaurant at the airport. She was a regular in department store ads until she got married, gained some weight and her tits got too big for those fashionable dresses. She always drew a crowd at the pool.

  Bennie was easily old enough to be her father, although he didn’t look it. They were a real contrast, her with her fair skin and hair; Bennie shorter, dark and swarthy with biceps that seemed to belong to a larger man. He had tattoos of a hula dancer on one arm and the Marine Corps insignia on the other. Arm wrestling champion in Bennie’s Tavern, the walls of which were lined with Marine Corps boxing trophies, he was not a man to trifle with. H
is family owned several restaurants and taverns in town and each of his five brothers owned a place. His father, though, was really in charge of running things.

  Bennie loved big gatherings, especially family ones. When his whole family came for dinner they had to eat in shifts. He usually had the whole gang over in warm weather so they could all sit outside. I would see Bennie parading his tall blonde wife around, enjoying the contrast with his brothers’ short dark Mediterranean women.

  Bennie transcended jealousy. He didn’t allow Sandy in his tavern because it was bad for business. She would walk in and someone who didn’t know who she was would make some remark or whistle or just glance her way and Bennie would punch his lights out; the police would come and close the place down while they made their report—killing a whole evening.

  I think that’s what attracted Sandy to him in the first place. The fierce, defiant possessiveness of this small dark man with the giant arms must have lit some fire in her. Around the apartment it got to be a sort of a game. Sandy would get on her bathing suit and go down to the pool and a crowd of guys would start to appear. Bennie would come home for lunch or just a break in the afternoon and the crowd would disperse. He would wrap a towel around her and take her inside. As soon as he was gone she’d be out in short shorts going to the laundry or shopping. She never actually led anybody on; she didn’t need to. It would be suicidal to go into her house, even to borrow a cup of sugar. If Bennie came home while you were there, you’d be in little pieces before you could explain.

  Still, everyone liked Bennie. He was the organizer in the complex. At Sandy’s birthday party he organized a volleyball game. It was evenly divided with each couple on opposite sides of the net. A large and hotly contested game, there must have been at least 10 to a side. A large crowd of onlookers, cheering drunkenly from around the beer keg, gathered for the show.

  Sandy and Honey were vying for the big tits award. Honey doesn’t like to be outclassed in that department. Knowing the competition was going to be fierce, she was decked out in her skimpiest halter top. She was hands down winner until Sandy stripped off her t-shirt to reveal a bikini top. From that point on the game degenerated into all the guys trying to spike the ball to Sandy or Honey in hopes one of them would jump out of her top.

  Emboldened by the beer, and the fact Sandy was just across the net from me, I leaped for a spike. She leaped also with her arms outstretched above her head to block it. Tired from the constant spikes in her direction and clumsy from too much beer, she fell into the net. Two warm firm globes smashed into my bare midriff throwing me off balance and distracting me. I was trying to figure out how to make a grab for them look like an effort to keep my balance when I hit the ground and felt my leg give out under me. There was a snap and the pain was bad enough that I laughed to hide the tears. I couldn’t get up.

  “Oh, you’re hurt! And it’s all my fault!” Sandy said as she ran to my side.

  “Phil, you’d better not try to move; something’s busted. I heard it crack,” Bennie said as he kneeled to examine my ankle.

  I was carried to the sidelines and attended by both Honey and Sandy as well as a dozen onlookers. Ice was applied but when the volleyball game broke up and I still couldn’t walk, we went to the hospital for an X-ray.

  “The fibula is the small bone in your ankle. You’ll just need a short leg cast and you’ll be able to bear weight in a couple weeks,” the doctor said reassuringly. To a door to door salesman it was not reassurance.

  “Bullshit. You must be hung over,” Lanny said when I called in Monday morning. Even with crutches and a cast the pain was too great to let me get around the house, except for necessities.

  I was gone for a week, during which time even Billy blanked, riding out of Lanny’s car. Things were really in a spin. When I did return I couldn’t walk more than 100 yards before my arms gave out. During the week I was learning to walk on crutches I must have fallen down the stairs in our apartment a dozen times.

  Deciding the density was greater per yard walked, I went to work at the garden apartments near Memphis State. Billy worked upstairs and I worked downstairs. All in all it didn’t go so bad. In fact, I discovered that a broken leg is a great door opener.

  “Hi. Phil Lazar here. We’re talking to all the young families in the neighborhood. Got a minute?”

  “Sure, come on in. What happened to your leg?”

  “Rolled a car in a stock car race up in Blytheville last week. Season was about over anyway; doin’ this now.”—That was one of my better ones.

  “My Karate instructor told me I wasn’t ready to try bricks with my feet yet, but I wouldn’t listen. Coach was real broke up about it.”—was another.

  “Coach? You on the football team?”

  “Track scholarship. I was flunking anyway. Now I’m doin’ this,”—That always got them.

  I doubled two nights in a row.

  Lanny decided to go on a road trip. My leg was beginning to hurt again so I took two days off. I was to stay in the office during the day and give a training class to the one new man we had and try to hire more. Lanny would put the orders on the Greyhound wherever he was, and I was to check the bus depot daily. Burt Marty, the regional manager, would call every day at 10:00, and I was to report the production. Lanny confided that he was going to work down to Jackson, Mississippi and then go on down to New Orleans for a couple days to talk to Joe Palenske. He wanted to get his old job back as sales manager in the branch office in Baton Rouge.

  I assured Lanny I would try to write some business while he was gone. I could hardly wait for Burt’s call to let him know that Lanny had put me in charge. Finally the call came.

  “Hi Burt,” I said confidently. “No, Lanny’s not here, but he asked me to make the report while he’s gone. We have six verified so far this week with one last night that isn’t verified.”

  “Who wrote ’em.?”

  “Billy Schatz wrote one. Lanny wrote one. I wrote four and Barney Baker wrote the one last night in Tupelo.”

  “Barney Baker! Is he finally getting off his lead ass?” Burt said with a laugh.

  I hadn’t realized that every order was reported or that he knew so much about what went on in the office.

  “It’s that or starve.” I replied.

  “How’s your leg?”

  “I think I over did it Monday and Tuesday. It hurts like hell. That’s why I didn’t go with Lanny.”

  “How’s the new man gonna work out?” He sounded serious now.

  “I don t think he’s going to make it. He’s asked me 10 times already what happens if he doesn’t make enough placements.”

  “Negative, huh?”

  “Yeah, just like everyone else down here. Almost everyone.”

  “Memphis sucks hind tit nationally among all the districts. Did you know that?”

  “No. That’s hardly the kind of thing a district manager would bring up in a sales meeting.” I said with a laugh. I wanted to get Lanny into the conversation.

  “Yeah, well.” he paused, as if to change the subject.

  “See if you can do something about it tonight. How about a double like Monday and Tuesday?” He was clearly trying to end the conversation.

  “I’ll try. Have you got another minute?”

  “OK.” He sounded like he was in a hurry now.

  “You’re gonna need another district manager here. Don’t say you heard it from me though.”

  “Oh?” Interested a little more now.

  “Lanny is working down toward Jackson so he can slip down to New Orleans to talk to Joe Palenske about getting his old job back.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me that?” Now he was angry.

  “He doesn’t have his old job back yet. I guess.”

  “He did a helluva job when he was in Baton Rouge. I think Lanny needs closer supervision than he’s been getting in Memphis.”

  I wondered why he was telling this to me.

  “I want the job.” I blurted out.

&nb
sp; “How long have you been with Collier’s?” he asked, surprised.

  “Almost five months.”

  “And you want a district?” He laughed, but it was a good natured laugh.

  “Who else are you going to get?”

  “Listen, buddy, there are 12 districts in my region, and there are five sales offices in each one, and each of the sales managers would give a gonad for a district. Some of them have been with me for five years.” He was downright hostile now.

  “Would they want Memphis?” I said, taking a gamble that there was something about Memphis that made it undesirable.

  “Yeah, even Memphis,” he said after a brief pause.

  I thought I could detect a hint of a smile in that last comment and decided to shoot my wad. The original plan had been to draw this out over the whole week, but here we were on the first day and the chance was now.

  “How many of them wrote two doubles this week?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then a laugh.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Let me think about it. If you talk to Lanny don’t tell him about our conversation.”

  The guys didn’t do too badly on the road, but not as well as I did in town. I didn’t write any more doubles but I did write one almost every night. By the time Lanny returned Burt had talked to Joe Palenske and suggested he take Lanny back as a sales manager in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the office was slumping badly. Burt gave me a month to turn Memphis around while he looked for another district manager.

  “My wife doesn’t like Memphis. I may move back to New Orleans,” Lanny said the first morning back.

  “Oh?” I said, trying to look surprised.

  “I talked to Joe when we were down there. He promised me an office if I would come back and work for him. I haven’t told Burt yet.”

  “What’s gonna happen here?” I said curiously.