Grif Stockley: Religious Conviction

I notice a thread unraveling on the right arm of the sleeve of the russet blazer I got on sale this past spring at Bando’s. Damn. I thought I was stealing it, and they probably still made fifty bucks. If this guy was injured, it wasn’t his mouth. He’s a talker.

“You said that you thought you had a products liability case,” I remind him, thinking he should have been a lawyer. He looks much slicker than the attorneys on our floor, but that isn’t difficult to do, as Julia reminds us on a weekly basis.

“I think I do,” Blessing says, frowning.

“In my business image is everything. You’ve got to look sharp if you want to sell in the most expensive stores where they can really jack up the profit margin. If the customer is going to lay out good money for a pair of pants and a matching jacket, you can imagine he doesn’t want to give his money to a guy who looks like a bum off the street.”

I put my left arm over the offending thread.

“Sure,” I say. I went in Bando’s once and was so horrified by the price of just the ties I had heartburn for a week.

“It’d be like going to Alouette’s and being served by a woman in curlers with grease stains down the front of her dress.”

Nodding to signify that we’re on the same wave length, Blessing tugs at his lapels.

“If the store is going to make seven hundred dollars off a suit,” he says agreeably, “the customer should get something. It’s only right.”

Hell, yes, I think. At the very least he should be congratulated on his choice of store. Maybe even a lint brush thrown in for free. I think I’ll wait awhile before I go shopping again. What is this guy’s problem? Did his tape measure break when he was measuring an inseam, or what? Ah, capitalism. No wonder the Commies have such cold feet.

“I’m not exactly sure how all this ties in,” I say, wondering if I’m missing something.

Any injury must be purely internal. With blue eyes the color of the inside of a flame and a diamond-hard chin, the guy could be a male model.

“Here’s the deal,” he says, his eyes suddenly out of focus.

“My boss was taking me to a late lunch because of the great month I’d had in January, which is usually one of the toughest in the business, and he wants to try this new Indian place a couple blocks from the store. In February it’s like being in a wind tunnel down there, and all of a sudden in front of my boss and about twenty other people my rug blows off into the gutter. I had to chase the damn thing. The way the wind was blowing, my boss said it looked like a little animal running down the street!” He jerks off his toupee and reveals a scalp as wide and barren as Death Valley.

Though I am trying desperately, there is no way to keep a straight face. I pretend I have to sneeze and reach for a tissue from the box on my desk to cover my face. I begin to laugh into it and nearly suck it down my throat as I try to draw a breath.

“It’s not funny, damn it!” Blessing cries, throwing the hairpiece on the corner of my desk where it catches on a two-hole punch I use to make files. The toupee, a rich brown color, looks like some eyeless mutant creature dreamed up by a special effects person for a science fiction movie. I wait for it to begin to move toward me.

“Not funny at all,” I get out without choking.

“It must have been terrible.”

Blessing grabs his hairpiece and crams it back on his head. Amazingly, it fits like a jigsaw puzzle piece onto his own hair, which rims his head like a bad paint job.

“All of February my sales were down to nothing. I’ve lost all my confidence. Every time someone comes into the store I imagine this thing,” he says, pointing to his head, “slipping down over one eye. After this happened, even the janitors were laughing at me.”

I lean back against the wall and feel the bare skin of my own bald spot. The poor guy can’t laugh at himself.

If this had happened to me, I would have spent the rest of my life telling this story. Instead, Blessing wants to sue.

“Actually,” I say, “it looks incredible. You just popped it into place without a mirror and you can’t even tell you have it on.”

Blessing winces as he pats his head selfconsciously.

“It ought to,” he complains, “it cost fifteen hundred dollars.”

Hell’s bells. No wonder he’s pissed. For that kind of money you’d think they could have thrown in a bottle of Super Glue.

“Where did you buy it?” I ask, remembering there is a wig shop downtown that caters, judging by its windows to African-Americans. I doubt if Mr. Blessing bought it there.

“At a place in Memphis called Wiggy’s,” he says, handing me a wad of papers.

“There was an ad in the Sunday Commercial Appeal which guaranteed you couldn’t tell the difference.”

I look through the documents, searching for a con tract. All I find are pages of testimonials from satisfied customers. There are pictures of wigs, and, curious, I look for one that covers up a bald spot. Wiggy’s! I don’t blame him for going out of town. It will be hard to keep my mouth shut. Since we are basically salesmen our selves, lawyers love a good story.

“Did you sign any thing?” I ask.

“Something, I think,” Blessing says, reaching for the papers on the desk between us.

“The salesman who sold me mine said his had never slipped even a fraction of an inch in the two years he had worn it.”

I study Blessing’s hair, marveling at the transformation. He must have felt as if someone had somehow suddenly pulled his pants down. I tell myself I’d never wear a toupee, but if I looked like this guy, I’d think about it, especially if I were in his business. He’s right.

Appearance is important. You don’t go into a clothing store to discuss the meaning of life.

“Is there a booklet on how to care for it or some kind of warranty?” For that kind of money, you surely get more than testimonials.

“I know I got some other stuff,” Blessing says, riffling futilely through the sheaf of advertisements, “but I can’t find it.”

Clients never bring in the right papers.

“I want you to look some more at home,” I urge him.

“They could be important.”

He assures me that he will, and after I let him wring his hands for a few more minutes, I escort him to the elevators I’m not ready to sign up to argue this case at the U.S. Supreme Court, but I’ll take a look at his papers I’ve had worse cases. I might even get a free wig out of it.

After work I swing by Rainey’s house to eat dinner and get the scoop on Shane Norman and his Christian Life church. Until this past winter, my girlfriend’s religious beliefs were as indecipherable as my own, but after having had a benign lump in her breast removed, Rainey, to my surprise, and not a little to my dismay, has gotten that old-time religion. As I pull up in front of her modest frame house, I try to rein in my feelings on this subject, as it is becoming a sore point between us.

A lukewarm Episcopalian (God only knows what they believe) until her conversion, Rainey now talks about “Biblical inerrancy If she weren’t serious, I’d be sorely tempted to laugh at her.

Just a few years back we had our own Scopes mon key trial in Arkansas, a highly publicized battle in federal court over whether public school teachers should be required to teach “creation science,” thanks to a bill pushed through the Arkansas Legislature by the fundamentalists. Gleefully, the media, smelling a circus, sent reporters from all over to yuck it up at our expense as the ACLU brought in Stephen Jay Gould, the heavy duty Harvard rock sniffer, to testify about the probable age of the earth. Mercifully, the federal judge, a Methodist ruled there was a lot more theory than science put on by the attorney general, who was obligated to defend the statute with his own out-of-state scientists. Our AG, to his everlasting credit, had the good sense and political courage not to appeal.