Peter Abrahams - Last of the Dixie Heroes

Roy checked the time; he was already an hour late for work. He didn’t know what to say, heard himself trying, “But you like football.”

“Football’s not until the fall.”

“Practice starts in August. Be here before you know it.” He reached across the front seat, opened Rhett’s door. “You’re walking home after school, don’t forget.”

“Where?”

“Home to momma. Get on, now.”

Rhett didn’t move. “Were there bullies back in your day?”

“They rode up on dinosaurs.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Sure there were bullies.”

“But you were big, right?”

“I was built kind of like you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.” Roy motioned to the open door.

Rhett didn’t move. “Did any of them pick on you?”

“No,” Roy said, but then he had a funny memory, a taste memory, the taste of blood in his mouth. His own blood, and the inside of a barn, one of those sagging old barns with the cantilevered additions they have in east Tennessee. “I got into scraps, like any other kid.”

“Did you win?”

“They weren’t serious.”

“But did you beat the shit out of them?”

Kids were streaming into the school. “Git,” Roy said.

Rhett was watching the kids. “You saw my touchdown, didn’t you, Dad?”

“Sure did.”

He turned to Roy. “I picked up that fumble.”

“And took it in for six.”

“I didn’t hot dog.”

“Course not. You’re a classy kid.”

Rhett took a deep breath. He got out of the car.

“See you,” Roy said.

“When?”

“Got a second?” Curtis said, popping out of nowhere as Roy hurried across the floor. Gordo was standing in his cubicle, his hand half raised as though he had something to say.

“I know I’m a little late,” Roy said, following Curtis into the glass office. “It won’t-”

“Take a seat,” Curtis said. He was rubbing at some stain on his French cuff with a silk handkerchief, hadn’t been listening. “Truth of the matter,” Curtis said, folding the handkerchief so it came to a point and sticking it in his breast pocket, “Bill doesn’t really think you’re ready.”

Who was Bill? That confusion tempered Roy’s initial disappointment. Then he remembered: Pegram, VP tech personnel, and felt its full force. He’d been stupid, let down his guard, forged crazy chain links deep in his mind, like: promotion, money, emeralds, Marcia. Gotten ahead of himself. One of his mother’s favorites: Now, Roy, don’t you be gettin’ ahead of yourself. He’d loved that voice of hers, the way the y in Roy was hardly a sound at all, more like flowing air, a breeze.

“Thanks for thinking of me anyway,” Roy said, getting up.

Curtis waved him back down. “Whoa,” he said. “Getting a little ahead of yourself.” The phrase gave Roy a shock. “Thing is, Roy”-the y almost exactly like his mother’s, another shock-“Bill doesn’t think you’re ready, but I do. And since-how can I put it? — questions of maturity have been raised about his preferred candidate, Bill’s agreed to go along with my choice.”

Roy wasn’t following this too well, the meaning of it, but all of a sudden the disappointment was gone. “Have you made it yet?” he said.

“Made what?”

“Your choice.”

“Why, it’s you, Roy. That’s what I’m trying to communicate here. Feeling all right?”

“Yeah,” Roy said, already thinking, Promotion, money, emeralds, Marcia.

“ ’Cause you’re usually a little sharper than this. Don’t you even want to know what the job is?”

“Sure.”

“Sure?” Curtis smiled. “You crack me up sometimes.” Curtis glanced down at some notes on a legal pad, made a check mark. “Know where we’re weak, Roy? Where we were weak? Chemerica, I’m talking about.”

Roy wasn’t sure.

“Eastern Europe,” said Curtis; Roy remembered hearing something about that. “Dates way back to the Cold War. Now, with Globax, we start shaking that tree. Going to demand a lot of my time. New York’s designating a new post, regional supervisor or area manager, name’s not set yet, to take some of the pressure off. I’ll be spending half my time up on seventeen, so we’ll get another desk in here for you.”

“Another desk?”

“Meaning you’re it, Roy. The new regional supervisor, area manager, whatever.”

“I’ll be in here?”

“With bells on. Congratulations. Only reason I’m not shaking hands is they’ve got big eyes down there on the floor, and we’re keeping things under wraps until New York makes everything official.”

“What’s everything?”

“A little reshuffling, no concern of ours.” Curtis made another check mark on the pad. “Now, we get to the nitty-gritty.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, the money, Roy. Any idea what you’re going to be making? To start, that is.”

Roy shook his head.

“Guess.”

Roy thought. “I just don’t know.”

“Take a shot.”

“Fifty-three thousand.”

Curtis smiled. “Seventy-two seven, Roy. And that’s before bonuses.”

Roy was stunned. His first reaction was childish: if only he could tell his mom, just to see the look on her face. Seventy-two seven, before bonuses. Bonuses! He’d never had a job that paid bonuses, unless you counted the case of beer the landscapers sometimes got when they worked late on Saturdays, that first year of scrambling around after he’d left Athens. “Bonuses?” Roy said.

“Never less than ten percent of base, in my experience,” Curtis said.

Eighty grand. Roy’s lungs filled so full of air he thought he’d rise off the floor.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Curtis said. “ ‘What’s the catch?’ “

That hadn’t occurred to Roy.

“No catch, my man. Do good work, get rewarded. Things are straight up more often than people think.”

That was what Roy liked about Curtis, right there. Things are straight up more often than people think. Roy believed it too, not because of this wonderful break in his life, and not because he’d made a careful study of human behavior and come to that conclusion, but because he just did.

“Thanks,” he said. “Whatever you had to do with this, thanks.”

Curtis’s phone buzzed. “We’ll tend to the details in the next week or two,” he said, reaching for it. “For now, just enjoy the feeling.”

Roy rose, glanced quickly around the glass office, soon part his. Outside, down on the floor, the cubicles shrank row on row into the distance, like a science project demonstrating perspective. Roy’s gaze found his own cubicle, empty, and Gordo’s right beside. Gordo’s face was turned up, very small from where Roy was, but Roy could tell Gordo was watching him.

Questions of maturity have been raised about his candidate. Closing the glass door, Roy looked back at Curtis. Curtis was talking on the phone, and dabbing again at the stain on the white cuff. Roy walked across the floor. He spotted the little flag sticker on Gordo’s wall from a long way off.

“Son of a bitch give you the boot?” Gordo said, leaning over the cubicle wall the moment Roy sat in front of his screen.

“The boot?” Roy said. The cubicles were small: he could smell the sourness of last night’s alcohol on Gordo’s breath.

“The boot, Roy. Canned, fired, sacked.”

“Why would he? That’s the first time I ever left early in eight years.”

“Not that,” Gordo said. “I thought maybe he got wind of what went down after.”

Roy lowered his voice. “The nitrate?” he said.

“Fuckin’ right the nitrate,” said Gordo, much too loud. “Coulda blown a nice little hole in the map of Asia, good buddy.”