Donald Westlake: The Ax

I studied the ads, I sent out my resumes, and most of the time nothing at all happened. No response. No answer to all the questions you naturally ask: Is my salary request too high? Did I phrase something poorly in the resume? Did I leave something out I should have mentioned?

Here's my own resume. I decided to go for absolute simplicity and truth and clarity. No fudging my age, and no unnecessary crowing about my skills and training. But I included my college interests, because I think it's good to suggest you're well rounded. I think so. Who knows?

BURKE DEVORE

62 Pennery Woods Road

Fairbourne, CT 06668

(203) 567-9491

WORK HISTORY 1980–present

Product Manager, Halcyon Mills

Responsible for manufacture and sales, polymer paper specialty products.

1975–1979

Sales director, Halcyon Mills

Coordinated sales force in areas of specialized paper applications.

1971–1975

Salesman, Green Valley Paper & Pulp. Learned and described complete product line. Top salesman 19 of 45 months.

1969–1971

Bus driver, city of Hartford, CT.

1967–1969

US Army, Information Specialist, learned typing, radio skills.

EDUCATION

BA, Northwest Connecticut State University, 1967. American history major. Debate team. Track.

Occasionally, that resume draws a response, and briefly my heart lifts. I get a phone call or a letter, usually a phone call, and an appointment is made. It's usually somewhere in the northeast, though once it was Wisconsin and once it was Kentucky. Wherever it is, you pay your own transportation costs. You want to get to that meeting.

You shower thoroughly, you dress carefully, you try to find the balance between self-assurance and easy geniality. You don't want to be full of yourself, but you don't want to be a toady either. You meet and chat and discuss. You might even tour the plant with the interviewer, showing your familiarity with the machine, the line, the work. Then you go home, and you never hear another word.

From time to time there would be a small news item in Pulp or The Paperman, when a mill announced hiring so-and-so for such and such a management position; with that usual smirking headshot of the lucky bastard. And I'd read it, and realize it was a position I'd interviewed for, and I couldn't help it, I'd have to study and study that guy's face, his eyes, his smile, the tie he wore. Why him? Why not me?

Sometimes it would be a woman's picture there, or a black man's picture, and I'd decide it was quota time, they were hiring politically and not commercially, and in a strange way that would make me feel better. Because it wasn't my failure then. If it was a woman or a black man they wanted, and they were just going through the motions with people like me, there was nothing I could do about it, was there? No blame, then.

But other times I did feel the blame. Why him, why that guy with the sloppy grin or the huge ears or the rotten haircut? Why not me? What did he do or say? What was on his resume, that wasn't on mine?

That was what started me, that was the first question. What do they have on those resumes? What edge do they have? That's what led me to take out my ad.

Yesterday I killed Herbert Coleman Everly, and today I come home from my interview in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and when I walk into my house at four in the afternoon Marjorie is waiting for me in the living room. She's pretending to read a novel — she borrows novels from the library, now that we have fewer magazines and less television — but she's really waiting for me. It's true she doesn't know the full extent of our trouble, but she does know there's trouble, and she realizes I'm worried.

Before she can ask, I shake my head. "Not a chance," I say.

"Burke?" She gets to her feet, dropping the novel behind her in the chair. "You can't be sure," she says, to encourage me.

"Oh, yes, I can," I say, and shrug. I don't like lying to Marjorie, but there's no other choice. "I'm getting to know the interviewers by now," I tell her. "This one just didn't like me."

"Oh, Burke." She puts her arms around me, and we kiss. I feel a certain stirring, but it doesn't last, it's like an underwater echo. Not a submarine, but a submarine's refraction.

I said, "Any mail?" Thinking of Everly.

"Nothing… nothing that mattered," she says.

"Well."

There are a lot of men now, in my position, who take out their frustrations on their families, particularly on their wives. A lot of wife-beating going on these days, among the middle-class unemployed. I admit I've felt that nasty urge myself, the urge to destroy, to release the frustration by just lashing out at the nearest target.

But I love Marjorie, and she loves me, and we've always had a good marriage, so why should I let this external thing tear us apart? If I'm going to lash out, if I'm going to destroy, I should make my violence more productive than that. And I will.

In doing what I did yesterday, apart from any other benefits to be derived (I hope, in time), I made it even more certain that I would never attack my girl. Never.

"Well," I say again, and we share a companionable and rueful smile, and I carry my suitcase away to the bedroom, as Marjorie returns to her novel.

Knowing she'll stay put in the living room with her book, I carry the Luger and Everly's resume to my office and stow them in my filing cabinet. Then I go back to the bedroom, unpack, strip and take a long shower, my second of the day. In the shower, I permit myself at last to think about Herbert Everly.

A man, a decent man, a nice man, rather like me. Except he's unlikely to have killed anyone. I feel terrible about him, and about his family. I had trouble sleeping last night, I was racked with guilt much of the day, I thought seriously about giving the whole thing up, abandoning the entire project with it barely begun.

But what choice do I have? I stand in the hot water, clean and cleaner, and go over it all again in my mind. The equation is hard and real and ruthless. We're running out of money, Marjorie and I and the kids, and we're running out of time. I have to be employed, that's all. I'm no self-starter, I'm not going to invent a new widget, I'm not going to found my own paper mill on a shoestring. I need a job.

There are too many of us out here, and I have to face the fact that I am never going to be anybody's first choice. If it were just the job, just the knowledge and experience, just the capacity and the expertise, just the willingness and the proficiency, no problem. But there are too many of us going after too few jobs, and there are other guys out there just as experienced and willing and capable as I am, and then it comes down to the nuances, the ineffables.

Amiability. Sound of voice. Smile. Whether or not you and your interviewer are fans of the same sport. What he thinks of your choice of necktie.

There is always always always going to be somebody just that tiny bit closer to the ideal than I am. In this job market, they don't have to take second best, and I have to either accept that fact or I'm going to be very unhappy for a very long time, and drag my family down with me. So I have to accept it, and I have to learn to work within it.

I finish my shower, and dress, and go into my office. I look at my list, and I think it would probably be best not to kill two people in the same state within just a few days of each other. I don't want the authorities to start looking for patterns.

On the other hand, I don't have much time. I've started the operation now, and I have to move briskly to the end of it, before something happens to spoil it all.

Here's one, in Massachusetts. Next Monday, I'll drive north.