Donald Westlake: The Ax

Maybe a quarter of the resumes stink of that self-importance, that aggrieved sense that things ought to work out right. But the problem with most of the resumes is a simpler one than that; their aim is wrong.

I wrote an ad that I could respond to, that was absolutely appropriate to my experience, without being overly specific and narrow. There is such desperation out there, however, that people don't limit themselves to the job openings where they might stand some chance. Clearly, they're sending out the resumes wholesale, in hopes that lightning will strike. And maybe sometimes it does.

But not in the paper business. Not in the specialized kind of industrial use of paper in which I'm the expert. These people are amateurs, when it comes to my field, and they don't worry me.

But some of the others do. People whose qualifications are very like mine, perhaps even a touch better than mine. People with a background like mine, but an education that looks in the resume just a little more distinguished. The people that I would be second best to, if my ad had been real and I'd sent my own resume in response.

People like Edward George Ricks.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

My name is Edward G. Ricks. I was born in Bridgeport, Conn., on April 17, 1946. I was educated in Bridgeport schools and took a degree in Chemical Engineering at Henley Technical College, Broome, Conn., in 1967.

In my Navy service — 1968 to 1971 — I performed as a printing technician on the fleet aircraft carrier Wilkes-Barre, where I was responsible for putting out the ship's daily newspaper as well as producing all orders and other printed material on the ship, and where I first combined my chemical background with an interest in specialized forms of paper.

Subsequent to the Navy, I was hired by Northern Pine Pulp Mills, where I worked in product development from 1971 until 1978. When Northern Pine merged with Gray-lock Paper, I was promoted to management, where I held responsibility for a number of product lines.

From 1991 until spring of 1996, I was in charge of the polymer paper film product line at Graylock, where the customers were almost entirely defense contractors. With the recent military cutbacks, Graylock dropped that product line.

I am now at liberty to present my experience and expertise to another forward-looking company in the specialized paper industry. I have been based in Massachusetts since 1978, but have no objection to relocation. I am married, and my three daughters are at this writing (1997) all at university.

Edward G. Ricks

7911 Berkshire Way, Longholme, MA 05889

413 555-2699

I would hire him, before I hired me. That degree in chemical engineering is a real bone in my throat.

And the self-assurance of the man. And he was twenty-five years with the same employer, so he must be a good and faithful employee (just as they, of course, are a bad and faithless employer, which doesn't matter).

The form of his resume is the only thing against him, and it isn't enough. That to-whom-it-may-concern business is just too artificial, and so's the restrained chattiness. The pomposity grates, his being "at liberty to present" himself, and having three daughters "at university," as though they're all at Oxford and not some community college. The man is undoubtedly a prig and a bore, but he's perfect for any job that I would be very good for, and because of that I hate him.

Monday, May 12th. Over breakfast I tell Marjorie I'll be doing library research today, a thing I actually do spend time at occasionally, searching through recent magazines and newspapers for leads to jobs that might be opening up but that aren't yet in the help wanted columns.

Mondays and Wednesdays are when Marjorie has one of her two part-time jobs. We sold the Honda Civic last year, so I'll have to drive her to Dr. Carney's office and then pick her up again at the end of the day. She is our dentist's receptionist now, two days a week, and is paid a hundred dollars a week off the books. On Saturday afternoons she's cashier at the New Variety, our local movie house, her other part-time job, where she's paid minimum wage on the books, taxes are deducted, and she brings home nothing. But she feels better getting out of the house, doing something, and the perk is that we get to go to the movies for free.

Today, though, is Dr. Carney. I drive Marjorie to the mall where his office is located, and leave her there at ten. Now I have eight hours to drive to Massachusetts, see what the situation is with EGR, and get back to the mall to pick up Marjorie at six.

But first I have to return to the house, since I didn't dare carry the Luger with me while Marjorie was in the car. At home, I put the gun in a plastic bag from the drugstore, carry it out to the car, and put it on the passenger seat beside me. Then I drive north.

It's forty-five minutes northbound, up into Massachusetts, then a right turn at Great Barrington, and another thirty minute drive to Longholme. Along the way, I keep remembering last week's event with Everly, which now seems to me about as clean and perfect as such an experience could ever be. Will I be that lucky again today? Can I merely once again follow the mail carrier, and have EGR delivered into my lap?

(I have no idea, of course, what happened after I left Everly last week, and I think it would be dangerous to try to find out. The shooting was not important enough to be written up in the New York Times, and the only other paper I normally read, the Journal, our local weekly, does not extend its reach as far as Fall City. Our cable service doesn't carry local channels, but I doubt Everly made the TV news.)

My Massachusetts road atlas shows Longholme about twenty miles west of Springfield and north of the Massachusetts Turnpike. Berkshire Way is another wiggly black line — suggesting hills again — extending out of the town proper, this time northward. It's a long sweep around for me to avoid the town and stay on country roads, but I think it's worth the time and trouble. Still, it's almost twelve o'clock when I finally make the turn onto Berkshire Way.

This is decidedly more rural, with a few actual farms along the way. The private homes are mostly large but unpretentious, as though the residents don't feel they have anything to prove to their neighbors. The countryside is more open, with cleared fields and wide valleys rather than the tumbled woodsiness of Connecticut. It doesn't feel suburban, probably because it's just a little too far from New York and Boston and Albany and every other northeastern urban center.

7911 Berkshire Way turns out to be a modern house on a traditional plan, on the right side of the road as I come along. Probably built after World War II, when the boys came home to create us baby boomers, so that fifty years later we could all be shunted off the social order.

I'm a bit surprised at the house and disappointed with EGR, with his daughters "at university," which does not imply yellow aluminum siding and green fake shutters and a TV satellite dish as prominent as an erection right next to the house. There are scrubby plantings around the base of the building and a few small specimen fruit trees haphazardly placed, but nothing has been planted along the line between scraggly lawn and roadside.

The wide door of the two-car garage is lifted open as I drive by, and there are no cars in there. Nobody home. Damn.

I drive on. A quarter mile farther, a convent school provides a handy parking area in which to turn around. I drive back, looking for an inconspicuous place to park. Unlike the last time, the mailbox is on the same side of the road as the house, so I'll have less warning when EGR comes out to get his mail. If he's home. If he comes out to get his mail. If the mail hasn't already been delivered.