Stephen Dixon - Frog

“You probably did the right thing. I don’t know what to say. Plumbing.”

“Maybe I can become a cashier someplace. I’m not kidding. Something simple; nothing to interfere with thinking. Just sit behind a booth, give back change, do what cashiers do, ‘Don’t forget your charge card; thank you.’ Waiters could fetch me coffee every so often. Effortless. Days would pass. I wouldn’t get dirty or exhausted. Years. Then Social Security. We’d have enough to live on from it, so long as you were working.”

“In four years I’ll be able to go back to teaching full time. Then, though I wouldn’t be making nearly as much as you, you could quit or go part time.”

“How about one of those guys who sits by office building entrances? In a uniform, usually, but no gun. Or fancy apartment house lobbies. A checker or weaponless guard. Gives out passes, sees that undesirables don’t enter. One does, no trouble — he just summons the real security force or the police. It’d be easy too. Nine to five. Four to twelve. Read a book. Two books a day. Go over or even rewrite by hand the work I really want to be doing. Or driving a truck. I see ads where they teach you how to drive one in a month and then get you a job. Those guys make good money. Women too. You can come with me sometimes, share the driving load if you also take the driving course. Or I’d teach you. But better you get your permit so they can pay us as a driving team. And the beds in those trucks often have a bed in them too.”

“You mean in the truck’s cabin. The bed is the container part in back.”

“Narrow beds but we’d be snug in them, see America, sleep under the stars or the smog. We could even take the kids sometimes, during their school breaks.”

“You don’t like driving much. Six hours on the road kills you. Those drivers go fourteen hours, sometimes two days running with only four hours’ sleep. That’s what those beds are for.”

“I’ve got to start doing something else though.”

“What I said then. Plumbers call the shots. There’s always work for them. Set up your own business and collect the fifty to sixty dollars an hour for yourself. Sure, expenses and medical insurances. But four hundred a day. Say three-fifty. Only work two days a week and take three months off in the summer. You’d still earn more money and get more vacation time, or the same vacation time but no class preparation during it, than you do now and for about ten fewer work hours a week.”

“What would happen if a toilet was really clogged? Needed a lot more than a snake. I’ve heard stories. Plumbers sticking their arms into pipes up to their shoulders. Not in the toilets so much but in the main basement pipe, with years of crap in it, leading to the sewer. Where nothing but a hand would unclog it. They have gloves on, and I guess they get used to it, but do they? Maybe that’s why they charge so much: to even it all out. No, it’s not for me. Why don’t I just open a little store? Buy one, rather, so when I get it it’s all there, goods on the shelves, the rest. At the most, work another year teaching, save up enough capital, I think it’s called, and open a general store in Maine or Vermont or some country or beach town where New Yorkers and Bostoners and Hartforders and so on vacation. So, three busy summer months, probably another busy month preparing for summer, and eight slow winter, fall and spring months. Lots of fresh air and smells, but in a community — not so remote or in the hills and a school relatively easy for the girls to get to — and our food costs, because of the store, drastically reduced. In fact, everything would be. Beer, wine, motor oil, combs — all at cost. Even gas if we get a pump. We could live in back of the store, or on top of it. We could get a store with a good rear view. Of water, or whatever. Or a frame store. I don’t know anything about framing but what would it take to learn? Again, apprentice myself out for nothing while doing my current job. I think I’d prefer a store like that. Better hours, nothing perishable. No problems with mice, roaches, raw garbage, credit, rats. Paints, printings, etcetera. Documents, cutting the glass, beveling the cardboard the documents or prints go inside. You know, that fastens the print — protects and supports it — to the glass but without the print touching the glass. For what would it cost to open such a store? Then turn it into an art gallery. Or a combination of the two — that’s how they do it. When you’re not selling art, you’re framing it.”

“You want to get away from the kind of people who collect art and go to openings and such, don’t you? Besides, you’re not a salesman and haven’t the personality to become one, and to sell paintings and prints you’d have to be.”

“I could become one. It’s part of our people’s heritage. It’s American also. Everybody in this country’s potentially one. All right, I’m not smooth and I don’t like pushing people into anything, but that’s not the salesman I’d be. I’d put the stuff on the tables and walls and would say ‘Here it is, there’s the price list, nothing’s negotiable. It’s as fair a price as I can make it without cheating the artist and breaking the gallery. Take as long as you like looking at things, come back anytime you like, have a cup of coffee or tea, herbal, decaf or regular; even some cookies.’ I’d keep a box of cookies around and maybe some fruit if it were cheap. No fruit — that’d create raw garbage again. And I’d read. I’d look oblivious and remote. Nothing on my face would express ‘sell.’ Or I’d talk to them if they wanted, and about whatever they wanted. All right. Let’s say my new kind of salesmanship didn’t work. So just a frame store. I could read while I’m waiting there for customers too. Read or make frames, and cut the matting, it’s called.”

“Mats.”

“Mats, matting, or both. But you mat them. That I know.”

“The frame store’s not a bad idea. Whatever makes you happy. Sleep on it.”

“But you know by now I have to do something. I can’t stand my work. Same thing for too many years. Little variations but not enough. I want to get away from it, from everything and all the people in it, except if they travel to our little country town and might possibly buy something in the frame store. Or just visit me in the store, because ‘no hard sell.’ I didn’t think my job was so bad, but every day for months it seems worse. Maybe it’d take too much capital to open a store. I know I couldn’t be a word processor.”

“You mean a computer programmer.”

“Yes, and one who also works on a word processor for someone. Don’t they do both? Because lots of my students do it or have gone on to it for a living.”

“Could be.”

“Too boring. It’d be like prison. Maybe I could be a prison guard. Not maximum security; something lighter. Lots of different people. It would always be interesting. Till retirement age, which I’d think with guards would be early. I’d be good to the prisoners. Wouldn’t wear a gun. Not even handcuffs or a club.”

“Forget it. I wouldn’t let you. Maybe you want something with kids.”

“Did it. Secondary school and lots of junior high school teaching. No knack or authority. Couldn’t get them quieted down or fired up about learning.”

“Kindergarten age then. Just fun and games and the ABC’s.”

“It’s much different now. Wordbooks. People expect big growth from kids in kindergarten.”

“Nursery school. Learn to tinker on the piano. Simple stuff. ‘Old MacDonald.’”

“I’d love to be a pianist. Classical. And compose. Just piano and little voice pieces. But that’s another lifetime.”

“Also learn a repertoire of children’s songs and games. You have a nice personality for kids. You obviously like and respect them and most of the time they adore you.”