Stonecipher continued. “Frankly, I’ve never had a lot of confidence in celebrity product endorsements, but Mitchell has made an interesting proposal, and that’s the reason for this meeting. To be fair, your sports popularity does not qualify you for what we want to do, but it could be beneficial in this particular situation if you have the other attributes we need.”
Stonecipher was a pacer, and he was walking back and forth behind the conference table across from Dex as he talked. “We are bringing to market a new product and will initially test market it in the Southeast. Of course, this is the precise region where your name recognition is the highest. Let me hasten to point out, however, that we are not just looking for an endorsement. We could buy a celebrity endorsement. What we need is a full-time employee with the personality and ability to actually sell our product to physicians and pharmacies.”
Stonecipher cleared his throat and continued. “We’ve had a search firm looking for an experienced pharmaceutical salesman to head up a product-specific sales effort, but Mitchell has proposed an alternate approach. The name recognition aspect is not lost on us, but we are only willing to consider the possibility of hiring someone without experience if we believe that individual has the potential to be trained to sell in our rather specialized market. Jim Mitchell speaks very highly of you and believes that you might have that potential. He will discuss the details with you later, but we wanted to get everyone together this morning so you could meet our team and we could get to know you.”
The CEO buzzed his assistant, and she brought in a tray of sweet rolls, which were apparently already prepared for the meeting. In the next few minutes Dex had an opportunity to informally speak with each of the executives as they stood around the room. He surprised himself with the ease he had in communicating with them. Perhaps all those after-game interviews would prove to be useful.
When Stonecipher said he had to leave, all of his subordinates knew it was time to go to work, and the room quickly emptied. Dex followed Mitchell back to his private office.
“Dex, I hope we didn’t overwhelm you with all those people, but I thought it was important for them to get to know you since the position we’re talking about creating is something we’ve never done before. I had to sell the idea to the old man, and I didn’t need to have any of the other executives oppose me. I’ve found that the best way to eliminate opposition is to make everyone feel like they participated in the decision. I know you were nervous, but you handled it well. I made a point of talking to Stonecipher and each of the others while you were circulating among them. They were all impressed. But before I get too far into this, I need to know if you are even interested in a position with Argon.”
“Mr. Mitchell, I’m definitely interested. I appreciate what you’ve done and look forward to the opportunity.”
Mitchell said, “Okay, but call me Jim. We’ll have to line you up for an interview with the shrink that evaluates all new sales employees. Then we’ll have our agency run a background check to make sure you haven’t robbed any banks. You’ll also have to go up to human resources, fill out about ten pounds of forms, interview with the director, and pass a standard employment physical.”
Although he carefully concealed any outward sign of discomfort, knowing that some agency would be running a background check terrified Dex. This had been his greatest fear when he started his job search. He worried about what would happen if a potential employer found out about the Florida incident.
Mitchell pulled a large manila folder from a drawer. “I saved for last the very thing you probably wanted to discuss first. The compensation package is multi-tiered and would combine a base salary of seventy thousand dollars, a bonus based on sales, and our standard benefits package. If you are as successful in sales, as I think you could be, you could approach six figures in your first year. Personnel can explain the whole package to you later. We’ll furnish you a company car, and after the first year, you’ll be eligible for the company’s incentive stock option program. I’ll explain the option program later, but all you need to know now is that if the company does well financially, you can make a lot of money in options.”
As he drove home, Dex’s head was spinning. He didn’t understand all the details, but he did understand that he was offered a job, contingent on passing a psychological test, physical exam, and background check. He also knew that if the Florida incident was discovered in the background check, he would probably be disqualified; however, it had been three years, so maybe they wouldn’t find out about it.
The compensation offered by Argon wasn’t what he had been expecting from the NFL, but it was a lot more than he ever thought he could get without throwing a football. He couldn’t wait to share the news with Marie. If this job worked out, he would be able to have his own apartment. Maybe Marie could sleep on his sofa for a change.
Dex was scheduled to meet with the shrink on Wednesday morning. When he arrived at the doctor’s downtown office, he discovered from the sign on the door that the guy was actually an industrial psychologist, not a psychiatrist. The distinction was insignificant to Dex.
Dex enjoyed their conversation and talked openly about his family, teenage years, and college experiences. He left the office feeling very good about the meeting, but then the realization of what happened suddenly struck him. The psychologist had very effectively lulled him into a comfort zone to get inside his head. He had to admit that the guy was very good. For the next hour, he replayed the conversation over and over, trying to remember just what he’d said and how he’d said it.
That same afternoon Dex was scheduled to be back at the corporate headquarters to meet with Ralph Bell, the vice president of human resources. At his office, an administrative assistant said, “Mr. Martin, before meeting with Mr. Bell, you will have to fill out our standard employment application.” The assistant then led Dex to a small room and said, “Here are the application forms. Please complete the front and back of all three pages. When you finish, bring them to me and I will notify Mr. Bell.”
She closed the door and left him alone. Dex was about halfway through the employment application when he came to the question he’d been dreading: “Have you ever been convicted of any offense other than a minor traffic violation?” Now Dex was faced with the first ethical question that he had to confront in the business world. Should he lie and hope that the truth was never discovered, or should he tell the truth and risk not even being given an opportunity to explain?
He put the pencil on the table, leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and considered his course of action. This could turn out to be a life-altering decision. He could tell the truth and risk not getting the job, or take the easy way out and just say no on the application. If he didn’t tell them, the arrest in Florida would probably never be discovered. While he was sitting with his eyes closed, Dex’s mind raced back to the summer when he was thirteen years old.
Chapter 12
Dex had just finished the seventh grade. The day after his last day of school, he went fishing at his favorite pond, and it turned out to be one of the most memorable days in his life. An old man was sitting in the exact spot where Dex usually fished. He was under a canopy of trees and concentrating on the end of the cane pole he had anchored in his grasp.
Dex stopped to watch when he saw him catch a fat bluegill and bait his hook with a white gob of something that Dex couldn’t identify. He watched the man pull one bluegill after another from the pond’s murky water before his curiosity overpowered him.
“Hey, mister, what is that white stuff you’re using for bait?”
“Son, dat be crawdad tails. Sit yourself down here and let old Geechee show you how to do some fishing.”
Dex watched as the elderly black man broke the tail off of a live crawfish, peeled the shell back, and baited his hook with the white meat of the tail. Dex sat beside him until the man had about fifteen fish on his home
made stringer and decided to quit for the day.
That was the first of many days they fished together that summer. Until he met Geechee, Dex had never had a close relationship with an adult other than his grandmother. He was so young when his parents died that all he knew about them came from stories Gigi told him. There was an old photograph on her mantel of him standing between them, but Dex had spent so many hours staring at the photograph that he was no longer sure whether he actually remembered them or he just remembered the images in the photograph.
Dex’s meeting with Geechee couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. He had just had his thirteenth birthday, and like all children entering their teens, he was passing through an emotionally awkward stage where the idealism of youth bumps up against the realities of life. Puberty and the emergence of hormones contribute to the confusion, and the lessons learned during this impressionable time stay with teens as they struggle into adulthood and beyond. Geechee helped bridge the gap between where Dex had been and where he was headed, and he discovered that he could safely share his innermost thoughts with his new friend.
Geechee must have been about seventy when they met, and he was the first black man with whom Dex ever had a conversation. No one Dex met since had a greater influence on his life. He still believed Geechee was probably the smartest man he ever encountered, even though he essentially had no formal education. He was certainly the most unforgettable person he ever met.
Although Dex didn’t discover it until years later, “Gullah-Geechee” is a culture and a dialect spoken by descendants of African-American slaves who live on coastal islands and in communities along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. Their dialect is a lilting, English-based Creole that has been preserved by their relative isolation.
Geechee, the only name by which Dex ever knew him, had left his home near Charleston at an early age and worked at several jobs before he was old enough to work on the railroad. He was a railroad porter for years before a back injury forced him into early retirement.
Although he was basically illiterate, Geechee seemed to instinctively understand what was important in life. Even now after Dex had graduated from college, he still thought that Geechee probably had a better understanding of the purpose of life than anyone he had ever met.
Geechee’s lifestyle didn’t require many creature comforts, and he didn’t have many of them. He lived on the edge of the city garbage dump in a one-room shack beside the unmanned facility where the city sewage was processed. The city apparently tolerated his presence there because his shack was a deterrent to any vandal who could endure the stench of the waste treatment facility and garbage dump long enough to get into mischief on the property. The creek that flowed past the garbage dump was the most severely polluted waterway Dex had ever seen. Even Geechee, who was known to eat things that would repulse other men, refused to eat the fish from that creek. There was a fabric-dying facility several miles upstream, and the water in the creek changed colors daily in accordance with what dye was being used on a particular day.
He told Dex over and over, “Don’t you be eating no fish come outta dat crick.”
There was no electricity or running water in Geechee’s shack. His meals were either roasted over an open fire spit or boiled in a large iron pot. Dex had seen pioneer women wash clothes in pots like that in Western movies. His water for drinking and cooking was captured in a barrel strategically placed to catch the rain as it ran off the shack’s tin roof.
In retrospect, Dex now thought his relationship with Geechee probably had something to do with his lack of a father figure, but a mutual love of the outdoors was the direct link that connected two individuals from different generations, cultures, and races. Geechee was a mentor and a friend to the impressionable teenager. While he was teaching Dex to fish and trap wild animals, their long conversations were also teaching him the difference between right and wrong and how he should treat others. He learned more about how to live his life sitting outside Geechee’s shack than he ever learned inside a classroom.
They talked for hours outside the shack while sitting on the truck seats Geechee salvaged from the dump. Geechee would often grill a rabbit or boil an opossum while they talked. Dex caught many of the old man’s meals in the homemade traps Geechee taught him to make.
The group of five ponds where they fished several days each week during that long summer were shallow craters in the earth that remained after clay had been excavated a century earlier to mold the red-tile pipe that was common in that era. It was about a mile from Geechee’s shack to the ponds, and they would usually follow the railroad tracks to get there. Geechee encouraged Dex’s unsuccessful attempts to travel the entire distance balancing on one track.
“Fore summa be gone, you gwine to do it to da fishin’ hole.”
When they didn’t follow the railroad tracks, they took a path that followed a buried gas pipeline through an otherwise impassable swamp. The path paralleled the polluted creek that either drained or filled the swamp, depending on the amount of rainfall in the area. The only fishing equipment that each of them owned was a cane pole they had cut in the swamp. The swamp was also where they collected the crawfish they used for bait.
Geechee told Dex, “When I’s on the tracks, I seen dem folks in Nawlins boil dem crawdads til they be red as clay. Den dey’s eat ’em up and suck on da heads.”
As Dex pondered his dilemma over the arrest question on the application, he thought back to that summer. In his mind’s eye, he could still see Geechee sitting at his favorite fishing hole. He would know how to answer this question. Dex’s association with Geechee taught him that character and integrity were the most important traits an individual could possess and human dignity has nothing to do with education or money. He also learned that there was very little difference between a thirteen-year-old child and a seventy-year-old child, except for a few wrinkles. Dex had heard racial slurs at school, but he now knew that the only difference in the races was the color of the skin, and the only important difference between the rich and poor was attitude.
When Dex started the eighth grade that fall, he was gradually lured away from Geechee by athletics and a sudden interest in girls. Later that year, he read in the newspaper that the charred remains of an unidentified man were discovered in the rubble of a shack that had burned to the ground next to the city dump.
If measured financially, Geechee’s net worth was zero, and he was buried in a pauper’s grave with no marble tombstone marking his final resting place. But Geechee had riches and self-dignity and wisdom beyond what most men ever knew. His economic status caused most people to consider him a failure, but Dex knew that no man who was a failure could have ever had such a positive influence on the life of a teenage boy.
And now, from his unmarked grave, Geechee provided the answer to the question that was plaguing him. Dex picked up the pencil and wrote, “Yes.”
Chapter 13
Dex nervously handed the application to the administrative assistant, who asked him to have a seat and wait. She delivered it to Bell in his office, and the ten-minute wait seemed like an eternity. When she finally returned and ushered Dex into the office, she left him standing in front of the desk. Bell was looking at the application and simply motioned for Dex to have a seat.
Dex held his breath as the executive finally laid the application on his desk, took off his glasses, and looked at him.
“Well, Mr. Martin, do you want to talk about it?” There was no need to explain what he meant.
Dex cleared his throat and said, “Yes, sir. I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to explain what happened. Several people advised me not to answer the question truthfully on an application, but as badly as I need this job, I can’t start my career by lying on an application. They said that an employer would probably never discover it because it happened in Florida, and they are probably right, but I just couldn’t do tha
t.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “It happened on spring break in Florida during my freshman year in college. I’m not going to make an excuse, because I was guilty as charged. You can call it youthful indiscretion or simple stupidity, but whatever label you put on it, I was wrong.”
Bell frowned as he nodded and then leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.
“I was eighteen years old. I had been involved in athletics all my life, and I had never even had a beer in high school. We just finished spring football practice, and the spring break from classes started. We had a week before we had to be back in school, and I went to Daytona Beach with several of my teammates.”
Dex nervously cleared his throat and said, “There were about a hundred kids at a hotel pool party, and some guys from Auburn started trash-talking about Georgia. My friends and I had been drinking, and I don’t think they had any more experience with alcohol than I had. A fight started, and we threw several of the Auburn guys in the pool and then threw the pool furniture in after them. The next thing I knew the police were there, and we were arrested and charged with drunk and disorderly conduct and destruction of property. We had already spent what little money we had, so we had to spend the night in jail. The next day we pleaded guilty to the charges, and the judge fined us and ordered us to pay restitution to the hotel for the damaged furniture. My grandmother wired me the money, and I worked that summer to repay her. That’s the whole story. I’ve been worried about this coming back to haunt me for three years, but I had to tell the truth.”
Appalachian Intrigue Page 7