Bookman

by Ed Baldwin

  “Well, well boy. What is it this time? Insurance? Magazines? Them photo albums?” The chief strode across the floor in my direction, thumbs hooked behind his belt. He was young for a police chief, 35 or so, but already his belly obscured his belt buckle. He wore a white uniform shirt with a gold badge. He stood right in front of me, glaring, waiting for an answer.

  “No. Actually it’s, uh, books,” I said quietly. If it was his intention to be intimidating, he was successful.

  “Books! What kind of books?” The chief took my briefcase and handed it to the deputy. “Here, take a look and see if there’s any kind of contraband or anything in there.”

  “It’s encyclopedias. A new set that’s not even on the market yet. We’re just trying to find some people who…”

  “Shit! What will they think of next? I suppose you’re from Memphis. We’re gonna wear our jail out puttin’ guys from Memphis in it for sellin’ stuff door to door. Don’t the word ever get around with y’all?”

  “I just started this week,” I said, eager to appear inexperienced.

  “Shit. That’s what the last one said.” He appeared disgusted and turned to the deputy. They went through the briefcase, curiously opening each of the broadsides displaying the set and the yearbook, then carefully refolding them and replacing them in the case. The chief took the prospectus and spent several minutes with it, seated on the corner of the deputy’s desk.

  “How much do you get for a set of encyclopedias like this?”

  “It retails for $500, but….”

  “Five hundred dollars!” His quiet interest in the book evaporated and he quickly replaced it in the briefcase and returned to his former less pleasant mood. “There ain’t three families in this town could come up with $500 for a set of books. Hell, do you know what the biggest industry in this county is? Welfare! If it weren’t for the welfare checks each month there wouldn’t be no money at all. Except for the moonshiners, and I’m supposed to put them in jail.” His face cracked with a faint smile as he looked at the deputy with this last statement.

  “Hey, that reminds me,” suddenly the chief stood up and walked toward the door, “Ole Billy Trousdale ought to be cuttin’ his grass about now. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  It was as if he had just been killing time talking to me and had thought of something better to do.

  After the chief left the deputy got the paper out again and handed me the financial section while he read the funnies. Every few minutes one of the patrol cars would check in. They had two sheriff’s patrol cars out in the county and one police car in town. One of the deputies was at the scene of an accident where a car had apparently run through a bridge railing and then left the scene. The other was on routine tavern patrol, checking in at the rural beer joints. The city police car was picking up speeders on the state highway that went through town. He brought in two unfortunate souls while I was there; one from Nashville on his way to Memphis and one from Memphis on his way to Nashville. Both were businessmen in late model cars who had fudged a little on the 25 mile per hour speed limit going through town. Both posted $25 bonds and were released. Judging from the cash box on the deputy’s desk, business had been good that day. When it got almost dark the radar business dropped off and the police car began roaming around.

  “Dispatch, this is two. I got ol’ John B. Cox here. Drunk as a skunk. Weavin’ down the sidewalk, hardly able to walk. Bring him in or what?”

  “No. Take him home. They’re giving him a bad time down at the church about last week. His wife called the chief and complained. We don’t need anymore of that. Take him home.”

  “Ten-four. I’m goin’ for coffee after that. At Myrtle’s.”

  “Ten-four.”

  The chief showed up again. This time he had a prisoner. The man was handcuffed but sitting up front in the squad car. The chief brought him down the long hall and locked him in the holding cell across from the office and the air conditioner. Never having seen a moonshiner I craned around the corner to see through the glass part of the door what one looked like. He was middle aged and his blue work shirt was stained with sweat. He wore khaki work pants that were fairly well starched, a sort of cross between work clothes and something you might wear to an informal office or a factory. He seemed more irritated than afraid, and called the chief by his first name several times. I couldn’t hear exactly what they said but it was more of a friendly discussion than I would have thought under the circumstances. The last part, just as he closed the steel door, was something about he, the chief, “Getting Orville down here first thing in the morning to get you out.”

  “Got damn! Been chasin’ that old fart for a year. Couldn’t figure where he was keepin’ it.” The chief said as he returned to the office and closed the door. “Knew he had it. Finally figured it out. Every time he’d pass this one spot on his yard he’d stop and take a drink.” The chief triumphantly held up a gallon jug, half full of a yellowish liquid. As he related his tale he would open the lid and smell and then make a face.

  “Here, boy. Taste some moonshine!” he said as he handed me the jug proudly. “Old Billy’s a third generation moonshiner, only he’s not as good as his daddy was.” The deputy laughed at this and agreed heartily.

  “His pappy kept my pappy pickled for 20 years,” the deputy said and they both laughed again.

  The stuff smelled strongly of yeast and other unknown impurities. It also smelled strongly of alcohol. I declined to taste it.

  They played with the jug for awhile and then the chief tired of it and began to badger me again. He asked me where my car was and I told him about my pickup point at a laundromat. He told the deputy to keep me there in the office until 10:30, then to have the patrolman take me over to the laundromat and drop me off.

  “You’d better stay there til your boss comes to take you back to Memphis, and you better not come back here again. You hear?”

  “Yes sir!” I said, truly happy to be getting out of there.

  Lanny was a little late getting back and I was afraid they would pick me up again. The police cruiser passed by the laundromat every 15 minutes or so, making sure I was not molesting the good people of their tightly knit little community.

  Lanny’s response to my tale was a diatribe against small town police in general and this one in particular. This lasted until we got to the lights of Memphis and everyone was asleep except him and me. We dropped off the other salesmen at various points as we came through town and I was asked to accompany Lanny up to the office to drop off an order he had written.

  “This is all part of the job, Phil. It goes with the late nights and the long drives. If they ever really do throw you in the klink I’ve always got a couple of hundred in cash on me to get you out. Our crack team of lawyers upstairs, Slinkerd and Hedge, can handle any legal difficulty with just a phone call. You gotta look at it from the small town policeman’s point of view. You’re out there knocking on doors, being seen by more people than you ever see. They don’t see many men in a coat and tie walking down the street with a briefcase, and they’re curious so they call the police to see what’s going on. Very many of those calls and the police have to do something, just to show that they’re still in control.” Lanny delivered this little speech as we took the elevator up to the office. We put the order on the branch manager’s desk so he could verify it first thing in the morning and then sat in Lanny’s office to wait for the other crews to check in. It was after midnight.

  “I want to show you something, Phil. Not to brag, but to illustrate a point.” He took an envelope out of his pocket. Among some other papers was a payroll check. ‘This is my week’s earnings —$1,215. It isn’t always this much, sometimes more. You don’t get this by sitting on your ass like those goddamned lawyers upstairs. They have a law degree. All we have is ambition and sweat. But, if you’re willing to get out there and grab people by the lapels and tell them your story, and work in the hot sun, and talk your way out of small town jails, and get home late, and
drive 50,000 miles a year, you can make more money than you ever dreamed of. I think you’ve got that something that makes a good bookman. Don’t let some small town cop ruin it.”

  It had been two weeks since I left Towers of Flowers and I figured it was time to go pick up my check and say goodbye to the guys in the back. I wasn’t going to miss T.J. Towers or his goddamned rubber plants, but I was going to miss Sonny and Pig and even old Moses.

  I parked the car behind the back greenhouse and went in the screen door. We were half a block away from the front office and Sonny was on the phone as usual. I sometimes wondered if he didn’t run a book-making business on the side. He smiled and waved me in. Pig, named because of his dedication to pork barbecue rather than any physical characteristic, jumped up and came over to shake my hand but withdrew at the last moment as his hands were dirty and I had on a coat and tie.

  “Hey Phil. You got a downtown job! Congratulations. I’d shake but don’t want to lose none of this good potting soil for you to carry off downtown.” He gave a hearty laugh. He’d come to work there about the same time I had. He was Sonny’s cousin and seemed quite content to dig in the dirt and learn the greenhouse business. He was already way ahead of me in naming varieties of the plants we worked and recognizing diseases and pests I couldn’t seem to notice. I had teased him that the dirt didn’t show under his fingernails because he was black and that’s why it didn’t bother him as much as it did me. He’d respond that digging in the dirt made your dick bigger and that I’d better put in some overtime.

  “Hey, I’m gonna miss you guys,” I said, pausing. “I was in the slammer last night. Company lawyers will take care of it, though. I’ve already made a sale and the commission is more than my check here for a week.”

  “You gonna be a big shot, with an office downtown and all that shit?” Sonny said, finishing his call and coming over. He did shake hands as he was the greenhouse boss and didn’t get as dirty as the rest of us. He called himself the “muscle director” because if a job had anything to do with gettin’ dirty or hot he was in charge of it.

  I was in the process of relating how we placed the libraries when the loudspeaker in the greenhouse came on and said, “Sonny Masters, line three,” and he went back to the telephone. Sonny was about thirty and had never worked anyplace but the Towers greenhouse. He knew everything about everything that was in it, or had ever been in it. He lowered his voice and turned away from us, shielding the phone so whoever he was talking to couldn’t hear the rest of us.

  Moses was Sonny’s uncle and had been in the greenhouse since T.J. bought it and had worked as a gardener at the zoo before that. His wrinkled face and gnarled arthritic hands coupled with his deliberation of movement and thought made him seem perhaps older than he really was. There were many jokes in the back about him being the real Moses of Biblical fame who had somehow been preserved in the potting soil just in case he was needed again. Unable to go out with the rest of us to dig and plant he stayed in the greenhouse and tinkered with the various watering mechanisms; Moses, the “waterman.”

  I was just starting the tale of Judy when I looked up through the second greenhouse and saw T.J. hurrying back. I absolutely did not want to discuss my recent change in employment. I made a face and pointed toward the front and hurriedly stepped behind a stack of pots.

  T.J. entered the greenhouse like a man in charge. He looked at each man as he strode to the back where we were gathered. He nodded at Moses but didn’t acknowledge anyone else. Sonny got off the phone and walked up to him.

  “Sonny, we got that Chevrolet thing for Wednesday. He wants red and white azaleas, at least three hundred. I’ll bet we don’t have fifty.” As he said this he put his arm around Sonny and steered him toward the front of the greenhouse. This was the usual procedure. If we all stood around while he and Sonny planned things no work would ever get done. I hated him even more.

  “Take the van over to West Memphis and see what you can buy over there. They ought to be happy to get Two Fifty. Pay whatever you have to. Take a couple guys and hurry back. I’ll go out to Millington to see what they have, but I’ll stay here until noon in case Jones calls.” He handed Sonny a small sample paint card from the dealer. “Make sure they match this.” With this last statement he let go of Sonny’s shoulder and strode back up toward the office. Just as he got to the front door of the greenhouse he turned and shouted back,’’Don’t get any of those that have the orange in ’em, like we did last spring!”

  Sonny nodded, acknowledging that he knew what T.J. meant and T.J. was gone.

  “He must think you’re color blind,” I said as I stepped out from behind the pots. Sonny was sending the two new men out to the van. It was just Sonny, Pig, Moses, and me.

  “No. He is color blind,” Sonny said with a conspirational smile. “Been in the flower business all his life and can’t tell green from purple.”

  I was astounded. The others already knew.

  “That’s why Sonny do all the buyin’,” Moses volunteered. “One day, before you come here, he got a rush job on a funeral for a little girl, and they wanted pink roses. Sonny was gone so T.J. he go ’round town lookin’ for pink roses ’cause we didn’t have enough. He never let anybody know he color blind. He bought a lot of real pretty roses, but they was kind of pink and orange too. Hot pink. He drop ’em off with the arrangers and tell them to make up a casket spread and then left. One of the arrangers, she call Sonny’s dad, it was before he die, and said, ‘Mr. Amos, you better get down here quick. Mr. T.J. he fixin’ to get into real trouble.’”

  We all got a big laugh, imagining a funeral for a little girl with hot pink roses over the casket. T.J. would have had to go into the insurance business.

  Sonny left with the two new men to find some red azaleas and I talked for awhile with Pig and Moses before slipping up to the office to get my check. It felt good to leave and head down toward the Sterick Building.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  “An open bridge is best for a beginner.”

  “No. He’s got to learn to do it right. Only girls use an open bridge.”

  “Girls and me. And I can beat you, Lanny, so where does that put your closed bridge?”

  Terry and Lanny were trying to teach Byron Hogarth how to play pool. We were working in Memphis that day so we had a few hours to kill before going to work.

  “Now, Byron, if you’re ever going to be worth a damn as a bookman you’ve got to learn to shoot a respectable stick.” Lanny pointed his cue at me. “Just look at old Phil here. He plays a decent game of pool, and he’s smart enough to come close to but never actually beat his sales manager.” Lanny poked me in the side and ordered a new rack. “Come on, Mr. Lazar. How about another game? Terry will show our Mr. Hogarth a stroke or two.”

  Lanny and I had already played three games, but I was always up for a challenge. I think he really believed I was letting him win, but the truth is, I was trying my damnedest to cream the guy.

  “I want you to take Byron out tonight and show him an order,” Lanny said, chalking up his stick. “I know that’s Terry’s job, but Terry is currently on a two week slump and I don’t want a new man exposed to that. Terry is going with me tonight. Three in the corner with a kiss off the twelve.”

  The three plunked right into the pocket Lanny had indicated. “Shit!” I exclaimed, truly impressed.

  “It’s all in the wrist,” Lanny chuckled as he walked briskly around the table for his next shot.

  “Phil, there’s something about watching another salesman close a deal that turns a man on. Joe Bryant came to town last spring when we were all in a slump. He was the district manager in Louisville then and Burt Marty, the regional manager, sent him down to see if he could pep things up. We went out one Saturday afternoon and he was going to show us all a deal. He kept talking about how easy it was and finally picked this one house while we were all still in the car. That’s my deal’, he said. Then he jumped out and ran across the yard to knoc
k on the guy’s door.” He stopped for a moment while he studied the table. “Four ball in the side.

  “So anyway, not five minutes later he was back out to get his briefcase and brought the whole bunch of us back into the house. In half an hour he had the poor fucker written up. I’ll bet Joe hadn’t knocked on a door in a month, but when the chips were down, he produced. Joe was probably as surprised as we were. But, even if it were blind luck, every one of us worked until we had an order, and Gerald Hamilton wrote two!” Lanny ran out the rest of the rack and ordered another.

  “I’m going to need another field manager soon,” he went on without me uttering a word yet. “I need somebody who can produce when the chips are down and who has a car. Barney Baker has ruined the last half dozen new men I’ve put in his crew. He never goes out of town unless I absolutely insist, and he’s always back before the bars close. I like a new man to see a manager who has some hustle and who can write book orders himself. Get the drift?”

  I was pretty darn excited but decided to play it cool. “Six, off the rail and in the side,” I said, not looking up.

  “Close, but you needed just a little more edge.” Lanny smiled at me. “Will you take Byron tonight?”

  “Might as well. I’m losing my lunch money here,” I said, trying not to seem too eager.

  I showed Byron three presentations that night. We got drenched in a thunderstorm between the second and third, and wouldn’t have gotten that one if we had not been such a sorrowful sight at the door. I’m sure the man let us in more out of pity than interest in our story. It was the third one that I closed, although it was a shaky order. I got the $12 down payment on a post dated check, and the head of the household was laid off his job. But, when Lanny picked us up, at least I had a deal.

  When I got home, after midnight, Honey and little Phil were asleep. I had a beer and read the paper in the kitchen. Honey got up and came in.