Читать книгу In the Course of Human Events - Mike Harvkey - Страница 13

Clyde called his mom from Highway 50. She picked up on the first ring, her voice wet with worry until Clyde started in on his excuse. Concern flipped to fury and all Clyde could do was listen to her rant and rave about how many times are you gonna disappoint me? Finally she told him to forget the whole thing, just forget it. She hoped he was happy. Clyde told her he’d pick her up in ten minutes and he did, breaking the speed limit from Boonville to Strasburg, punching the wheel, cursing Jay Smalls, praying for luck. He honked pulling up and helped her in the passenger side. She never could lift herself up. He put her hair kit, a big pink tackle box, in back. The four miles to the Omega she didn’t say a word, just sat there looking beaten down and worn out, Clyde knew that he was the cause of it. He hated to disappoint people who depended on him.

At the Omega he went in after her with the tackle box. She told them who she was, apologizing all over herself to somebody who didn’t know or care. Clyde hung back, just inside the second set of doors that opened only from the inside with the push of the receptionist’s button. It was a jail. A tall man entered the lobby and said, Mrs. Twitty, in a way that didn’t hide his irritation. Clyde’s mom blamed him, her son, he could see very clearly by how often she looked over. Clyde resisted the urge to wave. The man shook his head, wore a sour expression, threw up his hands, shrugged, and crossed his arms over his thin chest while Clyde’s mom apologized and apologized and apologized, working herself near to tears. Finally satisfied that she had crucified herself enough for today, the man told her to follow him. It was almost like he’d gone out of his way to humiliate her in public.

There was no way that Clyde was going to stand around inside the Omega, it was depressing as hell. If he’d had his druthers, he would have gone back to Jay’s and trained the rest of the day like he was supposed to. He hadn’t felt the burn of a hard workout since baseball and he missed it.

In the truck he sat watching the Omega’s front doors. Every few minutes a resident appeared, hands on glass, staring with cloudy gray eyes—Let me out! Let me out! Clyde couldn’t sit there watching that; he went around to the back of his truck, stepping into the first stance he’d learned that morning. It hurt his knees but he did it anyway, going through every technique Jay had shown him, all the punches and strikes, the blocks that made his shoulders ache. He breathed the way he’d been taught—in quickly through the nose, out slowly through the mouth—and sweat ran down his face. Jay had said, “If you’re gonna punch, punch hard,” and Clyde executed every technique with as much power as he could muster. He kept count, then tried some kicks, but fell off balance too often and got frustrated. Jay could stand on one foot and raise the other to your face, gently tap your cheek, and bring it back to the ground. Clyde kept to knee kicks and threw a hundred. Sweating and tired but feeling strong again, he got back in his truck. He’d chased all the aches away. He opened the book that J.D. had given him.

September 16, 1991. Today it finally began! After all these years of talking—and nothing but talking—we have finally taken our first action. We are at war with the System, and it is no longer a war of words.

I cannot sleep, so I will try writing down some of the thoughts which are flying through my head. It is not safe to talk here. The walls are quite thin, and the neighbors might wonder at a late-night conference. Besides, George and Katherine are already asleep. Only Henry and I are still awake, and he’s just staring at the ceiling.

I am really uptight. I am so jittery I can barely sit still. And I’m exhausted. I’ve been up since 5:30 this morning, when George phoned to warn that the arrests had begun, and it’s after midnight now. I’ve been keyed up and on the move all day.

But at the same time I’m exhilarated. We have finally acted! How long we will be able to continue defying the System, no one knows. Maybe it will all end tomorrow, but we must not think about that. Now that we have begun, we must continue with the plan we have been developing so carefully ever since the Gun Raids two years ago.

Now Clyde remembered. He had seen this book at gun shows. Word was, the assault-weapons ban that passed in 1994 had been pretty much predicted by this book. At gun shows he heard the talk about the erosion of rights and the Second Amendment. He just never thought it would come to that.

The Omega’s automatic doors parted and his mom came through blinking, almost two hours after they’d arrived. It had been years since she’d worked this way, one customer after another, and it had taken it out of her. At home, she rarely had more than three appointments any given day, and only about a dozen clients total, a third of what she’d had when Mr. Longarm was open. After it closed, almost half of Strasburg’s population had left town in search of work, some left the state entirely. Clyde had considered leaving himself, had been given a golden opportunity when his best friend, Troy, moved to Nashville a few months back. In fact Troy and Clyde had talked about Nashville, or something like Nashville, for years. Troy played the drums and had always urged Clyde to take up guitar. Clyde had tried but he had no aptitude for it so Troy had told him he could manage the band instead. To Clyde, it had just been talk, the silly daydreams of a couple small-town boys, he’d never expected it to lead to anything and had always figured Troy hadn’t either. Between the announcement of the move and packing the car neither of them had mentioned Clyde riding shotgun. He guessed Troy had by then realized that there were certain responsibilities that would keep him right where he was.

Somebody once said that luck brought more luck. Clyde thought this must be true when a few minutes before six a.m. Monday morning he got the call from Walmart. Jerry Wilson wanted him at the store by seven. He’d slept only about four hours and didn’t even have time to make any rocket fuel.

When he got there, he was given paperwork and put in a dark room with the orientation video. It started with a middle-aged white guy grinning into the camera. “I’m Walmart,” he said. Then he was joined by a black woman. “I’m Walmart,” they said together, and on like that. A young guy that looked Mexican, a dark woman with an accent Clyde had never heard, a few retarded people. Yeah, I see it, everybody’s Walmart, we’re all in this together, quack quack quack. “Through our commitment to low prices,” one of them said over shots of people from all over, “we are bridging the global gap and bettering the lives of millions. Congratulations. You are a part of that effort now,” someone else said, then everybody who’d called themselves Walmart showed up again. “Welcome to our family,” they shouted, all of them smiling like it hurt. Then it cut to static.

The noise washed over Clyde. What a load of shit. He made no move to shut it off. He’d been very fortunate to get on at Mr. Longarm in his senior year in high school. That was very clear now. Even though he’d had to join the union to work there, nobody had ever confused workplace with family. He hadn’t been somebody’s corporate kin, he’d been a highly skilled worker, paid accordingly. That stint at Longarm had allowed Clyde to witness the end of an era that would never happen again in America, he suddenly realized, looking around this room built out of the cheapest materials—gray cinderblocks; brown linoleum; white dropped tiles; buzzing fluorescents. He tried to read one of the inspirational notes pinned to the corkboard by corporate and couldn’t from where he sat. Probably best, given his frame of mind. Clyde had never been in prison before, but he figured this was what it felt like. The static surrounded him, he shut it off; he needed this goddamn job and decided he’d better try to get along.

In the manager’s office Wilson was at his desk. “Finished?” he said, eyes down.

“Yes sir.”

“Good, good,” Wilson said. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

“I’m Walmart,” Clyde said. That made the manager look up.

Wilson paraded his new hire around for introductions before bringing him to Pets, where Esther was singing to a bagged goldfish, sunglasses covering her from hairline to lip. She had a sweet voice, actually, and for a moment neither Clyde nor Wilson said a thing. Then the manager cleared his throat and Esther practically jumped into Clyde’s arms. “You hired him!” The bag rolled in the aisle behind her.

Mr. Wilson blinked and marched off and Esther rested her head against Clyde’s shoulder. Her hair was rough and smelled of cigarettes. “Be gentle with me, Clyde. I ain’t slept a blink.” She asked him to run to Starbucks for a venti drip. He was worried about leaving so soon after getting there, but Esther assured him that Wilson wouldn’t even notice. His ass was planted in his chair for the next half hour while he worked on the morning’s “challenge.”

Clyde checked his wallet. He had four bucks. He’d never gone into a Starbucks before and crossed the lot with the low sun on his face, waited behind a dozen people, some who’d brought their own mugs from home to be filled here. Clyde wondered about the effort of bringing an empty mug to a coffee shop. He ordered Esther’s cup and said, “You’re shitting me,” when the woman in green gave him the price. He did not think the whole pot he made for his uncle every week cost three dollars. When he went out he couldn’t help but bleat like a sheep at the people in line.

“I love you long time,” Esther said, blowing across the coffee, fogging her glasses. “You didn’t get one?”

Clyde shrugged. “Couldn’t afford it.”

“Clyde,” Esther whined, her mouth hung open. “I woulda given you some money.” Clyde dismissed the idea with a gesture. She held the cup out. “We’ll share it.”

“Nah,” he said. “You have it. I don’t really drink coffee anyway.” Though this morning he would have, happily.

While he worked to make Pets presentable, Esther nursed the coffee and entertained Clyde with tales of the party she’d been to the night before. Deep in the woods, it had ended near five when the bonfire spread to the trees and she’d failed a three-way in a mound of damp hay. “I’m so humiliated,” she said.

Before opening, Wilson came on the P.A. with the morning’s challenge. It was, Esther said, a team-building exercise. Employees cheered, and Esther yelled, “Brownnosers!” She deflated immediately. “I think I’m gonna barf.” Someone yelled from another aisle wanting to know who’d said that and Esther got behind Clyde. “Protect me, Clyde.”

“Nobody here but us fishes,” Clyde said in a pinched voice that made her laugh.

Today’s challenge came from a personal conversation Wilson once had with Sam Walton, “the nicest, decentest, most down-to-earth man you could ever know.” The challenge was to define the spirit of Walmart. A few minutes later Wilson appeared in Pets with a clipboard. “So?”

Esther raised an imaginary gun and said, “Low prices! Take that, high prices. Ka-blooey.”

Wilson smiled stiffly. “That’s a great point, Esther, and I like your enthusiasm, but it’s not what Sam Walton said when we talked. I hope you’re not wearing opaque lenses when we open.” He turned to Clyde and waited.

Clyde tried to remember the terrible video. “Community,” he said.

Wilson’s face flushed pink. Clyde could tell that he’d hit a home run. “I’m gonna have to keep my eye on you, boy,” Wilson said. “But. It’s not exactly correct. What Sam Walton said when we spoke is that people think of us . . . as an old friend.” He spread his arms. Clyde thought that “community” and “an old friend” were, more or less, the same damned thing. He also thought that nobody in a million years would guess “an old friend,” so the challenge had been set up to be unwinnable. Bullshit.

“Weird,” Esther said.

“No, not weird, Esther. Use your cabeza. Who do we call in our times of need?”

“Ghostbusters!” Esther said.

“You call on your old friend.”

“Jesus is my old friend.”

“And I bet you call on him in your times of need.”

“He’s not my emotional tampon, Mr. Wilson. I call on him in all my times,” she said. That was all Wilson needed to march off with his head in the clipboard. Clyde felt worn out and the store hadn’t even opened yet. Barely there two hours and he’d already been screwed. Esther must have sensed his mood; she slipped her arms around him from behind. “Ciggie break?”

Outside she said, “Watch me smoke,” and French inhaled, looking up with bedroom eyes. “Is it sexy?”

Clyde nodded and took the cigarette she offered him. He didn’t smoke, but one wouldn’t kill him. Esther dragged hungrily on her Marlboro Light, burning an inch of paper, closing her eyes and resting her temple on Clyde’s shoulder. When she finished she waved her hands in front of her face and looked at the sky. “I’m sorry, darlin, I swear that’ll be my last one.” She slipped her arm through Clyde’s and waited for him to finish. A sick sweat rose to the surface of his skin. The lot filled with cars sliding around each other silently, rocking side to side as drivers sprang out. Clyde wasn’t sure he was ready for human interaction. Maybe he wasn’t made for work of this sort, with the public. He did not think, no matter how hard he might try, that he could buy into this “we” team-building crap, but Wilson, you could tell just by looking at him, bought it all hook, line, and sinker. Anyone who wanted to climb his corporate ladder would have to do the same thing.

Esther held her hand up in Clyde’s face and fingered a gold band on her thumb. Clyde sank with disappointment. “Who’s the lucky sum’bitch?”

Esther laughed. “My dad,” she said, slipping it from her thumb to her ring finger. “I promised him I’d remain pure till my wedding night.” Clyde looked at Esther for any sign of a grin but none came. Obviously Mr. Hines didn’t know the first thing about his daughter.

Before they finished their cigarettes a black couple drove into the lot, got out, and made their way to the entrance. Esther squeezed Clyde’s arm when they went in. The doors jerked shut behind them and she shook her head. “Wonder how long it’s gonna take them to realize they’re in the wrong Walmart?” she said. There was an older one across town, where all the black people lived.

When Clyde’s shift ended around three he went in the back and wrote down his next shift—not until Thursday, and only four hours—and asked Wilson when he could expect his first paycheck. “You’ve only worked one day,” Wilson said, laughing, and explained that Clyde had just missed the pay period. “Should be around the eighteenth,” he said finally.

“Great,” Clyde grumbled, going out. Three weeks of labor before I see a penny. Typical.

Esther told Clyde that she’d be out cruising Main Street after work and hoped he’d be there. He couldn’t afford to waste gas; he had to get to Independence tomorrow morning. But he figured he could park and wait for Esther, maybe ride with her a while. He drove halfway down Main and pulled into the empty lot of a bunch of empty storefronts, For Rent signs in every dusty window, and parked nose to the street. With his engine ticking, Clyde ran back in his mind through his experience with the fairer sex. It didn’t take long. It had been four years since he’d had a girl, and that girl—a woman, really—had been his one and only. When it came to women, Clyde had never been much good. In school, he’d paired off with Cindy Teagarden two weeks into their sophomore year. They’d both begun and ended that three-year relationship as stone-cold virgins; that whole time Clyde had turned down offers from other girls, he’d been a baseball player, in great shape and so popular that students, when he wore his number in the halls, shouted it like a cheer. No one knew that Clyde had graduated high school with his cherry intact and had only lost it in his first year at Mr. Longarm, to one of the secretaries up on the second floor, a married mother of two in her thirties who’d fucked Clyde four times and stayed in his bed until five in the morning, making Clyde almost sick with worry. Clyde picked up The Turner Diaries to take his mind off sex. As soon as he’d read a paragraph, his thoughts jumped to Jay and training. The funny thing was, the moment he put the book down so that he could try to remember how to execute a certain technique, Jay’s name appeared on his phone. Clyde wasn’t planning on going to class tonight, so he let the call go to voicemail.

“Osu, Clyde-san,” Jay said in his message. “Hope we didn’t scare you off yesterday, hope you’re feeling good and strong after a morning of hard training. Get your mom to work all right? If not, I’d be happy to talk to her, smooth things over,” Jay snickered. “Hope to see you at class tonight. Dale’s coming out, couple others. We’ll pick up where we left of yesterday. Six o’clock at the house. Let me know if you can make it. Osu.”

Clyde checked the time, almost five thirty. From where he was parked he could see the start of the hill that ran to Liberty Ridge, he could be there in no time. Just when he was thinking about going, Esther’s tiny mustard-yellow car turned into the lot, tires and power steering squealing. She backed in beside Clyde, rolled down her window, and smashed her cigarette into a large black spot halfway down her door. Clyde saw that she was slowly making a smiley face. “Like my car?” She spread her arms, one across the passenger seat, one in the air outside. “I call it the Honeybee.” She pointed off. “I ran into some friends who want us to join ’em in a truck-bed party.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, they’re cool, and they got like five bottles of wine. What do you think?”

The clock on Clyde’s dash read 5:45. He could still make class. “You know what, you go ahead. I think I might just take off.”

“What!?” Esther said, throwing her door open. She hooked her hands to Clyde’s window and hoisted herself up. “Don’t be crazy,” she said, her smoky voice choked by the effort of staying off the ground. She let herself down and flapped an arm. “Give me five minutes. I’ll go say hi and come back and me and you can cruise to our hearts’ content.” She jumped. “Okay!?”

“Sounds good,” Clyde said, and Esther hopped in, tore out, and disappeared into the flow of traffic.

Clyde watched the clock. 6:00 became 6:15, then 6:30, finally 6:40 before he saw Esther again. She was in the back of a truck that had been raised twice as high as Clyde’s with a lift kit, music was blasting, the back was full, Esther right in the middle, cigarette in her teeth, sunglasses on, a Big Gulp in hand that Clyde knew wasn’t full of soda. She was sandwiched between a thin guy with a beard and a girl in a tube top, dancing. Clyde cranked his engine.

It took ten minutes just to nose out of the lot, the traffic was so heavy on Main, and fifteen more to pass under Highway 50, only a quarter of a damn mile away.