Chapter Four
Six miles from the Lavender house, Barry Drexler sat in the cramped office of Rojelio Chavez, his employer, with his fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms.
“You know sales have been down,” Chavez was saying. He sat in his rocking desk chair, tilting back toward shelves full of catalogs, phone books, and cartons of inventory. The rest of the tiny office was similarly cluttered, so much so that Barry had often wondered how Chavez managed to find anything he really needed. “I’ve been putting my own money back into the business, trying to stay solvent. But I just can’t afford to keep doing it.”
It wasn’t much of a job, working at the Redi-Market. But since Barry had wrecked up his back five years before, he hadn’t been able to keep ranching. Years of drought had made that a questionable business anyway, especially at his small scale. He had tried auto mechanics, but things had changed in that field so much since his younger days, he hadn’t been able to make a go of it. His one mechanic’s job had been lost to a Mexican kid a third his age, and he’d been lucky that Chavez had been willing to take him on, at fifty-nine, even part-time.
Two years later, he sat behind the register in the little market four nights a week, selling liquor, smokes, packaged foods, and sundries to the people in McNeal. He had met folks there who had lived in the area as long as he had, but with whom he’d never had contact before. The job had opened up a new social world to him, as well as providing a paycheck and getting him out of his empty house.
“So when’s it happen?” he asked.
“Last day will be Friday,” Chavez said. “I’ll put up a sign today, let everyone know what’s happening. If anyone asks for details, just have them see me.”
“Right,” Barry said.
“Barry, I’m really sorry about this. If there was anything else I could do, I would. I know the community counts on this store, and I know you like that regular check.” Chavez appeared genuinely pained. His smooth forehead furrowed like a freshly plowed field, and the lower tips of his drooping black mustache were wet from him chewing on it while he talked.
Barry relaxed his fists and rubbed the gnarled surface of his left thumbnail. “You got that right.”
“I can’t do much by way of a severance package. I’ll cut you a check for a couple of weeks’ pay.”
“Anything you can do, I’d appreciate.” Barry couldn’t quite believe he was being so deferential. Chavez was forty and had plenty of money. His wife worked at the hospital down in Douglas. His family wouldn’t go hungry no matter what. Barry didn’t have any family, since his wife Clarice died eight years back. They’d had one son, killed in the Gulf war, so Barry was effectively alone in the world. He had a brother named Stuart, four years older, who had moved to Ohio after his own army stint and gone to work for a big insurance company. That company had folded a few years back, and it turned out the pensions promised to its employees didn’t really exist. Stuart had a wife and three kids, so his financial straits were even worse than Barry’s, but that didn’t mean Barry could get by on his minimal savings. “Why do you think it is, business bein’ off?”
“Could have to do with the Walmart,” Chavez said. Barry had expected that response, since his boss had been complaining about the giant chain ever since they’d expanded their superstore in Douglas, just a block from the Mexican border. “People are willing to drive all that way to save a few pennies, and then while they’re down there they buy ten things they don’t even need.”
“That’s right.” Barry had been there a couple of times, but the size of the place had put him off. Aisle after aisle stacked high with junk, most of it plastic, made in China, some of it he couldn’t even guess as to what it was used for. He’d never been able to find what he wanted, and looking for it disoriented him.
“You might think about applying there,” Chavez said.
“At my age?”
“They hire older folks sometimes,” Chavez replied. “As store greeters and such. I’ll give you a good recommendation if you want to try it.”
Barry quit worrying at the nail. The stiff visitor chair across from Chavez’s desk was getting uncomfortable. “I’ll give it some thought, Rojelio. Thanks for the offer.”
Chavez stood up, which Barry knew meant their cheery little get-together had come to a close. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
For Barry to do that, he’d have to remember to copy down Rojelio Chavez’s phone number from the store’s emergency contact list. His employer had never given it to him, never invited him over or socialized with him in any way outside the shop.
He thought, for just a moment, about cleaning out the cash register before locking up tonight. He wouldn’t get much out of it, though; couple hundred bucks maybe, certainly not enough to risk jail over.
He was too young for Social Security, though, and his savings were meager. At least his house was almost paid off, and he had five rooms to wander around in. Spending the rest of his years in an eight-by-eight wouldn’t do, not at all.
“Guess I’ll get to work, then,” Barry said.
His employer didn’t answer.