26

Went to chunk in the morning and heard Mr. Jackson preach upon the total depravity of human nature.

James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849

Paul Dobbs was still working at Gibby’s General Grocery. When he came limping back on the job after his motorcycle accident, the manager of the grocery department ordered him to unload huge pallets of canned goods from a tractor-trailer at the back door. Paul’s chest was still strapped with elastic bandages, still sore, and he felt aggrieved. He walked upstairs to Jerry Gibby’s office to complain, to ask for something else to do instead.

At that moment Jerry Gibby was on the phone, shouting at Bill Pope, the senior financial officer of General Grocery. “It’s Upshaw, right? Upshaw got you on my back? Listen, you better watch out for that guy Upshaw. You’re next in line, what do you want to bet? He’ll have your job next.” Slamming down the phone, Jerry looked around wildly at Paul. He was about to burst into angry sobs, and he didn’t want to do it in front of a stock boy. He yelled at Paul, “Get out of here! Go on, get the hell out!”

The truck driver at the receiving door was mad too. He had unloaded the whole order of canned goods himself, and it wasn’t the sort of thing he was paid to do. “Hey, kid, come on, take this up, to Gibby. He’s got to sign the invoice. Hurry up. I got to be in Rome, New York, by noontime.”

“Nothing doing,” said Paul. “I’m not going up those stairs no more. No way.”

“Well, somebody’s got to sign it,” said the driver testily. “Here, why don’t you sign it yourself?” He thrust the invoice at Paul. “See? Right here where it says thirty-eight cartons? Here’s a pen.”

Paul stared at the piece of paper, which was covered with rows of meaningless hieroglyphs. “Sign it?” he said doubtfully.

“Sure, why not? Right there where it says X.” The driver pointed with his big thumb.

“Well, okay.” Carelessly, Paul took the pen and made a meaningless scrawl.

“Thanks,” said the truck driver, snatching back pen and paper.

The next truck was a huge trailer from Pinecraft Paper Products, loaded with unwieldy boxes of toilet paper, paper towels, paper diapers, and paper napkins. The boxes weren’t heavy; they were just awkward. Paul lugged twenty or thirty off the truck, then stopped for a smoke.

“Hey,” said the Pinecraft driver, “get a move on.”

Paul merely grinned at him and dropped ashes on the floor.

But instead of getting mad, the driver walked back to the cab of his big truck and returned with a cigarette in one hand and a can of Pepsi in the other. Squatting down beside Paul, he looked up at the scraped raw face and the black eye. “High-school kid?” he said.

Paul laughed. “High school? Hey, I got no time for high school. My brother, he works in City Hall in Boston. I’m just filling in around here for a couple weeks, you know?”

The Pinecraft driver was interested. “Hey,” he said, “I got a suggestion.”

“No kidding,” said Paul. With mounting interest he listened to the truck driver’s suggestion and grinned in agreement, then unloaded no more boxes that day. When the driver produced the invoice, Paul made another scrawl across it and accepted five twenty-dollar bills.

The grocery-department manager didn’t show up in the receiving area until after lunch. Looking around, he was surprised to see the small number of cartons from Pinecraft. “Is that all? They usually fill up the whole end of the room here.”

“Oh, sure,” said Paul. “That’s all. Jeez, it nearly broke my back.”

“Who signed the invoice?”

“Mr. Gibby,” said Paul smoothly.

“Well, okay, then.” Taking out his case cutter, the grocery manager ripped open a carton of paper napkins.