Wheels (23 page)

This was the clincher. Always, after this, they closed the books-no dice,
no work. Well, they could stick their stinking job; Rollie still wondered
why he had come. "Armed robbery. I drew five to fifteen, did four years
in Jackson Pen
.”

A jewelry store. Two of them had broken in at night. All they got was a
handful of cheap watches and were caught as they came out. Rollie had been
stupid enough to carry a .22. Though he hadn't pulled it from his pocket,
the fact that it was found on him ensured the graver charge.
"You were released for good behavior
.”

"No. The warden got jealous. He wanted my cell
.”

The middle-aged Negro interviewer looked up. "I dig jokes. They make a
dull day brighter. But it was good behavior
.”

"If you say so
.”

“
All right, I'll say so
.”

The interviewer wrote it down.
"Is your behavior good now, Mr. Knight? What I mean is, are you in any
more trouble with the police
.”

Rollie shook his head negatively. He wasn't going to tell this Uncle Tom
about last night, that he was in trouble if he couldn't keep clear of
the white pig he had spooked, and who would bust him some way, given
half a chance, using scum bag honky law. The thought was a reminder of
his earlier fears, which now returned: the dread of prison, the real
reason for coming here. The interviewer was asking more questions,
busier than a dog with fleas writing down the answers. Rollie was
surprised they hadn't stopped, baffled that he wasn't already outside
on the street, the way it usually went a
ft
er he mouthed the words
"armed robbery
.”

What he didn't know-because no one had thought to tell him, and he was
not a reader of newspapers or magazines-was that hard core hiring had
a new, less rigid attitude to prison records, too.
He was sent to another room where he stripped and had a physical.
The doctor, young, white, impersonal, working fast, took time out to
look critically at Rollie's bony body, his emaciated cheeks. "Whatever
job you get, use some of what they pay you to eat better, and put some
weight on, otherwise you won't last at it. You wouldn't last, anyway,
in the foundry where most people go from here. Maybe they can put you
in Assembly, I'll recommend it
.”

Rollie listened contemptuously, already hating the system, the people
in it. Who in hell did this smug whitey kid think he was? Some kind of
God? If Rollie didn't need bread badly, some work for a while, he'd walk
out now, and screw
th
em. One thing was sure: whatever job these people gave him, he wouldn't
stay on it one day longer than he had to.
Back through the waiting room, in the cubicle again. The original
interviewer announced, "The doctor says you're breathing, and when you
opened your mouth he couldn't see daylight, so we're offering you a job.
It's in final assembly. The work is hard, but pay is good-the union sees
to that. Do you want it
.”

"I'm here, ain't I!
' What did the son-of-a
-
bitch expect? A bootlick job?
"Yes, you're here, so I'll take that to mean yes. There will be some weeks
of training; you get paid for that, too. Outside, they'll give you details
-when to start, where to go. Just one other thing
.”

Here came the preaching. Sure as glory, Rollie Knight could smell it.
Maybe this white nigger was a Holy Roller on the side.
The interviewer took off his horn-rimmed glasses, leaned over the desk and
put his fingertips together. -You're smart. You know the score. You know
you're getting a break, and it's because of the times, the way things are.
People, companies like this one, have a conscience they didn't always
have. Never mind that it's late; it's here, and a lot of other things are
changing. You may not believe it, but they are
.”

The chubby, sports
jacketed interviewer picked up a pencil, rolled it through his fingers,
put it down. "Maybe you never had a break before, and this is the first.
I think it is. But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you that
with your record it's the only one you'll get, leastways here. A lot of
guys pass through this place. Some make it after they leave; others don't.
Those who do are the ones who want to
.”

The interviewer looked hard at
Rollie. "Stop being a damn fool, Knight, and grab this
chance. That's the best advice you'll get today
.”

He put out a hand. "Good
luck
.”

Reluctantly, feeling as if he had been suckered but not knowing exactly
how, Rollie took the proffered hand.
Outside, just the way the man said, they told him how to go to work. The training course, sponsored jointly by the company and through
federal grants, was eight weeks long. Rollie Knight lasted a week and
a half.
He received the first week's paycheck, which was more money than he had
possessed in a long time. Over the following weekend he tied one on.
However, on Monday he managed to awaken early and catch a bus which took
him to the factory training center on the other side of town.
But on Tuesday, tiredness won. He failed to wake until, through the
curtainless dirty window of his room, the sun shone directly on his f
ace. Rollie got up sleepily, blinking, and went to the window to look
down. A clock in the street below showed that it was almost noon.
He knew he had blown it, that the job was gone. His reaction was
indifference. He did not experience disappointment because, from the beginning, he had not expected any other outcome. How and when the ending
came were merely details.
Experience had never taught Rollie Knightor tens of thousands like
him-to take a longterm view of anything. When you were born with
nothing, had gained nothing since, had learned to live with nothing,
there was no long-term view -only today, this moment, here and now. Many
in the white world-nescient, shallow thinkers
called the attitude
"shiftless," and condemned it. Sociologists, with more understanding and
some
sympathy, named the syndrome "present time orientation" or "distrust of
the future
.”

Rollie had heard neither phrase, but his instincts embraced
both. Instinct also told him, at this moment, he was still tired. He went
back to sleep.
He made no attempt, later, to return to the training center or the
hiring hall. He went back to his haunts and street corner living, making
a dollar when he could, and when he couldn't, managing without. The cop
he had antagonized
miraculously-
left him alone.
There was only one postscript-or so it seemed at the time-to Rollie's
employment.
During an afternoon some four weeks later, he was visited at the rooming
house, where he was still sharing space on sufferance, by an instructor
from the factory training course, Rollie Knight remembered the man-a
beefy, florid-faced ex
-
plant foreman with thinning hair and a paunch, now
puffing from the three flights of stairs he had been forced to climb.
He asked tersely, 'Why'd you quit
.”

"I won the Irish Sweep, man. Doan need no job
.”

'-
y
ou people
!
" The visitor surveyed the dismal quarters with disgust.
"To think we have to support your kind with taxes. If I had my way . .
.”

He left the sentence unfinished and produced a paper. '-
y
ou have to
sign here. It says you're not coming
anymore
.”

Indifferently, not wanting trouble, Rollie signed.
"Oh, yes, and the company made out some checks. Now they have to be paid
back in
.”

He riffled through some papers, of which there seemed to be
a good many. "They want you to sign those, too
.”

Rollie endorsed the checks. There were four.
"Another time," the instructor said unpleas
antly, "try not to cause other people so much trouble
.”

"Go screw yourself, fatso," Rollie Knight said, and yawned.
Neither Rollie nor his visitor was aware that while their exchange was
taking place, an expensive, late-model car was parked across the street
from the rooming house. The car's sole occupant was a tall,
distinguished-appearing, gray
-
haired Negro who had watched with interest
while the training course instructor went inside. Now, as the beefy,
florid-faced man left the building and drove his own car away, the other
car followed, unobserved, at a discreet distance, as it had through most
of the afternoon.

Chapter
ten

"C'mon baby, leave the goddam. drink. I gotta bottle in the room
.”

Ollie, the machinery salesman, peered impatiently at Erica Trenton in the
semidarkness, across the small black table separating them.
It was early afternoon. They were in the bar of the Queensway Inn, not far
from Bloomfield Hills, Erica dawdling over her second drink which she had
asked for as a delaying device, even though recognizing that delay was
pointless because either they were or weren't going through with what they
had come here for, and if they were they might as well get on with it.
Erica touched her glass. "Let me finish this. I need it
.”

She thought: He wasn't a bad-looking man, in a raffish kind of way. He was
trimly built and his body was obviously better than his speech and
manners, probably because he worked on it-she remembered him telling her
with pride that he went to a gym somewhere for regular workouts. She
supposed she could do worse, though wished she had done better.
The occasion when he had told her about workouts in the gym had been at
their first meeting, here in this same bar. Erica had come for a drink one
afternoon, the way other lonely wives did sometimes, in the hope that
something interesting might happen, and Ollie had struck up a conversation-
Ollie, cynical, experienced, who knew this bar and why some
women came to it. After that, their next meeting had been by arrangement,
when he had taken a room in the residential section of the inn, and
assumed she would go to it with him. But Erica, torn between a simple
physical
need and nagging conscience, had insisted on staying at the bar all
afternoon, and in the end left for home, to Ollie's anger and disgust. He
had written her off, it seemed, until she telephoned him several weeks
ago.
Even since then, they had had to delay their arrangement because Ollie
had not come back from Cleveland as expected, and instead went on to two
other cities -Erica had forgotten where. But they were here now, and
Ollie was becoming impatient.
He asked, "How about it, baby
.”

Suddenly she remembered, with a mixture of wryness and sadness, a maxim
on Adam's office wall: DO IT
TODAY
!
"All right," Erica said. She pushed back her chair and stood up.
Walking beside Ollie, down the inn's attractive, picture-hung
corridors-where many others had walked before her on the same kind of
assignation--she felt her heart beat faster, and tried not to hurry. Several hours later, thinking about it calmly, Erica decided the
experience was neither as good as she had hoped for, nor as bad as she
had feared. In a basic, here-and-now way, she had found sensual
satisfaction; in another way, which was harder to define, she hadn't.
She was sure, though, of two things. First, such satisfaction as she
had known was not lasting, as it had been in the old days when Adam was
an aggressive lover and the effect of their love-making stayed with
her, sometimes for days. Second, she would not repeat the experience-at
least, with Ollie.
In such a mood, from the Queensway Inn in late afternoon, Erica went
shopping in Birmingham. She bought a few things she needed, and some
others she didn't, but most of her pleasure
came from w
hat proved to be an exciting, ch
allenging game-removing items
from stores without payment. She did so three times, with increasing
confidence, acquiring an ornamental clothes hanger, a tube of shampoo,
and-especial triumph I-an expensive fountain pen.
Erica's earlier experience, when she had purloined the ounce of Nore
ll
,
had showed that successful shoplifting was not difficult. The requirements, she decided now, were intelligence, quickness, and cool
nerve. She felt proud of herself for demonstrating that she possessed
all three.