Nebraska

  She opened the door and looked at me as if she were about to expire. I sagged against the door frame, done in by her skeleton. “I've got this story,” I said, and explained everything about it. I was stuck, I said. I had problems.

  Mutt said, “Well, it's not a story really, is it? I mean, it doesn't have a plot. It's just comments, you know?”

  “Yeah, that's what I'm stuck on.”

  She thought a moment. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a portrait of Emily Dickinson on it. She said, “Maybe you ought to have this guy decide not to hassle it any longer. Maybe you could make him content with his portion in life.”

  I must have sagged a little farther down the door frame.

  “I mean, maybe what you should say is that other worlds are pretty much identical when you get down to the nitty-gritty. Like, if one's screwed up, it could be they all are. That's what science fiction's all about, isn't it?”

  I was rather mute for a minute.

  She threw some bleached hair off her forehead. “Maybe you should ask the kid. Intergalactic stuff makes me cross-eyed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I'll do that.”

  I tramped up the stairs to the kid's room, opened the door, and stood over his breathing, brushing his bangs away. They're trying to teach him to float. The girl instructor stands beside him in the pool, he flops forward and sinks like a stone. “Bravo!” she yells. “Just like a jellyfish!” The kid bursts to the surface wiping his eyes and coughing.

  “Kid,” I whispered. “Kid.”

  “Mister Sand Man?” he asked.

  I switched on the clown light.

  “Oh.”

  I sat with him slumped and drowsing under my arm.

  I told him I was writing a story about an astronaut trapped on a planet in outer space. (I shook the kid awake.) The astronaut didn't like the planet he came from very much (I pinched the kid) but doubted he'd like anyplace else much better. I told him it seemed to me I had a lot of options for my hero but couldn't decide on which.

  The kid groggily told me he'd seen a movie like that. The guy eventually leads an attack on his former planet but gets zapped by a laser beam aimed by a girlfriend he'd jilted. There was also a TV show once in which the guy went through all those troubles only to find out that it was just another in a series of preflight tests; the scientists wanted to study his reactions to various stimuli. The kid said a similar story had the Earthling become king of a planet where he ruled magnificently for eons, then foreign robots attacked and by mistake took the top man as a specimen of the culture. The hook is, when he's on board the transport, he asks where he's going and one of the robots answers, “Earth.” In still another, the guy finds out this is his punishment for a crime he thought he'd gotten away with. The kid went on describing other versions. It was apparently a common theme.

  “Thanks, kid,” I said. “You've been a lot of help.”

  I tucked him in.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, kid?”

  “I think you should make it happy.”

  I patted him on the head.

  I went to the room where my wife was biting her pillow. I brushed my teeth, unbuttoned my natty shirt, and washed in cold water, whistling something catchy. My watch glowed in the dark. It was midnight. If she asked what time it was, I'd say, “Tomorrow.” That always sounds terrific. Tomorrow I'll make my hero content with his portion in life. I'll give him two chairs, two pillows, a double bed, two van Goghs on the wall. Then maybe I'll give him somebody to love. Maybe I'll give him Mutt. Tomorrow I'll make it happy.

  Susannah, don't you cry.

  Can I Just Sit Here for a While?

  He was called a traveler, and that was another thing he loved about the job. If you wanted the hairy truth, Rick Bozack couldn't put his finger on any one thing that made his job such a clincher. It might have been his expense account or the showroom smell of his leased Oldsmobile or the motel rooms—God, the motel rooms: twin double beds, a stainless-steel Kleenex dispenser, and a bolted-down color TV topped with cellophane-wrapped peppermints that the maid left after she cleaned. He loved the coffee thermos the waitress banged down on his table at breakfast, he loved the sweat on his ice-water glass, he loved the spill stains blotting through the turned-over check, and he loved leaving tips of twenty percent even when the girl was slow and sullen and splashed coffee on his newspaper. His sales, his work, his vocation, that was all bonus. The waiting, the handshakes, the lunches, The Close, jeepers, that was just icing.

  If you asked Rick Bozack what he did for a living, he wouldn't come out with a song and dance about selling expensive incubators and heart and kidney machines for Doctor's Service Supply Company, Indianapolis. Not off the top of his head he wouldn't. Instead he'd flash on a motel lobby with all the salesmen in their sharp, tailored suits, chewing sugarless gum, while the sweet thing behind the counter rammed a roller over a plastic credit card and after-shaves mixed in the air. It was goofy when he thought about it, but walking out through those fingerprinted glass doors, throwing his briefcase onto the red bucket seat, scraping the ice off the windshield, and seeing all those other guys out there in the parking lot with him, scowling, chipping away at their wipers, blowing on their fingers, sliding their heater control to defrost, Rick felt like a team player again, like he was part of a fighter squadron.

  What was this Death of a Salesman crap? he'd say. What were they feeding everybody about the hard life on the road? You'd have to be zonkers not to love it.

  Then Rick had a real turnaround. A college buddy said something that really clobbered him. Rick and his wife, Jane, had returned to South Bend, his home, for the Notre Dame alumni picnic, where they collided with people they hadn't even thought of in years. They sat all night at a green picnic table with baked beans and hot dogs and beer, laughing so much that their sides hurt, having a whale of a time. They swapped pictures of their kids, and Rick drew a diagram of an invention he might go ahead and get patented, a device that would rinse out messy diapers for daddies right there in the toilet bowl. He told all comers that he was thirty-four years old and happily married, the father of two girls, and he woke up every morning with a sapsucker grin on his face. Then Mickey Hogan, this terrific buddy in advertising who had just started up his own firm, said you don't know the thrill of business until it's your own, until every sale you make goes directly into your pocket and not to some slob back in the home office.

  This guy Hogan wasn't speaking de profundis or anything, but Rick was really blown away by what he said. It was one of those fuzzy notions you carry with you for years, and then it's suddenly there, it's got shape and bulk and annoying little edges that give you a twinge whenever you sit down. That's how it was. He and Jane talked about it all the way back to their three-bedroom apartment on Rue Monet in Indianapolis. “How much of what I earn actually makes my wallet any fatter? What do I have besides a measly income? When am I going to get off my duff and get something going on my own?”

  Jane was great about it. She said she loved him and she'd go along with whatever his choice was, but she had watched him waste himself at Doctor's Service Supply Company. She knew he was a great salesman, but he had all the earmarks of being a fantastic manager too. She had been hoping he'd come up with something like this but didn't want to influence Rick one way or the other. “I don't want to push” were her words.

  Jane's enthusiasm put a fire under Rick, and he began checking things out on the sly: inventory costs, car leases and office-space rentals, government withholding tax and social-security regulations, and though it seemed dopey and juvenile, the couple decided that they'd both stop smoking, watch their caloric intake, avoid between-meal treats, and exercise regularly. Sure, they were mainly concerned with hashing out this new business venture, but how far afield was it to take stock of yourself, your physical condition, to discipline yourself and set goals? That was Rick's thinking, and Jane thought he was “right on the money.”

  The two of them let a half gallon
of ice cream melt down in the sink, got out the scale and measuring tape, bought matching running outfits, and they took turns with Tracy and Connor at breakfast while one of them jogged around the block.

  And Rick was no slouch when he was out on the road. He jogged in cold cities and on gravel county roads and in parking lots of Holiday Inns. Other salesmen would run toward him in wristbands and heavy sweatshirts, and Rick would say, “How's it going?”

  “How's it going?” they'd reply.

  Rick imagined millions of joggers saying the same thing to each other. It felt as good as the days of the Latin Mass, when you knew it was just as incomprehensible in Dusseldorf, West Germany, as it was in Ichikawa, Japan.

  On one of his business trips to South Bend, Rick jogged on the cinder track of Notre Dame's great football stadium, where who should he see but Walter Herdzina, a terrific buddy of his! Rick was flabbergasted. The guy had aged—who hadn't?—but he remembered Rick like it was only yesterday, even recited some wild dorm incidents that Rick had put the eraser to. The two men ran an eight-minute mile together and leaned on their knees and wiped their faces on their sweatshirts, and after they had discussed pulse rates, refined sugar, and junk foods, Walter said, “You ought to move back to South Bend.”

  Jane, bless her heart, kept bringing up South Bend too. It was smack in the middle of his territory and a natural home base, but he had never really thought about South Bend much before the alumni picnic. When the company hired Rick, they had assumed he'd want to settle in a giant metropolis like Indianapolis so he could have some jam-packed leisure time, and he had never mentioned his roots farther north. And it wasn't unusual for Rick to spend two or three days in South Bend and not give anyone except his mom a call. But now there seemed to be a come-as-you-are feeling, a real hometown warmth he hadn't noticed before.

  In September he closed a deal with a gynecological clinic that would earn him six thousand dollars, what salesmen called the Cookies. But instead of immediately driving home for a wingding celebration, Rick decided to make some business phone contacts—thank yous, actually—and ride out his hot streak, see what fell in his lap. He stopped in the lobby of a downtown bank building to use its plush telephone booths, then, on an impulse, he asked to see someone in the business-loan department. A receptionist said a loan vice president could see him and Rick walked into his office and—how's this for a coincidence?—the vice president was Walter Herdzina! You could've knocked Rick over with a feather. “Boy,” he said, “you're really going places.”

  Walter smirked. “They'll probably wise up and have me sweeping the floors before my pen's out of ink.”

  Rick spoke off the top of his head. He had been with Doctor's Service Supply Company, Indianapolis, for six years, after three years with Johnson & Johnson. He'd built up a pretty good reputation in Indiana and southern Michigan, and now and then got offers from industries in Minnesota and California to switch over to a district manager's job and a cozy boost in salary. What he wanted to know was, could a banker like Walter, with years of experience and a shrewd eye for markets and money potential, give him a good solid reason why he shouldn't go into business for himself ? Crank up his own distributorship?

  Walter Herdzina glanced at his watch and suggested they go out for lunch.

  Rick figured that meant You gotta be kidding. "This is pretty off-the-wall,” he said. “I really haven't had time to analyze the pros and cons or work up any kind of prospectus.”

  Walter put a heavy hand on his shoulder. “How about us talking about it at lunch?”

  Mostly they talked about rugby. It had been a maiden sport at Notre Dame when they played it, but now it was taking the college by storm. Why? Because when you got right down to it, men liked seeing what they were made of, what sort of guts they had.

  “Lessons like that stick,” Walter said. “I get guys coming to me with all kinds of schemes, packages, brilliant ideas. And I can tell right away if they were ever athletes. If they never really hurt themselves to win at something, well, I'm a little skeptical.”

  Walter ordered the protein-rich halibut; Rick had the dieter's salad.

  Rick told the banker traveler stories. He told him anecdotes about salesmanship. He had sold insurance and mutual funds in the past and, for one summer, automobiles, and he had discovered a gimmick—well, not that, a tool—that hadn't failed him yet. It was called the Benjamin Franklin Close.

  “Say you get a couple who're wavering over the purchase of a car. You take them into your office and close the door and say, ‘Do you know what Benjamin Franklin would do in a case like this?’ That's a toughie for them so you let them off the hook. You take out a tablet and draw a line down the center of the page, top to bottom. ‘Benjamin Franklin,’ you say, ‘would list all the points in favor of buying this car, and then he'd list whatever he could against it. Then he'd total everything up.’ You're the salesman, you handle the benefits. You begin by saying, ‘So okay, you've said your old car needs an overhaul. That's point one. You've said you want a station wagon for the kids; that's point two. You've told me that particular shade of brown is your favorite.’ And so on. Once you've written down your pitches, you flip the tablet around and hand across the pen. ‘Okay,’ you tell them. ‘Now Benjamin Franklin would write down whatever he had against buying that car.’ And you're silent. As noiseless as you can be. You don't say boo to them. They stare at that blank side of the paper and they get flustered. They weren't expecting this at all. Maybe the wife will say, ‘We can't afford the payments,’ and the husband will hurry up and scribble that down. Maybe he'll say, ‘It's really more car than we need for city driving.’ He'll glance at you for approval, but you won't even nod your head. You've suddenly turned to stone. Now they're really struggling. They see two reasons against and twelve reasons for. You decide to help them out. You say, ‘Was it the color you didn't like?’ Of course not, you dope. You put that down as point three in favor. But the wife will say, ‘Oh, no, I like that shade of brown a lot.’ You sit back in your chair and wait. You wait four or five minutes if you have to, until they're really uncomfortable, until you've got them feeling like bozos. Then you take the tablet from them and make a big show of making the tally. They think you're an idiot, anyway; counting out loud won't surprise them. And when you've told them they have twelve points in favor, two points against, you sit back in your chair and let that sink in. You say, ‘What do you think Benjamin Franklin would do in this situation?’ You've got them cornered and they know it and they can't think of a way out because there's only one way and they rarely consider it. Pressed against the wall like that the only solution is for the man or woman to say, ‘I—just—don't—feel—like—it—now.’ All the salesman can do then is recapitulate. If they want to wait, if the vibes don't feel right, if they don't sense it's the appropriate thing to do, they've got him. ‘I just don't feel like it now.’ There's no way to sell against that.”

  Walter grinned. He thought Rick might have something. Even in outline his distributorship had real sex appeal.

  So that afternoon Rick drove south to Indianapolis with his CB radio turned down so he wouldn't have all the chatter, and he picked up a sitter for his two little roses and took Jane out for prime rib, claiming he wanted to celebrate the six-thousand-dollar commission. But after they had toasted the Cookies, he sprang the deal on her, explained everything about the lunch and Walter's positive reaction, how it all fit together, fell into place, shot off like a rocket. And what it all boiled down to was, they could move up to South Bend, buy a house, and in two months, three months, a year, maybe he'd have his very own medical instruments and supplies company.

  Jane was ecstatic. Jane was a dynamo. While Rick did the dog-and-pony show for his boss and got him to pick up the tab for a move to the heart of Rick's territory, Jane did the real work of selecting their two-story home and supervising the movers. Then Rick walked Tracy and little Connor from house to house down the new block in South Bend, introducing himself and his daug
hters to their new neighbors. There were five kids the same age on just one side of the street! Rick imagined Tracy and Connor as gorgeous teenagers at a backyard party with hanging lanterns and some of Rick's famous punch, and maybe two thousand four hundred boys trying to get a crack at his girls.

  He drank iced tea with a stockbroker who crossed his legs and gazed out the window as Tracy tried to feed earthworms to his spaniel.

  “Plenty of playmates,” said Rick.

  “This place is a population bomb.”

  “Yeah, but I love kids, don't you? I get home from a week on the road and there's nothing I like better than to roll on the floor a few hours with them.”

  The man spit ice cubes back into his glass. “But your kids are girls!” the man said.

  Rick shrugged. “I figure my wife will tell me when I should stop it.”

  What'd he think, that Rick would be copping feels, pawing them through their training bras? Maybe South Bend had its creepy side, after all. Maybe a few of these daddies could bear some scrutiny.

  Rick gave a full report to his wife, Jane, as they sat down with beers on the newly carpeted floor of the living room, telling her about all the fascinating people he had met in just a casual swing down the block. Jane said, “I don't know how you can just go knocking on doors and introducing yourself. I can't think of a single thing to say when I'm with strangers.”

  Rick said, “That's one of the things that comes with being a traveler. You just assume you're welcome until someone tells you otherwise.”

  But how did that square with the uneasiness Rick Bozack felt with his old chum Mickey Hogan? A year ago Mickey had been a high-priced copywriter, but then he had gone out on a limb to take over a smaller house that had been strictly an art and layout jobber, and the gamble had paid off in spades. Mickey turned the firm into a real comer in South Bend, what they call in the trade a “hot shop.”