Heat

Chapter 10

Jesse strolled down Main Street, taking stock of the town. The place was still overcast, but the light was becoming brighter; the clouds would burn off soon.

His first impression of Main Street was of something out of the twenties or thirties, and for a while, he couldn’t figure out why. Certainly, it was very clean and neat, with every storefront looking freshly painted, but that wasn’t it. Finally, it struck him. Although it was daylight, he saw that there were no electric signs, just the old-fashioned, hand-lettered kind. It was as though the business district was constructed and maintained to some very strict, but out-of-date design code.

He stopped in front of a small shop. The windows were soaped over, and above, on the facade, there were holes in the brickwork where a sign had been removed. He had noticed it because it was the only vacant storefront on the street, and at a time when most small town businesses were struggling to stay open, competing with the new malls. Some lettering on the glass front door caught his eye: “J. Goldman, Jeweler and Watchmaker,” it read.

Jesse continued his walk, stopping in the drugstore for a Boise newspaper. To his surprise, there was a soda fountain taking up one wall of the store. He hadn’t seen one since high school. A wave of nostalgia washed over him, a memory of sharing a strawberry soda with a teenaged girl — two straws. And even in those days the soda fountain had been mostly an anachronism.

“Good morning,” the druggist said as he rang up Jesse’s quarter.

“Good morning,” Jesse replied.

“New in town?” The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Norm Parsons.”

Jesse shook the man’s hand. “Jesse Barron. I’m so new I might not even be here tomorrow.”

“Sorry to hear it,” the druggist said. “We need new blood all the time. Fine place to live, raise a family, St. Clair.”

“I can believe it,” Jesse said, waving goodbye with his newspaper. He took a right at the corner and walked through a residential neighborhood. The houses were mostly Victorian or that most American of houses in the middle third of the twentieth century, bungalows. A new house was going up on the corner, and that, too, was an old-fashioned bungalow.

“Time warp,” Jesse said aloud. Each house was neatly painted, and its front lawn was closely clipped. He couldn’t spot a weed in a flower bed, not anywhere. He stopped on the corner and looked up and down Elm Street. “Jesus Christ,” he said aloud to himself. “Isn’t this where Andy Hardy used to live?”

Back on Main Street Jesse was waiting to cross at what was apparently the town’s only traffic light when a patrol car pulled up next to him, and Pat Casey got out. “How’s it going, Jesse?”

“Not bad. This is a real pretty town you’ve got here.”

“Glad you think so. Thinking of sticking around?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse replied, looking up and down the street. “You sure this isn’t a movie set?”

Casey laughed. “We like it that way. You stick around, and you’ll get to like it, too.”

“I sure like the soda fountain down at the drugstore,” Jesse said. “I haven’t seen one since I was a kid.”

“Yeah, and Norm whips up a mean milk shake or banana split.”

“Mmmmm,” Jesse moaned.

“I spoke to your sheriff back in Toccoa, Georgia,” Casey said.

Jesse let his eyebrows rise. “You’re a thorough man, Pat.”

“I am that.”

“How is old Tom?” Jesse asked.

“He seemed well. Had a good opinion of you.”

“He sort of spanked me once, a long time ago. We got along pretty good after that.”

“That’s what he said. You interested in some work?”

“Might be.”

“You make up your mind, you drive out the road there about a mile, and you’ll come to St. Clair Wood Products, our local industry. Ask for Herman Muller; tell him I sent you.”

“Thanks, Pat, I’ll keep it in mind.”

Casey took a small notebook from his shirt pocket, scribbled something on a page and tore it out. “The motel gets expensive after a while. If you want a nice room and home cooking, try this lady, and—”

“Tell her you sent me?” Jesse laughed.

“Just part of the service,” Casey said, then got back into his car and drove away.

Jesse read the notebook page. “Mrs. Weather by, 11 Elm Street,” it said. The street where Andy Hardy used to live.

Jesse pulled the pickup into a large parking lot, got out and surveyed St. Clair Wood Products. A long, low building sat fifty yards from the highway, and the noise of machinery could be heard from inside. Jesse found an entrance that said “Offices” and went in.

“Can I help you?” a middle-aged woman behind a desk asked.

“I wonder if I could see Mr. Herman Muller?” Jesse asked. “It’s about a job. Chief Casey sent me.”

She looked at him a moment without reacting, then said, “Have a seat; I’ll see if Mr. Muller’s available.”

Jesse sat down and watched as she walked into an adjoining, glass-enclosed office and spoke to an elderly man who was sitting at a large, rolltop desk. He nodded and said something to her, then she returned.

She took a sheet of paper from her desk and handed it to Jesse with a pen. “Fill this out, please, then Mr. Muller will see you.”

Jesse filled out the application, taking time to describe his new job background, then he was shown into Herman Muller’s office.

Muller stood up to greet him, a lean, tan seventy-year-old, Jesse figured. Muller shook his hand and waved him to a sturdy oak chair. He took the application and read it slowly before he spoke. “Nice to meet you, Jesse,” he said when he had finished.

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse replied. “It’s nice to meet you. Pat Casey said there might be some work going here.”

“Might be,” Muller replied. “I see you’ve been in the construction business.”

“That’s right,” Jesse said. “Had my own business until the recession came along.”

“We’ve been lucky around here; in fact, we just got a nice new contract for chipboard.”

“I read about it in the local paper,” Jesse said.

“Were you good at running a business?” Muller asked.

“I think I was,” Jesse said. “I never could seem to get together enough capital to bid on the big jobs, but I had a lot of happy customers on the little ones.”

“How many people worked for you?”

“I only had three, full time, but if we got a nice job I’d have a dozen or so at work, plus the subcontractors.”

“How’d you get along with them?”

“Nobody ever quit me, except for more money than I could pay.”

Muller glanced down at Jesse’s hands. “Looks like you’ve done some hard work before.”

Jesse looked at his own hands and saw what Muller meant. They were gnarled and scarred, and Muller didn’t know that they’d gotten that way from beating up other men. “I guess I’ve done my share,” he said. “I started working for my daddy when I was twelve, and I never stopped. In fact, right now is the only time I’ve ever been out of a job.”

“You got any family?”

“I lost my family in a car wreck,” Jesse said, avoiding Muller’s eyes.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Muller said. “I’m a widower myself, and I lost my only grandson not long ago.” He rubbed a hand quickly over his eyes. “Let me tell you how we work around here. Everybody starts at the bottom. I’ve got a force of five hundred and two people, and everybody started at the bottom. I’ve never hired a manager or a foreman; I’ve always promoted from within. I’ll offer you the worst job I’ve got around here, feeding the chipper; pays seven dollars an hour. You give me a day’s work for a day’s pay, and I’ll give you something better to do before long. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds all right to me,” Jesse said, managing a smile.

“Good. Let me take you down to the floor and I’ll introduce you to Harley Waters; he’ll be your foreman.” Muller rose and started for the door, then stopped. Two men had just come into his outer office, men wearing suits; one of them was carrying a briefcase. “Uh, oh, looks like I’ll have to talk to these gentlemen,” he said. He opened the door. “Agnes, this is Jesse Barron, he’s going to work on the chipper. Will you call Harley and ask him to come up here and get Jesse?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Muller,” Agnes said. She turned to Jesse. “Have a seat; Harley’ll be here in a minute.” She picked up a phone and tapped in a four-digit number.

Herman Muller waved the two men into his office, followed them in and shut the door.

Jesse noticed he didn’t shake their hands. He watched as the two men sat down, and one of them opened his briefcase. He removed a thick sheaf of paper and handed it to Muller, who took it and began reading. The second man offered Muller a pen, which the old man ignored. Muller opened a desk drawer, dropped the papers into it and turned back to the men.

“I’ll think about it,” Jesse thought he said.

The two men sat, staring at Muller, saying nothing. One of them said something briefly, then they got up and left Muller’s office.

“Good morning to you, Mr. Ruger,” Agnes said as they passed her desk.

“Morning,” Ruger replied, and then they were gone.

A man in a hard hat walked into the office from the direction of the factory.

“This is Jesse Barron, Harley,” Agnes said. “Jesse, this is Harley Waters.”

Jesse shook the man’s hand.

“Follow me,” Waters said. “I’ll show you around.”

“That would be fine,” Jesse replied.

“When can you start?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“That’s good; I can use you.”

Ruger, Jesse thought. That’s Coldwater’s other right-hand man, and Herman Muller didn’t seem too pleased to see him.

The machinery was noisy, and Jesse was given ear protectors, a kind of headset without electronics. Harley Waters started at the beginning of the chipboard production line and walked him through to the end, shouting comments over the noise, while Jesse nodded his understanding.

When they were finished, Waters walked him to the car park exit. “This is a good place to work,” he said, “because Herman Muller is a good man to work for. He built this business from nothing, designed a lot of the equipment himself, picked every man who works here. He must have liked you, or he wouldn’t have hired you, not even when he needs people bad, because of this new contract.”

“I liked him, too,” Jesse said.

“Good; I’ll see you in the morning,” Waters replied. “We work seven to five Monday through Thursday, and we take Friday off. It’s a good deal.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Jesse said. “See you tomorrow.”

He got into the pickup and drove back to town, wondering what this man, Ruger, was up to with Herman Muller. As he drove back into town, the sun broke through. On Main Street, Jesse stopped the truck, got out and looked up. Right behind the business district, a sheer mountain wall rose a good five hundred feet. It looked as if it might fall on the town.

Wow, Jesse said to himself. With the sky overcast, he had never known it was there.