The Birth of a Man

The Birth of a Man

Matthew Talas

Will sat in his car listening to the news.  The announcer was explaining how the rising unemployment rate was predicted to impact retail sales during the holiday shopping season.  “No kidding,” Will muttered as he turned off the radio.  It was the first day and he wanted to be sure he knew how to get to the job, so he wound up arriving about a half hour early.  He was killing time before he walked into the warehouse.  Through the windshield he could see that the rain had turned to snow and was beginning to make the ground white.

He was working for the temp agency again.  He had been laid off from his full-time job at Home Depot in September.  Before that he worked at a lumber yard in town where he managed the shipping and receiving department.  At the lumber yard he was his own boss and the pay was good.  They had decent health insurance and annual bonuses, but when the big box hardware stores opened just outside of town the small family-owned lumber yard couldn’t compete and eventually closed.  So, he took a big pay cut and went to work for the store that had probably put the lumber yard out of business. 

His wife Melinda didn’t work, at least not for pay.  She worked taking care of the family and raising their two boys.  Brady was the oldest and was in his last year of high school.  Hank was a sophomore.  Over the years Melinda had talked about working.  She took a job in the same elementary school that the boys attended, working in the cafeteria for a couple of years.  But when the boys both moved on to the middle school she stopped working at the elementary school.  She applied at the middle school, but a job never opened up.  Will got that promotion to the manager of shipping and receiving at the lumber yard and she never looked for a job again.

Will’s thoughts drifted back to the last date night he could remember with Melinda.  It was dinner at the Olive Garden.  The food wasn’t bad, and you knew what you were going to spend when you went there.  She had the eggplant and he ordered the basil chicken.  “We don’t want them taking care of us when we’re older, do we?” Will asked her.  She hadn’t touched her eggplant.

“No.  I suppose not.”

Will dug into his chicken.  “Then it’s settled,” he said.  “They can take out student loans.  Look, that’s what the house is for.  If they go to the state school and get a degree in something useful they can live at home rent free for as long as they need to pay off the loans.  I mean, it’s not like they’re going to major in art history at Yale, is it?”

Melinda poked at her eggplant.  “No.  I suppose not.”

“Now you’re pouting.”  He put down his fork and knife.  “I thought we agreed to this.”  Will always consulted Melinda on the finances, but when someone had to make a tough decision the responsibility fell to Will.  Will worked for the paychecks and Melinda worked for the family and they were both happy with the arrangement.  Their friends all had two paychecks coming in, but they hid their envy when they heard about the vacations to Cancun or listened to stories about a neighbor’s new boat.  They had decided to forfeit some material wealth in exchange for family life and never regretted it.

Will looked at the clock on the car’s radio.  Still fifteen minutes before he needed to walk inside.    The snowflakes were getting bigger.

The retirement fund stopped growing when he left the lumber yard, but they had not needed to dip into it yet.  Instead they downgraded the cable package, dropped the gym memberships and stopped going out on date night.  They were able to pay the mortgage and the car payment and put food on the table, so for the time things seemed okay.  Will told Melinda that the customer service job at the hardware store was just temporary and soon enough something better would come along.

At Home Depot, Will was a customer service rep answering the phones and running the help desk while wearing an orange apron.  When they decided to downsize the customer service desk and get rid of his position, the store offered him a job working out on the floor in the lighting department.  He turned it down.  Working at Home Depot was hard enough, but at least at the customer service desk he was managing something and was expected to think for himself.  Out on the floor was a demotion too far, he thought.  He would still qualify for unemployment pay since they were forcing him to switch jobs, so when they ask he declined and started collecting.  When he told Melinda he had been laid off he left out the part about the job offer.

The unemployment checks were about half of what Will was earning at Home Depot.  They had just managed to pay off the car while the Home Depot checks were coming in and they discussed what they might do with the extra money, but the smaller unemployment checks more than accounted for the car payment.

When October came and Will had still not found a new job, he started taking temp jobs for extra money while he was job hunting.  The state let him earn a few dollars part time and it did not impact his unemployment checks.

When Thanksgiving came he talked to the temp agency about more hours.  The weekly pay would be more than unemployment allowed without docking his unemployment check, but it would also extend the unemployment benefits.  Will figured the full-time jobs were harder to find during the holiday season, so he would work and report the money instead.  The state deducted whatever he earned over the limit and that extended his benefits.  These days, his finances were not about how much he was able to save.    Instead he counted the number of weeks he could keep paying the bills.  Extending the unemployment benefits out a few more weeks by working temp jobs would mean that he would make it until after the New Year when the job market would be better, he thought.

Today would be the first day working at a kitchen supply warehouse picking orders.  The temp agency told him it was for the holiday shopping season and would probably last three weeks.  Will was not looking forward to the work.  These temp jobs were all the same.  The work was usually easy, but it was boring and whether he was filling in for someone who had called in sick or was part of the staffing for the holiday rush, he was a low man in the organization and generally given the work the full-timers did not want.  He knew the worst part was at the beginning of the day.  Once he resigned to the drudgery and humiliation and settled in to the day ahead, things tended to move faster.

He rolled down the car window and reached out to open the door from the outside, wishing it was the passenger side that was broken instead.  A mixture of rain and snow fell through the open window as he grabbed the plastic bag holding his lunch from the passenger seat.  Will stepped out and headed towards the side entrance where a large sign reading EMPLOYEES pointed him.  Will thought the sign seemed more intended to steer temp employees away from the main entrance than it did to actually tell them where to go.

Once inside he joined a queue of other temp workers as they waited to have their names checked of a list.  At the front of the queue stood a woman holding a clipboard.  One by one, the workers gave their names to the woman and proceeded into the warehouse as she checked them off.  The warehouse was noisy.  Will could hear people yelling and the hum of electric engines propelling forklifts echoing off of the concrete floor and steel walls of the building.

The workers gathered quietly on the warehouse floor.  Will saw a time clock and a place to put his coat and then he noticed the break room where he found a place to stash his lunch.  As he returned to the group of temp workers Will could see that some people were already working in the warehouse.  Those must be the full-timers he thought as he listened to the beeping of a forklift driving in reverse.

When the last of the workers was checked off the list the woman with the clipboard walked to the front of the crowd and began her practiced speech, “Good morning.  My name is Susan.  I will be handling your timesheets.  To your right is the time clock.  I will clock you all in today at eight AM.  Going forward please punch in by eight AM, but no earlier than seven-forty-five.  At lunch you can find your card and clock out for your lunch break.  The break room is to your left with free coffee and some microwaves.  Lunch is thirty minutes.  Make sure you remember to clock back in after lunch.  There’s a ten-minute break before and after lunch.  You don’t need to clock out for the ten-minute breaks but please do not leave the building.  Are there any questions?”  Her tone indicated that questions were not expected, and the workers indicated their agreement by asking none.  “Good,” she said and then looked around and called, “Wagner?”

Will thought about how much he hated punching a clock.  It seemed more like a way of controlling and asserting dominance over the workers than a practical way of keeping track of hours.

A man holding a piece of paper in his hand walked to the front of the crowd.  Will guessed he was in his early twenties.  The young man stood in front of the workers and began his part of the morning presentation, “My name is Wagner.  I will be running the show back on the floor.  This is a pick ticket.”  He held the paper in his hand up high for everyone to see.  The workers gazed up at the paper without moving their heads or changing the expressions on their faces.  Will gazed up and feigned interest in the pick ticket.  He had seen pick tickets before and this one looked no different.   Everyone paid polite attention to Wagner as he continued with his instructions.

Will’s thoughts drifted off to how he probably did not like Wagner.  It was the tone in his voice, Will thought.  He was barking instructions on how to find items in a warehouse as if he were talking to a group of children.  Will meditated for a moment and reminded himself not to let Wagner get to him.  It wouldn’t make the day go any quicker.

Wagner concluded his instructions with a warning, “At the end of each day we will be doing a count of how many pick tickets each of you finishes.  If you are not able to process these fast enough we may need to ask you not to come back.”  The crowd of workers looked back with disinterest.  “Okay, that’s all I have.  Let’s move out back and get started.”

The workers moved towards the work area.  There were empty pallets that had to be filled on one side of the warehouse and rows of racks, three shelves high, extending the length of the warehouse on the other side.  The racks were filled with pots and pans and all the trinkets and tools a would-be connoisseur could ask for to cook in a modern kitchen.  Will grabbed a pick ticket and proceeded out into the rows of inventory to start picking.  He filled a cart with salad spinners, espresso machines and Christmas themed cookie cutters and brought the items back to stack on the waiting pallets.

Standing at the pallets, Wagner motioned to a full-time worker whose job consisted mostly of sitting in a parked forklift and pointed at a pallet that was stacked high with inventory.  The driver brought the forklift to the pallet, lifted it and brought it to a large stretch wrap machine located off to the side to prepare the pallet for shipping.  The machine had a platform where the driver set the pallet.  The driver got off the forklift and pulled cling wrap from a giant roll attached to the machine and wrapped it around the stacked palette just enough to get it started.  Then he pressed a button and the pallet turned in place until it was wrapped in a few layers of plastic.  When that was done he cut the plastic from the roll, returned to the forklift and brought the prepared pallet to where the trucks were being loaded.  Then he returned to his parking spot and waited to repeat the task when called.

As the stack on each pallet grew higher Wagner could be heard barking instructions on how to build the pallet up so it would not tip over. “You need to make sure the items are packed tight!” he yelled out.  Will wondered why he was yelling.  “Look at this!  Everyone, come here and look at this!”  Wagner called all the workers back to a pallet that was apparently an example of how not to stack a pallet.  “Look, look here.”  Wagner pointed to some empty space between some boxes containing toasters.  “This space needs to be filled.  You have to pack these pallets tight!”  Wagner proceeded to move the boxed toasters around and found a cheese grater from the other side of the pallet that fit into the space.  He then put the boxed toasters back and announced “There!”  The workers stared back and waited.  “All right, back to work.”

The morning wore on, broken up by the ten-minute break that was too short to finish a cup of coffee and Wagner’s persistent complaining about the way the pallets were being stacked.  When lunch time came Will grabbed his lunch and a cup of black coffee and sat at an empty table.  As Will unpacked his lunch one of the other workers placed a cup of coffee across from him and said, “How ya doing?”

“Good, and you?” Will replied.  The man looked a little older than Will, with gray hair tied back in a pony tail and a short messy beard.  He placed a smaller cooler on the table and sat down.

“I’m Chuck.”  Chuck stuck out his hand.

“Will.”  They shook hands.  “You from the temp agency?” Will asked.

“Yup.  Just started today.  You?”  Chuck began unpacking his lunch.

“I’ve been with them for a few weeks,” Will said.  “Are you working with Ben Diamond?”  Ben was the headhunter who had placed Will at this and the previous temp jobs.

“Yes, Ben.  He told me this was going to last three weeks.”  Chuck continued, “I was in Florida.  Just came back north to spend the holidays with my sister and her family.”

“Kind of backwards, isn’t it?” Will asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t people usually spend the winter in Florida?”  Will pushed on even though he wasn’t really interested in the answer.

“Oh, yeah.  I don’t really stick to a schedule.  She gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come up, so I did.”

Now Will was getting curious, “How do you just drop everything and drive north from Florida?”

“Easy.  I don’t own anything I can’t fit in my van.”

“You live in a van?”  Will asked.  He leaned in a bit to hear Chuck’s answer over the noise in the lunchroom.

“Sometimes.”  Chuck said.  “Sometimes I rent an apartment if I can get it month-to-month.  No leases.  That’s usually in the off-season though.  I’m probably going to rent a place down on the beach through the New Year.  My sister says I can stay with her, but the place is kind of small and when I get sick of her kids I like to be able to leave.  That’s why I’m working here – making some rent money.”

“What do you do in the summer?” Will asked.

Chuck smiled and stirred his coffee trying to dissolve the lumps of powdered creamer floating on the surface.  He gave up and took a sip.  Setting the cup down he said, “Whatever I want.”  A smile flashed across his face.  “Rents are higher in the summer, so I usually live out of the van.  Boondocking.”

“Boondocking?”  Will put is sandwich down.

“Free camping.  I drive around, look for a good spot, and stay there for as long as I want – or as long as I think I can get away with it.”

“Are you married?”  Will felt uncomfortable for asking.

“Used to be.  No kids.  Just an ex-wife.  She had different plans than me.”

“I know how that works.”  Will took a bit of his sandwich.

Chuck grinned and stirred his coffee.  “One day I left the house to put gas in the car and I just kept driving.  A couple of years later we finalized the divorce, but that’s how it started.  I just left the house one day and didn’t go back.”

Will did not want to ask any more personal questions, but he wanted to know more about living in the van and on the road.  “So you’re going to rent a place on the beach?”  The beach was a few miles to the east.  Will lived outside of town and the beach was another two miles across the marsh.  It was packed with tourists during the summer but once Labor Day came the place emptied out.

“Yup.  The apartments are mostly empty this time of year.  They’re begging people to stay, so the rents are cheap.  You gotta be out before Memorial Day though.  That’s when the rents go back up.  They usually want you out by May first.  That gives them enough time to evict you before the tourist season starts, if they need to.”

The two men finished their lunch while Will listened to Chuck’s stories about living on the road.  Chuck didn’t like staying in parking lots.  He told Will about the time he was kicked out of a parking lot in Daytona Beach by the police, and another time, also in a parking lot, when someone tried to break into his van while he was sleeping in it.  If he needed to find a quick place to sleep, he preferred areas that were a mix of homes and businesses where it was easier for a strange van to blend in for the night.  Chuck promised to show Will has van that was parked outside after work.

After lunch Will grabbed his cart and started picking again.  Pallets were stacked, the forklift driver wrapped them in plastic, and the process continued until just before the afternoon break.  Will knew the break was coming up, so he was taking his time before heading back out into the warehouse when one of the pallets tipped over as the forklift driver tried to move it to the stretch wrap machine.  Boxes spilled across the concrete floor.  Wagner walked over to the pile of kitchen gadgets and appliances and yelled out, “Everyone, over here.  NOW!”  Will took his time and found a spot near the back of the group.  Wagner was yelling, “This is what I mean.”  He pointed at the pile to make sure they all saw it.  “How hard is it?  All you need to do is stack these boxes neatly, without any gaps, without making the pallet off balance.”  The forklift driver leaned forward on the steering wheel and watched with mild interest as Wagner continued, “It’s not rocket science folks.”  He placed his hands on his hips while shaking his head in disgust at the mess of boxes on the floor.

“You need to put someone in charge of building these pallets,” Will said.  He was sick of being yelled at by Wagner.  “The pickers are trying to get their tickets finished.  They don’t have time to stop and tear the pallet down and rebuild it every time it gets out of balance.”  As he said this, Will thought to himself that this would be a good job for Wagner and the forklift driver.

Wagner was quiet for a moment as he stared at Will.  The workers looked at Will and then looked back at Wagner.  “That’s what you will be doing as soon as you finish cleaning this mess,” Wagner shot back while pointing down at the boxes on the floor.

“I don’t think so,” Will said and he turned to walk away.  As he turned he almost bumped into Susan who he had not noticed standing behind him.  “Excuse me,” he said, and he continued towards the time clock wondering why he had opened his mouth.  He punched out and searched for his coat.

“Ready to look at the van?” Chuck said as he punched out too.

“What are you doing?” Will asked as he found his coat.

“Like I said before, I’m doing whatever I want.”  Chuck smiled.  “That kid’s a real jerk.  I probably wasn’t going to make it to the end of the week anyway.”

“I guess so.”  Will turned towards the exit door.  He wanted to leave the building before someone got the chance to tell him to leave.  He still had his pride.  When they went outside the sky was gray and there was snow on the ground a few inches deep.  The parking lot was filled with snow-covered cars.

“This way,” Chuck said.  “I parked my van out in the back.”  They walked towards what looked like a white utility van.  “It’s about ten years old.  Lots of miles on it, but they’re all highway miles.  Runs great, no rust, no complaints.”  Chuck found his keys in his pocket and opened the side door.  Snow fell from the roof of the van.

The outside looked like any other white utility van, but the inside was a full-blown camper. It had a bed, a sink, a stove and the walls were covered with paneling.  Near the back doors looked like a pile of laundry.  A plastic cup, a plate and a fork were in the sink.  “Nice!” Will said as he looked inside.

“There’s insulation behind the paneling.  I don’t run the heater, but I never get too cold as long as I have my sleeping bag.”  Chuck fixed a bit of carpet on the floor that had turned over.  “Summers are the worst though.  That’s when it gets hot.  No A/C in this so I need to keep the doors open and sometimes run a small fan.”  He pointed to fan mounted on the ceiling behind the driver’s seat.

“Well, I envy your freedom,” Will said.

“You could do the same thing.  All you need to do is leave your family and hit the road.”  There was that smile again.  Chuck reached under the passenger seat and grabbed a brush to clean the snow off the windows.  Will wondered if Chuck was joking or offering serious advice.

Will took one last look inside the van.  “Sounds simple,” he said.

“Simple, but not easy I suppose,” said Chuck as he started brushing the snow off the van’s windows.  When he finished he shook Will’s hand, walked around to the driver’s side door, unlocked it and climbed in.  The van started after a couple of attempts.  Chuck put it in gear and gave Will a quick wave through the freshly cleaned windshield.  Will stepped back and watched as Chuck and his van made their way out of the parking lot.

Will thought about what he would tell Melinda when he got home.  The temp work didn’t pay a lot, but it helped.  He thought about telling her the truth but changed his mind.  He grabbed the snow brush from the back of his car and started cleaning the snow off the windows while he thought about what he would tell her.

Will watched the scenery as he drove along the road that led out of town towards his house.  The snow clung thick to the branches of the trees and the road, still not plowed, ran quietly under the wheels of the car.  When he reached his house, he turned into the unshoveled driveway.  The street had been plowed leaving a snow bank along the front of the driveway that he had to drive through.  The wheels spun, and the car lurched to the side as he slid into the driveway.  The car was off the road, that was good enough.  He would figure out how to dig it out in the morning since he did not need to be at work.

“You’re early,” Melinda said as he entered the house.

Will could smell something cooking.  “They decided they didn’t need some of us.” Will said.  “Sent us home and told us not to come back.”  He looked through the kitchen door into the living room where he saw the two boys watching TV.  “Smells good!  What is it?”

“I thought you said it was for three weeks?”

“I did.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ll call the temp agency in the morning and find something else.”

Will felt a sense of relief when Melinda changed the subject, “We’re having meatloaf.  It should be ready in about a half an hour.”

“Can’t wait!” Will said as he left the kitchen.

After dinner Will watched TV with the boys.  It was one of those reality shows where a bunch of twenty-somethings live in a rent-free apartment at some hip location and complain about how miserable their lives are.  It looked like it was taking place in a house near a beach.  Will wondered which beach.

Each of the boys had his favorite cast member, but they both agreed on who the villain was.  She was one of the female cast members and was secretly flirting with two different male cast members.  The boys debated who she really liked, what her true motive may have been and whether they would date her.  Will wondered what the parents thought about their cast member children as he got up to go to bed.

Will lay in bed staring at the ceiling.  He thought about what Chuck had said, “All you need to do is leave your family and hit the road.”

Melinda entered the bedroom and sat on her side of the bed.  She removed her slippers, turned off the lamp next to the bed and slid under the covers.  “You quit, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Kind of,” Will said.  “I left before they could fire me.”  He was no good at keeping secrets from Melinda.  “Maybe we should sell the house.”

“Sell the house?  And live where?”  She sat up and turned on the light.

“I don’t know.  It was just an idea.”  He rolled over on his side, facing away from Melinda and decided not to tell her about Chuck’s van.

The next morning Will got up early, before Melinda and the boys, and made scrambled eggs and pancakes for breakfast.  No one in the house ever ate breakfast, at least not the kind of breakfast you eat sitting down at a table, but Will couldn’t sleep.  They were out of pancake syrup, but Will did not realize it until he had already made about a dozen pancakes.  He found an old jar of grape jelly in the refrigerator and decided he would use that instead.

Brady was the first one up.  He stumbled into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee.  Will hadn’t realized that Brady drank coffee.  “Good morning!” Will said.  “I made breakfast.”

Brady dumped a heaping spoon of sugar into his coffee cup.  “Breakfast?”  Brady looked at the frying pan sitting on the stove filled with scrambled eggs and the plate of pancakes next to it.  “I don’t eat breakfast,” he said as he dumped another spoon of sugar into his coffee.

“Sure you do!”  Will said as Brady retrieved a carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator.  “You used to love it when I made breakfast.”  Will watched as Brady poured half-and-half into his coffee cup like milk into a bowl of cereal.  He wondered how much coffee was in the cup.

“It looks great, but no thanks,” Brady said as he left the kitchen.

Will heard someone leaving the bathroom and guessed it was Hank.  “Hey!  How ‘bout some breakfast?” Will shouted.  Will grabbed the frying pan from the stove top as he heard the footsteps coming down the hall.

“Breakfast?”  Hank stood in the doorway looking at the pile of food on the stove.  Will held the pan filled with scrambled eggs up to Hank’s nose.  Hank recoiled slightly.

“Sure,” Hank said, and sat at the table.

Will made two plates of eggs and pancakes and brought them to the table.  He placed the grape jelly down and sat across from Hank.  “We’re out of pancake syrup.  Use jelly instead.”  Will pushed the grape jelly across the table to Hank.

“On second thought, I have to get ready for school.”  Hank stood up.  “But thanks,” he said as he left the kitchen.

Will poked at his eggs and took a bite of one of the jelly covered pancakes.  It didn't taste as good as he had remembered it.  When the boys were younger he used to put jelly on the pancakes when they ran out of syrup and they didn’t even notice.  Sometimes they asked for jelly even when they had syrup.  Will got up from the table and scraped the plates into the trash.

By the time Melinda got out of bed and made it to the kitchen Will had cleaned up all evidence of breakfast.  He sat at the kitchen table next to a cup of black coffee staring out the sliding glass door into his back yard.  A squirrel feasted at the bird feeder mounted on the deck rail.  “Maybe we should sell the house,” he said, still watching the squirrel.

“Not this again.”  She sat down at the table across from him.  “Why do you want to sell the house?”

She was asking the wrong question, he thought.  “Why keep it?” he asked.  The squirrel had its entire head inside the bird feeder.  “There are cheaper places to live.”

“We have to live somewhere,” she said.

“Yes, but why here?  It’s expensive.”

“OK.  Where?” she asked as she stood up.  Her tone indicated she was losing patience.

“We could get a camper and live on the road.”  Now he was teasing her.

“You’re an idiot,” she said has she left the kitchen.

“I know!” he said loudly so she would hear him as she walked down the hall.  The squirrel looked up from the bird feeder to investigate the noise and after a short listen went back to his meal.

When the boys left for school, Will got dressed and shoveled the driveway just enough to get the car out.  He pulled out over the partially removed bank of snow that lined the front edge of the driveway and accelerated as he pulled out onto the street.  The plow had only been down the road once, so the pavement was covered in a slick coating of packed snow.  The front tires spun as the back end of the car slid out to the side into the opposite lane.  Will steered into the skid, accelerated again and straightened the car out.  He drove towards town. 

At the temp agency Will waited in the lobby for the receptionist to finish the phone call she was on.  When she finished she looked up at Will, offered a forced smile and asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’d like to see Ben Diamond.  My name is Will Arthur”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Nope.  Just dropping in.  Is he available?”

The receptionist looked at Will as if trying to decide what she was going to do and then picked up her phone.  “Ben, there’s someone at the front desk to see you.  Will Arthur.”  She hung up the phone.  “He’ll be right here.”

Will was surprised he would be seen so quickly.  Before he had a chance to sit down in the lobby Ben was at the front desk, “Will! What are you doing here?” He stuck out his hand to shake.

Will shook hands. “I don’t think the warehouse gig is going to work out.”

“Really?  Well that’s funny, I just got a call from them and they wanted to bring you in for an interview.”  Will followed Ben down the hall towards his office.

“An interview?”  Will asked as they sat at a table in Ben’s office.

“Apparently they fired their Warehouse manager yesterday and need a replacement - quick.  The holiday rush has already started.”

“Wagner?”  Will asked.

“Yeah, I think so.  You know him?”

“Kind of.  So, what’s the job about?”  Will wanted to change the subject back to the interview.

“A warehouse manager.  I gave your resume to Susan and she remembered you from yesterday.  She likes your experience and wanted to talk to you about a full-time job.  Are you interested?”

“Sure.  Sounds great,” Will said flatly.

“Well don’t get too excited!”  Ben gave Will a slap on the back as he got out of his chair.  Will got up to leave.  “I’ll get the time finalized, can you do it tomorrow?”

“No problem,” Will said.

On the way home Will thought about the interview and the prospect of working full-time again.  The snow had started to melt and the roads were wet and black.  Will listened to the tires sucking water off the pavement as he wondered what working at the warehouse would be like.  Melinda was going to be happy, that was for sure.  Will pulled into a gas station to fill up.  He didn’t want to worry about gas tomorrow on the way to the interview.  He needed to figure out what to wear.  A tie for sure, but what about a suit?  He’d ask Melinda.

As he pulled in to the gas station he noticed a white van parked in the back of the parking lot.  He pulled through the gas pumps and up to the van to get a closer look.  There was Chuck in the driver’s seat reading a map.  Chuck looked up and recognized Will.

“Hey!  Long time no see!” Chuck said as he got out of the van.

Will got out of his car and shook hands with Chuck.  “No kidding.  So, what are you up to now that you are unemployed?”

“I’m usually unemployed,” Chuck said with a laugh.

“Any plans?”

Chuck scratched has beard, pretended to think for an answer and said, “Whatever I want.”

“Right.  Well, I just landed an interview back at the warehouse.  Might have a full-time job lined up.”

“Are you taking it?  I mean, if they offer it to you?” Chuck asked.

“Well, of course.  What are you talking about?”  Will seemed startled by the question.

“The open road my friend.  All you need is a tank of gas and a map.”

“A van helps,” Will said with a smile.

“I didn’t have a van when I first hit the road.  Just a car, about like that one.”  Chuck gestured towards Will’s car.  “Hey, good seeing you, but I have to go.  Might have an apartment lined up on the beach.  Now all I need is a job to pay for it!”  Chuck climbed back in the van and pulled out of the gas station.  Will watched as the van disappeared down the road that headed towards the beach.

Will got back in his car and pulled up next to the pumps.  When he was topped off he pulled out to the parking lot exit and looked both ways.  Left was back home he thought.  He wondered what was to the right.