Free Red Baker by Robert Ward Page A

over the floor, and I thought of death by electrocution.
    Right before I got to the big steel EMPLOYMENT OFFICE DOOR, I stopped, took out my comb and slicked back my hair, and told myself to be ready. Look sharp, stand tall. Be a good imitation of Red Baker.
    Then I walked inside. The secretary was a fat woman who was sipping a diet soda and reading a book called
Fury’s Passion.
She wore a green dress with a ruffled collar that came up to her double chin. On the collar there was a sparkly, cheap turtle pin with rhinestones in its shell.
    I gave her my name and told her I was looking for work. She gave me one of those Bible school smiles and looked back at her book.
    “Mr. Porter will be back in a minute,” she said, not looking up. “He just went down to the canteen. You can fill out this application while you’re waiting. And please stand back from my desk. You’re dripping all over my lunch.”
    I looked down and saw a brown paper bag sitting on the edge of the desk. I had gotten it wet. I moved back fast, trying for my friendly, boy-next-door smile. She didn’t go for it.
    I picked up the application papers and started filling out the forms with the Bic pen she handed me. It was nearly out of ink, and every other letter was faded and unreadable, making it look like I couldn’t spell. I bore down twice as hard, but it was no good, and I had to ask her for another one.
    “Some people applying for work would have thought to bring their own pens,” she said. “That happens to be the last one. All the others have been took.”
    Her voice was like the lead paint chipping off the walls.
    I finished writing out my application as best I could, and then her switchboard lit up.
    “Mr. Porter, there is someone here to see you. Yes, a man who
claims
to be looking for work.”
    I could feel my adrenaline level pumping through me. I wanted to rip her paperback book in half, but I figured she already expected that of me.
    “You may go back now,” she said.
    I nodded and made my way through the long gray halls to the employment counselor.
    His door was shut when I got there, so I rapped on it and he told me to come inside.
    When I walked through the door I stared at Peter Porter, a boy who was known as “Mange” Porter at Patterson. Of all the boys I had known in all my years at school, Peter Porter was the biggest whimp.
    “Well, well, Red Baker,” he said in a whistling yodel, looking up at me from behind his desk. “I don’t believe it. Laid you off down at Larmel, huh?”
    “That’s right,” I said. “Good to see you, Peter.”
    He smiled at me with his little yellow teeth and ran his left hand down his caved-in chest and then over his belly. He wasn’t fat exactly—in fact, mostly he was thin—but he always had this beer gut. Your skinny-fat guy. He’d been the biggest suckass to all the teachers and had reported Dog for cheating once in math class.
    They’d made him head of the safety patrol. I remembered him lurking in the halls, waiting to see if you were going to try and skip out early on Friday afternoon.
    I remembered him getting caught jerking off in the boys’ room.
    I tried to recall if I had been hard on him, but it had been so long. He was the kind of person you forgot existed the second they left your line of vision.
    “So what brings
you
to Shaw’s?” he said in that same high, sticky voice I recalled from school. He took off his black glasses and tapped them on his wrist.
    “I’m looking for work, Peter,” I said. “I heard you have some jobs open.”
    “Well, isn’t that interesting?” he said. “I mean, don’t you find this an amazing turn of events?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Just the fact that you’re asking
me
for a job.”
    I shrugged and said nothing.
    He got up, then rubbed his hand over his stomach and ran it around his jaw, like he was having some deep thoughts.
    “Well, I find it an
amazing
coincidence.” He whistled.
    “Listen, Pete,” I said, “I’m looking