Free Red Baker by Robert Ward Page B

for work. I mean, I’d like to know if there’s a job open or not.”
    He turned and stared at me, rubbing his right hand on his elbow and putting his left on his jaw, like
The Thinker.
    “I guess you
would
like to know about work. I thought at one time you were going to be a professional basketball player. That’s what they said. Red Baker—boyhood hero.”
    I began to sweat a little then. I looked behind him at the high window which looked out on one of the three big buildings. Through their windows I could see people that looked like great hunched birds working away, moving slowly, bent in half as if they were in a dull, steady pain. I thought of my dream and felt the back of my throat get dry.
    “What
did
happen to your basketball career, Red?”
    “Nothing much. I wasn’t good enough to play pro.”
    He stopped and opened his eyes like one of those Japanese actors they got on public television.
    “Red Baker not good enough? I don’t remember it that way. It seemed to me you were always being touted as the best player Maryland produced in twenty years. I always wondered why you didn’t go to college on a scholarship.”
    “I was married, had a kid,” I said.
    “Yes, I know,” he said, walking back and forth. “I’m aware of that. But a man of your talents … they’d make excuses for a player like that. They would have probably given the newlyweds a house of their own.”
    I was starting to get uneasy. I didn’t mind all the sarcasm, but he was leading me somewhere.
    “Look, Pete, I don’t see what this has to do with me getting a job, if there
is
a job.”
    He picked up a paperweight, one with Harborplace in a snowstorm inside of it. He shook it up and watched the snow settle on the small trapped city.
    “I think it might have a great deal to do with it. It seems to me that I remember something about you and your friend, what was his name, the big, stupid one … Dog? Yes, I remember something about you losing your chance to get a basketball scholarship because of some holdup you were involved in. Isn’t that correct?”
    I sat still and put my hands in my lap. I took deep breaths and told myself to do nothing, to say nothing. Get it under control, Red, because I wanted to go for him now. I wanted to take his head and bash it with the paperweight a few times.
    “There was no holdup,” I said.
    “No? That’s not how I remember it, Red. This is no joking business I’m speaking of. If I hire someone who was in trouble with the law, there could be serious repercussions. People might think I didn’t live up to the position of trust and authority the company has chosen to hand over to me.”
    I kept my breathing regular, looked him straight in the eye.
    “I need work, Pete.”
    “Well, Red, I would be less than honest if I didn’t tell you there is a job. It’s in the stuffing division. Eight dollars an hour. But I’d have to know more about this … incident … before I could recommend that you be hired.”
    “I was eighteen years old, Pete. It was nothing.”
    “If it was nothing … why did you spend two years in the Maryland State Training School for Boys?”
    “I was only there for seven months,” I said. I sat perfectly still and looked at him. He was like a long white slug, staring down at me, still working his soft jaw with his flabby hand.
    “I’d have to hear the story, Red, before I could recommend you.”
    I looked down at my soaked feet and back up at the gray sky, which pressed down on the building like a great lead shield.
    “It was a gag. Me and Dog, we were drunk one night, just out tooling around in his old Buick, and we decided for a laugh to rob the Little Tavern. It was just a joke. We went in and told them to put up their hands. We didn’t even take the goddamned money. We just stole all the hamburgers and sodas in the place and gave ‘em out on the street.”
    His face lit up now, and his tongue curled around his lips. He rubbed his stomach like he was trying to