Chapter 13: Barback

Lawton was waiting on the dock when Sallie unlocked the door Tuesday morning.

He had two coffees and no truck.

"Where's your truck?" I said.

"It belonged to the company. Libba had it picked up at six."

He held one of the coffees out to me.

"Decaf. I asked."

I took it.

Sallie looked him up and down from the doorway in her denim apron.

"If you're here to pay for something, the answer's still no."

"I'm here to ask for a job, ma'am."

Sallie pulled her reading glasses down off her head and put them on.

"You run five hotels."

"I ran five hotels. As of yesterday they've changed the code on my office door and cut off my company card."

"I'd rather be useful here than sit in that house."

"Can you lift a full keg?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Can you take orders from a woman half your size who doesn't like you much?"

He looked at me over his coffee.

"I've been practicing."

"Barback. Fourteen an hour, same as her. You stock, you haul ice, you wash glass, and you do what she says."

"She's your boss. Not me. Her."

"Sallie," I said.

"Train him, sugar."

He didn't know where anything was.

He put the lemons in the walk-in with the fish.

He stacked the pint glasses so high that the whole tower came down when the kitchen door banged.

The old shrimper with the bad hip set a quarter on the bar for him.

"For the broom," he said.

By Thursday Lawton could change a keg faster than I could.

By Friday the nurses at table four were ordering refills they didn't want, just to watch him carry the ice.

"He's married," I told them.

"To who?" one of them said.

"Me."

"Then why's he hauling your ice for fourteen dollars an hour?"

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