Coasters: A Novel

By Gerald Duff

Waylon McPhee, middle-aged and divorced, moves back in with his widowed father in hopes of coasting through another year. But his father is dating again, and his sisters are trying to manipulate Waylon into asking their father for their inheritance before he gives it to a second wife. The sarcastic Waylon, juggling his relationships and responsibilities caustically but light-heartedly, hangs on hoping to recover something he lost in his youth: enough momentum to reach escape velocity. By turns humorous and melancholy, this novel cruises to a conclusion where all its characters satisfyingly reap what they have sown. Gerald Duff is a splendid writer of sparkling dialogue, and has perfect pitch for the ennui of contemporary life in the suburbs of the petroleum-chemical corridor that stretches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Mississippi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781603062268

Gerald Duff

GERALD DUFF is a native of the Texas Gulf Coast, and has taught literature and writing at Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, and Johns Hopkins University. The title story of Fire Ants won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine, was cited in Best American Short Stories, and republished in The Editors’ Choice: New American Stories. His novels have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, an International eBook Award, and a Texas Institute of Letters Award. He has published two collections of poetry, A Ceremony of Light and Calling Collect, and six novels, including Indian Giver, That’s All Right, Mama: The Unauthorized Life of Elvis’s Twin, Memphis Ribs, and Coasters and Fire Ants from NewSouth Books.

Book preview

Coasters

A novel

Gerald Duff

NewSouth Books

Montgomery

Also by Gerald Duff

Novels

Indian Giver

Graveyard Working

That’s All Right, Mama: The Unauthorized Life of Elvis’s Twin

Memphis Ribs

Snake Song

Fire Ants

Poetry

A Ceremony of Light

Calling Collect

Non-Fiction

William Cobbett and the Politics of Earth

Letters of William Cobbett

NewSouth Books

P.O. Box 1588

Montgomery, AL 36102

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2001 by Gerald Duff. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

ISBN-13: 9781588380296

ebook ISBN: 9781603062268

LCCN: 2001031479

Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.

This book is in memory of Addison Irwin,

Wallace Kay, Robert Daniel, and Terry Brown,

absent friends.

And for my children,

Audrey and Stuart,

blocks off the old chip.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

About the Author

Gravity sliding is the downslope movement of part of the Earth’s crust. This mechanism appears to be responsible for many observed extensive, low-angle faults. The phenomenon is thought to be intimately connected with many of the Earth’s great systems of slide.

— Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition

Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden

back by perpetual backsliding? They hold

fast deceit, they refuse to return.

— Jeremiah 8:5

Slipping and sliding

Peeping and a hiding

Been so a long time ago.

— Little Richard

1

The singer on the radio show called Tried and True Tunes was chanting over and over that there’s a bad moon on the rise, and Waylon McPhee was struck by the truth of that as he pulled his car into the driveway of his father’s house. Midday though it was, the moon hung like a stone in the sky above the rooflines of the Helena Street addition, reflected sunlight blazing from its white face so strongly that Waylon felt like looking off to avoid eyestrain.

A little out of phase, Waylon thought, like everything else on the Gulf Coast had come to be these days. Not wrong in itself, just wrong in the timing. Even the heavenly bodies are falling out of step. One of the celestial gears has slipped a little and thrown all the functions off a tad, interfered a little with the chain drive that makes it all go. Not enough to shut things down completely, not enough to grind it all to a shivering halt, but sufficient to throw things out of synch.

Take me, for instance, Mister Moon, Waylon said aloud, leaning forward to cut the ignition, his voice loud enough in the sudden silence after the singer was stopped in mid-note that he dropped it to a near whisper. Here you are, a creature of the night, having to hang around in the hot middle of the day, and here I am moving back home with Dad.

He knew he ought to toot the Chevy’s horn to announce his homecoming. Charlie McPhee had raised his children to do that, along with requiring a thousand other little rituals which taken together constituted what it was to be a member of the family, according to Charlie, believing as he did that repetition faithfully observed would hold off change, make things stay the way they were a while longer, maybe even avert calamity forever.

Hasn’t worked, though, Charley, has it, Waylon said to himself. It’s finally got out of kilter, just like that moon hanging up there. You’re going to drag yourself out of the house in a minute here, whether I blow my horn or not, trying to look cheerful, but you’re going to be what you are. A sad old man with his wife now dead and gone and his son moving back home to save rent, eat your groceries, use up all your hot water every morning and look about him for signs and wonders.

By the time Waylon had walked around to the rear of the car, popped the trunk, and begun to pull and tug at the cardboard boxes holding just about all he owned, Charley McPhee still hadn’t done what he always did when somebody showed up at his house. That was to make a rush toward the new arrival, arms open wide as he scampered toward initial contact, his high chortle filling the air, and whatever he had been holding when he heard the guest arrive still grasped tight in his fist. A screwdriver, a fish scaler, a blue plastic razor, an expired coupon, whatever happened to be at hand.

Waylon’s first box was giving him trouble as he pulled at it, wedged in between the two others in the trunk, and he jumped so suddenly when he heard his father say hello that he banged his head against the lid.

Dad, he said, rubbing his sore spot, I didn’t know you were home, quiet as it is around here.

Well, Waylon, you are a lucky man to catch me home this time of day, Charlie McPhee said. I got to admit. Good thing you told me you were on the way back home or I might not’ve been here. And I might not be back here tonight at all, even if you have just got here. You just as well not wait up for me.

Why’re you so busy, Dad? Waylon said, pulling with both hands and pushing with one foot on the bumper. It seemed to him there should be some aid coming his way from simple gravity, eventually. He felt something give, and the box began to slip reluctantly toward him. Encouraged, he leaned back harder, and the box picked up speed. It was well past the lip of the car body now and on its way to the rear bedroom.

You working the graveyard shift tonight? he asked and balanced the box of clothes and shoes on the front edge of the car trunk. Is that it?

Nope, Charlie McPhee said with vigor and edged out of the cool garage toward the Chevrolet backed up into his driveway. I don’t work graveyard these days. Exxon put a stop to that when I turned sixty-five years of age and went temporary. Union rules. You knew that already, didn’t you? What’s that yellow thing you got there in that cereal food box?

Waylon began responding to his father’s questions, one answer to match each push he was giving the box of his shirts and pants and socks and underwear. Yeah, I already knew. I just forgot for a minute. It’s a warm-up jacket.

What you need that for? Not warm enough for you? What size is it? A small?

It’s for when you go jogging early in the morning when it might be cold. It’s a medium and won’t fit you, Waylon said. He look at his father. Why won’t you be back here tonight, then? If you’re not working graveyard. Are you in some kind of group grief therapy program or something you have to go to at night?

Charlie McPhee made a smoothing motion with both hands down the front of his white pullover shirt as though he was feeling for imperfections in the knit. No, he said. You have to handle grief alone, Waylon. It’s not a group thing, see. You got to hug it right up to you, all by yourself.

That’s what you think, Waylon said. That’s what they told you.

That’s what I know. And you may not see me again until later tomorrow afternoon. Maybe not even before suppertime.

Waylon paused long enough to allow Charlie time to smooth the front of his shirt where it met his beltline before speaking again.

It’s a woman, I guess, huh?

A lady, Charlie McPhee said, dropping his mouth open into a grin wide enough to show the bottom row of his teeth caps. But she’s a woman, too, let me tell you.

One of these widows on the street? Mrs. Larkin up there on the corner? Didn’t she use to come around and see Mama?

Nuh uh, son. Not Maude Larkin. A man doesn’t foul his own nest. I got to live here on Helena Street everyday. I keep my distance from the local stuff.

Local stuff? Where’d you hear that kind of talk? Who’ve you been talking to?

People say that all the time. Where have you been, Sonny? I guess you don’t get outside much. You got to get with the program these days.

You do, huh? Waylon said and watched his father plunge both hands into the pockets of his trousers and begin to rock back and forth on the hot cement of the driveway, the tiny gold chains on his loafers glittering in the sun.

You want to run with the big dogs you got to get off the porch, Charlie McPhee said. That means circulate. See and be seen. Let them know you’re on the job. He paused for a beat and spoke again. No offense intended, Sonny. That part about a job.

You can’t offend me. I’m offense proof, Waylon said. If she’s not local then, where’s she from, this lady? Waylon bent over to begin wrestling again with the boxful of his wardrobe. This one you’re fixing to see here all dressed up and smelling like a flower.

She is way yonder not local, partner, Charlie McPhee announced. This gal is from England. Exeter, England.

What’s she doing in Port Arthur, Texas? Looking at the ship canal?

Oh, she hasn’t lived over yonder in England in a long old time, Charlie said, putting out a hand to steady the box Waylon had brought up from the surface of the driveway in a series of jerks and stops. She’s an American citizen and everything. Got her a house in Groves on a double lot. Her house is built on the corner one of the two. Makes it nice for gardening flowers and what have you.

You don’t suppose you could help me carry these clothes into the house, do you? Waylon said, tilting the box back against his chest to get a better purchase and listening to his blood sing in his ears in the oven of midday. He lifted his eyes to the edge of the roof, but the bad moon was blocked from view. If you’re not occupied.

Sure, Charlie said, looking critically at the side of the box nearest him. I don’t mind a bit. But I’m not going to hug that thing up to me. There’s something sticky all down this side of it, and I don’t want to get anything on my shirt.

Any effort you could provide, I’d be glad to take.

She’s been there in that house on Evangeline Street ever since she and her ex-husband split the sheets.

Divorced woman, huh? Waylon said as he aimed his load at the space between his father’s Chrysler and the left wall of the garage, Charlie shuffling backward before him with one hand symbolically touching the bottom of the box.

Oh, yeah. For over ten years now, she tells me. That kind of thing happens. Especially with foreign brides. Don’t come at me with that greasy side, now.

Maybe if you could see your way clear to guiding it a little bit.

Slow and careful does the trick, Charlie McPhee said, backing away at an increased rate of speed to avoid the grease he saw threatening his clothes. He’s a pipefitter. Retired, of course.

Who? Waylon asked in a hoarse voice, yearning for the kitchen door and the cool air inside the house.

The ex. Tit Boudreau.

His name is Tit? Good God.

That’s what they call him. Some kind of a French name, I reckon. It doesn’t mean what it sounds like. He’s bad to drink. And can’t hold his liquor, never could, Hazel told me. And smoke, Godalmighty, like a chimney, in this day and age after what all we know about tobacco.

Sounds like a bad hombre, Waylon said.

She only sees him when she has to. You know, holidays sometimes or when she’s over to her daughter’s and he shows up. Charlie pointed toward the hall off the kitchen. Your room’s down yonder where it always was. Take your stuff down there before you set anything down. Hell, they’re grown anyway and never there.

Who’s grown? Waylon said, gathering himself for the last push down the hallway toward the bedroom where he felt like he’d spent most of his life. The daughter?

No, the ex-step-grandkids. Hazel Boles’s ex-step-grandkids. Her ex-step-daughter’s almost as old as you are. Her real daughter, now she’s some years younger. Name’s Louise.

After he had dumped the box of clothes on the floor by the single bed against the far wall of the room, Waylon went back to the kitchen to get a drink of water, wondering as he walked down the hall why his father always directed him to rooms in the house he’d grown up in. It was probably a reminder that he was just visiting and shouldn’t assume himself entitled to the knowledge of a permanent dweller.

Charlie was standing in the door to the garage, moving his head systematically from side to side as he checked the front of his white knit shirt for possible contaminants.

I thought you said the woman’s name was Boudreau, Waylon said between glasses of tap water. What’d you just call her? Boles?

That’s her maiden name, his father said, looking up from his shirtfront. She went back to it after she filed her papers. That’s the way they do nowadays.

She wasn’t worried about her daughter having a different last name from hers?

Everybody’s got their own particular name now, Son, Charlie McPhee said and leaned over to look at his reflection in the glass of the microwave oven above the counter. You figure out what handle fits you, and then you know what?

What?

You go with it. That’s what. Charlie stuck his left hand in his pants pocket and jangled his keys. Speaking of which, I’m gone.

An English woman, Waylon said. Name of Hazel Boles. Meet her at a tea party?

No, not hardly. It was the funniest thing, Waylon. We run into each other twice in the big grocery store there by the produce department. Got to talking and one thing and another, and the next thing you knew we started going around together.

So you met cute? Over the broccoli, just like in the movies.

That’s right, Way. Only it wasn’t the broccoli. It was the herb section. And let me tell you something else. These old-world types like Hazel, they will flat eat a man up.

Damn, Daddy, Waylon said.

And you know something else?

No, and I’m scared to ask.

Hazel may be English to start with, Charlie McPhee said, his eyes dancing as if he had just drunk two cups of Christmas eggnog, but that hasn’t stopped her in the least from being just a little bit French.

Well, what you’re saying seems to fit the new pattern, Waylon said. Have you noticed the moon today? The weird way you can see it in the daytime? I believe some kind of a warp has set in.

No, Charlie McPhee said. I haven’t got time to be looking up at the moon, whether or not it’s weird or whether it’s day or night. I got places to go.

And people to see, Waylon said, thinking to beat his father to the punch, but Charlie was already out the door into the garage and on his way into the light of midday by the time his son was able to get the words out.

After he had brought in the two other boxes from the trunk of his car, the one filled with papers and receipts and guarantees and the other holding the cassettes and paperback books, Waylon lay down on the bed. He would get the stuff from the backseat later, he told himself. It wasn’t going anywhere, and besides it was hot enough outside to make the asphalt soft in the cracks of the driveway. Walk around out there long enough and he’d get his shoes stuck to the pavement and shrivel up in the sun like a squashed toad.

From where he lay on the single bed, he could move his eyes to the right and see the front edge of the roof line on the house next door, the one where Paula Popp used to live with her parents and her two brothers. Donald, the older one, had become a hairdresser in Beaumont. The little brother had barely registered in Waylon’s consciousness, or in the world at large, as far as he knew. He tried to remember his face, but all he could call up of the young Popp was a blond flat-top haircut and a continual whine as the older brother worked various torments on him.

Little Popp is probably a stockbroker in Houston by now, Waylon thought, making a million bucks a year and whining into portable telephones all day while big Donald is teasing love knots into women’s hair in a beauty parlor somewhere on Calder Street.

Waylon let his eyes drift left, past the door frame and the light switch, onto the left wall all the way to its center where the outline of the Jimi Hendrix poster had left a pale rectangle still visible the last time he had moved back home to the house on Helena. Not this time, though. Covered up by a new coat of flat white paint the old man had laid down sometime in the last few years.

Charlie had done the ceiling, too, Waylon noticed as he looked directly above the bed where he lay, obliterating the discolored stain that had always looked to him like the outline of a duck riding a motorcycle those long afternoons he had studied it for meaning, watching the shadows change as the sun sank steadily behind the house full of Popps to the west. Now there was nothing above his head but a perfect blankness, not a hint of texture or variety in its surface, no more message to it than the endless rows of waves marching toward the beach from the Gulf of Mexico twenty miles south of where he lay.

Closing his eyes, Waylon tried to remember how Paula Popp looked in the face during the time she lived next door, but all he could bring to mind was a sort of oblong with a lot of teeth in it. He knew she had a nose and eyes and hair and the rest of it, but that part of her was not what people wanted to see during her days in the Helena Street subdivision. And it sure wasn’t the part Donald Popp had sold him a glimpse of one afternoon when Waylon was a tenth grader in Thomas Jefferson High School.

She’ll be in the family room, Donald had told him, whispering out of the side of his mouth as they sat together in last period study hall, the gaze of Mrs. Garner sweeping over their table as it moved steadily from one side of the room to the other like the searchlight from a watchtower. At four o’clock, I tell you. On the dot.

Yeah, Waylon whispered back, his eyes fixed on a stated problem in his Algebra 1 book, something about two trains leaving from Chicago and New York headed toward each other at different rates of speed and stopping along the way for an hour here and there, for what purpose it didn’t say. At four o’clock, all right, but with the curtains closed up.

Not if you got the five dollars.

I got the five dollars.

You be there in the side yard of your house, then, Donald had said, and Waylon had tried to turn his attention to the x’s and y’s and speeds and stoppages of the trains so concerning the inventor of the stated problem in the algebra book.

He had two one-dollar bills and the rest in dimes and quarters and the odd nickel or two, and as he stood in the open space between the neighboring houses he could feel his hand sweating on the coins as he held them in a clump in his pants pocket. He had imagined Paula Popp in the family room of the house next door, sitting down, maybe, in a chair as she waited for her brother to complete the financial arrangements, or better yet standing with her arms crossed under the two stars of the show to come, as she waited for curtain time.

Waylon had sensed a queasy feeling beginning to move hotly up from somewhere in his lower belly toward the center of his chest, and he was turning to walk back to the rear of his house when he heard footsteps behind him.

Hey, McPhee, Donald Popp had said, you got the money?

I told you I did, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.

It’s worth it, all right. I can tell you that. You just scared to look.

Bullshit, Waylon said. I bet she won’t do it. That’s all I’m worried about. Afraid I’ll lose my money without getting the good out of it.

Give me the five bucks, and I tell you what. If you ain’t satisfied, I’ll give you a dollar of it back.

Nuh uh. All of it. Every cent, or I’m going in the house.

Two bucks back, then.

All right, Waylon had said, pulling the handful of quarters and dimes and the crumpled bills out of his pocket. Here it is. You can count it.

I will, Donald had said, cupping both hands for the transfer. Inside the house. When you hear me rattle the wind chimes, come on around the back and look in through the crack in the curtains.

Waylon had stood near the rear of the Popp’s house for what seemed an hour, suddenly desperate to empty his bladder before the wind chimes signaled Paula was ready for viewing. When the metallic tinkle sounded, it seemed to come from somewhere inside his head and he jumped as though someone had jammed a cube of ice into his ribs up near his right armpit.

The sun was brightly shining in the Popp’s backyard, and for a few seconds Waylon could make out nothing as he peered through the slit between the curtains behind the sliding glass door of his neighbor’s family room. It wasn’t until he jammed his nose into the glass and shielded his eyes with both hands that he could begin to pick out details in the darkened interior.

Paula Popp, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School and a member of the Rangerettes Drill Team, stood in the middle of the room just in front of a Barcalounger easy chair, dressed in a white brassiere and a long skirt decorated with the outline of a pink poodle. The felt dog had buttons for eyes, Waylon noticed, and a little chain of real metal sewn to its neck. Paula seemed to be looking toward the corner of the room, where Waylon knew the Popp family television sat on a black metal frame, and she had no more expression on her face than as if she were watching the afternoon Three Stooges show on KFDM.

Later, her total lack of expression and the fact that she might have been watching the Stooges or maybe a local dance show called Jive at Five would be what Waylon remembered as most exciting about the moment.

At the time, though, he had rapidly fixed his gaze on the area between Paula’s collarbone and waistline as she reached behind her back with both hands, much like somebody imitating a bird about to flap its wings, and did something to the mechanism holding her bra together. The ends of it suddenly came into view as the fabric in front loosened and moved away from Paula’s chest, and she moved her hands to the cups of the garment and lifted them free of what they had been hiding.

Still regarding the area of the room where the television set was located, Paula drew the white bra up to her chin level, revealing both breasts, startling white against the tan of her arms and hands, and held it there for a count of four or five and then let it fall, beginning to lift her breasts one at the time with her right hand and replacing them in their cups as though they were separate things with a life of their own, quiet little animals waiting to be put back to sleep in their dark burrows, their vague eyes shut against the harsh light of the outside world.

Jesus, Waylon groaned aloud, remembering how he had crept back to the bed on which he now again lay, the sight of those fingers handling those breasts with such a careful nonchalance burned into his brainpan for all time. And now, he announced to the dead air above his resting place, now they tell me she’s counseling drug addicts at a rehab center.

It was, he thought later outside as he unloaded the rest of his stuff from his car after the hottest part of the day had passed, the best five dollars he had ever spent.

2

There was nothing to eat in the refrigerator except a plastic bowl of a concoction his father called patio beans, one of the three or four one-dish meals he had cooked off and on for the last forty years. It starts, Waylon remembered his father always announcing at the onset of one of his culinary fits, with one ordinary dead chicken. Charlie would then always wait for Waylon and his two sisters to groan in disgust before he went on to name the other ingredients, and if they didn’t respond, he’d begin describing the cooking process all over again until they did.

Waylon shook the container back and forth, but the brown foodstuff had seized up during its time in the cold on the second shelf and would not move, not even when tilted at a ninety-degree angle. He pushed it away, drank a glass of water at the sink and headed for the door.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sky was dark enough for Waylon to see the glow of the burning flares at the Arco refinery as he drove down Proctor Street toward the Nederland Club. A bank of clouds rolling in from the Gulf picked up the reflection of the light and gave it back to all those who cared to look, pinks and roses and oranges that would deepen to a steady red when full darkness settled over the Golden Triangle of Texas. It had been that way since the first excess gases were lit to burn off when the petrochemical plants went into operation, and it would continue as long as people used fossil fuels in their internal combustion engines.

Waylon sniffed at the air pouring into his Chevrolet through its vents and smelled the tang of esters, congruents, reagents and ozone working together in the thin soup of the atmosphere, and signaling a turn, pulled into the parking lot behind the Nederland Club, comforted.

The domino tables were filled with retirees from Gulf, Pure, Exxon, Arco, and Texaco, slapping their dotted counters down briskly in the unending bouts of Forty-Two, one foursome over in a corner doing additions in their heads at the site reserved for straight domino, while in the back part of the building two younger men were studying what the break had left them on one of the four pool tables.

Five, one of them said to the other, side pocket, as Waylon made his way behind them toward the bar. He heard the click of the cue and the shooter’s curse as the five ball lipped the hole and skittered away.

You still make hamburgers? Waylon asked the man behind the counter watching him sit down on a stool a little too high for comfortable mounting.

Up to seven o’clock. No fries. Potato chips.

All right. That and a Regal, Waylon said and turned to look back at the pool shooters, again silent as they considered the possibilities on the green field before them.

Woo! one of the retirees at the closest Forty-Two table yelled. Shoot the moon.

Don’t you bust another domino in two, Arleigh, the bartender said in a voice so low even Waylon could hardly hear it, as near as he was. I’ll make you buy your own.

These old boys are rough on the bones, huh? Waylon said, but the bartender had stepped away to speak to somebody through the pass-through cut into the wall to the kitchen and didn’t answer.

Yes, they are, Waylon said aloud to himself. They get excited, understand, when they see their numbers adding up to something.

I get you, he said in a higher tone, answering himself. You put things so clear.

Who the fuck you talking to, McPhee? came a voice from two or three stools down the bar. Ain’t nobody listening to you.

Who’s that? Waylon said, turning to look to his left. Who’s taking my name in vain?

A few feet away a small man was looking up from his beer to return Waylon’s stare, his right hand cupped around the glass in front of him as though he was afraid the bartender would snatch it away if he let his attention wander. Waylon couldn’t make out the man’s face in the dim light, and he leaned forward to see better, giving a little grunt of recognition when he saw the man’s flat-top hair style outlined against the window behind him.

That you, Shepard? he said. Hard to tell without my glasses.

Yep, Bobby Shepard said, turning back to his glass and taking a measured sip from it. It’s me, all right.

I knew you by your haircut, Waylon said. Takes me back to the class of ’68.

You see something wrong with my haircut, McPhee?

No, Bobby, to the contrary. It fits you right down to the ground. Waylon heard the clunk of the Regal bottle next to his elbow and turned to observe the bartender return to his lonely station near a stack of soft-drink cases.

Promise me something, Bobby, Waylon said.

What you talking about?

Don’t go changing, Waylon said. That’s what I’m talking about. Stay just the way I see you tonight.

Crazy fucker, Bobby Shepard said and allowed himself another sip from his glass. After a minute he spoke again. What you doing in town? I thought you was working at BP up in Beaumont.

I was for several years, Waylon said, regarding the pale green bottle before him. Then I wasn’t.

Why not? Get run off?

Well, yes, Bobby, in a manner of speaking that captures it. But that’s not what they call it these days.

What? Getting laid off?

No, that’s not the term either, Bobby, Waylon said, sipping directly from the Regal bottle. I have been re-engineered. All part of the process of benchmarking and redefinition and downsizing underway at BP.

Shit, Bobby said in a suspicious tone. Re-engineering. You ain’t no engineer in the first place.

Bobby, you misunderstand me. I am not and never have been an engineer, no. I am being re-engineered. I am acted upon, not acting myself. Some might call me a victim of strategic planning.

What’d you do to get fired, Bobby Shepard said. That’s what I’m asking you, McPhee.

I ran into a narrow passage in the flow sequence, Bobby. One I couldn’t fit through, no matter how tight I squeezed myself up. The new filter they installed at British Petroleum got me. It was just too fine a gauge for me to slip on through that sucker.

Huh, Bobby Shepard said and addressed his beer.

And you know what else, Bobby? Waylon said.

Uh-uh, I don’t.

The union didn’t help me a bit when I filed a grievance against what happened to me. Just stood back and let me fight BP about it on my own.

And you lost?

Just like the Astros always do. Yessir, I did.

You say chips? the bartender called to Waylon. With that burger?

Is there any choice?

No.

Well, yes, I’ll say chips, then, Waylon told him and looked back toward Bobby Shepard’s end of the bar. What you doing these days, Shepard?

Same old, same old.

Gauging?

Forty hours a week at Pure Oil.

Uh huh, Waylon said and addressed his Regal.

Let me ask you something.

What’s that, Bobby?

Why do you drink that Regal shit? It ain’t but seven ounces to a bottle.

You got it exactly, Waylon said. "See how little the bottle is, and how big it