.

on my belt.”

      Clyde’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. Esther was right, of course, about all of it. He didn’t know she’d been paying such close attention.

      She shouted, “Work here! Work here!” twirling on one foot. “Every paycheck you’ll wanna cry or kill yourself, but the job’s easy, we get a thirty percent discount at the Starbucks and a fifteen-minute smoke break every two hours. But best of all, of course, you’d get to work with moi, Esther Hines.”

      It was hard to argue. She walked him right then to the office in back and knocked at the open door. Behind a plain desk sat a man with thin, tan arms poking out of a short-sleeve button-down. A Walmart tie choked him around the neck, that or high blood pressure making his face look boiled. “Esther,” he said.

      She dragged Clyde in by the elbow. “Mr. Wilson, meet Clyde Twitty, totally the guy you should hire to replace poor Mrs. Asbury.” Esther gave Mr. Wilson an exaggerated sad frown and extended the arm she was holding so that there was nothing Clyde could do but open his hand above Mr. Wilson’s desk. A fake wood plaque said Jerry Wilson, Manager.

      “Mr. Wilson,” Clyde said.

      The manager stood up, revealing a comically distended belly, a complete surprise given the bony arms. Clyde half expected to hear one of his shirt buttons zing into a corner. Wilson shook Clyde’s hand. “It’s only part time,” he said.

      “That’s fine,” Clyde said. “I got other work too.”

      “Is that right?”

      “Yes sir.”

      “Such as?”

      “I drive cars to auction.”

      “See?” Esther said. “He’s reliable, he’s nice, he also takes care of his uncle, who’s a paraplegic. He didn’t say that ’cause he’s all modest. It don’t get any better than Clyde. He won’t let you down, Mr. Wilson.”

      “Thank you, Esther.”

      “He used to make extension rods,” Esther said. “Before the economy tanked and the place went kaput.” She really had been paying attention. She took a small ceramic pig from Wilson’s desk and held it a couple inches from her right eye; her left scrunched shut. “Ask him what he got paid.”

      “Esther,” Mr. Wilson said.

      She put the pig back on Wilson’s desk and said, “Eighteen bucks an hour!”

      Wilson’s eyes flared, but narrowed quickly. “Well, this position starts at significantly less than that,” he said. “Try seven seventy-five.”

      Clyde grimaced. At the rate he was going, he’d be paying the IRS every month for the rest of his life. “How’s anybody supposed to pay the mortgage with seven seventy-five an hour?”

      That pushed Mr. Wilson back in his chair. “You own a house?”

      Clyde lied. “I do. Bought at the top of the market, too.”

      Mr. Wilson’s eyes narrowed. Clyde could hear him breathing through his nose. “Well, I’m sorry, but Walmart’s not responsible for poor timing.”

      Clyde knew he needed a job. Now more than ever, with this goddamn out-of-the-blue IRS bullshit. But letting one of the world’s most profitable companies pay him minimum wage seemed like a particularly hard kick in the balls. I’ve had enough kicks in the balls to last a lifetime. Clyde shrugged. “I mean, I guess I’ll take it.”

      Mr. Wilson laughed. “Will you, now?”

      “Yes sir. Just until something better comes along.”

      “Well well.” Mr. Wilson shook his head, making notes and chuckling like Clyde had just made his day. “Don’t do us any favors, uh . . . ”

      “Clyde,” Esther said.

      “Clyde,” Mr. Wilson said, looking closely at his writing. “It’s very nice of you to put yourself out for us, Clyde, it really is. I’m sure Sam Walton will appreciate it.”

      Clyde had known this guy two minutes and he already had him figured out: prick.

      Mr. Wilson nodded at Esther. “Help him fill out an application.”

      At home, Clyde told his mom that she wasn’t the only one who’d been offered a job. He wasn’t sure that he’d get it now, but for her sake he made it seem certain.

      “Boy,” she said, “Walmart. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

      “Pays less than half what I used to make. Richest company in the world too.”

      “Well, I don’t know about that, but with the head you got on your shoulders, Clyde, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised to find you running the place in five or ten years. I think what we’re seeing here is proof of the economic recovery. At last!”

      Clyde nodded but he wanted to spit. Even with Walmart and driving and what his mom made setting hair, they’d still be struggling. Here he was, about to start a new job, and he felt like he’d just lost one.

      After supper he went around stapling Pretty Lady fliers on the telephone poles between Pleasant Hill and Grain Valley. He heard the Plymouth Fury before he saw it and looked around for a place to hide. The ditch was too wet. The car rolled by and the same group shouted, “You did! You did tee a putty tat!”

      “Hey, fuck you!” Clyde yelled, jumping into the road behind them and walking down the asphalt with both middle fingers raised. This had been happening for ten years. Literally.

      Clyde pounded one of the roadside Pretty Lady signs he’d made last week into the mud. The four or five vehicles that would pass by—the Plymouth Fury dicks included—ought to appreciate that. It was pathetic, he knew, but what was the alternative? Give up? Then what? He was standing on the side of 58, still pissed about those townies, when his phone buzzed. He didn’t recognize the number and thought it might be Walmart. “Hello?”

      “Clyde?” a woman said.

      “Yes.”

      “It’s Tina,” she said. “Smalls. From earlier.”

      “Oh,” Clyde said, immediately thinking about the ten-dollar bottle of shampoo. What a scam. “How you doing?”

      “Good,” she said. “Here, my dad wants to talk to you.” She smothered the phone.

      Jay came on. “Clyde-san?”

      “Yeah, hey, Mr. Smalls.”

      “Special class tomorrow, Clyde. Be a real good introduction for you. Nothing too clazy. Just some basics. Running, stretching, kihon, kata, light kumite, no big deal. You gonna love it. Eight o’clock. Can you make it?”

      “Um,” Clyde said, looking out at the endless stretch of road, not a car in sight past his own truck in the grass. “Sorry, can you hang on a second, Mr. Smalls?”

      “Call me Jay,” Jay said, and Clyde lowered the phone. With no voice in his ear there was nothing to hear but wind and a lawn mower so distant it was probably coming from Grain Valley. Clyde wanted to train, but there was no way he could afford to, especially without knowing whether or not he’d got the Walmart job. “Mr. Smalls?” he said.

      “Jay. Or sensei.”

      “Well, I’d really like to make it but . . . I just can’t,” Clyde said.

      “You can’t,” Jay said.

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Why can’t you?”

      “Um,” Clyde said. “Well. I haven’t worked much in the last couple years.”

      “I don’t teach to make money, Clyde. This ain’t one of these ‘you give me five hundred dollars and I give you a black