the professional

I had this job. I won't bore you with what it was all about because you wouldn't understand. Let's just say I was hired because I had the right implement. I carried it like a tenor saxophone in a velvet-lined case all clean and scratch-free. Set it down right next to my chair as the man with Peter Lorre eyes wearing a white shirt and tie with greasy armpits in human resources asked me questions listed off a yellow sheet. He was funny looking. At first, for some unknown reason, this little man in human resources wore a red helmet with a chin strap, you know, like one of those guys under the big tent preparing to be shot out of a cannon, off course, crashing into the part-time cotton candy vendor. He'd snap the chin strap, unsnap it, then fastened it over and over during the interview - hollow sounding click like in an empty warehouse. I told him I had my own tool and was qualified, but he just looked over the sheet of questions with those crazy bug-eyes as though I was a dangerous felon.

I'd go around tightening and recalibrating, and I wore a real nice suit everyday. And then one day - I think it was a Tuesday - I saw the little man in the helmet go whizzing by overhead at 37 miles per hour, and he'd yell at me to speed up, and I'd shout back (just about the moment he goes head first into the wooden storage bunker) I would just take my tool and quit. And it would be like when you was a kid playing football in a vacant lot, and it was your football, you'd take your football and up and leave, all the kids standing around, their lips parted in the shape of circles because there'd be two hours of light left, so they'd just stand there disbelieving as you faded away across the field and the only thing they could do was get some big rocks and bust windows at the rusty factory until it was dark and their big sisters yelled it was dark like they didn't know.


image ~ Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison