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his bed and closed his eyes. He thought of himself on the deck of a trawler with the nets piled on the stern and the steady roll of the Gulf beneath his feet, the horizon before him where the dying sun went down in the water in a last blaze of red, the smell of the salt and the seaweed and the sound of the anchor chain sliding off the bow. He turned in his bed and couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tavern where they used to go after coming into port. It was a good place with a long polished bar and small round tables covered with checkerboard cloths. They served boiled crabs and crawfish, and you could get a plate of barbecue and a pitcher of draught beer for a dollar. It was always filled with fishermen, and Toussaint would stand at the bar and talk and drink neat whiskey from the shot glasses with water as a chaser.
    The next morning he looked for a job. He tried the state employment agency first. The only jobs to be had were those of bellboy, bus hop, and janitor. He went to warehouses, trucking firms, auto garages, and was told that there was either no job to be had, or to come back when his hand had healed. The third day he went to a clothing store on Canal that had advertised for help in the stockroom. Toussaint applied and got the job. When he reported for work he was shown where the brooms, mops, dustpans, and cleaning rags were kept, and was told to mop the floor of the men’s and women’s restrooms. He left the store and looked for another job. A week passed and he found nothing. The landlord of his building asked for the rent, which took Toussaint’s last twenty dollars. He rode the streetcars and buses and walked over most of the city to find work. He went to a private employment agency. They said he might try cutting lawns; there wasn’t much else for a man in his condition.
    Two weeks later he was sitting in the pool hall, reading the want ads in the newspaper. All the tables were being used. A man with a cigarette between his teeth sat down on the bench beside him. It was one of the hustlers who had tried to get him into a game the afternoon of his last fight.
    “Out of work?” he said.
    “That’s right.”
    “See anything in the paper?” Toussaint looked towards the pool tables.
    “I see you got a bad hand. Work must be hard to get.”
    Toussaint folded his paper and put it on the bench.
    “If you’re looking for a job maybe I can fix it up,” the hustler said.
    “You run an employment agency?”
    “I got a friend that needs a guy to drive a truck.”
    “You drive it for him.”
    “I make my bread in other ways.”
    “Who’s your friend?”
    “That’s him by the horse board.”
    “I don’t know him,” Toussaint said.
    “He don’t know you either.”
    “Say what you got on your mind or go back to your friend.”
    “He needs a driver and he figured you might want the job.”
    “That ain’t telling me nothing. What’s he want to hire me for?”
    “This is a special kind of trucking service. He don’t take on union drivers.”
    “What’s he hauling?”
    “That’s what the union asks,” the hustler said.
    “And his drivers don’t ask nothing.”
    “You got it.”
    “I want to ask him some questions.”
    “He ain’t used to it.”
    “Get off it, boy. He wouldn’t have sent you over here to hire a one-arm man unless he needed a driver pretty bad.”
    “You’re cool, daddy.”
    They went over to the man by the horse board. He was a well-dressed, light tan Negro with thick, rimless glasses. He looked like a Negro preacher, except for the glass ring on his little finger.
    “This guy might want to be a truck driver,” the hustler said.
    “Did Erwin explain it to you?”
    “What are you hauling?” Toussaint said.
    “You make an out-of-state delivery. I take care of the rest.”
    “What’s the pay?”
    “A hundred dollars.”
    “I want two hundred if I’m carrying a blind load.”
    “I don’t pay a driver more than a hundred.”
    “Get somebody else,