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job bouncing drunks or shoveling shit, or maybe died of stroke or snakebite, or taken up preaching, which was a pretty good career, you had the guts not to be ashamed of it.
    “How’s it hanging, Hap?”
    “To the left.”
    “Hey, that’s my good side. Nut over there’s bigger. You ready to come back to work?”
    “Don’t tell me you’re calling from the field?”
    He forced a laugh. “Nah, we had a down day.”
    That meant either no one showed up, or certain supplies couldn’t be coordinated, or they’d expected the rain.
    “That little thing the other day,” he said. “Let’s let it go. I won’t even dock you. Tomorrow we got to have a good day, losing this one. So, hell, Hap. I can use you.”
    “Man or woman’s got hands and isn’t in a wheelchair, you can use them.”
    “Hey, I’m offering you a job. I didn’t call up for insults.”
    “Maybe we can jump that shit pay a little. Another fifty cents an hour you’d almost be in line with minimum wage.”
    “Don’t start, Hap. You know the pay. I pay cash, too. You save on income tax that way.”
    “You save on income tax, Lacy. Wages like that, I don’t save dick. I’d rather make enough so I had to pay some taxes.”
    “Yeah, well . . .” And he went on to tell me about his old mother in a Kansas nursing home. How he had to send her money every month. I figured he probably shot his mother years ago, buried her under a rosebush to save on fertilizer.
    “Couldn’t your old mother whore a little?” I said. “You know, she’s set up. Got a room and a bed and all. If she can spread her legs, she can pay her way.”
    “Hap, you bastard. Don’t start fucking with me, or you can forget the job.”
    “My heart just missed a beat.”
    “Listen here, let’s quit while you’re ahead. You come on in and I’ll get you working. Tell the nigger to come on in when he’s ready.”
    “Shall I tell Leonard you called him a nigger?”
    “Slipped on that. Force of habit.”
    “Bad habit.”
    “You won’t tell him I said it, all right? You know how he is.”
    “How is he?”
    “You know. Like that time in the field, when him and that other nig—colored fella with the knife got into it.”
    “That guy ever get out of the hospital?”
    “Think he’s in some kind of home now. I’m surprised Leonard didn’t do some time for that. You won’t tell him about the ‘nigger’ business, will you?”
    “I did tell him, there’s one good thing about it.”
    “Yeah?”
    “You already got the roses for your funeral.”
    He rang off and I had the fifty-cent raise for me and Leonard both, just like I thought Leonard might actually go back to it.
    Frankly, I had a hard time seeing me going back to it, but a look at the contents of my refrigerator and a peek at the dough in the cookie jar made me realize I had to.
    My mood moved from blue to black, and I was concentrating on the failures of my life, finding there were quite a few, wondering what would happen ten years from now when I was in my midfifties.
    What did I do then?
    Rose-field work still?
    What else did I know?
    What was I qualified for?
    I wasn’t able to tally up a lot of options, though I spent considerable time with the effort.
    I was considering a career in maybe aluminum siding or, the devil help me, insurance, when the phone rang.
    It was Leonard.
    “Goddamn, man,” I said. “I been wondering about you. I called your place and no answer. I was beginning to think you’d had an accident. Refrigerator was lying on top of you or something.”
    “I didn’t go back home,” Leonard said. “Not to stay anyway. I packed some of my stuff and came back here to Uncle Chester’s.”
    “You calling from there?”
    “His phone got pulled from lack of payment. Months ago. I’m calling from a pay phone. You want to know what I’m wearing?”
    “Not unless you think it’ll really get me excited.”
    “I’m afraid clothes have to have women in them for you to get excited.”
    “Maybe