The telephone rang yet again. Sam
forced his arm up as if it had been fastened to his side with duct tape,
and reached toward the receiver. Would it be a recruiter this time,
just now discovering one of the hundreds of resumes he had mailed and e-mailed
to everyone and anyone on the planet this past year, a recruiter hoping
to speak to the one applicant capable of filling an important, and well
paying, position? Or would the caller on the other end of the line
be yet another bill collector, wishing to extract one more ounce of bloody
lucre from his already tapped and drained checking account? Most
were young kids calling, mere boys and girls by Sam's standards,
who
probably never experienced a layoff, much less the
threatened loss of their car, their home, and everything in between.
They had not yet made thirty year careers to be lost to mindless corporate
boggling.
They had not yet made families
to disappoint. Most spoke English as a
second language. They might have a degree in
something or other; Sam
didn't think they gave degrees in squeezing people
who were down on their luck. It had to be a trait you acquired or
one you learned from family and friends.
Sam waited in polite silence
until the automatic dialer informed the caller there had been a 'hit.'
He knew the routine now. He knew it was a bill collector because
of this long silence before some Spanish or Middle Eastern man or woman
with a thick accent would inquire, as if having been just shocked awake,
"Hello? May I speak with.uhm.Sam or Sarah Collinsworth,
please?"
This one was female. There was no way this woman
was going to speak
with Mrs. Collinsworth. Sarah had left him and
filed for divorce
three months ago. Sam listened with the controlled
patience of a
cornered lion, answering each question with the same
growled reply as last week and the week before that and the week before
that. All these people worked from the same script, it seemed.
They never deviated. They must all have attended the same bill collection
school. They all used the same irritating singsong voice with the
phony respect shown by a cop who has just pulled over a motorist for speeding
and erratic driving.
In the old days they had a word for people like this,
the caller he had just finished speaking with minutes ago and now this
one. These women called him Samuel; Samuel, as if they knew him.
These young girlish voices that finished each conversation with, "Be sure
you do, Mr. Collinsworth," or "We'll be looking for your payment Mr. Collinsworth."
Look for this, he would mutter after he hung up, making
a motion in the air.
This one sounded young also, twenties or thirties,
around his daughter's age. He had promised an earlier one that he
would send money, but after he hung up he reconsidered her snotty attitude
and he thought, why should I let some young punk girl bully me? Some
young punk kid who probably lives at home with her mother, who has never
experienced the pain of her family's disappointment, or that look in their
eyes when they speak to you, inquiring how your day went, after you spent
eight hours going door to door asking employers for a job, or while you
stayed home answering bill collectors' inane questions, bill collectors
claiming to want to help you. Sure they want to help
you. They want to help separate you from the
little money and self-respect you have left. "Does your wife work?"
"Can you borrow from a relative?" "Do you have any other sources
of income, Mr. Collinsworth?"
He doubted they ever felt the pain of not being able
to buy a birthday gift for a loved one, or the pain of not being able to
buy Christmas gifts for their kids and grandkids. Why should he care
anymore?
He asked this bill collector to repeat her name.
At least English seemed to be her native language.
"Linda," she said.
"Linda," he repeated. He smiled. "Where
are you calling from, Linda?
Atlanta?"
"Phoenix," she replied.
"Oh, Phoenix. That's new. Most of you
young brats have been calling me from Atlanta or Seattle."
"Excuse me?" Linda said. "Mr. Collinsworth,
you owe us three hundred
seventy-five dollars and twelve cents."
"Phoenix, hunh?"
"Mr. Collinsworth, you owe."
"I just wanted to know where to visit when I finally
go postal and blow your stupid uncaring inexperienced little head off."
He hung up.
An hour later the police knocked on his door.
They knocked again. He
was in, the lights off. He had the television
off. He smiled in the dark when they went away.
The next morning the telephone
rang early, waking him from a troubled
sleep. He asked the young girl on the other
end of the line if the credit card company she represented gave lessons
in how to extract blood from loyal long standing card holders who were
temporarily down on their luck. Did they think that was the way to
maintain a good rapport with the high paid customer when he finally got
back on his feet? She tried to sidestep his questions and continue
her harassment of him, as he looked at it, but she was young, and no match
for a seasoned veteran of boardroom wars and skirmishes, no match for a
seasoned sales professional who knew all the ploys and up to now had played
along with these young brats because he felt a need to show his faithfulness
and sincerity, and the fact also remained that he held
out the hope he would have long since had a job by
now. He blew her off and decided she was in tears when he finally
hung up on her. She'll probably quit that bloodsucking job he thought,
chuckling to himself.
The police came around again
and this time Sam answered the door.
They asked him some questions and he explained that
he had just had a bad day and there was no way he was going to go, much
less could he afford to, visit Phoenix and shoot some young person he wouldn't
recognize anyway. Besides, he did not own a gun and he did not know
how to say asshole in Spanish or Urdu. The officers snickered and the senior
officer sympathized with Samuel but cautioned him about making threats
over the telephone and then the two officers stepped off his front porch,
smiling and shaking their heads as they went. Sam heard them laugh
as they climbed into their blue and white squad car, 'To serve and protect,'
painted on the side.
Mr. Samuel E. Collinsworth
smiled too; he even chuckled, as the car pulled away. He fondled
the wad of bills from his credit union savings account, the final extraction
of his net worth, tucked away in the right hand pocket of his fleece-lined
hunting jacket, a map of Arizona tucked in the inside vest pocket.
In his left hand pocket, Samuel Collinsworth tightened his fingers around
the forty-four Smith and Wesson.