Onward Toward What We're Going Toward Read Online Free Page B

school he spent two hours doing an “internship,” which basically meant he emptied garbage cans.
    Chic knew those offices on the second floor well. During his first week on the job, he had found himself on the second floor delivering some mail that had accidentally found its way to the production area. He asked an elderly woman, a secretary, which office had belonged to Bascom Waldbeeser. It had been nearly fifteen years since his grandfather worked at the cannery, but the woman pointed to a closed door. So, it was true. After his made-up story about the founding of Middleville, Chic wasn’t sure if he should take anything his grandfather said at face value. Chic looked back at the woman and asked if he could go inside. She nodded that it was fine, and Chic took hold of the door. The room wasn’t an office but a storage closet stacked with broken typewriters, boxes of pencils, and other office supplies. “He didn’t have a desk,” the woman said. “He had a cart.”
    Chic wasn’t sure he understood.
    â€œWhen he got too old to work on the production floor, he was
moved up here to deliver supplies to the offices.” She motioned to the office doors along the corridor. “Pretty much, though, he just kept the closet organized. You’re BJ’s grandson, aren’t ya?”
    Chic nodded.
    â€œDidn’t your mother just move down to Florida?”
    Chic closed his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about his mother. Everyone was always asking about his mother.
    â€œHow’s she like it? Florida would be too hot for me. Nice in the winter, though. But, hey, are you okay? You don’t look so good. You feeling okay?”
    â€œI think I should get some air.”
    â€œYeah. Right. Okay. Hey, when you talk to your mother, tell her Ellen Hastings said hello.”
    The Cape Cod needed fixing up, and Chic got to work. Up along the house, he planted box elder bushes. He cleaned out the gutters. He built a workbench at the back of the garage and hung some tools on the Peg-Board above the bench. He nailed up wainscoting in the dining nook. He painted the bedroom walls. Sometimes he’d be working and would feel like someone was looking at him, and he’d glance over his shoulder, and there would be his neighbor standing in a window, staring. Chic would wave, but the guy would just shut the shades.
    Diane did light housecleaning, and every morning Chic showered and headed off to the cannery. Walking to the locker room, carrying his lunchbox, he often saw Mr. Meyers in his office that overlooked the production floor. He was always drinking a cup of coffee and looking down at some papers spread out on his desk, a pencil behind his ear, a look of fear on his face, like at any moment the pumpkin cannery could disappear into a sinkhole and be gone forever. Mr. Myers turned forty the week Chic started at the cannery, and Chic thought it was odd that he was already bald. Forty years old and totally bald. Chic didn’t want to feel that same sort of fear that made a guy lose his hair. He wanted to feel like he felt right now, at nineteen. He lived in
Middleville, which was a bit of a misnomer, since the town wasn’t exactly in the center of the state—it was a bit southwest of center, actually. If one flew over it in a plane, it probably wouldn’t even be noticed. It was simply a cluster of houses and a school, a gas station, a couple of parks, and a few churches, all of which sprouted out of the Illinois dirt the way corn sprouted every June. Chic sometimes stood in his house and thought about how this was his town. He knew everyone—the teachers at the high school, the people at Stafford’s, the grocery store. Everyone. And everyone knew him. Chic liked the comfort in that, even if everyone knew him as the son of the man who sat down behind his barn and froze himself to death. Knowing everyone took the surprise out of life, and Chic Waldbeeser