Berry-Smashing Day at the C&L

Suddenly, one of the front windows broke and a fire started at number-three cash register and I knew right away what had happened. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window; because just before the smell of fire and smoke had covered over every single smell in the store, there was this smell of kerosene that had flashed in and out of my nose. "Hey, I'm burning, I'm burning up," Nelson Forman said, first very surprised to see his own clothes on fire, then running away from his post at number three with flames coming out of his back. "Get a blanket," a woman customer said; and when I yelled, "Where in hell 'm I going to get a blanket in a supermarket?" she said, "Get a coat, then, something to wrap around him, at least"; but this was a hot, sticky August day and not a person in the store had even a jacket on, not even the register clerks, though it was compulsory. Nelson ran up aisle A and disappeared for a second before I saw him rounding the imported-cheese section and coming down aisle B, flames still sticking out of his back. Everyone, including a dozen or so customers and the delivery boys and all the clerks except the two who were using the store's only working fire extinguisher to put out the small blaze at number three, just sort of looked dumfounded and helpless at Nelson running up and around and down the aisles, wailing his head off, till I tackled him from in front, a perfect tackle (continued on page 156)Berry-Smashing Day(continued from page 115) right below the knees, so his whole body would buckle and fall backward and lose an extra yard and maybe even loosen the ball from his hands, and rolled him on the floor on his back till most of the flames went out. Then I flipped open five quart bottles of cranberry juice, the nearest liquid I could reach, and poured them over Nelson till the fire was doused, and relaxed from the ordeal, with my breath coming on hard, while all three delivery boys uncapped quart and half-quart bottles of tomato and pineapple and apricot-orange juice and spilled the contents over Nelson, even after his body had stopped smoking.

"Anyone call the police for an ambulance?" I said to the manager, and he repeated the question to the customers and staff surrounding Nelson and me and they just looked at one another; some shook their heads, one man speaking for his wife, and he said, "We didn't, nobody said anything."

"Well, someone call the police for an ambulance," the manager said.

"Want me to do it, boss?" Richard, the food bagger, said.

"Dial nine one one, Richie."

"Nine eleven, right, that new police emergency number, right away. Which phone should I use--the one in the office or the pay one in back?"

"The office, and quick, now, Nelson's hurt."

"What I do, what I do for this?" Nelson asked, his eyelids and nostrils fluttering, and just my trying to blow away the ashes on his chest that were the remains of his short-sleeve white shirt caused him great pain. He seemed to be going crazy and his hair smelled singed like burned chicken feathers and we were both getting more soaked by the moment from being in this large puddle of juice. Nobody seemed to want to get near us or even get their shoes wet.

"How do I keep him from going into shock?" I asked the manager.

"Put his legs up on that olive-oil can there and keep his head straight down."

"No," a woman said, "you put his head up on something soft and his legs down."

"Which do I do?" I asked the manager.

"Let's keep him flat, then. The police will be here in a sec."

A combination of different sirens was heard in a few minutes and then the police came into the market and the fire department with axes and gas masks and portable extinguishers and a few men in white from the local city hospital. Nelson was given oxygen and treated briefly for his burns and was being carried out of the market on a stretcher when he yelled, "Boom, damn bomb went boom, and I saw the man who threw it, saw the bum who went boom."

"Hold him there for a moment," a police officer yelled to the bearers, but the intern said that he'd have to insist that Nelson not be detained.

"Just one quick question, please." And to Nelson: "Who'd you see throw the bomb, son? I'm saying," when Nelson looked up at him blankly, "the person who threw it, I mean. You know him? Could give me a description of him?"

"The person was a man," Nelson said. "Threw it right through it, right at me, right through the window at the Heinz beans I was ringing up, the catsup, right at me, went boom, that man went boom, and the boom went off like a bomb and burned my back, the bum, my back."

"Is that what happened? Well, you'll be fine and dandy in a few days, son, and take care."

"Good luck to you, Nelly," one of the other register clerks said. "Safe recovery."

"Now, what happened?" the police officer said to me. "And please say it nice and slow and straight. Shorthand's not my profession."

• • •

My wife asked if anything had happened at work that day, as she asked just about every night when I first got home and immediately went to the john to wash my face and hands and sometimes take a shower; and I said, "No, nothing much."

She said, "Oh, well, it's because you look more tired. that's why. Like a beer?"

"Yeah, a beer--no, an ale, I'm dying for one ice-cold."

"You bring home any from work?"

"No. I didn't even bring home a beer. I didn't even bring any groceries. There was a fire at work, that's the reason."

"A fire? Well, that's going to do great for supper. I was counting on a chicken from you, Kev. Why didn't you stop in another market or, better yet, phone me so I could shop somewhere near here? I would've, even though we don't get the discount like at your C&L."

"Someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window and Nelson Forman nearly got burned to death." She asked who Nelson was and when I told her, she said, "Was he seriously hurt?"

"I said he was nearly burned to death, that means almost being burned to death; the hospital I phoned said he has second- and third-degree burns on about fifty percent of his body and that he's still critical and probably lucky to be alive."

"Which is worse, second or third?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if first is worse or better than second. All I know is that fifty percent body burns is very bad, very critical."

"You should've phoned me, Kev. You phoned the hospital; I admit that's more important, but you should've also phoned me. Now we have no food for supper except eggs, 'less you want to go and walk the ten stupid blocks to the market."

"Is that the closest?"

"And the only one. It's seven o'clock and that's it in about a square mile around here that stays open. I think they're worried about robberies and such, but some enterprising chain should open a store nearer the project, stick an armed guard in it and stay open till nine or ten at night and make a fortune. You ought to suggest it to C&L."

The phone rang a few minutes before the time we normally sit down for supper. "Who is it?" I said, angry, as if everyone in this time zone should know that most family people have supper around this hour, but the man said, "Wimer, Kevin Wimer, you're in charge of the C&L produce line at Bainbridge, correct?"

"Sort of assistant in charge. Finer-man's head."

"Finerman, that's right. Well, there was a fire in your store today, caused by a particular labor-trouble reason I'll disclose this very minute, if you're not in a rush. There's a movement going on for better wages and working conditions by the ras, black and loganberry pickers of this nation. And your food chain has continued to sell these products, even though we've expressly requested it to boycott all the growers of these products till they've fallen in line with the few smaller growers who've raised pickers' wages to the national minimum and improved the pickers' living and working conditions while they're on the job. Were you aware your store was firebombed today?"

"Yes. And one of the clerks got fifty percent of his body burned, both second and third degree."

"I heard. And it's terrible. But if it's only five percent second and forty-five percent third, it wouldn't be that bad, am I right?"

"You are if second is worse than third, but it could be fatal the other way around."

"I'm very sorry about this clerk, but if I related to you some of the living and working conditions these pickers and their families must endure, you'd think they'd be better off dead than alive."

"The pickers can always get other jobs, can't they? I mean, there's no Government law saying they can't."

"Are you a union man, Mr. Wimer, I mean a good one? Then you, of course, know you can't be fired from your present position without an exceptionally good cause, correct? And if you've any complaints that can't be settled by you (continued on page 178)Berry-Smashing Day(continued from page 156) directly with management, then the union settles them for you, correct? Well, the pickers formed a union, but the major growers won't recognize it, so no complaints are settled in any way except the way the growers want, and that's always to the extreme disadvantage of the pickers. These pickers are relatively uneducated but very honest people, usually from a foreign-speaking minority, good family men, they know how to pick fruit, like the outdoors and accept gladly their means of livelihood, and now all they want is for their legitimately formed union to be recognized and honored by the growers, so the union can bargain directly and fairly for better wages, decent wages, the most minimum of national-minimum-wage-act wages, and for the most commonly accepted working and living conditions, which means a portable privy near their work area and dormitories that weren't built ages ago for pigs. Now, is that asking for too much?"

"No."

"Then support us by joining the boycott movement against the illegal growers. We're asking you--and, incidentally, this is in full accordance and sympathy from your own union organizer, Mr. Felk, at Local Seventy-nine--to refuse to sell ras, black and loganberries in your store. And, in fact, tomorrow, in the street outside the supermarket, to publicly dump and destroy the berries you already have while TV cameras of two local stations here take pictures and do a story of you doing it, all of which we'll be instrumental in setting up."

I made a few whoos and good Gods into the phone and asked the man to repeat what he had just asked me to do, which he was doing when Jennie walked over with a blackboard that listed the ingredients that were going into her "New Superspecial Famous Northern California Egg Dish tonight, which includes sweet cream, Swiss and parmesan cheese, scallions, peppers, pimientos and fresh chopped oregano and parsley," and said, "Who's on the phone?"

I told her, "Union business." And to the man: "What's your name, if I might ask?"

"I'll give my organizing name, which is Blackspot. Now, what do you say?"

I said why not ask the head of produce, and he said that Finerman was too old, besides being in complete agreement with the berry growers and management against the pickers. "Do what I ask, Kevin, and it might be the spark we need to make our Eastern boycott successful. We don't want any more fire-bombing. Innocent people get hurt and it looks bad for us, besides. Just dump the berries at ten tomorrow, which the stations say is the latest they can cover the story, because of previous camera commitments, and we swear we'll use every pressure we have to keep you on at the store, if they decide to fire you, and if that's impossible, then your union has promised to place you at even a higher wage at a pro-picker store. You'll also be stamping your own special mark for the same things your own union fought for and won only twenty years ago; now, what do you say?"

I said I'd think it over, but he said I had no time. I said why didn't he get a produce head of one of the giant, more influential markets to do it and he said because my store was in the news now and to gain back respect for the movement, that fire-bombing had to be whitewashed from the public's mind. "What you'd do would mean that even though one of your favorite colleagues was severely burned, his fellow employees still thought so much of the movement that they forgave the fire-bombing and were, in fact, placing direct blame for it on the growers and indirect blame on the market owners for trying to sell those berries."

I said, oh, what the hell, I'd do it and he said I'd see him in front of the store at ten, then. "You'll recognize me as an ordinary pedestrian with the most un-ordinary happy grin an ordinary pedestrian ever had. Pickers around the nation will never forget you for this. You're a credit to your profession and local."

I didn't care about being a credit to my profession. I never had any illusions that my job was difficult or needed many physical or mental skills, though I did have to use some better judgment and really strain a muscle or two when I worked for a small market five years ago and had to get up before the pigeons to select and buy the store's produce line right off the trucks. Now I open crates that are delivered twice a week to the market, make sure the fruits and vegetables look appetizing and salable to the customers, which mostly means using the right fluorescent lights and straightening out the food and spraying it every other hour to give it that just-picked or rained-on look and odor, put up the price signs that management directs us to from its offices in another city and occasionally use my own mind by writing and installing cute and clever sayings on the more perishable items, such as Act Like This Fruit is Your Mother-in-Law: Please Do Not Squeeze. But I agreed with just about everything that Blackspot said about improving the lot of the pickers, was bored with C&L after three years and didn't mind losing my job if I could get another one, though, with two weeks' severance pay, and then it'd be a kick seeing myself on television, having my wife, friends and relatives all seeing me, which'd be the most exciting thing to happen to me since my plane came back with me and my National Guard unit in it from an overseas emergency Middle East crisis several years ago and my crying wife and family nearly suffocated me to death at the airport gate.

"How'd you like to see me on television tomorrow night?" I said to Jennie when she set that superspecial northern-California egg dish in front of me; and she said, "And how'd you like to see me in a brand-new Valentino gown?"

"But I'm serious." And she said, "And so am I. Wouldn't I look spectacular? Now, eat up." And to that five-month-old thing in her belly: "You, too, mister, and don't be letting me know if you think the dish is too hot."

The eggs weren't very good, too bland, which not even salt would improve, which surprised me, with all the different herbs, spices and ingredients she had in it, and when she asked how it was, I said, "Great, um, fine, though still not as good as one of your plain cheese omelets or fried egg marinara, so maybe this ought to be the last time we have it, OK?"

"I like it. The sautéed pepper I could do without, but I like it." She ate all her eggs and, without asking me or anything, spooned half of my eggs onto her plate, while I just sat there, daydreaming about how I was going to get the berries to the street tomorrow before the manager or Finerman got wind of what I was doing.

• • •

I got to work a little earlier than usual and cleaned up the produce section a half hour before the store was to open at nine. The window from the bombing the day before still had wooden planks and tape over it and the store still smelled some from the fire, even though we had used several cans of bathroom spray. One of the girl food clerks said that just before she left the night before, the manager told her the company wasn't going to repair the window till the weekend, just to show the agitators that we didn't think a broken window was going to lose us much business and to also show the neighborhood how difficult it was providing them with the wide selection of food products we thought they wanted. I told her I thought a broken window was definitely going to lose us trade, not only because it looked bad but also because it reminded customers that more agitation might come if the dispute wasn't settled and, worse than that, of Nelson's near death.

"How is he, you know?" she said, and I told her I'd been thinking of calling the hospital; in fact, would do it right now, since I had a few minutes before the store opened, and went to the office.

"Good morning, Kevin," the manager said. "Everything straightened out up front?" He said this every time I saw him and he meant was the floor swept in my section and was I getting the more perishable items that wouldn't last the week right up on top for everyone to see or at least working with Finerman in ordering replacement produce, since the company prohibited markdowns on its fruits and vegetables. This was really his office, he made us very aware of that, made us feel uncomfortable whenever we had to use just one of the three desks in his office, and he red-circled the check-in numbers of our timecards if we punched in three minutes late more than once a week or two minutes late more than twice a week and even complained to our department superiors if he thought we were spending too much time in the washroom, which happened to be within seeing distance from his glass office overlooking the store, as I guess everything else was, except the stock room in back, where the staff took their breaks. That was why I was a little jittery and maybe too hesitant when I asked if he'd mind my using the phone to call about Nelson. He said I needn't bother, he had called himself last night and the hospital said Nelson's doing satisfactorily and it wouldn't know of any improvement in his condition for two days. "He has those kind of burns."

"I'd still like to call, if you don't mind, and find out if he just might have improved overnight."

"I never knew you and Nelson were that close."

"We weren't, exactly. I mean, Nelson liked me and me, him and we had lots of respect for each other, as we were both on the company softball team that made the league play-offs two years ago, Nelly at short and me at second."

"It's also that the company's been complaining to me recently about the excess calls from this phone, and on both exchanges. They say it's completely out of proportion to the excess calls of the other stores, and even sent me a notice to post on the bulletin board, which I haven't done, because I thought a brief mention of it at our next staff conference might serve as well."

"I'm sure they could make an exception with this one."

"I'm sure they could, too, if this were the only exception. But I can't be explaining to them why each excess call of my employees, or at least the calls I find out about, is an exception--I'd be explaining to them all week, if that were the case."

So he wasn't going to let me use the phone after all. He didn't care about Nelson, except that he had to be replaced by a less efficient man at the register and that might lower the day's profit a fraction of a percentage point and, good God!, how was he ever going to explain that to the company. He didn't care about the pickers or even his own employees; and if it had been me burned and Nelson who wanted to call the hospital, it would've been the same excuse: excess calls. I said thank you, I don't know for what, and called the hospital from the pay phone in back. Nelson was doing satisfactorily, a nurse said, though chances of his complete recovery wouldn't be known for at least another day.

"You see the cameras?" Mary Sarah, another food clerk, said when I got back to my section. "They're setting up outside--two of them from different stations. What you think they're for?"

"Probably to photograph the scene of yesterday's bombing."

"And the paper today? There was a picture of our market, real as life except for the boards, and another of Nelson waving from his bed in the hospital, though he looked so grim and weak, it seemed maybe strings were making his hand move. My hubby, Mike, and I talked about Nelson last night and couldn't decide what all that degree business meant. Though because third sounds so much the worse over second, we almost agreed it wasn't, simply because it was too obvious, and so we wouldn't have even thought about the question in the first place. Do you have a clue?"

The store bell rang, everyone got to his post, the doors opened and the usual early-morning surge of customers eager to get what they believed were daily-delivered fresh fruits and vegetables bought grapefruits, oranges, peaches and tomatoes and raspberries that had been on the counter for a few days.

"It's getting so exciting outside," Mary Sarah said, coming by after the early rush had ended and squeezing and thumping a melon to see if it was ripe enough for that night. "Could you put this one away for me?" she said, which I did. "And the papers say it was all because of those things--those berries there," and she pointed to the four crates of berries that in a half hour I was going to dump onto the street and destroy. I had already figured out how I was going to do it. I'd wait till Finer-man went in back for his every-half-hour-on-the-half-hour smoke, and then I'd simply stack the crates on one another and carry them outside.

"Morning, Kevin." It was Mrs. Shape, another morning regular. For six months in the cold season, she bought nothing but anise, artichokes and apples; and during the warmer months, it was plums, peaches and unpackaged carrots. "You shouldn't be selling those things," she said, meaning the berries.

"I know that, Mrs. Shape."

"I should be boycotting your store for selling them, because by having them, you only encourage people to buy. Haven't you seen the television reports?" I told her I hadn't and she said that the educational network last week devoted an entire hour to the plight of the berrypickers and the cynicism of the growers. "They're the most underprivileged and underpaid workers we have; and because of it, they're forced to live in hovels and have too many children, thereby causing even more future problems for the world. I shouldn't even be in this store, do you realize that? And maybe I won't," and she put down the plums, peaches and carrots I had already weighed out for her and bagged, clipped and marked, and left the store. "See you tomorrow, Kevin," were the last words she said.

It was nearly ten. The cameras were set up and a couple of policemen were keeping the pedestrians away from the equipment and the interviewer, whom I recognized from an evening-news-report show as one of the most well-known television reporters on the city scene. People were trying to get his autograph while he held a few pieces of paper in his hand and was practicing his report to an unmanned camera. Suddenly, Mary Sarah was right on top of me, excited and out of breath and saying, "You know what Mr. Dougherty of WNBT just said outside about you, Kev?" And Larry, the youngest food clerk, said, "What, Mary, what?" "He said that you, Kevin, have just smashed all the grower-grown berries that hadn't been picked by union-supporting pickers, as an act of protest against the growers and as a form of allegiance or something to the boycott movement, though I don't know if he was talking about you or the pickers, now, Kev."

"What's that all about?" Finerman said, his package of cigarettes and matches already out of his pocket and in his hands, as he was on his way to the stock room for a smoke.

"What's what all about?" I said, stacking a crate of berries on another crate.

"What Mary Sarah said."

"Mr. Dougherty said you smashed berries onto the street and destroyed them, though you didn't do that, from what I could see, did you, Kev? I would've seen it from number six, or at least heard about it."

"That's true, you would've." I had three crates stacked now, lifted them up, told Larry to place the fourth and last crate on top of the three I held, and started for the door.

"Where you going with those?" Finer-man said. "Now, put them down and explain to me, Kev."

I would have, the situation was getting much too tight and a bit frightening for me now, but everything had been arranged, which I had agreed to, and I would feel even worse and more stupid having had all those television men set up their equipment for nothing. "I've got to put these berries away, under manager's orders," I said.

"Well, you're going the wrong way, if that is what you're doing," Finerman said. "Storeroom's in back. Kevin? Now, you come back this instant, Kevin."

I was walking through the door. Finerman, as I had thought, didn't try to stop me physically, though by now he must have known what was happening. Larry, Mary Sarah and the delivery boys followed me outside, mumbling to one another that something fantastic was about to happen. "OK, fellas," Mr. Dougherty said, and the cameras began taking film of me on the street. Mr. Dougherty was reporting off camera how I was leaving the market to demonstrate my sympathy with the pickers' movement for higher wages and better living and working conditions. Behind me, Mary Sarah said, "Now I know, now I understand." And Larry said, "Oh, Jesus, and I was the one who put the last crate of berries in his hands. You think I'll get fired?"

I looked around for Blackspot, but there was a whole slew of ordinary-looking pedestrians grinning and smiling as I almost never saw them do. I walked to the curb, set down the crates, lifted the top crate and was about to turn it over into the street, when a couple of boys standing beside me and hamming it up for the cameras said, "As long as you're going to throw away those things, can we have some?" I said no, though I honestly didn't know what to say; I hadn't planned for anyone to bring up what I could see was a perfectly legitimate request, and when they said, "They're just going to go to waste, anyhow," I told them, "Well, only one basket apiece, understand?" The boys took a basket each from one of the crates on the sidewalk and then it seemed that everybody in the crowd except my co-workers and the television people and one unhappy, ungrinning, very ordinary-looking man except for a purple birthmark the size of a glass coaster in the middle of his forehead began grabbing baskets of berries out of the crates and stuffing them into their shopping bags or just eating handfuls of berries right on the street, as the two boys were doing. The crowd emptied the three crates in a matter of seconds and were reaching for the berries in the crate I was holding away from their reach, when I threw that crate to the ground and quickly stepped on and smashed the berries rolling every which way and then almost everybody in the crowd joined in stepping on the berries with me. "We're pressing wine," someone yelled. "Down with the illegal growers," Blackspot shouted at the cameras. "Up with C&L fruit men," a man said, and that was the cheer the crowd liked best. "Up with C&L fruit men. They give away free berries for nothing." The cameras picked up on all of this. Mr. Dougherty was reporting the story as if a last-second, game-winning touchdown had just been scored. It was almost a surprise to me not to be hoisted to someone's shoulders and hip-hip-hoorayed to.

• • •

That evening, Jennie and I sat down for the evening news. I told her something special was going to be on that we ought to watch, as I hadn't mentioned what had happened at work that day. She said she ought to see how the chicken was doing in the oven, but I said, "Sit tight, just for a moment?"

There were a lot of reports about Vietnam and Africa and the UN and our country's gold crisis and the city's impending school crisis and then the story that I was in. "Oh, gosh, I can't believe it, you were right," Jennie said, and I told her to can it, I couldn't hear; and off camera, Mr. Dougherty, while the screen showed me leaving the store, was telling a different story from the one he'd begun to recite when the incident actually took place. Now he said that what had started out to be one individual's protest against the major city supermarkets' nonadherence to the ras, black and loganberry boycott turned into a major neighborhood fun-in. "Kevin Wimer was the principal figure in the demonstration, but the neighborhood, a polyglot of race, creed and culture, wouldn't let Mr. Wimer have his protest without them eating it, too." The television showed that long mad loud scene of people stealing the baskets and popping berries into their mouths for the benefit of the cameras, and Mr. Dougherty said it was like a "modern-dress Cecil B. De Mille presents scene of Bacchanalian Rome." The last shot on the screen showed me still holding the fourth crate and walking with my back to the cameras and Mr. Dougherty saying, "So what began as a brave individual's protest against a segment of the giant corporate structure ended up as the best gesture of neighborhood good will and all the free publicity that accompanies it that a supermarket chain could hope to get."

"Did they fire you?" Jennie asked.

"The manager said he'd speak to upper management about it, but in the meantime, I should stay on, they're short of help. But there are always other jobs."

"We got bills, you know, a baby coming on, and chicken costs money, even if you do get it at two thirds the price." She went to the kitchen, yelled out, "You're a fool and a show-off, Kevin Wimer," and, a little later, that dinner would be ready in five minutes.

Blackspot phoned. "You weren't at first forceful enough with those two boys, but thanks, anyway. Nobody won or lost, but it at least drew some much-needed nonviolent attention to the movement. I was wondering if you'd join our picket lines tomorrow against a pro-grower Food-o-Rama on a Hundred and Sixty-eighth. We need marchers badly."

"I'm still working," I said. "But because of my general all-around foul-up today and sympathy for the movement, I'd like to give a few dollars to the pickers. Where do I send it to?"

"We're going to have a complete full-page ad in all the city's newspapers on Sunday. It'll mention just that matter and also the address of national headquarters, where the donations should be sent."

The phone rang again a few minutes later. "Let it ring," Jennie said, but I left the table and answered it and it was Nelson Forman's wife, Rita. She said she hadn't seen the story on television herself, but at least five friends had called to tell her that one of Nelson's colleagues had come on television to say that not only did Nelson deserve to get burned but the whole city should go up in flames if the city and supermarkets and supermarket workers and shoppers didn't support the berry boycott. I told her that wasn't true, wondered out loud what show her friends could have been watching, "But it certainly wasn't the one Jennie and I saw, and the other station covering it shot the exact same scene." Then I asked how Nelson was and she said, "Oh, fine, absolutely fine, I mean, how else would he be with half his body charred to shreds and all the pain that goes with it, which no amount of drugs administered seems to help?"

"Is he improving any? I mean, Nelson and I were friends, I'm interested, everybody at work is concerned," and she said, "Oh, yeah, a lot you care." "No, that's not true, I care a lot; that television report your friends gave was totally false," and she said, "Well, the doctors say he'll live, thank God, though with so much of his body burned, they say he'll have to get skin grafts on the parts burned most," and it occurred to me that she if anybody would know the answer as to which of the two degrees was worse. I first said I'd be glad to give some of my skin to Nelson, if the doctors thought the color was right and all, "as I've big thighs and an even bigger behind and I know that's where they take the donor's skin from." Then I told her about the question that had been bothering me for two days now and which was worse, if she didn't mind my asking, second- or third-degree burns? Rita said, "Well, the main difference, Nelson's doctor told me----" but then she broke down; it sounded as if she was swallowing the mouthpiece whole. I felt very bad for her and said, "Now, come on, don't cry, it'll be all right, everything'll work out OK, Rita," but she said, "I can't go on, I've been like this since the fire-bombing, oh, what's wrong with this world, anyway?" and hung up.

I stood there a few seconds with Rita's sobbing voice and those pleas of hers still in my head, then went to the dictionary in the living room while Jennie was calling me back to the table in the kitchen, but all it had in it were the words "second" and "third" and "first" and "burn" and "-s" for the plural, but no word "degree" after them, neither with hyphens, separated nor anything. I decided I'd never get to know the answer to this question. That none of my friends knew and nobody at work knew and that maybe the only person who could tell me would be one of those great skin-doctor specialists like the one working on Nelson, who wouldn't give me the time of day on the phone for less than a $50 bill. Then I remembered my promise to Rita and I said out loud, "Good God, what the hell you get into this time?" and I suddenly felt stomach-sick and woozy, because just the thought of being operated on for skin for Nelson's grafting scared me to no end now. I hoped Rita would forget my suggestion, or maybe in her condition she hadn't even heard my suggestion, but I had promised her my skin and I knew Id have to go along with it if I was asked.