Lincoln limousine crowded with Baptist priests.
'Forgive me, forgive me,’ the cab driver begged the Lincoln's occupants sarcastically as the limousine swept by. 'I done seen the wrongness of my ways. Or at least I done seen the ass end of that truck before we got totaled.’ He turned around to Randolph again and said comfortably, ‘That's a fair amount of potential forgiveness in one vehicle, wouldn't you say? But what do you think of the way I missed that truck? That's sixth sense, that is. Kind of a built-in alarm system. Not everybody has that, sixth sense.’
'I'd honestly prefer it if you'd use your first sense and look where the hell you're going,’ Randolph told him testily.
'All right, my friend, no need to get sore,’ the driver replied. He turned around again, his sweaty shirt skidding on the textured vinyl seat, and switched on the radio. It was Anne Murray, singing 'You Needed Me.’ He turned the volume up, surmising correctly that Randolph would find it irritating.
Randolph was a heavily built man, tall and big-boned, and in accord with his appearance, he was usually placid. He made an ideal president of Clare Cottonseed Products, Incorporated, a business in which Southern tempers invariably ran hot to high. If he hadn't inherited the presidency from his father, the board would probably have chosen him anyway. He never raised his voice above an educated mumble. He played golf, and fished, and loved his family. He had grey hair and reminded his junior secretaries of Fred MacMurray.
He enjoyed being nice. He enjoyed settling arguments and making even the least of his two thousand employees feel wanted. His nickname at every one of Clare Cottonseed's seven processing plants was 'Handy Randy.’ He usually smelled slightly of Benson & Hedges pipe tobacco. He had a degree in law, two daughters, one son, and a wife called Marmie, whom he adored.
But today he was more than irritated. He was upset, more than upset. His phone had rung at 4:30 that morning and he had been called back from his vacation cabin on Lac aux Ecorces in the Laurentide forests of Quebec, where only two days earlier he and his family had started their three-week summer vacation. It was their first family vacation in three years and Randolph's only time off in a year and a half. But late yesterday evening fire had broken out at his No.2 cottonseed-processing plant out at Raleigh, in the northeast suburbs of Memphis. One process worker had been incinerated. Two other men, including the plant's deputy manager, had been asphyxiated by fumes. And the damage to the factory itself had so far been estimated at over two million dollars.
It would have been unthinkable for the company president to remain on vacation in Canada, fishing and swimming and buzzing his seaplane around the lakes, no matter how much he deserved it.
To complete Randolph's irritation, his company limousine had failed to show up at the Memphis airport. He had tried calling the office from an airport pay phone smelling of disinfectant, but it was 7:45 p.m., and there was no response. Eventually - hot, tired and disheveled - he had hailed himself a cab and asked to be driven to Front Street.
Now they drove west along Adams Avenue. The radio was playing the '59th Street Bridge Song.’ Randolph hated it. He sat back in his seat, drumming his fingertips against his Samsonite briefcase. 'Slow down, you move too fast… got to make the morning last…'The business district was illuminated by that hazy acacia-honey glow special to Memphis on summer evenings. The Wolf and the Mississippi rivers, which join at Memphis, were turning to liquid ore. The twin arches of the Hernando de Soto Bridge glittered brightly, as if offering a pathway to a promised land instead of to nowhere but West Memphis.
The day's humidity began to ease and surreptitious draughts wavered around the corners of office buildings. The breeze that came in through the open taxi window smelled of flowers and
'Forgive me, forgive me,’ the cab driver begged the Lincoln's occupants sarcastically as the limousine swept by. 'I done seen the wrongness of my ways. Or at least I done seen the ass end of that truck before we got totaled.’ He turned around to Randolph again and said comfortably, ‘That's a fair amount of potential forgiveness in one vehicle, wouldn't you say? But what do you think of the way I missed that truck? That's sixth sense, that is. Kind of a built-in alarm system. Not everybody has that, sixth sense.’
'I'd honestly prefer it if you'd use your first sense and look where the hell you're going,’ Randolph told him testily.
'All right, my friend, no need to get sore,’ the driver replied. He turned around again, his sweaty shirt skidding on the textured vinyl seat, and switched on the radio. It was Anne Murray, singing 'You Needed Me.’ He turned the volume up, surmising correctly that Randolph would find it irritating.
Randolph was a heavily built man, tall and big-boned, and in accord with his appearance, he was usually placid. He made an ideal president of Clare Cottonseed Products, Incorporated, a business in which Southern tempers invariably ran hot to high. If he hadn't inherited the presidency from his father, the board would probably have chosen him anyway. He never raised his voice above an educated mumble. He played golf, and fished, and loved his family. He had grey hair and reminded his junior secretaries of Fred MacMurray.
He enjoyed being nice. He enjoyed settling arguments and making even the least of his two thousand employees feel wanted. His nickname at every one of Clare Cottonseed's seven processing plants was 'Handy Randy.’ He usually smelled slightly of Benson & Hedges pipe tobacco. He had a degree in law, two daughters, one son, and a wife called Marmie, whom he adored.
But today he was more than irritated. He was upset, more than upset. His phone had rung at 4:30 that morning and he had been called back from his vacation cabin on Lac aux Ecorces in the Laurentide forests of Quebec, where only two days earlier he and his family had started their three-week summer vacation. It was their first family vacation in three years and Randolph's only time off in a year and a half. But late yesterday evening fire had broken out at his No.2 cottonseed-processing plant out at Raleigh, in the northeast suburbs of Memphis. One process worker had been incinerated. Two other men, including the plant's deputy manager, had been asphyxiated by fumes. And the damage to the factory itself had so far been estimated at over two million dollars.
It would have been unthinkable for the company president to remain on vacation in Canada, fishing and swimming and buzzing his seaplane around the lakes, no matter how much he deserved it.
To complete Randolph's irritation, his company limousine had failed to show up at the Memphis airport. He had tried calling the office from an airport pay phone smelling of disinfectant, but it was 7:45 p.m., and there was no response. Eventually - hot, tired and disheveled - he had hailed himself a cab and asked to be driven to Front Street.
Now they drove west along Adams Avenue. The radio was playing the '59th Street Bridge Song.’ Randolph hated it. He sat back in his seat, drumming his fingertips against his Samsonite briefcase. 'Slow down, you move too fast… got to make the morning last…'The business district was illuminated by that hazy acacia-honey glow special to Memphis on summer evenings. The Wolf and the Mississippi rivers, which join at Memphis, were turning to liquid ore. The twin arches of the Hernando de Soto Bridge glittered brightly, as if offering a pathway to a promised land instead of to nowhere but West Memphis.
The day's humidity began to ease and surreptitious draughts wavered around the corners of office buildings. The breeze that came in through the open taxi window smelled of flowers and
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