Northwest Corner Read Online Free PDF Page A

something like “These are the best fins in the game,” or some such inanity, because that’s my job. She gave me a little smile then, though not at all condescending—something to the tune of “It must be sort of a kick to say things like ‘These are the best fins in the game,’ which really, when you get down to it, in its fine American banality, is just another kind of poetry.” All of which seemed pretty unusual and appealing to me under the circumstances—namely, our being in a sporting-goods store—and struck me meaningfully, and not just because I’d been a near-monk for so long that I’d begun to feel like Thomas Merton (the only monk whose name I could reliably recall).
    And so, before I knew it, I’d rashly offered Penny Jacobs twenty-five percent off the merchandise (top of the line and rated a Best Buy by Consumer Reports ) in exchange for her phone number.
    A deal she took, though only after due consideration.
    “Boss?”
    Lost in my reverie, I’ve wandered out to the sales floor and am now being greeted by Chang Sook Oh, former manager of the UCSB varsity tennis team and by far our most conscientious employee, emerging from the stockroom with two boxes of hockey skates for a waiting customer.
    “What’s up, Chang?”
    “We’re out all Merrells between eights and eleven and a halfs. And Salomons are low. Should I place an order?”
    “Check with Derek first to see what’s low his side. And when you talk to Mike at distribution tell him we need that bulk discount. They scrimped us last time.”
    “Got it, Boss.”
    Chang wears his clothes and hair neat, goes to church every Sunday, and is the only person in America who calls me Boss.
    “How’s your mother, Chang?”
    “Doing better today, thanks, Boss.”
    I watch him walk away, duck-toed and light on his feet. His mother has kidney problems that will probably do her in soon, but the kid never complains about it and never misses a day’s work. A good son. I can picture him washing her swollen feet in water scented with some Korean herb; making a Tupperware lunch for her before heading off in the morning; checking the connections on the dialysis machine to make sure that, within the sad, sinking chaos of her last years, this one necessary thing will function according to the warranty.
    Of course, such ruminations by a man in middle life about a young man his son’s age are prone to a high degree of subjectivity.Like most guys of my ilk (whatever that means), I’m in all likelihood just another salmon narcissist, ever returning to the corpse-strewn spawning ground of me, where one day, unless something even worse happens, I too will quietly expire.
    What I can say for certain is that watching Chang Sook Oh approach his seated customer at the end of aisle nine (skis, snowboards, winter-sports apparel, ice skates, hockey equipment), squat down, and enthusiastically present the merchandise as though on a silver platter, a suckling pig at a feast, hearing his low, genuinely congratulatory murmur of “These Bauers are top of the line,” I can feel myself already eddying off into a backwater of personal regret that, in truth, has nothing to do with this upstanding young man or his dying mother and everything to do with my own internal weather.
    At the register, Sandra’s just finishing ringing somebody up: “Thanks and, you know, have a good one.”
    Exit customer, bearing two cans of Penn tennis balls, rolls of Tourna Grip, a pack of string grommets, and a Wilson sun visor.
    “What ever, ” Sandra mutters to herself.
    “Tony come in?” I ask.
    “Had to take his dog to the vet. Some sort of diarrhea thing? Poop all over the house.”
    “Sounds ugly.”
    “Like, what kind of name is Dudley for a dog?” Sandra grabs a SoCal sales catalog and begins fanning herself. “It’s so motherfuckin’ hot in here. Can’t you turn up the conditioning or something?”
    “Just turned it down. Ever pay your own utility bills?”
    “Tony can be