The Bob Corrigan

Let’s take a crack at tuning up that piece I shared with you yesterday, shall we?

He locked and barred the aluminum door and fed enough wood to the stove to keep it burning through the night.   Brushing his teeth in the trailer’s closet-sized bathroom, he debated whether or not to bother switching the batteries out of the TV remote back into the carbon monoxide detector.   Changing the batteries took five minutes.  About the same time it took layer himself into bed under his collection of mismatched blankets.  Moving bars of headlights cut through the shades covering the porthole window next to his bed, the same window that leaked cold air and road noise all night long.

He covered his face with his arm. Thursday was one phone interview and three hours on a computer at the library reading message boards and postings and six emails to recruiters and one call-back.  One coffee from the library lounge, with enough Mini Moos and sugar packs to call it breakfast, calorie-wise.  A baloney sandwich and an orange from the Lutheran kitchen after a thirty-minute pep talk.  Two newspapers back at the library, then the long walk back home.  Canned ravioli for dinner.  He was getting sick of canned ravioli.

Another week of endless searching and not-finding was over.  Tomorrow, Friday, he’d walk the town beaches at dawn looking for jingles and sea glass and driftwood and bones, then he’d scout the recycling station and the junk stores until noon, because Saturday he had to be ready for the flea market, and it took him time to assemble, label and package his creations.

On Saturday he’d hitch over to the police station where he’d shower and shave then change into his good clothes, the one pair of khakis he owned and the blue shirt with the button-down collar. Sergeant Faelan would give him a ride back to the trailer so he could pick up his folding table and his transport crate before heading back into town.  He’d walk to the municipal parking lot at seven to set up, and if he was lucky, the Portuguese girl working Baroni’s food cart would sneak him some breakfast sausages on a potato roll.

Then at seven thirty the gate would open, and for a short while he’d become a real person again, not just another anonymous out-of-work early-middle aged retail manager living in a borrowed trailer.  For five hours he’d be Mr. Oliver Levant, purveyor of unique objects of unusual provenance and remarkable quality, an artist, a salesman, joking and smiling and selling and taking numbers and emails and discussing trends and making plans until the whistle blew at twelve thirty and he became anonymous and invisible again for another week.

He pulled the stack of blankets up to his chin and smiled.