The Hound Goes Back for Gold

“I assure you, Ma’am, you’d be making a mistake,” he grinned, through slightly crooked teeth. “I won’t be in town much longer and you won’t get an offer like this again.”

The woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat at the kitchen table. She was smiling too, but her eyes were darting to the door and her nails were leaving indents in one tightly clasped hand. She went to speak and he cut her off.

“I know, you want to wait for your husband, lord knows I’d want my wife to do the same. But this is different. And a smart man like your husband, he’d know that. Say, I bet he’d be impressed if you pulled the trigger yourself, so to speak.”

She lurched forwards like her objections were trying to physically force their way out, lips parted in a kind of panicky snarl, but he held up one hand and continued undaunted. 

“I could give you the whole set today for just $40. That includes everything I’ve shown you, even the crockpot.” He leaned back in the chair, waved one hand nonchalantly. One final strike. “I can smell the stew cooking when he comes through the door already. What do you say, Ma’am?”

She looked like she was about to cry.

“Good – for – nothing – bitch!” Hank pounded the steering wheel with both meaty, liver-spotted fists between the words, blasting the upholstery with flecks of sweat. The last emphatic swing accidentally set off a short burst of the car horn and he jerked backwards, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. They had. Strands of his thinning brown hair had come loose from where he’d carefully combed them this morning and were now damply plastered to his forehead. His thick, boxy spectacles had steamed up with the exertion, and he rubbed them on his shirt to clear them in a spot just above where the buttons were valiantly straining in the fruitless war against his expanding gut. He had to get the air in the car fixed soon, but he hadn’t reached target yet, and that was the deal he’d made with himself. It was an important motivational exercise to set goals. He was still a long way off, but closing that sale wouldn’t have hurt, not least for his pride. He was so close, he’d felt it, but before he could sense the shift she’d crumbled and he was suddenly being ushered towards the door. It was hard to keep composure when it slipped through your fingers like that, even for a veteran like Hank, and he had lost his cool a little. He’d shouted, that was all, when what he’d really wanted to do was rip the pearl necklace off her delicate porcelain throat and choke her with it. 

“Her loss,” he muttered. Some women just had no sense. Too much independence, he assumed. The moment you gave in with them and conceded ground, they took advantage, just like on the battlefield. Hank had learned that the hard way. He adjusted in his seat and angled the rearview to the left slightly. The house he’d just left was now in frame and, squinting, he could see the front curtains slightly parted, a pale face peering out from between them. He rolled down the driver’s side window without moving his head and extended his arm, giving an exaggeratedly jaunty wave. Seeing her slink back and close the curtains like a shot made him feel a little better at least. Sometimes you had to take respect where you could. 

“Could you check again, please. H. Bassett.”

            The disinterested teen at the reception desk covered the phone receiver with some irritation and loudly whispered back at him – “I’ve told you already, sir, give me a moment.”

Unbelievable, Hank thought. It was bad enough that the motel didn’t seem to have a record of his booking, but to receive this kind of treatment as well was too much. He was close to reaching over and disconnecting the call himself, but caught himself. What is a good salesman? Charming, sure. Persuasive, yes. But above all things – patient. He smiled, no teeth, and showed his palms: please, no rush. The teen glared, and went back to his phone call. The youth of today confounded Hank. That parents weren’t instilling a sense of honour and deference in their children, as he had done with his two girls, was nothing short of unpatriotic. This boy was soft, surly and smelled, Hank suspected, of marijuana. Shipping him off to Vietnam to learn some goddamn manners, that would be the best thing for him. Serving in the corps more than 20 years prior was the best thing that had ever happened to Hank Bassett and he’d said to colleagues and prospective sales on more than one occasion that he was glad for the war. There was too much that bothered him about the direction this country was headed in, and that started with the young generation. 

“Sir?”

The boy was off the call now, and tapping a pencil on the desk.

“What was the name of the company again?”

Hank struggled to plaster over the cracks showing in the aw-shucks veneer. “Oh come on. McCann Parrish? They may have used the full name, McCann Parrish Kitchenware? I guarantee the room’s been booked ahead, just give me the keys please. I’m very tired, we can sort this out later.”

“Sir,” the teen repeated (with some glee, Hank thought), “there’s no reservation under those names, or under your own name either. I can give you a room, it’s by the pool and it’s got a TV and everything, but you need to pay up front. No freebies. $22 cash.”

Hank stood very still for a few seconds, air whistling loudly through hairy nostrils and vein in his temple throbbing like a drummer keeping time, and reached wordlessly for his wallet.

The ritual whenever he checked in to a new motel room was very important. First, he hung up the pair of spare white shirts in the closet, then removed his black suit and did the same, lining up his shoes neatly by the door (polishing them first, if necessary). He’d wash the shirt he wore that day in the sink and iron it immediately afterwards ready for the next day. Still in his undershirt, briefs and socks, he had two more tasks to check off – remove the wedding ring he forced onto his thick finger each morning, and set up the trophy. Where the trophy sat depended on the room; preferably the centre of the desk if there was one, on a bedside table, even on top of the television if there were no other options. It just needed to be visible. It was made of some sort of metal but painted with a gold colour that was flaking in places, and in the shape of a briefcase perched atop a dais. The plaque on the front of the base, in bold, tasteful lettering, read ‘Hank ‘The Hound’ Bassett. Salesman of the Year, 1956’. 

Though just over a decade old now, the trophy had taken on a resurgent sentimental value for Hank in the last year or two. He had been clearing out the garage of the three-bed home he’d slaved for, to keep Marcia and the girls happy and safe until that suddenly wasn’t enough for them, when he’d come across the trophy in a droopy, water-damaged cardboard box stuffed behind a shelving unit. Turning it over in his hands, foggy memories of bright bulb flashes and slaps on the back from faceless colleagues became sharper. He’d been so proud, and so had Marcy – she had been there, by his side, looking beautiful on his arm. They’d even left the girls with a sitter to make a night of it, since the awards dinner was being held in the function room of a hotel uptown. There was champagne (or at least something like it) on arrival, and they’d got to sit with Don and Lucille Parrish and Foster McCann up at the top table, and Marcy hadn’t been able to stop blushing, and when they called his name it felt like being punched in the chest and a slug of whiskey and fireworks going off in his head all at the same time. They’d gone upstairs to their hotel room hours later, giddy and giggling at the bonus cheque for $1000 that Hank couldn’t keep from pulling out of his jacket pocket to gawk at, and ordered more champagne from room service. He’d pulled her down on to the bed, still giggling, and made love to her with the balcony door open and the burbling from the dregs of the party wafting up on the evening air. He hadn’t ever said it aloud, but when his mind wandered at 3am alone on a motel mattress in Nowhere, Idaho or Wrong Turn, Nebraska, he would admit to himself that it was the best single moment of his life. 

The memory of his former wife had curdled like milk left out in the sun but the sensation of winning, to have been certified top of the world, the best of his peers for an entire year? That was timeless. Hank tried wherever possible not to blaspheme, but he figured if he was ever going to feel akin to godliness, it would’ve been then. The trophy had been on the mantle for years after he won it but got lost in the move out from their first modest home to the bigger one he’d seen them in last and lay dormant, dull and pushed aside, until the last possible moment. Fishing it out and cradling it then, having rescued it from obscurity, Hank momentarily forgot his unfaithful family and dedicated himself instead to an intense kinship with an inanimate object. He had, for one glorious moment, achieved everything that he fervently believed that he not only could, but was owed to him. Did it matter that in the years following 1956 his performance had slowed year on year? That the number of doors slammed in his face got higher and higher as his skin sagged and the arguments with his wife worsened and the looks on his daughters faces got more and more scared? He felt himself stuck in time as the world surged and changed and grew around him but for the first time that wasn’t frightening to him – he saw it for what it was now. He was a giant, holding back a tide of chaos and hedonism and integration, alone if he had to, and he could envision his path back. So there he remained over a year later, still alone, polishing that ode to his talent nightly so that even with the lights off, he could still catch its gleam when a stray moonbeam cut through the cheap, dusty shutters of whatever room he was in and refracted it into even the darkest corners.

He finished the ritual and watched the news for a while with a glass of whiskey. Tired-looking young men trudged past the camera while the anchor talked about even more casualties at Khe Sanh. Hank thought he recognised one of the men, but couldn’t think why. A schoolmate of his eldest, maybe? He reached for the phone and reflexively dialled the old number, but it took five or six rings before he remembered and an angry male voice was demanding to know who it was that kept bothering them. He hung up and debated asking the front desk for a phone book, but thought better of it. The whiskey bottle was nearly empty, somehow. 

The 22^nd Annual Salesman of the Year awards dinner was only a few weeks away, and Hank was far behind. He was methodical on his car journeys between towns, working out exactly how many deals he needed to close in each one to stay on track for the top sales target. He’d see some of the others on the road sometimes. Hot shot, shit-eating upstarts. They’d play nice, they’d buy his lunch, they’d pat him on the back and tell him good luck, but he knew what they were all saying behind his back. Old. Out of touch. Washed up. But he was The Hound, and there was life in the old dog yet. 

            The accurate numbers were kept a secret until the dinner, but Hank had managed to get some information out of Milly at head office to keep him headed in the right direction. She’d laughed aloud when he first called and he’d banged the phone against the motel wall so hard that he’d sent chunks of plastic scattering across the misshapen pillows, but she’d felt bad enough about it that she’d eventually acquiesced. He wasn’t in the top five, even, but the gap wasn’t enormous. Hank didn’t need specifics. The road blurred into one endless, identical string of white picket fences and carefully manicured lawns. Contours and features of waspy faces swam and danced into an amorphous mass. Diner coffees and cold, anaemic hamburgers. A couple of near misses with irate customers, and even fewer completed sales. Whiskey bottles stacking up in the back of the increasingly battered Ford. In North Carolina, Hank stopped at an armourer and bought a revolver. All sorts of unsavoury types on the road, these days. It’s important to protect myself, he thought while feeling the cool metal against his bare torso one night. You never know who’s around. 

“I’m sorry, Hank. Maybe…maybe give it a miss this year.”

“I’m CLOSE!” Hank turned around, catching himself. An elderly woman in the corner of the reception, sweat beading on her upper lip, stared with her mouth slightly open and hands trembling over a chintzy purse. Cars shot by on the highway less than 50 metres away, blowing up thick trails of desert dust. Milly stayed silent on the other end.

“I’m sorry. You know, it’s, uh… I’ve got some time. I’ll make some calls on the way. I’ve still got some contacts in Rutherford, I can make four or five sales there easy and then I’ll be right back on top.”

Milly sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr Bassett. I don’t think this is your year.”

Bright spots flared in Hank’s vision. Motels flashed by. Round door handles. The treads on his tires. Hair around sink drains. Patterned carpets. TV static.

“My father didn’t raise a quitter, Millicent. I am one of the best salesman this company has ever seen. Don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise. Tell Don and Foster to save my goddamn seat.”

He hung up before she could answer. The old woman was still staring, and he tipped his hat to her. To the receptionist too. She looked like his youngest, he thought. The same nose, maybe, though that might not have been it. Her hair, maybe? A gingery blonde, like Holly. No, like Rachel. He’d check once he got home. He stumbled over the front step, and someone shouted behind him, but he didn’t look back. There wasn’t any time. 

He fumbled his keys in the ignition, dropping them once before hearing the engine’s stuttering cough, and pulled out. It was around 130 miles. Two days to make it. He checked the rearview, and caught himself smiling. Most of his colleagues had never met the Hound, but they would soon.