Static filled noise from the TV droned on. Mike sat up on the sofa in a haze, all he saw on the screen was blurry. The words were too sophisticated for him to understand in this state, he just laid his head back in vain hopes they would go away, and he could get back to sleep. “The Yamaguchi Steelworks might not be what one would expect to find amidst a city that still boasts about its age-old pagodas and ancient wooden gates, but inside this building we are witnessing a quiet revolution.” It would not stop. He didn’t know what hour it was, but the TV was still loud. “Behind me sits a carefully engineered vessel holding over two hundred tons of molten iron, but a mere forty five minutes from now it shall be steel suited for the most demanding engineering uses. Such a process would normally take up to twelve hours in a typical American steel mill. This remarkable feat involves injecting pure oxygen into the mix and reaching unimaginable levels of heat, but the men of the Yamaguchi Steelworks are betting their livelihoods that they can get it right.” Mike stirred some more but then the language turned to what he knew only as “Jap” and he tried to sleep again, drowning it out as white noise. “Germans were very stubborn….Bessemer Process…Ore Quality.” Ah, damn it, there’s a narrator. He forgot what he was watching last night. With a throbbing pulse in his head and one hand clutching his forehead he sat up enough to gain his bearings. “Low quality ore in Japan…International pressures... up to 25% scrap metal” He stepped forward, eyes blurry from the light. What channel did he leave it on? Was it that new-fangled PBS one wasting his tax dollars or did he have that pinko Cronkite on again. He was walking past the coffee table on the way to touch the dial when his elbow clipped something. A bottle fell with a heavy clunk on the table as room-temperature beer poured forth. It was enough to remind him of how his mother used to shout; that was the only way she got him care enough to clean up. He took off the stained t-shirt he was wearing and used it as a rag. No one to complain about the job he did these days. The TV continued on in the background, now the scene was something inside an American office. “You have to understand; I have obligations to balance. There are certain rates of return expected by shareholders, and the way I have run this has never disappointed them." “But surely they’d understand if they knew it was necessary.” “Let me explain to you in a way even a tv reporter like yourself can understand. You see that letter on the wall back there? That’s from one Miss Tilly. She’s been a shareholder for thirty years now and she’s been writing us letters ever since. Right now, she’s 82.” “I don’t see what that...” “What she tells us every year is how wonderful this stock and it’s dividends have been to her, how it helped her even when her husband passed, how proud she is of it and how she hopes her grandchildren will be able to keep her shares, because the we’ve done such a great job with the dividends each year.” “So, Miss Tilly…” “Miss Tilly and the millions of shareholders like her that rely on us for their retirement are not going to understand any fancy words like “Basic Oxygen Process” or “Collective Bargaining Agreement”, but they will understand if they see me shaving cents off of that dividend. A steel company of this scale is run like a precise machine, the finance boys will tell you that we’ve kept it on the same course with the same spending for fifty years and made a company that is the envy of the world, and we are not about to start fiddling with those because of Union agitators or foreign governments trying to undercut American prosperity.” Click. Mike finally found the dial. He bothered to finish the beer before he turned it off. The taste was awful. That wasn’t enough for him to reconsider drinking it. More pain in the head as he figured what he wanted to do. Get some food. Probably. Eating was a good way to solve unhappiness. He shuffled over the cheap linoleum and the thin film that covered them in the kitchen, kicking aside something metal that he didn’t bother to look down to see what it was. In the fridge he picked out some old casserole to microwave back to warmth, then looked out on the gray skies outside the window. No neighbors out now. Good, miserable bunch of pricks who want to tell him all about their kids grades or what color they want to paint their door this season. He paid all this money for a house near the water and even then, it was still downwind of the mill on a bad day, the nicest neighborhoods got the water and less smog, but he didn’t have the money for those. He barely had enough for this one. Ding, that’s the casserole. He ate with a spoon from the dishwasher, one he didn’t bother to check if it was clean or dirty, and placed the dish next to an opened liquor bottle sitting on the laminated wood of the table. Nothing he cooked was good food; a side effect of the primary means of instruction for cooking being parents and siblings screaming at him. Once the casserole was in his stomach it was time to get cleaned up a bit, so off to the bathroom it was. Did he have to look presentable anymore? That was a question he asked himself as he shaved the stubble away. Easier to answer that than what his old buddies would be doing now. He heard Costas got some kinda security work at the Mill, and of course Lieutenant Robinson kept his job, heaven forbid Minenoona’s finest lose someone whose best work is done apologizing and filling out forms. The rest? Who knows. Hughes is probably mooching off his wife’s salary from teaching; pure bitch move like that would fit him. In the bedroom he found a pair of jeans on the floor and new shirt in a laundry basket that he hadn’t bothered to fold yet. Being here made him feel like he should check something, something important. Not the safe, with its door cracked open by a hair, all he kept in there were guns and mementos, like his father’s World War 1 Victory Medal that he pried out of the hands of his other siblings. No, where he checked required him to push the nightstand aside and to pull up the right wood panel. There was a hole in the drywall behind it. With one arm he reached in and fished out a shoebox caked in dust. The only thing in the box was wads of cash. Mike touched them, feeling a rush of calm when the texture of bills reached his fingertips, and then came the urge to count. He gave up halfway through knowing it wasn’t as much as he hoped. He knew he’d need more soon, might not be able to find the day, but it would come. He put the box and the wall panel back with wordless sigh. It took him longer than he would have liked to admit to find his keys. He trudged outside, hands shivering in the cold, but once he got in his Mustang and heard the revving of all three hundred-some cubic inches of a cast-iron American V8. To him, it was the most beautiful sound in the history of the world. For those miles down the main strip, behind the wheel of his pride and joy, he felt like the biggest man in town. Then he parked at the Straight Shooter bar and remembered this would be his first time walking into it having to explain what he’s been up to since he got laid off from the force. Amid the clinking glasses and rumbling conversation of the growing crowd, Mike found there was still a seat for him at the bar. At least that remained. In the corner, he saw Hughes, shooting pool with some schmucks. Guy was all smiles and laughs, outside of Mike’s ear range, Hughes was using phrases like “reset” and “new focus in life”. Mack was the bartender today, out of the crew, he was the least talkative and quick to shut down anyone creating trouble, but fair and hospitable to newcomers. Mike didn’t bother trying the “just lost my job” routine with him and just ordered one glass of Old Style off the tap and planned on doing his best to make it last. Minutes rolled by and the guy they all knew as Stokes walked in. Normally he’d have been here over an hour ago, but his shift ran long. The spot he found was a few seats down from Mike; that was better, give him some time to get settled and to let Mike think about what to say to a friend who came out lucky when the axe fell. Stokes was already well into a story when Mike got up and walked over. Stokes said “So anyways, they’re on the radio tellin me bout this girl with broken ankles and bloody soles, and she’s talkin’ like fuckin crazy, lotsa words but trouble getting all of them through. Anyway, it’s near the end of the shift but they can tell it’s something crazy, so they give me a few hours overtime and tell me to check out some place because she got an address.” He paused when he saw Mike. Stokes said “Door was unlocked, halfway open and then I get this awful smell just in my face the moment I come in.” Mike said “Oh Yeah?” Stokes said “Yeah, so I go in and I’m finding blood, finding vomit, some guy with no pulse, and that’s just one room. It only got more fucked up later. They were still telling me about stuff they found when over the radio when I was heading down here. And y’know what the craziest thing about it was?” “What?” “The house was the one with all the boards on the windows, the one that the neighbors kept bitchin’ about. Robinson found five different complaints on file about the place when he dug through the files, but we never had checked inside.” Mike was pretty sure at least one of those complaints reached him. He couldn’t remember for sure. When you’ve checked the “COMPLAINT UNFOUNDED” box as many times as Mike has, they all blur together. What’d they expect him to do, stake out a place because someone said the owner smelled bad? Stokes said “Ah y’know, maybe I shouldn’t be saying more, police business an all. You understand, right Mikey?” looking around at the others, expecting a knowing nod from Mike. Mike said “Well, yeah, guess I do. Guess you don’t need go telling everything to everybody.” Stokes said “Ex-act-ly.” Mike said “Now, I’m not a guy that needs to know everything, but y’know, I ain’t just a bum off the street, right? Old times gotta count for something.” “Sure, sure it does. Mikey, if you’d been another guy I wouldn’t a said as much as I did, I know you’re a guy I can trust with a lot, but, uhhh, there’s always gonna be some stuff I can’t share.” “Well, yeah, but we all know it’s just the BS that doesn’t matter, the important stuff ain’t gotta stop.” “Ehhh, maybe. Lots of things could happen, I can’t tell you what I might have to keep my mouth shut about until I hear about how each situation is.” There was silence. Mike looked at his beer. Stokes strained to see the lone TV in the corner. Then Mike looked him in the eye and spoke. “If it was something about me, like if there was someone after me or something they were trying to stick on me, you’d let me know, right?” Stokes said “Mikey, what kind a question is that?” “That ain’t an answer, bud. Now give me something.” “Well, I prolly would.” “What’s this prolly business? You fuckin’ got my back or you don’t, nothin’ else to it.” “Well, Mikey, I think you of all people know that things can get complicated. You sit back and think it’ll be simple but of course, circumstances come up. Ain’t you said that a lot before? I can’t figure out how it’ll be til it happens, y’know?” “Some fuckin’ pal you are.” “Hey man, I’m what you got so next time you wanna bitch maybe look around and ask how you got here.” It was easier to sulk and finish the rest of his beer than it was to try to find another person to talk to in hopes of proving Stokes wrong. He paid his tab and left, managed to do the whole transaction through gestures and nods with Mack. On his way home he thought and thought some more. He had to get gas for his car, maybe that’d keep him from asking the same questions about how much cash he had and who really had his back. The change in his wallet was short of what it took to get a full tank; he cursed the Arabs as he watched the numbers tick by. Outside there was a pay phone, a sight he could not look away from. He flicked and fidgeted with the coins in his pockets while his eyes remained fixated on it. He knew what he had to do. He knew what he needed. It wasn’t about pride, it wasn’t about integrity, it may have been about ounces of fear inside him; one hard look at the payphone was enough for him to suppress that. In the cold he grabbed the receiver and chucked a coin in, dialing a number he had the good sense to never write down. His hands shivered in the Wisconsin cold. Someone picked up and Mike knew better than to ask too many questions about the person who was taking this call. He just had a simple thing to say. “Hey, uhh I know when we talked back den, I said some, I said that some of those tings, I said I maybe wasn’t interested in ‘em. Well, uhhh I think maybe now I’m thinking I might be, I think I can give you some ‘elp with ‘em, you know. All you gotta do is let me know what you need done.”