Commonplace

He licked his forefinger and lifted the sheet over, skimmed the back page.

“What do you study?”

“English. Mostly a lot of bullshit, I guess.”

“Hm. You ever taken an IQ test?”

“No sir, can’t say I have.”

“Put it this way—I’m in about the 98th percentile, but I quit doing school because it’s not for me. A whole lot of bullshit, actually. In fact, my brother has a PhD in teaching theory. I’ve read the papers he publishes. It’s a whole lot of bullshit. Anyhow, you’re smart. I have no doubt you can do this kind of work, you just have to pay attention. At any moment a limb could come down and break your neck, then you’re dead. It’s like a warzone, every time someone’s using a chainsaw, you could get killed. Also, the guy up in the tree’s not going to be thinking about you, he won’t even be able to see you. That’s why we wear orange.”

He talked quickly; every thought sprung immediately from the last. I nodded.

“I understand sir.”

“Good. What do you want me to pay you?”

“Minimum.”

He gave a little one-breath laugh. “Listen, I’m not here to cheat you.”

“Eighteen.”

“Not that high.”

“Fifteen.”

“I’ll give you seventeen.”

That was a backward bargain. I guess wanted to know for sure that I was clueless.

He looked at the page aimlessly. Then—“You a believer?”

“Yes sir, that’s right.”

“Good. Because the way I see it, you can have everything and be a genius, but then you wake up the next day and lose all of it. Then you’ve got nothing. If you don’t have God, what do you have?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Well, take it from an old guy. That’s my free old-guy advice. I’ll see you on Monday. Now I have to go call Jesus, so you go into the office and Tiffany will get your papers.”

-Peter Reamy