by Lisa Rosenkranz

Created on: August 05, 2011

 “Hey, I’m looking for a job.  You kids know who I need to talk to?” Joe asked a group of young boys who were playing in a plastic swimming pool under the shade of the only tree around. 

They stared at him for a moment before the oldest finally spoke. 

“You need to see Vic,” the boy said.  “He’s in the black trailer at the end of the street.”

“Thanks,” Joe said and headed off down what the kid had referred to as a street.

At the end of the row of campers was a large black RV, quite obvious the most impressive unit in the fleet. 

Joe walked up to the door and knocked loudly. 

He expected to see a tiny man in black coat tails and a top hat and was surprised when a tall bruiser in a wife beater opened the door and looked down at him as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of something important. 

“I’m here about the ad in the paper,” Joe said.

This statement softened the man’s expression.

“Oh yeah,” said the man, stepping down out of the RV.   “What skills ya got?”

“I guess I don’t have too much experience,” Joe said feeling panicked. “But I’m a damn hard worker and I’ll do anything to get out of this god-awful town.”

“You gotta trailer?” the man asked.

“No, I don’t even have a truck,” Joe replied disheartened. 

The man stood there making a face then said, “Well, ya gotta have a truck n’ trailer.  Tell you what.  Just this morning we had a guy up n’ leave on us.  Got a call from his family that his momma was gonna die.  Guess she’d been wastin’ away for a while.  Said his sister wired him the money for a bus ticket.  Left his truck n’ trailer here.  I told him if he didn’t come back ‘fore jump time, I’d be forced to sell it.  He said he prob’ly wouldn’t make it back ‘fore that n’asked if I’d send him part of the money for the sale.  So if you wanna work off the price of the truck n’ trailer, you can have a spot workin' one of the ticket booths.”

Joe slowly processed what the man had just said.   It seemed a little too good to be true.

“I’ll give ya some spendin’ money ‘course.  So you can feed yourself n’ all.”

“Okay,” Joe

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