The Corrections

It was the season of thunder in St. Jude. The air had a smell of Mexican violence, of hurricanes or coups. There could be morning thunder from unreadably churning skies, ominous dull reports from south-county municipalities that nobody you knew had ever been to. And lunch-hour thunder from a solitary anvil wandering through otherwise semi-fair skies. And the more serious thunder of midafternoon, as solid sea-green waves of cloud rolled up in the southwest, the sun shining all the brighter locally and the heat bearing down more urgently, as if aware that time was short. And the great theater of a good dinnertime blowout, storms crowded into the fifty-mile radius of the radar’s sweep like big spiders in a little jar, clouds booming at each other from the sky’s four corners, and wave upon wave of dime-sized raindrops arriving like plagues, the picture in your window going black-and-white and fuzzy, trees and houses lurching in the flashes of lightning, small kids with swimsuits and drenched towels running home headlong, like refugees. And the drumming late at night, the rolling caissons of summer on the march.

And every day the St. Jude press carried rumblings of an impending merger. The Midpac’s importunate twin-brother suitors, Hillard and Chauncy Wroth, were in town talking to three unions. The Wroths were in Washington countering Midpac testimony before a Senate subcommittee. The Midpac had reportedly asked the Union Pacific to be its white knight. The Wroths defended their postacquisitional restructuring of the Arkansas Southern. The Midpac’s spokesman begged all concerned St. Judeans to write or call their congressmen. . .

Denise was leaving the building for lunch under partly cloudy skies when the top of a utility pole a block away from her exploded. She saw bright pink and felt the blast of thunder on her skin. Secretaries ran screaming through the little park. Denise turned on her heel and took her book and her sandwich and her plum back up to the twelfth floor, where every day two tables of pinochle formed. She sat down by the windows, but it seemed pretentious or unfriendly to be reading War and Peace. She divided her attention between the crazy skies outside and the card game nearest her.

Don Armour unwrapped a sandwich and opened it to a slice of bologna on which the texture of bread was lithographed in yellow mustard. His shoulders slumped. He wrapped the sandwich up again loosely in its foil and looked at Denise as if she were the latest torment of his day.

“Meld sixteen.”

“Who made this mess?”

“Ed,” Don Armour said, fanning cards, “you gotta be careful with those bananas.”

Ed Alberding, the most senior draftsman, had a body shaped like a bowling pin and curly gray hair like an old lady’s perm. He was blinking rapidly as he chewed banana and studied his cards. The banana, peeled, lay on the table in front of him. He broke off another dainty bite.

“Awful lot of potassium in a banana,” Don Armour said.

“Potassium’s good for you,” Lamar said from across the table.

Don Armour set his cards down and regarded Lamar gravely. “Are you joking? Doctors use potassium to induce cardiac arrest.”

“Ol’ Eddie eats two, three bananas every day,” Lamar said. “How’s that heart of yours feelin’, Mr. Ed?”

“Let’s just play the hand here, boys,” Ed said.

“But I’m terribly concerned about your health,” Don Armour said.

“You tell too many lies, mister.”

“Day after day I see you ingesting toxic potassium. It’s my duty as a friend to warn you.”

“Your trick, Don.”

“Put a card down, Don.”

“And in return all I get,” Armour said in an injured tone, “is suspicion and denial.”

“Donald, you in this game or just keepin’ that seat warm?”

“Of course, if Ed were to keel over dead of cardiac arrest, due to acute long-term potassium poisoning, that would make me fourth highest in seniority and secure me a place in Little Rock with the Arkansas Southern slash Midland Pacific, so why am I even mentioning this? Please, Ed, eat my banana, too.”

“Hee hee, watch your mouth,” Lamar said.

“Gentlemen, I believe these tricks are all mine.”

“Son of a gun!”

Shuffle, shuffle. Slap, slap.

“Ed, you know, they got computers down in Little Rock,” Don Armour said, never glancing at Denise.

“Uh-oh,” Ed said. “Computers?”

“You go down there, I’m warning you, they’re going to make you learn to use one.”

“Eddie’ll be asleep with angels before he learns computers,” Lamar said.

“I beg to differ,” Don said. “Ed’s going to go to Little Rock and learn computer drafting. He’s going to make somebody else sick to their stomach with his bananas.”

“Say, Donald, what makes you so sure you ain’t going to Little Rock yourself?”