Saturday, December 4 (cont'd)

Brew made it over the bridge, turned on Beck Avenue, and went down Beach Drive.

He would cross Harrison Avenue and take the Tarpon Docks bridge, over Massalina Bayou, and come out by the old Ideal bakery, where 4th Street joined Business 98.

Barfield worked in the Ideal bakery once, when he was retired from seine-fishing on the Friendship. When he was on the hill. But the call of fishing drew him back.

Brenda was at home. She was working nights, at the Balboa Building, on 15th Street.

The worst part of her job was getting used to different shifts.

Once she got some seniority, she could choose her shift, but as a green hand, they moved her around. Nights, then days, then afternoons to 10:00 p.m. They ran three shifts, 24 hours a day.

Brenda couldn't go to The Red Bar with Brew to hear Dread Clampitt play, two Sundays out of three

She couldn't get time off for the holidays, when Owen and Jean and Ella Blue visited. And Owen sat in with Balder and them.

Ella would be a year old in December.

They were going to make it through December, this year.

That was the family song. "If We Make It Through December."

Brew couldn't wait to go in the door, singing, "If We Make It Through December."

Brew thought of the time he and Brenda and Owen were living with Granny Brown after he got fired at the department store for stealing.

He drove to Fort Walton to apply for a technical writing job.

The man told him he would get back to him next week.

Brew thought he was blowing him off.

Brew was going to go apply for the lawnmower job on Monday.

When he pulled into the driveway, Brenda ran out, shouting, "You got the job!"

The man who interviewed him had called his boss, out of town, to get permission to hire Brew, and then had called Brew, out of town, to offer Brew the job.

That job lifted Brew out of the shit.

Another time, Brew got an eight-month temporary job, in Atlanta, that paid $25 an hour. At the end of eight months, they hired him permanent, with benefits. Including retirement. His pay went up to $28.80 an hour. With an annual performance bonus that averaged 10% of his base pay.

He and Brenda were living in the trailer behind Granny Brown.

As he backed out of the driveway, to leave for Atlanta, he heard the Friendship crank up, and sang, "And the deckhands were singing, `Adios, Jolie Blon.'"

Now he was pulling in with a job, a technical writing job, a job he had despaired of getting, the pickings were so slim.

A job he could do, and was actually good at.

When he opened the door, singing, "If We Make It Through December," Brenda shouted, "You got the job!"

As soon as the lawyers got Wayne's estate settled they could begin paying for the house.

They were going to have a place to live in their old age.

A place no landlord could throw them out of.

A place they could afford on what they both made, working. At the best jobs they could find, in Panama City.

Brew figured they could give each brother and sister $1,000 down and pay them each $150 a month for four years, or $4,000 down and $600 a month, for a $35,000 house.

Brew had planned to work four more years at Suent Scientific when they laid him off.

He couldn't retire.

He would die, working for wages.

Unless he sold a book.

He was writing well. How long could that take?

Also, he'd have health insurance, at Actaeon. Brenda had him on her insurance at Bell South. She could drop him, now.

(Brew wasn't 65 yet, that is, not eligible for Medicare yet.)

The future looked bright.

Brenda was pleased.

She knew Brew would come through for the family. He always did.

Although sometimes he cut it a little close.

Sometimes he tested your nerves.

Brew was pleased.

He hated to go off sabbatical, but if he had to work--and he did, writing what he wrote--this was as good a job as he was likely to find.

He was lucky to have it.

He should remember that, when his job got boring, or when he started to fear that he might lose it.

He should remember to be grateful for it. To have gratitude. Not to take it for granted. Not to envy what some more successful writer had.

When Brew went on sabbatical, and moved to Panama City, he took out a new web page, roman-feuilleton.com.

He left The Daily Bugle up, but quit posting to it. That way, people who got a link to The Daily Bugle could read it. They could read roman-feuilleton.com. He posted to it every day.

When Brew got the job at Actaeon, he took both The Daily Bugle and roman-feuilleton.com down and gave himself a new web page, The Daily Bulletin.

He didn't want his new employer to be able to read The Daily Bugle or roman-feuilleton.com. He said things in there about the Bush administration that a defense contractor might not like. Might take exception to.

Also, when he wrote a poem or an essay at The Daily Bulletin, that seemed a little strong, now, he would just list the title in the online book and write redacted after it, in parentheses.

(Redacted).

The story, unredacted, was in the print version of his book. The unbowdlerized version.

This showed that (1) a person had to censor himself, on the worldwide web, to keep his day job.

(2) If you wrote books that had to be censored, you would have to hold a day job, because New York wouldn't publish you.

You were the poster boy for marketplace censorship, and what publisher wants to admit that (3) marketplace censorship exists, (4) because of their policies.

That is, Brew thought he would shame New York into publishing him, like Ernest Hemingway made publishers print expletives by using unprintable, and Ezra Pound called attention to censorship by making Laughlin print the black lines of the censor in his Cantos.

As it happened, no one at his work discovered The Daily Bulletin.

No one dropped a dime on him, to Personnel.

To Security.

To the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer. The Affirmative Action Czar.

To Traci.

To Rhino.

To The Colonel.

To his old cube-mate.

She used to hear him typing, and, depending on how fast he typed, say, "I know what you're do-ing."

What was Brew doing?

Writing the Great American Novel. On a Colt Commodore computer, with an 8088 processor, two 5¼" diskette drives, and a dot-matrix printer. On DOS 3.2 and WordPerfect 4.0.

A computer he bought himself, and brought in to use, at work.

Back in 1988.