The New Hire

Norman Bancroft wasn't exactly crazy about the job. For one thing, the pay sucked, and there was zero chance for promotions. In addition, fairly long periods of boredom were relieved-if one could call driving several hundred miles per day for several days in a row relief-by trips from one of the railroad's distant job sites to another somewhere in the northwestern quadrant of the United States. At least the job driving workers from site to site paid the bills. It offered a change of scenery, too, but the long hours behind the wheel and a sore back were stiff prices to pay to see the U. S. A.

The company didn't care much about its drivers, that was clear enough, but they took good care of the railroad workers. They were paid well, had great benefits, and Norm's interviewer had made it clear that he, if hired, was to do all that he could to satisfy his passengers. "It's very important to keep the men happy," he'd been told. Norm had assured him that he'd so anything he could to keep the men happy. How hard could that be? he'd asked himself. In his experience, rough-hewn men had pretty simple needs.

He'd been thankful when, a week later, he'd received the word that he'd been hired. He was welcomed "aboard" as an R & R Drivers employee and assigned keys to a late-model passenger van. Today was his first time out.

So far, everything had gone predictably well. He'd loaded his passengers-he supposed he ought to say "boarded" them-and they'd already put fifty miles behind them, the guys talking mostly among themselves. As he drove the vehicle past towering pines, toward a stretch of mountains ahead of them, under a cloudless, azure sky, Norm heard snatches of their conversation. Predictably, it consisted mostly of jokes and double-entendres about sex.

"The wife asks, 'The first time you ever saw me naked, what did you think?'" Ben, the pot-bellied man with the big hands who'd initiated the joke, answered for the woman's husband: "I wanted to fuck your brains out and suck your tits dry." After a pause, he continued, "As she removed the last of her clothing in preparation for her evening shower, she asked, 'What are you thinking now?' Looking her naked body up and down, he replied, 'It looks as though I did a pretty good job!'"