The birds screeched when I moved the body.

It was no mean trick trying to nudge the heavy corpse of my boss, John Crowley, down the wooded trail toward his cabin, especially from a wheelchair. I found a green tarp, probably left by hunters who rented his cabin in his shed. Then I looped rope through the metal ringed holes in the tarp, tied the rope to my wheelchair, rolled his body onto the tarp and hit the joystick.

The tarp moved but the body slid off a few times. Crowley’s head turned at an ugly angle and I thought it might snap off so I supported it by pushing his jacket around his head. It reminded me of the halo I’d worn after my neck injury years ago.

By the time I got his body to the front door of the cabin I was spent. I still had to get what was left of him inside, prop him up somewhere, then get out of there. I wondered if perhaps I should just leave his body in the yard. He could theoretically have taken a fall outside

But if I was going to do that, I should have left him where I found him. In the woods, underneath an old elm tree, his neck at a rakish angle, a look of surprise on his face. By the looks of it, he was tripped and he fell forward, breaking his neck or was pushed, maybe into the tree.

And I knew who did it.

Sighing, I opened the door of the cabin and continued to pull my boss inside.

*

It was hard to believe that only a few days before Crowley, Jimmy and I had lunch together at Sunny Lanterns restaurant. It was our favorite haunt when we got together for our sales meetings.

Jimmy and I sold durable medical equipment – mostly wheelchairs, hospital beds and cartons and cartons of catheters – through Crowley’s company, called Wheelchair Wizards. Crowley wasn’t a particularly good boss or even a good businessman, but he paid a decent commission, covered my traveling expenses up front and was amicable. Wheelchair Wizards didn’t make much of a profit, but his wife Cindy came from money and all his inlaws ever asked was that Crowley run a business. Apparently whether he succeeded, or even lost money, wasn’t a concern.

As a result, when I met him three years ago, John Crowley reached the age of 47 without knowing much about running a durable medical company. Cindy did the books, answered the phones and took orders while John seemed to alternate between trips to the country club to play golf and putting balls in his office at the back of the warehouse. The storefront of the place was neglected and unused although, as I pointed out to him numerous times over the past three years, there was a need for a local DME shop in the area and he could have easily doubled his income.

“Not worth the aggravation,” Crowley would say, telling me to get out of his light so he could hit the golf ball.

I still believe to this day that he hired me because I use a wheelchair. Every now and then, although he didn’t say it outright, he hinted that customers liked someone who could understand their needs. Like me, because I had a disability. Some of this was true, but what Crowley really picked up on from customers who were dissatisfied, I think, was that he didn’t know a castor wheel from a joystick.

And then there was Jimmy. Jimmy was, like me, in his thirties, a guy who was a born salesman. Jimmy could sell you anything. Once I saw him convince a guy who broke his leg that he needed to buy – not rent – a hospital bed. When we got outside, I took Jimmy outside and asked how he could do that.

“That guy will be out of the cast in weeks, a few months maybe,” I said. “He doesn’t need that and his insurance won’t pay for it.”

“By then,” Jimmy said, “it’ll be too late to return it.”

That was his philosophy. Most of the wheelchairs we made were custom jobs and the trick was that if the customer accepted delivery on a custom item, we didn’t have to take it back. It was custom. If the measurements were off, an accessory wasn’t as ordered – well Jimmy was a marvel at talking people out of what they originally ordered and into whatever appeared on their doorstep. Whenever an order came in wrong, Jimmy was sent to smooth things over by John Crowley.

“Give this one to Jimmy,” Crowley would say, handing me the order sheet.

I spent three years watching Jimmy do this every time Cindy wrote down an order wrong. Right before we left to go to lunch the other day we opened a box up and the wheelchair’s footplate was so low to the ground that it would be impossible to propel yourself and not scrape it on the floor.

“We better return this, boss,” I said, leaning down to examine it. “There’s no way this is safe to use.”

Crowley shrugged. “Give it to Jimmy.”

“But, boss –“

“You worry too much, Frank.”

Jimmy delivered the wheelchair before our lunch meeting, took two hundred off the price and then sold the customer a wheelchair back for five hundred bucks that we had in storage for years. Crowley came out ahead.

So when Jimmy sauntered into Sunny Lanterns, Crowley and I were already eating dumplings and had finished talking about my sales. Attention turned, as usual, to Jimmy, the star of Wheelchair Wizards. In fact I affectionately called him the Wizard of Odds because of his ability to pawn off odds and ends on customers.

“Get rid of it?” Crowley asked as Jimmy sat down.

“Yeah, boss. Had to do a discount but sold them that back you have in storage so it’s all good.”

“Great. See?” Crowley said, piercing a pork dumpling with his fork and elbowing me. “You worry too much.”

“Get this. I told him it was a lowrider wheelchair,” Jimmy said, cackling.

I knew that the wheelchair was unsafe and shook my head. Jimmy ordered hot and sour soup and loosened his tie. He always wore a tie and jacket to these meetings, as if trying to impress Crowley. Crowley, on the other hand, always wore a golf shirt, mostly because he was either on his way to or from the country club. I wore jeans and T shirts because, after all, I was the salesman of the people.

So it seemed as if lunch would be the usual. Jimmy would be grilled by Crowley about a few sales like I just was, we’d eat, belch and move on in our separate ways. I was shocked when Crowley dropped the bomb right after the shrimp with lobster arrived.

“Jimmy, Frank, I have news. I’m going to sell Wheelchair Wizards.”

A piece of shrimp stuck in my throat. I reached for my water. “Sell? To someone else?”

“That’s right,” Crowley said. “The building, the good will of the business-“

Whatever that would be, I thought, thinking of Jimmy’s sales tactics.

“-and you boys, of course, I highly recommended both of you to the new owner. But he’s interested in hiring his own sales people. I told him how excellent you both were and of course I’ll give you both recommendation letters, referrals, whatever you need.”

“I’m fired?” Jimmy asked. His voice screeched.

I’d never seen Jimmy – or any adult – look like he did at that moment. His face was beet red and his eyes seemed to be bulging out. He held chopsticks in his right hand and they were pointed at our boss.

“Not fired, Jimmy- just laid off – or something like that.”

“Fired. I’m out of a job. I have kids, boss. I work hard.”

“I know, Jimmy, but you’re not the only one affected here. So is Frank and he’s taking it well.”

“Frank can always go on that disability thing, can’t he?”

Thanks, I thought. Sure no big deal for me because everyone knows people in wheelchairs only work as a hobby. I was suddenly starting to enjoy watching this scene, almost forgetting that I was out of a job too. I stabbed at the shrimp on my plate, pushing them around but didn’t have much of an appetite.

“Look, Jimmy, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting a new job,” Crowley said.

“I bought a house. A house with a mortgage payment. And there aren’t any other DME companies around here, boss. You know that.”

Crowley didn’t know anything. This was a man whose bills were paid by his inlaws for the past twenty something years. Because of this, he kept eating his food and waving his chopsticks in Jimmy’s general direction as he offered a mixture of compliments and platitudes.

This just enraged Jimmy more. Finally, he stood, practically knocking over the small table we were at. “You screwed me. You ruined my life. After all I’ve done for you, you fake!” he yelled at Crowley. “You don’t know anything about DME or running a business. I’ve carried you – yes carried you – for years. And this is how you repay me?”

“I can give you a severance bonus or something like that. I’ll ask at the club this afternoon, see what can be done. Sit down, Jimmy, relax.” Crowley looked up and over at me, as if to implore me to intervene.

I said nothing. I was afraid of Jimmy and the way he looked. Suddenly the fact that he wore a tie and jacket, that he would do anything Crowley asked him to weren’t amusing to me. They were the sign of a man afraid of losing his job.

“I can’t just go get another job, boss,” Jimmy said. He looked around the place frantically. “I can’t read.”

We were alone in Sunny Lanterns except for an older couple seated at the far end of the room. I overheard the wife say “It’s that internet stuff, Harry. No one reads anymore. See?”

But our table was silent. Crowley sat with his chopsticks in mid-air and my mouth was open. The waiter, who was filling our water glasses, stopped. We all looked at Jimmy.
“You can learn to read,” said the waiter. “I learn English at night school. I give you the name of the place. See? Will be okay.”

“Don’t friggin’ patronize me!” Jimmy yelled. “I’m a salesman, a salesman. I’m a skilled worker, not some waiter handing out – boss – please-“

But Crowley wasn’t saying anything. In fact he was yanking his wallet out, asking for a check, excusing himself from this awkward situation. Then he did the worst thing I’ve ever seen one human being do to another. He stood up, eyeballed Jimmy and said “This is not my problem. You’ll get severance pay. That’s it.”

Within two minutes, our former boss had left the premises. Crowley is no longer in the house, I thought, watching as Jimmy sat down on his chair, his arms flailing up in despair.

“Frank, what am I going to do?” he asked.

*

So when he called me from the woods and told me that Crowley wasn’t moving and asked for my help, I did the stupidest thing. I drove over there to the cabin. I parked my van, rolled out in my wheelchair and checked around. No one was in the cabin and Jimmy’s car was nowhere in sight.

That was when I found our boss, dead, in the woods, after following the path down to the lake.

And I decided that somehow Jimmy was in the right, that Crowley deserved what he got for using him that way, for treating him like a piece of trash, for selling out his future so he could retire in his forties and go play more golf without even pretending to work. The sight of my dead boss did nothing to evoke sympathy for anyone but Jimmy.

The funny thing was I never thought I liked Jimmy. I don’t think I did, until what happened at lunch the other day. At least it’s fair to say I never understood him until then.

I dragged Crowley into the cabin, pulled the tarp out from under him and then went down to the lake to toss it in along with the rope. Then I drove home.

Jimmy and I both got jobs. I got one first, at a place called Wheels Heaven. I thought that was rather ironic and noticed the other salesmen called it Wheels Hell or even Hell on Wheels but when I talked the boss into giving Jimmy a job, he went for it and Jimmy took the job along with a slight cut in pay.

The police found Crowley’s body a few days later. It turns out things weren’t so rosy between Cindy and Crowley and the business was being sold as part of a separation agreement. Who knew? An autopsy was done but if there was an investigation, nothing came of it.

Jimmy and I never speak about it. We do lunch with the sales team but the rest of the time we don’t see each other because we’re on the road. Free agents. We work alone.

Except for those times when we need each other. Like when it’s too late to return things.

Copyright 2007 Ruth Harrigan