“What?” Joe demanded.
“Let me put it this way: After you’d failed—don’t get the idea I’m rubbing that in; as I told you, I made a miserable failure of my first job—had you come to me after that first failure, I’d have welcomed you instantly. A lot of persons change their first desires. I couldn’t ask for a better man than Fairchild; he started out to be a mechanical engineer. But you made show business both your first and second choices. You’ve made the store a very bad third choice. You leave the impression that you’re coming to me now because there’s no place else to go. That doesn’t set so well, Joe.”
Joe’s nerves were raw from a day of chafing, and this disappointment was crushing. “You mean I needn’t come around?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ll have to think this over. I’m trying to see the situation from your angle as well as from my own. What will it benefit you in the long run to use the business as a door of escape? If you come to the store as a place of last resort, you’re still a round peg in a square hole. It might be better for you to get a job on your own and try yourself out in somebody else’s business. For a while, anyway.”
Disappointment and raw nerves united to make the boy stiff with anger. “All right, Dad, if that’s how you want it.”
“That isn’t how I want it,” Tom Carlin said. “That’s how it seems to be.”
They said little more to each other on the ride out to the Northend. But they were talking as they entered the house, and talk was a lively stream around the dinner table. Front, Joe thought, wasn’t confined to show business; you could wear a front at home. The meal over, he found that morning’s Journal and went to his room.
Something that was part of this house worked its spell. His jagged nerves relaxed and anger died in him. He began to see his father’s point of view. He hadn’t been absolutely denied the store; it was simply that his father questioned the wisdom of having him come in now. After all, there was a lot to what his father had said. He had made the store a third choice. He must look like an irresponsible madcap, a harum-scarum who didn’t know his own mind. Well, he’d have to prove himself. He could do that. He’d find an outside job and make good at it. Then, after a year or two ... but a year or two seemed so long.
He opened the Journal and studied the Help Wanted columns. Christmas was approaching and all the large stores along Royal Street were clamoring for packers, sales people, delivery men, and cashiers. He could probably get a seasonal job at half a dozen places; certainly, if you rolled up your sleeves and pitched in, temporary employment might become permanent employment. But he couldn’t, he thought with a fresh pang, get a job with his own father.
There was a tap on the door and Tom Carlin walked in. “Joe, Mother thinks I may have been hasty. Her reactions are usually right. You’ve heard what I have to say, but I haven’t heard your side. Do you mind telling me why you were fired?”