At the department store where he had a job--"Are you in the English Department or the History Department?" "I'm in the Toy Department."--it was Hallowe'en month. Wittman had helped trick up the kid dummies in flat apron-like run-over-with-a-steamroller cartoon costumes. The Management Trainees had sent out a memo: Floor personnel to wear costumes of their choice on Hallowe'en, which Wittman hoped would not fall on one of his workdays, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 1:00 to 9:00 p.m., Open Late for Your Shopping Convenience. Another season, in the Candy Department, he had worn rabbit ears and white gloves. For revenge, he had stolen candy--white chocolate--and saved on buying groceries. Do something about your life. Find a way out before you have to set up Christmas Toyland. Transfer into Notions? Sell armpit shelds and corn pads? When he was a kid, he thought he could be happy forever working in a store. The tall glass at Kress had curved around brand-new toys, each one in many copies, which the owner arranged as he pleased. Is this malcontentedness what comes with a liberal-arts education? The way they taught you to think at school was to keep asking what's really going on. What's that thing at the end of this assembly line for? Why merchandising? Why business? Why money? Who are the stockholders? What else have they got their fingers into? Are any of the holdings in bomb commodities? Seek out vanities and emptiness. Which way out? Which way out? One of the clerks spotted him, and left the floor--quitting time for her. No wonder he didn't know anybody. But anything's better than the Defense Department. And he wasn't a soldier. We wasn't a prison guard. He was barely employed, a casual employee.
Wittman readied his station, sized up the house. Who are these people that no matter what odd time of day or night they have the wherewithal to go shopping? Put up roadblocks, do a survey, where are they going, and what do they do for a living? Are there many people like himself, then? They're all poets taking walks? "Just browsing." "Just looking." Between customers he was supposed to staple-gun black-and-orange corrugated cardboard into walls and along counters. The toys on the demonstration table could use a tidying up. Few of them sprang into action today because the customers had wound them too tight, unsprung them, or their batteries were shot. He pressed the laying hen, and a white marble rolled out of a hole in her stomach. He turned her upside down and re-inserted the half-dozen marbles that had rolled to the little fence. So it has come to this. (Lew Welch, the Red Monk, says: now and again, stop and think, "So it has come to this.")
-- Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey : his fake book
