He did some hard thinking on the way to work. He hadn’t had anything but misery for a long time with his wife. He’d tried to do everything he could for her, had pampered her, had done what she asked all the time, and it looked like all she did was use him. Tiny wondered what he’d done to deserve all that. He’d always provided for her, and what had she given him in return? Nothing but trouble, that’s what. All she wanted to do was watch television and drink. He was tired of it. He didn’t know why he couldn’t have a little fun in life. A man wasn’t supposed to just work like a dog all the time, was he? Just be like a damn machine standing at a damn machine and drawing a damn paycheck that was always spent before the next paycheck came? Tiny started wishing he’d never married his wife. He started wishing he’d never even seen his wife. He started wishing he’d never started working in the factory. He’d done some carpenter work when he was young and he started wishing he’d just stayed with that. He might have been a contractor by now, making plenty of money, having a big crew working for him, being the boss, ordering everybody around. The more he thought about his life and how it was, the sicker he got. He was so sick of the factory that he didn’t know if he could walk back in the door. He knew his wife was probably going to call the factory sometime during the day and say she was sick and needed to go to the doctor. Then the press-department foreman would get mad at him again. He felt trapped. He didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. He didn’t know how he was going to go on with his life. His life seemed so bad he could hardly stand to think about it.

He thought about not going in to work. He thought about just stopping by a pay phone and calling in sick. He didn’t feel real good anyway. He had a bad hangover. He wished there was some way he could get the little fat woman off with him and just spend the day with her. But she was probably on her way to work just like he was.

Tiny didn’t know what to do. He sure didn’t want to go back home. His wife would raise hell with him all day if he did that. Tiny realized that people could get more problems on them than they could handle, and that they could talk themselves into doing away with themselves. He wasn’t thinking about doing that, he was just seeing how it could happen.