It was hot. No, sweltering was more like it. Howard reached up under the brim of his straw hat and wiped the sweat from his brow - again. It was almost a constant flow now. The old rambler station wagon chugged along the blurry blacktop of a two-lane highway in the upper Midwest, rolling slowly toward the next destination on Howard's sales route. Probably just as fruitless as the last ten, he thought.
Howard was in his forties and had never had anything resembling a career. This sales job was just the latest in a long line of odd jobs and temporary employment. He had only been at it for three weeks now, but it felt more like three years. As with everything else he had tried, door-to-door sales didn't seem to be his thing. Especially on a rural route like this one, where getting from place to place was most of the effort, and left too little time for selling.
He shook himself out of his heat-induced self-pitying stupor as another farm approached on his right. This one looked to be a dairy. When he reached the mailbox at the side of the road, he saw the name Armour painted in white letters on its side. He stopped for a moment, then decided to
Mon Jul 27 12:18:18 1998
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