The Goal

Bill looks straight at me and says, 'What makes you think I'm going to?'

'Bearington is on its way back,' I tell him. 'We can make that plant make money for the division.'

'Can you?' he asks. 'Look, Al, you've had a good month. That's a step in the right direction. But can you give us a second good month? And a third and fourth? That's what I'm waiting to see.'

'We'll give them to you,' I say to him.

'I'm going to be frank,' says Peach. 'I'm not yet convinced this hasn't been just a flash in the pan, so to speak. You had a huge overdue backlog. It was inevitable you'd ship it eventually. What have you done to reduce costs? Nothing that I can see. It's going to take a ten or fifteen percent reduction in operating ex- pense to make the plant profitable for the long term.'

I feel my heart sink. Finally, I say, 'Bill, if next month we turn in another improvement, will you at least delay the recom- mendation to close the plant?'

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He shakes his head. 'It'll have to be a bigger improvement than what you gave us in this past period.'

'How big?'

'Just give me fifteen percent more on the bottom line than you did this month,' he says.

I nod. 'I think we can do that,' I say-and note the split second of shock blink into Peach's face.

Then he says, 'Fine. If you can deliver that, and keep deliv- ering it, we'll keep Bearington open.'

I smile. If I do this for you, I'm thinking, you'd be an idiot to close us.

Peach stands, our chat concluded.

I fly the Mazda up the entrance ramp to the Interstate with the accelerator floored and the radio turned up loud. The adren- alin is pumping. The thoughts in my head are racing faster than the car.

Two months ago I figured I might be sending out my resume by now. But Peach just said if we turned in another good month he'd let the plant stay open. We're almost there. We just might be able to pull this off. Just one more month.

But fifteen percent?

We've been eating up our backlog of orders at a terrific rate. And by doing so we've been able to ship a tremendous volume of product-tremendous by any comparison: last month, last quar- ter, last year. It's given us a big surge of income, and it's looked fantastic on the books. But now that we've shipped all the overdues, and we're putting out new orders much faster than before...

The thought creeps up on me that I'm in really big trouble. Where the hell am I going to get the orders that will give me an extra fifteen percent?

Peach isn't just asking for another good month; he's de- manding an incredible month. He hasn't promised anything; I have-and probably too much. I'm trying to remember the or- ders scheduled for the coming weeks and attempting to calculate in my head if we're going to have the volume of business neces- sary for the bottom-line increase Peach wants to see. I have a scary feeling it won't be enough.

Okay, I can ship ahead of schedule. I can take the orders

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scheduled for the first week or two of July and ship them in June instead.

But what am I going to do after that? I'm going to be putting us into a huge hole in which we have nothing else to do. We need more business.

I wonder where Jonah is these days.

Glancing down at the speedometer, I find to my surprise that I'm zipping along at eighty. I slow down. I loosen my tie. No sense killing myself trying to get back to the plant. It occurs to me, in fact, that by the time I get back to the plant it'll be time to go home.

Just about then, I pass a sign saying I'm two miles from the interchange that would put me on the highway to Forest Grove. Well, why not? I haven't seen Julie or the kids in a couple of days. Since the end of school, the kids have been staying with Julie and her parents.

I take the interchange and get off at the next exit. At a gas station on the corner, I make a call to the office. Fran answers and I tell her two things: First, pass the word to Bob, Stacey, Ralph, and Lou that the meeting went well for us. And, second, I tell her not to expect me to come in this afternoon.

When I get to the Barnett's house, I get a nice welcome. I spend quite a while just talking to Sharon and Dave. Then Julie suggests we go for a walk together. It's a fine summer afternoon outside.

As I'm hugging Sharon to say goodbye, she whispers in my ear, 'Daddy, when are we all going to go home together?'

'Real soon, I hope,' I tell her.

Despite the assurance I gave her, Sharon's question doesn't go away. I've been wondering the same thing myself.

Julie and I go to the park, and after walking for awhile, we sit down on a bench by the river. We sit without saying anything for a while. She asks me if something is wrong. I tell her about Sharon's question.

'She asks me that all the time,' says Julie.

'She does? What do you tell her?'

Julie says, 'I tell her we'll be going home real soon.'

I laugh. 'That's what I said to her. Do you really mean that?'

She's quiet for a second. Finally, she smiles at me and says

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sincerely, 'You've been a lot of fun to be around in the last few weeks.'

'Thanks. The feeling is mutual,' I say.

She takes my hand and says, 'But... I'm sorry, Al. I'm still worried about coming home.'

'Why? We're getting along a lot better now,' I say, 'What's the problem?'

'Look, we've had some good times for a change. And that's fine. I've really needed this time with you,' she says. 'But if we go back to living together, you know what's going to happen don't you? Everything will be fine for about two days. But a week from now we'll be having the same arguments. And a month later, or six months, or a year from now... well, you know what I mean.'

I sigh. 'Julie, was it that bad living with me?'

'Al, it wasn't bad ,' she says. 'It was just... I don't know. You weren't paying any attention to me.'

'But I was having all kinds of problems in my job. I was really in over my head for awhile. What did you expect from me?'

'More than what I was getting,' Julie says. 'You know, when I was growing up, my father always came home from work at the same time. The whole family always ate together. He spent the evenings at home. With you, I never know what's going on.'

'You can't compare me to your father,' I say. 'He's a den- tist. After the last tooth of the day is filled, he can lock up and go home. My business isn't like that.'

'Alex, the problem is you are not like that,' she says. 'Other people go to work and