Frank was in a sultry mood the morning he first met Tom McDermott. They were running late already, and would lose more time by hitting the morning rush-hour traffic. Being on a tight schedule as they always were in the armoured car service, it would mean curtailing or perhaps missing their customary morning coffee break. The usual procedure was to leave early enough to beat the traffic, get out of the city and then pull into a truck stop to have coffee before the first pick-up opened its doors. The earlier they arrived, the longer the coffee break. It doesn't sound like much, but to get out of the back of that truck for a half-hour and talk to some strange faces was a break from routine that Frank relished. Besides, halfway through someone had to go out to the truck, sit in the driver's seat and let the driver come in for his coffee. The guard and the messenger took turns doing this on alternate days. Frank particularly looked forward to coffee break on Mondays because there was a waitress he liked there, who always seemed to work the end of the counter where they sat. There were other regular customers there at the same time, but he liked to think she was particularly friendly to him; no big romance in his mind (she said she was married to a local farmer and lived nearby), but she was a happy person, joyful sort of and always had a sunny smile for everyone and laughed heartily at the jokes and jibes the fellows directed at her. That half-hour was probably the brightest spot in Frank Wilson's whole week.

Anyway, here it was Monday and they were already twenty minutes late and Frank was steaming. The new man was still in the branch manager's office, with the door closed, discussing God knew what.

"Funny God-damn thing," he fumed, "schedules are all-important until that fat wind-bag starts talking."

François the driver took a final puff on his cigarette and said nothing. He threw the butt on the floor under the truck.

"Fatso will see that after we leave and have a fit", Frank reflected with satisfaction.

"No coffee this morning," said François in his heavy French-Canadian accent.

The two men had worked together in the same truck for four years and liked each other well. François was the most taciturn man Frank had ever known and never seemed to get lonely driving all alone up front all day, yet he was good company to go out with on a Friday night. Most everyone off the job called him Frank, but between themselves he was François to avoid confusion and because Frank had a better claim to the name.

"Don't remind me," Frank growled.

At last the door opened and a slightly-built blond-haired kid stepped out. The manager followed.

"Frank, François, meet your new guard. His name is Tom McDermott."

"How are you?" François shook his hand.

Frank looked him up and down and nodded curtly.

"Let's go." He gestured with his arm toward the open cargo door of the armoured truck and the kid climbed in. Wilson got in after him and closed the doors leaving the branch manager, George Wells, beaming benignly after them.

"What the hell is he looking so jovial about this morning?" he asked the kid, although he knew full well that the manager relished his little pep-talks to the rookies. Everybody else ignored him for the most part, unless arguing about their hours or overtime pay, or refusing to volunteer for extra duty. He in turn retaliated by re-arranging the duty roster to punish those who "undermined his authority", or "showed no respect for regulations". François and Frank were senior to him, and had been with the company a long time before he arrived from head office, and so they intimidated him, and they knew it. Anyway, he liked to get the rookies aside and give them his patronizing advice on the importance of rules, schedules, and good grooming; to tell them how he had worked his way up from a guard and why it always paid to volunteer when needed because the most conscientious employees were considered first for the more responsible duties, meaning layover trips to Toronto with lots of overtime money, and other little perks.

The kid grinned. "He was telling me how I should get my hair cut, and keep my boots polished and be a credit to the uniform." In this last phrase he mimicked the branch manager exactly: perfect pronunciation in what Frank called that "silly overdone cultured Toronto accent," and the inflection in his voice was George Wells to-a-tee. Their laughter broke the ice and took the edge off Frank's temper.

"Frank Wilson." He thrust his hand at the younger man.

"Tom McDermott," he answered and dropped a rough calloused hand into Frank's. The two sat on the seats opposite one another and as the truck began to roll Frank surveyed his new guard coolly. He leaned back, pulled off his clip-on tie and loosened his collar. As he began to half-roll his sleeves he watched the kid begin to do the same.

"You must have thought that was a hoot, him lecturing you on appearance after handing you a used shirt that doesn't fit right," he observed, beginning already to feel somewhat conspirational. The rookie was older than he had expected. Usually the university students hired for the summer were just over the minimum age of twenty-one. Tom was twenty-six or seven, and had none of the innocent look of other student part-timers Frank had seen. His blond hair was long, really long for a uniform job, and he had one of those droopy moustaches like a Mexican cartoon character. He had a funny direct way of gazing right into your face when speaking too, that gave him a no-nonsense attitude.

"This guy's been around," Frank thought. "I must have heard wrong," he stated, "I thought you were a summer student replacement."

"I am," Tom replied and went on to explain how he had returned to school the previous autumn at his wife's insistence after knocking around at several dead-end jobs since their remarriage five years earlier. From short order cook to auto body painter, he had learned enough about a number of trades to know he didn't want to grow old at any of them. His wife had kept at her same job on a high-tech assembly line since high school graduation. They had no children, which left them free to "ride" with friends on weekends. By "ride" Frank assumed he meant motorcycles, which explained his appearance, and maybe some of his attitude as well. He began to suspect that Fatso had set him up, had deliberately assigned him this "square peg" so he would be put in the difficult position of having to make him conform. As courier, and therefore officer in charge of the unit, he was responsible for the appearance of the entire crew. Somehow he didn't think the hair was that length because Tom didn't have the price of a haircut. He finally asked the question he knew was in the other's mind.

"You gonna get it cut?" he ventured.

"No," he stated matter-of-factly.

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

"Look, Frank, we all have the right to wear our hair any way we want to. Nobody has the right to tell us to alter our appearance to suit their preferences. Now I can do this job with my hair long or short, and I don't intend to cut it for this lousy four-buck-an-hour job. They didn't tell me at the student placement office about this, they said clean and well-groomed; and I'm clean and well groomed. I figure that's the end of it."

"It's the end of it as far as I'm concerned, but I'm going to have to back you up to the brass, and I'm not sure if when you take a uniform job, regardless of the pay, that you shouldn't expect to have to become uniform to some degree yourself."

They said no more about it and Frank got up and looked out the rear window.

"Hey, we just passed our coffee shop," he exclaimed. He stepped quickly to the intercom. "François, what about our coffee break?"

"If we stop for coffee now we're going to be late Frank," the voice crackled through the little metal box.

He stabbed his finger irritably into the "talk" button. "Fuck it. Turn around. If we hadn't been held up this morning we wouldn't be stuck in 'traffic' right now would we?" he lied. He felt the truck slow and then turn right. They made several more turns and then pulled into the parking lot at the truck stop. Tom and Frank stepped to the back door and Frank twisted the lever downward and the heavy door swung open. They climbed down and entered the restaurant. As they approached the counter Frank noticed the little waitress wasn't there. There was a new girl working her end of the counter. He stopped by the cash register.

"Three coffees to go, two cream no sugar." Then to Tom "How about yours?"

"Regular" he replied.

The waitress selected three large-size paper cups and prepared three coffees, pressing the plastic lids down firmly with the palm of her hand. She handed one to Tom and set the others on the cabinet-top in front of Frank. "Sixty cents."

He placed two quarters and a dime on the glass, picked up the coffee and turned to leave.

"You guys are in a hurry this morning," she called after them.

"Yeah, we're late" as the door swung open.

"Change your mind Frank?" said François as he opened the armoured door to receive the coffee held out toward him.

"Yeah, might as well stay on schedule if we can. It's not as though we're overworked and need the rest."

François grinned as he poked a hole in the lid with his ballpoint. He lit a cigarette and then turned back into driving position, reaching for the door handle as he did so. The two men waited for the familiar latch click as Francois activated the solenoid relay, then Frank opened the door with his key.

"By the time we finish these, we'll be at our first stop, Tom."

Tom slammed the back door and then leaned his shoulder against it so he could watch out the rear window and brace himself as the truck moved. He stabbed the lid of his coffee cup as he had seen Francois do and began to sip carefully at it.

"How long you been doing this Frank?"

"I started as a driver part-time, then worked as a guard full-time for seven years. I've been a courier three years now. I guess ten altogether, ten and a half. I was a milkman before that, had Wednesdays off, so I used to work one day a week here to make some extra money. Finally got fed up with the dairy, being outside in all kinds of weather, getting stuck in winter and never making any money. I only made sixty bucks a week, and there was so much credit you never knew when you would see it. Driving one of these seemed a better job, nice and warm and safe in an armoured cab, but then when I started with the company it wasn't as a driver but as a guard. It paid an extra thirty cents an hour. Couriers get a little more, on the theory that it's more dangerous, and besides there's more responsibility. You, as a part-timer, are right at the bottom of the pay-scale; that's why you might feel some antagonism from some of the guys.

It's hard to bargain for benefits when so many of the employees are part-time. Most have army pensions or full-time jobs and so they can afford to work for low wages. We see it as unfair competition and the company really takes advantage of it. Another thing, you can't get some of these part-timers during the holidays because they have other jobs as cops or firemen and can afford to take the summer off. That's why they hire students; they work cheap, are available all summer when most people want their vacation, and they don't get involved with union affairs. You a union man Tom?"

"No, well … maybe I am at that. I never worked anywhere that had a union, but maybe that's what makes me sympathetic to the labour movement. I worked in an auto body shop one time where we got paid a weekly salary. It was hard dirty work with all the dust and smoke from the welding … bad fumes too. We often had to work late to finish a job but we never got overtime for it. The boss said he'd give us the time back later when we needed it, but everybody said you never got it back. We didn't always get our holidays either, if there was a holiday during the week, sometimes we had to work Saturday to make it up. People working in union shops got twice the money we did for the same work, and they got all their benefits too, but you couldn't tell that to any of those guys. They said if the union came in they'd be expected to produce more with fewer men and there would be lay-offs. The boss told them that of course, but they figured he was infinitely more wise than some smart-mouthed kid like me, and had their best interests at heart. I finally packed it in when he told us to buy new coveralls. He'd decided we were all going to wear the same colour; thought it would look better … at our own expense of course! I told him to stick his job in his ass, and I demanded the three days overtime he owed me or I'd go to the labour board. I was lucky I guess, my old lady could keep us going until I got another job, but a lot of those guys are still there, or in places just like it." Tom became increasingly excited as he warmed to this subject, and his voice had risen slightly in volume and pitch.

"He's a good speaker," Frank thought, "interesting," but their conversation was interrupted by the truck stopping for the first delivery.

Frank rolled down his sleeves and put his tie on. He smoothed his hair back and put his cap squarely on his head. Tom did the same, handling the brim and therefore getting the visor all smeared with finger-prints. Frank winced inwardly when he saw the look of all that hair under his hat. He picked out the bag marked for their first delivery, verified that the seal was intact and checked it against the log book. This he had ready for signature by the manager of the small-town bank who in turn would have a sealed package ready and would require Frank's signature on the deposit slip. There were several banks in the town but they delivered to only one; other armoured car firms had won the contracts for the others. Frank took a quick look out the side window and strode to the door. Tom looked out the window on his side and followed.

"Good," Frank thought, "he took his training seriously." It wasn't much of a run they were on, and the pickups and deliveries were normally small ones. The risk of a robbery was ever-present however. "Almost all bank robberies are for peanuts," he remembered being admonished during his own training, "and when you take a couple of wise-guys who maybe aren't too bright to begin with, put guns in their hands and place them in a dangerous scary position, people tend to get shot. For peanuts!"

The door opened and Tom got out first. He nodded to the messenger, who stepped out next, the bag and aluminum-bound log book in his left hand, his right hand free, close to his weapon. Tom waited until he passed and then followed a few steps behind. A young cashier standing near the front of the bank opened the door for them and smiled a greeting. Frank walked around the counter and approached the vault, while Tom selected a position near the wall where he could watch both him and the door. He spoke quietly and in a friendly manner to the girl, "Too nice a day to have to work," or something like. He was doing things by the book and Frank remarked this to himself, impressed by the way he required no reminders on procedures, yet didn't appear obvious in what he was doing; kind of casual, yet careful too. Perhaps more common sense than memory-work, he realized.

As Frank approached him to leave, Tom stepped out in front, arrived first at the door, and then waited for his partner to pass, calm as you please. He stood to one side as Frank unlocked the doors and they got in. Frank consulted the log and marked the time, then checked the next stop; the local arena, of all places. Still, it wasn't so strange. Sometimes community groups held bingos or auction sales and had large sums of cash to be deposited which they didn't want to carry. They picked up there, then made a pick-up at the department store.

The next stop would be in another town along their route up the valley, and so they had a fifteen or twenty minute ride. They settled in and Frank leaned back and closed his eyes a moment. This guy might not be so bad to work with after all, he seemed to know the job all right, and to use his head, yet he didn't make a big deal out of the fact that he was carrying a gun or the seriousness of the work. Frank remembered his own first day on the job, and to be fair he thought Tom seemed more relaxed, had none of the appearance of a newcomer trying to get things right. As the years had passed he had learned to expect each day to be like the last, pretty much boring and eventless in spite of the nagging recognition that such boredom could be punctuated by terror at any moment. Frank thought it peculiar that he never considered the danger while he was out of the truck making a delivery and taking care of the associated paperwork. The mind seemed to block out such ideas when it had anything else to occupy it. It was during moments of quiet like this that the fear sometimes came creeping from the inner recesses of the mind — graphic images of someone shoving the muzzle of a gun into your guts and pulling the trigger. Then, and sometimes late at night when he was troubled by insomnia such scenes would intrude unbidden into the restless dark, forcing his heart and mind to race as though there were a real and present danger, far in excess of any such feelings of alarm during a real work-day.

When Frank quit his job at the dairy it had never occurred to him that the job would be frightening. He had often worked for the guard service on his day off and had become quite accustomed to his duties as a driver. A week after joining the service however the branch manager (an ex-officer from the R.C.M.P.), had summoned him to the office. He would be needed as a guard, it was explained, as part-time help preferred the driving positions. He would be paid more money and the manager would personally ensure that he got preference for overtime hours. Frank didn't argue, but he wasn't aware then how vulnerable he would feel escorting a messenger through a large crowded shopping mall. It had been so secure locked inside the cab of the armoured wagon; his only responsibility in the event of a robbery being to sound the alarm and stay put. Still, he had learned to live with it, and had subsequently been promoted to messenger, a position which carried its own added responsibility and danger. Whenever Frank's colleagues began complaining about the low pay it was always this element of danger they alluded to, yet to him it was not the most stressful part of the routine. The boredom and inactivity wore upon him inexorably. Eight or ten hours inside a locked steel box caused time to march so slowly that every lunch and coffee break was anticipated, each stop an event to be looked forward to, if only for the space of a few minutes, to pick up a cold drink at a store, or to say hello to a familiar face in a bank. Upon climbing back into that box he often felt something akin to claustrophobia; it would feel so good on a spring day just to ride with the rear doors open for once and allow a cool breeze to waft over you. There weren't even any windows one could see out of while strapped in the seats. The inactivity left his body jumpy by the end of the day so that often lying in bed at night he would begin to itch all over. The muscles of the legs would twitch, feeling as though they were about to go into spasms because the energy being pumped to them all day had not been consumed. He had developed the habit, since the beginning, of walking a brisk three or four miles each evening when the weather was fair, but this wasn't always possible, and the inactivity had a way of perpetuating itself: doing nothing all day often led to a lack of ambition in the evening as well. Listening to a radio in the truck would have helped alleviate the boredom, but was impractical from a safety standpoint and was in direct contravention of the rules. Reading was also difficult. Frank sometimes read the newspaper, but a book was impossible in the jostling, bumping heavy truck; trying to focus on the small print caused headaches. Talking with François through the armoured glass that separated them was next to impossible so Frank had only his thoughts to occupy the time, and the conversation of the guard beside him. This meant that in the selection of a steady member of the crew personality factors weighed heavily.

There were some guards that Frank had worked with that worried him from a safety point of view, he hadn't much confidence in their ability to do the right thing in an emergency. But because ninety-nine percent of the time they sat locked in the truck together, the ability to carry a conversation, mutual interests, or personal habits overshadowed security considerations in his choice. After all, didn't the company consider them all to be competent? So Frank looked for someone who would help relieve the boredom of the prison-like hours in that steel box.

In actual fact he didn't always get to choose his partner. This was done by the dispatcher, with the branch manager overseeing and often interfering in the process. Sometimes Frank had spent long months living in cramped quarters with dull, stupid, farting, uncouth people who although always in abject ignorance of the facts nevertheless held strong opinions on most everything. When he had someone he felt comfortable with he dreaded the day he would be promoted or reassigned, because he never knew who his replacement might be. The most senior employees could request certain delivery routes and there had been a number of requests for Frank's that he had managed thus far to forestall.

For this it was necessary to use François. He, being French-Canadian spoke the same language as Claude the dispatcher. This conferred on them that fellowship enjoyed by members of minority communities and especially those who enjoy a separate language. In addition, the two men belonged to the same religious fraternity: the Knights of Columbus. François would disappear into the dispatch office while Frank was completing his paperwork and some time later Claude would accompany him to the door, all smiles and brotherhood. Claude would sometimes lay it on pretty thick, for the benefit of anyone within ear-shot, with endearments like "Oui, mon Frankie", and "Bien sur, mon gars!" Anyway, for the past six months or so they had been able to prevent the appointment of a new guard to their crew, preferring to have this position change from week to week, and sometimes from day to day as part-timers filled in, rather than accept on a permanent basis some of the other possible choices.

The problem was; Wells had confronted Claude a month ago about a schedule change on their itinerary and had announced that Wilson and his buddy had been running things long enough and would damned well do as he said from now on, yet they had continued to get relief guards up until now. As Frank sat in the jiggling truck, his eyes closed, he thought he began to see the strategy. This summer fill-in: Tom McDermott, was to be part of the crew for the next three and a half months, and he had been hand-picked by Wells because he looked like a problem. After all, Frank had in the past demonstrated an inability to work with a number of people, some of whom Wells had rated rather highly. Surely this long-haired rounder would be a thorn in Wilson's side, and this time he wasn't going to have any choice in the matter. It added to the alienation and frustration he already felt about the job. Still, it looked as though Tom might work out all right, he seemed capable and his attitude, though somewhat rebellious, was something Frank could live with. If his hypothesis was correct he calculated Fatso would be making discreet inquiries as to how well he liked the new man, probably before the end of the week.

Frank chuckled aloud, thinking, "Well, if that's the game, I'll certainly never let on I'm happy with the situation. It won't hurt the kid's career any if I bitch about him a little now and then, just to screw Wells around. He doesn't intend to make this his life's work anyway."

"You say something Frank?" Tom sat up straight to face him.

"No, but I was just thinking," a sly smile played around the corners of his mouth, "boredom must tend to make you mean."

Tom thought about this a moment and then replied. "Maybe. I know my old man always said if you want to make a dog cross, tie him up."

They laughed at this construction on his father's conventional wisdom.

"Yup, it might be a good summer after all."