Ministers and salesmen both meant something to my mother. One took care of death and the other life. I liked salesmen, just like my mother. Salesmen were our saviors. I was convinced by my mother's response that the fat one had come to redeem us.

He sat at our dining room table, tidy down to his fingernails. He leaned on his elbows, forearms up, clasping one hand over the other and draping his chin on his thick fingers. He wore gray wool pants and a matching gray-green, plaid sport jacket with leather patches on the elbows. His shirt and tie lay well-mannered against his full mid-section, not like my stepfather's which always hung off his belt-bulging midriff as if he'd just pulled them from the bottom of the laundry. The salesman's ruddy face matched his winter nose. His eyes were blue with porcelain whites. He smelled like paper napkins. I sat nearby and inspected him. I could tell he didn't personally know about dirt.

But I didn't say anything. My mother told me, "Never speak until spoken to. Children should be seen and not heard." That was a rule to be followed mostly around strangers. They seemed to be especially annoyed by children, though I was more or less tolerable, I thought. My mother hardly ever invoked the "silence in the presence of your elders" rule since we'd escaped from the South and moved to California. She hissed a shorthand shush only on special occasions, like the salesman's visit. She told me, "Watch and listen." (Sometimes listening was also forbidden. She'd wag her finger and say, "Little pitchers have big ears" or was it pictures? I never did understand why my ears were so dangerous.) The salesman would say things good for me, my mother explained.

"He must have lots of money," I decided, because he was so clean. That kind of appearance didn't come cheap. "Could he be really rich?" I wondered if he was worth more than my stepfather who worked all the time and paid for things my mother could never have hoped to buy before she remarried in 1953. Her new husband, a tool-and-die man, delivered her out of Appalacia unto the promised land of a San Diego suburb. They escaped poverty, but not its memory.

The salesman refused an offer of something to drink. Instead, he invited my parents to join him at our dining room table. My mother removed the fruit bowl without hesitation. We'd all sat right down, each on a matching, cast-resin, velour-padded chair, and watched. The salesman took his place, straightened his coat, and began.

He unlatched a black leather case he laid on the table. Books, papers, and color broadsides sprang out. A display popped up to demonstrate how twenty white leather bindings imprinted with gold lettered titles would look when such a collection was arranged on a shelf. "Handsome set, isn't it?" he twinkled. "Might even increase the value of your property. People will think twice about you. They will know you read significant works." He said this with a slight British accent. My mother turned her eyes up and listened in her head to neighbors confessing envy.

The salesman detailed the contents of his Special Edition Encyclopedia and The Great Books of the World for two hours. The books were stamped with names like Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. He evolved ideas glorified in the United States Constitution and traced their evolution as described in The Great Books. My mother's eyes grew wider. The volumes were heaving with wisdom and information. She learned that the entire collection, displayed in a suitably-sized bookcase, would make a wonderful addition to our living room. She Amen-ed the idea of book-burdened hardwood shelving, but when she turned to glow at my stepfather, he sat unsmiling, his lips pressed together. This prompted the salesman to increase his enthusiasm. He turned pages and pointed out articles and their titles. With special emphasis, he'd pause, place a thick, perfectly manicured finger on a color illustration and say, "Children can enjoy these as well. They are attracted by the illustrations, then learn to enjoy the privilege of reading. What a wonderful way to prepare them for university." My mother looked in my direction and nodded sagely. The fat finger pointed out names of great men who'd grown up in houses with encyclopedias at their fingertips, Winston Churchill, Bernard Shaw, Franklin Roosevelt. My mother rolled her eyes. My stepfather only stared at the table, not wishing to agree to a purchase but not daring to disrespect such an exalted group of encyclopedia consumers. He scratched an invisible speck off the table with his nail. Neither of my parents spoke to me, so I couldn't chip in my two cents worth. I wondered if those books had powers.

The salesman began asking if my parents thought the Great Books were beautiful, if they were valuable, if they were useful and educational.

"Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. Yes. Yes, they are," agreed my mother.

But my stepfather refused comment.

At last, the salesman pushed a contract across the table. The entire collection, including a subscription which guaranteed a new leather covered Great Book of superlative quality every month by mail, cost a bundle, hundreds of dollars. My mother acted as if the deal was a foregone conclusion, but my stepfather grunted, stood up, and asked her to join him in their bedroom. The salesman and I waited for them at the table. Because he didn't speak, I was bound by fear not to say anything either. I knew the books were expensive. I could hear my parents arguing about money. They would have to pay for many months. I heard my mother plead in the faraway bedroom, "Father, do you have any idea what they mean?" But I didn't understand the problem. If all the important information in the world was really in those books, why would my stepfather think they were any more expensive than the Freezer Club?

He paid what he said was a small fortune for a one year subscription to a freezer club. Every month they sent him a case of select, frozen meats and delicacies, best in the world: aged beef, crab, spare ribs, all kinds of fabulous treats. At home, the meat was reserved just for him, a reward my mother said he deserved for working so hard. Pot roast and chicken were good enough for us, she explained, but he should have something extra special.

More came than he could eat. My parents had to buy a new, bigger freezer to hold all the membership meat. The freezer filled, so my father ate more and more to keep from losing his investment to spoilage. He would often get out of bed in the middle of the night and cook up a pork chop or slice off a piece of cold Chateaubriand, sit by himself, and consume it all. Keeping up with that subscription became a challenge.

He was determined not to waste a nickel of his special treat. Such an indulgence was not something to be thrown away. Waste not, want not. He started eating meals before meals, after meals, after Sunday dinners when another meal was unthinkable. He became fatter. After eating, he would push himself away from the table and relieve the pressure with loud belches. He moved slower and slower after eating. I was sure it was dangerous to show my disgust. At dinner, my mother and I traded wincing looks as he made noise eating. I dared only once to say, "It's not nice to eat with your mouth open."

He looked at me quickly, but was stopped by my mother who cautioned, as she scooped up her plate and left the table in one smooth motion, "Don't do as your father does, do as he says. Now leave him alone."

My mother became concerned. My stepfather had to buy new pants for work. At home, he could let his stomach hang over his old belt in pants he wore when working in the yard. All his trousers developed a permanently rolled top from the spillover, but his job required him to be more presentable, in new pants, larger and larger.

My mother announced dietary control. She had a workman install a lock on the freezer door. She kept the key in her bedroom night stand. She would mark his feasts on a calendar they pinned to the freezer door with little magnets. She portioned him out more reasonable offerings. It didn't work. He cheated. When she wasn't home, he swiped the key from her drawer and made a copy. Then he put her key back, hoping she wouldn't discover the theft.

Smaller portions only meant the freezer filled to bursting, crowded with the steady, monthly march of cut-rate, frozen wonders. The thought of his extra special treats desiccating in icy splendor behind that white porcelain door drew him nightly into the kitchen. With his secret key, he conducted midnight raids. I could hear the door open, hot water run, and the skillet talk. Sometimes he would get up early as well, before any of us, during the dark hours when he tried to keep up with the impatient freezer drumming its nails on his appetite.

Meat could spoil, but words can't. My mother argued the Great Books would last a lifetime. Why shouldn't we buy the Encyclopedia and Great Books of the World? They would never overflow and rot. "Isn't the value obvious?" I heard her debate. I sat at the dining room table with the fat salesman and leafed through one of the sample books. The pictures and the text looked wonderful. I moved my fingertips across the glossy paper. I hefted the spine of a volume up to my nose. The leather and glue smelled rich, not like the dusty, cheap odor of weightless paperback books that broke in my hands when I opened them.

I could hear my parents' words heating up their bedroom. I sat, wondering what the new books would do to me. I became the salesman's ally. I knew my mother would get what she wanted, what we wanted. My mother and I were irresistible, unopposable, when we wanted the same thing. The salesman understood we were on his side. He waited without talking to me. I wasn't his target. We both knew who the target was.

About twenty minutes later my parents came out of the bedroom. They walked back into the dinette and sat down at the table with me and the salesman. My mother did the talking. She and the salesman signed the contract. After he left, my mother and I started removing the first set of books from cartons he'd lugged in and parked on the floor.

My stepfather finally spoke. He announced his plan. He would begin reading every night right after dinner. He would start with book number one of the encyclopedia. On weekends, he would read the Great Books of the World starting with Abbott. When I was older, I would be allowed to read them if I asked permission after washing my hands. Words must be protected from dirty children.