The Boss wasn't old when he got to town. He was a grown-up though, no mistaking. Long but chiseled features, and rail thin with skin like beef jerky, he had prematurely gray hair, thinning a bit at the sides and back cut close enough to stay in place under a hat, but long enough it didn't stick up. Gray eyes too, when you saw them through his thick-framed tortoise shell reading glasses, otherwise all you saw under his bushy eyebrows were the dark lines of his famed gunfighter's squint. There was a story that once, about a year after he came to town, he was called for jury duty. He showed up on time and spent a good two hours that morning on a folding chair, glasses on, working on a book of crossword puzzles placed on the seat of the chair beside him. He may have been a little too wrapped up in the puzzle because he didn't hear his number called the first time, or the second, but he did hear the lawyer practically shout his full Christian name from the front of the room. Concentration broken, with one hand The Boss removed his glasses, folded them up and placed them in his shirt pocket, and with the other hand he dog eared his page and shut the book, all while turning to look straight at that "loudmouth sumbitch" exactly the same way he would look at anything else, from two dogs fucking to the President of the United States. A full three seconds later The Boss hears the two words he waited all morning for, "you're dismissed" without a single question asked by the visibly shaken young lawyer. Yes, the power of that look was legendary, but what no one knew was that that terrifying tough-guy glare would disappear as soon as The Boss walked through the front door to his house and put on the bifocals he left on the tall wooden stool by the door on his way out every morning. Reading glasses were OK, bifocals were for old women and dentists.
The Boss had a uniform he stuck to. Twill pants in dark green, blue or brown, black steel-toed shoes and a black belt, topped by a short-sleeved white shirt, no matter what the weather. He also had a short, fat, brown necktie looped over the inside doorknob of his office for special occasions. At home, the white shirt, work shoes and twill pants came off and the flannel, boots and jeans went on after a quick shower and before anyone was allowed to say a word to him. This was the only rule he had that was never broken, bent or stretched. Once, a salesman was ringing the doorbell just as The Boss pulled his company Buick into the driveway. As the man rushed out to meet him, ranting on and on about some new vacuum cleaner, cleaning product or political issue, it didn't matter. The Boss blew past him, keyed open the the front door and slammed it shut on the man's fingers with devastating force without saying a word while trooping up the stairs and into the shower. Work was work and home wasn't home until the stink of work was washed off.
