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‘Excellent. Money in two and a half weeks, then.’
Willard shook his head. Up until a few weeks ago, life had seemed simple. He had looks, he had luck, he had charm, he had money. But things had grown complex; horribly so. Life had come to seem like a puzzle with a million moving parts and only one correct solution.
He hadn’t simply accepted his father’s ultimatum. The choice of cheques and the conditions that rode with them felt humiliating and unfair. But all his arguing had been useless – and, as a matter of fact, it hadn’t really been an argument. An argument takes two and the businessman hadn’t even bothered to raise his voice. Willard might as well have been throwing sand against granite for all the difference he’d made.
So the scene ended as it had begun, with a choice. Willard could bail himself out and give up his future throne. Or he could take the smaller cheque, extricate himself from his mess with Powell, and take his proper place beside his father, the heir anointed.
‘Listen, Ted, my father has offered to clear my debt, but I’d sooner, if I can, clear the debt myself.’
Powell stopped puffing, stopped smiling. His face was suddenly very cool, very still.
‘You wish to clear the debt yourself?’
‘Yes. Yes, Ted, I do.’
‘I see. And how do you propose to do that, may I ask?’
11 (#ulink_6d51c9df-34d1-5cc5-ac9b-3b0e6dde5cb9)
Abe said no.
What else could he have said? A foxy old storekeeper wanted Abe to save the town from a bunch of gangsters down the hill. From all Hennessey had said, it was clear that the gangsters were well-established, well-organised and well-financed. Even supposing that Abe felt like playing the hero – and he didn’t; he truly didn’t – what could one man do in such a situation? The cops, the county, the state had all proved useless or worse. How could one man, working alone, do anything to help?
So he said no. Positively, certainly and finally no.
Hennessey had accepted his answer, or pretended to. But the next day, Hennessey returned to Abe’s slatted barn-cum-workshop, warm and cordial as ever. The storekeeper’s ostensible mission was a concern about getting Main Street ready for Abe’s impending take-off.
‘The street’ll be fine. I just need everyone well clear,’ said Abe.
‘There are some potholes. I’m getting ’em filled. Should be done by the end of today.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And them trees at the end of the road. They ain’t gonna be in the way?’
‘I’ll wait for the right wind. If I get the conditions right, I’ll either clear the trees or have room enough to slip left of them.’
Hennessey shook his head. ‘That ain’t right. We owe you a proper send-off. I’ll have ’em felled. The worst ones, anyhow.’
Abe felt caught between two feelings. On the one hand, he was pleased to get Main Street properly cleared for a take-off. On the other hand, friendly as Hennessey was, Abe suspected him of ulterior motives.
‘Didn’t you hear me last night, Hen? I said no.’
‘Sure I heard.’
‘Listen, I know how to fly a plane. I can fix an engine if it breaks. And if my plane happens to have a gun on it, I’m a pretty good guy for shooting at other airplanes. That’s it. That’s me. That’s all.’
‘Sure, I understand. Probably I was dumb for asking.’
‘You knew that before. But you still went ahead and asked.’
‘It wasn’t because you can fly a plane, Captain. It’s because you’ve got it here.’ The storekeeper struck his heart. ‘And here.’ He tapped his forehead.
‘I reckon you’ve got plenty in both those places yourself.’
‘Hah!’ Hennessey made a hacking noise in his throat. ‘My wife’s got a sister over in Atlanta. If things get bad enough here, we got another place to go. Things being how they are, I don’t see I’d get a lot for the store, but –’ he shrugged ‘– there are others who lost a whole lot more.’
‘I’m sorry, Hen. I’d have helped if I could.’
‘I expect you’re right. Probably nothing you could do for us anyway.’
‘I don’t think there is.’
‘OK, then. You can’t blame me for asking.’
‘No blame.’
The storekeeper shook his head, dismissing the subject. ‘Say, though, before you leave, why not take supper with Sal Lundmark tomorrow? She’d love to have you round. Brad wanted to ask you, but was kind of shy. You’ve got yourself one heck of an admirer there.’
Abe looked sharply at the storekeeper, whose face was a picture of innocent friendliness. Abe suspected him of being up to something, but didn’t know what. In any case, Brad had been a terrific helper and Abe wanted to find a way of saying thank you.
‘Sure. He’s a good kid. I’d like that.’
Hennessey got up to go. The plane still sat in the barn, as she had done since the first day, but there was nothing sad about her appearance now. The plane was trim and clean. Her engine smelled of fresh oil and gasoline. The fabric over her wings was hard and taut, a series of gleaming curves, that seemed only waiting for the command to leap into the air and ride it.
‘There much more to do here, Captain?’
Abe nodded out towards the yard. He’d nailed a long roofing batten to an old horse-hitching post. On the top of the pole, a ribbon of white silk hung limply in the breeze.
‘The take-off site’s kinda short. Lowering the trees will help, but I’ll still want a bit of breeze in my face before starting out. And I’ll probably want to go not long after sun-up, before the air’s heated too much.’
‘Hot air’s a problem?’
‘A plane needs lift to get airborne. Cold air’s got more lift than hot.’
‘So that’s all you’re waiting for? A wind from the south and a bit of cold air?’
‘Uh-huh. Aside from that, we’re ready to go.’
The storekeeper was taken aback. He’d seen the way the plane had smashed up on landing. He hadn’t realised Abe could be ready to move on again so fast. But he controlled his expression and nodded.
‘You’d best go over to Sal Lundmark’s tonight, then. Wouldn’t want to keep you here unnecessarily.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll tell her to expect you.’
‘Thanks.’
Hennessey walked to the barn door and the white dust and beating sun outside. He looked back at the barn, the plane and the pilot. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he muttered. Then he headed out, back to Main Street and his store. He had a cigarette between his lips and was searching his pockets for matches when he heard a movement behind him. It was the airman, a strangely troubled expression on his face.
‘Hen, last night you asked me to do something for you. You asked me to help you and the town here out of a fix, a real bad one. I said no.’
The storekeeper nodded, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat from the fierce overhead sun.
‘I said no for two reasons and I only told you one of them. The reason I told you about had to do with the jam you’re in. It’s not clear to me – as a matter of fact I don’t think it’s clear to you – what one man could hope to do. Even if I wanted to, I don’t see as I could do anything to help.’
‘Uh-huh. And the other reason?’ Hennessey spoke slowly as though the sun was stealing energy from his words. The storekeeper’s cigarette was still between his lips, still unlit.
‘The other reason is me. Before the war, I was a racetrack driver. When the war came, I did everything I could to get out to France, because I thought I’d be able to fly planes and fight them. And I was right. I was right about that part. But I hadn’t understood something then, which I understand now.’
He stopped speaking. His jaw actually locked and he looked as though he wasn’t going to speak another word. It took Hennessey a moment or two to realise that Abe hadn’t simply paused, so it was only after a few seconds that the storekeeper stepped closer and prompted, ‘Yes?’ When Abe spoke, his answer was so quiet that only the baking stillness of the air allowed Hennessey to catch it.
‘A man’s got to want to play the hero. And at first I did, I guess. I was crazy for it. But then they promoted me, gave me a squadron. And I changed, or maybe the war changed me. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. But I had no choice. I was a serving officer with orders to carry out. What I did, I did because I had to. To the best of my abilities. But I’m not the man you thought I was, Hen. I’m sorry.’
The storekeeper nodded, his mouth slightly open and a dark crease running between his eyebrows. He looked surprised or disbelieving. But the look was only temporary. He held up his cigarette, still unlit. He smiled like a man who looks around for his glasses and finds them on his nose. He lit the cigarette and inhaled.
‘I’ll tell Sal Lundmark to expect you. You’ll be getting a pot roast, I expect.’
‘Pot roast sounds good.’
‘And you should ask to see the kid’s collection of flying stuff. He’s nuts about it.’
‘Yeah.’
The storekeeper looked up at Abe’s makeshift windsock. The strip of white silk still hung down, as if in surrender. The two men nodded. Words still unspoken drifted just beyond them, out of reach. Then the storekeeper turned and walked away, shoes scrunching in the dazzling dust.
12 (#ulink_513e6306-24c7-57fb-af51-ad594dab8017)
Powell accepted Willard’s offer.
It was an offer that gave everything to Powell, nothing to Willard. Under the terms of the contract – drawn up by Powell’s chief lawyer, then and there, under Willard’s nose – Willard would begin work at Powell Lambert. He’d be a junior employee in the trade finance division, earning a handsome fifteen thousand dollars a year.
Only not.
Of the fifteen thousand dollar salary, Powell would withhold ten thousand in interest payments on the loan. As for the principal, almost nothing was said. Willard wouldn’t even remotely be able to repay the loan from his earnings. When he tried to ask Powell about salary hikes and promotions, Powell dismissed the subject with a brusque jab of his cigar. The only thing Powell did say was, ‘This is Wall Street. There’s money to be made. If you have the gift, you’ll make it. If you don’t…’ He shrugged.
And the meaning of the shrug was obvious. With the contract as it was written now, Willard was a virtual slave. If he couldn’t find two hundred thousand bucks, then he’d be forced to work for Ted Powell for the rest of his life. During the war, Willard had been almost as frightened of capture as he had been of injury. But the barbed wire of a German prison camp could hardly have been more permanent than the contract he had just signed.
And why? Why was he doing what he was doing? Why not take the million, clear the debt, go back out West, get on with life?
Two reasons.
The first was money. A million bucks sounded like a lot. But Willard was a realist. He owed Powell two hundred grand: so a million became eight hundred thousand. And what would Willard live on? In Hollywood he had spent more than a hundred thousand bucks a year. Eight hundred grand would run through his hands in six or seven years, maybe less. And after that, what? To most people, a million dollars would have seemed like the vastest fortune in the world. To Willard, it felt a hair’s breadth from poverty.
But the second reason was the bigger one. He didn’t know how to put it into words. It had to do with pride, with Willard’s sense of himself.
From earliest childhood, he had understood this much: he was the son, the only son, the natural inheritor of the family kingdom. It had always been hard to convey to outsiders the intensity of that feeling. The name for one thing. No one in the family ever called the family business by its name, Thornton Ordnance. It was just the Firm, one word, implicitly capitalised. Willard’s great-grandpa had made it. His grandpa had nourished it. His father had expanded it. It was Willard’s destiny to do the same, to follow in their footsteps, to prove himself worthy of the family name.
And that pointed to a deeper reason still. Willard’s father. Junius Thornton might speak as though it were entirely up to Willard whether or not he joined the Firm, but both men knew that was a lie. It mattered entirely, completely, utterly. If Willard had chosen not to fight for his place at the Firm, Junius wouldn’t have excommunicated his son, but any respect would have vanished completely. Willard already knew too well how bruising his father’s savage, iron-bound silences could be. A lifetime of such silence would have been too much to bear.
And so, as Willard picked up the pen that would sign away his freedom, somewhere in his deepest consciousness he understood this: that everything he was about to do, he was doing for his father.
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The Lundmarks’ home had a double door. A screen door closed shut against evening insects and a green-painted wooden door that was folded back inside the room. Inside, the room was lit by a single oil lamp. What with the wire mesh and the dim light, Abe hadn’t been able to see very much of the interior. He knocked at the door, but out of politeness only, to let the folks inside know he was there. Without waiting, he went on in.
And he saw this: the kid, Brad, staring at him with those big wide-open eyes.
And this: the mother, Sal, her face and neck violently disfigured by red burn marks, her reddish hair growing thin and patchy through the burns on her scalp. And her eyes: pale blue, pretty, and completely blind.
And finally this: a photo on the mantelpiece, framed and spotlessly clean. It showed a man’s face, nice looking and strong, Brad’s father. Beneath the photo, an inscription: Stanford G. Lundmark, A Hero of Independence, 1881–1923.
Right away, Abe knew the nature of the storekeeper’s game – a game perfectly calculated to change Abe’s mind, if anything could. Muttering darkly, Abe assumed a smile and advanced. Sal Lundmark had dinner ready. She asked Abe to say grace, which he did, stiffly and out of practice. ‘Let us thank the Lord for these His gifts of goodness. Amen.’ Abe used the grace his father used to say, but finished wondering whether Sal had been expecting something longer and more ornate.
‘Thank you, Captain.’
The conversation began awkwardly. Sal Lundmark had some kind of idea that Abe had to be treated a little better than royalty, maybe not quite as well as a procession of angels. She asked him if it were true that he’d met President Wilson – which he had. She asked him if the Prince of Wales had been as handsome in real life as he looked in his pictures – Abe said he had. She asked what the food had been like the time he’d been a guest of the French Prime Minister.
At that point, Abe had put his knife and fork down.
‘Ma’am, I did a little flying in the war. Right afterwards, I met a few people, got given some medals, had a big fuss made of me. And you want to know something? I hated it. I like my airplane, I like any place that has airplanes in, and I like places that feel like home.’
There was a pause.
When Sal wasn’t using her hands to eat, she rested them on the edge of the table so she could keep her orientation in the room. ‘And your home,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Your home, I guess…’
‘The place I grew up was a little farmhouse in Kentucky.’ He looked around the cluttered room, which was about thirty feet long by fifteen wide. ‘I’d say it was a little bit smaller than this, and we didn’t have that fancy lean-to affair at the back. But don’t worry,’ he added, ‘although this place feels kind of grand, you’ve made it homey. It’s a pleasure to be here.’
She laughed. Abe laughed. Brad laughed with pleasure at seeing the ice broken. The conversation ran easily after that. Stanford Lundmark had worked as a carpenter and, when work was hard to come by, a farm labourer. Abe knew plenty about farming from his childhood, and they talked about good harvests and lousy employers.
Little by little, Sal opened up to speak about her husband’s death. He’d been one of the men who had first reported the Marion mobsters to the police. Their house had been burned to the ground, blinding Sal and almost killing her. Stanford had rebuilt the house, plank by plank. For a time things had been quiet, but then there had been more unprovoked assaults on Independence. Lundmark had had enough. He’d ridden down into Marion, aiming to sort things out, ‘once and for all’. He’d got his wish, in a manner of speaking. He was gone for two days, before he was found with his head smashed in down among the cornfields on the north side of town.
‘He must have been a hell of a man,’ Abe murmured softly.
Sal nodded. Her eyes couldn’t see, but they could still cry. There was a short silence.
‘You must have been very proud,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Very.’
Abe let the silence run a little longer, then changed subject. He asked Brad if he had collected any flying stuff other than the photo of Abe. He might as well have asked the Pope if he had an interest in prayer books. In an instant, the kid ran upstairs and came down with a whole boxful of photos, news stories, scrapbooks, pages torn from boys’ magazines, movie posters.
Abe laughed. ‘Sal, you know your son is a bit of an obsessionist?’
She smiled and wiped her eyes, but Brad was impervious to irony. He had a small mountain of material relating to Abe; vastly more than Abe had ever wanted to keep himself.
‘And that’s your Croix de Guerre,’ said Brad, slapping down one photo. ‘And that’s your Légion d’honneur –’ another photo ‘– And that’s your Congressional, no, wait, that’s your Distinguished Service Cross, the first one, three oak leaves, then I should have – yes – the Glory Boys piece. Boy! I used to know that article by heart.’
