Читать книгу Land Run - Mark Graham - Страница 10

Councilman Ted Levin was speeding down Hays-Barton Road well past midnight. He was on his way to meet Rusty Watson at the south border of the Montgomery place and knew better than to be too late. Ted could never think on Rusty without playing over in his imagination what had happened to the man. He thought back to that day some months before, a regular day, when Rusty was grilling chicken in his backyard. It was the last time Ted was at Rusty’s home. Rusty was known as a community man then, a civic man. He had a life that could be envied by the less adventurous. His acclaim as a Desert Storm veteran and fairly good football player at Oklahoma State made him a kind of hometown hero. He was once very gregarious, even affable. But he watched how his friend had his own idol to worship. Everyone knew that Rusty counted all his acclaim as nothing compared to anything done by his three-year-old, three-foot-tall little man. The boy was everything to him. While Rusty grilled in his backyard on that one Saturday afternoon, his everything left him. Rusty had just told the boy not to play near the pool before going inside to get buns and more sauce. His son could not yet swim, and he just didn’t make it no matter how much his father prayed, no matter how much his mother screamed and wailed, no matter that sirens sounded, no matter the presence of diligent people with uniforms whose job it was to bring him back. His boy’s passing didn’t just leave a hole in the heart of the great man; it turned it hard and charcoal black. Ted was certain that Rusty was on a mission. And his mission was revenge on the unseen. Rusty knew who gave this life and was even grateful. Ted suspected his friend felt responsible for the boy, for what happened. But his days now were spent groping blindly through everything in front of him to get at this thing that stole his son from him, ripped him away. And because he was Rusty Watson, Ted knew he was intent on having his day.

Ted pulled his cherry red Miata convertible off to the side of the road. As he walked across the gully, he saw Rusty’s tall, square frame silhouetted between barbed-wire fence posts and the moonlit field. The air was hot but still and silent.

“Rusty, it’s very late.”

Rusty didn’t look back to him. “A lot riding on this, Ted.”

“When do you sleep, exactly? I’ll tell you straight. I don’t think this thing with the ITC is going to happen,” Ted said, noticing that Rusty still had not turned to look at him. He could have just phoned the bitter mess of a man.

“I don’t have time to keep you enthused, Ted. At this point, you are on board or you’re not.”

“I am on board. The meeting just didn’t get it, you know. Cort doesn’t like this guy. Just gonna have to find some other way.”

Rusty snapped his head around to Ted.

“I don’t give two squirts of duck crap what Cort thinks,” Rusty said through his clenched teeth.

Ted dropped his gaze to his boots and slowly put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t want this meeting. He wanted to be in bed. Rusty wouldn’t bite his suggestion, and he knew he wouldn’t. The man was obstinate, but Ted knew him when he was flexible and creative. They were friends from childhood, and he often hoped they could be friends again one day.

“I have all but contracted Frank Howard to start doing what he does.” Rusty was controlling his obvious anger now. “You know what he does, Ted? He gets results. That is what he does. You telling me he couldn’t sell this to Cort?”

“You don’t get Cort. You don’t sell ideas to Cort. You have to be…don’t know. Something,” Ted said.

“What is that supposed to mean, Ted?”

“I don’t know. Look. Jules can’t hardly get a dime from him, and she’s his wife.”

“I got other backers. I’ll shift every bit of my business from Sooner National. I’ll get on the phone and make it happen now.”

Ted held in his fear when Rusty began pacing the fence and feeling for his cell phone.

“Rusty, you know that Cort basically is the ITC and that’s gonna trump any bank. Let’s go home and get some sleep. It’s just different. This might all play out differently. That’s all.”

Rusty put away his cell phone and stared intensely at the dark tree line across the field as if it was a chessboard. Ted could tell the man was feeling boxed in and unusually aggressive. He watched him close his eyes tightly, probably picturing all the ITC board members hanging out at the gas station downtown.

“Okay then. Just two to focus on: Cort and the old man. You sleep on that, Ted.”

On Saturday morning, the gas station, Hugo’s, opened up at six o’clock sharp. There wasn’t any real business to speak of, just a weekly meeting. It wasn’t a mandatory meeting, but it had its regulars. The coffee was cheap, sixty cents, and refills were free. That is a big deal to this fixed-income crowd. They had money, for sure, but mostly because many of them had a fixed-income mentality instilled in them from their youth. The Saturday paper was already on the table, and the owner’s wife warmed the coffee when Cort eyed Marty Black walking in. He never said anything to the workers, didn’t even look their way. Marty grabbed the paper and took the back booth next to the pinball machine.

By a quarter past six, the booths were packed and the meeting was brought to order. To Cort, Ted seemed well-rested and ready for the social.

“Marty, did you fart or just say something?” Ted asked.

Cort didn’t laugh and noticed that Marty didn’t seem to know anyone else was in the place. Ted was obviously encouraged by the laughter he caused. Ted was tapping the tiny foil ashtray with his cigarette across the table from him. Cort resolved within himself, knowing what the subject of talk was sure to be. He knew Ted to be the helplessly hopeful sort who always had to get some closure. Reality always seemed to come hard to Ted.

“What ya think, Cort?”

“No, Ted.”

“You mean no to the Frank guy?”

“Yeah. No. I understand if we have to force the buy of that plot. But however it gets done, it gets done right.”

“No problem here, Cort. I agree. Anyhow, he could still sell. Just maybe get the price up there, something responsible for him to leave his family members.”

“Ted, do you understand land? His grandpa was a slave on that land to the American Indians. He worked the farm hard as a free man for thirty years and bought it. You told me yourself that Elijah said that. That’s a big deal.”

“Ah, but even sentiment has a price,” Ted said.

“Ted, you keep trying.” Cort shook his head, dropping his gaze. “Look, if it can go that way, get a price. And I’ll take it to the ITC.”

“Maybe you talk to him. He doesn’t talk much to me anyhow. Just goes on and on about the war or about his grandpa and wife.”

“Maybe. I should get a feel for the old man anyhow. It’s just progress, and I guess our town needs it.”

Some men Cort knew from the Kiwanis were in the next booth. He thought they seemed happy enough without some golf course to run to this morning, but maybe he was just being obstinate. He looked around the walls of Hugo’s and remembered the drama he had in financing the gas station. The owner worked at the telephone office and made way too much money. He was one of a handful of out-of-town carpet baggers that came to homestead in Willow Springs. He had lived there for seventeen years but still wasn’t from there. Cort remembered how the EPA really gave the man a hard time about the car wash. And the insurance company found more and more that he had to insure. He must have come back to Cort fifteen times before the deal was done. Eventually, the cost had doubled from his initial business plan presentation. But today, it was Hugo’s, and there was no other place like it. That was a hard deal, Cort thought, but this new venture was a different kind of hard. There was something else to it, and Cort feared it had something to do with ethics, the kind never covered by the statement, “It’s just business.”

Cort headed back home in his white, four-door Buick to mow his yard. He had about three more weeks of that before it just flat burned off from the heat. He couldn’t wait. Yard work was not one of his joys in life. His neighbor seemed obsessed with his lawn and sometimes Cort’s lawn as well. The man’s yard was emerald green all summer long. Cort’s excuse was that his neighbor was retired and made time to water it every day, even after a good rain. He was nice enough, just not very interesting. Jules really thought a lot of him though. And Cort’s son often had an uninteresting story of his to retell at the dinner table. As he turned his Buick into Fairview Avenue, he spied the man walking to his mailbox. Cort was in no mood to talk with him and parked in the garage this morning.

Happily, Jules was back on speaking terms with him. He was going to help her with the new children’s theater and try to seem as excited as he could. She thought this was going to save the world from destruction, and that amused Cort to no end. Well, that’s whom he married, and he couldn’t say her goals were bad, just a bit misguided and probably quite pointless. His goal was simply that somehow he could salvage a profit of some kind or just break even.

“Hey, baby. How was coffee?” Jules asked as soon as she saw him.

“How was coffee? You make it sound girly, like we went to a tea or something.”

“Fine,” she said, hugging him now. “You know you need to mow today. And we have the picnic at twelve thirty.”

Cort felt under sudden attack. She always blurted out some schedule thing followed by a hug. He was defenseless because he ought to know the schedule and he never did.

Now he was suddenly looking forward to mowing, the memory of the church picnic coming back to his mind. The thought of the social event was too much for him, and he was suddenly tired, anxious to run outside, to surround himself with the noise of the engine and the singular smell of fresh-cut grass. He felt himself going numb.

“Yeah. I’ll mow and then shower,” he said.

Jules hugged him again, tighter, and then walked quickly back to the living room. She seemed to him a little stunned, and that satisfed him somewhat.

“Amy Lynn and I are going to have a little planning meeting at the picnic. We want to do something different this year for Founders Day.”

“Uh huh.”

It was the largest turnout of folks to the church picnic in its history. Everyone there commented to Jake about it. In fact, this replaced the usual conversation opener, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” The deacons were busy at the grill, basting, cooking, and serving. Some people were eating in the gazebo, and others were grouped under one of several makeshift tent awnings. Not many had ever experienced a shade tree. Some folks probably never would. The park was overrun with children playing. The band had just started playing and was singing a Third Day song that Jake recognized. He thought back, as he listened, of the struggle he had getting the same new style of music approved.

The changes Jake was making in church were just enough that it was noticeable. The past five years produced some level of drama for him and Amy Lynn. Every few months, an unhappy long-time member would yell at him, threaten him, and then leave the church because of doctrine. But so often, what was being defined as doctrine was, in reality, just tradition. These conflicts didn’t bother Jake as much anymore now that he had a few years under him. He came to the conclusion that there would simply be politics in the church as long as there were people in it. But what amused him most was just how much he had learned about politics from the church. He never expected that when first coming out of seminary. The real conflict was not usually about power as it was in much of life outside the church. There was some of that, but mostly, he found it was simply about taste. One person liked some song over another or some non-essential belief over another. This hit home with him on one Sunday while looking out over the congregation. Some folks, a lot of folks, would find him distasteful, always would. He knew, in a weird way, that too was motivating for him and he would do and say what he knew to be right. It would always please some and irritate the rest. Jake loved his work.

A church deacon officiated the potato-sack race for the kids as many parents ran alongside and cheered. Jake was observing it for the first time, and he studied the children and their parents. He could see that some of the children wanted greatly to win. And the expressions of some of the parents were more than hopeful. It was inevitable that the results would show forth some winners and some losers. But the prizes would all be the same, every child rewarded the same for their efforts, rewarded the same for having run the race according to their abilities. There’s something simple and true about that, Jake thought. His mind flooded with scripture, the story of the workers in the field all getting the same pay from their master. The world would call that unfair. And it was. But the wisdom of it surpassed the world. This potato-sack race was beautiful. The world, he thought, is mean and temporary anyhow.

“Jake, I want you to meet Jules Johnson’s husband,” Amy Lynn said softly as she grabbed at Jake’s arm. “His name is Cort,” she added as they walked. “Please remember.”

As they walked, Jake noticed Ted Levin’s red Miata pulling out of the park’s gravel entrance and onto the main blacktop road, leaving his family behind. Jake’s oldest daughter was talking with one of Ted’s girls. His other kids were having a great time with the races, and Ted’s wife was chatting it up real good. In a way, Jake thought, Ted left them three months earlier when he met that woman, Meg something, at his Ward Four election rally. She was a waitress at Spurs Restaurant and lived in an apartment building off Mustang Road. It was the only apartment complex in town, and even it was located on the personal property of its owner. Jake hated that he knew so much about people. So many people liked to confess other people’s sins to him. And he had no doubt that Ted knew his business was known to some, but the waitress probably did so much for his ego he couldn’t care less. She was exactly half his age, and her family was two states away. Knowing Ted, Jake figured it rarely if ever occurred to the man that the life he was making was miserable and self-defeating. But other folks in town knew and thought it best to leave Ted be. That is, Jake could tell, most folks didn’t figure he was worth saving. Maybe the folks at church just liked being in the know. To so many, Ted was just a picture on a two-by-two-foot sign staked crooked in the ground at every other stop sign, every other election year.

The next morning, Jake sat with Elijah on the nursing home porch to wait for Cort. Jake knew that Cort had heard that Elijah was a member of Jules’s church, and he got the idea to have her pastor introduce him to the old man. Jake offered to take him over to the Weeping Willows Retirement Home, but Cort insisted they meet there instead. Jake took it that Cort didn’t like the idea of spending any extra time with the preacher. He hoped that Cort found him nice enough or maybe at least not phony. But he settled on the idea that it just wasn’t one of Cort’s favorite things to do.

Jake introduced the men and moved over to give Cort room on the bench next to Elijah’s rocker.

“Elijah, Cort tells me he knows a man who is interested in buying some of your land.”

Jake noticed Elijah’s face turn serious, almost grave.

“He wants the whole farm. But ain’t for sale, ev’body knows that.”

“Obviously, I didn’t know that,” Jake replied.

“Pastor, ‘cept you. You ain’t sposed to know some things.” Elijah smiled back.

Jake could see Cort was getting nervous. He could tell that Cort was not used to being on the outside of any group, and the two of them were connecting on some level Cort could probably feel but not discern. There was a fraternal feel to Jake’s relationship with Elijah. He thought it probably centered on their faith and something intangible that Cort could not really get his arms around. He hated that, that unavoidable way he made others feel at times.

“Hey, it’s okay if you want to keep the farm. But I needed to let you know that the developers are going to triple the price offered in the other letters they sent out to you,” Cort replied. Then he tried to transfer the heat of his statement. “Wow. Look at that sunrise. I usually don’t get up this early.”

“‘Preciate that, partner. Just not sellin’. I prayed ’bout it but just ain’t a go. It’s really not my land. Nothin’ I can do with it right now.”

Jake was feeling uncomfortable suddenly and pretended to listen while he prayed.

“Well, Mr. Elijah, I don’t reckon I can outbid the Almighty,” Cort said.

“You a banker, right?”

“Yes.” Cort looked down at his watch.

“That’s good work. My granddaddy never went to school. But he was a house slave. The girl there, though, she’d come home and go over her stuff at ’em. The readin’ didn’t take, but the math did. Couldn’t beat ‘im outta a penny. He could walk out two boxcars full and tell ya straight what he was gonna git. Cotton was twenty-one and a half cents then.”

“Interesting.”

“You know, one time a man told my nephew to go get him an education so people won’t be lookin’ down on him. Then he told him to go to workin’ for awhile.”

“Sounds good.”

“Then he told him that after that he should go an’ git him some more education. You know why?” Elijah asked.

“Why?”

“‘Cause then, he says, so’s he won’t be lookin’ down on other people.” Elijah leaned in toward Cort.

“Hey now, Mr. Montgomery. I don’t look down on you.” Cort was moving to get up and leave.

Elijah laid his cane gently across Cort’s arm. “Partner, I didn’t say you did. But seems, the way you do, seems you look down on the one looking down on you.”

Cort was at a total loss and looked quickly to Jake for help.

“Well, Elijah, we got to get going. I’ll pick you up Wednesday. We still on?” Jake stood up with Cort to leave.

“If the good Lord spares us and the creek don’t rise,” Elijah replied.

On the way to their cars, Cort listened to Jake talk about what a blessing his wife and son were to the church. And he gave Cort a little more background on Elijah.

“You guys seem to get along pretty well,” Cort said.

“Well, I think so. We have a lot in common.”

“Right. Same church.”

“Yes. But we both had some time in the service, you know. There is something only ex-military people know and relate by experience, like the mind, intangible and transcendent. Just as the mind transcends freely across time and space, so military folks can connect unfettered by the matters of station, color, or education. Just that quality that demands your being one to understand one.”

“You read a lot, Jake?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh huh.”

Elijah remained on the porch after the men left and drifted back to that day. He hadn’t thought of it for years until this mess about the land popped up. In his mind’s eye, he could almost feel that night before he left for boot camp. His grandfather had taken ill and was talking even more than Elijah had ever been used to. He loved to talk, but his grandfather didn’t. After his last bout with the cough that night, his grandfather was delirious and went on about something, saying, “Down by the pee-can tree, sixteen from the ditch.” Elijah didn’t understand anything but the location. But whatever it was, he thought, might explain what his granddaddy never would explain about himself. His father wasn’t mean, not really. But he was hard and maybe never happy. Elijah had to go for it. Either he or his grandfather would be gone, maybe dead before the year was out anyhow—Elijah by war, his grandfather by age.

Elijah drove even more deeply into the memory.

It had been past midnight and drizzling outside when Elijah grabbed the shovel from the barn and headed out. He moved quickly through the dark and the light rain, that annoying, constant wet that made you blink involuntarily as if walking through spider webs. Elijah marked the spot and started in. Within minutes, he had set his mind only to the spade in his hands and to speed. Even the hard, red clay dissipated from his awareness. He moved the spade down, pulled it up, down, up. Then his fluid movement was jarred. Something was finally there. His soul had filled with possibilities as he tossed the shovel aside and dropped heavily to the soggy pit in the ground. The rain had then come on harder when he remembered his grandfather often drawled, “Boy, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” And he learned from him that the truth was always near to the story. But truth was just to be hidden away, never expunged. He had heard him once saying, “Folks bury the truth and live lies. But the truth is the secret hidden treasure.” In the wet, cold, and dark gray of dawn, Elijah had been moments away from discovering the whole of his granddaddy’s story. He felt it. He was shaking. The secret waited for him in that deep, dark hole. The truth is patient, he thought, and probably terrible. But nothing was there, and he couldn’t take the cold rain any longer and had to catch a train in just hours.