The Long November Page 12

  We could hear him through the walls of his office.

  “Hello, Mr. Blank,” he’d shout, using his most impressive tone, “this is BARNETT calling...How are you?

  Yes, Barnett of KASTEN AND COMPANY. I’m the Chief Trader. Tell you why I called, Blank, MR. KASTEN ASKED ME TO CONTACT ALL THE LARGER HOUSE ACCOUNTS and I’m staying late tonight to do it. Yes, Blank, I know you aren’t a client of ours, but this might be a hell of a good time to become one. I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU’D MIND MAKING A PROFIT, WOULD YOU? Ha-Ha. Listen to this, Blank, WE’VE JUST HAD SOME IMPORTANT NEWS FROM A RELIABLE SOURCE ON SLEEPING SQUAW GOLD...yes, Sleeping Squaw. It’s the BEST looking junior mining development of the whole mining market. THIS STOCK IS TRADING VERY ACTIVELY AT FIFTEEN TO SEVENTEEN CENTS A SHARE, Blank, BUT THEY ARE GOING TO START DIAMOND-DRILLING any day now AND WHEN THIS NEWS HITS THE ‘STREET’ SLEEPING SQUAW WILL GO THROUGH A DOLLAR A SHARE...

  I’d look at BF’s face as we’d hear this and he’d be quietly praying that Dick wouldn’t offer the “name” a ruby ring or a Cadillac car, too. It was hard to make the client feel the grip of Curly’s story, and we couldn’t gush on about the “probable” wealth of his golden woman. We felt this wealth or maybe we hoped it, but that isn’t enough for the client who expects the whole civilized world to blow its top any minute. Our clients, the few of them we managed to get, came in for a fast profit and nothing else, and Dick knew this. Sometimes the “name” would buy, and sometimes he wouldn’t. He’d heard the story before, many times, but we’re all suckers for the “quick-profit” angle at one time or another, and from these sales came the money we operated on. I’ll bet many a Joe Doakes who heard Dick’s pitch over the phone and didn’t buy mentally kicked his own ass in February of 1940 when Sleeping Squaw touched six dollars a share. A hell of a lot of good that did you, eh, Joe? Well, maybe it didn’t do me any good, but it paid Dick and BF off, and they deserved to be paid off, because they had the guts.

  That’s the difference, Joe. It takes guts, lots of it. It took guts for BF to slap a mortgage on his home and for Dick to pledge his Noranda shares, and then to watch the office overhead eat that up, too. There’ll always be guys who’ll fold when the going gets tough, but Dick and BF just worked harder. Remember, Joe, how BF juggled the accounts as though they were so many Indian clubs, and just when it seemed he had to miss one, he’d turn up a free hand and catch it? And the only outward sign of the pressure he was under was the way his head shone ever more brightly. We supported the market on our Sleeping Squaw shares; we had to. As BF put it:

  “It’s our baby, Joe, and the public won’t buy a share of it if they can’t see an active, quoted market, and if we don’t buy anything that’s offered along the Street the boys’ll sell it down to two cents a share.” So, when our brokerage connection phoned us with an offering of Sleeping Squaw shares, BF would say “Okay, Charlie, we’ll take it...” and maybe we had the money to pay for it and maybe we didn’t, but somehow it would be there the next day.

  What is this quality, Joe? Where does it come from and how do they get it? I don’t know, but by God, I wish I did. I wish I had some of it because I could use it right now. I wish...I wish...oh Hell, what difference does it make what I wish, I’ll still lie right here, quiet as a mouse, until it’s dark enough to sneak back to the boys. Turn it off, Joe, what kind of mularkey is that? Do you wish you had guts enough to rush out into the street like a hero and get yourself knocked off? What the hell good is a dead soldier? Just stay very still and maybe you’ll live long enough to hold Steffie again, see those kids, and help spend that dough. Just he here, Joe, and take every smell that works its way into this hole...just lie here.

  The headlines grew larger and our sales grew smaller. Each time we’d get a few thousand dollars ahead, a few thousand toward the fifteen we needed to drill, there’d be a lot of our stock offered for sale by someone frightened by the little corporal. We had to drill the property before any big money could be interested. It’s only when the diamond bits dig into the hard rock, foot by foot, and send the core back up the drill line, that we could tell how rich our golden woman was, and until then we were only gambling that she was truly golden. But the big companies won’t gamble, they must have proof, and to get that proof we had to drill. It was bad enough for me, but it was desperate for BF and Dick. The success or failure of Sleeping Squaw was also the success or failure of B. F. Kasten and Company...the bank roll was getting thin.

  I don’t think Dick would have taken a chance on Quill Masters if he hadn’t been at the end of his own angles. He felt Masters might be able to sell a block of our stock to some of his highly touted “bond accounts.” Masters was a tall, well-built guy, who was just “too-damned-British” about the whole thing, and BF didn’t like him.

  “That Masters is a phony, if I ever saw one, Dick,” he said, “he’s just here to get a few names.”

  “Masters is okay, BF,” Dick said, “my God, look at the guy’s background.”

  BF shrugged his shoulders, “Yeah, maybe we should, well probably be supporting it.”

  Dick grinned and rubbed his hand over BF’s bald dome, “Ten’ll get you thirty, little man?” he offered.

  BF nodded and took Dick’s bet, and in time he collected the thirty bucks, but it cost us almost twelve grand before we found out what Masters was. The second day I knew Masters I made a mental note never to send a kid of mine to Canada’s West Point...the Royal Military College. They all look alike and they talk like a cracked phonograph record. Masters ran true to form with his clipped mustache, clipped speech, clipped haircut, and constant talk of the army. But he’d learned a few extra things that aren’t part of the curriculum at the College; the son-of-a-bitch could throw more curves than Carl Hubbell, and he got me for ten grand with a fast one before he was through. He wore a different suit each day and we could tell it was Monday by the gray-flannel-pin-stripe or Thursday by the casual-slacks-and-jacket, all in the best British manner.

  Remember how certain he was that war would come, Joe? He wasn’t any more certain than anyone else, he just wanted it, that’s all. He’d connived the rank of major for himself in the peacetime army and he was pretty damned sure he’d go right to the top if war did come. Well, he was right...and it gave the bastard the best job he ever had, or ever would have had. And I guess he was a good soldier for all the use that’ll be to him...the last time I saw him he was lying face down in the shallow water of a Sicilian beach, half his body blown away by that Heinie shell, just washing to and fro in the waves. His wife collects the pension from a colonel’s rank, and they sent her the Distinguished Service Cross he won, and for spending money she’s got the ten grand he clipped from me. I hope he’s frying in hell.

  His body’s lying in a hole in Sicily; on a white cross at the head is his name, and rank, and the abbreviations of the decorations he won. And a funny little bird-like woman is alone in Toronto. She never understood him awfully well but she was awfully proud of him. He was so thoughtful, and he wanted her to have everything. Just think, he arranged...even after he was in England...to have a man named Kasten deliver ten thousand dollars in cash. But she wouldn’t have understood that either. His men weren’t too sorry when he jumped out of that landing barge in his smart alec way just to show them how to rush the beach, and the silly bastard ran right into the Heinie shell. You couldn’t feel too sorry for Masters, even if you hadn’t known him before; he wore his rank pretty strong.

  He stayed with Kasten and Company until after war was declared, until his regiment was mobilized, and long enough almost to end our deal. I wasn’t in the office the day Dick grabbed him by the ass of his just-too-British-slacks and tossed him out the door, but I’d like to have seen it.

  We worked and dreamed and prayed all that year. And while Dick’s sales and BF’s juggling supported the operation, they didn’t cry “we told you so” when my efforts with the little men wound up in the grease. They treated it as something everyone has to learn about finance.
They didn’t know how deep the damned thing had gone...far deeper than with just our Joe; it had become Steffie’s dream, too. We’d planned to take our vacation together on the Sleeping Squaw claims, and lay our dream town out. It didn’t bother us that the black flies might eat us up, or that the tiny spring-fed lake might be too cold for swimming, or that the nearest town was thirty miles away...Moreland Lake, or what’s left of it. But the flies aren’t too bad in the early weeks of September, and the whole summer’s heat would have warmed the lake.

  So we planned our town, and we built it around the lake. I might have known the underground workings of the mine would soon drain it or fill it with the “slimes” from the processing of the ore. I might have known, too, that the town would be just another mess of bastard huts huddling together like every other mining town in the world; that there’d be no model town, no model mine. But I didn’t know, or if I did, I wouldn’t accept it. We planned Millerville with its wide streets and parks, its churches and homes, schools and hospitals, and it was fun playing God.

  And now, God, I’m lying here on an old bed, in a deserted house, in a town whose only function is murder, and through the window comes a scent of clover to remind me of those weeks. It’s a smart twist, whoever thought it up. To make me think of that morning when I stood on the rocky rise behind the tent and watched Steffie’s lovely body come out of the lake all pink and tingling from the cold water. And when she saw me she just waved for me to join her. It must have made you turn your head even with all you’ve seen, God. Steffie made love with an honest abandon known only to women who are sure they are right. And we lay there afterwards, our bodies trying to recover from the cold of the water and the heat of our love. We lay for hours with just the warmth of the sun covering us, and a feather of a breeze moved Steffie’s hair across my chest and I could smell the scent of clover.

  I wonder what Curly’s golden woman thought of our love? We used her bright body to build our canvas home on; and in the clear well between her shining breasts, we swam; and on the warm sand of her generous belly, we made love. Yes, my darling, we have had moments, so many and so wonderful, so warm and so near...and if there’s never to be another, I shouldn’t complain, for we have had those moments.

  There are two graves in a cemetery in the fire-blackened stump of what once was a town. We stood by them for a while and I remember thinking that not very much of a man dies, any more than much of a man ever lives. The parts that really live never die, for you can’t place a man’s dreams in a sealed coffin or an oak box. They pass on like a flame and ignite another heart...and so it must be; the heart that has never dreamed has never felt a beat, and without a dream the heart is but a pump. One grave held a little man with a great heart, and the other held an old bent man with a great dream, and something had come from those graves and settled in my heart and now it’s a chunk of rock salt; but it stayed a long time and it didn’t wait for my death to leave.

  We stopped for gas in a town called Swastika. It’s a pretty little town and it clings to that name because it means a noble symbol, and the nobility of the symbol dates much further back than the slime that’s been thrown on it by the little corporal. All decent symbols have at some time been dragged in the dirt, even you, God. But it was in Swastika we bought the papers that told us the little corporal had taken the step from which there is no going back. War had been declared, and Canada was in it, too. As we drove south Steffie read me the accounts. She paused for a while with her head on my shoulder, then she sat up.

  “Joe...if we got married now and started having a baby right away...maybe they won’t take married men with children.”

  I laughed, “Don’t worry, honey, if the boys want to play soldier, let them. I’ve got work to do.”

  And the subject of the war drifted away. It was pretty remote anyway, and it couldn’t penetrate the wonders that had been ours for the past two weeks. We drove on toward Steffie’s home and talked for a while of the curious romance of Sis and Dick, how it clung tenaciously to a thread of life, but never seemed to grow.

  Steffie said, “Sis is afraid, Joe. I think she’s in love with Dick, but every time she’s fallen in love she’s been hurt. It’s always been her money and not Sis someone was after.”

  Dick was my pal, so I shoved in a plug for him. “I think it’s different with Dick, honey. He doesn’t talk about it, but he’s not the kind of guy to marry anyone for money. He’ll always be able to make it.”

  But when we reached the Rutledge pile, we found it didn’t matter a damn what anyone thought about Sis and Dick. They solved their own problems in their own way that night. Sis was drinking, facing a fact in the approved Rutledge manner. Sobbing, she told us Phil had joined the army.

  “What good will Phil be to them...” she asked, “he doesn’t know anything about being a soldier...he isn’t strong enough to face those things.”

  I felt the army would be a damned good thing for Phil, but I didn’t say so. “Don’t be too upset, Sis,” I said, “they’ll train him.”

  Dick put his glass down; he was tired of Sis’s sniveling. “I can’t see what you’re beating yourself about, Sis,” he said, “the army’ll find getting Phil sober is a tougher job than licking Germany.”

  She turned to him and looked him up and down. “Did it ever cross your mind that you might be of some use to the army?” She continued, nastily, “No...I suppose not. You’re one of these ‘clever’ boys...you’ll think of a way out.”

  Dick’s neck and face grew red, he didn’t raise his voice, though, when he answered, “If I had as little to do in this world as Phil, I might join, too...and you can be damned sure they’ll send for me when they need me, Sis.”

  Steffie and I tried to switch the conversation to our trip, but Sis wasn’t having any. She must have decided it would be a good time, drunk or sober, for a showdown with Dick, or a house cleaning. She poured another drink and walked unsteadily over to him.

  “I’m tired of you,” she said, looking squarely down into his face, and rocking back and forth on her heels, “and tired of your Bay Street smartness, and I’m damned tired of knowing too well what you’re after around here...how would you like to leave?”

  Dick stood up, said good night, and started for the hall.

  I went after him, and Sis weaved along behind us to hurl a final thrust at Dick.

  “She’s tight, Dick,” I tried.

  “Is she, Joe?”

  “Yes, I’m tight,” she said, “and I shall get tighter...I can celebrate getting rid of you.”

  Dick walked over to her, looked down into her angry face, and smiled. “You should, Toots,” he said quietly, “you really should. You’ve had me fooled for nearly a year, had me guessing, and I’ve just found out. I think the word is T)itch.’”

  Sis tried a haymaker with her right hand, but she should have remembered Baldwin Street; on Baldwin Street women learned not to throw punches. Dick blocked her hand with his left arm, still smiling. Then he slapped her cheek sharply. Steffie looked at me, expecting me to do something, I guess, but I shook my head. Sis begged for that slap. It wouldn’t have mattered a damn anyway, because they melted from the punching into a clinch. It was startling—one minute Sis was trying to hurt him and the next minute she was kissing him, sobbing and holding him as though he were the only man in the world. And somewhere they’re still holding the clinch. Somewhere they’re living decently and happily. The clinch had a by-product, too, and it came bouncing along a little ahead of time, about two months too soon. But what the hell, Joe, the first one can take anywhere up to nine months; any others take the full count.

  Later that night Phil came staggering in, wearing the uniform of a second lieutenant in His Majesty’s Royal Canadian Infantry. A drunken sergeant deposited him, gave him a terrific salute, and left.

  Phil leaned against the archway, rubber-kneed, and announced, “Friends, your fears are ended. Children can play in the streets again...Mothers need no longer clutch their loved on
es to their breasts in cellars. Men may breathe freely once more...Rutledge has the situation well in hand.”

  He collapsed then and Muscles arrived to carry him off to bed. Something tucked foggily away in Phil Rutledge’s nice blond head told him he should join the army because he wasn’t doing anything else right then, and maybe, too, he did it to laugh for the first time at an old man, long dead, who kept swathing him in cold cream. He was probably the worst officer in the Canadian Army, but since he was a Rutledge he had a commission. Good or bad, he was a damned good friend to our Joe. Phil took everything with the same calm he’d taken the loss of Steffie. The same calm he had almost a month ago when he pushed Bill Preston aside and crawled out of the ditch to his death. He died as he lived, half drunk and a gentleman, and he was more of a gentleman drunk than most men are sober. He took one last pull on the bottle of Dago-red and went out to die, and he died the way angels must want men to die.

  So a war came to Canada. It came and it oozed across the watery quiet of the land like oil, and it mixed about as well. Wars aren’t new for Canada, and this one came too soon. Many men still walked the length and breadth of the land on one leg, remembering where they had left the other; many still worked with one arm, or saw with their ears instead of their eyes. All remembered a place called Vimy Ridge where you can stand and look in every direction and not see the end of the little white crosses. That was “another” war, and those were “other” problems, and those are “other” white crosses...but under every last one of them there’s a guy lying who doesn’t know why he’s there.

  But what’s so old as an old battlefield, eh, Joe? Who wants to talk about old battlefields when there’re new ones coming up? But there were some who wondered. In the cheering crowds there were old men who said: “It’s different this time, it’s not like it was before...there aren’t as many parades.”