More Good Old Stuff Read online

  Across the room Rose Carney snapped open her purse, took out her cigarettes and ripped the cellophane from the pack. She had seen Roy sit down with Matt Otis and that Crane girl.

  What does he think I am? she thought. How much does he think I’ll stand for?

  But she knew that there was no limit to what she would stand for from Roy Bedford. Still it would be wise to let him know he had angered her. Be cool with him. Push him away, even when the touch of his hands turned the whole world swimming.

  He wouldn’t go over there if he didn’t still want that Crane girl, Rose thought. It gave her a feeling of great loneliness.

  The waiter sauntered over and said, “I see you come in with that fellow, but is he joining that party over there? The boss don’t allow no women without an escort.”

  “If you think he isn’t with me, try throwing me out and see what he does. That’s Roy Bedford, friend.”

  The waiter arched his eyebrows. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “It doesn’t right now. But it will.”

  The waiter walked away. Rose knew how much the name Roy Bedford was going to mean in Cranesbay. She sensed the hard quality of his indomitable ambition, his need to acquire power. In the soft, secret silences of the night when he had talked of himself, he had told her a little.

  (“Dad was the town drunk, Rosie, and I can see them looking at me and thinking about how I’m going to turn out to be a bum like he was. I’m glad I didn’t go to college like the rest of them. Rosie, I was learning how to do things the hard way. College punks, that’s what they are. Matt Otis, Evan Cleveland, the Furnivall girls. I’ll show every last one of them. Okay, so I got grease under my nails now from working as a mechanic for Jud Proctor. But last week he let me buy into the garage. In a year or two I’m going to edge him out. The garage will give me dough to get into other things, Rosie. Lots of other things.”

  “Like marriage, maybe?” she had asked hopefully.

  “No time for that, Rosie,” he had said, reaching for her.)

  Suddenly he slipped into the booth opposite her. She said quickly, “Thanks, Roy. Thanks a lot! All they were going to do was throw me out because they thought I was alone. I should think—”

  She stopped because then she had seen the rigid fury in the set of his mouth, the dark shine of his eyes.

  He took her wrist. He smiled at her and his nails dug into her skin.

  She moaned softly, “Oh, don’t, Roy. Don’t!”

  He let go of her and the blood stood where his nails had been. “We’ll go now,” he said quietly.

  Alicia watched Roy’s straight back as he walked away from the booth. She turned back to Matt and shuddered.

  “He frightens me, Matt,” she said.

  He smiled. “What can he do, honey? Besides, he wasn’t ever in love with you. It’s just that your name is Crane and your ancestors gave their name to the town where he was born. He’s driven by demons, that lad. He’s the original teapot tempest. Now, let’s settle down while you tell me how nice a guy I am, Alicia.”

  The conductor stuck his head into the coach and said, “Cranesbay in five minutes.” Matthew Otis turned from the window where he had been staring out at the memories of nine years before.

  Fear was Alicia’s face outside the train window, looking at him. Fear was Alicia’s voice, repeated in a thousand dreams. Fear was the small city of Cranesbay, waiting in the darkness ahead.

  Gradually the train slowed, the wheels clicking in slower cadence. Lights began to flash by the windows, and at last the train rocked wearily into the dingy station, the soot-smeared platform roofs damp in the feeble glow of the naked bulbs.

  He buttoned his topcoat, walked awkwardly up the aisle, his big suitcase thudding against the seats.

  The wind that touched his face as he stepped down onto the platform was the cool breath of Cranesbay. Dampness and the sea. Night, rain and the sea. The station was a square ugly room with a white tiled floor, a smell of coffee and rest rooms.

  A drunk sat on one of the benches, mumbling eternal truths which no one would remember. Behind the ticket window a sallow man in a green eyeshade was reading a magazine.

  It was as though he had never been away.

  The Ocean Bay Hotel, six blocks from the ocean, was but two blocks from the station. He walked it, with the moisture, half rain, half mist, beading his face.

  The lobby was empty. Behind the desk a man in a gray smock placed the registration card on the counter, read the upside-down handwriting with practiced ease.

  “Ah, Mr. Otis!” he said, rubbing chubby hands together. “We wondered if you’d have time to visit Cranesbay.”

  Matt looked at him in sudden surprise. He had begun to think of himself as having no interest for anyone in Cranesbay.

  “Oh!” he said. “There was something in the papers?”

  “Two columns, Mr. Otis. A review of your new book and sort of a biography and a little about your work in China.” He laughed. “You’ve become one of Cranesbay’s favorite sons, Mr. Otis. I can give you a nice suite on the eighth-floor corner. You can see the ocean from there.”

  Matt said, “Fine. Thank you.”

  A lean, yawning bellhop materialized and the desk clerk handed him the key. The bellhop ran the elevator, left it with the door open while he carried the bag down to the suite.

  When he was alone, Matt took off his coat and hat, turned out the lights, flung the window up and stood looking toward the sea.

  He could hear the distant whisper of the surf against the rocks. It made the same noise as it had on that night long ago when …

  He grew conscious of the sound of the sea and thought at first that he was in his bed and he wondered why the sea should sound so loud. A storm? He lay with his eyes closed, listening to its muted thunder, gradually feeling the beginning of the pain.

  The pain crept slowly over him, and he wondered almost objectively if the pain would pass some mystic boundary where he could no longer remain motionless, but must thrash about and scream.

  His cheek was against wetness. He grew conscious of being fully dressed. He opened his eyes, moved his fingers about. He could see nothing. His hand touched grass, a twig, small stones.

  The pain came back and part of it was above his ear. He touched it, felt the huge lump, the opened gash across it. The rest of the pain was in his hips, his loins. He touched his hip with his fingers, felt the unfamiliar shape. Distortion.

  I am hurt, he thought with sudden surprise. I am on the ground and I am hurt. My body is the wrong shape.

  When the pain came back the third time, it dragged him down into darkness.

  When he awakened, the pain was not so bad. The cold numbed him. He reached out and his hand brushed against something that was soft and like ice. He tried to identify it, but his hand was too numbed. With infinite effort he rolled onto his hand, warming it with his body.

  At last, the warmed hand outstretched, he traced with gentle fingers the outline of brow, the gentle arch of nose, the softness of lips. When he touched the eye, the lid was up, and his finger rested for a moment on the naked eyeball, feeling the moistness, feeling no quiver.

  It was then that he screamed for the first time …

  Feeling enormously weary, Matthew Otis turned away from the window and switched on the light. All of the strain that had gradually increased since the day he had walked up the gangplank at Hong Kong seemed to break within him, leaving him impossibly weary.

  He pulled off his clothes, flung them carelessly aside and dropped onto the soft bed, the light still shining. Down into sleep, down into vast sleep …

  He had told General Soong that the position was bad. The Honorable 21st Division had dug in on the forward slope of the hill. During the long, hot, dusty morning the artillery attached to the 8th Route Army had marched up the slope, pounding across the shallow holes, the places scooped in the earth, while from beyond the crest their own artillery answered. To his right a fragment caught a Chi
nese soldier in the throat. With a strange bubbling scream the man plunged up out of the hole, ran in a staggering, blundering stride down the slope to fall at last, rolling to a stop.

  During a lull in the shelling, two men crept out and stripped the corpse. At noon the body had begun to bloat.

  Far down on the plain they began to advance. The small slow figures of the soldiers of the 8th Route Army. Seeking shelter behind the rocks that littered the slope. Coming constantly closer.

  Near dusk they were within rifle shot. At a signal they burst from cover, running up the slope, their faces showing the strain of fear and effort.

  Then he saw her. She was running through the dusk. She was naked. Her long hair fell, golden and shining, down her back. She smiled as she ran toward him, and her voice, echoing, was saying, “Matthew, darling! Matthew Otis!”

  He jumped up and screamed at them to stop shooting at her. But his voice was gone and the scream came as a soft whisper. He wanted to run to her, to drag her out of danger. But he could not move.

  Even as she leaped over the naked body of the bloated soldier he saw the slugs write a wavering message across her white body. She came toward him in a stumbling run, falling as the dusk turned to night.

  He reached out a hand in the darkness, traced the line of brow, the arch of nose, his fingertip resting for a moment on the unquivering eyeball.

  “You’re dead, Alicia,” he said softly.

  “That’s right, Matt. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead …”

  He woke with a start, his body wet with perspiration. He felt weak and nervous. He padded into the bathroom, and stood under the shower, trying to wash away the memory of the dream.

  In 1872 James Furnivall, blacksmith, walked into the village of Cranesbay. Three days later he had set up his shop. He was twenty years old.

  Sixteen years later his only son, Roger Furnivall, was born. In 1908 James, then fifty-six, and his son, then twenty, enlarged the shop to take care of repairs for those new gadgets called automobiles.

  When Roger was thirty, he married a Boston girl named Patricia Bowen and incorporated the company as the Furnivall Pneumatic Tool Company. It covered an entire city block, having acquired nearly two million in war contracts.

  In 1927 Roger’s father died one week before Patricia died in childbirth, leaving Roger with two daughters. One four, named Patience, and one infant, named Susan.

  In 1948, at nine o’clock in the morning after Matthew Otis’ return, Patience Furnivall stood in her bedroom and looked toward the sea. To her left she could see the Furnivall Pneumatic Tool Company. Beyond it were the shining steel threads of railroad sidings. Beyond the sidings was the ocean. On the horizon a coastwise vessel made a gray pattern of smoke.

  The plant buildings were old, badly in need of repairs. The recent war years had not been profitable. She and Evan Cleveland, plant manager, had made a bad guess on equipment purchases.

  She sighed and turned away from the window. The maid knocked quietly at her door and said, “Mr. Bedford is in the sun room, Miss Furnivall.”

  She took a quick glance in the mirror, neither approving nor disapproving what she saw. She saw a tall woman of twenty-five. Tall and pale with black hair drawn back so tightly that it gave her high-cheekboned face almost an Oriental look. Her lips were full and warm, the only spot of color in her face.

  Here it is, she thought. Just walk downstairs and sell out something that started when my grandfather walked into this town with a pack on his back and a sledge in his hand. I can remember him. Tall and strong and straight until the day he died. If only Dad had lived as long as he did. The war killed Dad. Sixteen hours a day in the plant killed him. Square your shoulders, Patience. Go smiling down the stairs and sell your birthright to Roy Bedford.

  As she walked toward the sun room and caught sight of Roy Bedford, she felt the quick rise of hate. He was so sure of himself. So positive. So determined.

  He jumped up and took her hand. “Hello, Patience. Nice to see you alone like this.”

  She smiled, sat on the couch, and he sat across from her. She knew she was supposed to bring up the question first. That would give him some sort of an edge.

  “What’s your proposition, Roy?” she asked bluntly.

  Studying the glowing end of his cigarette, he said, “You’ve passed every dividend since the war. The forty thousand shares of stock outstanding have an over-the-counter value of twenty dollars a share. That’s thirty dollars under par. You and your sister own twenty-two thousand shares—eleven apiece. I own or control seventeen thousand three hundred and forty-one shares. It’s only a question of time until I get hold of the remaining six hundred and fifty-nine outstanding. You and your sister vote against me, giving me no hand in management.

  “I have two propositions. If you and your sister will sell me fifteen hundred shares apiece, I will give you seventy-five thousand dollars each, or a bonus of forty-five thousand dollars each over market value, permitting each of you to retain ninety-five hundred shares each. The other alternative is to buy you out completely, and frankly I’d rather do that. It will take me six months to get the actual money, but I will pay you half a million apiece for all your stock. That’s two hundred thousand dollars over the present market value of the stock. That could be invested so as to give both you and Susan a life income of twenty thousand apiece.”

  Patience smiled. “You make it sound so generous, Roy. You offer us a million for what we could have got three million for four years ago.”

  “That was four years ago, Pat. I’m offering you a million for what you can get half a million for a year from now.”

  “Evan doesn’t think so.”

  “Evan is a dreamer, Pat. He’ll be out five minutes after I get the controlling interest.”

  “Aren’t you a little hard, Roy?”

  He smiled broadly. “Pat, I didn’t parlay a one-third interest in a little repair garage into big money in nine years by being soft. I’ll put my own men in. If this new line of hammers and special tools that Evan has developed is any good, we’ll take over. If not, we’ll toss it out.”

  “It’s a good line, Roy. If we could only—”

  “—get the steel. I know. You buy the gray-market steel and the increased cost bumps your production cost so high you can’t make money.”

  “And you can?” she asked, smiling crookedly.

  He lifted his chin. “Of course I can!”

  She said slowly, “I’d like to sell out, Roy—”

  “It’s a deal?” he asked eagerly.

  She shook her head. “But I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want to be licked. I don’t think Dad and Gramps care if I decide not to run the company, but I don’t think they would like to see me quit while I’m behind.”

  Bedford smiled confidently. “Pat, that’s why you can’t ever make any money. You’re too sentimental.”

  “Come back in six months, Roy. We’ll talk about it again.”

  His face turned pale with anger. He jumped up and said, “These things don’t work that way, Miss Furnivall. I’m warning you. This offer is going to be good for exactly one week. Unless I get a decision at the end of that time, you may get a lot of surprises.”

  She looked at him calmly. “You wouldn’t be threatening me, Roy?”

  “I’ll make it my business to run that shabby little outfit of yours right into the ground and you right along with it!”

  “Please get out of this house,” she said.

  His mouth twisted in a humorless grin. “Polite even when you’re sore, hey? Sure, I’ll get out. But you better come around on your knees before the week is up.”

  She stood up slowly and said distinctly, “Mr. Bedford, I don’t have to wait a week. I’ll tell you now. The Furnivall Pneumatic Tool Company will go into receivership rather than make any such deal with you. Good-by.”

  “I suppose you think you’re talking for Susan, too?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer. The door slammed
behind him and Patience stood leaning against the hallway door, weak and trembling.

  He had defeated her. Through Susan.

  Susan will see through him, she thought. She must!

  That was the weak link. Susan. Gay, reckless Susan, who did not share her feeling of family pride in the name of Furnivall.

  She called the plant, got hold of Evan Cleveland. She told him that she’d be down in a half hour to discuss something of importance …

  Evan Cleveland had been in the same high school graduating class as Roy Bedford and Matt Otis. At the time of Alicia Crane’s death, Evan was just finishing his third year of engineering. He started out at Furnivall running a bank of automatic screw machines, eventually functioning as troubleshooter, assistant foreman, foreman, second assistant to the plant superintendent and finally, after the death of Roger Furnivall, factory manager.

  He was short, broad, quick and naturally cheerful. He had red hair touched with gray, freckles across his pug nose and calm blue eyes with a glint of humor in their depths.

  After Patience had finished telling him about the conversation with Bedford, he leaned back in his chair and glared at the papers on his desk.

  “I did do right, didn’t I?” Patience asked.

  “That’s just it, Pat. I don’t know. Yesterday I would have said yes. Today I don’t know.”

  “What’s the trouble?” she asked, alarmed.

  “Yesterday we were pretty sure of getting a hundred and fifty tons of steel at a price that wasn’t too bad. It would arrive by next Wednesday. But another bidder sneaked in and grabbed it. A week from today we’re going to either shut down or buy steel at prices that will make your eyes stand out on stalks.”

  “There’s more than that,” she said, suddenly calm.

  He stood up, walked over to the window and looked down at the plant yard, his blunt hands knotted behind him.

  “You’re right, as usual, Pat.” He sighed. “Got a phone call this morning. A man named Feeney in Rochester, New York, is bringing suit against us for patent violation. The whole line of stuff we’re working on. Claims he had it first.”