Roadwork

by Bachman, Richard; King, Stephen

Ordner was looking at him now, shocked.

  “Never mind what I said about the utility increase. That comes under operating overhead, not renovations. So where was I? The place has to be rewired for five-fifty. We’re going to need a good burglar alarm and closed circuit TV. New insulation. New roofing. Oh yeah, and a drainage system. Over on Fir Street we’re up on high ground, but Douglas Street sits at the bottom of a natural basin. The drainage system alone will cost anywhere from forty to seventy thousand dollars to put in.”

  “Christ, how come Tom Granger hasn’t told me any of this?”

  “He didn’t go with me to inspect the place.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I told him to stay at the plant.”

  “You did what?”

  “That was the day the furnace went out,” he said patiently. “We had orders piling up and no hot water. Tom had to stay. He’s the only one in the place that can talk to that furnace.”

  “Well Christ, Bart, couldn’t you have taken him down another day?”

  He knocked back the rest of his drink. “I didn’t see the point.”

  “You didn’t see the—” Ordner couldn’t finish. He set his glass down and shook his head, like a man who has been punched. “Bart, do you know what it’s going to mean if your estimate is wrong and we lose that plant? It’s going to mean your job, that’s what it’s going to mean. My God, do you want to end up carrying your ass home to Mary in a basket? Is that what you want?”

  You wouldn’t understand, he thought, because you’d never make a move unless you were covered six ways and had three other fall guys lined up. That’s the way you end up with four hundred thousand in stocks and funds, a Delta 88, and a typewriter that pops out of a desk at you like some silly jack-in-the-box. You stupid fuckstick, I could con you for the next ten years. I just might do it, too.

  He grinned into Ordner’s drawn face. “That’s my last point, Steve. That’s why I’m not worried.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Joyously, he lied:

  “Thom McAn had already notified the realtor that they’re not interested in the plant. They had their guys out to look at it and they hollered holy hell. So what you’ve got is my word that the place is shit at four-fifty. What you’ve also got is a ninety-day option that runs out on Tuesday. What you’ve also got is a smart mick realtor named Monohan, who had been bluffing our pants off. It almost worked.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting we let the option run out. That we stand pat until next Thursday or so. You talk to your boys in cost and accounting about that twenty percent utility hike. I’ll talk to Monohan. When I get through with him, he’ll be down on his knees for two hundred thousand.”

  “Bart, are you sure?”

  “Sure I am,” he said, and smiled tightly. “I wouldn’t be sticking out my neck if I thought somebody was going to cut it off.”

  George, what are you doing???

  Shut up, shut up, don’t bother me now.

  “What we’ve got here,” he said, “is a smart-ass realtor with no buyer. We can afford to take our time. Every day we keep him swinging in the wind is another day the price goes down when we do buy.”

  “All right,” Ordner said slowly. “But let’s have one thing clear, Bart. If we fail to exercise our option and then somebody else does go in there, I’d have to shoot you out of the saddle. Nothing—”

  “I know,” he said, suddenly tired. “Nothing personal.”

  “Bart, are you sure you haven’t picked up Mary’s bug? You look a little punk tonight.”

  You look a little punk yourself, asshole.

  “I’ll be fine when we get this settled. It’s been a strain.”

  “Sure it has.” Ordner arranged his face in sympathetic lines. “I’d almost forgotten ... your house is right in the line of fire, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve found another place?”

  “Well, we’ve got our eye on two. I wouldn’t be surprised if I closed the laundry deal and my personal deal on the same day.”

  Ordner grinned. “It may be the first time in your life you’ve wheeled and dealed three hundred thousand to half a million dollars between sunrise and sunset.”

  “Yes, it’s going to be quite a day.”

  On the way home Freddy kept trying to talk to him—scream at him, really—and he had to keep yanking the circuit breaker. He was just pulling onto Crestallen Street West when it burnt out with a smell of frying synapses and overloaded axons. All the questions spilled through and he jammed both feet down on the power brake. The LTD screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, and he was thrown against his seat belt hard enough to lock it and force a grunt up from his stomach.

  When he had control of himself, he let the car creep over to the curb. He turned off the motor, killed the lights, unbuckled his seat belt, and sat trembling with his hands on the steering wheel.

  From where he sat, the street curved gently, the streetlights making a graceful fish hook of light. It was a pretty street. Most of the houses which now lined it had been built in the postwar period 1946-1958, but somehow, miraculously, it had escaped the Fifties Crackerbox Syndrome, and the diseases that went with it: crumbling foundation, balding lawn, toy proliferation, premature aging of cars, flaking paint, plastic storm windows.

  He knew his neighbors—why not? He and Mary had been on Crestallen Street almost fourteen years now. That was a long time. The Upslingers in the house above them; their boy Kenny delivered the morning paper. The Langs across the street; the Hobarts two houses down (Linda Hobart had baby-sat for Charlie, and now she was a doctoral student at City College); the Stauffers; Hank Albert, whose wife had died of emphysema four years ago; the Darbys’ and just four houses up from where he was parked and shaking in his car, the Quinns. And a dozen other families that he and Mary had a nodding acquaintance with—mostly the ones with small children.

  A nice street, Fred. A nice neighborhood. Oh, I know how the intellectuals sneer at suburbia—it’s not as romantic as the rat-infested tenements or the hale-and-hearty back-to-the-land stuff. There are no great museums in suburbia, no great forests, no great challenges.

  But there had been good times. I know what you’re thinking, Fred. Good times, what are good times? There’s no great joy in good times, no great sorrow, no great nothing. Just blah. Backyard barbecues in the summer dusk, everybody a little high but nobody getting really drunk or really ugly. Car pools we got up to go see the Mustangs play. The fucking Musties, who couldn’t even beat the Pats the year the Pats were 1-12. Having people in to dinner or going out. Playing golf over at the Westside course or taking the wives to Ponderosa Pines and driving those little go-karts. Remember the time Bill Stauffer drove his right through that board fence and into some guy’s swimming pool? Yeah, I remember that, George, we all laughed like hell. But George—

  So bring on the bulldozers, right, Fred? Let’s bury all of that. There’ll be another suburb pretty quick, over in Waterford, where there was nothing but a bunch of vacant lots until this year. The March of Time. Progress in Review. Billion Dollar Babies. So what is it when you go over there to look? A bunch of saltine boxes painted different colors. Plastic pipes that are going to freeze every winter. Plastic wood. Plastic everything. Because Moe at the Highway Commission told Joe down at Joe’s Construction, and Sue who works at the front desk at Joe’s told Lou at Lou’s Construction and pretty soon the big Waterford land boom is on and the developments are going up in the vacant lots, and also the high rises, the condominiums. You get a house on Lilac Lane, which intersects Spain Lane going north and Dain Lane going south. You can pick Elm Street, Oak Street, Cypress Street, White Pine Blister Street. Each house has a full bathroom downstairs, a half-bathroom upstairs, and a fake chimney on the east side. And if you come home drunk you can’t even find your own fucking house.

  But George—

  Shut up, Fred, I’m talking. And where are your neighbors?
Maybe they weren’t so much, those neighbors, but you knew who they were. You knew who you could borrow a cup of sugar from when you were tapped out. Where are they? Tony and Alicia Lang are in Minnesota because he requested a transfer to a new territory and got it. The Hobarts’ve moved out to Northside. Hank Albert has got a place in Waterford, true, but when he came back from signing the papers he looked like a man wearing a happy mask. I could see his eyes, Freddy. He looked like somebody who had just had his legs cut off and was trying to fool everybody that he was looking forward to the new plastic ones because they wouldn’t get scabs if he happened to bang them against a door. So we move, and where are we? What are we? Just two strangers sitting in a house that’s sitting in the middle of a lot more strangers’ houses. That’s what we are. The March of Time, Freddy. That’s what it is. Forty waiting for fifty waiting for sixty. Waiting for a nice hospital bed and a nice nurse to stick a nice catheter inside you. Freddy, forty is the end of being young. Well, actually thirty’s the end of being young, forty is where you stop fooling yourself. I don’t want to grow old in a strange place.

  He was crying again, sitting in his cold dark car and crying like a baby.

  George, it’s more than the highway, more than the move. I know what’s wrong with you.

  Shut up, Fred. I warn you.

  But Fred wouldn’t shut up and that was bad. If he couldn’t control Fred anymore, how would he ever get any peace?

  It’s Charlie, isn’t it, George? You don’t want to bury him a second time.

  “It’s Charlie,” he said aloud, his voice thick and strange with tears. “And it’s me. I can’t. I really can’t ...”

  He hung his head over and let the tears come, his face screwed up and his fists plastered into his eyes like any little kid you ever saw who lost his candy-nickle out the hole in his pants.

  When he finally drove on, he was husked out. He felt dry. Hollow, but dry. Perfectly calm. He could even look at the dark houses on both sides of the street where people had already moved out with no tremor.

  We’re living in a graveyard now, he thought. Mary and I, in a graveyard. Just like Richard Boone in I Bury the Living. The lights were on at the Arlins’, but they were leaving on the fifth of December. And the Hobarts had moved last weekend. Empty houses.

  Driving up the asphalt of his own driveway (Mary was upstairs; he could see the mild glow of her reading lamp) he suddenly found himself thinking of something Tom Granger had said a couple of weeks before. He would talk to Tom about that. On Monday.

  November 25, 1973

  He was watching the Mustangs-Chargers game on the color TV and drinking his private drink, Southern Comfort and Seven-Up. It was his private drink because people laughed when he drank it in public. The Chargers were ahead 27-3 in the third quarter. Rucker had been intercepted three times. Great game, huh, Fred? It sure is, George. I don’t see how you stand the tension.

  Mary was asleep upstairs. It had warmed up over the weekend, and now it was drizzling outside. He felt sleepy himself. He was three drinks along.

  There was a time-out, and a commercial came on. The commercial was Bud Wilkenson telling about how this energy crisis was a real bitch and everybody should insulate their attics and also make sure that the fireplace flue was closed when you weren’t toasting marshmallows or burning witches or something. The logo of the company presenting the commercial came on at the end; the logo showed a happy tiger peeking at you over a sign that said:

  EXXON

  He thought that everyone should have known the evil days were coming when Esso changed its name to Exxon. Esso slipped comfortably out of the mouth like the sound of a man relaxing in a hammock. Exxon sounded like the name of a warlord from the planet Yurir.

  “Exxon demands that all puny Earthlings throw down their weapons,” he said. “Off the pig, puny Earthmen.” He snickered and made himself another drink. He didn’t even have to get up; the Southern Comfort, a forty-eight-ounce bottle of Seven-Up, and a plastic bowl of ice were all sitting on a small round table by his chair.

  Back to the game. The Chargers punted. Hugh Fednach, the Mustangs’ deep man, collected the football and ran it out to the Mustangs’ 31. Then, behind the steely-eyed generalship of Hank Rucker, who might have seen the Heisman trophy once in a newsreel, the Mustangs mounted a six-yard drive. Gene Voreman punted. Andy Cocker of the Chargers returned the ball to the Mustangs’ 46. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut had so shrewdly pointed out. He had read all of Kurt Vonnegut’s books. He liked them mostly because they were funny. On the news last week it had been reported that the school board of a town called Drake, North Dakota, had burned yea copies of Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five, which was about the Dresden fire bombing. When you thought about it, there was a funny connection there.

  Fred, why don’t those highway department fucksticks go build the 784 extension through Drake? I bet they’d love it. George, that’s a fine idea. Why don’t you write The Blade about that? Fuck you, Fred.

  The Chargers scored, making it 34-3. Some cheer-leaders pranced around on the Astroturf and shook their asses. He fell into a semidoze, and when Fred began to get at him, he couldn’t shake him off.

  George, since you don’t seem to know what you’re doing, let me tell you. Let me spell it out for you, old buddy. (Get off my back, Fred.) First, the option on the Waterford plant is going to run out. That will happen at midnight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Thorn McAn is going to close their deal with that slavering little piece of St. Patrick’s Day shit, Patrick J. Monohan. On Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, a big sign that says SOLD! is going up. If anyone from the laundry sees it, maybe you can postpone the inevitable by saying: Sure. Sold to us. But if Ordner checks, you’re dead. Probably he won’t. But (Freddy, leave me alone) on Friday a new sign will go up. That sign will say:

  SITE OF OUR NEW WATERFORD PLANT THOM MCAN SHOES Here We Grow Again!!!

  On Monday, bright and early, you are going to lose your job. Yes, the way I see it, you’ll be unemployed before your ten o’clock coffee break. Then you can come home and tell Mary. I don’t know when that will be. The bus ride only takes fifteen minutes, so conceivably you could end twenty years of marriage and twenty years of gainful employment in just about half an hour. But after you tell Mary, comes the explanation scene. You could put it off by getting drunk, but sooner or later—

  Fred, shut your goddam mouth.

  —sooner or later, you’re going to have to explain just how you lost your job. You’ll just have to fess up. Well, Mary, the highway department is going to rip down the Fir Street plant in a month or so, and I kind of neglected to get us a new one. I kept thinking that this whole 784 extension business was some kind of nightmare I was going to wake up from. Yes, Mary, yes, I located us a new plant—Waterford, that’s right, you capish—but somehow I couldn’t go through with it. How much is it going to cost Amroco? Oh, I’d say a million or a million-five, depending on how long it takes them to find a new plant location and how much business they lose for good.

  I’m warning you, Fred.

  Or you could tell her what no one knows better than you, George. That the profit margin on the Blue Ribbon has gotten so thin that the cost accountants might just throw up their hands and say, Let’s ditch the whole thing, guys. We’ll just take the city’s money and buy a penny arcade down in Norton or a nice little pitch ’n’ putt out in Russell or Crescent. There’s too much potential red ink in this after the sugar that son of a bitch Dawes poured into our gas tank. You could tell her that.

  Oh, go to hell.

  But that’s just the first movie, and this is a double feature, isn’t it? Part two comes when you tell Mary there isn’t any house to go to and there isn’t going to be any house. And how are you going to explain that?

  I’m not doing anything.

  That’s right. You’re just some guy who fell asleep in his rowboat. But come Tuesday midnight, your boat is going over the falls, George. For Christ’s sweet sake, go see Mon
ohan on Monday and make him an unhappy man. Sign on the dotted line. You’ll be in trouble anyway, with all those lies you told Ordner Friday night. But you can bail yourself out of that. God knows you’ve bailed yourself out of trouble before this.

  Let me alone. I’m almost asleep.

  It’s Charlie, isn’t it. This is a way of committing suicide. But it’s not fair to Mary, George. It’s not fair to anybody. You’re—

  He sat bolt upright, spilling his drink on the rug. “No one except maybe me.”

  Then what about the guns, George? What about the guns?

  Trembling, he picked up his glass and made another drink.

  November 26, 1973

  He was having lunch with Tom Granger at Nicky’s, a diner three blocks over from the laundry. They were sitting in a booth, drinking bottles of beer and waiting for their meals to come. There was a jukebox, and it was playing “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road,” by Elton John.

  Tom was talking about the Mustangs-Chargers game, which the Chargers had won 37-6. Tom was in love with all the city’s sports teams, and their losses sent him into frenzies. Someday, he thought as he listened to Tom castigate the whole Mustangs’ roster man by man, Tom Granger will cut off one of his ears with a laundry pin and send it to the general manager. A crazy man would send it to the coach, who would laugh and pin it to the locker room bulletin board, but Tom would send it to the general manager, who would brood over it.

  The food came, brought by a waitress in a white nylon pants suit. He estimated her age at three hundred, possibly three hundred and four. Ditto weight. A small card over her left breast said:

  GAYLE Thanks For Your Patronage Nicky’s Diner

  Tom had a slice of roast beef that was floating belly up in a plateful of gravy. He had ordered two cheeseburgers, rare, with an order of French fries. He knew the cheeseburgers would be well done. He had eaten at Nicky’s before. The 784 extension was going to miss Nicky’s by half a block.