by Davis Bunn
“Try to remember. Did anything out of the ordinary happen the first day? The day of your first nightmare?”
Buddy thought back. “Well, yes, but nothing that serious. The monthly business forecast arrived. The bank subscribes to it; all the bank’s managers receive a copy.”
“Bad news?”
“No, as a matter of fact it was all good.” Too good. That had been his reaction. Buddy recalled it clearly. Strange how he could have forgotten that until now. But that had been his reaction the instant he had read the headlines.
Inflation was back under control, the statement had read. Interest rates were on the way back down. Employment figures were stable, factory orders in good shape, consumer confidence sound, housing starts up for the third month running. It looked to be a banner autumn for the stock market and a great final quarter to the year.
But Buddy’s response had been entirely different. The paper had seemed alive in his hands. And despite the rosy forecast, he had felt a rising sense of dread. It had seemed as though barriers separating him from the future were being rolled back, until before him lay only bleakness and sorrow.
He looked up to find Jasmine Hopper watching him closely. This was one of the qualities that endeared Jasmine to her charges and made them friends as well as patients. She would stand and wait with them, working not just to treat the ailment but also to find the cause. “Something bad?”
“No. Well, yes. But not . . .” He stopped. There was no way he could put into words what he had felt that day.
Her eyes narrowed at his inability to continue. “Buddy, I could give you a prescription that will help you sleep. But I don’t think that’s what you want.”
“No,” he agreed, definite on that point.
“Do you have a psychiatrist you could speak to? I could suggest one if you like.”
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he could manage, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“What about one of our pastors? Somebody you can trust with your darkest secrets?”
“Yes.”
“Something is trying to work its way out. That’s my guess. Talking to a trusted professional is perhaps what you need to put all this behind you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I want you to do more than think. I want you to act.” She moved for the door. “And if the chest pains grow any worse or start appearing at other times, I want you to call me immediately.”
“All right.”
“For that matter, make an appointment to see me next week, regardless.” She nodded and gave a brisk smile. “Remember me to Molly.”
–|| THREE ||–
When Buddy arrived home that evening, his older boy, Paul, was sitting at the kitchen table. Somehow his father’s height and strength had managed to skip a generation, bounding straight over Buddy’s head and landing in his son. Nobody had any idea where his son had obtained his blond looks, however. Paul looked like a giant Swede—hair almost white, skin reddened by twenty minutes in spring sunshine, eyes the color of an early morning sky.
Jack, his second boy, was stamped from Buddy’s mold. He had the same small build, the same intent air, the same dark hair and eyes. Jack was a lawyer with one of the local firms, a member of the town council, and a quiet bastion of their community.
Paul was as gentle as he was big. Both Buddy’s boys were. Their gentleness had been a source of great concern to Buddy when the boys had been younger. Buddy had pushed them as hard as he could manage, trying to instill in them a need to excel and to do the most with what they had.
“Hello, Son.”
“What did the doctor say, Pop?”
“Clean bill of health.” But Buddy’s eyes were not on Paul. They were on his wife. The scar that began just below her left ear and spilled down her chin and disappeared into her high collar was red as a beet. This was a signal of strong emotion. Anger, happiness, sadness, distress, joy—it did not matter. Whatever Molly felt, if she felt it strongly, was displayed the length and breadth of her scar. Molly was so quiet that this was often his only signal that she had been hit hard by something while he had been away. And right now it was blazing as if lit by an internal fire. “Anything wrong?”
“No, not wrong.” Paul had a glow of quiet satisfaction about him. He set his mug down. “Mom tells me the dreams are still bothering you.”
“From time to time.” Buddy kissed his wife and studied her gaze. He saw a gentle joy in her eyes. He sighed silently with relief. Whatever had her so worked up was good. “But my health is sound, and that’s what matters.”
Molly asked, “And your heart?”
“Fit as a fiddle, according to Jasmine.” He accepted a mug and seated himself across from his son.
“That’s good, Pop. Real good. We’ve been worried.”
“No need.” He took a sip and gave thanks for the umpteenth time for having been blessed with two quiet and well-behaved sons. He did not know how they would have coped with loud or rambunctious children. He and Molly were simply not made for confrontation and anger. In their twenty-nine years together, he did not think he had ever shouted at her. Not once. It was just not their way. “Dr. Hopper wants to have another look at me at the end of next week, but she thinks everything is all right.”
“I’m glad you talked with her,” Molly said. “But I’m still worried about those nightmares.”
He nodded, not wanting to go into that. He was glad his son was there; he was glad that something else in the air kept them from dwelling on what he still did not understand. “What brings you over today?”
Paul and Molly exchanged a look that filled the room with shared anticipation. Paul turned back to him and announced, “We’ve decided to expand. We’re going to set up a second store in the new shopping mall.”
This should have been the best possible news. Buddy had been after Paul for years to start a second shoe store. But his son was naturally cautious. Running one successful shop had been enough. Even when Buddy had walked him through the statistics and the calculations, shown him how he was being overcharged for his product, and pointed out to him how fragile his outlook was with just one source of revenue, his son had held back. Until now.
Yet Buddy felt none of the pride and satisfaction that he would have expected. Instead he felt a sense of danger.
Molly prompted Buddy with her words. “Son, that’s wonderful.”
Paul fiddled self-consciously with his mug. “I’ll be coming in tomorrow to meet with you, Pop. I just wanted to let you know in advance that we’re going to do it like you said. Keep our savings in place and borrow what we need, so we can write off the interest.”
The words wrapped around Buddy in a veil of dread. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Paul’s eyes widened in surprise. “But why, Daddy?”
It was the first time Paul had called him Daddy in years. Why, indeed? Buddy could not explain it, even to himself. Yet the dread continued to build, like floodwater rising to surround him. “I’m not sure now is a good time to saddle yourself with more debt.”
His words were met with absolute silence. Molly slipped into the chair beside her son. “You’ve been after him for years to start that second store.”
“I know I have.” He rubbed his palms together, wiping away the dampness. He asked Paul, “Could you put off the decision for a while?”
“I suppose so.” Paul was watching him strangely. They both were. “For how long?”
Despite his strongest efforts to keep it at bay, the pressure continued to mount. Once more an unseen force seemed to push at him and to squeeze his mind and his heart so tightly he could scarcely draw breath. “Two months,” he managed. His voice sounded weak to his own ears. “Wait two months.”
Paul looked frustrated. “And then?”
The idea popped straight into his head and exploded with the force of a skyrocket. Buddy said, “I’ve decided to sell the ridgeline.”
Both his son
and his wife gaped at him. “What?”
“Tomorrow. Those developers were back again yesterday. They want to build a hotel.”
“But, honey.” Molly’s voice sounded as weak as his own. “You’ve always said that was for our retirement.”
The ridgeline was a strip of land Buddy had bought soon after his first son was born. The bank had offered their employees low-interest mortgages, which had been a relatively cheap way for the bank to ensure employee stability. Instead of using the money to buy a larger home, however, Buddy had purchased the ridgeline from an aging farmer. The land totaled almost forty acres and overlooked the town and the interstate. Every year or so, some developer approached him with another deal.
“It’s time to sell, that’s all. We’ll still have the cash.” Buddy kept his eyes on his son. It was easier than meeting Molly’s troubled gaze. “Wait two months. If you still want to go ahead, I’ll lend you the money interest free.”
Molly asked quietly, “What’s wrong, honey?”
He could not put her off any longer. And he owed Paul that much, dashing his son’s hopes as he had. “Nothing I can put my finger on. Nothing I can give any name to. But I’ve had the feeling for more than two weeks now that something is going to happen. Something bad.”
There. It was finally out in the open. Words to clothe the rising dread. “Something awful,” he went on, “an economic downturn or cyclical correction. I know everything looks rosy right now. And I feel like a fool for being so worried. But I am.”
Buddy studied each of their faces in turn. “I have the strongest feeling that we’re headed into the worst recession any of us has ever experienced.”
He sighed with sudden release. The act of speaking had eased the pressure as inexplicably as Paul’s announcement had brought it on. He steeled himself for their criticism.
Yet the ensuing quiet held none of the condemnation Buddy had feared. In fact, his son’s face seemed to clear up and relax. Even Molly’s concern eased.
Paul said, “It makes sense, Pop.”
“It certainly does,” Molly agreed.
Both of the men looked at her in surprise. Molly dropped her gaze. “Oh, I don’t know the first thing about economics, but you’d be surprised what people say to a quiet person. Maybe they think they’re safe, that I don’t understand or won’t repeat what I hear. And they’re right. But I do hear things, and what I hear I take in. There isn’t a single woman in my Bible study who isn’t worried about money. Not one.”
“It sure is strange,” Paul agreed. “People have good jobs; they’re making good money. But everybody’s afraid.”
“They buy things they don’t want,” Molly continued in her quiet way. “They go into debt and hate themselves for it.”
“As if they can’t control their own actions,” Paul added.
“Or they sense that something is happening and feel powerless to do anything,” Molly agreed. “Running faster and faster after something they’ll never have.”
Buddy stared at his wife in absolute astonishment. “Of all the things I might have expected you to say, this would have been the last.”
“People are frightened of tomorrow,” Molly said.
“I am too,” Paul confessed. “I’ve put it down to nerves over starting another store. Like you said, Pop, everything seems to be fine. But what my mind says and what my heart tells me are two very different things.”
There was a moment’s silence before Molly asked her husband, “Does this have anything to do with those nightmares of yours?”
“Yes,” Buddy replied, and he realized he was also admitting it to himself. “But it’s not just the dreams. There have been other things. In the office, and during my quiet times.”
Molly’s gaze was level, deep. “Has the Lord spoken to you?”
Hearing the words he had been afraid to think left Buddy floundering. He opened his mouth, closed it, and finally managed, “I’m not sure.”
–|| FOUR ||–
Forty Days . . .
The nightmare came again just before dawn. The dream was as bad as usual, the awakening as wrenching. Molly watched him rise, go to the bathroom, and return wearing fresh pajamas. This time she said nothing; she only lay her hand upon his shoulder as once more he settled into bed. But as Buddy drifted off to sleep again, he thought he heard a hint of murmured prayer.
The half-heard whispers remained with him through his shower and breakfast and prayer time. He heard them again on the way to work. They were there with him in the car, vague murmurs that were more than lingering tendrils of a bad dream. Yet try as he might, pray as he would, he could not seem to work it all out.
Upon entering the bank Thursday morning, Buddy felt every vestige of the dream and the uncertainty disappear, which was strange, since the nightmare’s first scene was always in the bank’s main foyer. Even so, the night’s distress was pushed aside by what he saw as soon as he walked through the big main doors.
Aiden was a middling town abutting the steep hills lining Delaware’s inner border. It was too far from the big cities of Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to have ever known the explosive growth that gripped much of the surrounding regions. Buddy had never minded. He had grown up here and had never wanted to live anywhere else. He liked the quiet attractive little town just the way it was.
The bank where Buddy worked was almost one hundred fifty years old. Seventeen years ago, however, the Aiden Merchant Bank had been taken over. The Valenti Banking Group had swallowed many such small banks, allowing it to dominate local markets. At the time, Buddy had been the bank’s assistant manager and had wondered for weeks and months if he was going to keep his job. But Buddy had earned many friends within the local market, people who made it clear to the newly imported branch manager that their business would leave with Buddy.
In time, the incoming managers recognized that Buddy was the genuine article, a local man with local savvy. They sweetened his paycheck, for other banks were also seeking to make inroads into communities like Aiden.
A year later, Buddy was offered a major promotion and the chance to take over loan operations at another branch in another small town, one where they were having trouble making contacts within the local business community. Buddy turned them down flat. Eighteen months later came another offer. This time, Buddy told them the only way he was leaving Aiden was in a pine box. They got the message and left well enough alone.
But the Valenti group had a strict policy that each promotion required a move. Every man or woman on the rise thus came to know different divisions and different branches. And equally important was the fact that a person who was shifted around did not put down deep roots. Their first loyalty remained to the bank and not the community—which was exactly why Buddy refused to move.
This was also why he was so enraged upon entering the bank. These people were more than citizens of his hometown. They were part of his extended family. And Buddy’s first glance was enough to tell him that one of his group was in dire trouble.
He had been concerned from the outset about hiring such an attractive and vivacious woman for the job of teller. But bank teller jobs were some of the lowest paid in town, and when the job market was tight, it was not always possible to hire people with families and thus greater stability. This was exactly what Buddy wanted in anyone who was going to be handling the bank’s money day in, day out.
But Sally had seemed a proper kind of young lady, despite her bubbly personality and good looks, and the public liked her. Some of their older clients waited until she was free so they could stand and flirt a bit. Buddy did not mind in the slightest, so long as the bank was not too busy. After all, these clients’ money kept their bank in business. If they enjoyed chatting with a cute young teller, that was fine and good.
But it was not a client who was making the teller’s giggles ring like chimes through the bank’s quiet air. Leaning across the partition that separated Sally’s station from the next was the bank’s new manage
r, Thaddeus Dorsett.
Since the takeover by the Valenti Banking Group, Buddy had endured eleven branch managers. Eleven in seventeen years. But Thad Dorsett was the first one since Valenti had itself been acquired by the famous New York tycoon Nathan Jones Turner. Thad Dorsett was also the first manager Buddy had ever genuinely disliked.
Thad Dorsett was a trader, imported from the financial markets of Chicago, the first one Buddy had ever met face-to-face. Buddy knew the bank now had a policy of promoting managers up from the ranks of their traders. And on paper this made sense. After all, traders were now responsible for more than half the bank’s total profit. Buddy tried not to let Thad’s background affect his thinking, but it was very hard. Buddy held a strong aversion to traders and all they stood for.
In their first conversation that previous winter, Thad’s gaze had lingered on the silver cross in Buddy’s lapel. He had smirked a little with the corners of his mouth, as though seeing the cross had confirmed something Thad had either heard about or expected to find. Then he had said, “You know, I actually attended seminary.”
Of all the things Buddy had expected to hear from the new branch manager, this was the last. “You did?”
“One semester. Never even took my finals. I did it for dear old Dad, who was a preacher. And my grandfather. And the one before that, for all I know. It was all I heard about when I was growing up. This family tradition.” His smile was larger this time. “But after I got there, I decided I’d rather serve mammon than heaven.”
Buddy had felt like he had just swallowed a mouthful of quinine.
Now he walked across the lobby’s parquet floor, under the huge brass-and-smoked-glass chandelier, and through the little gate separating the bank’s office area from the main chamber. His secretary, Lorraine, was already at her desk. Her face was clamped into a harsh line, which was very strange, as Lorraine had one of the sweetest natures Buddy had ever come across. But she was staring at Thad Dorsett as he hummed his conversation across the partition to where Sally was smiling and setting up for the day. And Buddy remembered four months earlier, when he had come in and found Lorraine weeping bitterly at her desk, while Thad Dorsett whistled and chatted with one employee after another, pretending that nothing was wrong and that he had not just broken the heart of Buddy’s secretary and very good friend.
