Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

I could hardly wait and I hugged her with all my might, and so did Sally. The next day was Saturday and we accompanied Una to the airport. That night as I lay in the bunker I remembered the warning words of Jesus that Lucifer would send someone to bring me into his fold and that I should stick close to my guide.

  If Una was in Jamaica and Lucifer attacked, I would be in plenty of trouble. I slept the whole night through in the bunker. The next day, Aunt Gayle arrived and I saw no resemblance to Mary. She seemed to be much older. Her eyes were unaffectionate towards me and I immediately disliked her. She was a short plump woman who dressed as sloppily as her shape and had dull, almost insipid eyes. In contrast, she lacked any of the fineness and intelligence which I’d straightaway seen in Mary. I wondered if they were truly blood sisters, listening in the bunker, I could discover little, of course I couldn’t very well ask Mary, and Una wasn’t around.

  We weren’t alone with Gayle until the next morning. After Mary and Stan had left to work, she made us a breakfast of cereal, fruit, toast and orange juice. She looked a little better the next morning and seemed friendlier. When we were done, she turned and said. “Go and brush your teeth, dears, then run along and play.”

  To a kid, the words ‘Run along and play,’ means, ‘Don’t bother me!’ To my ears, they were the sweetest words I could imagine coming from Gayle. I knew there would be no trouble between us. We stayed away the whole day, even for lunch, which we had at Bert’s. She made us say prayers at night, grace at meals, and talked about being a Catholic. I listened to her on this matter, as I would have to any unhappy person, only half-seriously.

  In the whole week, only one event occurred to alarm me. I couldn’t swear for sure, but I think that she caught Sally and I kissing on the lips. Una came back after a week, and the following day, we packed up and headed west, bound in the direction of Cedar Heights where Una’s little pretty lake sat near a wildlife reserve in a sparse cottage area know for its natural unblemished habitat.

  After we arrived, Una unpacked the Lincoln and Sally and I paddled out in the canoe, hardly stopping to look inside the cottage. This was our sixth time there. It was a small lake with a tiny island in the center and thick woods all around its edge. We hiked around the island on a familiar path and saw beaver, muskrat, eagles, and other animals. The cottage had no motor boats, but had a dock and a large raft. The next day, Sally and I packed a picnic for the island. It promised to be an extraordinary bright day. We spent the whole of it on the opposite side, completely naked, sunning, swimming, eating, and cuddling. Though we liberally applied tanning lotion several times, by four o’clock, it was obvious that we’d made an enormous mistake. We hurried back to the cottage.

  “Una, we’ve burned ourselves,” I cried running into the cottage. She rose and looked us over.

  “You don’t look too bad,” she said. I showed her my buttocks and she gasped. She then pulled down Sally’s shorts. Both of our bums had second degree burns and were already blistering. The rest of our body was pink.

  “Take off your clothes,” Una said and studied us naked more closely. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  “Mom and Dad would know we were sunbathing in the nude,” I said, “they would realize . . .” I left the rest of the thought linger.

  “Come with me,” she ordered with a frown. We dreaded to go back into the sun but we obeyed. From the porch she pointed to a tree on the edge of the lake which drooped all the way to the surface of the water on one side and to the ground on the other. “See, under the willow, how shady it is?” The aged tree had thick foliage and entirely blocked out the brilliant sun. I had hardly even noticed it before. She got two large umbrellas with dark blue and red mosaic patterns. “Take these and stand in the cold water up to your waist. That’ll keep down the blistering. I’ll be back in a half hour.”

  When she came back we were both still out in the lake under the enormous weeping willow, shivering. Certainly we must have looked like two fools and Una couldn’t stop laughing. That evening, and the whole night through, Una applied cream of silver sulfadiazine on our burned areas using her gentle rub and making us drink glass after glass of cold water. I applied cream to my testicles and penis, they too were burned. I remember it as one of the most painful nights of my life, and shameful, I apologized to Una.

  “My full grown child,” she said, “stop apologizing.”

  Sally cried through much of the night. We stayed indoors for four days straight, fretting to sit and trying hard not to lie down. The only comfortable position was standing, but how long can any one person stand? By Friday, Una looked at us naked again.

  “Thank God that’s over,” she said, “I don’t have to look at your bare behinds one more time. Now. No more nude sunbathing. Next time you’ll be scarred for life. What if our neighbors up here ever saw you? Word would get back to your parents lickety-split.” We both nodded. “If your secret ever became public, there would be a dear price to pay and believe me it would change just about everything.”

  How true those words would turn out to be. The next summer, we again visited the cottage, but this time, for two weeks in early July before our jobs at Tappets started. Straight A’s may have prevented this, but we didn’t even try. We were warned by Una before hand that all the A’s in the entire world wouldn’t change it. We were both to work in the Hoboken offices with Mary and Stan, or at least so I believed. The thing I remember about the cottage that year was that Stan and Mary were away for six days.

  Sally and I slept together every one of those nights. I couldn’t have been happier. In the morning we would hike and in the afternoon we’d swim and laze around. We often played board games with Una, Life, Monopoly, and Scrabble, or cards, especially Crazy Eights. Una would cook, knit, and read business books. In the evenings, she’d read aloud to us. She’d brought a book with her that was frightening and depressing. It made me an anticommunist for the rest of my days. Page by page, volume by volume, The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn, unfolded, right hot off the press in 1974, read expertly by Una.

  Sally and I would stay up to eleven o’clock listening intently to her dramatic Jamaican accent. How she took on the voice of the narrator and made it her own resonant one, full of emotion, telling of the pathetic lives of so many feckless imprisoned people. She often stopped to explain a term or a deeper meaning of the author’s intent or the players behind it. Marx, Lenin, and Stalin became in my eyes, the most evil people the world had ever seen.

  The author’s sardonic wit against the lugging inept bureaucratic system, often we would stop to laugh, made the facts all the more appalling. The unrelenting horror of belonging to such a senseless society, struck deep inside of me. It couldn’t be true. Any American my age, even a orphan, would deny such a horrible reality. Who wants to believe in such planned chaos created solely for the benefit of an idea? How could people be so stupid and slavish? This is exactly what would happen to Sally in the years to come.

  On July 16 at eight a. m., Sally and I accompanied our parents to the Hoboken Head-Office to start our lives in gainful summer employment. Although I thought I would be sad, I wasn’t. Sally left with Mary and I never saw her for the rest of the day. I sat in my dad’s office and Isaac brought me cold apple juice and coffee for Dad, then left. I knew Stan had a meeting at ten with the Stanroids, and we had come in early to talk.

  To me, ‘to talk,’ meant to negotiate, but this year I’d very little with which to bargain. Straight B’s mean nothing to the Tappets. Stan’s office was much the same as before, except now, he’d a stereo system and the curtains were drawn so I couldn’t see the buildings of the Manhattan skyline, although with the smog that day, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to see much anyway. Stan shuffled through some paper until he found a lined bright yellow one with his handwriting on it.

  “On Monday and Fridays,” he said, “you’ll come here to work with us.” He tossed me a large hard-covered book, This is Tappet Industries. “Read this. It’s pretty cur
rent. We’ve sold Arpedia Incorporated and gained no new holdings, so it’s fairly accurate as well. Isaac is going to show you how we keep the company-records, I’m going to teach you the history of the company, and Mary is going to show you how we continue to make money on a daily basis, you know, business-philosophy and such.

  “On Tuesdays, you’ll join Lloyd Mills at Modal Oil and he can show you the ins and outs of life in Ken Roxton’s fiefdom. On Wednesday and Thursdays, you will meet Ralph Peat from an industrial shop in East Orange who subcontracts for Factory Bright, a genius of a maintenance/engineer-guy, and he’s going to work with you so that you can learn to build a refrigerator with spare parts, I mean, from the ground up. After you’re done that, you will move on to stoves, micro-waves, dish-washers, and other things we manufacture. Your work, I’m afraid will be mostly in the guise of training. Can you handle it?”

  I nodded, and felt actually quite relieved. It sounded rather exciting and a smile almost escaped my lips, but I hid it with my hand and gave a short cough.

  “Much due to Mary’s guidance,” he continued, “Tappets practice diversification, a strategy of holding different kinds of investing to reduce the risk of loss. To achieve this we’ve followed a policy of purchasing things for which my friends and I have a natural preference, such as household appliances, electronic equipment, and machine tools. We produce precious metals and oil as a matter of following the basic rules of in-house discounting. Buying real estate also helps to attain diversification, but most of our profit comes from Spectrum Sound, Tappet-Tapes, Tonal-Flex, Factory-Bright, and Sursheita Companies.”

  “But you started with Thorp Tools?” I asked, perplex. He nodded. “Why is it still called Thorp Tools and not Tappet Tools?” I asked further.

  His kind eyes focused on me. “Don’t ask Mary that. She’s known as Queen Stringent in the American Manufacturing circles. If no one ever heard the name Tappets that would be fine with her. In 1953, when I patented the Tappet special adaptation to the industrial lathe for machine tools, we started a revolution in making precision tools. The new lathe allowed Thorp Tools to manufacture standardized-precise instruments and to produce them economically.

  “Once industrial computers were introduced, through Mary’s lead, we began to produce downright cheap precision tools and became the largest manufacturer of them in the world. You can get one of our portable circular hand-held power-saws with a high-speed rotating blade for a hundred dollars. With the right blade, it can cut through anything. As in regards to Thorp Tools, even from the time of the original arrangement, Jim Thorp played only a secondary role in the company. To entice me to set up shop, he kept only the name and his pension fund. He was on the verge of bankruptcy when we bought . . . he was a drunk, a philanderer. We wanted his factories and employees so as to start-up and build tools quickly. As you’ll read in This is Tappet Industries, Thorp’s took off at once and Mary didn’t waste a single dime of its profit.”

  “Are you a genius?”

  I could see his smile was gone and he looked as though a debate took place in his head, but the humor stayed in his eyes. “I’m a happy person, son, and I’m lucky to have Mary in my life. Without her, I would have spent every red penny I earned at Thorp Tools on inventions and have been no further ahead.”

  “Why do people whisper that Una runs the company?”

  He grunted. “That’s a good question, Christian. It’s part jealousy, part truth and part strategy, but that is best left answered for another time. Perhaps Mary should answer it. Essentially, there are twelve companies which make up Tappets.”

  “Ken Roxton is CEO of Modal Oil,” I said, interrupting him and naming the Stanroids first. I’d come ready for this part and listed them perfectly. I then named Mary’s close allies, all five of them, which, as Una had explained, was why Mary sometimes lost the votes, even though she held the power. Ultimately, when the votes came, Stan had one more than her.

  “Who has taught you all this?”

  I saw he was impressed, even alarmed. “Una,” I answered.

  “We’re off to a flying start,” he said happily. “After my meeting, I’ll take you out to lunch. Where too?”

  “McDonald’s,” I said in a rush.

  He frowned and begrudgingly nodded. I was happy. I loved Big Macs. We talked for sometime until he and Isaac left for their meeting. I’d to deliver the office mail and this took the rest of the morning. I tried to get a message through to Sally to let her known that I’d scored a major lunch coup, but she had been smuggled out of the building or something by Mary’s forces.

  At McDonald’s, I ordered a large coke, a large fry, and a Big Mac. Stan shook his head and ordered a glass of water. He read, The Wall Street Journal while I ate. The next day, Larry drove me to Modal Oil’s offices, located in a low-rise industrial complex which took up a whole block off Broad Street, west of McCarter Highway and Harrison. Like in Hoboken, I saw no logos, signs, fountains, flowers, or anything fancy. A small sign on the front of the property, Clifton Park, 20 Edgeley Blvd., Office Space for Rent, and a phone number was all that identified it. I said good-bye to Larry and reported to the receptionist area staffed by a woman with brown bouncy hair who smiled warm-heartedly.

  “Take a seat, please, Mr. Tappet. I’ll get Lloyd.”

  This was not unusual, everywhere I’d go inside Tappets, everyone knew me as Stan’s son. I had the feeling that Stan wanted it that way, maybe he was even proud of me, but this seemed like too much to expect.

  “Ken is in Japan,” Lloyd said, coming in to the reception area and shaking my hand. “He told me to look after you.” Lloyd was seventeen now and as lean as ever. He’d somewhat regained the look of a predator with his thin face and haunting blue eyes, but this was still softened by long brownish-blond hair. There now was also happiness in his eyes. They weren’t hidden behind some murky memory as they had been in the past. I was upbeat about this. It was his grimy grease-smeared work-clothes that scared me. Lloyd looked down at them, following my line of vision.

  “I hope you don’t mind a little elbow grease?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hard work.” Shocked, I could think of nothing to say. “This way,” he added. “How’s Sally?”

  It was an odd question for him to ask, and I was suspicious.

  “What do you do here?”

  “I told you before that I did all the dirty jobs, clean-up, and such, but now, I do real work. This part of Modal is a staging ground for everything involving drilling. It’s fun. You’ll see.”

  He took me first to a lunch room in which several men were drinking coffees and smoking. Their conversation halted and none of them said a word in front of us as though we were spies. He showed me a locker outside the lunchroom marked Christian and tossed me the key.

  “Get changed.”

  “Where’s the dressing room?”

  “Any where. No women come into this area.” I quickly changed into a work shirt and overalls as he watched. “Do you know anything about drilling?” he asked.

  I shook my head and tried on boots I found in the locker. They fit perfectly. “This way,” he said when I was ready. I was led through a set of narrow corridors where we saw few people. We came into a room where several men under intense light were gathered around a machine. “Don’t go any closer. That’s their big secret.”

  A tall well-built man came over and offered me his hand which I shook firmly. He was clean-shaven and young, his posture so straight that it arched. He appeared too rigid though, a caricature of a perfect adult man, like something you find in a science exhibition or in a mannequin. “I’m Merry Gerry Dexter,” he said. “You’re Stan’s son?” I nodded. A stiffness pervaded him. “We like Stan the Man, so you’re lucky,” he continued. “I’ve some things I need you to study.”

  He stepped into the corner and picked up a cardboard container, flipping the top. Without Gerry Dexter seeing, Lloyd curled up his eyes. He returned and passed me three books, Innovative D
rilling Practices, The Next Twenty Years of Energy, and A Strategy of Fossil Fuels and Economic Renewal. All three were thin books and I was thankful for that. He passed me two other manuals in white three-ringed binders. Tappets: Essential Information on Drilling, and Modal Oil, Vision and Statement.

  “The only method by which oil or gas can be really found,” he added, “is by drilling a hole into a reservoir. What my team does is to develop the best damn drill that we can for Stan the Man and our Friend, Ken the Wren. Now normally, we don’t bother telling new-hires at Modal Oil this sort of thing, since for a while at least, the only drills you’ll be seeing, are the ones you clean, sharpen, and polish with Avoid Lloyd, here. Nonetheless, read the books and keep your ear low to the ground. Do you know what that means, my Christian Mission?”

  I’d no idea, but I’d a funny feeling that if I lied, he would discount me for my duration at Modal, that it might have unintended consequences. I shook my head. “It means keep your powder dry,” he continued. “Do you know what that means?” I shook my head again. “It means sleep with your boots on. Do you know what that means?” I swallowed and for the third time shook my head. “Seems you don’t know much of anything, my Christian Mission. Read! When we meet next week, please, know something about drilling if not about old war clichés. Avoid Lloyd here will show you around and then you can help him with his work for the rest of the afternoon.”

  I took the books and brought them to the locker. Lloyd gave me a tour of the building and then showed me where he worked. It was a grungy area where the light was low and the air stank of grease. We plucked drilling apparatuses from bins of lubricants and soaked them in solvents. Our task was to recover drill heads, bits, or other parts, some were small, some large and heavy, all were sharp. We’d to carefully clean them with files, wire-brushes, and chisels. I received all sorts of nicks on my hands. It was hard boring work and I grew tired fast. It seemed forever before we took a break.

  “Halfway there,” Lloyd said with a sigh as we made it to the cafeteria. I was dragging my feet and was tempted to quit. I could phone Stan and throw myself on his mercy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.