Green Ice

by Gerald A. Browne

  He graduated twenty-third in a class of seven hundred, went on to get his Master of Science degree in electrical engineering.

  America was promises.

  Recruiters from several important electronics firms went after him, the way the pros went after a two-hundred-thirty-pound sure-handed tight-end. A prime prospect.

  Humes Electronics in Houston got him. For twenty thousand a year, which wasn’t bad for a start then, in 1958. Humes threw in a new car as an added inducement, on the condition that he not reveal that to anyone. Special treatment? He found out later the car bonus was almost routine.

  He was assigned to a phase of Humes’ responsibility in the space program and enjoyed being a part of that, did well at it, made some new friends at Humes and at NASA. On his annual review he was told management was pleased with him. Bright future if he kept up the good work. Praise and a raise of two thousand a year, which was no more than average.

  Foot on the first rung, he thought. To share being pleased with himself, he called home. Father and Mother pressed their ears to the same phone to hear him, their only. They were happy he was happy. There would be more money, he promised, there would be plenty of money. Someday soon, they’d never have to worry about money. His father, off the subject, said he’d heard Houston was having a hot spell.

  Wiley had been sending money home each month. A couple hundred. They hadn’t asked for it, told him he shouldn’t. But being able to help them gave him a good feeling, and he kept sending it. Besides, it left him with more than enough to spend.

  The better life he wanted for them: It was nearly always in his letters, mentioned when he phoned. At first, respecting his father’s pride, he hadn’t hit directly upon it, merely sown the idea of how their circumstances might be changed. His father had been a spinner at a woolen mill for twenty years. His mother had worked regularly as a stitcher at another mill. He would remove them from the grind that was wearing out their lives in that shitty little New England town.

  His parents accepted his wanting to provide for them as his way of conveying care for them. They expected nothing and went on working in the mills.

  Three years with Humes took a lot out of Wiley. He saw ahead more clearly and further, and realized the track there was too slow for him. They gave him pre-computed raises, on schedule. Advancement was held out in front to keep him going. No matter that he already excelled at his work, contributed more than most of the men who had been with Humes longer and were rungs above him. It seemed prerequisite that he put the time in, keep in place, wait.

  He couldn’t.

  He went for another job. Got it. At Special Dynamics in Los Angeles. More money than he’d been making at Humes—however, not much more. Actually, not much of a change in any way. Wiley detected humdrum in the personnel director’s welcoming spiel, was escorted into the president’s office for an immediate dose of top-level interest. A smile that was merely a mouth being pulled upward at the corners, a handshake too vigorous to be true, a couple of stock phrases.

  Wiley felt processed, rather than important.

  He was assigned to a phase of the lunar vehicle project.

  At Special Dynamics he tried a different approach. On his own time he came up with an improved system of electronic circuitry. It took six months of his nights and weekends to develop it: a much smaller, lighter, equally efficient circuitry that was perfect for the lunar vehicle project. It also had many other possible commercial applications.

  Wiley knew better than to show it to his phase manager or even the project supervisor, though he would have welcomed their suggestions and support. The idea was too stealable. Wiley took it right to the top. Laid it like an apple on the desk of the president, who considered this meeting with Wiley a matter of employee relations, a dutiful hesitation in the sentence of his busy morning. He looked over Wiley’s diagrams. No show of reaction from the president, who removed his glasses, cleaned them and took another, longer look at each page. “Seems good,” he said, a bit indecisively. But Wiley translated the man’s eyes, saw the dollar signs in them and was sure he would get his share.

  Two days later the president’s secretary delivered a sealed envelope to Wiley. It contained a check for three thousand dollars, which, an accompanying personal letter explained, was a bonus. Wiley should keep up the fine work.

  Hey, wait a minute, this was like something out of Dickens. He was no fucking Bob Cratchit.

  He wanted to see the president, but the president had left for a four-day Palm Springs weekend and from there would be going to Washington, D.C., for ten days.

  An executive vice-president sat Wiley down, tried to calm him. Wasn’t the three-thousand bonus enough?

  Hell, no.

  What did Wiley want?

  No lousy bonus. He wanted what was fair, and if he didn’t get it, he’d take his idea elsewhere.

  Couldn’t do that.

  Try to stop him.

  Wiley’s file was brought from personnel. The executive vice-president marked a check in the margin of the application form Wiley had signed the day he’d come to work for Special Dynamics. One paragraph among many pertaining to company rules and policies. Nothing anyone starting a job would bother to read. In so many words it said all inventions or original designs an employee created while working for Special Dynamics belonged exclusively to Special Dynamics.

  Was there anything else the executive vice-president could do for Wiley?

  Wiley bit his tongue, asked for a recommendation, went home and did some shadowboxing.

  Wiser, more bitter, Wiley changed to a job with Litting Industries. For about the same salary he’d been making. No special reason for his choosing Litting. Just a job. He put in his hours. Got his paychecks. At credible intervals he phoned in that he had the flu and went to the beach.

  Three years of that.

  Wiley was thirty.

  About then was when he met Harry Galanoy. A florid-faced, overweight man who wore wash-and-wear shirts and suits with a synthetic shine. Galanoy was thirty-five. He lived two apartments down from Wiley, overlooking the pool, at a typical medium-priced place in Van Nuys. Wiley had seen Galanoy numerous times coming and going but had never said more than a neighborly hello. One afternoon Wiley took his drink and cigarette out on the balcony. Below at poolside were a pair of sometime actresses who shared a ground-floor apartment. They had only the bottoms of bikinis on, were lying fronts up, slicked.

  Galanoy came from his apartment.

  He and Wiley shared the view for a while.

  Galanoy shrugged. “Seen two, seen them all.”

  Wiley smiled, nodded.

  One of the girls rolled over to get done on the other side, her breasts squashed beneath her. It appeared painful.

  “Buy you a drink?” Galanoy offered.

  Wiley accepted, followed Galanoy inside.

  Galanoy talked freely, especially about himself. He’d worked off and on at various things, mainly as a salesman. All it took to get rich was a gimmick, he said. Like the Hula Hoop. Nothing but a goddamn plastic ring. Made millions. Same thing with that stuff called Silly Putty. Who knew what might catch on next. The injector razor, the ballpoint pen. Sweet Jesus, how he wished he’d thought up the ballpoint.

  So did Wiley.

  Their conversation went on for five Scotches, kept on the topic of getting rich quick. Wiley did most of the listening, but at one point he related his experience with Special Dynamics. Galanoy was only slightly sympathetic, said Wiley shouldn’t have counted on anything so complicated. The simpler the gimmick, the better. The Hula Hoop, he reminded.

  Wiley spent quite a lot of time with Galanoy after that. At first he suspected the man might be trying to con him into something. Then he told himself he was only amused by the way Galanoy carried on about making millions easy. Galanoy hardly ever spoke of anything else—except his ulcer. He had a peptic ulcer, which he complained about with a kind of pride.

  Harry Galanoy.

  He didn’t co
nvert Wiley. The proselytizing had been done long before—in the public school system, where it was said that as undoubtedly as George Washington was the father of our country, anyone could make it from nothing all the way to the top in this land.

  God bless.

  During the 1940s, Wiley had sat in elementary classrooms where “No talking” was a commandment and talking back an offense, and had his thinking saturated with the need to achieve. Had ambition tied in a knot to his future manhood. There were names to keep in mind, such as Frick and Carnegie, Ford, Mellon and John D. himself, during the course in U.S. History—compulsory. John D. appeared cadaverous in photographs. Skin and bones and millions of dollars. Wiley always thought there was something incongruous and repulsive in that, but it would be irreverent to mention it. A Miss Pearson and a Miss Selkirk and a Mr. Mosely taught and tested and passed Wiley on in the general direction of opportunity.

  Anyone who didn’t make it was a lamebrain.

  It was a free-for-all.

  The red, white, and blue grindstone.

  “A guy can burn his nose and his ass down to the bone on it,” Galanoy said.

  Wiley had already come to that conclusion.

  Galanoy had a stockpile of gimmicks in mind.

  The one he and Wiley went partners on was a mail-order idea. The investment was $15,000.

  Galanoy sold his car for $1500 and scraped up another $1000. Wiley had $2000 in checking. He called home, and before he could finish explaining the deal, his father said he’d send the money right off. Your money, his father called it. His parents had been putting into a separate account whatever Wiley had sent over the years. Saving it for when he might want it. Ten thousand and some.

  He lost it all.

  Galanoy moved somewhere and never called.

  Wiley tried not to remember him.

  He tried to concentrate on his job at Litting. His imagination kept veering toward ways to make a financial killing. After about six months of paydays, he quit, gave in to it and, ever since, had been on the cycle:

  Think of a gimmick.

  Hold down a job long enough to get a stake.

  Try the gimmick.

  Go back to a job.

  Think of another gimmick.

  Often it was just a matter of timing. He tried selling organic food before the big demand. The same with hanging plants for city apartments. He was a little late getting into posters, water-beds, backgammon sets. He missed out entirely on an indoor tennis complex in Westchester, American Indian jewelry, musk oil, mood rings, pet rocks, Art Deco furniture, imprinted T-shirts, and frozen yogurt.

  He had bad luck with a tropical fish venture when the heating system failed on a January night, froze the entire stock in blocks of ice that shattered the glass of all the aquariums.

  Korean ginseng. He was right on time with that, when its libidinal benefits were only in the rumor stage. He’d heard about it from a pretty Korean model who chomped on those phallic-shaped roots as though they were carrots—and demonstrated excellent results. She claimed she had a cheap and plentiful source of ginseng roots, tea, and extract—a man in Namchiang, Korea, which happened to be her hometown. Wiley put up the money. She flew. The only excuse he could find to forgive her was she must have been extremely homesick.

  Wiley had another business adventure with an Oriental. A man named Chun Ta Ha, who hoped his constant smile compensated for his inability to speak English. Ta Ha had jumped ship in Boston, made his way to New York City and was working in the Hop Tee Hand Laundry on West Seventy-second Street when Wiley met him. He was the son of a farmer in Canton and was astonished at the prices being paid here for Chinese vegetables. Wiley saw the possibilities. Ta Ha would grow, they both would reap.

  They rented an abandoned warehouse downtown, in the Bowery area. A large, dark, awfully damp place. Perfect. They bought forty-three field-kitchen kettles from an army surplus dealer in New Jersey. The kettles were four feet in diameter, had drain holes in their bottoms. They also bought five hundred pounds of mung beans, a portion of which they washed and soaked and put into the kettles. Ta Ha hosed the beans down three or four times a day, kept them damp.

  They were in business.

  Within five days they had their first harvest. Two tons of bean sprouts they could wholesale for twenty-five cents a pound.

  A thousand dollars, just like that.

  What was great about it was the beans did practically all the work. With more kettles and more beans, there could be a harvest every day. All they had to do was pack them. A thousand dollars a day, every day. A take of over a quarter million dollars a year.

  Ta Ha giggled, and Wiley’s voice echoed in that place as he joyfully shouted, “Sprout, you little moneymaking bastards!”

  On the seventh day of production Wiley received a frantic telephone call in Chinese from Ta Ha. Wiley didn’t know what was wrong until he saw it.

  Rats had eaten all the bean sprouts.

  Rats. There was no way to stop them. It seemed as though the word had been passed to every rodent in the city. Despite traps, poisons, and wire mesh covers, the rats kept on coming—to eat Wiley and Ta Ha out of a fortune.

  In such ways success eluded Wiley. However, each near-miss only made him all the more determined. His schemes weren’t really quixotic, he told himself; his time would come.

  Now there he was at the office, thirty-two New York City floors above the ordinary level of life. His hopes this day were higher than ever. He was close to pulling off a deal that would net him millions. A simple little gimmick: clear plastic disks about the size of a quarter that could be worn as medallions or charms or carried in the pocket. Sealed within each disk would be a pinch of dirt, certified to be a pinch of the old homeland. From Ireland or Italy, Poland, Greece, Puerto Rico, Israel, or wherever. Millions of people were latter-day Americans. Most families had been here only two or three generations. Practically the entire country retained pride in some foreign land.

  Wiley had gotten the idea one Sunday when trying to get crosstown in a cab while there was a parade on Fifth Avenue. The cab driver was bitching: “Every fucking Saturday and Sunday and every fucking holiday somebody’s jamming up traffic with a parade. If it ain’t the wops, it’s the Polacks or somebody.”

  The very next day Wiley found a manufacturer in Brooklyn who specialized in molding the sort of cheap little plastic toys that came in bubble-gum machines. The manufacturer would deliver the disks complete with dirt sealed inside for two cents a unit in million-unit lots. It took considerable time and effort to arrange for dirt to be shipped from the various countries, but finally Wiley had it lined up.

  He took his gimmick to the largest cereal company. Positive reaction. A fantastic premium, they thought. An actual pinch of the homeland for a boxtop and only fifty cents. The cereal people gave Wiley an initial order for twenty million units. If the premiums were moderately successful they’d reorder, and projected they should be able to sell at least another twenty to thirty million.

  Wiley stood to make a nickel a unit—a million dollars right off.

  The cereal people had one condition. They didn’t want any part of a fraud. The soil had to be absolutely certified as to its foreign origin.

  Absolutely, Wiley agreed.

  And today was the day.

  There were 17 fifty-gallon drums of foreign soil sitting in the customs depot on the dock in Hoboken. Wiley couldn’t think of much else. He wasn’t even aware of Miss Kerby, the secretary standing in the doorway.

  “I was wondering if it was all right with you if I didn’t get back from lunch on time,” she said. “I want to go Christmas shopping at Bloomies.”

  Wiley glanced at her quizzically. All he’d heard was Bloomies.

  “Mr. Farley and Mr. Carlino said it was all right with them,” Miss Kerby said.

  Wiley shared Miss Kerby with Farley and Carlino. She had a huge behind, a tiny voice, and a habit of blaming others for her mistakes. “Said what was all right?”


  Miss Kerby repeated her request.

  Wiley didn’t care if she went to Macy’s in Nairobi—as a matter of fact, he’d prefer she did.

  “Don’t forget your lunch with Mr. Codd,” Miss Kerby said.

  “I thought Farley was taking him.”

  “It’s your turn.” She smiled for punishment.

  Wiley decided not to let it spoil his day. Nothing could spoil this day.

  He lighted another cigarette from the still-burning stub of his last, transferred a thick sheaf of papers from incoming to outgoing. He’d take care of those next time around—but doubted he’d still be there.

  The phone rang.

  Miss Kerby didn’t get it, just for spite.

  It was the divorce lawyer: “I have news for you. I met with her lawyer this morning. She was there.”

  Wiley and Jennifer had been married for three years come January, separated for the last six months. His first marriage, her second.

  “She’s asking for too much, but that’s normal,” the divorce lawyer said.

  “What more does she want?” It seemed every week the ante had gone up.

  “I didn’t realize she was so unstable.”

  “She cried.”

  “No.”

  “She turned her back to you.”

  “What a ball-breaker!”

  Wiley resented anyone else saying that.

  “Tell you one thing, I’d like to get this woman on the stand. I’d tear her to pieces.”

  “I don’t really want to give her a hard time,” Wiley said.

  “You haven’t been seeing her, have you?”

  “No.”

  “I mean it now, it’s important. Have you been going to bed with her?”

  Wiley was sure someone else had been doing that.