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I look at Lou and he looks at me.
"Is that a helicopter?" I ask.
Lou goes to the window and looks out.
"Sure is, and it's landing on our lawn!" he says.
I get to the window just as it touches down. Dust and brown
grass clippings are whirling in the prop wash around this sleek
red and white helicopter. With the blades still twirling down to a
stop, the door opens and two men get out.
"That first one looks like Johnny Jons," says Lou.
"It is Johnny Jons," I say.
"Who's the other guy?" asks Lou.
I'm not sure. I watch them cross the lawn and start to walk
through the parking lot. Something about the girth and the strid-
ing, arrogant swagger of the huge, white-haired second man trig-
gers the recollection of a distant meeting. It dawns on me who he
is.
"Oh, god," I say.
"I didn't think He needed a helicopter to get around," says
Lou.
"It's worse than God," I say, "It's Bucky Burnside!"
Before Lou can utter another word, I'm running for the
door. I dash around the corner and into Stacey's office. She,
along with her secretary and some people she's meeting with, are
all at the window. Everybody is watching the damn helicopter.
"Stacey, quick, I need to talk to you right now!"
She comes over to the door and I pull her into the hallway.
"What's the status on Burnside's Model 12's?" I ask her.
"The last shipment went out two days ago."
"It was on time?"
"Sure," she says. "It went out the door with no problems,
just like the previous shipments."
I'm running again, mumbling "thanks" over my shoulder to
her.
"Donovan!"
He's not in his office. I stop at his secretary's desk.
"Where's Bob?" I ask her.
"I think he went to the men's room," she says.
I go sprinting in that direction. Bursting through the door, I
find Bob washing his hands.
"On Burnside's order," I ask him, "were there any quality
problems?"
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"No," says Bob, startled to see me. "Nothing I know about."
"Were there any problems on that order?" I ask him.
He reaches for a paper towel and dries his hands. "No, the
whole thing came off like clockwork."
I fall back against the wall. "Then what the hell is he doing
here?"
"Is who doing here?" asks Bob.
"Burnside," I tell him. "He just landed in a helicopter with Johnny Jons."
"What?"
"Come with me," I tell him.
We go to the receptionist, but nobody is in the waiting area.
"Did Mr. Jons come through here just now with a cus-
tomer?" I ask her.
She says, "The two men in the helicopter? No I watched
them and they went past here and into the plant."
Bob and I hustle side by side down the corridor and through
the double doors, into the orange light and production din of the
plant. One of the supervisors sees us from across the aisle and,
without being asked, points in the direction Jons and Burnside
took. As we head down the aisle, I spot them ahead of us.
Burnside is walking up to every employee he sees and he's
shaking hands with each of them. Honest! He's shaking hands,
clapping them on the arm, saying things to them. And he's smil-
ing.
Jons is walking with him. He's doing the same thing. As soon
as Burnside lets go of a hand, Jons shakes it as well. They're
pumping everybody in sight.
Finally, Jons sees us approaching, taps Burnside on the
shoulder, and says something to him. Burnside dons this big grin
and comes striding up to me with his hand extended.
"Here's the man I especially want to congratulate," says
Burnside in a growling kind of voice. "I was saving the best for
last, but you beat me to it. How are you?"
"Fine, just fine, Mr. Burnside," I tell him.
"Rogo, I came down here because I want to shake the hand
of every employee in your whole plant," growls Burnside. "That
was a hell of job this plant did on our order. A hell of a good job!
Those other bastards had the order for five months and still
couldn't get it down, and here your people finish the whole thing
in five weeks. Must have been an incredible effort!"
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Before I can say anything, Jons jumps into the conversation
and says, "Bucky and I were having lunch today, and I was telling
him how you pulled out all the stops for him, how everybody
down here really gave it everything they had."
I say, "Ah . . . yeah, we just did our best."
"Mind if I go ahead?" asks Burnside, intending to continue
down the aisle.
"No, not at all," I say.
"Won't hurt your efficiency, will it?" asks Burnside.
"Not one bit," I tell him. "You go right ahead."
I turn to Donovan then and out of the corner of my mouth
say, "Get Barbara Penn down here right away with the camera
she uses for the employee news. And tell her to bring lots of film."
Donovan goes trotting off to the offices, and Jons and I fol-
low Bucky up and down the aisles, the three of us shaking hands
with one and all.
Johnny, I notice, is virtually atwitter with excitement. When
Burnside is far enough ahead that he can't hear us, he turns to
me and asks, "What's your shoe size?"
"Ten and a half," I tell him. "Why?"
"I owe you a pair of shoes," says Jons.
I say, "That's okay, Johnny; don't worry about it."
"Al, I'm telling you, we're meeting with Burnside's people
next week on a long-term contract for Model 12's—10,000 units a
year!"
The number just about sends me reeling backwards.
"And I'm calling in my whole department when I get back,"
Jons continues as we walk. "We're going to do a new campaign
pushing everything you make down here, because this is the only
plant we've got in this damn division that can ship a quality prod-
uct on time. With your lead times, Al, we're going to blow every-
body out of the market! Thanks to you, we've finally got a win-
ner."
I'm beaming. "Thanks Johnny. But, as it turned out, Burn-
side's order didn't take any extra effort at all."
"Shhhh! Don't let Burnside know," Johnny says.
Behind me, I hear two hourly guys talking.
"What was that all about?" asks one.
"Beats me," says the other. "Guess we musta done somthin'
right."
On the eve of the plant performance review, with presenta-
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tion rehearsed and ten copies of our report in hand, and with
nothing more to do except imagine what could go wrong, I call
Julie.
"Hi," I tell
her. "Listen, I have to be at headquarters for a meeting tomorrow morning. And because Forest Grove is more
or less on the way, I'd like to come up and be with you tonight.
What do you think?"
"Sure, it sounds great," she says.
So I leave work a little early and hit the highway.
As I head up the Interstate, Bearington is spread out to my
left. The "Buy Me!" sign on top of the high-rise office building is still in place. Living and breathing within the range of my sight
are 30,000 people who have no idea that one small but important
part of the town's economic future will be decided tomorrow.
Most of them haven't the slightest interest in the plant or what
we've done here—except if UniWare closes us, they'll be mad and
scared. And if we stay open? Nobody will care. Nobody will even
know what we went through.
Well, win or lose, I know I did my best.
When I get to Julie's parents' house, Sharon and Dave run
up to the car. After getting out of my suit and into some "off-
duty" clothes, I spend about an hour throwing a frisbee to the
two kids. When they've exhausted me, Julie has the idea the two
of us should go out to dinner. I get the feeling she wants to talk to
me. I clean up a little and off we go. As we're driving along, we
pass the park.
"Al, why don't we stop for awhile," says Julie.
"How come?" I ask.
"The last time we were here we never finished our walk," she
says.
So I pull over. We get out and walk. By and by, we come to
the bench by the river, and the two of us sit down.
"What's your meeting about tomorrow?" she asks.
"It's a plant performance review," I say. "The division will decide the future of the plant."
"Oh. What do you think they'll say?"
"We didn't quite make what I promised Bill Peach," I say.
"One set of numbers doesn't look as good as it truly is because of
the cost-of-products standards. You remember me telling you
about some of that, don't you?"
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She nods, I shake my head momentarily, still angry at what
happened as a result of the audit.
"But even with that, we still had a good month. It just
doesn't show up as the fantastic month we really had," I tell her.
"You don't think they'd still close the plant, do you?" she
asks.
"I don't think so," I say. "A person would have to be an idiot to condemn us just because of an increase in cost of products.
Even with screwed-up measurements, we're making money."
She reaches over to take my hand and says, "It was nice of
you to take me out to breakfast that morning."
I smile and say, "After listening to me ramble on at five
o'clock in the morning, you deserved it."
"When you talked to me then, it made me realize how little I
know about what you do," she says. "I wish you had told me
more over the years."
I shrug. "I don't know why I haven't, I guess I thought you
wouldn't want to hear it. Or I didn't want to burden you with it."
"Well, I should have asked you more questions," she says.
"I'm sure I didn't give you many opportunities by working
those long hours."
"When you weren't coming home those days before I left, I
really took it personally," she says. "I couldn't believe it didn't have something to do with me. Deep down, I thought you must
be using it as an excuse to stay away from me."
"No, absolutely not, Julie. When all those crises were occur-
ring, I just kept thinking you must know how important they
were," I tell her. "I'm sorry. I should have told you more."
She squeezes my hand.
"I've been thinking about some of the things you said about
our marriage when we were sitting here last time," she says. "I
have to say you're right. For a long time, we have just been coasting along. In fact, we were drifting apart. I've watched you get
more and more wrapped up in your job as the years have gone
by. And to compensate for losing you, I got wrapped up in things
like decorating the house and spending my time with friends. We
lost sight of what was important."
I look at her in the sunlight. The awful frosting in her hair
which she had when I came home the day the NCX-10 went
down is finally gone. It's grown out. Her hair is thick and straight
again, and all the same dark brown.
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She says, "Al, the one thing I definitely know now is that I
want more of you, not less. That's always been the problem for
me."
She turns to me with her blue eyes, and I get a long-lost
feeling about her.
"I finally figured out why I haven't wanted to go back to
Bearington with you," she says. "And it isn't just the town, al-
though I don't like it very much there. It's that since we've been
living apart, we've actually spent more time being together. I
mean, when we were living in the same house, I felt as though
you took me for granted. Now you bring me flowers. You go out
of your way to be with me. You take time to do things with me
and the kids. Al, it's been nice. I know it can't go on this way
forever—I think my parents are getting a little tired of the ar-
rangement—but I haven't wanted it to end."
I start to feel very good.
I say, "At least we're sure we don't want to say good-bye."
"Al, I don't know exactly what our goal is, or ought to be, but
I think we know there must be some kind of need between us,"
she says. "I know I want Sharon and Dave to grow up to be good people. And I want us to give each other what we need."
I put my arm around her.
"For starters, that sounds worth shooting for," I tell her.
"Look, it's probably easier said than done, but I can certainly try
to keep from taking you for granted. I'd like you to come home,
but unfortunately, the pressures that caused all the problems are
still going to be there. They're just not going to go away. I can't
ignore my job."
"I've never asked you to," she says. "Just don't ignore me or the kids. And I'll really try to understand your work."
I smile.
"You remember a long time ago, after we got married and
we both had jobs, how we'd come home and just talk to each
other for a couple of hours, and sympathize with each other
about the trials and tribulations we'd suffered during the day?" I
ask. "That was nice."
"But then there were babies," says Julie. "And, later, you
started putting in extra hours at work."
"Yeah, we got out of the habit," I tell her. "What do you say we make a point to do that again?"
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ing you must have seemed selfish on my part. I just went crazy
for a little while. I'm sorry—
"No, you don't have to be sorry
," I tell her. "I should have been paying attention."
"But I'll try to make it up to you," she says. Then she smiles
briefly and adds, "Since we're walking down memory lane,
maybe you remember the first fight we had, how we promised
afterwards we'd always try to look at a situation from the other's
point of view as well as our own. Well, I think for the past couple
of years we haven't been doing that very often. I'm willing to try
it again if you are."
"I am too," I say.
There is a long hug.
"So . . . you want to get married?" I ask her.
She leans back in my arms and says, "I'll try anything twice."
"You know, don't you, it's not going to be perfect," I tell her.
"You know we're still going to have fights."
"And I'll probably be selfish about you from time to time,"
she says.
"What the hell," I tell her, "Let's go to Vegas and find a
justice of the peace."
She laughs, "Are you serious?"
"Well, I can't go tonight," I say. "I've got that meeting in the morning. How about tomorrow night?"
"You are serious!"
"All I've been doing since you left is putting my paycheck in
the bank. After tomorrow it'll definitely be time to blow some of
it."
Julie smiles. "Okay, big spender. Let's do it."
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31
The next morning on the fifteenth floor of the UniCo build-
ing, I walk into the conference room at a few minutes before ten
o'clock. Sitting at the far end of the long table is Hilton Smyth
and sitting next to him is Neil Cravitz. Flanking them are various
staff people.
I say, "Good morning."
Hilton looks up at me without a smile and says, "If you close
the door, we can begin."
"Wait a minute. Bill Peach isn't here yet," I say. "We're going to wait for him, aren't we?"
"Bill's not coming. He's involved in some negotiations," says
Smyth.
"Then I would like this review to be postponed until he's
available," I tell him.
Smyth's eyes get steely.
"Bill specifically told me to conduct this and to pass along my
recommendation to him," says Smyth. "So if you want to make a
case for your plant, I suggest you get started. Otherwise, we'll
have to draw our own conclusions from your report. And with
that increase in cost of products Neil has told me about, it sounds
to me as if you have a little explaining to do. I, for one, would
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