All The Bells on Earth (9 page)

“To tell you the truth,” Henry said, “I came out here tonight because I’ve got a small proposition for you. I’ve been thinking along a different line altogether—a way to make this business of yours fly without leaving home. No trucks. No warehouse. You hire all that out to someone else and take a profit right off the top.”

“Well, I hadn’t thought …”

“That’s the future, you know—electronics, the information highway. Everything out of your house with the push of a button. Are you willing to listen?” He squinted his eyes a little bit, as if Walt was going to have to make an effort here, but that it would be worth it.

This was exactly what Walt had feared—that Henry was going to try to rope him in on some kind of business deal. Last winter it had been asphalt and roof paint, sold door-to-door, but somehow it had never quite got going because the company had gone broke at the last moment, and Henry’s sample kits and sales-pitch brochures were suddenly worthless. To Henry it made no difference; you win some and you lose some. Walt couldn’t afford to lose any. He hadn’t ever leveled with Henry about it, though. Walt and Henry got along on a level of gentlemanly good humor and mutual support, and there wasn’t much room for truth in it, not any kind of practical truth, anyway.

“Has it occurred to you that the real money might be in design?” Henry asked. “Right now you’re on the distribution end, the narrow end of the funnel. Have you read any of Dr. Hefernin’s books? Aaron Hefernin?”

Walt shook his head. He could hear the rain coming down. Out toward the street, the motor home was nearly invisible through the downpour. He switched on the space heater, listening doubtfully as Henry talked and wondering what the sales pitch would finally amount to.

“The man’s a genius,” Henry said. “He developed what he calls the ‘Funnel Analogy’ to explain business from the inside out. Look here.”

Henry picked up a manila envelope that lay on the bench and carefully shook out four or five stapled pamphlets. There was an illustration on the first one of a funnel, upside down, like the Tin Man’s hat. Arrows went in one way and came out another, along with words and sentences and phrases. Below it was a paragraph that began, “Welcome to the world of money,
real
money.”

“Eh?” Henry said, slapping the pamphlet. “What do you think?”

Walt nodded.

“It’s fascinating. Rock solid. I read this introductory pamphlet and subscribed to the entire series—nearly ten volumes so far. Each one clarifies another aspect of what Dr. Hefernin calls ‘the business of business.’ Remember that phrase, because it’s the key to this entire method. You see, most people fail for a simple reason: they don’t understand the business of business. They understand food, let’s say, so they open a restaurant. In six weeks it’s kaput. Why?”

“Because they don’t understand the business of business?” Walt said.

“Bingo! That’s it! There’s a dynamic that they don’t see. They don’t see the
big picture.
”

“Aah,” Walt said, nodding as if he were only now seeing the big picture himself. He picked up the pamphlet and looked at it closely, making out the words “profit margin” alongside the arrow that moved up the funnel toward the top of the page. The word “overhead” was contained within the loops of a spiral that looked almost like a snail crawling toward the margin. The caption at the bottom of the page read, “When opportunity knocks, answer the door dressed to go out!”

“This is … something,” Walt said. “Where do you get these?”

“Subscription. The first pamphlet doesn’t cost one red cent. It lays everything out on the page, take it or leave it. If you want to take it, the second pamphlet is fourteen dollars, but the information is priceless.”

“What does Dr. Hefernin do, exactly? Is he a publisher?”

“Oh, my goodness, no. Publishing is only one of his ventures, but I’d warrant he’s made a fortune on it.”

“I guess so,” Walt said. “That’s good money for a six-page pamphlet.”

“And worth every cent. How do you put a price on that kind of knowledge? Apply it, and it’ll return a thousandfold. Here.” He held out another pamphlet entitled “The Thousandfold Return,” this one illustrated with a picture of hundred-dollar bills, fanned out like a hand of cards. “Think about this,” Henry said, nodding profoundly. “Dr. Hefernin is a wealthy man.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Walt said.

“He’s gotten a lot of
my
money, hasn’t he?”

“Sure.” Walt gestured at the pamphlets. Nearly a hundred and fifty bucks for a few scraps of paper. You could shove all of them into your back pocket and not feel them when you sat down.

“Try this on for size: the more of my money he takes,
the more I ought to send him
. Do you know why?”

Walt shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

“Because
you can’t argue with success
. Hefernin calls it ‘the miracle of the self-fulfilling prophecy.’ ”

“Gosh,” Walt said. “That …
is
hard to argue with.”

“I mean to say that the proof is in the pudding. Put your faith in a man who warrants your faith.”

“Makes sense,” Walt said. He looked into the doughnut box, but of course it was empty. He’d already eaten the last one. He wondered suddenly if Henry was soliciting subscriptions for Dr. Hefernin, if that was his “small proposition.”

“I just want you to read these,” he said. “That’s all for now. They’re brief, but I think they’re convincing.”

“All right,” Walt said, taking the pamphlets and laying them on the bench. Things were working out pretty much like he had feared: first a salad full of garbanzo beans and carrot coins, now an envelope full of “advice” that was actually part of an infinite come-on for more advice. And the come-on worked, which was proof that the amazing Dr. Hefernin understood the business of business, and so you sent him more money to provide further evidence. It was like a school for pickpockets where they pick your pocket going in the door and then convince you that they’d done it to illustrate a point, and that you ought to pay them for it. Maybe the man
was
a genius.

“I’d like your opinion tomorrow,” Henry said.

“You’ll have it.”

“Good, because there’s more to it than I can tell you right now. I’m going to turn in. Driving wears me out. Jinx thinks I’m already in bed.” He started toward the door, then turned and said, “There’s no need to talk to the ladies about any of this, is there?”

“No,” Walt said. “Not at all. Whatever you say.”

“They don’t have much of a head for business sometimes.”

Walt thought about Ivy’s last commission check, which had actually been very nice. In fact, along with everything else it was financing Christmas. He nodded shamelessly. “I’ve never believed in operating by committee anyway,” he said, shifting things around to something he was comfortable with, but realizing when he said it that he was already entering into some kind of agreement with Henry. And it occurred to him at the same time that Aunt Jinx probably wasn’t as crazy about all these Hefernin pamphlets as Henry was—if she even knew about them.

Uncle Henry went off down the carport, carrying his envelope. He heard the back door open, and then Ivy’s voice: “Are you staying out there all night?”

“No!” he shouted. “Just locking up.” There was the sound of the back door shutting. He took off his jacket and hung it over the chair, then switched off the heater and the lights. He thought about the bird in the jar, buried out in the garden, and suddenly felt a little foolish about it—more than foolish. Apprehensive was the word. It was probably a bad idea to antagonize a man like Argyle, especially over something like a grudge that was nearly twenty years old.

The conversation he’d overheard an hour ago returned to him. There was something sinister in all that guarded talk, and for a moment he thought about retrieving the jar and running it over there. It wouldn’t take half a minute, and he could be rid of Argyle for good and all.

“You out there in the dark?” Ivy shouted through the open door again.

To hell with the jar. He stepped out of the garage and started to close up. Ivy stood inside the back door, already dressed for bed despite it being early. She was wearing her kimono, loosely tied, the one he’d bought her in the Japanese antiques store in Seattle, and the red and black silk against her fair skin suggested something exotic to him tonight, something he didn’t need to define. Her dark hair was pulled back loosely, into some kind of knot fixed with two glittery chopsticks.

He hunched through the rain, and Ivy kissed him as he came through the door. He could see that she was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. The rest of the house was dark. Jinx must already have gone out to the motor home.

“Congratulate me,” Ivy said as they moved together toward the stairs. “We’ve got a lot to celebrate.”

“A
N EMERGENCY MARRIAGE ENCOUNTER
?” Walt asked, pouring himself another glass of champagne. “I like that—sounds like emergency car repair or something. They probably use duct tape and baling wire and cans of that tire inflator.”

Ivy gave him a dark look, so he cut the joke off short. “A church counselor suggested it to Darla,” she said. “And whether it sounds silly or not, it’s the only thing anybody’s come up with that’s positive.”

“Except me,” Walt said. “What I said was that Darla needs a lawyer and Jack needs a subpoena. I’ve been positive about that for years. Why does she hang around?”

“Because she’s desperate. She loves him, I guess.”

“She’s crazy about him is what you mean. Like in out of her mind.”

“It’s easy to say that from a distance.”

“What makes it easy is knowing Jack, and she ought to know him better than I do. She’s had to live with him all these years.”

“That’s the purpose of the marriage encounter, isn’t it? So you can get to know each other better. People are married for years and they don’t have a clue about some of the things that matter most to their wives.”

“Or their husbands,” Walt said, but he knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as it was out of his mouth. He put down his champagne glass.

Ivy was silent for a moment. He knew where the conversation was leading. And he knew that he was going to have to be careful. Saying the first damned thing that came into his mind wasn’t going to help unless he wanted a fight, which he didn’t. He looked at Ivy, who had put on her kimono, but hadn’t tied it. She pulled it shut now, as if closing a door, and he turned his eyes away, looking instead at the fire in the fireplace. It was mostly burned down now, but it was too near bedtime to throw another log on. He sipped the champagne and waited her out.

“Please don’t go on at me about the size of the car tonight, okay? We’ve got to get past all that.”

Right like that she dropped into the middle of it. There was no way out except to get through it. “All I meant by that was that children are expensive,” Walt said. “That’s all. I read somewhere that the average kid costs about five grand a year as a child. Then it goes up.”

“I don’t plan on having average kids.”

“I don’t either,” he said, ignoring her tone. “When it comes to raising kids, it’s a mistake to do things halfway. And that’s my point, that’s what I was saying about the car. A family needs room. Kids need
stuff
. This commission today is great, but it’s only one commission. Things are tight, what with the economy and all. In a couple of years …” He listened to himself, chattering like some kind of preprogrammed Walt robot, and suddenly he hated the sound of his own voice.

“Next year I’m forty,” Ivy said. “And besides, we both know that this has nothing to do with money. Money’s not the issue.”

“What is the issue, then?” Walt asked.

“You’re afraid of raising children,” Ivy said. “That’s the issue—self-doubt. And you’re self-centered. When a person’s afraid of the world like you are, it’s easier to be self-centered. It’s safer, only worrying about yourself.”

He shrugged. It didn’t seem worth denying. “Bringing a child into a world like this …”

“That’s not what I meant. The world’s better off than it has any right to be. I mean you’re the one that’s full of fear. Change scares the hell out of you.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. You can’t imagine having kids, and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t have any. If you had a child, you could imagine it easily. It would all become clear to you. It would seem right. You’re afraid of it now because you can’t see it. It’s the unknown. And I don’t think you like the unknown.”

“That’s not fair. Having kids doesn’t
scare
me. I’m just practical about it, that’s all. I don’t get all hormonal about it.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. And you know what I mean. Don’t pretend to be insulted on behalf of women.”

“You were pretty hormonal a half hour ago.”

“That’s different. That was …”

“Sex. I know. Someday maybe it’ll be more than that.”

He gaped at her, not believing she’d say such a thing.

“And you know what
I
mean. Don’t go looking for an excuse to explode. You’ve got all these dreams and desires, and I’ve supported all of them, haven’t I?”