Strong Motion (54 page)

Bob took the magazine and paged through the cover story, running his finger down the columns. When he came to the end, he shook his head.

“Nix about Sweeting-Aldren. Which, believe me, I would have noticed when I read it. But—and really, I don’t want you to think I personally am not persuaded, because I am, because I know these people and it makes a lot of sense. But the impression you get from this article is that you don’t just drill the hole anywhere. There has to be a very special geology to collect the petroleum that’s coming up. I’m more than willing to believe the company sank a well to pump waste into, but I don’t think they’d go down any twenty thousand feet if five thousand would do. And unfortunately it sounds like your friend’s theory doesn’t hold up unless the hole is very deep. If the geology was correct in western Massachusetts, any hole that’s there should be deep. But if it’s in Peabody it can only be shallow.”

Louis was sure that Renée would have had an answer to this. “I guess they thought maybe they’d get oil anyway.”

“Come on, Lou.” Bob leaned forward challengingly. “It has to make sense in the details. If you send me this stuff as a paper to review, I’m going to jump all over you. Oil’s cheap in ’69. Deep holes are tremendously expensive. A shallow hole will do the trick for waste disposal. Your friend’s theory requires the hole to be deep. The Atlantic—which admittedly is not the Bible, but nevertheless—The Atlantic tells me the theory of deep petroleum wasn’t developed until the late seventies. It’s based on space probes from the early seventies. Even if somebody had a theory in 1969—when nobody cared about oil anyway, and Sweeting-Aldren by the way had earnings of better than four bucks a share annually—it must have been based on bad evidence.”

“Well, that’s what Renée said. It was a bad paper, but it still sort of anticipated the theory later on.”

“But a bad paper is a bad paper. How’s the company going to know the theory has a future?”

Louis squirmed like a failing student. “I don’t know. But everything else makes sense.”

“Do you remember the author’s name? It wasn’t Gold, was it?”

“Oh, please.” He pushed away his plate. “I
know
who Gold is. This was some guy named Krasner. Somebody who, he stopped publishing and we have no idea where he went.” He looked at hit father. “What’s wrong?”

Bob had risen from his chair. He was staring at the liquor cabinet, gravitating towards it. He was suddenly very pale.

“What’s wrong?”

Bob turned around as if responding to the sound of his voice, not the content. He looked at him vacantly. “Krasner.”

“You’re kidding. You’re going to tell me you know him.”

“Her.”

“Her?” A seed of fear sprouted in Louis’s stomach.

“Anna Krasner. A girlfriend of your grandfather’s.”

“How do you know that?”

Bob answered slowly, speaking to himself. “Because old Jack made sure I knew. There wasn’t a possession he had that he didn’t make sure I knew was his.”

“When was this?”

“Sixty-nine.”

“Was he married? I mean, to Rita?”

Bob shook his head. “Not yet. Not for another three years.” He was reading messages on the wall that Louis couldn’t see—worrisome messages, bitter messages. Then, abruptly, he came to himself and sat down. “You feeling OK?”

“Yeah, fine, drunk,” Louis said.

“I think I can find her for you, if you want.”

“That would be great.”

“You don’t remember Jack very well, do you?”

“Zero memories.”

“He was not your ordinary . . . not your ordinary human being. For example, Anna was a very pretty woman, about forty-five years his junior. When we found out he’d remarried, I was sure it was going to be her. But it turns out to be Rita, who everyone agreed was not a particularly attractive woman. Not to say an outright fright, although that was my opinion. We’d met her when she was at the girlfriend stage, when she was his secretary, but that was years earlier. I’d assumed she was long gone from the picture. And there are a lot of men where you wouldn’t have been surprised, but not Jack. He cared about how a woman looked, that and how old she was, more than anything.”

“Uh huh.”

A moth beat against the screen in the back door, unable to follow the smell of prairie that was creeping inside. Some small animal made the tall grass crackle. The cats crossed the kitchen, single file, and pressed their whiskers against the screen. Bob asked what Louis and Renée had planned to do with their information.

“I guess make sure the company pays,” Louis said. “We disagreed about the timing.”

“You’ll want to let your mother know in advance.”

“All right.”

“Had you thought of that?”

“I tried not to.”

Bob nodded. “That’s something else that was peculiar about Jack. Why he put all his money in Sweeting-Aldren stock. Because it wasn’t as if he earned it all in stock and then failed to spread it out. The records show a well-balanced portfolio until the early seventies, when he made his new will—I suppose after he’d married Rita. Then he retired from the company and systematically bought stock in it until that’s all there was. A piece of folly that’s already cost your mother a lot of money.”

“Boo hoo.”

“What we can’t figure out is why Jack did it. He was a company man, that’s where he made his fortune, and I don’t know how many times he told me it was the best-run corporation in the country. However many times I saw him in my life. A dozen times. But he loved money as much as he loved women, and he was anything but stupid. I simply can’t see him making emotional decisions. There must have been some greed involved, somewhere that I can’t see. This Canadian a while back, Campeau, the one who owned department stores. He sank all his money in his own company, and all his kids’ money too, to the tune of about five hundred million. Next thing he knew, the shares were nearly worthless. If you’re greedy, and you believe in yourself, I suppose you think, why put any money at all in things that won’t pay the maximum return?”

“Yeah, why not,” Louis said.

“Well. I’ll tell you why not. Because he bought shares at any price and any ratio. Every time something of his matured, he converted it to Sweeting-Aldren common, no matter what the price, and this was
after
he’d retired. Wouldn’t you call that a little irrational?”

“Sure, maybe, if I understood stocks.”

Bob leaned forward suddenly, resting his elbows on his knees, and focused his reddened, enthusiastic eyes on Louis.

“Jack’s girlfriend,” he said, “is a company chemist. The company drills a disposal well three or four times deeper than it has to be. The chemist disappears. Jack marries a fright. He converts all his assets to company stock at any cost. When he dies he leaves them in a trust fund for the fright. You don’t see anything there?” If the question had been put to Louis by anyone else, or at any other time in the last ten years, he would only have been irritated, figuring that if a person had something to say they should just go ahead and say it. What he felt now, though, was embarrassment for not seeing what his father saw. He was embarrassed to have to shake his head.

“No,” he said. “You have to tell me.”

13

T
HE COUNTREY, ACCORDING
to the first Englishmen to see it, more resembled a boundless green
Parke
than a Wildernesse. From the rocky shores inland as farre as a man could journey in a week, there stretched a Forrest suche as teemed with Dere, and Elke, and Beares, and Foxes; with Quailes and ruffed Grouse and wilde Turkies so innocent and
Plentiful
that a man could cast aside his Musket and hunt them with bare hands. There were majestical Pines and Hickeries and Chesnuts and Oakes, towering to heighths beyond the ken of any European, and so widely spaced (as severall Travellers noted), that an
Armie
could march through with ease. Beneath the trees and in the Intervalls, were found neither Brambles nor wooddy Undergrowth, but a low, softe Carpet of sweete Grasses and Hearbes that the Dere and Elke did much affect.

At the dawn of the seventeenth Century of our Lord, the land by
Masathulets Bay
had been relieved of its trees, by Indians in need of fire-woode. Lush Medowes and shrubby Hills stretched westward from the mouth of the River Charles as farre as the eye could see. Duske might fall at mid-day when a million of wilde Pidgeons filled the sky, and in the spawning Season the waters of fresh Streames congealed into Silver, with Smelts and Sturgions and Basses and Alewives swimming up-stream in suche Multitudes, that it seemed a man might step across them like a Bridge. Oysters in the Bay had foot-long Shells and could not be eaten in one bite. The soyle in many places was black and rich as Caveare.

Although the first Englishmen to settle in this Parke did nearly starve, yet the Indian men were observed to live more like unto
Kings
—working little and wanting little, and hunting and fishing at theyre Leisure. It was the Indians who, once or twice in a yeare, set the Fires that spred quickly and harmlessly over vast tracts of Forrest, therebye consuming Briers and much useless Woode, killing Fleas and Mice, and permitting of the growth of sweete Herbage. By the time God created the Sun & the Moone & the Planets, these Indians had called this Land theyre own for three thousand of years; and after another six thousand of years it was yet
more
like a Garden, than on the day when the first Human Beeing trod upon it.

In spring and summer, the Indian
Women
laboured to plant Maze in mounds, and tended it along with Squashes, Pumpkins, Melons, Tabacco, and the Beanes that climed the corne-stalks. Theyre hap-hazard fields were Nurseries for theyre children too. The men paddled to sea in hollow tree trunks, pursuing Seales and Walrosses, and fishing for codde-fish, and harpooning Porpisces and Whales. If theyre tree trunks sank, as was like to happen, they would swim for two hours to reach shore. Everywhere they chanced to look upon the Land, were Blueberries, Strawberries, Goosberries, Rasberries, Cranberries and Currans. Women and children gathered them, and captured the Birds, which came to feed. They trapped Hares and Porpentines and other small beests. Most of the Maze and Beanes which they harvested, was put away for winter, whilst the rest was eaten, along with Chesnuts and Acomes and Ground-nuts and Scallops and Clammes and Crabs and Mussles and Pumpkins, at Revels suche as lasted many weeks. Then, the Dere and Beares beeing fattest, the men went on hunting trips deep into the woods.
Women
dragged carcases back to the camps, and made Cloathes of the skins, and processed the Meat. When the men had luck, they ate ten Meales a day, sleeping in between them. When they were out of luck, they went hungrie for the nonce; for, the next summer always brought
Abundance
.

Wars and Abstinence from carnall Relations, maintained a balance between Population, and what goods the land could produce. A field beeing exhausted, the Indians farmed elsewhere. Fleas becoming intolerable, the Indians moved theyre Villages. They had no use for Propertie as could not be easily transported, or easily abandoned and refashioned. And, forasmuch as they lived in a World where there was either much food or little food, and otherwise had enough Cloathes and Firewoode and Tabacco and
Women
to satisfy theyre needs, so they were never in a hurry. Whatever could be put off until to-morrow, was put off. There were no Rats in theyre World, no Cock-roaches, no Stinging Nettles, no Pigs or Cows, no
Firearms
, no Meazels, no Chicken Pox, no Small Pox, no Influenza, no Plague, no French Pox, no Typhus, no Malaria; nor Yellow Fever; nor Consumption.

On the minus side—as Bob himself was always quick to grant—the Indians didn’t have those wonderful Greek black olives. They didn’t have blue cheese, or cardamoms, or the wines of Bordeaux, or violins. They had no conception of butter. Their imaginations were unenriched by Chinese porcelain, Persian illuminated manuscripts, or the idea of a midnight sleigh ride in the Russian winter. Was it perhaps worth the price of the Black Death to know that Jupiter had moons? Would a person trade
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
for contentment and freedom from the flu? Make do without metal cookware and, with it, world history?

You might as well ask whether, if she could, a person would choose never to have been born; and whether, for that matter, North America’s older sister Europe herself might rather have remained in fetal Stone Age darkness.

So the world of the Indians had been sleeping, alive but unborn, until the Europeans came, and the few missionaries and colonists compassionate enough to wonder why such a world had to suffer the pain of awakening to consciousness—and why they themselves had to be the instruments of this awakening—must have answered with conviction: because God wills it. For these Europeans of conscience, the conviction must have been a comfort.

For the rest it was expediency. “Fill the earth and subdue it,” God had commanded in Genesis. His Englishmen came to Massachusetts and, seeing that the natives had disobeyed the commandment—the place was all trees and no fences! no churches! no barns!—felt justified in tricking them and blackmailing them and massacring them. English pigs ate their clam beds and the crops in their unfenced fields; English guns slaughtered fowl and deer. English chicken pox, English smallpox, English typhus killed entire Indian villages, leaving bodies strewn on the ground outside dwellings. They were branches falling in the forest, these seventy-year-old men and thirty-year-old women and three-year-old girls, with no one to hear them. In the space of a generation, more than 80 percent of the Indians in New England died of European diseases. Vermont was essentially depopulated.