Chaingang

2

WATERTON, MISSOURI

At first Mary Perkins thought it sounded like real trouble, a note of seriousness in her husband's warm, friendly tone as he conversed with someone on the telephone. She hadn't been paying attention to what Sam was saying—their phone often rang in the morning, and it was generally something urgent to do with his real estate business. Over the years she'd become used to it. Mary had been sitting at the kitchen table, sipping black coffee as she worked on her grocery coupons and shopping list. But she heard a mild curse and a sharp change in his voice and tilted her head, suddenly aware of what he was saying.

“I know ... huh-uh ... no. I promise you that's not going to happen, Bill ... sure. I'd be concerned too.” She knew it was Bill Pike on the other end of the line, having recognized his voice when he'd called and asked for Sam during what passed for breakfast in the Perkins house.

“No. That isn't the case at all. Here's the deal on that: J. T. Delmar of Southland Growers, John Merriweather, and Wilbur Ferrell are the main guys behind it, Bill. Ocie Upton and the Newcomb brothers are in it too—that's who Maysburg Produce Enterprises is, okay? You know as well as I do that John Merriweather isn't about to stand for something like that. John's daughter and his son-in-law are building about half a mile down from you all. You think John's missus is gonna let him put three hundred migrant workers in a camp right in back of their own daughter?” Mary smiled at her husband laughing into the phone mouthpiece, and he winked at her.

“Yeah. I don't doubt they would like to get a hundred and fifty thousand for that ground. They done preemerged it so many times, they cain't get weeds to make a crop on it, but that's all right. Let me promise you it's not happening. They're going to put it over yonder on some of the Newcomb boys’ wooded acreage.” He lapsed into Good Ol’ Boy now and then out of habit. It went with your chamber of commerce membership if you did business in Waterton. “That's all right. I don't blame you ... I'd have been worried, too. Okay, Bill, no problem. Talk to you later ... Sure. ‘Bye!” He hung up the kitchen wall phone and sat back down at the table, a funny look on his face.

“Small towns,” he said, shaking his head. “They just kill me.” He reached for his coffee.

“Don't drink that,” she said, getting up and taking his cold cup to the sink, which was filled with dishes.

“That was Bill Pike. Get this: His sister called him. He didn't tell me that, but I know it had to be because Mary Beth works down at the welfare office. Anyway, she calls him and says the Mexicans are here. What Mexicans? he asks. The ones who are going to move out in back of you! That's what Mexicans, she says.'

Mary poured out the cold ink, and gave him a fresh cup. “Mexicans?'

“At the welfare office to get food stamps, presumably. Anyway, they asked around and found out these were some of the work force Southland Growers brought in to help do the planting. There's six guys in it—calling themselves ‘Maysburg Produce Enterprises.’ I coulda had us a piece of it, but...” He shook his head and jumped over his own thought. He sipped coffee. She was used to his discursive conversations.

“Did you say there were three hundred migrant workers?'

“No. I mean—there will be, yeah. When they start putting the crops in. It's about eight hundred acres. It's that ground the Newcomb brothers own across the river.” He meant in Kentucky. “They tried to get that ground in back of Bill, but they couldn't get city water or sewage. I didn't see any point in going into all that—it woulda only worried him more. He's about to have a fit. All he can think about are knife fights and robberies. He says, ‘The property values will drop to nothin’ overnight. But that won't matter none because we'll probably be killed in our sleep anyway.'” He smiled.

“Not all Mexican migrant workers are bad people, you know.” Mary checked off the last item on her list.

“Yeah. I know. But you don't want a seventy-five-unit migrant camp being built next door to you.” He went on explaining the intricacies of the deal to Mary, who tried to feign interest. She adored her smart, successful husband. She'd loved him for so many years—they'd been childhood sweethearts. In many ways they had a dream marriage. Over the years the romance had done what it does in so many marriages, but with that exception, they had it all.

For the first years of marriage—the first decade—Mary had stayed on the Pill. They loved other people's kids but had chosen not to start their own family. For the last few years the precautions had been Sam's responsibility, on those ever-dwindling occasions when the matter came up, so to speak.

Even if their marriage had become a bit too platonic, it was a good, solid marriage. There was a wealth of love between them. Mary thought she was one of the lucky ones. She had that rarest of all rarities—a genuinely good man. They were just as hard to find as the cliche said.

She turned the pages of a mail-order catalog while he told her about his lunch date, which was to take place in neighboring Maysburg. It was with an out-of-towner named Sinclair who claimed to be looking for a land investment in the Waterton-Maysburg area. She listened to his enthusiasm with a degree of pleasure, since she knew how much it meant to him to see their little town prosper, as he told her what a good omen it was that all this speculating and entrepreneurial investing was taking place. As with many longtime marrieds, she also read his mind and knew—from nothing more than the pause in his monologue—that he thought she wasn't listening.

“I'm listening,” she started to say. “Oh, hon! Look!'

“What?'

“You like this?” She showed him what appeared to be a very plain, dark woman's suit. To him it looked like every other plain, dark woman's suit he'd ever seen.

“Yeah. Mm-hmm. Very nice.'

“What!” Her pretty face contorted incredulously. “You don't mean it. They think I'm going to pay a hundred and sixty-eight dollars for that?” He'd never seen a woman like her. She never spent a dime on clothes, even though they had plenty of discretionary bucks. Yet she looked like a fashion plate.

“That's not so bad. Not if it's a really good suit.” He had no idea whether it was high or low, but if she liked it, he wanted to encourage her to get it. He loved his wife more than anything, and would have given her the world if it had been in his power to do so.

Material things meant nothing to Mary. She was such a content person. She liked being a housewife and taking care of him, or so Sam felt. She asked very little of life, enjoying people, nature, and their good health. He felt she was also a very spiritual person, but it was something she chose to keep within herself, a private and sweet core that made her what she was.

He tried to give her some money out of his wallet, but she wouldn't touch it. She could be hardheaded, too, but when she was, it was usually for the best.

He changed the subject and talked to her about fashions, which he knew interested her, because he suspected his business stuff was boring her. He knew how boring he could be, but he couldn't help himself. Sam was who he was.

The child of a couple they knew had asked him his age, and when he'd told the little boy he was in his early thirties, the kid had said, “God! I thought you were about fifty!” To the youngster fifty was obviously as old as anyone got. You turned fifty and you died. Everyone had laughed, but inside Sam knew that the boy had seen the emperor sans wardrobe. He often caught himself acting fiftyish.

In business it had been a blessing. Thinking fifty had paid for a lot of land for a street kid from a small town —a kid whose father hadn't handed him a dime. But he wondered now and then if Mary was terribly bored with their admittedly dull version of domestic bliss.

Life was funny. He looked over at his lovely wife. Her robe had fallen open slightly and he could see the swell of her breasts, and the unintentionally provocative pose as she sat with bare legs crossed, absorbed in her magazine. Her legs were as beautiful today as when she'd been a fifteen-year-old cheerleader. By anyone's standards she was an extremely attractive woman.

Any other healthy man married to this woman, sitting across from her and seeing her the way she looked at that moment, would have but one thought: he'd want to jump on her bones. Sam? He had fucking land deals running through his head. Life was nuts.