CHAPTER 6
Establish a scholarship in my name with the enclosed $5000.00.
– Excerpt of posthumous letter from Eugene Purdue to the management of The Panther Club
A.J.’S WALK WITH MAYHEM WAS ANCIENT HISTORY, but it had taken center stage in his consciousness when Eugene had chosen to refer to the incident, and A.J. had been in a foul frame of mind ever since. His mood remained sour until the following Wednesday, when he was summoned to the mill for an early meeting. At that point, his disposition really decayed. He normally reported at 4:00 p.m. and turned logs into boards until 2:00 a.m. the following morning. He called it the Bermuda Shift, because many hapless souls had wandered onto it over the years, never to be seen again. He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with John Robert when the phone call came.
“A.J., there’s a meeting at two o’clock,” said Marie Prater. She had been an institution at the sawmill for many years. “You have to be here.” Marie was John McCord’s secretary, and John McCord was president and general manager of McCord Lumber. She was a formidable woman, seldom wrong and rarely challenged. Her husband, Randall, was disabled, having suffered from a bad back since about the time he was old enough to perform any work. This affliction was hereditary and had stricken his father and grandfather, and others before that. Marie’s children-four teenaged boys with bad backs-amazed A.J., because he could not envision Randall expending the energy necessary to father them. In truth, none of the boys favored Randall much, and one of them was the spitting image of John McCord, so perhaps Marie had been forced to make other arrangements.
“What’s the meeting about?” A.J. asked, still groggy. The previous evening’s sawmill outing had been challenging, and he hadn’t been up long. He hated early meetings and had pointed out on numerous occasions that if they were periodically scheduled for 3:00 a.m., then the day staff would be afforded equal opportunity to come in a couple of hours early. This suggestion had yet to be acted upon.
“I’m not supposed to say, but what the hell?” Marie replied. “John sold the mill. The new owners want to meet all the supervisors and managers.” Rumors had been flying around the mill for weeks that a large lumber conglomerate was eyeing the property, and A.J. felt a stir of apprehension. The scuttlebutt had apparently been well-founded.
“Oh, shit,” he said into the phone.
“You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that in the last couple of hours,” was her reply.
“Sorry about that, Marie,” A.J. replied. “You know I don’t think of you as a woman at all. You’re just one of the guys to me.” His mind was on the news she had imparted.
“Thanks a lot. Two o’clock,” she said before hanging up. A.J. took a swig of coffee and sat quietly, thinking. Although the news at face value was not necessarily bad, he had a feeling that it would turn out to be so. He didn’t know a great deal about Big Business, but he knew enough to realize he had just made the transition from big fish in a small lake to small fish in the middle of the ocean, if he was lucky, and dead fish in the creel if he was not. He turned to John Robert, who was watching him.
“McCord sold the sawmill,” he told his father. “I have to go in to see who owns me now.” John Robert digested the information for a moment.
“Well, he’s older than I am,” he offered. “I guess it’s time for him to retire.”
“Hell, he’s already rich,” A.J. said. “Why does he want to be richer?”
“Don’t get upset until you know what you’re dealing with,” John Robert replied while refilling A.J.’s cup. “These new people will know a good man when they see one. You’ll land on your feet.”
John Robert had moved in with A.J. and Maggie six years previously after suffering a near-fatal heart attack. Luckily he had been in town and not somewhere out on the back forty when the bell tolled, so help was quick to arrive when he keeled over while having a cup of coffee and a couple of collision mats down at The Meek Shall Inherit the Chili-Mac Drive-In.
“That heart attack should have killed him,” Doc Miller told A.J. when they met in the emergency room in Chattanooga, the location of the nearest hospital of consequence. He seemed shaken. “His heart stopped on the way here in the ambulance. All you could hear was that long, steady tone coming from the monitor. Before I could do anything, and believe me, I was moving fast, his own fist slammed into his chest, and he yelled
“Nobody tells John Robert what to do,” was A.J.’s reply as he watched his father through the glass of the ICU. “Not even God.”
John Robert’s recovery was slow, and he almost died again during the bypass surgery that followed his attack. It was the surgeon’s skill rather than his own stubbornness that saved him that time, although to hear John Robert tell it, the man had nearly done him in. This trace of acrimony was due to a talk the doctor had with John Robert that was not altogether to the elder Longstreet’s liking. During the conversation, the physician extracted a promise from John Robert that the Pall Mall he was currently smoking would be his last. This was no small demand to make upon a man who had thoroughly enjoyed the two packs a day he had smoked for the last half century. The doctor explained that anything less than full compliance would be fatal. John Robert eyed him coolly for a moment. Then he stubbed out the item in question in a handy potted plant and quit on the spot.
Having survived two brushes with death and the loss of his favorite and perhaps only vice, John Robert should have been out of the forest. But he had one last blow to sustain. Upon his release with a clean bill of health, he and A.J. sat down on a cold winter afternoon and tallied the medical bills that had been piling up in the knife drawer for two months during John Robert’s convalescence. Life is cheap in many instances, but in John Robert’s case the price of continued existence was in excess of one hundred thousand dollars, not small change except to those who spend the public monies.
A.J. called Charnell Jackson to seek financial advice. Charnell was the only lawyer in Sequoyah and one of John Robert’s oldest friends. They had been boys together, and John Robert hadn’t held it against Charnell when he had chosen to read the law. Charnell looked over the debts and viewed the available assets. Then he advised John Robert to file for bankruptcy. John Robert’s reaction was negative, as if he had been advised to kick a good dog.
“I’m not broke,” he said. “I have a little money in the bank, and I own the farm outright.”
“The point is not what you have, John,” was Charnell’s patient reply. “The point is what you get to keep.”
“The point is, I owe the money. They did their part, and now I have to do mine.” He was quiet for a moment before rendering his decision. “Charnell, see if you can find a buyer for the farm. It ought to more than cover what I owe. Fix it so I can keep title to the cemetery plot and always have use of the road up to it. I’ll need to tend to Rose and Mama.” He looked at A.J. “I’m sorry about your inheritance.”
“I already have a house, John Robert, and I can’t farm for shit.” He smiled at his father, trying to make him feel better. “You’re doing me a favor.”
“When the farm sells, I’d like to come stay with you and Maggie. At least for a while.” A.J. was surprised John Robert had even brought it up; he and Maggie had been trying to talk him into moving in with them since Granmama had passed away.
Thus it came to pass that John Robert retired from farm life. The day after the farm sold, he arrived at the Folly with a truckload of belongings and was quickly incorporated into the household. A.J and Maggie had the impression John Robert was simply coming to live with them, but the elder Longstreet had more than mere occupancy in mind. The house was spotless before the first week was over, and three square meals per day began to grace the table. Maggie and. A.J. protested that he needed to relax and enjoy his golden years, but John Robert paid scant heed. Jobs that A.J. had been putting off were completed. John Robert washed windows, waxed floors, painted cabinets, mowed the yard, and did the shopping. He even dispatched the venerable repository known as the sewing barrel,
