tighten. “Nobody ever complained about the Rio Norte Line, until the Phoenix-Durango came on the scene.”
“The Phoenix-Durango is doing a brilliant job.”
“Imagine a thing called the Phoenix-Durango competing with Taggart Transcontinental! It was nothing but a local milk line ten years ago.”
“It’s got most of the freight traffic of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado now.” Taggart did not answer. “Jim, we can’t lose Colorado. It’s our last hope. It’s everybody’s last hope. If we don’t pull ourselves together, we’ll lose every big shipper in the state to the Phoenix-Durango. We’ve lost the Wyatt oil fields.”
“I don’t see why everybody keeps talking about the Wyatt oil fields.”
“Because Ellis Wyatt is a prodigy who—”
“Damn Ellis Wyatt!”
Those oil wells, Eddie thought suddenly, didn’t they have something in common with the blood vessels on the map? Wasn’t that the way the red stream of Taggart Transcontinental had shot across the country, years ago, a feat that seemed incredible now? He thought of the oil wells spouting a black stream that ran over a continent almost faster than the trains of the Phoenix-Durango could carry it. That oil field had been only a rocky patch in the mountains of Colorado, given up as exhausted long ago. Ellis Wyatt’s father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells. Now it was as if somebody had given a shot of adrenalin to the heart of the mountain, the heart had started pumping, the black blood had burst through the rocks—of course it’s blood, thought Eddie Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give life, and that is what Wyatt Oil had done. It had shocked empty slopes of ground into sudden existence, it had brought new towns, new power plants, new factories to a region nobody had ever noticed on any map. New factories, thought Eddie Willers, at a time when the freight revenues from all the great old industries were dropping slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time when the pumps were stopping in one famous field after another; a new industrial state where nobody had expected anything but cattle and beets. One man had done it, and he had done it in eight years; this, thought Eddie Willers, was like the stories he had read in school books and never quite believed, the stories of men who had lived in the days of the country’s youth. He wished he could meet Ellis Wyatt. There was a great deal of talk about him, but few had ever met him; he seldom came to New York. They said he was thirty-three years old and had a violent temper. He had discovered some way to revive exhausted oil wells and he had proceeded to revive them.
“Ellis Wyatt is a greedy bastard who’s after nothing but money,” said James Taggart. “It seems to me that there are more important things in life than making money.”
“What are you talking about, Jim? What has that got to do with—”
“Besides, he’s double-crossed us. We served the Wyatt oil fields for years, most adequately. In the days of old man Wyatt, we ran a tank train a week.”
“These are not the days of old man Wyatt, Jim. The Phoenix-Durango runs two tank trains a day down there—and it runs them on schedule.”
“If he had given us time to grow along with him—”
“He has no time to waste.”
“What does he expect? That we drop all our other shippers, sacrifice the interests of the whole country and give him all our trains?”
“Why, no. He doesn’t expect anything. He just deals with the Phoenix-Durango.”
“I think he’s a destructive, unscrupulous ruffian. I think he’s an irresponsible upstart who’s been grossly overrated.” It was astonishing to hear a sudden emotion in James Taggart’s lifeless voice. “I’m not so sure that his oil fields are such a beneficial achievement. It seems to me that he’s dislocated the economy of the whole country. Nobody expected Colorado to become an industrial state. How can we have any security or plan anything if everything changes all the time?”
“Good God, Jim! He’s—”
“Yes, I know, I know, he’s making money. But that is not the standard, it seems to me, by which one gauges a man’s value to society. And as for his oil, he’d come crawling to us and he’d wait his turn along with all the other shippers, and he wouldn’t demand more than his fair share of transportation—if it weren’t for the Phoenix-Durango. We can’t help it if we’re up against destructive competition of that kind. Nobody can blame us.”
The pressure in his chest and temples, thought Eddie Willers, was the strain of the effort he was making; he had decided to make the issue clear for once, and the issue was so clear, he thought, that nothing could bar it from Taggart’s understanding, unless it was the failure of his own presentation. So he had tried hard, but he was failing, just as he had always failed in all of their discussions; no matter what he said, they never seemed to be talking about the same subject.
“Jim, what are you saying? Does it matter that nobody blames us—when the road is falling apart?”
James Taggart smiled; it was a thin smile, amused and cold. “It’s touching, Eddie,” he said. “It’s touching— your devotion to Taggart Transcontinental. If you don’t look out, you’ll turn into one of those real feudal serfs.”
“That’s what I am, Jim.”
“But may I ask whether it is your job to discuss these matters with me?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Then why don’t you learn that we have departments to take care of things? Why don’t you report all this to whoever’s concerned? Why don’t you cry on my dear sister’s shoulder?”
“Look. Jim, I know it’s not my place to talk to you. But I can’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know what it is that your proper advisers tell you, or why they can’t make you understand. So I thought I’d try to tell you myself.”
“I appreciate our childhood friendship, Eddie, but do you think that that should entitle you to walk in here unannounced whenever you wish? Considering your own rank, shouldn’t you remember that I am president of Taggart Transcontinental?”
This was wasted. Eddie Willers looked at him as usual, not hurt, merely puzzled, and asked, “Then you don’t intend to do anything about the Rio Norte Line?”
“I haven’t said that. I haven’t said that at all.” Taggart was looking at the map, at the red streak south of El Paso. “Just as soon as the San Sebastian Mines get going and our Mexican branch begins to pay off—”
“Don’t let’s talk about that, Jim.” Taggart turned, startled by the unprecedented phenomenon of an implacable anger in Eddie’s voice. “What’s the matter?”
“You know what’s the matter. Your sister said—”
“Damn my sister!” said James Taggart.
Eddie Willers did not move. He did not answer. He stood looking straight ahead. But he did not see James Taggart or anything in the office.
After a moment, he bowed and walked out.
In the anteroom, the clerks of James Taggart’s personal staff were switching off the lights, getting ready to leave for the day. But Pop Harper, chief clerk, still sat at his desk, twisting the levers of a half-dismembered typewriter. Everybody in the company had the impression that Pop Harper was born in that particular corner at that particular desk and never intended to leave it. He had been chief clerk for James Taggart’s father.
Pop Harper glanced up at Eddie Willers as he came out of the president’s office. It was a wise, slow glance; it seemed to say that he knew that Eddie’s visit to their part of the building meant trouble on the line, knew that nothing had come of the visit, and was completely indifferent to the knowledge. It was the cynical indifference which Eddie Willers had seen in the eyes of the bum on the street corner.
“Say, Eddie, know where I could get some woolen undershirts?” he asked, “Tried all over town, but nobody’s got’em.”
“I don’t know,” said Eddie, stopping. “Why do you ask me?”
“I just ask everybody. Maybe somebody’!! tell me.”
Eddie looked uneasily at the blank, emaciated face and white hair.
“It’s cold in this joint,” said Pop Harper. “It’s going to be colder this winter.”
“What are you doing?” Eddie asked, pointing at the pieces of typewriter.
“The damn thing’s busted again. No use sending it out, took them three months to fix it the last time. Thought I’d patch it up myself. Not for long, I guess.” He let his fist drop down on the keys. “You’re ready for the junk pile, old pal. Your days are numbered.”
Eddie started. That was the sentence he had tried to remember: Your days are numbered. But he had forgotten in what connection he had tried to remember it.
