Beale was dusting his high-crowned, battered old hat with his big hands, patting and brushing it gently as though it were a baby animal of some delicate and appealing kind, a young rabbit or a little coatimundi. “I could see them,” he said. “From where I was up there. Most of them didn’t even see me—off in cloudland somewheres.”
“I’m going to Model Pattern Products,” Forlesen said.
The older man shook his head, and, having finished with his hat, set it on one knee. “I already tried there,” he said, “nothin’ for me.” In a slightly lower voice, the voice of a man who is ashamed but feels he should not be, he added: “Lost my old job. I been trying to hook on somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Forlesen found, somewhat to his surprise, that he
“About everything. There ain’t much I can’t turn a hand to. By rights I’m a lawyer, but I’ve soldiered some and worked stock out west, and lumberjacked, and once I fired on the railroad. And I’m a pretty good reaper mechanic if I do say so myself.” Beale took a round tin box of snuff from one of the pockets of his shabby vest and put a pinch of the brown contents under his lip, then offered the box to Forlesen.
“You’ve had an interesting time,” Forlesen said, waving it away. “I would have guessed you were a farmer, I think, if I had had to guess.”
“Well, I’ve followed a plow and I ain’t ashamed to say it. I was raised on the farm—oldest of thirteen children, and we all helped. I’d farm again if I had the land; it would be something. You know what? My dad, he left the old place to me, and the same day I got the letter that said I was to have it—from a esteemed colleague there, you know, a old fellow named Abner Bunter, we used to call him Banty; my dad’d had him do his will for him, me not being there—I got another that said the state was taking her for a highway. Had it and lost it between rippin’ up one envelope and the other. I remember when it happened I went out and bought a cigar; I had been workin’, but I couldn’t work no more, not right then.”
“Didn’t they pay you for it?” Forlesen asked. He had been coming up behind a car the color of sour milk, and changed lanes as he spoke, shooting into an opening that allowed him to pass.
“You bet. There was a check in there,” Beale said. “I planted her, but she didn’t grow.”
Forlesen glanced at him, startled.
“Hey!” The older man slapped his leg. “You think I’m touched. I meant I invested her.”
“Well, I’m sorry you lost your money,” Forlesen said.
“I didn’t exactly lose it.” Beale rubbed his chin. “It just sort of come to nothing. I still got it—draw the interest every year; they post her in the book for me—but there ain’t nothing left.” He snapped his fingers. “Tell you what it’s like. We had a tree once on the farm, a apple tree—McIntoshes, I think they were. Well, it never did die, but every winter it would die back a little bit, first one limb and then another, until there wasn’t hardly anything left. Dad always thought it would come back, so he never did grub it out, but I don’t believe it ever bore after I was big enough to go to school, and I remember the year I left home he cut a switch of it for Avery—Avery was the youngest of us brothers; he was always getting into trouble, like I recollect one time he let one of Dad’s blue slate gamecocks in the pen with our big Shanghai rooster, said he thought the blue slate was too full of himself and the big one would take him down a piece; well, what happened was the blue slate ripped him right up the front; any fool could have told him; looked like he was going to clean him without picking first. Dad was mad as hell—he thought the world of that rooster, and he used to feed him cake crumbs right out of his hand.”
“What happened to the apple tree?” Forlesen asked.
“That’s what I said myself,” Beale said. Forlesen waited for him to continue, but he did not. The miles (hundreds of miles, Forlesen thought) slipped by; at long intervals the speaker announced the time: “
Forlesen said, “Model Pattern Products is in an industrial park—the Highland Industrial Park—maybe you’ll be able to get a job there.”
Beale nodded slowly. “I been looking out for something that looked to be in my line,” and after a moment added, “I guess I didn’t finish tellin’ you ’bout my check I got, did I? Look here.” His left hand fumbled inside his shabby coat, and Forlesen noticed that the elbows were so threadbare that his shirt could be seen through the fabric as though the man himself had begun to be slightly transparent, at least in his external and nonessential attributes. After a moment he held out a small, dun-colored bankbook, opening it dexterously with the fingers of one hand, but to the wrong page, an empty and unused page, which he presented for Forlesen’s inspection. “That’s all there is,” Beale said. “I never drew a nickel, and I put the interest, most times, right smack back in, and that’s all that’s left. That’s Dad’s farm, them little numbers in the book.”
Forlesen said, “I see.”
“They didn’t cheat me,” Beale continued. “That was a good hunk of money when they give it to me, big money. But it’s went down and down since till it’s only little money, and little money ain’t hardly worth nothing. Listen, you’re young yit—I suppose you think two dollars is twice as much as one? Like, if you’re paid one and some other fellar gits two, he’s got twice as much as you? Or the other way around?”
“I suppose so,” Forlesen said.
“Well, you’re right. Now suppose you’ve got—I won’t ask you to tell me; I’ll just strike upon a figure here from your general age and appearance and whatnot—five thousand dollars. And the other’s got fifty thousand. Would you say he had ten times what you did?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where you’re wrong; he’s got fifty times, a hundred times what you do—maybe two hundred. Ain’t you never noticed how a man with fifty thousand cold behind him will act? Like you’re nothin’ to him, you don’t even weigh in his figuring at all.”
Forlesen smiled. “Are you saying five thousand times ten isn’t fifty thousand?”
“Look at it this way: You take your dollar to the store and you can git a dozen of eggs and a can of beans and a plug of tobacco. The other takes his two and gits two dozen of eggs, two cans of beans, and two plugs—ain’t that right? But a man that has big money don’t pay fifteen cents a plug like you and me; he can buy by the case if he feels inclined, and if he gits very much he gits it cheap as the store. Another thing—some things he can buy you and me can’t git at all. It ain’t that we can buy less; we can’t git even a little bit of it. Let me give you an example: The railroads and the coal mines buy your state legislatures, right? Sure they do, and everybody knows it. Now there’s
