Runner

'Come up here.'

'Why don't you come down? I like it down here.' It wasn't true. He hated it down here, but at least he didn't feel as though he was about to be catapulted into the sea.

'Your father wants to talk to you.'

He muttered, 'Oh, shit.' That was what he had been dreading. When he had arrived at the marina this morning, he had seen that flinty look in his father's blue-gray eyes. He had hoped the expression was just because it was a bit after six in the morning and the old man was still gruff from being up so early, but even then he had known it wasn't. The old man had told Richard to be there by five-thirty. It had always struck Richard as insane that people always went fishing at that hour. He could understand if they had been on their way to a tiny trout stream in the mountains, but how could anybody think the sort of fish that swam in the Pacific Ocean—half of them a mile below the surface and as big as a truck—would be so picky they cared what time it was?

But Andrew Beale was the sort of man who attached moral values to his own preferences. Men who were worth anything were on deck before the sun's rays touched it, their goddamned gear stowed and ready to cast off the lines. When Richard had roared into the marina parking lot in his Porsche Carrera at six-twenty-five, he had known his father would be less than cordial. As he was stepping cautiously along the little gangplank, he had heard his father saying something to his mother about leaving him on the dock.

Richard tested the lowest step to the bridge, and felt slightly relieved. The darker strip on each step was a substance like sandpaper that kept his foot from slipping, and the double railings on this boat were thicker and more substantial than they'd been on the last one. He fought the rocking of the boat by gripping the rails hard as he climbed, so by the time he was aloft and taking his first step onto the bridge, he felt as though he'd been lifting weights.

His father was at the wheel, staring through the huge windshield at the featureless, changeless ocean as though he could see something ahead that was invisible to Richard. At least the sound of the engines was quieter up here. Andy Beale was a man who looked as though he were made of blocks—big head with a neck invisible from behind, square shoulders in his starched white shirt with epaulets, short khaki pants. He was wearing his old navy blue USS Constance Kerr cap. He glared over his shoulder at Richard to see that he had arrived, but he let him wait.

After a couple of long minutes, Richard said, 'What's up, Dad?'

'Want to take the helm?'

'No, thanks.'

'Suit yourself.' The old man throttled back a bit, so the big yacht slowed, and the side-to-side motion became more pronounced. 'I've been thinking of talking to you for some time now.'

'What about?'

'I'm sure you're smart enough to know that your mother and I keep an eye on you. Just because we might not be actively in your business at any given time doesn't mean we don't know what it is.'

'What is it?'

'For months we've been wondering why you haven't seen fit to mention to us that your girlfriend was pregnant.'

'What girlfriend?'

'All right. Your secretary, then. Whatever the hell she is to you. Christine. She's sort of a cute little thing, and people tell me she isn't stupid. A bit on the young side for a thirty-eight-year-old man, but that could pay off later. When you're my age, you'd have a woman who was still on the young side for you. Your mother has been trying to think of a way to do a party for you, complete with presents and so on. But she couldn't get very far with that, because you haven't told us. So I'm forced to ask.'

Richard Beale felt even sicker. He could see that his father had reverted to his military personality again. His father was still a marvel to him. At various points in Richard's life he had been prompted to ask himself what the hell the navy did to people in four short years to change them so much. His father had been an Oklahoma farm boy until he went in the navy, and he had come out like this, and stayed this way for forty years. Richard knew he had to say something. 'Oh, I don't know. I guess I didn't feel ready to start all of that in motion. I don't want any parties or fuss, at least until I know if this is going to work out.'

'Seems a little late for that kind of wondering, doesn't it? If you weren't prepared to make a decision about her, maybe you should have kept it in your pants.'

'I don't mean that.'

'Not that we weren't pleased. Your mother has been running around with a pen and a special notebook writing down things for the wedding. She hasn't even finished figuring out the lists for the engagement party yet, but she has to make some moves to streamline this whole process so the bride won't be too obviously far along at the wedding. I haven't seen her this happy in twenty years.'

Was the boat just drifting and rolling with the swells? Richard kept feeling worse. 'Look, Dad. I've been trying to protect Mother from getting all excited and then being disappointed later, and you, too. I don't know how you found out Christine was pregnant. She didn't actually come out and tell even me.'

'That's not good,' said Andy Beale.

'How did you find out?'

'If I had wanted you to know that, I'd have told you. And for weeks, the mistake I thought you were making was trying to keep this to yourself and then springing it on your mother too late. But I guess you were making a different kind of mistake. With you, it's always some kind of mistake.'

'That's not fair.'

'Pah!' Andy Beale spat out something that was almost a laugh, but carried no happiness. 'What I told you four years ago hasn't changed, Richard. I was the one who started this life with nothing but a pair of calloused hands and a reasonably serviceable brain. When the navy sent me here, they sent a million other guys here, too. I was one of the ones who had his eyes and ears open. I could see that lots of those guys were from cold, hard, barren places. Once they'd been here, they were going to come back. Hell, that's been going on since World War Two. That's why there is a San Diego. Some of us were willing to take risks and work hard. I bought my first duplex apartment by working two jobs before your mother and I were even married. I saved the rent on that one to put a down payment on another, and used your mother's savings from her nurse job to buy the third. I never looked back. We both worked for other people until we were over fifty while we were doing real estate deals at night and showing rentals to prospective tenants on our lunch hours. You get to be a big shot and tool around in a Porsche at twice the speed limit and live in a house like a palace and make milliondollar deals all day. But you'd do well to remember that none of it is yours. I let you get used to all of it because I'm not going to live forever, and I need somebody who knows how to run it after I can't. I didn't want you to inherit it at the age of fifty or sixty and know so little that you let somebody take it away from you.'

'I know, Dad, and I'm grateful. I've always been grateful. I don't say it often, because I know you wouldn't think much of me if I followed you around all day saying how grateful I am.'

'No, I wouldn't. But there are certain things that you are required to do, and you've known that from the beginning. Your mother wants grandchildren. Sometimes I think that's all that keeps her interested in staying alive. She's waiting to see them and spoil them. I want grandchildren, too. All the work and sacrifice and agony I went through to make something of this family is going to be thrown away and wasted if there are no more Beales to make use of it. I didn't do all that—work eighteen or nineteen hours a day, leveraging everything I had on each new deal over and over again—just so you can live this bachelor existence, screwing around until you're eighty, and then die and have everything I built confiscated by the fucking State of California. I want heirs, and I want the first one this year.'

'Dad, if you know about Christine, you must realize that I'm trying to do what you expect of me.'

'It's about time. I was pretty much convinced that you were gay, and she was just around to type and pick up your clothes at the cleaner's.'

'So now you know I'm not gay.'

'Yeah, yeah. You like girls. It's an enormous accomplishment. Now I want you to see something.' He reached into the rack where the nautical maps were stowed, and pulled out a long white envelope with a string-tie closing at one end.

'If that's your will, you showed it to me when we talked about this four years ago. If I don't have a child before you die, then the money goes to the cousins. How could I forget?'