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 thousands and thousands of people on the other side of them, and those thousands of people, if you was to add their money up, would be worth more. But they can’t buy the legislature at all, ain’t that right?”
“Go on,” Forlesen said.
“Well, don’t that prove that little money’s power to buy certain things is zero? If it had any at all, thousands and thousands times it would make those people the kings of the state, but the actual fact is they can’t do a thing —thousands time nothing is still nothing.” Suddenly Beale turned, staring out the window of the car, and Forlesen realized that while they had been talking the road had descended to the ground. Still many-laned, it passed now through a level landscape dotted with great, square buildings which, despite their size, made no pretense of majesty or grace, but seemed in every case intentionally ugly. They were constructed of the cheapest materials, mostly corrugated metal and cinder block, and each was surrounded by a high, rusty wire fence, with a barren area of asphalt or gravel beyond it as though to provide (Forlesen knew the thought was ridiculous) a clear field of fire for defenders within.
“Hold up!” Beale said urgently. “Hold up a minute there.” He gripped Forlesen’s right arm, and Forlesen jockeyed the car to the outermost lane of traffic, then onto the rutted clay at the shoulder of the road.
“Look ’e there!” Beale said, pointing down a broad alley between two of the huge buildings.
Forlesen looked as directed. “Horses.”
“Mustangs! Never been broke; you can tell that from looking at ’em. Whoever’s got ’em’s going to need some help.” Beale opened the car door, then turned and shook Forlesen’s hand. “Well, you’ve been a friend,” he said, “and if ever I can do anything for you just you ask.” Then he was gone, and Forlesen sat, for a moment, looking at the billboard-sized sign above the building into which the horses were being driven. It showed a dog’s head in a red triangle on a field of black, without caption of any kind.
The speaker said, “Do not stop en route. You are still one and one-half aisles from Model Pattern Products, your place of employment.”
Forlesen nodded and looked at the watch his wife had given him. It was 069.50.
“You are to park your car,” the speaker continued, “in the Model Pattern Products parking lot. You are not to occupy any position marked visitors, or any position marked with a name not your own.”
