Behind the Bonehouse (2 page)

“It's important enough to repeat. You know how they treat worms in horses today?”

Carl didn't answer, and Butch shook his head.

“A vet shoves a ten-foot tube through a horse's nose and pumps the medication into his stomach with a hand pump. It can be fatal, even with a vet positioning the tube, and calling in a vet's expensive. Not only does the parasiticide in our product kill worms more effectively than anything else available today, if we can market this de-wormer as a paste a horse
owner
can safely administer, we'll revolutionize the horse world, and give Equine a market advantage.”

Carl and Butch glanced at each other.

And Alan tried again. “We're going to have to buy an entirely different mixing system. A big S-shaped Sigma blade blender with a special tank that rotates so the paste can be dumped out. We'll have to design and build a completely new assembly line, which means Bob Harrison's investment's going to be huge, and we have to get this right. It'll be very interesting and important work, and you both can really contribute.”

Neither one of them said anything. And Alan asked them to work on the tasks he'd already sketched out and report back at three.

They did. Reporting little progress. Shortly before a thunderstorm rolled in, and the power went off after a lightning strike that seemed to shake the earth.

That led Bob Harrison, the founder and president of Equine Pharmaceuticals, to visit each department and wish everyone a happy Fourth of July, and suggest they go home early.

Alan stepped out into the short side hall at his end of the lab, right after Bob had gone back to his office, to put mail in the outgoing box on the wall—and found Carl and Butch at the corner near reception with their heads together talking to Bob's son, Brad, who ran the accounting department (but gave Alan the impression that he saw himself as a masterful manager, waiting for a chance to show what he could do).

They stopped talking when they saw Alan. Then Brad nodded, and walked off toward the front door, to the right beyond reception.

Vincent Eriksen, tall and thin and nearly crippled by shyness, who cleaned all of Equine every night, was standing in the doorway to his supply room across from the door to the lab, filling a cart with supplies. Alan stopped and talked with him a minute before he walked toward the others to wish them a good Fourth.

Before he got to them, Carl said, “Butch and I have been talking. Before you were hired, Bob worked with us directly managing the transition from the lab to production. If you don't feel able to do it on your own, why don't you bring Bob in to fix the scale-up?”

“It's a bigger issue than that. It's not just this one scale-up today that's important. It's that we
all
need to learn to do it now—to develop the ability to do this easily as a part of everyday business. It's not healthy for an organization to have one or two Mr. Fix-Its who solve every problem.”

Carl smiled and said, “No? I thought speed was the issue.”

“Not speed alone. And Bob shouldn't be bothered with it. There're too many things only he can do. The formulating and fermenting of the vaccines and antibiotics. Field testing them too, with the UK vets. Horse care products and simple medications aren't as interesting to him, and we need to master this ourselves. Chemical manufacturing processes are beginning to change more rapidly now, and this will help us keep up.”

“My responsibility is the lab.” Carl wasn't looking at Alan, but staring off toward reception.

But Butch looked at Carl, before he glanced at Alan. “My responsibility is to take the formulas I get from the lab and manufacture the way I'm told.”

“Precisely.” Carl nodded and crossed his arms across his belt. “Again, as I said before, if you can't do it, and if speed in scale-up is—”

“Believe it or not, I have a great deal of experience with scale-up in pharmaceuticals, as well as formulation. But me being a dictator would end up being harmful. This is an opportunity for all of us to learn and develop.” Alan stopped, and made himself smile, before he said, “Anyway, have a good Fourth. Hope you've got power at home.”

Butch said, “You too.”

Before Carl said, “Goodnight,” and started toward the front door, with Butch following behind.

Alan sighed, then smiled at Vincent, and walked back into the lab.

Friday, July 12th, 1963

The following Friday night, Alan and his wife, Jo, went out to dinner in Lexington—Jo in a black linen suit with the skirt left half unzipped, and her tan silk blouse hanging loose to postpone the sewing of maternity clothes. Her pecan colored hair was wrapped on the back of her head so the curly ends swirled on one side, and Alan smoothed a stray end, before he sat down across from her.

They talked about all kinds of things the way they always did—her work as an architect helping to restore White Hall, the mansion that a hundred years before had belonged to Cassius Clay, the street-fighting abolitionist who'd been Lincoln's ambassador to Russia.

Jo talked about being pregnant for the first time too, and how four months felt different than it had before, and how she was trying to figure out what she should stop doing now with the horses they boarded on the farm.

But when Jo asked Alan how work was going, he clammed up without warning.

“What about the antifungal shampoo you formulated? How's that selling?”

“Better than we expected. The fungicidal ointments too. The exclusive contract with Bayer for the fungicide has given us a real advantage.”

“How's the de-wormer going?”

“More or less the way I was afraid it would.”

Jo leaned back in her chair, her straight black eyebrows pulled close together over dark blue purposeful eyes that were fixed right on Alan's.

She sat and watched him look away, the scar along the left side of his jaw white against the five o'clock shadow that had already taken control. Then she set her elbows on the table and wove her fingers together. “What?”

“What d'ya mean, what?”

“What's going on, Alan?” She watched him silently, seeing more than he wanted her to, her eyebrows arched analytically.

He told her then, for almost half an hour—about Carl and Butch, and that during the last week, Bob Harrison was either irritated with him, or avoiding him altogether. Bob normally went out of this way to consult Alan, and seemed to enjoy discussing the vaccines he was working on, but he'd been keeping to himself, and hardly looking at Alan when Alan went to talk to him, and the chill rolling off him was getting hard to ignore.

“I don't want to worry you, with you being pregnant, but if there's a lack of trust, or some opposition from Bob, it doesn't bode well for my stay at Equine. I can put up with resistance from the rest, but I can't stay if Bob joins the others.”

“Somebody's been gossiping behind your back. You know what I mean. Telling him something about you that's got him questioning what you're doing, and maybe what kind of person you are.”

“That's nothing but speculation.”

“Yeah, but I bet I'm right. Carl wouldn't hesitate, that's for sure. And yet why would Bob believe him? He oughtta know you better than that.”

“Bob's very good with people in certain ways. He can talk about the principles that are important to him, and the medicine he's excited about, and where he sees the company going, and when he's done everybody who's heard him would crawl across cut glass for him.

“But there's something naïve about him too, and I've seen him get fooled. He's so straightforward himself he expects everybody else to be. So he doesn't catch the two faced, or the manipulative, and he can't see the boot kissing that goes on with some of the people there. 'Member how Spencer's mom helped Spencer's dad with all of that? That's what Bob needs. But his wife knows nothing about the business. All she seems to think about is getting their son promoted.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It's definitely not a help.”

“So how does Bob react when he sees somebody's dishonest, or trying to take advantage of him?”

“I think he tends to overreact. He's so surprised and appalled he can't see it as an everyday facet of human nature and try to be dispassionate.”

“So if he thinks you've been undermining him, he won't respond well. Right? So what're you going to do?”

“You know how friendly he's been? How he's supported me, even when Brad's acted threatened by me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, yesterday, when I asked to talk to him about the Sigma blade options we need to research, he wouldn't even look in my direction.”

“You're going to have to do something. You can't just let it go on.”

They walked out into a blue-black night sprinkled with crystal stars, and stood by the curb in front of the steakhouse and looked up and smiled.

A man's voice said, “Hey,” off on their left, and they turned and saw Butch Morgan and his wife walking toward them from a barbecue place that was one of Lexington's favorites.

Alan said, “Hi, Butch. Hey, Frannie. How are your girls doing?”

“Enjoying their summer vacation.” She answered before Butch, adjusting the belt of her dress, her heart-shaped sun-burned face looking slightly ill at ease.

Jo asked if she was still working at the insurance company, as she slipped her hand in Alan's.

“The branch in Louisville most days. I moved up there this winter. Daddy comes in and helps three days a week here, but it's primarily up to me now. At the Louisville branch, and in Lexington.”

Butch looked irritated before she'd finished, but then he slipped his arm around Frannie's waist, and looked directly at Alan. “Her dad's not much older than Bob Harrison, but he's real close to retired.”

Alan said, “I can't imagine Bob retiring. He's only in his fifties, and work's the center of his life.”

Butch was watching Alan now with a kind of wavering intent as though he might've had too much to drink. “You ever seen Bob lose his temper?”

“No. Not what I'd call losing it. Why?”

“I reckon he didn't like being told he's too old to do good work.”

“Who told him that?”

“Carl told him what
you
said. 'Member? In the hall the other day? Manufacturing's changing so fast, you don't want him to help with scale-up. Like maybe his methods are outta date.” Butch was smiling, rocking on the balls of his feet, taking in the shock on Alan's face.

“I didn't say that! Nothing even close to that.”

“That's what
we
thought you said. But you know how it is,” he was trying to take one of Frannie's hands in his, but she stepped farther away. “If ten folks see a bank holdup, you'll get ten versions of what happened. See ya Monday, Alan.”

Frannie and Alan and Jo said goodnight, as Butch and Frannie walked past.

After they'd turned the corner, Jo said, “Well, now we know why Bob's irritated with you.”

“Yeah, we certainly do. Crap.”

“Did Butch and Frannie get divorced?”

“He hasn't said anything at work, but if she's moved, it—”

“She wasn't wearing a ring.”

“How do women notice things like that?”

“Why do men not?”

They both smiled, and started toward their car, staring up at the stars again—before they started worrying about what Carl had told Bob.

Monday, July 15th, 1963

“I appreciate you meeting with me.” Alan Munro set a glass of iced tea on the driftwood table under the old farmhouse's back arbor, between his chair and Bob Harrison's. “If the bugs get bad we can move inside.”

“I was raised on a dairy farm. I worked as a large animal vet for eight years. I can put up with bugs. Jo here?” Bob's salt-and-pepper hair, with gray patches at the temples, ruffled in a gust of wind from the left end of the arbor.

“She's working on the restoration of a house south of Lexington.”

A painful silence settled between them, while Bob Harrison, who looked like a coiled spring, tapped a finger on the arm of his chair as though that was all that was keeping him from leaping up in the air. “Look, I left work that I need to do, and I don't mean to be rude, but I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me why you asked me to meet you away from the office. I assume it's concerned with the business.”

“It is. I'm trying to decide where to start.” Alan Munro took a sip of iced tea before he turned toward Bob. “I know Carl Seeger told you that I told him and Butch Morgan something that more or less means I think you're old and behind the times. That you can't help with the scale-up of new products, but that's not at all what—”

“How do
you
know that's what Carl said?” Harrison's eyes were gray and deep set behind black-framed glasses, and he stared hard at Alan, then looked away again fast.

“Butch. Jo and I ran into him and his wife outside a restaurant in Lexington Friday night. He might've had a bit too much to drink, and he looked like he was gloating when he said it. I've also noticed there's a distance now in the way you communicate with me.”

Bob Harrison looked sideways at Alan for less than a second, then picked up his glass of tea.

Alan slid his director's chair counterclockwise till he faced Bob straight on, his green eyes determined, the small muscles under his cheekbones clenched as tight as his jaw. “What I said to Carl and Butch was ‘Bob shouldn't be bothered with scale-up. That's our job. He has other things to do that only he can, like the antibiotic formulating and fermenting.' I said we need to master it ourselves. I've told them till I'm blue in the face that it's a good opportunity for us to learn, and work together as a team. Vincent Eriksen was in the hall when we were talking and he can corroborate what was said.”