Graves' Retreat (3 page)

    The yellow piece of paper was still on the boardroom doorknob.

    Les and his appetite headed for the Charter House.

    He was three steps down the block, already taking in the sweet smells of spring flowers in Greene Square, when he heard behind him someone shout, “Les! Les Graves! Come back here!”

    When he turned, he saw Byron Fuller running down the bank steps toward him.

    Fuller was out of breath when he reached Les. Graves had always thought of Fuller as an exceptionally stuffy man. Now he resembled an excited teenager.

    “You’re having lunch with us.”

    “Us?”

    “Yes. Mr. Edmonds and Mr. Halliman and myself.” He slid his arm around Les and began escorting him up the street. “This is the greatest thing that’s happened to Cedar Rapids since we paved First Avenue.”

    And with that, Les and Byron Fuller joined a smiling Mr. Edmonds and a beaming Mr. Halliman, and the four of them set off down the street paralleling a happy load of streetcar passengers.

    “This is certainly a fine day.” Mr. Edmonds laughed.

    In two years of working for the man, Les had never heard Mr. Edmonds laugh before.

    

    

    Neely woke up on the hotel room floor and immediately grabbed the Navy Colt he always kept next to him.

    The scream still reverberated in his head.

    Then he realized that it had only been T.Z. and one of his nightmares.

    He cursed and laid his head back down against the rolled-up clothes that served him as a pillow.

    The room was decent enough-double bed, recently varnished bureau, closet, polished kerosene lamp, two plump chairs for sitting -but he slept on the floor because with T.Z.’s nightmares you never got any sleep. T.Z. either woke up yelling he was suffocating or shouting, “Don't close your eyes!” T.Z.’s father had died in his arms when T.Z. was only thirteen and T.Z. had dreams about how there, right at the last, he had sobbed, “Don’t close your eyes!” knowing that when he did he would be gone for eternity.

    Neely propped himself up on one elbow and rolled himself a cigarette. His hangover was bad enough that he was pasty and dehydrated. He needed a bath and a shave. He despised being dirty.

    From below, the sounds of noontime Cedar Rapids floated up. The chink of rig chains as wagons plied the streets; the clang of trolley car bells; a squeeze box playing a polka in the square down the street. Warm sunshine streamed in through the window, tumbling with dust molts, covering Neely in gold and making him feel lazy as a cat, something the beefy six-foot-two man was unaccustomed to. He had grown up in Kansas plowing up ground and beating out prairie fires with wet sacks and wishing to hell he could escape from it all.

    He relaxed, inhaled his cigarette, tried not to think about the old days. That was T.Z.’s problem. In a very real sense, the man’s life ended with his father there in his arms that cold March night.

    Whereas Neely’s life, or so Neely hoped, was all ahead of him, everything up to now mere prelude to a much finer and more fascinating span of years.

    And Cedar Rapids, Neely thought, was going to help bring it about. If all went as planned, this would be the easiest and perhaps the most money either of them had ever made.

    T.Z. started screaming again and this time Neely, with his hangover, with his whole weariness of T.Z., got up and grabbed the slender man and slapped him hard enough across the face to draw blood.

    T.Z. came awake instantly, terrified.

    “My father-,” he started to say.

    “To hell with your father,” Neely said. “To hell with him.”

    Then he got dressed and went outside into the lovely warm day and looked for the sight of a striped barber pole. He got himself a shave and a haircut for fifteen cents, then he went back to the hotel and got himself a bath for fifty cents.

    When he returned to the room, he found T.Z. lying on his back asleep. He had a rosary of brown beads tangled up in his hands.

    Neely sighed and went over to wake him up. He had been taking care of T.Z. for many years now. But soon that would be over. T.Z. had become a burden. He was going to kill T.Z. He had only to figure out how and when.

    

    

    “They make a sandwich out of beef tenderloin that is not to be believed," Byron Fuller said to Les Graves once they were seated in the men’s club where the elite males of the city generally lunched.

    Les had seen pictures of New York City and San Francisco hotels and it was difficult to imagine they could be much fancier than this. Flocked red wallpaper and long, narrow mirrors gave the eatery the aspect of a fancy lobby. A long bar, padded in leather with matching leather chairs, ran along the west wall, while to the east more than twenty large, round tables sprawled. Six hand-tooled leather chairs went with each table. The atmosphere was positively festive. Men, Les recognized as lawyers, doctors, merchants and members of what the town’s eleven different newspapers referred to as “the carriage trade,” sat around the tables laughing and smoking cigars and ordering drinks from young women, some of them pretty, with hair back in buns and long white aprons over gingham dresses. On the walls were large photographs of various heroes-Abraham Lincoln, President Anhur, “Cap” Constantine and (as something of a joke) a woman named Rose Coghlan who was presendy going around the country and beating men (if you could believe it!) at pigeon shooting.

    “So why don’t you try it?”

    Les turned back to Byron, realizing he hadn’t heard what the man said to him.

    Byron, obviously seeing that Les had been taking in the place and was duly impressed, said, “Quite a place here, isn’t it, Les?”

    “It sure is.” For just that moment, Les sounded very young and impressionable. He saw the amused glance exchanged by Mr. Edmonds and the newspaperman Mr. Halliman.

    Their serving woman came and Byron Fuller said, “Rosie, we’ll have the beef tenderloin sandwich.” He indicated himself and Les. He nodded to the two other men and smiled. “These two gentlemen will have to speak for themselves.”

    Les sat up as straight as he could, tugging his coat down, hoping his collar was clean enough (he usually wore collars three days), hoping his looking around didn’t mark him as too much a rube, despite the way Mr. Edmonds and Mr. Halliman had glanced at each other.

    The other two men ordered.

    Then, when Rosie was gone, Mr. Edmonds took out a very fat stogie, snipped off its end, and then put it with a certain ceremonial flair between his teeth.

    Mr. Halliman said, “You’ll have to forgive Clinton here, Les. He likes to keep you in suspense as long as possible.”

    Byron Fuller chuckled. “He certainly does. The night I asked him for Susan’s hand in marriage, he told me to go for a walk for an hour -alone-and then come back.” He patted his stomach. “That’s not good for a fellow’s digestion.”

    Les formed an image of Susan in his mind-in the shadows of her carriage last night-sounding so unhappy.

    Clinton Edmonds exhaled a mighty cloud of smoke. “What they’re trying to say, Les, is that I’ve been working on a little project for the past four months-and that it’s finally come to fruition.”

    Les didn’t know what to say. He just sort of gulped and sort of wondered again if his collar was clean enough to be sitting in a place such as this.

    Clinton Edmonds said, “What’s the one baseball team you’d most like to play?”

    Les said, “I guess there isn’t any doubt about it, sir. Sterling. But they’d never play us. They say we aren’t on their level.”

    Here Clinton Edmonds broke into a grin that lost him twenty years. “Well, guess who the Cedar Rapids baseball team is going to be playing right here this coming Fourth of July!”

    Suddenly Les was caught up in the same exhilaration as the others. “You’re not joshing?”

    “Of course I’m not joshing,” Clinton Edmonds said.

    “The Sterling municipal team?”

    “Yes, indeed, and in our home stadium.”

    Les forgot for the moment to whom he was speaking and blurted, “But how did you work it?”

    Clinton Edmonds put down his cigar and frowned. “Well, I wish I could say that I manipulated it the way I helped manipulate the last Republican caucus.” This brought a faint smile from Mr. Halliman. “But I’m afraid what happened was this: Sterling has this exhibition game all set up with a group of men who used to play in the National League, the White Stockings and teams like that. That was going to be their Fourth of July attraction, only the National Leaguers got a much better offer to do the same thing in Fort Wayne.”

    Edmonds’ words came as no surprise to anybody at the table. Last year the Fort Wayne, Indiana, baseball club, which had always been considered very progressive, made history by playing a seven-inning night game-one illuminated by seventeen electric lights.

    “So,” Edmonds went on, “Sterling found itself, last week, in a very embarrassing position. They had nobody to play.”

    “But why would they agree to come here?”

    Edmonds laughed. “I guess because they don’t have anything better to do.” For the first time he looked at Les with the eye of a jeweler appraising a stone. “So, Les, do you think you can beat Sterling?”

    “I-”

    But before he could finish, Byron clapped him on the back and said, “Of course he can beat Sterling. Les could play in the National League if he put his mind to it.”

    Halliman laughed. “In the East they’ve got an animal called a press agent. Sounds like that’s the role you’re playing for young Graves lino, Byron.”

    He averted his eyes from Byron. Given his relationship with Susan, it would be perhaps even needed-to dislike his rich young rival.

    But he couldn’t. Stuffy though he might be, Byron Fuller was a fair and decent young man.

    “What’s
your
answer, Les?” Clinton Edmonds said. The humor had gone from his voice. Byron Fuller and Karl Halliman were appropriately sober.

    Sterling really is his sore spot, Les thought. Around the bank it was said that Clinton Edmonds hated the city of Sterling more than he hated anything else. And he was a man of considerable anger. A certain cabal of men in the state legislature in Sterling, it was said, had conspired to pass laws that forced Edmonds to divest himself of certain small-town banking interests. His fortune, still large, was nonetheless not what it had been. Les could see that for Clinton Edmonds this would be much more than a simple baseball game. “Well-” Les said.

    Edmonds appeared surprised. “I thought you’d take this as good news, Les.”

    “I do, sir.”

    “Then why are you so hesitant?”

    “I’m not hesitant, sir.”

    But Edmonds was still frowning. “Then what’s the matter?”

    “It’s just-it’s just-” And here he almost told him. About what happened just before he came to Cedar Rapids. About the terrible thing that had happened when he had tried out as a pitcher for the Chicago White Stockings…

    “Just what?”

    Byron Fuller said, “Just that it’s a big responsibility is what he means.”

    “Be quiet, Byron. I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to Les.” Fuller blushed and put his eyes down.

    Les had never before seen the famous Clinton Edmonds temper. “I have to say, I’m damned disappointed in how you’ve taken this news. This was supposed to be a happy occasion.”

    “Sir, I didn’t mean to-”

    “Let me finish, young man.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “You are a citizen of this community and as such you owe it your absolute best. Am I right?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Which means that whether it’s marching off to war or pitching baseballs, you should respond with good spirits and pride. Am I right?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Which means that you should look
forward
to any opportunity to better your community and make it an even more pleasant environment. Am I right?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    Les glanced at Byron for some kind of moral support, but Byron was wisely keeping his head down. Halliman’s eyes had gone out of focus.

    “Do you know what it would mean to the people of this city if we were to beat Sterling? Do you?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Are you old enough to remember the jubilation we had when General Lee surrendered?”

    “Sort of, sir.”

    “There was literally dancing in the streets.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    "And that’s what we’d have here.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Dancing in the streets.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “So I’m going to ask you once again and I want your answer quickly. Do you understand?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Are we going to beat Sterling?”

    Les said, “Sir, we’re going to beat their stockings off.”

    Clinton Edmonds smiled the smile of a very happy man. “Very good, Les. Very good.”

    But all Les could think of was what had happened at the Detroit Wolverines’ training camp…

    Byron, sighing, raised his head. Halliman's eyes came back into focus.

    “Now, what say we each have a whiskey and do a bit of celebrating?” Clinton Edmonds said. “Does that sound like a good idea?” Three grown men simultaneously tried to beat each other to saying “Yes!”

    

    

    Though there was only the one round of drinks, lunch went on till two.

    At that point Halliman went back to his newspaper, second largest in circulation after the
Evening Gazette,
and the other three went back to the bank.