Land Run. Mark Graham

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      There was a plot of land off the main stretch of Mustang Road that Cort Johnson needed to check out. He was a board member of the newly formed industrial trust committee for Willow Springs. The town had formed the committee in an attempt to focus efforts in attracting new business to town. The city manager and a handful of very important people were going to lock in land for sale to prospective businesses with plans to encourage early stage development through tax incentives and other such stuff that only Cort and a couple other folks knew about. Cort tolerated Willow Springs. He only recently relented to the idea that he might one day live and die in the same place he was born. He often thought of just moving one town over, to Stible, just to make a kind of statement. His wife, Jules, loved Willow Springs and was obsessed with bringing culture to the town. She opened and closed a boutique, a tea room, and art gallery—none of which ever took root. Now she was in negotiations with her husband’s bank to fund a children’s theater group. Cort found life too complicated and chose long ago to just focus on his ledgers. Just keeping everything in the black was his loftiest ambition. And without other talents or hobbies known to him, work became increasingly enticing.

      As he drove by the land site, his cell phone rang. It was Jules, but he answered it anyway.

      “Yep.”

      “I called the bank, they said you left early,” she said.

      “I got to meet Ted and some guy.”

      “Fine,” she said.

      “I’ll be home right after but probably going to eat there.”

      “Eat where?” Jules asked.

      “Spurs, Jules,” he replied, “I know what you are calling about, and I don’t have an answer yet. The rent on that place is high.”

      “You know this town needs entertainment. Some of these girls will be pregnant in three years if they don’t get an outlet, something positive.”

      “Honey, you really think three matinees of Oklahoma is going to replace condoms?” Cort was tired. He was going to mention the Barrow Rodeo that went all summer long but remembered that something seemed to happen there every Tuesday night. Often, it would be something he would read about in the paper on Wednesday mornings.

      “Stop talking like that, Cort. I’ve really prayed about this and know it is what the Lord wants us to do. If you would pray about it, you might be more enthusiastic too, maybe even nicer to me.”

      “Yeah. Look. Don’t go there. I don’t pray. I work. Someone has to work. God, or whatever, has his job, and I have mine.”

      There was silence on her end of the phone.

      “Jules,” he said and was again answered with silence.

      “Jules, I was just making a joke. Please stop. Look. I’m sorry.”

      But Jules had hung up. Cort closed his cell phone and drove on toward Spurs Restaurant. He was always baffled that apparently God was consistently at odds with his thinking and seemingly so concerned with his little Willow Springs world. He knew that he got married in a church but never expected it would follow him around for the rest of his days.

      Ted Levin and another man were talking in the back booth of Spurs. Ted was the councilman of the Fourth Ward. As he approached, Cort could see that their conversation was not a lively one. Ted saw Cort and stood up, placing a quick smile on his face. “Cort, this is Frank Howard with Howard and Associates. His firm is in Tulsa.”

      “Hello,” Cort said as friendly as he could muster up.

      “Hi. Nice to meet you. You got a nice town here. Been talking to some locals today outside the IGA. That’s the best place to get a feel. Democracy at its best. Everyone has to eat.” Frank laughed.

      The man appeared to Cort to be watching for Cort to look enlightened, drawn into the philosophical and sociological implications of his statement. “Sounds good. Y’all order yet?” Cort asked.

      He learned a great deal about Frank over dinner. It seemed to Cort that the man was under some kind of truth serum or maybe hopped up on cocaine. He was a land man for Carlton Oil before the bust in the early eighties. Then he finished law school, but he could not leave his love of land acquisition. Cort figured that he must have used the word acquisition at least fifty times. There was something about that word that really impressed Frank. As of late, he had a big contract doing right-a-way work for Continental Telephone, getting tower sites and land for cable line runs. Frank said he learned a lot with it, said that he had big hopes for the government’s untapped powers of eminent domain. Cort still preferred this one-way conversation to his living room, where Jules would sulk and tell him in a sigh that she was fine.

      Ted helped the conversation to finally turn to the Montgomery land.

      “Frank, you seen the Montgomery place yet?”

      “I certainly have. Rusty Watson sent me some aerial photos. Nice little spread.”

      “We think so too. Don’t we, Cort? This town needs the recreation and a draw to some right kind of folks, folks who will need a club to congregate at and a gated community.”

      Ted had caught a vision and was spreading the good news. Cort found him to be almost evangelistic about the land deal. Cort was a banker and liked money as much as anyone but was cautious. He had only met a handful of straight arrows in his years of banking. It seemed that most everyone that came across him was a gambler, and he hated risk. That was the dance, the drama of small-business finance. You had to be good to get Cort Johnson to ride the roller coaster with you.

      “Elijah Montgomery owns that place. Been in his family since forever. He is a nice man and the town loves him. Most folks anyhow. Thing is, the Industrial Trust Committee has sent him several letters with offers. Ted here even spent some time with him at the nursing home just getting to know him,” Cort said.

      The lawyer jumped in, saying, “But he won’t budge. I know the type. And heard some talk down at the IGA. I even went to his church Sunday, asking around.”

      Cort could tell that Frank felt he had finally got the interested look he wanted from him. The lawyer seemed to him to be the kind who liked to rip the wings off flies, watch them squirm.

      “Mr. Howard, is the ITC paying you? Ted, we don’t have the investors lined up yet. You and the council forking over traffic ticket money to this guy?”

      “Don’t worry, Cort. In fact, I won’t officially work for the town or the ITC. I’m just kind of a drifter.” Frank said and then winked and added, “Drift in and drift out. We can work out all the details later, probably СКАЧАТЬ