Land Run. Mark Graham
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Rusty snapped his head around to Ted.
“I don’t give two squirts of duck crap what Cort thinks,” Rusty said through his clenched teeth.
Ted dropped his gaze to his boots and slowly put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t want this meeting. He wanted to be in bed. Rusty wouldn’t bite his suggestion, and he knew he wouldn’t. The man was obstinate, but Ted knew him when he was flexible and creative. They were friends from childhood, and he often hoped they could be friends again one day.
“I have all but contracted Frank Howard to start doing what he does.” Rusty was controlling his obvious anger now. “You know what he does, Ted? He gets results. That is what he does. You telling me he couldn’t sell this to Cort?”
“You don’t get Cort. You don’t sell ideas to Cort. You have to be…don’t know. Something,” Ted said.
“What is that supposed to mean, Ted?”
“I don’t know. Look. Jules can’t hardly get a dime from him, and she’s his wife.”
“I got other backers. I’ll shift every bit of my business from Sooner National. I’ll get on the phone and make it happen now.”
Ted held in his fear when Rusty began pacing the fence and feeling for his cell phone.
“Rusty, you know that Cort basically is the ITC and that’s gonna trump any bank. Let’s go home and get some sleep. It’s just different. This might all play out differently. That’s all.”
Rusty put away his cell phone and stared intensely at the dark tree line across the field as if it was a chessboard. Ted could tell the man was feeling boxed in and unusually aggressive. He watched him close his eyes tightly, probably picturing all the ITC board members hanging out at the gas station downtown.
“Okay then. Just two to focus on: Cort and the old man. You sleep on that, Ted.”
On Saturday morning, the gas station, Hugo’s, opened up at six o’clock sharp. There wasn’t any real business to speak of, just a weekly meeting. It wasn’t a mandatory meeting, but it had its regulars. The coffee was cheap, sixty cents, and refills were free. That is a big deal to this fixed-income crowd. They had money, for sure, but mostly because many of them had a fixed-income mentality instilled in them from their youth. The Saturday paper was already on the table, and the owner’s wife warmed the coffee when Cort eyed Marty Black walking in. He never said anything to the workers, didn’t even look their way. Marty grabbed the paper and took the back booth next to the pinball machine.
By a quarter past six, the booths were packed and the meeting was brought to order. To Cort, Ted seemed well-rested and ready for the social.
“Marty, did you fart or just say something?” Ted asked.
Cort didn’t laugh and noticed that Marty didn’t seem to know anyone else was in the place. Ted was obviously encouraged by the laughter he caused. Ted was tapping the tiny foil ashtray with his cigarette across the table from him. Cort resolved within himself, knowing what the subject of talk was sure to be. He knew Ted to be the helplessly hopeful sort who always had to get some closure. Reality always seemed to come hard to Ted.
“What ya think, Cort?”
“No, Ted.”
“You mean no to the Frank guy?”
“Yeah. No. I understand if we have to force the buy of that plot. But however it gets done, it gets done right.”
“No problem here, Cort. I agree. Anyhow, he could still sell. Just maybe get the price up there, something responsible for him to leave his family members.”
“Ted, do you understand land? His grandpa was a slave on that land to the American Indians. He worked the farm hard as a free man for thirty years and bought it. You told me yourself that Elijah said that. That’s a big deal.”
“Ah, but even sentiment has a price,” Ted said.
“Ted, you keep trying.” Cort shook his head, dropping his gaze. “Look, if it can go that way, get a price. And I’ll take it to the ITC.”
“Maybe you talk to him. He doesn’t talk much to me anyhow. Just goes on and on about the war or about his grandpa and wife.”
“Maybe. I should get a feel for the old man anyhow. It’s just progress, and I guess our town needs it.”
Some men Cort knew from the Kiwanis were in the next booth. He thought they seemed happy enough without some golf course to run to this morning, but maybe he was just being obstinate. He looked around the walls of Hugo’s and remembered the drama he had in financing the gas station. The owner worked at the telephone office and made way too much money. He was one of a handful of out-of-town carpet baggers that came to homestead in Willow Springs. He had lived there for seventeen years but still wasn’t from there. Cort remembered how the EPA really gave the man a hard time about the car wash. And the insurance company found more and more that he had to insure. He must have come back to Cort fifteen times before the deal was done. Eventually, the cost had doubled from his initial business plan presentation. But today, it was Hugo’s, and there was no other place like it. That was a hard deal, Cort thought, but this new venture was a different kind of hard. There was something else to it, and Cort feared it had something to do with ethics, the kind never covered by the statement, “It’s just business.”
Cort headed back home in his white, four-door Buick to mow his yard. He had about three more weeks of that before it just flat burned off from the heat. He couldn’t wait. Yard work was not one of his joys in life. His neighbor seemed obsessed with his lawn and sometimes Cort’s lawn as well. The man’s yard was emerald green all summer long. Cort’s excuse was that his neighbor was retired and made time to water it every day, even after a good rain. He was nice enough, just not very interesting. Jules really thought a lot of him though. And Cort’s son often had an uninteresting story of his to retell at the dinner table. As he turned his Buick into Fairview Avenue, he spied the man walking to his mailbox. Cort was in no mood to talk with him and parked in the garage this morning.
Happily, Jules was back on speaking terms with him. He was going to help her with the new children’s theater and try to seem as excited as he could. She thought this was going to save the world from destruction, and that amused Cort to no end. Well, that’s whom he married, and he couldn’t say her goals were bad, just a bit misguided and probably quite pointless. His goal was simply that somehow he could salvage a profit of some kind or just break even.
“Hey, baby. How was coffee?” Jules asked as soon as she saw him.
“How was coffee? You make it sound girly, like we went to a tea or something.”
“Fine,” she said, hugging him now. “You know you need to mow today. And we have the picnic at twelve thirty.”
Cort felt under sudden attack. She always blurted out some schedule thing followed by a hug. He was defenseless because he ought to know the schedule and he never did.
Now he was suddenly looking forward to mowing, the memory of the church picnic coming back to his mind. The thought of the social event was СКАЧАТЬ