The Road to Wellville (60 page)

Something was wrong here, and Will couldn’t quite fathom what it was. He gave Charlie a reassuring grin. The sun fell back a notch and the shade deepened. Birds flicked through the trees. They both turned to watch a man on a bicycle glide up the street.

“What I mean is, it’s a real joy to have her here,” Charlie said, but there was no joy in his face, “Mrs. Hookstratten, that is. Just like home. I’m arranging a tour of the Per-Fo factory for her.”

“Oh? That sounds terrific. I’m sure she’ll enjoy it. And where did you say the factory was located, just out of curiosity? I might like to have a visit someday myself, you know.” Will gave a laugh, meant to imply that while it was his prerogative as a stockholder, there was no pressure involved—he wasn’t fishing for an invitation. Or perhaps only partly.

“Raeburn Street.”

“Raeburn? I don’t think I’m familiar with—”

“It’s on the east side of town—or on the south side, that is. South-east.” Charlie’s eyes were busy again—up the street and down, over Will’s shoulder, back to the building on the corner. “Listen, Will”—the old smile, the warm one—”I’ve got to run. Business, you know. But let’s meet for lunch one day. Soon. All right? No whiskey, I promise.”

Will laughed. “It’s what I want more than anything, but we’ve got to control our appetites, right? Should I bring Eleanor? Amelia? We could make it a foursome.”

“Yeah, sure,” Charlie said, but there wasn’t a whole lot of conviction in his voice.

“You know,” Will said, keeping him—keeping him simply because he had nothing else to do in the world but crawl back to his cell at the San—”it’s funny we never met in Peterskill, what with your being Mrs. Hookstratten’s protégé, I mean. But of course she’s my mother’s friend primarily and Eleanor and I have our own circle of acquaintances…. How old did you say you were?”

It was a simple enough question, straightforward, direct, but Charlie
seemed to be having difficulty with it. He retrieved the smoked spectacles from his pocket, wiped them on his sleeve and hooked them first over one ear and then over the other before answering. “I’ll be twenty-six in July.”

Twenty-six. There was a poignancy in that. A beauty and a sadness. Not so long ago Will had been twenty-six, a happy and a healthy man, happily married and with the sheen of immortality glowing round him like a second skin. All at once he was seized with the urge to take Charlie by the arm and lead him up the street to the Red Onion, to sit over shots of whiskey and tall sizzling beers and compare notes on their boyhoods in Peterskill, the concerts at the band shell in Depew Park, skating on the river, school, baseball, girls they’d known in common and maybe even courted or danced with, but he fought it down. “There’s only five and a half years separating us,” he murmured instead. “Or maybe six. Strange we never met—but I guess we traveled in different circles—”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. But listen, Will, I’ve really got to be going.” Charlie seized his hand. “Good talking to you.”

“And you.”

Will stood there and watched till Charlie turned the corner and was gone, and then he made his way up the street toward the San. They’d be serving dinner soon, and while the prospect of the food didn’t hold much interest for him, Eleanor would be there, and that was something. Though he had to share her with Linniman and Badger and Dr. Kellogg and half the matrons, Foodists and housewives in the place, though he’d followed her to the door of that mysterious house on Jordan Street like a cuckold and sat at her side like a trained monkey, she was his wife still, and he took what he could get.

Besides, he just loved the look on her face when she got back from her treatment.

   
Chapter 5   

T
here was nothing to do but lie.

The train was heaving into the station, the porters were jumping, the Push, Grano-Fruto and Vita-Malta boys jockeying for position with the people who’d come down to greet their friends and relations, and Mrs. Hookstratten—Auntie Amelia—was perched behind one of those shimmering windows, peering out on the town of vegetable legend with all the anticipation Charlie had felt on the night he’d arrived. How could he tell her that the whole thing was a bust, a dismal failure and worse? How could he explain that every last cent of her $6,500 investment in Per-Fo, along with the thousand dollars she’d laid out as start-up money, was gone, vanished down Bender’s insatiable gullet like a stone dropped in a well? How could he admit that there were no happy workers whistling over crisp mountains of golden cereal flakes; that there was no office appointed in mahogany, no conveyor belt, no factory, no product; how could he tell her that the only thing Per-Fo had produced was lawsuits and injunctions?

He couldn’t and he didn’t. Somehow, when he rose up off that bench and stepped into the surging crowd, he found the strength to fight down the fear and loathing that ran through his veins like an infection. In that moment he made himself over He felt the smile leap to his face, tasted the sweet syrup of the lies gathering on his tongue, saw the world
come into focus as if for the first time. Nothing he’d experienced in his life could approach the cold-sweat tension of this moment, not the giddiest hustle, not the shakiest hand at cards or the luckiest kiss on the billiard table, not even the finessing of Will Lightbody—till now it had been easy. This was his baptism, this was his trial by fire.

In his jacket pocket, neatly folded in an oversized envelope, were the handsome blue-and-gold, and utterly worthless, Per-Fo stock certificates for Mrs. Hookstratten—the same issue he’d delivered to Will in exchange for his check—and in his right hand, tucked into the crook of his arm like a bouquet, was the last red-white-and-blue-striped sample box of the sham product itself. There was no going back now. There was no crying over Bender, no covering his flank—there was only this moment. Grinning, ecstatic, his eyes glowing and his back arched, he stood there on the platform like a suitor, and went forward to meet it.

Like Eleanor Lightbody before her, Mrs. Hookstratten descended from the train in a flurry of porters and baggage. She wore a traveling gown of some sheeny blue material, tightly corseted, a hat that shot feathers like sparks and a trailing fur stole. Brisk and small—she wasn’t much taller than a child, though she was as solid as a fireplug—she sank into the snarl of activity and Charlie lost sight of her. He shouldered his way past a man with a trunk the size of a coffin, neatly sidestepped a pair of nuns walking arm in arm, and with a twist of his hips sent a Vita-Malta boy sprawling into the knees of a man hawking Dr. Pettibone’s Health Tonic. “Auntie Amelia!” he cried, though the words stuck in his throat, and in the next moment he was embracing her.

“Charles, my Charles,” she cooed, patting his shoulders in an explosion of perfume and powder, her grip surprisingly firm and tenacious. “And let me have a look at you,” she demanded, standing back now at arm’s length. Her eyes, magnified by the thick polished lenses, darted like fish in an aquarium, and then she pronounced him looking fit but a little thin. “And that suit,” she added, clucking her tongue, “—it looks like you slept in it.”

“Yes, well,” he mumbled, at a loss suddenly, but holding his artificial smile (he
had
slept in it, three nights running), “business, you know. I hardly have time for anything but. And speaking of business”—with a
flourish—“ this is for you,” and he handed her the last remaining box of Per-Fo in the world.

Her mouth dropped. Her eyes went soft. And as traveling salesmen, juvenile stock peddlers and grandparents from Ohio surged round her, she took the garish pasteboard container from him and pressed it to her bosom like rare treasure. Three porters, burdened with her baggage, looked on numbly, watching this ritual with the impassivity of Indian fakirs. “Charles,” she gasped, struggling to summon breath sufficient to express the precipitous emotion of the moment, “oh, Charles, I’m so proud of you.”

In the cab on the way to the Sanitarium, while Charlie tortured his brain to come up with an even faintly credible explanation as to why he couldn’t help her in with her things, she elaborated. “I’m proud that you’ve chosen the field of health, Charles,” she breathed, her eyes shining with excitement as the dusk settled in around them. “I mean, dedicating yourself to the general good, while coincidentally making your way in the world. Why, it’s almost a crusade. Just think how many digestive systems Per-Fo will save from ruin…. I only wish your Morgans and your-Rockefellers had such humanitarian aims. I’m afraid the majority of our boosters and go-getters think of nothing but money. It’s a shame, really. A shame.”

Charlie nodded, forcing an inarticulate rumble of agreement from his larynx. He was thinking of money himself at the moment, wondering if he could somehow manage to hold off the stroke of doom long enough to get more of it out of her—love, gratitude and the Eighth Commandment notwithstanding. If Bender had taught him anything, it was this: never let mere scruples stand in your way. Bender had taken something soft in Charlie, something weak and yielding, something human, and held it over the torch of his cynicism till it blackened and shrank and grew hard as an ingot.

“And how is Mr. Bender?” Mrs. Hookstratten wondered, patting his hand and leaning forward to peer out the window, drinking in this new and glorious environment like a pilgrim come to the shrine. “Such a sincere man. And with such vision.”

Vision. Yes, he had vision, all right. Bender made the inventor of
the memory tablets look like a blind man. Right from the beginning, from the moment Charlie had been introduced to him at the odd soirée at Mrs. Hookstratten’s, a friend of a friend of someone in Philadelphia society, Bender had seen the entire jerry-built framework of Per-Fo rise up before him on rotten timbers, had seen all the suckers lined up out the door and across the countryside all the way to Battle Creek—and Charlie first in line—and he’d seen the day when the take would be sweet enough to pull the whole thing down. What Charlie wouldn’t have given for a little of that vision.

“Charles?”

“Huh?”

She let out a laugh. “Has business got you that distracted? I was asking about your partner, Mr. Bender: How is he?”

“Fine,” Charlie blurted. “Thriving. Couldn’t be better. He’s out of town at the moment, though,” he added, feeling the ground slip out from under him. “In St. Louis—looking after our accounts.”

“What a pity,” Mrs. Hookstratten murmured as the carriage turned up Washington Avenue and the lights of the Sanitarium came into view, showy and audacious, a six-story electrical blaze that set the twilit night afire. “I’d so looked forward to seeing him again—but, then, I suppose he’ll be back soon?”

“Soon? Oh, yes, sure—of course he will, of course. In a few days or so. Or a week. What I mean is, who can tell how long a sales trip will take—got to drum up business, you know. But he’ll be back. He will.”

If he was hedging, Mrs. Hookstratten didn’t seem to notice. She’d spotted the San now and was emitting a low gurgle of appreciation and grasping blindly for Charlie’s arm. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she cried, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve seen it so many times in pictures and on postcards. ‘A goodly temple upon the hill’—and it is a temple, isn’t it?” She was distracted in her excitement, thinking aloud about her glossitis, her shingles, her nervous itch (“I’ve scratched my arms and legs till I look like a skinned savage strapped to a totem pole or whatever you call those things”), and it gave Charlie a precious moment to work up an excuse for being unable to help her check in, find her room, arrange her things for her, stay to dinner, gossip, visit and tuck her in. The carriage swayed. The horses clopped. The lights grew closer.