Captains and The Kings (18 page)

And here, as always, lay the embrace of jasper and aquamarine hills beaming as innocently as though man had never been born and was not a lethal menace to them, and lifting their iridescent flurries of leaf to the sky, as if glorifying a God who cared not in the least for them, but conspired with His human race to cancel it all. "Well, here we are," said Mr. Healey. They had arrived at a large cluster of housed oil wells and Joseph could hear the rhythm, like mechanical heartbeats, of machinery. The primeval stench was thicker here as the decayed and oleaginous vitals of ancient animals and plants poured to the surface after millions of years of quietude, to give wealth to a race who had never known the riches of their being. Who am I to quarrel with God? thought Joseph with bitter cynicism. He followed Mr. Healey into one of the housed oil wells. He saw the great wheels being turned by leather belts and the sweating attendants and heard the monotonous and imbecile pound of the pumps as they sucked up the black blood of the earth. He saw the donkey engine being fed sedulously by young men, naked to the waist. He smelled the smoke and the acrid odor of oil, and the wood which was being burned to move the wheels and the pump. He looked up at the tall wooden chimney which spewed out billows of black clouds. The workers had the intense and dedicated appearance of priests, their faces and their bare arms stained with streaming wet moisture as black as coal, their brows sooted. They looked at Mr. Healey and their white teeth glittered in their young faces. They were just as avid as he, but they were also subservient. "Hundred barrels so far today!" one of them shouted at Mr. Healey. "And more to come, sir!" Mr. Healey nodded. He said to Joseph, "It's all surface oil; just pump it out. Maybe lakes of it. Perhaps the whole damned world is filled with oil. Never can tell." He smiled widely at Joseph and his small dark eyes squinted. "Want to work here, for eight dollars a week or keep your hands clean and make more?" Some of the young men working about the well were not more than fifteen years of age and Joseph felt old as he watched them. "I heard tell," said Mr. Healey, "that John Rockefeller said a man's worth a dollar a day from the neck down but there ain't no limit to what he's worth from the neck up. Muscles don't get you anywheres, Irish. Brains do." "I knew that when I was in nappies," said Joseph. "I thought this was all settled today." Mr. Healey inclined his head. "Just thought I'd show you, if you had any funny idecs." He chewed on his cigar, ruminatively. Then he grasped Joseph's arm. "Ain't never been married. Don't have no sons. I aim to make you one I never had. But you be square with me, hear?" "I told you, I'd never betray you," said Joseph, and Mr. Healey smiled. "And remember what I told you, too, Joe. All men are Judas. Every man has his price. Mine's higher." They returned to the town and Mr. Healey took Joseph into a three- story building near the square. The wooden steps were gritty and dusty; the halls were narrow and lightless. Splintered doors lined them, and Mr. Healey flung one open. "Here's where I really conduct my business," he said. "My house is just for important folks." The door opened on what Joseph immediately saw was a series of small adjoining rooms. The dirty windows were shut tightly and the air was heavy with heat and smoke, and if these rooms had ever been cleaned in a decade it was not evident. The floors were filthy with tobacco spittle, though cuspidors were placed here and there, and the walls were a dull brown and the ceilings were of dark-brown tin. Every room held a roll-top desk stuffed with papers and a high bookkeeping desk with a stool, and a dilapidated chair or two. Mr. Healey's own office was little better but it did have a long table as well as a desk and a comfortable leather chair. The light that seeped in through the gray-smeared windows was like light struggling through fog. Joseph also noticed that the windows were barred, as if the offices held prisoners, and that the one door leading into the series of rooms was steel-sheathed on the inside and had a number of complicated locks. Garish calendars hung on some walls, and Mr. Healey's room held a bookcase full of law books. But what caught Joseph's interest at once was not so much the decrepit and ugly and polluted atmosphere of the rooms as the inhabitants of them. He saw at least fourteen men there, and not one was over forty, the youngest being in his early twenties. However, they had various things in common, so that they seemed of one family, one breed, one blood and mind: They were all tall, slender, elegant and deadly and dispassionate, and their faces were as unreadable as his own. They were richly dressed, though they had discarded their long coats because of the heat. All wore fawn or gray or discreetly plaid pantaloons, and their immaculate white shirts were ruffled, their cravats smooth-folded perfection, their waistcoats beautifully embroidered, with watch chains across their lean middles; their fluted cuffs showed no stain or gritty deposit. Their jewelry was most decorous, unlike that of the flamboyant Mr. Healey, yet obviously expensive, and their black boots were brilliantly buffed and narrow. Their figures were the figures of gentlemen, or actors, and they moved with the sure grace, restrained and economical, of the professional assassin. Their eyes might have been of different colors, their features might not have been identical nor their heights exact, yet Joseph caught the impression of oneness and affinity, which had no need for many words or explanations. Handsome though they were, and smooth and polished, they exuded cold menace. Joseph recognized them as the sort of quiet men who had waited in the depot at Wheatfield, the men who had been pointed out to him as gamblers and other unscrupulous men who lived by their wits. They did not move as Mr. Healey entered with Joseph, though those who had been sitting rose and stood. They said nothing. They did not smile. It was as if the king wolf had come among them and they waited for his orders, which would be obeyed instantly and without question. Some of them were smoking the long thick cigars Mr. Healey favored, and they removed them from their mouths and held them, in their long and extraordinarily aristocratic hands. Their black boots twinkled in the muted light from the dirty windows, but did not stir. Their attitudes were supple and quiet and attractive. Their thick hair, of many different shades, was fashionably long, covering their napes, and marvelously burnished and sleekly waving. With the exception of neat sideburns they were all cleanshaven, and all complexions were uniformly pale and unblemished and displayed minute care. From them all exuded faint perfumes and the scent of expensive hair tonics. They were incongruous in these close and filthy and crowded rooms, like patricians, or parodies of patricians, caught in noisome alleys or lurking fitfully in dark doorways in dangerous sections of a city. But Joseph felt the incongruity only briefly, and then he intuitively understood that this, indeed, was their proper milieu. Mr. Healey boomed affectionately, "Lads, I want you to meet this here spalpeen, Joe Francis he calls himself, and he's going to help keep the books while I'm off making money for all of us!" He laughed happily. "Then I won't have to strain my eyes over all those details. You just tell him. He'll boil it down. Smart, and sure he is. Fine hand, too. He'll give me in an hour what takes me, now, a whole day to get into my head," and he tapped his rosy and glistening temple. His attitude was affable and easy. "My manager, you can call him. Kind of young, but he ain't young in his mind, are you, Joe?" None said a word but Joseph was suddenly the target of narrowed and intent eyes and merciless speculation. If any man present felt the matter was incredible no expression at all appeared on his face. Here was a youth, much younger than the youngest, meanly dressed, shabby and patched, with no ruffled shirt, no watch chain, no silken cravat, no jewelry, his thick boots dusty and broken, his pantaloons of a coarse brown cloth and stained, and with a pallid, ginger-freckled face that betrayed his immaturity, and surely, thought Joseph, they must feel some surprise. If they did, they did not reveal it. No one moved, and except for their roving and sharply observant eyes they might have been elegant statues. Joseph was to learn later that none of these men ever questioned or doubted Mr. Healey's decisions or wisdom, or ever protested or ever ridiculed them privately. He ruled them absolutely not because he was rich and potent and their employer, but because wolves, themselves, they recognized and honored a more puissant wolf who had never, as yet, made a mistake. Had they once discovered a weakness in him, a hesitancy, a stupid blunder or an uncertainty, they would have pulled him down and destroyed him utterly. Not from malice or greed or thievery would they have done this at once, and instinctively, but because in his self-betrayal he had betrayed the pack and endangered them. He would have no longer been master, and for abdication they knew but one remedy: execution. Joseph waited for a protest, for a subtle smile or one half-hidden, for a wink of disbelief, or a murmur. But there was none. It was a long time before he understood that a few had recognized him almost immediately -not a criminal like themselves-but as powerful and more dangerous even than the most dangerous among them. Moreover, Mr. Healey had chosen him and they never were dubious about his methods or decisions. He had proved himself too often to them, and they were certain he would continue to prove. Joseph saw no signal, but the men came together in a thin-hipped queue and held out their soft gamblers' hands to him and bowed a little. He took their hands. He still felt the incredulity of the whole affair. There were a few men here old enough to be his father, yet they lowered their tall heads in respect. They felt his lack of fear for them, but if they guessed it was because he did not know exactly what he should fear, they did not show it. However, a number of the more experienced silently decided to test this newcomer very soon to see if Mr. Healey had, at last, made a stupid mistake. Joseph heard names mentioned by Mr. Healey's jovial voice, but he did not really listen. Later, he supposed, he would know them by name, all of them. If he did not, it did not matter. What was important was what they could teach him and tell him. However, he did observe that Mr. Healey, still smiling like the sun but with cold blank eyes, drew two of the older men aside and spoke to them almost inaudibly, and that once or twice he made a ruthless chopping motion with his jeweled hand. He suspected that he was the object of these quiet conversations and it annoyed him, then he shrugged mentally. Of what importance was it? If he failed, then he had failed. If he succeeded, then he would be on his way. He determined not to fail. A man who refused to fail was a man who did not fail. Once he had read an ancient Roman saying, "He is able who thinks he is able." I am able, said Joseph to himself. I dare not be anything else but able. A young man gracefully offered him a cigar, but Joseph shook his head. He looked at the man and said, "I do not smoke. I never intend to smoke. I don't want to waste my time and my money." Mr. Healey overheard this and sauntered back, beaming and chuckling. "And that, boyo, is just my sentiments, too. But everybody to his own pizen, I say." He said to the company, "Joe, here, this miserable young spalpeen, is eddicated. He reads books. Now, lads, don't hold that agin him!" and he held up his pink palm in a parody of defensiveness. The gentlemen dutifully laughed. "I don't hold with book-learning as such," Mr. Healey continued. "Softens a man's brains and makes him a fool. But it done the opposite with Joe, this Irisher. It toughened him. Made him ambitious, like. Taught him what things was all about, it did. And he's got an Irish head on his shoulders and I'll tell ye this, lads, you don't beat an Irisher at any game. Not ever, not once. Don't I know it, being Irish, myself? We burn like peat but like peat we never just flare up; we keep on burning until there ain't nothing left. And Joe here don't like whiskey. If there's one mortal thing bad for an Irisher it's whiskey, though I ain't found that out for myself!" He beamed and patted his enormous paunch. "But I don't drink the booze when I'm working, and you know my sentiments about that, too. No whiskey in these offices. Pistols yes, but no whiskey. And no hangovers tolerated. This is just for Joe's information, lads. And now, I want Joe to have my office, beginning tomorrow, and my desk, but not my table. That's mine. He'll be on hand at seven in the morning." He looked at Joseph, then indicated the man nearest him. "This here is Mr. Montrose. We never call each other by Christian names, Joe. Just Mister, and God knows if their monikers is the ones they were born with. Don't matter, anyway. Mr. Montrose will take you to the shops tomorrow morning and buy you clothing fitten my men." "Not unless I can pay for it myself," said Joseph. Mr. Healey waved his cigar. "That's understood. Get off your high horse, Joe," but he was pleased and looked at the others with a self- congratulatory smirk. He took Joseph by the arm, nodded to his employees, and led the young man out into the gritty corridor. "Finest lads in the world," he said. "Smart as turpentine, too. Don't fear God or man, or the police. Just fear me. I reckon there's not one but police are looking for them somewheres. Maybe like you, Joe, eh?" Joseph said, "No police are looking for me, Mr. Healey. I've told you that before. Nor am I running away from anyone, nor have I ever been in jail. Nor will I ever be." "No shame in once being in jail," said Mr. Healey and Joseph at once knew that his employer spoke from experience. "Finest men in the world, been in jail. No disgrace on them, I always say. There's better men been in jail than ones never been there, I'm thinking." The air was blessedly cooler and cleaner than the air in the offices and Joseph breathed of it deeply. There were hollows of bright gold in the tall trees and the western sky was deepening into a bluish purple in which small flecks of rose floated. Bill Strickland was waiting in the surrey. His attitude was as still and as removed as an Indian's, and Joseph wondered if there were not Indian blood in him as well as Anglo-Saxon of a degenerate sort. Certainly he had the capacity for infinite patience and immovability. They drove home, Mr. Healey placidly smoking and relaxed. But Joseph could feel him thinking, and thinking intensely and with absolute precision. A soft and
benevolent smile touched Mr. Healey's fat gross mouth, behind which he thought and thought and made plans. Joseph did not speak. He knew that Mr. Healey had temporarily forgotten him and that he had compartments in his mind which he closed when he thought out some problem or made some plan. He, Joseph, had just this genius and he respected it in others. A man whose mind idly wandered was feckless and of no importance. They arrived at Mr. Healey's house. The tall thin upper windows blazed like fire in the increasing sunset. The lawns appeared greener and thicker than ever, and the trees glittered with fresh and blowing gold. But for some reason he could not explain to himself Joseph felt a sudden desolation at the sight of the fortress-like house, as if no one lived there at all, and it was hostile in its isolation. There were neighboring old houses on the same street on their own vast lawns, yet Joseph had the eerie conviction that they were not aware of Mr. Healey's house, and never saw it. He looked up at the hills, which were turning violet in the evening light and they seemed far and cold to him, unaware also. It was these mysterious insights which had plagued Joseph all of his almost eighteen years, and which were to plague him, despite angry rationalizations, all his life. He thought, neither nature nor God seem to know or care anything about us, though they care about other things, such as the earth. His Irish soul was struck by an inexplicable sadness, a sense of total alienation, a sense of exile, a sense of heartsick yearning which had no words. "Now, we'll wash and then we'll have our supper," said Mr. Healey, who apparently never experienced any of these emotions. " 'Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.' George Washington." "Benjamin Franklin," said Joseph. Mr. Healey's bright smile became fixed. "Smart, ain't you? Who cares who said it? True, ain't it?" They went into the hall with its immense sofas and chairs and rugs. Mrs. Murray was there in her black crinoline and her ruffled white apron and cap. She made a little grudging curtsey to Mr. Healey, but gave Joseph a malignant glance. "Supper in ten minutes, sir," she said. "It's late." He laid his hand genially on her shoulder, which was as broad as his, and her formidable face softened for an instant. "Miz Murray, ma'am," he said, "you'll pardon me, I know, and begging your pardon, too, but when I come down you hit the gong. Not before." She curtseyed again, but gave Joseph a murderous look as if it were all his fault. "It's a hard day we had," said Mr. Healey to his housekeeper, as he began to mount the stairs with Joseph. "Got to forgive us businessmen." She snorted then disappeared down the hall. Mr. Healey laughed. "I'm always kind, that I am, to folks who work for me, Joe. But there's a limit. You get familiar like with them and first thing you know they're running you and you not running them. It hurts me, Joe. I'd like to love everybody, but it don't do. Got to have authority. Got to show them the nine-tails once in a while." Mr. Healey went to his own quarters in the front of the second story and Joseph walked down the hall to his own room. He was about to open his door when he heard a weak and fretful voice behind the door of the green room, and a soft young female voice answering. He said to himself, It's none of my business any longer, what happens to Haroun. I have my own self to consider, and no involvements. But still he hesitated. He remembered what he had felt outside this house a few minutes ago, and then with an imprecation against himself he went to Haroun's room and opened the door, throwing it open angrily as if driven not by his own will but by the power of a stupid stranger. Vivid red sunlight poured into the room and Joseph noticed at once that this room was as beautifully serene and as austere as his own, but in green shades. Haroun was lying in a magnificently carved poster bed made of some black wood, and he was resting on plump white pillows. Beside him sat little Liza, holding his hand and soothing him and talking to him in the gentlest and sweetest of voices. They were both children, and Joseph, in spite of himself, thought of Scan and Regina. Liza jumped to her feet in obvious terror when she saw Joseph, her thin flat body quaking in its black cotton uniform, her starved face tremulous. She shrank; she tried to make herself invisible, and cowered. She dropped her head as if awaiting a blow. But Haroun's fevered face, the huge black eyes shining, brightened with delight. He was ominously sick; he appeared to have dwindled in size and shape. He held out his dusky hand and quavered, "Joe!" Joseph looked at Liza. He said, "Thank you for taking care of-for taking care of-" She lifted her head a little and glanced with fearful timidity at him. "I just been talkin' to Mr. Zeff, sir. I didn't do no harm. I'll bring him his supper," and she fled from the room like a meager small shadow in apprehension of violence. Joseph watched her go, and his face darkened and tightened. You fool, he said to himself, what does it matter? These are of no consequence. They ought never to have been born. He turned to Haroun and felt umbrage because Haroun, though now conscious, was evidently suffering and it was no affair of Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh's, who had been intruded upon. Haroun still held out his hand and Joseph was forced to take it. "I don't know how I got here, Joe," said Haroun. "But I reckon you did it." "It was Mr. Healey. This is his house, not mine." "But you did it," said Haroun with the most absolute conviction. "He'd never look at me 'cept for you." "Well, get well, Haroun, and you can repay Mr. Healey. I did nothing." "You saved my life, Joe. I remember the train." It was then that Haroun looked up at Joseph with a glowing look, a deep and intense devotion, a total trust, a passionate fervor. It was the look which Bill Strickland gave Mr. Healey, unquestioning, dedicated. It was not to be shaken, that faith. It was beyond reason. "I am your man," said Haroun, in a whisper. "For all my life." Joseph pulled his hand from Haroun's. "Be your own man, for life," he said in a harsh tone. But Haroun still glowed upon him, and Joseph almost ran from the room.