Early Warning (11 page)

R
UTH BAXTER WON
Claire over the first day of secretarial school when she said, “You're from Usherton? Aren't you lucky! I had to come from Buffalo Center,” and without even pausing to think, Claire exclaimed, “Oh, you poor thing!” Ruth had a plan for every hour of every day. She was twenty now. She would dress perfectly, cultivating verve and style, until she was well out of the secretarial pool, and then she would cast about among the younger men in the lower reaches of management, and attain herself an ambitious husband exactly five years older than she was. By the time she was twenty-eight, she would have a house in West Des Moines, two children, a dog, and a charge account at Younkers. The ultimate goal was a membership in the Wakonda Country Club. If she and the future husband had to be transferred (sometimes that happened), Kansas City was preferable, St. Louis acceptable. The first step, getting a job, was easy as pie—they both ended up at Midwest Assurance.

Ruth, Claire had to admit, was even plainer than she was, or, rather, she had begun with fewer evident assets, though she didn't have to wear glasses. But once she had shaved and plucked and dyed and girdled and curled and sprayed, once she had modified her accent to make it less Minnesotan and more unidentifiable, once she had taught herself to react to everything any boss said as if it were electrifying, she seemed to be on her way, so Claire duly plucked and
painted and cultivated. She also took Ruth to her optometrist and had her choose Claire's new frames: “cat eyes,” black with gold along the upper curve. Claire's manner was not as arch and vivacious as Ruth's—she could not manage that—but by thinking of Henry and Rosa, she could manage some good-natured irony and a few amused observations.

The first reason for turning down the proposal she had from Wayne Gifford, who was twenty-seven and worked in Claims, was not, oddly enough, that she didn't especially like him; it was that she didn't want to tell Ruth that she had attained their common goal first. But the second reason, that she didn't especially like him, was good enough, too. For years she had thought that her main goal in choosing a spouse was that he not remind her of Frank, Joe, or Henry, that he remind her of her father, but not be a farmer. Wayne did not remind her of Frank, Joe, Henry, or her father—he was not good-looking, not nice, not smart, and he didn't seem to enjoy her company all that much. While she was ridding herself of Wayne, the fellow Ruth had her eye on, Ed Gersh, introduced her to Paul Darnell.

Paul Darnell was more than thirty, and he was a doctor. He had just opened an ear, nose, and throat practice. He was scowling, abrupt, and from Philadelphia. He hated Des Moines, hated Iowa, hated humidity, hated the Midwest, didn't much like being a doctor, and was vocally glad that ears, noses, and throats only rarely led to sudden death (influenza and scarlet fever he sent to the hospital, and throat cancer he sent to the oncologist). He planned to treat ear infections by day and pursue the passion that his father, also a doctor, had forbidden, by night—playwriting. He thought Claire was not at all plain. Her eyes were diamond-shaped; he took her glasses off and gazed at them. Her hands were slim and graceful. She had great ankles, and a twenty-two-inch waist, and she was funny. On their third date (for dinner, then
The Big Country
) he said, “I am perfect for you,” and thereafter proceeded as if she had said yes to an official proposal. He did not remind her of anyone she had ever met. Ruth said he was “a catch.”

Paul told her that, in the quiet backwaters of Des Moines, he could write in peace and comfort for ten years, then explode onto the New York scene (though not Broadway—never Broadway, which was far too corrupt to produce anything really meaningful). He talked in a
way no one else she had known talked—he ranted, argued, joked, and gave her compliments. He responded to each of her facial expressions as if she had said something. Claire thought that if he just wrote down half of what he said while he was saying it, he would have a play.

Ruth's idea was that you could tell your intended was getting closer and closer to proposing each time he added a regular date to his schedule. She had gotten Howie Schlegel, and now Ed, from Friday, to Saturday, all the way up to Sunday. Howie had dropped out after about three months, not ready for the pressure. Ed seemed to be holding up, though his family were not already members of the Wakonda Country Club, but over there in Davenport, where they were from, his father and his uncle did play plenty of golf on the public course.

Claire did not want to be spending her Sunday afternoons, or even every Friday evening, with anyone, so she and Paul suited one another, since he liked to have a lot of time to himself, but also to call her at the last minute and ask her out. He did everything abruptly. All of this Claire kept to herself. When Rosanna asked her whether she had any special “beaux,” she said she did not, and Rosanna just put her hands on her hips and got a look that said that she had expected this all along. But Rosanna had been married at nineteen and a mother at twenty, and Lillian was just the same, and even though Granny Elizabeth had been very cruel that day on the beach, well, in the end, was she any crueler than Ruth, who was always suggesting hairstyles and lipsticks? As long as Paul was sure they were going to get married, then Claire's job was to make best use of her present freedom. No, Paul was not a farmer, and did not remind her of her father, but he was attentive, and her goal was attained: since he was not like Frank, Joe, or Henry, she would not be like Andy, Lillian, or Lois.

—

ONE DAY TOWARD
the middle of May, Jim Upjohn called Frank at the office and told him to come after work to the Plaza. There was a man he wanted Frank to meet. Andy was in Iowa, visiting her parents, and Nedra was staying through the weekend, so Frank had been planning a rendezvous at the Grand Canyon with a girl named “Ionia” (really Effie, though Effie didn't know that Frank had looked
through her purse when she went to clean up the last time), but Jim pressed him, and so he went.

The man was an oddball, in the sense that he was wearing a very expensive suit, certainly made for him, but he was so impossible to fit that he looked terrible anyway. When he went to shake Frank's hand, his hand enveloped Frank's in a horny clamp even though he was six inches shorter. His hair marched around his red, shiny head in patches, and there was a quality of scaliness to his bald parts. His eyes were bright and suspicious. Jim said, “Dave, I want you to meet Frank Langdon. He might be the man you're looking for.”

“Not looking for a man,” said Dave (Dave Courtland, it was; Frank had heard of him, though he wasn't sure where).

“Are you looking for a woman?” said Frank.

“Not looking,” said Dave Courtland.

And Jim Upjohn said, “Well, you better be; otherwise, your kids are going to ease you out of there before you know it.”

Frank pretended this was not interesting. The Oak Bar had a self-conscious quality, Frank thought, as if it knew it was in a hotel and really wanted to be off on its own, not so accessible to out-of-towners. Jim ordered drinks for all of them—a martini for himself, a whiskey and soda for Dave Courtland, and a beer for Frank. If Frank was thirty-nine now, then Jim Upjohn was forty-four or -five, on a kind of plateau of self-assurance that came not only from wealth and not only from his war experiences, but also from considering himself a free thinker and a charitable man (who still sent money to the
Daily Worker
—try and stop him). Oh, and there was the fact that his fortunes, always prosperous, had risen on the postwar economy like a cork on a flood. He frequently made “wealthiest in America” lists, and only Frances Upjohn knew what the exact amount was. Probably because of Jim, Frank had had a very good year, promoted to VP in charge of development at Grumman, making a nice sum, and, thanks to Jim's tips, though he and Andy were not on any “ten most” lists, Uncle Jens was spinning in his grave. Every time Andy opened a brokerage statement, she said, “Do you think this is real money?”

Jim said, “Dave and I were just talking. I serve on the board of Dave's company, that's Fremont Oil—you know them, Frank—and I told him he needs to talk to you. He needs to talk to someone entirely outside of that world.”

“So you say,” said Dave.

Jim said, “This is what makes Dave such a great oilman. He is stubborn as a doorpost. It's a medical condition brought on by petroleum fumes.”

Frank said, “I know you recently discovered a big field in Venezuela.”

“How'd you know that?” Dave looked as though he might punch him.

Jim said, “I told you, Frank Langdon is a scout. He's got his eyes open twenty-four hours a day. Even when he's asleep. He was an army sniper in Italy during the war.”

“I thought the marines in the Pacific did that.”

“There were a few of us in Europe.”

“How many kills you get?”

“Twenty-six,” said Frank, “but one was a Jerry who asked me to do it.”

Now Dave actually looked at him, and Jim did, too—Frank had never told him this story. He said, “It was in Sicily. A German officer was being driven up the mountain, and they went over the edge. The driver was impaled on the steering wheel. The officer got himself out, and when we came up to him, he was just lying there. He tried to shoot himself and failed. When he saw us, he asked us to do it for him. He was the only one I ever saw up close. Seemed more like a murder in a way.” Frank spoke coolly.

“Missed both wars,” said Dave Courtland. “Too young for the first one and too old for the second one.” That would make him fifty or so, but he looked twenty years older than that. Frank said, “You start out in Texas?”

“Nah, Oklahoma first, then Texas. But the war effort drained those fields. Mexico looked good for about a minute, but I knew that Red, Cárdenas, was trouble before the big boys did. I had a feeling about Venezuela from the beginning. No roads, no nothing. We used to explore on foot, donkey if we were lucky. When that fellow who worked for Jersey was killed by an arrow while eating his eggs and bacon one morning, I just thought it was exciting.”

Frank nodded, then said, “And these days?”

“ 'Bout ten percent more civilized, but better than butting up against the Russkies.”

“That seems to be the problem,” said Jim Upjohn. “Dave's sons want to make a big investment in Saudi. Dave says better the devil you know.”

“Your sons are Hal Courtland and Friskie Courtland?”

“Friskie, yeah. Christened William Flinders.” Dave made a low, rough, loud sound in his throat that Frank decided was a cough, then said, “You know anything about the oil business?”

“Only what I read in the papers,” said Frank.

“See,” said Jim, “this is where you're making your mistake, Dave. You think that the oil business is different from any other business, and it's not. Real estate, airplanes, bombs, cookies, rutabagas—all the same. You identify the customers, you identify the product, and you bring the two together.”

Dave looked Frank up and down, then said, “The thing I'm not good at is getting along with people. I just seem to blow my top. You good at getting along with people?”

Jim said, “Frank gets along with everyone.”

Frank thought, Or with no one. And that was a pleasant thought.

The conversation ambled forward, Dave Courtland taking an intermittent interest in it, but also looking around the bar, staring at this customer and that one, and not always the females. Frank saw why Jim was after him to run Fremont: Dave was a kind of farmer, with oil as his crop. Proud that he hadn't gone to school after the age of twelve, proud that he'd taught himself everything he knew, but now confused at how often he felt adrift. Hal and Friskie (Harvard and Yale? Princeton and Dartmouth?) would have perfected their slightly condescending manner, and of course they wanted to invest in Saudi—they could hobnob with Europeans and Rockefellers and art collectors. Frank agreed with Dave Courtland that it was better to drill on your own side of the Atlantic.