Chapter 2

I went home and took myself a nap after finding out that Ellen wasn't at home. It was sometime after six that afternoon when my mother woke me up.

"Jackie, you need to get up now, there's a phone call for you. Someone named Art Driscoll."

I was still groggy from just waking up, but I didn't remember anyone named Driscoll. I got up right after Ma left though and threw on the work pants I'd been wearing earlier, before heading out to the wall between the living room and the kitchen, where the phone was.

"Hello?"

"Jackie, this is Art Driscoll, from over in Niantic. I got your phone number from a mutual friend. Mr. Bennett?"

Mr. Bennett was really my father's friend. More of an associate than a friend, I'd say. He and my father exchanged favors from time to time. My father usually did things that Mr. Bennett wanted done. In return for him doing this, Mr. Bennett helped our family with things we got into that needed either legal help or a certain amount of political influence. If Mr. Bennett had given Art Driscoll my phone number, it must have been approved in advance by my father.

"Mr. Bennett, the attorney?" I wanted to make sure we were talking about the right person.

"That's him all right. The thing is, after he called me, I got to thinking about how you might be interested in helping me with the same kind of problem that you've been helping Billy Blackwell with. I heard you've been going great guns with selling off firewood all around these parts. Thing of it is, I'm kind of in between buyers for my little logging operation right now. I've been told that you've been moving quite a few cords of firewood with your own crew. If you tell me what you need, and how much you might be willing to pay for it, I'm sure we can come to a nice little arrangement."

While I liked the fact that he sure didn't beat around the bush when it came to telling me why he had called me, I knew I needed to speak with my father before discussing anything further with this Art Driscoll person. It wouldn't do for me to make any plans before he and I had conferred together. I saw my father poised with his knife and fork above his supper plate. He made no bones about the fact that he was listening in on my end of the phone conversation.

"Listen Art, things are a little up in the air around here right now. If you'll give me a number I can reach you at, I'll try to call you back in a few days, and maybe we can discuss this some more. As things stand at this moment, Billy and I are trying to work out something that would prevent me from going elsewhere to purchase my firewood. This might change though, and if it did, I'd certainly want to talk with you some more. You say it was Mr. Bennett who called you and told you what I'd been doing?"

"Called me this afternoon, about four o'clock it was. It surprised me that he even remembered who I was, or that I'd taken over my daddy's logging crews after he passed last year. He gave you a very good recommendation, Jackie. Told me you were a real go getter. That's what I've been looking for. My old man was the outside salesman. A lot of his contacts were buried with him. I'm having all I can handle just trying to keep my little operation afloat over here without having any end user's committed to buying what I've been cutting. I sure hope you'll find out pretty quick whether or not you and Billy are going to work something out. If it comes down to bidding you the best price, I'm pretty sure I could beat any offer he's likely to be giving you. We do all our own harvesting from our family lands too. Some of that smaller stuff when we're out clearing would be just perfect for sawing up into fireplace logs. I could let you have a whole lot of it on the cheap."

I got his phone number and promised he'd hear from me, one way or the other, before the next Friday evening. After I got off the phone with him, I went back to my bedroom to put more clothes on. I could talk on the phone without having my shirt or shoes on, but I couldn't go sit at the supper table like that. I wanted to eat, but I wanted to have that talk with my father even more. I needed to find out just what he was up to.

After I was dressed and seated in my place in the kitchen, my mother brought me some corned beef, boiled potatoes, and cabbage, which just happened to be one of my favorite meals. I didn't try to start the conversation with my father. I knew if I dug in and started eating, he'd get around to explaining whatever he thought I needed to know. I hadn't finished squashing down my potatoes and adding butter to them and the cabbage before he started right in talking.

"Mr. Bennett mentioned to me that he knew someone who was in a very similar line of work to what Billy does. I'm glad he called the man and put the two of you into touch. That's as far as its ever going to go though. At least it is as far as you're concerned. Billy and Theresa don't need to know that. When I talked to Mr. Bennett this morning, and filled him in on what's been happening with you two fools, he kind of came down to your way of looking at things. He agrees that Billy might not be able to keep his business things together, even if he did try to get someone else to sell his firewood for him. What I don't understand is why you pay Billy more than you'd pay anyone else, Yutch? From what I've been hearing, and I've really been calling and asking around, you're paying him more than the retail price people usually pay around here."

"A lot of that other firewood is pure crap, pop. What Billy sells me is prime hardwoods. By the time he loads it on my truck, it's already cut, sized, dried, and ready to be put into a fireplace. I never get green wood, or something that won't burn for a long time once it's lit up in a furnace or over a fireplace grate. Billy cares about quality, takes pride in what he's doing. He doesn't mix in junk with the good stuff either. Our buyers, they appreciate getting prime firewood. Mostly because the other vendor's are usually out there trying to put something over on them."

"What about the guy who just called you?"

"I don't have any idea. To get one, I'd probably need to ask Billy to look at what he's hoping to sell me. I can't see Billy being that accommodating about something like that." My father laughed, a slightly snorting sound coming from his nose when he did.

"The sum and total of what we're going to do is to let Billy get wind of the fact that this Art guy has called you, and that he seems anxious to get you to do some business with him. You aren't ever going to do any business you understand, so just get that out of your head right away. If Billy thinks you've decided to not just walk away from your business, Mr. Bennett and I both think he'll go back to seeing things the same way you see them."

"Why this sudden change in attitude, pop? Before, all you were telling me was that I was trying to hurt Billy and Theresa. What made things different for you?"

"It wasn't that simple, don't kid yourself. The thing is, this was the only idea we could come up with that kept things the same way as they are now, where both of you are doing well, and making some decent money for yourselves. Your Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret, they both agree that you two clowns need to be joined together at the hip to make this thing of yours stay working. Plus, your mother and Ellen are both convinced that you need to get yourself married and settled down some before you end up doing something stupid like you'd probably do if you didn't have someone like Ellen to help you decide things."

"Is that right, Ma? You think I'd be doing something stupid if I waited a few more years before getting married?"

My mother was standing over close to my father, waiting to see if anyone wanted something else to eat before she fixed herself a plate and sat down. She'd only do this after she knew that all of us were already finished eating.

I'd been watching her reactions while my father had been talking. She'd been nodding right along with him when he'd been talking about me and Billy, and about Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret, but she'd stopped nodding when he'd started talking about her and Ellen.

My mother made a face, but she refused to say anything to contradict what my father was telling me. I knew this meant she was in agreement with him, about all the main things at least. As far as I knew, my mother wasn't particularly anxious for me to be going off and getting married to anyone.

I'd been slipping her more than a few dollars every week, ever since I'd started making my own way in the world. Even back when I'd just been caddying, I'd always given her five or ten dollars a week, telling her to get something for herself. Usually, Ma and my Aunt Margaret went off to one of the churches to play bingo, at least one or two nights every week. I knew my father wasn't giving her any money to be doing that. I'd also heard her in the kitchen before, talking to my Aunt Margaret about how I was too young to be settling down like I was planning on doing.

"Pay attention when I'm talking to you, God damn it. You have the attention span of a gnat. What we've decided, Mr. Bennett and me, is to light a little fire under Billy's ass. I'll get the word out to him tonight, that we're all worried that you've decided to strike off on your own, in spite of what we've all been telling you. We think he'll decide to go back to toeing the mark as soon as he finds out you might be thinking about going into business with some of his direct competition. Billy's no dummy, you know? He'll be able to figure out what's better for him in the long run."

It was apparent, just from watching the looks on my father's face as he was telling me all this, that he still believed he was the person pulling all the strings in both Billy's and my life. Billy and I were both grown men, and he was treating us like we were still kids, wet behind the ears.

What I'd been thinking, all along, was that Billy and I needed to change the way we dealt with each other. I couldn't keep letting him try to dictate the terms of our business dealings. If that were true for me and Billy though, that was doubly true as far as it concerned both of us and my father. Here he was setting himself up again as the best judge of what Billy and I should be doing.

I didn't say anything to him after that. When I was through eating, I went out to my truck and drove over to Ellen's house. This time, she was home, and we sat in the living room with her parents for a few minutes before heading out to have some private time for ourselves.

Things with Ellen's mother and me had never been too good. She thought I was way beneath Ellen when it came to class, culture and breeding. It galled her that Ellen didn't share her opinion of me. Ellen liked to say things to rub her mother's nose in the fact that she and I were physically intimate.

I might have had my doubts about how anxious my mother might or might not be to see me married to Ellen, but I didn't have any doubt at all about Ellen's mother. She never tried to hide her disapproval of me. I never tried to hide the fact that her opinion meant little or nothing to me.

We didn't spit every time we came into each other's presence, but we didn't try to disguise the obvious truth that we didn't like each other either. Fortunately, Ellen's father and I got along quite well. Between him and Ellen, they kept a sort of uneasy truce from erupting into all out war.

"Jackie, Ellen was telling us that you want to call off the wedding because you're soon to be out of work?" Mrs. De Paul was smiling widely when she said this, obviously hoping I would confirm what she'd heard.

I let Ellen have her full minute of intense glaring at her mother before I answered her question.

"I thought about doing that. It seemed like it would be the only decent thing I could do. Of course, that was before Ellen told me that you and Mr. De Paul have plenty of money yourselves already, and lots of extra room in this big old house. When she reminded me that we could always move back into her old bedroom if things ever get too tight for us, I stopped worrying so much. We'll probably be all right for awhile ourselves though, as long as Ellen doesn't get herself knocked up too soon, and lose out on that waitress job she's been looking into. I'm not that old fashioned you know, it wouldn't bother me at all to be living off of Ellen's wages if I needed to do it. As far as living here goes, all we'd need to change would be to get a lock put on that bathroom door so you wouldn't keep barging in on us when we're playing together in the shower."

Ellen and her father laughed. Mrs. De Paul got up and left the living room. We waited a minute to see if she'd be coming back or not, then we left to go out for a drive.

"Poor Mommy. She loves planning our wedding, but she hates the idea of me marrying you. I still don't know why she doesn't see how perfect you are for me. Wouldn't it be perfect if I ended up getting pregnant as soon as we got married? She'd hate that more than anything. I wish we could sneak back to the house and listen to what she's telling Daddy right now. He's going to be in so much trouble because he was laughing at what you told her. Poor Daddy!"

"My father has been plotting with a friend of his to try to get Billy and Theresa to stop trying to run me off. I guess some other people have figured out that what I've been saying would happen might be right. They've decided that Billy and I should keep working together."

"That's good, right?"

"Good that we should keep working together, but bad that people are treating us like kids who need to be forced into doing what the grown ups want. I'm getting tired of having so many people thinking they can tell me what to do."

"You shouldn't let anyone make you do anything you don't want to do, Jackie. Except for me, of course, but I'm going to be married to you, so you know I'll only want what's best for us."

Ellen and I went over to this place I knew and parked for awhile. Ever since we'd first started doing things, Ellen had turned into a real hot number. She had less patience for waiting than I did. I hoped it wasn't just a phase she was going through. I loved her enthusiasm. She still loved role playing games, even now when we were actually doing things together.

I didn't bring her back home until just past midnight. She had bribed and coerced me into putting two big Hickey's on her neck, one on either side, right under her ears. Well, bribed in the sense that she'd promised me she'd give me a blow job if I gave them to her. Coerced, because she told me if I wouldn't put them on her she'd get someone else to do it. After I gave them to her, she told me she'd only been bluffing. I'm not sure I believed her.

I spent most of my time over the weekend thinking about what had already happened, and about what my father was doing. In some ways, I was ready to just give everything up as far as my business was concerned. I really liked Billy and Theresa, a lot, and, even though I had some hard feelings about what they were trying to pull, they were still family, and people that I was used to rooting for, not against.

I knew my father was trying to do what he thought was best for all of us. I didn't like the idea of him manipulating things around in order to get his own way with Billy. This was really just something that was between Billy, Theresa and me. If Billy was forced to back down because of what my father was arranging, then he and I were even less likely to be able to work out something permanent that we could both live with. It was really only the two of us who could decide how we needed to treat each other.

I had my own ideas of how we should treat each other, but first I needed to gain Billy's respect in order to get him to look at what I thought was fair with an open mind. I couldn't get that respect I needed as long as he still considered himself superior to me.

It was so ingrained in him, this cocky air of superiority he walked around displaying. For so many years he'd gotten what he wanted because all of his peers were afraid of him. He'd gone unchallenged for so long, simply because he'd been thought to be unbeatable. Being tough had always been the only way he'd ever gotten any respect. He had used that to make a place for himself among his peers. That had worked when we'd been children.

We were no longer children. It wasn't still okay to settle arguments with our fists or our feet. I knew we couldn't just walk out to the back of the farm and decide things with our fists. It didn't matter which one of us would win if we had a fist fight. If we were going to be working together successfully, there needed to be an environment where the best ideas won out. I wanted to do what was best for all of us, not have to go along with the demands of someone who had only proven that he was a lot tougher than everyone else.

Saturday evening, after I came back home, I'd made up my mind about what I needed to do. I called Billy. I made sure to talk loudly enough so my father could hear what I was telling Billy on the telephone.

"Billy, this is Jackie. Do you know a guy named Art Driscoll?"

"I heard about this already, from your father, Jackie. I guess this means you're going ahead with what you were threatening?"

"No. I'm calling to let you know I'm not going to do anything to compete with you. You can have it all, Billy. I don't think you'll end up with anything better by going it alone, but I won't be doing anything to hurt your chances of succeeding. You need to let me know if you're interested in buying my trucks or not though. I'm going to need that money for when I start school."

"Uncle John said you were talking to Art. Didn't he offer you a good enough deal?"

"I haven't called him back yet. When I do, I'll tell him I'm not interested. This wasn't something I set up. My father did it with Mr. Bennett. They wanted to make us stop fighting about this. They figured you'd knuckle under as soon as you knew I was planning on selling someone else's wood."

"This was Uncle John's idea?"

"His and Mr. Bennett's. They think we're still kids, that they can manipulate us into doing what they want."

"Theresa wants to know if you're still going to be getting married or not?"

"Not right away. Ellen's always been used to living in big houses, having nice clothes to wear. She doesn't think she'd miss having that, but she would. I'm going to be living kind of hand to mouth for a few years, until I either graduate and get a good job, or until I come up with another business idea that I can start on a shoestring budget. When I do get married, I don't want to still be poor."

"Listen, Jackie, maybe we can still find some way to work this thing out? Theresa and me, we never wanted to make it so you wanted to stop working with us. We just thought we could all agree to make some changes, to make things fairer. We've been talking about things a lot lately, and now, maybe we're starting to think that things weren't as far out of line as we first thought they were. When we found out you were talking to Driscoll, Theresa and I both realized where that would leave us. Even if you don't start buying his wood, now that he's thinking along those lines, Art is going to find somebody else to go out and start to compete with us. You were right about how us selling all that wood is what allows us to outbid all the local competition. What we were thinking now is what might happen if one of the big outfits decides they want to get into taking some of their clearing cuts and start selling their own firewood to the heating and oil distributors? We couldn't compete with anyone big. We don't have the resources to do it. Now we know we need to try to make hay now, while we aren't faced with that kind of competition."

"I've thought of that too, but, from what I've seen so far, these independent distributors don't like or trust any of the big guys. They're more like us, guys who aren't afraid of a little work. I think most of them like throwing their trade my way because they know my business is even smaller than theirs. Anyway, it's going to be all your problem now, Billy, not mine. I don't want to be in any business where I'm not at least equal to everyone else involved."

"That's just bull shit, Jackie! How can you say you aren't our equal when you're the one making more than we are out of this whole deal?"

"There are lots of ways to not be equal, Billy. For instance, having someone telling you that you have to do what they want, or else they'll run right out and replace you. How is it being equal when someone can threaten to replace you any time they want to?"

"You wouldn't listen when we tried to get you to be more fair with us. Besides, you're the one who said you could buy your wood from somewhere else and save some money. Where would that leave us then?"

"It leaves you right where you were before I bought that truck from Uncle Donald and started buying wood from you. You don't like it that I'm making money. You think you should make it all. I've got some news for you Billy, if I wasn't making money selling your wood, I wouldn't spend so much of my time doing it. I make the money I make because I found something that people think they need, something they're willing to pay my price for. I'm not making my money because I made you discount the cost from what you'd normally charge Joe Shit the ragman for that wood. I'm making it because I went out and found some people who would pay me the price I needed to get to make it worth spending my time and energy to sell and deliver it. They decided that paying my asking price was a good deal. It left them in a situation where they could pay me what I needed, and still make enough money reselling the wood to their own customers."

"You make enough that it wouldn't kill you to share some of that with us. Theresa doesn't think this logging business is going to last forever. We need to put something away for the time when there are no more lots that need clearing. Right now, we're getting by okay, but what happens if I get hurt, or if we can't find any new jobs to bid on?"

"Get some insurance, or else start living on less than what you're making. That's how the rest of us protect ourselves, Billy. I don't understand why you and Theresa think you should suddenly get to be my partners in order to solve your security fears? Why aren't you asking the people who let you clear their land to take less for that? You don't do that because they'd tell you to pound sand if you did. All I can figure is that you're like my old man, and you think I'm still some child. Maybe you believe you can come to me and take anything I have away from me, just like you used to do when we were kids."

"That isn't what I think, Jackie. This isn't taking, this is just us asking you to be a little bit fairer with us."