To Sail Beyond the Sunset

  Mr. Smaterine gave a smile that displayed his false teeth. “We are always sorry to lose an old friend, Mrs. Smith. Has our service been unsatisfactory?”

  “Not at all, sir. But I wish to move my account to a bank closer to my home. It is not too convenient to come all this way downtown, especially in this cold weather.”

  He picked up my passbook, glanced at the address in the front, then at the current amount farther on. “May I ask where you propose to transfer your account, Mrs. Smith?”

  I was about to tell him, when I caught Nelson’s eye. He didn’t actually shake his head…but I’ve known him a long time. “Why do you ask that, sir?”

  “It is part of a banker’s professional duty to protect his customers. If you wish to move your account—fine! But I want to see you go to an equally reliable bank.”

  My wild animal instincts were aroused. “Mr. Smaterine, I have discussed this in detail with my husband”—I had not—“and I do not need to seek advice elsewhere.”

  He made a tent of his fingers. “Very well. As you know, the bank can require three weeks’ notice on savings accounts.”

  “But, Mr. Smaterine, you yourself were the officer I dealt with when I opened my account here. You told me that that fine print was just a formality, required by the state banking act, but that you personally assured me that any time I wanted my money, I could have it.”

  “And so you can. Let’s change that three weeks to three days. Just go home and write us a written notice of intent, and three business days later you can close your account.”

  Nelson stood up, put his hands flat on Mr. Smaterine’s desk. “Now just one moment,” he drawled loudly, “did you or did you not tell Mrs. Smith that she could have her money any time she wanted it?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Johnson. And lower your voice. After all, you are not a customer here. You don’t belong here.”

  Nelson did not sit down, did not lower his voice. “Just answer yes or no.”

  “I could have you evicted.”

  “Try it, just try it. My partner, Mr. Brian Smith, this lady’s husband, asked me to come with Mrs. Smith”—Brian had not—“because he had heard that your bank was just a leetle bit reluctant—”

  “That’s slander! That’s criminal slander!”

  “—to be as polite to ladies as you are to businessmen. Now—Do you keep your promise to her? Right now? Or three days from now?”

  Mr. Smaterine was not smiling. “Wimple! Let’s have a check for Mrs. Smith’s account.”

  We all kept quiet while it was made out; Mr. Smaterine signed it, handed it to me. “Please see that it is correct. Check it against your passbook.”

  I agreed that it was correct.

  “Very well. Just take that to your new bank and deposit it. You will have your money as soon as it clears. Say about ten days.” He smiled again, but there was no mirth in it.

  “You said I could have my money now.”

  “You have it. There’s our check.”

  I looked at it, turned it over, endorsed it, handed it to him. “I’ll take it now.”

  He stopped smiling. “Wimple!”

  They started counting out banknotes. “No,” I said, “I want cash. Not paper issued by some other bank.”

  “You are hard to please, Madam. This is legal tender.”

  “But I deposited real money, every time. Not bank notes.” And I had—nickels and dimes and quarters and sometimes pennies. Once in a while a silver cartwheel. “I want to be paid back in real money. Can’t you pay me in real money?”

  “Of course we can,” Mr. Smaterine answered stiffly. “But you will find, ah, over twenty-five pounds of silver dollars quite cumbersome. That’s why bank certificates are used for most transactions.”

  “Can’t you pay me in gold? Doesn’t a great big bank like this one carry any gold in its vaults? Fifteen double eagles would be ever so much easier to carry than would be three hundred cartwheels.” I raised my voice a little and projected it. “Can’t you pay me in gold? If not, where can I take this to change it for gold?”

  They paid in gold, with the odd change in silver.

  Once we were headed south Nelson said, “Whew! What bank out south do you want? Troost Avenue Bank? Or Southeast State?”

  “Nellie, I want to take it home and ask Brian to take care of it.”

  “Huh? I mean, ‘Yes, Ma’am. Right away.’”

  “Dear, something about this reminds me of 1893. What do you remember about that year?”

  “Eighteen ninety-three—Let me see. I was nine and just beginning to notice that girls are different. Uh, you and Uncle Ira went to the Chicago Fair. When you got back I noticed that you smelled good. But it took another five years to get you to notice me, and I had to slide a pie under you to manage it.”

  “You always were a bad boy. Never mind my folly in ’98; what happened in ’93?”

  “Hmm—Mr. Cleveland started his second term. Then banks started to fail and everybody blamed it on him. Seems a bit unfair to me—it was too soon after he was sworn in. The Panic of ’93, they called it.”

  “So they did and my father did not lose anything in it, for reasons he described as pure dumb luck.”

  “Nor did my mother, because she always did her banking in a teapot on the top shelf.”

  “Father accidentally did something like that. He left Mother a four-months allowance, in cash, in four sealed envelopes, each with a date. He took with him cash, in gold, in a money belt. And he left money behind—whatever it was beyond what we needed—in a lockbox, again in gold.

  “Nelson, he told me later that he had not guessed that banks were about to fail; he did it just to annoy Deacon Houlihan—Deacon ‘Hooligan,’ Father called him. Do you remember him? President of Butler State Bank.”

  “No, I guess he died without my permission.”

  “Father told me that the Deacon had remonstrated with him for drawing out cash. The Deacon said it was poor business practice. Just leave instructions to pay Mrs. Smith—Mother I mean—so much each month. Father should leave his money where it was and use checks—the modern way to do business.

  “Father got balky—he’s good at that—and consequently the bank failures never touched him. Nelson, I don’t think Father did business with any bank after that. He just kept cash in a lockbox in his surgery. I think. Although with Father one is never sure.”

  We had a conference about it when we got home, Brian, me, Nelson, Betty Lou. Nelson told them what had happened. “Getting money out of that bank was like pulling teeth. This boiled shirt certainly did not want to part with Mo’s money. I don’t think he would have done so if I had not made a loud, obnoxious nuisance out of myself. But that is only partly the point. Mo’, tell ’em about Uncle Ira and a similar case.”

  I did so. “Dears, I don’t claim to know anything about finance. I’m so stupid that I never have understood how a bank can print paper money and claim that it is just the same as real money. But today felt like 1893 to me…because it is just the sort of thing that happened to Father just before the banks started to fail. He didn’t get caught by bank failures because he was balky and stopped using banks. I don’t know, I just don’t know…but I felt uneasy and decided not to put my egg money back into a bank. Brian, will you keep it for me?”

  “Here in the house it could be stolen.”

  Nelson said, “And if it’s in a bank, the bank can fail.”

  “Are you getting jumpy, Nel?”

  “Maybe. Betty Lou, what do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to draw out my thirty-five cents and find a Mason jar and bury it in the back yard.” She paused. “And then I’m going to write to my father and tell him what I’ve done and why. He won’t listen—he’s a Harvard man. But I’ll sleep better if I tell him.”

  Brian said, “Some others also we must tell.”

  “Who?” said Nelson.

  “Judge Sperling. And my own folks.”

  “We don’t want to shout
it from the house tops. That could start a run.”

  “Nel, it’s our money. If the banking system can’t afford to let us draw out our own money and sit on it, then maybe there is something wrong with the banking system.”

  “Tsk, tsk. You some kind of an anarchist or something? Well, let’s get busy. The first ones in line always get the biggest pieces.”

  Brian was so serious about it that he made a trip back to Ohio, expensive though it was for him to travel without a client to pay for it. There he talked to Judge Sperling and to his parents. I do not know details…but neither the Foundation nor Brian’s parents were hurt by the Panic of 1907. Later on we all saw the United States Treasury saved by the intervention of J. P. Morgan…who was vilified for it.

  In the meantime the assets of Brian Smith Associates were not buried in the back yard…but were locked up in the house, and we started keeping guns.

  Correction: So far as I know, that was when we started keeping guns. I may be mistaken.

  While Brian went to Ohio, Nelson and I tried a project: articles for trade journals such as Mining Journal, Modern Mining, and Gold and Silver. Brian Smith Associates ran small display advertisements in each of these each issue. Nelson had pointed out to Brian that we could get major advertising free by Brian writing articles for these journals—each of them carried about the same number of pages of articles and editorials as it did of advertisements. So instead of a little bitty one-column three-inch display card—no, not “instead of” but “in addition to”—in addition to advertising Brian should write articles. “Lord knows that the stuff they print is dull as ditch water; it can’t be hard to write.” So said Nelson.

  So Brian tried and the result was dull as ditch water.

  Nelson said, “Brian old man, you are my revered senior partner—Do you mind if I take a swing at this?”

  “Help yourself. I didn’t want to do it, anyhow.”

  “I have the advantage of not knowing anything about mining. You supply the facts—you have; I have them in my hand—and I will slide in some mustard.”

  Nelson rewrote Brian’s sober factual articles about what a mining consultant’s survey could accomplish in a highly irreverent style…and I drew little pictures, cartoons, styled after Bill Nye, to illustrate them. Me an artist? No. But I had taken Professor Huxley’s advice (“A Liberal Education”) seriously and had learned to draw. I was not an artist but I was a competent draftsman, and I stole details and tricks from Mr. Nye and other professionals without a qualm—without realizing that I was stealing.

  Nelson’s first attempt retitled Brian’s rewritten article as “How to Save Money by Skimping” and featured all sorts of grisly mining accidents—which I illustrated.

  The Mining Journal not only accepted it; they actually paid for it, five dollars, which none of us had expected.

  Nelson eventually worked it into a deal in which Brian’s by-line (ghosted by Nelson) appeared in every issue, and a quarter-page display for Brian Smith Associates appeared in a good spot.

  At a later time a twin of that article appeared in The Country Gentleman (The Saturday Evening Post’s country cousin) telling how to break your neck, lose a leg, or kill your worthless son-in-law on a farm. But the Curtis Publishing Company refused to dicker. They paid for the article; Brian Smith Associates paid for their display cards.

  In January 1910 a great comet appeared and soon it dominated the evening sky in the west. Many people mistook it for Halley’s Comet, due that year. But it was not; Halley’s Comet came later.

  In March 1910 Betty Lou and Nelson set up their own household—two adults, two babies—and Random Numbers had a bad time trying to decide where he lived, at The Only House, or with his slave, Betty Lou. For a while he shuttled between the two households, riding any automobile going his way.

  In April 1910 the real Halley’s Comet began to be prominent in the night sky. In another month it dominated the sky, its head as bright as Venus and its tail half again as long as the Great Dipper. Then it got too close to the Sun to be seen. When it reappeared in the morning sky in May it was still more magnificent. On May fifteenth Nelson drove us out to Meyer Boulevard before dawn so that we could see the eastern horizon. The comet’s great tail filled the sky, slanting up from the east to the south, pointing down at the Sun below the horizon, an incredible sight.

  But I got no joy from it. Mr. Clemens had told me that he had come in with Halley’s Comet and he would go out with it…and he did, on April twenty-first.

  When I heard—it was published in the Star—I shut myself in our room, and cried.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  A Dude in a Derby

  They took me out of my cell today and led me, cuffed and hoodwinked, into what was probably a courtroom. There they removed the hoodwink and the cuffs…which left me the only one out of step; my guards were hooded and so were the three who (I think) were judges. Bishops, maybe, they were wearing fancy robes with that sacerdotal look.

  Other flunkies here and there also were hooded—put me in mind of a Ku Klux Klan meeting, so I tried to check their shoes—Father had pointed out to me during the recrudescence of the Klan in the twenties that those hooded “knights” showed under their sheets the cracked, scuffed, cheap, and worn-out shoes of the social bottom layer who could manage to feel superior to somebody only by joining a racist secret society.

  I could not use that test on these jokers. The three “judges” were behind a high bench. The court clerk (?) had his recording equipment on a desk, his feet under it. My guards were behind me.

  They kept me there about two hours, I think. All I gave them was “name, rank, and serial number”—“I am Maureen Johnson Long, of Boondock, Tellus Tertius. I am a distressed traveler, here by misadventure. To all those silly charges: Not guilty! I demand to see a lawyer.”

  From time to time, I repeated “Not guilty” or stood mute.

  After about two hours, judged by hunger and bladder pressure, we had an interruption: Pixel.

  I didn’t see him come in. Apparently he had come to my cell as usual, failed to find me, and went looking—found me.

  I heard behind me this “Cheerlup!” with which he usually announces his arrival; I turned and he jumped into my arms, started head bumping and purring, while demanding to know why I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

  I petted him and assured him that he was a fine cat, a good boy, the best!

  The middle ghost behind the bench ordered: “Remove that animal.”

  One of the guards attempted to comply by grabbing Pixel.

  Pixel has absolutely no patience with people who do not observe correct protocol. He bit the guard in the fleshy part of his left thumb, and got him here and there with his claws. The guard tried to drop him; Pixel did not let go.

  The other guard tried to help—now two wounded. But not Pixel.

  That middle judge used some language quite colorful, got down and came around, saying: “Don’t you know how to grab a cat?”

  —and proved at once that he did not. Now three wounded. Pixel hit the deck, running.

  I then saw something that had been known to me only through inference, something that none of my friends and family claimed to have seen. (Correction: Athene has seen it, but Athene has eyes everywhere. I mean meat-and-bone people.)

  Pixel headed straight for a blank wall at emergency full speed—and just as he seemed about to crash headlong into it, a round cat door opened in front of him, he streaked through it, and it closed instantly behind him.

  After a bit, I was returned to my cell.

  ▣

  In 1912 Brian bought an automobile, a car—somewhere during that decade “automobile carriage” changed to “automobile,” and then to “auto,” and then to “motor car,” or “car”—the ultimate name for the horseless carriage, as it could not get any shorter.

  Brian bought a Reo. Nelson’s little Reo runabout had proved most durable and satisfactory; after five years of hard wear i
t was still a good vehicle. The firm used it for many things, including dusty drives to Galena and Joplin and other towns in the white metals area, and records were kept and Nelson was paid mileage and wear-and-tear.

  So when Brian decided to buy a car for his family he bought another Reo, but a family car, a five-passenger touring car, a beauty and one that I could see was safe for children, as it had doors and a top—the runabout had neither. Mr. R. E. Olds called the 1912 Reo his “Farewell Car,” claiming that it was the best car that he could design with his twenty-five years of experience, and the best that could be built, in materials and workmanship.

  I believed him, and (far more important) Brian believed him. It may have been the “farewell” Reo but, when I left Earth in 1982, Mr. Olds’s name was still famous in autos, in “Oldsmobile.”

  Our luxury car was quite expensive—more than twelve hundred dollars. Brian did not tell me what he had paid, but the Reo was widely advertised and I can read. But we got a lot for our money; it was not only a handsome, roomy touring car but also it had a powerful engine (thirty-five horsepower) and a top speed of forty-five miles per hour. It was never driven at that speed, I think—the speed limit in the city was seventeen miles per hour, and the rutted dirt roads outside the city were quite unsuited to such high speed. Oh, Brian and Nelson may have tried it—opened the throttle wide on some freshly graded, level road out in Kansas somewhere; neither of them believed in bothering ladies with things that might worry them. (Betty Lou and I did not believe in worrying our husbands unnecessarily, either; it evens out.)

  Brian outfitted the basic car with all sorts of luxuries that would make it pleasant for his wife and family—a windshield, a self-starter, a top, a set of side curtains, a speedometer, a spare tire, an emergency gas tank, etc. The tires had demountable rims and only rarely did Brian have to patch a tire beside the road.

  It did have one oddity; its top could predict the weather. Put the top down; it rained. Put the top up; the sun came out.

  It was a one-man top, just as the ads claimed. That one man was Briney—assisted by his wife, two half-grown girls, and two small boys, all of us straining and sweating and Brian nobly repressing the language he wanted to use. But eventually Brian figured out how to outsmart that top: Leave it up all the time. This insured good weather for motoring.