Chapter 5 - Propositions
Several days passed following Ethan and Cedrick’s excursion into the cold while searching through warehouses for Clavius Turner. Cedrick opened his coffers further and employed private security guards to patrol his grounds. None of those sentries found any trespasser no matter how Cedrick berated them for such ineptitude. Several of those sentries went missing themselves. When Ethan voiced concern that the disappeared guards may have been hurt, or worse, in their duties, Cedrick had laughed and called his grandson foolish for not recognizing how Clavius Turner had, surely, recruited those missing sentries to his cause, a cause the old man believed was nothing less than his tower’s destruction.
Cedrick spent the afternoons following his search for Clavius Turner attending to the business expressed upon the pages piling upon his desk. He would often stop suddenly in his work to strain his ears and listen to the wind howling outside his window. His burning eyes would close. He would turn silent and still. Then, Cedrick would hear the pounding of a hammer or a whirl of a drill, and so know that his tower still strained to stretch another level higher.
Ethan was trying to catch enough of his grandfather’s attention to share suggestions for further streamlining shipping costs when a knock on the tower’s door made any efforts to concentrate on business impossible.
Cedrick stood from his desk and smiled at Ethan. “That’s one hell of knock to echo like that all the way up the stairs. Maybe one of our sentries has finally captured something to show us.”
But it was no sentry who stood across the threshold after Ethan opened the doorway for Cedrick. A thin, rail of a man stood outside the foyer. Stitches criss-crossed the man’s frayed jacket where the fabric had been repeatedly mended. What patches remained uncovered by beard or grime looked frozen on the man’s face. A bomber cap fell crookedly over thick eyebrows, and the man’s grin was a rampart of missing teeth and fetid breath. The rest of the man smelled of gin and urine, and Ethan grimaced upon realizing vomit and blood accounted for the stains on the man’s corduroy pants. A hand bandaged in cloth and missing two fingers, Ethan thought no doubt on account of the cold, extended an envelope across the threshold.
“God sake, boy, close your mouth and take the envelope,” Cedrick hissed at Ethan. “This man’s obviously been sent by Clavius Turner. Now grab it so that miserable cur slobbering in the doorway can limp back into the cold.”
The man simply turned and walked back towards the warehouses after Ethan took the envelope. Cedrick once more perplexed Ethan by simply letting the man go. Ethan had thought his grandfather might at the least shout a vulgarity at the man’s back. Instead, Cedrick's eyes burned upon his grandson, and he snapped his fingers to rip Ethan out of his stupor.
“Back up the tower,” Cedrick snatched the letter and was again ascending the stairs in his motorized lift by the time Ethan remembered who he was. “We’ll read Clavius Turner’s missive in my high chamber’s comfort. We’ll need more brandy to get the blood flowing before we read what that cur has to say.”
Cedrick locked his high chamber’s door the moment Ethan entered. Cedrick grunted before swiping his arm across his desk and dumping the piles of papers onto the floor and into chaos. Ethan cringed to consider the trains, trucks and planes at that moment threatened by such a gesture. Satisfied that nothing remained that might distract him, Cedrick slumped into his chair and ripped open the envelope’s wax seal. The old man’s eyes were nearly on fire as they moved across the letter’s contents.
“I’ll put the flame to every one of those brick warehouses before I agree to this letter. I’ll set the torch to this tower if I have to.”
Ethan held up his hands. “Take a breath. Think what you’re saying.”
“Read it yourself then!” Cedrick flipped the letter into Ethan’s lap.
Ethan downed a second brandy before he squared his eyes onto the letter’s script.
Cedrick Pyle,
Yours has been a noble cause. Any of mortal kind’s endeavors, however, can only stretch so far, might rise only so high, before they must fall to the elements that eventually lead to any effort’s ruin. Your tower is no exception to this law that the Creator, in either wisdom or folly, doomed upon our world. I know you realize that such a maxim cannot be eluded, no matter all the forces you have summoned in the raising of your tower. I know, that however you wish to deny it, that the winds remind you of your inherent frailty with their howl. I know the winds remind you that every step onwards and upwards grows more taxing with each new level. Even the thickest and most ancient of forest trees must one day fall.
I am prepared to offer a proposal that might delay the toppling of your tower for many, many years to come. I know you to be a wise man, a man aware of both his limitations and his advantages. Only such a man could build an empire such as yours. I know that as such a man you are privy to the influences my kin wield upon mankind from the safety of our seclusion. I know you will consider most carefully the design I here proffer to you.
Though the blood I inherit curses me with such pale ugliness, my pursuits task me to become a beacon for the miserable. My reach must always expand if I hope to keep decay from gaining its first foothold upon me. Your tower offers me a means to grow my influence. From its pinnacle, my whisper shall reach multitudes. For that, I would preserve your masterpiece, for its height would serve as the key to unlock my entrance onto the larger, waiting world.
A bell will tonight toll within your yard. Go to your lofty window, and from there look upon the spire we have constructed to cap your tower’s final level. Though your tower will no longer rise, and though an end to its growth means that your tower will no longer sustain you, know there can be taken a solace in in the fact that the tower will still stand. Do not let pride make you cringe to think it will be me who then sits within the tower’s highest chamber. Your work will still maintain a place for your grandson, will hold for him a purpose through which he can achieve his greatest potential. Thus, the tower will in a sense still know your blood.
Make no mistake. Your tower shall crumble should you deny my offer. You strive to build one level more on this very day, but I know you feel your tower’s lean. I know you hear my minions gnawing upon the stones of your foundations. They pause now for me. But it would not take them much longer to taste their last bite and topple all you have devoted such a long life to build.
I close by thanking you for your toil in the construction of such a lofty and wonderful stage for my beacon. I look forward to presenting my spire to your consideration on this night, and I look forward to your resignation from this good earth.
Yours,
Clavius Turner
Ethan’s hands trembled as he set the letter back upon his grandfather’s desk. Neither of them moved. Cedrick strained his ears, but he heard no striking hammer nor whirling drill.
“I’m afraid the the construction crew has abandoned their work,” Ethan’s whisper broke the long silence.
Cedrick’s eyes continued to blaze. “We’ll find a new crew first thing tomorrow morning. I hope the pause in construction will not be too long.”
Ethan did not reply. Instead, he poured himself another brandy and did his best not to brood upon Clavius Turner’s letter resting on his grandfather’s desk. He felt surrounded by mad men. He felt powerless before whatever jeopardy his instincts promised was approaching. He did not understand why he felt such fear, but he recognized how badly he wished to run. He felt powerless while the tower swayed.
Cedrick’s shoulders slumped. His eyes dimmed.
“Stay up here and keep me company tonight, Ethan. We’ll look together upon what Clavius Turner brings us,” Cedrick sighed as his hands shook. “If you would be so kind to your grandfather. Please.”
Ethan realized his grandfather had just cracked.
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