Fortune's Hand

  Surprised, Robb looked at him. His ankle was resting on his opposite knee. There was a hole ready to pop in the sole of his shoe. His brown hair was thinning. He looked tired. Maybe he was older than Robb had thought. And just as Napoleon’s crow that morning had touched him with melancholy, now pity touched him. It must be a discouraging, dull existence, day after day to visit the troubled, the injured, the needy, and the cheats alike, then to haggle, persuade, and if possible, convince them to settle and sign. The awful sameness of it!

  And exactly as if his mind had been traveling in the same direction, Brackett said, “A man gets fed up, starting out every morning to do the same thing over and over.”

  Robb did not answer. Emotion had slipped into an atmosphere that had been impersonal. He was not sure how it had happened. He sat still, observing the other man, following his gaze across the rug, where dust motes swirled in a puddle of sunshine. Then he thought how the scene might appear to a person coming unexpectedly upon it: two young men in a forlorn room could be the subject of a Wyeth painting or an existentialist play.

  Brackett said suddenly, “Twenty-two. I’d give something to be twenty-two again, Robb. Tall, like you, with your muscles and your head of good wavy hair.”

  “Thanks for all the compliments, but you can’t be much older than I am.”

  Brackett smiled. “I can’t? Try forty. I only look younger because I’m thin.” He reached for a book that lay beside the lamp. “Sandburg’s Lincoln, Volume 3. You’ve read the first two?”

  “Yes, I get them from the library. My girlfriend’s the assistant librarian.”

  “I read the first volume. It boggles the mind. He came from nowhere, and look what he made of himself.”

  “Well, we can’t all be Lincoln.”

  The mournful tone had begun to trouble Robb. There was no point in it. This was an insurance adjustor; so let him adjust the insurance and be done with it.

  Once more, the other man’s mind seemed to have read Robb’s. He made an abrupt change of mood, raised his head, looked directly at Robb, and proposed, “How about this? I’ll figure out exactly what it will cost for three years’ law school tuition and living expenses at the state university. We’ll make a generous allowance for extras, clothes, medical expenses, and a little natural fun. You’ll sign the release, and we’ll end the whole business fair and square. How about it?”

  Robb was astonished. “I told you,” he replied, “I only want a lump sum for the accident. I’m here to stay. I love kids, and I’m going to enjoy teaching them.”

  “But you really wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “I dreamed of it for a while, yes, but it wasn’t possible, so I forgot about it.”

  “You didn’t forget about it. You know you didn’t.”

  There was silence.

  “And now it’s possible.” Brackett, with an earnestly wrinkled forehead, leaned toward Robb and spoke earnestly. “Take my offer. You can have the money by next week, no strings attached.”

  There was another silence.

  “And if you don’t want to use it for law school, you can use it for whatever you want. You can study music, travel to the Antarctic, or stay here in the place where you were born and be satisfied. Only I don’t think you will be.”

  Brackett picked up another book and read the title out loud. “De Tocqueville. Democracy in America.”

  Now Robb spoke defensively, almost angrily. “It’s a good place here.”

  “For many people, very good people, too, it is. But not for all people.”

  Why is he pounding me like this? Trying to influence my life? Of course he wants to close the case as quickly and as cheaply as he can. Yet I think there’s more to it than that. He really means some of what he says. He means well by me. You can see it in his eyes. He bears his own sorrows, the sorrow of lost opportunity, for one.

  Robb’s annoyance began to fade. In its place he was feeling confusion. You’ll have the money by next week. That meant a good many thousands of dollars, next week, instead of more money, maybe—in two, three, five years.

  He stood up, saying, “I need to think. I want to walk outside by myself.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll get some figures together while you do.”

  The day was bright, moist, and in full leaf the color of young lettuce. On such a day you were supposed to feel springtime energy. You were supposed to feel indomitable. Instead, as he went out through the back door toward the chicken yard and the garden patch, his legs felt weak, as if Brackett’s weariness had been contagious. He walked over to the fence and leaned upon it.

  Already there was a sense of desertion about this home place. Weeds had sprouted at the base of the bean poles. The hens pecked and clucked, poor simple creatures, unaware of the changes that were coming. He thought of his mother who had fed those hens and weeded those beans. He thought of her infected teeth. He thought of the rusting gasoline pump at the farm’s farthest edge and of his father’s crooked posture after the stroke. He thought of the path they had trodden all their lives, from here to the little town and back, rarely any farther, and then never really far.

  At college, walking under the trees, Lily and he had talked about their visions. Of course they had visions! Who did not? Lily was practical. Her mother was a widow who sewed for a living and knew the sour taste of poverty. It had taught her the prudent use of money. You sought a job and lived within its means. You had security. Who could argue with sound advice like that?

  Now all of a sudden his fists clenched and his heart ran fast. He was seeing himself in a new way. Perhaps he had talked himself into becoming a teacher because his parents were proud of the status. He had never been truly enthusiastic, not truly. And he saw himself as a dreary, elderly man standing before the rows of young faces, not giving them what they deserved. He had presented a false picture of himself, and it had been wrong of him. He would not be a good teacher. He wasn’t qualified. He did not love it enough.

  “I could be a good lawyer, though,” he thought aloud. “Law is a tool. There’s no limit to what you can do with it. Even make life easier, maybe, for people like my parents. It’s productive, it’s exciting. You’d never know what each day might bring. Oh, probably I’m being overly romantic about it, even naive, but why not? I may be impetuous, I probably am, but if I don’t try it, I’ll never know. And if I don’t do it now, I never will.”

  Brackett was spreading some printed forms out on the table. He looked up, questioning, when Robb came in. This was the moment: You stood on the diving board prepared for the high, perfect leap, felt suddenly the clutch of fear, but were ashamed to retreat.

  “I’ll take your offer,” he said.

  Brackett nodded. “A wise decision. You won’t regret it. Sit down, and I’ll show you. I’ve got your expenses figured out. If you agree with my figures, you’ll sign here, and we’ll be in business. All you’ll have left to do is get yourself admitted to the school.”

  At Lily’s house they were reading the law school’s catalog. From the corner where she was sewing in the lamplight, Mrs. Webster asked, “Robb, has the sale gone through?”

  “Yes, the farm went last Tuesday. For practically nothing, too. It was all mortgaged. I didn’t know. Dad must have had to do it after he had his stroke.”

  No one spoke. A parting with land, the living earth, brought a sadness unlike the loss of any other wealth. And Robb knew that the memory of its trees and seasons would stay with him always.

  “There’s a terrible accident,” he said. “A stranger walks in to talk it over, changes the direction of another man’s life, and walks out. Tell me, was I suddenly crazy, or wasn’t I?”

  “Why Robb, you’ve always had this in the back of your mind, and I’ve always known you had it,” Lily said. “You just didn’t think it made any sense for you, so you didn’t talk about it, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Webster spoke sharply. When she wanted to, Mrs. Webster could be very sharp indeed. “If you want my answer, Robb, I’ll
give it to you. Yes, it was a crazy impulse.”

  “Mother!” cried Lily.

  “That’s all right. Robb knows how I feel about him. I feel close, and that’s why I dare to speak out. You’ve thrown away a good certainty in exchange for the unknown, Robb. Besides, the man flummoxed you. Your parents were killed. And if not for a few extra inches of space, you’d have gone with them. You should have gotten a fortune out of it, and you took peanuts instead.”

  “Should have and could have are two different things, Mrs. Webster.”

  “You were flummoxed, Robb.”

  “Mother! We’ve been over this before. Anyway, I don’t agree with you,” Lily protested.

  “I’m not trying to make trouble,” her mother said more softly. “Who wishes the two of you any better than I do? You need to be married, that’s what. You’ve delayed long enough. It’s not healthy.”

  She is afraid I will make Lily pregnant, Robb thought, hurt her child. My God, hurt Lily?

  But in one way, Mrs. Webster was right. They did need to be together. Three years was too long to wait. He should have thought of that before. Somehow in the back of his mind that day, he had made the assumption—without thinking he had made it—that Lily would go along wherever he went. But when the law school acceptance had arrived and they had gone looking for an apartment in the city, they had found that rentals, even for the cramped quarters where law students lodged, were expensive. The “generous allowance” barely stretched to meet the most simple needs.

  “If you could get work up there—” Mrs. Webster began, but seeing Lily’s face, stopped.

  “I’ve told you I tried, Mother. It’s impossible for me, inexperienced as I am, to get a big-city job. I’m very lucky to be in the library here.”

  “We’ll manage,” Robb said. “A three-hour bus ride isn’t a world away. You’ll drive over through Marchfield where the bus stops on the highway. And sometimes you may want to take the bus up my way,” he added, not adding that they had already designated their meeting place at a motel halfway between home and the capital.

  Lily touched Robb’s hand. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be saving for our own place,” she said. “By the time you’re finished, we’ll be ready to start out together, and we’ll still be very young.” Her eyes were radiant. “Look here, there’s a course in environmental law. That sounds like your thing, doesn’t it? Here’s another.”

  Her forehead creased and her lips were pursed above the catalog. She looked like a serious child doing homework. I don’t deserve you, he thought. There isn’t a selfish bone in your body. No, I don’t deserve you, but neither do I know anybody else who does. And suddenly he was flooded with a love so tender that it was almost pain.

  At six in the morning at the end of August, the sun was on his right as he drove northward. He had rented a car for the day. In it were all his worldly possessions: photographs of Lily, his parents, and the old house; his clothes, bedding, and his books. There were not many of the latter, since books were expensive; a set of Shakespeare, some American histories, a history of the Second World War, in which his father had fought, and the collected works of his favorite poet, Stephen Spender, were all.

  He had expected to play the radio for company on the solitary drive, but sounds of any kind just now would grate upon his mood, which was a troubled conglomeration of wistful thoughts about Lily, of last minute doubts, of fears and prideful anticipation, all of which had seemed to settle themselves in his nervous stomach.

  He had not seen this particular stretch of road since the night of the accident, and now, as the fateful intersection neared, he would have done anything to avoid it. Since that was an impossibility he steeled himself, pressed on the pedal, and raced past it. “They didn’t feel anything,” he said aloud. “Everyone told me the same. The cops and the doctors told me. They didn’t feel anything.”

  Heat glimmered on the road ahead and on the fields alongside it, where cattle grazed under the brutal sun with hardly an island of shade where they might huddle for relief. Cruel slaughter was their ultimate fate. Mercifully—scant mercy—they did not know it.

  The land was so flat, in places he could see the horizon all about him, drawing a circle on the enormous sky. Then he knew for sure that he was speeding on a sphere that was itself speeding through space, and the sensation was so eerie that he had to turn to the radio for relief after all.

  The familiar thrum and twang of country music filled the silence for another hour. Then gradually the landscape changed: the straight, monotonous road curved upward through low hills and denser foliage. Rural acres became country estates; these became suburbs; and after a few more miles, the road would become an avenue into the heart of the city.

  Robb had not been in the capital for years. When he was twelve, he had been taken to see it and had had no reason to go there again until his visit and application to the school of law. Now, to his adult eye, these structures, the capitol, the federal-style courthouses, columned and pedimented like the Parthenon, had an impressive grandeur that the twelve-year-old eye most certainly had missed. Suddenly, as he drove through the Sunday morning downtown, there sounded a peal of church bells, bringing as suddenly a half memory of an ancient stanza about Bow Bells and “Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London.” The country hick was approaching the great city.

  Well, here I am, he thought with amusement, stuffed with unrealistic hopes. And yet, why not?

  The university stood at the other end of the broad central avenue. It looked like almost every university described in books and pictured on film: a cluster of dignified stone Gothic buildings in a setting of lawns and rich old trees. Passing it, Robb was once more amused at himself for feeling already a possessive loyalty.

  And yet, why not?

  CHAPTER TWO

  1973

  “Hard to believe this is our third year,” said Eddy Morse.

  The aged frame house on Mill Street had five apartments, and in every one of them, the air conditioning was humming. But still there were times when, craving some real air, people would rather spend an evening hour on the front steps in the heat.

  “I don’t know how you can stand the summers in this lousy climate,” he continued, wiping his face.

  Eddy was from Chicago as well as from Oregon, where his divorced father lived, and also from Washington, where his numerous extended family lived.

  “You forget I’m a Southerner,” Robb replied.

  “Forget? How could I? Fried chicken and grits.”

  “Also pecan pie. You dig into those right enough when Lily sends me one.”

  Eddy grinned. His face was likeable, round-cheeked with a round-tipped, bulbous nose to match his rounded shoulders. He was as tall as Robb but burly and seemed to be shorter. He was everybody’s friend, sincerely, believably so. On that memorable first day, he had been the first to greet Robb as he was unloading his car.

  “Here, I’ll give you a hand,” he had said. “Are you the upstairs or the down? There’s one left on each floor.”

  “Number two.”

  “Across the hall from me. I’ve already filled my refrigerator, so come have a beer after we empty your car. I guess you know there’s parking in the rear.”

  “I don’t have a car. This is rented for the day.”

  “Well, it’s only a short walk to the school. I can always give you a lift if you want one, anyway.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice of you to offer.”

  “Why the hell not?” And there came the nice grin again.

  Eddy always wanted to talk, but now seeing Robb with a book in hand, he fell silent. Robb was indeed reading, although being tired, he was not concentrating; no doubt as a result of the summer’s overwork, he was allowing his thoughts to wander.

  The summer had been extremely successful. He had spent it doing research for a professor who was preparing a textbook. His résumé was superior: He was an editor on Law Review, and his grades were at the top of the class. He was
not exactly a grind—he would hate to be known as one—but he was not extremely sociable either, which was due in part to his need to watch every dollar, and in part to Lily.

  Whatever free time he had was spent with her, usually at the halfway motel. Physically, it was a musty place, and as a setting for lovers, it was barely ideal. It was tawdry. But going to Lily’s house was worse than nothing. There they had to sleep apart, he on the sofa and she in her own room next to Mrs. Webster’s. When Lily came up here, it was a late night’s journey. The last year, he thought now, only the rest of this year to go.

  And yet in so many ways, the life here had been so good. It was cheerful, orderly, and very, very busy. The cramped apartments, all occupied by law students, were adequate, and the tiny kitchen quarters were new and clean. The students made their own dinners, which generally consisted of spaghetti, being cheap and easy to prepare.

  Eddy Morse was the exception. He ate very well, with visible results, and very expensively.

  “Come on out,” he liked to say. “I feel like a steak tonight.” Or he might “feel like Italian.”

  He always tried to find a companion. It was Robb who, after the first dinner, the price of which had appalled him, refused to go again.

  “I can’t afford to,” he had told Eddy frankly.

  “You can’t? Oh, I didn’t know. I had no idea—”

  “What? That I had no money?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  Yes, probably when you owned a new Chrysler coupe, had a first-class stereo in your room and cash in your pocket, you didn’t think about it.

  “Well, come anyway, Robb. I’ve enough for the two of us.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Robb, don’t be embarrassed. Don’t be foolish. We’re going to be friends, and I like your company.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it, but I still can’t do it.”