The Road To Ruin

43

OF COURSE STAN MURCH was the driver, but when it came to just driving around from place to place, that was usually Kelp. Tiny wasn’t physically suited to the task, and nobody was eager to see John behind the wheel. So, a little after five that first full day on the job, Thursday, June 16, it was Kelp who slid into the driver’s seat of his recently acquired Yukon, with Stan in the copilot’s seat and John in back; but not back the way he’d been back in the monster station wagon. This time, if he wanted, he could lean forward and rest an elbow on top of the front seat and partake in the conversation.

Except, this time, there wasn’t any conversation. It was a short run from Hall’s big white house across the compound past mostly empty buildings, and they all spent that time with their own thoughts, reacting to a full day of more or less honest employment.

For Kelp, the experience had been an eerie one. He’d expected to show up, have to bear with some kind of overbearing guy, and just hunker down and wait for the auto removal. Instead of which, he’d been thrown off from the very beginning by the guy’s decision not to hire him after all.

He couldn’t have that; he needed to be here with the crew. So it meant he first had to convince Hall that he really did need a secretary, and then by God act like one, persuade Hall of his value by doing things that Hall would like.

And that led to the second surprise; he didn’t find Monroe Hall a bad guy at all. The exact opposite, in fact. Hall was so surprised and pleased and grateful that Kelp was actually going to restore his good name—as though by now Monroe Hall had a good name to restore—that he was like a puppy getting his first bone. His admiration and gratitude were so intense it made Kelp redouble his efforts, reach out to the surrounding community, stay calm and resilient through all the rebuffs from the people he phoned—and you’d think people working for charities would be more charitable, somehow, but no—and actually work to make an opening here and there that a contrite Monroe Hall might somehow someday be able to crawl through.

In fact, by the end of the day, Kelp found himself a little sorry he wouldn’t be able to stick around long enough to finish the job. (The finish, of course, the spectacular finish, would be the Monroe Hall Cup, added to some national pro-am golf tourney. Sure he could do it. Every golfer in the country paying his club dues from his corporate account would look at Hall and say, “What the hell, forgive and forget. Mighta been me.” And it mighta been.)

So Kelp was silent because he didn’t have anything negative to say about Monroe Hall, and he had the feeling positive statements about the guy wouldn’t go over so well with this crowd. So what he did, he followed the old folk wisdom: If you’ve got nothing bad to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.

The run to the green house where Chester had once lived was a short one, and when they walked in there was a smell in the house that might have meant the furniture was being refinished but was actually Tiny in the kitchen, making everybody’s dinner. They all trooped in, to view the unprecedented sight of Tiny in two aprons, overlapping, with a meat cleaver in one hand and a long wooden spoon in the other, with a lot of big pots and pans hissing and snarling on the stove. What he looked mostly like was some darker version of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. “Soups on at six,” he told them.

Looking doubtful, John said, “We’re having soup?”

“No,” Tiny told him. “It’s what you say. ‘Soup’s on.’ It means food. Don’t talk to me now, I don’t want no distraction. I’ll talk to you when we eat. I got good news and better news.”

Kelp said, “I figured, if you wanted a ride from the guardshack, you’d a called me.”

“My shift didn’t start yet,” Tiny said. “That’s parta the news. Outa my kitchen.”

So they got out of the kitchen, and went to the living room, where Stan said, in a very quiet voice, “Suppose we could go out to eat?”

“No,” Kelp said. “Nobody refuses Tiny’s hospitality.”

“I think I’ll take some Pepto-Bismol ahead of time,” John decided.

•

And then it was good. It wasn’t your ordinary stuff, but it was good. Real tastes, but not too sweet, not too sour. There was lamb, in chunks; there was bacon, not too crisp; there were home-fried potatoes, with some kind of tasty oil on them; there was swiss chard, boiled up and spread with some kind of sauce that tasted sort of like chutney; there were biscuits, so light and fluffy you had to put butter on them to keep them from floating away. And there was not just beer, but stout, to tie it all together.

There was no talk at the table for quite some time. It was Kelp who first came up for air, saying, “Tiny, this is great. What is this? This is great.”

“It’s Tsergovian,” Tiny told him. “It’s from the old country. It’s how my people used to eat in the old days, when they had food.”

John said, through a full mouth, “Then I’m surprised they ever left.”

“Well, there were a lotta days,” Tiny said, “when they didn’t have food. So that’s why they come here, before my time. The food wasn’t as good over here, but it was around every day.”

Stan said, “I wouldn’t mind this food every day.”

“Which brings up the question,” John said, through another mouthful of food, “when do we do what we come here for.”

“Which is the good news and the better news,” Tiny said, “I told you I got. I didn’t want to disturb you from your eating.”

“Well, I’m done now,” Kelp said. “Whoo.”

“Save a little room,” Tiny advised him, “I got pumpkin pecan pie for dessert.”

Everybody moaned, and Kelp said, “Tiny. Tell me that isn’t the good news.”

“No,” Tiny said. “But we gotta eat this pie.”

“Maybe for breakfast,” Stan suggested.

Tiny considered that and, to everyone’s relief, nodded. “That could work,” he said. “Okay, the news and the news. The good news is, the new hire in security gets the shit detail.”

They looked at him. Kelp said, “That’s the good news?”

“The shit detail,” Tiny said, “is guard duty at the main gate, midnight till eight in the morning. All by myself until six A.M., when a couple day guys show up.”

“Wait a minute,” John said. “You’re gonna be alone on the gate all night?”

“Midnight to six.”

Stan said, “Then we’re outa here,” and Kelp felt a little pang. He’d thought he’d have a few days anyway to get Hall shaped up for his comeback.

But Tiny said, “Not right away. Tonight, clear sky, big moon, all the stars. Tomorrow night, heavy cloud cover. No rain, but also no moonlight, no starlight.”

John said, “So tomorrow night. Good. But first we gotta find the cars.”

“That’s my better news,” Tiny said. “While I was down there today, picking out my uniform—a very nice brown, a little tight in the shoulders, but for two nights I can live with it—I come across a map they got there of the compound. On that map is marked where every one of Hall’s cars is stashed. And on a big board in the office there are the keys to every one of those buildings, each one with a tag on it, says which building it is.” He looked around at them. “You sure nobody wants a little pie?”