But Benjamin Weldon could not buy a used car as the family’s only car. It would indicate either an uninteresting sort of eccentricity, or serious money problems. Either conclusion was unpalatable. Everyone had problems. Everyone managed to get by, somehow, and keep up appearances. It was a test of both management and character, like dressing for dinner in the jungle.
Ben Weldon did not care about the opinions of Lawton. But of the two thousand men in the area who went down to the city every working day, at least fifty not only were in his age group and approximate earnings group, but were employed by organizations operating in the same areas as National Directions. Three men were, in fact, employed by National Directions, two junior to Ben and one senior to him. In any tensely competitive situation, trivia become excruciatingly important.
The fifty of the two thousand men who rode down to the towers of the city each day were blandly cordial to one another. And without being able to state precisely why, they watched one another with minute care. They learned to read the small signs. They could pick out the overconfident ones who, through talking too loosely and readily, were slamming doors they might have entered. They saw the first signs of decay in the man who would be felled by liquor. They detected evidences of the marital rift or the destructive affair long before the gossip became public property. And they could tell, with an uncanny, unerring accuracy, the ones who were on their way up and out of this narrow routine.
It was all casual, with the desperation carefully hidden away, but each year a few dropped off, and newcomers closed the ranks. They went down or up, and in either case their houses went on the market, and they rode those trains no longer. And at the lunches in the city, and in the idle moments before meetings were called to order, the smallest departures from standard behavior were discussed.
“What’s with Weldon, buying a used car? I thought he was crown prince over there. They cut his pay?”
“Maybe he’s just smarter than you and me.”
“Maybe. Seems funny, though.”
“Maybe he guessed the market wrong, or he’s playing the horses.”
Ben Weldon knew exactly how the system worked. Yet he guessed that if he had less at stake, he would have gone ahead and bought the used car. But when you’re playing the game for the house limit, it is stupid to go around handing the world any kind of club to beat you with. It would not be a crime to buy a used car. The crime would be in giving the men who control your destiny any personal questions to ask about you that do not have obvious and reasonable answers.
“If he can’t manage on what we’re paying him, how could he hope to run this outfit someday?”
Ben Weldon drove home in his brand-new car, and took his family for a short ride at dusk, wondering if he had been intelligent — or just scared.
October was a thin month. November was a little better, but it made Ben feel defeated to think of the onrush of the Christmas season. He made up budget after budget, and tore them up. No matter how he strained over the figures, he could see that, with luck, they could reduce the indebtedness each month, but by such a discouragingly tiny figure that it seemed to stretch endlessly into the bleak future.
When you have a chronic toothache, you eventually end up in the dentist chair. Ben had heard of a C.P.A. in Manhattan who had reputedly done wonders in straightening out the tangled personal finances of some of his friends.
He made one appointment and had to break it, and kept the second one, appearing with all his books and records and copies of his state and Federal tax returns, and his operating budget.
The wonder-worker was J.J. Semmins, with an office on West 43rd Street. He was a small fat man with a permanent scowl of impatience, an unlit cigar, a diamond ring, and audible asthmatic breathing. He had a huge bare desk in a very small office off the anteroom, where several people were working. He spread Ben’s papers all over the top of the desk and growled at Ben to have a seat and be patient. He went through the papers so fast that Ben could not believe he was absorbing what he was reading. From time to time he would scribble a note on a scratch pad. He reassembled the papers, plunked them on the corner of the desk and leaned back.
“Weldon, you keep good records. You should see some of the stuff comes in here. It looks like you’re even using your head here and there, but that isn’t helping you a bit, is it?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Twenty-three five, you make. And right off the top, for Uncle and the governor and other payroll deductions and that cooperative pension plan comes seventy-one, and none of that can you change, so we’re talking about sixteen four. Right? So twenty-six hundred goes into life insurance. It’s a little over ten per cent of total income, but with three small kids it isn’t out of line. Can you juggle the policies around and get the same coverage for less money?”
“I tried that. I’ve got a good agent. He couldn’t come up with a thing.”
“And you’re borrowed to the hilt on it. Now we’re talking about thirteen eight. Give me the story on this two hundred a month to your mother.”
“She’s quite old, seventy-four. She had her children late, and my father’s been dead thirty years. No Social Security to help out. She’s out in Columbus, Indiana, living in the house I was born in. We’ve tried to get her to come live with us, but all her friends are there. She seems to get along on two hundred. I’d send more if I could.”
“Any other children helping out?”
“I’m the only one living.”
“The house out there is in her name?”
“Yes, but—”
“Worth anything?”
“I don’t know what it would bring. It’s not big. A frame house in an old part of town, but she still likes it there. She has a woman come in and help her. The same woman for years and years.”
“If she signed it over, you could sell it and rent a nice little apartment for her. Put the money on these debts and cut your debt service.”
“I just couldn’t do that. It’s a matter of pride to her. I’ve heard her say a hundred times that the house is ‘free and clear.’ That means a lot to her.”
J. J. Semmins sighed. “So we’re talking about eleven four. If your house was free and clear, it would make the difference. Two ten a month on the mortgage and nearly six hundred a year town and county taxes. That’s a load, those taxes.”
“They’ve been going up ever since I bought the place four years ago. National brought me in from the Cleveland office then. Lawton is growing so fast they’ve had to spend a lot of money to take care of the services, schools and so on.”
J. J. Semmins scribbled for a moment and then leaned back. “Take the mortgage payments, taxes, and call it one fifty a month for heat, light, phone, electric and water and so on, call it five a year goes into that place. It’s a lot of house.”
“We hunted a long time before we located it, Mr. Semmins. And it scared us a little, even though I knew we bought it right. I can get seven more than I paid for it right now.” He paused and looked down at his fist for a moment, searching for the right words. “The firm I work for, Mr. Semmins, takes... a special interest in me. When I was brought into the home office, there was a certain amount of... gentle pressure brought to bear. They wanted me to live up to a certain standard, and the house and its location are part of that.”