Arkson had come round the desk to perch on the near edge and take his hand. “No bargain rate for survival, Bayard,” he said, “no fire sales. If the price seems steep, just think of it this way: Would you put a price on your life? Or the lives of your wife and children?” He’d paused to give Bayard a saintly look, the look of the young Redeemer stepping through the doors of the temple. “Just be thankful that you two had the financial resources — and the foresight — to protect yourself.”
Bayard had looked down at the big veiny tanned hand clutching his own and shaken it mechanically. He felt numb. The past few weeks had been hellish, what with packing up, supervising the movers, and making last-minute trips to the mall for things like thread, Band-Aids, and dental noss — not to mention agonizing over the sale of the house, anticipating Fran’s starts and rushes of panic, and turning in his resignation at the Hooper-Munson Co., where he’d put in fourteen years and worked himself up to Senior Vice President in Charge of Reversing Negative Corporate Image. Without Arkson it would have been impossible. He’d soothed Fran, driven the children to school, called the movers, cleaners, and painters, and then gone to work on Bayard’s assets with the single-mindedness of a general marshaling troops. Arkson Realty had put the condo on the market and found a buyer for the summer place in Big Bear, and Arkson, Arkson, and Arkson, Brokers, had unloaded Bayard’s holdings on the stock exchange with a barely significant loss. When combined with Fran’s inheritance and the money Bayard had put away for the girls’ education, the amount realized would meet Thrive, Inc.’s price and then some. It was all for the best, Arkson kept telling him, all for the best. If Bayard had second thoughts about leaving his job and dropping out of society, he could put them out of his mind: society, as he’d known it, wouldn’t last out the year. And as far as money was concerned, well, they’d be living cheaply from here on out.
“Fran,” Arkson was saying, taking her hand now too and linking the three of them as if he were a revivalist leading them forward to the purifying waters, “Bayard. .” He paused again, overcome with emotion. “Feel lucky.”
Now, two months later, Bayard could stand on the front porch of his cabin, survey the solitary expanse of his property with its budding aspen and cottonwood and glossy conifers, and take Arkson’s parting benediction to heart. He did feel lucky. Oh, perhaps on reflection he could see that Arkson had shaved him on one item or another, and that the doom merchant had kindled a blaze under him and Fran that put them right in the palm of his hand, but Bayard had no regrets. He felt secure, truly secure, for the first time in his adult life, and he bent contentedly to ax or hoe, glad to have escaped the Gomorrah of the city. For her part, Fran seemed to have adjusted well too. The physical environment beyond the walls of her domain had never much interested her, and so it was principally a matter of adjusting to one set of rooms as opposed to another. Most important, though, she seemed more relaxed. In the morning, she would lead the girls through their geography or arithmetic, then read, sew, or nap in the early afternoon. Later she would walk round the yard — something she rarely did in Los Angeles — or work in the flower garden she’d planted outside the front door. At night, there was television, the signals called down to earth from the heavens by means of the satellite dish Arkson had providently included in the package.
The one problem was the girls. At first they’d been excited, the whole thing a lark, a vacation in the woods, but as the weeks wore on they became increasingly withdrawn, secretive, and, as Bayard suspected, depressed. Marcia missed Mrs. Sturdivant, her second-grade teacher; Melissa missed her best friend Nicole, Disneyland, Baskin and Robbins, and the beach, in that order. Bayard saw the pale, sad ovals of their faces framed in the gloom of the back bedroom as they hovered over twice-used coloring books, and he felt as if a stake had been driven through his heart. “Don’t worry,” Fran said, “give them time. They’ll make the adjustment.” Bayard hoped so. Because there was no way they were going back to the city.
One afternoon — it was mid-June, already hot, a light breeze discovering dust and tossing it on the hoods and windshields of the cars parked along the street — Bayard was in the lot outside Chuck’s Wagon in downtown Bounceback, loading groceries into the back of the Olfputt, when he glanced up to see two men stepping out of a white Mercedes with California plates. One of them was Arkson, in his business khakis and tie. The other — tall and red-faced, skinny as a refugee in faded green jumpsuit and work boots — Bayard had never seen before. Both men stretched themselves, and then the stranger put his hands on his hips and slowly revolved a full three hundred and sixty degrees, his steady, expressionless gaze taking in the gas station, saloon, feed store, and half-deserted streets as if he’d come to seize them for nonpayment of taxes. Bayard could barely contain himself. “Sam!” he called. “Sam Arkson!” And then he was in motion, taking the lot in six animated strides, his hand outstretched in greeting.
At first Arkson didn’t seem to recognize him. He’d taken the stranger’s arm and was pointing toward the mountains like a tour guide when Bayard called out his name. Half turning, as if at some minor disturbance, Arkson gave him a preoccupied look, then swung back to say something under his breath to his companion. By then Bayard was on him, pumping his hand. “Good to see you, Sam.”
Arkson shook numbly. “You too,” he murmured, avoiding Bayard’s eyes.
There was an awkward silence. Arkson looked constipated. The stranger — his face was so red he could have been apoplectic, terminally sunburned, drunk — glared at Bayard as if they’d just exchanged insults. Bayard’s gaze shifted uneasily from the stranger’s eyes to the soiled yellow beret that lay across his head like a cheese omelet and then back again to Arkson. “I just wanted to tell you how well we’re doing, Sam,” he stammered, “and. . and to thank you — I mean it, really — for everything you’ve done for us.”
Arkson brightened immediately. If a moment earlier he’d looked like a prisoner in the dock, hangdog and tentative, now he seemed his old self. He smiled, ducked his head, and held up his palm in humble acknowledgment. Then, running his fingers over the stubble of his crown, he stepped back a pace and introduced the ectomorphic stranger. “Rayfield Cullum,” he said, “Bayard Wemp.”
“Glad to meet you,” Bayard said, extending his hand.
The stranger’s hands never left his pockets. He stared at Bayard a moment out of his deepset yellow eyes, then turned his head to spit in the dirt. Bayard’s hand dropped like a stone.
“I’d say you two have something in common,” Arkson said mysteriously. And then, leaning forward and dropping his voice: “Rayfield and I are just ironing out the details on the plot next to yours. He wants in this week — tomorrow, if not sooner.” Arkson laughed. The stranger’s eyes lifted to engage Bayard’s; his face remained expressionless.
Bayard was taken by surprise. “Plot?” he repeated.
“East and south,” Arkson said, nodding. “You’ll be neighbors. I’ve got a retired couple coming in the end of the month from Saratoga Springs — they’ll be purchasing the same package as yours directly to the north of you, by that little lake.”
“Package?” Bayard was incredulous. “What is this, Levittown, Montana, or something?”
“Heh-heh, very funny, Bayard.” Arkson had put on his serious look, life and death, the world’s a jungle, La Lanne admonishing his audience over the perils of flab. “The crunch comes, Bayard,” he said, “you could support fifty people on those thirty-five acres, what with the game in those woods and the fertility of that soil. You know it as well as I do.”