Playing with the big boys proved to have its own set of rules, but Regina was an intelligent woman who did not have to be told twice. She contracted with Eugene-whom she mistakenly believed would kill for her-to distribute all the black Jamaican she could provide, and since he warranted she would make a fair profit and not be ravaged or terminated, a partnership was born that lasted for several years.
This left the loose end of A.J. and Maggie. One of his main concerns-aside from Lukey in the Reidsville shower stall-was how Maggie would react when informed her beloved had killed more people than Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan, if that was his real name. But he told her anyway and was surprised to discover her thoughts on the affair were similar to Eugene’s.
“Eugene was right. He could get away with it. You they would have hung.” She spoke in a sardonic tone. “Anyway, he really wanted the credit. Can’t you tell? He gets to be a hero without being a hero.” And that was that, except for her comment on the act itself. After describing to her the scene at the campground, Maggie’s response was cool and measured.
“Good. I hope it hurt.”
CHAPTER 6
Establish a scholarship in my name with the enclosed $5000.00.
– Excerpt of posthumous letter from Eugene Purdue to the management of The Panther Club
A.J.’S WALK WITH MAYHEM WAS ANCIENT HISTORY, but it had taken center stage in his consciousness when Eugene had chosen to refer to the incident, and A.J. had been in a foul frame of mind ever since. His mood remained sour until the following Wednesday, when he was summoned to the mill for an early meeting. At that point, his disposition really decayed. He normally reported at 4:00 p.m. and turned logs into boards until 2:00 a.m. the following morning. He called it the Bermuda Shift, because many hapless souls had wandered onto it over the years, never to be seen again. He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with John Robert when the phone call came.
“A.J., there’s a meeting at two o’clock,” said Marie Prater. She had been an institution at the sawmill for many years. “You have to be here.” Marie was John McCord’s secretary, and John McCord was president and general manager of McCord Lumber. She was a formidable woman, seldom wrong and rarely challenged. Her husband, Randall, was disabled, having suffered from a bad back since about the time he was old enough to perform any work. This affliction was hereditary and had stricken his father and grandfather, and others before that. Marie’s children-four teenaged boys with bad backs-amazed A.J., because he could not envision Randall expending the energy necessary to father them. In truth, none of the boys favored Randall much, and one of them was the spitting image of John McCord, so perhaps Marie had been forced to make other arrangements.
“What’s the meeting about?” A.J. asked, still groggy. The previous evening’s sawmill outing had been challenging, and he hadn’t been up long. He hated early meetings and had pointed out on numerous occasions that if they were periodically scheduled for 3:00 a.m., then the day staff would be afforded equal opportunity to come in a couple of hours early. This suggestion had yet to be acted upon.
“I’m not supposed to say, but what the hell?” Marie replied. “John sold the mill. The new owners want to meet all the supervisors and managers.” Rumors had been flying around the mill for weeks that a large lumber conglomerate was eyeing the property, and A.J. felt a stir of apprehension. The scuttlebutt had apparently been well-founded.
“Oh, shit,” he said into the phone.
“You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that in the last couple of hours,” was her reply. “Oh, hell, and goddamn have also been popular. All of you boys need to be watchin’ that language.” Marie was teasing A.J. in an attempt to lighten the moment. She was known throughout the Southeast and in three foreign ports for her richly descriptive turn of phrase.
“Sorry about that, Marie,” A.J. replied. “You know I don’t think of you as a woman at all. You’re just one of the guys to me.” His mind was on the news she had imparted.
“Thanks a lot. Two o’clock,” she said before hanging up. A.J. took a swig of coffee and sat quietly, thinking. Although the news at face value was not necessarily bad, he had a feeling that it would turn out to be so. He didn’t know a great deal about Big Business, but he knew enough to realize he had just made the transition from big fish in a small lake to small fish in the middle of the ocean, if he was lucky, and dead fish in the creel if he was not. He turned to John Robert, who was watching him.
“McCord sold the sawmill,” he told his father. “I have to go in to see who owns me now.” John Robert digested the information for a moment.
“Well, he’s older than I am,” he offered. “I guess it’s time for him to retire.”
“Hell, he’s already rich,” A.J. said. “Why does he want to be richer?”
“Don’t get upset until you know what you’re dealing with,” John Robert replied while refilling A.J.’s cup. “These new people will know a good man when they see one. You’ll land on your feet.”
John Robert had moved in with A.J. and Maggie six years previously after suffering a near-fatal heart attack. Luckily he had been in town and not somewhere out on the back forty when the bell tolled, so help was quick to arrive when he keeled over while having a cup of coffee and a couple of collision mats down at The Meek Shall Inherit the Chili-Mac Drive-In.
“That heart attack should have killed him,” Doc Miller told A.J. when they met in the emergency room in Chattanooga, the location of the nearest hospital of consequence. He seemed shaken. “His heart stopped on the way here in the ambulance. All you could hear was that long, steady tone coming from the monitor. Before I could do anything, and believe me, I was moving fast, his own fist slammed into his chest, and he yelled No! I’ll be damned if his heart didn’t start beating again.” Doc shook his head. “I’ve been a doctor for fifty years, and I’ve seen a lot in my time. But I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Nobody tells John Robert what to do,” was A.J.’s reply as he watched his father through the glass of the ICU. “Not even God.”
John Robert’s recovery was slow, and he almost died again during the bypass surgery that followed his attack. It was the surgeon’s skill rather than his own stubbornness that saved him that time, although to hear John Robert tell it, the man had nearly done him in. This trace of acrimony was due to a talk the doctor had with John Robert that was not altogether to the elder Longstreet’s liking. During the conversation, the physician extracted a promise from John Robert that the Pall Mall he was currently smoking would be his last. This was no small demand to make upon a man who had thoroughly enjoyed the two packs a day he had smoked for the last half century. The doctor explained that anything less than full compliance would be fatal. John Robert eyed him coolly for a moment. Then he stubbed out the item in question in a handy potted plant and quit on the spot.
Having survived two brushes with death and the loss of his favorite and perhaps only vice, John Robert should have been out of the forest. But he had one last blow to sustain. Upon his release with a clean bill of health, he and A.J. sat down on a cold winter afternoon and tallied the medical bills that had been piling up in the knife drawer for two months during John Robert’s convalescence. Life is cheap in many instances, but in John Robert’s case the price of continued existence was in excess of one hundred thousand dollars, not small change except to those who spend the public monies.