Timeline: 10:42, Friday 20th April:: Fawley Grain and Feed, G.M’s House.
Walt Kempster stood in the kitchen of the Fawley Grain and Feed General Manager’s house. It had been his father’s before him and was now his, as it came with the job. He had grown up in this house; coming here with his parents when he was eight years old and it had been home ever since.
Walt sighed as he stirred two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into a mug of strong black coffee and thought through his current situation.
He supposed he ought to feel angry or revengeful towards Mitt Fawley for the increasingly abysmal way he was being treated. But Walt did not feel any negative emotions. He was confused because he felt relieved, as if a great burden had lifted from him.
All of the uncertainties regarding his position over the past months appeared to have come to a resolution. Mitt had not sacked him today, but Walt knew he could not work for the man any longer. Mitt’s erratic behaviour and foul temper, coupled with the outlandish designs he had for the business; using it only as an instrument for self-aggrandisement increased the gap between them on a daily basis.
Mitt left the running of the business entirely to himself and Trish. He took little personal interest in the daily operations other than for demanding updates at irregular times throughout the day or night; as the mood took him. Mitt reacted to each report in what Walt and Trish accepted as a standard response. Mitt would verbally abuse them personally when things were less than good and, when business fared well would applaud them with scornful comments that the results should have been better.
Owner and general manager perpetually at loggerheads with each other was no way to run a business. There was little they agreed on and most of the short periods of each day they spent together passed in argument, rather than in constructive planning.
Walt sighed in pity for the way things had worked out, sipping his coffee while he thought through his next actions. Walt could never get a sensible hearing with Mitt. Whenever he put up an argument that Mitt could not parry with a practical or sagacious counter argument, the man shut Walt down by playing the ‘owner’ card. There was no future for Walt here now and had not been for some months past; ever since they landed the prospect of the Lido broiler contract.
The business was moving inexorably away from what it knew and did best, into the uncharted and shallow waters of supermarket supply. It was the vehicle Mitt thought he best needed to satisfy his childish wish to be the local ‘bigshot.’ Walt blamed himself for linking the firm up with Lido supermarkets. He and his father had established the connection on a fishing holiday. Mitt had seized on it and taken it over as his very own ‘baby’. The resulting contract coming to sign-off was now the only thing that mattered to him.
A month ago, and for the first time in his life, Walt admitted to himself that he did not like Mitt, not only as a boss, but neither as a person. Each succeeding day strengthened the sentiment and Walt had recognised the time would come when he would have to do something about it. He could no longer continue in the hope that things would get better and eventually come good. It was now clear to him that the time for their parting had arrived, but Walt felt no rancour; on the contrary he felt the thrill of freedom pass through him. He could find himself again, become his own man, and in an esoteric way, that was an exciting prospect. He would think and worry of the practicalities of his decision to part company with Mitt later.
Walt walked around the old rambling house. It was much too big for him living here on his own now his parents had gone. But it was home and had been a happy home with fond memories of life in a secure and loving family. These old boards that rattled in the wind were more to him than a place to live, it was where Walt had found love, security and encouragement.
His footsteps echoed around the empty vastness of the hallway as he slowly placed one foot in front of the other to climb the stairs and visit every room once again. This would be for the last time; not only for nostalgia, but also to collect his few belongings.
Every room held a happy memory that played through his mind as he entered. The two storied, wooden frame and board building had stood for more than a hundred years. It was a roomy, draughty house and twice a year when he was a child, he and his mother would be on their hands and knees in each room to deal with the draughts.
Every autumn they hammered newspapers into the cracks between the wall skirting and the floorboards to protect them from the icy draughts that blew through these gaps. Then in spring they would pull them out, so the breeze could blow through to reduce the heat of summer. These had been hard, but happy times.
Walt pulled back the net curtain of his childhood bedroom and caught sight of the old red-brick pigsty, with its rusted corrugated iron roof in the far corner of the back yard. The sight evoked more pleasant memories of his childhood.
Each spring his father brought home a piglet for his mother to feed through the summer. It was Walt’s job to keep the sty clean and he would spend a lot of time with each pig, becoming friends with each one. His parents forbade him giving them names. ‘The pigs are not pets Walt, they’re for slaughter so don’t give ‘em names, you should be kind to ‘em but don’t make pets of ‘em.’
Walt chuckled as he recalled his father’s face, set rigid and stern as he handed out this advice. Walt did give each one a name and would use it when he talked to each animal as it nuzzled its snout against his legs, searching for treats and throatily grunting its appreciation when Walt rubbed behind the hog’s ears.
He was careful not to mention the grunter's name when his parents were around. The porker would grow larger week on week, feeding on garden waste and feed spillage from the warehouse until the icy blast of the north winds heralded winter and that the pig’s time had come.
Walt would run to his room when his father loaded the pig into Jim Caffery’s trailer for the trip to the abattoir. He would lie on his bed and cry tears enough to dampen his pillow.
Walt chuckled at these recollections; for he had no problems at all when a half pig came back three day’s later. The first time he had asked his father irately. ‘We sent a whole pig, how come we only got half a pig back?’ His father explained he had sold the other half of the pig to the butcher, out of which he had paid the slaughter man.
Walt happily joined in with his parents as they busied themselves in the kitchen butchering the animal into joints for preserving and cuts for giving to friends. They had no freezer in the early days and his mother salted down much of the meat she kept for their own use. He took his turn on the handle of the mincer, grinding meat and rusk into a filling that his mother would stuff into the pig’s entrails, after extensively cleaning and washing, to make sausages. One of his favourite sandwich fillings was the cheese she made out of the pig’s head. Walt no longer recognised the meat as being April, or May or June, or whatever name he had given the pig.
The first meal after the pig came back was always a feast of liver and onions. Walt had no guilt feelings preventing him eating his fill of the offal, mashing his potatoes into its rich, succulent sauce.
But his face hardened as he looked out of the window onto the neglected yard and overgrown vegetable garden his parents had tended so assiduously. He saw it all in a different light today, and the taste of bitter gall rose into his mouth. These were happy childhood memories for him, but for his parents had been an absolute necessity of life. The pig would be almost their sole supply of meat for the winter. They ate a lot of vegetables, mostly grown in the two long plots in front of the pig-sty; nourished by garden compost and the manure from the pig. It was all part of an essential annual cycle.
Mitt paid Walt a pittance of a salary, enough for him to get by, but without benefit of extravagancies or luxuries. He knew now that the little treats he had enjoyed as a child were the result of his parents scrimping and saving to provide them.
The net curtain fell back across the window, obscuring his view outside. Walt had not tended the garden as his father had done, preferring to buy his provisions in town. He turned around to leave the room with a lump in his throat acknowledging for the first time that his father had had no choice, but to tend the plot to provide for his family. Yet never once had he heard his father complain about his lot, undertaking the burden of the toil with good humour such that Walt believed his father did it because he wanted to, like it was his hobby.
In the kitchen Walt collected together his belongings and stuffed his personal papers into his father’s battered leather briefcase. He stopped to open the passbook of his savings account and saw his total financial worth was a little less than fifteen hundred dollars. There was no pension provision he could draw on.
“Not much to show for a life’s work,” he said glumly, “two lives’ work if you count Pa’s.”
Walt stuffed the passbook into his back pocket. This was the first of his practical worries raising its head. 'What would he do now? Where would he go from here? How would he provide for himself? How would he get by'?
Walt shook his head to free himself from such thoughts. ‘We’ll deal with them questions another time.”
Around his feet were the sum-total of Walt Kempster’s possessions. He was astonished to realise that all of his material worth; his clothes, pictures, photographs and books partly filled only two suitcases and three cardboard boxes.
Everything else belonged to the house. Every stick of heavy wood furniture that he had helped his mother polish each Saturday morning as a boy belonged to the house and not themselves.
Walt sighed deeply, feeling foolish that he had lived for so long in the hope that Mitt would change, and develop the business for the benefit of them all; as had been the Fawley promise to him and his father before him. ‘Leopards can’t change their spots, so why should Fawley’s change theirs?’ He grinned at the irony of his thought as he picked up his car keys to load his possessions and dropped them back onto the kitchen table as if they were electrified.
The car was not his; it also belonged to the business. Walt could have become bitter at that point, as he felt the first touch of pique that all he and his father before him had achieved for the business was worth no more to Mitt than a piece of casual sex.
Trish had so far managed to deflect Mitt’s advances, it had not deterred the man, quite the opposite, he seemed encouraged by her refusals and pursued her with ever more extravagant promises. Walt bore Trish no ill-will. He saw her as a victim, the same as himself. He knew she had not manoeuvred herself into his job. It was Mitt, seeking her favours by offering her ever-larger bounties if she would share his bed. Walt’s home, job and livelihood was just the last and the biggest of them all so far. He didn’t blame Trish. Walt laughed a short, sharp titter and thought. ‘Mitt don’t know what I know. Some surprise he’ll get if he gets her to go with him to Tahoe.’
Mitt had told Walt to revisit the condo and persuade them to accept his offer. He would do as he was bid, without enthusiasm, but would warn them to expect a visit from the man himself. He wouldn’t have it said about him that he failed to follow instructions, or give Mitt a valid cause for complaint against him. A wry smile crossed his face at the thought as he piled his belongings into the car to drive to the condo and then to the motel. ‘I’ll give you no excuse whatsoever to fire me Mitt; I’ll be damned careful to avoid that.’
Walt decided to live in town for a few days while his funds lasted and he could get himself onto unemployment benefits. This was the first of the practicalities that he could not avoid. He had no job or income and to get unemployment benefits he would need to be fired for no fault of his own. If he resigned of his own accord he would not qualify for benefits. He was convinced that Walt would fire him and now hoped that would be the case. ‘Maybe I can do or say something to get him to do just that.’
* * *
Ebonie Marrs was playing in the dirt at the front of the condo with a clutch of children around her as Walt pulled up in the road outside. He sat and watched them for a while, enjoying the happy cries and gleeful chortles of small boys and girls having fun.
Ebonie saw him and stood to brush herself down and wait for Walt to come into the front yard. To the biggest boy she said “You’m go tell Mr. Gerry to come on down, hurry now.” She slapped the boy’s shoulder lightly several times to hurry him up and the boy scampered away to do her bidding.
Walt steeled himself to walk with purpose into the yard feeling uneasy and like an interloper when he came under the stern gaze of Ebonie’s piercing green eyes.
“You’m back so soon Mr. Kempster, you’m not been gone an hour since. …You’m got somethin’ else to say to us from your boss man?”
Walt stuttered and shuffled around nervously until he realised he did not have to lie or tell half-truths to these people. Calmness washed over him and with it returned his sense of authority along with his smile.
Walt straightened himself to stand tall just as Gerry Wolny arrived, looking suspicious, and with his thumbs under his suspenders slung over the shoulders of his wife beater. He nodded at Walt and stood to listen to what he had to say.
“I have indeed, Mrs. Marrs.” Walt spoke with a confidence he had not experienced in ages and savoured the moment. “I have indeed, he told me to get down here and tell you folks anything at all to get you to accept his offer and move out of here before Monday noon. So here I am, doing my job. Tell me now, what is it you want to hear from me?”
Walt felt rather light-headed, as if he had taken a drink. Ebonie had the same thought and pushed her scrawny face closer to his to sniff his breath.
“You’m been drinking Mr. Kempster?”
“Not a drop Mrs. Marrs.” Walt chuckled and slapped his side. He was enjoying this, a moment of liberation.
“Then you’m’ll know we ain’t talked with everybody else. You’m’ll have to come back when we gone and done that.”
“Well he told me to get down here and promise you the earth. Everything I told you when I was here this morning is correct to the best of my belief. I do believe when I go back this time and tell him you’ve not yet come to a decision, Mitt Fawley’ll decide to come down and persuade you’all himself. So be prepared for his visit; and his lies.”
Wolny grunted, but Ebonie’s searching eyes read something else in Walt.
“Are you’m OK Mr. Kemspter”?
Walt chuckled again. “Oh sure, I’ll be fine Mrs. Marrs, just fine, thank you kindly for asking.”
“In that case we’m’ll call you if we have anything else to ask or say.”
“You’d best call the plant direct and ask for Trish Conalty, she’ll be likely handling this now. I’m happy to help you out as much as I can and if you need me for anything, you can call me at the motel.”
Ebonie never said anything in reply but watched Walt closely as he climbed into the car and drove off. She then turned to Gerry who watched while picking his teeth with the nail of his little finger, and said to him.
“Looks like things b’aint’ goin’ so good fer Mr. Kempster after his visit t’us this morning, Maybe he’m gone and lost ‘is job’?”
Wolny ran his tongue over his teeth before replying. “Welcome to the club. There’s plenny more vacancies.”