“Our thinking is pretty obvious from the schematics. A combination of history lesson and the more visceral charms of a conventional park. We’re going to clean up on the school-trip-slash-family-outing market. Just look at all that parking for buses.”
Wooten began to flip through the cards, each detailing a specific complex. A working prairie farm with a big picnic area. A Malibu beach complete with a pool that looked like it generated its own waves. In greater detail, he could see that they intended to wrap a winding slide down the folds of Liberty’s gown. The penciled kids using it rode what looked like squares of carpeting. They were all laughing.
“The plan is this. We announce as soon as the land’s all squared away. Should be a month or so. Break ground in the fall with an eye toward grand opening around Easter of seventy-five. We’ll miss that, of course, which means Memorial Day. What we’re offering you is a two-year contract as building director. The salary package is terrific but the real sweet thing about this deal is you get premium shares.”
Wooten looked up. Savage smiled.
“That’s right. Premiums, Earl. Which means every time a ticket gets punched you get a hundredth of a hundredth of a penny. Or whatever. You’re lying in bed on New Year’s with a hangover, the meter’s running.”
Shares, Wooten thought. Good God. He turned his attention back to the cards. The scope of the place was amazing. It must be twenty thousand acres. Two years would really be pressing it. He didn’t dare ask how much they were spending on it. Not that it mattered. This place would be a license to print money.
“We’d also like to use you up front in our ads. You know. America Works. Really hit the sleeves-up end of this baby. As you’ll see from the schematics we’ve got a lot of hands-on stuff. Smithies. Butter churns. Musket shooting—kids love that. There’s a pretty nifty sweatshop somewhere in there. You know, just the way Grandma used to do it. Amazing stuff.”
“Sounds good.”
“The other thing we’d like to do is maybe get your family involved in the campaign. Ardelia and the kids. You know, from our family to yours. The guys down in PR have this whole spiel worked out. Like it’s your backyard the people would be coming to. Don’t worry—nothing too onerous. Just some photos and maybe a little copy. We just want to give it a homey feel.”
“Gus, I don’t know what to say. That would be fine. We’d love to help.”
“Oh,” Savage said as Wooten continued to flip through the cards. “We’ve also done a sweetheart deal with our friends in the Commonwealth of V-A to run a six-laner from the D.C. Beltway right to our front gate. A sixty-mile driveway. Think about it. It’ll be easier to get to than Mount Vernon.”
Wooten flipped another card and froze. It took a moment for his conscious mind to catch up with the stomach-tightening feeling the image brought on. The Doric columns. The parasols. The low dark shacks.
“What you got there?” Savage asked, registering the change in Woo-ten’s mood.
Wooten held up the card for him to see.
“Yeah. Magnolia Manor. We were gonna call it Tara but there was a copyright thing. Gotta have the Old South. Especially with I-Eighty-one so close.”
“Slaves, Gus?”
“Quarters, yes. But no slaves. We canned that idea.”
“But still.”
Savage’s expression darkened slightly.
“We’ve focus-grouped the hell out of all this stuff, Earl. What’s your point?”
Wooten realized he’d better zip it or else they’d find somebody else to give that hundredth of a hundredth.
“I just want to make sure we don’t wind up with protesters blocking the entrance.”
Savage’s expression relaxed. This was more like it. Just business.
“A little of that never hurt anybody. Besides, they’ll get bored. This place is seriously out in the boonies.”
Wooten looked back at the card in front of him, his gaze momentarily pulled by one hastily drawn stick figure in the upper right corner, a tall shadow wielding a hoe that was poised in midswing over his shoulder. There were no shoes on his feet. Behind him loomed a kudzu-choked forest. Someone had drawn a circle around him and then crossed out the image within.
Wooten shuffled the cards back together and placed them on his lap before meeting Savage’s coolly expectant gaze.
“Well?”
“I never knew Barnaby had anything like this in mind.”
Savage brushed nonexistent dust from his chair’s arm.
“This is a post-Barnaby project.”
Wooten suddenly smiled, remembering his suspicions of the past few days.
“What?”
“No, it’s just … never mind.”
“Earl—what’s on your mind?”
“You’ll think this is funny, but I came out here thinking that maybe you were considering me for Newton city manager.”
“Really? Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I heard a rumor.”
“From who?”
“Richard Holmes. Via Hollis Watson.”
Savage thought for a moment, then frowned.
“Yeah, I know where that came from. Hollis and some of the other guys at Afro-Am were after me a few weeks ago about not having any blacks in senior management positions. I told him to keep his powder dry, that the next big offer was going to go to a certain man from St. Louis.”
“And so he assumed it was Newton manager.”
“Logical, as nobody knows about AmericaWorks but a chosen few.”
“But why is that?”
“Think about it. Word gets out and the people who own that land are suddenly sitting in the catbird seat.”
Which explained why Austin wasn’t to know. This had nothing to do with Newton. It was about property prices in some godforsaken corner of Virginia.
“So manager’s still Austin’s job?”
“Of course. I mean, we’ve had to beat the jungle drums a bit to get him going these past few months, but sure. It’s his job.”
“And what about construction for the rest of the new cities? Who’s going to be handling that? Because I think Barnaby sort of had me in mind.”
Savage snatched a clove from the bowl and popped it in his mouth.
“There aren’t going to be any more new cities.”
Wooten sat in shocked silence for a moment.
“Excuse me?”
“The decision was taken a few months ago.” He swallowed the garlic. “Look, Earl—Newton isn’t working.”
“Excuse me?”
“The city. It’s failing.”
“Now, Gus, I’ve got to say, I don’t see that at all.”
Savage waved a calming hand.
“Obviously, from a construction viewpoint, we couldn’t be happier. Housing starts, infrastructure, the whole nine yards. We’re happy as can be. Glitches like the lake and the gaslights notwithstanding. But there are other factors at work here that make the picture gloomy.”
“Such as?”
“There’s been a sharp fall in home inquiries all spring. Sales are starting to slip as well. The summer picture is down. If the slide continues into the fall, forget about it. Seventy-four will be a nightmare.”
“I didn’t … is this because of the fights and the bad press?”
“I’d be a liar if I said they weren’t a major factor.”
“Come on, Gus. A couple kids go upside each other’s heads, you get that anywhere.”
“Ah, but Newton isn’t anywhere. Social harmony is our number-one selling point. Between you and me, I think Barnaby put too many eggs in that basket.”
Wooten remained quiet.
“This is an extremely delicate time for us right now, Earl. I won’t go into the numbers, but the city’s financial viability is in the balance. If we’re going to attract the homeowners for the next phase of housing then changes will have to be made. The fights and the bad press must stop.”
“What changes?”
Savage stood and walk
ed to one of his twin windows. He separated two of the louvered panels and peeked through, as if checking to see if Chicago was still there.
“Closing the HUD projects,” he said eventually.
“Closing them?”
Savage turned.
“Concurrent with the AmericaWorks announcement we’ll let it be known that we’re discontinuing Newton’s HUD program. Renaissance Heights and Underhill will be converted into rental units. The other four complexes will be sold as condos. Current residents will be given first crack at re-renting once a competitive pricing structure is drawn up, though I’d imagine few of them will be able to afford it.”
“And so what will we do with them?”
“They’ll be benignly relocated into EarthWorks reclamation schemes in deprived areas of Newark, Baltimore and Washington. We believe those HUD dollars can be better spent in existing ghetto neighborhoods than in our newer communities.”
Savage shook his head wistfully.
“Off the record, Earl? Barnaby blew it. He thought the city would change people. Make them behave differently. That’s why we’re so underpoliced out there. He didn’t think cops would be necessary. The board went along because there was a niche for this kind of thinking five years ago. A certain sort of homeowner who’d buy into the Newton ethos. You know the type. Young couples weaned on all that idealism, kids who thought the ’burbs were unfashionable. Black families with a little spare change. Newton people. The HUD projects were seen as a good part of the mix. Bait, if you will.”
“Bait? Barnaby saw them as bait?”
“Well, no, not Barnaby. He believed in them. Hook, line and sinker. No, I’m talking about the board and the banks. Dreamers need capital, right?” He shrugged. “We always knew there was a risk, that this sort of backlash might happen. It was an eventuality we’ve been preparing for.”
Eventuality, Wooten thought.
“And there’s another reason, Earl. One that cuts even more directly to the heart of the matter. We simply cannot afford the projects anymore.”
“But I thought the Title VII money …”
Wooten let the sentence die. Savage returned to his chair.
“Earl, I have three Nobel prize–winning economists at the University of Chicago on fat retainers and you know what they’re telling me? That we’re entering an inflationary cycle that is going to knock our socks off. My people out in the Middle East paint an even more dire picture. OPEC are just waiting for an excuse to jack up oil prices. Twofold, threefold. More. And that will mean one thing, Earl—hyperinflation. Right here in the heartland. Banana republic time. All that spare money Barnaby thought he could use to finance his dream is going to dry up quicker than a puddle of piss in August. Government funding will no longer cover the costs of places like the Heights. You think HUD is going to be pegging us inflation-indexed rises if the prime’s at fifteen percent? Give me a break.”
Wooten nodded. He was beginning to get the picture.
“What’s worse,” Savage continued, “house prices are going to go through the roof. This at a time when savings are being squeezed. Nobody’s gonna want to buy anything, much less an overpriced piece of aluminum. Idealism lives in the margin, Earl. When that vanishes, it’s out on its ass. We’re gonna need the cash those HUD units can generate as condos, especially when our first-time buyers realize their devalued dollar can’t swing a house. More importantly, we’ve got to move the lion’s share of the houses by the time the current selling cycle ends in November. Because unless Alfred Nobel is backing losers then this winter is going to see a big change in the whole shooting match. The last thing in the world we need are buyers holding back because of some adverse publicity. We got to close out Phases III and IV before the crude hits the fan.”
“But what about HUD? Won’t they kick up a fuss?”
“That’s where Swope comes in. He can hang those chumps out to dry. Besides, the federal government is in no position to give us any trouble. They owe us a lot more than we owe them. My people in the Mideast? They aren’t all engineers. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but trust me. And anyway, turn on the tube. Nixon’s got bigger fish to fry than a bunch of dinky apartments.”
“Does Austin know about this?”
“The decision has just been made. I’ll be talking to him about it next week.” He brushed the table again. “But we’re getting way off track here, Earl. The question being—do you want to build AmericaWorks for us?”
Wooten stared at the naked cloves for a moment. They looked like a litter of something born too early to live. He thought about those shares. He thought about the fact that he’d be able to stay in Newton—Clarke County couldn’t be more than an hour away. His picture would be everywhere. The man who built what had to be the world’s largest theme park.
“You know, Gus, I think I would. But I’ll have to talk to Ardelia about it.”
“Of course. Though I’d like your answer by Monday morning. We’re really raring to go on this one.”
“I’ll call you first thing.”
Savage smiled grimly.
“Excellent. Now, what do you say we go visit Barnaby? He’s dying to see you.”
Seven Oaks was located on the shore of Lake Michigan, an hour north of downtown. Wooten had seen photographs of the house but had never visited. His meetings with Vine had always been at EarthWorks headquarters or the Newton site. And, of course, their first session, when Vine recruited him back in 1967, after Wooten had made the news by rehabilitating twelve blocks of St. Louis brownstones into a community for working black families. Vine had come to Missouri himself, a tall, spry man on the cusp of old age. He had the impatient air of someone who’d been probing the world for seven decades and still found it wanting. He’d driven down from Chicago with his dog, Cicero, a remarkable animal who’d endured Joel’s attention with the same stoic reserve with which his master weathered the follies of man. For three hours, Vine spoke to Earl and Ardelia at their kitchen table, his Midwestern voice as dry and rich as harvested wheat as he told them about the perfect city he wanted Earl Wooten to build. By the end of his uninterrupted speech they were hooked. Earl would start digging right away; Ardelia would have a job teaching at the first of the city’s schools. The children would grow up on its safe streets, its tot lots and bike paths. The Wootens put their house on the market two days after watching Vine stride back to the limo. The chauffeur opened the door for the dog, who looked like he was as accustomed to the service as his master.
After that Wooten saw Vine regularly at the long, numbing strategy sessions in Chicago, where they tried to iron out every detail and anticipate every problem of the colossal building project they were undertaking. As they worked together, Wooten began to learn details of the man’s life. The childhood in Nicodemus, Kansas, where he was the only son of a Methodist minister. His brilliant early career as a builder of high-rises; his wartime service designing army camps for Ike. The disillusionment with urban life that led to his formation of EarthWorks in the mid-fifties. The successes with shopping malls and subdivisions and revivified downtown markets. Newton was the culmination of his life’s work.
Once the Wootens moved to the house Ardelia half wistfully dubbed Fort Apache, Vine visited his city on a near-monthly basis, quietly looking over Wooten’s shoulder, occasionally uttering a word of advice. After the decade’s end he came less often. Between visits he seemed to age years rather than months. In 1971 he came only four times for brief, distracted stopovers. And then, last summer, he’d had the first stroke. He was in the hospital for two months and spent the rest of the fall convalescing. Swope had seen him briefly just before Christmas. His condition hadn’t seemed too serious—a slight facial sag, some abbreviation in the movement of his left hand. The seventy-one-year-old brain remained as supple as that of a man half his age. The second stroke happened in March. No one had seen Vine since. Rumors were rife. The best claimed that he found it impossible to speak and had gone nearly blind. The worst, that hi
s mind was gone, blown away like a pile of dead leaves in a stiff autumn breeze.
Savage spoke nonstop on the drive up, detailing for Wooten the nuts and bolts of AmericaWorks, the acreage and budgets, the subcontractors and designers. The thing really had been worked out to the last detail. Building it would be hard, there was no doubting that. But it was doable. It was just before noon when they arrived at Vine’s house, passing through a spiked gate manned by a dozing security guard. The long driveway disappeared into a copse of pine before making a sharp bend. Seven Oaks appeared, so low that in places it seemed to vanish right into the duned earth. Its roof was flat, its walls severe and unadorned. There was nothing around it that could be called a garden or even a yard. Just sawgrass and dunes. Beyond it the lake stretched to the horizon, interrupted by occasional pleasure craft and big, Canada-bound barges.
Savage’s limo pulled up to the front door. Wooten stepped out. Chicago’s heat had vanished up here, blown away by a steady lake breeze. To the south, the highest of the city’s buildings, some designed by Vine, jutted from a collar of haze. The only sounds were seagulls and the breeze.
“Here we go,” Savage said.
They were met at the door by a maid with the high cheekbones and sad eyes of a Plains Indian. She wore a simple black dress. Her PF Flyers squeaked on the marble floor as she led them to the back of the house, which possessed the same aversion for walls Vine had displayed in his creation of Newton. They moved through a single large room, centered around a four-sided brick fireplace. Long rows of double steps broke up the space, creating a series of plateaus, none of which seemed higher than the others. The room reminded Wooten of the Escher drawing Joel had on his wall, the staircase that only went up. Or down, depending on which way you were headed. At the back of the big room there was a lone hallway that Wooten guessed led to the bedrooms and the kitchen. They never made it that far, steered instead toward a sliding-glass door that led to a lake-facing porch. The maid pulled it open and nodded to the men. Wooten took a deep breath and followed Savage through.
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