Metzner stiffened, instantly on the defensive. “It’ll pick up.”
“Sure. Maybe. I’m sending out most of my stuff in ice. The buyers at the other end still don’t know how to handle this vacuum-packed stuff. They’re not quite sold on it, you know.”
Metzner said stubbornly, “They will be. It’s the coming thing. You take the cost, for example — ”
“Look. I know all the arguments. And you have one tube working. That’s not good. I hate to say this, Herman, but the boys at the bank are getting pretty damned worried.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I’m one of the directors.”
“Oh, yes. Smart boy, you are.”
“You know, Herman, I’ve always liked you. I’d hate to see you take a shellacking. You’re one of the best farmers in the business and you own the land. Why don’t you stick to that? If this thing doesn’t pick up, you’re going down the drain. I wouldn’t like to see that happen.”
Metzner squinted at him suspiciously and smiled thinly. “Why, Dean, I never knew you cared.”
“You’d like to get out from under, wouldn’t you?”
The older man shrugged. “Who wouldn’t?”
Dean rubbed his chin, as if turning some problem over in his mind, then said, “The only way this place could be put into full operation is for one of the big outfits to take it over and send its whole product through vacuum packing.”
“What do you mean by taking it over?”
“I mean to buy you out, or at least a controlling interest. That’s the only way it could be worked. I don’t say I’m interested, I’m not too sold myself on this method, but if you could think of a way to get this off your back I might be some help.”
Metzner laughed, a dry cackle. “You’re an ice man. How would you help?”
“First, Herman, I’m a gambler. Don’t ever lose sight of that. And I’ve always had kind of an itch to gamble with this vacuum thing.”
“But your sheds — ”
“I own just one string. The other two I rent. In other words, I could walk out on them tomorrow. In fact, I’m probably the only man in the valley who could move in here without taking a beating.”
“Hmmmm.” Metzner got to his feet and stood before Dean at the door. “You’d like to buy me out?”
Dean burst into a laugh and dropped a hand on Metzner’s shoulder to shake him gently. “Do I look like a fool? I’m not interested in taking your losses. It will have to be better than that, Herman. You have a quarter million cash in here. The balance is in bank notes. I’ll tell you the way you should think. Forget that quarter of a million and I’ll assume the obligations on the notes. Just a passing thought, but that I might go for.”
Herman shook with anger and opened the door for him. “Good-by, Holt.”
“Sure. Sure. I’ll be seeing you, Herman. I may even see you at the bank. We’re having a board meeting Wednesday.”
Metzner paled and turned away from him to stare angrily into space. He mumbled, “I’ll think it over.”
“You do that, Herman. It may be a way out. You can get back on your land and no more worries.”
“I said I’ll think about it.”
“Yeah. But I wouldn’t think about it too long. Wednesday is day after tomorrow.”
Dean left him standing there and walked outside and his red hair turned to fire in the sun. He stood on the loading platform and looked up the long line of the Growers’ String by the side of the highway. Metzner’s new plant was the farthest south on the string. All of the big buildings in sight were ice plants, with the packing sheds running out from them like long covered tunnels. One day, Dean thought, they’ll all be junk, and vacuum plants will take their place. Then what happens to the skilled labor in the sheds? They can’t all go on relief.
A flash of sun on metal caught his eye and he watched a gray car leave the highway, cross the tracks, and coast in toward the loading platform. He recognized the Mercedes as it came to a stop a few feet beyond him. Steve Moore stepped out of the right side of the car and went around to give a hand to his sister. They were talking quietly as they came up the concrete steps to the platform. Dean watched them curiously, especially Truly. It was the first time he had really been able to appraise her thoroughly.
She was wearing a tailored cashmere suit, a lightweight blouse with a scarf tucked under the neck, and low-heeled alligator shoes. Steve had the black band on his arm, but there was nothing about Truly to indicate mourning. Because of her dress, Dean figured that she and Steve had been making a tour of their properties. She was not wearing a hat and the sun turned her hair almost to a platinum shade. Her gray eyes looked cool and her walk was one of calculated poise. She had a long stride, but there was nothing loose about it. Dean had the impression that she was aware of herself and everything about her at every moment. She held herself tightly, like a diver walking out on a springboard.
Because of her slimness, she looked very tall, but when Steve saw Dean and they came to a halt before him he saw that her eyes were a fraction below his own. In high heels, though, he knew that she would be slightly taller than he.
Steve shook hands with Dean and said what a pleasure it was to run into him, then looked curiously at Truly, as if expecting her to say something, too. Dean smiled and said, “We haven’t been introduced, Steve.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Dean, my sister, Truly Moore. Truly, this is the Dean Holt you’ve heard so much about.”
Dean held out his hand, but she ignored it. She looked into his eyes with no interest whatever and asked, “Did you finally get through the gate?”
Dean felt color creeping up in his cheeks, but continued to smile. “Yes,” he said. “After you got out of the way.”
“I’m so glad. You must have been in a terrible hurry.”
“Not so much. I just don’t like people getting in my way.”
She turned to give her brother a false smile. “You see, Steve? The secret of the man’s success.” She looked back at Dean, her features again without expression. “You are a success, aren’t you?”
“I get along.”
“I’m sure you do. There’s room for all sorts of people in the produce business. It’s wonderfully democratic that way.”
Dean was puzzled. What the hell? he wondered. Why should she go out of her way like this to give me the needle?
But he was also becoming angry. He said, “I agree with you, Miss Moore. I’ve also noticed the business supports a hell of a lot of worthless people. They take everything and give nothing. Isn’t that true?”
Steve had been embarrassed by his sister’s cold attitude toward Dean, but he was quick to take exception to the implication in his words. “Now, just a minute, old man. I don’t like — ”
Dean touched his arm lightly with his fingers. “Skip it, Steve. Maybe we both got out on the wrong side of the bed. I’ll be seeing you.”
He nodded at the two of them and walked away, but slowed down toward the end of the platform and looked back. Steve was holding an office door open for Truly and she was about to step through, but she paused and looked in Dean’s direction. She stood there a moment, a long moment, still with no expression, then she disappeared. Dean shrugged. Just a bitch.
He was going down the steps when he saw one of his own trucks pull alongside the platform. Hal had evidently received an order for some dry pack. He stopped and watched as a lift truck ran out on the platform, rammed its steel prongs under the wooden pallet, and lifted the entire load of lettuce from the truck. The machine backed away, turned around, and took the load inside the shed, where it was lowered onto small trucks on narrow-gauge rails. Dean walked inside to check the invoices and see where the load was going.
He felt a finger tap his shoulder and looked about at Truly. She had a cigarette poised at her lips. “Match?” she asked.
Dean looked beyond her, toward the glass partitions of the offices. He could see Steve and Metzner huddled over a desk. It was too far aw
ay to tell, but Metzner seemed to be smiling. Sure. Now he had the two biggest outfits in the valley interested in his plant.
Dean took a gold-plated lighter from his pocket, pressed on the spring, and held the flame to Truly’s cigarette. She inhaled deeply and let the smoke escape slowly from, her lips. “Thank you.”
“No trouble.”
“Actually, Mr. Holt, I could have had a light in the office, but I saw you standing out here….” She shrugged.
“So?”
“So I came out.”
“Love at first sight.”
“Of course. Passion rules me.” She waved her cigarette toward the cartons of lettuce and asked, “Just what is this all about? Steve claims this vacuum packing is going to revolutionize the business, but I don’t understand it at all.”
Dean said, “Well, in the first place, it isn’t vacuum packing. We all use that expression, but it isn’t right. It’s really dry packing with vacuum cooling. You know how we pack in ice?”
“Yes.”
“O.K. Here’s the difference. This lettuce is packed into small cartons right in the field by the cutters. It doesn’t go through the expensive shed operation. From the field it’s brought directly here and stacked in the shed until it’s ready to be shipped, always the same day.” He pointed toward the four big tubes, each about eight feet in diameter and fifty feet long, just as one of the steel doors was opened and his own truckload of lettuce was shoved in. “You see those cartons going in? Well, when the door’s closed, the air is exhausted in the tube and brought down to twenty-nine point eight, which is pretty close to the perfect vacuum of thirty. A vacuum freezes, you know. So when the cartons come out the other end, after about fifteen minutes or so, the lettuce is at a temperature of thirty-two to thirty-three degrees. It’s cold, it’s dry, and no ice has touched it. It goes into the cars that way.”
“Ice is used in the cars?”
“No. Well, it is, yes, but in the bunkers only. No ice is blown in over the cartons, the way you’re used to seeing it. There’s a difference in the cars, too. You can’t use regular refrigerator cars for dry pack. These cars are all Preco, which really means a Preco fan that keeps air circulating through the cars at all times, moving or standing on the tracks.” He paused, then said, “That’s about it. That’s how simple it is.”
“But why is it supposed to be so revolutionary?”
He smiled and said, “One word: cost. Shed labor is skilled labor and it’s expensive. This operation bypasses the ice sheds. Our break-even point on ice packing is about two and a half dollars a crate. For the same amount of lettuce, the break-even point in dry packing is around a dollar eighty. Now you see?”
She nodded. “Very interesting.”
Dean had a feeling that she had paid some attention to his words, but that she was really just killing time with him. He said weakly, “Well, that’s it.” He glanced at his watch, then said, “By the way, I’m sorry I missed the funeral yesterday.”
Her thin eyebrows arched as she lowered the cigarette from her lips and turned her head to look into his eyes. “Oh? Were you invited?”
He could feel his face getting red again. “No, but I assumed — ”
She said coolly, “So many people showed up who weren’t invited. Dad certainly knew a weird lot of people in his time.”
“We all do, in this business. And,” he added, “we keep meeting new ones every day.”
She looked into his eyes for a long time, studying him, then said, “We seem to have taken a terrific dislike for each other. I wonder why.”
Dean shrugged. “Hard to say. Maybe it’s because I can’t stand bitches and your female intuition has told you so.”
A smile flickered faintly in the depths of her eyes and tugged at her lips. “You darling, you.” She looked toward Metzner’s office and saw Steve rising to his feet and shaking hands with the farmer. “It looks as if we’re going. Believe me, I just hate to tear myself away.”
“I can see that.”
He turned on a heel to watch her walk toward the offices. The arrogance of her cool poise infuriated him. Strictly a snob, he thought. That’s all. A spoiled snob, period. He swung away and walked quickly out of the building.
He saw her again later in the afternoon, when he was coming out of the bank, on the main street of Salinas. She walked by without seeing him. Two young women were standing on the sidewalk, dressed in cheap slacks and blouses, printed kerchiefs wrapped about their hair, their shoes dirty and run over from shed work. They were chewing gum and talking fast, but as Truly strolled by their jaws slowed down and their chatter came to a halt.
They looked after her wistfully and with envy. One of them mumbled, “Jees, there goes real class. Get a load of that suit?”
“Two hundred bucks if it’s a dime. And the way she wears it. Jees! I’d give my right arm if I could walk like that.”
“Prolly some rich doll.”
“Oh, sure. How can you miss? She’s the kind used to plenty of loot all her life. It’s written all over her. But that walk, like she owns the world.”
“She don’t belong around here, that’s for sure.”
They sighed together, their eyes riveted on Truly as she continued on down the street.
Dean looked at the two women, then his own gaze followed Truly. He could understand what they meant. There was something different about her walk, something almost regal. And she was different from anyone else in sight, far different. He could picture her on the sands of Biarritz, at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, strolling slowly through the Louvre, coolly seated in a Fifth Avenue salon while mannikins were paraded before her, a spectator in the best box at a polo match, greeting diplomats in a swank Washington apartment, presiding over a long table with candlelight gleaming on silverware and imported glass. Salinas was definitely not her setting.
He turned away, wondering idly what it would be like to be married to a woman like Truly Moore. There would have to be a palatial mansion in Pebble Beach, a smart apartment atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill, a mountain lodge, and a desert house built around a swimming pool at Palm Springs. Filling out the rest of the proper setting would mean jaunts to Europe, New York in the fall for the opening of the new plays, Acapulco for the swimming, and the Mardi Gras at New Orleans. It would mean formal parties and the best people, the “right” people. It would mean that she, as a front, would be worth her weight in diamonds. A broad smile tugged at Dean’s mouth. And all the while you’d still be married to an iceberg.
Or was she? Dean was curious.
He saw Metzner the following day and also on Wednesday, after the board of directors’ meeting at the bank. Dean drove out to the vacuum plant and had a talk with him. Metzner still had a trace of worry, but he was no longer afraid of losing anything.
“The way it is now,” he told Dean, “I keep the plant myself and in time I clean up with it. Steve Moore will keep me going.”
“Is he buying in?”
“No. He can’t. His attorneys figure it will take about a year to settle the Moore estate. He can’t buy in with nobody until then.”
“Then how the devil can he help you?”
“Well, him and Freeman got it figured out. Ninety per cent of their stuff’s been going through the sheds and the rest through vacuum. They’d like to reverse that, but if they do it means they’re stuck with two big ice plants and all their expensive sheds.”
“So?”
“So Steve will close the sheds down a little at a time and switch gradually to dry pack.”
“They can’t dump the sheds. There are no buyers. They’re up against the same thing as everyone else. I’m the only one in the clear.”
“Steve don’t mind taking a loss on the sheds. He figures they gotta close sooner or later, anyway. But the way Freeman figures it, they’ll run all the top-quality stuff through ice and send the rest over here. So they’ll get some use out of the sheds while they’re switching to dry pack.”
Dean shook
his head and squinted narrowly at Metzner. “This don’t — doesn’t make sense. I don’t see where you’re getting off. You’d better start talking to me as one of the bank directors. How about those notes?”
Metzner placed his fingertips together and smiled at Dean. “Freeman figures the Moore outfit’s big enough to pick up the interest on my notes out of profits. We’ve made a deal on that, which we’ll close the end of the year. I keep controlling interest and everybody’s happy.”
“Then you won’t consider my idea.”
“Not on your life. I opened this plant to make money. Now I got a chance.”
Dean got to his feet, feeling angry and frustrated. “Sounds to me like you’re taking a hell of a gamble on the Moore outfit’s staying on top. Suppose their profits aren’t big enough to handle your notes? Then you really go down the drain.”
“Now, now, my boy. With Freeman Mitchell running things? I never heard of that man losing on anything yet. Have you?”
There was no answer to that. Dean left to head for his office. He had a queer feeling that old Tom Moore was laughing at him in his grave. His first move completely stymied. Why did the old coot have to leave a man like Freeman behind? Anyone else he could get around, but not Freeman.
He pulled into the parking area in front of his offices and glanced toward the Moore string, which was next door. He saw Freeman’s car pull in and Freeman getting out. Dean frowned and scratched his head. Freeman was walking stiff-legged, like a drunk. At that time of day? It didn’t make sense. Freeman was a good drinking man and could go along with the very best of them, but he watched himself during business hours. Dean shrugged. Maybe he was celebrating something. The will, probably. Sure, that was it. This was the day the Moore will was to be read. Dean lifted an arm to wave.
• • •
Freeman saw him waving in the distance, started to lift his own hand, and dropped it. There was a glassy, dazed look in his eyes. He moved ahead like a sleepwalker and almost tripped on the steps going up to the plant. He went into the Moore offices and employees smiled and made remarks and he neither saw nor heard any of them. He went through the long line of offices and into his own office at the far end. He closed the door softly and stood there stiffly, looking about, as if seeing the room for the first time.
Hunger and the Hate Page 7