The party broke up at dusk, just as the western rim of the ocean was swallowing the sun. The younger crowd left first for another party they were attending somewhere in Pebble Beach, and the others were soon ferried to the wharf in the small dory.
As Dean was about to step into the dory with Steve and Betty, Ruth and the Hardings, Truly detained him with a hand on his arm. She asked, “Do you mind staying a few minutes?”
He gave her a puzzled glance, but shrugged. “No, I don’t mind.”
She waved to the others to go ahead. Ruth stood up in the dory and called to Dean, “Shall I wait for you on the wharf?”
He looked inquiringly at Truly and she shook her head. He called to Ruth, “I’ll see you later.”
Ruth frowned and dropped back to her seat in the dory. She was looking puzzled and angry as the motor kicked into life and the boat pulled away. Dean was becoming slightly angry himself. He had intended spending the evening and possibly the night with Ruth, but now he was not sure she would be at home when he got there. Ruth had a childish reaction to any upset in plan; she generally took off somewhere on her own, usually a tour of the bars. It could be difficult to find her, if Truly detained him too long, and he would be faced with a dull evening alone.
He turned to look at Truly, who was watching him with intense speculation. She smiled and mentioned something about a chill in the air and suggested that they have coffee in the galley. He followed her below and watched as she opened a can of coffee and prepared it on the galley stove. He smiled at her ineptness. It was apparent that she knew little about kitchens, at sea or on shore.
Dean leaned back against the sink, got a cigarette going, then asked Truly bluntly, “What’s on your mind?”
Mario started down into the galley with a trayful of glasses, but Truly took them from him and gave him a signal with her eyes. The Filipino grinned, glanced slyly at Dean, and disappeared.
Truly put the glasses on a counter, then turned to face Dean with a suddenly serious expression. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think I need to bother about preliminaries with you. I’ll get to the point. I’d like to talk with you about Steve. I — I’m worried about him.”
Dean nodded. “About what?”
“Well, about all sorts of things.”
“Especially his business.”
“Yes, his business. Steve has always liked the produce business, you know, and he was quite excited at taking it over. He has led a — well, a fairly sheltered life, and he hasn’t liked it. He likes making his own way in the world. Now, of course, he has a chance to do that. But it came a bit sooner than he expected and caught him sort of unprepared. To be perfectly honest with you, he isn’t at all equipped to handle the huge business left to him.”
Dean chuckled and said, “No one is. We all have to learn.”
“You learned by degrees, though.”
“Oh, sure. It took time.”
“That’s where Steve is handicapped. He finds himself suddenly in the position of having to make decisions that should be backed up with years of knowledge and experience. He doesn’t have it. I think he will learn, eventually, but meanwhile the mistakes he makes are all big ones. Whatever he does wrong now has far-reaching consequences and could eventually put him in a position from which it would be difficult to recover.”
Dean burst into a laugh. “You sound like the chairman of the board at my bank.”
“Really?”
“Sure. But go ahead. I’m listening.”
A look of irritation crossed her face, but she kept her voice level. “Steve is very anxious to make good, and not just because of the money involved or even the business itself, as such. He enjoys the challenge of it. And he likes what he’s doing. Underneath everything, though, he’s worried. He’s never had responsibility before.”
Dean interrupted: “He’s always seemed pretty self-confident to me.”
She reached across the short space separating them and touched his arm lightly. “But he isn’t. That’s just a front. He’s not like you, Dean. You had to fight for everything you have. Steve has been given everything. I have a hunch that when you go into a fight, you keep right on fighting regardless of how the outcome may seem to you. That’s the way you are. You couldn’t do anything else. You just keep right on fighting, come hell or high water.”
Dean was pleased with her analysis and nodded. He reached around her to turn off the flame under the boiling coffee as he said, “I guess I am that way.”
“I know you are. That’s why you’re the one man I can talk this over with.”
He was even more pleased, but he asked, “How about that coffee?”
She stared at him, then laughed and turned away to get cups and saucers. She had put too much coffee in the pot, and when he tasted it he found it too strong. He added a little water to his cup and an extra spoon of sugar. Truly barely tasted hers, made a wry face and shoved it aside.
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”
“That’s all right. It’s hot, anyway. Now, then.”
“Well, as I was saying, Steve doesn’t have your aggressive spirit or your strength. Steve will fight, but only up to a point. Then he quits.”
He looked at her sharply and asked, “What is that point?”
“It’s a point that would never occur to you. As I said before, you would keep on fighting even though it would seem that you could gain nothing. You’d keep on anyway. Steve, on the other hand, will continue a fight only as long as he thinks he has a chance of winning. He must have that chance to win. It must be at least possible and, better still, highly probable. If he thinks, at any time, that winning is beyond him, even though maybe it really isn’t, then he quits. I’ve seen it happen many times.”
“Where?”
“Well, mostly in sports. He’s an excellent tennis player, one of the best. Yet I’ve seen him quit when the chance of winning, though a slim one, was still within his grasp, just because he figured he no longer had a chance. It was the same in golf. There comes a point in his mind when it’s no longer worth the effort to continue. Do you understand, or am I telling this badly?”
“No. You’re explaining it very well.” He sipped at his coffee and considered what he had been told, then said, “Sam Parker is pretty much that way, at least in his domestic affairs. It isn’t worth the effort for him to arrange his home life the way he’d like it, and I guess he feels he’s lost, anyway, so he gets plastered and tomcats around with a bunch of tramps.”
Truly cried, “That’s exactly what I mean. You do understand.”
“Well, sure. As you say, it’s really pretty simple. I didn’t realize Steve was that way, though. He seems to have a lot of drive.”
“He has, but only up to that certain mental point.”
“Yeah.”
“Now you understand why I’m worried about him. He isn’t playing a game any more. The Moore Company isn’t something you can shrug off and forget and walk away from. It isn’t a case of divorcing one wife and trying again with another.” Her voice rose and she said shrilly, “This is one time he’s playing for keeps.”
Dean blinked at her, startled by her momentary loss of composure, but he also had to smile. “No kidding about that.”
She went on rapidly, “This is a big thing and he knows it. Steve is no fool. He has to make good at what he’s doing, he simply has to, because he knows he can’t walk away from this. And he wants to make good. He wants it so badly and he’s working so terribly hard to do it. He can’t reach that certain mental point this time, because,” she cried, “it would destroy him if he did.”
“Oh, now, wait a minute. Aren’t you getting a little dramatic?”
Her gray eyes blazed. “Don’t be a fool! I know my brother and I understand, even better than he, what he’s up against. It’s not just a case of losing a sizable fortune or a great business. It’s a case of losing himself. So I’m appealing to you. I need your help.”
“But you’re n
ot involved. Even if he went so far as to go down the drain, it wouldn’t affect your inheritance.”
It was getting dark in the galley, but he saw her features twist into an ugly grimace as she said, “Anything that affects Steve affects me. Anything.”
Her words gave birth to strange images in his mind, and he was uncomfortable and embarrassed. He glanced at his wrist watch and, though he could not read the time in the deepening gloom, he mumbled, “It’s getting late.”
She was suddenly contrite and again smiling at him. “I’m sorry. Of course, you must have another engagement.”
“Yeah. If I’m too late — ”
She led the way out of the galley and he followed her to the short companionway on the starboard side of the cruiser. The hired man came from the bow of the boat, jumped down into the dory, and started the engine. The ocean was a black plain under a dark-blue sky with a faint golden line along the western horizon. Small boats bobbed at their anchors in the cove, but there was no sign of life. It was very still. There was a chill in the air and Dean felt it through the light sweater he was wearing.
“It’s been a nice day,” he said.
“Yes.”
Already she was becoming remote again, and he said quickly, “Y’ know, I just thought of something. I was pretty damned rude down there in the galley. I didn’t let you finish what you were saying.”
“It’s quite all right. You have no reason to listen to me. It was foolish and presumptuous of me to force my problems upon you.”
“Oh, hell, I don’t mind. Anything I can do — Look. Let’s sum it all up in a nutshell. You figure Steve is a babe in the woods and you also figure I’m the one guy who can really hurt him.”
She was back with him again, even physically close, her hand touching his arm as she said, “Well, yes.”
“O.K. You’re right about that. I’ll tell you something else. The business we’re in, there’s no such thing as two outfits sharing the top. Only one can do it at a time. Your father always had that spot. No one could budge him. Now it looks like my day. Even without effort on my part, the whole thing is swinging in my direction, simply because I’m now in a stronger position than your brother. That’s the nature of things. You can’t control it and I don’t control it much, myself. That’s the way it goes.”
She was standing closer to him, trying to read his eyes. She whispered, “Yes, I know that.”
“Good. I don’t think you expect me to step aside. Do I look like that kind of a moron? Would you step aside?”
She hesitated, then answered truthfully, “No, I wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t think so. All right. Now that I have the Delaney acreage, I guess I’m top dog. I’ll probably even grow a bit more and maybe Steve will lose a bit more. That’s the way it goes, too. The crowd follows the winner. But, in my experience, there always comes a leveling-off point. Beyond that you don’t go, no higher and no lower. It works both ways. So I don’t think you have a thing to worry about where Steve is concerned.”
She said breathlessly, “You sound so sure.”
“I am sure. Steve will get his affairs and his organization stabilized before this season is over and then he’ll be O.K. However, if you’re so worried about it — ”
He paused and for the first time realized the true meaning of the situation. A Moore was appealing to him for help. One of the aristocrats, the biggest of the big shots, was appealing to Dean Holt, from the wrong side of the tracks, a former field hand, packer, swamper, and truck driver. It was a heady sensation and he felt a sense of power coursing through his body like electric waves. It was intoxicating.
But he had started to say something meant to be reassuring. She was waiting to hear from the one man who had control over her brother’s destiny. He searched his brain and a convenient lie came to mind:
“I’ll tell you one thing, Truly: Regardless of which way the business goes, it won’t hurt me a damned bit to give Steve a hand now and then. He may not want it, but there are a lot of little ways I can do it without letting him be aware of it.”
“Oh, Dean. Would you?”
“Sure.” He grinned, almost believing his own words. “Why not? In the first place, I like Steve. In the second place — well, I’ve changed my mind about you. I think we could get along.”
Her eyes, staring into his, were suddenly wide with shock, as if for the first time he had come into focus in her mind. Dean had an odd feeling that in spite of his background and his ruggedness and even in spite of the fact that he was the direct antithesis of her idol, Steve, Truly was nevertheless suddenly fascinated by him. He was so different and so far removed from the sort of men she had known that he could be the one man who could take her away from Steve. He could almost read it in her eyes and the pulse of her throat and the breathless way she was holding herself. It was so real to him and he felt it so forcefully that it was almost as if she had herself put the feeling into words.
But then he shook himself and came close to laughing aloud at the extravagance of the idea. She, too, smiled lightly and stepped back, as if breaking a spell. Yet he noticed that she had paled a bit and that now her breath was coming faster than it had before.
“Yes,” she said quickly, “I’m sure we could be friends. I’d like that.”
“O.K., chum. Stop worrying. I’ll be seeing you.”
He stepped down to the dory and was taken through the darkness toward the wharf. He turned and looked back and could dimly make out Truly’s figure on the boat. He started chuckling. Gripes, he thought, I must be getting bats in my belfry.
Chapter Eleven
DEAN WAS SO BUSY for a while that he gave little thought to Truly, or to Steve and his problems. He was fighting a falling market by throwing all the fives down the cull chutes and selling only enough lettuce to keep his accounts happy, yet he had to give orders to Vince to plant the Delaney acreage for even more lettuce. It was a surplus season and he already had more lettuce than he needed, but he had to plant even more or lose Delaney. If the market was still down when that lettuce was ready for cutting he would be ruined, or at least seriously damaged. He could only hope that the market would recover before then.
He and Metzner and Parker and Harding tried to get all the growers in the valley to plow under every other row of lettuce and so reduce the surplus to combat the good weather in the East, which was bringing in all the home-grown stuff. With their added transcontinental freight rates, they could not compete with the Eastern product. Most of the growers were desperate and agreed willingly to plowing under 50 per cent of their crops, but two of the big growers would not go along. That would mean that the growers in agreement would simply be holding an umbrella over the two holdouts, who would then make a financial killing. The plan fell through, as usually happened to all such co-operative plans, and lettuce dropped to $2.50 for crates of fours.
For some, such as Dean, who was sending out most of his product dry-packed and whose affairs in the fields were pretty fluid, that was the break-even point. As a shipper, he actually made about twenty dollars a car on the crates going through the ice shed by taking a small profit on the ice itself and none on the lettuce. He was not yet losing money, and he had the tremendous profits of the first part of the season in reserve to pull him through the lean season. He also had Freeman, who was at his best on a down market and could smell out small buying centers before word got around and they were glutted with lettuce.
For others, though, such as Steve Moore, who had no great cash reserve to fall back on and who had to sell at any price to keep open, it was necessary to throw in fives at two dollars a crate, which meant a slight loss in the icing department and no profit on the lettuce. They could either sell at a loss and keep their accounts and growers, or refuse to sell and go out of business. So they sold at a loss.
Dean was not at all unhappy with the situation. It never failed; at least once during a year the bottom fell out of the market. He expected it and he was always prepared for it. Of co
urse, if the down market lasted too long he could be badly hurt, too, especially if he had too many growers on his hands and had to dump the lettuce. But he was also well aware that there was nothing so variable as weather, and the good season in the East was bound to break. All he had to do was hang on and coast. On the other hand, if a miracle did happen and weather continued good in the East, then everyone in the West would suffer. In that case, he thought wryly, the banks would have to bail them all out, or the banks themselves would go under. He was protected.
He was in Clyde Davenport’s office one day, discussing a legal matter concerning the vacuum plant, when their conversation naturally gravitated to the condition of the market. Clyde sighed and asked Dean, “Do you think it will go lower?”
Dean nodded. “Sure. Everybody talks about this being the bottom. That’s whistling in the dark. It will drop at least another quarter before it gets any better.”
“That’s bad. That means everyone in the business takes a beating.”
“Well, yes and no. We won’t make dough, that’s for sure, but I’ve gone through two-and-a-quarter markets before without suffering too much.”
“How do you do it?”
“Tight organization. Everything in my control. No one putting pressure on me to sell or to dump. I can pick my accounts, avoid the credit risks, and stack up a hell of a lot of No Bills before I have to float them. Ice alone can carry me through a market like that without losing. But if it goes lower than that — well, then,” he shrugged, “that’s tough.”
Hunger and the Hate Page 20