The Collectibles

by James J. Kaufman

  Howard seemed to ponder that answer as he rose and selected four nearby sticks, looking them over as if only those four would do. The ritual was familiar to Joe as he watched his uncle unsheathe his hunting knife and, using the handle, pound the sticks into the ground, each a yard from the fire. Next, Howard sat down on a log he had pulled up to the fire and slowly unlaced his boots, placing them upside down on the sticks. Then he removed his wool socks and hung them up to dry as well.

  It was Howard who’d given Joe his first pair of high leather boots. “Them boots are your foundation in these hills,” he told Joe. “Take care of ’em, they’ll serve you well.”

  Joe stared at the fire, not moving.

  Howard looked at Joe again and asked, “What’s botherin’ you, son?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Uncle Howard, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and, no matter how much I think about it, I really can’t change.”

  “Can’t change what?” Howard asked in a gentle tone.

  Joe’s eyes continued to lock into the fire. He heard what Uncle Howard had asked, but no words came out in response. Just silence. Howard simply waited and, finally, Joe looked up from the fire and directly into Howard’s eyes. “Can’t change the fact that I’m average, and I’m always going to be average.”

  More silence.

  Howard finally stood up, walked over to Joe and, kneeling down, put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. Looking into his eyes, he said, “Joe, it ain’t been easy for you with your mom and dad gone at too young an age. Your Aunt Lettie and I love you like our own son. I wonder sometimes whether we’ve been good ’nough for you. We prayed many times askin’ for help from the Almighty. Lettie and I couldn’t be more proud of you if we tried. We think you’re a fine young man. Lot of people ’round here think so, too. You talk about not wantin’ to be average. I ain’t the reader you are, and I don’t know all the words you know. But it don’t seem to me that you were average when you won the All State swimmin’ meet last month. You ain’t average in school, ’cause you’re at the top of your class, winnin’ all kinds of learnin’ and athletic awards. You already got them colleges writin’ to you about scholarships, both for your grades and your swimmin’ and wrestlin’.” Howard looked up at the moon, stood, turned and added, “I don’t call it average when you went down into that crevice and brought that young fella from New York City back up after he fell in and broke his arm. Funny name. Started with a ‘P.’ You saved that boy’s life.”

  That was more words at one time than Joe could remember Howard ever saying.

  “His name was Preston. And you had something to do with saving him, the way I remember it,” Joe replied with a grin, stoking the fire.

  “You did the savin’, I just did the haulin’. Anyhow, don’t be changing the subject. So what’s average about all that?”

  “What I mean, Uncle Howard, is, well, I’m five-foot-nine, and I’ll probably never be taller. I can only lift so much, and I sure can’t do the carrying like you. And I listen to the way you talk to the men you guide, and I see the look in their eyes and hear the tone in their voices when they talk to you. They don’t just respect you, Uncle Howard, they idolize you. They’re never going to be like you. I’m never going to be like you. And I don’t think I’m going to be like them either. I hate being average.”

  Joe watched Howard get up and walk around the fire, stretching his arms and neck. He went over to the lean-to and laid out his sleeping bag in front of his backpack basket. He arranged a few more of the pine boughs on each side of the lean-to and prepared himself for sleep. But instead of crawling into the lean-to, Howard came over to Joe, put his hands around Joe’s shoulders holding him square, and again looked straight into Joe’s eyes.

  “Son, you’re right. You can’t help bein’ average. But that don’t mean you can’t be uncommon.”

  “Uncommon?” Joe asked.

  “Yep, uncommon.”

  “How do you be uncommon?” Joe asked, amazed that Howard had said this much to him and praying that he was not pushing his uncle too far.

  “Well, I’m just an old mountain guide, but seems to me there are three ways. Do what the other fella can’t. Be what the other fella ain’t. And then help the other fella.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s enough,” Howard replied, and crawled in the lean-to.

  Joe thought about his uncle, how he had worked these mountains he loved since he was a young boy, how he’d lived for sixty-eight years outside the small town of Mineville, on the eastern side of the mountains in the foothills, in a large, two-story, wood-frame house that he built with his own hands. Winding behind the house was a fresh brook, home to endless numbers of trout. Behind the brook were seven small green-and-white wooden cabins he had also built. These cabins were rented from time to time to the business executives and others who came from the cities to bag a deer or catch a big trout with the help of Howard as a guide.

  They returned year after year, lured by the majesty of the mountain and its bounty and by Howard’s competence, charm, warmth, and grace. They felt safe with Howard. There was Aunt Lettie’s humor and mountain cooking, too.

  Increasingly, Howard had allowed Joe to come on these trips. The executives, or “city fellas” as Uncle Howard called them, were, for Joe, a window to another world. Joe loved to watch them as they struggled through the narrow passes. First Joe noticed the difference in the way they talked. Not only the words they used but the sound of the words. What Uncle Howard called their “New York City way of speaking.” Then there was a difference in the way they walked, the way they moved. It was hard to explain, but there was something in the way they acted that gave Joe the impression that they had seen it all, that nothing could surprise them. Finally, their clothes were the kind Joe had only seen in catalogs, sort of fancy and finished at the same time, all new and expensive. Joe felt they lived in a different world.

  Occasionally, they would even say a few words to Joe. They could not keep up with Howard, though he had them by fifteen or twenty years. At night, they gathered around the campfire, watching Howard cook. While usually tired, they were expansive, at times euphoric, as they recounted their experiences during the day. They missed their shots, lost their fish, or found their traps empty, and acted as if they had conquered the world. Eventually, in one way or another, they would turn the talk to their lives and how successful they were in their business deals. Joe could tell from the way Uncle Howard kept taking off his cap and putting it on again he didn’t care too much for the bragging part, but Joe wanted to hear it all. Where they went, their cars, their Lear jets, and especially their boats and where they would take them on the ocean. It was another world. Someday Joe would have a boat and drive it in the ocean himself.

  Howard insisted on no alcohol during the day and indeed discouraged it altogether. But often, the flasks would appear after supper “to add a nip to their coffee,” and that added fuel to their words. After Howard had listened intently to all of their stories, and told a few of his own, he would suggest it was time to turn in and “allow all the other animals in the mountains to get some sleep.” Joe watched Howard carefully, taking it all in.

  The moon was high and bright now. Joe sat by the fire watching it until the last ember died, replaying the conversation with his uncle over and over. The air turned chilly. His uncle’s words burned hot in his mind. Do what the other fella can’t. Be what the other fella ain’t. And then help the other fella.

  Joe crawled into his sleeping bag. He finally fell asleep, but not before making himself a promise. I may have to go through this world being average – but I swear, I’ll be uncommon along the way.

  Chapter 2: Preston

  Hundreds of miles away and in a world apart, Preston, too, would hear words this night that would change his life forever. The only son of Peter and June Wilson, he had the misfortune of being born rich, and ignored by his
father. From this father he inherited a tall, strong body with full shoulders, a well-proportioned and pleasing face, a full head of thick black hair, straight healthy teeth, and piercing blue eyes.

  Preston’s mother was an even-tempered, slight-breasted woman of thirty-seven who wore her thin brown hair in a page boy cut and a small amount of make-up applied to her eyes and sparse eyebrows. She had thin lips, slightly turned down unless she happened to smile. When she did smile, her pale translucent face took on a bright, less hungry look and, at times, she actually had a certain glow, especially when she saw Preston.

  From his mother, thanks to her father, Preston would inherit a trust fund making him the sole beneficiary of 6.7 million dollars. His mother also inherited a sizable sum from her father, Rupert Gaylord, who had the good fortune to buy a large amount of stock in a little-known company named Haloid. Haloid became Xerox, and Rupert became rich.

  Preston’s father had been a promising young businessman when he persuaded June Gaylord to marry him sixteen years earlier. They were living in an expansive cooperative on the twelfth floor of 1040 Fifth Avenue, on New York City’s Upper East Side that June’s father had purchased for June when Preston was born.

  June insisted that her son attend the right private schools; among the many subjects of Peter and June’s arguments was the question of which would be appropriate. They had settled on Eaglebrook in Deerfield, Massachusetts for grades six through nine. He was now enrolled at the Hotchkiss School.

  What seemed most important to Preston and many of his classmates were their backgrounds. What did their parents do? Where did they do it? How much money did they really have? Where did it come from? Would it continue to come? Did they actually make money from what they did, whatever that was, or was their money made from returns on their money? And, above all, would it last?

  It wasn’t hard to figure all of this out. It was a small group, after all, and there were only so many Michael Douglases, Samuel Kauffmanns and Hiltons.

  The majority of the boys came from New York City, as did Preston. Preston could tell that they were from the city by how fast they talked, their body language, their attitude and the way they acted toward their teachers. They were rebellious, and underneath, they were all, in one way or another, angry.

  While Preston knew that they, and he for that matter, were privileged, he wondered what the privilege was in being shipped off to private school, consigned to live with all these smart-ass kids, when what he really longed for was to have a relationship with normal friends and to spend at least some time with his mother and father. When Preston complained that he never got time with his mother, and even less with his father, June reminded him that his father did make an effort. “Preston, your father has tried,” she said, but it was evident that she was trying hard herself to think of an example. Then, her face a bit lighter, she reminded him, “There is the business about those trips way upstate in the mountains. You know he tries to do that at least every other year.”

  His mother did not need to worry – Preston would never forget that trip last summer. While Preston appreciated – actually longed for – time with his father, he hated the fact that what little time he had was spent traipsing around in the mountains watching his father play hunter. Besides that, going into the mountains was not a vacation – certainly not the kind his friends enjoyed with their parents: skiing trips to Aspen, the Swiss Alps, cruising the British Virgins or the Greek Islands. And the mountains were dangerous.

  What was with his father and these hunting trips anyway? What in hell his father saw in going that far to bust their asses climbing around in the woods with some local hicks and freezing to death in some half-ass lean-to was beyond him. Why did his father seem to covet the respect of some poor mountain guide? And what was Preston supposed to do about the kid, kiss his ass because he got him out of a tight spot after Preston slipped, fell from the trail and broke his damn arm? They shouldn’t have put him in that position in the first place.

  “Ask him why it’s a good thing that I never see him. Ask him why you never see him either. Why do you and he stick me on a shelf, first up in Massachusetts and now in Connecticut, visit me on parents’ day and Thanksgiving, and have me join you at Christmas? Why is that enough?”

  “You don’t understand, Preston,” his mother replied. “It’s not that simple. These things are for your own good. I don’t want you to make the mistakes . . . ”

  “What?” Preston demanded. “Go on.”

  “I don’t want to go on,” June said in a choked throaty voice. Preston saw her eyes begin to fill, and he feared she was going to cry. “I don’t want to discuss your father in this way; I don’t want to let him down. I will talk with him, however. I’ll do it tonight.”

  Preston thanked his mother. He wished he could talk to his father himself, but either Peter wasn’t around or, when he was, he was too busy doing “other things.” What Preston did not understand was what these other things were.

  “What do you do, Dad?” he would ask, only to be told by Peter in a vague but sweeping way, “I’m a businessman, son. I make deals, make things happen, manage money, that sort of thing.”

  Peter waited until a night when June would be in the right mood, after a steak dinner and wine at Mulligans, to educate her on the idea and get her support. Tell her about his vision for Global to import latex gloves into the United States. Unfortunately, the night he picked was the same one when June was waiting to talk to him and it was also the night that Preston happened to be home and had decided to position himself in such a way that he could hear their conversation after they returned from dinner.

  Preston seemed to anticipate that his parents would continue their conversation in the study over Johnny Walker Red and ice. He crouched under the wooden cabinets in the narrow butler’s pantry off the kitchen where he used to hide as a young boy. He could hear the exuberance in his father’s voice.

  “June, honey, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on my next move, what I’m going to do, and I’ve really got one this time. I’d like to tell you about it.”

  June sipped her drink, leaned forward in her chair and looked at her handsome husband with a smile that failed to mask distrust. “Oh, wonderful, Peter,” she said. “Please do.”

  Missing, as always, the complexity of June’s response, Peter was delighted with the green light. “I’ve devised a strategic plan,” he said, with pride and special emphasis on the word “strategic.” Peter went on to explain that he had become aware that the United States and China had recently held a joint session on Trade Investment and Economic Law in Beijing. “I’ve researched the Sino-American scene from a potential market perspective, and, baby, I’ve determined that the Chinese are hot in the latex market.” He flashed his best smile, hoping to convince June and himself of his confidence. “They’re producing latex gloves right now, but they need the good old US of A to really fly.”

  “Don’t they have a large population of their own to supply, let alone the rest of the world?” June paused, and then asked sharply, “How much do you need this time?”

  “Only two million. The rest will be self-producing. And I can pay it back in less than twelve months,” Peter said, trying to sound convincing.

  “I don’t want to talk about lending you money right now, Peter, and I don’t want to be . . . ” what did her psychiatrist call it? An enabler . . . and she added, “In any event, what I want to talk to you about is Preston.”

  “What about him, and why are you changing the subject? Why do you connect Preston with helping me over the top with this business deal?” Peter thumped across the room with no specific destination in mind. He stopped at the antique end table, picked up the empty ash tray and threw it down again. “My relationship with Preston is just fine.”

  June stood up, drink in hand, and addressed her husband directly. “I think it’s time we speak frankly, Peter. There is good reason t
o connect Preston to your deals because, while you’re off chasing rainbows, you have a wife and a son who are unclear what you really do and who you really are. Do you know how many deals I’ve given you money for that were going to make you millions, in fact, amounted to nothing but debt? I’m not stupid, Peter, and neither is Preston, by the way. He asked me to talk to you, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you myself for a long time. I have decided that I’m not going to loan you any more money. And I want you to find Preston and have a heart-to-heart father-and-son talk.”

  Peter knew he had to be especially artful in how he managed her now. At the same time, it annoyed him that he had to go through all this just to tap in to what he regarded as her inexhaustible resources. He decided to take a different tack. “Okay, June. Take it easy. It’s not a big deal. Relax. I’ll talk to Preston. I’ll tell him whatever you want. What do you want me to tell him?”

  At this point, June, having poured herself another scotch, was sitting stone erect on the forward part of the sofa. She looked up at Peter with ice in her eyes. “All right, Peter, I’ll tell you explicitly what I would say to him and what I would not say to him. I’ll start with what I would not say. I would not tell him that, despite your good looks and charm and gift of gab, you are an abject failure. Notwithstanding your promises, you’ve failed to deliver on every significant business matter you’ve undertaken. You’ve nearly exhausted the money my father left me, with no money left for Preston. Thank God the trust wouldn’t let you touch the money for his education. You have my love, what’s left of it, but you don’t have my respect. As far as what you say to him, you as a father should be able to figure that out. You might try listening to him for a change. Ask him how he feels. Answer his questions. Truthfully, Preston loves you. He just isn’t sure who you are or what you do, and he can’t understand why you constantly push him away.”