by Richard Ford
“I’m carrying pretty stiff debt,” Karl said dolefully, as if that were equivalent to toting around a hunk of lead in his heart. With his flat pink thumbnail he stabbed at a hardened root beer droplet bonded to the tabletop. “I’m about, oh, six months from two tits up out here.” He sniffed and dug away at the scab of sweetness, baked on by a long summer of shitty luck.
“Can’t you recapitalize?” I said. “Sell off the dining car, maybe take out an equity loan?” More realty lingo.
“Don’t got the equity,” Karl said. “And no one wants a goddamned dining car in central Jersey.”
I was ready to drag myself home by then, have a real drink and pile into bed. But I said, “So what do you think you’re going to do?”
“I need an investor to come in and clear my debt, then maybe trust me not to run us into the ground again. You know anybody like that? ‘Cause I’m going to lose this pop stand before I have a chance to prove I’m not a complete asshole. It’ll be too bad.” Karl was not making an attempt at a joke, as my son would’ve.
I looked around behind Karl Bemish, at his little orange birch beer outlet—neat, hand-lettered signs all over the trees: “Walk dogs here ONLY!” “PLEASE don’t litter.” “Our customers are our BEST FRIENDS.” “THANKS, come again.” “ BIRCH BEER is GOOD for YOU.” It was a sweet little operation, with, I imagine, plenty of local goodwill and a favorable suburban-semi-rural location—a few old farms nearby, with small but prospering vegetable patches, the odd nursery cum cider mill, some decades-old hippie pottery operations and one or two mediocre, mostly treeless golf courses. New housing soon would be sprouting up in the open pastures. Traffic flow was good at the intersection of 518 and 31, where there was already a two-way stop and as growth continued there would have to be a light, since 31, if no longer the main road, was at least the scenic former main road from the northwestern counties down to the state house in Trenton. All of which spelled money.
It might really be, I thought, that all Karl Bemish needed was a little debt relief, a partner to consult with and oversee capital decisions while he ran the day-to-day. And for some reason (partly, I’m sure, because I shared a slice of nostalgic past with old Karl) I just couldn’t say no.
I said to him right out under the gum trees, with mosquitoes thickening around our two heads, that I myself might be interested in some sort of partnership possibility. He seemed not the least bit surprised at this and immediately started spieling about several great ideas he had, all of which I thought would never work and told him so as a way of letting him know (and myself too) that I could be firm on some things. We talked for another hour, till nearly one, then I gave him my card, told him to call me at the office the next day and said if I didn’t wake up feeling like I needed to have my brain replaced, maybe we could sit down again, go over his books and records, lay out his debts versus his assets, income and cash flow and if there weren’t any tax problems or black holes (like boozing or a gambling problem), maybe I’d buy in for a piece of his birch beer action.
All of which seemed to please the daylights out of Karl, from the evidence of how many times he nodded his head solemnly and said, “Yep, sure, okee, yep, sure, okee. Right, right, right.”
But who wouldn’t be happy! A man comes crashing out of the night into your place of business, apparently drunk and wrecking the shit out of your picnic table and petunia beds. Yet before the dust even settles, you and he are making plans to be partners and to haul you out of a mud hole you’d gotten yourself in by a combination of dumb optimism, ineptitude and greed. Who wouldn’t think the horn of plenty had been laid, big end forward, right outside his door?
And in fact inside of a month everything was pretty much in place, as the high rollers say. I bought into Karl’s operation at the agreed-to amount of 35 thousand, which in essence zero-balanced his creditor debt, and also—because Karl was completely broke—took a controlling interest.
I immediately got busy selling off the slush puppy and yogurt machines to a restaurant wholesaler over in Allentown. I got in touch with the company up in Lackawanna that sold Karl the dining car, “The Pride of Buffalo,” and they agreed to return a fifth of what they could get from reselling it, plus they’d haul it away. I sold off the copy and fax machines Karl had bought expecting eventually to further diversify by offering his roadway clients a wider variety of services than just birch beer. I eliminated several novelty food items Karl had also bought equipment for but never got operational because of space and money problems—a machine for making pronto pups; another, almost identical machine for (and only for) making New Orleans-style beignets. Karl had catalogues for daiquiri makers (in case he got a liquor license), a six-burner crepe stove and a lot of other crap no one in central New Jersey had ever heard of. It occurred to me during this time that after his wife’s death Karl may have suffered a nervous breakdown or possibly a series of small strokes that left his decision-making faculty slightly bent.
Yet pretty soon, by application of nothing but common sense, I had things under control and was able to split the proceeds of the equipment sales with Karl and to put back half of mine into working capital (I decided, on a lark, to keep the kitchen-on-wheels). I also filled Karl in on some of my own newly minted, commonsense-rooted business acumen, all of which I’d picked up around the realty office. The biggest mistake, I told him, was an impulse to replicate a good thing so as to try to make it twice as good (this almost never works). And the second was that people failed not simply because they were greedy but because they got bored with regular life and with what they were doing—even things they liked—and farted away their hard-won gains just trying to stay amused. My view was, keep your costs down, make it simple, don’t permit yourself the luxury of boredom, build up a clientele, then later sell to some doofus who can go broke making your idea “better.” (None of this had I ever done, of course: all I’d done was buy two rental houses and sell my own house to buy my ex-wife’s—hardly qualifying me for the trading pit.) I expounded these maxims to Karl while two enormous black men from Allentown Restaurant Outfitters were fork-lifting his slush puppy and yogurt machines out the back door onto a rental truck. It was, I thought, a vivid object lesson.
The last alterations I made in our business strategies were, first, to change the name of the place from Bemish’s Birch Beer Depot (too big a mouthful) to Franks, no apostrophe (I liked the pun plus the straightforward appeal). And on top of that I declared that only two things would a human being buy when he pulled off the road at our sign: a frosty mug of root beer and a hell of a good Polish wurst-dog of the sort everyone always dreams about and wishes they could find while driving through some semi-scenic backwater with a hunger on. Karl Bemish, a saved man now in his white, monogrammed tunic, paper cap and shiny dome, was of course promptly established as owner-operator, yukking it up with his old customers, making crude, half-assed jokes about the “bun man” and generally feeling like he’d gotten his life back on track since the much-too-early death of his precious wife. And for me, for whom it was all pretty simple and amusing, our transaction was more or less what I’d been searching for when I came back from France but didn’t find: a chance to help another, do a good deed well and diversify in a way that would pay dividends (as it’s begun to) without driving myself crazy. We should all be so lucky.
I emerge out of the woodsy Haddam back roads to the intersection with 31, over which a state utility crew with a cherry picker is just suspending the prophesied new stoplight, the crew members standing around in white hard hats and work clothes, watching the procedure as if it were an act of legerdemain. A temporary sign says “Your highway taxes at work— SLOW.” A few cars are pulling cautiously around, then heading off south toward Trenton.
Franks, with its new brown and orange mug-with-frothy-bubbles sign, sits kitty-cornered from the yellow highway truck. A lone customer car sits off to one side on the newly re-asphalted lot, its driver cool behind tinted windows. Karl’s old red VW Beetle
is parked by the back door, the red OPEN card in the window. And as I park I admit I unreservedly admire all, including the silver kitchen-on-wheels converted now into a dogs-on-wheels, glistening in the corner of the lot, all polished up by Everick and Wardell and ready to be hauled into Haddam early Monday. Some quality of its single-use efficiency, its compactness and portability, make it seem like the best purchase I’ve ever made, including even my house, though of course I have scarcely any use for it and should probably sell it before it depreciates out of existence.
Karl and I have forged an unwritten agreement that at least once a week I drive out and troop the colors, a practice I enjoy and especially today after my disconcerting wire-crossings with the Markhams and Betty McLeod—neither one typical of my days, which are almost always pleasant. Karl, during our first year together, which included the market sinkhole last fall (we coasted through unfazed), has begun treating me like a spirited but slightly too headstrong young maverick boss and has reinvented himself as an eccentric but faithful lifelong employee whose job it is to snipe at me in a salty, Walter Brennanish way, thereby keeping me on a true compass course. (He is much happier being an employee than running the show, which I’m sure comes from years in the ergonomics industry; though I have never thought of myself as anyone’s boss, since at times I feel I’m hardly my own.)
When I step inside the “Employees only” side door, Karl is behind the sliding window, reading the Trenton Times, perched on two stacked red plastic milk cartons from the days when he made malts. It is hot as a broiler back here, and Karl has a little rubber-bladed Hammacher Schlemmer fan trained on his face. As usual, everything is spotless, since Karl has dark worries of getting what he calls a “C card” from the county health officer and so spends hours every night scouring and polishing, mopping and rinsing, until you could sit right down on the concrete and eat a four-course meal and never give one thought to salmonella.
“I’ll tell you, I’m getting goddamn anxious about my economic future now, aren’t you?” he says in a loud, scoffing voice. Karl has on his plastic reading specs and hasn’t otherwise remarked my arrival. He’s dressed in his summer issue: short-sleeved white tunic, laundry-supplied black-and-white checkered knee shorts that let his thick, mealy, sausage-veined calves “breathe,” short black nylon socks and black crepe-soled brogans. An ancient transistor, tuned to the all-polka station in Wilkes-Barre, is playing “There Is No Beer in Heaven” at a low volume.
“I’m just interested in the Democrats to see how they’ll fuck up next,” I say, as though we’d been talking for hours, walking back to open the rear door onto the brookside picnic area to get some breeze going. (Karl is a lifelong Democrat who began voting Republican in the last decade but still thinks of himself as a nonconforming Jacksonian. To me, these are the true turncoats, though Karl in most ways is not a bad citizen.)
Since I have no special mission here today, I begin counting packages of hot dog buns, cans of condiments (spice relish, mustard, mayo, ketchup, diced onions), checking the meat delivery and the extra kegs of root beer I’ve ordered for the “Firecracker Weenie Firecracker” concession.
“Looks like housing starts fell way off last month again, twelve point two from May. The dumb fucks. It’s gotta mean trouble to the realty business, right?” Karl gives the Times a good snapping as though to get the words lined up straighter. It pleases him for us to talk in this quasi-familial way (he is finally an old nostalgian where I’m concerned), as if we had come a long ways together and learned the same hard human lessons of decency and need. He peers at me over the newspaper, removes his half glasses, then stands and looks out the window as the car that’s been parked by the picnic tables idles out onto Route 31 and slowly starts north toward Ringoes. The backup bell on the highway department truck starts dinging away and a heavy, black man’s voice sings out, “Come-awn-back, nah, come-awn-back.”
“Units sold is down five from a year ago, though.” I say, while I estimate packages of Polish weenies in the cold box, frigid air hitting my face like a bright light. “Maybe it means people are going to buy houses already built. That’s my guess.” In fact that is what’ll happen, and the sorry-ass Markhams better be getting in touch with me and their brains toute de suite.
“Dukakis takes credit for the big Massachusetts Miracle, it’s only right he takes it for the big Taxachusetts Fuck-up. I’m glad I live in Joisey now.” Karl says this listlessly, still mooning out the window at the newly lined lot.
“Well.” I turn back toward him, ready to quote him my “Buyer vs. Seller” column eye-to-eye, but I confront his big checkered behind and two pale, meaty legs underneath. The rest of him is geezering around, watching the workers and their cherry picker and the new stoplight going up.
“And hot dogs,” Karl observes, having heard me say something I haven’t said, his voice faint for most of it being directed into the hot day, and making it easier for me to hear the polka music, which is pleasing. I am as ever always pleased to be here. “I don’t think anybody gives a shit about this election anyway,” Karl says, still facing out. “It’s just like the fuckin’ all-star game. Big buildup, then nothin’.” Karl makes a juicy fart noise with his mouth for proper emphasis. “We’re all distanced from government. It don’t mean anything in our lives. We’re in limbo.” He is undoubtedly quoting some right-wing columnist he read exactly two minutes ago in the Trenton Times. Karl couldn’t care less about government or limbo.
I, however, have nothing more I can do now, and my gaze wanders through the side door, back out to the lot, where the portable silver dog stand sits in the sun on its shiny new tires, its collapsible green-and-white awning furled above its delivery window, the whole outfit chained to a fifty-gallon oil drum filled with concrete that is itself bolted to a slab set in the ground (Karl’s idea for discouraging thievery). Seeing outside from this angle, though, and particularly viewing the feasible but also in most ways sweetly ridiculous hot dog trailer, makes me feel suddenly, unexpectedly distanced from all except what’s here, as though Karl and I were all each other had in the world. (Which of course isn’t true: Karl has nieces in Green Bay; I have two children in Connecticut, an ex-wife, and a girlfriend I’m right now keen to see.) Why this feeling, why now, why here, I couldn’t tell you.
“You know, I was just reading in the paper yesterday …” Karl pulls his bulk off the counter and swivels around toward me. He reaches down and switches off the polka festival. “… that there’s a decline in songbirds now that’s directly credited to the suburbs.”
“I didn’t know that.” I stare at his smooth, pink features.
“It’s true. Predatory animals that thrive in disturbed areas eat the songbird eggs and young. Vireos. Flycatchers. Warblers. Thrushes. They’re all taking a real beating.”
“That’s too bad,” I say, not knowing what else to offer. Karl is a facts man. His idea of a worthwhile give-and-take is to confront you with something you’ve never dreamed of, an obscure koan of history, a rash of irrefutable statistics such as that New Jersey has the highest effective property-tax rate in the nation, or that one of every three Latin Americans lives in Los Angeles, something that explains nothing but makes any except the most banal response inescapable, and then to look at you for a reply—which can only ever amount to: “Well, what d’you know,” or “Well, I’ll be goddamned.” Actual, speculative, unprogrammed dialogue between human beings is unappetizing to him, his ergonomic training notwithstanding. I am, I realize, ready to leave now.
“Listen,” Karl says, forgetting the dark fate of vireos, “I think we might be being cased out here.”
“What do you mean?” A trickle of oily, hot-doggy sweat leaves my hairline and heads underground into my left ear before I can finger it stopped.
“Well, last night, see, just at eleven”—Karl has both hands on the counter edge behind him, as if he were about to propel himself upward—“I was scrubbin’ up. And these two Mexicans drove in. Real slow. Then
they drove off down Thirty-one, and in about ten minutes here they come back. Just pulled through slow again, and then left again.”
“How do you know they were Mexicans?” I feel myself squinting at him.
“They were Mexicans. They were Mexican-looking,” Karl says, exasperated. “Two small guys with black hair and GI haircuts, driving a blue Monza, lowered, with tinted windows and those red and green salsa lights going around the license tag? Those weren’t Mexicans? Okay. Hondurans then. But that doesn’t really make a lot of difference, does it?”
“Did you know them?” I give a worried look out the open customer window, as though the suspicious foreigners were there now.
“No. But they came back about an hour ago and bought birch beers. Pennsylvania plates. CEY 146. I wrote it all down.”
“Did you let the sheriff know?”
“They said there’s still no law yet against driving through a drive-in. If there were, we wouldn’t be in business.”
“Well.” Again I don’t know what else to say. In most ways it is a statement like the one about songbird decline. Though I’m not happy to hear about suspicious lurkers in lowered Monzas. It’s news no small businessman wants to hear. “Did you ask the sheriff to check by special?” A little more oily sweat slides down my cheek.
“I’m not supposed to worry, just pay attention.” Karl picks up his rubber-bladed fan and holds it so it blows warm air at my face. “I just hope if the little cocksuckers decide to rob us, they don’t kill me. Or half kill me.”
“Just fork over all the money,” I say seriously. “We can replace that. No heroics.” I wish Karl would put the fan away.
“I want a chance to protect myself,” he says, and makes his own quick assessment outside, via the customer window. I’d never considered protecting myself until I got bonked in the head by the Asian kid with the big Pepsi bottle. Though what I thought of doing then was concealing a handgun, lying in wait at the same place the next evening and blasting all three of them—which was not a workable idea.