Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  Two weeks later, the invitation to the wedding of Miss Virginia Calderwood to Mr. Bradford Knight was in the morning mail.

  The organ struck up the wedding march and Virginia came down the aisle on her father’s arm. She looked pretty, delicate, fragile, and composed, in her bridal white. She did not look at Rudolph as she passed him, although he was standing in a front pew, with Jean beside him. Bradford Knight, bridegroom, sweating a little and flushed in the June heat, was waiting at the altar, with Johnny Heath, best man, both of them in striped pants and Prince Alberts. People had been surprised that Rudolph hadn’t been chosen as best man, but Rudolph had not been surprised.

  It’s my doing, Rudolph thought, as he half listened to the service. I brought him here from Oklahoma, I took him into the business, I refused the bride. It’s my doing, am I responsible?

  The wedding lunch was held at the Country Club. The buffet was laid on a long table under an awning and tables were set all around the lawn, under brightly colored umbrellas. A band played on the terrace, where the bride and bridegroom, now dressed for traveling, had led the first dance, a waltz. Rudolph had been surprised at how well Brad, who did not seem like a graceful man, had danced. Rudolph had kissed the bride dutifully. Virginia had smiled at him with exactly the same smile she had given everybody else. Maybe, Rudolph thought, it’s all over, she’s going to be all right.

  Jean had insisted upon dancing with him, although he had protested, “How can you dance in the middle of the day?”

  “I love weddings,” Jean said, holding him close. “Other people’s.” Then, maliciously, “Shouldn’t you get up and make a toast to the bride? You might mention what a loyal friend she is—waiting outside your door night after night to make sure you got home safely and calling you at all hours to see if you were afraid in the dark and offering to keep you company in your poor lonely bed?”

  “Ssh,” Rudolph said, looking around apprehensively. He hadn’t told her about the night of the hospital.

  “She does look beautiful,” Jean said. “Are you sorry about your choice?”

  “In despair,” he said. “Now, dance.”

  The boys in the band were a combination from the college and Rudolph was saddened by how well they played. He remembered his days with the trumpet when he was about their age. The young did everything so much better these days. The boys on the Port Philip track team were running the two twenty, his old distance, at least two seconds faster than he had ever run it. “Let’s get off this damned floor,” he said. “I feel crowded.”

  They went over and had a glass of champagne and talked to Brad’s father, who had come from Tulsa for the occasion, wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. He was weatherbeaten and thin and had deep sun-creases in the back of his neck. He didn’t look like a man who had won and lost fortunes, but rather like a small-part player in the movies, hired to play the sheriff in a Western.

  “Brad sure has talked enough about you, sir,” old man Knight said to Rudolph. “And about your beautiful young bride.” He raised his glass gallantly to Jean, who had taken off her hat and who now looked not bridal, but coeducational. “Yes, sir, Mister Jordache,” old man Knight went on, “my son Brad is eternally in your debt, and don’t think he don’t know it. He was turning on his own tail out there in Oklahoma, hardly knowing where his next square meal was coming from when he got the call from you to come East. And I was in mighty poor straits myself at the time, I don’t mind telling you, and I couldn’t raise the price of a broken-down oil rig to help my boy. I’m proud to say I’m back on my own two feet again, now, but for awhile there it really looked like poor old Pete Knight was finally ready to be put to rest. Me and Brad were living in one room and eating chili three times a day for sustenance when like a bolt from the blue, the call came from his friend Rudy. I told him when he came home from the service, now you see here, Brad, you take the offer of the United States Government, and you get yourself to a college with that old GI Bill of Rights, from now on a man ain’t going to be worth spit in this country if he ain’t been to college. He’s a good boy, Brad, and he had the sense to listen to his pa, and now look at him.” He beamed across the dance floor to where his son and Virginia and Johnny Heath were drinking champagne among a group of the younger guests. “All dressed up, drinking champagne, with all the future in the world, married to a beautiful young heiress. And if ever he says he doesn’t owe it all to his friend Rudy, his pa’ll be the first to call him a liar.”

  Brad and Virginia came over with Johnny to pay their respects to Knight and the old man took Virginia onto the floor to dance with her, while Brad danced with Jean.

  “You’re not celebrating much today, are you, Rudy?” Johnny asked. Nothing escaped those sleepy eyes in that smooth round face.

  “The bride is pretty, the champagne plentiful, the sun is shining, my friend thinks he’s got it made for life,” Rudolph said. “Why shouldn’t I be celebrating?”

  “As I said,” Johnny said.

  “My glass is empty,” said Rudolph. “Let’s get some more wine.” He started toward the end of the buffet table under the awning, where the bar had been set up.

  “We’re going to have an answer on Monday from Harrison,” Johnny said. “I think he’s going to go for the deal. You’ll have your toy.”

  Rudolph nodded. Although it annoyed him when Johnny, who didn’t see how any real money could ever be made out of the Sentinel, called it a toy. Whatever his feelings were, Johnny, as usual, had come through. He had found a man called Hamlin, who was putting together a chain of small-town newspapers, to act as the buyer of record. He was contracted to sell out his interest to Rudolph three months later. Hamlin was a hard dealer and he had demanded three percent of the purchase price for his services, but he had beaten down Harrison’s first demands so far that it was worthwhile to meet his conditions.

  At the bar, Rudolph was clapped on the back by Sid Grossett, who had been Mayor of Whitby until the last election, and who was sent every four years as a delegate to the Republican convention. He was a hardy, friendly man, a lawyer by profession, who had successfully squashed rumors that he had taken bribes while he was in office, but had chosen not to run at the last election. Wisely, people said. The present mayor of the town, a Democrat, was at the other end of the bar, equally drinking Calderwood’s champagne. Everybody had turned out for the wedding.

  “Hi, young man,” Grossett said. “I’ve been hearing about you.”

  “Good or bad?” Rudolph asked.

  “Nobody ever hears anything bad about Rudolph Jordache,” Grossett said. He wasn’t a politician for nothing. “Hear, hear,” Johnny Heath said.

  “Hi, Johnny.” A handshake for everybody. There was always another election. “I got it from the horse’s mouth,” Grossett said. “You’re quitting Dee Cee at the end of the month.”

  “Who’s the horse this time?”

  “Mr. Duncan Calderwood.”

  “The emotions of the day must have gone to the poor old man’s head,” Rudolph said. He didn’t want to talk about his business to Grossett, or answer questions about what he was going to do next. There was plenty of time for that later.

  “The day any emotions go to Duncan Calderwood’s head,” Grossett said, “you call me. I’ll come running. He tells me he doesn’t know what your future plans are. In fact, he said, he didn’t know if you had any plans. But just in case you’re open to suggestions—” He swiveled around, sniffing the air for possible Democrats. “Maybe we could talk in a day or two. Maybe you could come around to my office some afternoon next week.”

  “I’m going to be in New York next week.”

  “Well, there’s no sense beating about the bush,” Grossett said. “Have you ever thought you’d like to go into politics?”

  “When I was twenty,” Rudolph said. “Now that I’m old and wise …”

  “Don’t give me that,” Grossett said roughly. “Everybody thinks about going into politics. Especially somebody like you. Rich, popul
ar, with a big success behind you, a beautiful wife, looking for new worlds to conquer.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to run me for President, now that Kennedy’s dead,” Rudolph said.

  “I know that’s a joke,” Grossett said earnestly. “But who knows if it’ll still be a joke ten years, twelve years from now? No. You got to start politics on a local level, Rudy, and right here in this town you’re everybody’s fair-haired boy. Am I right, Johnny.” He turned, pleadingly, to the best man.

  “Everybody’s fair-haired boy.” Johnny nodded.

  “Up from poverty, went to college right here, handsome, educated, public-spirited.”

  “I’ve always felt I was actually private spirited,” Rudolph said, to cut off the praise.

  “Okay, be smart. But just look at all the goddamn committees you’re on. And you haven’t got an enemy in the world.”

  “Don’t insult me, Sid.” Rudolph was enjoying baiting the insistent little man, but he was listening more closely than he seemed to be.

  “I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You don’t even know whether I’m a Democrat or a Republican,” Rudolph said. “Ask Leon Harrison and he’ll tell you I’m a Communist.”

  “Leon Harrison is an old fart,” Grossett said. “If I had my way I’d take up a collection to buy his paper away from him.”

  Rudolph couldn’t refrain from winking at Johnny Heath.

  “I know what you are,” Grossett went plugging on. “You’re a Kennedy-type Republican. It’s a winning model. Just what the old Party needs.”

  “Now that you’ve got the pin in me, Sid,” Rudolph said, “mount me and put me in a glass case.” He disliked being categorized, no matter what the category.

  “The place I want to put you is in the Whitby Town Hall,” Grossett said. “As Mayor. And I bet I can do it. How do you like that? And from then on, up the ladder, up the ladder. I suppose you wouldn’t like to be a Senator, the Senator from New York, I suppose that rubs you the wrong way, doesn’t it?”

  “Sid,” Rudolph said gently, “I’ve been teasing you. I’m flattered, really I am. I’ll be in next week to see you, I promise. Now, let’s remember this is a wedding, not a smoke-filled hotel room. I’m off to dance with the bride.”

  He set down his glass and gave Grossett’s shoulder a friendly pat, then went looking for Virginia. He hadn’t danced with her yet and if he didn’t go around the floor at least once with her, there would undoubtedly be talk. It was a small town and there were sharp eyes and tongues everywhere.

  Good Republican, potential Senator, he approached the bride where she stood, demure and gay, under an awning, her hand light and loving on her new husband’s arm. “May I have the honor?” Rudolph asked.

  “Anything I have is yours,” Brad said. “You know that.”

  Rudolph swung Virginia onto the floor. She danced bridally, her hand cool in his, her touch on his back feathery, her head thrown back proudly, conscious of being watched by girls who wished they were in her place today, by men who wished they were in her husband’s.

  “All happiness,” Rudolph said. “Many, many years of happiness.”

  She laughed softly. “I’ll be happy,” she said, her thighs touching his. “Never fear. I’ll have Brad for a husband and you for a lover.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Rudolph said.

  With the tip of a finger she touched his lips to silence him, and they finished the dance. As he walked her back to where Brad was standing, he knew that he had been too optimistic. Things were not going to work out all right. Never in a million years.

  He did not throw rice along with the other guests as the newlyweds drove off in Brad’s car to begin their honeymoon. He was on the front steps of the club, next to Calderwood. Calderwood didn’t throw any rice either. The old man was frowning, but it was hard to tell whether it was because of something he was thinking or because the sun was in his eyes. As the guests drifted back for one last glass of champagne, Calderwood remained on the steps, looking into the shimmering summer afternoon distance in which his last daughter had disappeared with her husband. Earlier, Calderwood had said to Rudolph that he wanted to talk to him so Rudolph gave a sign to Jean that he would meet her later and she left the two men alone.

  “What do you think?” Calderwood said finally.

  “It was a beautiful wedding.”

  “Not about that.”

  Rudolph shrugged. “Who knows how a marriage is going to turn out?”

  “He expects he’s going to get your job now.”

  “That’s normal,” Rudolph said.

  “I wish to God it was you riding off down to New York with her this afternoon.”

  “Life doesn’t work out that neatly most of the time,” Rudolph said.

  “It certainly doesn’t.” Calderwood shook his head. “I don’t trust him completely,” he said. “I hate to say that about any man who’s worked loyally for me the way he has and who’s married my daughter, but I can’t hide it from myself.”

  “He’s never made a wrong move since he came here,” Rudolph said. Except one, he thought. Not believing what I told him about Virginia. Or worse, believing it and marrying her anyway. But he couldn’t tell Calderwood that.

  “I know he’s your friend,” Calderwood said, “and he’s smart as a fox and you’ve known him a long time and you had enough confidence in him to bring him here and give him a big load of responsibility, but there’s something about him—” Calderwood shook his big, sallow, death-marked head again. “He drinks, he’s a whoremonger—don’t contradict me, Rudy, I know what I know—he gambles, he comes from Oklahoma …”

  Rudolph chuckled.

  “I know,” Calderwood said. “I’m an old man and I have my prejudices. But there they are. I guess I’ve been spoiled by you, Rudy. I never dealt with a man in my whole life I knew I could trust the way I trust you. Even when you talked me into acting against my better judgment—and you’d be surprised how many times that’s happened—I knew you’d never do anything that you thought was against my interests or was underhanded or would reflect against my reputation.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Calderwood,” Rudolph said.

  “Mr. Calderwood, Mr. Calderwood,” the old man said peevishly. “Are you still going to be calling me Mr. Calderwood on my death bed?”

  “Thank you, Duncan.” It was an effort to say Duncan.

  “To turn the whole damn shebang over to that man.” There was a cranky, aged complaint in Calderwood’s voice. “Even if it’s after I die. I don’t feel like doing it. But if you say so …” He trailed off unhappily.

  Rudolph sighed. There is always someone to betray, he thought. “I don’t say so,” he said quietly. “There’s a young lawyer in our legal department by the name of Mathers …”

  “I know him,” Calderwood said. “Light-complected fellow with glasses and two kids. From Philadelphia.”

  “He has a degree from the Wharton School of Business that he took before he went to Harvard Law. He’s been with us more than four years. He knows every department. He asks all the right questions. He’s been in and out of my office. He could earn a lot more than he does here in any one of a dozen law firms in New York, but he likes living here.”

  “Okay,” Calderwood said. “Tell him tomorrow.”

  “I would prefer it if you told him, Duncan.” Second Duncan in his life.

  “As usual,” Calderwood said. “I don’t like to do what you’re telling me to do, and I know you’re right. I’ll tell him. Now let’s go back and drink some more of that champagne. I paid enough for it, God knows, I might as well drink it.”

  The new appointment was announced the day before the newlyweds were due back from the honeymoon.

  Brad took it calmly, like a gentleman, and never queried Rudolph about who had made the decision. But three months later he quit his job and he and Virginia went out to Tulsa, where Brad’s father had made a place for him in his oil business. On Enid’s first birthday, he sent a
check for five hundred dollars to the bank to be deposited in Enid’s savings account.

  Brad wrote regularly, jovial, breezy, friendly letters. He was doing very well, he wrote, and was making more money than he ever had before. He liked Tulsa, where the golf bets were on a generous Western scale and on three successive Saturdays he had won more than a thousand dollars a round. Virginia was liked by everyone and had made dozens of friends. She had taken up golf. Brad invited Rudolph to invest with him—“It’s like picking money off a tree,” was the way he put it. He said he wanted somehow to pay back all that Rudolph had done for him, and this was one way of doing it.

  Out of a sense of guilt—he could not forget the moment on the steps of the Country Club with Duncan Calderwood—Rudolph started taking shares in wells that Brad prospected, drilled, and managed. Besides, as Johnny Heath pointed out, for a man in his income bracket, considering the twenty-seven-per-cent depletion tax allowance that the oil industry enjoyed, it was more than worth the gamble. Johnny checked on the credit rating of Peter Knight and son, found it was A one, then matched Rudolph’s investments dollar for dollar.

  Chapter 3

  1965

  Thomas squatted on the forward deck, whistling tunelessly, polishing the bronze spool of the anchor winch. Although it was only early June, it was already warm and he worked barefooted and stripped to the waist. His torso was dark brown from the sun, as dark as the skin of the swarthiest Greeks or Italians on any of the ships in the harbor of Antibes. His body wasn’t as hard as it had been when he was fighting. The muscles didn’t stand out in ridges as they had then, but were smoother, not as heavy. When he was wearing something to cover his small bald spot, as he was now, he looked younger than he had two years ago. He tilted the white American gob’s hat, which he wore with the rim turned down all around, over his eyes, to protect him from the glare of the sun off the water.