by Anne Degrace
“How many are for sale at the store?” Carson Sr. asked his son.
“I don’t know,” Carson shrugged. “I just want to buy one. It’s only ten cents.”
“I’ll loan you ten cents, son. But nothing comes for free. You’ll pay it back with ten percent interest.”
“How will I do that?”
“First, go back to the store and count how many are there.”
So Carson went back to the store. At the magazine rack, Jimmy and Pete had a copy open, heads touching as they looked at the page. “Pow!” Carson heard Pete read aloud. Carson had just time to count five copies still in the rack, plus the one becoming slightly crumpled in Jimmy’s sweaty paw, before Mr. Stamatelakis shouted at them all to pay up or leave.
When Carson reported back, his father gave him sixty cents. “Buy them all,” he told his son.
“What for?”
“You’ll see.”
Carson sold each comic for fifteen cents. In 1938, at nine years old, it occurred to none of his friends that another store somewhere else might stock the Action Comics, and besides, the desire to own one was far too great. They paid, but they grumbled. Carson didn’t mind: he made thirty cents and, after paying back his father with interest, had enough left to buy the last two Ace Comics in the rack, the new one featuring Blondie, Jungle Jim, and Felix. Before long, all the kids bought their comics from Carson. Next, he hired Tommy Jachowics from the grade two class to buy up copies as they came in, and paid him a cent per copy. At a profit margin of four cents, Carson was averaging sixty-five cents a week. By the time Mr. Stamatelakis put a stop to it, Carson had eleven dollars in his bank account. His father laughed when Mr. Stamatelakis called to tell him about his son’s unfair trading practices. “You’ll be more discreet next time, boy,” Carson’s father said later.
At the collegiate, fourteen-year-old Carson found a March, 1946, copy of Bizarre magazine in his math teacher’s desk while waiting for Mr. Duckworth to discuss his marks. He’d intended to make his case by citing his father’s hefty endowment to the school; now, he discovered some hefty endowments in the pages of the magazine that was secreted inside a file marked “statistics” in the bottom drawer. He didn’t wait for the instructor, who was late anyway.
Carson made a fortune that year renting the magazine, with its illustrations of large-breasted women with their hands bound, to his dormmates. The fines for any pages found stuck together were particularly large.
Later, in university, Carson learned a great deal about media spin while editing the campus newspaper, a lesson he later applied when “encouraging” financial pages columnists to plug particular companies and hint about the downfall of others. As shareholders pulled out, Weymouth & Son swooped in.
“It’s all about building equity through acquisition,” his father told him. “It’s all about getting yours. Because if you don’t get yours, some other bastard will.”
If pressed to say what it was he did in his work, while at a cocktail party or during the champagne-and-schmooze intermission of a cultural event, Carson would be necessarily vague: brokering mergers, for example, and most would leave it at that. There was no question that the Weymouth force was successful. “Enforced mergers and hostile takeovers” would have been closer to the truth. “Kill the competition” was the credo.
There was only one other person who moved inside the circle of father/son trust. Jamieson T. Sibley had served overseas with Carson’s father, and whatever had passed between them at that time had sealed a pact of brotherhood. Beyond these three, with regards to the outside world, no trust existed. Carson was often unsure if Sibley—J.T., as he was called by insiders— and his father entirely trusted him. There were times he felt as if a piece were missing, but nothing he could quite put his finger on.
As the empire grew, there were casualties. J.T. and Weymouth Sr. exulted in these. But then came the day, when, at a stockholders’ meeting, Carson’s father stopped speaking, in midsentence. Around the table, men in suits assumed a pregnant pause, and waited for the delivery.
“What he delivered was a spray of saliva across the table,” Carson explains to Pink, as the hitchhiker has introduced himself. “I think he was sputtering, trying to get the last word out. Then he fell, face forward, across the profit report. Massive stroke. He was only sixty.”
“Sounds like Karma to me.”
Carson looks at him blankly.
“Sort of an ethical cause-and-effect.”
“Hmmm. Well, after that J.T. took me under his wing. He needed to, really. I had a hard time with the loss of Dad, couldn’t quite see my way without him.”
Pink looks at Carson sympathetically. “I’m sorry. About your father dying.”
“Thank you.”
They sit for a few moments before Carson continues.
“‘We’ll keep the Weymouth name strong,’ Sibley told me. ‘We’ll honour your father’s legacy.’”
“And did he?”
“In his way, I guess he did.”
Carson, business-savvy, streetwise in the financial world, was temporarily numb after his father’s death. His anchor loose, he moved through his days like a ship without course. Carson and Sibley were photographed more times than Carson could count: the handshake; the paternal arm around his shoulder. If Sibley advised him, Carson followed the advice. If there were papers to sign, Carson signed them. Sibley doubled Carson’s personal holdings in a year, showed him new ways to use his power.
Sibley told Carson he felt honour-bound to complete the education Carson’s father had begun before his untimely death. He said this as if Carson was his own son, the son he never had, and Carson, bereft, flattered, embraced his new “father.” In fact, Sibley was more fatherlike than Carson’s own father had ever been: over the next few years he made sure Carson joined the right clubs; they played racquetball on Wednesday afternoons. Afterwards, they’d go to the executive club. Carson would watch while J.T.—“call me Jamie, boy,” he told Carson—set the climate for a deal down the road, how he knew just the right word to say. He’d raise one eyebrow at Carson, acknowledgment of their private understanding.
“I didn’t know until yesterday, when I was awakened by a phone call. A reporter. He wanted my comments on the Securities Commission freeze on my assets. That’s when I knew I’d been framed. And who had set me up.”
“Yeah?”
Carson seems unaware that he’s talking to a traveller with long hair, a backpack, and what are, most likely, entirely empty pockets. He rambles on as if to himself.
“I had been accused of insider trading. I had a couple of hundred cash in my wallet. No idea what I would do next. I went out, locked the door behind me, took the elevator down to the lobby.”
As it turned out, the reporter who broke the story had his own insider information, and, eager to beat the competition to the scoop, jumped the gun. The story should have broken in time for the late edition at best. This was something Carson found out later, listening to the news on the car radio. The reporter’s name had been vaguely familiar; it took Carson some time to recognize the name as the same as a financial reporter he’d once paid off, then cut off when demands got too high. He’d threatened the man with exposure, eventually seeding rumours in the right places to ensure the reporter would have difficulty finding work in the future.
It no longer mattered: all Carson could see was a wall of fog in front of him, and in his ears, a roaring. He could hear a voice in his mind speak of lawyers, but he knew instinctively how far Sibley’s influence would have spread, how thoroughly he’d been framed.
In the lobby it was as if nothing had happened; businessmen came and went, the morning busy as usual with the first stirrings of commerce. Carson, still engulfed in fog and roar, could barely fathom the normalcy of the scene. The sun came through and lit up the atrium—the plush seats, the mahogany tables, the lush ferns. It came as a surprise that everyone didn’t yet know. He looked at the cuffs of the fine Italian suit he now had no b
usiness owning, almost expecting them to unravel as he watched.
Walking into the door of the lobby washroom, then, Carson saw Sibley.
“Of course, he hadn’t expected me to know anything yet. He had orchestrated the whole thing so as to be on a jet for London when the news broke.” Carson laughs, an odd giggle. “Goes to show you. You can’t trust anyone.”
Pink shifts uneasily.
“My stomach felt sick; I thought my bowels might give way. I ran to the bathroom and spent a long time sitting in the stall. When I came out, Sibley was at the sink; he saw me behind him, framed in the gilt mirror. We stared at one another for a moment. Then he seemed to collect himself: ‘There’s my boy!’ he said. He was jovial. Slapped me on the back. ‘Are you sick, boy? You don’t look well.’ He said it with such fatherly concern, I almost thought maybe I’d misread it all. Then I saw this—gleam in his eye. I hadn’t seen it before. I must have had that look myself from time to time, honed over all those years. It was a look that said you’d pulled one off. That someone was going down. This time, it was me.”
Carson didn’t think about what he did then, didn’t know he was about to grab the potted palm from the countertop until he had it in his hands, knocking Sibley across the head with it, putting everything he had into the swing. Sibley went down, cracking the back of his head on the edge of the counter, sending a spray of blood across the white marble basin. It was then that Carson ran.
“I don’t know if I killed him or not. Oh, God, I hope I didn’t kill him. What if I did?”
Pink isn’t sure what to say. Finally, “Maybe you didn’t,” he manages.
Carson nods. “It’s ironic, though, isn’t it? Our unofficial company motto: kill the competition. Oh, God.” Carson covers his eyes for a moment, and then rubs them as if they are painful. “I got in the car,” he continues. “I had a full tank of gas, and some cash. And here I am.”
“Now what?”
“Now, I don’t know. At first, the only thing I could think of was suicide. I was thinking of jumping. The quickest. Most painless. It seemed the only way. But I have never been decisive: it was always my father and Sibley who really made the decisions. When it came right down to it, I couldn’t make up my mind.”
Carson and Pink both look at the trees across the road, the way the afternoon sun, now behind a thin haze of clouds, looks as if it is perched on their tops.
“Here’s the thing. I’m thirty-six years old. Never had a wife, a family. My parents are dead, and I have no brothers or sisters. What I had was a lot of money. And now I don’t have that.”
“So now what?” Pink asks again.
“Now?” Carson says again. “Change my name, I guess. Begin again, somehow. Funny thing is, just now, talking to you? I feel almost—free. Because it’s all over. That life. Isn’t that odd?” Carson looks at Pink like a bewildered child.
“Not so strange, man. There’s a song about that, you know the one: freedom’s just another word…”
Carson shrugs. “I don’t listen to popular music.” He giggles, an edge of hysteria. “Didn’t. I suppose the rules have changed, now. I mean, anything goes.”
“Well, anyway. You want to give me a ride?”
“You want to ride with a criminal? A possible murderer? An exile on the run?” Carson looks at Pink. “Hey, are you a draft dodger?”
“No. I don’t know. I left before my number came up, but you know, it was all pretty much over anyway. Lucky, I guess.” Pink is quiet for a minute; some of his friends weren’t so lucky. He looks at Carson, thinks about how easily money can buy a ticket out. Some of the time, anyway. “Man, if you don’t want to give me a ride, that’s okay. I’d better get going.”
“I never do anything for nothing, you know. Everything has a price.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Then give me a name.”
“What?”
“I mean, you made up your name, right? Nobody called you that. Don’t tell me otherwise. I want a name. A fresh start.”
“You want me to give you a name.”
“Yes. What’s my name?”
Pink thinks for a minute.
“You said you felt…free.”
Clouds gather, the air chills slightly, and Carson “Freedom” Weymouth Jr. shivers.
“I’ll give you something else,” Pink says, digging into his pack. In it is the t-shirt Carson will be wearing when he pulls into the parking lot of Cass’s roadside café a half-hour from now.
3:20 p.m.
Coffee, black
The silver Jaguar glints in the afternoon sun as it pulls into the lot, and Jo puts down the newspaper she’s been reading to watch its driver emerge. American plates. A movie star, maybe. Certainly somebody rich. Doing what, exactly, at Cass’s Roadside Café? But the man who emerges is wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt.
“Nice car,” she tells him as he opens the door to the diner. As he enters, he glances over his shoulder, then around the room before settling on Jo.
“Actually, I’m selling it,” he tells her. “Trading it, maybe. For a truck?” He seems uncertain.
“Why do you want to do that?”
He giggles, a childlike sound. “Just want a change, I guess. Yes, that’s it. Do you know anybody? I’d make a deal. A good one.”
Jo shakes her head. “What can I get you?”
“Just coffee, please. Black.”
“Something else? Cass makes great cookies.”
Carson begins to laugh then. He laughs for long enough that Jo finds herself glancing towards the trailer, where Cass is apparently taking the longest nap in the history of the world, or she’s into one of her soap opera marathons. As Carson’s laughter subsides, “Everyone should get to have dessert,” he says, and starts up again.
Jo pours his coffee. What else can she do?
“You know, it’s not like me to talk about myself,” Carson says, wrapping two hands around the cup. “I’ve always kept my cards close to my chest. Second nature, really. But there was the hitchhiker just now, and, I don’t know. I mean, after this morning. What have I got to lose?” He starts laughing again, as if he’s just cracked a knee-slapping good joke.
“What hitchhiker?’
“Oh, just a guy.” Carson pulls at the hem of his t-shirt, holds it out, and looks at it. On the front, two businessmen shake hands. One of them is in flames. Wish You Were Here it reads.
Carson looks around the café, takes in the Jesus hands, the Fanta sign. He reads the slogan on his cup: You should be dancing. His face falls into an expression of bewilderment. “This will take some getting used to.”
Jo leans against the back counter, arms crossed, watching the customer sip his coffee. “What did you mean, everyone should get to have dessert?” Like he said, she thinks, what have I got to lose?
“Well, I’d just had this—shock, I guess you’d call it. A fright. So I ducked into the kitchen of the hotel I was in—ran right past the cooks—and out the back door. And that’s when I met these girls.”
Uh, oh, thinks Jo. She glances again at the trailer.
“Two of them, dressed like…hippies, I guess you’d call them. You know, long hair, backpacks, sandals, that sort of thing. Not people I usually talk to. There was a restaurant worker about to throw out leftover desserts into the dumpster. The Chancery Bay Hotel is the best in the city. These were éclairs, petit-fours: dainty little desserts on doilies. Chancery Bay is known for its high tea. I never thought about what they might do with food that wasn’t absolutely fresh, but of course, they couldn’t serve anything but the best to their clientele.”
Jo thinks about Howie, and the day-old sandwiches Cass would send over with Bob. Nothing was ever wasted at Cass’s. What couldn’t be eaten, if it wasn’t to be disguised in one of Cass’s Today’s Special casseroles, became dog food or chicken food, or generally fed to something.
“He asked if they wanted one, and they asked for them all. He just shrugged his shoulders and left the tray
s there, telling them he’d get them a couple of boxes. When they had loaded them up and the fellow had gone back inside, my curiosity got the better of me. I guess I startled them, coming out of the shadows like that. But when I asked them what they were going to do with all those desserts, ‘Follow us,’ said the girl with the earrings. So I did.”
Carson pushes his empty cup forward, and Jo fills it.
“The part of town they led me to…I’ll tell you, I was shocked. I was also—not in my right mind, you understand. Because of this thing that had happened. So I suppose I sort of stumbled after them, as much because I didn’t know what else to do as anything. It was early in the morning, not yet even eight o’clock, when I think about it. A lot had happened really fast. On the way, they introduced themselves: the girl with the earrings, she was dark-skinned with black hair, which she wore straight and parted in the middle— like yours—her name was Angie. The other girl, with the blonde hair, was Susan. They explained to me that they had spent the night in the park. They were looking for food. Restaurants are always throwing out food, the better the restaurant, the more they waste, she said. They weren’t actually looking for desserts. But now that they had so many… It’s funny. They didn’t even ask what I was doing there, or why I wanted to follow them. I wonder why.”
Because you look shell-shocked, thinks Jo. Because you look lost. Even in a suit. Or half a suit.
“The streets we walked down: faded signs and burnt-out neon of seedy hotels, free clinics, strip clubs. In some of the doorways were piles of clothing—and I realized to my absolute horror there were people inside the clothing. Street bums. Rubbies. Winos. Words I’d heard used, but that I never attached to a real human being. When the first one rolled over and stretched…well.”