End of the Tiger

by John D. MacDonald

  And when he looked ahead to see how far it was to the car, wondering if he could make it, knowing he could not, he saw beyond where he left it, a girl standing under the cone of the streetlight. All he had time for in this world was to see the shine of her dark hair, and see that her arms were bare and white, her dress was black, and that she stood indolently, looking toward him as though she were waiting for him.

  The Trap of Solid Gold

  If Ben and Ginny Weldon had only had the time to sit down quietly and think things through, they might have seen just how they were heading for a time of crisis. More than crisis, in fact. “Disaster” is not too mild a word, not when all the hope and promise is so great. By careful prediction they could have guessed that the early months of 1965 would be the time of ultimate trial, but of course they had no time to sit down and think. They would have admitted a growing uneasiness, small fore-warnings of doom that were briskly poked back down into the subconscious whenever they became aware of them.

  Marriage is a small brave ship, and embarkation is valiant and hopeful. But the channel is narrow, the set of the tide tricky, and the buoys and markers forever shrouded in mist. They had set out in a tighter ship than most, which is a matter of luck, a factor for which you can be grateful without ever making the mistake of believing you have earned it. They were whole people, with the capacity to give and receive love in equal measure, with humor to give them that special balance of objectivity, with good looks, health, education, ability, and uncontrived charm. These factors are luck. You have to earn all the rest of it.

  And so it was a special shock to realize that by 1965, after ten years of marriage, the copilots had lost the channel, the wind was rising, and the thunderous reefs were sickeningly close.

  Marriage courts and counselors relate that the one most prevalent cause of marital difficulty is money. This seems a small, mean, shabby thing, with no dignity in its connotation of bickering. But money is a strange poison. It is an index of security, and when it becomes a problem, it has a nasty tendency to tinge those other less tangible aspects of security with despair.

  In view of Ben Weldon’s position and his ability, if is both ludicrous and tragic that money should have been the hidden rock that cracked the hull of the stout little ship. By 1965 there were five in the boat.

  Chris, at eight, was a small boy full of areas of a deadly earnestness, but with such a brimming joy in being alive that he was afflicted with frequent seizures of a wild and manic glee that would take him whooping to the top of a tall tree in a startlingly few moments.

  Lucille, age six, was known only as Ladybug. She wore seven different personalities a day, from imprisoned princess to aging ballerina, combining an appetite for conspiracy with a thespian lust for costume.

  Penny was a three-year-old chunk of round, warm appetite and placid insistence upon being hugged frequently, a goal consistently achieved despite a chronic condition of stickiness.

  This is the Weldon family, whose combined ages total 79, who live at 88 Ridge Road in Lawton, New York, a one-hour-and-seventeen-minute commutation from the city.

  The view of an outsider was perfectly expressed when they had, as a weekend house guest, a man they had not seen since college, a man doubly precious to them because it was he who had first introduced them. Just before he left, as they stood by the drive, Ben’s arm around Ginny’s slender waist, the friend said, with a fondness spiced with a dab of envy, “You kids have really got it made.”

  One would have thought so.

  Take a look at one target of this odd disaster, Benjamin Dale Weldon, age 32. By profession he is an executive, one of the rare good young ones, employed by National Directions, Inc., as Assistant to the Vice President in Charge of Unit Control. Weldon is a tall man with a dark semi-crew cut, glasses with thick black frames, and the kind of rugged-wry asymmetric face women have the tiresome habit of calling “interesting.” In his first years with National he gave a deceptive impression of low-pressure amiability, which obscured his special talents, but now they are thoroughly known and appreciated. Under pressure, he can plow through jungles of intricate work. He can properly delegate authority, backstop his superiors, make effective presentations, keep his temper, side-step company politics, resolve controversy, and make the people working for him feel as if they are a part of a special team.

  All this is, of course, a description of a splendid No. 2 man. But Weldon has that additional gift of being able to come up with the important and unusual idea at the right time, and the willingness to fight for his idea to the extent of laying his career on the line. This makes him a potential No. 1 man, and the company is totally aware of his present and his future value.

  For his abilities they pay him $23,500 a year. In return for this salary he is expected not only to function adequately in his job but to dress conservatively and well, comport himself with traditional National Directions dignity, live in a house and a neighborhood suitable to his position, entertain properly, take first-rate care of his family and their future, and take a hand in civic affairs.

  The executives of National Directions, and in particular the president, Brendan Mallory, see in Ben Weldon a pleasing prototype of the young National executive, a sort of ambassador at large. They are gratified that he had the good luck and the good sense to marry a girl who is and will continue to be of great help to him.

  Brendan Mallory has a private timetable in his mind whereby Benjamin Weldon will assume the presidency at age 55. At that point Weldon will not only be receiving one of the more substantial salaries, but he will have additional income through the bonus and stock-option plan. But this, to Brendan Mallory, is of secondary importance. The man who heads the firm must, first of all, have respect for the obligations and responsibilities of the position, realizing that his decisions can have an effect on the national economy.

  Brendan Mallory realizes that it is a most delicate problem to nurture the growth of the young executive. He must be taught to understand the blessings of and the reasons for conformity without deadening that creative individualism that the No. 1 man must have if the company is to remain competitively strong.

  Virginia, wife of Benjamin, is lovelier at 30 than at 20, an outgoing blue-eyed blonde, who wears her multiple emotions close to the surface, who has pride and the gift of laughter. She is loving, rewarding, and incurably absent-minded. She fills with a violent indignation at any injustice. Her energies inspire awe. Toward her children she is scrupulously, unpermissively fair, whacking them soundly when they need it. As a consequence there is order in their small world, and they feel secure, well loved, and feel no urge to express themselves through tantrum or bratty whining.

  So here is paradise on Ridge Road. Strength, love, ambition, and a future. Nice people too. No sleazy little cocktail-party flirtations. No amorous discontent.

  At the end of 1964, if you had asked them if paradise hadn’t become just a little conditional, they would have stared at you, and then defended themselves with great indignation. And that could have been the clue—the little excess of indignation.

  If they had had the time to sit down quietly——

  But there were the commuting to the city, and the job itself, and the increasing frequency of the field trips, and the two kinds of entertaining—business and friendship—and the Lawton Country Club (as a result of Mallory’s hint that he should belong), and the sitter problem and the Cub Scouts and the P.T.A. and the Community Chest and the Red Cross and the Civic Betterment Committee and the Ridge Road Association and, of course, five birthdays and holidays and church and anniversaries, and correspondence with friends and relatives, and television and shopping and essential do-it-yourself projects and office work brought home and that essential reading that must be done to keep up with the world’s swift pace.

  So if there was a rare chance to sit down quietly, they took it. And spent the time making up little mental lists of the things undone. They no longer had time to talk to each other in any leisurely
, thoughtful way, and so they were losing one of the best parts of a good marriage—and making it not quite as good as it should have been.

  It should have been more of a clue to Ben and Ginny that, all that year, whenever they did have a chance to talk, they talked about money. Oh, it was reasonably amiable, with an infrequent edge of rancor showing only briefly. They tried to make a kind of joke out of it. And why shouldn’t it be a joke? When you’re making $23,500 a year, money problems are a joke, aren’t they?

  Ben paid the bills, so the true nature of their situation was trying to intrude itself on his awareness long before Ginny became aware of the growing tensions. Let it be said firmly and finally right here that these were not two silly, improvident people, whimsically tossing money left and right. Ben had paid a good share of his own way through school. Ginny had been on a tiny allowance. They had started marriage with debts, not riches, and had lived to a rigid budget, and paid their way. Ginny knew every rice dish in the book.

  Perhaps the first intimation of what would eventually and incomprehensively turn into disaster was the Incident of the Cigarettes.

  In January—right after New Year’s, in fact—when the checking account needed very dexterous juggling, Ben Weldon switched from cigarettes to a pipe. He told himself it would be good for him. Ginny had always wanted him to smoke a pipe. He told himself that it was purely secondary that cigarettes, at a pack and a half a day, were costing him $164.25 a year. He wondered why he had bothered to figure it up.

  He struggled with the pipe problem until he had mastered the techniques. His birthday was in April. He got home from the city later than he wanted to, because he knew Ginny would keep the kids up so they could give him their presents, but it was one of those unavoidable things.

  He sat in the living room, and the cake was brought to him so the kids could see him blow out the candles, and the song was sung, and the kids gave him the presents, the littlest one first, as was the household custom. He lifted himself out of his weariness to make those exclamations that would satisfy them, and those jokes that would delight them.

  The present from Ginny was the last one he opened. It was a pipe in a fitted case, with a beautiful grain in the wood. He remembered the brand name and the model name from the day when he had selected a pipe. And he certainly remembered the price. He had told the clerk that he didn’t feel like paying $25 plus tax for a pipe.

  He looked at the beautiful thing, and he felt a resentment so sharp, so bitter that it shocked him. In one gesture she had cut the heart out of his campaign of frugality. He looked at her and saw her smile, which anticipated his pleasure in the gift, and in that instant he wanted to smash it to the floor in its fitted case.

  Her smile faded and she said, “Don’t you like it? I thought it——”

  He caught himself quickly and said, “It’s beautiful, honey. It really is. And the style is just perfect.”

  So the kids had to see the ceremony of the first lighting of the new pipe, and then Ginny permitted them one small piece of birthday cake each, and shooed them off to bed.

  After she came back to the living room she said, “Is anything wrong?”

  “What could be wrong on my birthday, blondie? Bring me a kiss.”

  The unexpected, irrational force of his anger over such a simple thing should have prepared him better for subsequent developments.

  On an evening in early May, Ben got out the checkbook and paid the bills. This necessary ceremony was something that he had begun, not exactly to dread but to feel increasingly irritable about. He sorted them and paid all the little ones first—fuel oil, dentist, doctor, phone, light, gas, water, car repairs and so on. He totaled them and deducted the total from his balance. Next he looked over the big ones, and paid the ones that had to be paid. Every month it seemed as though an unexpected big one would come along. This time there were two discouragingly fat ones, the fire insurance on the house (paid annually and not included in the mortgage payments) for $208.20, and a life insurance premium of $442.50. They had to be paid. And a final check for $400 had to be drawn to Ginny’s order, for deposit in her checking account to take care of the household expenses. He tried not to think too much about the balance left: $41.14. He had his commutation ticket for the month and a little over $20 in cash. Light lunches in the city this month.

  Ginny came in just then, and as she walked by she patted him on the shoulder and sat in the chair near the desk.

  “Made out my check yet, financier?”

  “Are you that hungry for it?”

  “No. I think I’ve got to hit you for a raise, boss.”

  “What?”

  “Four fifty anyway, but five hundred would take some of the strain off.”

  He glared at her and said, more loudly than he intended, “Just what do you do with all of it?”

  She looked startled, then indignant. “What did you think I did with it? I buy groceries for five. I buy clothes for me and three children. Gas and oil for the car. A one-afternoon-a-week cleaning woman. Sitters. A yardman once in a while now that you don’t have as much time as you used to have. Dry cleaning. Toys. Movie money. Sometimes I even buy myself a dollar lunch. Prices are going up, darling. Up and up and up, and I’m asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. What’s the matter with you lately?”

  He adjusted a weak smile. “I’m sorry, honey. Look here. Everything is paid. Here’s what’s left.”

  She got up and stared at the figure and then sat down again rather heavily. “But you need more than that for the month!”

  “I’ll get along. I can draw trip expenses in advance for the Toledo thing.”

  “I’m not … foolish with money, Ben.”

  “I know that.”

  “But where on earth does it all go?”

  “Good question.”

  “You’re making good money. Don’t we owe the bank something on that open note?”

  “Oh, I’ve whittled that down to just twelve hundred.”

  “Will it be better when that’s paid off?”

  “It might be. A little.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “Well, I can certainly get along on the four hundred, Ben. If I’d known, I certainly wouldn’t have——”

  “I didn’t mean to bark.”

  “Golly, I don’t blame you. We’ll just have to live … simpler.”

  “Where? How?”

  “Those are good questions, too, aren’t they?”

  And it was turned into a joke, but the strain was there, the tinge of poison. And all the affirmations of love could not make it go away entirely.

  It was, Ben thought, as the lean month went by, just a case of holding on, cutting corners until income jumped again. It made him feel guilty, however. It was a shameful situation to be unable to live without strain on an income which, ten years ago, he would have considered wildly affluent. It was best not to think of what might happen should some emergency situation come up.

  And so in June, of course, which had promised to be a better month, Chris nearly lost his right hand. He was in a school bus on the way to a picnic, sitting by the window on the right side of the bus, his right arm out the window. As they were making a turn at low speed on a gravel road the right front tire blew. The bus skidded, went through a shallow ditch and into a stand of small trees. Chris said later that he had tried to pull his arm in, but the motion of the bus had jammed everybody against him. At first it was believed that no one had been hurt. The sound Chris made was lost in the general turmoil. But then he fainted.

  When Ben got to the hospital at four o’clock they had been working on the hand—pulped between tree and bus body—for over an hour. Ginny was very white and very still, and her eyes were huge.

  They did the basic structural repairs in the first operation. The third day following there were evidences of infection. In spite of the sulfas and antibiotics, his fever went up to dangerous levels, there were consultations and tentative recommendations for amputation. It was a nightmare time,
with the hospital the center of all thoughts and schedules. The child was so stolidly brave about it, so uncomplainingly courageous and gallant that it seemed to make the whole thing more pointlessly tragic.

  Almost during the last hour of decision, the infection began to respond. There was a second operation in July, very delicate and intricate, close work with muscles, tendons, nerves, to achieve optimum functioning of the hand. He healed with such miraculous speed—a facility reserved to small healthy boys—that he was able to go back to the hospital for the final operation in late August, a relatively minor one to readjust repairs previously made in the index finger and thumb.

  By the time he started school in the fall, the bandages were off. The hand was slightly but not obviously misshapen. The orthopedic surgeon was quietly proud of his work, of the restoration of an estimated 60 per cent of function. But Chris often wept with frustration at the hand that would not follow the commands of the mind and, when it did so, was so girlishly weak. He had a series of exercises that he tended to overdo. “By the time he is twelve, he will have eighty per cent function,” the doctor said. “Perhaps later it will become more. He will adjust, and never notice it.”

  When your only son is injured, it is degrading to think of money. You get the money, somewhere, and you don’t think about it, at least very much. The hospitalization covered a small part of the expense. Ben had the optimistic feeling that he could recover the rest of it from the Department of Public Instruction. He had a local lawyer, Harold Crady, look into it.

  Crady finally reported back. “I’ve been around and around on this thing, Ben. The insurance company takes the stand that their coverage does not extend past taking the kids to and from school, or on special instructional field trips. This was a picnic, not authorized by the company, and the bus was not being driven by a regular driver.”