End of the Tiger (20 page)

“If he can’t manage on what we’re paying him, how could he hope to run this outfit someday?”

Ben Weldon drove home in his brand-new car, and took his family for a short ride at dusk, wondering if he had been intelligent—or just scared.

October was a thin month. November was a little
better, but it made Ben feel defeated to think of the onrush of the Christmas season. He made up budget after budget, and tore them up. No matter how he strained over the figures, he could see that, with luck, they could reduce the indebtedness each month, but by such a discouragingly tiny figure that it seemed to stretch endlessly into the bleak future.

When you have a chronic toothache, you eventually end up in the dentist chair. Ben had heard of a C.P.A. in Manhattan who had reputedly done wonders in straightening out the tangled personal finances of some of his friends.

He made one appointment and had to break it, and kept the second one, appearing with all his books and records and copies of his state and Federal tax returns, and his operating budget.

The wonder-worker was J.J. Semmins, with an office on West 43rd Street. He was a small fat man with a permanent scowl of impatience, an unlit cigar, a diamond ring, and audible asthmatic breathing. He had a huge bare desk in a very small office off the anteroom, where several people were working. He spread Ben’s papers all over the top of the desk and growled at Ben to have a seat and be patient. He went through the papers so fast that Ben could not believe he was absorbing what he was reading. From time to time he would scribble a note on a scratch pad. He reassembled the papers, plunked them on the corner of the desk and leaned back.

“Weldon, you keep good records. You should see some of the stuff comes in here. It looks like you’re even using your head here and there, but that isn’t helping you a bit, is it?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Twenty-three five, you make. And right off the top, for Uncle and the governor and other payroll deductions and that cooperative pension plan comes seventy-one, and none of that can you change, so we’re talking about sixteen four. Right? So twenty-six hundred goes into life insurance. It’s a little over ten per cent of total income, but with three small kids it isn’t out of line. Can you juggle the policies around and get the same coverage for less money?”

“I tried that. I’ve got a good agent. He couldn’t come up with a thing.”

“And you’re borrowed to the hilt on it. Now we’re talking about thirteen eight. Give me the story on this two hundred a month to your mother.”

“She’s quite old, seventy-four. She had her children late, and my father’s been dead thirty years. No Social Security to help out. She’s out in Columbus, Indiana, living in the house I was born in. We’ve tried to get her to come live with us, but all her friends are there. She seems to get along on two hundred. I’d send more if I could.”

“Any other children helping out?”

“I’m the only one living.”

“The house out there is in her name?”

“Yes, but——”

“Worth anything?”

“I don’t know what it would bring. It’s not big. A frame house in an old part of town, but she still likes it there. She has a woman come in and help her. The same woman for years and years.”

“If she signed it over, you could sell it and rent a nice little apartment for her. Put the money on these debts and cut your debt service.”

“I just couldn’t do that. It’s a matter of pride to her. I’ve heard her say a hundred times that the house is ‘free and clear.’ That means a lot to her.”

J. J. Semmins sighed. “So we’re talking about eleven four. If your house was free and clear, it would make the difference. Two ten a month on the mortgage and nearly six hundred a year town and county taxes. That’s a load, those taxes.”

“They’ve been going up ever since I bought the place four years ago. National brought me in from the Cleveland office then. Lawton is growing so fast they’ve had to spend a lot of money to take care of the services, schools and so on.”

J. J. Semmins scribbled for a moment and then leaned back. “Take the mortgage payments, taxes, and call it one fifty a month for heat, light, phone, electric and water and so on, call it five a year goes into that place. It’s a lot of house.”

“We hunted a long time before we located it, Mr. Semmins. And it scared us a little, even though I knew we bought it right. I can get seven more than I paid for it right now.” He paused and looked down at his fist for a moment, searching for the right words. “The firm I work for, Mr. Semmins, takes … a special interest in me. When I was brought into the home office, there was a certain amount of … gentle pressure brought to bear. They wanted me to live up to a certain standard, and the house and its location are part of that.”

“So now we’re talking about sixty-four hundred, which is what you got left after the house, and your wife takes forty-eight hundred of that. Right? So here’s sixteen hundred for car, clothing for you, entertainment, club dues, recreation, commutation expenses and, theoretically, interest and principal payments on your loans, plus medical, dental, personal, legal … and you come to me with this
impossible
situation and say that there’s nothing you can change, and I’m supposed to make up a miracle for you? You’re brighter than that!”

“I thought a fresh viewpoint might——”

“I’m sorry. What good is it yelling at you? You’re the man in the trap. Can you knock off at least the club?”

“We use it as little as possible, but they come up from New York and they expect——”

“O.K., O.K. How about this money you’ve been paying into the pension plan? Can you get your hands on it?”

“Theoretically I could borrow what I’ve donated at no interest. If I left the firm, it would be turned over to me, the exact amount I’ve put in.”

“How much is the total?”

“About nine thousand now.”

“Could you borrow it?”

Ben studied his fist again. “I have the
right
to. But if I exercised that right, it would have to be because of some … very obviously expensive and disastrous thing, such as a child in an iron lung or something. If I just borrowed it, it would be evidence that I can’t live on my salary.”

“But you can just barely get by on it right now, man, provided you have no more trouble!”

“I’m supposed to live on it,” Ben said miserably.

J. J. Semmins threw his yellow pencil against the far wall. It bounced back and rolled under his desk. “I get so sick of this same deal all the time,” he said. “Hundreds of you bright guys are in this trap. The big shots you work for made theirs so long ago that they think they’re paying you a king’s ransom. They want you to live big on it, advertise how good they are to work for. They’ll make certain the guys in the factories take home fat money, because the unions have put the fear of God into them, but the bright guys right under their noses, they’ll pay them twenty-five thousand and then put the pressure on so you spend all but a couple dimes paying your taxes and living as fat as they could have lived twenty years ago on the same money. Then, if you crack, it’s your fault. If you demand more money, you’re unreliable. If you start shopping around for more money, you’re labeled disloyal. Thirty-five would be about right for you, Weldon. You could reduce those debts down to zero and start a little savings program. Taxes would take a bigger bite, but you’d have about the right amount left. Go ask them for thirty-five. If they won’t give it to you, shop for it.”

“That’s a joke I can’t laugh at. Sorry.”

“There’s another choice. Sell the house. Grab that nine thousand in the retirement fund. Pay your debts, drop your insurance, and go to Florida or someplace and buy a gas station. You’ll live longer. You’d be surprised to learn how many guys in your shoes have done just that. They’ll tell you they got sick of commuting and conforming and so on. They won’t admit they got starved out. But they did, and it’s a shameful thing. Big business needs the guys they’re driving away because they’re too chinchy to pay them what they
think
they’re paying them. You’re the forgotten man, Weldon. Go anywhere in the country and beef about not being able to live on your salary, and you’d have them rolling in hysterics. Nobody will ever be sorry for you. You’ll get all the sympathy of a man with two black eyes. But from where you and I sit, it is a tragic, unnecessary thing, and we both know it. But it’s a story that won’t sell.”

Ben managed to force a smile. “Like the small-town
bank clerk back in the ’twenties, trying to act like a substantial citizen on nineteen dollars a week.”

“And a lot of those guys took it as long as they could before they grabbed the money and ran.”

“I guess I can at least thank you for … confirming the situation, Mr. Semmins.”

“I won’t bill you, buddy. I don’t have the heart.”

“But——”

“Let’s have no arguments, please. What will you do?”

“Try to squeak by, I guess. Cut every corner we can. Try to hold on. You see, the stakes are big.”

“Sure,” Semmins said. “You sit in this great big poker game and you’ve got twelve dollars and you sit there, folding every hand, waiting for a royal flush, and while you’re waiting they ante you to death. Isn’t there some guy over there who is interested in you enough to sit down and go over these records with you?” He sighed. “I suppose not. All I can say is good luck.”

Ben Weldon reported this to Ginny, but he did not let her see the depth of his feeling of helplessness. He made it light, in so far as he was able, and, as Christmas hung over them, an ominous tinsel avalanche, they vowed all manner of economies as though it would be great fun. Economies can be fun for the recently wed: a romantic game, with the long walks to save bus fare, the happy magic of finding a quarter in the gutter, the painstaking budget to squeeze out the $4 a week to put in the savings account—against the future house, car, baby.

For those longer wed, economies can be a game if there is a special goal—the new house or the cruise or the swimming pool. But when it is part of a struggle to survive, and there seems to be no end to it, and you do not know when some small and expensive disaster may wipe out all your efforts—then there is a corrosive and destructive quality to it all. It can be a dreary battle, waged with the presentiment of defeat.

And there is not really too much you can do. You can put an end to the habit of bringing fond and silly gifts to your wife, little things you happened to see in store windows. You can avoid taxis as much as possible, give up the tenth-of-a-cent bridge game on the train,
avoid all lunch dates that threaten to be expensive, try to get a little more wear out of the business suits between dry cleanings, give up the relaxing ceremony of the before-dinner drink. And you can begin a practice you have always avoided, the sly and delicate art of fudging the expense account. He found that he could show a small profit on each trip. Twelve dollars, seventeen dollars. It made him feel like a petty thief, but he told himself it was a practice hallowed by tradition.

Yet, with all these practices, he felt as if he were engaged in an exercise in futility. He was the captain at the wheel of the small boat, The sea was rushing into the hold. Every now and then he could rush down and bail for a few moments with a teacup before returning to his duty station.

There was a more serious aspect to it, one that he could not dare admit to himself. He had attempted to build an impenetrable wall between the increasing tensions of his personal life and the demands of his career.

There was an afternoon meeting ten days before Christmas, and as they were waiting for Brendan Mallory, who would conduct it, Ben Weldon heard Charlie McCain, saying, “——got them to promise to deliver it Christmas morning, a little M.G.A., robin’s-egg blue, and Kath’s eyes are going to bug like a stomped frog——”

Midway through the meeting Weldon was staring off into an equitable world where Ginny was driving her brand-new little M.G.A. down a sunny country road, the wind ruffling her blond hair, her eyes adance——

“Sir?” he said, falling abruptly back into here and now.

Mallory looked at him oddly and said, “You
do
have the break-even figures on Western Products, Ben?”

“Right here,” he said, flushing, and opened the folder to the summary his staff had prepared for him and began to make his report.

As the meeting adjourned, Brendan Mallory said, “Spare a few minutes, Ben?”

It was a command. He went with Mallory to the office of the president on the tenth floor. Mallory was a dapper little man with a narrow mustache and a deceptively ineffectual look. His voice was unerringly brisk and light
and casual. But all the hidden force of the man was gathered somewhere and projected through steady bright blue eyes, as intent and merciless as the eyes of a falcon. No man who had endured the special focus of those eyes tended to underestimate Mr. Mallory.

“Sit down, Ben. We never seem to get a chance to chat lately.”

Ben sat in a deep leather chair. Mallory perched on the corner of the desk, arms folded, smiling down at him. “All arguments and no chat,” Ben said, returning the smile, feeling inside himself the special alertness of a blindfolded man on a tightrope.

“I’m very pleased with what you’ve been doing, Ben.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I discussed it with Ed and he agreed we should bring you into the bonus setup, starting this January.”

“I’m very grateful, Mr. Mallory.”

“I wonder if you aren’t pushing yourself a little too hard.”

This, Ben knew, was a direct result of the woolgathering in the special meeting. He carefully broadened his smile, and said, “I don’t feel oppressed, sir. As a matter of fact, I think I do better the heavier the work load is.”

“Everything outside the office is fine?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said heartily.

“Give my regards to the lovely Virginia, please. Tell her you two are coming for dinner after the holidays. Alice adores you both.”

“We’ll both be looking forward to it, Mr. Mallory.”

“I thought you might be pushing yourself a little too eagerly, because you’ve seemed a little bit drawn and … remote lately, Ben. This has no bearing on your efficiency, but you don’t seem to have the—ah—lift you used to have. That light touch of yours that can take the tension out of sticky situations. And I do believe you’ve become a little less gregarious. I know that lunch with the people you work with all day can be monotonous, but sometimes things are resolved in little unexpected ways.”