End of the Tiger (24 page)

In his favorite alternative, Brendan Mallory would look up from his study of the figures, his eyes vivid with shock and concern, and say, “Why, I had no idea we’d been forcing you into such a ghastly position, Ben! Why hasn’t somebody brought this to my attention before? This is absurdly unfair! It shall be corrected immediately. A man carrying the load you’re carrying these days shouldn’t be forced to endure this kind of personal anxiety!”

In another scene, he had filled a gas tank and wiped the windshield and he was taking the money from the customer when the man looked at him intently and said, “Say, aren’t you the Ben Weldon that used to be with National?”

There was, of course, a background of hot sun and sandy beach, and his brown children playing on the beach, with Ginny near them, barefoot and splendid, and a boat anchored at a dock.

“You’re right, friend,” he would say, “but we got out of that ulcer trap. We didn’t know what real living was until we came down here, friend.”

There was another that kept slipping into his mind, making his stomach feel hollow. The word would be passed around in some mysterious way, and he would spend the sour, defeated weeks and months sitting in waiting rooms, filling out forms that would be filed away and forgotten, and the men he talked to would treat him with a brusque courtesy that did not quite conceal their contempt for the sort of man who would quit the team just before the Series.

“Sit down, Ben. Sit down,” Brendan Mallory said in his light and casual voice. “Something that has to come directly to the top, eh?”

Ben knew that when Mallory learned of the request for the appointment, he would have checked with Bartlett, who would be just as much in the dark as Mallory.
So he was outside normal channels, and in National, when you bypassed your immediate superior, you had to be sure of your ground. He sensed a wariness in Mallory. This was it, and it made all the day’s conjectures seem silly. It was an effort to grope for and remember his planned opening.

“This is a personal thing, Mr. Mallory. I guess it’s a request for advice.”

“You know I’m ready to help in any way I can, Ben.”

“Before I ask for advice, I’d like to make one general point, sir. In many ways I’ve been led to believe that I’m considered a valuable man. It may be bad taste to bring it up this way, but can we assume it’s true?”

“It’s definitely true. Bringing you into the bonus picture was a pretty good clue as to what we all think of you, Ben.”

“So if I am valuable, can I make the further assumption that an extra effort would be made to keep me happy, Mr. Mallory?”

Mallory reached for the small gold model of a military jet on his desk and gave it a quarter turn before answering. “That’s such a hypothetical question, I can only give a hypothetical answer, Ben. We will do our best to treat you fairly. Isn’t it time we came to specifics?”

“Of course. I’ve come directly to you because I know this is a policy question. It may sound petty, but I’m asking you to look at the broad implications of why I have to bring it up. I can’t live and support my family on what you’re paying me. We have no other source of income. I have here our budget figures, and a personal balance sheet. We’re in debt, with more probability of going further in debt than paying it off. I’d like you to look these over and——”

Mallory, with a slightly pained expression, raised his hand and said, “Please, Ben. I don’t want to pry into the personal details of your life. Statistically you’re in the top five per cent income wise.”

“That’s no comfort if it doesn’t work out, sir.”

“I don’t want to bore you with reminiscences, Ben, but Alice and I didn’t have an easy time of it, believe me.” He chuckled and shook his head. “The macaroni years, that’s what Alice calls them. We had to watch
every last penny, and sometimes it was a wearisome thing, but I can’t say that it did us any harm. I think it did us a lot of good, as a matter of fact. It doesn’t hurt anyone’s character to be careful, Ben.” He smiled and his voice became more confidential. “We both know it’s harder on our wives than on us, those lean years. And sometimes a woman can force a man to make … a small error in judgment. You can tell Virginia that you made the old school try, and the man said not yet. And we’ll both forget this little chat.”

“I can’t let it drop, Mr. Mallory. That’s the point I’m trying to make. If you’d look at the figures I——”

“This isn’t like you, Ben. It can’t possibly be so serious. You have a beautiful home, handsome, healthy children, a lovely wife. I can get a little angry when I think of the way you live now compared with the way Alice and I lived during the lean years. It’s a sign of our times, I guess.”

“What do you mean by that, Mr. Mallory?”

“Nobody is willing to
wait
any more. They have to have it
now
. You people all seem to want to live the abundant life before you earn the right to it.”

“It’s the kind of abundant life I’m living that I don’t want. And I’m not yearning for a cabin cruiser or a mink coat for Ginny or an airplane of my own, Mr. Mallory. I want to get out of debt because I feel degraded by being in debt when I make so much. But too much of what I make goes to keeping up the front you people demand of me. Let me unload that house and stop being a clubman and stop doing semibusiness entertaining I can’t write off, and I can get out of the swamp.”

“We pay you as much as we do, Weldon, because we expect you to live in that style.”

“Then it isn’t enough. Somebody should make a study of the suburban budget, Mr. Mallory. Too many of us are trapped.”

“Trapped? By a need for economy? What kind of a trap is that?”

“We’re not communicating, Mr. Mallory. I wouldn’t have taken up your time if it wasn’t important. I hoped this talk would go better than it’s going. I’ve got to have thirty-five.”

“You’ve
got
to have thirty-five thousand dollars a year!”

“If I’m to go on in the same job, and live on the same scale. I got that figure from an expert who
did
study my figures, Mr. Mallory. The tax bite will be much larger, of course. But the difference will be enough for me to get out of hock and begin to save a little, build up an emergency fund, lay money away for the education of my kids.”

“Ben, how many people are on your approximate level of pay in this building, in this home office?”

“As a quick guess, fifteen.”

“Closer to twenty, I’m afraid. Though salaries are not supposed to be public knowledge, quite a few people work on payroll and on overhead-expense data. An eleven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar raise would not pass unnoticed. And it would be a source of discontent.”

“Why should it be? If I am slated for bigger things, as you have hinted, why wouldn’t it be considered merely a confirmation of those plans?”

“Traditionally the salary is matched to the job, not the man, until you become one of the top officers of the corporation. But is that all we’re here for, Ben? Is that all National is—a money cow to be milked as often and strenuously as possible?”

“On the other hand, Mr. Mallory, should National have an irresponsible attitude toward the personal problems of its junior executives?”

“That’s a rather large word, Ben.”

“It wasn’t said hastily. To maintain the façade of my existence I’ll have to get that thirty-five, sir. Somewhere.”

It was that final deadly word, with its implications of disloyalty, that immediately changed the atmosphere in Mallory’s office. Ben had vowed not to bring that factor into the discussion. It would be there, but only by implication. But he had been pushed into the position of saying it, and things would not be the same again.

Mallory studied him for a moment. Ben had the feeling that Mallory had put a small strong hand against Ben’s chest and walked him backward and, with a final push, had then slammed and bolted a big door, and now looked at him through an armored peephole.

Or, in a more fitting analogy, two ships had hove to, side by side, exchanging cautious messages, until suddenly one had run up its battle flags, opened the gun ports and cleared the decks for action.

“We certainly don’t want to lose you, Ben,” Mallory said heartily. “You belong in the National family.” He had watched Mallory in action too many times not to see that this was the Mallory attitude toward all outsiders. Cordial almost to the point of being effusive, the eyes clear and friendly, the smile correct to the final millimeter of spread.

“Thank you, sir.”

Mallory came around the desk as Ben stood up. He put his hand out and Ben took it. “I recognize your problem, Ben, and I’m glad you brought it to me, and you can be assured I’ll do my very best to find a solution. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as we can come up with something.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mallory.”

There was no escort to the office door, no light touch on the shoulder. Ben went back down to his floor, his office, his desk. He sat down and looked out the glass wall at the beginning of the rain.
Everything is so gentle and delicate here
, he thought.
They don’t ride you down in the elevator and give you a swing, and bounce your pants off Lexington Avenue. But somehow it feels exactly the same
.

A few moments later he called Gearling, the treasurer, and asked to borrow the balance in his retirement account.

“You … want to take it out, Ben?” Gearling asked.

“It’s permitted, isn’t it?”

“Of course! Of course! The—uh—whole amount?”

“Yes.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“As soon as you can get it, Edward.”

“It has to clear through the trust account that handles the retirement fund, Ben. Three days?”

“That’ll be fine. Thanks.”

“When will you—uh—put it back in, Ben?”

“Sometime before I retire, Edward. I guess I’d have to, or it would mess up my retirement, wouldn’t it?”

Gearling suspected that Ben was making a joke, so he laughed in a slightly hollow and uncomfortable way.

That evening Ben told Ginny what he had done. He wanted to see her happy. He wanted to see her eyes shine. He wanted to get at least that much out of it, the way they give the big loser a free taxi ride home. But she stared at him, her eyes round in shock, and then her face came apart like a small child readying itself for tears, and she fled to the bedroom.

Ten days later Bartlett phoned and asked Ben to come to his office. It had been a curious ten days. There had been a subtle yet obvious change in attitude toward him. He learned indirectly of a policy memo that had not been routed to his desk, and suspected there had been others. Men who had been stiff and rather formal with him in the past were now relaxed and quite friendly in his presence. Those who had sought him out now seemed to avoid him. Bartlett was taking an unusual interest in the details of matters he had previously left entirely up to Ben.

When he walked into Bartlett’s office he was not surprised to see Brendan Mallory there, or see his open friendly smile.

“Sit down, Ben. Sit down,” Mallory said. “Ed and I have been up one side of this and down the other, and I think we’ve come up with something that will solve your special problem.” There was an ironic emphasis on the word “special.”

“I’m glad to hear that sir.”

“You’re too good a man to lose, Ben. We’re quick to admit that, believe me. Gil Walker sent in a formal request for early retirement for reasons of health, and we’ve been sitting on it, wondering who to put in out there. That’s Southwest District, out of Denver, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“With all respect to Gil Walker, Ben, that district does need the kind of talent you can bring to the job. It’s a good place to live, I hear. And, traditionally, the district
managers do better, salarywise, than a lot of us slaves in the home office.”

“I’ve heard about that, sir.”

“From the way it looks, Ben, you ought to make about thirty-two or thirty-three at the beginning and, if you can build it up, as I’m sure you can, it could peak at forty in a very short time. So it’s quite a handsome promotion, and it seems to Ed and me to be a good solution all around. And it certainly won’t hurt your future value to the corporation to have a few years of running a district on your record.”

It’s so neat
, Ben thought admiringly.
You bring the outstanding young men out of the districts into the home office, the way you brought me in, but you never, never bring a district manager to New York. There’s good reason. He’s acquired an incurably regional point of view. The pay is good because it has to be good, because it is just as high and far as the man can go with National. So you sit out there and you do one gutsy job of following the instructions from the home office, and it is, in a sense, a demanding job, but you never get your fingers into policy. It’s a handsome promotion if you think just about the money. But all of a sudden they’ve dropped the barricade across your highway, and you know just how long the road is. You can move to a bigger district
—
at their request
—
and that is all. You’ll be the youngest district manager in National. And ten years from now you’ll be of average age for district managers, and eventually you’ll retire to a little better than reasonable comfort. You can do the job. It’s no snap job. It’ll take diligence and concentration and good judgment. But there will be no opportunity to exercise that rare executive muscle that creates brand-new plans, programs, policies, and attitudes. It will use all the rest of you, but not that
.

So look at us as we sit here, full of face-saving devices and fabrications. Theirs is a salvage operation. They have decided they were wrong in believing they had a machine that would push new roads through the wilderness. But the same machine can be very useful keeping old roads in repair. It is uneconomic to scrap it. So grease it well and put it to work
.

The other choice is to resign here and now and get
into another outfit where the road to the top level will not be so neatly blocked. But would not that run us into the same thing?

He realized they were looking at him and had been for a few moments too long, but they both wore expressions of polite attentiveness, and the pleased look of men who have found a way to do a seemingly generous thing. They had beribboned the gift with the fictitious hint that he could and would return here after running a district. It could not happen.