Chapter 8 #2
“And it’ll be years before he can get at it, for pity’s sake. We have a contract with families who live there sayin’ that no mining will be done till they leave. That may not be for another twenty or thirty years.”
John had spent his share of time in the past thinking of ways to circumvent that contract. “I’d offer them money to move them sooner. Cutter wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t have the money to do it.”
“Which is probably why I’m willing that land to him,” Eugene said.
“I’ve already offered those folks money, and they don’t want it.
They want to stay where they are. You’d pressure them, but I won’t have it.
” He shook his head conclusively. “No, Cutter was born and raised here. He feels for the people more than you ever could.”
“‘Feeling for the people’ isn’t what keeps a business running.”
“It’s what’s kept it running so far.”
“And not terribly efficiently, if you ask me.”
Eugene drew himself up to his full height, which, to John’s frustration, hadn’t shrunk at all with age. “I ain’t askin’ you.” He started for the door.
But John wasn’t through talking. He had to get Eugene to change his mind—and his will. “All right.” He followed his father into the hall. “You have a personal interest in Cutter. If you want to help him, leave him some money. The guy lives like a pauper.”
Eugene paused at the top of the stairs. “If he lives that way, it’s because he banks most all of his paycheck, just as I taught him to. He’s got money. He wants to spend it, he can.”
“Okay.” John could deal with that argument, too. “So he’s being prudent, just like you taught him. Leave him a little more money, and he won’t feel that he has to be so prudent.”
Halfway down the stairs, Eugene said, “He’s happy with his life. He wants to splurge, he can.”
John grasped the railing with both hands.
“But he’s going to need more money anyway.
Pretty soon he’ll meet someone and want to get married, then he’ll have kids coming right and left.
He’ll need funds, but it’ll be years before he sees a dime from Little Lincoln, and then only if he puts money into it. ”
Eugene’s smile, as he looked up from the bottom of the stairs, was a knife twisting in John’s gut.
“You’ve got his life planned out for him, eh, John?
You’ve always been orderly, ever since you were a boy lining your toys up in your room.
But Cutter’s life ain’t your toys. You ain’t got much of a say in it. ”
He took a breath and went on. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what Cutter’s got planned.
Don’t think he does. Don’t think he wants to plan much ahead right now.
And that’s why Little Lincoln is the perfect thing for him.
By the time it’s ready to be mined, he’ll know what he wants.
” He arched a brow and said pleasantly, “Tell you what. You keep your money in the bank, and by that time you might have enough to buy him out. Course, Little Lincoln won’t come cheap.
And by that time, at the rate you’re goin’, Cutter will hate your guts enough to take you for a real ride. ” He walked to the front door and left.
Pride was only one of the feelings that prevented John from going after him.
The other was a raw anger that kept him immobilized, standing where he was gripping the second-floor railing, for a time.
It was only when his fingers began to ache that he realized what he was doing.
Returning to his room, he finished packing with a vengeance.
“Pam!” he bellowed, trotting down the stairs with his bag.
“Get down here, Pam!” Had he not been her only source of transportation home, he’d have left without her.
Having to suffer her company was bad enough under normal circumstances.
Given his present mood, it was going to be unbearable.
“We’re leaving, Pam,” he shouted. “Get her out here, Marcy! I’m getting the car! ” He stormed out of the house.
It was another fifteen minutes before they got on the road. The sudden departure plans had caught Marcy baking a chocolate cake. She had to clean up the kitchen before she could pack, then had to dash to take food to her mother, who was laid up with a broken rib.
“Did he hit her again?” John asked in disgust when, breathless, she finally climbed into the backseat of the car.
“She’s okay,” Marcy said and tucked herself into a corner.
Pam turned around in the front seat. “Is someone with her?”
“Lizzie.”
“Where’s Jarvis?”
“He ran off. He’ll be back in a week or two. Always is.”
“It’s her own damn fault,” John snapped. “He was beating her before they got married, still she went ahead with it. It was a stupid thing to do.”
Pam turned on him. “She had her reasons for marrying him.”
“Sure. She wanted someone to warm her bed, so she picked the first man who came along.”
“Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she was scared. Marcy was just a baby. Honestly, John, can’t you imagine what she was feeling?”
“Frankly, no. It was a stupid thing to do. So now she’s living with the decision.”
“She doesn’t deserve what he does to her.”
“Then she should kick him out.”
“She does, and he keeps coming back.”
“Then she should go to court.”
“She doesn’t have the money to do that.”
“So she sits there and takes it. She’s as stupid now as she was back then. Some people just don’t learn.”
Pam made a face. “You’re a pill, John.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” John said and stepped on the gas.
He made record time back to Boston. While the speed took the edge off the worst of his anger, enough remained to keep him geared up.
He kept thinking of Cutter, then of Eugene.
Then he thought about Patricia, and kept thinking about her, so that by the time he parked the car in the courtyard of the townhouse on Beacon Hill, he was sexually excited.
Pam and Marcy took off as quickly as they could, which was just fine with John.
Dropping his bag by the back door, he took the stairs two at a time.
Patricia was in the parlor, sitting at the roll-top desk, writing out invitations for a party she planned to give.
Having already paused to greet Pam, she raised her eyes when John appeared at the door.
Tossing his head toward the upper floor, he turned and took those stairs two at a time also.
He went straight to Patricia’s bedroom—Patricia and Eugene’s—and began to strip.
By the time Patricia slipped through the door, he was naked and fully aroused.
She barely had time for a whimsical smile before he pulled her to him and began to shove her clothes aside.
“John?” she asked.
He knew that she was puzzled; he was usually more urbane in his approach to her.
He also knew, as he tugged one piece of clothing after another from her body, that she was a little frightened, and that suited him well.
He was the one in charge. Eugene could do whatever the hell he wanted with his will; he could be smug and cocky, make fun of John, put him down without a care.
But the final laugh was on Eugene, because here in his bedroom, on his bed, between his sheets, his wife was putting out for John.
Over the next few months, John sought out Patricia more and more.
She became a vindictive compulsion for him, the only source of satisfaction he had in his war with his father.
Eugene wouldn’t change his will; John argued and argued, tried reason again and again, but the more he went at it, the more it seemed Eugene dug in his heels.
Likewise, Eugene dug in his heels when it came to the business.
He wouldn’t hear of branching off into activities other than mining, and when John even mentioned the possibility of taking the company public, Eugene left the room.
So John left, too, and took out his frustration in Eugene’s bedroom, on Eugene’s wife.
Sometimes she protested. On the day he returned from Maine with Pam and Marcy, when he took her without even a moment of foreplay, she complained that he wasn’t considerate.
“I’ll stop,” he said tightly, holding himself up on his fists while he was buried deep inside her. “I’ll stop if you want. I’ll get out of this room and never come back. I’ll even move out of the house and take a place of my own. That’s long overdue.”
But she quickly relented, as he’d known she would.
Just as she’d become an obsession for him, he was her addiction.
With Eugene rarely there, John gave her peace of mind.
She depended on him. He was her ally, the one who was going to convince Eugene to take the steps necessary to provide her with the security she needed.
John didn’t always agree with her on what those steps should be.
She remained fixated on real estate. She saw men in Boston making millions buying property and then renovating or tearing down and building from scratch.
Restoration of the waterfront was just beginning.
She was sure that St. George Mining could thrive in property development.
John had other ideas. Those men making millions in real estate were, in his opinion, relative upstarts.
Some were from out of town. Others were local lawyers and politicians who had spotted a good thing and were capitalizing on it.
None had real class, and he had no intention of aligning himself with people like that.