Annie Proulx - That Old Ace in the Hole

“Yes sir,” said Bob, seeing the logic of it.

“And Bob, here’s a list of the qualities that I want you to look for – on the q.t. – in that country. Look for your smaller cow outfits and farms, not the great big ones or the ranches with four hundred oil wells. Look for areas where everybody is grey-headed. Older. People that age just want to live quiet and not get involved in a cause or fight city hall. That’s the kind of population we want. Find out the names of local people who run things – bankers, church folks – get on their good side. Keep your eyes and ears open for farmers whose kids went off to school and those kids are not coming back unless somebody puts a gun to their heads. Read the obits for rural property owners who just died and their offspring are thinking ‘show me the money’ so they can get back to Kansas City or Key West or other fleshpots of their choice.

“And here’s another thing. You will have to have a cover story because you can’t go down there and say you’re scouting for Global Pork Rind. Some people would be openly hostile. You will be there off and on for several months at a time, so you will have to think up a story to explain your presence. The fellow we had before told people he was a reporter for a national magazine working on a panhandle story – that was supposed to let him get into every kind of corner and let him ask pertinent questions. You know what ‘pertinent’ means, don’t you?”

‘Yes sir. Pertaining to, or related in some way to a topic.”

“Very good, I imagine you did well in school. That fellow I mentioned thought it had something to do with hair implants. Anyway, he thought that was a good cover story and expected doors to open to him like butter.”

“What magazine did that fellow say he was working for, sir? Doing the profile for?”

“Well, he did not pick Texas Monthly , thinking the local populace might have heard of it. And of course it would have been folly to name Cockfight Weekly or Ranch News. I believe he said Vogue. He thought he would be safe with that one in the panhandle.”

“And it didn’t work for him?”

“No, no. It didn’t.” Ribeye Cluke’s little finger swept a speck of shaving cream from his earlobe. “You will have to think of something else. I would stay away from the magazine idea, myself But you’ll think of something. Now, Bob, it’s perfectly fine to stay in a motel for a few days until you get your bearings, but your best bet is to rent a room with someone in the area. Find some old lady or elderly couple with plenty of relatives. That way you’ll get a beeline on what’s happening. You’ll get the lowdown. Now you just scour the properties north of the” – he consulted the map on the wall – ”the Canadian River. Scour them good! Whenever you find a property that looks right and the owner is willing, you let me know and I’ll send our Money Offer Person down. We’ve set up a subsidiary company to buy the parcels and then deed them over to Global. The residents do not know a hog farm is coming in until the bulldozers start constructing the waste lagoon. Later, when you’ve gained experience, when you’ve proved your value to Global Pork Rind, you can act as your own Money Offer Person, though generally we like to send a woman, mention a sum to the oldsters right on the spot. There’s an advantage to that. Another thing, don’t stay in one place, after a month or so switch to another town. And so forth. That fellow I mentioned? He picked Mobeetie, so if I were you that’s not where I’d go. He made people suspicious. He got into trouble.

“Lucille here has made up a packet of maps and brochures, county profiles for you, and there’s your corporate credit card – and you bet there’s a limit on it, Bob. We need your signature on this card. Here you go then and I’ll just wish you good luck. Report back to me by mail every week. And I don’t mean that damn e-mail. I won’t touch that. Get a post office box. Write to me at home and I’ll respond from same so your postmaster down there doesn’t see Global Pork Rind on the envelope and start putting five and five together. I’ll see that the company newsletters are sent to you in a plain brown wrapper. Can’t be too careful. Use a pay phone if there is an emergency.”

“Yes sir.”

“And remember, the thing that’s really important is that – that we – that we do what we do.”

Bob left with the feeling that Ribeye Cluke was somehow deceiving him.

That night he took his uncle Tam to a celebratory dinner at a famous Inuit-Japanese-Irish steak house where they poured melted Jersey butter from quart pitchers, where the baked potatoes, decorated with tiny umbrellas, were the size of footballs and the steaks so thick they could only be cut with samurai swords. His uncle winced at the menu prices, then overpraised the food, a sure sign he was homesick for Chickee’s place down the block from his shop where he could enjoy a plate of fried gizzards or catfish hot pot. But it seemed his thoughts had gone in a different direction, for out on the sidewalk he belched and said, “I’ve been thinking of getting into vegetables. Becoming a vegetarian. Meat’s too damn expensive. Oh. Wait a minute. Before I forget. Wayne sent you something. And there’s a little thing from me.” His uncle thrust two flat parcels at Bob. “Don’t open them until you get there,” he said.

“Bromo! I didn’t even know you were in touch with him anymore.”

“Yeah. I am. We are. Whatever.”

At the time Bob’s parents had dropped him off on the doorstep, Uncle Tam had had a roommate, Wayne Redpoll, with glary eyes and a rubbery mug, his features arranged around a nose so beaked that it made his eyes unmemorable. His brown hair was crinkled and violent, springing with energy. In the mornings before ten o’clock when the shop opened, he lounged around without a shirt doing crossword puzzles, tapping the pencil against his discolored teeth. His chest was strange, the nipples almost under his armpits. He was not good at the puzzles, too impatient for them, and after a few minutes would go his own way, filling in the blanks with any old word, right or wrong. Bob disliked him mildly and it was partly to vanquish him at crosswords that he began to study The Child’s Illustrated Dictionary which Uncle Tam had fished out of a box and handed to him, saying, “Happy congratulations on this great Wednesday morning.” By the time he was twelve he could do the Tuesday New York Times puzzle with a pen in less than twenty minutes, but Thursday and Friday took many hours with pencil as the clues were sly and presumed knowledge of cultural events in the dim past. All kinds of words streamed through his mind – ocelot, strabismus, plat du jour, archipelago, bemusement, vapor, mesa, sitar, boutique. Wayne tried to counter Bob’s skill by dredging up odd crossword information and explaining it to him as though that were the point of the puzzles: that crosswords had been invented in 1913 by a Liverpool newspaperman, that in 1924 they became a national craze. He generally pooh-poohed the New York Times puzzles, which, he said, were child’s play – a meaningful look at Bob – compared to the evil puzzles of the British, particularly those with cryptic clues constructed by the old masters, Torquemada, Ximenes and Azed. But this persiflage did him no good. He did not have the knack and Bob did.

Wayne Redpoll had come by the nickname “Bromo” after a night of heavy drinking not long after Bob Dollar arrived on the doorstep. He moaned with a hangover, drank black coffee to restore balance, said, “Goddamn, I’m going for a walk to clear my head,” ended at Chickee’s place down the street where he ordered a Bromo-Seltzer to settle his queasy gut. He swallowed the gassy mixture and within seconds puked on the counter.