Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

From his office high above the floor, Paul concluded that Miss Elvstrom was gaga over Stuart, and that this would be an excellent time to have a smallish discussion with him.

Stuart was summoned by means of a loudspeaker. The bottle-washing foreman he’d been talking to, a small gray-haired man with forearms like Popeye’s, said to Stuart in solemn tones, “There’s a fuckin’ afoot.”

When Stuart entered the office and sat down, Paul was writing on a notepad—“I am collecting my thoughts,” Paul said before looking up into the slightly anxious eyes of Stuart, whose long, gullible face suggested impending flight.

Paul was aware of the fact that since the death of his father-in-law and his own installation as the new boss, Stuart had been entirely too forthcoming in expressing his reservations about the future of the company. Hearing this, Paul vowed to “kick his ass,” and had done lots of homework in preparing for this deed.

“Stuart.” There was no sense that Paul had ever seen him before.

“Good morning, Paul.”

“Beautiful, uh, day.” Paul glanced at the window to discern if this was in fact true, then he pointed in case Stuart didn’t know where it was to be found.

“It certainly is.”

“Stuart, I want you to look into some water-management services we could offer, some franchise we might consider….” He could make out the impact of this preface on his clueless brother-in-law. Yet it took people like this to make headway in places like up on the High Line, say, where anything but the outright monosyllabic produced xenophobic hysteria.

“You mean like—”

“So we’re not stifled in this his toric building by the spirit of our father-in-law, now dead and only maybe in heaven.” This whiff of kinship made them both uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re thinking about.”

Neither, of course, did Paul, but it was Stuart who looked disoriented. Less-than-idolatrous discussions of Jim Whitelaw were at best experimental in this new postmortem world, and at worst an insufferable deviation. The idea of discussing Sunny Jim’s place in the afterlife was disconcerting.

Paul raised his voice. “ I already told you . Water-management services as it is understood by most Americans: various forms of conditioned water that we can sell without doing the R and D ourselves. Like with water softeners. We put the widget in the home, sell them the salts for the rest of the life of the operating unit, then sell them another unit. How far are you getting with this, Stuart?”

“I’ll look into it,” he said quietly.

Paul knew that with Stuart, he could really raise the pitch, even let a bit of it be heard down on the floor where Miss You-Know-Who stood by. It wouldn’t be a speck on the regular blistering old Whitelaw regularly doled out to this beaten man. He had concluded that further heapings of the assigned tasks might abet Stuart’s sense of disadvantage.

“You know, we could do need analysis right in their homes and charge for that too. All the water around here is too hard — a whole population with itching scalps, flaking skin, mineralized pipes; half of Montana scratching their asses trying to get on with their lives. It’s not right. I’ve seen our elected representatives back there in Washington scratching their asses on national TV, so half of America thinks we’re uncouth, when it’s really just a water-quality issue. But there’s a big opportunity out there for you, Stuart, especially vis-à-vis a guy with a twenty-year-old profit-sharing plan. So look into it, Stuart. You’re fully vested .”

“I will, Paul. I know I am, my whole fu—”

“Lot of outfits like us supposed to be bottling plants, and they’re nothing but prisoners of some empire. You can tell our customers all about Coca-Cola products but you’re still a prisoner—” Paul paused at the startled look the word produced on Stuart’s face “—watching some behemoth (‘What are the chances this guy knows what a behemoth is?’) eating your goddamn margins. Sure, I’m worried about sales, but I’m more worried about profitability.” With these types, you go straight to the rules of the game and stay out of some value-driven mess where their opinions could have merit. Paul was beginning to believe this himself and vowed to rant more in the future. This was a complicated business, and Paul had no idea what was going on. Even the Coca-Cola concentrate — arriving in separate shipments from Atlanta and Puerto Rico, to guard its secret recipe — added to his anxiety, though in bolder times he dreamed of cracking the code.

“I’m constantly concerned with profitability, Paul.” Paul, who thought Stuart’s little show of gumption was a scream, fanned this show of spirit away. He pursed his lips and stared up into a corner of the room where there was nothing to look at. This lull ended when his gaze came spinning down like a bird of prey. “What, for example, do you say when you call on someone who was just visited by the dipshit from Pepsi? What do you say?” This seemingly cruel redirection was actually a sop enabling Stuart to show the colors a bit and recover a shred of dignity. Paul knew he wasn’t smart enough to credit him with this kindness, but it would be fun to see him on his feet for once, at least for a few strides. Breathe some life back into him. Not much use having a shell out there pushing some dubious product when real conviction was required.

Old Stuart was off and running. “I explain that our sugar content and carbonization differs. I tell them that Pepsi is flatter. I tell them Coke is more orange based, while Pepsi’s more of a lemon flavor.” He concluded in a tone of quiet reason, “I tell them Coke is cocaine free, but that the caffeine’s still there.”

Suddenly Paul was contemplative, his handsome face and great brown eyes at rest. “You know there’s every reason to fear glass bottles are going to be phased out. You need to make it clear that aluminum recycling is iffy as hell and that the best interests of their communities are served by returnable glass bottles. Glass bottles hold carbonization and flavor better than anything. Also, on the Coke front, your customers need to be reminded that Coca-Cola is more American than apple pie.” Here Paul began to speak in a stentorian tone that would’ve done Lincoln proud. “Dr. John Smith Pemberton first made this elixir in his backyard in 1886, and the world has been drinking it ever since. Forget the expansions —Minute Maid, Fanta, Sprite, all those peripherals. Stuart, please try and forget them. You need to sell the old original, and you need to sell it out of glass bottles.”

“I tell them we combined with Tri-Star to form Columbia Pictures!” Stuart cried, causing a brief but unsettling quiet.

“No, Stuart, please , they don’t need that, Stuart, they mustn’t hear it. They do not need Hollywood. They need a time-honored cold drink in a glass bottle. But look, the headline for today is water-management services, the sort of slam dunk you can do on the weekend across your neighbor’s fence while you’re roasting weenies on the barbecue. Tell the one about how the problem isn’t keeping his wife out of your yard but keeping your yard out of his wife! It’s an old one, but the old ones are the good ones, aren’t they, Stuart? I think they are. And you can make stuff up, too. Tell them Pepsi gets its water out of the cyanide leach fields from abandoned mines.”

“Uh, I’m going to dig into it today, Paul. Services basically.”

“Good, Stuart. And look, I know this takes some getting used to, but what are we going to do? Jim Whitelaw is dead.” Paul felt strangely soiled by his own performance.