Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool

Speaking of ill winds. The van that carried huge bales of the Schuyler Springs Sentinel pulled up behind him, did a three-point turn in the empty street and backed up to the curb in front of the Rexall. The driver got out then, opened the rear hatch and dropped a bale of Sentinels into the darkened, recessed doorway. Clive Jr. already had a copy of the Sentinel on the front seat next to him, having driven from his golf course town home into Schuyler Springs at four-thirty in the morning to buy one. Not that anything in the paper was news to him. He’d gotten a call from Florida late yesterday afternoon, so he knew, of course, that Escape Enterprises was now, at the last minute, pulling out, refusing to exercise its option, having chosen instead to build their amusement park near Portland, Maine. The Sentinel had reported the reasons they’d given for this most recent decision. The tract of land between North Bath and the interstate that had seemed so huge to residents of the region had seemed to the developers only marginally adequate, and adequate only if they could content themselves not to expand at a later date. The fact that the land itself was swampy had not been the impediment, as many had feared. What was Disney World but a reclaimed swamp? But you couldn’t invent more swamp to fill later on if you wanted to double the size of your park, and expansion was the name of the game. Plus the tax structure and regulations in Maine were more conducive to development, and given the fact that this resort was going to be basically a summer operation, the Maine demographics and climate also made more sense. There were other reasons for people to go to Maine, which had the ocean and L. L. Bean, whereas if they built in Bath they’d have to be the reason.

The Sentinel had run an editorial right on the front page attacking this stated rationale for the developer’s eleventh-hour about-face. Normally, the Schuyler Sentinel wouldn’t have sympathized with the plight of its smaller neighbor, but this was different. The Ultimate Escape was to have been a boon for the entire region, not just Bath, and in a magnanimous gesture the editors of the newspaper had apparently decided that the whole region had been slighted, not just their neighbors. And for no good reason. The proposed site, they pointed out, had not become suddenly smaller than when negotiations began, nor had the tax structure and inadequate incentives the developers now complained of been raised as issues before. The location hadn’t changed, and neither had the climate. There was a resort town just up the road with a racetrack and baths and a summer concert series. What were the real reasons for the pullout? the Sentinel editorial had asked significantly, even hinting that the state of Maine might have greased a few palms. It also suggested that the decision had nothing to do with the cemetery controversy the Schuyler paper had done so much to publicize. No, it had to be something else.

Clive Jr. knew the real reason, because he’d asked the same question of D. C. Collins of Escape Enterprises, who’d called him personally from Texas yesterday afternoon to apologize for the decision. “I know how hard you folks worked,” Collins admitted. “You did everything we asked.” Beyond which he hadn’t wanted to explain, and he wouldn’t have done so either if Clive Jr. hadn’t pleaded with the man so abjectly, not even bothering to conceal his personal frustration. “Well, okay,” Collins had finally agreed, “if you really want to know why, I’ll tell you. This is between you and me, though, and I’ll deny it later if I have to. But here’s the deal. Straight scoop. I’m the one made this decision, and I’ll tell you why. We’re looking to invest, what, about ninety million dollars. That’s a fair piece of change, Clive. It’s more than that. It’s an investment of time and material, and it doesn’t stop there. When we finally get the son of a bitch built, we’re going to hire a lot of people in the area. We have to do that, because we can’t afford ill will. We need a supportive environment. Now this is where I don’t want you to get me wrong. I know your people have all been cooperative. What I’m talking now has more to do with … what’s the word?… ambience. Here’s the deal. A lot of the people up in your neck of the woods behave funny. Hell, Clive, no offense, but they look funny.”

Collins had paused to let this sink in. “You got yourself some real beautiful country up there, and I mean that. Nice trees especially. But you also got yourself some people who look like they live in trees, and that’s the cruel goddamn truth. We need a different ambience entirely. We need people who look more like people look in southern Maine. Massachusetts, really.” This is what it had come down to. People in Bath looked funny.

At that moment a noisy garbage truck marked SQUEERS WASTE REMOVAL roared around the corner onto Main from Division Street, having apparently interpreted the traffic signal, in conjunction with the time of day, as meaning You Do Not Have to Stop Here. Three small, powerfully built men in filthy jeans, navy blue hooded sweatshirts and heavy orange plaid outer coats clung to the sides of the truck like flies. One of these men, whom Clive Jr. recognized as the same fellow who frequently tagged along with Sully, lost his footing on the side of the truck (the other two men seemed to occupy safer positions along the rear bumper, which provided a wide, flat surface to stand on) and had to hang on with both hands to a metal loop, his booted feet frantically searching the side of the truck for a foothold. Before they were able to locate one, the truck skidded to an abrupt halt behind Clive Jr.’s Continental, and the morose-looking Rub Squeers let go and leapt to the pavement, where he hit an icy patch and ended up on his behind. His two companions dismounted more gracefully, grinning at each other as they did so. One signaled a thumbs-up to the driver, who was grinning into his big passenger side-view mirror. Rub picked himself up without comment, ignoring his companions, who wanted to know if he was okay, and went to fetch the metal garbage can that sat in the doorway of the Rexall next to the stack of newspapers. The other two men lumbered off in the direction of other cans.

Clive Jr. watched them, especially Sully’s friend Rub. Well, he conceded, people in his “neck of the woods” were funny-looking. These garbage men, these Squeers, taken together, looked like some failed genetic experiment — round-shouldered, waistless, neckless, almost kneeless, to judge from the way they lumbered. When one of the two Squeers who had been riding on the back of the truck returned with a garbage can and paused to remove his cloth hood and scratch his dome, Clive Jr. noticed that the hair on top of his skull was exactly the same length as the stubble on his chin, and suddenly Clive Jr. was certain that D. C. Collins, who had twice visited Bath, had witnessed this same scene. Clive Jr. had tried to control what Collins saw during his visits to the region, introducing him to Bath’s better-educated and more successful business people, then hustling him out of town and to dinner at one of Schuyler Springs’ finer restaurants, using that city’s proximity, as he always did, as a recruiting tool. But on one or two occasions Collins had been slippery, and one morning when Clive Jr. had gone to Collins’ Schuyler Springs hotel, he’d learned that the man had headed into Bath in his rental car. Clive Jr. had found him at Hattie’s, of all places. He now imagined Collins getting out of his rental car just in time to see the Squeers garbage truck careen around the corner, various and assorted stubbly Squeers clinging stubbornly to its sides like cockroaches. Lord.