‘We’ve kicked the idea around, but frankly I always thought of it as just postponing the inevitable.’
‘That’s one of the things that’s been giving Chuck trouble. This feeling that he’s in a make-or-break situation.’
‘I’ve never pressured Chuck.’
‘Not on purpose, I know that. So does he. On the other hand, you’re a rich, successful man who graduated from college sum ma cum laude. I think Chuck feels a little bit like he’s batting after Hank Aaron.’
‘There’s nothing I can do about that, Johnny.’
‘I think a year at a prep school, away from home, after his senior year might put things in perspective for him. And he wants to go to work in one of your mills next summer. If he were my kid and if they were my mills, I’d let him.’
‘Chuck wants to do that? How come he never told me?’
‘Because he didn’t want you to think he was ass-kissing,’ Johnny said.
‘He told you that?’
‘Yes. He wants to do it because he thinks the practical experience will be helpful to him later on. The kid wants to follow in your footsteps, Mr. Chatsworth. You’ve left some big ones behind you. That’s what a lot of the reading block has been about. He’s having buck fever.’
In a sense, he had lied. Chuck had hinted around these things, and even mentioned some of them obliquely, but he had not been as frank as Johnny had led Roger Chats-worth to believe. Not verbally, at least. But Johnny had touched him from time to time, and he had gotten signals that way. He had looked through the pictures Chuck kept in his wallet and knew how Chuck felt about his dad. There were things he could never tell this pleasant but rather distant man sitting across from him. Chuck idolized the ground his father walked on. Beneath his easy-come easy-go exterior (an exterior that was very similar to Roger’s), the boy was eaten up by the secret conviction that he could never measure up.
His father had built a ten percent interest in a failing woolen mill into a New England textile empire. He believed that the issue of his father’s love hung on his own ability to move similar mountains. To play sports. To get into a good college. To read.
‘How sure are you about all of this?’ Roger asked.
‘I’m pretty sure. But I’d appreciate it if you never mentioned to Chuck that we talked this way. They’re his secrets I’m telling.’ And that’s truer than you’ll ever know.
‘All right. And Chuck and his mother and I will talk over the prep school idea. In the meantime, this is yours. He took out a plain white business envelope from his back pocket and passed it to Johnny.
‘What is it?’
‘Open it and see.’
Johnny opened it. Inside the envelope was a cashier’s check for five hundred dollars.
‘Oh, hey… ! I can’t take this.’
‘You can, and you will. I promised you a bonus if you could perform, and I keep my promises. There’ll be an-other when you leave.’
‘Really, Mr. Chatsworth, I just…’
‘Shh. I’ll tell you something, Johnny.’ He leaned forward. He was smiling a peculiar little smile, and Johnny suddenly felt he could see beneath the pleasant exterior to the man who had made all of this happen – the house, the grounds, the pool, the mills. And, of course, his son’s reading phobia, which could probably be classified a hysterical neurosis.
‘It’s been my experience that ninety-five percent of the people who walk the earth are simply inert, Johnny. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other
three percent are the people who do what they say they can do. I’m in that three percent, and so are you. You earned that money. I’ve got people in the mills that take home eleven thousand dollars a year for doing little more than playing with their dicks. But I’m not bitching. I’m a man of the world, and all that means is I under-stand what powers the world. The fuel mix is one part high-octane to nine parts pure bull-shit. You’re no bullshitter. So you put that money in your wallet and next time try to value yourself a little higher.