Welcome to Wednesday's Words where I share a snippet from one of my stories using yesterday's word from the New York game Wordle. Yesterday's Wordle was MINUS.
One
morning nearly six weeks after we had moved into the barn, I was riding the
train into school. Two men boarded and
took the seats directly in front of me.
One
of them was a short, thick-set man with a wide gray mustache parted in the
middle and combed into handlebars. He had a red face, beady eyes, and a strong
jaw, which somehow seemed wrong with his loud, checked suit and sporty necktie.
He wore a pin made of two stones, a diamond and a sapphire, clipped on his
lapel, and had three showy jeweled rings on his fat, pudgy fingers.
The
other man was sly, quiet, gray, unobtrusive, making me wonder if he were the
henchman of the first.
I
watched them. Of course, they made me think of the Ramsey’s, and I wondered if
they could have any dealings with Parker’s family. It was only a passing
thought, and I went back studying for my English exam.
The
two men sat with their backs toward me, and settled down and begun to talk. I
heard a low-breathed comment on the furnishings of some office indicating a
good bank-account of the owner, and a coarse jest about Carly Haywood.
My
ears pricked at the mention of Max’s mother’s name.
"Well,
we got them now!" The pudgy man spoke, his voice full of scorn. "The
young one bit all right! I thought he would. He's that kind." He stopped
for a laugh of contempt, and my heart skipped.
What
did he mean? Was he talking about Max? Some game being played on him? The men
looked like type who preyed on others. Lady G had a name for such people,
parasites.
I
wanted to return to my studies, but my attention, once alerted, couldn’t stand
down. I reached into my bag, found a sheaf of sheet music and poised my pencil
above the margins.
The
men talked and I scribbled down as much of their conversation as I could.
"He
went out to see the place, you know, examine the fields and all that. Oh, he
thinks he’s paid his due diligence! Relying on that wetlands specialist we set
up to inspect the property on Fulsom Road. We fixed that up all right—had the
very man on tap at the right minute, government papers all O.K.—you couldn't
have told 'em from the real thing. It was Casey; you know him; should have been
on the stage—could fool the devil himself. Well, he swore the property was as
right as rain and all that kind of dope, and led that Max kid around as sweetly
as a baby calf searching for its ma. We had a gang out there all bribed, you
know, to swear to things, and took particular pains so Max would go around and
ask the right questions—Casey tended to that—and now he's come home with the
biggest kind of a tale and ready to boost the thing to the skies. I've got his
word for it, and his daddy is to sign the papers this morning. When he wakes in
a few weeks he'll find himself mired with hundreds of angry environmentalist
and irate tree-huggers, MINUS a couple of millions, and nobody to blame for it,
because how could anybody be expected to know those wetlands are home to
polliwogs?”
“Pat
yourself on the back, boss,” the quiet man said.
“We'll
have a tidy little sum between us when we pull out of this deal, and take a
foreign trip for our health till the brawl blows over."
I
felt faint and dizzy, and, for may be the hundredth time, cursed myself for not
having a phone. My thoughts whirled. What could I do with this information?
When
were the papers being signed? Was it too late to stop it? Would they talk on
and reveal more?
No comments:
Post a Comment