FOUR

The sun was low on the snowy horizon to the left of Clarence Sandberg’s beige Oldsmobile as he drove north on Highway 59. It was one of those lifeless afternoons in Minnesota, when the sundogs guard the flanks of a sun without warmth. As he passed through Erhard, he fine-tuned his radio to “The Mighty 790” KFGO radio from Fargo, North Dakota. A Garth Brooks tune was just beginning, but as he opened his mouth to provide the country singer with a monotone duet, his wife of twenty-nine years, Joey, chose that moment to say, “Do you think John will make us go snowmobiling?”

It was a question that deserved an answer, and Clarence reluctantly turned down the volume and said, “Well, I’m sure that he won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. He just wants us to have a good time. It might be fun.”

“Fun? To sit on a machine that makes as much noise as those stupid Shriners motorcycles do at the parades? I hate those things. And I can just picture a bunch of Shriners doing figure eights on snowmobiles if they ever held a winter parade. So we should run around like a bunch of Shriners in the woods scaring the living daylights out of the squirrels while we freeze our fannies? If that’s what it takes for you to become president of the company I suppose I can do it for a while, but don’t expect me to call it fun. And I suppose I have to sit there in my good coat and get it torn up by the machinery.”

“No, no. No chance of that. The Otter Slide Resort supplies the whole outfit—snowmobile suits, helmets, boots, and even mittens. Besides, nobody’s going to make you go. You can sit around and read a book if you want to.”

“Sure, and have John think, ‘Clarence is a good man, but his wife is sure a stick in the mud. She wouldn’t help him sell insurance if she couldn’t get out and enjoy a Minnesota winter.’ I’ve spent fifty-nine winters in Minnesota and I’ve never enjoyed a one of them, but that doesn’t mean I complain about them.”

“No, not much it doesn’t,” thought Clarence, but aloud he said, “Well, I say, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. I’ve never been on a snowmobile either, but I’m kind of looking forward to it. Would you rather try cross-country skiing?”

“At my age? Don’t be absurd!”

“What do you mean, at your age? You’re not so old. The Otter Slide provides everything you need. It’s supposed to be much easier than downhill skiing and a lot safer. Or, hey! I know! How about coming ice fishing with me?”

Joey’s voice was colder than a well-digger’s heel as she said, “There is only one thing more stupid than sitting out in a boat catching fish that nobody ever eats. And that is sitting in a dark fish house on a frozen lake trying to catch fish that nobody ever eats. No thank you!”

“Yah, maybe,” Clarence tentatively agreed, “but that’s not the point. In any event, it’s still a nice gesture, you know. It’s just a real pleasant way for John to get us all together and make us all comfortable with each other when he goes and I’m the new president.”

He let his mind wander to the future. He was a contented man who was essentially satisfied with life. Hofstead Hail had been good to him. He had sent one daughter to Concordia College and the other daughter was a senior at Gustavus Adolphus College. His two hundred and fifty pounds were spread inelegantly on his six- foot-two frame and his massive, bespectacled, and clean-shaven face hid not a trace of guile. His protruding ears held up a fur hat covering a scalp the adornment of which was summed up in his favorite bumper sticker, “Don’t say bald, say ‘combing impaired!’” He lived the life of an isolated Swede in a sea of Norwegians—he got along, he went along, and he didn’t make waves.

Joey was, in many ways, the perfect complement to Clarence. She, too, was large, and in no way physically attractive. Her idea of glamour, and a not altogether mistaken one in her case, was to appear sensibly dressed and clean at all times. She could never understand the attraction of shopping at Nordstrom’s when there was a perfectly acceptable ensemble to be had at Penney’s. Her brown hair was styled in a short permanent wave and hadn’t changed since the day they married. Her blue eyes, somewhat magnified behind large eyeglasses in a frame dating to the Carter administration, were warm and surrounded by the pleasant wrinkles often referred to as “laugh lines.” They had always been a very respectable couple. After five minutes of pleasant silence, she said, “So you think you will be, then?”

“Will be what, Joey?”

“The new president. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? I’d hate to think I am subjecting myself to a full weekend with that dreadful Iris Pekanen for nothing. It sounds like a beauty contest with you and Pek and Gary waltzing down the runway while some washed-up celebrity judges appreciate your loveliness.”

Clarence did not allow his mind to dwell on that image. “Now, Joey. You know it won’t be anything like that. John just wants us to build togetherness so that the business can function without him. I think it will be a good thing and valuable when I’m president.”

“So you have no doubts about that, huh? What about Borghild? She knows as much about the company as you do and has been with him longer.”

“Well, you know, me and John are the same age almost. We grew up in a different era. We’re used to having a woman as our secretary, not as our boss. I think many of our policy holders would probably feel the same way. Now you know me, I’m all for women’s rights and everything, but in this business you can’t afford to be a leader in anything.”

Joey nodded ruefully and thought, “If that’s the case, you are certainly qualified for the job.” Aloud she said, “What about Pek?”

“No, no, no. Certainly not. I mean, Pek’s all right. He brings in a lot of business. But he’s kind of a sneaky type, if you know what I mean. None of the Norwegians or Swedes would ever trust a Finn. And he does like his booze. People claim he never sells a policy without capping it off with a snort. No, I think John likes him just where he is.”

“And Young Gary?”

“To tell you the truth,” Clarence said, his face perceptibly darkening, “I’m a little afraid of Gary. I think John is, too. Anytime anybody brings anything up, Gary whizzes into his office and pretty soon you hear that ‘ticky-ticky-ticky’ from his computer and the next thing you know he’s shoving a spreadsheet under your nose and saying ‘See, I told you I was right.’ Now, I don’t know if he is right or not, because that stuff is all a mystery to me, but I also know it is a mystery to John. I see his eyes glaze over the same way mine do and he cuts him off with an enthusiastic ‘nice work, Gary’ and quickly says, ‘How about those Vikings?’”

Clarence adjusted his safety belt from one roll of fat to another and continued, “Still, John knows how to read the bottom line, and the agency has really done well since Gary joined. The way I see it, John will see me as president until I decide to retire, oh happy day, and then Gary can take over for me. I figure, what the heck, I could easily tolerate Gary working for me, but John’s gotta know I couldn’t work for Gary.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Clarence, but I’ll just try to get Martha aside for a while this weekend and see if she knows which way the wind is blowing. We’ve always had a nice relationship and she always tells me anything she knows.”

“And I’m going to have a little heart-to-heart with John. I won’t ask him for anything, I don’t think that would be proper. But I would like to reminisce about the last twenty-five years and share with him the way I see Hofstead Hail shaping up over the next twenty-five. Continuity is a good thing, you know. Maybe we’ll just go off on our snowmobiles and talk the whole thing over like we used to do.”

This was already more conversation than Clarence was used to, and he leaned forward to turn up the volume on the radio, thus signaling to Joey that the topic had been exhausted. An overly familiar song by Billy Ray Cyrus provided diversion for the last mile of the trip.