R.G. Anderson had purchased the sawmill two decades previously and had turned what was deemed a shaky enterprise into success. The mill had fallen on hard times when the nearby hills and mountains had been stripped of their marketable timber. New growth of pine and cedar would take years to reach harvestable size. R.G. had been told by everyone whose advice he’d solicited, and others who offered it gratis, that he’d been a fool to buy a business that had no future. The price was right and he’d bought the mill anyway and turned it around. What his critics missed and he understood was that there was timber and there was timber. Softwoods used in the building trades was the traditional market they understood. They were ignorant of the about-to-boom furniture and paneling business. Furniture manufacturers in the North and South needed oak and maple, birch and chestnut for a demand that skyrocketed after the war.
The chestnut blight had devastated forests across the country. People were more than happy for R.G.’s crews to come and remove the leafless skeletons of once-mighty trees. Thus R.G. found his business provided with a nearly limitless supply of cheap wood which he brought in and cut to specification. By concentrating on processing hardwoods, he had turned a neat profit his first year and ever since. After three years, he purchased the equipment to cut thin sheets for veneers, paneling, and a new product builders were experimenting with: plywood. All in all, R.G. had himself a winner.
Then his health began to fail. His eyesight had never been good, and now, added to that, something deep inside was eating away at him. The doc said he’d need to make some tests but it didn’t look good. R.G. reckoned he knew a thing or two and said not to bother. He’d rather die in painful ignorance than in painful knowledge. The doc said he didn’t understand, shook his head, wrote a prescription for laudanum, and let him go.
Jesse found his boss hunched over his desk, a magnifying glass in his hand, squinting at a sheaf of papers. At one time, R.G. had the bulk and heft of his hero, Teddy Roosevelt. His friends would say he had Teddy down to everything but the teeth. When R.G. smiled, the illusion disappeared. Roosevelt’s teeth, one wag was heard to say, were as “big as paving stones.” Sadly, the comparison to the twenty-sixth president had deserted him. By now his illness had reduced him to a gaunt shell. The only remnants left of his Rooseveltian persona were his mustache and pince-nez.
“Jesse,” he said when he entered the office, “I’ve been looking at these orders. We are way ahead of last year and it don’t look like things are going to slow any. Can we do this?”
“R.G., how are you feeling? Maybe you should go home and rest. Me and the boys can get this done, for sure.”
“Jesse, I know you can, and I thank you. See, here’s the thing, I ain’t likely to make it to Christmas. Well, maybe I won’t drop that soon, but I for sure ain’t gonna see Easter. What am I going to do?”
“Ain’t you got a brother in Saint Louis? Couldn’t he come and take it over?”
“I asked. He said he didn’t know anything about sawmills and didn’t want to learn. He said I should sell while it is worth something and spend my last days in a hammock on a beach somewhere drinking good-sipping whiskey.”
“Well, that does sound like a good plan, R.G., but you ain’t gonna die. You be too ornery. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to say, but bless me, it ain’t even near to true. Jesse, you been making money helping me and I know you piled up some money buying and selling timber rights. I should know ’cause you sold near all of them to me. Whyn’t you buy me out?”
“Well, the idea has crossed my mind. I might get enough together to put something toward it, but I’d need a loan from the bank. To do that, I’d have to know a bit more about the profits.”
“Hell, Jesse, your wife is doing my books. Has been for near ten years, though I miss her not sitting in that front desk.”
“She’s got babies to tend. She works them books in the afternoon when they’re at school or napping.”
“Yeah, I know, but you tell her anytime she’s ready to come back…no, that won’t happen. I won’t be here. Listen, you give it a thought or two. It’s a good business and I’d give you a good price. Hell, most of the success we’ve had these last eight years is from what you did.”
Jesse smiled. Well, maybe it was. “I’ll think on it. Does the Cadillac go with it?”
“Well, sir, if that’s what you’d need as a sweetener, maybe.” R.G. stared out the window for a moment and then shook his head. “Broke his heart, you know that?”
“Pardon? Broke whose heart?”
“Wilson. He broke Teddy’s heart. You know I rode with him clear to Kettle Hill.”
“Yes, sir, I did. Rough Riders were a tough bunch. What about Wilson?”
“Teddy asked for an Army commission so he could go to France with you boys.”
“I heard that.”
“Wilson said he was acting like a big boy. He said nope. Teddy died right after that. The war wasn’t over but four months and he died. I’ve never forgiven Wilson for that, no sir.”
“Well, that is as may be, but I will tell you this, Wilson done Teddy a big favor. The trenches weren’t nothing like Cuba, R.G. There wasn’t no glory and there wasn’t no shining moment like storming up Kettle or San Juan Hill. It were a miserable life spent in mud and blood, and in the end, nothing got done. Black Jack said it ’bout the Armistice. He said if we don’t lick these Heinies and good, don’t push their sorry rear ends clear to Berlin, we’ll just have to do it all over again in time.”
“He said that?”
“Something like that, yes, sir, he did. I hope to heaven he was wrong. There ain’t no future fighting wars and I don’t cotton to the notion I’m raising my three boys for the Army to throw into a mess over there again.”
“You have three boys?”
“R.G., ’course I do. You’re the goddaddy to number one.”
“Of course I am.”
Jesse studied his boss and friend closely. Whatever was eating up his insides must have started in on his brain, too. What would he do when he couldn’t get anything straight in his head? If someone wasn’t there to help him, the mill and everything else he owned would either fall into ruin or he would be cheated out of it when it came time to sell. Maybe he should put in a bid for the mill, anyway, if for no other reason than to save R.G. from himself. What R.G. needed now was a good lawyer. He decided to put off any talk about buying new equipment for another day and also to have a chat with Nicholas Bradford about maybe representing R.G. That, of course, would need a sign-off from R.G. himself.