COMMUNICATIONS
INTERRUPTED
CLARENCE BUDINGTON
KELLAND
The American Legion Magazine May 1945
SERGEANT MATT WILEY, his
left chest blazing with ribbons, stepped off the train in Newtown to find his
family affairs in a mess. He still limped slightly owing to an expression of
Japanese esteem received over Leyte, and had looked forward eagerly to thirty
days of rest and peace and quiet with his father and mother, but found nothing
but illness and distress, worry and financial disaster.
"Oh, Mike,"
his mother said at the train, "I'm so glad you're home. So glad. But I
don't know what you can do."
Mike grinned.
"What," he asked, "have I got to do? Out where I come from we
get our orders, ask no questions, and bring home the bacon."
"Your father is
sick—more worry than physical illness. He's going to lose the mill and
everything he's given his life to build up. Not his fault, Mike. Not lack of
attention to business, nor mishandling of his affairs."
"What then?"
Mike wanted to know.
"It's that Parker
man who came in here two years ago and bought the old Woodenware Plant. He has
war contracts. He has enlarged the mills, built houses for his employees and
has grown until he runs the town and the bank and the people and everything in
the county."
"But how does that
hurt Dad?"
"Parker wants to
put him out of business. He wants our timber. He wants complete control of all
the timber within reach. He wants no other employer of labor here. He offered
to buy your father out, but you know father. He wouldn't sell. There's a note
for $12,000 at the bank, and it will be due in two weeks. Things have happened
at the mill. Machinery has broken down. Unnecessary labor troubles. Trains of
logs running off the track. All sorts of accidents.
"Strictly business,"
she said tersely, to his amazed whistle.
Then there's the
contract. Another worry."
"What
contract?"
"Your father made
an agreement to deliver a huge order of veneer to the Worthington company. By a
certain date. There was money in it, enough to save him and pull him through.
But he hasn't been able to keep up his deliveries. They are threatening to
cancel if he fails to make full delivery by March first. He never can do it,
and that will be the end. Bankruptcy."
Mike rode home with
his mother and sat for an hour at his father's bedside. His father was
listless, hopeless, though pride did light his dull eyes for a moment when they
rested upon the tall form and broad shoulders of his son. Mike patted his
shoulder.
"Guess I better
run down to the mill," he said, "and do a spot of
reconnaissance."
"Too late,
son," his father said, and closed his eyes. "Nothing to be done
now."
"They tell us
different in the Army," Mike said. "It looked as if we got a knockout
punch at Pearl Harbor. But we've done pretty well since. Maybe we're licked,
but if we can keep the enemy from finding it out we may be able to hit him a
wallop where it will hurt and turn the tide."
Mike walked down to
the mill and climbed the stairs to the office. He walked past the enclosure
where the bookkeepers worked and into his father's room. A girl sat at a small
desk across from his father's big one. She had a mop of brown hair and a large
mouth and brown eyes, and at first you thought she was not a desirable dish.
That was because you could not see all of her and because she was frowning.
"Who," asked
Mike, "is the head man around here?"
"We're fresh out
of head men," she said tartly. "Where are you feeling pain?"
"Somebody must be
running the she said.
"What running
it's getting," she answered, "I'm giving it. And I'm busy. What's
your business besides being a hero? Come to the point and scram."
He walked over to his
father's desk and sat down, then he grinned at her and when he grinned it did
something to you.
"There's a head
man now," he said. "Name of Mike Wiley. Turret gunner of a B-29. Home
to enjoy a furlough. Start helping me enjoy it. What's your name on the
payroll?"
"Esther
Jenks," she snapped. "What makes you think you can cut up
capers."
He grinned again.
"Got to prove a point. Got to show the nation a soldier can drop into
civilian life with a bang and work the combination. D-day has arrived. LaFayette,
we are here. Let's commence."
"Modest!"
said Miss Jenks.
"You're the
intelligence department," he said. "Come through with
information."
"You mean you're
really going to tackle this mess?"
"On the surface,
under the surface and in the air," he said.
She talked,
succinctly, colloquially, intelligently. In half an hour he knew the facts,
knew what he was up against, what resources the enemy had against him, and what
he himself had to repel and make counter attack.
"Now maps,"
he said, and for another half hour they studied detailed maps of the county
showing roads, farms, timber limits, logging roads, railroads.
"You can
plan," she said, "till you choke. But what we need is a sackful of
jack."
"Lady," he
said, "you are now looking at the champion crap shooter of the Pacific
area. I came home heavy. When I say 'come seven' it comes. To look at me you
wouldn't believe I was a malefactor of great wealth with eighteen hundred and seventy-six
of Uncle Sam's bucks bulging in my wallet."
"It might as
well," she said, "be a dime. I'm talking about important cash."
"Did you ever
hear," he said, "that a dozen men, dropped on the right spot, can
muss up the communications of a Division?"
She stood up and
stretched. He changed his ideas about her. Maybe she was a bit eccentric as to
features, but when it came to figure she could compete for the pin-up
championship.
He whistled.
She lifted one brow
and lowered the other.
"Strictly
business," she said tersely.
Mike continued to pore
over the maps with special reference to his father's timber holdings and the
more extensive properties that had been acquired by Parker. He studied them,
not as a businessman, but as a soldier memorizing the terrain upon which a
battle was to be fought. He was thinking, not in terms of timber but in terms
of strategy.
"You say Parker
has bought that Maddox town of timber?" he asked, pointing to the map.
"A month
ago."
With earnest finger he
traced the road from the Maddox timber to Parker's mills. "He'll have to
bring it out this way, down to the valley. Crossing the river here. That's an
old covered bridge, as I remember. No other possible way of getting out his
logs."
"You know the
country—I don't," said Miss Jenks."
"Let's go see, if
the business can scramble along without you for a couple of hours."
They drove out of town
to the westward and into the hills. The road followed the river, becoming
rougher and rougher as it mounted. Ten miles out of town the little-used
thoroughfare descended again to the river and then crossed a narrow, rocky
gorge on a dilapidated wooden bridge.
"What you might
call a bottleneck," said the sergeant.
"So what?"
asked Miss Jenks.
"So," said
Mike, "I'm going to call on this man Parker."
"He'll toss you
out," she said.
"I hope so. You
establish an advanced dressing station with bandages and splints and plasma to
pick up the pieces, if it gets that bad."
They drove back toward
town and up to the huge Parker mills. Mike left Miss Jenks in the car and
entered the office, where he asked for Mr. Parker, giving his name. Presently
the clerk returned with word that Mr. Parker would see him and he entered a
room to see a large man with reddish hair touched with white sitting behind a
desk. Parker looked up at Mike under heavy brows.
"Well?"
he asked arrogantly.
"I'm
Mike Wiley."
"What
of it?" Parker asked.
"Just
got home for a furlough." Mike said. "I find you're bearing down on
Dad. So I thought I'd come in and talk it over."
"Nothing to
discuss," Parker said shortly. "If your father can't manage his
business affairs that's too bad—for him."
Mike was very mild.
"You're a competitor. You have a right to compete. But, Mr. Parker,
there's such a thing as fair competition and unfair competition. All I'm asking
of you, sir, is to fight fair."
"If your father
doesn't like the way I fight it's his privilege to fight back the same
way," Parker said. "I protect myself. Let him do the same."
"I don't
believe," Mike said slowly, "that Dad can fight your way. I think he
would rather be licked and go into bankruptcy than to win on a foul. He's been
here a good many years, Mr. Parker, and he's been fair and aboveboard. He has a
reputation among his neighbors, and with his employees."
Mike grinned. "I
don't believe he would know how to fight your way, and I'm rather proud of
it."
Parker's lip twisted.
"Why did you come here? What do you want?" he asked.
"I came,"
Mike said, "to suggest that you stick to fair business methods. If you can
win out that way nobody will have a kick. Just play according to the
rules."
Parker leaned forward.
"Sergeant," he said, "your father's business is a nuisance to
me. I don't want it here in the valley. I'm going to put him out of business."
"And no holds
barred?" asked Mike.
"You get the
general idea," Parker said.
"This
is your final answer?"
"Positive
and final," Parker said.
Mike
got to his feet. His face was discouraged. He sighed as if he realized himself
beaten, and turned to the door. Parker smiled sardonically and shrugged his big
shoulders.
For a week Mike
scarcely went near the mill. He seemed to spend most of his time visiting about
among old friends of his father's, and a great many of those friends chanced to
be in and about the old, white-painted courthouse on the hill.
When he did call at
the office Miss Jenks received him with increasing unfriendliness. "I
never," she said, "could like a quitter."
"They may have
their good points," Mike said.
She flared out at him.
"Here you come back to town and find your family in a jam. Come back
wearing a uniform and a lot of pretty colored ribbons. And what do you do to
live up to them? You go around town swapping stories with a lot of old
mossbacks. Do you know that note at the bank is due in a week? Do you know
we'll have to shut up shop."
She flashed her eyes
at him. "If you're a sample of the Air Corps, then God help America."
Another five days
passed. On the morning of the sixth day Mike came again to the office.
"Want to go calling
with me?" he asked.
"I don't want to
be seen with you," she said furiously.
"We'll go by back
streets so nobody will notice you," he said. "Roll up that map of the
county. We're going to need it." ✋
He leaned over her
desk. "I'm the boss, you know. Orders."
She snatched the map
from the wall and followed him with sullen face. In silence they drove to
Parker's office, where Parker sent out word he was too busy to see them. Mike
spoke firmly to the clerk.
"Go in," he
said, "and tell that big lug that I want to see him now. Tell him to open
the door and let me in or I'll go in and bring the door with me."
The clerk scurried
away and returned, followed by Parker, whose broad face was distorted with
rage. "Come in here making threats, eh?" he bellowed. "Well,
uniform or no uniform, here's where you go out on your ear."
Mike held up his hand,
palm out. "Mister," he said, "personally I wish you'd try it.
I'd love it. But business before pleasure. And I mean business."
Parker hesitated. He
outweighed the Sergeant by forty pounds but there was something in the young
man's eye that he did not relish.
Mike took advantage of
Parker's hesitancy and brushed past him into the private office. Parker and
Miss Jenks followed.
"All right,
Wiley," Parker said. "Say what you have to say and get out."
Mike took the map from
Miss Jenks and spread it on the desk. "You own the Maddox timber," he
said. "It's no good if you can't get it out. It loses value if the cost of
getting it out becomes too high. Well, Mr. Parker, it's going to cost more than
you can afford to log that town and haul the timber to the mill."
"What will make
the cost prohibitive?" demanded Parker.
Mike pointed to the
map. "That timber lies on the south side of the valley there. There's just
one possible road. See. It runs along here, down to the river, across the old
Maddox bridge and so to town."
"What of
it?"
"This of
it," Mike said. "You're going to pay me a nice piece
of change for every log that crosses the bridge."
"That's what you
think," sneered Parker. "That," said Mike, "is what I know.
I own the bridge."
"It's a county
road and a county bridge. You can't own it."
"It has been
condemned," Mike said. "The county has no money to spend for new
bridges, especially where there is practically no public travel. So I went to
the Supervisors and made them a proposition. I agreed to build a new
bridge—which won't be so expensive that I can't finance it. And in return the
Supervisors gave me a toll-bridge franchise. All legal, signed, sealed and
delivered."
Parker stood silent,
staring at the map. Mike continued.
"The franchise
authorized me to charge five cents apiece for passenger cars, but, and here's
the catch, it lets me charge other vehicles by weight. At the rate of a dollar
ton."
He paused. "How
many hundred thousand tons of logs will you have to haul across that bridge in
the next few years? Figure it out."
"I don't believe
it!" Parker shouted.
"Here," said
Mike, "is a certified copy of the franchise."
Parker snatched it,
read it and dropped into his chair suddenly deflated.
"But this—this is
crooked. This is outrageous. This will cost me hundreds of thousands of
dollars. It's—it's dirty business."
Mike smiled. "No
holds barred, is what you told me. It's legal. Try to beat it. Go ahead. Bust
Dad. Take his mill. Take his timber. We'll have a better income from this than
from running a woodenware factory."
Parker was whipped. He
bit his lip. "What," he asked slowly, "what's your
proposition?"
"First,"
said Mike, "you pay the $12,000 note at the bank. Second, you lay off Dad.
You stop sabotage at the mill and in the woods. You quit stirring up labor
trouble. You stop meddling with production. That's all I'm asking. Just that
you play fair."
Miss Jenks
interrupted. "But suppose he promises? How can you hold him to it?"
"I make a
contract with him, permitting him to use the bridge for a dollar a month. The
contract to be terminated at will at the end of any thirty days. If he behaves
the contract continues. If he hits below the belt I clamp down on the first of
the next month. How about it, Parker?"
The man knew when he
was beaten. He spread his hands in a gesture of complete surrender.
"Right,"
said Mike. "I'll take along the check to pay off the bank. Here's my
agreement with you to sign. And we call it a day."
Parker made out the
check, signed the agreement and sat scowling at Mike. Miss Jenks was staring at
him, but there was no scowl to disfigure her face.
"Thank you, Mr.
Parker," Mike said. "And good morning."
Miss Jenks did not
speak until they were in the car.
"I eat my
words," she said. "I eat them hide and tail."
"Not
enough," Mike told her.
"What more?"
she asked.
"In two weeks I
go back to duty," he said. "No guess when I'll be back to Newtown.
But when I do, I want to come back to something special. I'll be back. If you
want to square yourself with me you've got to do something special?"
"Such as?"
"Such," he
said, "as being here when I come, practically at the altar with a marriage
license in one hand and a written promise to love, honor and obey in the
other."
"Obey?" she
demanded.
"Obey," he
said firmly.
"Have it your
way, Sergeant." she said. "We certainly got to have discipline in our
Army."
