A Builder's Tale - Chapter Thirty-Six

A Conversation with The Banker Feely

                                                              Chapter Thirty-Six

                                                 A Conversation With The Banker Feely

Wilson waits in a chair opposite the banker Feely’s desk.  Both chair and desk are copies of fine furniture.  It is the sort of chair that sits before all such desks, low and uncomfortable enough to prevent a supplicant from staying too long or falling asleep, and certainly no chair for extended idle conversation.  But a chair for the serious discussion of finance, either the paying off of one note or the acquiring of another… The discussion of interest rates, and points, and prime, their future trends… And sometimes for the hell of it, where the economy is going… today, tomorrow, or in the longer future.  In this sense, it is appropriate for a bank president’s office.  But, neither the chair nor desk quite fit, as they are copies of furniture from the 19th century, while Feely’s bank is from the 1960s. 

     Both pieces of furniture would fit more appropriately at the older bank on Main Street… The Beauville Bank and Trust, with the weighty dignity of three stories of brick and limestone and an immense and massive painted safe with a scene of commerce from the 19th century.  However; The Beauville Bank and Trust is closed, and has been since the Great Depression… Idle and full of bats for years, until it was resurrected as first office space, and then a restaurant, and now its current incarnation as an Art Gallery of sorts… open only from late spring and through the summer. 

    But you may still leave your dollars there, deposited in exchange for paintings… overpriced oils of French Chateaus, ponds of Lilly pads that never were, or sunsets too bright above impossible waves, or sailboats with the rigging wrong.  And if your pocketbook is wanting, there are less costly water colors… seabirds drifting over wave-scaped beaches, clouds with cottages, pine trees embedded in morning mists, and lonely dinghies set in haze.  And if you are still tight or frugal, you may purchase prints, or photographs of scenery, the northern lights, and lighthouses.  And for the souvenir shopper; near the door are clear glass cases, and shelves and stands containing an assortment of nautical nick-knacks, fishing floats and driftwood pendants… dull knives and rubber tomahawks, Indian canoe lighters, T-shirts, log tchotchkes, flip-flops, sunglasses, pictures of the Mackinac Bridge shellacked to pine… All of this… And if you have a sweet tooth, fudge and candy.  

     And because this most handsome bank in Beauville is no longer a bank at all, the citizens of the town are stuck between three choices, the choice of two recent interloping clone-cottage banks with national names and transplant managers or with Feely’s bank, The Beauville State... a bank with a more personal connection to the town, but as buildings go… a dull and low and squat one.     

     For there are no soaring spaces or marble columns in Feely’s bank.  His office is not up some grand stairs, bulwarked by rows of workers with their desks aligned in columns of disciplined endeavor.  No, Feely’s bank is not a 19th century or even early 20th century structure. Rather, it is nothing but a simple sixties banker’s building… A country, county wide state bank, resembling nothing but all the other small financial institutions of mid-century America, simple and still anchoring villages and towns across the nation… With a presidential office and a door saying President, leading into a room with a bit more space than anyone else, an extra heater blasting, and a ceiling made of sheetrock, instead of one suspended.  

      Though President and the major owner, Feely lacks pretension, even sharing a secretary with Vern, who handles the car loans from an office down the hall.  Still, given its size and small-town situation, The Beauville State exists as a substantial successful institution, its success as much to do with Feely as anything else. Feely, who is more about frugality than show, and a banker who profits from observation, the lay of the land, the pulse and knowledge and the rhythm of the town… The summer folks… The haves and the have nots.  Feely, who is wise to the chicaneries of man… The lies, the greed, the skullduggery that exists beneath the surface of even a neat American town… The hiddens, which make a resort and village, town like Beauville an ooh-la-la of affairs and frolics, little crimes and big ones.

      Yes, Feely is sensible to the rhythms of Beauville.  He knows its people, and its drumbeat… Those who visit, and those who travel through… Those who live there permanently, and those who only inhabit the town and region in the summer.  In short, Feely knows Beauville, and he knows people.   Aware that mankind is a mixed bag, and alert to where this mixed bag may be problematic, with loans fickle for a banker. 

     In Hollywood terms, viewed from the Christmas season just departed. Feely knows that there was never a ‘Wonderful life’… That Jimmy Stewart, the banker Bailey of that fable, was part fraud and fool, and an outlandish hopeful dreamer who would have been, in reality, ignored and kicked by his many customers, instead of being bailed out from disaster by their last-lunch, happy days, last-nickel.

      Wilson and Feely have, over the years, added to their customer client relationship, the bonds of friendship, largely because their interests and cynicisms intersect. They are in complete agreement when it comes to Capra.  Though their cynicism originates from different places. Wilson’s from the empathy awareness of a suicidal George Bailey… a dreamer and romantic crushed.  While Feely’s is the result of a sensible solid cynicism necessary for any successful small-town banker, who by observation, and experience, knows that in the real-world Hollywood   endings rarely happen.

     “Chair doesn’t fit,” he says, when Feely arrives. 

     “You,” says Feely.  “Wilson, what are you doing here, cold enough for you?    Are you working?  No… You can’t be.” 

     “Desk doesn’t fit either.  I’ve meant to tell you before, but somehow… I never did.”

     “Well, now you have,” he says.  “What do you want, money?” 

     “No… Conversation and advice.”   

     “You rarely come in here without wanting something,” says Feely.

     “I’m usually way too busy for chatting, but with this weather, I have time on my hands.  Damn Cold.”  Wilson rubs his hands together.

     “Not working?” 

     “Not on that Stevens house,” says Wilson. “No information forthcoming since Stevens died, and it’s way too cold for anything but inefficiency. Plus, I was concerned that someone might get badly hurt, crash and fall and break something.  Last thing I need is one of the fellows hurting themselves, not to mention what it would do to my insurance.  When Turner jammed that skill saw into his artery… that time, years back… My payments went through the roof for two years!  I’m too small to take the medical hit. Insurance company immediately doubled my costs… Bastards!” 

     Feely half smiles, looking down at Wilson from his higher chair as he rustles a paper.

     “I know your views on corporate greed.  How is that Turner, these days?”  

     “Oh, he’s fine.  They gave him disability.  Last time I saw him… it was last summer.  He was on the way to drunk… And going fishing.”

     “Sounds like something a Republican would say.”

     “Well, I’m not.  And you mean All-American greed.”

      “Not now,” says Feely.

Feely looks at his schedule, flipping through the pages of his daily calendar.  “Can’t talk now. How about later, after work?  Got any whiskey at that house of yours… Well, part mine… yours yet.  I could meet you…”

     Feely has now arrived, late afternoon transforming into winter’s dark.  Wilson has poured him a glass of his best Old Draper.  They both sip, Wilson standing at the open kitchen counter-bar, Feely wandering about the great room looking up and down, strolling, stopping, peering into the crackling fire’s flames, above them a tapestry with renaissance gondolas… Venice hanging against the white.  A gift from Grace. 

     Outside, Trees rise calm and barren fifty-sixty feet above the ground, their tapering trunks extending into bare branches above the great room’s glass.  A slice of silver moon appearing over the bay, as faint stars spit light through the trees’ shadow.

      “This is a fantastic space.  Your lighting is design itself.  Never been here in the dark before.  In summer, with the light so late, you may have had it on.  I remember a glow, but not this effect.”  Feely points to the valence traveling around the room.  “How you do it?  You know, sometimes I don’t get you creative types, smart… but it’s like you have blinders on… No big picture.  But this…”  He points to the valence once more, the shadows cast by the upward, downward, lighting cans, the satin varnished pine window frames, the glossy reddish fir sweep of deep thick beams mirrored and extended outward, reflecting in the glass, the white walls.   “It’s almost perfect.” 

    Feely pauses for a moment as if recapturing his place and thoughts and takes a slow, long sip.  “I know,” he says to Wilson. “I know you better than you think.  You hate the bullshit, and your integrity will be your downfall… In your designs, and buildings, integrity of deals, integrity in anything.  Folks like that Tim… May he rest in peace… and now this Van Domelen that you’ve mentioned… They see you as a fool, you know.”

    “A fool,” questions Wilson… “A fool?” 

    “Yep,” says Feely.   “An idiot, and why?  I’ve been meaning to explain this to you.  It’s only recently I understood how badly you don’t get it…  Their rules are different, and I don’t think you know this.”  Wilson shakes his head. 

     “Not the fool part… I know they’re different.  They’re normal, I suppose.  If a Reagan Republican can be considered normal? I’m aware that most of my clients think they did it all, no luck of circumstance.   I’ve listened to their hard work tales, stories and imaginations. I have attended their parties.  It’s always odd. First, they assume I am one of them, before they begin to realize I am not. I know that Van Domelen likely thinks hard bargaining’s a virtue.  But… The fool, part… Really, they see me as a fool?...  Never considered it.  If you're right? … That sucks!”

    “They don’t understand you.”  Wilson raises his hand as if to interrupt and pause him.  Feely waves him off, continuing.  “I know, I know...who does?  But a Stevens.  And now this Van Domelen.  You really do not get this?  For these guys… Life… It’s a game… Monopoly.   You need to be more wary.  If a sleight of hand is not illegal, then it’s legal.  If they can benefit by tying you up in court, it’s fine.  Part of their quiver and on their possible agenda from the beginning.  For guys like your Van Domelen, using the law, and its cost for you…   It’s part of business.  The deepest pockets win.

      “You’re depressing.”  

      “Perhaps, but I’m right. When they see you… an honest builder… And you can be sure they’ve checked.  When they see you coming down the street.  About to start their job… They see a chump approaching.  It may be why they’ve hired you.  Remember, in their club, everyone is screwing each other.  It’s admired, a part of the game, a testing of intelligence.  Points!  But you, encumbered with chump principle, and someone, they’ve decided, will not cheat them… When they find you, able, honest…  They’re clapping their hands with glee.   Because ethics makes a sucker… Ethics makes a hustler’s dream.  Idealists are for the ivory towers… and never imagine that your professor next door is not playing a similar game.  It’s how humans, most of us, survive.  Guys like your Cortland, your dead Stevens, they enjoy it.”

     “You’re telling me they’re all sociopaths? Ivory Towers too? And you’re a Republican, saying this?”  Wilson raises his arms, and rubs his scalp, thick forearms extended… “Really?” 

     “It’s reality, but not my choice of words,” says Feely.  “You have the skills, but not the necessary skill set… And yes, I’m a Republican, but not like these guys.  But I know them…  Me, I’m my father, old school conservative, for limited government, national defense, a smaller welfare state. 

      “I get that. My uncle was like your father,” says Wilson as Feely continues.  “Republicans like me… We cannot afford these houses you build, and when we can.  We don’t want them. We’re thrifty!”  Feely pauses… takes another sip from his glass… “Anyway… I’m aware you would not describe yourself as an idealist, but you are, and also a perfectionist with purpose.  Your process, this build it and design it place, you’ve made for yourself, where you’re the center.  No one else does this.  And when it fucks up.   One project, that’s all you’ve got…  And your current one is way past fucking up, with your dead Stevens.”

     Wilson interrupts. “But that is how…” 

     “Wait, wait,” says Feely.  “I know, I’ve got it.  Build and design… Mind and body…  You’ve told me too many times. But your clients, and now this Van Domelen and others like him, they don’t care about you.  And they certainly would not care about your philosophy of life or building or anything else, if they even understood it.  It’s about what you can give them. These are… Feel it, see it, touch it, take it, fellows.”   Wilson goes to get the bottle.  Feely rambles on. “And if hiring you makes them look good, rich and wise and smart, they may even tell their friends that you are doing their house.  But make no mistake… to a Stevens, a Van Domelen, a Daphne, you are more commodity than creator… an intelligent cog, a brighter shiny widget, someone… something they’ve bought, just another product purchased…  You.  In essence, you’re that worker slave you babble on about… for them, that’s you! Bought and paid for.  Creative Kleenex… Your only final option and final leverage is to say… I quit!  And to find out if your quitting scares them.”

     “Creative Kleenex?  This booze is making you into some sort of poet, here have some more.”  The bottle gurgles and Wilson sets it down. “Feely the poet.    Disposable?  How about a Haiku.”  Wilson pauses for a second.. “What are those things? How many syllables?”

      “Five, Seven, Five, if I remember high school…” says Feely.

      “You remembered that?”

      “I’ve quit before,” says Wilson, then mumbling and looking at his fingers, counting…. “Got it.  Sort of.”

        He is disposable.

        Yes, he is one of the best

        His life a big mess

Feely laughs. “You missed the format structure, but ok.”    Wilson pours them both some more whiskey repeating.  “I’ve quit before.”

“I know, that’s why I said it.” Continues Feely.  “And for some, that will work.  It did with Downly.  But he wanted one of your houses.  And he trusted your decisions, so he listened to your gripes.  But with fellows like this Van Domelen… it’s not going to work.  You might as well be a 2-by-4, as far as he’s concerned.  Once the building’s standing. He doesn’t care what you think or what you know.” 

     Feely points about the room.  Wilson starts to speak, but Feely waves him silent.  

     “I know, I know.” Continues Feely, as Wilson’s Nakamichi   spins the cassette from side one to two and the music begins to play again. The deep chords of Mozart’s requiem becoming background

     “This is perfect, but it’s kitchens and paint to him.  What’s his name again?”

     “Cortland.”

     “I bet he doesn’t see the subtle anywhere… From this and what sells, the average.  He probably sees the expensive hinges, the shiny and little else.”  

    Feely opens the refrigerator for some additional ice, then examines the cabinet doors…

   “He probably gives a hoot how they’re mounted… even that they’re hidden.”  Feely opens the door… “See.  They could be missing screws and I bet he would not notice…  This fellow… good job, bad job, great job… it is not what he is thinking about… It’s money, cost, and is he getting his monies worth… Then, maybe.  But I bet he cannot tell a decent job or even an average job from an excellent effort, and if he can, he usually does not care…  that is unless he can get it cheap… your primary gift… perfection.  If he perceives it, even if he sees value.   He’ll steal it, but… It will provide you no stature!  And… If he can brag, he got you cheap… If he can imagine that he’s bested that Downly, who finally paid you.  He’ll brag about that too… And louder!”

    Wilson mumbles, “A sucker.” …Then… “Here you need some more,” pouring whiskey into Feely’s glass, then some additional into his own.  “And don’t stop now?” 

     He is troubled.  Still, he is enjoying the show, even though he is not sure of the content or the message… Feely on a roll. 

     And Feely is on stage, his gestures growing, becoming more pronounced, accompanying the deepening of his voice, as his words grow more lugubrious with the additional whiskey. 
     “This is what I think. You see your buildings as a whole… Complex, complete, and built as you imagined them.  And we both know you will sacrifice dollars in your pocket to make this happen….  I’ve watched you do it against my advice more than once….  I get it… They are your art.  But how can you expect your typical success story to understand?  Spending money that you may not get back on someone else’s house because it’s the way it must be… That’s not how they do it in Detroit where the name of the game is cutting costs and saving pennies… And these days, even more so… Farming everything out to subs.  To the smaller shop that they can torture with late payments.”

     “Yeah, I’ve done that,” says Wilson.  “Made things the way they had to be.  Fixed things, added details, to make a house as it must be… For me.   Hoping I will get paid eventually after walking the owner through the space, explaining why.

     “And could you?”

     “Sometimes.”

     “But, more often not, right?”

     “It usually produced more arguments than I could stand, as you know.”

      Feely pauses, and takes a drink, his glass again nearing empty as Wilson dumps some more in both glasses.  Then he drifts.

      “All this… What you’re saying.   Are you switching parties?

       “No, I am old school.  I’m a conservative.  But I don’t like where things are going…”

       Wilson starts to speak.  

     “No, don’t interrupt me.  There is no process in our society anymore, only results and costs and the balance of these determining…  We live in an age of money and fragmentation.  Corner this, figure out that.  What was once regarded theft, is now regarded favor.  Today a man is proud to say I made my money off of gaskets, or bumpers, an ignition switch… To hell with the complete car!  It is as if Henry Ford became the richest man in the world from making an assembly line for selling a bunch of multifunction widgets that he then sold to someone else.”

     “Not sure I buy that one.”

     “I don’t care.  Listen.  You need to watch out for this Van Domelen.  I know you think he is ridiculous and lumbering dumb… But his only measure is money.” 

     “You just told me that… Repeatedly.”

     “Well, then I am again.  Listen.  He is brighter than you think.  And guys like him are limited to getting, having… For them, stuff equals happiness.     Remember, I know these guys.  This new fellow was not there at the beginning.    At least Steven’s hired you.  This Cortland, he could give a shit about you or your ideas or your design…  For him, it’s money, comfort.  And that’s trouble for you, just like I’m getting from that new clone bank down the street.  Late twentieth century show me… show me MacBank, as you described it. 

     “Stop, stop… enough says Wilson,” But Feely continues anyway.

                   “Your project. You remember those people at Janet’s? They were impressed.  People are going to like it.  If you get it finished?  It still resembles your Mackinac Island copy.”   

    “It’s more than that now, especially the spaces.  But that was the idea of it.”

    “It has your design sense.”  Feely opens the slider of the deck and walks outside, the cold immediately biting, shielded by the booze.  “Like that.” He points to the soaring soffit matching and continuing the inside ceiling vault, but clad with exterior siding, pulling the inside structure out into the rising trees, while at the same time bringing the details in, as they soar upward reflected through the glass. 

     “Damn, it’s cold this year.”  Feely shuts the slider.  “But this idea… Listen to me… idea that there is integrity to the process.  To both build it, design it, be part of it.  That is some sixties myth that only you bought.  Do you think this Cortland, with his lumber yards, would ever think of sawing down and milling his own lumber, head out into the forest to locate just the proper tree?  Of course not.  And that is what he sees when he sees you, an of course not, an idiot who wants to select and saw down the trees before he sells them.”

    “You think I’m an idiot?”

    “No, but it would surprise me if he didn’t.  And a fool… who not only wants to design something, but one who also wants to break his back and build it.  He doesn’t see an architect who is also a craftsman taking pride in it.  He sees a professional who enjoys getting his hands dirty.  You confuse him.  And because you confuse him… And because of Daphne… And because it is the American Way. He is going to try to screw you.  If not directly, then with lawyers, time, and money. Until you run out of both.  My prediction… I am not sure that you can win this one.” 

      Wilson starts to interrupt to defend himself, then thinking better of it, sips his drink, observing Feely. Who walks about the great room, gesturing with his glass, then continuing on a roll, listening to himself, as his words echo to the corners of the room. 

     Off the sound bright materials and angled spaces, Feely might be the sonorous, sound carrying Daniel Webster in contest with an imagined Devil, or Feely the orator, a Pericles Feely, his tongue, senses and imagination magnified by Old Draper as he stands once again before the fire, beneath the tapestry.

     “Hell!  He may even want the job, the house, Daphne, for himself… Now that your Stevens is dead.   Alert, alert I say!  Man, the battle stations!”   Waving his glass, then finishing its contents, striding, then gesturing for Wilson to pour some more. “No, No, too much.”  He drinks from the glass.  “Ok, that much,” marking the glass and Wilson saying, “I thought you were a Republican.”  Then taking the glass back, pouring part of what he has just poured into Feely’s into his own, as Feely tugs it back, immediately consuming half of the remainder, and sitting now, continuing to ramble on.

     “I am, but old school. You can be a Republican and still have

principles. Remember, to a Cortland Van Domelen, who probably is, and likely doesn’t, it is winner take all, and in his world the winner uses all the rules and ruses in order to win the game… nothing else matters.  I’m a Republican, but not like he is.” Feely pauses, his mind wandering. “And Wilson, that is a game I have never seen you play.  You think it demeaning.  What do I think? … I think you’re fucked.”  Feely rises to his feet.  “Beware, Beware!”

     “Is that the same as Alert, Alert?”

     “I’m not kidding.”  Feely extends his glass.  “A little more.”

     “OK, but unless you want to stay and eat and then sleep in one of the extra bedrooms.  That’s your limit.  If you want to stay, there are more bottles.”

     “Look,” says Feely, seated again, his volume down. “You and I are not that different, really.  In fact, I am probably more in touch with mankind in all his permutations than you are.  The difference is…I think we… men, man, us… are corrupt, and it’s inevitable.  You… Guys like you.  At heart you’re an op-toe-mist.  I know, I know, you won’t admit it.   But, why be a Democrat and worry about people, if you’re not?  Tell me that…  You’re a Rousseau and I’m a Malthus….”

     “I didn’t know you knew those guys.” 

     “What, you think an accountant that becomes a banker can’t be a sociologist, doesn’t know of political economy?  You think he doesn’t read is… unenlightened of the enlightenment?”

     “I think that Malthus has been proven wrong, and that Swift was correct when it came to eating Irish babies.”

     “You mock, you mock!” says Feely. “And you wait on Malthus.  Even if he was only arithmetic about food and population while mankind geometrics along, eating more and more… with endless fertilizer.”  Feely stands once more.  “There’s a price, a price!  Malthus could be taken to be saying that systems are amok… Oh for plagues and pestilence… The dust-bowl cometh!”

    “Some Republican,” says Wilson, laughing. “Limbaugh would disown you.”

     “I detest Limbaugh,” says Feely.  “He is only there to fool the fools into thinking that General Electric is on their team.  That Jack Welch drives around in your average Town Car and flies commercial coach or business class, just like they do… That his Queen Mary of a yacht rises the same as their damn duck boat or piddling thirty-foot Sea-Runt…  Limbaugh’s A gasbag… but a smart one.”

     “Really? Some Republican,” says Wilson again.  “Limbaugh would be tar and feathering you.  That is, if he cared, or if you mattered.”

     “Ditto,” says Feely, laughing.  “Booze brings out the Democrat in me.  And just because I believe in limited government, doesn’t mean I am a crook or want everyone but me and my friends in poverty.”

     “Your president is not a crook,” says Wilson, shaking his nonexistent jowls while quoting Nixon….

     “Libertarian, then?”                    

     “No,” says Feely.  “I’m not like Ron Paul. Wanting to get rid of the national bank, I’d be out of business… with no federal reserve and only gold.  We would be back to the nineteenth century when banks issued their own currency (Wilson imagines cheap paper, a large note with Feely’s face at the center) … Nope, on that, I’m an up to the minute, way past Bretton Woods, national bank fellow, like every other sensible soul.  I’m a Hamiltonian.”   

    “Your party deserted you with Larry Laffer and his stupid curve… Reagan’s economic muser.  You sound more like an Eisenhower or a Nixon, without the opportunistic anti-communism, and the corruption, or that plain cloth coat.” 

     “Nixon was completely unprincipled. But he went to China.  Nixon was for healthcare.  Nixon was more liberal than Clinton.”

     “Did Nixon like cigars,” says Wilson.

     “Don’t know, but he instituted wage and price controls.  Last president to do it.”

     “You know what I think?  I think you don’t fit any of them,” says Wilson.  “Hell. I think bankers either wear suspenders or join rotary, and in Beauville both.

   “Don’t own a pair,” says Feely.  “And I read too, and I’m a Lion.  But I once coached little league.  Did you?”

    “Nope, but I played.  I was a substitute teacher once, one winter, long ago now… No work, needed a job.  The kids loved me… parents had me fired because they said I was a communist.  It had something to do with religion… really.  I told a kid he was the Devil, a Mephistophelean munchkin, I think I called him that, with his peach fuzzy goatee, with an earring and black fingers, and no one knew what that meant but they did not like it… Thought it had something to with the witch and the wizard of Oz, as I remember.  They were worried about the kid already, so they shot me as the messenger.  I told them it was Goethe, not Baum.  But they did not understand and thought I said Gouda and Bomb… It was a Christian town in Montana, and that was that.  They thought I was possessed.  Might be a bomber.  They all carried guns, shot bears.  So, I got out of there…. Feely, have you ever been into cocaine?”

    “Absolutely not,” he says.

    “Well, our conversation is starting to be like one of those ski bum rambles… Coke talk… All over the place and endless.  I’m crashing.  Stay here.  Don’t drive! Last thing we need is the President of the Bank forced to find Jesus, like Brown.”

     “Brown,” says Feely.  “Camp Hope… I heard about that.”

      “That’s another conversation. Stay, watch TV, help yourself, listen to more music.  I’m done.”

     “Wait, wait… let me tell you about Brown.  Are you getting involved with that?  What’s he calling it?”

     “Camp hope for little Children, Founders Samuel Smythe, and Augustus Brown.  I saw his idea for the sign.  Underneath their names… We Do - God Works.

     Feely starts to laugh, tears streaming, his face red and redder.  “And after he and Walshinksi burned Janet’s house, remember… and that camp idea to get out of jail, then Jesus, because he and his malcontents got out of hand and burned down that rough-in a year ago.  I know… Brown!” 

     “You know about them?”

     “I was there.”

     “I wasn’t.  I woke to see that tug on my beach.”

     “Dumb place to leave it, but close to town… I know most everything that goes on in Beauville.  Knew that too.  I’m president of the Bank and Lions, of course I know… But that one is a hush-hush so far.  Everyone knows the black tug did it.  But one rumor says some kids stole it. It was them though, Brown and Walshinksi, and Janet knows, but she is keeping it quiet. That fire got her a new kitchen, new furniture, new paint, new deck, new railings, redone floors… A crime well defined, and the insurance wouldn’t have paid.  She’s no fool when it comes to money.”

Then he pauses, chuckles, and looks for a moment, serious at Wilson.  Jaw lowering, lengthening his face, sinking his cheeks.  “Brown’s loaded, you knew that?”

    “No, I didn’t.”

    “Not liquid.  But loaded!”

    “He doesn’t show it.”

    “Doesn’t want to, doesn’t need to, it’s his genes. It’s his father’s, really. And Brown’s just waiting, not that he will spend it any more than his dad has done. The captain was old when he was flying in World War 2, thirty-five’s old for war, even then, and flying a fighter.  When he came back, after downing 7 planes, he decided that was that.  He’d spent his luck.  That’s when he started collecting.  Have you ever looked at all that crap out back, on all those acres?  Up that hill there’re sheds and barns, even an airplane hangar with two planes in it, one a stunt biplane.  Millions… Some of it just scrap, or machines left alone too long, but there are also cars and collector Chris Crafts, a shed full of ancient scotch… That’s why you hear the dogs back there.  They’re for protection. Rumor is Brown senior also went into Krugerrands, bought at least one every week, and that was in 1945.  That’s thousands of them by now.  Another reason for the dogs.  People say he’s buried them.  That and all the land they own.  Sure, Brown’s a good old boy, but not a poor one when his old man dies.  He keeps it to himself.  But he’s going to have some fun with that Camp Hope.”  Feely starts laughing again at the thought of it…  “And on top of that, Brown Sr. married old money… Brown’s mother, she died when Brown was six or seven, but there is some sort of trust, and Brown gets it when his back east uncle dies.  Of course, rumors of money are like fish stories.  But the junk and land, all true.  It’s all true.  Diggers do it deeper.”  Feely begins to chuckle more, then he sits half falling with an extended fatigued sigh into the couch, his drink sloshed on the floor.  “More, I need some more.”

    “Ok, but you’re staying.”  Wilson tops the glass.  Feely gets up and moves to the sink, tossing water on his face, then rubbing it with a dish towel, his eyes slits from laughter.

     By the winter dawn’s late, early light, Wilson wakes, his head pounding like a Mahler timpani in its final hammered crescendo.  Downstairs he makes coffee, then shouts for Feely, with no response.  Then he looks outside.  It has snowed again, there are no departing footprints, so he descends another floor, his house leading him down the hillside toward the lake, startling a deer peering through the glass with edible longing at the flowers, hibiscus, blooming in the stairway planter, shouting… “Up, up, it’s a bankers morning… Feely.”  But there is no Feely.    

     Upstairs once more, half-bundled, he opens the oak glass door, leaving the foyer warmth, he hurries to the drive.  Feely’s car is gone.  Did he leave drunk or just early in the dark, before the snow?  He will need to call the bank and hopefully not the sheriff.  Cleaning up the glasses, and putting the cushions right, Wilson sees a note on the table.

     Large square giant lettering, a bit wobbled… Enjoyed it, I won’t tomorrow!  Great time… If you ever get in too deep.  Might take this house off your hands.  4:15—FEELY, then a slash.