The Tight White Collar

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETIMES, JUST ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, THE SEASONS run in a perfect cycle in northern New England so that when you have grown old the memory of perfection is so sharp and clear edged that you look back and say to yourself, Yes, that’s the way it was. You remember that you were young and that at the end of summer, just before school opened, everyone you knew had a cellar full of vegetables put up in glass jars because summer had put forth just the right amounts of sun and rain. In autumn the apple trees were so red and so swollen with fruit that the branches dragged on the ground and your mouth watered when you thought of biting into a McIntosh because you knew what the sharp tang would be like against your teeth and how the juice would feel running down your chin. The foliage was brighter than it had been since anyone could remember and under your feet the leaves crunched louder and the bonfires sent up a sweeter, smokier smell than they had ever done before. There was snow on the ground at Thanksgiving and you remember best the smell of cranberries and mincemeat and butter and how it felt to come in out of the unfriendliness of November and into a bright warm kitchen where something was always going on. By Christmas Eve there was enough hard-packed snow on the roads that you could go carol singing in a horse-drawn sleigh and your mittens were bright red and your nose ran a little and over everything there was the smell of freshly cut spruce. In January there was a blizzard that knocked down the power lines and closed the schools for three days. Then you stayed home, warm and safe in front of the fire, and read Snowbound to your little brother and it wasn’t at all like reading it in school because this time you felt all the words instead of just saying them out loud, and that night you ate canned food for supper because no one could get out to the stores. The thaw set in at the end of the month and everyone who was older than you said that it was unhealthy but you didn’t believe it and you looked forward to the next day because maybe tomorrow you wouldn’t have to wear overshoes to school. But then it was February, bleak and snowy and not much fun at all because now you were looking forward to spring and sleds and skates had become tiresome. You were not surprised when March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb because you had heard that it was so in school and you forgot all the years when it had not been true. In April the rains that would bring the blossoming of May ripped at the rivers and streams until winter melted clear out of sight and then it was the time of gentleness. Purple violets poked their little heads suspiciously out of the ground and the more daring crocus rose defiantly out of patches of now harmless snow. Bare ground was covered overnight with a soft green fuzz and on the trees the new leaves were the color of lettuce, so tiny and tender looking that you wanted to pick a handful to put into your mouth. The forsythia bushes were like young girls at a party with their yellow skirts all spread out, fresh and crisp and new looking. Even the pines discarded their black winter faces and turned now, washed and green, toward the sun. You walked in the woods where the pine needle floor was still soggy from the recently gone frost and if you were very lucky you found a lady’s-slipper with its color going all the way from shell pink to deep rose and you felt singled out and special all day long because this was a Practically Extinct Flower and you had found one. You put your blossom in a glass of water and set it on your bureau and you could not believe that the flower would be dead by morning.

One year spring came with gentleness to a town called Cooper Station. It was the spring that Anthony Cooper came home after ten years away, and after he had come to the top of the last hill before the long slope down into town he parked his car at the side of the road and looked down at Cooper Station. The town looked like something, or the reflection of something, in the bottom of an enormous green cup.

Like something I dreamed, thought Anthony, or like a picture on a calendar or on a Christmas card.

The sun shone warmly on pink brick and white wood and it filtered down through the leafed trees to make patterns on the shadowed sidewalks. It reflected itself in the front of the shops on Benjamin Street, the main thoroughfare, where even the First National was painted white and had small paned windows. Anthony noticed that the marker at the town line was still a plain black post with the name of the town painted in white block letters on a crosspiece. There was no huge billboard such as is found at the entrance of many towns and which, in this case, might have read, WELCOME TO COOPER STATION. WORK, PLAY AND LIVE IN OUR TOWN, for the simple reason that Cooper Station did not welcome just anybody. If a man wanted an obvious Chamber of Commerce welcome he had to go north for another ten miles, beyond the camouflaging hills, to where there was a gigantic curve in the river and there he would find the city of Cooper’s Mills. There he would find the factories, the tenements, the sixty-watt light bulbs in the soiled beer joints, the Canucks and the Catholics. But Cooper Station was different. It was made up of the people who profited from the existence of Cooper’s Mills and who could, therefore, afford not to live there.

For a moment Anthony felt some of the old bitterness which had caused him to leave Cooper Station in the first place, but then he merely shrugged and put his car in gear. He had not come home to champion lost causes. He had come home to die.

And I intend to do it with dignity and in peace and quiet, he said aloud as he turned his car off Benjamin Street and into Smith Road.

Much later, Anthony would say that he had given up the idea of dying because he never found the time for it. He had been home less than six weeks when, as he put it, all hell broke loose.

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER FIVE O’CLOCK, ON THIS SAME AFTERNOON, NATHANIEL Cooper II left his office in the main building of the factories at Cooper’s Mills and walked slowly across the parking lot to his car. He passed little groups of workmen who touched the brims of their caps and said, Afternoon, Mr. Cooper, and he smiled and said, Afternoon in reply. It hadn’t been like this with his father, Nathaniel remembered, nor with his brother, Benjamin, nor with his grandfather. Then the workmen had laughed out loud and shouted, Whaddya say, Fergie?

Not a Goddamned thing to bums like you, Ferguson had yelled back.

Keep your hands off that girl’s ass, Benjie, they had called. We’ll tell your old man on you.

Up yours, boys, Benjamin had shouted back. Pretty asses were made for pinching. My old man told me so himself!

And as for Nathaniel Cooper I, he had become a legend in his own time. Old Nate, as he was called, had been able to go out and plow fifty acres with the best of them. He could hay in the field all day and raise hell all night, but most of all, he had been able to see the abundance of free water power in the Tioga River and he had built himself an empire with it. He had built the first mill with his own hands, then he had built a town around it and finally, like a chef putting icing on a cake, he had built Cooper Station.

Maybe I have to breathe in lint all day, Old Nate said as he watched Cooper Station take form and grow. But I’m damned if I’ll do it all night. A man needs breathin’ room and leg stretchin’ room in a place away from his work.

Old Nate looked upon Cooper Station as other men look at precious jewels. He drew up its charter, named its first streets and was very, very careful to whom he sold land. When Old Nate got away from his work he did it completely so that when he was at home, his eye fell on nothing that reminded him of the factories. No lint, no soot and, especially, no mill hands.

But in Cooper’s Mills, Old Nate worked shoulder to shoulder with his men, expecting nothing of them that he did not demand of himself. He ate, slept, cursed and wenched with them, and in return his workers had given him labor, sweat and love.

Move your bloody arses, men! had been old Nate’s war cry. What the hell do you think we’re runnin’ here, a fuckin’ tea party for the old ladies at the church?

You’re the only old lady here, Nate, the workers yelled back as they scrambled to their machines.

And for years, month after month, the Cooper mills put out enough cotton cloth to circle the earth.

Nathaniel Cooper II had never had the love of the others for the mills nor for the ugly town that surrounded them nor for the machines and the millions of yards of cloth they turned out. Every day Nathaniel waited for the moment when he could swing his car away from the factories and drive quickly away from the town. Each afternoon at five o’clock, he headed for one of the side roads that led away from both Cooper’s Mills and Cooper Station and drove until he found a secluded spot where he could park his car and leave it to walk in the woods.

On this particular afternoon, Nathaniel walked up a long, sloping hill that was situated more than two miles from either town. He walked rapidly, so that when he reached the top of the hill he was breathing heavily and his armpits itched with sweat. Then he found a sun-warmed stone and sat down with his knees spread and drawn up, and between his knees his hands found a long blade of grass that was warm and moist to his fingers. From here, when he looked down at the town named for his grandfather, he could almost make himself believe the words that his friend, Dr. Jess Cameron, lived by. These are my towns. They are my people. He could almost feel some of Jess’s conviction when he said these words to himself.

Almost, but not quite, thought Nathaniel wryly.

From the top of the hill where he rested, Nathaniel could see how gently the river moved through the countryside north of Cooper’s Mills. He could see its slow progress winding in and out of sight until, abruptly, it changed its face just north of the factory town. There, the Pemigawasett flowed into the Tioga and the river widened, twisting with a monstrous power, churning over rock formations into great falls, and the factories looked like red brick giants that gained strength from suckling at the river’s banks. The falls, the mills, the town and beyond, the river again, filthy now, and turgid and spent so that it took it the better part of ten miles before it cleansed itself and flowed quietly and cleanly past Cooper Station. Sometimes, especially on Friday afternoons when the long, long week was over and he was more depressed than usual, Nathaniel thought of Cooper’s Mills in terms of a large cancer that grew and spread every day, not only in the direction of Cooper Station, but toward all the surrounding countryside, consuming everything and everyone in its way.

I should go home, he thought suddenly, Anthony is coming home today, and I should be there.

But he did not move. Instead, he reached down and touched a vine whose branch was delicate with new, green leaves.

Odd, he thought, how some men manage to hit the nail right on the head while others fumble and stumble in trying to express an idea. Like the sentence I read the other day and can’t seem to forget.

It is impossible for man to reason without God.

Nathaniel looked around him and saw the tender buds on the trees bursting into leaf and, above him, the perfect are of the sky.

It makes sense, he thought. It is impossible for man to reason without God. Hm-m, I’ll have to tell Jess what a philosopher I’m turning out to be.

Nathaniel Cooper regarded himself as the family misfit. He was sure that no one except his wife, Margery, and Jess Cameron, knew how much he had hated to go into the mills. No one else would have understood. He was Ferguson Cooper’s son, and it was his place to go into the mills with his brother, Benjamin, and after the deaths of his brother and father it had been up to him to run the mills alone. Every citizen in two towns had expected it of him and if Nathaniel had ever entertained the silly idea of doing anything else, well, a young boy had to have his dreams, but when he was a grown man it was time to settle down to business.

Nathaniel could remember being taken to the mills for the first time when he was six years old. He had been frightened by the size and noise of the machinery and had cried for his mother. At first, the workmen and his father had laughed but then Ferguson swept him up in his arms and shook him not gently at all until Nathaniel swallowed and made himself stop his tears. His father forced him to look at the spools of yarn and to put his hand against the throbbing machines which seemed, to the child, to be living giants that gobbled up bobbins and spewed forth cloth.

That evening, Nathaniel had been feverish and exhausted and his mother, Isabel, had put him to bed.

I hate it, he told her in a frantic whisper. Hate it. Hate it.

Hush, Nate dear. You mustn’t talk like that. Your father works very hard at the mills. How else do you think we could have this beautiful house and all the food we eat and the clothes we wear?

I don’t care. I hate it. All the noise and the people are all dirty and I hate it.

Later, Isabel Cooper had spoken to her husband about Nathaniel.

Ferguson, would you hate it so if Nate didn’t go into the mills? There is Benjamin, and if I didn’t know better myself, I’d swear that he’d been born under a spinning machine.

Nonsense, said Ferguson. The mills are for both boys. Believe me, it’ll take two of them to run them if we keep on going the way we are now. Nathaniel wasn’t named for his grandfather for nothing. He’ll learn. Just as Benjamin did.

Just because a child is named for his grandfather doesn’t mean that he is cut from the same piece of cloth, said Isabel. And believe me, there are times when I’m very grateful for that fact.

Ferguson rattled his newspaper nervously. That’s enough, Isabel, he said.

I should be the one to say what’s enough, said Isabel angrily. I’ve had more than enough of your father and you and Benjamin with your foulmouthed companionship with the mill hands and your nights away from home swilling beer with them, waiting for the moment when you can go to the greasy embrace of some factory girl. Nathaniel’s different, and you’re not going to make him into another image of yourself.

Isabel! roared her husband. That’s enough!

You needn’t shout in pain because the truth hurts so much, Isabel said. I’ve known for a long time. But you leave Nate alone. He’s not like the rest of you.

You’ll be the one to leave Nathaniel alone, replied Ferguson. He’ll learn.

But Nathaniel did not learn for a long, long time. When Benjamin, who had been named for Isabel’s father, was twelve years old he could completely dismantle a knitting machine and put it back together, while Nathaniel, even at sixteen, did not only know where to begin but always ended up with parts and pieces left over.

Benjamin, so everyone said, was a true chip off the old block—the same block that had fashioned Old Nate and Ferguson. When he was twenty years old he got a girl in trouble and for awhile he was afraid that there was going to be hell to pay, but his father and grandfather fixed it so that very few people found out, and the few who did were made to keep their mouths shut. The girl’s name was Laura Ford and she was the daughter of the Cooper Station high school principal, Edward Ford, who did not relish a scandal anymore than did the Coopers. Laura and Benjamin were married in the Congregational Church and then shipped off to England where Benjamin would supposedly study British manufacturing methods. Later, Benjamin looked back fondly on the months he had spent in London. He had become involved almost immediately in a love affair with an Algerian dancer who performed in a Soho nightclub, and he had drunk a river of champagne and had lost a considerable amount of money at cards. Since there were no Algerian dancers in Cooper Station and champagne was served only at big weddings and cards were played for small stakes on Saturday nights in the back of somebody’s garage, Old Nate and Ferguson paid gladly for Benjamin’s English diversions. Their only prayer was that Laura would produce a child who would be born dead or, failing that, one who would be as small and sickly as herself so that both Cooper and Ford faces could be saved in the two towns. Laura came through with flying colors. Anthony had weighed less than five pounds at birth and for a time it was doubted that he would live at all. Ferguson sent a distraught Isabel to London to accompany the frail mother and premature baby home.

When Benjamin returned to Cooper Station and stepped into the mills beside his father, Nathaniel was allowed the delicious delusion that perhaps he would never have to go into the mills at all.

You see, Nate dear, things always work out for the best, said Isabel. Benjamin and your father will run the mills with Grandpa and in a little while I’ll talk to your father about building that greenhouse you’ve always wanted. And then, when Anthony is grown, he’ll be able to step in with Benjamin. Everything is going to work out for the best.

Benjamin was everything that Old Nate and Ferguson had been in their younger days. After Old Nate died, Nathaniel kept more quiet than ever and tried to make himself blend into a background of obscurity. He was enrolled at Harvard, where, because his father insisted, he majored in business administration, but he carried a minor in botany and he was happy. Benjamin, on the other hand, had never even bothered with high school. He hated books, loved the mills and was encouraged in both emotions by Ferguson.

To Isabel, making sure that Nathaniel heard, Ferguson said, Nobody needs a college education to count money. You can either count to a million or you can’t, and there’s nothing a tight white collar will do for you but choke you and leave a red mark around your neck.

A year later Laura died and six months later Isabel followed. Benjamin closed his house and with Anthony moved across the street with Nathaniel and Ferguson.

Bad things come in three’s, said Ferguson. Grandpa and Laura and Isabel. Now it’ll stop for awhile.

But less than a year later, while standing in front of a knitting machine at the mills, Benjamin fell forward.

Nathaniel! he screamed, just before he died.

Everyone in both towns said that Benjamin had died calling for his brother and that it was an omen telling that Nathaniel would come to stand in his brother’s place. But forever after, Nathaniel wondered if perhaps Benjamin had not called to his absent grandfather, screaming for the old man to get him out of another scrape.

Ferguson did not mince words with his one remaining son.

It’s up to you, Nathaniel, he said. I’m not getting any younger and somebody has got to look after things. You’ll have to go into the mills as soon as you’re through school, and it’s going to fall to you to see to things after I’m gone. You won’t get any help from Anthony, I can guarantee you that. Takes after his mother’s side, that boy. Frail and empty headed as they come. None of Benjamin in him at all. This house’ll be yours, Nathaniel, and the running of the mills. Benjamin’s house belongs to Anthony now, but this one is yours. For you and the wife you’ll bring here someday and for your sons.

Nathaniel looked around him. He looked at everything. He looked at the mills and he looked at the people. He looked at the house where he had been born and raised. And he tried to think, to find a way out.

Don’t ever get the idea, Nathaniel, said his father, that your grandpa and me and Benjamin ran the mills. Get that idea out of your head. The mills ran us. Just like they’ll run you. And don’t forget, too, when you look around, that everybody you see depends on you. Without you, there’ll be no Cooper’s Mills. Every worker in the factories has a family. Without you there’ll be no bread for them. Your grandpa built Cooper Station. He built it to live in, for when he wanted to get away from the mills for a little bit. Without you there’ll be no reason for Cooper Station to be here. Nate, son, when you get very tired, look at your hands. Look at them and remember that you hold the lives of thousands of people in them. It’s not easy, Nate. But, then, none of us ever said it was. It’s the way things are, if you’re a Cooper.

From the top of the hill where he sat, Nathaniel looked down at the mass of red brick for which he was supposed to do the thinking, and he shivered suddenly.

So, it’s impossible for man to reason without God, is it? he thought angrily. His eyes turned heavenward and his fingers snapped the new green vine he held. Defiantly, he looked at heaven and shouted.

All right, You’ve got all the aces. You call the turns, but I’ll never believe a damned word about justice and mercy. A big, magnanimous God! Well, tell me Your reason for Robin. What possible reason could You have for her? And what about Margery?

Nathaniel squeezed the sides of his head in an effort to shut out the memory of a night now almost ten years old. The night he had gone to Margery and she had turned on him, screaming.

Get away from me! Margery had shouted, pushing at the hands that touched her with love. Don’t touch me!

Impossible to reason without You? said Nathaniel to the silent sky. Far more impossible to reason with a God who’d bitch me up the way You have. I’m here. Where are You?

Nathaniel Cooper turned and began the slow trek down the hill to his car. Never had he felt such loneliness, such complete emptiness and exhaustion.

I hope Anthony won’t linger after dinner, he thought as he climbed into his car. I’ve got a Guardian meeting to go to.

CHAPTER THREE

THE COOPER STATION HIGH SCHOOL STOOD IN AN OPEN FIELD at the end of Laurentian Street. This was the oldest street in Cooper Station, named by Old Nate in memory of the place where he and his wife had spent their honeymoon. The school was a beautiful new building, all brick and glass and completely fireproofed and almost everybody in Cooper Station regarded it as the town’s monument to free education and its tribute to the American Way. Sometimes, there was talk of building the same kind of school in Cooper’s Mills, but this kind of talk always trailed off into vagueness and finally halted altogether until someone brought up the subject again. The people who usually brought up the subject were Dr. Jess Cameron, Nathaniel Cooper and Thomas Averill, the owner of the Twin Town Clarion. For awhile, everyone would