I smiled at Junior. “Jake, we’ll give it a fair shake. Give it a shot. We’re here to back you up. Meet with your friend and see what he has to say, and then go to work on it. This is your baby. Let’s see how it goes.”
After the meeting, he bounced out full of energy. The rest of us simply smiled at each other and shook our heads in amusement. His father said, “I’ll ride herd on him. I won’t let him screw this up, if it’s real.”
“Just remember, you’re not just his partner, you’re his father,” I told him.
Jake snorted. “At home I’m his father. Here I’m his partner and I’m going to ride him ragged. Let’s see how he likes it in the big leagues.” That got a laugh from the rest of us.
A few weeks later, Marilyn decided to have a birthday party for Charlie. Just how much a one year old gets out of this is beyond me, but I wasn’t asked, and any opinions I had were not to be volunteered. Of course Tusker, Tessa, and Bucky were invited, and so was Missy and her brood, along with several moms and babies from around the town house complex. I simply wish she had done the party on Charlie’s birthday, October 12, which was a Tuesday. That way I could have pleaded work or something, and skipped out. No, she did it on the Saturday before, and I was stuck. I love my son, but exactly what a one year old was going to do was questionable at best.
Charlie was now walking, sort of, somewhat unsteadily, and with the same manic energy as a Marine hitting the beach — he didn’t go around obstacles, he went through them! I was detailed to put several items together. Some assembly required, no batteries included, etc. etc. etc. It’s too bad the party was non-alcoholic. Both Tusker and I would have enjoyed it more.
We would close on the Tough Pup investment in November, and Jake Junior was our man on the Board of Directors. He was nervous about it and I sat him down in my office to talk about it. “What am I supposed to do as a director?” he asked me. We were scheduled to sign the papers at the end of the week, Friday November 19.
I smiled at that. Calendar wise, at 27 I was only a year or so older than Jake; experience wise I had many decades on him. “You do what has to be done. Here’s a hint, though. God gave you two ears and one mouth, so use them in that proportion. Keep your mouth shut, to start with, and just listen. It’s their company. We’re just buying a piece of it, not the majority, so they get to decide what to do.”
Jake nodded, so I continued. “For one thing, the most important thing for you to remember is who you work for. By that I mean the Buckman Group, not Tough Pup. You’re our representative. Always remember that whatever you do over there, and whatever they do, will reflect back on this company and on me personally. We can always make some more money. We can’t always make a new reputation!”
“Carl, I would never…”
I held my hands up to forestall him. “I never thought you would, or you would never have been invited in. All I’m saying is you need to keep an eye on the things that you are involved in. This goes to your personal life, too. The last thing in the world anybody wants to see in the newspaper is your name, Jake Eisenstein, Vice President of the Buckman Group, in the police blotter for drunk driving or something equally stupid.”
Jake smiled and rolled his eyes. “My old man would kill me!”
I smiled. “I’ll hold you down and let him! Anyway, as far as the business goes, your biggest job is to understand what their plans are and to let us know about them. They seem like a good operation, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing this. Learn from it. Keep your mouth shut. If you don’t understand something, ask them. Always praise in public, always chew somebody out in private. Management 101 stuff. Have some fun, too. Maybe you’ll meet a girl who’ll be impressed by your being on the Board of Directors of something!”
Jake’s eyes widened at that. He was single, and as far as I knew, between girlfriends. He grinned. “I don’t think I’ll tell my mother that idea.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed.
That Friday morning we all drove down to Pimlico to sign the papers. Despite his tough persona with his son, it was obvious that Jake Senior was very proud of how Jake was working out. For this deal, we had hired a couple of tax lawyers to review what we were doing. There’s just a shitload of crap that has to be reviewed! One thing I noticed on this last trip was a bulletin board with pictures of various dogs and puppies on it. These guys really loved their animals!
We had some time before the signing, and I was looking over some of the photos, when a young black girl came over and put a Polaroid on the board, showing some black and brown puppies, along with a note about how they were available for adoption. She looked up at me and asked, “You looking for a puppy, mister?”
I laughed. “Haven’t really thought about it. You guys are big into your pets here.”
She smiled and nodded. “It’s practically a requirement. You coming to work here?”
“No, not really. You work here?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m over in the rawhide chew section.”
I noticed she had on a hair net and a white smock. “That your uniform? What do you do with rawhide chews?”
“We have to be real clean over there. I do quality control. You don’t want a bunch of sick puppies, do you!” She was a nice girl, maybe about twenty, tops, with a very earnest look to her.
“No, that would be a really lousy thing to do. You like your job?”
“Yes, sir.” She tapped the picture of the puppies. “You looking for a puppy? My brother’s got a new litter. They’re adorable!”
I looked at the photo again. Momma was laying on her side, with a bunch of brown and black puppies surrounding her. Momma looked like a beagle, but I wasn’t so sure about the father. “Hadn’t really thought about it. What type are they?”
“Well, the mother is a beagle. The father is what we call a traveling man! We think he’s the boxer from next door, who managed to jump the fence,” she answered, laughing.
I had to laugh as well. “A boxer and a beagle! Now there’s a mix for you! Depending on who’s who, it’s either assault or ambition!”
“There’s no cost. We just want them to have a loving home.”
I gave it some thought. We would probably be able to move into the new house by Christmas, although we might take it slow. We had a number of months more to go before the lease on the town house was up. I liked dogs and had raised a number of them over the years. The puppies looked awfully cute, too.
A boy needed a dog. A house needed a dog.
I reached out and tore one of the little tabs off the sign, with a phone number and name on it. “Is this your name and number?”
“Yes, sir. The dogs are at my brother’s down the street. You interested?”
“Maybe. How old are they?”
We talked a few minutes more about the puppies, and the girl repeated several times how nice they were. At that point, John’s friend, Barry, the owner of Tough Pup, came out and asked, “Everything all right?”
The girl looked a touch nervous, but I just smiled and said, “Taniqua —” I turned and faced her. “Did I get that right?” She nodded mutely. “Taniqua is trying to talk me into a puppy for Christmas.”
“How’s her sales pitch?”
“Pretty good. I think you need to move her off the line and up the ladder.”
At this point Taniqua twigged to the fact that I was more than just hanging around the bulletin board, and got very nervous. “Excuse me, Mister Bonham, I’ll get back to work!” She scooted out of there quickly.
I just smiled at Bonham. “She seems like a nice kid.”