Oaties Is for P*ssies.
His big brother, Adam Fence, looked ready to kill somebody. And it wouldn’t be the first time.
“I’ll sue him into extinction,” Fellows said weakly.
“Sue him for what? Cooperating?” Adam demanded. “He’s reading right off the complaint you filed, Fellows. You were supposed to make this go away, not turn it into a media frenzy. Look at this!” Adam jabbed at a remote control and a wall-mounted screen came to life. That son of a bitch MacGregor was giving a press conference. “Oaties is for bleepies.” If he said it once, he said it ten times.
“Legal’s already come back to me on this, Fellows. It’s clean. There’s no complaint here. We’re screwed.”
‘It’s legal’s fault,” Fellows said. “I cleared this with them. They said we had a case.”
Adam jumped to his feet and pounded his fists on his desk. “What the hell are you thinking! They know the law and that’s it. They’re lawyers—nobody expects them to have common sense. But you are supposed to have common sense.”
Fellows fought to keep his lower lip from quivering. “You blame me for this?”
“Of course I blame you. You did it.”
“It’s my assistant’s fault. Jeremy. He’s supposed to run interference.”
“It’s your fault. Shoulder the responsibility for once.”
Fellows saw a slide show in his head, desperately seeking the person responsible for this disaster. It had to be someone else. It couldn’t be him. In desperation, he tried to turn the tables. “You should have seen this coming. You should be taking the responsibility for this, Adam.”
Adam smirked. “You’re right. I bear the ultimate responsibility for all legal actions taken by this company. Which is why the company bylaws state specifically that the president shall be given adequate opportunity to review all legal actions taken by Fence Flour Company prior to them being taken. But you went to court without even giving me a heads-up. You know how serious that is, Fellows? It’s a fireable offense!”
Fellows became extremely flushed.
‘You better not faint. You faint in my office one more time and you’ll wake up in the mail room. As an assistant”
“You’re not going to fire me?” Fellows stammered.
“I’m giving you one last chance to save face. One.”
“I’ll do it.”
“It might be too much for a guy named Fellows,” Adam said sardonically.
“I’ll make it happen. Just tell me what to do.”
Adam scowled and sat heavily in his chair. He told Fellows what he wanted done.
“Please, no,” Fellows whimpered. “Anything but that!”
Fellows Fence was on the morning shuttle flight from Battle Creek to Chicago, and minutes later was on a United flight to Los Angeles. By the time he gathered his wits, with the help of a steady flow of white zinfandel, he was three hours out over the Pacific Ocean.
“I can’t believe we’re caving in. We’re not followers,” he ranted. “We’re leaders. We made the breakfast-cereal industry into what it is today.”
“Overpriced junk?” asked the amused plastic-pellets salesman next to him.
“Extreme Nuggets is junk,” Fellows declared. “It binds you up. It’s way too much of a good thing. Now I have to imitate Extreme Nuggets.”
It was one of the famous Adam Fence handwritten business strategies. He came up with them at the breakfast table. These were legendary documents. They were studied in the MBA program at the University of Michigan in Kalamazoo.
This one had all the earmarks of a classic Adam Fence manifesto. It was bold, it was blatant, it used no careful business-speak.
“Extreme Nuggets is high-profile competition and they’re cutting into our sales. We will beat them at their own game by launching Extreme Oaties in less than thirty business days.” One bullet point instructed the cereal development laboratory to formulate the new cereal by the end of the week. Another bullet point called for the creation of dummy sales materials to be in the hands of sales reps in two weeks. The most important factor in the launch would be the celebrity promotions, as the final bullet point detailed.
“Oaties is famous for using champion athletes on its boxes, and we’ll achieve dominance in this aspect of the extreme-cereals category, too. The vice president of marketing is charged with the responsibility of personally signing the best-known extreme athletes. This will be accomplished within two weeks.”
Fellows Fence felt his spirits droop every time he read the part about the “vice president of marketing.” Not a name but a tide. Adam’s way of letting everybody know when somebody’s position was tenuous.
“He’d fire his own brother,” Fellows moaned.
“I never knew the breakfast-cereal business was so ruthless.”
“Oh, yeah. It’ll chew you up. It’ll spit you out.” Fellows wiped away a tear and silently asked himself if he was man enough to endure such viciousness.
Chapter 25
Jaiboru Junction, Northern Territory, Australia, was in the middle of nowhere—never mind that it was easy to find on the map, off the highway from Darwin to Alice Springs. The truth was that there was a single pitted dirt trail from the highway to the small outback town.
The name was a bold-faced lie. There was no junction in Jaiboru. It was on the way to nowhere. Wauchope was hours away, and Elliott and Tennant Creek were unreachable most of the year without an aircraft.
Situated on a dank stretch of real estate alongside the arid unpleasantness of the Tanami Desert, it offered visitors both the horrible dry and awful wetland outback experiences. That was just what the Extreme Sports Network was looking for when it planned its first Extreme Outback Crocodile Habitat Marathon.
The plan was for a triathlon, originally. The scout producer had to explain to the locals that a triathlon involved biking, running and swimming.
“You can’t have people swimming in these waters, mate.” The mayor of Jaiboru Junction chortled. “They’ll be et.”
“They’ll be what?”
“Et. Et by crocs. Water’s teeming with them.”
The producer considered that. “It would be acceptable if some of them were eaten by crocs,” he said hesitantly. In fact, it would be great if some of the contestants were eaten by crocs. He was already thinking about how to set up underwater cameras to film the feeding.
“No way, mate. You don’t understand. The water is teeming with crocs! They’d all of ’em be et.”
The producer considered that, then decided that, for the sake of the program, there had to be some survivors to finish the race.
Jaiboru Junction had been visited by a thousand people in its eighty-year history as a white settlement in the outback, and it quadrupled that number in just the first afternoon of the Extreme Outback Crocodile Habitat Marathon.
“Where’s the hotel?” asked the latest stupid American to stop by the new roadside tourism-and-information tent.
“Ain’t no hotel, mate,” Quimby Summy said with a brown-toothed grin and dollar signs in his eyeballs. “Seems the promoters forgot to arrange to ’ave one built.” The American didn’t panic. Most Americans would panic. “And the nearest hotel is…?”
“Two hundred and twelve klicks out that way,” Quimby Summy said, happy to be of service.
“So where’s everybody staying?”
“Summy’s Tent City. My ma and I thought there might be a need, see? We got tents, cots, blankets, mosquito nettin’, all the comforts.”
The American seemed bored with this. “Not that I’d rent one, but what’ll a tent run you in the outback these days?”
“Two tents,” piped up the small, elderly Asian man standing nearby.