“The money first, Judge.”
He looked at his watch and grinned. “The way Connie drives, they’re probably halfway back to Frostproof by now.”
It took me a long time to find anybody who could give me any kind of clear directions on how to find the Carbee place. He had no phone. He had a post office box in Sunnydale, and it was his habit to come in no oftener than once a week to pick up his mail.
In the end I had to go over the unending construction project that ran by my new property. Florida is full of long-range, unending road jobs that break the backs, pocketbooks and hearts of the road side businesses. The primitive, inefficient, childlike Mexicans somehow manage to survey, engineer and complete eighty miles of high-speed divided highway through raw mountains and across raging torrents in six months. But the big highway contractors in Florida take a year and a half turning fifteen miles of two-lane road across absolutely flat country into four-lane divided highway.
The difference is in American know-how. It’s know-how in the tax problems, and how to solve them. The State Road Department has to take the low bid, by law. So Doakes Construction says a halfyear contract will cost the State ten million, and a one year contract will cost nine, and a year-and-ahalf deadline will go for eight. Then Doakes can take on three or four big jobs simultaneously, and lease the equipment from a captive corporation, and listlessly move the equipment from job to job, and spread it out to gain the biggest profit while the only signs of frantic activity can be two or three men with cement brooms, looking at first like scarecrows but, when watched carefully, can be perceived to move, much like the minute hand on a clock.
Of course if some brisk, hustling firm moved into the state and started bidding what the jobs are worth and doing them fast, it would upset the tax teacart. Some have been foolish enough to try it, and the well-established Contractor’s Club has just taken round-robin turns low-bidding the interloper to death. When he has quit for lack of work, things settle down to the cozy old system whereby, through some miraculous set of coincidences, all the big boys have exactly the amount of work they need at all times.
A couple of governors ago, when too many road jobs were not up to specification, somebody ratted and there was a big hassle about the State Road Department engineers and inspectors getting envelopes with cash money therein from some of the club members. Those contractors were restrained from bidding for a little while, and the engineers and inspectors were suspended. But it died down, as it always does, and the companies were reinstated with authorization to bid on upcoming work, and the state employees were put back on the job also, with the governor explaining that men should not be judged too harshly for a “moment of weakness,” even though it had been made quite clear they’d had their little moments of weakness every Friday afternoon for a long, long time.
The Shawana County project of repaving 80D was the same thing on a smaller scale. Though the workday was not over, the only sign of roadwork I saw was one bulldozer and one scraper parked and unattended off the side of the rutted road. I stopped at my dead business property, tore off the official notices of foreclosure, and decided against busting the shiny padlocks with a tire iron. Near the far end of 80D I found the sand road I was told to look for. It wound through scrub toward the bay shore, and when I drove into the clearing at the end I saw the traditional old Florida shack of cypress and hard pine set high on pilings, so that looking under it I could see the bay water and a crooked little dock with a skiff tied up.
There was a twanging of dogs toenailing the wire of their run, and a heavy throated Arooo, Arooo of the indigenous hound. I was standing by the car looking at the hounds when the voice directly behind me said, “Evenin‘.” It gave me a violent start and when I whirled, I could see from the glint in his faded old eyes that he enjoyed the effect.
In the days before age hunched him and withered him, he could have been nearly my size. His sallow jaws were covered with long gray stubble, and his head was bald except for a sparse white tonsure. He wore torn, stained khaki pants with a narrow length of hemp line for a belt, and an old gray twill work shirt. His feet were broad and. bare, and standing near him was like standing near a bear cage, but with a slight spice of kerosene amid the thickness of the odor.
I gestured toward the dog run. “Red Walkers?”
“Got some Walker in ‘em. I don’t sell no dogs this time of year. Got just one bitch carryin’ but she got loose on me just the wrong time, so God knows what she’ll drop.”
“Mister Carbee, I didn’t come by to look at dogs. I came on a business matter.”
“Waste of time. I don’t buy a thing except supplies in town and send for the rest out of the Sears.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
“They say that and I ask them to set, and it turns out they are after all.”
“It isn’t like that this time.”
“Then, you come set on the stoop.”
“Thank you. My name is McGee.” When we had climbed the steep steps and were seated, Carbee in a rocker and me in an old kitchen chair that had several generations of different shades of paint showing, I said, “I just bought the Bannon place on the river from the widow.”
“Did you, now? I seen her once and him twice. Heard he kilt himself last Sunday morning when he found he’d lost the place. Great big old boy he was. Him and that Tyler Nigra come on me one morning drifting on the bay. Year ago maybe. Heavy fog, and me out too deep to pole and the ingin deader’n King Tut. That Tyler knows ingins like he invented them. Spring thing busted on the little arm for the gas feed, and that Tyler fixed it temporary with a little piece of rubber, got it running good. That Bannon wouldn’t take a thing for it. Neighborly. Couldn’t been too much longer after that Tyler quit him. Heard Tyler is working at the motorsyckle place in town. Anywhere there’s ingins he’s got a job of work. Maybe Bannon knowed and maybe he didn’t that when Tyler quit him, it was because no Nigra with sense like Tyler’s got is going to stay in the middle of any white man’s fussing. If you’re going to run that place, Mr. McGee,, the first thing you better do is get Tyler back, that is if you’re peaceful with everybody.”
“I’m not going to run it, Mr. Carbee. I bought it as an investment.”
“Lease it off to somebody to run?”
“No. Just let it sit.”
I let him ponder that one, and at last he said, “Excuse me, but it don’t make good sense, unless you got it for the land value alone. The buildings are worth more than the land.”
“It depends on who wants the land.”
He nodded. “And how bad.”
“Mr. Carbee, I’ve been checking land ownership at the courthouse. You own the two-hundred-acre piece that starts at my east boundary”
“Could be.”
“Ever thought of selling it?”
“I’ve sold a little land now and again. I’ve got maybe seventeen, eighteen hundred acres left, scattered around the east county, and except for this hundred right here, my home place, I imagine it would all be for sale if the price was right. You thinking of making an offer? If so, you better come up with the best you can do right off, because I don’t dicker. Man names a price, I say Yes or I say No, and that’s it.”
“Best offer, eh? I better tell you, Mr. Carbee, that I would be gambling on being able to pick up other parcels too, and gambling on being able to do it while my chance of resale is still good, resale of the whole two sections. And I’ll tell you right now that if everything does work out, I’ll make a nice profit, but if it doesn’t, I’ll have some working capital tied up until I can find some way of getting it back out. The best I can offer on an immediate sale-provided the title is clear of course-would be five hundred an acre.”