He was brought out of these abstract reveries when, a few miles short of his son's school, they stopped at a service station. The emblem Z (for Zearsdale) on the station's gas pumps was responsible. He had seen these signs before, naturally, but they had had no meaning for him. Now, after last night, they had a great deal. For a man needs something very, very special in the oil business to become an important refiner and distributor.
Attempting to become one, he invariably is confronted by the giant-with-many-names who proceeds nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million to stomp the holy God out of him. The giant has posted Keep Out signs around the field of refining and distributing. Littering that field are the bleached and broken bones of intruders who had everything to go the distance- yet not quite enough.
There was Gidsen, for example, a man with great wit and charm, and the backing of some of the east's wealthiest families. No more. There was Harlund, who had as much going for him as Gidsen, plus plenty of political power. No more. And so on, endlessly.
To fight the many-named giant, you had to fight his way. And that was not something you could learn. It had to be second-nature with you. An instinct for the jugular. A conviction that the destruction of an enemy was as necessary as defecation. A social outlook that was as intestinal as it was amoral; seeing one's neighbors as something to be gobbled up, and a knife in the back as the best way to a man's heart.
Not all the giant's successful rivals were like that, of course. There are always exceptions. But Mitch doubted that Zearsdale was one of them.
What the hell? he asked himself. I'm not that important. I didn't really do anything to get him down on me.
His son, Sam, was waiting for them at the gate of the school. Mitch's heart quickened as the boy came toward them-black-haired, gray-eyed, wirily trim in his cadet's uniform. The long-ago image of one Mitchell Corley, dice handler de luxe.
Sam shook hands with him, kissed Red and complimented her on her suit. Then, he cast a lingering and longing eye at the car's controls, and cocked a brow at his father.
"Okay," Mitch laughed. "If it's all right with your Aunt Red."
"Of course, it's all right," Red smiled. "I'll sit on your lap, Mitch."
Mitch slid over on the seat, and Sam got behind the wheel. How old was he now, thirteen, fourteen? He experimented with the stick shift for a moment, then drove them smoothly through the gate to a nearby picnic area. Mitch complimented him on his driving as they unloaded the picnic hamper. It wouldn't be long now, he said, before Sam was driving his own car.
The boy shrugged casually. "I wouldn't have much use for one in a place like this, Dad."
"Well, of course, you won't be here by the time you're old enough to vote."
"Of course."
To Mitch, the words seemed an echo of his own voice; something that he had once said pretty much as Sam had said them now. He glanced at Red, and found her looking at him meaningfully.
"I think you'll be through with boarding schools before long, Sam," he heard himself saying. "Red-your Aunt Red and I hope we'll be able to run our business without traveling in another year or two, and then we'll all settle down together."
"Well," Sam said. "I don't care particularly about settling down. I'd just as soon travel as not."
Mitch passed a paper plate of roast beef, murmuring that he needed to get an education before he started traveling. Sam said that Mitch seemed to have managed to combine the two.
"No, I didn't really get an education," Mitch said seriously. "My folks couldn't afford to put me in boarding school, or you can bet they would have."
"What about Aunt Red?"
"What? Oh, well, Aunt Red was just a tot while we were on the road. By the time she was of school age, the family was settled down in one place."
The boy looked gravely from his father to Red. He nodded, as though to himself, and began buttering a roll.
"Good chow," he said. "Did you cook it, Red-Aunt Red, I mean?"
"Why, no, I didn't. They don't allow cooking in the apartment where we are."
"I'll bet you could cook though, couldn't you? I'll bet you can do anything better than a wife could do."
"W-What?" Red stammered. "I, uh, why do you say that?"
"Because Dad has never got married. Again, I mean. You take care of him so good that he doesn't want a wife."
A deep blush had spread over Red's face. She bit her lip, band trembling as she reached for a piece of fruit. In the heavy silence, Sam looked innocently (too innocently?) at his father.
"I've got the afternoon off, Dad. Want me to show you around or anything?"
"Why don't you show your Aunt Red around, and let me join you later?" Mitch said. "Right now I imagine I'd better make my courtesy visit to the Colonel."
"He's been in the infirmary all week," Sam told him. "But I guess you should drop in on the adjutant. He's sitting in for the Colonel."
"Good. I'll take care of it right now," Mitch said.
He left the car with them, and headed on foot for the ivy-covered administration building. Crossing the sun-baked parade ground, he skirted a small group of drilling cadets, in the custody of a red-faced man in sergeant's uniform. They were a punishment squad, apparently. Or, perhaps, an awkward squad. Sweat streaked their straining faces, dripping down to darken the gray of their uniforms. To Mitch they seemed like automatons, moving like a single machine. Yet they did not satisfy the sergeant. With a harsh and unintelligible yell he brought them to a halt, molded them into a dozen-odd sweating statues. Then, pacing up and down in front of them, occasionally thrusting his nose within an inch of some supposed miscreant, he spewed out such a threatening and insulting tirade that even Mitch was a little shocked.
But this was a good school. One of the very best, he thought, as he went up the steps of the administration building. The sons of the southwest's elite were enrolled here, and he had only been able to enter Sam with the help of some of his highly-placed hotel friends. It was good-so how could you knock it? How could you object, after a nonage in bellboys' locker rooms, to the discipline in one of the very best schools?
Certainly, Sam never kicked about it. Sam never kicked about anything, for that matter.