Night of the Ice Storm by David Stout

Author:David Stout [Stout, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery
ISBN: 9780892964154
Goodreads: 608423
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 1991-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

The publisher had made the suggestion with a smile, had even affected a breezy manner after knocking on the door to Will’s office and sticking his head in: “How about driving out to the country club and seeing how the remodeling is coming?”

The invitation was a command, no matter how pleasantly conveyed, and before Will could guess how far behind he would be on his work, he was sitting in the publisher’s air-conditioned Lincoln.

“Beautiful day, eh?”

“Sure is,” Will said.

Actually, it was on the muggy side, but the air-conditioning shielded the publisher from the weather, just as (or so Will imagined) the tinted glass shielded him from the decay that was slowly spreading out from the city’s center.

“Do you mind a little detour?” the publisher said, almost shyly.

“Course not.” What else was Will to say?

The publisher took a sharp turn down a side street, then another turn, then another. Now he steered his Lincoln up a street lined with rotting houses and overflowing garbage cans. Men and women sat on front steps, sweating idly in the summer heat, their brown faces staring with curiosity and resentment at the passing car.

The publisher slowed the Lincoln almost to a stop. “See that house, Will?” The publisher pointed to a sagging, three-story, wooden building that hadn’t been painted in years. “That was my father’s house, Will. I spent my childhood there. A long time ago.” The publisher’s voice had dropped to a sad hush.

“Ah.”

“Yep. Right there in that side yard. I used to throw sticks for my dog to fetch. Part collie, part shepherd. A mutt, really. Lived to be thirteen.”

Will’s annoyance had evaporated; he was touched that the publisher had shared part of his past with him.

“Sort of sad, what’s happened to Bessemer. Don’t you think, Will?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we can help turn things around, Will. I hope so. The city needs it. Its people need it.”

“Yes.” Maybe I’ve been judging him too harshly all this time, Will thought.

“’Cause if we don’t turn things around, Will, if we don’t attract new jobs, new vigor, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“The fire next time.”

“What? Well, whatever. Things can’t go on like this, Will. We need new business and industry.”

“I agree, sir.” And he did, although he didn’t dare say that Bessemer also needed more leadership and generosity from some of the businessmen and industrialists who were already there.

“I look at these people, Will, and it just … It makes me sad and sick.”

“I know the feeling, Lyle.” He was moved by the publisher’s nostalgia and social conscience.

“Yep, Will, it makes me sad. If jobs aren’t found for these people, if they aren’t put to work, the drug-and-welfare mess is gonna grow and grow. And pretty soon we’ll see people like this on our streets.”

It was a twenty-minute drive out of the city to the country club. On the way, they passed the reservoir and old stone houses that many decades before had been homes for the steel and coal and shipping millionaires and the bankers who had made Bessemer what it was, good and bad.

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