Lena Hackley
Part III: The Curse; Father and Son
Continued from Lena Hackley, Chapter II:
A few months after this, a rumor became current in our town, which had never circulated before; namely, that Ellen Gibson, that is, Walter Hackley Sr.’s first love, had cursed him on her deathbed. No one knew where this rumor originated. It was not with her family, though many suspected them. In fact there was no hatred for Mr. Hackley among the Gibsons, contrary to what might be expected. They were as full of admiration for him as anyone in our town, and anyone in our town would tell you at that time they were as full of admiration for Mr. Hackley, as they were for Eisenhower or any other hero. The cause was this: in the course of making himself money, he had pulled the entire town out of a depression. He had accomplished this by scooping up a shuttered zinc refinery at a steep discount, the which refinery had not been in operation since the Depression had forced it to close, and taken the town’s jobs with it. He reopened this as his fertilizer production plant, under the auspices of Hackley Chemicals. For this reason clouds of thick tan smoke once again rose on the Northwest horizon of our town—and people greeted this smoke each day with the gratitude and pleasure usually reserved for the daily appearance of the sun. If this smoke arose in the morning, it confirmed that this day, at least, there would be bread.
Walter Hackley Sr., then, was a success, and a noble success, which made this rumor all the more inexplicable and laughable. Many said that if Walter Hackley Sr. were cursed, they did not want to be blessed. It was kept alive, however, by a few career gossips, who gleefully whispered of pride before a fall.
If Mr. Hackley himself knew of this rumor, he paid it as much attention as I daresay it deserved, that is, none at all. Undeniably, he was a success. He had moved off his father’s farm which, incidentally, was in the shadow of the very zinc refinery he had bought; he had been educated through the GI Bill; he had moved the five miles or so from the West side of our town to its more fashionable East, and had exchanged a drafty old farmhouse for a carpeted bungalow with air conditioning a mere stone’s throw from Lake Michigan. He was the wealthiest man in town, and the farm where he had slaved as a boy now paid him back in rent and the occasional weekend retreat for his family, when the renters visited a sister out of state. He was every inch the success, and had no fear of ghosts.
As for George, who might have been disturbed by this rumor when we first met him, he was now too absorbed in his studies to care. In fact he had become too absorbed in his studies to care about a great many things which had once distressed him, and could even look at the the mice in the basement traps without crying. I wish I could say this marked an improvement in his character, but alas, George Hackley’s noble cause had not made him nobler. At the close of the seventh grade he was an entirely different boy from its beginning. His new devotion gave a story and a context to the suffering which had so disturbed his sleep and leisure; this also served to deaden its sting. He began to see how some suffering might be necessary, or even beneficial, if it were to advance the eradication of all suffering forever. This new perspective was, in fact, the cause of a breach between himself and Mr. Bowen, the teacher he so admired.
In the very last week of school, a story broke about a certain long-running experiment, which raised a national outcry. It became public knowledge that during the course of this experiment, prisoners in an Ohio jail had been injected with a deadly disease, I need hardly add, without their knowledge. Mr. Bowen, as shocked and dismayed as any, took the opportunity to discuss with his class the ethics of scientific experimentation.
It was an unusually hot June, and this an unusually hot June day. With two days left of school, his class, while present in body, was entirely absent in mind, and the only reaction from anyone to his passionate lecture on this subject so dear to his heart, was from George Hackley. Halfway through the class Mr. Bowen noticed his former favorite roll his eyes. This irritated Mr. Bowen unaccountably, so much so, that he requested George to remain after class. Incidentally, what would have been a matter of course, that is, George’s staying after class, had become a rarity. He was impatient to go. He thought privately, now, that Mr. Bowen was rather sentimental.
“I noticed you rolled your eyes in class today. Why was that?”
George shrugged. “I didn’t agree with you.”
Mr. Bowen nodded, if only to collect his thoughts and his patience. “I guessed as much. You don’t agree, then, that scientists should be transparent with the human subjects of their experiments?”
George scoffed. “What next? Will they have to be transparent with rats?”
Mr. Bowen did not laugh. “I’m not talking about rats. I’m talking about your fellow human beings.”
George shrugged again, though this time less out of carelessness, than from a desire to shake something off. “They were on death row, weren’t they, or in prison for life? At least this made them useful.”
Mr. Bowen became very still and when he spoke his voice was very quiet. “Useful to whom?”
“Well—to the rest of us.”
Mr. Bowen, after a pause, leaned forward, and met George’s eye. “And who is ‘the rest of us’?”
George became uncomfortable. “I guess—law abiding citizens.”
“Law-abiding citizens. And what, then, qualifies someone as a candidate to be injected with an incurable disease? Should they have a felony, a robbery charge, a parking ticket?”
“I know—”
“You don’t know anything.”
This was said in a tone of disappointment George had not heard in his teacher’s voice before; and to his shame, the tears started in his eyes. He lowered his head, so that Mr. Bowen should not see. Meanwhile, his teacher sighed.
“I’m sorry, George—but you have to understand, there are limits.”
When George did not speak, his teacher tried to meet his eye; but the boy was resolute. Feeling defeated and angry with himself, Mr. Bowen said, “Alright, George, you can go. Have a good summer.” George flew from the room in a muddle; and this was the last time he saw Mr. Bowen.
The Friday after school let out for the summer, the Hackley family removed to their country estate. Here Mr. Hackley showed a different face—he seemed to revel in his being a visitor where he had once sweated and bled. He relaxed a little, and was apt to say to Walter Jr.,
“Son, there’s no substitute for land. The world can be going to Hell in a hand-basket, but if a man can wedge himself into a half an acre somewhere, he’ll be alright.”
He probably intended only to be expansive and impressive, as he himself had gotten away from his “half acre”—which really numbered one hundred acres—just as soon as he possibly could, and now took satisfaction from it only in the form of rent money and mint juleps on the farmhouse porch. But these moments and phrases had a greater effect on his son than he could suppose, as he was to learn.
The one unifying principle between Mrs. Hackley and her second son was in detesting these trips to the farm. Mrs. Hackley had to endure a tastefully decorated, well kept-up old house, where the occasional bug was unavoidable, and where her interference in decorating was strictly forbidden. She used to vent her frustration at this state of affairs by rearranging two or three pieces of china, or even by putting a vase in an upstairs linen cupboard. For George, the farmhouse was the one place where he could not shake his fear of the dark. He would lie awake listening to the sound of the wind rustling the soybeans and corn, and it sounded so like a human’s step, going up and down the rows, as though a man were trapped in a labyrinth. In the very innermost kernel of his heart George knew the house must be haunted—though, naturally, during the day he did not believe in such things.
On this particular Friday night after their arrival, George was unable to sleep. The corn and the soybeans seemed rustling louder than ever, and seemed more human than ever—he longed to shut the window, but it was a hot June night, when even the breeze seemed broiling.
As he lay in bed listening and despairing of sleep, a yet more terrible thing occurred, a recurrence of his old trouble. The corn and soy seemed to gain the voices of the imprisoned men, and to whisper to him, to accuse him. He lay, pinned by terror, almost unable to breathe, til all at once he tore himself from the bed, put on his clothes and hurried quietly from the room.
A light shone in the kitchen downstairs, and at once George felt calmer. That he would not be alone, even if it was only his mother for company, was a welcome thing. Yet when he entered the room it was his father who was still up, and apparently had never gone to bed; he was still in his collared shirt and slacks, sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of scotch in front of him, with two ice cubes, as he preferred. As George entered his father caught his eye and smiled, holding up the glass.
“Where do you think I got these ice cubes?”
George was surprised to realize his father was slightly drunk.
“From the freezer?” He guessed.
His father nodded. “From the freezer.” He chuckled and drank. “We’re living in the future, George. This is it. It’s here. Ice from the freezer on a hot June night.”
He took another drink, while George stood in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or wait to be asked.
“I got a call from Mr. Bowen today, before we left.”
George said nothing.
“He said you’re a whiz at science, and that I should be proud of you. And you know what? I am.” Mr. Hackley laughed as though this was a grand joke. It was the first time his father had told George he was proud of him, and George wondered why this did not feel better than it did.
Mr. Hackley waved towards the fridge. “Grab yourself a Coke or something and sit down.”
George obeyed this order in wonder; as a rule the boys were allowed no soda after five in the afternoon. When he sat across from his father, Walter Sr. looked at him keenly.
“‘Better living through chemistry’—that’s what they say on television, isn’t that right, George?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And so it is. And so it is.” Walter Sr. held his glass up to the light with its two melting ice cubes. “We’re living in the age of chemistry, George. Coolants, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides—these fields used to be crawling with people, like an anthill. Now look!” He gestured towards the wall, behind which stood the fields with their soybeans and corn, “Empty—pure—pristine. Hell, you probably couldn’t even find an ant in there.
“We’ve freed up the people, George. They’re doing more important things. One chemical can do the work of forty men, and by this we’ve freed up forty men.” George had the fleeting thought that his father no longer addressed him, but rather sought to persuade an invisible audience. George himself needed no persuading; he was enraptured. “They’re making the machines, discovering the chemicals, designing the farm of the future. You stick to your science, George. We’ll need plenty of chemists at Hackley, in the future. After all,” he said, “we’ve got to feed the world.” And he took a long drink.
George could have walked on air. His father’s speech enchanted him with its vision, and the last hint filled him with pride. Preoccupied as he was with his own ecstasy, he did not notice that his father was not himself ecstatic. Indeed, in calling up these feelings in George he seemed to have exhausted himself, and even scowled in ill-humor at the wall which obscured the fields. After a short pause he commanded George to go to bed, while he stayed, and reached to open the liquor cabinet.
George went upstairs. As it happened, he had completely forgotten Mr. Bowen, and the fear which had driven him down to the kitchen in the first place. He slept the sleep of the dead, never having asked himself, why his father could not so sleep.