Sons of Fortune (20 page)

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“Not
as long as Jimmy and I continue to make him feel that it was always his idea in
the first place.”

“Don’t
you think by now he might just have worked out what you’re up to?”

“He’s
been able to do that since the day I met him at the Hotchkiss versus Tail game
nearly a decade ago. I knew then he was capable of raising the bar far higher
than I ever could.”

The
senator placed an arm around Ruth.

“However,
there’s one problem I may need your help with.”

“And
what’s that?” asked Ruth.

“I
don’t think Fletcher has made up his mind yet if he’s a Republican or a
Democrat, and I know how strongly your husband.

.”

“Isn’t
it wonderful news about Joanna?” said Fletcher to his mother-in-law.

“Sure
is,” said Martha, “Harry’s already counting the extra votes he’ll pick up once
he becomes a grandfather.”

“What
makes him so confident of that?” asked Fletcher.

“Senior
citizens are the fastest growing section of the electorate, so it must be worth
at least a percentage point for the voters to see Harry wheeling a stroller
everywhere.”

“And
if Annie and I have a child, will that be worth another percentage point?”

“No,
no,” said Martha, “it’s all in the timing. Just try to remember that Harry will
be up for reelection again in two years” time.”

“Do
you think we should plan the birth of our first child simply to coincide with
the date of Harry’s next election?”

“You’d
be surprised how many politicians do,” replied Martha.

“Congratulations,
Joanna,” said the senator, giving his daughter-in-law a hug.

“Will
your son ever be able to keep a secret?”

Joanna
hissed as she extracted the knife from the cake.

“No,
not if it will make his friends happy,” admitted the senator, “but if he thought
it would harm someone he loved, he would carry the secret to his grave.”
professor
Karl Abraham’s entered the lecture theater as the
clock struck nine. The professor gave eight lectures a term, and it was rumored
that he had never missed one in thirty-seven years. Many of the other rumors
about Karl Abrahams could not be substantiated, and so he would have dismissed
them as hearsay and therefore inadmissible.

However,
such rumors persisted, and thus became part of folklore. There was no doubting
his sardonic wit should any student
be
foolish enough
to take him on; that could be testified to on a weekly basis. Whether it was
the case that three presidents had invited him to join the Supreme Court, only
the three presidents knew. However it was recorded that, when questioned about
this, Abrahams said he felt the best service he could give the nation was to
instruct the next generation of lawyers and create as many decent, honest
counselors as possible, rather than clear up the mess made by so many bad ones.

The
Washington Post, in an unauthorized profile, observed that Abrahams had taught
two members of the present Supreme Court, twenty-two federal judges and several
of the deans of leading law schools.

When
Fletcher and Jimmy attended the first of Abrahams’s eight lectures, they
weren’t under any illusion about how much work lay ahead of them.

Fletcher
was, however, under the illusion that during his final year as an
undergraduate, he had put in sufficiently long hours, often ending up in bed
after midnight. It took professor Abrahams about a week to familiarize him with
hours when he normally slept.

Professor
Abrahams continually reminded his first-year students that not all of them
would attend his final address to the law graduates at the end of the course.
Jimmy bowed his head. Fletcher began to spend so many hours researching that
Annie rarely saw him before the library doors had been locked and bolted. Jimmy
would sometimes leave a little earlier so that he could be with Joanna, but he
rarely departed without several books under his arm. Fletcher told Annie that
he’d never known her brother to work so hard.

“And
it won’t be any easier for him once the baby arrives,” Annie reminded her
husband one evening after she had come to pick him up from the library.

“Joanna
will have planned for the child to be born during the vacation so she can be
back at work on the first day of the term.”

“I
don’t want our first child to grow up like that,” said Annie. “I intend to
raise my children in our home as a full-time mother
andwitha
father who will be back early enough in the evening to read to them.”

“Suits
me,” said Fletcher. “But if you change your mind and decide to become the
chairman of General Motors, I’ll be happy to change the diapers.”

The
first thing that surprised Nat when he returned to the university was how
immature his former classmates seemed to be. He had sufficient credits to allow
him to move on to his sophomore year, but the students he had mixed with before
signing up were still discussing the latest pop group or movie star, and he’d
never even heard of The Doors. It wasn’t until he attended his first lecture
that he became aware just how much the experience of Vietnam had changed his
life.

Nat
was also aware that his fellow students didn’t treat him as if he was one of
them, not least because a few of the professors also appeared somewhat in awe.

Nat
enjoyed the respect he was afforded, but quickly discovered there was another
side to that coin. Over the Christmas vacation, he discussed the problem with
Tom, who told him that he understood why some of them were a bit wary of him;
after all, they believed he had killed at least a hundred Vietcong.

“At
least a hundred?” repeated Nat.

“While
others have read what our soldiers did to the Vietnamese women,” said Tom.

“I
should have been so lucky; if it hadn’t been for Mollie, I’d have remained
celibate.”

“Well,
don’t disillusion them would be my advice,” said Tom, “
because
my bet is that the men are envious and the women intrigued. The last thing you
want them to discover is that you’re a normal law-abiding citizen.”

“I
sometimes wish they’d remember that I’m also only nineteen,” Nat replied.

“The
trouble is,” said Tom, “that Captain Cartwright, holder of the Medal of Honor,
doesn’t sound as if he’s only nineteen, and I’m afraid the limp only reminds
them.”

Nat
took his friend’s advice, and decided to dissipate his energy in the classroom,
in the gym and on the cross-country course. The doctors had warned him that it
could take at least a year before he would be able to run again-if ever. After
their pessimistic prediction, Nat never spent less than an hour a day in the
gym, climbing ropes, lifting weights and even playing the occasional game of
paddle tennis. By the end of the first term back he was able to jog slowly
around the course-even if it did take him an hour and twenty minutes to cover
six miles. He looked up his old training schedule, and found that his record as
a freshman remained on the books at thirty-four minutes, eighteen seconds. He
promised himself that he would break that by the end of his sophomore year.

The
next problem Nat faced was the response he got whenever he asked a woman out on
a date.

They
either wanted to jump straight into bed with him or simply turned him down out
of hand. Tom had warned him that his scalp in bed was probably a prize several
undergraduates wanted to claim, and Nat quickly discovered that some he hadn’t
even met were already doing so.

“Reputation
has its disadvantages,” complained Nat.

“I’ll
swap places with you if you like,” said Tom.

I
The
one exception turned out to be Rebecca, who made
it clear from the day Nat arrived back on campus that she wanted to be “dis”
given a second chance. Nat was circumspect about rekindling that particular old
flame, and concluded that if they were to rebuild any relationship, it would
have to be done slowly. Rebecca, however, had other plans.

After
their second date, she invited him back to her room for coffee, and started
trying to undress him only moments after she’d closed the door. Nat broke away,
and could only come up with the lame excuse that he was running a time trial
the following day. She wasn’t put off that easily, and when she reappeared a
few minutes later carrying two cups of coffee, Rebecca had already changed into
a silk robe that revealed she was wearing little if anything underneath. Nat
suddenly realized that he no longer felt anything for her, and quickly drank
his coffee, repeating that he needed an early night.

“Time
trials never worried you in the past,” teased Rebecca.

“That
was when I had two good legs,” replied Nat.

“Perhaps
I’m no longer good enough for you,” said Rebecca, “now that everybody thinks
you’re some kind of hero.”

“It’s
got nothing to do with that. It’s just
..”

“It’s
just that Ralph was right about you from the start.”

“What
do you mean by that?” asked Nat sharply.

“You’re
simply not in his class.
In or out of bed.”
She
paused.

Nat
was about to respond but decided it wasn’t worth it. He left without saying
another word. Later that night he lay awake, realizing that Rebecca, like so
many other things, was part of his past life.

One
of Nat’s more surprising discoveries on returning to the university was how
many students pressed him to run against Elliot for the president of the
student senate. But Nat made it clear that he had no interest in fighting an
election while he still needed to make up for the time he’d lost.

When
he returned home at the end of his sophomore year, Nat told his father that he
was just as pleased that his cross-country time was now down to under an hour
as to discover he was placed in the top six on the class list.

IBM

During
the summer, Nat and Tom traveled to Europe. Nat found that one of the many
advantages of a captain’s salary was that it allowed him to accompany his
closest friend without ever feeling he couldn’t afford to pay his way.

Their
first stop was London, where they watched the guards march down Whitehall. Nat
was left in no doubt that they would have been a formidable force in Vietnam.
In Paris, they strolled along the Champs Elysees and regretted having to turn
to a phrase book every time they saw a beautiful woman. They then traveled on
to Rome, where in tiny back-street cafes they discovered for the first time how
pasta really should taste, and swore they would never eat at McDonald’s again.

But
it wasn’t until they reached Venice that Nat fell in love, and overnight became
promiscuous, his taste ranging from nudes to virgins. It began with a one-day
stand-Da Vinci, followed by Bellini, and then
Luini
.
Such was the intensity of these affairs that Tom agreed they should spend a few
more days in Italy and even add Florence to their itinerary. New lovers were
quickly picked up on every street corner-Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Canaletto,
Tintoretto. Almost anyone with an
Of
at the end of
their name qualified to join Nat’s harem.

Professor
Karl Abrahams stood in front of his desk for the fifth lecture of the term and
stared up at the semicircle of tiered seats that rose above him.

He
began his lecture, not a book, not a file, not even a note in front of him, as
he took them through the landmark case of Carter
vs
Amalgamated Steel.

“Mr.
Carter,” began the professor, “lost an arm in an industrial accident in 1923,
and was sacked without receiving a cent in compensation. He was unable to seek
further employment, as no other steel company would consider offering work to a
one-armed man, and when he was turned down for a job as doorman at a local
hotel, he realized that he would never work again. There wasn’t an Industry
Compensation Act until 1927, so Mr. Carter decided to take the rare and almost
unheard-of step at that time of suing his employers. He wasn’t able to afford a
lawyer-that hasn’t changed over the years-however, a young law student who felt
that Mr. Carter had not received fair recompense volunteered to represent him
in court.

He
won the case and Carter was awarded one hundred dollars in compensation-not a
large amount for such a grievance, you might well feel. However, together these
two men were responsible for bringing about a change in the law. Let us hope
that one of you might at some time in the future cause the law to be changed
when faced with such an injustice. Subtext, the young lawyer’s name was Theo
Rampleiri
. He only narrowly avoided being thrown out of law
school for spending too much time on the Carter case. Later, much later, he was
appointed to the Supreme Court.”

The
professor frowned. “Last year General Motors paid a Mr. Cameron five million
dollars for the loss of a leg. This was despite the fact that CM was able to
prove that it was Mr. Cameron’s negligence that was the cause of the injury.”
Abrahams took them through the case slowly, before adding, “The law so often
is, as Mr. Charles Dickens would have us believe, an ass, and perhaps more
importantly, indiscriminately imperfect. I have no brief for
counsel
who look
only for a way around the law, especially when they know
exactly what the Senate and Congress intended in the first place. There will be
those among you who forget these words within days of joining some illustrious
firm, whose only interest is to win at all cost. But there will be others,
perhaps not so many, who will remember Lincoln’s dictum, “let justice be
done.”“ Fletcher looked up from his notes and stared down at his mentor.