Mayor of Macon's Point - By Inglath Cooper Page 0,68
he took another jump through the set of possible actions he could take from here. None of them was remotely palatable. And all led back to the same beginning. He had no choice but to do something.
The easiest response would have been involving the police. To do so would have meant keeping his own hands clean as far as confrontation went. But one thing had changed since he’d come back to Macon’s Point: he cared what happened to that factory. He’d awoken to that realization this morning, its existence clearly etched in his conscience. He cared. Didn’t want to see it sucked down the pipes of bankruptcy like so much dishwater.
Corbin Manufacturing had made a difference in the lives of a lot of people. Still could. That was the part he could no longer ignore. Annie’s efforts at personalizing the situation had worked. When he thought of the company now, he saw individual faces, recognized what the demise of the business would mean to each of them, to this town.
And so he’d called Early, asked him to meet him in the parking lot of the old Second Baptist Church off Elm Hollow Road. A startled Early had agreed on the phone. Question was, would he follow through?
Nothing about this meeting held the mark of anything Jack would normally have done. He should have decided ahead what he was going to say. Let someone know where he was in case anything went wrong. But he hadn’t done any of that. He wanted to hear what Early had to say for himself. Eye to eye. Man-to-man.
They’d agreed to meet in the church’s back parking lot. Jack was ten minutes ahead of schedule. He drove around the side of the building. Early was already there. Pacing the width of an old blue pickup and puffing on a cigarette hard enough to suck the whole thing down his throat.
Jack parked beside him, got out, kept his expression neutral. “Hey, Early.”
“Jack.” The nod was curt, but the look in his eyes was pure terror.
“Guess you know why I called.”
Early shrugged. “That you out there last night?”
Jack nodded.
Early dropped the cigarette, ground it out with the scuffed toe of his work boot. “So what’re you plannin’ to do about it?”
“Thought I’d ask you the same.”
“Ain’t much I can do.”
Jack leaned back against the hood of Early’s old truck, hung a heel on the front bumper, folded his arms across his chest. “Guess I don’t see it that way.”
“What is it you do see?”
“I’d like to think a mistake.”
Early hung his head. “Don’t matter what you call it if it’s wrong and you can’t go back and redo it.”
“How’d you get into this mess, Early?”
“Weakness, I guess.”
Jack respected that answer. A lot of men would have thrown out a list of excuses that had nothing to do with their own responsibility. “Would you redo it if you could?”
Early looked up, met Jack’s direct gaze, his eyes wavering, then snapping back and holding their ground. “Reckon I would.”
“My father thought you were a good man. Not once in my life did I ever know him to be wrong on that. Was he wrong this time?”
Early’s face, weathered, time-worn, held the clear footprints of shame. And regret.
“One thing was true about my father, Early. He knew how to judge a man’s character. I don’t think he was wrong about you. And that’s what tells me you would never have started this thing on your own. You want a chance to make this right, you’re gonna have to tell me who did.”
* * *
THEY’D TALKED FOR over an hour. Gone over from the beginning when the stealing had started, how long it had been going on. And Early had given him names. The two that counted. One was Hugh Kroner. This did not surprise Jack.
Hugh and the other man were educated, highly paid executives who had embezzled from the company with deliberate intent. Jack could not excuse Early’s role in the situation. But if he called in the police on the other two, Early would go to jail, as well. Maybe that would have been the right thing. Maybe Jack was being too soft.
He hadn’t promised Early anything. Had just told him he had a lot of thinking to do and that he would be in touch. Early had given him his word he would not betray him by letting the others involved know of their meeting.
Now, headed back toward town, there was one person, and only one, with whom