In 1932, an author named Wuther Crue published a short story called "
Ordeal By Cheque", in a format that was the talk of the town for the daily news-readers.
(You can read the entire original story by clicking this link:
http://ghsbears.pbworks.com/f/Cheques.pdf )
The story was written as a means for readers to demonstrate the use of inference.
I, being one of the readers, took the challenge and inferred an entire story, filling in the gaps.
Here it is,
Enjoy!
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Ordeal by Cheque
Written by Wuther Crue
Adapted by David Kuriny
He had all the money securely placed in a little black book, ready to be written out as payment in a moment’s notice. Lawrence Exeter Jr. was born to two loving parents who would’ve bought him the world if he had asked and did buy him much even though he showed no interest.
Kids like Lawrence received toys for Christmas, but my father never failed to remind me of his famous maxim:
“Some people were born being fed with a silver spoon. Others were handed a copper shovel to do a little of their own digging. But you, you Tony, weren’t given nothing; You’s got yourself a clean slate to make your own mark.”
While I knew this was just a euphemism for being dealt a rough and disappointing hand, I agreed with him, letting him feel like he had a son who idolized and looked up to his father.
I sat up on my mattress one night upon hearing the familiar sound of father coming in through the fire escape. Then I heard a candlestick smash against the wall and my mother yelling and hitting him. She sobbed and he didn’t move. The light that had been lit upon his arrival was soon put out and I drifted back into a routine sleep.
The day I first met Lawrence Jr. was the day I was walking through the ‘Wealth District’ for the first time, a name applied by most children who lived on Elm street to the area that boasted the large, luxurious mansions and the thick-dewy grass that seemed to beg you to lay in it a while. It was quiet and comfortable and everything that was not the cramped, rat’s nest rows of homes that I knew. There was a small man who walked his big dog while reading the morning papers. On the other side of the sidewalk, a large woman wearing a long overcoat walked a small dog. The two canines barked across the street at one another, the owners smiled a polite embarrassment, and each pair carried on to wherever it was that they were going.
Then I saw an even more perfect sight: I watched a muscular, gentle-hearted man running beside a small boy on a bicycle, laughing and yelling words of encouragement. The man, known to be Lawrence Exeter Senior, looked with gentle eyes at his son’s beaming face.
“You’ve got it my boy! Steady yourself now and gain some speed. I think you’ll make a fine driver!”
I watched all this and pretended to be on the bicycle. I swerved when he swerved and clutched my imaginary brakes when he bounced along on the broken walk, headed for a bush. A smile of much-wanted contentment vanished quickly like water putting out a warm-glowing hearth. Another part of the fantasy that was Laurence Junior’s life appeared on the threshold of the front door. She held a little triangle as means to summon her men to a well-deserved meal.
Scoffing at how perfect this looked, loathing every frill and tassel of the Exeter family, the woman caught me with her eyes. And it felt as if it were my mother, even in just a fraction of a moment, holding me and bandaging all the day’s wounds.
I ran and ran. I ran hard, jagged strides that made me feel as if there were no cushion between my bones. Tears rolled freely down my cheeks and escaped towards the docks.
**********
Over the years, I frequented the Wealth District more times than I can remember, almost every day. I stole glimpses into a life placed ten notches above me. You can be sure that the Exeter’s had their son attend the finest schools and academies. On my way to a morning dishwashing job, I saw a boy my age, dressed in a freshly pressed uniform, hop into the back of his father’s ever-gleaming Cadillac, and head off to some expensive day school where he would meet all the other boys who lived in the Wealth District.
In my aspirations, I lived vicariously through the life of Lawrence Junior. We’d never even met, yet I felt as though we shared with each other our innermost secrets. However, each night we would return home to different lives; he, to the sound of endless, hope-filled waves lapping playfully against his moonlit aspirations, and I to the sound of a leaky faucet and sticky moisture in a torn-up mattress.
Fate is a gamble sometimes. The one consistent thing about it is that you’re always placed as a peg on a very large board. This board is full of niches that extend upward, farther than anyone can see into the sky. No matter how low or how high your peg is placed on the board in the beginning, the humanity in us makes us constantly keep climbing, always discontent with the current circumstances, and looking for a better, higher place.
When Lawrence Senior enrolled his son at Stanford University, I knew that I would follow him. It was almost like reading a good book that’s nearly impossible to put down. I tried to close the book and return to reality but I didn’t like seeing my family or sleeping on my soggy mattress. So, I opened it back up again and kept reading; Fate beckoned towards Lawrence Jr. and his family.
There was a flower shop called ‘University Club Florists’ that needed someone to cover shifts as a sales boy. On my very first day, Mr. Exeter Sr. walked straight through the double doors, slapping down a list of arrangements to be purchased and a check to cover the cost. He did all this with a warm, confident smile.
“My boy’s getting married, Pete!”, said Mr. Exeter, addressing my boss. He turned to me, “It’s all on the list. Not a stem over twelve inches and be sure get the absolute best of the lot.”
“Yes sir.”
“And forty-two of those blue ones. Forty-two, you see? Not any less or any more.”
“Of course, sir.” I said.
“And don’t--”
This time he was caught by himself trying to be even more reassured of the perfection that he ascribed on the list.
“Oh, hell. I worry too much! The missus always did say I worried more than what’s good for me.”
Mr. Exeter turned with a smile and a wink and set off for his car.
“What was your name again, boy?
“Anthony sir. But most folks just leave it at Tony, sir.”
Lawrence Senior wrote a separate check, set it down in the same manner as he did with all the checks he made out—a confident, matter-of-fact sort of way— and smiled warmly.
“Well thank you, Tony.”
And he left.
**********
Mr. Exeter and his wife visited the shop regularly. They always purchased large quantities of our most expensive selections and always gave me a smile and a tip. Lawrence Jr. never joined his parents, even though the happy couple spoke of their son often. Through my various encounters with the Exeter’s, visit by visit, I was becoming more cognoscente of the vastness of the wealth they possessed. I was also told of the plans made for their son and his life ahead of him; the wedding and honeymoon for he and a miss ‘Daisy Windsor’ that had already been purchased at a great price; the newlyweds were to move into a place just outside of San Francisco City area: a house overlooking the coves and beaches, also purchased by the groom-to-be’s parents.
Lawrence Jr. did eventually come to the florist shop. I saw him step out of his father’s Cadillac, something I’d become rather familiar with during our childhood. He took sulky steps between his two parents. I heard him ask upon entering the shop if they could possibly go to another, more respected florist.
“Hello Mr. Exeter, Mrs. Exeter. What can I do for—”
“This is my boy, Lawrence Jr.” interrupted the father jovially,
“We thought you’d like to meet him after all of our talk!”
I looked blankly between the son’s parents and then between them, expecting to see a reflection of a better self. Instead of seeing a more educated, more refined version of the man I thought I was, I saw someone desperately attempting to escape a prison. Simply looking at him next to his parents who were buying flowers and talking about the bride-to-be, I could see he was distant. He was off running somewhere, trying to find a wall to scramble over.
With an elbow from his parents, he said,
“Yeah, my folks talk a lot about you. Thomas, right? Well, howd’ya do. Let’s get on with it, shall we? We have the list with us, don’t we mother?”
“Yes, my darling. Can’t you just imagine how nice the colors will look against the white? Or the little frills on the ends of the bouquets? Oh, I am excited.”
And she was. Mrs. Lawrence and her husband were very excited for a perfect wedding, with a perfect bride and groom, and a perfect amount of color against the white. For it was their lives, put into their son; a by-product of ancestral fame and family fortune.
I smiled politely.
Mr. Exeter Sr. clasped my forearm, wringing my hand excitedly, Mrs. Exeter nearly vaulted over the counter to plant a kiss on my cheek, and the younger Lawrence sought the interior of the Cadillac as his parents signed a check of payment. I watched them wave at the door to the shop and drive away with Lawrence Exeter Jr. in the rear with his head pressed against the window.
***********
Despite my numerous conversations with customers, sweeping occupied the majority of my time at the florist shop on Sunset Boulevard.
“We close in five minutes Mr. Ventizzi.”
To which Mr. Ventizzi, my boss, would reply,
“Yeah, means five more minutes that you have to sweep that dirty floor. It’s so damn filthy from your ‘mister-Ventizzi-can-I-leave-early’ load of garbage.”
So, I swept and swept, and never stopped sweeping right up until the clock struck twelve and five. I swept not because I thought the floor was getting any cleaner from its already pristine condition, but because Mr. Ventizi said it needed correction. And so, it achieved a final polish, one that he and I both knew to be unnecessary and a time-waster. Yet, it was necessary because it added a gloss. Everyone congratulates the people who do what they’re told and get by doing everything by the routinely tick of a perfectly-strung clock. They congratulate you in the form of ignoring your existence, taking for granted the people that make the tock click in synchronized rhythm to begin with.
************
Every morning I walked through the exquisitely painted houses and manicured lawns that make up the Wealth District, to my sales boy job at University Florists.
“Flossie! Don’t be so loud, would you? We’re not a hundred yards away from my parents’ house and you’re laughing louder than a tanker horn.”
“Aw, Hell Law! Ain’t it just too exciting? Why, can’t you quit biting your nails even for a minute?”
“If my parents find out that I’m sending you off into the mountains with more than a dime, they’ll have me shot through. I mean it, keep your voice down and let me write this out.”
“But ain’t—”
“Hush up now. I mean it.”
I recognized the voice of the man and immediately put the face of Lawrence Jr. to it. As for the girl, I had never seen nor heard of her before then. And it would be the last time I’d ever encounter her again.
I finished circling the remaining part of Oriental Ave. and saw a closely entwined pair under the late summer foliage of a gigantic Oak tree. They stopped, hearing a leaf crinkle under my boots and immediately detached. Lawrence Jr. resembled that of a deranged wild animal, scared of being shot and killed; while Flossie laughed even louder, apparently not minding an addition to their otherwise secret rendezvous. I tried to walk as quickly as I could, head down, away from the scene I had just witnessed but was stopped by a hand pulling at my shoulder.
“Damnit Tony, wait! Please, please you can’t tell a soul. Promise me you won’t or it will be the end of me.”
I looked beyond him at his mistress; she sat laughing in the shade, harder than ever and with a bottle of scotch dangling playfully at her side.
“Look, I have to go. If I don’t show up at the shop my pay will be docked and—”
“Wait! Please, I can’t take this any longer. They shove houses and weddings and honeymoons at me, expecting me to be happy. Hell, they even gave Daisy twenty-five grand as incentive for us to get hitched! I don’t love her and… and, well, it just isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Just don’t tell them that. It’ll set them worrying and just making new plans up. Here, just take some money and don’t—”
I now saw the destination of where his mind had been the day he walked into the florist shop. It was far away, with a less-predictable woman, in a house outside of the Wealth District. His bags were packed.
“Keep your money. I won’t tell.”
And I walked on, out of the wealth district to where my splintering broom lay beside its old dustpan.
**********
A lot of things happened quickly, so it seemed. On my off times and some of the times I should’ve been working, Lawrence Jr. spent more time with me. Sometimes, if Mr. Ventizzi wouldn’t allow me time off, Lawrence would pay him for my two or three day’s work, allowing me to keep my job and for him to gain a confidant and perhaps his only friend in the world. Lawrence told me everything: he simply wished he had something different, more freedom, maybe. He didn’t want to marry the first girl that his parents liked, so he sought to love one of his classmates from Stanford. They were to go out to the uninhabited, free mountain ranges and live under a house they made for themselves. It was theirs and that’s what mattered. He didn’t need his father’s education, he wanted freedom; He didn’t want to listen to his mother’s advice about marriage, he wanted liberty to love whomever he pleased. In many ways, in his mind especially, he wanted to move his peg up on the board. Lawrence Exeter wouldn’t care if that meant throwing away a gift and a privilege; of course, he didn’t see that. I looked at him, a peg that so far above he wasn’t even in sight, on that endless board and I saw that he wanted to go higher still.
Lawrence made me his best man at his wedding, maybe because he had no one else. They looked at each other, and saw what they wanted: the bride found gold in her groom’s hands and an empty safe in his heart; Although, she hadn’t even thought to try there, being as satisfied as she was with what she found in the form of dollars and coins. Lawrence was not much better: he saw only those mountain ranges and the whiskey and the liberty and his true love.
**********
At noon on the day before Lawrence Jr. was about to go on his honeymoon, he stopped at the University florist shop and asked to speak with me.
“Hey! You can’t be sneaking off with my only employee.” Shouted Mr. Ventizzi angrily.
A shaky Lawrence signed a check, paying for the rest of my day’s work. He said, with breath already acrid from strong spirits, that we were going out for drinks. We arrived at a pub near the coast, just as the sun was setting over the Pacific.
“You know something? Yeah, you’re a real pal. Tony, you’re the best, mos’ solid person I’ve ever known. Sometimes I wish I was you. You work a little then go and find some secluded, unwatched place where no one knows where you are and you’re free and you’re all yours. No one holds you to any damn sort of standard. You’ve got it made Tony.”
Lawrence then proceeded to tell me that his new bride had found out about the affair after he had gone through all the motions: He purchased the rings, the dresses, the clothes, and he thought his plan would work. But Daisy said that his ‘lover’ had told her all about their plans to move out to the mountains and to start a new life, away from all of this. Flossie sent a telegraph to Lawrence telling him that she had taken the money and put herself on the first train to New York. She said that she wanted to find ‘true freedom’.
I nodded. I could see in his eyes that there were opportunities that he had been after. The man who had been given a leather necklace, holding a silver key, to a golden kingdom, looked then like nothing more than a sales boy at a florist shop.
He caught me looking at him like that and said with a miserable attempt at a smile,
“Let’s take a ride, Tony.”
“No, I really don’t think we—”
“Let’s take a ride, Tony.” This time final, commandingly.
While I tried quickly to grab the key from his drooping paw, he tightened his grip at the last second and pulled away.
“You think I’m gonna let you drive this? This was a—”
He choked on a fatal mixture of resentment and drunkenness.
**********
I saw as we sped down the thread of coastline what a fine opportunity was leaking out of a once well-groomed, idolized face. Now what I saw scared me more than the crash itself; for as I threw my gaze back and forth between the advancing drop-off and the melting, wax-like face of my driver, I saw his realities as he must be seeing them. For so long, things had been going perfectly for Lawrence Exeter Junior. He was given the finest education, the best car money could buy, and an all-inclusive, all-expense paid life with a perfect bride.
Yet, he wanted more. He felt as if he wasn’t truly liberated until he had found a way to make his ‘own mark’. No longer did he need anyone; for he was Lawrence Exeter, a free, independent man and he was going to show it.
**********
I awoke next morning with blood caked on every side of my face. Lawrence Exeter Jr. lay dead beside me, head smashed by one of the rocks that jutted through the window shield when we fell.
I hitchhiked all day until I found someone who would take me into town. Once there, I notified the police and then Mr. Exeter about the crash. It was only Mr. Exeter now, there was no need for a suffix.
The lifeless body of the boy who once rode a bicycle in the now so distant Wealth District lay in the compartment of a medical vehicle. In one last vain attempt to preserve a life that was not meant to be preserved, Mr. Exeter paid the physicians to pump as much medicine as they could into the corpse, but death was the antidote and his son had long been cured.
The original Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Exeter buried their son in the most expensive, mausoleum-like grave they could find. His parents left the inscription blank. There were no words, just crisp, cold, white. What’s written instead on the forefront of my mind, and is re-etched each time I visit that giant white prison,
HERE LIE THE HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS OF WHAT COULD’VE BEEN.
HERE LIES, LAWRENCE EXETER JR.
