Behind the Bonehouse Read Online Free Page A

can afford and hope to be able to develop them. That’s how I hired Carl, and I don’t want to have to let him go.”
    â€œI’m not suggesting you let either of them go. But I would like you to look at the memos in this file. Annette did the day-by-day transcribing. You can corroborate their authenticity with her.” He pulled a manila folder from the briefcase he’d set on the arbor’s brick floor and handed it to Bob Harrison.
    Bob read it, while Alan drank tea and patted Emmy, the boxer-and-something-else, who’d been lying by his chair since he’d first sat down.
    â€œYour position’s documented, I can see that. Carl’s resisted too many reasonable requests, and seems to be more interested in standing on his own dignity than putting the health of the company first. Butch too. Though, as you suggest, his insecurities may play a larger part.”
    â€œI have
tried
to be collegial. I’ve invited them to dinner, separately and together, and tried to talk in encouraging terms, without being critical. I’ve described how chemistry and production methods are beginning to develop more rapidly, and how we could learn so much, and contribute so much, if we could work together. But it hasn’t seemed to help.”
    â€œI see that in the lab and production reports.”
    â€œBut I think there’s more too. They both really respect you, and they feel as though I’ve come between you and them. That you and I work together more closely now, and some inside position they once had has been unfairly ripped away. I also have to be honest and say that Carl’s attitude is such that I have real doubts that he can be turned around.”
    â€œIt’s an unfortunate situation.”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œI would like to speak with Vincent. It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
    â€œI understand. And I’ve asked him if he’d be willing for us to stop by this afternoon. If that’s something you have time to do.”
    â€œIt’ll be difficult for him. With his background.” Bob was looking out toward the pond, shielding his eyes with one hand. “Look at the great blue heron.”
    He’d landed for a second, but then gathered himself and flown off again as Alan turned to look. “I don’t know anything about Vincent, except that it’s hard for him to talk to people, and he still uses a list to clean the offices every night, even though he’s cleaned the building for years.”
    Bob Harrison smiled as he reached for the sport coat he’d hung on the back of his chair. “The fall before Pearl Harbor was bombed, Vincent was finishing his doctorate dissertation in mathematics at Harvard when a paper by a physicist at Oxford was published that anticipated his work. Vincent couldn’t come up with a new dissertation topic, and he left Harvard on his own volition and came home to live with his parents, whom I’ve known for years.
    â€œHe tried to enlist, but his eyesight disqualified him. He took a job as a mail carrier for a while, but the personal contact with that many people was very difficult for him. In ’55, when I was able to hire a person to clean the offices and the lab, I decided to try Vincent. It’s suited him very well. He comes to work as everyone else is leaving and works till midnight, or so, then studies mathematics and astrophysics on his own during the day.”
    â€œI had no idea.”
    â€œFew people do. He finds it impossible to discuss.”
    Vincent Eriksen was waiting for them on the front porch of the small clapboard house he shared with his widowed sister. It was over ninety and humid, but he was sitting in an old rattan chair dressed in khaki work pants with a long-sleeved tan shirt buttoned at the collar and the cuffs.
    He stood up as soon as he saw Bob’s car draw up, very tall and slightly stooped, and so thin his black leather belt sat on a