Dzhon O'Hara - The Lockwood Concern

THE LOCKWOOD CONCERN

A NOVEL by

John OHara

RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK

First Printing

Copyright, 1965, by John OHara

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Limited.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-21227

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, SCRANTON, PA.

ON Sunday afternoons people would drive out to have a look at George Lockwoods wall, and sometimes they would see, from a distance, George Lockwood doing the same thing they were doing. He was there every day, had not missed a day since the first pick had cut into the ground.

He never spoke directly to the workmen, never complained at the slowness of their work, never praised them, never addressed them individually, although he knew most of them. Some days when he visited the place he would look at the wall for a few minutes, then turn away and go back to his car, and the workmen would know that he was disgusted with their lack of progress. Other days he would come out in the morning, stay till noon, be driven home for lunch, and return to stay all afternoon. When this occurred every man was handed a dollar bill at quitting time, with no explanation given and none needed; George Lockwood was pleased. Sometimes the dollar bonus was distributed for six days running; other times a week would pass with no bonus at all.

The wall was being built of brick, two feet thick and eight feet high above ground. It was to have a two-inch concrete top, in which would be embedded iron spikes at intervals of twelve inches. The wall was a sizable project: it surrounded thirty acres of land.

The land had been farmed continually since the early Eighteenth Century. It was land that sloped gently, the high land of the Oscar Dietrich farm, which was now owned by George Lockwood. Earlier Dietrichs had cleared about twenty acres of the land, leaving timber above, which was to the south, and more timber to the east and west. It had not been the best land on the Dietrich farm, and in recent decades it had been used as pasture for the Dietrich Holsteins. George Lockwood was building his wall on a strip that had been cut out of the timber to the south, east and west, so that there would be a stand of trees on both sides of the wall. Thus the property would be surrounded by trees as well as by brick and mortar, since George Lockwood planned to plant trees on both sides of the front, or north, wall.

The thirty acres was not all that George Lockwood owned. He had bought the entire two hundred acres of the Dietrich farm and the parcels of timberland to the south. People who wondered what he was going to do with the Dietrich farm had their answer when the wall was half finished: George Lockwood sold the Holsteins and the farm equipment, and razed the Dietrich farmhouse, barns and outbuildings. In a months time the Dietrich farm was no more; an establishment that had existed for more than a hundred years vanished in a few weeks. Some said it was a sin and a shame, some said it was a crime; but others said that Oscar Dietrich must have got a good price; Oscar always knew what he was doing. He moved to the Lebanon Valley and bought another farm.

Pretty soon a second gang of workmen were being employed by George Lockwood in a project that was the opposite of the wall-building: the new men were engaged in removing the Dietrich fences; stone, post-and-rail, snake, and wire. As time went on the Sunday visitors to George Lockwoods wall could see that all traces of previous ownership were being systematically obliterated. Then, one Sunday in the middle of May, they saw that the wall was complete, that a tall temporary board gate was in place.

A door, with a Yale lock, had been cut out of the board gate. On the door was painted the order: Keep Out. All through the summer the people continued to visit the Lockwood place, but the gate was always closed, and they could not see what they knew to be going on behind the wall: George Lockwood was building a house.

In the town of Swedish Haven, two miles to the east, no one had been surprised by George Lockwoods decision to build a high brick wall with spikes on the top. The unusual, they said, was usual for George, and it was correctly guessed that he had first built his wall so that as few people as possible would be able to see what kind of house he was building. The contract for the wall had been given to a Swedish Haven man; the main contractor for the house was from Hagerstown, Maryland, and he brought with him his own carpenters and bricklayers. The plumbing contract was given to a Reading firm; the electrical work was being done by a Philadelphia firm; the interior woodwork was assigned to some Italians in New York; the painting, plastering, and paperhanging were being done by a Fort Penn outfit, the roofing by a gang from Gibbsville. The landscaping was in the hands of a man from Westbury, Long Island; the driveways were being built by a Port Johnson company. Workmen who lived within fifty miles of the Lockwood house came and went each day by truck; the contractors, foremen, and workmen who lived at a greater distance were put up in Gibbsville and Swedish Haven hotels and boarding houses. At the outset the main contractor would say to each sub-contractor: What I want you to understand is that Mr. Lockwood minds his own business and wants people to mind theirs. When this house is finished he doesnt want any local people to know their way around it. Thats what hes paying good money for. First-class work, and his privacy. And youve got to admit, he doesnt haggle over money. When I think of that overtime . . . The sub-contractors and workmen who arrived after the wall was completed made quick estimates of the cost of the wall, and there were those among them who wished they had put a higher price on their own work. A man who would spend twenty thousand, thirty thousand dollars on a wall was not likely to quibble over a few hundred. But there were others among the sub-contractors who had dealt with rich men before, and who had learned that a rich man might spend a lot of money to do something unusual, but he would know what he wanted and would see that he got it.

These latter sub-contractors were soon congratulating themselves on their guesses about George Lockwood. He came to the a-building house every day, ram or shine or stifling heat, wearing a floppy Panama, dressed in a crash-linen suit, and carrying a cane, which was unusual for a man in his early fifties. He would stroll about in the grounds, nodding but never speaking to the foremen and workmen except to say Excuse me when he got in the way. He would climb ladders and walk precariously placed planks. On the very hottest days he would sometimes help himself to a dipperful of water from the workmens pail and fan himself with his Panama and wipe under his collar with a fancy silk handkerchief, but he stayed on, never lingering too long over any particular job, but visiting each job several times a day. And he seemed to miss nothing. The workmen early realized that when he visited a particular job several times a day, he was noticing something; for the next day the foreman on that job would make some changes in the work already done. The orders to the foremen came down from the sub-contractor, who got his instructions from the main contractor, who was the only man on the job with whom George Lockwood would have conversation.

The main contractor, Robert Brackenridge, had a shanty on the grounds. In it he had an unfinished table, some camp chairs, dozens of tubes containing blueprints, fire extinguishers, first aid kit, a telephone, an army cot, a 16-gauge shotgun, several kerosene lamps, a small oaken filing cabinet, a Pennsylvania Railroad and a Prudential Insurance calendar, a water cooler, a board on which hung numerous tabbed keys, and a two-burner kerosene stove. In this shanty, and nowhere else, was George Lockwood seen to sit down, and workmen in the vicinity could overhear conversations through the screened windows. They learned little except that Lockwood called the contractor Robert, and that he was thoroughly acquainted with the blueprints and the details of the specifications. When a sub-contractor was called to the shanty for a conference, Robert Brackenridge would do all the talking, while George Lockwood, smoking pipe or cigarette, nodded in approval.