The Hollow Men - Episode 12
Elizabeth's new boyfriend, years later a massive sense of deja vu, seems everyone wants a tank from VP Tanks, and avoiding the tax man every legal way we can.
Last week in Episode 11 of The Hollow Men, VP Tanks continues to do well, Uncle Bill wants Rick and Drew to think long term, Andrea gets married and Drew makes resolutions he knows will get broken.
If you like to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through the story.
We were making money without hardly trying. Everyone wanted tanks. There was a television commercial by the Western Company, an oil services company founded by Eddie Chiles, that ended with a pretty girl saying to the camera “If you don't have an oil well, get one! You'll love doing business with Western.” Well, I don't know if everyone was trying to get an oil well, but it did seem as if everyone wanted a tank or two.
It was a good month for Elizabeth too. It was her senior year at Permian and she had continued her involved ways. Vice President of the Student Council, Varsity Cheerleader all three years at Permian, member of the Debate team, member and officer in the National Honor Society, most spirited, most dependable, member of the Panther hall of fame, member of so many damn clubs and organizations I made no attempt to keep count. She was doing everything I didn't do and she was good at it. It was maddening and exhausting trying to keep up with her life.
Elizabeth knew she wanted to go to college, but my parent's financial situation wasn't much better than it had been when I graduated from Permian. She had resolved herself to go to Odessa College for the first two years, work and hopefully save enough money to go off to school. She didn't know I had been thinking that there might be another way.
Rick and I were having our monthly lunch with Uncle Bill this time at Picadilly’s Cafeteria. All of our numbers looked great. We were working hard, our sales numbers were proof of that and we were learning to put our money to work for us. Our lunch had reached a quiet point when Uncle Bill asked me about Elizabeth.
“She's doing great. She's banging on all cylinders at Permian. Man, it is hard to believe she is my sister as involved and active as she is.”
“What are her college plans?”
“Well, Mom and Dad told her that they don't have the money to send her off to school. So she's planning to go to Odessa College, work, save money and hopefully go off to school in a couple of years. She doesn't like it, I know it. I've been thinking about helping her out. Hell, I've got the money, I ought to help her out.”
“That's good of you Drew. How about if there was a way to help her out while also helping you and Rick out? Help you out, that is, when it comes to taxes. Would that interest you?”
It did. Neither Rick or I liked paying any more taxes than we had to so any idea that involved paying less taxes was worth listening to.
“Tell us what you're thinking, Mr. Remington.”
“Elizabeth wants to go off to school, but doesn't have the money. Drew wants to help her. Drew could just write her a check and be done with it. Everyone in Drew's family would love Drew.”
He paused and then spoke directly to me. “Though you would probably want to be careful about how your Dad feels about it. You don't want him to think you're upstaging him any.”
“Good point, that.” I didn't say much else because I had just taken a bite of cherry pie. Picadilly’s had, in my opinion, the best cherry pie in town and I liked it with a biscuit on the side to make sure I sopped up every drop of cherry filling. While I sopped, Uncle Bill elaborated.
“But if all you do is write her a check, you don't gain any immediate financial benefits from your generosity. Instead think about this. Hire Elizabeth to answer your phones when you two have to be out of the office, take care of your filing and drop the mail off at the post office. It doesn't have to be many hours a week, just a couple of hours a day for the semester, a few hours on Saturday mornings and more hours once summer comes. Pay her minimum wage, maybe a little more just to be a nice brother.”
Uncle Bill looked over at Rick and smiled.
“Don't worry, every dollar you spend on her is a business expense, which decreases your profits which decreases your taxes.
“But here's the next step. After she has worked for you a month or two, you decide to enact a new company policy, a scholarship program for excellent employees. The scholarship will be paid for by VP Tanks. The scholarship is another expense, which means profits are smaller, which means smaller taxes as well. You were planning to help her out anyway, but why not do it in a way that helps you out as well? If you like the idea talk about the details with Kevin. He can make sure that it comes out of Drew's side of the business if Rick isn't interested in helping Elizabeth out.”
“She's my sister. Rick doesn't need to help.”
“Fine, then you could consider carrying it even further and build yourself a little bit of positive public press. Start up a second scholarship fund at Odessa College or UTPB, your choice, work with the schools to find a deserving student and give them the second scholarship. That's more expenses, which means more off of your taxes and with the second scholarship you eliminate any suspicion that you're moving money around solely for your personal benefit. Net result, you help your sister go to college and you help someone else go to college. In both cases you spend less than a dollar for every dollar in the scholarship because of the tax benefits. What do you think?”
Rick and I were both quiet, letting the idea roll around in our heads. Rick spoke first.
“I like it. Damn, I like it! Let's do it. Drew, tell, bribe, convince Elizabeth to come work for us. We'll start up the scholarship fund at Odessa College and we'll go from there. Let's get this going. I like it! We're helping out those close to ourselves as well as a stranger and it lowers our taxes. What's not too like?”
I liked it too and nodded my head. Uncle Bill was beaming.
“You see, Drew, you can spin this to your Dad as a money saving thing for you. Then it won't come off at all as you doing what he can't do.”
We talked a little more about the details of our new scholarship plan then headed back to work. Rick was out of the office for most of the afternoon meeting with local customers and some of our contractors. I managed the phones while completing some drawings for a set of 750 barrel tanks that SouthWestern Tank would start building for us in a couple of months. Rick rolled back into the office at 5:30, we talked about the day over a couple of beers.
“I've been thinking about the scholarship idea this afternoon and about my brother. You know since he came back from the road he's been working as a waiter at night and going to school during the day.”
I nodded. Robert, after his early madness after high school had seemingly straightened up. Since he came back from the open road in 1976 he had turned things around. Shortly after coming home, he started working at the Barn Door restaurant, had proven to be a good employee and after a year at home he moved out and got himself an apartment not far from the restaurant. Shortly after he started taking courses part time at Odessa College.
“He's at a point now he needs to make a decision. He had one good year at UT, and he's got another 30 hours at Odessa College over the last few years, but he's taken everything he really can at Odessa College without wasting his time and money so he needs to make a decision. We've been talking, part of him wants to go back to Austin, but he's a little afraid of that. He's nervous that going back to the old haunts might lead back to his old life. He's thought about going to UTPB, but, hell, I can't blame him, he knows he needs to get out of this town too, some of his old drug buddies from high school days are still here and that can be a temptation in itself.”
Rick paused for a moment, he seemed to be thinking something through. I just left him think while I walked over to the refrigerator and got us both another beer. He looked up when I handed him the beer.
“Thanks.”
He took a sip, thought some more and spoke.
“Thing is, I would like to help him.”
“Are you sure? Man, he really screwed things up before. I don't know if I could help him after what he did to your family.”
“He's my brother. You might think differently if he was your brother. I understand your feelings. I was pissed too about what he did. But I believe he has really changed. Hell, it's been nearly four years since he's been back and he's walked a narrow road all that time. He's had plenty of chances to fall but he hasn't.”
He went quiet again and took a couple of sips before he spoke again. I didn't see any point in trying to fill up the quiet with noise so I just waited. After all, I had my own beer to drink.
“Shit, you want to help your sister. I want to help my brother. I just don't know if he will be willing to accept my help and I really don't know what he should do.”
“All you can do is offer. Then it is his decision to make. You will have done your best and he will know that you're willing to help.”
He nodded his head to that. We finished our beers, locked up and headed home.
Dinner was typical that evening. Elizabeth told us about her day at Permian. Dad grunted when Mom asked him how his day had been been. I told everyone that Rick and I had lunch with Uncle Bill that day and that he had asked how everyone was doing. I didn't tell them about the main topic of discussion at our lunch as I wanted to talk to Elizabeth about it first in private before I let Mom and Dad in on the plan.
After dinner and the dishes had been washed and put away, we all headed to our separate evening places. Kaiser to his spot on the living room couch. Lately he had been laying between Mom and Dad on the couch, he found that guaranteed someone would pet him while he drifted off to sleep. Dad was on his end of the couch, Mom was on her end of the couch as they talked about what to watch on television. Elizabeth went to her room and after a few minutes I followed her.
I knocked on her closed door. I could hear her on the phone talking to someone. She didn't come to the door so I knocked again.
“What?”
“I wanted to talk to you, Elizabeth.”
“Not right now, I'm on the phone.”
“It won't take long, and I really want to talk to you tonight. I don't plan on staying up real late.”
“Hmpph, all right, just a minute.” A minute or two passed and she said “Okay, come on in.”
I opened her door and walked in, nearly being knocked over by Kaiser. He apparently had overheard the conversation and decided to join in. He didn't get to go into Elizabeth's room much anymore so he was delighted at the chance. He trotted in, I was right behind him. Elizabeth was sitting on her bed, holding the phone to her ear.
“Oh, that sounds great, Bud. Look, let me call you back. My idiot brother wants to talk to me.” There was a pause as she listened to what Bud said. There was a nice smile on her face She noticed me looking at her and seemed a little embarrassed at my hearing one side of the conversation.
“Okay, I'll call you later, shouldn't be too long... Yeah, me too... Bye.”
Elizabeth hung at the phone and looked at me in the way that only a sarcastic, knows more than you will ever know, teenage girl can look at you.
“What do you want?”
“Who's Bud?”
“Oh, just a friend at school.”
I didn't believe her.
Kaiser hopped up on her bed and laid down next to her. I grabbed Elizabeth's desk chair, turned it around and sat down facing her.
“I think I have a way you could help me that would end up helping you.”
She didn't say anything but seemed vaguely willing to listen.
“Rick and I need someone to work for us a few hours during the week and on Saturday mornings, to answer the phone when we are not around and to, well, clean up after us. We would like you to consider working for us. We would pay you, oh, let's say $4.25 an hour to start. If it all works out you could make more.”
“Why would I want to work for you? You know I need to start making some money to save for school? Can you give me enough hours to make it worth my while? Anyway, I don't know how I feel about working for my brother.”
“You can work as few or as many hours as you want, as long as you're really working. Here's the second part of the deal, something that Uncle Bill came up with. If you're working for us, you're an employee of ours. If you're our employee, you get employee benefits and one benefit we plan to offer is a scholarship fund for our employees. We haven't worked the details out, but we will over the next few days or weeks.”
I just let that hang for a minute, thinking she might start putting the pieces together but she didn't or she just chose to not let me know she did. We stared at each other. We were both stubborn, both waiting for the other to speak first. I grew tired of waiting.
“If you work for us I can pay for your college, anywhere you want to go in Texas that's within reason, and I can pay for it out of company money. It would be an employee benefit, that's an expense to us, which means we can put the whole cost of you going to college up against our revenue, that reduces our profit, which reduces our taxes, which means more money back to us. It's a strange thing, just moving the money around from one column to another. It's the same money, but where it ends up determines how much taxes we have to pay. This way, you as an employee, you helping us out, us giving you a scholarship, allows me to take care of you cheaper than if I were to just write you a personal check. Do you understand?”
She didn't say anything for a moment, just looked down at Kaiser and petted him. He liked that and sighed.
“You mean you're going to pay for my college? Just like that? All I have to do is work for you and Rick? I can go anywhere in Texas?”
“Yes, within reason. A good public university would be good, the Rice's and ACU's are more expensive, you might have to handle a bit of that kind of school on your own.
“You mean this, you really mean this?”
“I really mean this. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but we can do this, we just have to figure out the details in order to make it all nice and legit, but we can do this. We will do this.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then jumped off her bed and gave me a hard hug and whispered “Thank you, Drew. Thank you.” Then she let go, ran out of her room and into the living room saying “Mom and Dad, you won't believe what Drew is going to do.”
Not exactly what I had planned. I really hadn't planned to let Mom and Dad in on it until we had the details all worked out. Kaiser looked at me, seemed to shrug his shoulders, stood up, yawned and stretched, hopped off her bed and trotted into the living room. I got his message, nothing I could do about it now but explain it the best I could.
In the living room, Elizabeth was a blur of motion and sound. Mom and Dad just watched and listened to her but I could tell they weren't getting much of the message. Hell, I kew the message and even I couldn’t figure out Elizabeth was explaining. Finally, after several minutes, Elizabeth seemed to wind down, she ran over to me, leaned her head on my shoulder and said to Mom and Dad “Isn't he the best brother a girl could ever have?”
Dad looked at me and said “Can you explain to me what the hell Elizabeth is all so excited about. I think I caught part of it, but I sure as hell didn't catch the details.”
I sat down across Mom and Dad and explained it all to them. I told them I had been thinking about helping Elizabeth with college, that Uncle Bill suggested that we do it through the business in order to take advantage of the tax benefits, about the idea of setting up a second scholarship, and how both Rick and I decided to do this for all the right reasons: to help Elizabeth because we could, to help someone else we don't even know because we could and to pay a little less to the taxman.
Elizabeth had sat down between Mom and Dad on the couch. Mom had her arm around Elizabeth and was looking at me with moist eyes and a soft smile. Dad was thinking it all over.
“So, you're telling me that by doing this, you pay a little less to the taxman? That's right?”
“Yes, sir, that's right.”
He smiled.
“I can live with that. I can live with my son helping my daughter, particularly if the taxman gets a little less as a result.”
I smiled back at him and said to Elizabeth “Well, you need to think about where you want to go to school next fall. And, oh yeah, I expect to see you in the office tomorrow afternoon by 4:00 pm. You can work two hours a day during the week, and five hours, 7:00 to 12:00 on Saturdays for now.”
“7:00 am? You got to be kidding me?”
“Hey, that's when Rick and I get to work every day. You won't have to be there at 7:00 am every day until this summer. And remember, VP Tanks only gives scholarships to its most excellent employees.”
I said that last sentence with a sarcastic smile. Dad liked it as he smiled right back. It was time that Elizabeth quit sleeping in on the weekends.
Elizabeth showed up on time the next afternoon and Rick and I welcomed her to the business. That first day she wasn't quite willing to have the day ending beer Rick and I usually had but by the end of February she was willing to have a sip of mine to close out the day.
One Wednesday evening after work Rick and I went to happy hour at The Place. Our intention was to have a beer or two, play a little pool, get our hands stamped and maybe come back later that evening for quarter beer night.
While we were playing pool Rick started talking.
“I talked with Robert about his plans. He doesn't really have any yet, other than he wants to finish his degree. At the moment he is leaning towards UTPB, UT or Corpus Christi State University.
“How did Corpus Christi get in the mix?”
“Well, he expects to keep working while he goes to school, or at least wants the option to do so. Turns out he can make crazy money as a waiter at a good restaurant, and he has saved quite a bit of his tips the last few years. He has enough cash saved up to go full time for a year, but he has two years to go so he wants to go someplace that has good restaurants so he can wait tables as he needs to. Add to that, he thinks he would like Corpus.”
“I'm guessing they aren't too many high end restaurant opportunities in Bryan and College Station?”
“Guess so.”
“Did you talk to him about helping him out?”
“Yeah, I did. He just smiled, said thanks for the offer, but no. He said he needs to do this on his own. I can't blame him for that. I just told him that if he does need help to let me know.”
We drank a couple of more beers and decided to call it a night. On the way out the door we said no to the hand stamps.
Back at home, Elizabeth spent a lot of time on the phone with “Bud.” He was nothing more than a voice on the other end of the phone until the evening of Friday, February 22nd. That was the night of Elizabeth's first official date with Bud Tyler. Now that we knew his name, we also knew a little about him. Bud had been the starting tight end for the Panthers this past season and was a senior with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth dreaded having him come over to the house. Dad said he had to shake hands with any boy that wanted to date his daughter. Dad was looking forward to this, he was extremely protective of Elizabeth and seemed to revel in the opportunity to grill any suitors. Since I had often been on the receiving end of Dad's less than friendly questioning I wanted to be there just to watch the show. Bud was scheduled to arrive at our house at 7:30 that Friday night. I made sure I didn't hang around at work that evening, leaving right after Elizabeth left at 6:00 pm.
Elizabeth skipped dinner, explaining to Mom and Dad that Bud and her were planning to grab something to eat after catching a movie. I ate with Mom and Dad while she got ready for Bud. Once dinner was over and Kaiser had his plate of leftovers I helped Mom with the dishes. We were all ready and waiting in the living room by 7:15 pm.
At 7:25 Kaiser lifted his ears. I could hear a car pull up in our drive way and the sound of a car door opening and closing. A moment later there was a knock at the front door.
“Drew, why don't you answer the door, make the poor kid feel safe for a moment before he has to see me.”
I did as my Dad asked and walked towards the door, Kaiser walking right besides me. I opened the door to Bud Tyler, all six feet two inches and 190 pounds of him. I don't know if he was good looking or not, but he clearly wasn't hideous. Years later I realized he was almost a dead ringer for the Texan musician Pat Green.
He introduced himself, shook my hand firmly and said he was here to see Elizabeth. He looked down at Kaiser, smiled and said “Kaiser, I've heard about you. How you doing, boy?” He kneeled down and rubbed Kaiser's ears and the back of his neck. Kaiser's stump of a tail swished happily and having won Kaiser's approval, Bud walked into our house, moving with confidence but with a bit of a big lug or Baby Huey attitude with him, like a big friendly blonde lab that doesn't realize how big he is.
Bud walked into the living room and introduced himself to my Mom and Dad. Mom fell for him right from the start, I think it must have been that combination of confidence and clumsiness. Dad gave him more of a hard time but Elizabeth knew not to leave Bud alone with us too long. Within 10 minutes of his knock on the door she had whisked him out the door and into the night.
A few minutes later Dad grudgingly admitted he didn't hate the kid but Kaiser and he did stay in the living room until a little after midnight when Bud brought Elizabeth home. How do I know this? If I'm not dreaming, I sleep lightly. It was at 12:15 am when Kaiser trotted into my room, hopped up on the bed, turned around a few times to find the right sleeping orientation for the night, laid down, sighed contentedly with the smell of beef stick on his breath and fell to sleep. Sure, that's not proof, but I've never known Kaiser to be able to open the refrigerator on his own, which he would have to do to get the beef stick, which means that someone had been in the kitchen and living room with him. I also know that Kaiser would not leave when there was opportunity for food so for him to come to bed at 12:15 am it meant the feast was over. Ah, but the real proof, a moment later I heard Elizabeth's door open and close, then a few minutes later I heard her dialing her phone.
The next morning I was up at 6:00 and falling prey to my Dad's genes, I knocked on Elizabeth's door.
A groan was all the response I heard.
“Elizabeth, I don't care what time you got in last night. We got work to do. If you hurry up, I'll drive and I’m willing to stop by McDonalds on the way to the office.” A few minutes later I heard signs of life and by 6:20 she walked into the kitchen.
“Is that the look of love I see in your eyes?”
“Go to Hell.”
“Elizabeth! My hall of fame sister, such language! I'm truly shocked.”
Elizabeth gave me her hardest, firmest “can't you see how pissed I am, you should fear me” looks. All I could do was laugh because all I saw was my little sister. A few minutes later we were out the door on the way to work. That morning Rick and I both started things off right by giving her a hard time, but Rick showed sympathy first by suggesting we both head out to check on a few jobs and let Elizabeth work on our billing.
I came back to the office around 11:00 and Elizabeth was her normal, optimistic, happy self. Amazing what a few cups of coffee can do for some people. She had caught up with all our accounts payable and receivable and was filing things away. I looked over the bills to be paid and the checks to deposit and everything looked good. Elizabeth had caught onto things quickly and it was good to have another set of eyes checking things out.
Rick came in around 11:30 and we closed things up for the week. We wiped clean the week's blackboard and updated the monthly and quarter blackboard. We laid out the plans for the next week, then popped a few beers and drank to the month, the week and to the day. Like I said earlier, it had been a good month.
March wasn't such a bad month either. The price of oil went up by a dollar, the rig count increased again and our work buffer measure stayed steady at 65 days.
Our family got to see a lot of Bud. Every Friday night he and Elizabeth went out, three out of four Saturdays they went out as well. Add to that, in March Bud became a regular guest to dinner on Wednesday nights. In fact, he made Wednesday dinner more often than I did as Rick and I still managed at least one Wednesday night a month to start with the happy hour at The Place and stay right on through into quarter beer night.
Elizabeth was a solid addition to VP Tanks, she more than managed the phones and the office when Rick and I both were out in the field dealing with customers, vendors and contractors. She was now working 2-3 hours each week day and a full five hours on Saturday.
Towards the end of the month she came to two important decisions, the first being what the wanted to study in college. Elizabeth wanted to teach high school English. Amazingly enough, her favorite teacher at Permian was Mrs. Alderson, the same teacher who had labeled both Rick and I as ne'r do-wells wasting our God given talent. I could only imagine what tales Mrs. Alderson had told Elizabeth about me. The second decision was that she decided to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock. Part of her decision was clearly rational, Texas Tech had solid programs in Education and English and was a two hour drive north of Odessa. I did suspect there was an emotional part to her decision and as Bud also planned go to Texas Tech to study civil engineering.
Texas Tech was fine by me, it was a public school so it wouldn't be too expensive. Mom would like it because it was a short enough commute that we should see Elizabeth often throughout the semester and it wasn't too much of a foreign land like the University of Texas in Austin.
Author’s notes: A couple of nods to my years at Western Tank Company of Odessa in this episode. The pencil shown in Drew’s “getting while the getting’s good” metrics is a drafting pencil very similar to the one I used when I worked at Western Tank Company of Odessa. The engineer at Western Tank Company of Odessa was Budd Scroggins, the main influence on the Bud character introduced in this episode. The real Budd is several years older than me. We have stayed in touch over the years. Budd and Bud are physically alike and when I first saw Pat Green decades later I was stunned how much he reminded me of Budd.
Next week in Episode 13 VP Tanks isn’t the only game in town, Rick and Drew come up with a marketing campaign, and Drew and Rick help some of their friends celebrate their graduation from college.