The Corrections. Jonathan Franzen

its Kansan and Missourian officers (including Mark Jamborets, the corporation counsel) had persuaded the Board of Managers that because a railroad was a pure monopoly in many hinterland towns, it had a civic duty to maintain service on its branches and spurs. Alfred personally had no illusions about the economic future of prairie towns where the median age was fifty-plus, but he believed in rail and he hated trucks, and he knew firsthand what scheduled service meant to a town’s civic pride, how the whistle of a train could raise the spirits on a February morning at 41°N 101°W; and in his battles with the EPA and various DOTs he’d learned to appreciate rural state legislators who could intercede on your behalf when you needed more time to clean up your waste-oil tanks in the Kansas City yards, or when some goddamned bureaucrat was insisting that you pay for forty percent of a needless grade-separation project at Country Road H. Years after the Soo Line and Great Northern and Rock Island had stranded dead and dying towns all across the northern Plains, then, the Midpac had persisted in running short semiweekly or even biweekly trains through places like Alvin and Pisgah Creek, New Chartres and West Centerville.

      Unfortunately, this program had attracted predators. In the early 1980s, as Alfred neared retirement, the Midpac was known as a regional carrier that despite outstanding management and lush profit margins on its long-haul lines had very ordinary earnings. The Midpac had already repulsed one unwelcome suitor when it came under the acquisitive gaze of Hillard and Chauncy Wroth, fraternal twin brothers from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who had expanded a family meat-packing business into an empire of the dollar. Their company, the Orfic Group, included a chain of hotels, a bank in Atlanta, an oil company, and the Arkansas Southern Railroad. The Wroths had lopsided faces and dirty hair and no discernible desires or interests apart from making money; Oak Ridge Raiders, the financial press called them. At an early exploratory meeting that Alfred attended, Chauncy Wroth persisted in addressing the Midpac’s CEO as “Dad”: I’m well aware it don’t seem like “fair play” to you, DAD … Well, DAD, why don’t you and your lawyers go ahead and have that little chat right now … Gosh, and here Hillard and myself was under the impression, DAD, that you’re operating a business, not a charity … This kind of anti-paternalism played well with the railroad’s unionized workforce, which after months of arduous negotiations voted to offer the Wroths a package of wage and work-rule concessions worth almost $200 million; with these prospective savings in hand, plus twenty-seven percent of the railroad’s stock, plus limitless junk financing, the Wroths made an irresistible tender offer and bought the railroad outright. A former Tennessee highway commissioner, Fenton Creel, was hired to merge the railroad with the Arkansas Southern. Creel shut down the Midpac’s headquarters in St. Jude, fired or retired a third of its employees, and moved the rest to Little Rock.

      Alfred retired two months before his sixty-fifth birthday. He was at home watching Good Morning America in his new blue chair when Mark Jamborets, the Midpac’s retired corporation counsel, called with the news that a sheriff in New Chartres (pronounced “Charters”), Kansas, had had himself arrested for shooting an employee of Orfic Midland. “The sheriff’s name is Bryce Halstrom,” Jamborets told Alfred. “He got a call that some roughnecks were trashing Midpac signal wires. He went over to the siding and saw three fellows ripping down the wire, smashing signal boxes, coiling up anything copper. One of them took a county bullet in his hip before the others made Halstrom understand they were working for the Midpac. Hired for copper salvage at sixty cents a pound.”

      “But that’s a good new system,” Alfred said. “It’s not three years since we upgraded the whole New Chartres spur.”

      “The Wroths are scrapping everything but the trunk lines,” Jamborets said. “They’re junking the Glendora cutoff! You think the Atchison, Topeka wouldn’t make a bid on that?”

      “Well,” Alfred said.

      “It’s a Baptist morality gone sour,” said Jamborets. “The Wroths can’t abide that we admitted any principle but the ruthless pursuit of profit. I’m telling you: they hate what they can’t comprehend. And now they’re sowing salt in the fields. Close down headquarters in St. Jude? When we’re twice the size of Arkansas Southern? They’re punishing St. Jude for being the home of the Midland Pacific. And Creel’s punishing the towns like New Chartres for being Midpac towns. He’s sowing salt in the fields of the financially unrighteous.”

      “Well,” Alfred said again, his eyes drawn to his new blue chair and its delicious potential as a sleep site. “Not my concern anymore.”

      But he’d worked for thirty years to make the Midland Pacific a strong system, and Jamborets continued to call him and send him news reports of fresh Kansan outrages, and it all made him very sleepy. Soon hardly a branch or spur in Midpac’s western district remained in service, but apparently Fenton Creel was satisfied with pulling down the signal wires and gutting the boxes. Five years after the takeover, the rails were still in place, the right-of-way was undisposed of. Only the copper nervous system, in an act of corporate self-vandalism, had been dismantled.

      “And now I’m worried about our health insurance,” Enid told Denise. “Orfic Midland is switching all the old Midpac employees to managed care no later than April. I have to find an HMO that has some of Dad’s and my doctors on their list. I’m deluged with prospectuses, where the differences are all in the fine print, and honestly, Denise, I don’t think I can handle this.”

      As if to forestall being asked for help, Denise quickly said: “What plans does Hedgpeth accept?”

      “Well, except for his old fee-for-service patients, like Dad, he’s exclusive now with Dean Driblett’s HMO,” Enid said. “I told you about the big party at Dean’s gorgeous, huge new house. Dean and Trish really are about the nicest young couple I know, but golly, Denise, I called his company last year after Dad fell down on the lawn mower, and you know what they wanted for cutting our little lawn? Fifty-five dollars a week! I’m not opposed to profit, I think it’s wonderful that Dean’s successful, I told you about his trip to Paris with Honey, I’m not saying anything against him. But fifty-five dollars a week!”

      Denise sampled Chip’s green-bean salad and reached for the olive oil. “What would it cost to stay with fee-for-service?”

      “Denise, hundreds of dollars a month extra. Not one of our good friends has managed care, everybody has fee-for-service, but I don’t see how we can afford it. Dad was so conservative with his investments, we’re lucky to have any cushion for emergencies. And this is something else I’m very, very, very, very worried about.” Enid lowered her voice. “One of Dad’s old patents is finally paying off, and I need your advice.”

      She stepped out of the kitchen and made sure that Alfred couldn’t hear. “Al, how are you doing?” she shouted.

      He was cradling his second hors d’oeuvre, the little green boxcar, below his chin. As if he’d captured a small animal that might escape again, he shook his head without looking up.

      Enid returned to the kitchen with her purse. “He finally has a chance to make some money, and he’s not interested. Gary talked to him on the phone last month and tried to get him to be a little more aggressive, but Dad blew up.”

      Denise stiffened. “What was Gary wanting you to do?”

      “Just be a little more aggressive. Here, I’ll show you the letter.”

      “Mother, those patents are Dad’s. You have to let him handle it however he wants.”

      Enid hoped that the envelope at the bottom of her purse might be the missing Registered letter from the Axon Corporation. In her purse, as in her house, lost objects did sometimes marvelously resurface. But the envelope she found was the original Certified letter, which had never been lost.

      “Read this,” she said, “and see if you agree with Gary.”

      Denise set down the can of cayenne pepper with which she’d dusted Chip’s salad. Enid stood at her shoulder and reread the letter to make sure it still said what she remembered.

      Dear Dr. Lambert:

      On behalf of the Axon Corporation, 24 East Industrial Serpentine, Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, I’m writing