“It sure is,” said Martha. “It sure is.”
One thing that you could see from up here that hadn’t been included in the satellite imagery from the full file were the cotton fields themselves, the unending acres of them, rolling out from the campus in all directions like the moonscape beyond a space station. And I could not see them, not from this height, but I knew they were out there, hundreds of Persons Bound to Labor too small to be seen, lost in among the long white lines of cotton. For a second or two I stared out into those distant fields, stared at the fact that when this was over, once I talked to that driver and he pointed me to the next place I had to go, I would walk out of here, and those people I could not see but knew to be suffering, they all would be here forever.
What do you do with that fact? Do you hold it like a stone in your hand? Pitch it away from this great height and watch it fall? Do you swallow it and feel it in your throat till the day you die?
The elevator dinged. “All right, now,” said Newell. “Let’s head on down.”
Martha really was a goddamn natural.
We filed into Matty Newell’s small office on the fourteenth floor, past a hallway of air-conditioner chill and the faint smell of coffee, the three of us crowded in there with the filing cabinets and his smooth black desk and computer. She and I had practiced it, going around and around, back and forth, in the lawyer’s basement, and as soon as Newell closed his door behind us, away she went. Off to the races.
“Well, as long as we’re here, visiting,” she said, and he grinned, gave her a tsk-tsk.
“Here it comes, huh? Here comes the sales pitch.”
Martha winked. “You caught me. It’ll be painless, Matthew, I promise it will.”
“Matty.”
“Matty. All I want to do is ask you a simple question.”
“All right.” His brows were knitted. His fingers were laced together. I could read his thoughts—from back by the door with my eager smile, a good boy, an obedient boy, I could see what he was thinking: I’ve got no juice anyway. I can’t say yes or no to anything. He had given us the tour. That was what he had to offer. His smile was preapologetic—soon she would find out, this pretty lady from Peach Tree Management Systems who had dropped from the sky into his little life, that he had no juice. We’d chosen him well.
My eyes flitted to the four corners of the room, one by one. Nothing. Not that a camera couldn’t be small, of course. Buried in the plaster; screwed into the lights. But nothing that I could see.
“All I ask is that you answer one question,” said Martha. “And it’s a darn easy question, too.”
“Okay…”
“This question is like, you know”—she palmed her forehead—“duh.”
“Okay.” Mr. Newell laughed. “Sure. I getcha.”
“So here’s the question. What is it that y’all are selling here?”
Newell puffed out his cheeks. Opened his hands. “Cotton? Cotton goods?” he said, tentatively, shyly, like a kid getting a trick played on him. Waited to see if that was right, then tried again. “A brand? A, uh…” He fumbled for the buzzword. “A lifestyle?”
“No, sir,” said Martha, shaking her head slowly, exuding confidence. I could have applauded. “What you are selling is time.”
She launched into it then, good and confident, the whole Music Man business, while I made my comprehensive survey of his office, moving only my eyes: two squat filing cabinets; a floor-to-ceiling tiered bookshelf, lined with binders and regulatory manuals; a sturdy industrial desk with a metal frame and a glass top, with three pictures arranged neatly (Mrs. Newell, Mr. and Mrs., Mr. and Mrs. and a handsome chocolate Lab). Hidden from view, not visible but certainly present, was the fingerprint danger button: on the underside of the desk, most likely; under the seat of the chair, second choice. Behind and to the right of where Newell sat was a single interior door. Not to any kind of executive washroom, surely. Our Mr. Newell wasn’t pulling those kinds of perks. A closet, more likely. Storage.
While I crawled through his tidy junior executive’s lair with my eyes, Martha was giving it to Matty with both barrels: “You got yourself four thousand, two hundred and thirty-two folks out there”—pausing, just barely, a quick sly acknowledgment that she had the figure, she’d done her homework—“and it’s their time that you all are selling. Every hour of good work they give to the company, every darn minute of it, that is the product.
“Now, let’s say we take one Person Bound to Labor,” she said, “and pop him anywhere on the flowchart. Okay? He’s splitting open bales. He’s a loom operator. Doesn’t matter. He’s top-level, he’s a trusty, he’s punching code on a pattern maker. Okay?”
“Okay…”
“Let’s say he works one hour. How many minutes are in that hour?”