Abbeville by Jack Fuller Page B

was the one who wanted for us to go out,” said Karl. “I am the one you should blame.”
    â€œBusiness and sentiment, lad,” said his uncle. “You must keep them scrupulously separate. When you don’t, someone always gets hurt.”
    Karl left his uncle’s office in a daze, contradictions colliding within him. An opportunity of a lifetime, brigaded by cruelty. The sweetness of the city’s freedom causing injustice and suffering. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, a newspaper hawker shouted the morning’s headline. Another bank had failed. The markets had been getting more and more jittery.
    As soon as he reached the floor of the Board of Trade, the clamor and immediacy drove contradiction into retreat. On the trading floor everyone wore linen jackets, wheat green in color for the traders, who had numbered badges pinned to their lapels. Along the perimeter of what they called the pits the traders stood elbow to elbow in a line, like cornstalks at the edge of a field. A pit consisted of concentric risers ascending perhaps four feet on the outside and descending an equal distance toward the center. Each pit specialized in a single commodity—wheat, corn, rye, and so on—and each section was devoted to a specific month—July wheat, September corn, November rye. Every trader had his special place on the risers. Through sharp trading you might force a man into the poorhouse, but as long as he was in the pit you would never take his trading space.
    Whenever a large order came in to buy or sell at whatever price the market would bear, a telegraph clerk slapped the order onto the counter, making a sharp noise like a starter’s gun. A runner snatched it and raced toward the pits. Woe betide anyone who got in the way.
    As Karl donned his trader’s jacket and badge for the first time, theactivity in the pit was so intense that at first he couldn’t even locate the man who was to train him. Rumor had it that Sampson & Sons was trying to construct a corner in September corn. This meant they were buying heavily in an effort to take control of the supply and then ruthlessly drive up the price. When the price reached a peak they hoped to sell out at enormous profits.
    The noise was furious. Men shouted and flung fingers into one another’s faces. Karl found some daylight and moved through it. Behind him the crowd closed up again like water.
    When he reached the top step, he finally spotted his man. Rather than go around and risk losing his target in the turbulence, Karl descended to the center of the maelstrom.
    â€œSchumpeter & Co.!” he shouted. “Peter Mallory!”
    His words were lost in the din.
    Ducking outstretched arms, he reached the bottom. Down there the traders oriented themselves outward and upward, where the action was. As a result, the very center was empty and calm.
    As he pushed upward again, the mob pushed back. Noise crashed over him.
    â€œWell, there you are, sport,” said Mallory, who immediately caught something out of the corner of his eye, and, like a fisherman seeing the ring of a trout’s rise, wheeled and cast. The quarry was a fat, balding fellow ten feet away. Mallory hit his mark, set the hook, and completed the trade, recording it both on the order sheet and on a card he kept in his breast pocket.
    â€œPicked that off at three-quarters,” he said. “The market’s already moved north of that.”
    Karl looked up at the balcony where an attendant was turning the arm of the indicator.
    â€œYou really have to be alert,” Karl said.
    Mallory looked past him. His arm flew up and in an instant he was writing again.
    â€œBy the time you see the market shift, it’s too late,” he said. “You always have to run ahead of the current.”
    Hour after hour Karl studied Mallory. Then at the end of the day the older man had Karl attempt a trade. But before he could consummate it, a bell