Green Lights Turning to Yellow

Carson watched as Murray left the building. He knew that Murray didn’t like him & that was okay. He wasn’t there to be liked. He was there to get things done & make things happen. But he wasn’t sure Murray respected him either, & that could be a problem.

But that was for another day. The truth was, he liked Murray & even envied him. Not his name, of course. To Carson, Murray was just the name of a guy who would always play second fiddle to Mary Tyler Moore. He preferred the name Carson. That’s the reason he’d chosen it. His parents had named him Alfred after his great grandfather. But Alfred was the name of Bruce Wayne’s butler, not a captain of industry. Carson had known he was meant for bigger things & so he’d had it legally changed once he turned eighteen.

But Murray had something Carson never had. Virtually everyone who had ever worked for him liked & respected him—& they worked all the harder because of it. They knew that he fought hard for them & they were determined to do all they could to repay him for it. They were loyal to a fault. People who worked in his department rarely asked for a transfer. When someone did move on, it was either because they got a promotion or had received an offer they couldn’t refuse. And then they would pay him the supreme compliment—they always did their best to emulate their mentor. And they always remained friends.

Carson didn’t have that kind of luxury. He had too many irons in the fire & too many employees counting on him to worry about making friends. Yes, he cared about his employees every bit as much as Murray did, at least he liked to think so. But it was on him to make sure they had jobs—jobs that would put food on their tables & roofs over their heads.

Right now, that’s what had him worried. Most of his business interests were in a line that stretched along the base of this mountain range. The storm they were forecasting wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime storm. It was a once-in-many-lifetimes storm. A system like this had not landed here for over five hundred years & it put everything at risk. With what they were predicting, electricity would be lost for days if not weeks. Product that had to be kept at a certain temperature, whether hot, cold, or somewhere in between, would likely be lost. Insurance would only cover a portion of it, & margins were already razor thin. Supply lines would be cut off for a week or more. Who knows when they would be able to get back up & running?

That was just the immediate problem. Come spring, they would be facing another. Under the best of circumstances, the runoff from this amount of snow would be a disaster. But if the spring thaw came on too hard & too fast, entire towns could be wiped off the map. Once the snow began this evening & there was nothing else to do, he would begin calculating triage, both for the present & for the spring. What could he save, what did he need to be prepared to let go, & what resources did he have that might be needed for emergency response?

Still, he probably could have been a little more sensitive with Murray. He knew that what he had required would be hard on him. But he’d have to apologize later. At the moment he had too many things on his plate.

He was a little put out with himself. Why had he not been more concerned as he became overextended, greenlighting one project after another, only making sure there was enough line of credit with the bank to cover expenses? Well, those green lights had turned to full on yellow. Soon they would become solid red.

He thought about Corbin & wondered if there might have been something else he could have done. Corbin had been a solid performer when he first came to them not quite five years ago. He went after the work as though he was desperate for the distraction. Carson hadn’t been nearly so busy back then, so he’d noticed Corbin & had taken a liking to him just like everyone else. But now something was distracting him from his work & he had become a liability.

It was frustrating, because Corbin had never been willing to talk about his past or what it was he was running from. Carson never knew how to reach out to him and now, he was far too busy. He felt badly about it, but he couldn’t allow Corbin to drag the company down any longer. He’d be taking too many others down with him, perhaps Carson included.

Ah, who was he kidding with all these thoughts of triage, what could be salvaged, & what effect an ineffective employee might have? If the weather forecast proved accurate, Carson was going down period, & every single last one of his business interests with him. He had done what he could. He’d used every truck he could muster to haul their products to safety, selling as much of it as possible at deep discounts. But there were no buyers for the bulk of it, not even with bargain basement prices. Either they didn’t have room in their warehouses or they didn’t have the market to sell them before they passed their expiration date. Most of the perishables would have to be distributed to food banks or used for emergency response. At least then it could be written off as a charitable deduction.

And still, it wouldn’t be enough. He had maxed out his line of credit with the bank for a project that hadn’t even broken ground yet. Invoices remained to be paid for supplies they would never get to use. He had insurance for any buildings or equipment that might be lost or damaged over the next few days, but only for their current value, not replacement costs. Most of the equipment had already depreciated greatly.

The one bright spot? A lot of the buildings needed serious repair &/or upgrades. Carson guessed he wouldn’t have to worry about those anymore.

The only question that remained was what could be salvaged for someone else who could pick up the pieces? That, & how many employees who were just now settling in for an extended weather “holiday” would still have jobs once the snow was cleared? Most, he surmised, would not.

He shuffled through some of the papers strewn helter-skelter across his desk as though still searching for a solution he had not previously seen. He knew there wasn’t one. He’d spent the last couple of days crunching the numbers every way he could imagine, testing each & every contingency. The numbers he needed simply weren’t there. He had made all the calls he could to his suppliers, customers & the bank alerting them to the situation & what would happen if the looming disaster came to pass. He’d paid all the invoices he could with the balance he still had so that those smaller businesses wouldn’t be shut out by the courts once chapter eleven had been filed. The bank was in contact with his lawyer preparing the paperwork they hoped would not become necessary, though everyone feared it was all but inevitable.

Carson tossed the invoices & reports back on his desk without even registering what they were. He buried his head in his hands. He was exhausted. He hadn’t slept for over thirty-six hours. Perhaps that was why he had acted so cruelly with Murray. He didn’t know. His eyes were so beyond red that not even the bottle of Visine he kept in his drawer was going to be of any help. He couldn’t drive himself home. He would have to weather the storm here.

What was he thinking? He didn’t live here. His home was over a hundred miles to the southeast. This was just his office/apartment for when he was in town. He had understood all along that he would be staying here through the storm, since this was where the invoices were kept & paid, as well as the main office for most of their banking.

And this was the place from where he was most likely to be successful with the calls that he’d had to make these last two days. This being the financial center of his empire, people didn’t ignore calls from this number. It also served his purposes by being likely to be the first to lose service in the storm. He didn’t think he’d be wanting to take too many more calls.

Murray had been lucky. He’d been given the task of sacking only one employee. Carson had made seventeen calls over the past two days to seventeen other managers for the purpose of talking about two hundred & twenty-three employees to decide which seventy-nine of them would be furloughed. It had been a very long thirty-six hours. He had tried to keep himself distanced from what had to be done, but that was hard. He knew every single one of those employees & just having to talk about them in such a context cut him to the quick.

But it was done. All he could do had been done. And now his head hurt. He needed a brandy.

Carson opened the door to the living quarters & poured himself a drink. But it wasn’t brandy. It was scotch. He would be wanting brandy later.

On either side of the living room & dining area were two huge bay windows. The one to the east looked out over the town. It really was a quaint little village that had not yet been injured by too much tourist trade, mostly because the ski lodges were a fair distance to the south. The windows to the west looked over a few foothills & then up to the mountains. If you wanted to see any of the peaks on the range through those windows, you needed to be sitting on the west end of the table. If you wanted to see the peak that was directly above, you had to press your nose against the glass.

Carson loved this apartment. To him it was a second home. And these would be the final days he would be able to enjoy it, so he thought he should make the most of it. He turned on the gas to the fireplace, lit it, then adjusted the flames to the perfect height where they danced over the faux logs as though improvising to the music of a jazz ensemble. He then programmed his service for Duke Ellington.

Once he had the music & the lights at the perfect level, he poured himself another scotch & sat down in a chair where he could face the mountain & wait. For Carson, this was neither a time to remember all the things he had accomplished in his life nor one to punish himself for all his regrets. This was a time to forget—to forget & simply allow himself to be.

It might take another scotch & a few brandies, but he promised himself he would get there.