A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [189]
In addition to his school work, he put in his afternoons working for a law firm. He drew up briefs, served summonses, examined deeds and records, and searched out precedents. He was familiar with the state’s statutes and was completely capable of trying a case in court. Besides doing so well in school, he earned twenty-five dollars a week. His firm wanted him to come into the office full-time after his graduation from high school, read law with them, and eventually take the bar exam. But Ben was contemptuous of non-college lawyers. He had a great midwestern college picked out. He planned to complete work for an A.B. degree and then enter law school.
At nineteen, his life was planned out in a straight unswerving line. After passing the bar exam, he was all set to take over a country law practice. He believed that a young lawyer had more political opportunities in a small-town practice. He even had the practice picked out. He was to succeed a distant relative, an aged country lawyer who had a well-established practice. He was in constant touch with his future predecessor and received long weekly letters of guidance from him.
Ben planned to take over this practice and await his turn to be county prosecutor. (By agreement, the lawyers in this small county rotated the office among them.) That would be his start in politics. He’d work hard, get himself well-known and trusted, and eventually be elected to the House of Representatives from his state. He’d serve faithfully and be re-elected. Then he’d come back and work himself up to the governorship of his state. That was his plan.
The amazing thing about the whole idea was that those who knew Ben Blake were sure that everything would come out the way he planned it.
In the meantime in that summer of 1917, the object of his ambitions, a vast midwestern state, lay dreaming beneath the hot prairie sun—lay dreaming among its great wheat fields and its unending orchards of Winesap, Baldwin and Northern Spy apples—lay dreaming—unaware that the man who planned to occupy its White House as its youngest governor was, at the moment, a boy in Brooklyn.
That was Ben Blake; well-dressed, gay, handsome, brilliant, sure of himself, well-liked by the boys, with all the girls crazy about him—and Francie Nolan tremulously in love with him.
She saw him every day. His fountain pen flashed through her French assignments. He checked her chemistry work and cleared up obscurities in the Restoration plays. He helped her plan her next summer’s courses and, obligingly enough, tried to plan out the rest of her life for her.
As the end of summer came near, two things saddened Francie. Soon she wouldn’t be seeing Ben every day, and she wasn’t going to pass the French course. She took Ben into her confidence about the latter sadness.
“Don’t be silly,” he told her briskly. “You paid for the course, you sat in class all summer, you’re not a moron. You’ll pass. Q.E.D.”
“No,” she laughed, “I’ll flunk P.D.Q.”
“We’ll have to cram you for the final exam, then. We’ll need a whole day. Now where can we go?”
“My house?” suggested Francie timidly.
“No. There’d be people around.” He thought for a moment. “I know a good place. Meet me Sunday morning at nine, corner Gates and Broadway.”
He was waiting for her when she stepped off the trolley. She wondered where in the world he’d take her in that neighborhood. He took her to the stage door of a theater given over to Broadway shows on the first lap of the road. He got through the magic door merely by saying, “Morning, Pop,” to the white-haired man sitting on a tilted chair in the sun beside the opened door. Francie then discovered that this amazing boy was a Saturday night usher in this theater.
She had never been backstage before and she was so excited that she almost ran a temperature.