Read Online Behind the Bonehouse by Sally Wright - Free Book Online

coffee, staring at the slippery looking surface as though matters of consequence depended on how well he concentrated.
    He asked questions about the options he was given, and eventually told them he’d sign the new agreement. And he did, the same one they’d offered Carl, all the copies and the addendums, once he’d called his next-door neighbor over to witness them too.
    Then he sat, his square face sunken and crushed looking, his eyes tired and red rimmed, his dark hair thick and coarse, brushed straight back from his face, his heavy muscled shoulders straining against the back of the chair, while he stared at the turned off TV.
    Bob Harrison watched him for a minute, then asked him in a neutral voice why he’d gone along with Carl.
    â€œIt wasn’t you. I respect you a whole lot. You were real good to me right from the start. You didn’t care that I dropped outta college, and it seemed like you trusted me to do things right.”
    â€œI did. Until this happened. But that doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be new things that we’d all have to learn to keep the business growing. You can’t stay the same in business. You either grow, or shrink, or go out of business altogether.”
    â€œIt was Alan Munro changin’ everything. You started talkin’ to him and not me when we was trying to figure somethin’ out. It’s been him standin’ in between us, actin’ like he knows it all, and I got real tired of it. I figured I couldn’t stick it out much longer, and if Carl and me had a business goin’, there’d be some way for me to make a livin’.”
    â€œThere’d be lots of ways for you to make a living if you hadn’t done what you did. Then I could’ve given you a good recommendation. You’re a hard worker, and you’re very mechanical. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just come and talk to me, if you were having trouble working with Alan.”
    â€œI wouldda looked like a cry baby. I was hopin’ to be successful, and work on new products with Carl, and then you’d see I could do it without help from you or Alan.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t see that taking the formulas was dishonest?”
    â€œCarl said he’d checked with his lawyer. That he owned the formulas, for having done the work, and it wasn’t wrong for us to benefit too.”
    Garner Honeycutt smiled and shook his head. “I very much doubt that he talked to his attorney. Harry Rasmusson wouldn’t have said any such thing. Not if he’d consulted Mr. Seeger’s signed employment agreement, which he had a hand in drafting.”
    Bob Harrison set his coffee cup on the table beside him and looked across it at Butch. “Carl did the experiments we asked him to do. Lab-bench-level experiments designed by Alan or me. That’s not the same as designing the experiments, or doing the formulating, or creating a product. And even so, any work done at Equine legally belongs to me as sole owner and proprietor. That’s absolutely standard. It’s stated right in your contracts. What I did that most people don’t was to give you and Carl bonuses when a new product did well. Even so, there’s a difference between what’s right and what’s legal. Taking those formulas was wrong.”
    Butch set his coffee on the telephone table, just as Garner Honeycutt thanked him for the coffee, and stood up and walked toward the door.
    Butch stood too, and faced Bob Harrison, then dropped his eyes toward the floor. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison. I can see it better from your side now. And I wish I hadn’t done it.”
    â€œI do too. I really do. I thought we could all work together.”
    Butch stood on the side porch after they’d gone, a bottle of twelve-year-old Jefferson bourbon open on the table by the hammock, a cocktail glass with an inch in the bottom hanging loose in his hand. He