W.T. Marchman

The satin sheen of the dark walnut shelves shimmers slightly as the shadows play across it, the books placed upon it old tomes from times since passed, each one picked over in its time and meticulously placed within the office when completed.

A man, old and weathered walks at a slow pace, but still with the strength and defiance earned through the lashes of the human body politik, stewarding a fledgling business into an empire. He is tall, though he used to be taller, still towering over most at 6’4”, and wears a perfectly pressed green shirt beneath a maroon sweater and khaki trousers.

He stands for a moment and gazes up at the collection – hundreds of books of all manner of subjects. He has read them all, some more than once, the knowledge of hundreds of men which then became part of his own.

The man lays a hand at the top of a fine leather office chair, and runs his fingers over the stitching. It was a gift from an old friend of some years past, the craftsmanship exquisitely detailed, created by Italian leatherworkers of the highest quality skins.

He sighs lightly and lets his head fall slightly as the tips of his fingers continue their path along the stitching, gently caressing the seams of brown leather until he reaches the end. With a firm grip he pulls the chair back, and eases himself into it. He reaches over to his desk drawer and pulls out a fountain pen and a sheet of cream colored linen paper, and prepares to write.

His fingers grip the pen as he fills it with a royal blue ink from a bottle, the wrinkles and scars across each digit the fossilized marks of a life spent in the service of creating new things. He wipes the nib of the pen clean with a cloth and settles in to the desk and starts to write.

The script he uses is uncommon, taught in a time long ago when elegance and style were still considered important, in a time when letters were still sent through the post, before computers and keyboards, and before impersonal modes of communication came to supplant the script of human hands.

As he writes he thinks back to earlier in the day when he met with a reporter who came to interview him for an article. He thought it was most likely for an obituary, but shrugged off the thought for the sake of having the company for an hour or two.

“Good evening, Mr. Marchman,” the reporter said as he moved to shake the old man’s hand. “Thank you for meeting with me today.”

“No trouble at all, please sit. Could I offer you some coffee, or tea, perhaps?”

“Some water, if you please, actually.”

“Very good – Natasha!” he called from the desk in front of his books.

A petite servant walked briskly into the room and stood for orders at the doorway.

“Please bring our guest a pitcher and glass of water, and a cup of coffee for myself, the usual way.”

“Right away sir.” She replied and departed as fast as she came.

The reporter gazed around the room, the books on the shelf, the paintings of foreign cities gracing the walls, the Persian rug his chair sat atop, no doubt actually from Persia. The room was cavernous and lit mildly, with tasteful, although somewhat bare ornamentation. He wondered briefly the number of meetings and personages that had passed through the room he was now seated in.

The two chatted for a few minutes. They talked about the cold of the winter, the most recent political travail prevalent in the news, and a few other bits of friendly chatter until Natasha came back with a tray and set it down on the desk between them.

“Well Mr. Marchman,” the reporter started as he poured water into his glass, “I’m sure that you’re very busy this evening, and I don’t want to take up much of your time – thank you for meeting with me.”

“Think nothing of it, you’re Harold’s boy, and I’m glad to be able to help you get a story. Now, what is it you’d like to discuss?” the man replied, then drank a long draught of coffee from his cup.

“Well, I’d like to write a small biographical piece on you, just a page or two perhaps. I wanted to cover some of your early life, your business life, obviously, and your more recent history.”

“Very well, I’m all yours then.” The man replied, with a gesture of his hand.

The reporter crossed his legs and furrowed his brow slightly, the wooden floors beneath the rug creaking mutedly from his change in position as he pulled out a ballpoint pen and notepad.

“Let’s start at the beginning, and move forwards from there, and I’ll help move things along back to today.”

“Okay.” The old man replied. “I was born in Texas, close to the Oklahoma border. My parents divorced at a young age, and my brother and I were raised by our mother. Money was hard to come by then, there was a time when we had nothing but a jar of peanut butter to eat when I was a child. They came in glass containers back then, and I knocked it off the counter one time by accident. We saved what we could of it but ate a lot less for the rest of that week. We were poor.”

“My father played a played a part in our lives and helped us when he could, and both of my parents, even though they didn’t get along personally, instilled a set of morals and ethics in me from a young age that proved to be helpful later in life.”

“The years between childhood and adulthood are unremarkable. I worked hard at school and went to college, where I worked at a butcher’s shop as much as I could to help pay for my tuition. I can still dress and cut a cow to this day. I ran out of money before I could finish a mechanical engineering degree, and went to work as a roughneck at an oil company down in Houston.”

“And you started your business soon after, correct?” the reporter inquired, then took another sip of water.

“Yes, the first business came after about two years of working in the field. I was 19 and had gotten tired of some of the problems we faced at the oil wells every day, and I thought I was as good a person as any to fix them, so I did. A few years later the company was sold and I walked away with a few million dollars. A tidy sum to be sure, particularly for the time. I took a vacation for about three months – I visited several cities in Europe, and spent some time resting, but I got bored and got back to work quickly.”

“The accounts of the rest of my life are pretty well known, as I’m sure you’re aware. I invested the money from the sale of SP Oil into starting an oil services company, and expanded from there. We required manufacturing for our oil equipment, so we created and purchased several manufacturing facilities. We faced materials supply shortages that were crippling us for a year and got tired of it, so I started buying foundries to ensure a reliable supply of materials. As we grew we continued developing each business unit by itself, along with the company in total – we sold off excess materials and production capacity to other companies, and eventually purchased and ran several of those as well – that’s how we got into automobiles for a time.”

“You eventually spun off cars, though, right?”

“We did. Some nitwit in the government decided that we fit his definition of a monopoly and we got sued for supposed anti-competitive business practices. We spent millions of dollars on lawyers and settled with the government to avoid spending million of dollars more, but as part of the settlement we gave up cars, which was a shame, since I really enjoyed making them and we had some of the best on the market back then. The spun off company eventually floundered and was purchased by some foreign car company, and was shuttered after a decade or two when the brand was destroyed by bad quality cars and mismanagement.”

The man drains his coffee and lets out a long breath of air from his nose, then sets the cup back onto a white ceramic saucer.

“It was at this point that I became politically active. The government serves its people, after all, and my taxes were – and still are – higher than everyone else’s, so I figured it was time to take our good men of politics to task and ensure that we were getting a fair shake for our contributions. It took a few decades of work, but I think we ultimately did alright – other business colleagues joined in over the years and we now have a country with some of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, that is considered very business friendly, and with some the highest GDP and standard of living of all nations.”

“But what of the process? You had opposition –“

“Yes, we had opposition. People will always oppose something that will cause them to lose a benefit, or an entitlement, or otherwise cause them to have to earn their keep. We did have to break the backs of the unions and the politicians they had in their pocket, we had to convince the people who write our laws to write ones that made sense, and that were effective at fostering competition and innovation. It wasn’t cheap, nor easy, but it was the right thing to do, and better than being slowly bled out by bad policy instead.”

“I see. Tell me about your political work thereafter.” The reporter asked as he poured another glass of water.

“Well, once you become involved it’s difficult to extricate yourself. There’s always someone who wants to be put in touch with someone, some issue invariably crops up when you want to retire from that world that requires you to take a stand, there’s always something. And like with anything, the longer you stay, the more people you meet, and the more people want of you, too.”

“So that’s how you ended up in a few administrations?”

“Sort of. I first got asked by the Wentmore folks to chair a committee for them on finance and economics, which I did. We published a report about the effects of various tax rates on businesses and citizens in general to try to determine a tax plan for growth. They like to call it “revenue”, but it’s all just taxes. They got a bill passed through congress putting it in place, and it mostly worked, despite cutting out about 90% of the key provisions the committee suggested.”

“Afterwards we continued our expansion of the company. We had holdings in airlines, in aircraft manufacturing, in oil, in materials. We had mining operations in South America and drilling rights in the arctic sea. At this point we weren’t so worried about an anti-trust suit anymore so we were able to leverage our production capabilities around the world to help drive our costs down on all durable goods. When the semiconductor revolution happened we helped bootstrap several companies creating integrated circuits, which eventually became part of our family of businesses. We’re currently the second largest semiconductor supplier in the world with fabs all over Asia, and we spun off our computer manufacturing division about five years ago, which is also second largest in that field. That basically brings us to today.”

“Indeed. Nowadays it seems your companies make everything, Mr. Marchman. Maybe it’s easier to ask what industries you’re not involved in.”

The old man smiles a half grin and says “We never got into food.”

“Why not?”

“When you find a good chef you want to keep him to yourself!” The old man laughed, “Not everything can or should be sold.”

The reporter smiled and continued: “You’re known nowadays for your philanthropy, for supporting a variety of causes to try to make life better for people. Your political advocacy continues, and you still run your business empire daily. Your work ethic is legendary across the industry – do you still get only five hours of sleep nightly?”

“Usually. I don’t like wasting my life in a bed when there are things to do and experience.”

“How do you find the time to do this sort of thing, to keep these schedules, and these enterprises complete, and still set aside time for family?”

The old man’s faced darkened and stiffened slightly, the question stung him more than he cared to admit. Forcing a smile, he replied, “Ah, there’s the rub, isn’t it? Getting the scoop on the notoriously private business mogul, in hopes that he’ll at last reveal the details of his personal life. My personal life is one of the few nuggets I keep to myself, and I suspect the details of it will go with me to the grave, whenever I’m forced to make up for lost sleep.”

With that the interview began to wind down to a close. The two consumed a few biscuits from the tray, and exchanged parting pleasantries, then they walked from the office to the main hall, down a set of steps covered in patterned maroon carpet leading down to a tiled floor made of ornately arranged Italian marble in front of a grand set of doors, crafted by wood carvers from Germany’s black forest region. The door caused a heavy thunder to echo through the house as it closed after the reporter.

The man turned away from the door slowly and looked around the room. It was enormous. The entire house was built in the style of a French Chateau, replete with many guest rooms, a full kitchen, office, drawing rooms, library, and an armory, set atop over 200 acres of manicured land with gardens, forests, and fields of lush, green grass. He built it during a more extravagant time, one where he would entertain people with regularity and play host to his business colleagues and world leaders.

His appetite for that social function started leaving him as his true friends grew older and began to pass on. As his colleagues aged and their younger replacements came to fill their stead, he found that he had to rely on lawyers and contracts instead of a man’s word and handshake, so he let his lawyers and managers earn their keep instead.

He decided to go for a walk.

Passing the grand staircase, he went through a door on the left and into one of the main halls. Passing the floor-to-ceiling windows, with their red velvet curtains with golden tassels, he came to a framed glass door and stepped outside. The cool winter air was crisp in his nostrils as he breathed in the outdoors. The clouds were heavy with the grey boughs of snow or rain, his path to the gardens illuminated by the warm incandescent yellow of the lights that graced the side of the walkways.

He moved leisurely across the gray stone path through the gardens, towards the greenhouse where he kept his orchids.

Never had his house heard the cries of a newborn child, or the laughter of children running through its halls. His success came at a price – the struggles of business demanded the attention of a lover, and for his entire adult life he was married to his work. Women had come and gone, the smart ones, he felt, left him, in time, and the hangers-on he pushed away – half a brain, a gold-digger’s anchor baby, and an alimony suit to try to take half of everything away was not worth the hardship, no matter how pretty a face.

He had loved once. Several times, actually, in his younger days. Back then he let it wallow in favor of exploring the “what if” of business, but now he sometimes wondered wistfully what life would have been like if he’d chosen a simpler path with a woman who loved him and a family to call his own.

His extended family saw his rise and tried to ride the coattails. He helped get his father started with a car dealership which he ran until his passing, and his mother came to live with him in her later years, until she, too, passed away.

His brother met an untimely end skiing in the Alps, and left behind a wife and child. He had given his brother a large stipend to manage for his children’s education and a trust to create a livable income from for them, but once he died, the wife sued for access to all the funds, drained the accounts, and became a drug addict and alcoholic. Her children followed suit, and while he threw them all into rehabilitation centers regularly for about a decade, they all ruined their lives and met early ends. Money, it seems, should never be left in any significant amount to those who didn’t earn it.

He entered the greenhouse where the orchids were kept and was greeted by a warm blast of humid air with the smell of mild fungus and earth. He closed the door behind him as he walked in and toured the orchids. Their myriad shapes and colors had always fascinated him since he first saw one as a young man in Europe, and he had his gardener keep a steady supply of flowering plants rotated in as the others went dormant.

He paused at each plant and looked at it carefully before moving on to the next, until he had travelled the entire greenhouse, then stepped back outside.

The clouds had given way to a light winter’s snowfall fluttering all around him, the snowflakes beginning their inexorable mission to cover the ground in fields of white. He moved back into the house and up to his office.

He moved in, stately, and prepared his paper and pen for writing, collecting his thoughts from the day, and began:

Mr. Haroldson,

I am a most unhappy man. I have achieved what it is I set out to achieve since I was a young man. I have lived a life that many would say I have no right to complain about, that my material possessions and number in my bank account should assuage fully any further needs that a person may have, as though my halls of stone and mortar can bring warmth into my heart or that little green pieces of paper can, in themselves, bring some modicum of happiness.

My life’s work has been tireless and my legacy is secure. I have created a company that was built atop a solid foundation, with offices on every continent except Antarctica. Through it I brought forth new innovations and new products that changed the lives of billions of people around the world for the better, and it was all achieved honestly. Even our fights were fairly clean. I have served two Presidents and history has vindicated what controversial actions or policies I advocated during my efforts in government. These last few years of my life, and those that remain, have been spent engaged in divesting myself of what monetary fortunes I have come into, in an effort to create a better life for those who circumstance has not smiled upon.

Yet, there’s something that aches inside of me these days, and it’s not the travails of old age. I have been blessed with a sound body and mind up through now and hope to retain it for so long as our creator sees fit to allow me to grace his good Earth. In my old age I ache for the companionship which I tossed aside as a young man in favor of my work. I ache for the lineage of my family that will die and be buried along with me. I ache from the loneliness of an old and tired man who has nothing but a decorated cave and hired servants as his daily company instead of a wife and children and grandchildren.

I delve into my work each day with unbridled furor, even now, to keep my mind at bay, but in those instances where I have time to myself I do truly wish I could tear out my heart and stomp upon it on the floor, so as to purge myself of the emotion that remains unrequited and so burdens me on cold winter nights such as these.

It is, perhaps, uncouth to complain about these things, and thusly the public sees the front of the executive board, of the man who runs it, and the edifice of the company that was built over the decades, and so it shall remain until I’ve passed back to dust. Still, there is a human man behind all of this, and a human struggle, even if it’s not given ready personification.

This letter will reach you, along with various personal effects and diaries cataloging my life, when I’ve rejoined my mother, father, and brother. I hope that it provides you with an interesting story to write about, and proves to be helpful to you.

May the future bless you with fulfillment of all your heart’s desires, and may you have the wisdom to find true richness in your life early.

Sincerely,

W.T. Marchman

The old man leaned back in his chair and stared ruefully across the room to the portraits of his father and mother. He folded the letter and put it in an envelope, sealing the back with wax and a signet, and stored it away in his desk drawer along with his catalogue of family history.

He walked out from the office to the front of his house, and made his way to the fountain in the middle of the roundabout. The snow was falling briskly now, and the chill of winter air blew deeper into his bones. He surveyed his home, and the fields and trees being blanketed in whites and greys, before turning back to go inside.

As he walked towards the front door he shook his head slightly and forced his troubles out of mind, and began to sort out his work for the next morning.