Breeding Ground (14 page)

“I didn't know that.”

“I don't suppose Spence would welcome my perspective.” Harrison said it like a statement, but the gray eyes studied Alan as though he were hoping Alan would contradict him.

“It's always a gamble. I knew a minister who used to say that an engaged couple
and
their families, right before the wedding, are temporarily insane.”

Bob Harrison smiled, then stared out the window for a minute. “That's an accurate description, even allowing for hyperbole.” He sighed slowly, as he took off his black-framed glasses and rubbed the muscles at the top of his jaws by the gray patches at his temples.

Alan laid a paper on his desk and leaned back in his chair. “Here's my take on the wormer formulations and the steroid cream for hives.”

Excerpt From Jo Grant's Journal:

…I went to church yesterday for the first time since Tommy's funeral and left before the last hymn. I knew what it'd be like, and I couldn't face everybody telling me how sorry they are and what a fine fella he'd been, and there “hadn't been a running back a hundred miles from Lexington like Tommy Grant since he'd graduated. And then he became a paratrooper too, and that was one tough bunch!”

There's also the contingent of female Sunday School teachers who remember him vividly for the way he used to look out for Billy Barnes, who'd spent two years in an iron lung, and Junior Terry too, who was what folks used to call slow.

And I knew some guy about T's age would take me aside and say he remembers when Tommy took that big galoot Jerry Joe Priest off behind the Presbyterian church on Pisgah Pike and beat the crap out of him for making fun of Junior.

It's not that I wouldn't want to hear all of it sometime. It just seems too soon. I think of myself as being somebody who'll blurt out just about anything, as though talking makes it easier, but maybe I'm not, under duress. Maybe when it really hurts, I go and clam up…

Tuesday, April 24, 1962

I
t was a hot morning, one of the hottest there'd been that spring, and Jo had left Toss and Buddy and the farrier sweating in the main broodmare barn. Buddy was holding horses for Jimmy, as he trimmed feet and set shoes, while Toss rolled around in his wheelchair hosing water into stall buckets and shooting the breeze with Jimmy.

Jo had wanted to strangle Toss before six that morning. He'd pulled himself up in bed, using the trapeze they'd hung above his head to make it easier to sit. But then he'd tried to stand on the leg with the cracked thigh bone instead of sliding into his chair, and lost his balance and fell. Which scared Jo to death, and probably Toss too. Everything about it had made him furious, and Jo had had to wrestle him up and into his chair, which made him even madder. He wasn't mad at her – it was having to be helped that made him crazy. But that didn't make it any easier to know how to deal with him, while worrying about what he'd do to himself.

Buddy was good with him, when they were in the barns. He could pick him up better too, if Toss were to fall.

But Jo had said, “God help me!” and meant it, as she drove down their long drive to McCowans Ferry Road where she turned left toward Versailles and the start of her drive north to Frankfort, and west from there to Louisville.

She thought about Alan off and on as she drove, and why he was willing to help Jack the way he was. She wondered about his family, and whether he'd ever been married, and how badly he'd been hurt in France, and how far he could walk with his injured leg. It seemed as though he did fine for a mile or so, but she wondered if he could manage several, if she ever decided to invite him to hike through the woods around the farm.

She knew he'd joined a “Y” so he could swim, and he'd said something about lifting weights. He looked like he was in really good shape, so he had to be doing something. And she figured that if he was serious about learning to ride, she could put him up on Sam sometime and give him a couple of lessons and see if it bothered his leg.

It bothered her that he still rode a motorcycle. Like a sitting duck, exposed to the world, at the mercy of every other driver. Which meant Alan could die the way Tom had through no fault of his own.

She stopped herself then, and asked what she was doing. She hadn't spent this much time thinking about a man since Nate two-timed her in Michigan.

Of course, her mom getting sick had had something to do with that. There hadn't been time for much of anything but her mother and her job at the architectural firm that didn't deserve to be called one.

She also hadn't seen a man who'd interested her. Who had character, and enthusiasms, and perspective worth thinking about. Not till she read what Tom said and then spent time with Alan.

Who probably thinks I'm an immature little sister, or a cold, selfish, snit who only cares about herself.

Not that it matters in the greater scheme. I'll get through this time with Toss, and then go see great architecture so I can do work that's worth doing. My life is going to be more than doing dishes, and taking care of a herd of horses, and cleaning up after a man.

Although Alan doesn't seem like someone who'd want a woman limited to that. He's deep. He thinks. You can trust him too, the way you could Tom. Or at least it looks like it now.

What you need is to keep yourself busy. Working on White Hall will help. And doing the lab for Alan.

And maybe it's time to try to write again. You could do a memoir of Tom, maybe. Bringing in bits from the journal. Or a story about the war – about being a kid growing up then. You spent your whole childhood writing stories. Why not start again?

Jo thought about that for quite awhile. What she might want to write, and why, and began to get really interested in what that might be, and how she'd do it.

Then she listened to music, and got bored and shut it off, and began thinking about Grace Willoughby and how she ought to approach her. She'd sounded polite and pleasant when she'd talked to her the night before, though a little concerned too about what Jo might be after.

She'd ended up saying she'd be happy to see her. But there'd been something reserved in her voice. Something that made Jo think of England. Of Jane Austen, and sharp-eyed hostesses, and proprieties to be observed.

Grace's house, when Jo found it, was east of Louisville on Blankenbaker Lane, and she had to drive past Locust Grove to get to it, the old Georgian house where “The Longknife”, George Rogers Clark, Revolutionary war hero, had lived and died of a stroke.

Grace Willoughby's house was much smaller and newer, though probably built in the late eighteen hundreds – a modest-sized Italianate Victorian, a two-story terracotta brick with a bay window in the front to the right of the broad double doors.

They were set back under a porch roof, and were made of intricately carved mahogany with etched glass panels on the top and a round brass doorbell set in the middle of the right hand door.

Half-a-minute after Jo figured out how to turn the brass knob and make it ring, a tiny white-haired woman opened the lefthand door, holding her glasses in one hand, while smiling up at Jo. She was dressed neatly in a tan tweed skirt and cream-colored blouse, both old but well cared for, and sturdy black pumps that were worn but polished.

She stepped back and ushered Jo in, while asking about Jo's trip, then led her into the living room where tufted Victorian sofas and chairs were centered around the fireplace, and starched open-work white lace curtains hung in front of the tall bay window and the two windows flanking the hearth.

The woodwork was heavy and dark. The floors bordering the blue Chinese rug were polished and almost black against pale robin's-egg aqua walls. All the upholstery was worn velvet in dark teal and maroon. And the coffee table – Victorian too – was set with flowered china teacups and a plate of lemon curd tarts.

They both drank Earl Grey tea and wiped tart crumbs from their lips with embroidered linen as they discussed Locust Hall and the Clark family, William Clark in particular, of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

They talked about Louisville and compared it to Lexington, and the places Grace Willoughby had lived as her husband was called from one church to another.

“I'm very fortunate to have settled here. Very fortunate indeed. Donald and I lived in manses all our married lives, and never would've expected to own our own home.” She smiled, as she twisted her narrow gold wedding band, and then poured Jo more tea. “It was a wonderfully kind spinster, a member of my husband's last congregation, who had been born and raised in this house, who enabled me to purchase it.”

“Did she?” Jo watched the old woman's face – the gentleness and the softness, and the kind of delight she usually saw on children and dogs who've been properly civilized – but there was something firm and disciplined in her eyes. The old-world dignity of a woman raised to be staunch as well as lady-like, whether anyone else is or not.

“She was ill herself at the time of his death, and I'd taken to visiting her, as one would, and we enjoyed each other's company a good deal. Yet it still came as a very great surprise when she offered to sell me her home and furnishings for a very modest sum. She did so with the understanding that she would continue to live here until she passed away.”

“That's unusual, isn't it?”

“Oh, my dear! You can't imagine how surprised I was. She intended her estate to be shared between her niece and nephew, but wished not to burden them with the selling of the house and contents. She gave them, before her death, the sum I'd given her, and continued to live here after I joined her.”

“So you acted as her caregiver?”

“In a manner of speaking. She wished to remain as self-sufficient as possible and maintain her own sense of dignity.”

“And it was when your husband had a church here in Louisville that you met Tara Wilson?”

“I'm so sorry, my dear. I digress entirely too much these days. Perhaps it's having fewer visitors with whom to converse.”

“No, please, it was interesting.”

Grace Willoughby crossed her well-shaped ankles, then brushed a crumb from her skirt. “I wonder if you would be willing to explain a bit more about why you wish to enquire into Tara's past?”

“A friend of mine has recently become engaged to Tara. I know for a fact that she treated a young man very unfairly when she was a teenager, and I've recently learned from Tara's aunt that she's done similar things since. I want to give my friend an opportunity to investigate her past for himself before they're actually married. I know he may not thank me for doing it, but I do feel obligated to place a few facts before him before it's too late.”

Grace Willoughby tucked a strand of soft white hair into her French twist with a small arthritic hand, then slowly sipped her tea. “I can sympathize with your intentions, as I said last night. I have certainly known of situations where such intervention might have prevented great misery. But that is only one consideration.”

She paused then, and toyed with her reading glasses, before adjusting the small pearl earring that had almost slipped from her ear. “You see, my dear, it seems to me we would all be done a great disservice if the measure of our characters were to be taken in our teens and twenties. It's a time of great upheaval and temptation, as well as vulnerability.”

“So you think we change over time?”

“Experience can teach, can it not? One may become more discerning and mature. Discipline may develop. One may broaden and strengthen. Or soften, perhaps, instead. For there are some who would do well to empathize more fully with those more fragile than they.”

“I hadn't stopped to think about it in exactly those terms.” Jo studied Grace for a moment, and then ate the last of her tart.

“I do not wish to be unfair to Tara. There were admirable traits to be taken into account. She'd applied herself, on her own, to earn some sort of accounting credentials, as well as her G.R.E. degree in college preparatory subjects. She was given natural intelligence and some degree of intellectual curiosity, and she seemed to be reasonably self-motivated. Though a number of her actions did cause me grave concern.”

“Having to do with men?” Jo smiled sardonically, while watching Grace for her reaction.

“In part. Though certain of her proclivities were not easily observed. My husband, God rest his soul, did not at fist notice the earliest signs of questionable behavior that I found disturbing, but once he became aware, his ire was harder to dampen.”

Grace Willoughby smiled then, and gazed across at a photograph on the writing surface of a walnut secretary – an eight-by-ten black and white photograph of a strong-looking man in three-piece tweeds, holding a walking stick in one large hand, on the edge of a mountain lake. “I couldn't have asked for a more admirable or congenial husband, and I very much miss his conversation. Still…”

Grace set her cup back in its saucer and smoothed her skirt across her knees. “In answer to your previous question, I met Tara when she visited my husband's church. She was just nineteen, as I recall. And after attending a second or third service, she asked to speak to Donald in private.

“She told him she'd had a child out of wedlock, that the baby's father had taken the daughter and run off to parts unknown, leaving her homeless and destitute. She said she'd been searching for work, but so far in vain, while sleeping on a neighbor's couch. She was presentable and polite and well spoken, and seemed to him a fragile waif blown upon our shores by the very real tempests of everyday life.

“My husband invited her to stay with us, which was very much his way. We'd taken in others on several occasions in the past, and I was happy to welcome Tara as well. Donald was instrumental in finding her a secretarial and accounting position in a Louisville car dealership owned by one of our deacons, and she lived with us for three or four months. I don't remember precisely.