Everything She Ever Wanted (6 page)

remained crystalline in her mind ever after.
 
"Mr. Allanson," she

said.

"I didn't want to corner and see you, but I had to come .
 
. . because

I've tried to have you all meet us.
 
I couldn't believe all the things

I've heard-that you were a stern man and a hard man-and I just can't

believe any father could be like that.
 
. . . Tommy's not said

anything, but I can see his heart has to be breaking inside from the

attitude that you and his mother have with him.........

Walter Allanson was hardly cowed by the indignant words of the woman

before him.
 
"Mrs. Radcliffe," he said ominously.
 
"Let me tell you

something.
 
I'm Scotch, I'm a strict disciplinarian, and I'm a stern

man.
 
I have schooled myself that when I'm finished with someone, I'm

finished with them.
 
I don't have a son.

"Mr.
 
Allanson," Margureitte said, "you don't mean that.

11 Deep down inside you, this is some kind of front that' t you are

putting on.
 
Deep down inside you, you have to have some feeling.
 
',

"No, Mrs. Radcliffe, I do not.
 
. . . If Tommy would drop dead today,

I would not go to his funeral, and if he was dying and would ever call

me, I would not lift a finger to help him.
 
In fact, I would do

everything I can to ruin him."

"Mr.
 
Allanson!
 
Have you always felt this way about him?"

"No.
 
About a year ago, he changed.
 
I think the boy has a tumor."

Margureitte drew herself up.
 
"Well, if I thought a child of mine had a

tumor, rather than accusing him of things, I think I'd do everything I

could to persuade him to seek the proper medical advice."

"He won't pay any attention to me," Walter Allanson said.
 
Then he

mentioned the formaldehyde in the baby's milk again, and added that Tom

had also put sugar in the gas tank of his car on May 9.

"That couldn't be," Margureitte countered.
 
"Tom was in Stone Mountain

getting married on that day; there were at least three hundred people

at his wedding.
 
Really and truly, Mr. Allanson, you must have

something back in your cases and you should be looking there instead of

thinking that everything that happens is Tommy's fault."

"Well," Allanson said, leaning across his desk and glaring at

Margureitte, "I want to tell you what he did, Yesterday morning,

sometime between nine A.m.

and one-thirty P.m someone broke into our house and stole three

guns."

Walter Allanson wanted the weapons back and he instructed Margureitte

to have Tom mail them to him.
 
"He's not to come and bring them to me,

because I'll kill him when I see him.
 
If he doesn't mail them to me,

or the police department doesn't make the case against him, then I'll

get him."

Margureitte blanched.
 
"Mr Allanson, you can't mean that.
 
. . . Even

though your son hasn't done anything to you?
 
If he came to you and

said, 'Dad, I don't know what this is about, but can't we sit down and

talk it over and let bygones-let it be over with,' Mr. Allanson, you

couldn't forgive your son?"

"No.
 
I'm finished.
 
I don't have a son.
 
I don't have a daughterin-law

either.
 
Your daughter is not my daughter-in-law."

Her face stiff with horror, Margureitte Radcliffe left Walter W,

Allanson's office.
 
Her visit had only made things worse.

EveryU", one in the family felt it.
 
The atmosphere at Kentwood in late

June was thick with tension.

Liz Price, an old friend of Tom's and a horse show acquaintance of

Pat's, owned a farm seven miles south of Kentwood.
 
Her daughter,

johnette, exercised their horses three or four days a week and

occasionally rode the Morgans in shows.
 
Liz was present when Tom

walked into the kitchen one evening with an onion from the garden and

presented it to Pat with a flourish.
 
Liz was surprised to see Pat

frown and brush his hand away fretfully.
 
"She was always fussing at

him," Liz recalled.

Pat's daughter, Susan Alford, who was twenty-one that summer and often

came out to Kentwood with her baby son, Sean, had always been able to

gauge her mother's moods; she saw that Pat was strung out to a fine

thread.
 
She picked at Tom for having no backbone.
 
She demanded that

he defend her honor, go to his parents andforce them to welcome her

into the family circle as his wife.

Susan saw that Tom was so completely smitten with Pat that he would do

anything to please her, at least anything within his power.

But Tom knew he had no power at all with his father.
 
He never had.

Pat's aunt Alma rocked on the porch glider one velvet night in June,

but she couldn't relax.
 
"I can't put my finger on it," she commented

to Liz Price, "but something bad's fixing to happen.)$ .
 
. .

On June 28, Pat was alone at Kentwood.
 
Tom had gone over to

Barnesville to shoe horses, and Ronnie had said he would be in Zebulon

on a painting job.

It was a glorious sunny day and Pat was finally feeling well enough to

do a little more work around the place.
 
She got out the riding mower

to cut the grass.
 
In a statement she later gave to a Pike County

deputy, she described the terror she had endured that afternoon.

I was there by myself and we have a great big huge yard; we have

fifty-something acres there .
 
. . and I was cutting way up the very

front part of the road-which is a long way from the house.
 
I was on

the small riding mower and I was just nonchalantly cutting around.
 
I

had just started cutting .
 
. . a I nd I saw a truck go by.
 
It looked

just like our truck, a blue camper truck.
 
I knew it wasn't ours

because the camper top was off.
 
. .

. You know how something just goes through your mind and it just sort

of sticks?
 
I went on around-it was a good acre-and there is a big tall

hedgerow about fourteen feet high between our farm and the field next

to us and .
 
. . I could see the top of a camper.

I thought, Well, gee, that man must have had trouble with his truck.

.

. . And all of a sudden I got right at the end of the hedgerow where we

have a great big tall tree.
 
And there he stood.

Sleeves rolled up, and he just dropped his pants.
 
. . . I didn't know

what to do.
 
I slammed the brakes on the tractor and it seemed like I

was frozen for an hour, but I know it wasn't but a second."

Pat told the deputy the most shocking part of her ordeal.

She recognized the man.
 
She had seen him for years around East Point,

and lately his picture had been in all the papers and on political

signs.
 
The man who had exposed himself to her was Walter Allanson, her

husband's father!

"I was sure it was him.
 
The only thing that threw me offthere was a

cigar in the man's mouth.
 
. . . I had never seen his daddy smoke a

cigar.
 
. . . I have never seen him with anything except a cigarette in

his mouth.
 
. . . I slammed the tractor into third gear.
 
It doesn't go

very fast.
 
I headed across to go to the neighbors next door, and there

were no cars over there, so I headed back up my long, winding driveway

and another acre to get back to the house.
 
I ran straight into the

house."

Tom always kept his "shoeing book" right there in the house so that Pat

would know exactly where he was all the time in case she had a "sinking

spell."
 
Pat hadn't called the sheriff first; she called Tom.
 
She was

in such a panic that he could barely understand her, but then she

blurted out that his father had stood right out there in their hedgerow

and exposed his penis to her.

Tom could scarcely take in what she was saying, but one thing was

certain-she was hysterical.
 
"He said, 'Shug, for crying out loud, stop

and hang up the phone and call the sheriff!"
 
And Pat had done just

that.
 
The sheriff told her he was on his way, and before Pat could

dial again, the phone rang.
 
It was Ronnie, calling from Atlanta, where

he was visiting Margureitte.

She was so frightened that she really wasn't sure where Ronnie was, she

told the sheriff later.
 
She had thought he was in ZebuIon painting a

house.

But then, who knew where Ronnie was half the time?
 
He and his friend,

Cecil "Rocky" Kenway-who often stayed at Kentwood with him-were like

most teenagers, taking off for God knows where whenever they pleased.

Ronnie told his mother that he had had a sudden presentiment about

her.

"Mom, I don't know why-I just wanted to call and see if everything's

all right."

Pat began to tell her son what had happened, when Ronnie stopped her

and said, "Mother, are the doors locked?"

"Oh, my God, I don't know.
 
Wait a minute.
 
I'll call you back.

She set the phone down and ran to lock all the doors in the house, but

then she was struck with a terrible thought: Oh my God, what if I've

locked him in the house with me?
 
He could have come up the hedgerow

that lines the back of the house....

Ronnie held on the line until Pike County's chief deputy sheriff, Billy

Riggins, raced the two and a half miles from the courthouse in Zebulon

to Kentwood.
 
Riggins found an attractive but hysterical woman standing

at the kitchen phone, clutching an unloaded .22 rifle.
 
Since Riggins