Graves' Retreat (21 page)

    He was sweating so much that drops of perspiration fell from his fingers to the paper on which he wrote, splotching the ink.

    He knelt down to tape Byron’s paper back in the same way it had been.

    Now came the second-riskiest part of the afternoon. Now he had to leave Byron’s office without being seen.

    He went up to the door. Pressed his ear to it. Listened carefully.

    Distantly, he heard the standard hubbub of the bank. From down the hall floated the conversation of the women in the accounting department. They were talking about their plans for the Fourth.

    He gentled the door open.

    Started to peek out.

    Saw nothing.

    He would just have to chance it. Bolt out into the hall as he’d bolted into the office.

    He took several deep breaths, wiped sweat from his brow and plunged out into the corridor the way he had, as a boy, plunged into the deep, icy darkness of a swimming hole.

    He stood in the middle of the hall, looking around and realizing that he had been completely successful.

    Nobody had spotted him.

    He felt good about himself-good about his chances of keeping May Tolan and his life in Cedar Rapids-all the way back to his teller station.

    Then the gloom was on him again because waiting for him, wide and ominous in a dark suit, was Black Jake Early.

    

    

    Susan noticed something different about Byron the moment he turned around.

    The difference was in his eyes. The confidence she saw there. The confidence she’d been waiting to see for years.

    “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.

    Softly, she replied, “I know about it already.”

    “You know?”

    “Let’s go for a walk.”

    The day was so vividly green it almost hurt to look on it. A bluebird perched comically on the branch of a pine. The air almost choked with summer.

    They were ten feet down the winding brick path before she smelled an unfamiliar odor on Byron. Alcohol.

    “Were you drinking when you saw Father?”

    “No,” he said. “After.”

    “That’s very unlike you, Byron.”

    He paused and looked at her. “Are you disappointed?”

    She looked right back at him. “No, just-surprised, I suppose.”

    “About my drinking so early in the day or saying what I said to your father?”

    She smiled faintly. “Probably both.”

    Byron sighed. “I hurt his feelings.”

    “Very much.”

    “I-meant to.”

    “I know.”

    “He’s treated us badly. No-he’s treated everybody badly.”

    She looked at the grounds, the black iron gates at the front of the estate, the sweet smell of road apples from the recent passage of horses, the line of hazy blue hills to the east.

    “I always thought I’d be happy when this day came,” she said. “Are you-angry with me?”

    She shook her head. “I’m partially responsible. I encouraged it.”

    “Then you're sad?”

    “He won’t come out of his room.”

    “Damn,” Byron said. “Damn.” He slammed his fist into his palm. “I shouldn’t have handled it that way. I should have been gentler.” She touched his sleeve. “You had a lot of anger pent up in you.”

    “Still-”

    This time she touched his cheek. “You did it for me. I know that.”

    “Not for you.”

    “No?”

    “No-for us.”

    She nodded.

    “I just wish-”

    “It came out the way it had to come out, Byron.”

    “I feel sorry for him.”

    “So do I.”

    “Perhaps if I went to see him-”

    “No,” she said, “this time it’s my responsibility.”

    “You’re sure?”

    “Yes.”

    He stared at her. “May I see you tonight?”

    She wanted to smile, but she was too melancholy. “Yes, yes, I’d like that very much.”

    “How about Omaha?”

    She said, without inflection, “I’m not sure yet, Byron.”

    “I had hoped-once I spoke up to your father-well, hoped that…

    She took his hand again, squeezed it gently. “I know, Byron. I know.” She nodded to the great house behind her. It was a silly house in its way, too much gingerbreading and too many spires and too many needless rooms. “I’d better go now.”

    He nodded.

    “I’ll meet you by the gate,” he said. “Save us all the embarrassment.”

    “No,” she said. “No. Come to the front door and knock.”

    “You’re sure?”

    She watched him a moment. He no longer looked so afraid of things. “I’m sure.”

    Then she turned and went back to the house.

    

    

    Inside, in the cool shadows of the vestibule, she paused a moment and looked up the winding staircase that led to her father’s den on the second floor.

    It would not be easy, she knew.

    Not at all.

    The second-floor hall, the maid having just finished, was brilliant with the tangy smell of furniture polish. She hesitated before the den’s door, then knocked softly.

    She heard a stick match flare, but that was the only sound.

    Lighting his cigar, she knew.

    He did not acknowledge her knock.

    The second time, she rapped more sharply.

    He said, “I’ve already told you that I want to be alone.”

    “It’s Susan.”

    Even from behind the door, she could hear the sharp intake of breath.

    “Go away.” Anger was obvious in his voice.

    “There’s no use putting it off. We need to talk.”

    “Your boyfriend has already said more than enough.”

    “It needed to be said, Father.”

    “Then if you believe that, you and I have nothing to say to each other.”

    “Please open the door and let me come in. We really do need to talk.”

    There was silence inside, then the scrape of a chair and an old man’s sigh as he rose.

    He crossed the hardwood floor, the stiff soles of his shoes slapping the wood, and unlocked the door.

    Unlocked it.

    But he left it to her to actually put her hand on the knob and open it.

    By the time she did it, he was back in his rocking chair before the window where he could look for miles across the town. Around him were hundreds of fancy leather-bound volumes-everyone from Plutarch to Thomas Jefferson-but the books provided him no succor or wisdom she knew, because he could scarcely read. His people had come up from the South in a migration that took eight months to complete, and unlike the earlier Southerners who had settled in Cedar Rapids, his kin were not first families or rich folk, they were instead from the poor Delta where education was as hard to come by as a fancy carriage. He never saw them now-not his brothers or his sisters-for they had used him too meanly, carved on his success like a feast lost in its own consumption. Yet late one night she’d glimpsed him staring at an old family photograph and sensed in him a great loneliness. He would be “buried without his blood,” he’d said to her drunkenly one night. And she had not needed to ask what he’d meant.

    She went over and sat on the edge of the mahogany shelf that stretched before the windows.

    “I’m sorry it had to come out so harshly.”

    He looked up at her. Stunned, she realized he’d been crying.

    “I’m sorry it had to come out at all,” he said.

    She had never seen him appear so old or exhausted. The words seemed to come from him one by one-as if wrenched from him; and his gaze was so vulnerable, she knew she could have pushed him over in his chair with only a push of her finger.

    He was an old man, but until now his rage and bluster had disguised the fact. But there was no denying it now. He sat there white of hair and flushed of face, liver spots browning his peasant hands, and the loose flesh of his neck forming into wattles. He seemed incapable of anything even remotely as formidable as rage.

    She had never before realized that he was going to die-somehow his anger would keep him immune-as if God would not dare take him.

    But now the truth had impressed itself on her and suddenly she broke into tears and crossed to him and put her face to his.

    At first, predictably, he pushed her away, but she came back and this time he let her stay, and finally he even put his hand on her cheek, the way he had when she was a little girl, and then he said, trying to recapture some of the bark she was used to, “Now don’t go getting emotional on me, Susan. You’re the only one in this family with a head on her shoulders.”

    “Damn you,” she said, but she was laughing-she had never felt

    giddier or sillier-but she just kept saying it over and over, “Damn you, damn you,” and laughing all the time.

    “ ‘Damn you,’ ” he said. “That’s a nice thing to say to your father.” But he apparently understood the meaning behind it because he began to smile, as if to complement her laughter.

    “I don’t want him in my house ever again,” he said.

    “He’s coming tonight.”

    “Not to this house.”

    “It’s my house as much as yours.”

    “Did you pay for it?”

    She touched his face. She was still crying and laughing. “Of course I did. Every day of my life. Putting up with you.”

    He started to say something, but she put up a hand.

    "And you’re wrong about the members of this family. My two brothers and my mother are perfectly levelheaded-it’s just that you never gave them a chance. John you forced to become a lawyer and Michael you forced to become a banker. And Mother you’ve forced to become your slave.”

    “I thought you came here to make amends,” he said, sounding surprised.

    “No,” she said, “I came here for two reasons. To tell you that I love you and-to tell you the truth.”

    Both of which she then proceeded to do.

    

    

    "You seen your brother?” asked Black Jake Early.

    “You couldn’t have waited to see me after work?” Les said.

    “I’m not planning to stay here any longer than I need to.” He leaned toward the cage. “I’ve got a message for him.”

    A woman waited impatiently behind the massive Indian. Obviously she cared neither for people of red skin nor for people who shilly-shallied with bank clerks.

    “I told you. I haven’t seen my brother for some time,” Les said. He talked between his teeth so that nobody but Early could hear him. “Now please get out of here.”

    Early leaned in even closer. “By the time the trial comes up and the Judge gets around to passing sentence, there’s a good possibility your brother could have another year of life. This way-” Early mopped sweat from his face with a blue handkerchief that looked half the size of a bedsheet. “This way, if I have to take him down myself, he may be dead before midnight.” He shrugged. “He’s around here, Les, and I’m going to find him.”

    “Doesn’t seem you’ve done too good a job so far.”

    Early smiled. “Not so far. But then I’m not the flashy sort. Just steady.”

    “Are you about through?” the woman behind Early said, leaning past the Indian so Les would be sure to see her.

    Early turned around and said, “Ma’am, you’ve got business here but so do I, believe it or not.”

    He said it with enough heat that she was reduced to simpering. Early looked back at Les. “I’d think about it if I was you. Maybe it doesn't seem like much, but it’s another year you could be buying him. That’s worth something anyway.”

    Then he turned back to the woman and said, “Now, ma'am, you can go on and conduct that almighty important business of yours.” Early doffed his hat to the lady and then promptly left the bank.

    At practice later Harding said, “Well, you seen ’em, right?”

    “Right,” answered several of the players lined along the bench.

    “And they ain’t no Greek gods, are they?”

    This was obviously the part of his warm-up talk where Harding hoped to persuade his players that there was nothing to fear.

    “No, but they might pass until something better comes along,” joked one of the men.

    Several of the men laughed.

    Les sat in the middle. He had suited up right after work and come directly to the stadium. He was hot and tired in his woolen uniform. When he closed his eyes, his nose filled with the clean scent of the grass that had been cut just that afternoon. When he opened them, his eyes scanned the opposing stands for sight of May Tolan. No sign of her yet.

    “So don’t play yourself out this afternoon,” Harding was saying, “but make sure you get a good, hard practice.” He nodded to Les. “I don’t want you to throw no more than twenty pitches this afternoon.”

    Les nodded.

    “So let’s get going,” Harding yelled, clapping his hands together, “and remember that just because they’re considered the best don’t mean nothing to us, right?”

    “Right!” the men said.

    Les only wished they sounded a little more positive and enthusiastic-and wished he felt likewise.

    

    

    For the next half hour, he watched as the stands filled up with fans and well-wishers. Mothers hoisted up infants for a better look at the held, as if the infants had any idea what was going on; and daddies, being pulled, answered interminable questions from sons about various baseball teams, most notably the St. Louis Unions, who had surprised everybody this summer of 1884. Even the mayor turned out, surrounded by cronies in straw hats and carrying stogies the size of rake handles.