Roses (41 page)

“Percy, you know that Ollie will accept no money from you outright,” she said, sitting down at last and imploring him from
the edge of her chair. “You could empty your bank vault into his lap, and he wouldn’t accept it. However… if you can convince
him of your crucial need for that land and of the job opportunities a pulp mill would provide the community, then Ollie might
go along with accepting money from the sale. As a matter of fact”—her tone lifted—“he made an agreement with me long ago when
he gave me his signature to save Somerset after the harvest failed….” Her eyes begged forgiveness for bringing up a painful
memory. “I made him promise that he would allow me to help him if he was ever in my situation. I’m going to hold him to that
promise, if you will help me.”

Percy removed his arm from the back of the couch and hunched forward. Her arguments made good, if criminal, sense. They’d
all benefit if he bought that Sabine strip. Even if Mary was unable to keep Somerset afloat—and that was a decided possibility—the
store would provide a living and a possible inheritance for Matthew as well. No one stood to lose—except William. “One thing
you’ve forgotten, Mary,” he said. “Ollie will never permit you to sell William’s land. He’ll expect you to abide by the terms
Miles spelled out.”

There was a small silence filled by the katydids striking up a chorus from the lake’s edge. Percy’s scalp hair tingled. He
recognized the nature of that silence. “What are you not telling me?” he asked.

“Ollie hasn’t seen the letter,” she said. “I… didn’t show it to him when it arrived. I told him only that I’d received a letter
asking that we take William in, but I pretended I misplaced it. I showed him only the deed with my name on it and told him
that Miles had transferred it to me when he learned he was dying.”

Percy forced down a surge of revulsion. He visualized Miles, dying of agonizing lung cancer, writing the letter in trust that
his sister would do the right thing by his son. “Then why the hell did you show
me
the letter, Mary? I would have bought the land without ever knowing Miles asked you to hold it for William.”

She looked at him helplessly, shamefaced. “I… guess I couldn’t bring myself to deceive you, too, Percy. I… didn’t want you
to agree to my proposal without knowing the truth.” A flush heightened the perfection of her cheekbones. “I wanted you to
know everything, so that you… could refuse without… guilt.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. As if you thought I
would
!” He pounced up. “Where’s that Scotch?” He struck off to the kitchen alcove and rattled around in a paper sack, Mary watching
fearfully as he found the bottle and poured a stiff drink. After a moment of letting the Scotch do its work, he said, “Maybe
there’s another way.”

“What is that?”

“I could go to Holstein, offer to buy the mortgages. Ollie need never know I’m the buyer. I could extend him as much time
as he needs to meet his loan.”

Hope flamed in her face. “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think it’s possible?”

“Let me give it a try. If Holstein refuses, I’ll agree to your proposal, but you must swear one thing to me, Mary.” His tone
warned against any thought of deception.

“Anything,” she said.

“You must swear that you’re asking this of me on behalf of Ollie and not Somerset.”

“I swear… on my son’s soul.”

“Then you better make damn sure you’re not putting it in jeopardy.” He set down his glass. “I’ll need a few days to meet with
Holstein, then I’ll contact you by letter. I’ll send one of my boys around with it. We can’t chance the phone.”

A week later, Percy sat at his office desk and composed a letter to Mary. He had failed in his negotiations with Levi Holstein.
Not only had the retailer hooted away his generous offer, saying that he’d waited half a lifetime to acquire department stores
of the DuMont quality, but he’d sneered that Ollie had only himself to thank for his financial pickle. “He lacks good business
sense,” he’d declared in his mean little office in Houston, tapping his forehead with a jaundiced-nailed finger. “What store
owner in his right mind accepts IOUs for goods in times like these? What landlord refuses to evict tenants who do not pay
their rents when the oilfield workers flooding East Texas would pay double for a place to live?”

“A good man, maybe?” Percy had suggested.

“A
foolish
man, Mr. Warwick—of the kind that you and I are not.”

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Holstein?” Percy had asked, and watched the man’s face pale from the implication.

He sealed the envelope and summoned one of the mail boys up from the basement. “Take this letter to Mrs. DuMont and put it
directly into her hands. No one else’s. Understood?”

“Understood, Mr. Warwick.”

From his top-floor window, Percy, with an acrid taste in his mouth, watched the boy pedal off on his bike. The pathway to
hell was paved with good intentions, but what about the wrongs committed for the right reasons? Were they included as well?
Life had taught him that anything that starts wrong, ends wrong. In this case, he supposed that only time and its unpredictable
mercies would tell.

H
OWBUTKER
, S
EPTEMBER
1937

P
ercy sat in the Warwick pew waiting for the church service to begin, lulled into inertia by the hum of conversation around
him and the drowsy whirr of overhead fans. He was the only member of his family present. Lucy had once contemplated converting
from Catholicism when they married but never had, and Wyatt had spent the night—as he did every Saturday night—at the DuMonts’.
Unless Ollie had cracked the whip this morning, odds were the boys would not make it to church but were probably still in
the rack or devouring stacks of Sassie’s pancakes drowning in butter and ribbon cane syrup. Of the two families, only he and
Ollie attended church regularly. Mary was an inconsistent churchgoer, usually spending her Sunday mornings going over accounts
at the Ledbetter place, and Lucy, a nonpracticing Catholic, spent hers sleeping in.

Ollie must have cracked the whip, Percy observed in amusement. A side door of the church opened, and his old friend stepped
through, followed by Matthew, Wyatt, and Miles’s son, William. Percy smiled to himself. He could imagine the scene this morning
with Ollie and Sassie getting that trio scrubbed and brushed and harnessed into suits and neckties. No doubt Mary had left
for the Ledbetter place before daybreak, since it was now harvesttime.

All four saw him. Ollie’s face broke into its usual broad smile, eyes turning ceilingward in mock long sufferance of the morning’s
ordeal, and Matthew and William each grinned and waved. Only Wyatt’s countenance remained impassive, his eyes sliding away
from his father without acknowledgment.

Percy watched the boys follow Ollie down the far aisle to the DuMont pew, Wyatt maneuvering to get a seat next to Matthew.
He could not help but feel a stab of envy as he stared at his friend seating himself, both of his sons on one side of him,
and now Miles’s son belonging to him, too. Ollie would not sit in his pew wondering, with a tug of loneliness, what he would
do with himself for the rest of the day, as Percy was now doing. Ollie would go home at the end of the church service, the
boys in tow, and Mary would be there waiting, the house smelling of baking ham or frying chicken or roasting beef. He and
Mary would sit on the screened back porch, she drinking her iced tea and Ollie his French wine, while the boys did their best
not to rend asunder their Sunday suits until dinner was over and they were free to change. Afterward he’d grab a nap while
Mary did her bookkeeping and the boys were out on the lawn playing the same games that Percy and Ollie and Miles had played
every Sunday of their lives when they were growing up. In late afternoon, there’d be a rousing game of cards followed by a
light supper—maybe even fudge—and Ollie would finish the day with his family gathered around the radio. A wonderful Sunday,
that. None better. Percy remembered those kinds of Sundays in his own home when his parents had been alive, and before Lucy.
Odds were he’d never experience their like again.

The church service began. Percy went through the motions of participation, his attention on his two sons sitting side by side
a few pews down the other side of the aisle. How unalike they were. And how odd that both should so thoroughly resemble their
mothers. They took only their height from him, Matthew at sixteen and Wyatt nine months younger, already standing a head taller
than their peers.

Wyatt possessed the male version of Lucy’s solid, compact form, while Matthew had inherited Mary’s long, willowy frame. Posture
would always be a problem for Wyatt, whereas it never would for Matthew. Percy wished there were a device to stretch Wyatt’s
stumpy neck and correct the oafish slump of his shoulders. In comparison, his older brother sat in the pew with his head high,
back straight, and shoulders squared, all held with Mary’s effortless grace.

This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased….

Rising to sing with the congregation, Percy remonstrated with himself over the unfairness in being pleased with only one son.
He should be pleased with Wyatt, too. The boy tried harder at what came naturally to Matthew and therefore more easily. Only
aggression was natural to Wyatt, a sort of controlled belligerence that stood him in good stead in playing football, a sport
at which both boys excelled. It surprised Percy that Wyatt took so readily to the bridle of rules and discipline and team
play required to play football. But he did, and with a total commitment that Percy could not help but admire.

The boys had been playing the game since each was in the seventh grade and were now co-captains of the junior varsity team.
Their group was being predicted to lead Howbutker to its first state championship, a future thrill that both Percy and Ollie
looked forward to eagerly.

The two men often attended practice sessions together but saw the game with their wives separately, occupying seats on the
fifty-yard line at each end of their row. Matthew played quarterback; Wyatt was an offensive lineman who led his teammates
in protecting their leader and opening holes for him to streak through. Lucy’s eyes never left Wyatt’s bull-like figure on
the field. Percy’s rarely strayed from Matthew’s thoroughbred form. He could not believe the boy’s agility in outmaneuvering
his opponents, his intelligence in calling plays, the sheer magic of his skill in firing the ball to a receiver in the end
zone. It was breathtaking, it was wonderful. Inside himself, as the roar of the hometown crowd filled his ears, he’d shout:
That’s my son! That’s my son!

But there was reason to be proud of Wyatt, too. Though slow to comprehend, he retained everything he learned. He was conscientious
in his studies, staying up as a matter of routine until all hours of the night to wrestle with the dragons of his homework.
Percy kept an eye on his academic progress through Sara, and from her he learned of his son’s near failures and close victories,
marks that never reflected his effort and perseverance.

Whenever he returned late from meetings or a visit to Sara’s and saw a light still on in his son’s bedroom, he did not step
inside to ask how it was going, the way he once had. Wyatt had not appeared to welcome these intrusions and had merely grunted
an answer without lifting his head from his books.

He labored hard when put to work at the mills also. Managers extolled his efforts, as amazed as Percy that he did not take
advantage of being the boss’s son to shirk his duties any more than he used his father’s position as president of the school
board to wangle favors from his teachers. Wyatt accepted Percy’s praise in these matters with the same dispassion with which
Percy suspected his son would take his criticism. His indifference eased Percy’s shame that Wyatt’s dogged victories, his
heroic efforts, never reached his heart like Matthew’s easier, more natural ones.

A cough broke the listening silence of the congregation as the scripture was read. A number of heads, including Percy’s, turned
toward the DuMonts’ pew. The perpetrator had been Matthew. Percy saw Ollie discreetly slip him his handkerchief. Matthew coughed
into it, a deep, jacket-tightening hack that drew Wyatt’s worried gaze.

Percy felt a jab of concern. The boy’s coming down with a cold, he thought, glad that Ollie would be there to look after him.
He wouldn’t have to worry about Ollie running off to the store and leaving Matthew at home ill.

“… give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap,”
the minister read. “For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Percy listened to the Text and his eyes went again to Ollie. There, sitting beside his friend and waiting at home, was proof
of the scripture’s promise. Ollie had always given full measure without counting the cost. Of all the men he’d ever known,
or would know, Ollie was the most giving. If he’d had to lose the woman he loved to another man, he was glad it was Ollie.
If he’d had to give up the son he could not claim to another to raise, he was glad it was Ollie. If his other son turned from
him to another father to honor and love, he was glad it was Ollie. Ollie’s cup did indeed run over, and deservedly so. Percy
was happy for him. He questioned only how it was that he had ended up with a measure so much less.

The service was ending. As the congregation rose for the benediction, Matthew flashed him a grin over his shoulder and jiggled
his eyebrows. Percy chuckled, but his concern deepened. The boy looked pale and a little thinner than when he’d last seen
him. Once the prayer was finished, he waited by his pew for Ollie and his charges to draw abreast.

“How about coming to the house for Sunday dinner, Percy?” Ollie invited. “Sassie’s having chicken and dumplings. Matthew here”—he
gave the boy’s shoulder a mock punch—“has been off his feed lately, and Sassie thought that might be just the ticket to get
him eating again. Me, I don’t need an excuse to eat Sassie’s chicken and dumplings. I hope nobody heard my stomach growling.”