Everything She Ever Wanted (2 page)

shelter-and love-when no one else would.
 
Pat's mother, Margureitte,

was the kindest woman he had ever known; she would do anything to help

her children and grandchildren, and Tom respected the colonel for his

army service and for his dignity and military bearing.
 
He pleaded with

Pat to marry him as soon as his divorce was final.

Pat couldn't take stress or dissension or disappointments.

When Tom listened to her speak of her longings, he realized that what

she wanted in this world wasn't that much; she just wanted it so

badly.

He vowed to do whatever he could to make her life so happy and calm

that she would regain her health.

Pat had one special dream-a dream that no man yet had been able to make

come true.
 
She longed to live on her own plantation.

More than a century had passed since the Civil War, but Pat yearned for

the genteel life of a southern belle as it was evoked in Margaret

Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind.
 
She wanted her own
Tara
; she

wanted to be Scarlett O'Hara.
 
Somehow, someday, she believed Tom was

going to get her her own place, a spread of land where she could hold

her head up proudly.
 
A place where she could grow the roses she loved

so.

"I'm like a rose, Tom," she explained softly.
 
"And like a rose, I'm

selfish.
 
I want all the sun for myself, all the rain.

Roses need everything so that they can bloom and be beautiful."

She wasn't really selfish, he knew.
 
It was only her appetite for life,

for love, she spoke of.
 
That was one of the things he admired about

her: she reached out for life with her two hands, grasping all its

wonder and clasping it to her breasts.
 
She made him see what could

be-should be-for them.

Together, that first October, they came across a place that seemed

meant just for them.
 
Pat was having a good week, feeling strong and

healthy, and she and Tom went deer hunting.
 
He was so proud of her.

The way she tramped around the woods with him, cooked over a campfire,

and loaded her own gun, shouldering it as well as any man, amazed

him.

"She knew more about guns than most men," he said later.
 
"She had me

buy a .44 carbine so she could go deer hunting with me-that's a

powerful carbine."

She was such a remarkable woman.
 
Pat could do just about anything.

They cuddled together through the long cool
Georgia
nights, warming

themselves with a sexual fervor that had not diminished with

familiarity, but had only grown more intense.
 
So it seemed a good omen

for their future together when they found the red brick house with a

porch all around it in Zebulon during their hunting trip.
 
There was a

For
Sale
sign on it, and they learned it was the old "Hoyt Waller

place" and that Waller was selling it because he was divesting himself

of some of his many real estate holdings.

After Pat pointed out the tremendous potential just waiting to be

tapped in the sprawling farm, what they could do with it, Tom was as

wild to have it as she was.
 
The place was right on Highway 19 a few

miles north of Zebulon.
 
Its four hundred feet of road frontage was

fenced in with freshly painted white horizontal boards.
 
There were

soaring pine trees beyond the roadside meadow and a curving drive wound

between tall
Georgia
holly bushes all the way back to the brick house

and the barn.

"It was just perfect," Tom remembered.
 
"I wanted to stay there until

the day I died.
 
It had everything I ever wanted.
 
The house was a

brick ranch-style house.
 
It had a twenty-five-acre pecan grove plus

twenty-seven more acres.
 
It had everything you could ask for.
 
It was

the most beautifully landscaped place.
 
It had the orchards.
 
It had

the garden spots.
 
It had the vineyards.

Apple trees.
 
Pecan trees.
 
Pear trees.
 
Catalpa trees.
 
Rose

gardens.

It had a beaver pond on the back side of it, and the pastures, the

deer, the quail.
 
It was just a beautiful place.........

All they had to do was figure out a way to buy it.
 
Waller wanted

forty-two thousand dollars for the spread, and it would take some fancy

financing for Pat and Tom to swing that.
 
There was money in Tom's

family, all right.
 
His father was a successful
East Point
attorney who

had made a bundle of money in land deals.
 
Still, Tom knew his father

wasn't likely to help him out.
 
He couldn't remember the last time he

had done anything his parents approved of.
 
They were still so angry

about his second divorce, there was no point in even asking them for

help.

Anyway, it seemed that his father enjoyed watching him fail.

Tom was the last of three Walter Allansons.
 
Old "Paw"Walter

Allanson-was the first, and then came Tom's father, Walter O'Neal

Allanson, and finally Tom himself, Seaborn Walter Thomas: "Tommy."
 
Paw

and Nona, Tom's grandparents, were well up in their seventies, but they

had always been more like his parents than Walter and Carolyn Allanson

ever were.
 
Paw still farmed his place over on Washington Road in East

Point.
 
He had made a small fortune over the years and he was

frugal-but he wasn't stingy, the way his son was.

Tom figured and figured until he came up with what might be a way to

buy the Waller place for Pat.
 
He had long wanted Nona and Paw to live

near him, especially now that they were older.
 
His grandmother was in

failing health, and Paw couldn't go on forever.
 
Tom took Pat over to

meet them, and left her chatting with Nona while he and Paw went out

walking around the farm to discuss "business."

Paw and Nona were polite to Pat, although they were a little puzzled to

see Tommy with his third woman in a decade.
 
She was obviously older

than Tommy by several years, and Nona thought she dressed awfully

flashy.
 
The old woman was surprised when Pat told her she had three

children and that both of her daughters were already married.
 
Nona,

whose speech was compromised by a stroke, and who was too polite to

speak what was on her mind anyway, listened quietly as Pat rattled on

about her wonderful plans with Tommy.
 
Despite Nona's earlier

misgivings, she couldn't help but like Pat-and catch her enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Tom explained to Paw about the place in Zebulon: the fifty

acres and the house and barn and all that went with it that could be

had for only forty-two thousand.
 
It was a buy that Tom couldn't just

walk away from-not without consulting Paw.

The two men worked out a plan.
 
Paw would give Tom the money for

twenty-five acres, and that money would serve as a down payment for the

whole place.

Tom would find a way to make the balloon payments due down the road.

Tom said he would like either to build or move a house onto that

acreage for his grandparents.
 
That sounded good to Paw; since Nona's

stroke, he had been doing both the outside chores and the inside

work.

He prided himself on the fact that he took excellent care of his wife,

but it would be nice to have a woman around to spell him and cook a

meal once in a while.
 
Tom assured Paw that Pat already loved both him

and Nona.
 
He had told her how good they had always been to him.

Colonel and Mrs. Radcliffe, Pat's parents, also helped Pat and Tom

with the down payment on the Zebulon property.
 
Their only request was

that they call their farm Kentwood in memory of Pat's brother, Kent,

who had died when he was in his mid-twenties.
 
Although Pat would have

much preferred something more romantic and evocative-like Rose Hill

Farm or Holly Hedge Stables, or even Tara Orchards-they called it

Kentwood Morgan Farm.

At long last she had her love and her piece of earth, a fine brick

house, and a barn big enough for all the horses she and Tom would

raise.
 
They would make it a showplace where they could host grand

riding competitions.
 
Tom could shoe horses and she could teach riding

and, afterwards, they could stroll hand in hand through her own rose

garden.
 
There could be nothing more perfect than the hushed twilight

of a soft Georgia night, and being in love.

Pat and Tom moved onto the wonderful property on Highway 19 in late

1973, and Tom immediately began to work on the place, sure his divorce

from his' second wife was imminent.
 
When he was truly free, he would

marry "his Pat."

Making the house just right for her was a labor of love and, as he was

able to afford materials, he remodeled and refurbished.
 
"I redid it

just like we planned," he said.
 
"We got lumber out at Fort McPherson

and redid the barn and the pastures.
 
I had such great expectations.

j'i at proved to be remarkably unhandy at home improvements and

although she picked up a paintbrush from time to time, the bulk of the

work was Tom's.

He didn't mind.
 
He was euphoric just to be with her and to have

Kentwood.

Ronnie, fifteen, moved in with his mother and Tom, although he was

certainly welcome to stay with his grandparents.
 
Pat loved her son.

She indulged him too.
 
She bought him anything he wanted and let him do

whatever he asked-except visit his father.
 
He missed a lot of school,

and Pat didn't push him to go.
 
He was both spoiled and neglected.