Roses (46 page)

He sucked in his breath from a fear so intense, it left him weak. South Korea. Who’d ever heard of it, and why the hell was
the United States sending men to die for it? He threw his napkin on the table and shoved back his chair. Wyatt would probably
think he’d shown up seeking absolution from the son he’d wronged. He’d think it was a ruse to get near his grandson, have
another go at a Warwick, so to speak. At best, he’d think it was something a father does when his only child is going off
to his second war, when he’d been lucky to survive the first. And he’d be right on every point. What he wouldn’t know was
that Percy also came out of love for him, a love that seemed to grow stronger each year despite the distance between them.

The plans he’d formed at the breakfast table were altered when his secretary handed him a telegram seconds after his arrival
at the office. “From Wyatt,” she said. “I signed for it a few minutes ago.”

Percy tore open the yellow envelope: dad stop arriving by train 6:00 tonight stop bringing claudia and matt home stop wyatt.

Percy lifted his stunned gaze to his waiting secretary. “Sally, my son is coming home with his family. I’d like you to assemble
every cleaning lady in town on the double and send them out to Warwick Hall. I’ll pay twice their usual fees. Better still,
I want you to go to the house and supervise the cleaning of each room from top to bottom. Will you do that?”

“You know I will, Mr. Warwick.”

“And call Herman Stolz—”

“The butcher, sir?”

“The butcher. Have him cut three of his finest filet mignons two inches thick. Also, while you’re at it, will you kindly call
the florist and order flowers for the first floor and the best guest room. I’d like one arrangement of… red and white roses.
Have that placed in the front hall.”

“Yes, Mr. Warwick.”

Percy got on the line to Gabriel, the houseman Lucy had fired and he’d rehired from the DuMonts after her departure. Gabriel
was sixty-five and had rarely ventured beyond Houston Avenue since the day he was born in the servants’ quarters above the
Warwicks’ garage. “Gabriel, I’m sending the car. You’re to go to Stolz Meat Market and pick up some steaks I’ve ordered. While
you’re there, I’d like you to select Mister Wyatt’s favorite foods. Got that? Mister Wyatt is coming home tonight with his
wife and my grandson.”

Percy allowed for several interruptions of “The Lord be praised!” before proceeding with further instructions. “I have a feeling,”
he said, “that his wife would like béarnaise sauce with her steak. Do you think you could handle that?”

“I’ll get my grandson Grady to read the recipe to me. I got a pencil here. How’s it spelled?”

Percy sighed and spelled the word, wishing for Amelia.

Those orders completed, he telephoned Mary. She listened and, after promising to send Sassie down to assist Gabriel, said,
“He’s bringing the baby and his mother home to leave with you while he’s in Korea, Percy.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. You’re getting another chance.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I think you can count on it. I envy you, Percy.”

“Maybe you’ll get another chance someday, too, Mary.”

Her laugh reminded him of crystal breaking. “And from where would that come?”

It was as Mary had predicted and as Percy hadn’t dared hoped. He didn’t ask Wyatt what his mother had thought of his decision.
It must have hurt and surprised her, but he put aside his empathy for Lucy to indulge his own feelings of elation and gratitude.
The baby was beautiful. Percy gazed at him in awe and could hardly believe the miracle of the forehead, nose, and chin that
declared him the flesh and blood of a Warwick.

Sally was shooing the cleaning brigade out the back door as they arrived at Warwick Hall, and Percy watched Claudia enter
his home slowly, eyeing its worn grandeur and sweeping dimensions. With the baby in her arms, she paused at the magnificent
arrangement of red and white roses reflected in the soaring mirror of the hall table. Wyatt didn’t seem to notice them. “How
beautiful,” she said.

They’d arrived at six o’clock on the dot, and old Titus, the conductor, had himself offered his arm to the pert wife of the
uniformed U.S. Marines captain who stepped down behind her. He’d pointed at Percy. “That’s Mr. Percy Warwick over there,”
Percy had overheard him say. “As fine a man as ever there was.”

She’d approached him carrying the baby, her husband, tall and commanding, following behind. “Hello, Dad,” she said.

She appeared to his eye rather characterless at first, with no single feature to arrest attention. Her hair was neither blond
nor brown, her face neither pretty nor plain, her stature neither tall nor short. It was the dulcet sound of her voice that
first drew notice and then the attraction of her eyes—not necessarily their color, which was an unremarkable hazel, but the
intelligence and integrity found there, the gentle strength and humor. Percy liked her instantly, filled with pride that his
son had done so well by a wife. “Daughter,” he said softly as he embraced her, the child between them.

“So what do you think of the place?” he asked her later of Warwick Hall, glistening as a new pin.

“Think of it? Why, who wouldn’t think it magnificent? Wyatt never told me.”

“But… he must have told you… other things.”

“Yes,” she said, her expression knowing and gentle.

He let it go at that, taking pleasure that she liked his house, the home his forebears had built. Time enough to discuss “the
other things” when Wyatt was gone, if she was so inclined.

He’d been aghast to learn that Wyatt would be shipping out to Korea within weeks and that he’d be returning to Camp Pendleton
the next afternoon. “So soon?” Percy had asked, his heart rived with disappointment.

“I’m afraid so.”

Late that night, too keyed up to sleep, Percy left his room to go down to the library for a glass of brandy before retiring.
Having seen his family settled in the guest room and Mary’s borrowed crib set up next to the bed, he’d thought they were all
tucked in for the night when he saw a light coming from the open door of his son’s old room. He went down to investigate and
found Wyatt, still in partial uniform, standing in the middle of the room, his back to him, his shoulders granite hard beneath
the starched fabric of his shirt. In silence Percy watched him, wondering what his reflections were, what voices he heard,
what echoes from the past. The memorabilia of his boyhood still hung on the walls. A pennant reading H
OWBUTKER
H
IGH
S
CHOOL
1939 S
TATE
F
OOTBALL
C
HAMPIONS
crowned the head of the bed.

Percy cleared his throat. “A man shouldn’t have to fight in two wars.”

Turning, the expression on the grown man’s face as impenetrable as ever, Wyatt said, “Maybe we’ll get this one over soon.”
He ran his finger down the spine of a book he held. It was the treasured
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
. “I thought I might take Matthew’s birthday present along with me this time. Might bring me luck.”

“A good idea,” Percy said. “A soldier can never have too much of that.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, but he could not get the words past the emotion clogging his throat. Wyatt saved
them both from the moment’s embarrassment by saying, “Dad, I have something to ask of you before I go. A favor.”

“Anything, son. Anything at all.”

“If… I don’t get back, I’d like my son raised here with you. Claudia feels the same way. She’s already crazy about you. I
knew she would be. She’s no snap judge of character, either, believe me.” A small grin appeared, a light of pride in his eye
that softened the hard contours of his face. “They’d be no trouble, and I’ll feel easier knowing that no matter what happens
to me, they’ll have a home here with you.”

Percy struggled to find his voice. “You… want me to help raise Matt if—if—”

“That’s right.”

Percy stared into the clear blue eyes. They said nothing; they said everything. All Percy could be sure of were the words
he’d heard. “They are welcome here for as long as they wish to stay,” he said. “I wouldn’t want them anywhere else, and I’m
deeply honored that you… want them to live with me.” He swallowed hard. He must not break down. He must not appear less the
man than Wyatt had always respected. But he could not resist saying—he
had
to say: “You must come back, Wyatt. You must.”

“I’ll give it my best shot. Good night, Dad, and thanks.” Stepping around Percy, the book clutched under his arm, Wyatt nodded
shortly and left the room.

T
he hours flew. It seemed they were back at the station before they’d left, Claudia holding two-month-old Matt swaddled in
a blue blanket, Wyatt militarily correct in his impeccable uniform with its rows of campaign ribbons aligned over his left
breast. “You got everything?” Percy had asked before they left Warwick Hall. “You get everything packed?”

“Everything’s packed,” Wyatt had said. “I’m a good one for not leaving anything behind.”

Not so, Percy had thought sadly. But after he’d kissed his wife and son good-bye and shaken Percy’s hand, it was to him that
Wyatt uttered his last words before boarding the train. “Make sure my son knows that I love him, Dad.”

“You’ll be back to make sure of that yourself, son.”

After returning home, Percy left Claudia and Matt in the garden soaking up the early summer sunshine while he went up to the
guest room. He looked for
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
but could not find it. There was nothing left there of the man who had come and gone in less than twenty-four hours. Relieved,
he had to believe that Wyatt had packed the book in with his things. Unbeknownst to his son, Percy had clipped a red rose
from the arrangement in the hall and slipped it between the pages of the book. He’d thought of writing a short note and taping
it to the stem as they did poppies every year in honor of Armistice Day, but he’d thought better of it. Written words were
as useless as spoken ones when the reader attributed them to guilt. He was sure that Wyatt wouldn’t have the foggiest idea
how the rose got there, what it meant, or what he should do about it. Lucy, he was sure, had never apprised him of the legend
of the roses, and certainly Percy hadn’t. But he could take comfort in the gesture, knowing that it went away with his son
to war, a testament of his contrition pressed between the pages of Wyatt’s dearest possession.

Once again, Percy found himself following the war from newspapers and radio. New, strange-sounding terms and names of yet
another battlefront in a foreign part of the world emerged: Inchon, Chosin Reservoir, Fox Hill, Old Baldy, Kunuri, MiG Alley,
the DMZ. Wyatt wrote: “Men cry here and curse and pray in the same way they did in World War II and in your war, Dad. It’s
all the same—the fear, the boredom, the loneliness, the adrenaline rush, the comradeship, the tension waiting for the next
assault, the long nights away from home and family. In this war, it’s the God-awful terrain—hills as bare and brown as a bear’s
butt—and waiting in your foxhole in nights as black as the inside of a tar bucket for the hordes of Chinese Commies to come
at you blowing their bugles—burp guns, we call them—raising every hair on your body. But between times I think of Claudia
and Matt there, safe with you.”

Shortly after he’d gone, Percy had unwrapped an object he’d put away after Wyatt’s return from World War II. He unrolled the
red-bordered square of white silk before little Matt, awake and gurgling in his crib. “What’s this, you ask?” Percy said.
“This, my little lad, is called a service flag. I’m hanging it in the front window. The blue star represents a member of the
family serving his country in the military in times of war. In this case, it stands for your dad.”

In late September 1951, nearly a year and a half after Wyatt had gone, Percy received a telephone call from Claudia at the
Courthouse Café as he was having coffee with members of the OBC—Old Boys’ Club—asking that he return home. He did not question
why. Quietly, he laid money on the counter, and without a word he walked out into the kind of blue-and-gold morning that had
dawned the last day of his older son’s life. Upon arriving home, he saw an official U.S. Marine Corps staff car parked under
the portico. They had sent a team from Houston—a chaplain and two officers—to inform the family that Wyatt Trenton Warwick
had been killed in action on a bleak and forbidding battleground known as the “Punch Bowl.” Days later, his body was sent
home draped with an American flag that was later folded and presented on behalf of a grateful nation to his widow at the grave
site. Percy had chosen the burial spot over the mild disapproval of the funeral director, who would have interred Wyatt in
the Warwick plot at the feet of Matthew DuMont.

“Not at his feet, by his side,” Percy had ordered.

“If you insist,” said the funeral director. “After all, they were best friends.”

“Not just friends,” Percy had said, his voice shaking with emotion. “They were brothers.”

“That’s how everybody remembers them,” the undertaker had said pacifically. “Close as brothers.”

The mill hands with whom he’d worked, his former classmates and girlfriends, his old football chums and coaches, all came
to attend the memorial service from wherever the news of his death had reached them. Lucy arrived, clad in black, her face
pale and drawn behind her veil, and stayed with the family at Warwick Hall. Percy longed to weep with her, to touch in some
way the mother of his son, but her cold eyes forced him to keep his distance. In choosing the family flowers that would lie
upon the grave, she said, “Please, Percy, no roses….”

Therefore, it was a blanket of red poppies that fluttered in the breeze next to the resting place of Matthew DuMont as an
honor guard raised their guns to fire a farewell salute. The roar of the volley filled Percy’s ears and made little Matthew
cry in the refuge of his grandfather’s arms.