Titans (10 page)

A
swallow of coffee caught in Nathan's throat. “Were you?” he choked.

“Responsible for my brother's death? Absolutely not!” Trevor declared. “Jordan's death was an accident, and I mourn him as profoundly as my mother does. There's hardly an hour of the day I don't miss him. We weren't only brothers, we were best friends, confidants, hunting and fishing buddies.”

Grief lanced through Trevor's sea-green glare. It would have been hard not to believe the man's sincerity. “What reason would your mother have to think you're responsible?” Nathan asked.

Trevor pulled back to his desk and picked up his cold coffee cup. “That's not what we're here today to discuss,” he said. “I'm innocent, whether she believes it or not.”

“
You
may not want to discuss it, but I do,” Nathan persisted, refusing to offer mercy. “I'm not working for a man whose mother believes her son killed his brother. Why can't she believe you're innocent?”

“Because of who she thinks I am!” Trevor retorted. “And I'm not about to discuss that today with you except to say I'm to blame for my actions, attitudes, and decisions that would appear to confirm her opinion. But things are not always as they seem, Nathan, not even to a mother. Now if that's not enough for you, I'll have Benjy drive you to the house to collect your knapsack, then to the station, and you can go back to the farm and that woman whose maternal love for you wouldn't fill a thimble. But you need to know that your grandmother is counting on you. I'm not using that as a stick to get you to stay. I'm telling you the way it is. And because of her, I want you to give it at least a try. Forget about me!”

“And if I come on board, you'll have a better chance of your mother leaving you all of this, is that it?” Nathan swept an arm to include the office complex and buildings beyond.

“She's made it clear that I'm to rescue you, build a father-son relationship, introduce you to the company with hope you'll want to become a part of it. At least, I'm to try, and if I don't succeed…”

“Then you're cooked,” Nathan said flatly.

“Unless I can prove to her I didn't kill my brother, but… as you may have noticed, there's not a lot of time left for that.”

Nathan set his coffee cup and saucer on the desk. “You're in one doozy of a ditch, aren't you?” he said.

His comment elicited a small smile. “That's another succinct way of putting it. So what's your decision? Benjy and your knapsack, or are you going to stay and let me show you around the place?”

“I need time to think about it.”

Trevor got up. “The room is yours. I have to consult with my foreman. I should be gone about a half hour. Will that give you enough time to make your decision?”

“All I need.”

When Trevor had left, Nathan refreshed his coffee from the pot and let himself out through an exterior door, cup in hand, to stroll down to the river. He could always think better under an open sky among growing things. A good flowing body of water helped, too. The hour had gone past noon, and the sun was warm through his barn jacket, but the air still held the last breath of a fading winter. He was downwind of the industrial fumes and odors that he'd expect to be pretty stifling during the hot, humid days of summer when the area's factories were going full blast. The smells would be a mark against his staying. He liked country air that a body wasn't afraid to breathe.

There would be plenty of bad air he'd have to inhale if he stayed here, Nathan thought, and he wasn't thinking only of the manufactured kind. He could almost hear Leon spouting his often-repeated philosophy that applied to the situation he was in now:
It's important for a fella to look at every knot and wormhole in a load of timber before buyin', or some night his house just might come crashin' down on his head.

But in this case, Leon would push him to stay.
Lord'amighty, what do you have to lose?
he'd say.

Not anything but time, Nathan granted, and there wasn't much to gain by going back to Gainesville. He would have said
home
, but he couldn't think of the farm that way anymore. He'd given some thought to Leon's plan to buy Old Man Sawyer's land for the two of them to farm and decided that wasn't in the best interest of his stepfather. Leon was the other side of forty-five, too old to break ties with his wife and children and go into debt to start over on a farm that might or might not pay. Nathan couldn't let him do that for the sake of a boy not even his son.

So he was virtually homeless, Nathan had come around to thinking, and here in Dallas his real father had offered him a roof over his head and blood kin to boot. He might be flattering himself, but he did share the sense his grandmother needed him, his little sister, too, though he had yet to make up his mind about his father. Nathan had come prepared not to trust or like him, but somehow in the space of the hours he'd been in his company, Trevor Waverling had shaken that mind-set a little. A sad thing about his brother, Jordan. Could Nathan believe him when he said he'd had no hand in his death? And would Nathan's own life be in jeopardy after a while if he should take to Waverling Tools like a fish to water, impress his grandmother, the holder of the keys to the kingdom, and turn out to be his father's competitor as heir apparent?

The sudden idea of being in personal danger from Trevor Waverling briefly unsettled him. The man was easy to fear physically. In his office, Nathan had noticed a couple of photographs on a bookshelf—not necessarily buried but not displayed for the world to see either—of his father in boxing gloves and shorts in his younger days. A narrow brass plate attached to the bottom of the frame read
MIDDLE-WEIGHT CHAMP / DALLAS AMATEUR BOXING COMPETITION / 1876.
Nathan had wondered at his father's obvious physical fitness, city and desk man that he was. Nathan admonished himself for his concern. He'd been reading too many Nick Carter detective stories of family skullduggery, and he was getting way too much ahead of himself thinking he'd be a contender for the Waverling crown. So far he couldn't imagine himself working in a stuffy tool-making facility or sitting in an office behind a desk. He wouldn't be able to draw a good breath. He was an outdoors man.

Besides, he would go nowhere where Zak wasn't welcome, and Nathan couldn't see his German shepherd getting along with his grandmother's tabby in her fine house of breakable things.

Nathan found the dock and walked to its edge. It was really a pier, for it extended a good length over what he could see was actually a fork of the Trinity that flowed through Dallas. Where had Jordan Waverling died? Here? Nathan was looking at a wide, long, deep expanse of water. Moored beside the pier, a sizable boat bobbed in the gentle swells under a covered slip, paddles anchored within the hull. Was that boat the setting for the accident—or the crime? His grandmother had said the mystery of her son's death was another story for a private moment. Away from her surviving son's ears, Nathan had the feeling that if he stayed, his grandmother would treat him to many private moments of family history. He did not know if he cared to listen.

But where else could he go for the time being? Nathan looked out upon the water, finished his coffee, and reached his decision. Zak would make or break the deal. If they'd accommodate his dog, arrange it so he and Zak could be together, he'd stay. If not, he'd go home, get Zak, and be on the road to California.

Back together in his office, Trevor Waverling looked at his son with a frown. “That big German shepherd I saw?”

“Yes, and he eats a lot.”

“He sleeps in your room?”

“Right beside my bed.”

“Do you think he'd frighten Rebecca?”

“I couldn't say. He's gentle with Lily. That's my half sister.”

“How does he get along with cats?”

“He's not crazy about them.”

“Oh, God, Nathan—” Trevor combed a hand through his graying, well-trimmed hair. “I know Mother won't go with your suggestion to lodge apart from us. She expects you to live in the house, become a member of the family. It's part of the arrangement she made with me, but with a dog? You absolutely must have it with you? You can't leave it at the farm where it will have lots of fresh air and space to run?”

“I absolutely must have Zak with me.”

“And if we don't meet this… demand, you'll return home?”

“That's right.”

“Then my mother won't have any choice but to agree to having him in the house, but I must warn you, she's not fond of dogs.”

“Zak knows to stay out of parlors.”

Trevor regarded Nathan for a long moment in silence. “Do you ever budge on anything?”

“Not on what's important.”

“And do you always know what's important?”

“To me, yes. It's other folks' ideas on the subject I have trouble with.”

Trevor shook his head. “In that regard, you're Edwin Waverling's grandson, all right. Now let's go discover what else you may have in common with the founder of Waverling Tools.” Trevor put his arm around Nathan's shoulders and walked him to his office door. “You may find it's where you belong,” he said.

N
athan gratefully caught a ride to the Barrows farm with a neighboring farmer who'd come to the train station to pick up a crate of chickens. But for the neighbor, he'd have had to walk the two miles from the depot through the town of Gainesville, then another five to the farm. In the uncanny way of dogs, Zak sensed his arrival before the wagon turned into the gate of the Barrows farmstead and bounded full speed up the lane to the road. His excited barking set off the chickens, so Nathan thanked the driver and hopped down to walk the rest of the way to the house.

Zak's enthusiasm at his return nearly knocked him over, so he knelt to allow the dog his full expression of joy. Nathan had been gone four days, the only time in his life he'd been away from the farm. He had wondered how he would feel when he first viewed the wide acres he'd helped to tend since he was a child, the neat two-story house set in its grove of shade trees, the barn and pigpen, the chicken coop and orchard and grazing pastures. He'd gone off to Dallas thinking he'd left his heart behind—a broken heart, for sure, but one that would never fit in anywhere else. Now he realized that the sweetness of his labors had come from the satisfaction of knowing that the land he worked belonged to him. The truth that it wasn't and had never been still almost emptied his stomach, but it changed his perspective. The brown fields seeded with spring wheat by his own hands did not move him. They did not call to him, their one-time caretaker and friend, as he'd once imagined. A feeling of alienation swept over him like the time his mother's father had taken Randolph and Lily for a ride in his surrey and left him behind. “No room for you!” his grandfather had sung out as he sped off, and Nathan had stood there feeling severed from the family, an outsider, as if he did not belong. The brown arrow-straight rows eyed him as a stranger now.
Go on
, they twinkled in the late afternoon sun.
There is no place here for you anymore.

Leon came out of the barn, spotted him, and hurried to greet him, the faded pants of his denim overalls flapping. Nathan's heart twisted. He would miss Leon most of all.

“I heard Zak's bark,” he called, “and knew you were home. Good to see you, son. How did it go?” He indicated that they head toward the barn to discuss in private Nathan's decision. It was nearly time for the evening meal, and the savory aroma of roasting chicken trailed after them. Randolph and Lily would be at the kitchen table doing their homework, his mother at the stove. An ache burgeoned under Nathan's rib cage.

“Just in time for the milkin',” Leon said. “Daisy will be right glad to see you.”

The cow, already at her feed but her back feet rooted firmly, lifted her head from the trough and bawled a greeting. Nathan dropped his knapsack and went to work.

“So you're going to give it a try,” Leon said, when Nathan finished telling him about the events of the last four days, the people he had met, and his impressions of them all.

“Yessir. I'll be leaving in two days when Benjy comes for me in the coach. The train doesn't allow dogs in the passenger compartments. I'll leave everything behind but Zak and what I can fit in my knapsack.”

“You'll take along a few memories of us, I hope. Don't let the last ones mar the good ones, Nathan. There were plenty of 'em.”

Memories based on misassumptions, Nathan thought, but he would never hurt Leon by saying so. “I guess I'd better go tell Mother I'll be leaving,” he said, leading Daisy back to her stall. “What'll we tell Randolph and Lily?”

“We've told them only that you went to Dallas to check out an opportunity the man in the coach-and-pair driven by his odd little driver came to offer you,” Leon said. “Naturally, they were surprised. Randolph wondered what kind of opportunity you'd be qualified for other than farmin'.”

Nathan grinned. “Sounds like him.”

“Lily cried.”

“Sounds like her, too. Will they ever know we're half related?”

“Your mother would die if the news ever got out.”

“Uh-huh,” Nathan said. “Sounds like her, too.”

Millicent glanced at them from the stove when they walked in, then turned her face away quickly and went on with her stirring. “I see you're back,” she said. “Go wash up. There's plenty, though we weren't expecting you. Children, put away your books, and Lily, set the table.”

Lily leaped up from her chair. “Nathan!” she cried, hugging him. “We've missed you! Tell us all you did in Dallas. What's it like? Is it big—bigger than Oklahoma City?”

Randolph stood with a frown of annoyance at having to be pulled from his books. “Did you get lost in it?”

Nathan waited until they were through with supper to tell them he'd be leaving. Lily took the news with a cry; Randolph in wonder that his brother would be hired for any employment but farm labor. “You'll be working in a plant that makes oil drilling equipment?” he repeated in an incredulous voice.

“Working in a
supervising
position for a
company
that drills for oil, Randolph,” Leon corrected him. “There's a difference.”

“Mr. Waverling believes the economic future of Texas lies in petroleum,” Nathan said, “so he's converting the plant to that end. They're already manufacturing oil field equipment, and he's got a notion for a rotary drilling bit with a hollow drill stem that could break up rock strata easier. He believes it would be a huge improvement over the repetitive lift and drop of heavy cable-tool bits used for water well and salt drilling.”

“Sounds like Greek to me,” Randolph said.

“That oil field they discovered over in Washington County certainly ushered in a boom for the Oklahoma Territory,” Leon offered. “Maybe you'll be coming our way to drill your wells just over the Texas border.”

“Maybe,” Nathan said. “I don't know yet where I fit in the company. Mr. Waverling seems to have in mind my work may be more mental than physical, but whatever it is, it will have to be a job outdoors.”

Randolph smirked. “How can drilling for oil be anything but physical?”

“There's brainwork involved in finding oil, Randolph,” Nathan said patiently. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Waverling wants me to go with him Saturday to hear a lecture on paleontology. The speaker is going to explain what kind of fossils to look for that indicate the presence of oil.”

Throughout the supper conversation, Millicent remained silent, her face no screen for her thoughts. Nathan had feared hearing the name Waverling would be repugnant to her, but he'd be a toad frog before he referred to him as “my father” in the presence of Leon. Finally, she rose to clear the dishes and said, “So you'll be going in two days' time?”

“Yes, ma'am. It'll take us three days to get to Dallas by coach, and Mr. Waverling wants me there by Saturday to attend that lecture.”

“Then I guess I'd better wash your jeans in the morning so they'll get dry,” Millicent said. “We can't have you show up at the place in dirty pants.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Nathan did not tell her that hanging in the closet of the blue room he now occupied in Dallas were three new suits and a half-dozen dress shirts. On the floor were two pairs of “city” shoes, new boots, and the bureau drawers were filled with underwear still in their packaging. His father had offered to have his old clothes burned, but Nathan would not part with them. He stored them away should the situation ever arise that he would need them again. This last maternal gesture from his mother was nothing but a pat on the head, he understood, but Nathan felt moved by it, and he would not for the world deny her the opportunity to feel she'd sent him off with some token of maternal devotion.

In the next two days, the sun warmed the earth, and on his final morning to wake in his old room, he looked out the window to find a green blush over the brown fields. The wheat seeds had sprouted their first leaves. Up from the kitchen rose the smells of bacon and onions frying and biscuits baking. Nathan turned from the window and was surprised to see Randolph awake, watching him from his pillow. “We'll miss you, brother,” he said softly.

Nathan tousled his hair. “Go back to sleep.”

He finished dressing in the hall, passed through the kitchen to the outhouse without a word to his mother, then headed for the barn. Halfway through the milking, he set his forehead against Daisy's flank and cried.

The coach and Thoroughbreds arrived just before noon. Randolph and Lily had gone off to school voicing their protests. Even Randolph had whined to stay home to say good-bye, but Nathan was relieved his mother had not allowed it. “It will be hard enough for your brother as it is,” she'd said. “Get on with you.”

At last it was time to board the coach. The merry little Irishman, his stomach filled with the fried chicken and mashed potatoes and buttermilk pie Millicent had prepared for her son's last meal at the family table, had reins in hand. She and Leon and Nathan had gathered on the porch. Zak was already in the coach, observing them quizzically from the open window.

A palpable tension hung in the silence. Millicent rubbed at her throat, her eyes averted, Nathan stared down at his feet, Leon withdrew his handkerchief.
You can come home again, you know
, Leon had told Nathan in one of their private conversations in the barn.
We can still make it happen with Old Man Sawyer if you're not happy in Dallas.

But Nathan knew he would never come home again. His farming days here were over.
That's good to know
, he'd said. On the porch, he stuck out his hand to Leon, “Well, good-bye, Dad. Thanks for everything. You've been the best father a son could ever have.”

“You made it easy,” Leon said, blowing his nose into his handkerchief.

Nathan turned to his mother. “Good-bye, Mother. I'll miss your cooking,” he said.

Millicent responded with a flickering smile. She reached up and straightened a side of his collar, and for the briefest second, Nathan felt her fingertips touch his neck. “Take care of yourself,” she said.

As the carriage pulled away, Nathan waved out the window, then settled against the leather seat and did not look back. Zak, whining, jumped next to him. “It will be all right, boy,” Nathan said, wrapping his arm around his neck. But in his heart Nathan knew it would be a long time before it was so.

From the bed, Leon watched Millicent rub her elbows with cream from a jar on her dressing table. She had already spread the oily mixture on her face that she rarely exposed to outdoor elements. The stipulations of her parents' small trust fund allowed a monthly stipend that afforded such personal luxuries. The rest she set aside for Randolph's and Lily's wants.

“You didn't waste any time puttin' that ad in the paper, did you, Millie girl?” Leon drawled. “What made you think he wouldn't come back to stay?”

“Why would he? He knows there's nothing here for him anymore.”

“I'm glad you didn't tell Nathan before he left. That was decent of you.” Leon's tone dripped sarcasm.

“What would have been the good of it?”

“What newspapers did you put the ad in?”

“The
Fort Worth Gazette
and the
Dallas Herald
.”

“And the ad will appear on Monday?”

“Yes, and run every day for two weeks. There'll be no need to run it longer. This place will be snapped up in no time.”

“I hope the boy doesn't read the
Dallas Herald
.”

His wife did not reply. After a long period of silence in which Leon observed the mesmeric rotation of her fingers, he asked, curious, “What are you thinking, Millicent?”

Millicent screwed the lid back on the jar and took up her hairbrush. “What makes you think I'm thinking anything?”

“This room is so thick with your thoughts there's hardly breathing room.”

“I'm doing the right thing, Leon—for all us,” Millicent said, her words underscored with brisk strokes of the hairbrush. “Daddy never meant for the farm to go to Nathan. You know that. I could not go against his wishes and will it to him, and his other grandchildren aren't interested in it. When my time came, Randolph and Lily would sell the place before my body turned cold, leaving Nathan high and dry when he's beyond his youth and too late to start over, like with this opportunity Trevor is offering him. Farm prices are at their highest now. What happens when the next tornado, or drought, or flood strikes, as one of them will eventually. You know it's the truth, Leon. Besides, you're getting too old to farm, especially now that Nathan won't be here to help you run things.”

“Who're you trying to convince, Millicent?”

Millicent's jaw stiffened. She turned her head to glare at him. “We need the money
now
, Leon. Don't you understand that? College will be expensive. Randolph will need a new wardrobe for Columbia, and I can't keep making Lily's dresses. She needs tailor-made clothes…” She placed a hand at her throat, a habit when out of words, and turned back to the mirror. After a few more strokes of the hairbrush, she said softly, “He's a good boy, Leon. I never said he wasn't. I warned you when he was born that I would probably never warm to him. How could I when he looks so much like… him.”

“Well, there's his winning traits of honesty and decency that might've won you over,” Leon drawled.

Millicent shook her head irritably. “I know, I know, though where he gets it from considering the man who's his father—”

“—and the woman who's his mother.”

Millicent laid down the hairbrush. Leon expected her to throw it at him, but she stared into the mirror, and he wondered who, what, she saw there. “Yes, that's right,” she agreed. “Considering who fathered and birthed him, where does he get it all? I just hope he's not heading into the devil's den and that he'll be happy where he's going… that it's best for him.” She turned the wick of the kerosene lamp, and the room was cast into darkness. “I mean that, Leon. As God is my witness, I really do.” The mattress depressed under her slight weight. “Don't expect anything tonight. I'm not in the mood for it.”