Titans (15 page)

I
n his office, Trevor Waverling stared at the notice in the week-old classified section of the
Dallas Herald
. Good Lord, it couldn't be. The farm advertised for sale was the Barrows place and Millicent was the seller. “What's your biggest dream?” he'd asked Nathan during one of their getting-to-know-each-other drives to the plant. Without hesitation, his son had answered, “Someday to buy my mother's farm.” Trevor lifted his gaze from the paper. Damn the woman! What other ways remained for Millicent Holloway to break her son's heart?

He rotated his chair toward the window where he could see his personal swath of the Trinity River reflected in the April sun. The paper was dated April second—a day after April Fool's Day. No practical joke here. Trevor wished it were. Should he let the boy see it? Each week, to get a view of what was out there, Trevor pored over the classified ads from landowners wishing to lease their property for oil exploration. He'd jot down the details in the records he was compiling, keep an eye out for what leases disappeared after a few weeks and which ones stayed in the
FOR SALE
column. The information gave him an idea of the location of the most intense oil interest. Mainly, the advertisements were submitted by farmers from the Oklahoma Territory hoping to get rich because of the oil boom going on there, but petroleum speculators were now taking a look at land in Montague and Gainesville Counties. Had the Barrows farm already been snapped up or leased to drill for oil and gas? Which offer would likely appeal to Millicent? She'd get more money up front if she sold it as a farm, but she might choose to lease her acreage for far less with the hope of bigger money if petroleum was found. Trevor had a feeling that she'd go for the bird in hand.

May Millicent Holloway burn in hell for what she'd done to Nathan! The boy had told him of her plans to sell the farm in order to grease her other son's start in life (Trevor's word, not Nathan's) and to finance her daughter's entry into society when they moved into Gainesville.
Society?
In Gainesville, Texas, for God's sake! Nathan didn't know she'd put up her place for sale the minute he stepped foot out the door. Well, his mother's loss was his father's gain.

Trevor swiveled back to his desk and reflected on the rarity of the boy who had slipped quietly with his dog into their lives. There was no noise about Nathan. You could almost forget he was there until he wasn't, and then the void shouted, as when he'd gone back to the farm for a few days. His daughter had been bereft.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king
'
s horses and all the king
'
s men couldn
'
t put Humpty together again
, she'd recited over and over, running despairingly about the house with her hands pressed to her head. Trevor had tried to soothe her.
It's all right, honey
, he'd said at least a hundred times.
Nathan will be back.

But off she would go wailing again.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king
'
s horses and all the king
'
s men couldn
'
t put Humpty together again
… The rhyme ran through Trevor's head all through the days the boy was gone, and his heart wrung for his daughter. She thought of her father as the king. She believed him all-powerful. What would happen to Rebecca if Nathan remained at the farm and the king couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again?

Trevor felt he should have been jealous of his mother's growing affection for Nathan, but he wasn't. He was overjoyed. Things were working out better than he could have hoped. She had her grandson—a future heir—and his father was building a relationship with him. Trevor Waverling didn't have to worry about proving his innocence in his brother's death to her any longer. Mavis Waverling would never sell the company now. But aside from that, it was good to see her old, pretty face relaxed, at peace, contented now in the evenings. Before Nathan, he rarely saw her smile, and he hadn't heard her laughter in years.

Before Nathan.
Trevor identified the former period in their lives in those terms. Before Nathan, he met people for supper or went to the gym or to his club most evenings following work, but after Nathan, he began going home with the boy to show his mother he was making an effort. Now they were quite a family group in the parlor after supper—he and his mother and son and daughter, the dog and cat. Another maid had been hired to give Lenora a hand with the extra mouth to feed—two, counting the German shepherd—and so Lenora was happier, too.

The boy was turning out to be an impressively quick learner. Trevor had put him under the wing of Jamie Foster, his foreman, who reported, “Your kid don't need to be told twice 'bout nothin'.” Coming from taciturn Jamie, that statement spoke volumes and put the stamp of approval on him. Nathan had yet to be assigned a specific job. It was more important in these early days for him to become acquainted with the factory's workings and infrastructure as well as the business transactions of the company. Surface grinders and auger drill bits, metal-cutting machinery, and other engineering tools were miles beyond the farm implements of Nathan's experience, and the boy was finding there was a lot more to a company's books than a farmer's expense ledger.

To explain Nathan's heretofore unknown existence when introducing him, Trevor had come around to a clap on the boy's shoulder and a quote from the parable of the Prodigal Son. “This is my son who was once lost but now is found,” he'd say and leave it at that. Brows were raised, glances exchanged, but Trevor's friends, colleagues, and employees knew his reputation for consorting with women and took Nathan as an
oh-oh
that happened. Which was exactly what he was. All shook hands and welcomed him graciously, if some could not resist a few winks at Trevor behind the boy's back, and some treated him with exaggerated courtesy like the kind shown a man missing a limb one took pains not to notice.

Within a week of their acquaintance, Trevor had decided upon the eventual right position for Nathan. The boy would chafe at working full-time in a factory. He'd fare worse learning the ropes of Waverling Tools behind a desk. The boy belonged on the land under the open skies. He'd make of Nathan a representative of the company to seek out and execute oil leases when the time came to drill its own wells.
Landmen
, they were called. There was no other formal name for them. The profession was as new as the petroleum industry and required no special education other than experience, but acquiring that took some time and doing. It was the geologist's task to find the right conditions where oil and gas could be found, but it was the landman's job to negotiate leasing terms for the mineral rights from the property owner. Along with that skill, which called mainly for handling people well, the landman had to know how to comprehend and write contracts and research public and private records to prove title and ownership status. Those sorts of things Nathan could learn, and Trevor had no doubt of the boy's ability to handle people. He did it simply—by being himself.

Trevor leaned back in his chair, considering. Should he tell Nathan about the ad? Was it better for him to learn the truth now rather than later? The news, coupled with the other sins of his mother against him, would wound him even more deeply, not that he'd show or express it. Other boys might stomp about and curse their mother, but not Nathan. Millicent, for better or worse, was the woman who had given him birth. Nathan would put his respect for that above his rage.

Now was the time, not later, Trevor decided. He'd promised Nathan that he'd put all his cards on the table when dealing with him.
Lie to me one time or keep one card up your sleeve, and I'm gone
, Nathan had said.
Zak and I will hit the road to California.

At the time of the threat, the warning had no more impact than the bounce of a paper ball off his chest, but the last thirteen days had changed things, and now the thought of the boy leaving had the force of a well-landed right hook to his solar plexus. Trevor pulled a cord that rang a bell in his secretary's office. When she arrived, he said, “Jeanne, find Nathan and send him to me. He left before I did this morning, so he must be in the plant.”

“Yes sir, he's here. Last I saw him, he was with Jamie when I took over the bill of lading for the latest shipment to England.”

Trevor's eyebrows rose. Jeanne, hand-carry a
B/L
to his plant foreman when ordinarily she'd expect Jamie to pick it up at her desk? She fetched and carried for no man but her boss, she was pleased to say. But Trevor knew what was behind her sudden initiative. His secretary, young and single, had an eye for Nathan, but it would do her no good. His grandmother had other plans for the boss's son in the romance department. When Jeanne left, Agatha Beardsley, his longtime receptionist who had also warmed to Nathan, poked her head in. “You have two men here to see you, Mr. Waverling.”

“Who?”

“The geologist, Todd Baker, and”—Miss Beardsley consulted her notepad—“a Daniel Lane. He says he's an ironmonger who presently works for a smithy in Fort Worth. He's come in answer to our want ad.”

“Give them both some coffee and tell them to wait. I need to see Nathan.”

Nathan appeared five minutes later, and Trevor thought as he walked in that he'd never seen a member of his gender so ill at ease in a business suit but so comfortable in his own skin. The observation confirmed his decision to put him in the field rather than behind a desk.

“You called for me?” Nathan asked.

Trevor didn't know how he avoided it, but once he'd disabused Nathan from calling him Mr. Waverling, the boy had never addressed him by any other name, paternal or otherwise, nor asked him what he wished to be called. He figured time would decide his son's handle for him. “You need to see this,” Trevor said, pushing the classified section of the
Dallas Herald
across his desk with a finger pointed at the advertisement. “Is that the farm I think it is?”

Nathan read without comment. Only a tightening of his jaw gave away his inner reaction. “I see she wasted no time,” he said finally.

“I'm sorry, Nathan.”

“Me, too,” Nathan said. “Anything else?”

Trevor wanted to say something to offer sympathy, but Nathan had shut him out. The boy's self-containment threw up a wall that made it impossible to comfort him. Further commiseration would be intrusive. Trevor felt a twitch of resentment, then recognized the feeling as a father's frustration with his inability to help his son. “Yes, there is,” he said. “Step into the reception room and send Todd to me, will you?”

“All right.”

Trevor swiveled back to the window, somewhat let down but buoyed, too. Another nail in Millicent's coffin. Another road closed to Gainesville, Texas. That was good.

T
here's a good lad, Zak! There's a good lad!” Benjy sang out as the German shepherd bounded toward him to return a stick in his mouth the Irishman had thrown. It was noon, playtime for Zak while the plant workers brought out the contents of their metal “carryalls” to eat under the trees and enjoy the dog's romp in the fresh air and sun of the cool April day. Nathan was among them. Lenora always sent him off with a full lunch tin. Whether he partook of its thick sandwiches or not depended on whether Trevor invited him to join him for a luncheon business meeting. The generous slices of meat and bread did not go to waste. Benjy made thorough work of them along with his own fare, which he made for himself in the small kitchen of his apartment above the Waverlings' carriage house. Nathan had never seen anyone enjoy food as much as Benjy. The calories bypassed his thin arms and legs and long, skinny feet and headed straight to his expansive stomach that had the appearance of a perfectly round ball under his snug waistcoat. His inordinate relish for food—gluttony, Benjy didn't mind calling it—came from the tales he'd heard of family members starving to death during the potato famine in Ireland. “The power of the imagination is great, me boy,” he'd say to Nathan. “Me mind conjures up pictures of the poor souls who wasted away, and me feels it's me duty to eat for them.”

Played out, both dog and Irishman dropped next to Nathan by the cloth he'd spread on the new grass for their meal. The chance to expend his energy was a treat for Zak, which he enjoyed three days a week when he accompanied Nathan and Trevor in the carriage to work and spent the day with his master in the plant and office. On the other days, the German shepherd had to stay home, restricted to the small fenced backyard of the town house when let out of doors. Those days, because Trevor sometimes required the use of the carriage beyond normal working hours, Nathan rode his horse to the plant. When he'd first come to live in the town house, he'd wondered about transportation. Was he to ride in the carriage with his father to Waverling Tools each day? Nathan thought that might be a strain for both of them. Apparently, Trevor Waverling had thought so, too. The day after Nathan returned to Dallas from the farm, his father had taken him to a horse auction.

“Pick your choice, and I'll make a bid,” he'd said. “You'll need your own mount while you're here.”

While you
'
re here.
Did that mean he was on probation? Well, so was Trevor Waverling, for that matter, Nathan decided. Not so his sister and grandmother. They passed muster in every way. He would miss them if he had to leave, as he missed his whole family back in Gainesville, but so far he'd not felt the urge to sling his knapsack over his shoulder and hit the road to California with Zak if things soured. The only drawback was Zak's confinement, but his dog seemed happy enough to stay behind with the adoring attention of Rebecca and the dubious companionship of Scat, and nobody, not even Lenora, seemed to mind the hairs he shed, a relief to Nathan. They had been a constant complaint of his mother's. Nathan didn't have to worry that the long fibers of his dog's coat on the carriage leather might end up on his father's dark suits, either. Nathan trained him to occupy only one corner of the seat, and Benjy took care to wipe the spot clean on the days Zak rode with them to work.

“You've got yourself a mannerly mutt there, Nathan,” his father said, commenting on Zak's seemingly good sense to know not to shake himself in the coach.

As Nathan became acquainted with the pattern of Trevor Waverling's daily schedule (every Wednesday after work, for instance, he took off for his gym), he realized his father had not bought the horse to avoid close contact with him in the coach but to give him the freedom to come and go without having to depend on him for transportation. Trevor actually tried to arrange his meetings and activities to give them a chance to ride together so they could talk business.

Nathan had to admit that in the three weeks he'd lived under his father's roof—his
grandmother
'
s
roof—there was not much about his new life that he did not enjoy other than his natural reservation about becoming too trusting of it. He was especially enjoying his budding friendship with Benjy, whose residence in the carriage house apartment gave them opportunities to spend time together.

“How did you and my father meet?” he asked the Irishman one day.

“Well, now, me lad, therein lies a story.”

“I'm interested in hearing it,” Nathan said.

August twelfth, 1890, it was, Benjy said. He, an immigrant, had hopped a train from New York down to Texas without benefit of a ticket. New York City was dirty, crowded, polluted, and unkind to Irish Catholics. He wanted to live where there was space and clean air and a bloke could get a good start in life without people looking down their noses at him, and Texas was the place, so he'd heard. He didn't know to what city the train was headed. He just knew that when it got to Texas, he'd jump off at a stop that looked like it offered good job possibilities. That spot happened to be thirty yards from the front door of Waverling Tools, only he didn't have time to notice because he was jumped by two railroad peelers twice his size wielding billy clubs. He fought back but he was overpowered, and he figured he'd be meeting his mam and da in the great hereafter if the knacking went on much longer. Then all of a sudden the blighters were off him, and he was looking up through a film of blood and snot and tears into the face of Trevor Waverling. The man offered a hand.
Help you up?
he said and pulled him to his feet.

“I could hardly stand, and me head rung like a bell, and for a few seconds I thought I had died and gone someplace where men were clean-shaven and dressed in nice suits like Mr. Waverling was wearing,” Benjy told Nathan. “But no, he was real and I was alive, and the peelers were out cold. ‘Better get out of here before they come to,' he says to me, and I look around as if a place might exist where I could disappear. That's when Mr. Waverling told me to follow him, and I've been doing it ever since—wherever he wants to go.”

“Quite a story,” Nathan had said. “I guess the peelers met his boxer's fists.”

“Aye. The man is a formidable fighter. You should see him in the ring.”

“Does he still fight?”

“Not in competitions anymore, but that don't mean his hobnails are not in good order. I owe the man me life, me livelihood, me home, and… me family, Nathan. I'd do anything for your da and his mam and his little
inion
. Have not a doubt about that.”

Nathan didn't. Benjy's loyalty to Trevor Waverling was rock solid. The Irishman had filled in one picture for Nathan, but it wasn't likely he'd answer the question he most wanted to ask. Did Benjy know how, where, and why Jordan Waverling had died, and did he believe that his father had a hand in his death?

Nathan bit into his sandwich and, with his usual amusement, observed Benjy carefully remove the ham from his two slices of bread, lay it on the tinfoil wrapper, and place the bread, lettuce, cheese, and pickles in a row beside it. Next he set out in order a boiled egg, an apple, and a cookie.

“Nay, lad, this is not for you,” the coachman said to Zak, whose nose was sniffing closer to the ceremonial layout. “Now, don't bother me.” He pushed the dog away and began to eat, first the ham and lettuce, then the bread; afterward, the pickles and boiled egg, followed by the apple and cheese, with the cookie as the finish to the meal. “Sandwiches go farther if you take them apart and eat the fillings separately as
courses
,” Benjy maintained. “They stretch further that way than if you eat them as a
package
.”

“I guess that works if your stomach doesn't mind waiting,” Nathan said.

A tall, well-muscled man with a dashing air about him approached carrying a lunch pail. Nathan recognized him as the ironmonger his father had recently hired. He usually ate his sandwich while fiddling at his drafting table. No one knew much about him except that he was a bachelor and a wizard with metals. The man kept to himself and did not socialize, so Nathan had heard, much to the chagrin of the secretary when she wasn't flirting with him. “Mind sharing your spot?” the newcomer said.

“Not at all,” Nathan said, moving over to give the man room in the shade of the oak tree. He held out his hand. “We've only met once, Daniel. In case you don't remember, I'm Nathan Holloway.”

“Oh, I remember.” The newcomer shook his hand. “Holloway? I thought you were the boss's son?”

“I am. I go by my stepfather's name.”

Daniel Lane nodded. “I had one of those, but I wasn't too keen to hold on to his name. I shed it quick as I shed him. I go by my mother's, not that it was much better to be proud of.”

“You know Benjy?” Nathan said. The man was remarkably handsome, but there was a hard bitterness about him. Nathan put him roughly in his late twenties.

“The boss's driver,” Daniel clarified Benjy's place in the hierarchy. “Not had the pleasure. How'd do.”

“How'd do,” Benjy said. “Where do ye hail from?”

“Everywhere, but Fort Worth most recently. I quit my job as a smithy's helper over there. Atmosphere got a little… stifling.”

Nathan bit into his apple. “How do you find the atmosphere here?”

“More to my liking. It's nice to be appreciated and paid what I deserve, not to mention respected.”

“Sounds like ye got an ax to grind, if ye'll forgive the observation and the pun,” Benjy said.

A grin at Benjy's humor improved the resentful slope of Daniel's mouth. “You could say that. I just need time and a little luck to get my own back.”

“And what would your own be, if you don't mind my asking,” Nathan said.

“I don't, since I brought up the subject,” Daniel replied. “A woman. My own is a woman taken away from me because her brother didn't think I was good enough to be in her company. I intend to change his opinion about that.”

“Well, good luck to you,” Nathan said, packing away tinfoil and apple cores. “Let's hope she'll be waiting should you succeed.”

“Oh, she'll be waiting,” Daniel said.

“How can ye be so sure?” Benjy asked.

“Because nobody else will have her,” Daniel answered. “Well, there's the gong. I better get back to work. I got a project I'm working on that I hope will impress the boss. Nice meeting you gents. See you around.”

As Daniel walked away, Benjy mused, “For somebody known for hardly saying a word to anybody, me thinks that man talks too much.”