We Were Beautiful Once (11 page)

“I remember when I first met your folks, about '42, yes, maybe eight years back when they came to the bank.  You must've been about fifteen, high school age I guess.  A skinny kid.  They needed a mortgage.  For a bungalow.”  He smiled and then added smugly, “Still there?”

“No, sir.”  Jack stood stiffly at attention, and Tracy touched his arm.  Hamilton's eyes momentarily shifted to Tracy's hand and back to Jack.

“And how're your mom and dad?  Will they be at the station tomorrow?”

“Yes, I guess so.”  Jack knew that his mother would be there.

Hamilton looked away.  “Fine, I'm hoping to see them.”

“Yes, sir, I'll tell them you said hello.”

“Good.  Now you and Tracy have a swell time.”  He turned to Brookfield, who smiled, pleased that he had won the greater man's attention.

“Nice meeting you both,” Jack said earnestly.

Always looking for a vote, the First Selectman replied, “Good luck, son.”  Mason only needed Hamilton's vote, so he fixed on Hamilton stuffing a wiener into his beefy face.

Tracy steered Jack toward the foyer.  “Come on, let's walk through those fox trotters and say hello to Mom.”

Tracy's mother was welcoming guests, smiling, mentioning their children or hobbies in a few words.  She invited Congressman Bickford and his young wife Nina to help themselves to cocktails before she acknowledged Jack with an arched brow and a turned up smile, “Hi, Jack, enjoying yourself?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton, the party's terrific, I never expected so many people.”

“I did hope your mom and dad would be coming.”

“I'm sorry, Mom isn't feeling well, and Dad has to get up at five.”  

 

Jack and Tracy had been making the rounds for an hour before they ran into Trent.   “Jack, what do you think?”

“Well, a little more fucking sane than the last frat party.”

“Sane ain't the word for it.  Let's blow this joint.  Gallagher and the guys are makin' a dent in our beer supply out back.”

“I want to introduce Jack to Congressman Bickford, then we'll come out,” Tracy said.

Jack watched Trent walk in the direction of the pool and, having been in the old man's presence a short time ago, saw in him the mold of his father, aloof, deciding by the numbers, trusting only what he saw and touched, gravitating toward reality, repulsed by the ideal—not a dreamer.  Between detached and emotional, Trent chose the former, even to the degree that he didn't have a steady girl, so there would not be any tear jerking goodbyes in the morning.  Trent told Jack the day before the party that Anna, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, wasn't coming to the party, but that he would see her just before the train came—not for some soppy farewell, but to make sure, “things were settled before he left.”

Tracy and Jack danced a few numbers, then she drifted off to her college friends and Jack found himself alone among guys he had come to socialize with over the past few years, but in reality had remained distant.  The band played until one.  The honored guests and their friends sat on the veranda around a circular glass table.  Jack remained quiet, drowned in the sounds of beetles throwing their bodies against the ceiling lamps, the buzzing of mosquitoes close to his ears and the crickets chirping in the stuffy summer air.

Tracy's mom appeared, thumb in the air, signaling that the party had ended. She pursed her lips.

“It's time to call it quits. Trent has an early start, people.”

Old man Hamilton, having walked the last of his guests out, appeared in the doorway and laid eyes on Jack, before rubbing his chin and bidding everyone good night.  Linda followed saying, “Goodnight, all, don't stay up.  You have to be at the train by eight.”

***

After the guests left, Trent lay in bed painting thoughts on his bedroom ceiling— thoughts that could no longer be delayed by graduation exercises, soirees and going-away-parties.  Thoughts of tomorrow's reality, adventurous military operations, foreign cities, alluringly strange women.  Out the bedroom window, Bridgeport's sulfurous lights cast an orange halo over the black hills.  With sunrise, the hills would be forest green again and, in a few short months, red, russet and gold.  Trent would miss fall's wild asters, goldenrod and gentians in the fields behind the stables.  Like the birds that migrate south after the first frost kills most of the insects, Trent's time had come.  He would fly away and return at the end of the season.  Neither he nor anyone in Fairview could know that the next season would not be that of a bucolic New England countryside, but that of a foreign place, where the hills would be painted brown, black, and white, a less than Impressionistic selection of color.  He went back to bed, shut his eyes, and dreamed of the good life, until the 5:30 alarm that would send him to Anna's.

Dawn had barely broken over the southern hills leading to Bridgeport when Trent drove out of his driveway down the two lane highway and by the old gravel quarry that brought back memories of the years he and his friends raced cars around the field, took girls there to make out, played chicken and, occasionally, crashed perfectly good cars.  

***

During the '49 summer break, Trent went to work for his father's loan department, where he inspected the condition of collateral before the bank loaned money.  Albert Staples and his wife Rebecca, a couple in their mid-sixties, needed $2,000 to buy a tractor, and they applied to Hamilton Bank.  Every morning he hitched up two huge brown Percheron work horses, mother and son, to a small two wheeled wagon, and depending on the season worked one of three fields until supper.  In the spring, Albert decided to buy a used John Deere after the gelding broke its ankle and had to be put down.  The remaining mare could not work alone.

The Staples' farm with its dilapidated, unpainted barn sat a quarter-mile at the end of a dirt road twenty miles north of Fairview.  The couple was on the porch when Trent Hamilton pulled up in an open convertible.

“We've been expecting you, young man,” said Albert.

“Well, where should I start?” Trent asked in business-like fashion.

“In the house.  I can take you to the barn, the chicken coop.  We can go to the field if your car don't mind.”

Mrs. Staples bowed her head slightly when Trent entered the front hallway, where he opened a notebook and jotted things down.  When he finished inspecting inside, the men walked to the barn.  Inside, it smelled of horse manure and piss, and except for the horse stall, the place hadn't been used in some time.  Behind a pile of hay at the far end, was a 1929 four door, yellow and black Studebaker.

“Nice car.”

“Yep, haven't driven it in years.  Belonged to my boy.”

“Well how come he don't get it on the road?”

“Didn't come back from war.  Lost in '43.  Over Germany, bombardier, B-17.”

“Probably worth a little.”

Pointing in the direction of the car, Staples complained, “Yep, who wants an old car?”

“I'd take it off your hands.”

“Well, don't know.  I didn't mean...  . If you're serious.  We'd have to see how we felt about it.”

After looking at the barn, Trent headed for the bank.

That night the phone rang at the Staples house.

“Staples here...  oh, Mr. Hamilton.”

“I'm calling to ask if you're interested in selling the car,” said Trent.

“How much?”

“Well, I can make it worthwhile.  Hundred bucks.  How 'bout it?  Take it off your hands?”

“Well, son...  I'll ask my wife.  Call tomorrow.”  Albert hung up and sat down at the kitchen table.  “Well, offered hundred bucks for Scooter's car.”

“I'm not ready to let it go.”

“Maybe I can get more.  But, you know if we give the kid a break, I'm sure he'd put in a good word with his old man.  We need that loan or this time next year we're out on the street.”

Rebecca slumped her shoulders forward and picked up a wet dish.  “Do what you want, you always do.”  Albert went into the bedroom, Rebecca finished drying, patted her hands on her apron and went out on the porch to watch the sunset.

 

The next night the phone rang.  Albert picked up.  “Yes, Mr. Hamilton.  No sir, we haven't come to a decision on the Studey, yet.”

“What's he want?” Rebecca whispered.

Albert waved his hand at his wife to keep her from distracting him.  There was a pause while he listened to Trent.  “We need to get more than a hundred,” Albert countered forcefully. He listened and reiterated his position, “No...  it's worth more than a hundred.”

There was a hesitation in the conversation. Rebecca looked at Albert for a clue to what Hamilton was saying.

“Did you say that the loan officer asked to go over our loan on Friday?” Albert smiled at Rebecca. He cupped the phone and whispered, “Looks like they're going to decide this Friday.”

There was another hesitation. “Alright, Mr. Hamilton, hundred.”  Albert hung up and turned to his wife.  “He's picking up the car in the morning.”

Rebecca went to the barn after supper, opened the doors and walked past the mare bedded down from a long day of hauling stones.  She climbed in the car and let out a grief-stricken scream, flung herself down on the Mohair seat and bawled until she had no more tears left inside.

Early next morning, Trent, dressed in a tan Palm Beach suit, and a skinny, acne-faced kid in blue overalls came to revive the old car.  The kid popped the hood, installed a fresh battery, and while Trent punched the gas pedal and turned the key, the kid sprayed ether down the carburetor's throat and fiddled with the butterfly.  When the car cranked over, Trent pressed his foot to the floor, sending a black cloud of smoke into the horse stall.  Trent stared vacantly ahead as he drove the car through the barnyard and down the dirt road.  Rebecca watched it disappear around the first bend.

On Friday, Trent met with the bank loan officer.

“Trent, tell me what you can about the condition of the collateral out at the Staple farm.”

Trent slowly opened his notebook. “Let me see here.” He passed his finger along the margin of the opened page.

“Glad to see you took notes,” the officer said with an approving look.

Trent smirked, lifted his head.  Wiping the grin off his face, he looked at the loan officer squarely.  “Ben, the place is a wreck.  Those people have nothing.  You'd be looking to hire a collection agent if you loaned them more than a  hundred bucks.”

***

Anna lived with her mother among Polish immigrants, small stores and antebellum storied houses, interleafed among metal-working factories.  It was a tight ghetto bordered on one side by the Pequannock River and on the other by the railroad yard.  Below Anna's bedroom a small dry cleaning store started its machines at 5 a.m.
 
On the floor above her were a dozen small, cold-water flats let to families that came and went when the factories ramped up production or cut back.  Her bedroom window faced the gated entrance to the Remington Arms Company, a Civil War-era red brick factory that made ammunition, where she, like her mother before her, would someday work the 4 to 11 shift.

When it came to women, Trent acted like a self-centered little boy in the body of a virile man, never feeling the kind of emotions that led other young men to that thing most called love. As long as Anna lived close by, he would come around—even when he dated other girls —because she made him feel manly.  She helped Trent explode when he had to.  Otherwise, he had no strong ties to her.  In fact, he felt no strong ties to anything: not to the town or the people he grew up with.  There were no defining moments, outside of football, and no special places, except perhaps the Fairview countryside and the mansion.  Anna would not be there when he entered the future; he could find others to satisfy his sexual desires, and he knew that she had no illusions about that.

As Trent got closer to Anna's house, he started working himself up, imagining Anna slipping into panties, a full length silk slip and her white cotton dress.
 
He pulled up in his red '48 Merc coupe, the fender with the black Chinese ideogram signifying ‘fun' facing the house.  Trent tooted the horn and saw her peek out from the drape.  The moan of the factory horn signaled a new day.  Across the street, the usual cast of workers marched through the company's gate.

As she came out, she grasped the brass doorknob with both hands, gingerly shutting it.  Running down the stairs toward the car, the heels of her white pumps hardly touched the ground, and her crisp white dress pressed against her slim legs.  Her short, caramel colored hair was neatly pinned behind her ears with a gold-plated barrette.

A few minutes later, Trent drove through the granite pillared entrance of Lamb's Park and to an elliptical pond at the far end of a dirt road.  Wisps of dew hung over still water—green with algae—trees bordering the pond were reflected in the ripples caused by the breeze.  He knew this was Anna's favorite spot, but neither had ever been there this early in the morning.

Trent did not need sex if something could substitute, like hunting, drag-racing, gliding or skiing.  His favorite pastime was chicken.  Lights off, he and his buddies sped around in old or stolen cars doing curly cues, careening over rough ground and fissures, yelping, caterwauling, then straightening out toward the embankment.  They never thought about the certain death that would come if a hand slipped or a leg tangled within the steering column.  If the jalopy—with them trapped inside—completed its journey to oblivion.  Last year he'd played chicken, jumping out seconds before his 1929 Studebaker dove off a fifty-foot cliff, crashing like a wingless bird into the pit of an old stone quarry.  Running over to precipice, the guys cheered its eruption—first into flames and then exploding.  It cast an eerie, sapphire haze that reflected off low-hanging clouds.