His current project, a cedar chest, was a birthday gift from a college professor to his daughter. Tom was facing a deadline, the professor having paid his deposit months ago and the birth date was coming within a week. The party was set for the following Saturday. Tom had fashioned strips of cedar and laminated them. Wesley had helped join the pieces together using dowel pegs, and the bottom of the chest was placed on thin wooden rails. The box was two feet wide and four feet long, and two feet deep. The laminated wood slats showed different grains—red, white, gray, hues of amber—and they would be pretty when the lacquer was applied.
Tom placed a dowel rod into a hole on the bottom. The hole was filled with carpenter’s glue, and he tamped the rod down with a wooden mallet. The mallet was made from a fallen hickory tree in the yard, the head fashioned from a limb that he’d shaved down to size. He wished Wesley was there to help him install the hinges on the box lid. He smelled the cedar. It was even more profound after drilling the hole to insert the dowel, and he felt sad that he could not share it with his son.
On Sunday morning, Tom attended the service alone at Little Zion Methodist. They sang hymns: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” He listened to a sermon taken from the Book of Hebrews preached by Reverend Poole, a local pastor. He worked part-time at the church and taught Senior English at Milltown High School. He had one foot in the world of religion, and the other in the ongoing battle to defeat comma splices, sentence fragments, and incoherent paragraphs. Poole had earned two graduate degrees, one in theology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and the other in English from LSU. As a bi-vocational pastor, he stood on the bottom rung of the Methodist clergy ladder, but this suited him well enough. He often said that the proper role of the clergy was that of a servant and not a master, and staying as a local pastor and never getting ordained as an elder prevented him from entering the Methodist rat race toward larger churches and the bishopric.
Tom thought that having a public job allowed the minister to empathize better with the parishioners, since he worked full-time outside of the congregation like everyone else. At least it shielded him from charges of only working on Sundays and not knowing what it was like to function in the real world.
After the sermon was finished, the piano played “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” an invitation hymn. When the second stanza was complete, no one came forward to become a member of the church, so Poole went ahead with the benediction. The parishioners began to file out of the sanctuary, speaking to the minister at the door as they left.
The minister offered Tom his hand and they shook. “Tom, I’ve got to go visit Donald Brownlow and Mrs. Inez Jones this evening at the hospital. Donald mentioned to Mary Anne that he wanted to see you when I went to checked in on him this evening. I guess he wants you for company. You mind coming along for the visit?”
“No, I’ll ride with you.”
“Six o’clock. I’ll come get you at your house.”
“Okay.”
Tom stepped through the church door and into the afternoon light. He wondered what the marshal might want but wasn’t too concerned about it. Sara was still not talking to him, and he figured the trip to the hospital might help get his mind off the problems at home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wesley’s back throbbed from sleeping two nights on Nate’s couch. It was a hard plastic couch, something Nate bought for three dollars at a yard sale in LaPlace, a small town south of Pickleyville where he grew up and where his parents lived. Though Wesley had decided to go home and get some clothes, he first worked out an arrangement with Nate to stay the rest of the week. Wesley offered to help out with the rent money and the cost of food.
It was Sunday afternoon, and Wesley closed down the Industrial Arts Shop at four o’clock with his key. The campus was empty, not a car in the lot except for his Ford Maverick. Wesley’s stomach was in his throat just thinking about going home to get his things. His eyes twitched, and he couldn’t be sure how his father would react when he asked for the tuition money, but he was determined to do it. Around seven hundred and fifty dollars was in a special bank account from what he’d been told by his parents, and he wanted to be sure that he had the money for the fall term squared away. The Claiborne job would cover most of the spring semester’s tuition and fees. With a part-time job in Lafayette, Wesley figured he would be able to return in the spring and continue his studies uninterrupted. In the summer, he could find full-time work and sock away enough money for the following fall.
As he walked to his car, the big art portfolio under his arm, a red Mercedes turned down the side street and into the parking lot and honked. Wesley could see Charity’s long black hair, her sunglasses and ivory-white smile gleaming in the driver’s window of the sleek convertible. The car came to a smooth stop. She leaned out of the window and Wesley bent over to talk to her.
“Hey, Wesley. I drove by to see if you were on campus. It’s great finding you here. C.J. said you’re always at school working. I saw him yesterday.” C.J. Kirby was Wesley’s favorite teacher and building supervisor at the Industrial Arts Shop.
“I’m working on your project today.” He held his portfolio and squatted beside Charity’s door, looking at her face, seeing her flawless skin and tan neck.
She took off her sunglasses, and for the first time, he noticed her deep blue eyes. They looked completely true and sincere, honest and beautiful eyes. They seemed to Wesley more inviting than any eyes he’d seen before.
“I’m so sorry about how we handled the problem with your father on Friday. I should have explained more to Dr. C. beforehand. It caught him off guard, and he reacted like he was surprised by it, I guess.”
“Me, too. My father has more or less kicked me out of the house.”
Her eyes widened and her brows rose. “Oh my! He’s kicked you out. He’s that mad about the job?”
“Yes, he’s plenty mad that I took work without telling him. He’s wound pretty tight and doesn’t like to be surprised.”
“Wesley, do you want to just drop the whole thing? I’ll pay you for the drawings and get someone else to do the job. I don’t know who, but somebody’ll do it. Maybe you know a good carpenter in the area who can help us.” She looked resigned, her hands on her lap. The Mercedes purred, idling like a big old cat.
“No, I need the money for school at USL.”
“Come to think of it, the president of Southwestern is a friend of my husband. Dr. C. knows President Van Broussard well over in Lafayette. They’ve known each other for decades. I think they went to college together or something. I’ve been to the mansion twice. I bet we could pull some strings and get you a scholarship. We can sure try.”
“That would be super. It would be helpful, very helpful.”
“Wesley, where are you staying?”
“With my buddy, Nate. But I don’t know what I’m going to do until my dorm opens in August. I’m sleeping on his couch. It’s as hard as a rock wrapped in rawhide.”
“Wow. You know, we have a pool house out back, a little furnished guest cottage. It’s got a nice new bed. When we moved to the family home after Dr. C. retired, we figured we’d get a helper to stay there. It had been a caretaker’s quarters years ago before the swimming pool was added. It’s totally furnished, a studio apartment. I think we could work something out for you to stay with us while you’re renovating our study. Just until you leave for Lafayette,” she said.
He thought for a second. At that moment, he was standing at a crossroads. One life was on the left and another life lay on the right. He didn’t like the choices ahead, but he felt like he was being forced by his father to take one pathway or the other. At least it could sever his relationship with his father, but not his mother. She’d stand by him. An opening was pointing the way toward Charity’s world, and he knew to distrust it, but he decided to take the risk anyway.
“Wesley, are you still there,” she said, putting her hand on his arm.
“Yes,” he said.
“You seemed to zone out on me.”
“I’m still here. The apartment sounds fine to me.”
“Super. We’ll work something out for the rent easily enough. When do you want to come see it?”
“I’ll come by tomorrow, if that’s okay. I’m going to get some of my things from the house this evening and stay with Nate tonight.”
“Excellent. Just call me. Or better, if you see my car under the carport on the side of the house, stop by. Maybe after lunchtime. Dr. C.’s gone to Oxford, Mississippi, doing research. Then he’ll come back for one day, and then fly up to Washington to the Library of Congress. He’ll be there for a few weeks. But I’ve already talked to him about having someone stay in the pool house. We were about to run an ad in the school newspaper for a student to live in the guest house and help out around the place, but you can have it until school starts in the fall.”
“That’s great. Thank you so much.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re so sweet. Bye-bye.” She drove off waving her hand out of the window.
Wesley felt troubled, as if his back were against a wall. Yet here was a door open wide, and he was going to walk straight through it and deal with the consequences later.
CHAPTER TWENTY
My best guidance will fall on deaf ears, Tom thought, as he waited for Wesley to come home. Despite this knowledge, he prepared a little speech for his son. Both Friday and Saturday night, he waited. Sara was angry and worried, and she was still not speaking to him. The world was often dominated by indifference to hard decisions, benign ambivalence, but this was a rebellion counter to his faithful leadership, kicking against the pricks like St. Paul, an affront to his authority and wishes as a father. Tom knew that Wesley was now twenty, and he was able to make it on his own terms and live by his own lights if he wanted to.
To Tom this was a new age, the dawn of Babylon, brother against brother and child against father. Indeed, it was the kind of world brought to America courtesy of President Richard M. Nixon, a man fit only to lie, a sleaze in an expensive suit with a band that played “Hail to the Chief” every time he strode down a sidewalk. Tom wondered if this was the era when no one had loyalty beyond his own self-interest. He believed this was a time not unlike the Book of Judges in the Bible, a time when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
All he wanted was a good life for his son and security for his family. But as much as he wanted to be reconciled with his son, he also wanted Wesley to repudiate Charity Claiborne for his own good, and for the overall welfare of the Hardin family.
It was afternoon. A cold supper waited for him in the refrigerator, surely a silent supper, as his wife had turned off the conversation like a spigot. He got up from the table and went into the yard and walked around a few minutes, and then went to the front porch to think. After a while, Tom started reading a massive book by T. Harry Williams, Huey Long, a biography of Louisiana’s most infamous governor. During a peaceful evening, he could read for hours, but this was no peaceful evening.
Tom heard Wesley’s Ford Maverick turn onto Lower Louth Road, just around the corner. He could tell Wesley’s car needed a new muffler. The car was only three years old, and they’d just paid it off, and already they had to start making repairs. He put the book down on the bench beside his cypress rocker. The gravel crunched under the car tires as he pulled into the driveway toward the house.
Tom stood. He watched as he got out of the car, several empty cotton sacks in his right hand. “Where’ve you been, son?” he asked.
“Here and there, almost everywhere, but nowhere in particular,” Wesley answered, looking at his father square in the face.
Tom’s forearms were tight with muscle as he closed them at his chest. The cavalier tone slapped him, the smart mouth, the lack of a direct and straight answer. “Boy, I’ll knock your teeth straight down your throat. You want to come here to the house, you’ll show a little respect.”
“Yes, sir.” Wesley looked down at his feet briefly.
Tom wasn’t sure of the sincerity. “Where’ve you been staying?”
“Over at Nate Forrest’s place. On the couch.”
“Why didn’t you call? Your mother’s been worried, and you have a good bed in your room.”
“You gave me an ultimatum, Pops. You told me to quit the Claiborne job or don’t come back home.”
“But you’re here now.”
“I’m here to get some clothes, if that’s all right with you.”
“Have at it. What about the Claibornes? You’d be wise to leave them be. Charity is nothing more than a homewrecker. She’s got a dark and vicious heart. It’s cold as ice beneath that pretty veneer that you see, the hair and makeup and pretty legs, and that German car she drives around like she owns Pickleyville.”
“You don’t know her well enough to say all of that.”
“I know about her well enough. Since way back, she and her people, the LeBlancs, were always a blight on the landscape, even her preacher daddy, and she’s the reason old man Claiborne’s first wife is dead today. I fervently believe that.”
“Are you saying she’s some kind of murderer? Come on, Pops. Then why did we go over to the house for the job to start with, if she killed Dr. Claiborne’s wife or something?”
Sara gazed through the window in the living room. She held the curtain aside and watched. Tom could see her looking from the corner of his eye.
“I went over there to deal with Dr. Claiborne himself out of common courtesy. He hired your mother in 1965 and me in ’67. Now I’m not saying she murdered Mrs. Eliza outright, but that Charity drove her to an early grave by relentlessly pursuing Dr. Claiborne. It was a public disgrace and a true scandal at the college. Not to mention her affairs with that fruity English teacher right after they got back from the honeymoon.”
“You blow everything out of proportion.”
“I’m telling you, she drove his poor wife to her casket. Mrs. Claiborne was a real sweet lady, too. She was the mother of their children, taught piano lessons in town. I’ve been inquiring about it all. Charity was set up in that big house where you plan to work even before Mrs. Eliza was dead. She was his mistress. And it was her constant scandalizing that caused the old man to be forced to step down from Baxter State. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
Wesley turned his head away from his father, and Tom thought for a second that he might be able to get Wesley to reconsider. Tom wanted him to change his plans, leave the Claibornes alone. But when Wesley turned back his face, he knew it was not the boy’s plan to do the right thing. The young man clenched his teeth and set his jaw in outright defiance.
Wesley said, “All you give me is criticism. I’ve never done anything in my life that you were happy with. Nothing’s ever correct. I give up. The only thing I want from you is the money for the fall tuition. I need this job for the spring tuition and you know it.”
“We have enough money set aside for this coming semester. It gives us another four months to come up with the funds for the spring. And you’re not being fair in your assessment of me. I try to do what’s best for you and our family at all times, and right now, I don’t believe we need the job or any money from Charity LeBlanc or Claiborne or whatever she goes by nowadays,” Tom said.
“You’re unwilling to compromise. I’ve had plenty enough of it. I want my tuition money, and I want to leave with some clothes and my car.”
“First thing, I need to know what your plans are. Are you planning to stay with Nate Forrest?”
Wesley was almost shaking with rage. He wanted to lie, just tell his father that he was moving in with Nate, and avoid additional conflict. But then he blurted out the truth: “I’m moving into the guest house at the Claiborne place for the next few weeks until the job is done, and then I’m moving to the dorm at USL.”
Tom’s face was reddened by his son’
s words, his cheeks hollowing and the blood leaving his head. Rather than arguing, he backed up and sat down in the rocker. He was instantly reminded that he and Wesley built the rockers seven years earlier. Tom was stunned. His body could not feel the cypress wood against his blue jeans.
Wesley began to rant, trying to provoke his father’s wrath, knowing there was a vast gulf between them that could not be bridged. It was as if all of the care and friendship they had between them had been for naught.
Tom said nothing. He sat listening on the porch, letting Wesley gripe, make his petty charges.
Now the boy reveled in the permissiveness and kept going on with his complaint. “You’re more interested in your own spotless reputation, more interested in your own silly perfection and righteousness than us. That’s always your highest priority. It’s just an idol that you worship, bottom line. And I’d like to have my college money right now,” he said, ending his diatribe with a direct request.
This brought Tom back to Wesley’s little speech. He hadn’t heard three-fourths of what the boy said. “I wish you wouldn’t move in there. It’s going to end badly. I guarantee it,” he said.
“That’s your opinion.” He stared at his father and wiped away a stream of tears with his forearm.
“I’ll give you the money, but it’s in the bank.”
“Good. I’m going to pack my clothes.”
“Do whatever you think you need to do.”
Wesley went to his bedroom and packed enough clothes to last him until the fall, including his winter coat in case he didn’t come home for Christmas. Sara followed him into his room talking about trivial things. She acted as though she knew nothing of the trouble with the Claibornes. She stood at his door making small talk as he packed his cotton rucksack, brine tears occasionally slipping from his eyes. She hugged him before he left, and she told him to come home for supper and that she’d wash his clothes any time.
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