Roses

by Leila Meacham

  For companionship, he had the constants of Ollie and Mary and a welcome newcomer to their circle of three, a young lawyer named Amos Hines. Amos had wandered into Howbutker in late 1945 on the heels of William Toliver’s departure and was immediately asked to join the law firm of his old friend and family attorney, Charles Waithe. Like his father, William had discovered he was no farmer and had taken off for parts unknown one fall morning, not to be heard from for several years. Once again, Mary was bereft of an heir to Somerset.

  With her wry half smile, she summed up their failures to Percy in a single observation. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

  “That we are,” he agreed.

  “You miss Lucy?”

  He pursed his lips and reflected. “I feel her absence, but not her loss.”

  He invested in an oil company and was required to sit in on meetings in Houston with several other partners, whose sole endeavors, passion, and income centered on the petroleum industry. It was during one of these conferences that he met Amelia Bennett, a year after Lucy took up residence in Atlanta. A recent widow, she had come by her partnership as a result of inheritance, but unlike Percy, she knew the industry backward and forward. They clashed immediately in a dispute over the financial prudence of drilling for oil in an area of West Texas known as the Permian Basin. He was for it; she was against it.

  “Really, Mr. Warwick,” she said, addressing him with a disdainful look down the polished conference room table, “I can’t imagine how a lumberman would have the faintest idea of where to drill for oil, let alone express an opinion concerning it. Perhaps you should keep quiet and let those who know decide where to set up the company’s rigs.”

  Percy’s brow arched. Ah, a challenge. Not since Mary had he encountered a challenge.

  “I shall take your well-meaning rebuke under advisement, Mrs. Bennett, but meanwhile I’m casting my vote to drill in the Dollarhide Field of West Texas.”

  Later, when they found themselves alone in the elevator, she looked his six-foot-three frame up and down and declared, “You are the most impossibly arrogant man I’ve ever met.”

  “So it would seem,” Percy concurred agreeably.

  She favored simple pumps and dark, slim skirts that she wore with silk blouses in pastel colors. Her only jewelry was a gold wedding band and single-pearl earrings to complement the mother-of-pearl buttons of her blouses. After several more meetings, Percy experienced the exquisite pleasure of slipping those buttons through their holes and parting the silk blouse.

  “Make no mistake, you are still the most arrogant man I have ever met,” Amelia said, her eyes glowing with the lambency of the finest amber.

  “I would not dream of disputing it,” Percy said.

  Their affair proved eminently satisfying to both. Neither was interested in marriage. A mutual need for intimacy with someone they liked, trusted, and respected was all either wanted from the other. They dated openly, letting the gossipmongers make of it what they would. None did. It was the postwar era, and certain social mores were relaxing. Percy and Amelia were consenting middle-aged adults. They were rich, influential, and powerful, accustomed to doing as they pleased. Who was there to dare criticize publicly a healthy, nubile widow for sharing a bed with a virile tycoon who’d been deserted by his wife?

  Wyatt was now stationed at Camp Pendleton. He seldom wrote, called only on Christmas and Percy’s birthday, and came home never. Percy corresponded frequently, filling his letters with news of the Sabine plant and housing development, of Mary and Ollie and his new friend, Amos Hines, of local events and happenings that might keep Wyatt in touch with Howbutker by however slim a thread. Once, after reading Sara’s final letter to him, he wrote that Miss Thompson had married a high school principal in Andrews, Texas. After long consideration, he decided to risk confiding that he and Miss Thompson had once been very close and that her marriage had left him with a bittersweet feeling. To his surprise, Wyatt responded immediately, mentioning Sara with the simple comment: “She always was my favorite teacher.”

  Six months before the decade ended, a letter arrived from Wyatt announcing his marriage to Claudia Howe, a transplanted schoolteacher from Virginia. They were living in the married officers’ quarters on base. He was now a captain and a company commander. Lucy had recently paid them a surprise visit when she flew in from Atlanta to meet her new daughter-in-law. Wyatt did not suggest that Percy do the same.

  Percy at once picked up the receiver and placed a call to Camp Pendleton. A woman with a pleasant and well-bred voice answered on the first ring. “Good morning,” she said. “Captain Warwick’s quarters.”

  “Claudia? This is Percy Warwick, Wyatt’s father.”

  He thought he detected a silence of pleased surprise, confirmed when she said with a lilt in her voice, “Why, how nice to hear from you. Wyatt will be so disappointed to have missed your call. He’s on maneuvers.”

  Stung with disappointment, Percy said, “I’m sorry, too. Bad timing on my part, regrettably.”

  “I hope you’ll try another time.”

  “I will indeed.” He searched for something to say to fill the silent line. “I was delighted to hear of his marriage, and I hope to meet you soon. You must get Wyatt to bring you to Howbutker.”

  “I will certainly mention that to Wyatt.”

  Percy noted the avoidance of an invitation to visit them and framed several more polite queries regarding their welfare that Claudia met with gracious but brief answers not conducive to prolonging the conversation. He hung up feeling cheated and depressed.

  He sent a large check for a wedding gift that was promptly acknowledged in a note from Claudia with one line added from Wyatt. Percy suspected the short salutation had been his wife’s idea. A year later, another letter arrived from his daughter-in-law. She wrote in a fine, distinct hand that he was now a grandfather and that the enclosed photograph was to introduce him to his grandson, Matthew Jeremy Warwick. They called him Matt.

  The next day, he was shocked by bold black headlines screaming from the front page of the Sunday Gazette:NORTH KOREAN TROOPS CROSS THE THIRTY-EIGHTH PARALLEL IN A SURPRISE ATTACK AGAINST SOUTH KOREA.

  Over the next few days, with increasing alarm, Percy followed news stories of North Korea’s refusal to comply with the UN Security Council’s demand that its government immediately cease hostilities and withdraw its forces to the thirty-eighth parallel. North Korean troops were already on their way to capture Seoul, capital of South Korea, for all intents and purposes to bring down the recognized democratic government and forcibly unify the country under Communist rule. The UN Security Council responded by sending troops to support South Korea, dominated by American forces and commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. One of the general’s first orders: “Send me the marines.”

  That’s it! Percy thought, staring at the picture of his grandson over his breakfast plate. I’m catching the first plane to San Diego. I don’t give a damn if Wyatt doesn’t want to see me. The First Marine Division is always the first in, and I’m going to see my boy before he leaves.

  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 ye
llow 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 HOWBUTKER HIGH SCHOOL 1939 STATE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS 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.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The 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,” W
yatt 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.”