“Watson was in the hospital the night Wallace Sampson was shot. And for two weeks after. Air-tight alibi.”
“So Pennegar had no reason to question him.” I took a deep breath and felt a little dizzy. “Shit.”
I stumbled out of my cubicle. I could see Walker in a meeting in the corner conference room but I could not spare the time to wait for him to finish. I slouched to Carmela’s desk.
“We’re going to need to hold the Wallace Sampson story,” I said. “There are a few loose ends.”
Carmela sighed, called the circulation department and told them they’d need to adjust their expectations for Sunday sales.
By the time I got back to my desk, word had spread through the newsroom that the weekend’s big investigative package—my story, my way out of the publisher’s crosshairs—was dead.
Chapter Ten
Sunday morning I stayed in bed too depressed to retrieve the newspaper from my doorstep, even if it did have a big story on Cyprus and a feature on single-sex math classes.
The phone finally roused me from my bed. It was Delana, and I was sure I knew why she was calling.
“Sorry about the message,” I said. “The story got held.”
“I wondered. But that’s not why I called. Matt, your dad has cancer. He phoned me yesterday when he couldn’t reach you.”
I collapsed into a chair, a hole in my stomach, a weakness in my limbs, a lightness in my brain. I was reeling, outside myself, as I struggled to absorb what Delana had been able to learn. Multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood. No known cause. Treatable but not curable. Maybe one year. Maybe ten.
“Matt, we need to see him,” she said.
“I’ll be there in an hour.” I hung up and stared dumbly at the blinking light on my answering machine. I’d deliberately ignored it, unwilling to be distracted from the Sampson story. I pushed the button, picked up the model car I keep on my desk, and listened to my dad saying he had some news and that I should call.
Some people keep family pictures on their desks. On mine, I keep a set of vise grips and a miniature model of a green two-seat Triumph TR3 sports car like the one my father drove when I was growing up.
I had some of the best times in my life in that car. I can close my eyes and summon the smell of its oil-rich exhaust and worn black leather upholstery. I can hear the winding engine and the delighted screams of my brother Luke, scrunched sidewise in the tiny space behind the seats, as Dad took turns low and fast. Unbuckled in the front, I can feel myself pressed back as Dad accelerated through the gears and then, during turns, tossed between the door and the handbrake.
Saturdays, Dad worked, “holding down a desk” as he put it, overseeing production of the big Sunday paper. Little League, Scouts, family trips to the park were out. But, sometimes, late Saturday afternoon Luke and I would be playing when he’d pull into the driveway. He’d put the TR’s top down, lift Luke and me in and we’d be off, cruising all over town. As the editor of the paper, Dad knew everyone and everyone knew him.
“Evening, Mr. Harper,” cops would say from their patrol cars as we idled at the lights.
“Put me in the paper, Mr. Harper,” my friends would beg when he’d drop me off to meet them at the movies. “Take a picture of me in your car.”
In the TR3, Dad never seemed happier. I keep a model on my desk because I want one just like it.
I use the vise grips to hold down papers. I like to twist the adjusting screw while I’m talking on the phone. Sometimes, I try to get the grip to just the right tolerance so I can pick up a brand new Charlotte Times #2 Ticonderoga pencil without cracking its yellow paint.
I have had them since the day I turned thirteen. Among the bright packages of T-shirts, shorts and music tapes at my birthday party was a heavy package wrapped in brown paper and string and a tag that said “Happy Birthday, Dad.” It felt heavy enough to be something really good. I kept thinking—what? a radio, maybe? I pulled away the paper and felt the metal, cool and slippery, lightly coated in mineral oil to prevent rust. I held the vise grips and looked at Mom and Dad.
I searched their eyes for a clue. Was this some kind of gag? Maybe there had been a mistake. But it was no mistake. Now that I was beginning to enter adulthood, my father explained, it was time that I began thinking about a career. It should be something that involved working with my hands, he thought. It was time I start building a collection of tools.
I had tried to smile and say thank you and maybe I did. I tried not to hurt but I couldn’t. There is not a single person, including my mother and father, who knows who I am, I remember thinking. I am alone in this world.
Now, the feeling came again.
I drove in a daze to The Farmlet, Delana’s weathered farmhouse and pottery studio outside of town. I found her in the kitchen looking sexier than I wanted. She wore jeans, a sports bra, and no shirt. Her dark hair caressed her smooth shoulders as she turned her head to greet me, her hands in the sink.
“I’m making him a blackberry crisp,” she said. “Sorry.” She hunched her shoulders to indicate her bareness. “These things stain like crazy. I didn’t want to dress until I was finished.” She returned to work at the sink. “I’ll have this in the oven in a minute.”
I sat by the window at the small breakfast table, the one where we used to start the mornings with the paper and coffee. Behind me, a cobalt blue pottery vase full of lavender, red, and pink zinnias stood in stark contrast to the black wood-burning stove on which it sat. The old ceiling fan turned lazily, giving off a familiar click on each rotation. I was surprised to see the picture we’d had taken of us together at sunset at our favorite place, the aging dock at The Farmlet’s secluded pond, still on the shelf. For a moment I felt as if I had never left.
I have known Delana Calhoun half my life, since we were fifteen and my father used to drive us on our first dates. She is gorgeous. She is smart. She is sexy. We’ll always be friends. If I were a better man, it might have been more.
Delana busied herself at the counter, mixing the berries, oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, and flour. She opened jars of cinnamon and nutmeg, sprinkled them into her bowl and began spooning the mixture into a glass pan. When she had finished, she washed her hands, shook them out over the sink and hugged me.
“Matt,” she said, “it’s so awful about your dad. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s a tough old bird. He’ll fight it.”
She laughed. “I remember the first time I met him. He bowed and kissed my hand. He was so mannerly. So cultured and polite. You were like that, too. That’s one of the first things that attracted me to you.”
“I used to be better at it.” It was true.
“You’re better than you think.” She smiled and squeezed my hand hard.
She bit her lip and her chin quivered. For the first time since I got the news, I could not hold back.
“I’m glad I didn’t put on my mascara,” she sniffed as she pushed away. She slid the glass pan into the oven and had to kick the door shut. “Twenty-five minutes and we’ll be ready to go.”
“Smells good,” I said.
She smiled. “Must be genetic. It’s always been your father’s favorite.”
I caught myself staring. “I’m starting to get distracted,” I said. “You need to put your shirt on.”
“Put it on?” she laughed. “That’s a switch.”
I laughed, too, but it didn’t take. I missed her too much. I had assumed that by now I could be easy and breezy about our past—just two one-time lovers who’d grown up and moved on but could look back fondly on the times that had been. But it still hurt. I remembered my father and my heart was stabbed again.
The sweet, syrupy smell of baking blackberries and brown sugar filled the room as I read the paper and killed time. I wondered whether my father had ever had one of his stories crash and burn. I wondered if he’d ever been fire
d.
I spotted a piece of Delana’s pottery I hadn’t seen before—a spectacular blue-glazed tray impressed with natural items from North Carolina, a pine cone, a dogwood bloom, a magnolia leaf, that Delana was using as a mail holder. Her new stuff had moved well beyond functional pottery. It was art.
A letter from a New York gallery lay open in the mail tray. My reporter’s genes made me read it. The curator had enjoyed his recent trip to North Carolina, the letter said, and wanted to make sure Delana understood his offer. The gallery was eager to represent Delana’s art, was prepared to buy twenty-five thousand dollars-worth of pottery up-front and would launch a month-long exhibition if only she’d say “Yes.” The letter was dated two weeks earlier.
The timer on the stove announced the completion of the crisp and of Delana’s dressing routine, which I could not bear to watch. But I saw it anyway because I knew it by heart.
Delana covered the hot crisp with foil and placed it in a picnic basket. She packed the basket with hot pads to secure the crisp and keep it warm. An hour later, I could still sense its warmth as it rode on the floor of the back seat on our way to visit my father.
I asked about the letter from the gallery as we drove.
“Who can figure the New York art world?” She shrugged her shoulders. “For years they wouldn’t look at me and now they won’t leave me alone.”
“Congratulations. You’re finally getting the recognition you deserve. Twenty-five thousand bucks and your own show.”
“The Farmlet could use the money,” she said ruefully, “but I’m not going to do it. The work isn’t quite where it should be yet.”
I was stunned. “The gallery obviously thinks it is.”
“But I don’t. Besides, they’ll still be there when I’m ready.”
Before long we were almost there. Like a kid on the high dive with a line of impatient swimmers waiting, I knew I had to jump. “Delana,” I said, “I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve never told Dad about what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I haven’t told him yet that we aren’t getting married.”
Incredulous, she swiveled toward me. “Why not? This is a big thing in people’s lives. This is your father! How does this not come up?”
Beyond her disbelief, I could feel her hurt, as if our breakup meant so little that it didn’t even merit family mention. But that wasn’t it at all. I had so many good reasons for not telling my father about what happened with Delana that I didn’t know where to start. How about shame? How about denial? How about because not talking is the nature of father’s and my relationship? In the Harper family, I’ve learned that if I need a shoulder to cry on, mine is the shoulder I turn to.
“He doesn’t need to hear bad news right now,” I said, skipping to where I knew the conversation was headed.
But I had already uncapped the well of her anger. “Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to fertilize the hot little tomato,” she said. “That bitch.”
I flashed to the morning the Times garden writer and I were awakened by the clanging of trashcans. Peering out from the slits in the blinds of her bedroom window, the bed sheets pulled around our necks, we watched Delana dump can after can of garbage on the garden writer’s neatly manicured lawn.
“It wasn’t her fault,” I said weakly.
“I wouldn’t call her blameless. I’ll never understand what you saw in her.”
She stared out the side window, chin in hand. I tried to lighten things up. “Besides,” I said, “I probably did you a favor. My story’s dead and my career’s even deader.”
“That’s crap and you know it, Matt. The story’s not done and you’re not done. Quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence.
Dad’s habit was to spend Sunday afternoon at his office. I planned to pick him up there while Delana waited at his townhouse with the blackberry crisp.
“So what are we going to do about telling him about us?” she asked when I dropped her off on a leafy side street not far from campus.
“I don’t know.”
I haven’t seen my dad all that much—maybe two or three times a year, less than that after Mom died and he quit the newspaper to take the teaching job. But I knew where to look: in his office at the School of Communications on the second floor of Lowell Hall. Head down, he graded papers at his desk, the walls behind him adorned with the record of his splendid newspapering past—awards, citations and photos with the famous. For a long time I watched him silently from the doorway, as a parent might a sleeping child.
The fortunate among us outlive our parents and therefore experience their deaths. But as I watched him, fortunate is not how I felt. I was scared for him. I didn’t want him to hurt and I didn’t want him to die unhappy. I was scared for me. If it was his turn now, it might be my turn next. As Walker Burns once put it, “When your parent dies, it means the lemming right in front of you just went over the cliff.” Mostly, I was sad for both of us. I’ve always wanted my father and me to be closer. I used to think we had years, but we were running out of time.
Every kid wants to envision his dad a hero. Lucas Harper Jr., had a lot of material to work with. He is the son of a crusading newspaperman who became one himself. His passion for human rights and commitment to social justice found expression daily on his editorial pages and in our lives at home. At the university, his ferocious memory and piercing wit are legendary among the next generation of journalists and crusaders.
On Labor Day 1962, civil rights protesters marched through our all-white suburb. Mom, Dad, Luke, and I joined the neighbors at the curb. Dad hoisted me to his shoulders. The marchers were well-dressed, peaceful, and carried signs bearing slogans like “Integration Now” and “End Discrimination.” But as the marchers passed, I saw faces twisted in anger. People began to boo.
Then suddenly my father stepped forward, off the curb and into the street, me on his shoulders and Luke and Mom beside us. The Whites, our next-door neighbors, followed. Soon others from the curb began to fall in and before long the streets were filled. Only now do I understand the impact of my father’s step and the courage it required for him to take it.
At home, it was Dad who set the standards. We said “sir” and “ma’am” on all occasions. Mom might let a lapse slide but any failure within earshot would be immediately addressed by Dad removing his eyeglasses, staring at the offender, arching a left eyebrow menacingly, and demanding, “What did you say?”
“I mean ‘sir,’ sir,” we’d quickly scramble.
“That’s better.” That was the script. Every time.
We were to rise when any woman or any adult entered the room. We were not to speak unless spoken to. We were to be seen and not heard.
High standards applied to life, school, and work, not just social occasions. If something was worth doing, it was worth doing well. The greatest sin was a failure to think. Perfection was the point.
In fifth grade I came home excited because I’d learned that Robbie Schroder’s parents paid for grades—fifty cents for each B and one dollar for each A. My ten As and two Bs added up to eleven dollars, I had already calculated.
“Young man, we do not pay for good grades in the Harper family,” my father informed me. “We expect good grades. Excellence is not the exception. It is the rule. Now, get cracking on those Bs.”
At home, there were no free rides. We had a duty to contribute to the household, Dad would explain, as if it were a lesson in ethics and economics. A suitable contribution became defined as two hours of chores every Saturday during the school year and two hours a day, Monday through Friday, during summer vacation. An allowance wasn’t a gift. It was money earned.
One day, Luke had had enough. “None of my friends has to do what we have to do,” he told me. “Johnny Doyle’s mom does everything
for him and he gets five dollars a week. I’m going on strike.”
I knew what a strike was. Dad’s newspaper had to stop publishing once because the pressmen’s union had walked out. I knew it meant you refused to work and I knew it was serious. I was delighted that Luke was testing the limits but I intended to lay back and see how it all turned out. Luke was principled, uncompromising, and stubborn. So was Dad. It was going to be interesting.
“I’m on strike,” he told Dad. “I’m not working. And you still have to feed me and buy me clothes. The law says so.”
“The law doesn’t say I have to feed you hot dogs and hamburgers,” Dad shot back. “I can feed you tomatoes.” Luke and I hated tomatoes in any form except ketchup.
“Then I’d starve to death and you’d go to jail.”
“You’d have to not eat for thirty or forty days to starve yourself to death.”
“Well, I’m not working and if all I get is tomatoes, I’m not eating.”
And so Luke’s strike commenced. It had started conceptually as a labor strike but also took the form of a hunger strike, at least for the first day. When Mom served dinner the first night, Luke sat silently and left his plate untouched. Luke wasn’t going to work but he wasn’t going to take any family food, either. Dinner finished with the controversy never addressed.
By the next day, the strike had been modified to allow the consumption of food from non-home sources such as Johnny Doyle’s mom and the Good Humor man. By the day after that, the terms had been modified to allow consumption of food from our home as long as Mom and Dad didn’t know about it. And by the fourth day, the strike was over, the issues that sparked it still unaddressed and unresolved.
All this attention to obligation and standards came from Dad’s conviction that much is expected from those to whom much is given. Lucas Harper Jr. had grown up with a good education and a father with an important job. So would Luke and I. Dad made clear to us that Harper family members had been given the gifts of education and good fortune and we were to use them to make the world a better place.
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