W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound

by Honor Bound(Lit)

  And then there is that other problem, Cletus, my boy, you've never flown a stagger-wing. Well, so what? You never flew a Wildcat either before the first day you flew one. If you can fly a Wildcat, it would seem logical that you can fly a stagger-wing.

  When Clete pulled up, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was sitting in an armchair on the wide verandah of the ranch house. He held a large, very black cigar in one hand; and in the other was a large, squat glass, dark with whiskey. He was wearing a white polo shirt, riding breeches, and glistening boots.

  "Welcome to San Pedro y San Pablo," Frade said, moving down the shallow stairs toward the car.

  The cigar, Clete saw, was freshly lit. The drink was fresh. So was the shave: A dot of shaving cream was by his father's ear.

  He got all dressed up to meet me. Jesus, that's nice.

  "I brought Se¤ora Pellano along with me to show me the way," Clete said as he shook his father's hand.

  "I hope that is all right?" Se¤ora Pellano asked.

  "Of course it is, Marianna," Frade said. "I should have thought of it myself."

  "Gracias, mi Coronel," she said.

  "Nice-looking automobile," Frade said. "The latest model?" He took a closer look and proclaimed indignantly, "It's filthy."

  "It just came off the ship."

  "They should have prepared it for you at the dock," Frade said indignantly. "I was assured that everything would be taken care of." But then he brightened. "No problem. Enrico will see to it that it is washed and waxed."

  "That's not necessary," Clete protested.

  "Nonsense. Enrico will be pleased. He admires fine automobiles. Marianna, would you be good enough to have someone take care of Se¤or Cletus's luggage, and have someone send for En-rico, and then ask if they can prepare a little snack for Se¤or Cletus and myself?"

  "S¡, mi Coronel."

  "Come sit on the porch with me," Frade said. "I do not nor-mally take spirits before seven, but your visit is a special occasion for me. And perhaps you would like a little something... what is it they say, 'to cut the dust of the trail'?"

  "Yes," Clete said, restraining a smile. "Thank you, I would." Se¤ora Pellano walked into the house. Thirty seconds later, a procession of three servants marched onto the porch, one of them heading for the car, the other two pushing wheeled tables. On the first of these was arrayed an enormous plate of hors d'oeuvres. And on the second Clete saw enough whiskey of various sorts for a party of eight.

  He had that set up, too. It took half an hour to make that tray of food. How did he know exactly when I would arrive? Ah hah, those guys galloping over the fields on those beautiful horses with the funny-looking, hornless saddles. He had people out there wait-ing.

  "We will have a drink, or perhaps two, and then you will decide when we should have our dinner. It will be simple, just you and I. It will take no more than an hour to prepare." "Thank you," Clete said.

  "I did not know when you would arrive, of course, so I was about to take a ride," Frade said.

  Sure you were. Where's the horse, Dad? "I saw some beautiful animals a couple of miles back," Clete said.

  "We take pride in our animals," Frade said. "I am sure that your uncle James taught you to ride?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Perhaps we will have time to ride tomorrow."

  "I'd like that," Clete said.

  "I don't know about riding clothes..." Frade said, almost in alarm.

  "I'm wearing all I need," Clete said, hoisting his trousers to reveal his boots. "Anyway, Uncle Jim always said that a man who couldn't ride bareback really couldn't ride."

  "Yes, I recall, James was a fine horseman. And your mother rode extremely well for a woman. So it is in your blood from both sides."

  Enrico appeared. There was no look of recognition on his face.

  "¨,Mi Coronel?"

  "Enrico, this is my son, Se¤or Cletus, former Teniente of the U.S. Marine Corps. Cletus, Enrico is former Suboficial Mayor"- Sergeant Major-"of the Husares de Pueyrred¢n. We were to-gether there for many years, weren't we, Enrico?"

  My father doesn't know how he got home from the Guest House the night he passed out. Or he knows, and we are pretending we don't.

  "S¡, mi Coronel. A sus ¢rdenes, mi Teniente."

  Enrico smiled at him warmly as Clete shook his hand.

  Whaddayasay, Gunny? How they hanging? Still one below the other?

  "Be so good, Enrico, to prepare Se¤or Cletus's automobile. Have it washed and waxed, and you-personally-check all the mechanicals."

  "S¡, mi Coronel."

  The drink prepared by the maid was at least a triple. Clete sipped a small swallow, put it down, and then stood up.

  "I need the gentlemen's," he said.

  "Emilia, show Se¤or Cletus to his apartment," Frade ordered the maid who was passing the hors d'oeuvres and mixing the drinks.

  He was distracted by other things before he reached the apart-ment. When he entered the house, he found himself in an enor-mous foyer. Off of this opened three corridors. The maid led him down one of those, and then Se¤ora Pellano intercepted them.

  "I wish to show you something, Se¤or Cletus," she said, and opened the door of one of the rooms.

  Whatever I'm about to be shown, the maid doesn't like it a goddamned bit, to judge by that horrified look on her face.

  Se¤ora Pellano entered the room ahead of Clete, snapped on the lights, then stood to one side.

  It was something like a small library. There was a leather arm-chair, with a footstool and a chair side table on which sat a cigar humidor and a large ashtray. There was a library table, on which rested a stack of leather-bound albums. And hanging over the fireplace there was a large oil portrait of Elizabeth-Ann Howell de Frade with her infant son Cletus in her arms.

  Cletus Marcus Howell smiled rather artificially in a photograph taken before the altar of the Cathedral of St. Louis on Jackson Square in New Orleans. The Old Man was in morning clothes, standing beside His Eminence, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Uncle Jim, and the bridal couple.

  There was a wall covered with framed photographs: Clete Frade, aged nine, taking first place in the Midland FFA Sub-Junior Rodeo Calf-Roping Contest; Cadet Corporal Cletus Frade in the boots and breeches of the Corps of Cadets of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Institute; Clete Frade, looking as if he had already been at the post-tournament refreshments, with the rest of the Tulane Tennis Team...

  "Marianna! How dare you bring him in here!" el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said, almost shouted, from the door.

  Se¤ora Pellano was unrepentant.

  "No, Se¤ora Carzino-Cormano is right, and you are wrong, mi Coronel," she said. "It is wrong for you to let him think he was not in your mind and heart all these years."

  It was a moment before the Colonel spoke. "If it meets with your approval, Cletus, we will dine in an hour," he said. Before Clete could reply, he turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  "I will leave you, Se¤or Cletus," Se¤ora Pellano said, and left the room.

  What did she say? "Se¤ora Carzino-Cormano is right"? Who's she?

  Clete walked to the wall of pictures and examined all of them.

  It's a scrapbook on the wall. I wonder what's in the scrap-books?

  He went to them. They were full of photographs and newspaper clippings. In a town like Midland, with a thrice-weekly newspa-per, one tends to find one's name in one's local newspaper far more frequently than, say, if one lives in New York City and subscribes to the Times.

  Whoever did this clipping job worked hard at it. Every time Clete's name was mentioned in the Midland Advertiser-as a guest at some six-year-old's birthday party, for example-the item was clipped out and somehow sent down here.

  He was deeply touched. His eyes teared, and his throat was tight.

  Well, the Old Man is obviously wrong. My father did not simply put me out of his mind as if I never happened. A lot of effort went into collecting all this stuff. And he displays it, prot
ects it, with... what? reverence? Maybe not reverence but something damned close.

  Then why the hell did he never try to get in touch with me ? The Old Man could have stopped him from doing that when 1 was a kid-and he's certainly capable of that. But not when I went to A&M or Tulane. And my father damned sure knew that I was there, and when I was.

  Fascinated with the idea that his father had actually gone to such trouble, as well as with the clippings themselves, Clete went through each of the seven albums he found, one page at a time.

  Finally, desperately wishing he'd brought the triple scotch with him, he left the room.

  And now where the hell is my bedroom? Se¤ora Pellano was in the corridor outside. "Your father, Se¤or Cletus, spent many hours in there."

  "Thank you, Se¤ora Pellano, for showing it to me."

  "I felt I should," she said. "I will show you to your room."

  The room turned out to be a three-room suite; and he was not surprised to find that his clothing had been unpacked and put away. On the desk in the sitting room sat a package decorated with a red ribbon and bow. Inside a small envelope was a card, embossed with what must have been the Frade coat of arms. The card read:

  This belonged to your grandfather, el Coronel Guillermo Ale-jandro Frade, who carried it while commanding the Husares de Pueyrred¢n. I thought it would be an appropriate gift from one soldier to another. Your father, Jorge Guillermo Frade.

  Clete opened the package. In a felt-lined walnut box-with 20 rounds of ammunition and accessories, including a spare cylin-der-was a Colt Army.44-40 revolver, the old Hog Leg. It was in good shape, but it was obviously a working gun. The blue was well worn, as were the grips, which were nonstandard-person-alized. They were of some wood Clete did not recognize, inlaid with silver wire. On one side was again probably the Frade coat of arms; and on the other was probably the regimental crest of the Husares de Pueyrredon, whatever the hell that was.

  He removed the cylinder and peered down the barrel. No rust, no pits, but evidence (the lands were worn smooth) that it had been fired a good deal. He replaced the cylinder and was returning the pistol to its box when he heard a knock at the door. "Dinner will be at your pleasure, Se¤or," someone called. "Be right there," Clete called.

  * * *

  El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade stood at one end of a table with enough side chairs to seat at least twenty people. It was set, at that end, for two. There was a large centerpiece, a sterling-silver sculpture of a horse at full gallop. There were two silver bowls filled with freshly cut flowers. There were four wineglasses for each of them, and a dazzling display of silverware. An enor-mous standing rib of beef rested on a large silver platter, and there were at least a dozen other serving dishes, each with a silver cover.

  "You had time to freshen up?" Frade asked.

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you for the pistol. I'm sorry, I didn't bring..."

  "I didn't expect you to."

  He snapped his fingers. A man in a gray cotton jacket appeared immediately and poured a splash of wine in one of the four wine-glasses in front of Clete's plate.

  "This is a Pinot Noir, from a vineyard in which the family has an interest," he said. "I tend to feel it whets the appetite for beef. Is it all right?"

  Clete sipped the wine.

  "Very nice," he said, nodding at the man in the gray jacket, who then filled the glass before moving to the colonel's glass.

  "That's a fascinating room," Clete said. "How did you get all those clippings down here?"

  Frade did not reply. He stood up, and with an enormous knife cut the beef. He laid a two-inch-thick rib on a plate held by a maid, who carried it to Clete and then returned to Frade, who was now holding out a vegetable bowl to her.

  Frade waved impatiently at her.

  "I will ask her to serve the vegetables and the sauce and the pudding," Frade said. "It is less complicated."

  "How did you get your hands on those clippings?"

  Frade sat down, pursed his lips, and shrugged.

  "Very well," he said. "When your mother came to me as my bride, her dowry was an interest-approximately one quarter..."

  It wasn't approximately a quarter, it was twenty-four-point-five percent, precisely. Christ knows, I've heard that figure often enough!

  "... of the outstanding stock of Howell Petroleum. It wasn't then worth what it is now, but even then it was of considerable value. When God called your mother to her heavenly home..."

  Well, that's one way of putting it, I suppose. "... it came to me. I considered it, of course, to be yours..." Jesus Christ! That means that with the third of the twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Stock Uncle Jim owned and left me, I will own thirty-two point something of Howell. And if the Old Man leaves me a third of his stock-a third of fifty-one percent is seventeen percent, seventeen and thirty-two-point-something is forty-nine-point-something- I will be majority stockholder in Howell Petroleum. And I think he'll leave me more than a third. Sarah's girls don't need the money, and the Old Man likes me best.

  Jesus Christ, Cletus Frade, you are an avaricious sonofabitch, aren't you ?

  "... to which end I engaged an American attorney, who es-tablished a trust fund for you managed by the First National Bank of Midland. I asked him to keep an eye out for anything..."

  "And he hired a clipping service."

  "I presume."

  "I've been told some unpleasant stories of my mother's death," Clete heard himself say.

  "If you don't mind, I would prefer not to discuss the matter."

  "I would prefer that you did."

  "No one dares talk to me like that. Just who do you think you are?"

  "I'm the only son you have."

  "You are a guest in my house, and you are insufferably rude."

  ' 'I told you, the rules are different. I want your version of what happened. If you don't want to give it to me, I will have to presume that my grandfather's version is true.... It paints you as the unmitigated sonofabitch of the century. And if it is true, I don't think I want to be here."

  "You dare to call your father a sonofabitch?"

  "That's what it looks like from where I'm sitting."

  Frade stared down at his plate, then suddenly, furiously, pushed it away from him. It slid a third of the way down the table and then crashed to the floor. The maid made a faint yelping noise and rushed to clean up the mess. "Get out! Get out!" Frade ordered. She scurried from the room.

  "You take that from your mother," Frade said to his son. "I know when to stop. Your mother... your mother had a will of iron."

  "Is there something wrong with that?"

  "There is a time to bend. Nothing is black and white."

  "For example?"

  "It was necessary for your mother to join my church in order to marry me. For a long time she absolutely refused. I tried to explain to her that I personally didn't care if she lit candles to Satan himself, but that Argentina is by law a Catholic country. To be legally recognized, a marriage has to be performed in a Catholic church. Otherwise, there would be serious problems about our children. In the eyes of the law, they would be bastards, and there would be all sorts of difficulties about inheritance."

  "So she said she would talk with a priest in New Orleans. An ordinary priest was not good enough for your grandfather. If his daughter talked to someone, she would deal with someone im-portant, in this case, his golf-playing friend, the Archbishop. I met that sonofabitch when I was there. I blame a good deal of what happened on him."

  On the Archbishop? That's stretching things a little, isn't it?

  Clete's father made sudden angry stabbing motions with his leg. For a moment, Clete thought there was a rat or a mouse under the table. But when the maid reappeared, he understood that the call button was mounted on the floor under the table.

  "Bring whiskey," Frade ordered. "Scotch."

  "And for the young Se¤or?"

  "Bring him whatever he wants, of course."

  "Nothing for me, thank you."r />
  "Then I received a letter from your mother. She wrote that she had been wrong, and that she now understood. She would now be confirmed in my Church and place her life in God's hands and mine. I didn't pay a lot of attention. I have never pretended to understand women and God. But the immediate problem, mar-riage in church, was over."