Brotherhood of Gold

by Ron Hevener

  “That’s better,” Ezra said. “You’re a Hoover! You’re my Lucky One!” There it was, that odd nickname Ezra had given him. “Now, listen to me, for once. You’re getting yourself a brand-new pair of shoes—from Italy! And some good-lookin’ underwear. The silk stuff! It feels good.” Ezra smiled, and coughed a thick, hacking, choking cough into a handkerchief that had seen better days. “You can only find this stuff in one place. And that’s where I want you to go. Promise me, Ben. That’s where you go. None of this goin’ someplace cheap and using the money for that car of yours. You hear me?” And then he wrote a name on the yellow tablet: “DeCroix,” scribbled it out, and wrote again, this time spelling it “DeCroy,” Americanized.

  “I have an account there, Ben. Tell the man who you are, an’ they’ll treat you like a king!” Ezra said, tearing off the page, folding it slowly and pressing it into Ben’s hand. Locking eyes, his own sinking and Ben’s brimming with life, Ezra said, again, “Promise me. Nowhere else. Be sure an’ tell him you’re my grandson.” Slowly, stiffly then, he reached under his mattress and pulled out a handful of hundreds and gave them to Ben. “Pour me some water,” he told this young man he had raised so carefully and loved so much. “And hand me the medicine Doc left, can you? That blue one.”

  They nearly bumped into each other in the hallway, Ben and Sarah. He, wrestling with feelings he hoped he would never feel again and with questions bigger than he would ever be; Sarah with fresh flowers for Ezra’s room. “I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” she whispered.

  “I can hear you!” Ezra called out. “And answer the door!”

  “He wants me to go to New York,” Ben said, holding up the money. “He wants me to go shopping, of all things. He even told me what store and what to buy.”

  “And you promised!” came Ezra’s orders from the other room. “Will somebody answer that door?”

  “You have to go right now?” she asked, surprised. “Philly’s closer for that kind of thing,” she said, but, when he showed her the address, her eyes softened. “Oh,” she said, gently, before kissing him on the cheek. “I understand. Go, Ben. Go!”

  “That’s what I told him!” Ezra said in a loud whisper, and Sarah knew it was his way of saying, “Let him go. It’s you I need.”

  “The DOOR!”

  “OK! OK!” Ben said, hurrying off to find Theodore Trimble with a briefcase and a smile.

  “I have some papers your grandfather wants to sign,” Theodore said.

  “Come in! Sorry to keep you waiting,” Ben said, motioning to Ezra’s room. “You know your way?”

  “Yes,” Theodore answered on his way to Ezra’s room, nodding to Sarah, who asked him to be as quiet as possible. “The doctor just left and he seems pretty tired,” she said.

  “I won’t be long. Just a few details Ezra wants me to take care of.”

  True to his word, Theodore kept things brief, said his good-byes to Ezra and left Sarah alone to consider what the doctor had said, and what her own heart knew. Holding the flowers to her chest, breathing in everything they represented—roses for passion and wild daisies for love me, love me not, she held back fears that were coming too often, and too fast, now. Oh, don’t do this, she begged the fields, the forest, the life she loved so much with him. When you leave me, I will never be the same. Ever. I can’t.

  It was her turn now. It was their time for flowers. Disappearing into Ezra’s room, Sarah crawled into bed, took him in her arms and held him close. They lay together like this for hours, sharing what only lovers of many years can know. She kissed the lips that once had whispered with so much love, “We must be soul mates, you and me,” and tasted the medicine the doctor had left for them and this moment. She would miss that mind, those lips and all they could say. She had dreaded this moment for so long. To his eyes blue and glistening, though she had never remembered them so opaque and sinking from her pleading heart now, she said, “Thank you, Ezra…darling. Thank you for everything. Wherever you go, I love you.”

  He heard those words and couldn’t answer. A deep laziness was spreading through him now. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, or how fast these things could happen when you were ready. One of Nature’s tricks, he guessed. It felt good there, the two of them in his fresh, clean bed…or were they together again in the soft hay on which they had first held each other like this. He tried moving his fingers and wiggling his toes just to see if he still could. But they were far away…dream-like. His feet, his legs, his arms weren’t quite real to him anymore. If he was going to say anything important, it must be now, before his chest went cold and his mind went into a dream. He managed to smile and it startled her. “What’s so funny?” she said, really, tenderly amused by his effort.

  “You, my love,” he whispered. It was the best he could do.

  She had tried to be strong for him. She had tried keeping up a brave front, holding back her tears. She didn’t even wipe them away now, as they glistened and ran down her face. This wasn’t the time to worry about how anything looked. And here he was…smiling.

  “We did it,” he answered quietly, letting out a deep breath and shaking as a weight seemed to lift from his chest. Exhaustion. He must rest. He was starting to feel peaceful again, relaxed, drunken good. The world was a good place, although it occurred to him, he hadn’t seen enough of it.

  “Oh, yes, darling. We did,” she said. Their time was running out. Never again would she be able to speak with him like this. Never again would she be able to hold him so lovingly in her arms, and feel him warm against her skin. “What am I going to do without you?”

  For years, night after night they had held each other and shared everything, their intellect, their souls, their bodies; and now he was hiding. Holding out on her in these last few, precious moments. “Ezra,” she pushed. He stared ahead, but not at her. Roughly—desperately—she shook him as if she could bring him back.

  Giving in to the final compulsion to admit his sins, Ezra breathed again. “You were right,” he said.

  “Of course I was right!” she wept. “The woman’s always right. Don’t you men know that?”

  “Arden!” he said.

  “Forget him,” she said, hugging him tight.

  “I’m,” he took a breath, “nothing but,” another breath, “a thief,” he said. “Everything I loved,” one more breath, “I stole to get it.”

  Speechless, Sarah gathered him in her arms as if she would never let him go. As if no force on this Earth or in all the Heavens could ever take him from her. “You darling, darling idiot,” she wept. “When old Saint Peter shakes your hand at the Pearly Gates, you tell him—you make sure he knows—you never took anything that wasn’t going to be lost anyway. Anything you ever took, you spun into pure gold. I’m going to be a lonely lady, Ezra.”

  “Come with me,” he managed to say.

  “If I do that, who takes care of our beautiful horses?”

  With one last breath, he smiled. “I’ll help you,” he smiled with a whisper.

  CHAPTER 10

  New Designs

  Recovered from their fit of jealousy, Sarah whispers to Sidney Leigh, who appears to be studying the plants on the window sill beside the breakfast nook where they sat, but is really thinking about the interview. “Where’s she going with this thing?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sidney answers quietly. “But you can feel it, too?”

  “Sure can. I don’t know if I’d call it creepy, exactly, but…” her voice trailed off in a you know what I mean kind of way.

  “She keeps asking about Wembly,” Sidney Leigh says. “Do you notice that?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah says, pulling off dead leaves and poking her fingers in the dirt to see if the plants need water.

  “Why can’t they leave him alone?” Sidney Leigh asks.

  “I’m thinking the same thing,” Sarah says, finding a glass and heading to the sink.

  “I just wish I could figure it out,” Sidney Leigh says.

  “Honey, t
here’s lots of people who wish they knew about Ezra and Wembly. Diane’s just the latest in a long line,” Sarah says, as she waters the plants and Diane Wallace checks her notes.

  “So, what you’re telling us, is you were like the student and Wembly DeCroy was the professor. Is that pretty much how it was?” Diane says, in an understanding way.

  Ben nods, and says, “That’s a good way to put it, yes. Actually, I felt very lucky to have the opportunity to talk with Wembly and to have someone of his experience help me learn the ropes in business.”

  “Of course,” Diane agrees. “And I’m sure it was significant that he and your grandfather both knew each other for such a long time.”

  “I find that the connections we have going way back are often the best,” Ben says, with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t you?”

  She smiles, and without makeup covering a sudden blush, the whole nation would have seen it.

  “Well, did you ever wonder about this connection they had?” she asks, looking him in the eye as she says it.

  He holds her gaze for a breath, and says, “No, Diane. I didn’t. I knew it was a business relationship, and that’s all.”

  * * *

  New York City

  Four and a half hours was a long drive in the winter, but Ben knew he could find a coffee shop on the way to Fifth Avenue and the House of DeCroy.

  Ezra might not have mentioned the name before now, but Aunt Sarah certainly had. Like her, the French-Canadian fashion designer loved Arabian racehorses, and, for Ben, their first meeting was still bright in his mind. He remembered the low, green buildings of the back lot of the racetrack that day and how extraordinarily vibrant they were as Sarah, along with Sidney and himself, checked in with the guards for their visitor passes. Heightened by Sarah’s enthusiasm, he considered the possibility of having racehorses of his own as a shiny white Jaguar approached the gate from the training stables, made a wide U-turn and pulled up directly in front of them. When the door opened, a dignified, silver-haired man with a bright, conspiratorial smile on his face stepped out, opened his arms for Sarah, and fixed his magnetic eyes on her.

  “God, Wembly!” Sarah gushed. “If you were any better looking, I’d be tempted to marry you!”

  “Ezra would have me killed,” he said. “Or, is that Theodore’s job these days?” He hugged her, kissed her as the French do and whispered something flirtatious. Backing off slightly, but not too much, she slapped his face playfully and gave him a knowing wink as the four of them climbed into the car, which smelled of clean leather and class, to see his horse.

  “So, this is him,” Sarah said as they stood at the horse’s stall a few minutes later.

  “Fashion Statement, yes,” Wembly answered, as they studied the bay Arabian with lots of chrome. The white blaze and socks all the way up to his knees made the gelding exactly the kind of horse a stylish man like this would have. “What do you think, Sarah?”

  “Beautiful,” she said. “But his Daddy’s better.”

  “Yes? Then we must race against each other sometime. Father against son. The classic challenge!”

  “Wembly DeCroy, my stallion doesn’t have to race anything. Your colt is doing that for him.”

  “But why do you leave your stallion at home?” he asked, and it was Sarah’s turn to laugh.

  “Because I’m not ready to race yet. And, as you know, he’s breeding mares and making more runners like this!” She rubbed Fashion Statement’s neck proudly. “He looks great, Wembly. You’re taking great care of him.”

  They exchanged a few more comments, and as he watched Mr. DeCroy with his horse, Ben wondered how someone could look so cool on a day like this. They were magnificent creatures, standing there, a classy man and his horse. Smooth. Powerful. Though he couldn’t explain it, Ben had the strange, fleeting sensation that he, himself, was the only thing missing in this community of owners, trainers and stable hands feverishly making last-minute preparations for the race. This time, no matter what had gone before, the race would be theirs. Months of conditioning and training, years of careful planning, and generations of selective breeding were about to be put to the test. Swiftly, they moved toward the car, glided through the gate once more and eased toward valet parking. Stepping out into the hot sun, Ben could hear the pounding rush of horses coming down the stretch, the announcer shouting out the call, the crescendo as they neared the finish line and a thousand voices filled the grandstand and the crowd’s blood froze in their veins. Suddenly, he understood Sarah’s passion. And he would never doubt it again.

  Passing through the grandstand entrance, they started toward the paddock, past clusters of bettors and spectators scattered throughout a floor littered with torn tickets, programs and racing forms. Trying not to lose sight of their hosts, he and Sidney Leigh hurried through the crowd, her grip on his arm saying don’t lose me, while she said, “Something about this is so exciting!”

  As they left the building and headed for the grove of trees where Fashion Statement was approaching the paddock, Ben thought he had seen a lot of Arabian horses, but this one really was a standout. With his elegant rider in green and gold silks waiting patiently with a saddle barely more than a slice of thinnest leather across his arms, Fashion Statement was ready for anything. Moments later, saddle firmly in place, the trainer was offering a hand for the jockey’s leg and hoisting the rider up with last-minute instructions.

  “Are you betting today?” DeCroy asked, but Ben declined politely, admitting he didn’t have the slightest idea how.

  In response, Wembly approached the nearest ticket window and returned in a matter of minutes. “For you and the young lady,” he said, placing two tickets in Ben’s hand. “Number six to win.”

  They found Wembly’s trainer already seated in his box. Not a box really, but called so. Just reserved seating, surrounded by steel rails, concrete and chattering bodies in male and female clothes evaluating twelve Arabian horses parading toward the gate now. A quick look at the tote board showed the odds on Fashion Statement—three to one: not the favorite, but he had a good chance.

  In the distance, they could see the handlers having trouble getting the last horse in the gate. With some heaving and shoving, he was in. The chute exploded in horse flesh and silk and THEY WERE OFF!

  Thundering past the clubhouse turn, the horses stirred up the air in a blur of spirit. Ben caught a glimpse of green and gold on Chestnut and a jockey’s determined face leaning into the horse’s mane. As they rounded the first turn, screams softened into murmuring chants, intense and personal, as the crowd strained to hear the announcer’s call of the race. With ticket clenched in his fist, and Sidney Leigh on his arm, Ben was caught up in a thousand strangers. How must it feel to own a horse in a race like this? In the rush, he looked back at Wembly, who was watching him with a distracted, curious smile. “What do you think, Ben?” he was asking. “Can he win?”

  Ben shifted for a better view. “I hope so!” he said, as the horses approached the far turn and battled down the home stretch.

  Fashion Statement moved to the lead, neck and neck with a hard-driving Bay.

  “Come on, boy!” Sarah screamed, as if the horse could hear, feel and sense her. “Come on!”

  With a gush, the crowd came to its feet in one orchestrated move—screaming, screaming—arms flailing with abandon. As the horses flashed over the finish line Sidney Leigh jumped into Ben’s arms. “He did it! He won!”

  But the crowd hushed…the announcer was saying, “Hold all tickets….” Sidney looked from Sarah to Ben…Ben looked at Wembly, who stood expressionless. After what seemed like an unbearable amount of time, a cheer went up from the crowd. The tote board showed 6 as the winner, and Sarah jumped for joy. “Lord, I’m a comin’ home!” she laughed, as they hurried to the winners circle. Sidney Leigh held onto her ticket like the prize it was and Ben gave the victory sign to Wembly, still very much in control of his emotions.

  “This way,” he told them, gesturing toward the steps
of the grandstand and outside to a very aroused, sweaty horse. “Follow me.”

  “You know, Wembly,” Sarah predicted, “there are going to be a lot of Mattison horses racing here some day.”

  “I look forward to it,” he said.

  “You should take a look at some of my two-year-olds.”

  “Beautiful?” he asked.

  “More than beautiful—spirited! My stallion passes that on to all his kids,” she said proudly.

  “And Fashion Statement is proof,” he agreed. “But what about his dam? I seem to remember she was spirited, too, was she not? Winner of Poland’s most prestigious race? A mare I paid almost a quarter million dollars for?”

  “Smile!” a pushy lady photographer said as she clicked.

  Through her smile, Sarah said, “She’s a great mare! But I think my stallion’s the best you could have bred her to. This is a whole new industry here, Wembly. And you’re right on top of it now.”

  “The crowd loves them,” Sidney Leigh said. “You’re right, Aunt Sarah! You’ve been right all along—Arabian racing is going to explode!”

  And the camera went “Click!”

  *

  Fifth Avenue was far away from Delaware and the fading memories of that wonderful day at the racetrack. Again they would be meeting, only this time Ezra knew about it. Was a man’s suit really that important?

  Salesclerks floated everywhere at DeCroy’s. Courtesy, even when it came with a price tag, felt pretty good, Ben thought, as a management-level voice aiming directly for his wallet said, “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. DeCroy.”

  The man looked him over, assessing him from head to toe and lingering perhaps a bit too long below his belt. “They’re all here to see Mr. DeCroy, baby. Whom may I say is calling?”