Honor Bound

by W. E. B Griffin

  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.

  Señora Pellano was unrepentant.

  “No, Señora 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, Señor Cletus,” Señora Pellano said, and left the room.

  What did she say? “Señora 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 scrapbooks?

  He went to them. They were full of photographs and newspaper clippings. In a town like Midland, with a thrice-weekly newspaper, 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, protects 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 I 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?

  Señora Pellano was in the corridor outside.

  “Your father, Señor Cletus, spent many hours in there.”

  “Thank you, Señora 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 Alejandro Frade, who carried it while commanding the Husares de Pueyrredón. 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 cylinder—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—personalized. 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 Pueyrredón, 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, Señor,” 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 enormous 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 wineglasses 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 established 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 important, 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 Señor?”

  “Bring him whatever he wants, of course.”

  “Nothing for me, thank you.”

  “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, marriage in church, was over.”

  The whiskey was delivered. Frade watched impatiently for about thirty seconds as the maid fussed with a silver-handled shot glass, then he took the bottle from her and poured an inch and a half in his glass.

  “And then get out,” he concluded to her. He waited until the maid fled again before going on.

  “So we were married. We went to Europe. It was a splendid time. And then she became pregnant with you. And fell ill. Her doctor informed me that further pregnancies were ill-advised. That was fine with me. We were to have a baby. Two or three babies might increase the chances of having a son, but if the choice was between a second baby and your mother…”

  He took a healthy swallow of his drink.

  “I told her, before you were born, that there is some sort of an operation performed during—what is the word—delivery that prevents future pregnancies. She flatly refused. She said her life was in God’s hands; God would protect her. She had sworn a vow before God; she was honor bound.

  “I thought I would talk her out of this nonsense at a later time. There are…certain measures…one can take to prevent pregnancy. After a while, after you were born, she told me she had discussed this question with her confessor, and the priest told her there was only one thing she could do to avoid children. You know what I mean.”

  No, I don’t. Oh, yeah. Abstinence.

  “What happened thereafter is clearly my responsibility,” Frade said. “I knew the risk, and out of selfishness, I took it. And you know what happened. But I loved her so much, with such passion…”

  “Why did you leave me in the States?”

  “Your grandfather hated me, with obvious good cause. Your uncle James hated me.”

  “You could have told them.”

  “They would not have believed it. And I could not, in any event, try to blame your mother’s religious fanaticism for what happened. God didn’t make her pregnant, I did.”

  He looked at Clete.

  “I asked you, why did you leave me in the States?” Clete said.

  “I hoped not to get into this, Cletus.”

  “Get into it.”

  “When I went to Midland and drove to the ranch, I was arrested—by two Texas Rangers, by the way—and charged with trespassing. I was sentenced to ninety days in the county prison. When I was finally able to get a lawyer—I was employed on the county roads, clearing drainage ditches—he told me that an appeal of my jail sentence, much less an application to the courts to have you returned to me, would be a waste of effort.”

  The Old Man is certainly capable of arranging that.

  “The lawyer did tell me that he could have the sentence vacated on my promise to leave Texas and never return. So I accepted that offer and sought other legal counsel. When I arrived at the courthouse seeking an injunction to have you returned to me, I was rearrested by the Texas Rangers for parole violation, and returned to Midland to complete my sentence.”

  “I never heard any of this.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Frade said simply. “When I was released from jail, officials of the Immigration Service were waiting outside. My visa had been revoked on allegations that my morals were not up to the standards required of visitors to the United States. I was taken to El Paso, Texas, and escorted across the Mexican border.”

  “Incredible!”

  “In Mexico City, a firm of lawyers—I was assured they were the best around—informed me that my case was virtually hopeless. In order to petition a Federal Court for your return to me, I had to be physically in the United States. Otherwise—I remember the phrase well—I ‘had no legal status’ before the court. And I could not, of course, obtain another visa to enter the United States. Your grandfather hates with a great depth, Cletus. In a way, it’s admirable.”

  “My mother was his only daughter,” Clete said softly.

  “Yes, of course. In Buenos Aires, I consulted with our Foreign Ministry, who took the case to the Argentine Ambassador in Washington.” He shrugged, holding out his arms helplessly. “Little pressure could be brought to bear…especially now that several United States senators had already brought the case to the attention of the State Department. The senators were furious that an American child might be expatriated into the care of a father whose morals were…”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “I considered having you taken—kidnapped. But I finally…Your aunt Martha loved you. I knew that. She would be a mother to you. I was alone. It would be better for you to be raised by Martha than by my sister, who has never been entirely sound mentally. Or by servants. So I quit, Cletus. Gave up.”

  “All I can do is repeat that I knew nothing.”

  “I was right about one thing. Jim and Martha raised you well.”

  Very hesitantly, one of the maids entered.

  “We do not wish to be disturbed,” Frade said softly.

  “The Señora is here, mi Coronel. She asks to be received.”

  “I will be a son of a bitch!” Frade exclaimed.

  “The Señora?” Clete asked.

  “She is the Carzino-Cormano
widow,” Frade explained. “She has an estancia nearby. Pushy woman. Comes here whenever she feels like it. Does not have the good manners to telephone to see if it would be convenient. I had hoped she would spare me today.” He turned to the maid. “Tell the Señora that we will join her shortly.”

  The door opened again and a svelte woman in her fifties walked into the dining room. Her gray-flecked, luxuriant black hair was folded up under a hat with a veil; a double string of pearls hung from her neck; and a golden sunburst with diamond-chip decorations was pinned to the right breast of her black silk dress.

  “I was planning to bring him by to meet you tomorrow,” Frade said.

  “So you said,” she said. She looked around the room, and turned to the maid. “Clean up the mess on the floor, remove the whiskey, and bring champagne. I told Ramona to chill half a dozen bottles this morning.”

  The maid hurried to obey her orders.

  “I have not finished my drink,” Frade protested.

  “Yes, you have,” she said. She walked to Clete. He rose to his feet as she put out her hand. “You are Cletus. I am Claudia de Carzino-Cormano. You may call me Claudia.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She turned to Frade. “There is much of his mother in him, but also much of you. Which may not be entirely a good thing.”

  Three maids entered the room, one stooping to clean up the mess on the floor, the others carrying a silver wine cooler and a tray of glasses.

  “Can you open that?” Claudia inquired. “How much have you had to drink?”

  “I have had this one drink.”

  “And how many before? You were as nervous as a virgin on her bridal night when I talked to you this morning.”

  This woman is not simply a pushy widow woman from the next spread, Clete thought.

  Claudia took the champagne bottle from the cooler, expertly uncorked it, and poured.

  She handed Clete a glass, then handed one to his father, and finally picked hers up.