gray car met us at the Stuttgart station and drove us without conversation to Schloss Issel.
As it departed, McQuire said, “You’re tightly wired, Bradford. Not a bad quality overall for courier duty.”
“Thanks, ma’am. I won’t be so nervous on the next assignment.”
“Good, because there will be more, I can assure you.” So Tiberius had picked a new favorite. Me. I made a note to be careful where I walked.
I said, “It would be nice if it weren’t on a weekend every time, though.”
She looked at me without expression, but did not answer me. Had I already displeased her?
“Just a thought, ma’am.”
Did my days as the favorite, luncheons by the lake with stemmed glasses of white wine and Lendenschnitte, promise to be short or had I built a rapport with the captain, partners in the shepherding of secrets across a malevolent Europe?
SUFFUSION
Such romantic illusions, and they’re all about you.
–Marlene Dietrich
“WE’LL ONLY STAY FOUR OR FIVE days. Sarah called and said she needed to see me. Asked for you to come, too. We can swim, drink some beers, go frog-gigging.”
A road trip always excited Henry Zilbert, away from Middleton for a week or so. He asked me to take off work, join him on the trek over to Parthenon. In the years before he had invited me several times but I turned him down because of my summer work.
I said, “Yesterday I was fired from the highway department. Dad got the job for me. Your father is a good man, they said, but there’s no place here for you, Bradford. I’ll cash this last check on the way out of town.”
“Don’t bring much. Shirts, pants, swimming suit.”
A stop by the house to pack, on to the bank and we were on the road by late morning. The drive from Middleton in West Texas to Parthenon in far East Texas took seven hours on the farm-to-market roads, no stopping. We talked little as we drove through San Angelo, Robert Lee, Goldthwaite, Brownwood, across the middle of Texas to Nacogdoches, Chireno and finally the last half hour into Parthenon, where Sarah, Henry’s grandmother, lived.
This was a year before I was drafted, Henry Zilbert and I home for the summer. Before Schloss Issel. We shared a room at college for the last three years. Summers brought us back to Middleton, he to help his grandfather on the ranch and I for temporary work in the oil fields or the pipeline. It would be best to let Dad cool down about my being sacked at the highway department. When we got back I would need to avoid family dinners for a while.
Just outside of Parthenon we turned off into the Blanchett Farm, a gravel road crowded by magnolia trees in a long crescent, dark leaves brushing against the car. I rolled down the window on the passenger side and the moist smell of evening pastures flowed in like water. Honeysuckle, magnolia, new-mown hay and turned earth. It was barely light, the sky a dark violet blue. Around the curve, we saw Sarah’s house, a clapboard two-story with yellowish light filling the double-hung windows.
Sarah had not set foot in Middleton since her son, Henry’s father, was killed in the war, counseling the family with detailed letters and, more recently, telephone calls. Henry’s grandfather refused to go to Parthenon, she would not come back to Middleton, and so the Zilberts had lived apart for twenty years. Sarah was there to meet us at the door.
“I love you, Henry John. Do you know that?” She was tall enough to kiss him on the forehead, like a favored son. With a sense of personal style that we saw little of in Middleton, she wore pleated ivory slacks, a black-and-white striped blouse, and a black silk scarf tucked around her neckline. Her hair was pure white, abundant, cut sharply short and straight. She and Henry had the same burnt-umber eyes. Sarah bought her clothes in New York, Henry had told me, not trusting Dallas to have what she wanted.
“Yes, ma’am. You remember Harold.”
“I do. Come in, both of you. Francie’s gone for the night, but she left some cold chicken and potato salad in the kitchen.” It was cooler in the house, a lingering mix of aromas: cooking, cut-flowers and damp fabric.
Henry said, “We ate in Nacogdoches. No need.”
“You talk like Henry Sr. Not a spare word. Harold, are you hungry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Henry John can ‘ma’am’ me, but you call me Sarah, please. If Francie’s chicken doesn’t suit, at least get yourselves a cold beer.” She pronounced her name Say-rah.
After twenty minutes of conversation between Henry and Sarah about Middleton—who was still there, what the Zilbert neighbors were up to, how the Angus herd was doing—we went up to bed. Henry and I were staying in Sarah’s father’s room, which she said had the best view of the pastures. Twin beds now stood where Earl Blanchett’s four-poster bed almost touched the ceiling. Francie would serve breakfast on the lawn about eight.
A cool breeze came through the windows, laboring to break up the moist heat inside. I slept under a half a sheet, fitfully in the warmth. At first light, I got up and took a shower, dressed in clean Levis and a button-down shirt. Henry did not stir. On the back lawn, Sarah was already having coffee at a narrow table, reading a newspaper.
“Join me, Harold. I have a hot carafe here.” She poured me a cup and folded her newspaper. The morning air was cooler, but sultry.
I said, “This is beautiful. So different from Middleton, so green.” We looked across the rolling Blanchett fields to the native hardwoods of East Texas: oaks, maples, dogwoods, wild cherries and tulip trees, making a dark verge. Compared to the dry openness of West Texas, it was a close green paradise, ponds brimming, streams rushing into all of the low places, sounds of tree frogs and water birds.
She said, “These were cotton fields in the last century, but we turned them to permanent pasture years ago. A cattle farm instead of a ranch. We make three cuttings of hay for winter feed, have open pasture the rest of the summer. I can call the cows from here. We don’t brand them. Pets, almost. Not like the wild, tough cattle on the Zilbert spread.”
“Henry loves that ranch.”
“I know, just like his grandfather. He thought that good-for-nothing Middleton spread was the land of Goshen. It is all your Henry John’s now that Henry Sr. has passed.”
It was difficult for me to call her Sarah. “Sarah, Henry said that you were born here?”
She nodded, “When the tobacco failed in the eighteen forties, the brave part of the family came west, founded Parthenon. The worried ones stayed on in Virginia, getting fatter and more fretful. Lots of Blanchett cousins around here, first, second and twice-removed cousins. It’s always been home for me.”
“I can see why you like it.”
“I wish I could get Henry John to like it, too, to sell up and move here. We have two farms still in the family that he could have, the Grand Vert and the Yellowwood, either one. But I think he’s got too much Zilbert blood. Dry-land, Zilbert blood.”
“You never know.”
Henry
