After a few months of playing house as the wife of an enlisted man, trying to live on his army pay while her stock dividends piled up in the bank, young Claudia had taken the baby and gone back to her parents’ house. If her parents had wanted her back, they had used the perfect strategy: no hint of disapproval toward the déclassé groom with the high school education, but refusing to provide any financial assistance to the newlyweds. Terence didn’t know if his father had followed his wife and son to the coast, or if he had ever made any effort to save the marriage. If so, it hadn’t worked.
A divorce, handled by the family lawyer, had ended Claudia’s “Adolescent Rebellion,” and she had never strayed again. Her second marriage, when Terence was four, had been to Merrill, an investment banker and eminently respectable son of friends of her parents. He supposed that they were happy as a couple. He had no complaints about the courteous but distant Merrill as a stepfather, and if the man was dull, he was also reliable and prosperous. Perhaps Claudia had experienced enough drama in her year as a sergeant’s wife to last her a lifetime.
Around him, the sonorous words of the funeral oration droned on.
Terence kept his head bowed in what he hoped was a respectful pose for a next-of-kin, but his mind would not focus on the service. He kept thinking a dozen other thoughts: that he could have worn his Armani after all and not looked out of place among the other mourners; that the minister did not look or sound like a television evangelist; that the flowers were all real; and that the apple-blossomed hillside looked like a nice place to spend eternity.
Now that he considered it, the decal on the coffin had not really surprised him. It was exactly the sort of thing he had been expecting at the funeral for the father he never knew. It was the only thing that had lived up-or down-to his expectations of the burial of the man his mother always spoke of as “the hog farmer.” He hadn’t seen any hogs, either, come to think of it, which was a pity, because Terence was fond of animals. He had never been allowed to have a pet when he was growing up, but lately he had been thinking of getting, perhaps, a cat. He didn’t think he could manage a dog in a small Manhattan apartment.
“A pet is a lot of work,” his secretary remarked when he’d mentioned the idea to her.
Not as much work as people, Terence thought.
At last the minister finished his homily and invited those present to share their reminiscences of the deceased. Terence felt a moment of panic, envisioning all eyes turning to him, but that had not happened.
Instead, Vance Howard stepped forward and nodded to the assembled mourners. “If Tom is listening to all this somewhere, then he’ll probably laugh when I say how much I’m going to miss him. We’re all going to miss him. He was an original.”
When the services ended, most of the people lingered for a few more minutes in the spring sunshine, talking quietly among themselves. Then they shook hands with Terence and walked back down the hill to their cars. A few stragglers accompanied him back to the house. A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Nash had touched his arm and whispered that she was going back to the house to set out the food. Before he could whisper his thanks, she had hurried away.
The white frame farm house sat in a grove of old oak trees in the shelter of the hill. Two stories high with a pitched roof, its columns supported a square, covered porch above the front door. The sunny kitchen, a one-story addition at the back of the house, had obviously been added many years after the original structure had been built. Terence supposed that this was the Palmer family homestead, but he knew nothing about that half of his heritage.
On a starched linen tablecloth, Mrs. Nash had set out plates of fried chicken and bowls of potato salad, sliced tomatoes, deviled eggs, and a glass pitcher of iced tea. Now she was stacking plain dark earthenware plates at one end of the table next to a tray of silverware. Beside it was an assortment of glassware-none of it plastic, he noted.
“This is really kind of you,” said Terence, nodding toward the laden table. “It looks lovely. Did you bring the plates and silver from home?”
Sarah Nash gave him an appraising look. “All this belonged to your father,” she said. “So you can tell your mother he didn’t eat off paper plates.”
The shot hit home, for he had been thinking exactly that. “The others will be along soon, I guess,” he told her. “They stopped to talk to that older gentleman in the black suit. Mr. Johnson. Who is he, anyhow? A senator? Everyone else seemed awed by him, so I didn’t like to ask.”
Mrs. Nash smiled. “That was Junior Johnson,” she said. “Now, why don’t you look around a bit? He left everything to you, you know.”
Terence nodded. He had been wondering what on earth to do with all of it. The furniture looked old, comfortable, and well-made, in keeping with the style of the house, but he could hardly turn his tiny Manhattan apartment into a set for The Waltons. But uppermost in his mind was what she had just said. “Junior Johnson? The Junior Johnson?”
Sarah Nash smiled. “That was him. I didn’t think you’d know who he was.”
“Of course I know who he is. He’s in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Cadillac Ranch,’ for heaven’s sake. Junior Johnson came to my father’s funeral?”
Sarah Nash’s expression did not change but there was a twinkle of pleasure in her eyes. “Well, he lives around here,” she said.
“And I guess I expected him to look like Jeff Bridges. You know, the movie. Last American Hero. You forget how long ago that was. He’s older now. Of course he is.” He looked down musingly at the hand that had shaken the hand of Junior Johnson. “I love that film. Haven’t seen it in years.”
Sarah Nash was still studying him, as if she were trying to guess his thoughts. Finally she said, “Well, you own it now. There’s a copy in the den. It was Tom’s favorite movie, too. All of this is yours now.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure what to do about that,” he said.
“I don’t think it matters what you do, as long as you do it intelligently.”
“What do you mean?”
She considered it. “Would you know what a David Hockney painting looks like?”
“A Hockney?” Terence blinked. “I think so. Well, in a museum, I would. And if it had a swimming pool in the foreground. Maybe not if I found one unframed in an attic.”
She gave him a tight smile, and went back to rearranging the covered dishes. “Well, don’t worry about that. You won’t find one here, nor a Rembrandt nor a Faberge egg. Your father was an art collector all the same, though, and some of his things are more valuable than you might suppose. I don’t believe you’d recognize the sort of art he went in for, so I thought I’d mention it to you before you start giving museum pieces to Goodwill.”