Paul Robertson is a computer programming consultant, part-time
high-school math and science teacher, and former independent bookstore owner in
Blacksburg, Virginia. This is his first novel.
AND NOW...THE FIRST
CHAPTER:
I couldn't take my eyes off the casket. It was expensive, and it
glowed, resting among the candles and the heaps of flowers. It so perfectly
expressed the man inside.
The dignitaries droned, and I didn't hear them. We knew it all. We knew
what he had done with his life. If a man knows his purpose, then
everyone else will know it, too.
They'd been told what to say and to keep it short, and they obeyed.
They'd all gotten where they were by doing what they were told.
It was tribute by catalog listing: achievements, philanthropy, and
Senate career. The real man was never mentioned—the companies he inherited,
the rivals he crushed, the cold blood behind the politics—but everyone
knew. Was anyone else listening? It's easy to eulogize a man who knew
why he lived his life.
I just stared at that gleaming box and wondered why I was living mine.
We sang a hymn, and that brought me back—words obscure enough to drive
any clear thoughts from a man's brain. A voice behind me sang off-key.
I watched the man's wife instead. Her name was Angela, and she was
sitting between my brother, Eric, and me. I might have given her a hug, but
she had always objected to my familiarity. It was nothing personal; she
objected to anyone. Her brother and sister were not at the service.
She was his second wife. The other one died young of cancer, which had
been worth a lot of sympathy in his first election. If he had grieved
for her, I wouldn't know.
I looked back. The off-key voice behind me was another senator, a man
I'd never liked. He had no speaking part. It was probably a snub.
For a moment it seemed a pity the whole thing was going by so fast. The
church was flawless, and the funeral was such a good use for it. Now I
even knew the true purpose of candles: to reflect off that casket. They
were going to look tacky anywhere else. And there I was staring at it
again.
Candles knew their purpose, but I didn't have a clue about mine.
The governor said his few words about what he had felt when he heard
about the accident—the shock and sadness, the great man cut down in his
prime, what a loss to the state. He shook his head at the whole sad
mystery of life and death and checked his watch.
"Jason?"
I pushed past Katie and got up to the pulpit. Now the box was right in
front of me, shining like a waxed floor. I needed something else to
look at.
The back wall of the place had a row of statues in it, saints or
angels, and one had his hand up waving at me. I never had written anything to
say.
"Why am I here?" The little saint seemed friendly, so I figured I'd
just talk to him. "I wish I knew." Maybe it was a her, not a him. They all
wear robes.
"I think he could have told me. He knew why he was here, what he was
doing. He never doubted anything he did." Somehow, I was staring at the
casket again. I found my friend on the wall. "Maybe he is now."
They were all watching me, but I watched the back of the church. "The
one thing I ever really knew for sure in my life was that he was there.
I only saw him a few times a year and I won't miss him for that. It's
more like a mountain is gone—one you'd see off in the distance."
Katie wanted me to be impressive for the assembled personages. She knew
they'd be measuring and calculating, putting me in their equations.
After three years of marriage, she also knew me enough to know I didn't
care. I did hope she wasn't embarrassed. Her mother was sitting behind
her and she'd be embarrassed enough for all of us.
I wouldn't inherit anything anyway. It was all going to his foundation.
Eric and I would just get our monthly checks, as we always had.
The saint's stone hand was palm up, as if it had been holding something
that had just flown away. "Anyway, he's gone and we're still here, so
we'll get by without him." I finally got myself to look at the people.
What a well-dressed crowd. "And everything he knew about life is gone
with him, so I'll get by without that, too."
I didn't have anything else to say. I smiled at Angela, and then I
nodded at Eric on her other side.
I waited at the end of the pew as Eric got out, and he patted me on the
back. Katie gave me a tight smile as I sat. She was annoyed, but not
mad.
Eric was tall, dark, and clueless behind the heavy wood pulpit. We look
alike, especially with him wearing one of my suits. For all the money
he has, he'd never figured out how to buy clothes. It was loose on him,
and maybe that was why he looked so young. Or maybe it was because he
was so young. There were no questions about life beneath that spiky
black hair.
But he kept his eyes on the audience the whole time and told them what
a loving father the man had been. He did a good job. I appreciated him
because he did the right thing, what I should have done, and maybe he
thought what he said was true.
Then the priest said whatever he had to, and it was over. When I got
out into the light of day, I was so glad it had lasted no longer than it
did.
* * *
The rest of the festivities went about the same. In the limo, Katie
chattered and Angela sighed about how nice the service had been. Eric was
watching boats in the bay.
I watched them, too. I prefer water to land because land is unmoving;
the water is never still and has nothing fixed. Long Island Sound,
Nantucket Sound, Block Island Sound—we were surrounded by silent waters
named for the lands that confined them.
Eric turned to me. "What did you mean, you wouldn't miss him?"
"That's not what I said."
"And what were you looking at?"
"Nothing."
He turned back to the boats and I did, too. I would rather have been
out there. Anyone whose ancestors lived on these coasts would feel the
same pull.
Across from me, Katie was glaring, so maybe she was mad after all. She
had her hair down straight, over her shoulders. Her simple, dark blue
dress with the string of pearls was as perfect as the church. She had me
done up just right, too, with the black suit she'd picked out a year
ago for weddings and funerals. She had a tailor come every six months to
keep all the suits fitted. That's why it hung so loose around Eric's
shoulders.
Change the subject. "He really was a great man," I said to Angela.
She smiled, and it was genuine. The funeral had penetrated the pink
plastic armor. She wasn't even fifty. Her husband had been fifteen years
older, but she'd still expected a lot more years with him. They'd been
married for nineteen.
Katie smiled at me, and I was out of trouble. I pushed my luck.
"What do you think he would have been most proud of?"
"Most proud?" Angela always spoke so quietly, like a kitten. I'd
wondered if it was an act, but it was no asset to a political wife, being so
fluffy. She wasn't striking or brilliant. Why did he marry her? He must
have actually loved something about her. I wouldn't even recognize her
without the platinum hair and bubblegum lipstick. "He did so much. He
didn't enjoy Washington, but he accomplished so much there. He was
happier here at home. And he was proud of his foundation. I think that's
what he was most proud of."
Not of his sons. Not of his oldest son, anyway. "I hope it will keep
going," I said.
"Mr. Kern will run it. He's always done such a good job there. And now
he'll have charge of all of Melvin's companies."
Melvin. The name of the deceased hovered in the air for a moment like
cigarette smoke, and Nathan Kern's name was the smell of stale beer that
went with it so well. I was not a patron of that saloon. I'd get my
little allowance, and the big wad would go to the foundation. Melvin had
made it very clear that Eric and I should have no expectations beyond
simply living in the style to which we had become accustomed.
We were born to be idle rich, Eric and I, and we'd never risen above
it. I wondered what our new allowance would be. Katie was feeling
constrained by our thirty thousand a month.
Ahead of us, the hearse turned onto the gravel road into the cemetery.
We parked beside it. As we waited for the other cars to park, I walked
to the open grave. What a view he'd have, of the cliffs and the waves
breaking. I was about fifty feet from the edge of the grass, and it was
twenty feet straight down from there into the violent water. In a
thousand years the whole place would be gone, worn down by the surf. Usually
he planned better than that, but while it lasted, it would definitely
be a view to die for.
There were six pallbearers. Nathan Kern and the governor took the
middle on each side, for show. The casket was heavy, though, and it needed
at least four strong men out of the six. So Eric and I were in front,
and two gardeners from the estate were in back. We walked the short
distance slowly. The sun was bright, between clouds; the better to dramatize
the moment. The mourners added darker colors to the brilliant blue and
greens, and the brown of the earth piled by the grave.
Five minutes after we set the box down, we were done with the words and
the gardeners were lowering it into the ground. I took the shovel they
handed me and dropped some ceremonial dirt down on top of the box, and
then a couple more good heavy loads just for the exercise. I was just
kicking into gear, and I would have filled the whole pit, but then I had
to stop. I felt lightheaded and my vision blurred and my breath stuck
in my throat, and that was when I knew he was gone. I dropped the shovel
and walked over to the cliff, and I didn't know if the pounding I heard
was the waves or my own blood filling my ears.
Then Katie was beside me. "Jason? Are you all right, dear?"
I nodded. Wherever we all end up going, he was there now—where he knew
the answers to all my questions and where I couldn't ask them of him. I
looked around again at the strength and ferocity of that place with its
hard stone and unrelenting breakers. It was everything hard, without
mercy or forgiveness. I hoped he'd enjoy it.
"Come on, let's go back." Katie sounded nervous. She knew me well
enough to want me away from the cliff.
"Don't worry." The moment was over. I took her hand and we strolled
back to the others.
* * *
We stood for the right number of minutes in the rolling clouds and sun,
nodding to the mourners, saying the proper words. The cloud shadows
were chill, a reminder that the New England summer would soon have its own
abrupt end.
"I'm getting cold, dear."
I hadn't noticed Francine next to us. The last I'd seen her, she'd been
talking to the senator.
"You should go home, Mother," Katie said. "I'll call tonight." We
watched her skitter across the grass, like a little crab.
"I'm getting cold, too," I said.
"No, you aren't."
"Let's go home anyway."
My own car was waiting for us. I was about to open the door for Katie
when Melvin's lawyer waddled over to us.
Fred Spellman was a nice man. He must have been very smart to have been
Privy Counsellor, but I'd never seen him in action. To us, he had
always been Uncle Fred, and I had better childhood memories of him than of
Melvin.
He gave me a paternal pat on the back and kissed Katie's hand, and I
might have thought he'd been crying. But he took a deep breath and pulled
himself together.
"Well, well." Then he paused and took another breath and tried again.
"Well. We have some things to discuss, Jason, my boy. I need to have you
and Eric come see me."
"Right. The reading of the will."
Melvin's secretary, Pamela, was next to us. She really had been crying,
and she still was. She hugged Katie, patted my shoulder, and walked on,
all without words. I watched her.
"It won't take long," Fred was saying. "Would tomorrow morning be too
soon? Or do you need time to ... adjust? I don't want to hurry you, but
there are some things that will need attention, sooner rather than
later."
"That's fine. The body's still warm, but at least it's underground." I
looked away from Pamela to my watch. "We could do it right now, sitting
on his grave. That would be poetic. I'll call Eric."
"He's not serious," Katie said. "What time tomorrow?"
Maybe I had gone too far with him. He stared at me in a way I hadn't
seen. "Nine o'clock?" he suggested. "Eric is available."
"What about Angela?" I said. "The grieving widow, you know. The scene
wouldn't be complete."
"She will have her own meeting."
"Whatever." I opened the door and Katie slipped in. "May I bring my
wife?"
"That will be at your discretion." He smiled, the old teddy bear smile.
"I think you should. It helps to face these things together."
I shrugged. "It's really not a big deal, Fred. Not to me. We'll just
putter along like always. Nathan Kern will have the headaches."
That look again. I couldn't read it, and it was not from the kindly
family friend I'd always known. But then we both turned to watch Eric
vroom vroom out of the cemetery on his Yamaha. Nice touch, or it would have
been if the thought had occurred to him. I would have done the
motorcycle-at-the-funeral thing to make some kind of statement. He did it
because he was oblivious.
Or maybe the bike was the most presentable thing he had. None of his
five cars was very solemn. The leather jacket was going to mangle the
borrowed suit.
"Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock."
"I'll be there, Fred."
I got in the car, but not fast enough. Nathan Kern floated elegantly up
to the window.
"Jason! I don't know what to say." Not that that had ever stopped him
from saying it. "It just doesn't seem possible." If Fred was the king's
chamberlain, Nathan was the archbishop.
"Apparently it was," I said. I was the court jester.
"We will need to talk. I know the foundation will be as important for
you as for your father." Selfless nobility, thy name is Nathan Kern.
"I don't plan to have much part in it."
He was surprised at that, and he shouldn't have been. He knew me
better. "But it was always Melvin's foremost concern." His elegant fingers
were trembling. I thought the diamonds would fall out of his cuff links.
"He left his estate to it. I feel sorry for you, Mr. Kern. You have
some big responsibilities now." I was getting tired of the day or I might
have been a little nicer. I could feel Katie preparing the lecture.
"Give me a week, and I'll be glad to come see you." By then I might even
build up some curiosity about him and his world. There had to be
something beneath the sanctimony.
"Yes, yes, of course," he said.
I took that as a good-bye and closed my window.
* * *
We finally got out onto the road. "You could have acted like an adult,"
Katie said.
"That's not my way."
We'd come up behind a truck, and there was no place to pass. The coast
road went on a few more miles like this, two winding lanes. "Everyone
there was looking to you to take your father's place."
"I'd rather die."
"Jason."
I punched the accelerator and passed blind on a curve. The road ahead
was clear so I kept the speed up. Katie held on to her shoulder belt.
"You don't have to kill me, too."
I slowed down. "All right, I won't. But the only reason I'm not taking
this car off a cliff is because I don't want to die the same way Melvin
did."
"Thank you." She would have bitten through the guardrail, her jaw was
clenched so tight. I needed to make a gesture.
There was a gas station after a few minutes, and I stopped beside some
landscaping and pulled up two flowers.
"Here."
She relented. "I accept your apology." We got back out on the road and
she held them, treating them with far more respect than they deserved.
"Why did I marry you, anyway?"
"For my money," I said.
"Then I made a big mistake." She said it with a smile, though, for
which I was very grateful. "I don't know if your money is worth putting up
with you. If you worked with those people—Nathan Kern and all the rest
of them—you could be rich."
"I am rich."
"Not as rich as you could be." The edges of the smile hardened a
little. "He'd put you on the board of the foundation, and you could get
control of everything your father had." She looked out the window. "It
should have been yours anyway."
"Look, all I did was get born into this family," I said. "It wasn't my
choice. As long as they send my check each month, nobody gets hurt. If
they want anything else I'll inflict damage." I waited until she looked
back at me. The two daisies in her hand were a little damaged. "You
like your flowers?"
"Yes."
The road was bending through hills, away from the ocean. I stopped
again, just off the edge, where the guardrail actually was bitten through.
Out of the car, I stood and looked down the hillside at the scraped
dirt and torn bushes and the broken tree at the bottom. They'd cleaned
away the wreckage, every piece of it.
Katie got out with me.
"Why am I here?" I said. "What is the point?"
She pulled a knot of wildflowers from the ground, much nicer than the
daisies, and handed it to me.
"Here."
"You don't need to apologize for anything," I said.
"I just want to give you some flowers."
I stood for a moment. Then I tossed them down the steep hill and the
wind caught them and they landed just where his car had. I'd seen it
there, with yellow police tape and spotlights, and the trucks pulling it up
the embankment.
"He's gone, Jason," she said. "It might really be different now."
Excerpted from:The Heir by Paul
Robertson
Copyright ©
2007; ISBN-13 9780764203244
Published by Bethany House Publishers
Used by permission.
Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
Stolen Indian artifacts...A murdered museum guard…
