Philipp Meyer - The Son

“Are they real?”

“Of course,” she said. He looked past her, to the street outside, to see if anyone was waiting for her. Then he put the pearls in his mouth as if he planned to eat them. Instead he rubbed each one against a front tooth. Afterward, he looked them over with a magnifier.

“Did a policeman send you in here?”

“No,” she said.

“I am interested in why you brought these here.”

“I saw the window.” She shrugged.

“They’re yours to sell.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything.

“What sort of hat is that?” she asked, trying to be polite.

He said something that sounded like hichpah . “I’m Jewish. Unfortunately a bad one, working on the Sabbath. Don’t worry, I won’t eat you. But I can’t buy your pearls, either.”

“I don’t have any money. I went to the banks but they’re closed and I have to get home to my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

They stood looking at each other and finally he told her: “I’ll go wake up my brother. But he is just going to tell you the same thing.”

Another man, much more nicely dressed, came in from the back. He looked over the pearls, and ran them over the edge of his teeth, then looked at them with another loupe, then under a very bright light, and then under what appeared to be a microscope.

“Obviously these are worth several thousand dollars…”

“They are worth twenty,” she said.

“They are worth eight,” he said. “On a good day, to the perfect buyer.”

“That would be fine.”

He smiled. “I can’t buy them from you. You’re too young. I’m sorry.”

She felt her eyes get wet. She wanted to take the pearls back and run out into the street, but instead she made herself stand there so they could see that she was crying.

“You’re too young,” he repeated.

“I don’t care. I’m not leaving.”

The two of them looked at each other and began to discuss things in a foreign language. Finally the better-dressed one said: “We can give you five hundred dollars. I’d like to offer more, but I can’t.”

Through her tears she said: “I will take a thousand.”

THAT NIGHT SHE was on a train to Baltimore. Four days later, when her grandmother picked her up in San Antonio, she told her the pearls had been stolen.

IT WAS NOT a story she had told many people and even Hank had never grasped its significance. It had been the turning point of her life, in some sense its most important moment; she had seen the world and retreated, while Jonas, for all his other failings, had not. There were times she imagined how she might have turned out had she stayed in the North. Like Jonas, she knew, settled and comfortable, she would have been someone’s wife. And that was not who she had wanted to be.

And yet Jonas had four children who adored him, a dozen grandchildren. Her houses, all three of them, were empty. Pointless monuments. Her life’s work would pass to a grandson she barely knew — who would likely crumble under its weight. It is not fair, she thought. She wanted to weep.

She looked around her. She was certain now. There was a smell in the room, it was gas.

Phineas came down from Austin. We are the darlings of the capital for killing nineteen of our neighbors and getting two family members shot in the process. Phineas talking about a run for lieutenant governor.

Glenn is home, but still sick. He and my brother talked for a long time. The boys have always liked Phineas; to them he is a younger version of the Colonel, the pinnacle of manly attainment. Of course I do not dare tell them what I suspect, though I am not sure he would extend me the same courtesy, were the situation reversed — he would probably take me out to a pasture and shoot me.

HOW TWO MEN from the same stock might be so different… my father likely reckons my mother snuck off for congress with some poet, scrivener, or other nearsighted sniveling half-man. I have always seen myself as two people: the one before my mother died, fearless as his brothers, and the one after, like an owl on some dark branch, watching the rest move about in the sunlight.

How he and Phineas can stand in front of a hundred men and never once wonder what they are thinking — I can barely eat dinner without considering if I’ve been talking too much or not enough, drinking too much or not enough, making as little noise as possible with my knife and fork, paying mind to the clunk as I set down my water glass. And yet when I crossed the wall at the Garcias’, I forgot myself.

HAVE BEEN TENDING their grave, unbeknownst to everyone. That day, after I left, they were all buried in a single pit: mother, father, daughters, grandchildren, assorted employees. No marker and, owing to the caliche, the hole was not very deep so I have been piling rocks and dirt on top. Old Pedro, who sent a priest to his vaqueros after every miscarriage, who always paid for a lined casket and a Christian burial. I still imagine the house as it has always been; each time I am freshly shocked, the charred walls, the birds flying freely where there was once a roof. The wood was old and seasoned and the fire burned hot. Little left inside but nails and bits of glass and metal. Even staring directly at it, part of me believes it is an illusion.

Perhaps this is why I am constantly disappointed — I expect good from the world, as a puppy might. Thus, like Prometheus, I am unmade each day.

PHINEAS AND I rode out to see what was left of the casa mayor; he explained he had already been talking to Judge Poole about the Garcias’ “tax problems.” I waited for him to acknowledge the chicanery, but he did not. He does not trust me entirely. No different from the Colonel.

When we reached the house Phineas was shocked. He sat there on his horse while I dismounted and went to pay my respects at their grave. He must have realized what I was doing so he left me alone. As I passed their spring I saw that someone had thrown a dead dog into it. I roped the animal and pulled it out.

“See clear to the goddamn border, can’t you?”

It was an exaggeration but I got the meaning.

“You know, Pete, you might want to stay away from here for a while. I don’t like looking at this myself and you…” He shook his head.

“Pedro Garcia was a friend.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said.

I walked off behind the house, where I could sit on the patio and look over things. A few minutes later he came and found me.

“You shouldn’t hold this against Daddy.”

“How would that be possible?”

“This would have happened anyway. And of course, Pedro wasn’t eight years behind in taxes. But there are things he could have done…”

“Such as?”

“Marrying his daughters right? I guess he thought he was making them happy, but…”

“If they’d married whites, you mean.”

“Why not? All the old families did it. They saw the writing on the wall and married their daughters off to the proper people.” He shrugged. “It’s Darwin at work, Pete. Dilution is what the situation called for, but Pedro decided to double down.”

I thought about Pedro encouraging me to call on María. I began to get a sick feeling.

“You and Daddy see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

“There is not a moment of my day I am not thinking about this place.”

“You are here twice a year,” I said.

“You think a bank in Austin wants to lend a half-million dollars to a ranch it’s never seen, and doesn’t know anything about except it’s already mortgaged out its asshole? Or Roger Longoria in Dallas? You ever wonder why your credit comes on such good terms from him? Or why it even comes at all? Or how it might be that the cattle business is collapsing all around Texas but somehow money comes easy for us?”