by Amor Towles
—The one hitch is that the camp always gets opened up for the last weekend in June, which doesn’t give us a lot of time. I’ve got to make a quick stop in New York to see my old man, but then we’re heading straight for the Adirondacks. We should have you back in Morgen by Friday—a little road weary, maybe, but on the sunny side of fifty grand. Think about that for a second, Emmett. . . . I mean, what could you do with fifty grand? What would you do with fifty grand?
There is nothing so enigmatic as the human will—or so the headshrinkers would have you believe. According to them, the motivations of a man are a castle without a key. They form a multilayered labyrinth from which individual actions often emerge without a readily discernible rhyme or reason. But it’s really not so complicated. If you want to understand a man’s motivations, all you have to do is ask him: What would you do with fifty thousand dollars?
When you ask most people this question, they need a few minutes to think about it, to sort through the possibilities and consider their options. And that tells you everything you need to know about them. But when you pose the question to a man of substance, a man who merits your consideration, he will answer in a heartbeat—and with specifics. Because he’s already thought about what he would do with fifty grand. He’s thought about it while he’s been digging ditches, or pushing paper, or slinging hash. He’s thought about it while listening to his wife, or tucking in the kids, or staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night. In a way, he’s been thinking about it all his life.
When I put the question to Emmett, he didn’t respond, but that wasn’t because he didn’t have an answer. I could see from the expression on his face that he knew exactly what he’d do with fifty thousand dollars, nickel for nickel and dime for dime.
As we sat there silently, Billy looked from me to his brother and back again; but Emmett, he looked straight across the table like he and I were suddenly the only people in the room.
—Maybe this was Woolly’s idea and maybe it wasn’t, Duchess. Either way, I don’t want any part of it. Not the stop in the city, not the trip to the Adirondacks, not the fifty thousand dollars. Tomorrow, I need to take care of a few things in town. But on Monday morning, first thing, Billy and I are going to drive you and Woolly to the Greyhound station in Omaha. From there you can catch a bus to Manhattan or the Adirondacks or anywhere you like. Then Billy and I will get back in the Studebaker and go on about our business.
Emmett was serious as he delivered this little speech. In fact, I’ve never seen a guy so serious. He didn’t raise his voice, and he didn’t take his eyes off me once—not even to glance at Billy, who was listening to every word with a look of wide-eyed wonder.
And that’s when it hit me. The blunder I’d made. I had laid out all the specifics right in front of the kid.
Like I said before, Emmett Watson understands the whole picture better than most. He understands that a man can be patient, but only up to a point; that it’s occasionally necessary for him to toss a monkey wrench in the workings of the world in order to get his God-given due. But Billy? At the age of eight, he probably hadn’t set foot out of the state of Nebraska. So you couldn’t expect him to understand all the intricacies of modern life, all the subtleties of what was and wasn’t fair. In fact, you wouldn’t want him to understand it. And as the kid’s older brother, as his guardian and sole protector, it was Emmett’s job to spare Billy from such vicissitudes for as long as he possibly could.
I leaned back in my chair and gave the nod of common understanding.
—Say no more, Emmett. I read you loud and clear.
* * *
After supper, Emmett announced that he was walking over to the Ransoms to see if his neighbor would come jump his car. As the house was a mile away, I offered to keep him company, but he thought it best that Woolly and I stay out of sight. So I remained at the kitchen table, chatting with Billy while Woolly did the dishes.
Given what I’ve already told you about Woolly, you’d probably think he wasn’t cut out for doing dishes—that his eyes would glaze over and his mind would wander and he’d generally go about the business in a slipshod fashion. But Woolly, he washed those dishes like his life depended on it. With his head bent at a forty-five-degree angle and the tip of his tongue poking between his teeth, he circled the sponge over the surface of the plates with a tireless intention, removing some spots that had been there for years and others that weren’t there at all.
It was a wonder to observe. But like I said, I love surprises.
When I turned my attention back to Billy, he was unwrapping a little package of tinfoil that he’d taken from his knapsack. From inside the tinfoil he carefully withdrew four cookies and put them on the table—one cookie in front of each chair.
—Well, well, well, I said. What do we have here?
—Chocolate chip cookies, said Billy. Sally made them.
While we chewed in silence, I noticed that Billy was staring rather shyly at the top of the table, as if he had something he wanted to ask.
—What’s on your mind, Billy?
—All for one and one for all, he said a little tentatively. That’s from The Three Musketeers, isn’t it?
—Exactly, mon ami.
Having successfully identified the source of the quotation, you might have imagined the kid would be pleased as punch, but he looked despondent. Positively despondent. And that’s despite the fact that the mere mention of The Three Musketeers usually puts a smile on a young boy’s face. So Billy’s disappointment rather mystified me. That is until I was about to take another bite, and I recalled the all-for-one-and-one-for-all arrangement of the cookies on the table.
I put my cookie down.
—Have you seen The Three Musketeers, Billy?
—No, he admitted, with a hint of the same despondency. But I have read it.
—Then you should know better than most just how misleading a title can be.
Billy looked up from the table.
—Why is that, Duchess?
—Because, in point of fact, The Three Musketeers is a story about four musketeers. Yes, it opens with the delightful camaraderie of Orthos and Pathos and Artemis.
—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis?
—Exactly. But the central business of the tale is the means by which the young adventurer . . .
—D’Artagnan.
— . . . by which D’Artagnan joins the ranks of the swashbuckling threesome. And by saving the honor of the queen, no less.
—That’s true, said Billy, sitting up in his chair. In point of fact, it is a story about four musketeers.
In honor of a job well done, I popped the rest of my cookie in my mouth and brushed the crumbs from my fingers. But Billy was staring at me with a new intensity.
—I sense that something else is on your mind, young William.
He leaned as far forward as the table would allow and spoke a little under his breath.
—Do you want to hear what I would do with fifty thousand dollars?
I leaned forward and spoke under my breath too.
—I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
—I would build a house in San Francisco, California. It would be a white house just like this one with a little porch and a kitchen and a front room. And upstairs, there would be three bedrooms. Only instead of a barn for the tractor, there would be a garage for Emmett’s car.
—I love it, Billy. But why San Francisco?
—Because that’s where our mother is.
I sat back in my chair.
—You don’t say.
Back at Salina, whenever Emmett mentioned his mother—which wasn’t very often, to be sure—he invariably used the past tense. But he didn’t use it in a manner suggesting that his mother had gone to California. He used it in a manner suggesting that she had gone to the great beyond.
—We’re leaving right after we take you and Wo
olly to the bus station, added Billy.
—Just like that, you’re going to pack up the house and move to California.
—No. We’re not going to pack up the house, Duchess. We’re going to take what little we can fit in a kit bag.
—Why would you do that?
—Because Emmett and Professor Abernathe agree that’s the best way to make a fresh start. We’re going to drive to San Francisco on the Lincoln Highway, and once we get there, we’ll find our mother and build our house.
I didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that if his mother didn’t want to live in a little white house in Nebraska, she wasn’t going to want to live in a little white house in California. But setting the vagaries of motherhood aside, I figured the kid’s dream was about forty thousand dollars under budget.
—I love your plan, Billy. It’s got the sort of specificity that a heartfelt scheme deserves. But are you sure you’re dreaming big enough? I mean, with fifty thousand dollars you could go a hell of a lot further. You could have a pool and a butler. You could have a four-car garage.
Billy shook his head with a serious look on his face.
—No, he said. I don’t think we will need a pool and a butler, Duchess.
I was about to gently suggest that the kid shouldn’t jump to conclusions, that pools and butlers weren’t so easy to come by, and those who came by them were generally loath to give them up, when suddenly Woolly was standing at the table with a plate in one hand and a sponge in the other.
—No one needs a pool or a butler, Billy.
You never know what’s going to catch Woolly’s attention. It could be a bird that settles on a branch. Or the shape of a footprint in the snow. Or something someone said on the previous afternoon. But whatever gets Woolly thinking, it’s always worth the wait. So as he took the seat next to Billy, I quickly went to the sink, turned off the water, and returned to my chair, all ears.
—No one needs a four-car garage, Woolly continued. But I think what you will need is a few more bedrooms.
—Why is that, Woolly?
—So that friends and family can come visit for the holidays.
Billy nodded in acknowledgment of Woolly’s good sense, so Woolly continued making suggestions, warming to his subject as he went along.
—You should have a porch with an overhanging roof so that you can sit under it on rainy afternoons, or lie on top of it on warm summer nights. And downstairs there should be a study, and a great room with a fireplace big enough so that everyone can gather around it when it snows. And you should have a secret hiding place under the staircase, and a special spot in the corner for the Christmas tree.
There was no stopping Woolly now. Asking for paper and pencil, he swung his chair around next to Billy’s and began drawing a floor plan in perfect detail. And this wasn’t some back-of-the-napkin sort of sketch. As it turned out, Woolly drew floor plans like he washed dishes. The rooms were rendered to scale with walls that were parallel and corners at perfect right angles. It gave you a zing just to see it.
Setting aside the merits of a covered porch versus a four-car garage, you had to give Woolly credit on the dreaming front. The place he imagined on Billy’s behalf was three times the size of the one the kid had imagined on his own, and it must have struck a chord. Because when Woolly was done with the picture, Billy asked him to add an arrow pointing north and a big red star to mark the spot where the Christmas tree should go. And when Woolly had done that, the kid carefully folded the floor plan and stowed it away in his pack.
Woolly looked satisfied too. Although, when Billy had cinched the straps nice and tight and returned to his chair, Woolly gave him his sad sort of smile.
—I wish I didn’t know where my mother is, he said.
—Why is that, Woolly?
—So that I could go and look for her just like you.
* * *
Once the dishes were clean and Billy had taken Woolly upstairs to show him where he could shower, I did some poking around.
It was no secret that Emmett’s old man had gone bust. But all you had to take was one look around the place to know it wasn’t from drinking. When the man of the house is a drunk, you can tell. You can tell from the look of the furniture and the look of the front yard. You can tell from the look on the faces of the kids. But even if Emmett’s old man was a teetotaler, I figured there had to be a drink of something somewhere—like maybe a bottle of apple brandy or peppermint schnapps tucked away for special occasions. In this part of the country, there usually was.
I started with the kitchen cabinets. In the first, I found the plates and bowls. In the second, the glasses and mugs. In the third, I found the usual assortment of foodstuffs, but no sign of a bottle, not even hiding behind the ten-year-old jar of molasses.
There wasn’t any hooch in the hutch either. But in the lower compartment was a jumble of fine china covered in a thin layer of dust. Not just dinner plates, you understand. There were soup bowls, salad plates, dessert plates, and teetering towers of coffee cups. I counted twenty settings in all—in a house without a dining-room table.
I seemed to remember Emmett telling me his parents had been raised in Boston. Well, if they were raised in Boston, it must have been on the top of Beacon Hill. This was the sort of stuff that is given to a Brahmin bride with every expectation it will be handed down from one generation to the next. But the whole collection could barely fit in the cupboard, so it certainly wasn’t going to fit in a kit bag. Which sort of made you wonder . . .
In the front room, the only place to stow a bottle was in the big old desk in the corner. I sat in the chair and rolled up the top. The writing surface had the normal accessories—scissors, a letter opener, a pad and pencil—but the drawers were cluttered with all sorts of things that had no business being there, like an old alarm clock, a half a deck of cards, and a scattering of nickels and dimes.
After scraping up the loose change (waste not, want not), I opened the bottom drawer with my fingers crossed, knowing it to be a classic stowing spot. But there was no room for a bottle in there, because the drawer was filled to the brim with mail.
It didn’t take more than a glance to know what this mess was all about: unpaid bills. Bills from the power company and the phone company, and whoever else had been foolish enough to extend Mr. Watson credit. At the very bottom would be the original notices, then the reminders, while here at the top, the cancellations and threats of legal action. Some of those envelopes hadn’t even been opened.
I couldn’t help but smile.
There was something sort of sweet in how Mr. Watson kept this assortment in the bottom drawer—not a foot away from the trash can. It had taken him just as much effort to stuff the bills inside his desk as it would have to consign them to oblivion. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was never going to pay them.
My old man certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble. As far as he was concerned, an unpaid bill couldn’t find its way into the garbage fast enough. In fact, he was so allergic to the very paper on which bills were printed, he would go to some lengths to ensure that they never caught up with him in the first place. That’s why the incomparable Harrison Hewett, who was something of a stickler when it came to the English language, was occasionally known to misspell his own address.
But waging a war with the US Postal Service is no small affair. They have entire fleets of trucks at their disposal, and an army of foot soldiers whose sole purpose in life is to make sure that an envelope with your name on it finds its way into your mitts. Which is why the Hewetts were occasionally known to arrive by the lobby and depart by the fire escape, usually at five in the morning.
Ah, my father would say, pausing between the fourth and third floors and gesturing toward the east. Rosy-fingered dawn! Count yourself lucky to be of its acquaintance, my boy. There are kings who never laid eyes upon it!
Outside, I heard the wheels of Mr. Ransom’s pickup turning into the Watsons’ drive. The headlights briefly swept the room from right to left as the truck passed the house and headed toward the barn. I closed the bottom drawer of the desk so that the whole pile of notices could remain safe and sound until the final accounting.
* * *
• • •
Upstairs, I stuck my head into Billy’s room, where Woolly was already stretched out on the bed. He was humming softly and staring at the airplanes hanging from the ceiling. He was probably thinking about his father in the cockpit of his fighter plane at ten thousand feet. That’s where Woolly’s father would always be for Woolly: somewhere between the flight deck of his carrier and the bottom of the South China Sea.
I found Billy in his father’s room, sitting Indian style on the bedcovers with his knapsack at his side and a big red book in his lap.
—Hey there, gunslinger. What’re you reading?
—Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers.
I whistled.
—Sounds impressive. Is it any good?
—Oh, I’ve read it twenty-four times.
—Then good may not be big enough a word.
Entering the room, I took a little stroll from corner to corner as the kid turned the page. On top of the bureau were two framed photographs. The first was of a standing husband and seated wife in turn-of-the-century garb. The Watsons of Beacon Hill, no doubt. The other was of Emmett and Billy from just a few years back. They were sitting on the same porch that Emmett and his neighbor had sat on earlier that day. There was no picture of Billy and Emmett’s mother.
—Hey, Billy, I said, putting the photograph of the brothers back on the bureau. Can I ask you a question?
—Okay, Duchess.
—When exactly did your mother go to California?
—On the fifth of July 1946.
—That’s pretty exactly. So she just up and left, huh? Never to be heard from again?
