American Pop

by Snowden Wright

  Connor wasn’t in his office, though his door was open, a library lamp turned on. His secretary wasn’t at her desk either. Not sure whether to wait, Imogene headed in the opposite direction, looking in each open door she passed. She found Connor in room 1901.

  “Imogene! The prodigal daughter returneth!” The firstborn son of German immigrants who’d settled in the Pinch District of Memphis, Tennessee, Connor Rolph graduated at the top of his class from Ole Miss, where, in reference to Tintin’s wire fox terrier, his fraternity pledge name had been Snowy. Not only was he similar to the dog in appearance, his blond hair almost white in a certain light, his eyebrows two slightly raised semicircles, but he was also similar in demeanor: affable, curious, energetic, and, above all, facile with occasionally dopey comic asides. While sitting in the doorway to room 1901, however, Imogene didn’t give a damn about Connor Rolph’s personality, but rather his location.

  “This’s my grandfather’s office.”

  Connor allowed smile lines to trim his eyes. They failed to disguise his obvious embarrassment at Imogene’s obvious annoyance. “Good memory. With all this new work on my plate, I thought I could use a bit more room to spread out.” He straightened a stack of paper.

  “That’s my grandfather’s chair.”

  In one swift motion, as though he had been sitting on an ejector seat, Connor sprang from behind the leather-topped, ash-veneered desk and walked toward Imogene. “Come in, come in! Can I help you? No, you don’t like that. I remember.”

  Imogene wheeled herself into the office, stopping beside the coffee table where she used to doodle pictures of robots, unicorns, and flowers while her grandfather worked at his desk. Connor pulled up a chair catty-cornered to her. “I’m sorry I had to leave in such a hurry after the funeral. All this work, like I mentioned. But what a turnout! And I loved your eulogy. Did Houghton really say, ‘Do you want to act rich?’”

  “Every time.”

  In attendance at the funeral had been three former Mississippi governors, one former United States president, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Martha Baird, Charles Chaplin, Edward R. Murrow, eight ambassadors of foreign nations, twelve CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Tallulah Bankhead, William Shawn, Ella Fitzgerald, and four presiding chancellors of state universities. So of course Imogene had felt completely unfazed while approaching the podium at Batesville First Presbyterian. Up onstage, she recovered by turning her grandfather into what he’d always wanted to be, a character.

  “I sure did love that man. He was my mentor, really. Taught me everything,” Connor said. “But hey, listen to me, getting emotional. This tree’s got a lot of sap to it.”

  Imogene laced her fingers together. “I wanted to discuss with you a few of the plans I have for the company going forward.”

  “Right, but—”

  “My grandfather always said you were one of his most trusted advisers, his former protégé, as you put it, so obviously I’d like your feedback. I could use people who are honest.”

  “Before that, we really need to—”

  “I want my transition into leadership to be as smooth as possible. I realize the fact I’m a wo—”

  “Imogene,” said Connor. “We should really discuss the will first.”

  In that moment, Imogene was stunned speechless, not because of what Connor had said, but because he had emphasized it by touching her thigh. Her horrific, withered, spindly, disgusting thigh. Imogene couldn’t even manage to look down as a way to show she was upset. Connor drew his hand back in seeming response to her silence. Thank the damn Lord.

  “What about the will?” Imogene asked.

  “I want you to know your grandfather loved you very much. Personally, and please don’t repeat this to Nick or Susannah, but I think you were his favorite.”

  “What. About. The will.”

  “Your grandfather”—can’t never could, can’t never could—“left the company”—can’t never could, can’t never could—“to your brother.”

  * * *

  Two years later, Imogene Forster appeared on the cover of the June 30, 1958, issue of Time, beneath the headline, cola nation. She exhibited the same determined stare she’d once given Connor Rolph after he’d told her news that sent brine through her veins. Her only visible accessory was a magnolia flower pinned to the lapel of her jacket. She did not smile. In the article, Imogene responded to the question of what was next for the company by saying, with the verbal equivalent of a shrug, “We’re going to war.”

  Thus the neologism “cola warfare” entered the lexicon. The phrase appears numerous times throughout Ms. Panola Cola, in reference to, for example, the constant struggle with Pepsi and Coke for the title of best-selling soda, the controversy over the Americanization of foreign economies for which PanCola was held up as a token, the so-called arms race for a diet cola, and the difficulties winning over the peace-loving countercultural youth of the 1960s. Then came the year Imogene’s brother came of age. Although she never speculated in public about Nicholas’s actions—“All’s fair in a cola war” is the only thing she writes of them in her autobiography—the reason he took over the Panola Cola Company was not, as many believe, a desire for wealth, power, and fame. Somewhat ironically, his mother, Sarah Forster, who had exhibited such a lack of discernment in her naming of him, correctly guessed Nicholas’s motives when, believing her son to have met someone in college, she remarked to her mother-in-law, “The things a young man will do to impress the woman he loves.”

  4.4

  The Harrington Limit—Like Brother, Like Sister—Candy’s Dandy—Pre-Post-Imperialism

  Montgomery was dressed to make an impression. On the train from London to a small village south of Birmingham, he wore a three-piece suit of fine glen plaid wool, a silk tie with a tie bar, polished Oxford wing tips, and a gray trilby pitched at a spry angle, its Petersham band matched perfectly with the houndstooth of his cashmere dress socks. He focused on the countryside out the window in the hopes of calming his nerves. To the other passengers on the train, Monty seemed as though he were about to meet his lover after a long absence—“He’s giddy as a schoolboy,” a commuter on holiday whispered to her husband, “just like you were with me”—an observation that, for the American trying to appreciate the English landscape, was at least partly accurate. It wasn’t his lover he was about to meet but his lover’s family.

  One month earlier, a letter had arrived for him at the PanCola headquarters, where, during any time he had to spare from his campaign for district attorney, he served as head legal counsel. “April 28, 1934,” was its first line, and its last read, “William Harrington.” Between those two was a formal offer to develop, produce, and market a hard candy based on the flavor of Panola Cola. Monty hardly took a breath during the short time it took him to read the letter.

  “I suppose you may be wondering why I’m writing to you about this matter instead of your father,” wrote the owner of Harrington Limited, a British confectionery manufacturer. “I believe you were acquainted with my son during the war. Nicholas mentioned you in his correspondence.”

  Ni-cho-las, Ni-cho-las. The syllables stole into Monty’s mind as if on a winter gale. They drifted in the air before his eyes, six little clouds of condensed breath, offering hope and relief, a glimmer of deliverance from a life of measured desperation. “Name’s Nicholas. These chaps call me Nick, but to my friends I’m Nicholas.”

  Although it took a great deal of persuasion, Montgomery convinced his father that, no matter if they chose to accept the deal, a company representative should visit the Harrington facilities, to get a sense of their operation. Monty volunteered to be that representative. In answer to the request for a visit, William Harrington not only agreed to one but also, just as Monty’d hoped, insisted he stay with the family at their home. “Any friend of my son’s is a friend of mine.” So, roughly a month after the negotiations began, Montgomery Forster made the third voyage in his life across the Atlantic Ocean, the first of which had led to fa
lling in love with a man, the second of which had helped in letting him go, and the third of which, Montgomery suspected as his train inched north toward Birmingham, would be some combination of the two.

  “Paisley Street and Ashbrook! Paisley Street and Ashbrook!”

  That was his stop. Once the conductor had passed by, still hollering, “Paisley Street and Ashbrook,” like a folk song, Monty gathered his luggage, waited at the train doors, and, after they opened, stepped out onto the platform. The bright sun was a shock to him. He had to blink for a few seconds in order to draw focus on the village that, despite being just five miles south of a major city, looked as though it had been preserved in a jar for the past hundred years. The streets were unpaved and the cottages mossed over. A cow munched on grass in the middle of an alley. Monty had to scatter chickens as he walked down to the lane that ran parallel with the station.

  “Mr. Forster,” called a man standing beside a lustrous beetle-black Bentley. Mustachioed and bespectacled, he kept his thumbs and index fingers tucked into the pockets of his waistcoat, part of an ensemble of Harris Tweed. The admirable tailoring of his suit did little to disguise a portliness one might expect in the owner of a multinational candy company. Montgomery’s heart, which he had felt expanding with each mile he’d gotten closer to Nicholas’s home, shrank like a snail touched with salt to see that the father bore little resemblance to the son.

  “William Harrington,” the man said. “Your trip enjoyable?”

  “Very. Thanks.”

  His tight collar reminiscent of an overdone coddled egg, Mr. Harrington placed Monty’s luggage in the Bentley, refusing any help by modestly insisting that he had it. The man even doffed his cap. “Let’s be off then, shall we? Do accept my apologies for picking you up myself. My daughter insists it’s improper not to send the chauffeur,” Mr. Harrington said. “But I’m eager to show you our little village. The not-necessarily-grand tour.”

  Named for a local stream that, due to a glacial deposit of boulder clay, appeared the color of soot, Ashbrook was originally a farming community but, Mr. Harrington explained to Montgomery, had taken a moderately industrial turn fifty years ago. That was when Mr. Harrington’s father, George, chose it for the new, expanded premises of their company, believing its access to canals and the railway would give Harrington Limited an advantage over their main rival, a company Mr. Harrington referred to, over the course of their drive through the village, as “the chicken coop,” “fowl chocolate,” and “the egg layers.”

  The small village became, as they drove farther into it, a sort of economic model. Farmsteads gave way to commissaries. Barnyards were replaced by living quarters. Country lanes turned into paved roads. “When my father purchased these three hundred acres, he wanted it to become an idealized village for our employees,” Mr. Harrington said to Montgomery. “You’ll notice there are no pubs. Father advocated temperance. Just beyond this knoll here is an outdoor swimming lido.” Despite being on a wholly different continent, Ashbrook reminded Monty of plantations in the Delta, how they were self-contained systems in many ways, a thought that, in turn, reminded him of the joke Nicholas had made whenever Monty pronounced his rank. “Who is this Lou Tenant,” he would say, “a farmer from Mississippi?”

  “To your right is the factory,” Mr. Harrington said, nodding toward the last still in the time-lapse slide show of capitalist progression that was the village of Ashbrook. The confectionery factory was mammoth, at least twelve floors, steepled by smokestacks, with an oval perimeter, like a giant royal crown built of red brick. Its proprietor said, “We’ll visit the old girl tomorrow. I’m sure you must be dashed tired from your trip.”

  Fifteen minutes later they reached Ashbrook Hall, a building just as impressive as the factory. Even more so, thought Monty. Previously owned by Edmund James Lowsley, 3rd Baron Atwell, the country house was a square block of seven quarters and three floors, its exterior constructed of Runcorn sandstone in ashlar blocks, Welsh slate on the roof. The south front included a pedimented porch with a balustrade, and the north front featured a portico with two monolithic columns. Marble steps approached an imposing doorway. Nicholas must have crossed that threshold a thousand times. Monty could see him now: seven years old, hair in want of a comb and a smudge of marmalade at the corner of his mouth; fifteen years old, dressed in cricket whites; sixteen years old, dressed in boating flannels; eighteen years old, army cap tucked under his arm, freshly shaved, effortlessly handsome, a young man strutting out a doorway through which he would never enter again.

  Inside the house, where Montgomery was led by the butler, Samuel, whom Mr. Harrington spoke of like family, the drawing and dining rooms were to the east, smoking room and library to the west, all of which could be reached from the entrance hall, a rare early example, the butler said regarding its decoration scheme, of the “Wrenaissance style, the one with a W.”

  “Is there anything I or the staff can get you? A batch of rock buns was baked this morning,” said Mr. Harrington, half his digits nestled, once again, in his waistcoat.

  “No, but thank you. Your home is lovely.”

  Mr. Harrington placed a hand on Monty’s shoulder, saying, “You’re more than welcome. Like I said, a friend of Nicholas’s. Samuel will show you to your room.”

  Once he was alone, Monty loosened his tie, yawned, removed his shoes, yawned again, and plopped himself on top of the billowy, soft eiderdown covering the bed in what, he assumed, must be one of at least twenty rooms in Ashbrook Hall. Talk about to the manor born. During their short time together, Monty had known the phrase “well-off” certainly applied to Nicholas, but this was at a different level.

  He took a deep breath through his nose. The smells of an early English summer came to him—hints of peppermint creams from the kitchen, outside the window a Bourbon rose heavy with buds, furniture polish, apple charlotte, mildewed wicker, a new bar of carbolic sitting in a bathroom soap dish—all of which Nicholas must have known growing up. With his eyes closed, Monty tried to conjure his friend, to feel and see him, to taste and hear him, by focusing on these new additions to his senses and trying to ignore his memories of the war, that smell of the harvest on distant farms, freshly bloomed gunfire, ready to be reaped by chests, arms, legs, and heads.

  Forgetting the war while also remembering Nicholas had been Monty’s most difficult struggle over the past sixteen years. He practiced the trick every night before bed. Seeing and not seeing. Hearing and not hearing. Tasting and not tasting. Feeling and not feeling. If you want to get better at anything, Monty had learned, you push yourself until the point of no return, and then you return.

  It was almost cocktail hour when he woke up. Monty splashed some water on his face and reestablished the part in his hair before venturing downstairs and getting understandably lost on his way to the parlor. He wandered into it by the mercy of luck.

  From a carved Victorian armchair Mr. Harrington rose to greet him. “May I offer you an aperitif?” he said, lifting a preprandial decanter from the bar cart.

  “That would be wonderful.”

  Drinks in hand, the two men sat down crosswise to each other, each putting ankle to knee. “Afraid we’re going to be a light party this evening,” said Mr. Harrington. “The boys still have a few more weeks left in the term.” Monty knew he was referring to Nicholas’s brothers, Baxter and Rupert, both of whom, according to their father, were at present living a life that would make Riley himself say, “Those two chaps certainly do have it easy.” One was at Cambridge, the other at Oxford. Monty also knew from his many conversations with Nicholas that their mother had passed away giving birth to Rupert.

  “Shame they’re not here. I would have liked to’ve met them.”

  Could have sworn Nicholas mentioned he had a— Monty was thinking when a woman entered the drawing room, saying, “So this is the man who fought alongside my brother.”

  Sophie Harrington was essentially the female version of Nicholas Harrington. Two years junior to her de
ceased sibling, roughly an inch shorter, with the same chestnut hair marked by a slight bit of curl, the same tawny complexion, not to mention the same casual, proud disregard for social niceties, she bore the resemblance to her brother Monty had been expecting to find in their father. Monty had a difficult time getting down his last sip of cordial in order to introduce himself. “Nicholas told me so much about you,” he finally managed.

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “Don’t be rude, Sophie.” Mr. Harrington turned to Montgomery. “She and her brother were very close. So close it was as though neither liked to share the other.”

  “Please refrain from analyzing me in front of strangers.”

  In Sophie’s emphasis on that last word, strangers, Monty thought he detected a provocation, some dig at his friendship with Nicholas. What had he done to make her so angry with him? During the war, Nicholas had rarely spoken of Sophie, it was true, focusing instead on his brothers, Baxter and Rupert, in nursery school at the time. It had seemed perfectly normal that a pair of rambunctious boys would make for better stories to tell.

  “Dinner is ready.” The butler stood in the doorway to the drawing room. “If you please.”

  Ashbrook Hall’s dining room, where the three members of the party took a seat at the table, featured a white-oak wainscot, giving it a yellowish lambency. The room looked as though it had been dripped from a tallow candle. “Before I forget,” said Mr. Harrington, cast in a light similar to his own skin tone, as he reached into his pocket. “The prototype.”

  He slid a small item across the table toward Monty. The hard candy was oval-shaped, light brown, and not covered by any wrapper. “May I?” asked Monty.

  “Please, go ahead,” Mr. Harrington said as two uniformed women served a course of vichyssoise. “Give us the verdict.”

  Although he was trying to appear enthusiastic, Montgomery, while holding the candy in his hand, worried that his fingers would start to shake. He had not touched or tasted a hard candy since the wrapper for one saved his life and sanity in the war. Over the past sixteen years, he had often woken up at night, brow rimed with sweat, an odd sugary taste in his mouth. More than once he’d had to excuse himself from office meetings because of a lozenge-size knot that had inexplicably formed in his throat. He unfailingly grew nauseated whenever he took medicine whose flavor, to make it more palatable, had been masked with a cloyingly sweet imitation of some fruit, cough syrup that went down like sour cherry, antacids that turned electric orange in water.