Wrapped in Rain Page 7

  South of Abbeville, I popped four antacids in my mouth. Bessie was right-her coffee bordered on real bad. Lights appeared in my rearview mirror, along with the glint of a chrome dirt bike strapped atop a car. A minute later, the Volvo pulled up behind, hesitated, and then passed erratically while the driver gunned the engine. I took my foot off the accelerator and watched as the driver crossed my line and inadvertently sprayed my windshield with rainwater.

  Bubble gum boy was lying in the backseat, apparently asleep. If the Volvo was out of place at Bessie's, it was really out of place on the highways of southeast Alabama. Not interested in me, the baseball-capped mother sped up, and the red taillights disappeared into the rain. I finished my coffee, swallowed the stale and crumbling cinnamon roll, and switched my wipers to low. On State Road 10, I turned head-on into the rain, slowing my progress even more. I was ready to climb in bed, but the rain wasn't cooperating. Compared to normal traffic, I was crawling. Fifteen minutes from the house, I downshifted, switched the wipers to high, and started rubbing the inside of the windshield with a dirty T-shirt.

  The wipers squeaked across the windshield and brought me back to Alabama. With home around the bend, my thoughts led to Waverly Hall. The land of Rex. Scorched earth. The beginning and ending of most thoughts. The epicenter of hell.

  Unlike hell, Clopton, Alabama, is a map dot-and little more. There is no stoplight and no stop sign. Just a potholed and graveled intersection marked by a boarded-up corner grocery store, a faded mailbox, and an abandoned tobacco warehouse built with slave labor from chipped brick glued together by weeping mortar. Were it not for the mailbox, the word "Clopton" would probably not appear on most maps. Actually, were it not for my father, Clopton would have died long ago.

  Born to a high-flying duo that worked with the traveling circus, Rex Mason grew up hard, fast, and with a talent for making money. Rex worked everything from the Tilt-a-whirl and the merry-go-round to guessing people's weights. He was good at it too. He could size up anybody, give or take three pounds. In his late teens, Rex put two and two together and discovered how to make real money-the kind that when you had it, it made you better than those who didn't-by selling blackmarket cigarettes and liquor to underage kids.

  With a thick wad of Franklins in his pocket, it didn't take him long to figure out that he was finished with both his parents and the circus. He thumbed his nose, pulled up his collar, and never looked back. By the time he was twenty-five, Rex owned seven liquor stores and was looking to buy the distribution rights for Atlanta. At thirty, he owned the rights for all of Georgia and was negotiating on a trucking company that included a fleet of fifty trucks.

  By thirty-three, he was transporting liquor through eleven states-from Virginia south to Florida, west to Alabama, north through Louisiana and Tennessee, and everywhere in between. And he didn't care what type. If they would drink it, he would sell it. The more the merrier, and his margins were never conservative. There were few highways his trucks didn't travel. In his midthirties, he was worth ten or so million and headed for what the Atlanta Journal and Constitution called "dizzying heights." They were right, because by the time Rex turned forty, he was worth more than fifty million. For his birthday, he gave himself the architectural plans for a sixty-story downtown Atlanta high-rise. Four years later, he moved his office to the top floor.

  Soon thereafter, he paid cash for fifteen hundred acres in Clopton, Alabama, where he dug a rock quarry in an outcropping of oddly displaced granite, sold the stone, and used the proceeds to renovate the property's old plantation-Waverly Hall. He told the paper it was to be his summer home, his retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city, a place to prop up his feet, scratch the dog's head, and enjoy life.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Waverly Hall became Rex's twelve thousand square foot monument to himself, and if there was a design scheme, it began and ended in Rex's head. He began his "renovation" by borrowing some dynamite from the masons at the quarry. He wrapped the sticks in a bundle, placed them in the oven, lit the fuse, and ran out the front door laughing. When the pieces settled, he bulldozed what remained and built what he wanted.

  Rex used his own granite to build the foundation, basement, and first floor and then brought in Alabama bricks to build the second and third stories. The weeping mortar that glued it all together spoke volumes about the entire process.

  Rex prized the fact that his tile, fabrics, and furniture rode the slow boat from Italy, France, and the Orient. The farther away, the better. And that his carpenters and painters came from as far away as California and New York. Truth was, few locals would work for him. The house towered above the landscape. Ceilings on the first floor measured fourteen feet high, shrunk to twelve feet on the second, and a mere ten on the third and in the attic. The floors on the first floor were an odd conglomeration of both Italian tile and Spanish marble, while the second and third floors were hand-cut Honduran mahogany. Scattered throughout the house were eight fireplacesfour of which were big enough to sleep in. I know because I did. He never thought to look there.

  Rex stocked his wine cellar with dusty bottles, his liquor cabinet with a dozen different single malts-even though he preferred bourbon-and his gun closet with ten matching sets of gold-inlaid side-by-sides and over-and-unders imported from the same countries that sent the tileGermany, Spain, and Italy. On a gently sloping hill behind the house, he cleared and terraced a pasture, surrounded it with a hand-peeled cedar fence, built a ten-stall, state-ofthe-art barn, and filled it with ten state-of-the-art thoroughbreds. Next door, he bricked a separate servant's cottage and connected it to the house with a covered walk so that he wouldn't get wet when he woke up whatever servant happened to live there at the time.

  If Rex wanted to isolate himself and us in the south Alabama woods, he had done a good job of it. We had few neighbors to begin with, but just to make sure none of them ever popped up uninvited offering a fresh-baked pie and ten minutes of kind conversation, he built an entrance to Waverly. A massive brick and wrought iron gate, set several car lengths off the county road, towered over visitors some fourteen feet in the air. Due to its sheer weight and the settling earth beneath, it leaned forward like the Tower of Pisa. Rather than fix the root of the problem, Rex anchored it with cables and long corkscrew spikes that bound it to the earth like a circus tent. With the taut cables set to snap during the next thunderstorm, it stood much like the threat of Rex's fist-ever-present and not something you wanted to mess with.

  Once through the gates, the drive led down a winding half mile that snaked to the house like a water moccasin skimming the surface of the water. It wound beneath tentacled oaks and weeping willows, around old camellias, and over fresh winter rye before coming to rest at a circular drive framed by eight Leyland cypress that spiraled upward like the stoic soldiers at Buckingham Palace.

  When finished, Waverly Hall, the once stately Southern-plantation turned pseudo-French chateau, looked like a bad marriage between a bricked tobacco warehouse and the Biltmore Estate. It was as out of place in Clopton as a McDonald's in Japan. As I grew older and the photographer in me began bubbling to the surface, I tried to stand back and let the picture fill the viewfinder. No matter what lens I used, I saw it only as a shadow of something dark, where the light was difficult to read.

  When she first came to work for Rex, Miss Ella tried to plant some color at the base of the gate, a few impatiens mixed with daylilies, thinking Rex would like it. But Rex didn't like it. He whacked them down with a closed umbrella, stomped them with his Johnston and Murphy heels, and poured diesel on the roots.

  "But, Mr. Rex, don't you want people to feel welcome?"

  He looked at her like she had lost her mind. "Woman! I'll let them know whether or not they're welcome. Not the blasted gate!" Needless to say, not too many strangers made a wrong turn.

  When I was six, Rex appeared on a Tuesday morning, which was unusual, in a black Mercedes, which was not, and walked up the front
steps with a suitcase in one hand and a dark-haired little boy in the other. Rex stayed just long enough to fill his glass twice and speak to Miss Ella. "This is Matthew ... Mason." Rex wrinkled his nose and gulped from the crystal, as if the admission was painful. Two more big gulps and he said, "Apparently, he's my son." He then drove toward the barn without uttering a single word in my direction.

  Mutt's birth certificate said he had been born at Grady Hospital in Atlanta six months after me. His mother's name had been skillfully omitted but was listed as "Female, Age 29." Mutt had olive skin, suggesting she had been of foreign descent. Maybe Spain, Italy, or Mexico. And between all of Rex's "help"-house help, office help, yard help, and bedroom help-only Rex knew who she was and would ever know the truth.

  Before he left, Rex checked on his horses and dogs and then drove down the driveway. I watched him through the window and, when the coast was clear, opened up my toy chest and held out a toy soldier and a wooden rubber-band gun. While we dug through the bottom of the toy closet, Miss Ella called us together.

  "Tuck?" she said.

  "Yes ma'am."

  "Today is the day you learn to share."

  "Yes ma'am." She grabbed my two-holster belt off the end of the bunk bed and sat on the floor next to the bed. "Matthew," she said, looking through her right eye like she was trying to size him up, "which hand do you color with?" Mutt looked down at his hands, turned them over, and then held up his left. "Good, that makes it easier." She pulled a pair of scissors out of her apron and cut the stitching that held the left holster to the belt. She grabbed a leather dress belt out of the closet, looped the belt through the holster, and snugged it around Mutt's waist. "There," she said. Mutt looked down, adjusted the belt, and then reached up and threw both arms around her neck. The first words I ever heard my brother say were "thank you." Miss Ella wrapped her two skinny arms around him and said, "You, young man, are welcome." Those arms might have been skinny, but they held a lot.

  Somewhere about the time Matthew arrived-I can't quite remember-I was the subject of some pretty harsh ribbing at school. The teacher wanted us to stand up in front of the class and tell about our parents. I had never met my mom, and I really didn't know Rex or understand what he did or why, so I started talking about Miss Ella. The class picked up on the fact that I was talking about our "maid," and it was a couple of years before they let it die. That's really the first time I had any idea that life wasn't supposed to be what it was.

  When I got home from school that day, I walked through the back screen door and dropped my books. Miss Ella saw my drooped shoulders and grabbed me by the hand. She walked me back onto the back porch where the sun was setting and casting an easy golden glow across the still-green hay. She knelt down, her white maid's shoes squeaking on Pine Sol'd floors, and she gently lifted my chin with her stubbly, callused fingers.

  "Child," she whispered, "listen, and you listen close to what I say." A tear rolled down my cheek, and she brushed it with her dry and cracked thumb. "Don't you believe anybody but me."

  I didn't want another sermon, so I looked away, but she jerked my head back with two fingers that smelled like peaches. "The devil is real. He's as real as water, and he's only got one thing in his sick little mind. He wants to rip your heart out, stomp on it, fill you full of venom and anger, and then pitch you into the wind like fish scales." Miss Ella was pretty good at painting pictures. "And you know what he's after?" I shook my head and started listening, because Miss Ella had a tear in her eye too. "He's after everything that's good in you. See, the Lawd ... He's the Alpha and Omega. Nothing gets past Him. Not the devil and not even Rex." I liked that, so I smiled wide. "The Lawd put me here to look out for you while you're growing up. The devil may have it for you, may be scheming until his horns are steaming, but he's going to have to get through me first."

  The memory of the schoolyard was still pretty raw, but Miss Ella had soothed me. She made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and we sat on the back porch, watching the horses feed across the back pasture. "Tucker," she said, with peanut butter wedged in the corner of her mouth, "if the devil wants to lay a hand on you, he's got to ask God's permission. He did it with job, he did it with Jesus, and he's got to do it with you. He's got to knock on the door and ask. It's been that way since he got himself kicked out of heaven."

  My eyes narrowed and the question that had been on the tip of my tongue since I was old enough to think it almost came out of my mouth. She shook her head. "I know what you're thinking, but don't give it another second's thought. We're not always going to understand what God is doing or why." She placed the tip of her finger on my nose. "But one thing I know for sure. If the devil wants to touch one hair on your beautiful little head, he's got to ask permission. And you remember this-I talk to God all the time, and He told me He's not giving it."

  When Miss Ella got to talking about God, there was only one right response. "Yes ma'am," I said halfheartedly.

  "Boy!" She grabbed my cheeks, jerked my chin around, and lifted my face to hers. "Don't say, `Yes ma'am,' with your head." She tapped me in the chest with her stiletto finger. "Say it with your heart."

  I nodded. "Yes ma'am, Miss Ella."

  She let go of my cheeks and smiled with her eyes. "That's better."

  When Rex hit forty-five, Mason Enterprises had holdings in every state in the Southeast, had absolutely cornered the liquor market, and Rex was anything but satisfied. At the age of fifty, he leveraged everything he owned and a few things he didn't, generated tens of millions in cash, and began buying up the competition, which he quickly dismantled and sold in small, unrecognizable pieces. With a glass in his hand and a twisted, spider-veined, and bloodflushed smile on his face, he'd tell his competitors, "Sell, or I'll start giving this stuff away and your business won't be worth a dime on the dollar." Rex had a real way with words. The gamble-and tactics-worked, because three years and another hundred million later, he was commuting from his office rooftop to Waverly Hall via helicopter and a twinturbo Cessna. If Rex had one gift, it was making money. Everything he touched turned to gold.

  Back at Waverly, Rex had continued dynamiting the quarry, raping the earth. Sixty feet down, the masons blew the top off an underground spring that flooded in and filled the base of his quarry. No bother, Rex pumped the water out via a four-inch pipe to irrigate his gardens and orchards-which spanned about ten acres. Then he built a water tower next to the barn and stuck something the size of a pool on top of it where he held enough water to keep both his orchards and us alive for almost six months.

  He did all this despite the fact that he knew next to nothing of houses, shotguns, thoroughbreds, servants, bird dogs, or orchards. But that didn't matter. He didn't go through all that trouble because he knew something about it or intended to. It's what others knew that drove him.

  The fifteen-hundred-acre Waverly Hall tract also included a long-since vacant and dilapidated church surrounded by a graveyard. St. Joseph's had been built prior to the establishment of the Episcopal diocese in Dale, Barbour, or Henry County, so when Rex bought the property, he bought the church and graveyard by default. It contained eight pews-all wooden, narrow, and straight up and down. The place might seat forty people squeezed shoulder to shoulder. Scottish farmers had built it before 1800 when people were just grateful to have a place to sit down.

  The altar was worn and looked more like a butcher's block than something sacred. A wooden Jesus hung on the back wall, topped with a crown of thorns and white, clumpy pigeon droppings on his scalp, arms, protruding knees, and toes. Rain poured in through the hole in the roof and soaked most everything, including a motheaten, purple, and squishy kneeling pad that lay beneath the railing that framed the altar. The railing wasjust big enough for about eight skinny adults to kneel briefly and then shuffle back to the comfort of their hard and upright seats where the cold rose up through the floor and penetrated their leather-soled shoes and sockless toes. Once flung wide during services to produce a summer draft, all fo
ur windows had been painted shut seventyfive years ago and had not opened since.

  Rex was required by law to maintain the graveyard in "functional condition," which he did. "My man mows it once a month whether it needs it or not." From day one, the church sat dormant, doors locked, and brimming over with the most religious pigeons, spiderwebs, and rodents Alabama had ever seen. It was the closest we ever got to the inside of a real church. Thanks to the hole in the roof, the church was rotting from the inside out.

  Rex had few acquaintances and absolutely no friends, but he routinely entertained business partners who could ill afford not to be nice. During the decade of his heyday, which started in his late forties, Rex employed a dozen full-time servants as well as countless business underlings who scurried like Secret Service men between Atlanta and Clopton, all adding to the perception he wished to create.

  When Atlanta magazine wrote its glowing piece about the downtown mogul whose ability to build an empire from absolutely nothing would rival even King Herod," the Atlanta Journal followed it with an editorial that described him as a "squatty, fat man with beady eyes, a potbelly, and a Napoleon complex." The magazine was right. Rex did build an empire from nothing and Waverly Hall had been bought with cash, but the journal pegged him on the head because, when channeled, his combination of inferiority and insecurity, topped with an insatiable jealousy, created a ruthless tycoon who couldn't care less about the people who worked for him or the companies he dismantled.

  Not to mention his two boys.

  At the end of the day, when all the paperwork had been signed, hands shaken, and deals closed-including the ones under the table that netted the most money-Rex Mason had one driving motivation: obtaining control. And Waverly Hall, like Rex's life, was built in the pursuit of one thing-keeping it. Rex didn't have the slightest interest in other people liking him. All he wanted was their fear. Night and day, his single ulcer-causing concern was how to instigate fear in the competition-and everyone was competition. That included me and my brother. Others' fear gave him power-the power to control every situation he encountered. If I sound like I know what I'm talking about, I've had thirty-three years to consider it.