Youngblood hawke, p.13
Youngblood Hawke, page 13
"Art! Lord have mercy, what are you doing climbing the roof in the rain? Don't you have any sense, big as you are? Come inside, boy."
His mother was wearing her good black dress, of course, and she was wiping her hands on an apron, peering up at him through her square steel-rimmed glasses and wrinkling her nose. With a heavy sigh, like a man about to hoist a piano on his back, Hawke jumped down to the porch, dutifully hugged his mother, and went into the house—the gloomy house, the tiny house, which seemed to get smaller each time he came back to it, with all the old furniture; except no, a screaming green new couch stood in the parlor, mail-order modern in style, with a green armchair to match.
"New furniture, mom. Nice."
"Well, you know, that old couch was just coming to pieces, I reupholstered it four times, there's just so much good you can get out of a couch—"
His sister Nancy came running down the stairs and without a word threw herself at him. She was sallow, past thirty, heavy in hip and ankle, and apparently doomed not to marry. She had Arthur's broad thick features, except that her mouth was small and pretty, and her chin did not jut like his. She worshipped Art, and they both knew it, and not a word to acknowledge the fact had ever passed the lips of either. "Let's look at you. Heavens, you're fat!"
Inevitably, Mrs. Hawke marched him into the dining room, and inevitably she produced a huge steaming plate of thick soup, a plate from the "good set," the purple willow pattern. He was glad enough to have the soup, and he fell to with appetite. This was probably the high point of the trip home; he might as well enjoy it.
"Take some bread, boy. Don't just gulp soup."
He cut into the fresh loaf, with the bone-handled knife his mother had sharpened so often that the middle of the blade arched high and thin. The bread was from Wertz's bakery, with a wrinkled ridge along one side, the bread he had grown up on.
"That's it, boy. Have more bread, that's good bread, you don't get bread like that in New York."
"It's good bread, mama."
Her eyes were bright, and the lines of her square face were strong, and above all she looked very alive, smiling and ready for a joke, a business talk or an argument. He thought her smile was beautiful. He had always thought so.
But he was not glad to be home. A crushing depression seeped from the very walls and furniture of this house. The heavy black dining-room set, stronger and uglier than pig-iron, which had followed the family everywhere, was crammed in a tiny room. He had found it close quarters as a skinny boy; he could slide himself into a chair today only at the end open to the kitchen. How mean and shabby it all was, compared to the Prince home and the Winter home! He could see in the parlor the scrawny Christmas tree with its meager ornaments, shoved out of shape against the old piano. The hideous new couch and chair somehow made the room look like a junk shop. The bookshelves still held the mildewy best sellers of his father's reading days—Story of Philosophy, Kristin Lavransdatter, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sunset Gun, and forty others, for his mother threw out nothing—and the cracking sets of classics which his father had bought from book agents when he saw his son was a reader. The boy had eaten through them like a fire. He had reread volumes like Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo, and David Copperfield until they had fallen to pieces; the broken volumes still stood ragged and backless on the shelves. Compare this to Jay Prince's library!
"You're so quiet, Art," Nancy said.
"Let him eat. He's tired and hungry."
Hawke tried to shake off his gloom. "Nancy's right, let's talk."
The mother said, "Art, I don't like to see good food get cold. I bet that's the first decent soup you've had since you left home. They don't know how to cook up north."
"You've never been north. How do you know? The fact is they cook a lot better than they do in the south."
"Ha! I bet!" The mother watched with pride and pleasure as he ate, wrinkling her nose each time he put the spoon into his mouth, as she had done when he was four years old. It was perhaps the earliest detail of observed life in his enormous catalogue of memory: his mother wrinkled her nose as she watched food go into his mouth. Here he was nearing thirty, and she was still doing it.
"Don't tell me you can get such soup up north, because I know you can't," Sarah Hawke said. "Look at him eat that soup, Nancy! Yes sir, it pays to come home once in a while, don't it, son, and get a plate of soup that's got some meat in it, real soup. You've got to be willing to use meat in soup, that's the whole secret of soup, you can't be stingy, and a lot of different vegetables, fresh out of the garden, I tell you you've got to know how to make soup."
These were the opening lines of one of his mother's major orations, known to him since boyhood, and to cut it off he said hastily, turning to his sister, "Come on Nancy, let's get at it. What's been going on up in Edgefield?"
"Let him eat," Mrs. Hawke said to Nancy. "Art, can't you just sit and eat a lunch any more and just kind of talk to the family?"
"I want to talk about your book, Art," his sister said, staring at him with glad hunger, as she had been doing ever since his arrival. "Tell us everything. What's Prince House like? Did you meet any famous authors?"
"Nance, authors don't hang around publishing houses, they're all off working, or they ought to be."
"Does Hovey seem like a terrible hole after New York?"
"It isn't only Hovey." Hawke carved himself a huge chunk of bread. It was quite true that there was no such bread in New York. "Nancy, when I got off the plane in Lexington and heard the accents and smelled Kentucky, if you know what I mean—the air here has a smell, you know, a nice smell, you could bring a tank of it to New York and let it loose in my room and I'd tell you what it was—I tell you my heart went down in the bottom of my shoes. New York's horrible in its own way, but it's alive, you feel good, you feel you're in the world—"
"Ha!" his mother said. "I bet your nerves are unwinding by the minute. That's what you need, boy, a few weeks of good air and good food and a little quiet. Get some color in your cheeks, why you look like you've been working in a flour mill, did you ever see him looking so white, Nancy? And you've got such a strained face too. I bet that's how everybody looks in New York. More soup?"
"Coffee, mom, please." Hawke drew out his cigar case, and lit one self-consciously.
"Lord have mercy!" said Mrs. Hawke, wrinkling her nose. "Since when did you start on those? Why, that looks like a club you could beat a horse to death with. What does that cost?"
"Seventy-eight cents apiece exactly, mama."
Mrs. Hawke went to the kitchen, saying, "Well, I guess if you've got money to spend you're going to spend it, just like your daddy, though I sure don't see burning up a dollar bill just for a smoke, it can't taste that good, it sure smells ripe."
"It smells wonderful," Nancy said. "Rich. It has a rich smell."
From the kitchen Mrs. Hawke called, "Art, did you sure enough get five thousand dollars for that book of yours?"
"Yes, mom. That's just an advance on royalties."
"I understand all that," Mrs. Hawke said in an injured tone, bringing him steaming coffee. "I probably know a lot more about royalties than you do. Book royalties, coal royalties, they're all the same. What did you do with the money? Did you put it in a bank?"
"I haven't. I will."
"You mean you've got a check for five thousand dollars just lying around? Now Art, that's kind of simple."
"I got it Christmas Eve, mom."
"The whole five thousand, or are they paying it in installments?"
"Installments."
"What kind of installments?"
"Five hundred a month."
"Well, in your case that's a good thing, I'm surprised you were so sensible. You'll have money for ten months instead of spending it all in a month on dollar cigars and whatnot. Only it's not good business, generally speaking. If the price is five thousand get the cash paid down, boy, none of this installment business, I've been through enough of those. Cash in hand, boy, that's the thing, cash in hand." Mrs. Hawke smiled, and put her arm around her son's broad shoulders. "Art, I just can't tell you how proud I am. You do look peaked, boy, you're strong as an ox I know but you did have that accident and you should watch yourself, just a bit."
Hawke was both exasperated and pleased by his mother's solicitude, and by the touch of her cheek on his. He loved her, though he could not stand her. "Mama, I've been working nights, trying to get a second book done. I feel fine."
His mother sighed, and hugged him. "Well at least you've got some push to you. I'm sure glad you've got that money coming in, we're going to need it. We've got a big fight on our hands, Art."
"All right, mom. Now suppose you tell me what it's all about."
"Well, I'll give you Judge Crain's memorandum. That explains everything better than I can. You better study it up, Art, because we have to go to the Hawke Brothers office this afternoon." The mother went into the parlor, and fetched a legal-size manila folder.
"Oh, no!" he groaned. "Hawke Brothers! Mama, this isn't another one of those goddamned family fights! You didn't get me down here for one of those. Good lord, after all these years—"
Mrs. Hawke dropped the folder on the dining-room table in front of him. "Will you just read that first, before you start using foul language and carrying on? You just read what Harry Crain said. And just remember too that what he says isn't necessarily the whole truth. There isn't a lawyer in this town who isn't scared of Hawke Brothers, but even so he has to admit I've got a case. I made him put it in plain language, too. He was talking to me about things like adverse possession and estoppel and I don't know what all and I finally said, 'Harry, my son Art's coming down from New York to fight this, and he's a busy author and he has no time for all these four-dollar legal words, I want you to write out what it's all about in plain English on one sheet of paper.' Well, he took three sheets and it's still too legal, but I can understand it and so I reckon you can, too, being a college man and a writer. You just read that now. We have to go up there at one o'clock." She rumpled his thick hair. "I'm going to wash up. You either have to get a haircut, boy, or buy a violin. Aha ha ha!" She kissed him and went out.
Nancy said in a voice like a conspirator's, as the mother's firm tread sounded on the stairs, "Mama doesn't believe in changing her jokes, does she?"
"Nothing about mama changes." Hawke picked up the folder. "Have you read this?"
"I tried to. You know how I am about those things, Art."
She poured more coffee for him, and cleared away the dishes. With considerable reluctance, Hawke forced himself to open the folder and start reading.
MEMORANDUM ON
WHITE BRANCH SECTION, FRENCHMAN'S RIDGE
This summarizes a dispute about the mineral rights to a parcel of some 93 acres held by Sarah Hawke, trustee, in trust for Arthur Youngblood Hawke, her son. Fee simple deed on record in county clerk's office shows parcel was purchased May 27, 1921, from John Crewes.
On January 8, 1914, seven years earlier, John Crewes sold the mineral rights to this parcel to the Battle Coal Company. Battle in turn sold these rights on August 27, 1935, to Hawke Brothers Coal Company.
However, no notation of a restriction as to mineral rights appears in the deed of sale to Sarah Hawke. Perhaps due to senility John Crewes did not inform Mrs. Hawke that he had previously sold the mineral rights. At that time he was ninety-seven years old. Mrs. Hawke made no title search and was never aware that she did not own the mineral rights.
In 1941, due to the advance of the price of coal in wartime, the mining of coal in the Edgefield area became economically feasible. Hawke Brothers conducted extensive mining in Frenchman's Ridge, where it owned and still owns mineral and surface rights to some three thousand acres besides the parcel in dispute. Hawke Brothers took several hundred thousand tons of coal from that area including the land in dispute, exact figure unknown, but lost money, due to high trucking costs, problems of water, black damp, road washouts, and so forth. Mining was stopped in 1943.
Mrs. Hawke, walking the land in December of 1946, came upon a tunnel punched in her land from these workings, and determined on investigation that this tunnel was from a coal mine. She therefore is seeking legal redress.
It is clear that on the basis of the deed from Crewes she has no claim. In September 1927, Mrs. Hawke also bought a pro forma quitclaim on a dormant patent, bought in by the Pine Mountain Timber Company to quiet its own title on extensive holdings in the region. Mrs. Hawke's purchase was a legal formality recommended by me at the time, and it cost no more than the price of the registry stamps and stenographic work, about five dollars. There is an arguable case that since this was a senior patent Mrs. Hawke thereby acquired some further color of title. However, it must be said that considerations of adverse possession and estoppel tend to cancel this claim.
Essentially this is a situation where the purchaser, Mrs. Hawke, was deceived by the seller, Crewes, and for twenty-five years labored under the misapprehension that she owned coal rights (in trust for her son Arthur) which she did not own. A lawsuit is not recommended. In view of the family relationship involved, the peculiar circumstances, and the fact that Mrs. Hawke does have some arguable ground, the proper course here is undoubtedly some kind of reasonable settlement paid to Mrs. Hawke by Hawke Brothers for a complete release.
HAROLD CRAIN.
Hawke closed the folder with an impatient slap. "Christ, mama hasn't got a goddamned thing here, Nancy. She was skinned by some old mountaineer twenty-five years ago, that's the long and short of it! All Harry Crain says is that Glenn Hawke should give her something out of charity." Hawke ran up the stairs two at a time with heavy thuds, brandishing the folder. "For crying out loud, ma!" She stood in her bedroom in an old bathrobe, combing her long grizzled hair. "Did you have this memorandum when you wrote me to come down here?"
"No, Judge Crain just sent it over this morning. I asked him for it yesterday."
"Mama, you've got absolutely nothing. This old fellow Crewes cheated you, that's all."
The mother said, "I don't know what all that means about adverse possession and whatnot. Do you?"
"No, but Judge Crain does."
"Harry Crain is as yellow as this comb," Mrs. Hawke said, waving the big plastic comb at him. "Don't fool yourself, we're going to have to get a lawyer from the outside, and that's where the money is going to come in. Why, Crain won't even come to the meeting today, he says he's in bed with laryngitis. He's just yellow."
"Mama, Harry Crain's been handling land law in Hovey for forty years. The plain fact is you thought you bought mineral rights and you didn't. Don't you understand that?"
"Ha! Coal was going at better than four dollars a ton at the mine head in wartime, boy. That was my coal and I want my rights. I mean it was your coal, of course. Now don't you be a quitter, Art. That was the trouble with your father, he would never fight, just drink beer and read books."
Hawke remembered that word "quitter"; it had been the goad that often sent his father shouting out of the house, and he felt the same sick surge of anger now that his father must have felt, hundreds of times. He realized how useless it was to argue with his mother. He had never known her to change her mind on any subject once it was made up. He dropped the folder on her dresser, and trampled down the stairs. "Goddamn wild goose chase," he said to Nancy, who was in the hallway putting on her coat.
She said, "Well, it got you home, didn't it? I'm satisfied."
He swept her into a bearhug. "Okay, Nancy. I'm satisfied, too."
His sister gave him a strange, almost flirtatious look. "I have to go back to the bank. No time off for entertaining brothers. Let me ask you something. Do you object to a person who wears a wig?"
This was such a startling remark that Hawke blinked stupidly. "A wig? It's kind of an eighteenth-century thing to do. I guess I don't object. Why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing. There's just this new man in the bank, he's nice enough but he wears this horrible brown wig. I never could have anything to do with a man like that. Well, have fun at Hawke Brothers. Better take along a sack to bring home the million in." She giggled in an old-maidish way and trotted out of the house.
"You, Art!" the mother called down from above. "Change your shirt and shave. I don't want people taking you for one of these tramp writers from Greenwich Village."
Hawke trudged upstairs, thinking what a long long way he was from Prince House, and Frieda Winter, and Jeanne Green. He was back in the gray trap; but not for long! He had a foothold in the realms of gold, and as soon as he could he would flee there again.
2
He had not been inside the Hawke Brothers building since his tenth or eleventh year, and it felt very queer to be mounting the cracked old cement steps again.
His father, Ira Hawke, had been the older brother, Will Hawke two years younger. They had both come over from West Virginia in their early twenties, to try their luck in the new fields opened up by the railroad spur. Will was the mining engineer, Ira presumably the man of business acumen. The partnership had broken up on the hard fact, emerging in bad times like a jagged rock at low water, that Will was a strong man, and Ira a good-natured weakling. Will had bought out his older brother, and Ira had been glad at the time to take the cash and try again on his own, away from the frustrating domination of the brother he had once patronized. Will had gone on to become the richest man in Hovey, before his death in 1940. Ira had drifted from one coal venture to another, always downward, and had left the mining business in the end to run a drugstore. Mrs. Hawke's version of this family history was that Mr. Will (as everyone in Hovey called him) was a cruel, heartless schemer, and that if Ira had only had a little more push he would have been Hovey's first citizen, though God knew she had pushed him as hard as she could. Indeed she had.
