Clara Wiseheart opened a cigarette case that was either sterling silver or white gold. “Can we talk about financial matters somewhere else?” she asked.
“I’m like you, Clara,” Linda Gail said. “I can’t get my mind focused on business matters. Know why? My father owned a dry goods store and talked about nothing else. My mother would stuff cotton balls in her ears when he’d get started.”
Clara Wiseheart’s back straightened. “Excuse me a moment,” she said. She went out the door, lighting her cigarette, her hand trembling.
Linda Gail looked about uncertainly. “What I meant is a lot of business things are surely over my head,” she said. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.”
“Clara has migraines. It has nothing to do with our conversation,” Wiseheart said.
“You want me to go talk to her?” Linda Gail asked.
“That’s very kind, but you don’t need to do that,” he said. He pushed away his plate and looked at me. He smiled good-naturedly. “My analysts say those modifications you did on those German machines are extraordinary. Maybe my people could replicate them, maybe not. I’m an oil producer, not a welding contractor. I hear you all might start up a drilling operation. Come in with me and I’ll back your play. I mean to the hilt. You can write yo
ur own ticket.”
Hershel waited.
“We’re not interested,” I said.
“You’re sure about that?”
“Sure as God made little green apples.”
“Do you mind telling me why you’re so resistant to a perfectly reasonable business proposal?” Wiseheart asked.
I held my gaze on his and said nothing.
“Say something, Hershel,” Linda Gail said.
“Weldon got us the capital, hon.”
“You’re the one who got the welding machines. I think we owe Mr. Wiseheart an answer to his question,” she said. “I think it’s impolite to turn into a possum on a gum stump when somebody just wants information from you.”
I stood up and put my hand on the back of Rosita’s chair. “Thanks for the lunch. Please tell Mrs. Wiseheart good-bye for us.”
Wiseheart lifted his hands in resignation. “It’s been my pleasure,” he said.
Clara Wiseheart was nowhere in sight when we walked out of the clubhouse. I could hear Linda Gail breathing through her nose. “What in the name of Sam Hill has got into y’all?” she said. “Do you realize what you just threw away?”
“It’s all right, Linda Gail,” Hershel said.
“It is not all right,” she replied. She looked at the marble floors, the high ceilings, the huge bouquets of flowers on the tables, with the expression of a woman being driven from Eden. “Weldon Holland, I can’t believe what you just did. Who put you in charge?”
“I don’t think you quite appreciate Mrs. Wiseheart’s estimation of us,” I said.
“So she’s a little snooty. If you want snooty, go back where I grew up,” Linda Gail said.
Trying to understand her statement was like tying a knot inside your head.
“There’s a reason she wears gloves,” Rosita said.
“Yeah, what?”
“She doesn’t want to touch people like us, Linda Gail,” Rosita said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to touch a Jew who was in a death camp. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to touch the silverware the Negroes have touched. Maybe she doesn’t like being seen at the same table with what she would call ‘common people.’ The possibilities are many.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all, not for one minute,” Linda Gail said, pouting. “If you ask me, some people have wild imaginations.”
IT WASN’T OVER. As I was to learn, patience and latitude and even humility are paradoxically the handmaidens of wealth, because virtue is costly only for those who own nothing else. It was a warm Sunday night, the pecan and live oak trees perfectly still, black-green against an autumnal moon. Fireflies were lighting in the darkness, like cigarettes that sparked and died inside their own smoky tracings. Roy Wiseheart pulled a red and metallic-gray Packard into our driveway. I went outside before he had a chance to cut his engine. I leaned down to the passenger window. “We’re done, sir,” I said. “That’s an absolute.”