The Devil Tree (18 page)

In recognition of your notable achievements as industrialist, philanthropist, citizen, and student of international affairs; by virtue of the authority vested in me as president of the University, and with the approval of the Board of Governors, I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Laws with all its rights, honors, and privileges.

Whalen picked up a folder of newspaper clippings and leafed through the two-inch headlines from New York and Pittsburgh newspapers.
HORACE WHALEN DROWNS, INDUSTRY EMPIRE BUILDER, THE SEA’S VICTIM. CIVIC LEADERS MOURN WHALEN. HORACE SUMNER WHALEN DEAD.

Other clippings gave fragments of his father’s biography: “During his exemplary life, Horace Sumner Whalen turned a single rolling mill into a multibillion-dollar empire that was located initially in Whalenburg, a West Virginia township Whalen founded and later named after himself. Branded by his enemies ‘the lone wolf’ of American business and ‘the feudal lord of Whalenburg,’ Whalen took on
the most powerful adversaries: American presidents, Congress, the federal bureaucracy, organized labor, and heavy industry itself.” “Born of Calvinist lineage in the Mesabi mining region of Minnesota, Horace Whalen never completed his elementary education.” “At the age of thirteen, Horace Whalen got his first job as an office boy with a local iron-mining company. Advancing rapidly to positions of increasing responsibility, at the age of twenty Mr. Whalen became a plant manager. Two years later he founded his own company, which has never shown a loss.” “The death of Horace Sumner Whalen writes the final chapter in the saga of the rise of American heavy industry and the exemplary individualists who were its leaders. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Charles Schwab, F. F. Jones, Henry Phipps, Jr., Ernest Tenet Weir, and Horace Whalen are the heroes of that story. They were tough men engaged in a tough business. And they helped to make this nation tough.” “A devoted Christian fundamentalist, Horace Sumner Whalen many years ago told reporters that he started every day with the same prayer, for inspiration read Dickens, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Robinson Jeffers, and at least once a week listened to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” “Whalen said once that if he was fond of the American Constitution and its plea for the distribution of power, it was not because he believed that all men equally deserved to exercise power, but because the Constitution properly bore out John Calvin’s notion of man’s natural corruption, as expressed in his
Institutes
: that ‘the vice or imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands of many . . . and that if any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as censors and masters to restrain his ambition.’”

Jonathan picked up a program of the Annual Dinner of the Institute of American Heavy Industry. The dinner
that year had been given in honor of his father, who was a past president of the institute. At the center of the program’s cover was a raised aluminum-foil medallion engraved with the running bull, the institute’s symbol, and inscribed with the words “A Great and Growing Country.” In addition to the opening remarks by Horace Whalen, the evening’s main attraction was a speech, “SEATO—Power for Peace,” by General Thomas B. F. Gertner, U.S. Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia. The menu consisted of bisque de langouste with sherry, croutons, filet de boeuf à la mode, golden fleurons, salad, frozen soufflé Alaska, cherries jubilee flambé, petits fours, and demitasse. Jonathan tried to picture his father unfolding his napkin, appreciating the meal, and applauding politely after the speeches.

The content of other newspaper articles and the transcripts of certain public speeches indicated that Horace Whalen might have been more disposed to having his son become a draft dodger than to applauding General Gertner, the evening’s principal speaker. Only a few days before that dinner, Horace Whalen had been the guest on television’s
Face the Nation
. Introduced as a propagandist for a strongly antimilitaristic point of view, he was questioned by the country’s top journalists, and in the TV program’s transcript he was quoted as saying: “Half of our every dollar and over eighty percent of our energy budget goes to our military. Even though with our current atomic resources we could blow up every big Soviet city fifty times over, we produce daily two additional nuclear bombs, each of which has a megatonnage higher than all the bombs dropped by both sides during World War II. Half of this generation’s scientists and engineers have been working for the Department of Defense, experimenting with over twenty thousand designs for future weaponry—from self-guiding missiles and killer satellites to death rays and lasers capable of melting
tanks, planes, and satellites. Meanwhile, the cost of only one American attack plane represents two times the cost of our total national budget for making our water safe for drinking! We have become so entrenched in and accustomed to the war economy and war production that most Americans believe that only a new war, or military spending that leads to one, can give us full employment and production. Yet, as history teaches us, our war economy can only make us a country given over to galloping inflation, not to mention industrial and human waste in gigantic porportions.”

In a separate album, mounted under transparent plastic casings, Jonathan found clippings about his mother. “Mrs. Katherine Furston Peck Whalen, one of America’s richest women, died last night. With grace and ease, Mrs. Whalen bore the mantle of grande dame of American industry. She presided over her forty-room mansion in Whalenburg, and after her husband’s death continued to maintain homes in New York, Southampton, and Palm Springs, as well as a favorite yacht in the Mediterranean. She also presided over the family’s formidable Byzantine art collection and founded the Katherine Whalen Center for Byzantine Studies in Whalenburg, the township that still houses the steel mills of Whalen Industries. Often listed among the world’s ten best-dressed women, Mrs. Whalen owned jewelry that was estimated to be worth millions of dollars.” “With the death of Horace Sumner Whalen, Mrs. Whalen inherited over a quarter of a billion dollars in tax-free municipal bonds alone.” “Mrs. Whalen was reportedly grief-stricken for years after her husband’s death, despite the comfort she derived from an only son, Jonathan.” “Following her late husband’s instructions, Mrs. Whalen has left her entire estate to Jonathan James Whalen, her son.” “Jonathan Whalen, the only child of Horace and Katherine Whalen, has been living abroad, where he combines study with travel.”

•   •   •

Jonathan came across a folder of press clippings labeled “Distortions” in his mother’s handwriting. It contained newspaper and magazine articles that questioned the official family statement attributing the cause of his father’s death to a heart attack suffered after a swim in front of the family’s Rhode Island vacation home. The articles spoke of Mrs. Jean Roberts as “the other woman” in his father’s life. Mrs. Roberts was a vice-president of one of his father’s subsidiary companies. Some reporters noted that while Mrs. Whalen restricted herself to the houses in Whalenburg, Southampton, New York, and Palm Springs, Horace Whalen often used the Rhode Island house for business purposes. According to other reports, Mrs. Roberts owned a nearby Rhode Island house, paid for with the help of a substantial loan from one of Horace Whalen’s companies.

Denying the family version of Horace Whalen’s death, the articles produced their own facts: that when the ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident, Mrs. Roberts was wearing an evening gown; that Horace Whalen, clad only in swimming trunks, was found dead on the beach in front of Mrs. Roberts’s house; that late October, after sunset, was an unlikely time for a swim; that Horace Whalen’s clothes were found scattered about in Mrs. Roberts’s bedroom; that the subsequent autopsy revealed alcohol in Horace Whalen’s blood and stomach. Other papers, quoting one of the paramedics, conjectured that a substantial time must have elapsed between Whalen’s attack and Mrs. Roberts’s summoning of the ambulance, a time during which Mrs. Roberts had quite likely dressed herself, slipped the swimming trunks on her dying lover, and managed to walk him
down to the beach, where he collapsed and died. There was speculation that, had Mrs. Roberts telephoned the ambulance the minute Horace Whalen was stricken, the paramedics could have saved his life, though, perhaps, not his public image: that of the proud man who had never surrendered to idle pleasures.

•   •   •

At first the articles jolted Jonathan. Not that he was shocked by the presence of Mrs. Roberts in his father’s life—in her photographs she appeared to be a nondescript, slightly plump woman; what shocked him was her age. Mrs. Roberts was fifteen years older than Katherine Whalen.

Jonathan’s thoughts were then flooded by the image of his father’s death. He could see him making love to Mrs. Roberts. Suddenly his father choked, struggling for breath, clutching his chest, and sweating and trembling he rose above her, only to collapse on top of her. Mrs. Roberts screamed; then in panic she eased out from under his weight; then, turning him faceup, she began pouring champagne over his head and splashing his chest with ice water and begging him not to die. Blurting words, coughing and whispering, his father pointed to the beach. Mrs. Roberts understood. She forced a pair of his swimming trunks onto him, then helped him to stand up, but his father, unable to carry his own weight, fell to the floor. Mrs. Roberts helped him onto the bed, pleading with him to rest while she put on clothes because she must not be found naked. Then she helped him get up, and with his arm over her shoulder she dragged him across the bedroom, the living room, the glass-enclosed veranda, across the terrace, down the wooden
staircase, along the narrow path between the grassy dunes, and onto the beach, his father wheezing, heaving, gasping for air all the while, leaning on Mrs. Roberts for support, his feet plowing the sand. They were now at the ocean, with its mist on their faces, their ankles in waves. There his father stumbled for the last time and fell. Jonathan saw the foam spill over him.

•   •   •

Another folder contained several sheets of unused American postage stamps bearing his father’s portrait. A letter signed by the postmaster general was attached to one of the sheets.

Dear Mrs. Whalen:

We are happy to present you with the first official sheet of this new stamp commemorating your husband’s pioneering role in American industry. Additional sheets will be available for members of your family, the directors and officers of your company, and others whom you designate.

Jonathan could not remember his mother’s telling him about this commemorative issue. Nor could he remember ever receiving a letter from her postmarked with the Whalen stamp. He wondered whether she had been displeased that the nation’s tribute to Horace Sumner Whalen should have been paid on a stamp with such a low denomination. Now, after years of two-digit inflation rates, not even a postcard could be mailed with one of them.

•   •   •

The memories triggered no emotion. Jonathan recalled coming home from summer camp. A company limousine was waiting for him at the Pittsburgh station. He sat next to the chauffeur and read the passing signs—Sweetheart Brands, Forge and Pipe Works, Half-Moon Island, Moon Run Road, Moontour Run—thinking how strange the familiar names sounded. He could hear the chauffeur reverently telling him that the Peter Tarr blast furnace had produced cannonballs used by Oliver Hazard Perry in the War of 1812; that his father, Horace Sumner Whalen, was sole owner of all the land surrounding the furnace for miles; and that one day he, Jonathan Whalen, would own all that land.

•   •   •

In another drawer he found a yearbook from the H. L. Mencken College for Girls, and he turned the pages until he came to his mother’s picture. She looked girlish and frail and had unusually long hair.

A short paragraph next to the picture noted that Katherine Furston Peck was an honor student, had won first prize in the Alpha Omega poetry contest, and was a member of Cum Laude, the student council, and the yearbook staff. She was voted most likely to succeed, wittiest, and most attractive. She participated in a number of sports, and she was president of the Byzantine Antiquity Club, vice-president of the Debating Club, honorary chairman of Parents’
Weekend, and a Foreign Travel Society representative. Printed in italics were her girl friends’ fond tributes to her: “Kitty’s terrific sense of humor makes her one of the most popular girls in her class. No wonder the boys flock all the way from Pittsburgh to find out what goes on behind that flashing smile!” “She’s impeccably groomed and marvelous at backgammon, and we’ll long remember singing to her expert guitar accompaniment.” “Her horseback riding and tennis game are great, and she’s a natural at French and German.” “Her family’s convertible has been the vehicle for numerous fun-filled outings.”

Tucked inside the yearbook, Jonathan found an essay by Katherine Peck. “Searching for a stage on which to enact the drama of free men engaged in free enterprise,” she wrote, “American industry has evolved an architecture unique in the history of mankind: the skycrapers, those magnificent towers of steel and glass, are the very soul of
Homo Americanus.
Yet once man has erected such noble structures, he still perseveres, never satisfied, never stopping to enjoy the fruits of his labors. These colossal creations are America’s greatest contribution to art, and the steel industry is our nation’s monument to America’s restless energy.”

Jonathan flipped through the yearbook. In the back pages he came across an advertisement with a youthful photograph of his father at the top of it. “Dollars—dollars—dollars: As graduates you need funds. Save as regularly as you eat, or you will become financially undernourished. Don’t wait any longer. Open a checking and savings account now at one of the many branches of the Whalen Bank of Commerce and Savings.” He wondered if young Katherine Peck had pondered this photograph of Horace Whalen before she met him; perhaps it was this picture in her yearbook, in fact, that first prompted her to seek employment in the Whalen company’s steel and glass skyscraper in Pittsburgh.