The Ordways (29 page)

The second respondent to his plea was not the preacher but the other man. Mr. Lindsay Conroy was no retired private investigator—far too conspicuous a man for that; but neither was he the openhearted farmer whom my grandfather had imagined coming compassionately to his aid. Mr. Lindsay Conroy was nobody's father. He smelled of spending too much time in barber's chairs to suit my grandfather's taste: a waft of bay rum and quinine tonic, scented soapsuds, talcum powder. The hand he proffered was boneless and moist and cool as a curd, tender as a mushroom. He seated himself without waiting to be asked, and said:

“I take it, sir, that you have never heard of Lindsay Conroy?”

“Well, since you ask me, frankly, no,” said my grandfather.

Instead of displeasing him, this answer seemed to satisfy Mr. Conroy exactly. “In your walk of life you wouldn't,” he said. “My work is done behind the scenes. Mr. Ordway, in the absence of any third party to do the honors, you will have to overlook a certain immodesty on my part. I say it who shouldn't, perhaps, but I say no more than any man would say for me who knows the political facts of life in this state. I, Mr. Ordway, have been called ‘The King Maker of the Lone Star State.'” He paused to let that sink in, then continued, “I have manageered the election campaigns of some of the biggest officeholders in this state. You are looking at the man who made the Honorable Boyd Ramsey what he is today. In Boyd I saw the senator beneath the hayseed—and I want you to know, in the beginning I was the only one that could see it! Friends said to me at the time I was grooming him, ‘Lin, you have put your money on a plug in this race.' I said to them, ‘You don't want a sprinter on a muddy track.' Boyd was pure Bull Durham. None of that ready-rolled look about him that is sure political death with the voters in South Bootstrap, Texas. Et his black-eyed peas with his knife. Could milk a farmer's cow for him while talking him out of his vote. I mean
milk
that hussy! Kept his hand in. Still does. I'm real proud of Boyd. But as the poet says, full many a rose is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air, et cetera. Boyd's got both feet in the trough up there in Washington today; but if he was here he'd tell you hisself that he would be still currycombing cockleburrs out of a mule's tail right today if it wasn't for Lin Conroy. Wellsir, those are my credentials, and now I'll come to a head and tell you why I'm here. Sam (you don't mind if I call you Sam? I have the feeling you and me are going to get to know one another real close), Sam, I have got an entry in this race for lieutenant governor, but I'll tell you candid, I don't believe I'm going to vote for him myself. If you will stand, why I'll scratch him at the post. Sam, boy, you can win in a landslide—with a little coaching from me. Wait. Wait. Don't interrupt me now. I was there and heard you speak today. I felt the pulse of that crowd. You had them eating out of your hand. They was buzzing about you all through the following speeches. In fact, it got to the point that one of the last speakers had to begin his talk with, ‘Well, folks, I ain't had none of my kids napped, but…' Now wait. Wait. I know what you're fixing to say. It's already October. Primaries are long past. Election time is almost upon us. There's no time left for filing. Never mind. Leave all that to me. Now Hoyt Crittenden had got the governorship sewed up this time around. But the race for lieutenant governor is wide open. And as anybody in the know will tell you, the lieutenant-governorship had got it over the top spot coming and going. The pickings are damn near as fat, and the risks are one hell of a lot less. You're not near as much in the public eye. You ask the average voter, hell, he don't even know who the lieutenant governor is, much less what he's up to. So what do you say, Sam? Take the word of an old handicapper, you are a dark horse if I ever saw one. A political Cinderella. A shoo-in. What do you say, boy?”

“I say,” said my grandfather. But what he had been about to say was never known. Suddenly blenching, Mr. Conroy breathed, “Sam. Mr. Ordway. You
are
a Democrat, ain't you?” Then, “Damn me, though, if I don't believe we could get you elected on the other ticket! What an angle! Father searching for his little son far and wide over this broad and beautiful great state of ours, seeking the help of his fellow Texans and fellow fathers in locating his little lost son and heir. It's got everything! Everything! And if you should find the boy! After statewide efforts of public law enforcement officers have failed, father singlehandedly locates stolen son. Shoots kidnapper. Touching scene of reunion. We'll carry the boy around with us, stumping the state. We'll hire us a band and play ‘The Eyes of Texas Are upon You' and ‘Mighty Lak a Rose.'” He stopped, held up his hand, and broke into wavering song:

“
Cutest little fella everybody knows
.

Don' know what to call him but he's mighty lak a rose
.

Lookin at his daddy with eyes so shiny blue
,

Makes you think that he-e-ebm am comin close to you
.

Sam, not one man in Texas will cast his vote against you. He couldn't, not and live with hisself afterwards.”

“Mr. Conroy,” said my grandfather.

“Lin to you,” said Mr. Conroy.

“Mr. Conroy, I don't know the first thing about politics, but—”

Mr. Conroy threw back his head and snorted. “Whew!” he cried. “Kiss me on the neck, Gus, my mouth is full of snuff! Boy, you are the greatest natural-born vote getter I ever struck across. You are a nugget in the raw, Sammy, boy. It needs a little rubbing up, but you have got it, in the bone. In the bone. Somebody had to show you what to do with that thing between your legs, didn't they, but it was hanging there all the while. Sam, you just get up there and give them that speech you gave today, about looking for your little boy and how maybe you wasn't always the daddy you ought to been but you'll be a better one if—that is, when—you get him back, and not to worry about Will Vinson, and I'll follow you and let them know that if they can't help you find your boy they can write your name in on the ballot. Meanwhile if it's campaign costs you're worried about, don't give it a thought. One fund-raising rally, just one, right here in Paris, and if we don't fill all the hats that John B. Stetson has got, then I'll eat every one of them, without mustard.”

Mr. Conroy could hardly believe it when my grandfather said he was really not interested in a career in politics, and he laughed uproariously when my grandfather said he didn't really believe that the voters of Texas would elect a man to high office whose only qualification for the job was that he had had his child stolen from him. Mr. Conroy tried persuasion. He pointed out that as a candidate stumping the state he would be making expenses in his search for his boy, and maybe something over. That as it was now, being a farmer, he was able to look for him only during his off season—through the winter and part of the spring and fall; but if he was elected lieutenant governor, think of the free time he would have! My grandfather, however, did not choose to run.

“Well, I can promise you this,” said Mr. Conroy as he put on his hat to go, “now that you've given them the idea some other s.o.b. is sure to do it if you don't.”

“Mr. Ordway? Teague. Reverend Dorsey Teague of the First Baptist—”

“Come in, Reverend. Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

Reverend Teague lowered himself into an armchair without waiting to be asked, leaned back, placed his fingertips together, and said, “Baptist yourself, by chance, Mr. Ordway?”

“No, 'fraid not. Metho—”

“Live and let live, I say,” said Reverend Teague. “There is more than one pathway to heaven. We Baptists think we are on the shortcut, but even those that take you round by Laura's house all get you there in the end. However, my boy, you may be grateful that the one church in Ben Franklin, Texas, is Baptist.”

“I may? How is that, Reverend?”

“Well, excuse me, I am getting ahead of myself. Ah, my son, this is a terrible thing that has befallen you.” And he took from his pocket, unfolded, and waved in the air a copy of my grandfather's handbill. “May I offer you,” he asked, “a few words of spiritual counsel?”

Oh, dear, thought my grandfather. And he must have looked it, too, for Reverend Teague protested, “Now don't suppose I'm going to give you a sermon about how you ought to regard this as a blessing from God. Had it been a case of outright death, why that is what I would have done. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom. And so on and so forth. But it was not the Lord that took your boy, and he isn't in heaven, he's in Texas. No, sir, I don't know how you Methodists feel, but I just don't believe that the Lord chooses to work through such agents as this Will Vinson, myself. No, what I want to say is this, you are an injured man, an angry man. But we must forgive our enemies. As a man of peace it is my duty to tell you that. We must turn the other cheek. Vengeance is mine—you remember who said that, Mr. Ordway?”

“I don't know about turning the other cheek,” said my grandfather. “I'm no saint. But I will tell you something, Reverend, that I wouldn't tell just any man. I'm not aiming to kill Will Vinson. No, I mean it. I can't say I don't bear him a grudge. Thinking about it sometimes I get so mad I say to myself I could kill him. But that is only a manner of speaking. He has sure inconvenienced me and I can't promise not to give him a good thrashing, or” (feeling his fresh bruises) “try my level best, if I ever do catch up with him. But more than that. … Well, what I'm after is to get my boy back. I'm not a very bloody-minded man, I'm afraid, and even if I was, let me tell you it's not so easy as people seem to think to hate a man who has wronged you through love of your child. It's a very mixed-up feeling.”

“Son,” said Reverend Teague, “you have set my mind at rest. Now I can tell you what I have come for. I mentioned the little hamlet of Ben Franklin, Texas. Not familiar with the place, I venture to say. A small community, some twenty miles south of here. General store. Four-grade schoolhouse. One church—Baptist—mine, as I mentioned earlier. A small congregation. A quiet spot, Ben Franklin. There a man might settle down and be lost to the world, far from the maddening crowd and cities' strife. Needless to say, no one ever does. The Winstons are the first new people to settle in Ben Franklin in—oh, I don't know how long. In all the fifteen-odd years that I've been riding this circuit. However, I can see by your look, sir, that you wish I would stop maundering and get down to business.”

“No, no, Reverend! Perish the thought!”

“Bear with me if I seem to be running on about some little one-horse town and folks you never saw.”

“Not at all. Not at all. I'll just ask you to excuse me while I open this bottle of Mercurochrome and dab some on this bite on my leg.”

Reverend Teague vented a low whistle and, leaning forward in his chair, said, “Christamighty! That looks nasty. He wasn't mad, I hope.”

“Pretty mad,” said my grandfather. “However, it wasn't a dog, it was a boy.”

“A boy! Had he been bit by a mad dog?”

“No, he was protecting his father. But it's a long story. Go on, Reverend.”

“Where was I? Oh, yes, the new folks in Ben Franklin. The Winstons. Nice people. Poor but honest. Poor! My, when they first pulled into the place last spring they didn't have nothing but that wagon and team and that collie dog that looked starved to—”

“Collie dog? Did you say collie dog?” said my grandfather, dropping his pants leg.

“And a wagonload of sick kids.”

“Sick?”

“They give it out that they all had the chickenpox and couldn't leave the house, not even to come to Sunday school. That was how I first took an interest in them. I went and—”

“How many kids?” asked my grandfather.

“Four. One little—”

“Thank God!” my grandfather breathed. Then, fumbling in his pocket, he found the photograph and thrust it in Reverend Teague's hand. “Was one of them …?”

“Little Ted!” the Reverend said. “Then my suspicions—”

“It's him?” said my grandfather. “No mistake? You're positive?”

“Ah,” said Reverend Teague, shaking his head sadly, “how that fellow took me in! Winston!”

Happily, yet with just a touch of ruefulness, my grandfather said, “I guess I was right. Will figured he didn't have to go very far.”

Still looking at the photograph, Reverend Teague said, “Little Ted.”

“Ned,” said my grandfather.

“I know him,” said Reverend Teague, looking up mistily from the picture, “as Ted. And that is how I'll always think of him. Ah, no one would believe how that little scamp has wound himself around this old heart of mine in just a few short months! Even knowing he's with his own daddy where he belongs won't keep me from missing him.”

These words, much as they pleased him, at the same time sent a pang of chagrin into my grandfather's heart. Here was a second stranger who appreciated his child more, apparently, than he himself ever had.

“Mr. Ordway,” said Reverend Teague, bringing him back to the present scene, “when I think what that rascal Winston-Vinson has done I could kill him myself. But, as you say, that is only a manner of speaking. As a man of the cloth, I must implore you not to use this information I have given you to bring blood on your head and mine.”

“Reverend, I've said it once and I'll say it again, what I want is to get my boy back.”

“I believe you. Now listen. You go past the general store and take the first right-hand turn. You go for about two miles and you come to a crossroads and you take a left. Go down that road until you come to another crossing and you take a right. Go down that road and take the first left, and it's the second place after the bridge on your right. I'll be driving out myself a little later in the evening. I preach out there tomorrow. However, who knows? Somebody from out that way may have been in town here today and gone back bringing news of this”—he waved the circular—“little knowing that—”