“I’m afraid he didn’t think much of women. Maybe they came too easy. I don’t know.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I was under your father’s command. I was in his last patrol.”
“So you’re one of the ones he treated like a son.”
“That hurt, didn’t it?” Salty said.
“More than anything else that son-of-a-bitch ever did. I would have given my right arm for him to be a father to me.”
“He knew that.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he do something about it?”
“Because he couldn’t.”
“Because it was more fun to keep on drinking and chasing women than it was to take a kid riding.”
“Your father never talked to any of us,” Salty said. “He just listened. But he couldn’t sleep that night before he rode into Sherman’s lines. I think he’d already made up his mind what he was going to do. I sat up with him, just listening. He talked all night.”
“I bet he had a lot to tell. I’m not surprised you weren’t strong enough to ride into battle next day. Or couldn’t you stand to be anywhere near him?”
“He just talked about two people. Tom Bland and you.”
George had expected many things, but never that.
“And what did he say?”
“That you two were the greatest mistakes of his life. Nothing else mattered.”
“Not even my mother.”
“He said he told her, but she wouldn’t believe him.”
“Told her what?”
“Not to marry him, that he was rotten, that he would break her heart.”
“That’s one prophecy he certainly lived up to. What excuse did he have for Tom Bland?”
“None. He hated Tom as much as he loved him.”
“That makes no sense.”
“He saw in Tom all the things he should have been. He hated it even more when you boys turned to Tom. Each failure made him hate Tom even more.”
“Either you’re crazy or Pa was. I never heard such nonsense.”
“It was as though the better Tom was, the more your father wanted to destroy him. Anyway, he seduced Tom’s sister just to goad Tom into calling him out.”
“And killed him because he was so good he couldn’t stand to let him go on living?”
“I don’t think he meant to go that far. The drink muddled him a bit.”
“Nothing muddled him. He was evil to the core.”
“He wasn’t so evil he couldn’t feel remorse. He used to mumble things about Tom. I didn’t understand them. I don’t suppose they made sense to anyone but him.”
“I don’t think he felt any remorse about killing Tom,” George said angrily, “but I’m glad something bothered him. I only wish he’d suffered half as much as the rest of us.”
“He did, mostly over you.”
George didn’t want to hear any more. He had finally come to accept the fact that his father had no redeeming qualities. He couldn’t afford to hope again.
“You’re not going to tell me he gave me a single thought after ignoring me all those years. I won’t believe you.”
“I don’t know how often he thought about you, but he was proud of you.”
The curses George spat out would have shocked even Monty.
“He talked about you a lot, mostly a sentence here and there, but we all knew he was proud of you. That’s one of the reasons the boys were so willing to confide in him. They figured if he could have such an interest in you, he might be willing to listen to them.”
George felt like getting up and walking away. He didn’t believe a word of it. But what upset him the most was he wanted to believe it. He needed to believe it. No matter what Salty told him, he would continue to sit there, waiting, hoping for something that would allow him to respect his father just the tiniest bit.
“Your father knew he wasn’t a good man, but he knew that you were.”
“Don’t make stuff up, Salty,” George said. He could feel the need to believe growing greater all the time. If he could only trust Salty to tell him the truth.
“He said that while you were still a child, he could see you were going to become the man he should have been. He also saw that you adored him, that you would do your best to be like him. That’s when he decided to drive you away so he wouldn’t ruin you.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to believe that Pa became the most disliked man in Virginia just to keep me from trying to be like him.”
“No. I doubt he did anything he didn’t enjoy, but he did want to protect you. That’s why he ignored you.”
“So I could grow up without any guidance at all.”