Chapter Ninety-Three
Thomas gave a start when he read the name of the sender on the envelope. Priscilla Woodward Toliver. It was addressed to him, not Vernon. Thomas had arrived home after a frustrating day and did not need another aggravation added to the strain on his temper. What did Priscilla want? More money?
He took the envelope into his study to pour a Scotch and water before opening it. Damn, if people you thought you knew couldn’t still fool and disappoint you. He’d gone to his neighboring planters today to present a USDA recommended plan for reducing next year’s weevil damage. To control the pest’s population, the strategy called for burning and plowing under cotton stalks immediately after harvest to avoid the beetles having a chance to hibernate, but success depended on a community effort. Weevils could migrate to the next planter’s fields, so for the plan to be effective and the crop protected, each farmer had to agree to burn their residue at the same time.
Thomas had been shocked at his neighbors’ lack of cooperation. Jacob Ledbetter, who owned Fair Acres, a plantation between Somerset and the strip of Toliver land along the Sabine, balked, saying, “All those fires going at the same time would be a hazard to our homes and buildings and livestock if the wind blew the wrong way.”
Jacob had a point, but what other choice did they have if they were going to reap a harvest above the cost of production next year?
His other neighbor, Carl Long, a carpetbagger from Minnesota who had practically stolen his plantation from the Tolivers’ longtime friend Paul Wilson after the war, had actually attempted to blackmail him. Thomas took a stinging sip of the Scotch and water to alleviate the sour taste of Carl’s offer. “Tell you what, Thomas. You buy my plantation, and you can burn the place down for all I care. Otherwise, no deal. I don’t have the manpower to do what you’re suggesting.”
Thomas would have liked nothing better than to have bought the Longs’ land and Fair Acres, too, if it were for sale, which it wasn’t, but he had no money to buy extra acreage. He had stalked away from both men in a foul temper. To hell with Carl Long, but he might strain relations with Jacob Ledbetter if he went ahead and burned Somerset’s fields. Since the settlement days, the Ledbetters had allowed the Tolivers egress through their land to their property on the Sabine with its gin and cottonseed mill and dock. Jacob could close that route if his neighbor chose to preserve his plantation at the destruction of his.
Were there any heads harder to drill through than farmers’ noggins? Thomas remembered the prewar days of his father’s appeals, arguments, threats against secession, but did any landowner listen? To their miserable regrets, they did not, and they weren’t listening now. Planters’ heads were as deeply buried in the sand as they were then not to recognize their livelihoods were more threatened by the assault of the boll weevil than any force of the union army. Once again, and probably as futilely, the only recourse open to a Toliver was to beseech the Texas legislature to establish mandatory stalk-destruction dates for cotton and corn producers.
Thomas ripped open the envelope and withdrew a single page. The house was quiet. This was the afternoon Jacqueline and his mother attended their reading club and stayed for tea. Thomas, Priscilla wrote, I need to see you as soon as possible. It’s very important. May I expect you Sunday? Please respond by telegram. You must come, Thomas. Time is of the essence. PWT
Thomas folded the letter thoughtfully. Sunday. That was in three days’ time. He had not seen Priscilla since he’d installed her in Houston eight years ago. Though invited, she had not come to her son’s wedding. Thomas never asked about her, and Vernon did not volunteer information. Vernon and Darla made regular trips to visit his mother and her father. Oddly, but apparently happily, Priscilla and Barney Henley had become friends and spent evenings together playing cards. Vernon and his wife seemed to enjoy their time in Houston with the pair and made no complaint about having to make their dutiful visits.
Jacqueline would encourage him to go. She would never say it, but she’d see it as his duty to honor Priscilla’s request. He shared part of the fault in the breakup of their marriage, and Priscilla had asked for nothing extra in the eight years afterwards. She had abided by the terms of the divorce and quietly and completely disappeared from his life.
Thomas felt a sense of foreboding. What could Priscilla possibly want with him? And why the sense of urgency? Thomas dreaded seeing her. He was sure time had not been gentle, and he felt responsible for its heavy hand. Still, he wouldn’t have traded these past eight years he’d been free to love and be with Jacqueline for all the guiltless consciences in the world. He loved his wife more every anniversary and, at fifty-nine, regretted only the quickly diminishing number of years left to spend with her.
He rang the servants’ bell. Sassie appeared, a reminder of how fast the years had flown and would continue to fly. Sassie was nineteen and engaged to be married next year. Only yesterday she’d been toddling behind her mother, Amy, who herself had been in her early twenties.
“Sassie, when my wife returns, tell her I’ve gone to the telegraph office,” Thomas said.
Priscilla had dressed in her finest but terribly outdated dress. Thomas paid no attention to female fashions, but even he knew that the hard bustle of women’s skirts had been replaced with pleats, thanks to the sensible likes of Tippy. Priscilla greeted him with a cool smile and cooler hand. She did not look well and had lost the weight Vernon had mentioned to Amy she’d gained.
“A cup, Thomas?” Priscilla invited, sitting down in her dim parlor at a table laid for afternoon tea and motioned that he do the same.
“No, thank you.”
“Then Scotch and water, perhaps?” Priscilla pointed casually to a sideboard as in the old days when he would come in for the day and help himself to the decanter before supper.
The familiarity of her manner touched a chord. “I believe I will,” he said.
Settled in the small room, he with his crystal glass and she with her china cup, Thomas asked, “Why did you wish to see me, Priscilla? I’m taking the late train back to Howbutker.”
Her lip quirked. “I didn’t expect you to stay, Thomas, only to come.”
“Well, I’m here. What do you want?”
She reached behind her to a bookcase and removed a leather volume almost too heavy for her hand. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “A present for Vernon—my going-away present.”
Thomas took it and stared at the gold-embossed lettering. Tolivers: A Family History from 1836. He shot her a startled gaze. “You actually completed it?”
“It helped to pass the time. I hope Vernon will keep it for posterity. I want him to know about his family roots. The title is not exactly accurate. The historical facts go back to the beginning of the Tolivers and Wyndhams in England.”
“How—how did you compile the material? Where did you find it?”
“You mean other than from your mother’s diaries?”
Thomas could feel heat shoot to his face. She had been nothing but gracious. “That’s not what I was asking, Priscilla,” he said.
“I know,” she conceded, her tone less arch. “Mainly I used the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. It’s an organization that employs genealogists who contact sources here and abroad for records and documents from such places as parish registers, archives, headstones. The photographs were collected from newspapers and from the DuMonts’ and Warwicks’ albums they were kind enough to part with and, of course, from your mother.”
“She’ll be very impressed,” Thomas said, hearing a huskiness in his voice. The book was a masterful compilation of family genealogy, maps, pictures, anecdotes, history, and data beautifully bound. It must have taken several years to compile and assemble. He smoothed a hand admiringly over the cover. “The cost of this must have taken a pretty penny out of your pocket.”
She flicked a hand to indicate the room, grown shabby through the years. “The money was no matter. As you can see, I don’t spend much, either for living or personal expenses. You’ll observe that there is space in the genealogical chart for additions. It won’t be long before you’ll be adding another name to the Toliver tree.”
“Yes,” Thomas said, clearing his throat. “Darla should be delivering next month.”
“And Jeremy III and Abel are to be proud papas as well, are they not?”
“They, too. If the children are sons, the dads are hoping the boys will forge the special bond they knew growing up.”
A wistful shadow crossed Priscilla’s face. Thomas could tell she was remembering the days when she’d been a witness to the special friendship their son had shared with his two best friends. “They enjoy an enviable companionship, Vernon and Jeremy III, and Abel,” she agreed. “I hope along with you that the next generation of boys will be so blessed.”
“Is the book why you asked me to come, Priscilla? If so, I thank you. It will be a treasured volume, but I really must be going.”
He pushed back his chair, but she raised a restraining hand. “There is something else, Thomas. My main purpose in asking you here is to tell you something you need to know.”
He had suspected there would be another shoe to fall. “And what is that?”
“It’s about Regina, your daughter.”