Dead Peasants (3 page)

6

Within a minute after leaving Jack, Colby was passing the old Ridglea Theater. Her mind wandered back to her encounter with her new client. It had been years since she had a romantic thought about a man. Why this one? Why now? As the thought grew, she realized why: This was a man, self made, who had done a lot of good for needy people and made a lot of money along the way. Maybe he was a night in shining armor, maybe not, but he was certainly different from the guys she met nearly every day. Then she shoved him out of her mind. Whatever the thought, she couldn’t follow through on it.

When she got to Edgehill she moved to the left turn lane and waited for the light. She glanced in her mirror as she waited, then reached into her purse for lipstick which she managed to apply just before the light changed. She followed Edgehill until she got to Ridglea Country Club, a nice neighborhood but one several steps below Rivercrest. She circled around the west side of the golf course until she turned into a circular driveway with a granite monument between two giant live oaks. The monument announced “Ridglea Oaks Nursing Home.” Colby parked in the shade of one of the oaks and took one last look in the mirror. Satisfied with her appearance, she retrieved what she called her realtor’s black purse, a Dooney and Bourke with multiple pockets accessed by gold zippers. She called it her realtor’s purse because it was large enough to double as a briefcase. In fact, the main pocket held, among other trash and treasures, her iPad.

Ridglea Oaks was considered among the finest nursing homes in Fort Worth. The lawn was manicured. Flowers that changed with the seasons were in beds on either side of the entrance.
There’s nothing good about being confined to a nursing home
, Colby thought as she opened the door,
but if there
is
no other option, this is certainly better than most.

The living room, as it was called, had a large screen HDTV on the wall to the left. Several of the guests, most of them elderly and largely abandoned by their families, watched an afternoon game show. Some understood it. Others merely stared at the screen because their chairs were facing that direction. In one corner four men were engaged in some card game. To Colby’s right was the reception desk. Colby addressed the receptionist manning the desk by name as she signed the register. “Afternoon, Ruth. How are things going today?”

Ruth smiled. She liked Colby and it showed. “Just fine, Ms. Stripling. You sell any houses today?”

“Actually, I’m about to land a big one.” She leaned over and whispered. “In Rivercrest.”

“Wow. Good luck,” Ruth replied.

Colby walked toward a hallway and paused when she saw a shriveled up old lady in a yellow dress, sitting in a wheelchair by herself. Colby kneeled beside the wheelchair so Ms. Newman could see her face. “My, you’re looking pretty in that yellow outfit. Even have a yellow rose in your hair. I bet you’ve got some family coming for a visit today.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Then Ms. Newman slowly nodded her head.

“Well, you tell your daughter I said hello. I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Colby rose and walked down the hallway painted a pale blue, her heels tapping on the tile floor as her eyes wandered over pictures of landscapes, gardens and mountain scenes.
They certainly tried to make a dreary place cheerful, anyway
, she thought. She nodded at the nurse at the nurses’ station. When she got to the fourth door on the right, she drew in a breath and entered without knocking. The single occupant of the room was a man, lying still on the bed in the center, his eyes open but seeing nothing. He was fed by a tube in his stomach. A sudden, ruptured aneurysm in his brain had put him in that condition. The neurosurgeon did everything he could, but he could not change the inevitable. The doctor had said he might live five years. That had been ten years ago.

Colby walked over to the head of the bed and kissed him on the cheek. “Hi, Rob. It’s me. Let me pull up a chair and I’ll tell you my good news.”

Colby placed a straight back chair facing the bed and took the occupant’s hand in her’s. “I’ve got a lead on a sale in Rivercrest. Four and a half million, can you believe that? Of course, I’ll have to share the commission with the listing broker, but my share will be around a hundred thousand. That means I can catch up on my payments to the nursing home and use the rest to pay down my 401k loan.”

Rob said nothing, which is what Colby expected. She knew he neither saw nor heard her. Still, she felt a moral obligation to treat him like a human being who had thoughts and feelings when she visited.

Colby stayed half an hour, then kissed Rob on the cheek again before she left the room. In the hallway she found an attendant pushing Ms. Newman toward her room. “You have a good visit with your family, Ms. Newman?”

The attendant shook her head. “Nobody came. So, I’m taking her back to her room for dinner.”

Colby shook her head in disgust as she walked away, wondering how people could just abandon family members like they were animals in a shelter.

7

Don Allison sensed desperation in his brother’s voice when Dwayne asked him to drop by the office. Don spent twelve years in the Navy after high school and then became his brother’s insurance manager, overseeing the insurance products sold in his brother’s dealerships for the last twenty years. Don drove to his brother’s office that afternoon, waved at the secretary and opened the door to find Dwayne on the phone. The office was at the front of Dwayne’s ranch, built to look like a large bunkhouse until a visitor got through the front door. The front office was Ann’s, Dwayne’s secretary for twenty-five years. A door to the side led to a bull pen, full of cubicles for bookkeepers, clerks, and staff. Dwayne’s office was massive with leather furniture and nearly every space on the walls filled with the head of some trophy animal he had killed in hunting trips throughout the world. Behind his desk were plaques, recognizing his service to multiple civic organizations and photos of Dwayne with politicians, mostly Republican. Dwayne was ten years older and starting to get a little beefy with jowls and dark circles under his eyes. A few prominent veins on his nose acknowledged his love of good whiskey. What little hair he had left was now mostly gray. Don walked to the bar by the window and poured two fingers of Tito’s vodka over ice and returned to sit in front of the desk until the conversation ended.

His brother slammed down the phone. “Damn bankers! They’re nothing but a bunch of leeches, out to drain the last bit of blood from my body. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all!”

Don didn’t say a word as he sipped his vodka. He knew Dwayne’s rages were like a summer thunderstorm, loud and raucous but passing quickly. His brother suddenly leaped from his seat, circled the desk to the bar and filled a large glass full of ice and scotch. He downed half of it and returned to his desk. “Look, Don, I’ve spent thirty-five years building this business. At one time I had a hundred and twenty-five dealerships in three states. Along the way I’ve been a good citizen. Hell, I’ve been Chairman of the Board at Methodist Hospital and Potentate of the Shriners. This year I’m President of the Rodeo and Livestock show. Everyone in Fort Worth knows my name. I’m even being asked to run for mayor. I built my business on borrowed money and always paid it back on time, every damn time. Then the
Great Recession
hit.” Sarcasm dripped from his words as he discussed the recession. “All of a sudden the bottom dropped out. The goddamn bank won’t renew my loans. Quillen acts like I just rode into town on the back of a turnip truck. On top of that my customers can’t borrow money to buy a fucking used pickup. Shit, I haven’t changed the business practices that made me a success. It’s the politicians, mortgage lenders and Wall Street that created the problem.”

Don rose to refill his drink and said, “I’ve heard that speech at least a dozen times. I can’t do a damn thing about it.”

Dwayne walked to the window and gazed off in the distance at some of his prize quarter horses that were running in circles around their pasture. He smiled at the sight and then turned back to Don.

“I’ve been here sweating every phone call, thinking it will be from Quillen, ready to foreclose on a dealership. I’m barely able to make payroll, much less pay interest on any goddam notes. Then it hit me. I’ve got thousands of assets I haven’t tapped. I must have life insurance policies on over five thousand current and former employees.”

“Actually it’s closer to seven thousand,” Don replied.

“I’ve kept up the premiums on all of the former employees, some even before you started here. Been a good tax write-off and we occasionally have a payday when one of them kicks the bucket, only those paydays are now too few and far between. People must be living longer. I was figuring those policies would make for a nice retirement Now times have changed. Let’s cancel every damn one of these policies. The cash surrender value ought to be enough to get me out of this hole I’m in.”

Don shook his head as he downed the last of his vodka. “Sorry, Bro. You’re wrong. We took out term policies on all of those employees. If you quit paying premiums, you get nothing.”

‘What the hell?” Dwayne exploded. “You’re telling me I’ve been paying premiums on policies that aren’t worth anything. How could we be so stupid?”

“That was your call early on. They’re worth something only when the employee dies.”

8

Jack had time to check into the Residence Inn, clean up a little and pick up J.D. at his apartment, not far from TCU. After being greeted by a young man wearing a TCU golf shirt, Jack pulled his bag to the elevator, leaning on his cane as he rode to the third floor. When he got to his room, he pulled his T-shirt off and put on his own “Horned Frogs” golf shirt. Satisfied he was suitably dressed for dinner, he returned to his pickup and drove South on University. Two blocks from the campus he turned onto J. D.’s street and spotted him tossing a football with another guy about his size, obviously another football player. When J.D. spotted him, he tossed the football to his friend and loped to his dad’s truck. Jack had gotten out on the driver’s side and walked around to the curb. “Junior, boy, I’m glad to see you.”

J.D. bear-hugged his dad until Jack broke away. “Easy, Junior. I’m in good shape except for a bum knee, but I’m fifty now. So go easy on your old man.”

“Sorry, Dad, and remember I’m not Junior any more. I’ve got your name, but I’ve been called J.D. since I entered the Marines.”

Jack nodded his understanding as he appraised his son.
I damn sure couldn’t have done much better,
he thought.
Six feet four inches of muscle, and he looks like me, even down to that Bryant dimple in his chin. J.D. had a bumpy road, but now he was on the right track. His mother jerked him out of my life when he was eight, saying I was married to my law practice. Truth be told she was right. She hauled him off to Los Angeles where they lived off her half of our community estate, which was pretty damn good, even then. Jack knew that his son had made it through the two tours in Iraq without a physical injury, but he still worried about the mental toll of war. Was he a victim of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? It might take years to know for sure. For now Jack just had to be the father he could not be for all those years.

Jack saw J.D. for thirty days every summer until he was fourteen. By then he was six feet, four inches and weighed two hundred pounds. Unfortunately, he started running with a bad crowd and had no interest in visiting Beaumont. J.D.’s mother told Jack he was getting in trouble, petty stuff, at least when he got caught. And his grades were so bad he couldn’t even try out for football. In the spring of his senior year J.D. got in a fight with three guys in the parking lot of a bar, leaving all three unconscious. One nearly died and J.D. was charged with felony assault.

Jack flew to Los Angeles and cut a deal with a young assistant district attorney. If the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor, J.D. would plead no contest and promptly enroll in the Marines upon graduation, never to set foot in Los Angeles again. The ADA agreed. The problem was the Marines. At first they looked at J. D.’s grades and his brushes with the law and were about to reject him. They changed their minds only when they gave J.D. a battery of tests that told them that J.D. had a potential for leadership and a little-used I.Q. of 140. The Marines took him and did as their ads promised. Four years later Lance Corporal Bryant completed a second tour of duty in Iraq and was honorably discharged.

J.D. showed up at his Dad’s office in May and announced that he was going to enroll for the summer session at TCU. He had always liked Fort Worth when he visited his grandparents. Now he wanted to major in computer science and walk on the TCU football team that he knew was becoming a national power. Jack gave him his blessing and promised to fund his tuition and expenses, provided he made respectable grades.

After J.D. enrolled, he found his way to the athletic department and asked to see the head coach. Coach Patton invited him into his office, which was rapidly filling with trophies and plaques as TCU ascended in the ranks of major college teams, and invited him to take a seat. Patton obviously liked J. D.’s size. If there was an ounce of fat on him, Patton couldn’t see it.

“Tell me about yourself, son,” Patton said.

J.D. unloaded it all, including his misspent youth, his lousy high school grades, his trouble with the law and finally got to the four years in the Marines.

The coach steepled his hands under his chin as he listened. When J.D. was finished, he said, “We’ve got a damn strong program here. I pretty much built it myself. These days we compete with Texas, A & M, and Oklahoma for some of the best athletes around. You’ll have a big learning curve since you never played organized ball. Still, I’ll give anyone a chance. Go down to the basement of this building. Ask Smitty to give you a shirt, shorts, shoes and a jock. I’ll meet you on the field in thirty minutes.”

J.D. did as he was told and was stretching and jogging around the field when Patton joined him.
Wow, what a specimen
, Patton thought.
Too damn bad he never played before.
“J.D. come over here,” he hollered. J.D. joined him at the goal line. “You warm?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, I’ve got a stopwatch. Go out to the forty and sprint this way when I drop my hand.”

Not sure what to do, J.D. dropped into a four point stance and waited. Patton dropped his hand and hollered, “Go.”

J.D. strained as he drove his legs into the ground and up righted himself in five yards. He remembered Olympic athletes flattening their hands to cut down wind resistance. In ten yards he was in an all out sprint. When he breezed by the goal line, he trotted to a stop and circled back around to the coach who was staring at his watch.

“Must be something wrong with this damn thing. Should have made sure I had one with a new battery before I came out.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“This damn watch clocked you in a 4.45. Nobody your size has ever done that in my twenty-five years of coaching.”

‘Sir, I’m pretty fast. I always led the sprints in the Marines.”

“Well, son, go back there and let’s see if you can do it again.”

J.D. did 4.48. Patton shook his head in amazement.

“If you can catch a football, you’re gonna be a tight end. Hell, with your size and speed, I may try you at linebacker, too. Go tell Smitty to give you a locker and some practice gear.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” J.D. said as he started to trot off. After two steps he turned and asked, “Can you tell me about the construction, sir?”

Patton gazed up to where the western stands had been imploded in December, 2010. “Sure. Our goal is to remain a national power and bring TCU and Fort Worth a national championship pretty damn soon. We got more fans than we do seats. So, we’re starting there. Construction will be complete in time for opening day. Adding ten thousand seats and some luxury boxes and suites. Hopefully, it won’t be long until we expand again.”

J.D. turned and resumed his trot from the field. Coach Patton smiled as he thought,
Hell, this kid is big and fast and was a combat Marine. If I can’t make him a football player, I better just turn in my whistle.