If These Walls Had Ears (8 page)

Here’s the house with the second story Charlie added when his mother came to live with them. It was the fall of 1926, the
beginning of the beginning of the troubles.

1926  
  1937

F
or much of my life, even my adult life, I thought that you worked hard, you achieved and acquired things, and that those things
would forevermore be yours. It’s an embarrassingly naïve view of the world.

The thing that opened my eyes was a simple pair of socks. It was in that bedroom in Minnesota. In my sock drawer, I discovered
a pair of socks that wasn’t mine. I asked my wife about them, but she said I must be mistaken’. I knew I wasn’t. Not coincidentally,
her boss soon left his wife and moved away, taking a job in New England. And my wife asked for a divorce and took our two
sons home to her mother’s house in Florida. Shortly after our divorce was final, she moved to New England and married her
ex-boss. Though I certainly wouldn’t have been able to script out that specific scenario, I knew, from the moment I found
those socks, that my life would never again be quite the same.

That’s part of what fascinates me about houses—how major life changes are precipitated, or at least revealed, in the most
mundane ways. To my mind, Elizabeth Armor was a harbinger. Nobody alive today remembers why she came, and maybe there never
was a plausible answer. But it’s as though she were the embodiment of some larger, darker disturbance loose in the land. It’s
as though this pinched soul from the heart of America interrupted the Armours’ happiness as a warning: that life, and fortune,
can shift with the suddenness of a letter being plucked from the mailbox. Whatever her reason for coming, the truth of the
matter is this: She lived with them for more than two years. And even after she was gone, their life at Holly Street was never
as good again.

Maybe you can trace a portion of that to Charlie’s decision to build a second story onto the house. That was a gesture born
of hopefulness, of optimism, of confidence. And why
wouldn’t
Charlie have been confident? He was successful—didn’t his fine house with all its elegant appointments prove that? He had
built this house from nothing. I’ve never commissioned the building of a house, but I can imagine that, once the work is completed
and you realize that indeed you
have
afforded it, a heady feeling of power might ensue. You’ve put something on this earth that wasn’t here before, something
that will stand a hundred years. It’s natural to believe you can keep doing it.

Besides, the Nu Grape business had been going well—so well that Charlie had invested more and more of his money in it. By
1928 he had two plants, the main one in Little Rock and a smaller one in Pine Bluff, forty-three miles south. Charlie believed
in making his money work for him. Pem McRae, Jane’s husband, remembers Charlie saying, “Money tied up in a house is wasted.
That’s expensive living. That money could be making money for you somewhere else.” All over the country, businessmen were
doing exactly as Charlie Armour was doing—investing in American business.

Even young Charles wasn’t immune to the lure of big money. Much to his mother’s horror, he decided to drop out of Little Rock
High School to go into business with his dad. Charlie gave Charles a job loading cases of Nu Grape on and off one of the big
trucks. Later, Charles graduated to driver, with a truck of his own. He was making more money than he’d ever seen in his life.
Meanwhile, Jessie remained distressed at his dropping out of school. One day, one of her friends came over to have coffee,
and as Jessie poured the cups, she also poured out her fears. The friend told Jessie not to worry.” Charles will be all right,”
she said. “Just wait’ll he gets over fool’s hill.”

Before the decade was finished, many an American businessman older than young Charles Armour had gotten over fool’s hill the
hard way—by tumbling down the steep side. On October 29, 1929, when the
dizzy
ing rise of stock prices finally imploded in the famous crash, people went broke overnight. Businesses began closing. Over
the next two months, $15 billion in paper value would simply vanish.

And, though it wasn’t obvious at that moment, so would the market for soft drinks.

Most of us, when we’re growing up, have no idea how hard it is to hold the center. If we’re lucky, we never have to think
about there being such a thing as a center to hold. Economic and emotional gravity keep us tethered, keep us believing that
we’re part of something solid, something warm, comfortable, and secure.

For a long time, Charles and Jane weren’t aware of how precarious their world had become. There was food to eat; there were
clothes on their backs. Charles arid his father still had a bottling business to go to. Even after the Depression had begun
in earnest and Charlie was forced to close the Little Rock plant, his children had no idea how bad things were.

At first, Charlie tried to scale down. In 1930, he gave up the big plant at Second and Rector and moved his operation to a
smaller building on Broadway. He worked out of that office for a couple of years, but he could see that things were getting
worse instead of better. Orders were dropping off at a steady pace. It couldn’t have made him feel any better to read in the
trade news that even gigantic Coca-Cola, which owned some two-thirds of the market, was feeling the pinch. Coke’s sales declined
more than 20 percent between 1930 and 1932. Nobody had even a nickel to spend on soda pop.

In the house at 501 Holly, there was, added to this external gloom, a sadness of a more personal nature. Grandma Jackson died
in January 1932. She had been getting weaker, and for the past year Jessie had moved her into the middle bedroom, where she
could remain in bed and still be part of the goings-on. Everyone who came to the house wanted to see her; it had always been
that way. Now Jessie would just open the French doors, and the bedroom became a kind of salon, where Jessie and her guests
could drink coffee and chat while Grandma lay propped up in the big sleigh bed. Some days were better than others. Some days,
she just wanted to doze, with the radio tuned low at her side. She died in the evening, with her family around her.

Jessie’s feeling of emptiness must’ve been overwhelming. She was forty-five years old and had never, other than during college,
lived apart from her mother. She turned her attention to her garden, planting two huge Cape jasmine bushes just outside the
kitchen door. She had always planned to wallpaper those wall panels in the living and dining rooms, but the window had closed
on that—wallpaper cost too much money. She stepped up her church work. Even during the weekdays, she spent many hours “going
calling,” as she termed it, visiting young women to try to persuade them to attend Sunday school.

Charlie’s mother soon prompted a different kind of mourning. On July 18, 1932, probably at work, Pulaski County Sheriff Blake
Williams came to see Charlie. The sheriff reached into his coat pocket and placed a summons in Charlie’s hand. “In the Circuit
Court of Pulaski County,” it began. Then the words became almost unbelievable:
“Elizabeth Armor, Plaintiff,
vs.
C. W. L. Armor (also known as
C.
W. L. Armour), Defendant.”

It’s possible that Charlie knew this was coming—though the idea that your own mother would sue you, especially when you were
already on the ropes financially, is hard to comprehend. The suit claimed that Charlie owed her $2,154.28, that she had demanded
payment, and that Charlie had refused. An affadavit, signed in a shaky hand by Elizabeth, charged that she had lent Charlie
one thousand dollars on May 1, 1926 (which was just before she came to live with him). That loan was to be repaid in full,
plus 6 percent interest. Then in late 1929 and 1930, Charlie had received four thousand dollars, three thousand dollars, and
five hundred dollars, which was to be his share of Elizabeth’s estate after her death. The stipulation, however, was that
he would pay interest on that money during her lifetime. Finally, he had drawn $112.71 from an account she maintained in Little
Rock. Between January and September 1930—about the time Charlie was scaling back his business—he had made six payments, totaling
$215; after that, nothing. Now she wanted her money.

I can imagine Charlie and Jessie sitting on the front porch late on that July night in 1932. We give up in stages. We draw
invisible lines, across which we won’t allow the world to encroach. Then when that line is violated, we draw another—tighter,
closer in. It’s a helpless feeling, waiting for the end to come. Charlie must’ve felt that way about the business. It was
a losing battle. The Depression was bigger than he was. The summons, like Elizabeth herself, was only symbolic— what’s another
couple thousand dollars in the face of total ruin? For Charlie and Jessie, the tighter line now had to encircle the family,
the house: the home. Others were losing that battle, too, but
they,
the Armours, had to find a way to hold the center.

At the end of August, Charlie settled with his mother for the sum of $1,994.82, plus 6 percent interest from June 10. That
fall, he set about dismantling the Little Rock Nu Grape plant. He still had the one in Pine Bluff, but that wasn’t enough
to keep the family going. The spring of 1933 brought the worst of the Depression to Little Rock. On March 4, to avoid a run
on the banks, the Arkansas banking commissioner ordered all banks closed. They didn’t reopen until March 13, after they had
been pronounced sound and new procedures had been adopted. But that was a long week in Arkansas. That was a week in which
many people were paid in produce, or in anything else that still had value.

By that time, the frivolous little Nu Grape car seemed as alien as the memories of the decade just past. Charlie replaced
it with a two-door Chevy in sober black.

Seemingly overnight, 501 Holly was transformed from a place of gaiety and well-being into a retreat. No more would there be
elaborate dinners or festive dances with the rugs rolled back. Instead of a place into which the world was invited, this house
had become a refuge from it.

Charlie’s presence at home on weekdays was unsettling for the rest of the family. Charles, back in high school, was now in
the same grade as Jane. In the mornings, they would catch the streetcar a couple of blocks away on Prospect, then ride it
back home again after school. Upon their return, they would often find their father sitting in the living room by the radio,
wearing casual clothes instead of his customary suits, his pipe cradled in his mouth as he listened to the state of the world.
His sitting there told Charles and Jane all they needed to know about the state of the world.

Not that Charles and Jane spent a lot of time worrying about their father’s situation. They were, after all, teenagers. Both
would be seniors during the 1933-1934 year, and both had their own friends, their own schedules, and their own concerns. Even
though he made better grades than Jane, Charles fretted that he wasn’t going to do well. And he was compulsive—he wanted things
done
just
right.
Jane seemed to be more comfortable in her skin than Charles was in his. She was dating a nice young man named John Pemberton
McRae, called Pem. Like people all over the country, Jane and Pem escaped to the movies as often as they could afford it during
the 1930s. On hot summer evenings, there was nothing better than a cool, dark theater to take you away from your troubles.
There was a new Disney cartoon that seemed—if your mind worked in such a way—to be a commentary on the times. It was about
a trio of pigs, and after the show you could hear people singing or whistling the catchy theme song, “Who’s Afraid of the
Big Bad Wolf?” as they left the comfort of the theater and walked off in pairs into the night.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Jessie worked at keeping his spirits high. Behind that noncommittal exterior, Charlie Armour had a
temper, though he usually managed to contain it. Jane remembers witnessing his anger through the window one day when she was
a child. Charlie was in the front yard with a Negro man, who was there doing some work. Suddenly; Charlie grabbed the man
by his shirt and practically lifted him off his feet. Charlie was saying something, but Jane couldn’t hear what. The man was
obviously petrified. Then Charlie put him down and the Negro went back to his work, cowering like a dog that had been disciplined.
From Jane’s point of view, the entire vignette was acted out in silence, which gave it a power—the power of imagination—beyond
what it might’ve had otherwise.

Jessie kept busy, of course, and. Charlie really did, too—as much as possible. He worked on the grape arbor he’d built in
the backyard, and he tended his tomato plants, as he had every year. He had a knack for growing tomatoes, and at harvest time
he made the rounds of the neighborhood, sharing the bounty with the folks on Holly and Lee. He phoned friends, visited with
people he’d known in business, church, and civic affairs. Sooner or later, some job prospect would turn up. At least he and
Jessie weren’t having to go out and humiliate themselves by dancing for dollars in dance marathons, the way so many other
couples were.