“Your father was a very generous man. He’d give you the shirt off his back, if he liked you. But in business he was tough, even ruthless; nobody got the better of him. Your mother shouldn’t have divorced him; but then she shouldn’t have married him, either.”
Roy and his Uncle Buck, his mother’s brother, were riding in Buck’s Cadillac convertible on Dale Mabry Boulevard in Tampa, Florida, having just inspected a prospective site for a housing project Buck’s company, Gulf Construction, was considering for development. Roy was thirteen years old; his father had been dead for almost two years. Since his parents had divorced when Roy was five, he had not known his father as well as he would have liked. During most of his childhood, Buck had been the primary paternal figure and influence in Roy’s life.
“Were you and my dad friends?”
“We were friendly. He was only one year older but he had been in business since he was very young, so he was more experienced. I was just getting started as a civil engineer when your mother married him; and then for the first two years they were together I was up in the Yukon building the railroad. He knew most of the important people in Chicago, he made a good living. Your father made sure your mother had whatever she wanted and she enjoyed the nightlife. He was a twenty-four hour kind of guy.”
“He was much older than my mother.”
“Fifteen years older. He was good to her, and he really loved you.”
“Why didn’t Nanny like him?”
“Your grandmother didn’t dislike him, Roy. She was just protective of your mother. She was afraid of some of the people your dad did business with.”
“I met a lot of those guys. They were nice to me.”
“Why shouldn’t they have been? You were a little boy and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of your father.”
“Nanny said they were dangerous.”
“Even after your parents were divorced, if my mother had a problem she called your dad.”
“Did he always fix it?”
“He loved your mother, so I’m sure he did what he could.”
“I remember once when a guy my mother didn’t want to see any more kept calling her and coming around, and Nanny said to her, ‘If you don’t call Rudy to take care of him, I will.’ ”
“There’s a good Cuban place up here, La Teresita. Feel like eating?”
“Sure.”
Buck pulled the Caddy into the parking lot of the restaurant. The sun was going down and when they got out of the car a strong breeze was blowing in off the Gulf.
“Just a minute, Roy. I’m going to put up the top in case it rains.”
“I’ll do it, Unk.”
Roy slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition and pushed the button that controlled the top. Once it was up, he fastened both the driver’s and passenger’s sides, turned the key off, removed it, got out and handed the key to his uncle. The wind felt good and Roy stood still for a moment watching the sky turn different shades of red. This was one of the best things about Florida, he thought, the sunsets.
His mother had had three husbands since she divorced his father. Roy felt better when he was with his uncle. They went fishing together and Roy worked on construction jobs for him. Buck taught him about navigation, mineralogy, the correct way to build a staircase and the architecture of bridges. He treated Roy differently than other men, not exactly as an equal, but Roy felt that he could trust him, that he could talk to his uncle about almost anything.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” Roy said.
Buck’s first wife had divorced him and Roy knew that his uncle’s second marriage was on the rocks.
“ ‘Weak you will find it in one only part, now pierced by love’s incurable dart.’ ”
“What’s that?”
“Lines from a sonnet by John Milton. I had to memorize it when I was in high school. Do you remember Rameses Thompson, who used to work for me?”
“The black guy who had a holster for his handgun on the inside of the driver’s side door of his pickup truck. Is he still around?”
“No. He killed his common-law wife, Rosita, and her girlfriend.”
“His wife had a girlfriend?”
“They were stepsisters, from Panama City. Thompson got caught in Mobile, Alabama, and a cop shot him in his spine. I hear he’s alive but can’t use his arms or legs.”
“He was very strong. He could lift two chairs at the same time holding each one by only one leg.”
“Rosita was ugly and lazy, but Thompson was crazy about her.”
Another thing Roy liked about the west coast of Florida was that rain was never far away. It started a few minutes after he and his uncle were inside La Teresita.