Matt took a bus from Bristol to Whitetop, having to wait three hours for the only one that went there. He almost laughed at the thought of not being able to do better when there was a check for $400,000 in his wallet. But he stopped short of hysterics, realizing that he had lost a whole lot more than that much in having Brambleton snatched from him.
But he already was becoming philosophical about that. He hadn't exactly acted right the whole time he was there, topped off by begging sex from the evil Rick even while the man was scheming Matt's inheritance out from underneath him. Matt was coming around to thinking that Rick's legal maneuverings were justified, however. Matt hadn't done anything to earn an inheritance. He perhaps had made an old man happy for a short timeâbut he had killed the old man in the end, or at least his infidelity had been the cause of the judge's death.
Also, the shock of losing Brambleton had put the whole concept of owning Brambleton into perspective. It was just a house. Matt had done so much harm to others and allowed himself to be screwedâliterally as well as figurativelyâby others just in the worshiping of a house. Now that the restoration was complete, his fever for the house was lessening.
He patted the leather portfolio case clutched at his side as the bus rumbled along the hilly road toward the mountains and home. He had Brambleton right here beside him. This was the proof of all the work he had done on the houseâhow he had worshipped it and how it had rewarded him in response by turning out perfect.
The first thing he did when he got off the bus in Whitetop was to walk over to the town's only bank and deposit the $400,000, less fifteen grand, in his bank account. Vicky, the bank teller there, had always had a crush on him, and now she couldn't take her jaw off the floor after she'd seen the size of her check. This was more money than the bank had ever seen go by in a day.
He paid $4,000 cash for an old Mustang at the local used car lotâlaughing in remembrance of how sleek Perry's Mustang had been despite having been his "slumming" car because his father wouldn't let him take a flashy one to the University that first year, when he wasn't supposed to have one in Charlottesville at all. Four grand may have been something that would have made the folks in Loudon look down their noses in terms of a car price, but it was the priciest car on the lot here in Whitetop. And nobody paid that much in cash for a car in this townâa truck, yes; a car, no.
Loudon now seemed a lifetime away. If he had it all to do over again, would he have done any differently? No, he supposed not. Well, maybe he'd have been more careful about letting Archie catch him with Emmet. But he wouldn't have given Emmet up. His time with Emmet was all a time bomb affair anyway. At some point, when it served his purposes, Rick would have exposed the relationship to Archie. Archie wouldn't have had to find it out for himself.
This put into his mind Dashad. Matt had a thing for big, hung black men. That was for sure. No denying that. He only wished that Dashad would still be talking to him after a year and a half of no contact and not even answering the man's letters. How could he convince the big guy he'd missed him after ignoring him this long? He couldn't even figure out why himselfâother than that something always got in the way just when Matt was about to rectify that failing. And most of the time it had been something to do with his obsession for Brambletonâand his overweening ambition for a lifestyle so much higher than he'd been born into.
Dashad. That's what brought him back to Whitetop. He could have gone to Charlottesville. He'd left Brambleton with that portfolio under his arm, intending to go to Charlottesville, but at the last minute he decided he wanted to go to Bristol instead. Rick had been slightly irritated because the train fare to Bristol was twice that to Charlottesville, but he'd paid the price.
Matt got in the Mustang and drove it out of town toward the two small farms side by side, his and Dashad's. The Mustang purred along, and Matt said a little prayer of thanksgiving that the mechanics in these small southern towns worked hard to keep even rust buckets in good order and on the road (and, in most cases, capable of doing high speeds) for as long as possible.
He was surprised as he pulled up in front of his parents' placeânow hisânot Brambleton, but unquestionably his. The house was in a lot better shapeâat least on the outsideâthan it had been when he'd left it. In fact, it looked downright quaint and even had been painted recently and given snazzy shutters on the windows. The roof hadn't just been patched where there had been a hole before; the building was covered in new shingles.
In contrast, Dashad's house looked much the same as Matt remembered it. He was about to climb out of his car and check to see if Dashad was home, there not being any evidence of him working the fields of either place, when the door to the small house opened and a young, black, and extremely pregnant woman came out onto the porch and started watering some potted plants there from a can.
Matt shrank back behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, in shock. But why should he be shocked? he thought. Dashad wasn't young; it stood to reason that he might want to settle down with a family some day. And he was virile. All of the women of the town looked at him a second time when he passed byâjust as they did with Matt. Why would Matt have assumed that Dashad would just wait for someone who couldn't even be bothered to answer letters? Why shouldn't Dashad have decided that the direction he had taken with Matt wasn't getting him anywhere, had no satisfaction for him, and turned in another direction? Or maybe he had just knocked her up and was doing the right thing. Dashad was a sucker for doing the right thing.
When the woman went back into the house, Matt started up the Mustang and returned to Whitetop to the only tavern in town. Whitetop was that sort of town. Whatever store or shop there was, there was enough business for only one of them in Whitetop.
He was greeted at the entrance of the bar as if he had only been in there the previous day, although all the men and women were happy to see him. Everyone still recognized him. None of them asked where he'd been this year and a half. The last they'd heard was that he was at the University of Virginiaâand so few went to such a prestigious school from this region that, as far as they were concerned, he'd been on another planet. To them, he was just returning from school for a visit, and going to the university didn't make him any more special than they wereâand if he had acquired that thought while at that nose-up school up in Charlottesville, they'd just shame it out of him.
That wasn't the very last thing they'd heard about him, though. By now all of them knew he'd come into town with a cashier's check in a huge amount, which the rumor mill had already promoted to a million dollars. And they all knew that he'd paid cash for the best used car in Howard Johnson's car lot. This was more interesting to them than anything about that school. Where had the Henderson boy gotten that much money? And, more important, how much of that was he going to dole out around these parts?
There were those in the bar who would have glad-handed him to separate him from some of that money for the cost of a drink, but, while not being exactly unfriendly when he'd walked in, Matt was obviously too reoccupied to approach right off the bat.
He was in no mood to chit chat, and that seemed to have been divined and good-naturedly accepted by everyone in the tavern, at least for now, so he sat at a table near the back of the tavern and nursed a beer. Before he'd moved to his second beer, one of the men, after taking a look at him, got down from his bar stool and exited the tavern. Before Matt had finished that second beer, the man was back and behind him was Dashad.
Dashad came directly over to Matt's table and sat down.
"Hi," he said.
