Creep Around the Corner. Douglas Atwill

in Sarah’s father’s room, which she said had the best view of the pastures. Twin beds now stood where Earl Blanchett’s four-poster bed almost touched the ceiling. Francie would serve breakfast on the lawn about eight.

      A cool breeze came through the windows, laboring to break up the moist heat inside. I slept under a half a sheet, fitfully in the warmth. At first light, I got up and took a shower, dressed in clean Levis and a button-down shirt. Henry did not stir. On the back lawn, Sarah was already having coffee at a narrow table, reading a newspaper.

      “Join me, Harold. I have a hot carafe here.” She poured me a cup and folded her newspaper. The morning air was cooler, but sultry.

      I said, “This is beautiful. So different from Middleton, so green.” We looked across the rolling Blanchett fields to the native hardwoods of East Texas: oaks, maples, dogwoods, wild cherries and tulip trees, making a dark verge. Compared to the dry openness of West Texas, it was a close green paradise, ponds brimming, streams rushing into all of the low places, sounds of tree frogs and water birds.

      She said, “These were cotton fields in the last century, but we turned them to permanent pasture years ago. A cattle farm instead of a ranch. We make three cuttings of hay for winter feed, have open pasture the rest of the summer. I can call the cows from here. We don’t brand them. Pets, almost. Not like the wild, tough cattle on the Zilbert spread.”

      “Henry loves that ranch.”

      “I know, just like his grandfather. He thought that good-for-nothing Middleton spread was the land of Goshen. It is all your Henry John’s now that Henry Sr. has passed.”

      It was difficult for me to call her Sarah. “Sarah, Henry said that you were born here?”

      She nodded, “When the tobacco failed in the eighteen forties, the brave part of the family came west, founded Parthenon. The worried ones stayed on in Virginia, getting fatter and more fretful. Lots of Blanchett cousins around here, first, second and twice-removed cousins. It’s always been home for me.”

      “I can see why you like it.”

      “I wish I could get Henry John to like it, too, to sell up and move here. We have two farms still in the family that he could have, the Grand Vert and the Yellowwood, either one. But I think he’s got too much Zilbert blood. Dry-land, Zilbert blood.”

      “You never know.”

      Henry walked out and joined us. Sarah poured him a cup of coffee and refilled mine. Francie, a thin, straight-boned black woman, brought eggs, biscuits, butter and bacon. Sarah touched her arm gently and looked up to thank her.

      Sarah said to Henry, “We’ve been talking about your selling up and moving back to Parthenon. Francie’s chicken dinners every Friday night. What do you think, Henry John?”

      “What did Harold say?”

      “Very little. He’s a smart young man.”

      Henry said, “We have our friends back in Middleton. Harold and I talk about sharing the house on Water Street, living together.”

      She said, “So you should live together, but I never liked that house. Your great-grandfather Zilbert had a heavy hand with it, brown woodwork, dark plaster and those pier glasses.”

      “It’s the oldest house on Water Street.”

      “Henry John, if you won’t come back here to Parthenon, you should pull it right down and build a new house. A modern house for two bachelors with a swimming pool in the back garden. Get a good architect from Dallas.”

      He tried to ignore his grandmother. He said, “As it is, Harold can use the attic for his studio, and I will run the ranch from there. In town. Convenient, central.”

      “Harold, wouldn’t you like a proper studio with a big north window, no dusty old attic, where that garage is now, and a long pool to have your friends over?”

      Henry replied before I could. “Sarah, leave off. The house is fine just the way it is. Harold and I can move right in when we graduate next May.”

      She said, “I give up, then. What about the Army?”

      “We went by the bank and John Bartram said the war will be over in a few months, no more draft.”

      “John Bartram is quite often dead wrong.”

      “He said to send his love. How’s that pretty thing, your Sarah?”

      “Did he now?”

      Later that morning, Henry and I drove Sarah into Parthenon, three miles east of the farm. With the convertible top down, we circled the court-house, which she said was a scaled copy of the Temple of Zeus in Greece. On adjoining streets, canopied with live oaks and Chinaberry trees full of blackbirds, there were other Classic Revival houses with Doric porches, windows with pediments and the invariable green shutters, some angling away from their hinges. The more imposing houses were the Blanchett cousins, she said, and the others were owned by newcomers who bought in after the War.

      I thought that Parthenon had a caught-in-amber quality, curious green amber, a town waiting for the world to press in, to make changes. Changes that might not prosper under Chinaberry trees.

      I asked, “Are there oilfields near Parthenon?”

      She said, “No, north and east of here, near Tyler. A little shallow sweet near Chireno. We just have the farmland and the timber around here. No royalty checks.”

      Henry said, “Humble Oil is drilling next to the ranch in Martin County right now. We might just get a lot of royalty on that good-for-nothing Zilbert land.”

      “Don’t be smart to your grandmother, son. You’re as much a Blanchett as a Zilbert.”

      “Just joking, Sarah.”

      “I miss you, Henry John. Why can’t you be here all the time?”

      “I’ll try to come more now that college is about over.”

      She said, “I don’t have many more really good years.”

      “I know.”

      The next morning, Sarah and I drank our cups of coffee before Henry came down. There was a faint breeze against the hot press of morning. Looking away across the field to the forest, she put her hand over on mine. It was smooth and cool.

      “Don’t get caught up in Henry John’s good looks, Harold, like I did with his grandfather. A fly stuck in honey.”

      I said, “I think he is handsome, Sarah. I wish I had his dark hair, brown eyes.”

      “Henry Sr. could turn heads on the streets of Middleton. Every woman had hungry eyes for him, but all he wanted was that old, dry land. And me, he said. He was always loyal to me.”

      “You never liked the ranch?”

      “I did in the early years with summer rains. The grass grew up to the stirrups and went as far as the eye could see. I fancied that it was the steppes of Mother Russia when we rode out for roundups. Then the dust started to blow year after year. We talked about selling up and moving east. But Henry Sr. was afraid he would lose his soul here in Parthenon, be the worthless son-in-law of rich, old Earl Blanchett. It’s true that Papa never liked him much. If Henry Sr. stayed hundreds of miles away in Middleton, he could still be his own man.”

      “I can see that.”

      “Harold, you will also have to fight to be yourself, to be a painter. The Zilberts are beguiling, can trap you in what passes for love. Henry John is very fond of you, but he is a Zilbert, stubborn, manly, unbending.”

      “I think that’s why I like him.”

      “Big mistake, unless you want to be suffused by Henry John, nothing for yourself.”

      “I don’t know what I want.” I knew that Sarah was right, but I hoped that the summer days would just go on. We could stay ever as young men, extending our college