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The Old Bold Pilot

J. Quinn Brisben


I.


Cletus Gowrie got a collect telephone call in the middle of

the night in early May, 1975. It was from his older brother Orvis
on the island of Guam. Cletus refused the call. If Orvis was calling from Guam, he had escaped from Vietnam with his life. If he could place a call by himself, he was in reasonably good health. If he had to call collect, he had not picked up the plane load of gold or whatever he had been trying for this time.
The next evening Cletus waited until the rates changed to call Mattie, Orvis's most recent ex-wife, in Los Angeles. She and Orvis had a daughter who was still in college. Cletus had paid two hundred dollars a month toward his niece's support whenever Orvis had been unable to do so. Orvis always promised to pay him back and had actually done so on several occasions. He was currently eighteen months in arrears. Mattie was pleased to get the news that Orvis was still alive.
Debbie still has two years to go before she graduates, Mattie said. Orvis hasn't been legally bound to make payments since she was eighteen, but you and he have been so good about keeping them up. She has a job, but she would have to drop out if it wasn't for the extra money. Besides, that girl just loves her daddy so, even though she's hardly seen him in the last dozen years.
I'd make sure she still got through school even if something bad happened to Orvis, Cletus said.
I know you would, Mattie said, and Debbie and I love you for it, too, but Debbie just dotes on her daddy and would be heart-broken if he died or was bad hurt.
Orvis can be a very lovable man when the going is good, Cletus said. I respect you very much for not trying to turn
Debbie against him.
It's hard to turn a girl against a man who comes roaring in on her sixteenth birthday to give her a sports car he's just won in a poker game or who takes her off for a month's holiday in Manilla and Hong Kong and Singapore when she's just graduated high school, Mattie said. Hell, I would have stuck with him myself despite the fact that he was always carrying on with other women and never could settle down to making a steady living, that is, if I could have stood the suspense.
It's hard having to clean up after the messes he leaves, though, Cletus said.
It is that, Mattie said. I suppose you'd better call Mei-ling, too.
Who's Mei-ling? Cletus asked.
She's his latest, Mattie said, or at least the latest that I've heard of. Orvis brought her by the house the last time he passed through, that was last Christmas. She's a pretty little thing, not much older than Debbie, from Hong Kong, I think he said, or maybe it was Vietnam. Anyhow, Orvis said they had a place somewhere near Seattle. I don't know whether they're
married or just living together the way people do nowadays. Probably, Orvis hasn't got in touch with her since he got out. He never likes his women to know about it when his crazy schemes have gone smash and he's broke again. I don't know their address, but you could probably get it from Seattle telephone information. Orvis always goes by his own name, even when someone troublesome is looking for him. That's a saving grace he's always had. She would probably appreciate knowing he was alive and safe for the moment. I always did when I was in her place.
One and only one Orvis Gowrie was listed for the Seattle area. Cletus called the number. A high-pitched female voice asked who was calling.
This is Cletus Gowrie, Orvis Gowrie's brother. I just called to say that he tried to call me from Guam last night, so he must have gotten out of Vietnam this time in one piece.
Oh, you are the brother Orvis has spoken of so often, Mei-Ling said. It is good and kind of you to call me. I also had a similar call from Orvis, which I refused to take, for those were his instructions. Orvis has told me that there is a tradition of not wasting money in your family. I thoroughly approve of that. Have you called his other wives?
I just got through talking to Mattie in Los Angeles, Cletus said. In fact it was her idea for me to call you. I've only heard from Orvis a couple of times in the last year, and Mattie's mentioning you was the first I knew of you. I have not called Willa Mae yet. In fact I don't know how to get hold of her. Last year's Christmas card came back saying that she was no longer at the address I had for her. I don't have an address for the two boys either.
I do, Mei-Ling said, and for the number one wife, too. She has re-married and has a different name. I have never met her or her sons, but Orvis told me how to make contact with them if I needed help from the family. Orvis is very proud of his sons even though circumstances have estranged them. The fact that they are both pilots like their father pleases him immensely. Orvis is very sorry that he could not have been a better father to them and to Debbie as well. He hopes to make amends with his new family.
New family?
I am pregnant, due in about four months. We are hoping that it will be a son, another pilot.
Congratulations, I suppose, Cletus said. Excuse me for asking, but how does Orvis expect to support this new family? He is too old to get a job flying with a regular commercial airline, even if he could settle down to do such a thing. He has no savings, never has had. I'll help this new family out just as I have tried to help all the previous families, but I hope Orvis does not have you believing in any of his get-rich-quick schemes.
Orvis is a man of great resources, Mei-Ling said. His current plan to fly out the treasure of a Vietnamese general has evidently misfired, but he has other ideas, ideas which might gain riches for a man of daring. If the next plan does not work out, we will probably receive collect calls from Hong Kong within the month. If I receive a call from Taipeh or Singapore a month or two after that, I will ask for your aid. The money Orvis left me will be gone by then and the baby about to come. Even if that comes to pass, Orvis will keep on. He tells me that he has always paid you back in the past. He considers it a matter of family honor to keep on doing so.
He has indeed always paid me back, Cletus said, and showered me with lavish gifts when he did. But the man is sixty years old, and he has suffered all kinds of injuries. Soon his health will not permit him to lead the kind of life he has always led. Then his various families and other creditors will be stuck.
Perhaps so, Mei-Ling said, though I do not think that will be soon, and I believe that he will provide comfortably for his new family. The hair on his chest may be white, but Orvis is still a tiger inside.
Cletus had no answer he wished to make to that, not even on low evening rates. He agreed to call Willa Mae and her sons and invited Mei-Ling to drop in anytime she was in the Des Moines area.
Willa Mae and her new husband lived in Highland Park, Texas. She apologized for not sending Cletus a wedding announcement or her new address.
It happened kind of suddenly, she said. We met at a square dance convention in Gatlinburg last summer. Steve, that's his name, Steve Boudreau, he's a Cajun, talked me into taking an early retirement from the Fort Smith school system and moving in with him here. He's a widower who was just rattling around in this beautiful big house. His children are all grown up like mine. Steve is very well-fixed; he's an executive with a firm that puts out oil well fires, and he still goes out into the fields occasionally. He flies all over the world and takes me with him sometimes. We've been to Venezuela and to Indonesia just since the first of the year.
I'm very glad to hear you sounding so happy, Cletus said.
I've never been so happy in my life, Willa Mae said. My big mistake in life was to get involved with a man like your brother Orvis when I was eighteen. You cannot really enjoy an adventurous man until the kids are grown up and you can't have any more of them.
It's Orvis that I'm calling about, Cletus said. He tried to call me collect from Guam last night. He's alive and well, but broke. He tried to ferry some gold out of Vietnam for one of the anti-communist generals, but evidently something went wrong. I called Mattie in Los Angeles, and she said that Orvis has a new woman up near Seattle, an Oriental girl of some kind. So I called her, and Orvis had left her instructions as to how to reach you.
That poor little thing, Willa Mae said. I suppose Orvis has knocked her up.
She's due in four months, Cletus said. If Orvis is still not back in the states by that time, I'll try to help her out.
Let me help with this one, Willa Mae said. I got a good price for the house in Fort Smith, and Steve has put a huge bunch of stock in my name. That's because a man in his profession can't get life insurance, you know.
You are under no obligation to do that, Willa Mae.
Not to Orvis, maybe, but I am to you Cletus. You're the one who talked Orvis into sending extra money so I could go back to college at Jonesboro during the war, and you kept that money coming when Orvis was out of touch, which was frequently. Even when you were just a little boy, you did your best to take care of me. According to Orvis, you were the one who got him to do right and marry me when I was already carrying Tommy.
Orvis has a tendency to exaggerate.
Is it true that you actually pulled a shotgun on him?
Willa Mae, I was only about ten years old then. I could barely hold that gun up. Orvis was a good deal more affected by our mother crying in her dish towel than he was by me and that silly gun. He would have married you anyhow; Orvis generally does the right thing, but sometimes it takes him a while to get around to it.
Tommy is really going to be surprised that he's going to have a baby half-sister or brother, what with him being forty years old and starting to lose his hair already. He has a regular run from New York to Paris now and brings me back the nicest things. Jimmy has a short run that's even steadier. He flies San Francisco to Los Angeles and back every day just like a bus driver. He's back home every day before his kids get out of school, and that's just the way he likes it. He has three nice kids, all growing like weeds, and Tommy has two nice ones, too, both of them in high school out in Connecticut where he lives. I should have sent you pictures of all of them last Christmas, but I was so busy getting married again that I forgot.
It's good to be in touch with you again, Willa Mae, it really is.
Cletus was surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes. He recalled how Tommy and Jimmy had cried when they had left the farm; they had really loved their grandmother and their young uncle. He had done his best to keep that family together, but it was flatly impossible to do so once the war started. Orvis had given up barnstorming and made a genuine effort to settle down, but there was just no way that he could keep on helping with the farm, dusting crops, and giving flying lessons on government contract when so many of his old buddies were joining up with the Flying Tigers, being paid a thousand dollars a month with a thousand dollar bonus for every Japanese plane shot down just for doing their patriotic duty. Orvis had promised to come back and settle down after the war, but that was a promise which, unlike his periodic promises to pay his debts, he was constitutionally unable to keep.
Willa Mae had moved in with her mother's cousin in Jonesboro, gotten a secretarial job with flexible hours, enrolled as a part-time student at the local teachers' college, then sent for her two sons as soon as she could afford a place of her own. Cletus had visited them in 1946 after his discharge from the infantry at Fort Chaffee. Willa Mae had looked tired and was no longer the beautiful girl just out of high school who had attracted a barnstorming pilot, but she was coping nicely. Orvis had been there the previous month, leaving behind a treasury of silk and jade for his wife, fabulous war souvenirs for his sons, and years of arrears in support money.
She paid Cletus back for the army pay allotments which he had split between her and his parents and said firmly that she would need no more help. She had enough to buy and furnish a modest house in Fort Smith, where she had accepted a teaching position, and she was giving Orvis his freedom. She still felt a strong attraction to him, so strong that she considered herself fortunate that she did not get pregnant again during her prodigal husband's brief return, but she was not going to spend the rest of her life crying over a man whom God had made a rolling stone.
Cletus had gone back to the farm in Grant County, Oklahoma. Orvis had been there before him, scattering gifts. The farm house and the milking barn had electricity now, as well as a propane tank, and the family soon expected the very latest in home appliances, presently unavailable because of pent up postwar demand. Four wheat combines of varying ages and conditions were packed on the backs of trucks in the yard. Orvis had left him a letter.

Dear Cletus,
I left money with Mama to pay you for the GI allotments you sent her, just as I did with Willa Mae. Take it, because Mama now has a new sewing machine and the biggest radio I could find and soon will have the gas kitchen range, refrigerator, freezer, washer, dryer, mangle iron, and all the other stuff she ever wanted. She complains that she will not have enough to do to keep her occupied, but it is about time she had that problem in her life.
Dad has always wanted to boss a custom wheat-harvesting crew, and now he can. If you get back by the time the wheat is ripe, I would appreciate it if you would go with him, at least for this one season. You are better at figures and paper work than anyone else in the family, and you can help him with that. The combines and trucks were the best he and I could get, but they are kind of junky. Dad is the best mechanic living; he could even keep that first plane I ever had, that old DH-4 I bought from my instructor, running like a Swiss watch when nobody else could even get it turn over.
The only trouble is, Dad tends to wander off sometimes when you need him. If he gets lost, look for him first at the local farm machinery agencies, for he likes to talk about machinery and mess around with it more than anything else in the world. Next to that, he likes women; if you want to find him, keep track of all the waitresses and such like with red hair, freckles, and long jaws and big teeth like Mama. The old goat is at least loyal to one type of woman, which is more than I can say for myself. Next to women, he likes liquor. Generally, if you let him bust loose on a Saturday night every two or three weeks, he will be all right between times.
Try to keep him away from driving and from machinery with moving parts when he is the worse for booze. He has already lost two finger joints and cannot afford to lose any more. He has reached the age where he ought to slow down. So have I. The men who flew us in our supplies over the hump used to say that there are old pilots and bold pilots but that there are no old, bold pilots. I have come to believe that, and I no longer take the chances in the air that I used to do when I was barnstorming. I may still do some crazy things if I have to, but not through carelessness or deviltry. I do not need to give you the same advice, for you have always been a good and steady soul.
I thank you again for helping Willa Mae and my two fine boys and the folks, too, when I was unable to get money home to them. I would have loved to spend some time with you, but I have to leave for Europe right away. Some old buddies of mine want me to help them ferry Jewish refugees into Palestine. There is a lot of money in it, and it is work worth doing, too, even if the British do say it is illegal.
You are a hard worker, but you belong on a farm even less than I do. Take the money I paid you back and insist up front that Dad give you at least one fourth of the profits from this summer's harvesting. Make him put it in writing; he is generally an honest man, but that does not always extend to dealings with his own family. Then you take all that and whatever you can get on the GI Bill and enroll in some good college, one far enough away from Oklahoma so that Dad cannot drag you back every time he wants a job of work done on the cheap.
Do not take literature or history or law or anything like that, because you do not have it in you to be a bullshitter. Take accounting or business administration or something. Those are the boys who get the soft jobs that make big money in this postwar world, and that is what I want for you. I don't know when I might want to borrow from you again, and I want you sitting safely on top of a nice big pile.
Your loving brother,
Orvis

It was the longest letter that Cletus had ever received or would ever receive from Orvis, and the only letter from him which ever contained advice. Cletus took the advice. He made good advance contracts, kept accurate books, and taught his father how to perform these tasks adequately. He kept his father on the job sufficiently so that the combines and trucks stayed in good repair. The wheat crop was a record breaker, and the harvesting profits were high. The crew called it a year in Manitoba in September. Cletus had declined to join his father and the rest of the men in a big Winnipeg blowout. He made sure that the bulk of the money had been safely sent to his mother, took his own share, and started hitch-hiking south.
Chance had led him to Ames, Iowa. He liked the area and decided that Iowa State University was good enough for his purposes. He had been allowed to enroll even though the Fall term had already begun. The campus and the town were bursting with returned veterans. Cletus moved into a tiny attic room with three other bachelor veterans. The widow who owned the house had arthritis and wanted to move to California. The four roommates discovered that they had sufficient savings between them to make a substantial down payment and that they qualified for a low-interest Veterans Administration mortgage loan. The rent from the other tenants more than covered the payments. Cletus's business administration professors were impressed.
Summers had posed a special problem. Cletus stayed on to manage the house, partly to have a good excuse for not joining his father's harvesting crew again. He filled the house with undergraduate summer students whose fraternity houses were closed for the season. One of them was an engineering student from Des Moines named Kevin Lauchlan, who became close friends with Cletus. They went to Des Moines together for the two week break at the end of the summer term.
He liked the Lauchlan family very much. Kevin's father David Lauchlan had a thriving insurance business. Cletus had decided that the insurance business would suit him very well. David Lauchlin offered him a job when he graduated with a good salary and prospects for advancement.
Cletus had also liked Kevin's sister Heather, who was about to begin her senior year at Drake University. Heather had good secretarial skills and had worked in her father's office during vacations ever since she was in high school. Cletus returned to Des Moines that Christmas to give her an engagement ring.
Are you buying that ring on time? David Lauchlan had asked.
No, sir, Cletus said. The house has been turning a nice profit, so I could pay cash for it. One of my roomers knows a lot about minerals, and he says that it is a good stone for the price.
Heather and Cletus were married in June, 1948, following her graduation from Drake. They gradually bought out their partners in the rooming house. In addition to helping manage the house, Heather supplemented their income by typing dissertations for graduate students. When Cletus graduated in 1950, they were able to exchange their equity in the rooming house for a mortgage on a very nice three-bedroom split-level in the new Beaverdale neighborhood on the West Side of Des Moines.
David Lauchlan Gowrie, called Locky, was born the last week of December, 1950, nice timing for a tax exemption, as the proud grandfather remarked. His sister Jean was born in January, 1952, but her failure to save the family a few hundred dollars on 1951 taxes was forgiven with good grace. Cletus quickly became as much a part of his milieu as any Des Moines native, active in the Junior Chamber of Commerce and the First Christian Church. By 1960 he was a partner in the firm of Lauchlan and Gowrie, which was doing very well.
He had not meant to diminish his contacts with Willa Mae and the rest of his family, but it had happened. At first he had written Willa Mae once a month, then once every three months, then finally she received only a brief personal note at the bottom of the mimeographed Christmas letter which he sent out to such a large list that it was a family joke. He sent generous graduation gifts to Tommy and Jimmy, but their dutiful replies told him chiefly how little they remembered him.
In 1963 on a Chicago to Miami flight to a business association meeting a stewardess had asked him to come forward to the cockpit. Tommy was co-pilot and had recognized his uncle's name on the passenger list. They had a pleasant dinner in Miami Beach comparing and exchanging stories about the fabulous adventures of Orvis, but neither of them had kept up the renewed connection.
He had tried to visit his parents every year, but they had less and less to say to each other with each visit. Cletus never felt quite at home in the re-modeled farm house with its spectacular array of gadgets dominated, from the early 1950's on, by ever larger television sets which seemed never to be turned off. His mother liked Heather and loaded her down with home-made sausages and fruit preserves at every visit, but they had few things in common. Locky and Jean were always fussed over but showed progressively less enthusiasm for each approaching visit to their paternal grandparents. The elder Gowries never felt comfortable visiting Des Moines despite every effort to make them so.
They had died within a month of each other in 1968 shortly after selling the farm and moving to an Arizona retirement community. The Tet Offensive had made Orvis, then a pilot for Air America, temporarily unreachable, so Cletus kept half the estate in trust until Orvis re-surfaced, deducting only the support money he had paid for Orvis's daughter Debbie.
Orvis was temporarily safe in Saigon again within a few weeks. Despite Cletus's fervent admonitions, half of a good Oklahoma farm was almost immediately lost through a failure to anticipate correctly the price fluctuations on the Singapore rubber exchange. Cletus was angry about that and vowed never to help Orvis out again.
He had forgiven him, though, before the year was out. Orvis had given him a surprise call from the Des Moines airport on Christmas Eve, 1968. He had so many bundles that Cletus had difficulty fitting them into his small car.
Life is too short to have to go through it driving a dinky little car like this, Orvis had said.
It suits me, Cletus said.
I reckon it does, Orvis said. Before I have to listen to you grinding your teeth all the way to your house, take a look at this.
Orvis pulled some papers out of his jacket pocket. They were ninety-day Treasury bills in high denominations. They represented almost exactly the amount of the inheritance which Orvis had lost in his speculations.
Why are you showing me this? Cletus asked.
So you will know I respect the amount of work that the folks put into that farm, Orvis said, and that you and I put into it, too, for that matter. I just don't have your respect for money, except that I do enjoy spending it.
Orvis, you have obligations. Mattie and Debbie have had to depend on me for months now.
And you got a kick out of that, Cletus, just like you always do. Now I'm flush again, and I'm making good on everything. Give me those T-bills back. I just bought them to show you that I could keep ahold of money if I felt like it. I intend to spend them as quick as I can. This other little financial document, though, I want you to keep.
He handed a twenty-five dollar series E savings bond to Cletus.
This represents the amount that Mama took out of the egg money in 1932 when I was seventeen to help me pay for my first flying lessons, Orvis said. It took me three years before I could pay her back the cash, and there was no way I could ever pay back what the giving of it meant to me. It's meant a lot, too, the way you've always come through for me. I just want you to keep this pissant little bond as a sign that you understand that.
Cletus had kept the bond and continued to help Orvis out as needed.
He shook off his memories and looked at the lacquer screen which was one of Orvis's gifts from that Christmas six years ago. It had been admired by the people from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and was Heather's favorite object in the whole house. Cletus had spent good money to have it appraised and had added a rider to his homeowner's policy so that it could be replaced at full value if damaged or stolen.
He went to bed. Heather was already there. She had gone back to work full time at the insurance office as soon as Jean was in first grade and was an inveterate early riser. He snuggled in next to his wife and gave her breast a gentle squeeze. She gave a friendly wriggle in response but did not wake all the way up.
Honey, Cletus said, does it bother you that I am not bold.
You suit me just fine, she said. Now go to sleep. We'll both enjoy it more if we wait until tomorrow morning.
II.

Locky wanted to make his father a millionaire in September, 1985, but Cletus refused.
Dad, this is as near to a sure thing as you can get on the
commodities market, Locky said. I have good information that no one else has, legally acquired, too, that is going to make the bottom fall out of the soybean market in a couple of weeks when everybody else starts getting it. Go short on soybeans now and you can double your money, maybe even triple it.
Son, there is nothing close to a sure thing in that soybean pit, Cletus said. You have been trading there for ten years and ought to know that better than anybody. Any investment that the law says is too risky for an insurance company's money is too risky for my personal money as well. You are not going to get any of the money that your mother and I have saved for our old age. You will get half of whatever is left when your mother and I die but not until then.
Dad, I am not going to need it then and neither is Jean. She's married to a doctor, for God's sake. This money is not for me, although I've put a considerable bundle on this, too. This is for you and Mama.
Your mother and I are doing very well without extra nervous strain from taking unnecessary risks, thank you. You forget, Locky, that I'm a gambler, too. That's what an insurance broker is. I calculate risks and lay off my bets just like any bookie. I even back a long shot when I have a hunch now and then, as I did when I provided some capital for that black burial insurance firm that needed start-up capital to reach new markets. But that was an insurance company, which I understand.
Dad, this is soybeans, which I understand.
Nobody understands crops, Cletus said, not the farmers, not the commodity traders, not anybody. Your grandfather Morgan Gowrie was as savvy a farmer as you could find anywhere, but he just barely scraped along most of his life. He prospered in later years only because he got an absolutely unpredictable infusion of capital right after the war, and even then he almost went under a couple of times before he sold out. You've almost gone under a few times yourself, even though right now you seem to be making more money than I'd ever heard of when I was your age. I am not going to risk a comfortable old age by going short on soybean futures.
I reckon there is nothing to be done with a father who just absolutely refuses to get big rich, Locky said. Do you think anyone else in the family would be interested?
You could talk to the Medicare wizard, that rising young internist, your brother-in-law, Dr. Gavin McClain, Cletus said. You could talk to your uncle Kevin Lauchlan, the famous designer of bridges on the interstates, who might have some cash left over even after his very generous contributions to everybody's political campaigns. You might even get some of your uncle Orvis Gowrie's dope money.
That's not fair, Dad, Locky said. Uncle Orvis never sold dope. He just hauled it around for the people who wanted it hauled, which, most of the time, was an agency of the U.S. government which you and I pay taxes to support.
I never thought of Orvis as an example of my tax dollars at work, but you have a point, Cletus said. He's through with doing that anyhow. Since his stroke a couple of months ago, his doctors say that he'll be lucky to walk without a cane, let alone fly or boogie all night in some disco, the way you told me that you and he did a couple of years ago.
That's too bad, Locky said. Every time he came to town we would walk into Butch McGuire's and walk out twenty minutes later with the two best looking women in the place. Except that he sometimes had a couple of flight attendants for us by the time I picked him up at O'Hare.
He's lucky that kind of behavior hasn't cost him another marriage, Cletus said. He'll need Mei-Ling to take care of him now.
She'll do that, Locky said. She gets mad at him, but she told me one time that she would rather have a man who tomcats around than one who bored her to death. She used to call me for investment advice that year when Uncle Orvis sort of disappeared up near the Khyber Pass. I think that she's a fine woman. If I ever have a third wife when I am seventy years old, I want her to look something like Mei-Ling.
You'll never even get a first wife at the rate you're going, Cletus said.
I'm working on it, Locky said. I thought I had something going with the girl who designed the track lighting for my loft a couple of years ago, but she said commodities futures bored her and married a stage carpenter who doesn't have a dime. If this deal I tried to get you to buy in on goes through, I'll be mostly fixed for life and will devote more time to really serious looking.
Your mother will be glad to hear that, Cletus said. You ought to call her more often than you do. You should call Orvis, too. That stroke has slurred his speech some, but he can still make himself understood over the telephone.
Locky promised to call his uncle.
The next Tuesday Heather and Cletus had dinner with Jean and Gavin and their children, a weekly family custom. Gavin asked Cletus if he had followed Locky's advice and gone short on soybean futures.
I did not, Cletus said, and I would have advised you against it if you had asked me. How much are you in for?
Eight thousand and a bit, Gavin said. I can afford to lose it and establish a tax loss, but I'd rather not, of course. Locky says that the rumors he has been anticipating have started to circulate, but the market hasn't dropped nearly as much as he anticipated it would.
I remember the first year I made as much as eight thousand dollars, Cletus said. I thought I was doing really well. Heather and I bought our first television by way of celebration. Remember, dear, it was a Zenith with a round tube that looked like it was staring back at us when we were through staring at it.
Two weeks later Mei-Ling called from a Seattle hospital.
You had better come out here if you can, Cletus, she said. Orvis has had another stroke. The doctors say he might go at any time.
Cletus was in Seattle the next evening. Orvis could not speak, but he could grasp his brother's hand and manage a lop-sided grin. Cletus asked Mei-Ling about the financial situation.
It could be bad, she said. Orvis recently sold all our securities and re-mortgaged the property. If his current investment does not pan out, I may have trouble putting Wayne and Kimberly through school.
What is the big investment this time? Cletus asked.
He has gone short on soybean futures, and the market has not dropped as anticipated. If he cannot redeem those contracts within the week, we will be left penniless.
I have always known this would happen, Cletus said. I just didn't know that I would be the one to set it up.
Orvis lasted two more days. Cletus was at his brother's bedside almost constantly. Cletus kept re-assuring his brother that this last family would be taken care of and avoided being judgmental to the best of his ability. He could not tell if Orvis understood what was being said. The handclasp and the half grin were his only signs of consciousness.
Cletus told Mei-Ling to call Locky at his firm's 800 number. He could not help wanting his son to suffer a little for this. The operator told Mei-Ling that Locky was away from his desk but was expected back within the hour. Mei-Ling left a message to call her at the hospital. Locky called back shortly before one in the afternoon Seattle time.
The market dropped like a stone this afternoon, Mei-Ling said. Orvis has made an after-tax profit of over a quarter of a million dollars, not as much as Locky had hoped, but still quite a lot.
Orvis squeezed his brother's hand and died with the grin still on his face. Mei-Ling could not tell whether Cletus was sobbing or laughing. Despite her decade in America, she found Caucasian emotions very difficult to read at times.

III.

In April, 1990, Cletus flew to Las Vegas for a convention of insurance brokers. As a member of the board of directors of the association, he had voted against holding the convention there but had been in a minority. He felt that Las Vegas did not represent the kind of image which the insurance business ought to project.
When he presented himself at the desk of a lavish hotel on the Strip, a clerk eyed him suspiciously and told him that there was a problem with his room.
What sort of problem? Cletus asked. I have had this reservation for months.
Our records show that Cletus Gowrie already checked into that room earlier this afternoon, the clerk said. Would you mind presenting identification, sir?
Cletus did so. There was a hurried consultation behind the desk. He was asked to step into the lounge where he was told that he could order a complimentary drink and was given a roll of forty quarters with which to play the slot machines. Cletus put the roll in his suit jacket pocket. He ordered a double scotch on the rocks, specifying an expensive single malt brand which he had learned to appreciate after having been given a bottle for Christmas by a company with which he did business.
Twenty minutes later the manager of the hotel, who was perspiring slightly despite the air conditioning, joined him.
I have been in the hotel business for thirty years, the manager said, and this is the first time that I have seen something like this happen. The gentleman occupying the room is also Cletus Gowrie. He can identify himself as such and has colleagues who can vouch for him. Both of your reservations were made by telephone by your secretaries on the same day. A clerk here assumed that the second phone call was a secretarial error. The only thing to distinguish the two of you on paper is that you are from Des Moines and that the other gentleman is from Detroit.
I would very much like to meet this man, Cletus said. This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone else bearing the name.
The other Cletus Gowrie was a light-skinned black man in his mid-fifties, long-jawed and toothy, with freckles and hair which had once been reddish. Both men were of the same height and build, both were wearing dark blue suits with conservatively patterned neckties.
We have a real problem, the manager said. There are two conventions being held here and the hotel is completely booked.
There are two beds in the room, Cletus Gowrie from Detroit said.
Then, if you are willing, sir, Cletus Gowrie from Des Moines said, we shall share. I assume that the hotel can make a satisfactory adjustment in the rate.
A very satisfactory adjustment, the manager said. This has been terribly embarrassing for the hotel. Would you gentlemen care for another round of complimentary drinks?
We would, Cletus Gowrie from Detroit said. We have some things to discuss.
The two Cletus Gowries sipped their drinks and munched macadamia nuts. They exchanged driver's licenses and discovered that Cletus from Detroit was born in 1934, which made him nine years younger than Cletus from Des Moines. Both were born in Oklahoma, but in different parts of the state.
I do not remember much about Oklahoma, Cletus from Detroit said. We moved north when I was five years old, to a Detroit neighborhood called Paradise Valley. I had a stepfather. I bore his name until I was eighteen years old, but we never got on well. When I won a scholarship to Howard University, I decided that I would change my name. My birth certificate lists my father as unknown, but that was not true. My mother said that his name was Gowrie.
How did you come to be called Cletus?
According to my mother, it was my father's suggestion that I be named that if I turned out to be a boy. He said that it was the name of an upright person whom he hoped I would turn out to be like. I know no more about it than that. My mother was not very forthcoming, even when closely questioned. All I know is that they stayed together about two months, that it was impossible for them to get married in that time and place because they were of different races, that she genuinely wanted to have a baby by him, that he left her with a considerable sum of money and promised to send more if she asked for it, which she never did, and that she was courted in a glamorous and unusual manner which she found impossible to resist. It was very obvious that this had been the great love of her life and that this was why my stepfather, who was a good man in many ways, had never been able to get along with me. It was because she did not want to hurt my stepfather again, I think, that she refused to tell me more.
Did she describe this glamorous and unusual manner of courtship?
She did.
Did it involve taking her up in an airplane and doing barrel rolls and loop the loops and all manner of tricks like that?
It did. Who am I?
You are the son of my older brother Orvis Gowrie, who was born near Muddy Creek, Oklahoma, in 1915 and who died in Seattle in 1985. You were named after me. I am probably not as upright as my brother thought I was when I was eight or nine years old, but I am pleased to have you as a namesake.
The two Cletus Gowries reached for the family photographs in their wallets almost simultaneously. Cletus from Detroit had a daughter who was an instructor at the University of Western Ontario and a son who was an assistant state's attorney for Wayne County, Michigan, with a four year-old granddaughter from each. His mother was in good health and living in Cleveland. His flourishing insurance business had many similarities to that of his newfound uncle in Des Moines.
Cletus from Des Moines told about Tommy Gowrie who had quit flying to take a front office job and Jimmy Gowrie who had flown back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles as often as the rules permitted for the last seventeen years without missing a single trip. Debbie Gowrie had moved to Des Moines and resumed her maiden name after the break-up of her marriage to a musician named Esposito. She worked for Lauchlan and Gowrie and would manage the firm after he and Heather retired later this year. Wayne Gowrie seemed chiefly interested in computer games, and Kimberly Gowrie loved to ride horses.
All of them are cautious and hard-working, just like you and me, Cletus from Des Moines said, without any of Orvis's wild streak. That seems to have been inherited by my son and one of my grandsons. My son Locky is the richest Gowrie I ever heard of, but he's probably going to have to spend most of it soon to
get out from under a federal indictment for some sort of complicated hanky-panky. My oldest grandson, Wallace McClain, has equalled his great-uncle's record for an early start on sexual adventures and may equal him for a late finish. Kimberly is your junior by forty-five years, and there may be others, older, younger, and in the middle, that I haven't heard about yet.
My father does not seem to have been a good risk for most kinds of insurance.
That is a very interesting way of thinking about him. You're right, he was a poor risk. He sought out danger his whole life long. Sometimes he got medals out of it, sometimes money, sometimes the love of very good women. Mostly, though, he took risks just for the hell of it. Come to think of it, he did have an insurance policy. I was it, even when I was a little kid and he named you after me for luck. I covered his risks all my life, and I broke better than even on the deal. I would still consider it a good deal, even if I had lost a bundle of money.
Uncle, let me buy you dinner. I want a whole evening of family stories.
It was an expensive and leisurely dinner with a bottle of good wine. Cletus from Des Moines insisted on taking care of the tip. He left his roll of quarters on the table. It was too late to call Heather in Des Moines about the day's adventures, but she would probably call him tomorrow after the rates changed.



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