The father of Paige is named Walter Brannon, a deacon and a retired postal supervisor, and he set the deed down on the table so slowly that I heard the paper settle. “Hazel,” he said again, “I would like to understand how you came to own the house in which your son is hosting his in laws.” The shrimp and grits were going cold. I turned my wedding ring on my finger and let myself take one long breath. “Walter, I sold Piedmont Fabrics in August for eleven million two hundred thousand dollars. When the landlord of this house passed away, I bought it. Through a company. I wanted to see how my son would treat me.”
“Mom,” he said, “that is impossible.” I said, “It is on the deed, Wesley. Reedy River Holdings. Hazel Harmon, sole member. Your landlord for two months, and your mother for forty six years.” Paige turned to her husband. She is a pale, intelligent young woman who teaches chemistry at the high school, and her voice, when it came, was quite calm. “Wesley,” she said. “You told me you got a bonus. In July. For the down payment on my car.” Wesley said, “I did.” She said, “From what?” Wesley looked at the ceiling fan, turning slowly, as if it held an answer.
I took out the ticket and put it on the white tablecloth, next to the sweet tea. Number 8814. An Elgin pocket watch, engraved E.H. 1944, pawned on Laurens Road by Wesley Harmon, six weeks past. “That watch belonged to the father of your father,” I said. “He carried it ashore at Normandy, and it stopped in the sea, and it started again when it dried. Earl wound it every Sunday for forty years.” My voice shook. “And the Purple Heart. And the ring. Wesley, I opened the lockbox on a Tuesday and it was empty.”
A pawn ticket for a war veteran watch brought a retired postal supervisor to a shrimp and grits supper and gave one fabric founder the evening to bring her son back to his father.
The face of Wesley crumpled. He is forty six years old, a large, careless man with the big hands of his father, and the sight of those hands covering his face was almost more than I could bear. “Mom,” he said through his fingers, “I owed eleven thousand dollars on a boat. A man in Spartanburg was going to come to the house. I could not tell Paige. I thought, Dad is gone, and Mom has her pension, and nobody will ever look.” He took a rasping breath. “I meant to buy the watch back. The Purple Heart, I thought I could get replaced.” I said, “The ring, Wesley?” He said nothing. He only shook his head.
Paige stood up and went to the sideboard. She stood there with her back to the room, breathing hard, and Walter Brannon, with the gentleness of a man who has comforted many families at many funerals, went to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. After a while Paige turned. Her eyes were red but steady. “Hazel,” she said, “I want you to know I did not know. I would never have let this happen. If you tell me to leave this house tonight with my children, I will go, and I will not blame you.” I said, “Paige, sit down. I am not throwing out anybody.”
I laid out my terms there at the table, between the grits and the pecan pie. Wesley would redeem the watch the next morning, at the full price on the ticket, with the money of Paige, which he would repay her in full. He would write to the Army, at the address I gave him, and request a replacement Purple Heart for his father. He would find the buyer of the ring, and he would buy it back, however long it took. And he would take the boat to a dealer on Monday and sell it. “All of it,” I said. “Every cleat.” Wesley nodded, and nodded, and kept nodding, as if the movement were the only thing keeping him upright.
He redeemed the watch on Monday. I was at the pawn shop myself, in my good navy suit, and I watched my son count out the bills on a glass counter, with Paige beside him holding her purse in both hands. The shopkeeper, a lean old man with a loupe, placed the watch in a small cloth bag and slid it across. Wesley picked it up as though it might burn. He opened the case. The face was gold and white, with tiny black numerals, and the second hand was still. Then he wound it, and it began, faintly, to tick. He closed his eyes. “Mom,” he said, “it works.”
The ring took four months. At last, in a shop in Hendersonville, he found it in a tray, with a yellowed tag. He paid twice what it had fetched. He brought it to me in a small velvet box and set it in my palm, and I put it on the little finger of my left hand, next to the ring of my own wedding, so that the two gold bands touched. “It is warm,” I said. Wesley said, “I held it all the way home.” I looked at my son, a big, ashamed man in a creased shirt, and I forgave him then, with all of my heart, and told him so.
In November, a flat envelope came from the Department of the Army. Inside, wrapped in tissue, was a new Purple Heart, with a purple ribbon and a small bronze profile of George Washington. A letter explained that it was a replacement for a medal lost by the recipient. I held it for a long time in the kitchen, running my thumb along the edge, and thought of Earl, at nineteen, in the cold, with a bandage on his arm. Wesley stood in the doorway. “Mom,” he said, “can I carry it?” I handed it to him. He pinned it, with great care, to the inside of my coat.
At Christmas, the whole family came to the house on the Reedy River. Paige set the table with the china of her mother, and Wesley stood at the head, pale and sober in a gray sweater. He lifted his sweet tea. “I want to say something,” he said. “Last spring I told this table that it was hard supporting my mother. I was wrong. The truth is that she has supported every one of us, for as long as I can remember.” He glanced at the watch, ticking on its chain in his vest pocket. “Dad would be proud of her.” I looked around the table, at the lights on the tree, and I said, softly, “Earl, I think you hear this.”
