Galveston Between Wind and Water - By Rachel Cartwright Page 0,70
little late in the season for a summer vacation don’t you think, Philip?”
“Trains run out of Houston pretty much the same no matter what time of year it is.”
Bret looked at Philip as if forcing his red, squinting eyes open to let in the light. “Lord, but it’s hot so early in the morning.” He completely unfastened his loose, hanging tie and dropped it on the veranda.
He stumbled past Philip and dropped down into his father’s pine rocker. Bret rolled his head to one side and stared at the bottle on the rosewood veranda table. “Father’s best,” he said, picking up Philip’s glass. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything . . . but I didn’t get an invitation to your bon voyage party.”
Philip glanced at his shoes.
Bret raised the glass. “Well, cheers, happy trails, Godspeed, don’t forget to write, and all that.” He tilted his head back and finished the brandy.
Philip walked across the creaking floor planks and placed his hands on the top railing. “There was a time I would have taken that as a compliment, Mr. McGowan.” He looked out at the passing carriages on the street.
“What’s that?”
Philip dug his nails into the wood handrail and turned to face Bret again. “Being your father’s best. Yes sir, there was a time, but those times are long gone now, like your father and your mother, and soon . . .”
He glanced down at the freshly filled brandy glass in Bret’s hand. The liquor seemed to burn with an orange flame when the sunlight caught the glass. “Sometimes a man just lets himself get swallowed up, like when he swims out too far in the Gulf and the warm waves wash over him, putting him to sleep as they drag him under.”
“Mother always told me you should have been a preacher.” Bret raised the brandy glass again. “To His Most Reverend, Philip Harper.” He took a drink. “Ministering only to Galveston’s finest families before, during, and after their fall.”
He held the glass out to Philip. “Won’t you toast yourself, my good man? Lord knows you deserve it, or won’t you share this last refreshing libation with the bad blood son of your ol’ massa?”
Philip stared at Bret, locking the drunken man’s bloodshot eyes with the unwavering cold glare of his. It pained him to see this once proud young man turning into a tarnished imitation of himself, eaten from the inside by the corrosion and storms of his past.
Philip stepped across the squeaking boards and stood silently in front of Bret. He snatched the glass out of the young man’s outstretched hand and threw back the rest of the brandy in one gulp. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, dropped the glass on the veranda, and ground the shattered fragments into the boards with the sole of his shoe.
“Yes sir, and there’s one more thing ol’ Philip will share with his dead massa’s boy, before you ruin what’s left of the good in your family’s name and property.”
He bent down, grabbed hold of the wood armrests, and looked Bret straight in the face. “How does it feel to be wanting to mix your blood with the kin folk of a man who helped to spill yours?”
Bret puckered his brow. “Take it easy on me, old man, it’s been a long night, Miss Armstrong and I danced—”
Philip started clapping his hands and whistling as if kicking up his heels at an old-fashioned barn dance. “That’s it boy, you keep dancing and skirt chasing your life away until all the money’s gone. Then who you going to turn to when the oil well keeps coming up dry? Your new wife and her family?”
He stopped clapping and rubbed his hands to soothe the strain. “Wasn’t it enough for respectable folks to hang your father like that and get away with it, but then turn on your mother too?”
“What the hell you going on about, you crazy ol’ coot?” Bret pushed Philip away. He stumbled back but retained his stance. “You know how to take liberties, Philip.” Bret reached down and raised the uncorked bottle to his lips. “But this time,” he took a short sip, still keeping the bottle near his lips. “I think you’re drunker than I am.”
Philip looked down at Bret’s dusty shoes. “I wish, sir, I could say that was true.” He raised his head slowly, and was struck by the furrowed strain on Bret’s face.
Bret lowered his father’s brandy bottle and leaned back against the