Family Business
by John Clinton Hunt
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…Family-wise, matters had become a little complicated. Maybe we had all been in America too long. The Willoughbys are the ones I'm talking about. My own people, so to speak. Who had descended in a crooked line from a band of Europeans going back to the seventeenth century, and Virginia. But I will do my best to keep it simple. And limit my story to what happened to some of those who eventually made it to Oklahoma. Hard travelin', as they used to say. In a vast country, where wind and sun and so much empty space can often bring on what was occasionally called a nervous breakdown.

My situation was that I had a father by the name of Wesley Willoughby, who left me on my own one day without a word of explanation. My mother, a certain Susanna Lanier before she married Wesley, was born in an old Creek town called Muskogee, in Indian Territory. The two of them eventually moved to Grey Horse, Oklahoma. Where after awhile they met an Englishman, who soon became their closest friend. Graham Tucker was his name, and he was something of an anthropologist. He said that he had come to our little town to study the Chetopas. Meaning the local Indian tribe on whose last reservation we were all living, once it had been divided up and sold off in sections like so much real estate. Its importance and even notoriety being that under the reservation was a sizeable pool of oil. Belonging to the Chetopa, but one way or another, eventually available to everyone at a price.

Given the circumstances, we had a whole lot of lawyers and merchants in Grey Horse. Preachers and undertakers, too. Cattlemen who lived on spacious ranches in the surrounding county. Professional people, needless to say. And even a country club, with a nine-hole golf course for the gentry. It was a user-friendly kind of town. Full of money for those who got in early. And more than enough trouble to go around.

I mentioned that my father, Wesley, had gone away. That was the exact expression which my mother used to explain his absence. At the time, I was a boy going on seven. She told me that he would not be coming back, and that I would never see him again. And that she had promised him that she would never tell me what had happened. Because as she always repeated, he insisted that he wanted it that way. A promise, incidentally, which for reasons of her own, she seemed determined at all costs to keep.

I had been in California visiting family for the summer, and got back too late to know that there had been a funeral service. And even when I found out that he was permanently gone, I had no idea where my father was buried. Later I would gradually learn that he was resting in some kind of peace in a cemetery in Muskogee. Which as I thought about it seemed a little peculiar. Except that both of my Susanna's parents were also buried there, and could presumably keep an eye on Wesley. Or anyway, on those few friends or maybe enemies who came to visit.

Which may not seem like all that much, but was enough to keep me searching for someone who could at least provide the missing pieces. And maybe even tell me not only what had happened, but the reason why. Like for example, the story of how my mother Susanna, had taken up with Graham Tucker in a serious way. Once my father, Wesley, was barely in his grave.

I also had a sister, Katherine. I always suspected that she knew more than I did about what had happened to our family. As though everyone else had shared the secret, while I had been kept on the outside looking in.

Over the years, my curiosity became a passion. And only seemed to get worse with every scrap of information which came my way. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to put it mildly. Sometimes I was desperate, and often I was furious. I had the feeling that people who might know the story were afraid to talk to me about it, for fear of the consequences. Like for example, what I might take it in my head to do. After all, I was my father's son, and whatever it was that had happened to him might happen again to me. My Susanna's bedrock belief, for what it's worth. And as far as she was concerned, it was both my inheritance and my destiny.

And then my obsession reached the point where even if somebody tried to tell me what would invariably be presented as the absolute truth, I was sure that what I was hearing was just another cover-up. And finally when there was almost no one left who could legitimately claim to know for certain, after Graham Tucker had passed on and my mother died, I had no one left to turn to except my sister Katherine. And of course, Madame Lutetia, who worked for my mother until she and I together buried my Susanna. And even later, carried on as a sort of self-appointed Minister of Information. Though keeper of the secrets might be closer to the truth.

But to be honest about it, by that time I had practically become a beggar. A panhandler looking for a modest contribution just to keep me going for another day. Almost anything would do, so long as it promised to lead me to the truth of what had happened.

And there was something else. My wife was French, and she kept telling me that by now that I should have finished with what she called le travail de memoire, and the time had come for me to focus on reconciliation. I had a feeling that, from hard and deeply personal experience—but not the kind of thing we had ever really discussed—she knew what she was talking about. And that what she was referring to was my need to reassemble the pieces of a shattered family. For my own good, if for nothing else. Before I closed the books and went to my final resting place, wherever that might turn out to be.

And especially on what might be the last occasion available to me. When my mother died, and my sister Katherine and I returned to Grey Horse to lay her to rest. And also to exchange whatever final words we might now at long last be willing and able to share. For I had done my penance, or so it seemed to me. And now I was looking for absolution for a sin that I must somehow and in some way have committed. Particularly since no one had ever been ready to be forthcoming with me about it after more than fifty years.

I was fully aware that Katherine would not be the ideal person with whom to share my troubles. The truth as I saw it was that she had it in for me. Jealousy might be one explanation, though I can't believe that such an ordinary word would be strong enough to explain just how she felt. Remember that my Susanna had endowed me with a destiny, which supposedly I had inherited from my father. Which would seem to leave Katherine on her lonesome, without a legacy of her own. And thus give her a reason for feeling as she did that she was the one on the outside looking in. When I was absolutely certain that it had to be me.

So my position going into what I thought of as a last-chance showdown with my sister, was simple and at least for me, straightforward. Now or never, was the way I saw it. Time was running out, and I was determined to take advantage of what could very likely be our final meeting. That may seem heartless, as well as painfully self-absorbed. But I had lived a lifetime beset with anxiety and confusion, and now I was determined to come to closure with my personal holy ghost. Either that, or give it up, and go looking for a shotgun of my own. But not until I had paid a final farewell visit to those secret places of the heart, where if I got lucky, my father might have left a message for me. For along with all the rest, I was a man of hope…

This is an excerpt. To read the rest, please continue your travels in the Republic by purchasing No. 16, Winter 2005.

John Clinton Hunt was born in 1925 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He spent his boyhood in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, on what had been the reservation of the Osage Indians. His first novel, Generations of Men, was published in 1956. A second, The Grey Horse Legacy, appeared in 1968 while he was at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In subsequent years, he held senior management positions at the Aspen Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, le Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. When he retired in 1990, he was Founding Chairman and CEO of BioTechnica International in Cambridge, Mass. He now lives with his wife, Chantal, in Lyon, France.