The Erection Set

Three generations ago Grand Sita had been a distant retreat, a manufactured barony hand tailored to Cameron Barrin’s personal preferences. The rolling hills that covered six hundred acres surrounded a mansion that reflected the tastes of the era, a walled area with private roads and every accommodation money and talent could buy. The original structure with its simple design had long ago been obscured by new additions that social position demanded, and Cameron’s Castle had ceased to become a joking venture into the country, but a place where only the fashionable were invited.

That was three generations ago.

Now it wasn’t a six-hour carriage drive any longer. A superhighway sliced through a corner of the estate, making one-third of it unusable. Public utilities won condemnation proceedings and stretched a row of ugly latticework pylons hung with high-voltage cables from east to west. New York City was an hour and fifteen minutes away and obscured by fog, but Grand Sita was worth ten times more than it cost if the land developers could force it onto the market.

Due northeast, two miles away, the vast complex of buildings that housed the machinery of Barrin Industries nestled in the archaic splendor of ivy-covered red brick on the edge of Linton, a city built, structured and occupied by people working for Barrin or servicing its employees. At one time, Linton was only the name of the millowner who had his establishment on the bank of the river. With the advent of the first Barrin factory it became a city without government. Time had changed that, though. They had a mayor now, a city council and all the trappings of modern society. They had murders, fires, a small race riot and a welfare program.

From the crest of the bridge over the railroad tracks you could see the curve of the road that turned east midway between the estate and Linton, boring through the seven miles of countryside to the summer domain of the Barrin family old Cameron had named Mondo Beach, a vast crescent of sand and surf that looked out on a still unpolluted section of water.

We turned at the fieldstone columns where the ornate wrought-iron gates were rusted into the open position. The roof of the old gatehouse had collapsed and the building was unoccupied, but an old dungaree-clad gardener riding a motorized lawn mower looked up curiously, waved and motioned for us to go on in.

Leyland Hunter said, “Most of the staff have died or retired. They never replaced them.”

“It’s still beautiful,” Sharon told him. She was peering out the window, a strange expression on her face. “I never came in this way.”

“I thought you were only here once,” I said.

“In the house. Many a time I sneaked onto the grounds.”

“Hell, I used to sneak out. It’s hard to picture somebody wanting to sneak in.”

“This was the house on the hill, Dog. Every kid I knew used to envy the ones who came here.”

“I had more fun in town.”

Hunter chuckled again, his eyes moving between us both. “I’m afraid you were to the manor born, but not bred, Dog. Whatever genes your father carried sure took hold in you.”

“Bastards have more fun, buddy,” I assured him.

“And coming home doesn’t raise any nostalgia at all in you?”

“Not a damned bit. This place doesn’t represent opulence for me at all.”

“What does, Dog?” He had stopped smiling and was watching me with a lawyer’s eyes now.

“I’ve seen better and worse.”

“You’ve played a lot of poker, too, haven’t you?”

He didn’t have to tell me what my face looked like. I said, “I hardly ever bother to bluff, Hunter boy.”

“Again, that qualification. Hardly. Very improper. I think you mean rarely.”

“So I’m stupid,” I said.

The gravel drive gave way to old-fashioned Belgian paving blocks as we pulled into the area in front of the house. I let my eyes drift out the side window and took in the towering three-story mansion with its imposing Doric columns flanking the broad staircase, and for a single second I could see the old man standing there, hands on his hips, the cane in his hand, lips twisted in a snarl as he waited for me to walk up to where he could take a cut at my rear end, a sample of what was waiting for me inside. My mother’s face would be a pale white oval in the upper window, suddenly covered by her hands, and the grinning faces of Alfred and Dennison would be hidden behind the great oak door, unseen, but their muffled laughs of anticipated pleasure ringing in my ears. Somewhere the girls would be cleverly out of sight, but not out of earshot of that cane landing on my hide.

But he never made me yell and he couldn’t make me cry. I did that later when I was alone, not from the pain, but the damn humiliation of having to take Alfred’s lumps for him. Or Dennie’s. Or one of the girls’.

It passed in a second. The old man was out in the family plot now, my mother discreetly buried in another cemetery, and the others probably above such trivia by now.