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As a boy,
C.B. had enjoyed living in the Whiting mansion. His mother complained
constantly that it was old, drafty and inconvenient to the country club,
to the lake house, to the highway that led south to Boston, where she
preferred to shop. But with its extensive, shady grounds and its numerous
oddly shaped rooms, it was a fine place to grow up in. His father, Honus
Whiting, loved the place too, especially that only Whitings had ever lived
there. Honus's own father, Elijah Whiting, then in his late eighties,
still lived in the carriage house out back with his ill-tempered wife.
Whiting men had a lot in common, including the fact that they invariably
married women who made their lives a misery. C.B.'s father had fared better
in this respect than most of his forebears, but still resented his wife
for her low opinion of himself, of the Whiting mansion, of Empire Falls,
of the entire backward state of Maine, to which she felt herself cruelly
exiled from Boston. The lovely wrought iron gates and fencing that had
been brought all the way from New York to mark the perimeter of the estate
were to her the walls of her prison, and every time she observed this,
Honus reminded her that he held the key to those gates and would let her
out at any time. If she wanted to go back to Boston so damn bad, she should
just do it. He said this knowing full well she wouldn't, for it was the
particular curse of the Whiting men that their wives remained loyal to
them out of spite.
By the time their son was born, though, Honus Whiting was beginning to
understand and privately share his wife's opinion, as least as it pertained
to Empire Falls. As the town mushroomed during the last half of the nineteenth
century, the Whiting estate gradually was surrounded by the homes of mill
workers, and of late the attitude of the people doing the surrounding
seemed increasingly resentful. The Whitings had traditionally attempted
to appease their employees each summer by throwing gala socials on the
family grounds, but it seemed to Honus Whiting that many of the people
who attended these events anymore were singularly ungrateful for the free
food and drink and music, some of them regarding the mansion itself with
hooded expressions that suggested their hearts wouldn't be broken if it
burned to the ground.
Perhaps because of this unspoken but growing animosity, C. B. Whiting
had been sent away, first to prep school, then to college. Afterward he'd
spent the better part of a decade traveling, first with his mother in
Europe (which was much more to that good woman's liking than Maine) and
then later on his own in Mexico (which was much more to his liking than
Europe, where there'd been too much to learn and appreciate). While many
European men towered over him, those in Mexico were shorter, and C. B.
Whiting especially admired that they were dreamers who felt no urgency
about bringing their dreams to fruition. But his father, who was paying
for his son's globe-trotting, finally decided his heir should return home
and start contributing to the family fortune instead of squandering as
much as he could south of the border. Charles Beaumont Whiting was by
then in his late twenties, and his father was coming to the reluctant
conclusion that his only real talent was for spending money, though the
young man claimed to be painting and writing poetry as well. Time to put
an end to both, at least in the old man's view. Honus Whiting was fast
approaching his sixtieth birthday, and though glad he'd been able to indulge
his son, he now realized he'd let it go on too long and that the boy's
education in the family businesses he would one day inherit was long overdue.
Honus himself had begun in the shirt factory, then moved over to the textile
mill, and finally, when old Elijah had lost his mind one day and tried
to kill his wife with a shovel, took over the paper mill upriver. Honus
wanted his son to be prepared for the inevitable day when he, too, would
lose his marbles and assault Charles's mother with whatever weapon came
to hand. Europe had not improved her opinion of himself, of Empire Falls
or of Maine, as he had hoped it might. In his experience people were seldom
happier for having learned what they were missing, and all Europe had
done for his wife was encourage her natural inclination toward bitter
and invidious comparison.
For his part, Charles Beaumont Whiting, sent away from home as a boy when
he would've preferred to stay, now had no more desire to return from Mexico
than his mother had to return from Europe, but when summoned he sighed
and did as he was told, much as he always had done. It wasn't as if he
hadn't known that the end of his youth would arrive, taking with it his
travels, his painting and his poetry. There was never any question that
Whiting and Sons Enterprises would one day devolve to him, and while it
occurred to him that returning to Empire Falls and taking over the family
businesses might be a violation of his personal destiny as an artist,
there didn't seem to be any help for it. One day, when he sensed the summons
growing near, he tried to put down in words what he felt to be his own
best nature and how wrong it would be to thwart his true calling. His
idea was to share these thoughts with his father, but what he'd written
sounded a lot like his poetry, vague and unconvincing even to him, and
he ended up throwing the letter away. For one thing he wasn't sure his
father, a practical man, would concede that anybody had a nature to begin
with; and if you did, it was probably your duty either to deny it or to
whip it into shape, show it who was boss. During his last months of freedom
in Mexico, C.B. lay on the beach and argued the point with his father
in his imagination, argued it over and over, losing every time, so when
the summons finally came he was too worn out to resist. He returned home
determined to do his best but fearing that he'd left his real self and
all that he was capable of in Mexico.
What he discovered was that violating his own best nature wasn't nearly
as unpleasant or difficult as he'd imagined. In fact, looking around Empire
Falls, he got the distinct impression that people did it every day. And
if you had to violate your destiny, doing so as a Whiting male wasn't
so bad. To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be
good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible
to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about
a great deal. While the shirt factory held no attraction for him, he demonstrated
something like an aptitude for running it, for understanding the underlying
causes of what went wrong and knowing instinctively how to fix the problem.
He was also fond of his father and marveled at the little man's energy,
his quick anger, his refusal to knuckle under, his conviction that he
was always right, his ability to justify whatever course of action he
ultimately chose. Here was a man who was either in total harmony with
his nature or had beaten it into perfect submission. Charles Beaumont
Whiting was never sure which, and probably it didn't matter; either way
the old man was worth emulating.
Still, it was clear to C. B. Whiting that his father and grandfather had
enjoyed the best of what Whiting and Sons Enterprises had to offer. The
times were changing, and neither the shirt factory, nor the textile mill,
nor the paper mill upriver was as profitable as all once had been. Over
the last two decades there had been attempts to unionize all the factories
in Dexter County, and while these efforts failed--this being Maine, not
Massachusetts--even Honus Whiting agreed that keeping the unions out had
proved almost as costly as letting them in would've been. The workers,
slow to accept defeat, were both sullen and unproductive when they returned
to their jobs.
Honus Whiting had intended, of course, for his son to take up residence
in the Whiting mansion as soon as he took a wife and old Elijah saw fit
to quit the earth, but a decade after C.B. abandoned Mexico, neither of
these events had come to pass. C. B. Whiting, something of a ladies' man
in his warm, sunny youth, seemed to lose his sex drive in frosty Maine
and slipped into an unintended celibacy, though he sometimes imagined
his best self still carnally frolicking in the Yucat?n.
Perhaps he was frightened by the sheer prospect of matrimony, of marrying
a girl he would one day want to murder.
Elijah Whiting, now nearing one hundred, had not succeeded in killing
his wife with the shovel, nor had he recovered from the disappointment.
The two of them still lived in the carriage house, old Elijah clinging
to his misery and his bitter wife clinging to him. He seemed, the old
man's doctor observed, to be dying from within, the surest sign of which
was an almost biblical flatulence. He'd been turning the air green inside
the carriage house for many years now, but all the tests showed that the
old fossil's heart remained strong, and Honus realized it might be several
years more before he could make room for his son by moving into the carriage
house himself. After all, it would require a good year to air out even
if the old man died tomorrow. Besides which, Honus's own wife had already
made clear her intention never to move into the carriage house, and she
lately had become so depressed by the idea of dying in Maine that he'd
been forced to buy her a small rowhouse in Boston's Back Bay, where she
claimed to have grown up, which of course was untrue. South Boston was
where Honus had found her, and where he would have left her, too, if he'd
had any sense. At any rate, when Charles came to him one day and announced
his intention to build a house of his own and to put the river between
it and Empire Falls, he understood and even approved. Only later, when
the house was revealed to be a hacienda, did he fear that the boy might
be writing poems again.
Not to worry. Earlier that year, C. B. Whiting had been mistaken for his
father on the street, and that same evening, when he studied himself in
the mirror, he saw why. His hair was beginning to silver, and there was
a certain terrier-like ferocity in his eyes that he hadn't noticed before.
Of the younger man who had wanted to live and die in Mexico and dream
and paint and write poetry there was now little evidence. And last spring
when his father had suggested that he run not only the shirt factory but
also the textile mill, instead of feeling trapped by the inevitability
of the rest of his life, he found himself almost happy to be coming more
completely into his birthright. Men had starting calling him C.B. instead
of Charles, and he liked the sound of it.
Excerpted
from Empire Falls by Richard Russo Copyright 2001 by Richard Russo.
Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Synopsis
With Empire
Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America’s
most compelling and compassionate storytellers.
Miles Roby
has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that
cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps
him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs
all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine,
Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain
health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting,
who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything”
includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into
the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity,
heartache, and grace.
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