Chapter 1

I was tired but felt good that the events of the prior day had gone well. I wished everything had gone as smoothly during my first year at Alabama. Yesterday morning, I had flown from Fairhope to New Orleans, where I picked up Cathryn's fiancé. Her fiancé had flown in from Vietnam on R & R for Cathryn's graduation and their hastily organized wedding. His flight arrived early and he had only carry-on luggage, so we departed immediately and I flew him to Tuscaloosa. He had time to shower and change before Cathryn's graduation from the University of Alabama. Cathryn graduated with a B.A., while Beau Lauder received a Ph.D. and Thornton Canter received a J.D. Colonel Beau Lauder, Mississippi National Guard, obtained dress blue uniforms for the wedding party for Cathryn's military wedding that was held at the DKE house after the college's graduation exercises. After the wedding at DKE and the reception at the Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority House, I flew the couple to the downtown New Orleans Airport where they were met by a wonderful limo driver and New Orleans guide, who took them to a quaint hotel in the French Quarter for their honeymoon.

The transportation, graduation and wedding went off perfectly. Afterwards I flew from New Orleans to Lauderdale Plantation, Beau's home, for a graduation party for him. At his party, I hooked up the Ole Miss coed, who I had met when Beau bedded her after we attended Lib Lauder's charity ball in Meridian. Beau's graduation party was for his friends, mostly female, and his literary friends. It was an interesting group of people at the party including the who's who of the Mississippi literary set. The Ole Miss coed took the edge of my hectic day and capped it in a most satisfactory way. I slept well in the guestroom at the Plantation.

The day following the festivities I was tired and very relieved. I was glad to have a quiet day to relax and talk with Lib. Beau went into the office with his father. It was the chance for Lauderdale Corporation and town's people to see Beau before he and I went to New York City for the summer. I exercised, got a massage, and swam in the early morning. Lib and I talked as she planted flowers and worked in her flower beds before the temperature got hot. Lib and I lunched and sat around the pool most of the afternoon and talked. That night, Beau stayed home, where he and Lib beat Hub and me at bridge. We didn't play too late. I slept soundly and woke very early. I dressed quickly and went onto the screen porch that went around three sides of the mainhouse.

I sat and listened, fascinated by the predawn sounds of Lauderdale Plantation. I watched the daybreak and listened to the sounds of the farm animals. Most of my daybreak experience was on the wire in Vietnam, although I had gotten up with Grandfather a few times at the bayhouse and some at the Hamptons house last summer. Daybreak at Lauderdale was very different; as different from daybreak in New York City as the Lauders were different from the Wall Street types with whom I was most familiar back East. Beau and his family were like my second family and functioned very differently from the way I was raised with my mother. Lib hadn't delegated raising Beau to anyone. Other functions in the house might be done by the help, but Lib loved and raised Beau.

Lib came out on the porch soon after daybreak; she was in a housecoat. When she saw me, she went back in the house and soon returned with a pot of coffee and a couple of cups. She asked, "May I join you?"

I nodded. "It's so peaceful, yet so alive."

Lib said, "There's nothing like early morning on a farm. My family had a shipyard in Pascagoula and I grew up on the Gulf, not on a farm. It took me a while to appreciate early morning here. I'm going to miss it when Lauderdale is Beau's." She poured and we sipped the black coffee. We sat and listened to the morning sounds. After she finished her cup of coffee, Lib said, "It's nice to have you. You're always welcome." She kissed my cheek and went back into the house.

Lib was a jewel. She was a caring, Southern lady. I liked her a lot. I was sorry my difficulties with Beau because of Karen, had strained our relationship. I clearly understood that, while I might be like a son, Beau was her son.

Lib and Carolyn were the first people I turned to for personal advice or when I needed to talk about women. They were my substitute mother and big sister respectively.

Beau, Will, and I were very different. Beau and Will were classic first borns. We also differed in our skills with women. Will and Beau were socially skilled lovers. They had learned to be skilled swordsmen at early ages: Beau with women on the Plantation, small town Mississippi girls, and many women of different ages in Meridian; Will with my foreign born au pairs, our young housekeepers, and later with the young women of the Hamptons and the socialites of the Philadelphia mainline. From an early age, both had learned to use position and money with girls and women, strong and effective draws for willing sexual partners in the hands of young men with the experience and confidence that Beau and Will possessed.

Mother had kept me away from sex and girls. When I neared puberty, she purged our house staff of the type of young women who had taught Will about sex. Mother taught me the skills of the adult, polite high society of Long Island and Martha's Vineyard; or at least, the skills needed if you were a long-time moneyed member on the social register like her family, the Lowells were. Will and I were included as standalones in the social register because of Mother's family; Father had been included with Mother; Grandfather wasn't included. Not being included was of no concern to Grandfather. It was important to Will, and by extension to Brooke, since Will thought it important to move in those social circles for business purposes. Brooke moved easily in those social circles. Will and I benefited from being a Lowell and the expression was that 'the Cabots only spoke to the Lowells and the Lowells only to God'.

Lib taught me about Southern society and about the social and moneyed elite of the South. While Lib was the queen bee of Meridian to Pascagoula society; Mother had been a recluse. The contrast of styles taught me a lot and the similarities of the social structures were striking.

Beau was superlative with women and could lead men, but he didn't relate nearly as well with men as with women. Unlike Beau, Will preferred the company of men and had closer male friends than women friends. Part of the difference was that Beau had gone to elementary and high school in the coed public school system of Mississippi, while Will had been educated in male-only private schools and prep school. To Will, women were another thing to be conquered and they provided sex, but not friendship or companionship. That changed with Brooke, his mate who displaced his buddies as Will's main companion and confidant.

Beau had taught me a lot about women. We had talked about the South and Southern women. But it was watching his confidence and skills of seduction that showed me how to be successful within the A coed group, the socially elite women of the Old South and small town Southern women. For the better part of two months, I had daily bedded different socially elite sorority coeds at the University. I had gone through a partially steroid induced manic period, where I was driven to conquer many different coeds. I had found that I could be successful like Will had been, but I wasn't a lover like Beau. During that period, I had learned about women and more about myself.

Social position, wealth, and power gave me access to many women. Lib and Beau had taught me about women, and a little about reading women. I had learned that boldness and confidence were successful with many women. After my first year at Alabama, I knew that if I wanted, I could be a player in the hooking up social scene of the Hamptons and Long Island. I also recognized that physical beauty drew me more than social position, wealth, and power; and that sometimes, I acted irrationally and was affected strongly the beauty of women; much more so than Beau or Will were.

Lib was a master at understanding Southern Society and Beau had almost instinctively absorbed much of her knowledge. The Lauders gave me entre to Southern Society, much like Lowell/Josephs, Mother's family, gave Beau entre to Long Island and Hamptons Society. I would always be a bit of an outsider in Southern society, like Beau wouldn't be in the Bluebook, but we were acceptable in the other's society.

My first year at the University of Alabama exceeded my expectations academically. My grades were good, but more importantly, my writing skills had improved a couple orders of magnitude, both in the quality and speed of my writing. Professor McWilliams had taught me writing skills that I knew would assist me to be successful in law school.

In the just over a year I had been back from Vietnam, I had also met women I admired; foremost was Brooke, but I also admired Cathryn, Eunice, Lib, and Carolyn. My feelings for and admiration of Dorothy had grown over the year. I recognized and accepted that I had special feelings for Dorothy.

I had made mistakes and suffered emotional loses too; starting with Mary, and then to a lesser extent with Carolyn, Sadye, Dorothy, Jeanette, Jane, and finally Karen. The hurt with Mary changed me, and though I tried, I still wasn't able to put that hurt to rest.

Over the summer, I hoped to gain insight and mature. I wanted to be prepared for a better second year at Alabama. I didn't want to have a sophomore slump. The University and DKE would be different without Beau, but I had no doubts about doing okay with the coeds. I would miss Beau's smoothness and Cathryn's support. And I knew I would miss having Thornton and Eunice in Tuscaloosa. The year had provided me with the confidence that I could be successful with coeds at any college that I attended, and with women wherever I was. I was learning to enjoy women without the need to conquer them. I had also learned about dominance and female submissiveness.

I smiled as I thought of the difference in the feeling that sunrise over Lauderdale Plantation left with me in comparison with the feeling I got from sunrise on the wire in Vietnam. That reflection had changed from one that depressed me to one that grounded me and gave me perspective.

After a hardy breakfast of fresh biscuits, light sorghum molasses, country ham, grits and eggs with Lib, Hub and Beau, Beau and I took off from Lauderdale Plantation's airstrip for Long Island. Beau was in the left seat, piloting my Aero Commander. I tried to relax; well, as much as I could with someone else at the controls of my baby.

He climbed my plane above the clouds and engaged the autopilot. "Dad's ordered a turbo Bonanza for me. A plane will make it easier to get home from Oxford. I'll need it; Ole Miss is almost to Memphis."

"I hear they're faster and more fun to fly than this airliner; but she suits me."

"The pressurized cabin is really nice. It gives you so many more comfortable options. She's a nice plane. If she'd been my first airplane, I'd have a hard time giving her up too."

I asked, "What did you decide about the professorship at Ole Miss?"

"I had dreamed of teaching at Ole Miss for some time, but it's foolish. It's not like you or I need a work/study job to finance school. I need to concentrate on 'the law'. I think I should spend my free time learning about investment banking. This summer with Will and a summer with your grandfather should establish my position in those areas in the Mississippi legal and banking community. That's the image I want my classmates and the banking and legal community to receive, not of me as a writer/historian. That was the main reason I gave up the Historian position with the Guard. The other was I really felt like a fraud."

I responded softly, "I feel like a fraud often. What's the hurry in finishing law school? You're too gifted a writer and historian to stop writing. I doubt if Hub's pushing you to finish early."

"Dad's fifty-eight. We've talked about the good and the bad of marrying late. He doesn't want to work much longer."

"Hub's a lot like my mother's father was; DuPont and the corporate world weren't for him. Grandmother said my grandfather loved the woodlands. I'm not sure how crazy he was about the lumber or paper business though. Some parts of St. Joe are a mess. I suspect St. Joe was an excuse to have more forest land. If it hadn't been for Will, I'm sure I'd be in the City taking my place as a Jenkins in the bank and law firm. Will relieved the pressure from me to be a Wall Street lawyer and banker, and that allowed Mother and Grandmother Joseph to influence me."

Beau said, "I think you're right about my father. I believe Dad would have been happier just running the Plantation or the forestry company. He wants me to take over our Meridian activities as quickly as I can. I think I would like the challenge to be the dominant investment banker in Mississippi."

"Is taking over the Meridian operation what you want?"

Beau said, "I've been preparing to for some time. Mom and Dad have transferred most of Lauderdale common stock to a family trust account for me. We have people in place who can help me with most things. Investment banking could be my contribution."

I said, "I'm not really that interested doing many of the things Will wants to do. But like your dad said at Thanksgiving, we have a responsibility to use our capital to help others. For Will, the scorecard is making money. I'm not sure he would be motivated by the Lauder responsibility for Lauderdale and Lauderdale County; he's into the deal. I think I'm somewhere in between. I want to do something for my buddies from Vietnam and the families of the men in my company who didn't make it back. And Alabama feels right. If I hadn't had my Vietnam experience, I would have probably sleepwalked through Yale and have become a recluse, like Mother. I feel a duty to those men and their families."

Beau smiled and said, "I had planned to live in the penthouse of our hotel in downtown Meridian, and make Hugh Hefner jealous with women, women, and more women. Will and your grandfather made me understand that I have to do a lot of work quickly or Lauderdale will be overpowered by larger, non-local financial operations. I have to grow up. I can't wait until I'm thirty-five like dad did."

"Except for Hefner, I guess we all have to grow up eventually. Winston said his mother-in-law's favorite expression is, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.' I think she's right. Things don't turn out as planned. I never expected to be in Alabama."

"A bitch isn't it?"

"Yeah, really," I replied, "I feel really sorry for us this summer. A couple of twenty-two and twenty-three-year old, almost handsome, wealthy young men with an apartment on 72nd Street and Central Park West, a house on the Hamptons, and a place on Martha's Vineyard; and I shouldn't leave out this expensive toy. We have my prep school contacts and Will's, who can line us up with the crème de la crème of the young women in the City and on the Island. We have access to the best private clubs in the City. We have it rough."

Beau said, "Then you agree that we are going to have fun this summer; we shouldn't waste the opportunity, right?"

"Within limits; I can't do what you do. It doesn't work for me; I learned that this winter."

"Tell me about the Hamptons crowd."

"I don't have much experience there. A principal in J. Walter Thompson has a place a couple of doors down from our Hamptons place. He works with a lot of models. Will says he has great parties. I went to one party after an ad shoot at his place, where I met a couple of models from the Ford Agency; one gave me her telephone number. That's about it for my Hamptons experience. Will is the one who really knows that crowd; he practically lived there when he wasn't in college and prep school. There are a slew of Wall Street types like Will out there. And the Hamptons is the in place for the young beautiful women to hang out. It's the same as girls partying at DKE; they put out to be with the players. You won't have any trouble."

Beau said, "I don't want to hear 'that' crowd. This summer we are 'that' crowd. Let's have fun with it and them."

I nodded.

Beau asked, "Are you still planning on going to law school?"

"Sure, I haven't said anything about changing my mind about that. I want to do well in law school. It's important to me and Grandfather."

Beau's tone got very serious. "Is Dorothy going to be okay? Mom and I worry about both of you."

"I think a baby will help Dorothy and Fred."

Beau said, "I don't know if I could not know if the baby were mine."

"The baby isn't mine. The baby is Dorothy and Fred's."

Beau nodded. "I don't know what to do about Libby."

I was quiet. It's share confidences time.

"She's perfect for me and she makes me feel things other girls don't, but she's just seventeen. I want her to have fun in college, to experience the fun and social life of college."

"What does Libby want?"

"She says she wants me; that she doesn't need the other things. I had hoped she wouldn't go to Ole Miss. That's not saying it correctly; Ole Miss is perfect for her, but I had hoped she would experience college and me not get in her way."

"Thornton and Eunice don't seem to feel they missed anything by not being with others. I think they've been together since Avondale Elementary."