—No, ma’am. I’m all set.
When she retreated to her desk, Emmett pulled the volumes he needed, brought them to one of the tables, and took a seat.
For much of 1952, Emmett’s father had been wrestling with one illness or another. But it was a flu he couldn’t shake in the spring of ’53 that prompted Doc Winslow to send him to Omaha for some tests. In the letter Emmett’s father sent to Salina a few months later, he assured his son that he was back on his feet and well on the road to recovery. Nonetheless, he had agreed to make a second trip to Omaha so that the specialists could do a few more tests, as specialists are wont to do.
Reading the letter, Emmett wasn’t fooled by his father’s folksy assurances or his wry remark on the penchants of medical professionals. His father had been using mollifying words for as long as Emmett could remember. Mollifying words to describe how the planting had gone, how the harvest was coming, and why their mother was suddenly nowhere to be found. Besides, Emmett was old enough to know that the road to recovery was rarely lined with repeat visits to specialists.
Any doubts as to Mr. Watson’s prognosis were swept aside one morning in August when he stood up from the breakfast table and fainted right before Billy’s eyes, prompting a third trip to Omaha, this one in the back of an ambulance.
That night—after Emmett had received the call from Doc Winslow in the warden’s office—a plan began to take shape. Or to be more accurate, it was a plan that Emmett had been toying with for months in the back of his mind, but now it was in the forefront, presenting itself in a series of variations that differed in timing and scope, but which always took place somewhere other than Nebraska. As his father’s condition deteriorated over the fall, the plan became sharper; and when he died that April, it was clear as could be—as if Emmett’s father had surrendered his own vitality to ensure the vitality of Emmett’s intentions.
The plan was simple enough.
As soon as Emmett was out of Salina, he and Billy were going to pack their things and head to some metropolitan area—somewhere without silos or harvesters or fairgrounds—where they could use what little remained of their father’s legacy to buy a house.
It didn’t have to be a grand house. It could be a three-or four-bedroom with one or two baths. It could be colonial or Victorian, clapboard or shingled. What it had to be was in disrepair.
Because they wouldn’t be buying this house to fill it with furniture and tableware and art, or with memories, for that matter. They’d be buying the house to fix it up and sell it. To make ends meet, Emmett would get a job with a local builder, but in the evenings while Billy was doing his schoolwork, Emmett would be setting the house right, inch by inch. First, he’d do whatever work was needed on the roof and windows to ensure the house was weather tight. Then he’d shift his attention to the walls, doors, and flooring. Then the moldings and banisters and cabinets. Once the house was in prime condition, once the windows opened and closed and the staircase didn’t creak and the radiators didn’t rattle, once every corner looked finished and fine, then and only then would they sell.
If he played his cards right, if he picked the right house in the right neighborhood and did the right amount of work, Emmett figured he could double his money on the first sale—allowing him to invest the proceeds in two more run-down houses, where he could start the process over again. Only this time, when the two houses were finished, he would sell one and rent out the other. If Emmett maintained his focus, within a few years he figured he’d have enough money to quit his job and hire a man or two. Then he’d be renovating two houses and collecting rent from four. But at no time, under any circumstances, would he ever borrow a dime.
Other than his own hard work, Emmett figured there was only one thing essential to his success, and that was to pursue his plan in a metropolitan area that was big and getting bigger. With that in mind, he had visited the little library at Salina, and with volume eighteen of the Encyclopedia Britannica open on the table, he had written down the following:
Population of Texas
1920
4,700,000
1930
5,800,000
1940
6,400,000
1950
7,800,000
1960E
9,600,000
When Emmett had the Texas entry in front of him, he hadn’t even bothered to read the opening paragraphs—the ones that summarized the state’s history, its commerce, culture, and climate. When he saw that between 1920 and 1960 the population would more than double, that was all he needed to know.