Read Online On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett - Free Book Online Page A

perfect mother. She
        could, if she had wanted to, have married a John Kennedy, a Paul Newman, a
        Prince Ranier, or a Rockefeller. Instead, she had fallen in love with Ross
        Perot from Texarkana, Texas; five feet seven with a broken nose and nothing
        in his pocket but hopes. All his life Perot had believed he was lucky. Now,
        at the age of forty-eight, he could look back and see that the luckiest
        thing that ever happened to him was Margot.
        He was a happy man with a happy family, but a shadow had fallen over them
        this Christmas. Perot's mother was dying. She had bone cancer. On Christmas
        Eve she had fallen at home: it was not a heavy fall, but because the cancer
        had weakened her bones, she had broken her hip and had to be rushed to
        Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas.
        Perot's sister, Bette, spent that night with their mother, then, on
        Christmas Day, Perot and Margot and the five children loaded the presents
        into the station wagon and drove to the hospital. Grandmother was in such
        good spirits that they all thoroughly enjoyed their day. However, she did
        not want to see them the following day: she knew they had planned to go
        skiing, and she insisted they go, despite her illness. Margot and the
        children left for Vail on December 26, but Perot stayed behind.
        ON WINGS OF EAGLES 47
     
        There followed a battle of wills such as Perot had fought with his mother
        in childhood. Lulu May Perot was only an inch or two, over five feet, and
        slight, but she was no more fi-ail than a sergeant in the marines. She told
        him he worked hard and he needed the holiday. He replied that he did not
        want to leave her. Eventually the doctors intervened, and told him he was
        doing her no good by staying against her will. The next day he joined his
        family in Vail. She had won, as she always had when he was a boy.
        One of their battles had been fought over a Boy Scout trip. There had been
        flooding in Texarkana, and the Scouts were planning to camp near the
        disaster area for three days and help with relief work. Young Perot was
        determined to go, but his mother knew that he was too young-he would only
        be a burden to the scoutmaster. Young Ross kept on and on at her, and she
        just smiled sweetly and said no.
        The time he won a concession from her: he was allowed to go and help pitch
        tents the first day, but he had to come home in the evening. It wasn't much
        of a compromise. But he was quite incapable of defying her. He just had to
        imagine the scene when he would come home, and think of the words he would
        use to tell her that he had disobeyed her---and he knew he cotdd not do it.
        He was never spanked. He could not remember even being yelled at. She did
        not rule him by fear. With her fair hair, blue eyes, and sweet nature, she
        bound him-and his sister, Beft-in chains of love. She would just look you
        in the eye and ten you what to do, and you simply could not bring yourself
        to make her unhappy.
        Even at the age of twenty-three, when Ross had been around the world and
        come home again, she would say: "Who have you got a date with tonight?
        Where are you going? What time will you be back?" And when he came home he
        would always have to kiss her good night. But by this time their battles
        were few and far between, for her principles were so deeply embedded in him
        that they had become his own. She now ruled the family Ue a constitutional
        monarch, wearing the trappings of power and legitimizing the real
        decision-makers.
        He had inherited more than her principles. He also had her iron will. He,
        too, had a way of looking, people