“I’ve planned on your staying here tonight,” she said. “Will you?”
“I’d like to,” he said.
“And how about every night?” she said in a shaky voice.
“You mean move in here?”
“Would you like to?”
“I want to be with you every moment that I can,” he said truthfully.
“You wouldn’t have to give up your apartment in town,” she said. “I’m not asking for that.”
“You’re not going back to Atlanta, then?”
“Not for a long time. A long, long time. Maybe never.”
Briefly Tate thought about Kip and what that fool had so easily given up. He also thought about Kip’s picture, which even in this tender moment was staring at him from atop Maggie’s dresser.
He disengaged himself from Maggie, went to the dresser and picked up the picture frame.
“I don’t mind a ghost or two, but if I’m going to live here, I won’t be able to sleep very well with this staring at me from across the room,” he said.
Maggie grinned and held out her hands. He tossed her the frame and she pulled out the photograph.
“I think it’s a good night to build a fire in the fireplace, don’t you?” she said, tearing Kip’s picture into little pieces.
“Exactly,” Tate said, returning her grin, and he went out to get the firewood.
Chapter Ten
The director of the Scot’s Cove Historical Society Museum, a tiny birdlike woman named Lucille Dunn, was delighted that someone was asking about the real people behind the local Lover’s Leap legend and even more pleased when Maggie told her that she was descended from Peg Macintyre.
“The Lover’s Leap legend has overshadowed the real people behind the story,” Lucille told them. “Actually, there was more to Peg and Tsani than the legend leads us to believe.”
Maggie and Tate followed Lucille to a dusty file room where she pulled out a folder and spread the contents on a library table. She invited them to join her in sifting through the contents.
The first thing she pointed out was an obituary clipping, yellow with age, about John Garvey Macintyre, who had been mayor of the town of Scot’s Cove for twenty years. Lucille told them that this son of Peg and Tsani had added his stepfather’s surname to his birth name when he reached legal age to do so.
“Peg’s marriage to Harry Garvey was widely known to be unhappy, even though it lasted less than a year. Everyone knew that her son John was the son of Tsani, not Harry Garvey,” Lucille said. “You can bet it wasn’t talked about much in those days, though. John went on to become a hero in the War Between the States, fighting for the South, of course. He almost single-handedly revived the town during the Reconstruction years, and later he was mayor until he died in the early 1900s.”
“Why, he’s the spit and image of Tsani,” Tate said before he thought, quickly adding, “the way Tsani must have looked, I mean.” Although Maggie looked at him strangely, she didn’t say anything.
“Yes, he most definitely resembled the Cherokee side of the family,” Lucille said briskly.
Good thing Ms. Dunn was too preoccupied with the past to notice Tate’s uncanny resemblance to Tsani.
“Are there any pictures of Peg?” Maggie asked.
“None have survived, but she was reputed to have been a beauty,” Lucille said. “She moved back to the cabin where she grew up with her parents after she was widowed, her parents having both died of a fever by that time. Peg became well-known in these parts as a musician.”
Maggie and Tate exchanged glances.
“Do you know what instrument she played?” ventured Maggie.
“She was an expert player of the mountain dulcimer,” Lucille said as the telephone rang in another room. She excused herself, and Maggie and Tate stared at each other, their eyes wide.
“Wow,” Maggie breathed.
“If there ever was any doubt about what the music and voices mean, this puts it to rest,” Tate said.
“This absolutely blows me away,” Maggie said. “I mean, I wondered what exactly was going on in the cabin, and now I find out that she played the dulcimer. It must have been the thing that people associated with her most. She must have gained great pleasure from her music.”
“I think so, too,” Tate said as Lucille hung up the phone.
When Lucille returned, she seemed oblivious to their sense of discovery. “As it happens, Peg Macintyre lived to be more than ninety years old,” she said briskly. “In the early nineteen hundreds, when a couple of Princeton University ethnologists passed through here to learn about the customs of the people who lived in these mountains, they recorded Peg playing her dulcimer. Would you like to hear the recording?”
“Yes!” was Maggie’s answer, and Lucille went to a closet and removed a primitive phonograph with a big black horn protruding from the top.
“We’re so accustomed to all our high-tech stereo equipment that this Graphophone looks funny to us now, but it probably looked even funnier to the mountain folk who lived around here at the turn of the century. I’m sure it appeared very modern to them.”
“How does it work?” asked Maggie.
“Wax cylinders were inserted into the machine, and whatever was to be recorded was spoken or played into the horn. A stylus made impressions on the wax. Then it could be played back.” She held up a spool. “We have a small collection of these cylinders, willed to one of the local people who befriended the university ethnologists. This is one on which was recorded Peg Macintyre’s playing of the mountain dulcimer.”
Lucille inserted the cylinder and cranked the machine with a handle. She set an arm with a needle on the cylinder’s wax surface. “Listen,” she said.
The sound emitting from the phonograph was scratchy in the extreme, but Maggie caught her breath as she recognized the tune. It was the same plaintive, simple melody that she had heard over and over in her cabin.
“What is the name of that song?” she asked.
“It’s called ‘If I Could Fly,’ and it’s a ballad of lost love. Peg may have written it herself; it’s often been attributed to her.” Lucille paused for a moment, picked up the tune at the beginning of a verse, and began to sing.
“I’d be with my love if I could fly, I’d soar like an eagle up in the sky. He can’t return to the ties that bind, But if I could fly, my love I would find. Oh, sweet love, my love I would find.”
“I can see why that would be Peg’s favorite song,” Maggie said softly. “She wanted to be with Tsani.”
When the final chords of the music died, Lucille glanced at her watch. “It’s time for my lunch hour,” she said. “Since you’re so interested, why don’t you stay and look over the other items in the folder? When you’re through, you can leave the folder on my desk.”
“I know now what the next square of the quilt will be,” Maggie said after Lucille had left. “I’ll show Peg playing the dulcimer with all her children gathered around her, looking happy. I think that’s what her dulcimer music was supposed to tell me, Tate. She wanted me to know that she was happy in the cabin, finally.”
They studied old photos and letters from various Macintyres to other Macintyres, none of them important to Maggie, until Tate finally stretched and pushed his chair back from the table. “Aren’t you and the kiddo hungry?” he asked.
Maggie laughed. “The kiddo and I are starving,” she said as she began to put the things back into the folder. Her fingers lingered on the picture of John Garvey Macintyre, the son of Peg and Tsani.
“What makes you think that he looks so much like Tsani?” she asked him curiously.
“I saw Tsani in my vision,” Tate said.
“You never mentioned that,” she said in surprise.
He shrugged.
“Neither Tsani nor Peg has been around lately,” Maggie said. “Have you noticed?”
“Perhaps they think that we’re getting along well enough without their help.”
Maggie laugh
ed. “They’ve got that right,” she said.
THE TINY SANDWICH SHOP down the street from the museum was crowded, and before she placed her order, Maggie checked the menu. As Bronwyn had said, they didn’t serve quiche. But they did, Maggie found out after she ordered one, make a fantastic chicken salad sandwich.
Because there was a crowd waiting for seats, Maggie and Tate ate as quickly as possible and vacated their booth as soon as they had finished. When they stepped outside, the reason for the crowd became obvious. People were flocking toward the courthouse in droves.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know. It looks like some kind of rally,” Tate replied as someone almost elbowed him off the narrow sidewalk in haste. He was as surprised by the situation as she was.
Scot’s Cove was teeming with people. Tate spied a van with the logo of an Asheville television station emblazoned on its side, and he recognized the station’s chief reporter, Casey Nichols. As public relations manager at Conso, Tate had often dealt with Casey but had never liked him much; he had an idea that Casey didn’t care for him, either.
Several people ran up the street carrying signs, and one of them almost knocked Maggie over as she ran past.
“Sorry!” the woman called back to them, but by that time Tate had pulled Maggie into a niche between two buildings. He kept his arm around her.
“Did you see what those signs said?” Maggie asked him.
“Something about Conso,” Tate told her.
The crowd was growing by the minute. By craning his neck around the corner, Tate could see that a dais had been erected in front of the Confederate monument near the courthouse steps. A few members of the crowd looked angry, others merely excited. Tate knew some of the fellows who looked the angriest; they were the notorious town rowdies and sure to turn up wherever they could find trouble.
Everyone else, however, looked peaceable, including several mild-mannered grandmotherly types with children in tow. He finally decided that he and Maggie might as well attend. First, however, he thought he’d saunter over and say hello to Casey Nichols.
“Wait here,” he told Maggie, and he went across the street to confront Casey.
“Well,” said Casey, looking Tate up and down and taking in the long hair and lace-up moccasins. “How are things in the great outdoors?”
“Fine, Casey,” he said, and they shook hands. “I guess you drove over from Asheville for the big happening.”
“I sure did. I didn’t think I’d run into you, though. I thought you’d gone from Conso for good.”
“I’m on six months’ leave,” Tate said.
“You’re going back then?”
“Next week,” Tate replied. He stuck his hands in his pockets and adopted a nonchalant air. “Say, do you know what time this thing is supposed to start?”
“At one o’clock. I’ve been wondering if Conso plans to send a spokesman.”
“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on whether or not they think the gathering is of any importance.”
“Oh, this is an important get-together, all right,” Casey said with a know-it-all grin. “With the Kalmia Conservation Coalition planning to announce an all-out campaign to change the zoning on Breadloaf Mountain, why wouldn’t it be?”
Tate’s heart sank. Perhaps the coalition had learned about Conso’s plans to double the number of mobile home sites in Balsam Heights and to renege on the wilderness park.
At that point, Casey was pulled away by a camera crew, and Tate sprinted back across the street to Maggie.
“Come on, let’s see what’s happening,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her in the direction of the platform, and as they went he explained to her what was going on.
As they approached the main body of the crowd, they saw a glamorous redhead approaching from the other direction. She caught sight of Tate and headed purposefully toward him.
“Hi, Tate. I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, her eyes sparkling. She looked questioningly from him to Maggie, her gaze lingering for a moment on their entwined hands.
“Jolene, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Maggie Macintyre, this is Jolene Ott. She’s head of the Kalmia Conservation Coalition.”
Jolene extended her hand. “Glad to meet you, Maggie. We’re always glad to enlist newcomers to our cause.”
“Oh, I don’t think you can call me a newcomer. My family has owned a place at the base of Flat Top Mountain ever since my ancestors settled in the 1700s. The Macintyre place?”
“Why, Maggie, of course I should have recognized your name. Your folks used to let me and my brothers and sisters fish in that little pond on your property when no one was in residence. It provided many a meal for our big family, I can tell you that.”
“Jolene, are you part of this?” Tate asked, gesturing loosely at the gathered crowd.
“I’m president of the coalition and the principal speaker. I hope you’re going to stick around.”
“Sure,” Tate said.
“Good. Uh-oh, I’d better go,” Jolene said before quickly mounting the steps and taking her place behind a lectern bearing the Kalmia Conservation Coalition logo. A man fiddled with the microphone, trying to adjust it to Jolene’s height. Jolene shuffled her papers and winked at someone in the crowd.
The crowd was quieting down in anticipation of the speaker, and Tate leaned over to speak directly into Maggie’s ear. “Jolene is Sharon Ott’s sister. You know—Rose O’Sharon, the folk singer? In fact, Jolene went away to Hollywood to live with her sister and at one time hoped to become an actress, but her career plans fell through. She came back to Scot’s Cove and got interested in environmental causes. She’s an effective spokesperson, as you’ll see.”
The microphone shrieked, and someone flicked a switch on the public address console.
“Welcome to the Rally for Reality,” Jolene said, and a cheer went up from the crowd.
Tate glimpsed TV cameras rolling from a vantage point on the courthouse steps. He looked in vain for someone from the public relations department at Conso. He would have thought they’d send someone.
At that point, he was jostled by someone and spun around to see that it was Albie Fentress, his good friend who was editor and publisher of the Scot’s Cove Messenger, the local twice-a-week newspaper.
“And we’ll tell Conso that we don’t need more pollution! We don’t need more garbage! We don’t need hordes of people sapping our limited social service resources! And we don’t need higher taxes!” Jolene was saying.
“Tate Jennings! I didn’t think I’d run into you here, man.” said Albie in a delighted stage whisper.
“I’m taking a leave from my leave of absence,” Tate whispered back.
“Leave of nonsense?”
“Stop it, Albie. You’re not that hard of hearing,” he said. Albie, who was in his early seventies, did wear a hearing aid, but there was no doubt in Tate’s mind that Albie was joshing him a little. Maggie, who couldn’t help overhearing, raised her eyebrows and looked as if she might laugh.
“And four members of the county council stand steadfastly behind the Kalmia Conservation Coalition!” Jolene said, and the people cheered.
Albie leaned closer. “Well, Tate, I know you would have at least sent someone to see what the coalition is saying about Conso,” he said.
“A good rule of thumb in public relations work is to know your enemies better than you know your friends,” Tate said.
“Whose rule is that?”
“Karl Shaeffer’s.”
“Hah!” said Albie. “As if he has any friends.”
“Well, Albie, do a fair job of reporting. Karl may warm up to you eventually.”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell when Karl warms up to anybody. Besides, reporting isn’t easy at present. My managing editor quit, and my star reporter is out with some bug. It’s up to me to do the job, I guess.”
“Shh,” hissed a bystander, and Albie shrugged his narrow shoulders
and whipped out a notebook.
Tate made himself concentrate on what Jolene was saying. “And if those folks at Conso want a fight, we’ll fight! And if they want to go to court, we’ll go to court! Because we don’t need five hundred septic tanks on Breadloaf Mountain!” she said.
So Jolene only knew about five hundred septic tanks; she must have no idea that the number had been doubled. Conso’s secret was safe, which was a relief. If this cheering crowd was any indication, all hell would break loose as soon as they got wind that the actual number of mobile home sites in Balsam Heights had been increased to a thousand and as for the park, well, he didn’t even want to think about what would happen when the coalition found out that there wasn’t going to be one.
Tate shot a look at Maggie. She was paying rapt attention, and so was everyone else. He shifted uneasily; the brass at Conso had seriously underestimated the fervor of these people who opposed them.
“And so, my friends, we’re conducting a membership drive for the Kalmia Conservation Coalition, and we intend to pressure every county commissioner until they all see things our way, not the Conso way!” Jolene pounded the lectern in her enthusiasm.
A wild outburst of cheering and shouts of “You said it!” and “Right on!” rose from the crowd, and someone waggled a sign back and forth for the television cameras. The sign said Don’t Put Breadloaf In Tin Boxes.
“What a good slogan,” murmured Maggie. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
It did have a certain cachet, Tate had to admit.
The cheering didn’t stop even when Jolene stepped down from the speaker’s platform. The group of roughnecks erupted in a fracas, which was immediately squelched by two or three self-appointed peacemakers. A straggling line of schoolchildren playing trumpets, trombones and one wheezing tuba marched around the outskirts of the crowd as volunteers handed out leaflets. Jolene herself tried to give one to Tate.
He grinned at her but waved it away. “You know my situation,” Tate said. “Since I’m technically an employee of Conso, I’d better not take it.”
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