Tail Gait

by Rita Mae Brown

  “It won’t last,” the engineer predicted.

  “Can we finish this side?”

  “Lieutenant, maybe one more log, two.” He held up two fingers in his torn gloves. “When it breaks, well?” He shrugged.

  “All right. Take charge, Corporal. I’ll seek out Captain Schuyler. He’s here somewhere. Maybe we can find more rope.”

  He walked toward the main house serving as headquarters as well as the commandant’s residence, a point of dissatisfaction on the commandant’s side. The soles of his boots gapped in sections, the cold seeping through, and when it snowed his feet were always wet and ice cold. It hurt to walk.

  A little wind devil twirled in front of him, debris swirling, and a bit of sleet as the clouds finally reached him.

  Squinting, he saw Captain Schuyler striding toward the house, coming from the direction of the stables.

  “Captain,” Charles called to him, trotting in the tall man’s direction, then slowing, as trotting hurt worse than walking.

  “Lieutenant.” John Schuyler smiled. “Filthy weather.”

  “I fear frostbite as much as I feared battle.”

  “Did you fear battle?” Schuyler’s eyebrows rose up.

  “Yes, until the guns opened. Then I was fine,” the blood Englishman honestly replied.

  “H-m-m. I miss it.” Looking at the shivering lieutenant, Schuyler kindly offered, “Come back to the stables. It’s warmer there. The heat from the horses’ bodies does help and we’d be out of the wind.” He glanced up at the house. “I am not needed there. Just going for news.”

  “And what have you heard?”

  The wind, perhaps fifteen miles an hour, smacked them in the face as they walked to the barn.

  “The old-timers say this is the worst winter they remember.”

  Charles smiled. “What do you say, Captain?”

  “Nothing. I can’t do anything about it.”

  Smiling, they ducked into the sturdy barn, privates and corporals tending to the animals, each of whom had a blanket or a rug as well as good hay.

  “Ah.” Charles breathed relief, stamped his feet lightly.

  “What I have heard is everyone is in winter quarters. And the Crown refuses to budge on accepting the prisoner-of-war terms fashioned at Saratoga. Your long march presages a long stay.”

  Charles nodded. “Hard on some of the men. They truly thought they would be going home so long as they took an oath not to return and fight here. For me, I would have tried to get sent to the Caribbean. Somewhere I could serve but not break my oath here.”

  “I lay this at Burgoyne’s door. He refused to list and describe all officers under his command who had been captured.”

  Charles considered this. “Yes, we heard that.” When Schuyler’s black eyebrows rose up, Charles smiled. “Prisoners have big ears.”

  They both laughed.

  “I wouldn’t want to be in Gentleman Johnny’s shoes.” Schuyler called the British general by his nickname. “The loss of Saratoga will weigh on him the rest of his life.”

  “Yes, it will, and given his position, his flamboyance, he will never rest.” Charles felt some sympathy for the general. “I was looking for you. Could you spare my men heavy rope? Corporal Ix has rigged up a pulley so we can build barracks faster, and the rope is about to go.”

  “Private.”

  A young man, fifteen, perhaps, stood up straight. “Yes, Sir.”

  “If there is heavy rope in here or up in the loft, bring it to me.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Let’s get out of the aisle. A thrown bale of hay is as bad as a cannonball, especially the way these lads toss them around.” Schuyler turned and ducked, for the door was low, into a tidy room at the southern end of the barn.

  Rows of saddles hung on the wall; the odor of leather was comforting. The bits on the bridles gleamed. Harnesses took up one entire wall.

  Noticing all this, Charles said, “The leather work is good.”

  “Every town has at least one tannery. Competition between the people. The English want to be the best with bridles, tanned leather. The Germans think they are, and in those areas where there are Italians, I must say their work is good—light, though. Better for boots, I think.”

  A light rap on the door. “Captain.”

  “Come in.”

  The slight young man carried a heavy rope that probably weighed as much as he did. “Where shall I put this, Sir?”

  “Oh, right here and”—he didn’t know the fellow’s name—“come to me if you need anything.”

  Captain John Schuyler really was learning. He would help the young fellow, but the unspoken command was “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” The boy shut the door, made of planks in a Z shape to hold the wood together.

  Charles eagerly picked up the rope.

  “It has been some time since we’ve been at Ewing Garth’s. The road, still rough, is an improvement, but there’s much to do. I hope we will get there before spring but—” A troubled expression crossed his features. “There’s much uncertainty. I asked to return to my old regiment and was refused. I was told that I’m here in Virginia and I will be sent to a Virginia unit in time. Meanwhile, I guard you.” He smiled.

  “You do, Sir. You do.” Charles smiled back.

  “I did hear that Colonel Harvey is up at the congress. He’s offering us more land to house prisoners. The additional acres are between where we now stand and Peter Ashcombe’s land.”

  Charles threw the heavy rope over his shoulder. “How is it I haven’t heard that name before? Ashcombe?”

  “Loyalist.”

  “Did you burn him out?”

  Surprised, John answered, “When this broke out I was home in western Massachusetts, but I don’t think Virginians burnt him out. The Loyalists seemed to have gotten away. Peter Ashcombe fled to Philadelphia, pledged himself to General Howe as a civilian quartermaster.”

  “Confusing. When we win he will be richly rewarded. And should we not, will he hang?” asked Charles.

  “Ah, Lieutenant,” John replied, a broad smile on his face. “That is the first time you have admitted the Crown may lose. Will lose.” Then he added, “The Ashcombe tract is an original land grant. It goes back over one hundred years, and Ewing Garth’s father bought part of it. It’s good land.”

  “Even if we win, I wonder, will Ashcombe return? He will find himself in difficulty.” Charles imagined the fellow’s reception despite his wealth.

  “And if we win”—John’s voice rose a bit—“I say the land is privately owned. It will not revert to the Crown. So Ashcombe can wait until passions cool. He has retainers working the land now. Men who favor us.”

  “The lawyers will be busy for decades.”

  “Lieutenant, I suspect you are right.”

  As they left the tack room, Captain Schuyler paused. “One moment.”

  He returned to the tack room, came out to hand Charles a heavy cloth. “For your boots.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “I have read and reread every one of Aesop’s Fables. As we won’t be going to the Garth farm for some time, I would like to thank Miss Ewing and tell her which ones I enjoyed.”

  “No.”

  This surprised the tall, dark man. “Why?”

  “A gentleman would not write to a lady, especially a lady of marriageable age, without her father’s permission. Of course, love being what it is, it happens more frequently than not. But if you are to show you are a gentleman, you must write her father.”

  “Blast! What can I say to him?”

  “Simple, and I will write it in good hand. You tell him that you and Corporal Ix have been considering his bridge and you’d like to suggest more improvements. Tell him the road will be truly finished come spring but there may be ways to improve the bridge and the traffic thereon. Remember, Captain, he’s a man who believes in profit. Then yo
u mention, as a courtesy, that you will be heartened to see him again, and you hope that he and his daughters get through this bitter winter without incident.”

  A large sigh escaped, then John nodded slightly. “You are very clever.”

  “I was raised as a gentleman. I don’t know how clever I am.” A pause, then Charles took the rag and said, “But I rather like thinking of myself as clever.” He almost reached out to touch Schuyler on the shoulder but thought better of it. “Thank you for the rope.”

  May 1, 2015

  Resting across from Lee Park, the main library in downtown Charlottesville was in the old post office at 201 East Market Street. Like all those post offices built from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, the building was imposing, restrained, and well made. Its white pillars lent the massive shape a bit of lightness. Having been converted to a library, the once lovely interior had been violated to serve a different kind of public. The décor is what passed for efficiency at the time (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) and did indeed serve the reading public well. Ugly though the interior was, the fantastic people who worked there more than made up for it.

  Deputy Cooper sat at a computer screen in a cubicle off the center area. Those nearby and reading glanced up from time to time, keeping an eye on the blonde in uniform. A few vagrants walked in, spotted an officer, and walked out. Others, library patrons, searching for information, walked by, frankly stared, but kept walking.

  After hearing Harry’s latest intelligence from Snoop, Cooper asked the head librarian if she could see what Frank had been reading. The Patriot Act allows law enforcement officials to pry into ordinary citizens’ reading habits, thinking they might not be ordinary citizens, but terrorists posing as same. Coop, a county officer, claimed no such privilege, but after speaking to one of the librarians who in fact recognized Frank, she was allowed to scan his records. Fallen though Frank was, a bit of that old masculine magic remained. All the women working in the library knew him, nodded to him, and were recognized in turn.

  Now and then, Cooper took a break from the screen, which hurt her eyes. She looked over her notes. Frank preferred nineteenth-century literature, most of it out of fashion now. He’d checked out again and again all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, including the non–Sherlock Holmes books. He read the memoirs of any secretary of state who had written of foreign affairs of his or her time in office. He’d twice checked out the books of George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. He read everything Henry Kissinger ever wrote, along with masses of books on the American Revolution, some written from the British point of view. She scribbled down a few of these, scrolled down the screen more. When she saw Fifty Shades of Grey, she laughed out loud.

  Frank did not incline toward fiction, but she found, after that initial shock, more soft-core books written for women. Poor Frank, late to the game.

  —

  She finished up and asked if she might interview a few of the staff who worked the floor. A young lady, perhaps in her mid-twenties, came into the small conference room, closing the door behind her.

  “Emma Quayle?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, Officer.”

  “This won’t take long. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Frank Cresey. Your boss mentioned that you probably saw him more than anyone, as you often are in charge of the front desk.”

  “I am.”

  “How did he behave?”

  She blinked, thought for a moment, then replied, “He was quiet, always polite.”

  “Was he clean?”

  “Yes. His clothes were torn and I worried about him in the winter. His jeans were thin, holes in them, and he wore old sweaters. The staff and I found a parka that would fit him and we gave it to him for Christmas.”

  “So, Miss Quayle, you all liked him?”

  “Oh, yes. He was never trouble, and if someone came in here off the mall, drunk or, I don’t know, just loud or bizarre, Frank would take them outside. He was protective of us.” She folded her hands together. “We were all so sad, upset, when we read what had happened.”

  “I can imagine. Have you any idea who might have wished him ill? Did he ever mention a problem or a person who was a problem?”

  She shook her head. “No. He was quiet. And he read a lot.”

  “Yes, that I know.” Cooper smiled.

  After dismissing Miss Quayle, she briefly questioned three other staff members, then spoke to the head librarian, Mrs. Deveraux, in her well-lit office.

  “You have good people working here.”

  “Thank you. Some might think that being a librarian is an easy job, a soft one, but these days, not hardly,” the slender lady observed.

  “Well, I know, like the sheriff’s department, you all are constrained by budget.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Mrs. Deveraux smiled. “And like you all, we deal with the public day in, day out. A library is a community resource. There are lectures, meetings, outreach activities. The bookmobile, things like that. And we try to help those who can’t read very well. We do a lot of work with the various literacy programs. You would be shocked, Deputy, to know how many illiterate citizens live in Albemarle County, one of the richest counties in this country.”

  Cooper blinked. She was surprised. “I had no idea. On the issue of serving all, you see a lot of the residents, for lack of a better word, who live on the mall?”

  She nodded. “A few. Frank was our true reader. Some of the others come in and pretend to read on those cruelly cold days or when the weather is dreadful. When I first started my career, we had no training to deal with the homeless. We do now.” She stopped, then her voice lowered. “I think law enforcement, librarians, and postal workers see more than many others. Those without a home or much hope find us, if for nothing else, a brief touch of security.”

  “I wish I had an answer,” Cooper responded.

  “I wish I did, too.” Mrs. Deveraux brightened. “For all that, it’s a wonderful career, at least it has been for me. We are at the center of the community, we know so many people who are doing things. You learn a lot and you make good friends.”

  “What was your opinion of Frank Cresey?”

  “Lost. Carried a deep sense of failure. He had a curious mind, when it was clear. Like so many people with alcohol damage, he’d killed a lot of brain cells.”

  “Ever troublesome?”

  “Never.”

  “Any ideas as to who might have wanted him dead?” the deputy asked.

  “None.” Her mouth straightened, tight. “He’d ruined his life. He was a vagrant and, unfortunately, an alcoholic, but he didn’t deserve to be killed and stuck under a tree.”

  Cooper looked into her eyes. “That’s why I am here, Mrs. Deveraux, to find his killer.”

  —

  That afternoon was breezy and warm, promising a wonderful first day of May. Snoop had been canvassed on the mall for labor. Given the good weather, people were landscaping like mad, a pent-up demand after a long, hard winter. Snoop and two other men from the mall were picked up by one of Paul Huber’s landscaping trucks, a four-door three-quarter-ton Ford, so they all fit in.

  He sat in the backseat, bouncing down Garth Road toward The Barracks, out where a series of expensive houses were being constructed on a few acres. To the people buying these huge houses, ten acres seemed like quite a lot of land. At least they could protect themselves from their neighbors by planting rows of border trees, usually Leyland cypress, since they grew fast. Snoop figured that’s what they would be doing today, digging holes, lots of holes, in a straight line.

  The truck pulled up to a humongous eight-thousand-square-foot brick, neo-Georgian mansion, nearly finished. Snoop was last out of the truck, and the flapping sole of his shoe became loose. Cursing, he looked down, his duct tape had worn through. Standing next to the truck’s open door, he placed the exhausted shoe back up on the stair rail, a shiny chrome tube, to see if he could rewrap the sole, but the tape was shot and not a thread of adhesive was l
eft.

  “Dammit.” He put his foot back on the brown pea-rock drive, when a familiar shape caught his eye.

  Tucked under the truck’s front seat was his letter opener, the one Snoop gave to Frank.

  Hastily, he pulled it out. Something covered the wooden blade. It looked like dried blood.

  May 2, 2015

  Bouncing along on her John Deere, Harry plowed some back acres that she’d fertilized in mid-April. As winter proved long and hard, like other farmers, she waited it out, pushing back chores that normally were accomplished in April.

  That glorious morning, clear, in the mid-fifties, seemed to invite celebration. Overhead red-shouldered hawks cried out; regiments of robins inspected what Harry had plowed, knowing worms would turn up. Blackbirds sat in the trees doing what they do best: gossiping. Rabbits, squirrels, foxes, deer, bobcats, and, higher up in the mountains, bear all wandered about, thrilled with the weather.

  As she’d started at sunup, Harry rolled toward the barn on the last strip. Looking behind her, satisfied that she’d not missed any ground, she chugged along, just as happy as those creatures playing and chirping around her.

  Pulling into the large work shed, she cut the tractor’s motor, climbed down.

  She looked for Mrs. Murphy and the others, but they were nowhere in sight.

  “Lazy bums.” She smiled, suspecting they were sprawled in the tack room or kitchen.

  Inside the four-bay shed, on the wall, a huge thermometer, a big black hand on a white dial with degrees, told her it was now exactly fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Next to that hung an old clock, a Remington advertisement for the face, its electric cord tacked against the wall to an outlet.

  Seeing it was 8:20 A.M., she dusted herself off, wiped her hands on an old clean rag, checked the clock again, and headed back to the kitchen in the house.

  Since he was up most of the night with a mare foaling, Fair now slept. Pushing open the screen door, then the kitchen door quietly, Harry sat at the table and wrote him a note. Then, taking from the refrigerator a wonderful egg-and-bacon quiche she’d made, she put it in the oven but didn’t turn it on. She left her husband directions, not that he couldn’t have figured it out. Fair had mastered the basic domestic arts, but still.