Tail Gait

by Rita Mae Brown

  This reminded Harry, not that she needed reminding, of how curious Nelson’s mind was. “I never thought of that.”

  “Who would? That’s what made Ginger such a great professor. What did everyday people face? One of the best classes he ever taught was the class about love, sex, and marriage. Full attendance on that one.” Nelson laughed, fondly remembering his favorite professor.

  “I can imagine.”

  “Hey, our forefathers and foremothers felt lust, love, disappointment, dealt with pregnancy before marriage, you name it, and what I especially recall is how sensible much of them were. Sex is part of life. Doesn’t mean a man wouldn’t duel over it, but everyone understood the power of attraction.”

  “Today it’s the power of advertising.” Harry sighed.

  Nelson chuckled. “Oh, I think there’s more to it than that. Hey, to change the subject, the boys and I took up a collection for Frank’s burial once the body is released. I was surprised—dumbfounded, really—at how a few of his teammates, ’75, still bore a grudge against the old reprobate and refused to chip in.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “Some never forgave him for the showboating, all the press attention from so many years ago. A couple even said that if they hadn’t blocked for that S.O.B., he’d never have made all those touchdowns, never made All-American.”

  “What do you think?” Harry wondered.

  “I think in any sport, some are more talented than others, and some are in a class by themselves. Today, people would think of the Manning brothers. I remember their father, and he had it all. For me, it was thrilling to see Frank’s great talent. For others, not so much. Anyway, we scraped up enough to do right by him, and Marshall donated a burial plot. You know Marshall, he always goes the extra mile.”

  “Nelson, I try to go the extra mile, but someone always finds me and brings me back.”

  They signed off with laughter, Harry replacing the wall phone in its cradle. She sat down at the kitchen table, got up, sat down again.

  “Make up your mind,” Pewter fussed.

  Thinking the gray cat was hungry—she always was—Harry got up again and got everyone treats from the cabinet. Then she grabbed a Co-Cola, put ice in a glass, poured it, and once more sat at the table. She needed the caffeine and sugar.

  Having brought the maps in with her, she studied them again, which fortified her belief as to how the Huber Landscaping truck had driven in without notice.

  “She’s too quiet,” Mrs. Murphy observed.

  “Never a good sign,” Tucker concurred.

  Harry then thought about how lucky she was to live in a place where good men could throw in some money to bury another man who had made a shambles of his life.

  Albemarle County was a good place with good people, except someone living here was a murderer.

  May 4, 2015

  Mrs. Murphy and Tucker had been right about Harry’s silence. Provoked by the loss of an old family friend, surprised at the murder of a washed-up football player, she was convinced she could ferret out important facts.

  Taking out the list of books Frank had read in the last year, she called on Trudy. But before knocking on the front door, she examined the dwarf crepe myrtles along the drive. Trudy evidenced no surprise to see Harry watering her new shrubs at noon.

  When Trudy politely asked Harry inside for a cool drink, Harry and Tucker happily accepted. Trudy liked company.

  “The crepe myrtles are doing great.” Harry smiled. “Next year they’ll bloom even more. Of course, I selected the ones with heavy plumage. The trick is to get them rooted, secure, before the frosts come.”

  “Fortunately, there’s a long time before that.” Trudy sipped a sweetened iced tea.

  “True, but time goes so much faster than when I was in high school. Surprises me.”

  “Wait until you’re my age. Whoosh.” Trudy drew her hand over her head indicating a jet fighter. “Like a Blue Angel.”

  “Mom said the same thing about time flying, but now it seems she died young.”

  Trudy nodded. “Your mother had just turned fifty. Looked thirty.” She smiled. “A family trait. Your people never show their age.”

  “Thank you.” Harry dropped her hand to pet Tucker. “Blue Angels reminds me, didn’t the government stop the flying during the financial crisis? I don’t know why I thought of that, the money, I mean.”

  “Grandstanding.” Trudy grimaced. “I was shocked to hear about Frank Cresey, terrible though he was. But he was a kid spoiled by fame, I guess, and Olivia thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He was handsome. But what a terrible end. Two murders. Why?”

  “The sheriff’s department has made Ginger’s murder their top priority. Frank, well, it’s compelling, but…” Harry’s voice trailed off then she picked up the thread. “Would you mind terribly if I looked at Ginger’s office again? Would you go in with me? I’ll tell you why.” She reached into her jeans’ back pocket, retrieving the book list. “Look at this,” said Harry, explaining its significance.

  Trudy’s blue eyes ran down the list. “There are some of Ginger’s books on this list. How odd. How very odd.”

  Leading Harry down the hall, Tucker’s claws clicking behind them, Trudy opened the door, turned on the lights.

  “May I?” Harry pointed to Ginger’s comfortable and expensive office chair.

  “Of course.”

  Harry noted the books on Ginger’s desk, the papers from Alexander Fraser, the British captain at Saratoga. She opened the long, flat drawer under the middle of the desk. Clean white papers, pencils, and a flat gray square rubber eraser.

  “Where did Ginger keep most of his maps?”

  “He was fussy about those.” She turned to an editor’s bin, long, thin rows of drawers. Most are metal, but Ginger bought a beautiful large, long cabinet in mahogany.

  By her side, Harry asked, “The sheriff looked in here, I assume?”

  “Did.” Trudy opened the top drawer. “Old maps are in this one, new ones are in lower drawers along the aerial photos. The second drawer contains old maps of the King’s Highway, which, still in use, runs from Charleston, South Carolina, to Boston. There’s one for the Fall Line Road, important to Virginia, as was the Great Valley Road. He’s also got the Pennsylvania Road and Braddock’s Road. The oldest one, used in 1651, was King’s Highway. The others were in use beginning in 1700, some mid-century. Travel was hard—punishing, really. The government used to take survey photos, oh, about every decade. Ginger liked to see the development over former battlefields, old homes. Now that people are more interested in preservation, it’s not so bad, but if you compare these maps, it’s disturbing. Here, I’ll show you.” Trudy bent down, opened a lower drawer to lift out a series of large maps, black-and-white photographs. “Look at this.”

  The first aerial map of The Barracks and Barracks Farm Road was taken in 1920 by a private concern, not a government survey map.

  “No Ivy Farms back then, no indoor arena at The Barracks. The brick house is there. Look how open things were. Then, just twenty years later.” Trudy laid out an aerial map of that. “Still pretty clean.”

  “The country club is here on the right, across Garth Road,” said Harry. “Well, it was always there, but not as a country club, but now you can see the golf course. Wow, this is something.” She pulled the earlier map over this one again. “Even though it’s clean, you can’t see any remains of buildings or outlines on the fields.”

  “They’d been cultivated for too long, I think.” Trudy returned those maps, moved up a drawer. “Now look at this. Nineteen eighty.”

  “Well, I guess people need to live and they want to live grandly, but this is so sad. We’ve lost so much of our history. I mean, even the lovely old houses were torn down. Remember Rustling Oaks?” Harry inquired.

  “I remember all of Berta Jones’s properties and those of her children. Everyone dead now, and most of the land chopped up. The sorrowful thing about the people that
inherited most of the old estates is that they couldn’t run them. They cherished the country, but they didn’t know how to make money. Their forebears generated the money. My father always said, ‘The first generation makes the money. The second tries to keep it, and the third loses it.’ Simplistic, but there’s a lot of truth to it.”

  “Yes.” Harry studied the 1980 aerial photo. “I suppose that’s a form of revitalization.”

  “It is, but Ginger decried the loss of historical places. Then again, the new people had some money, but not enough. To run a place like the old Jones property or even The Barracks before it became what it is now takes a fortune and labor costs rose, always do. The price of everything shot up. The wars intervened, World War One and Two.”

  “Don’t forget the big one before that.” Harry’s mouth turned up slightly, a wry smile.

  “Oh, Ginger could be quite wicked about the Yankees coming down after 1865. He used to say, ‘Before we condemn, we have to remember that carpetbaggers saved Keswick.’ ” Trudy cited a gorgeous part of Albemarle County that had held fast to the large estates better than the western part of the county.

  “Trudy, I think those now living in Keswick would have a fit if they heard the Yankees getting credit.” Harry burst out laughing, as did Trudy.

  Trudy put the aerial photos away, opened another drawer. “Here’s an interesting view.”

  Harry laid the aerial map on the desk, peering intently at it. “I don’t remember this.”

  “Camp Security, York, Pennsylvania. It was under threat of development and a wonderful woman, Carol Tanzola, fought hard to save it. Took her twelve years with the help of others who understood her reasons for preservation.”

  “I’ve never been to York,” Harry confessed. “I know a little bit about Hanover.”

  “You would. All those horses. Oh, Harry, you must go. Old York, the square, the homes on those old colonial streets. It’s beautiful, and the York Historical Society is quite good. Ginger was impressed, and I know I am bragging, but he just fell in love with Carol. Quite a beauty, I might add, and he did what he could to help, would hector historians at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Villanova, oh, so many schools.”

  “What was his interest? I mean, what motivated him?”

  “Apart from Carol?” She winked. “Like The Barracks, it was another prisoner-of-war camp. In fact, when the four-thousand-plus wound up at The Barracks, many had to move, a thousand or so, went up to York. But at that time, you see, the campaign in South Carolina was moving up into Virginia. What a dramatic and frightening time.”

  “Trudy, you could teach classes.” Harry put her arm around her shoulders.

  “Ginger loved it so. You can’t spend all those decades with a man without eventually learning something.”

  “And he learned from you.”

  A peal of laughter shook Trudy for a moment. “What he learned was, after you shave, wash the whiskers down the bowl! Harry, it took me the first year of our marriage to get that through his head.”

  “With Fair, it was dropping his clothes on the floor as he took them off.”

  “My mother said you had to housebreak a man, and, boy, was she right.” Trudy laughed again, then her eyes misted over. “I’d do it all over again. Every second. Every minute. I had the best husband ever.”

  Harry hugged her again. “I think you did. You were a matched pair.”

  —

  As she drove home with Tucker’s head on her thigh, tears silently spilled over Harry’s cheeks. A good marriage teaches everyone around the couple. Trudy could say that Ginger fell in love with the York lady, and she meant that he was enthusiastic about the woman, had a crush, and Trudy trusted him. Loved him and wanted him to have those experiences. And Ginger, in turn, supported her interests, embraced her friends even if he didn’t always like a few.

  A wave of rage supplanted the sorrow. How dare someone kill Ginger McConnell? She focused on the road.

  “Tucker.”

  The sweet dog raised her head. “Yes, Mom.”

  “I am going to find who killed Ginger, so help me God! And why was he fascinated with prisoner-of-war camps at the end of his life, camps connected by the prisoners themselves? Was there some kind of illicit trade between Virginia and Pennsylvania?” She thought about that, and decided no.

  Although it would be possible to haul the best-quality Virginia moonshine up there, people in the Keystone State were perfectly capable of making hard liquor. They evidenced a real knack for beer, with all those German immigrants. What could tie those two together, and why was Ginger gathering photographs, old maps, reading and rereading battle reports that he already knew so well? She remembered once that he mentioned to her, if you truly wanted to know about a period of history, any period of history, get your hands on diaries and letters. Well, he had read those all his life.

  She spoke aloud again to Tucker. “Buddybud, I don’t know why, but all this has to do with The Barracks.”

  April 22, 1781

  Ewing Garth rode a Welsh cob, a sturdy horse, to the bridge being rebuilt over Ivy Creek. Spring brought the workers. He had driven over to the camp on a number of occasions during the winter, each time counting all the new barracks he could see. Others were being put up over the hill, hard by those two thousand acres owned by Peter Ashcombe.

  Intelligent man that he was, Garth realized more men meant more supplies needed. He could supply in volume hemp, corn, oats, straw and hay, and tobacco. The question was not establishing price, it was getting one’s money from the Continental Congress, and it was moving the supplies themselves. Fortunately, he wasn’t cash poor, because his holdings down in New Bern, North Carolina, and those on Chincoteague Island provided that. Commerce on waterways, or the ocean, gave a man quite an advantage, that is, until a British ship decided to capture your ship and claim all the supplies as booty. So far, Ewing Garth had been lucky on that count. He spotted Captain John Schuyler on the rise above the bridge.

  “Ah, Captain. I see progress is being made. The road is much improved.”

  Tipping his hat to Garth, Captain Schuyler smiled. “With spring, Sir, we should speed along with raising and widening the bridge itself. My only fear is that melting snows will raise the creek too high, too soon.”

  Nodding gravely, Ewing said, “This was a trying winter. As I age, they are all trying.”

  Charles West, knee deep in the cold swift-running creek, set thick support logs for what would hold the wider bridge span. Corporal Ix worked beside him. The water coming down from the mountains was so cold that Charles’s teeth chattered. Piglet kept running along the bankside, fretting over his master.

  “Captain, let us give these men some time by the fire,” said Garth. “I can see their distress.”

  “Of course. Our concern is to set these before the waters rise. You are very kind to think of the prisoners.”

  “Highly skilled, some of these fellows. I wonder what awaits them when they return to England? This canceling of the Saratoga Convention creates a new complexion, does it not? The Crown refuses to treat with us. Traitors, they say. But, sir, they abandoned their own! If anyone demonstrated tyranny, there it is.”

  “Ah, Mr. Garth, unlike you, I do not understand politics. I should think the Crown would seek to utilize good men. As for good men with understanding, I wonder that you do not run for congress.”

  Ewing appreciated this. “You flatter me, Captain. But as I like to get things done quickly, efficiently, I would be woefully out of place in a deliberative body.”

  The captain motioned for the men to take a break by the fire, then turned once again to the older man. “I believe we can complete your bridge by next month if the weather cooperates.”

  A large smile covered Ewing’s face. “Excellent. Excellent.” He placed his hand on his horse’s neck. The kind cob took care of Ewing, who was not much of a rider. “Tell me, Captain, what do you think of this war?”

  “We will win, Sir. How muc
h time that will take, I don’t know, but I do know we have a long, long coastline, and powerful as the British Navy is, they cannot control all of it. And they do not have enough men to land on our shores, nor to take and hold all our coastal and inland cities and towns.”

  “Yes. Yes. My thought is, and perhaps it is because of my tobacco holdings, that they will shift their thoughts to our South. I would not be surprised to learn they are stealing our tobacco. They know that is how we pay for our supplies. Oh, how they hate the French. Clearly Saratoga dealt the British a grievous blow. But, of course, you were there.”

  “A great honor. I will be happy when I can again take the field.”

  Garth shifted in the saddle. “Now that winter is over, can we expect more fighting?”

  “No doubt.”

  Garth turned to see Catherine and Jeddie riding together, coming toward them. Catherine was on the difficult horse, Renaldo, that had terrified her father and had once given John Schuyler the chance to hold her in his arms, however briefly.

  “I do wish she would not ride that beast,” Garth complained.

  John looked at her with admiration.

  “She has him under control.”

  “Well, I ordered her to never ride him alone. Jeddie or her sister must go with her.”

  “Jeddie has a natural seat,” the young captain said and nodded. “Slight fellow.”

  “He is devoted to Catherine, which gives me some comfort.”

  The beast Renaldo charged their way, then came to an abrupt stop with an arrogant snort.

  On his back, Catherine said, “Hello, Father. Ah, Captain Schuyler. Is this not a beautiful day?” Her deep, liquid voice rang out as she regarded the awestruck captain.

  Remembering Charles’s lessons, John swept his hat off, dropping his right arm alongside his horse and then raising it and placing his hat under his left arm, the hand of which held his reins. “Miss Garth.”