MacPherson's Lament

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Josh. You gonna shoot anything?”

  “Not with cannon balls, but it’ll make a loud booming noise. You’ll like it.”

  Josh considered this for a moment, and then turned his attention to the corporal. “Those are funny shoes.”

  “They’re Jefferson brogans. That’s what you wear if you’re a Confederate soldier.”

  “Is that a real gun?”

  “It sure is. It’s an 1841 Springfield smoothbore musket. I was just making cartridges for it. See?”

  “Did you ever kill anybody?”

  “Umm. In a battle it’s hard to tell,” said the corporal, and the little boy wandered away.

  After a few more minutes of inspection and explanation, followed by the firing of the small cannon, a Yankee sniper (Randy, the sentry, now wearing a blue uniform) appeared. He fired blanks at the Rebel encampment and was chased around the old house for a tree-to-tree shoot-out. Finally, the young corporal took aim and brought down the sniper, who died dramatically and at great length near the visitors.

  That little boy said, “Can I have his hat?”

  Two of the soldiers carried the body behind the house, to change clothes and return to sentry duty, and the family left. The lanky soldier who had been cleaning his gun walked over to talk to the corporal.

  “That little girl was tough,” he laughed. “She kept trying to trip us up by asking about current events. Captain Nance handled her pretty well, though. I like talking to kids. The ones I hate are the know-it-alls.” He assumed a pompous facial expression and mimicked such a civilian. “Soldier, that is a navy Colt pistol that you are wearing, not an army one!”

  “I can usually come up with a plausible story,” said the corporal. “There was all kinds of scrounging going on during the war. Hardly anybody was regulation past ’63. The ones I hate are the people who assume that because we’re Confederate reenactors we’re redneck racists.”

  “Just remind them that it was Philip Sheridan, the Union general, who said, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian,’ when the army sent him out West after the war.”

  “I’m not supposed to know that,” said the corporal. “It hasn’t happened yet!”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, you could go into a long explanation about states’ rights and representative voting by population and import tariffs, but people have never found those explanations very glamorous. That’s why the North always claimed the war was a crusade, even though the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t issued until halfway through the war. People like easy, flashy answers to complicated issues.”

  “I know, Ken. Usually, I just say I’m a corporal from the mountains, and that I don’t know anything about politics.”

  Ken shook his head. “You’re a corporal. Boy, is that ironic.”

  “You think I should be playing my own great-grandfather like you’re doing, right? Well, I can’t do that. I would be way too conspicuous. And the Silverbacks would never stand for it.”

  “The what?”

  “The good old boys who run things. They may not be racists, but they sure as hell can be chauvinists. That’s why I keep a low profile. And that’s why you can’t tell anybody who I am.”

  “But you’re a good reenactor,” said Ken Filban. “Do you really think they’d mind?”

  “Mind?” said A. P. Hill. “They’d go ballistic.”

  CHAPTER 6

  JOHN HUFF STOOD in the front hall of his newly purchased home, savoring the emptiness and the echoes of his own footsteps. The old ladies were gone, taking with them all their furniture and knickknacks, but leaving a tantalizing collection of trunks and boxes in the basement. He’d already checked. It was the first place he went. Well, not the first place; it had been a long drive out from the airport and he’d had two whiskey sodas on the plane; but after that, it was his first concern. He could examine the papers themselves later. The electricity was still on and the house’s water supply came from a well, so there was no billing problem to interrupt service there either. It was only three o’clock; the moving van should be arriving any minute with his furniture. With any luck and a little hustle on the part of the movers (which he would see to personally) he would be able to spend the night in his new residence. He had got a good deal on the house, he thought for the hundredth time. These Southern yokels were no match for a businessman of his caliber.

  Apart from his other interests in Danville, he thought that the house might make a very nice vacation home; perhaps even a place to retire to. He was bored with the usual vacation spots frequented by his acquaintances. He was getting a little old for skiing, and thoughts of skin cancer dimmed his enjoyment of the beach. He had been divorced for years, and there were no children to consider in his vacation preferences. He could please himself. Perhaps a graceful Victorian mansion was the perfect retreat for a gentleman of his age and income. He might even take up fox hunting. After the completion of his current project, that is.

  He looked appraisingly at the silent rooms, with sunlight filtering through the curtainless windows making dust motes dance above the oak plank floors. There was no sensation of the lingering dead haunting the empty halls. Too bad, thought Huff with a wry smile; he would have welcomed a couple of ghosts. He would have had questions to pose to them.

  After a last look around, while he mentally arranged his furniture in these graceful rooms, John Huff sat down on the stairs to wait for the moving van.

  For perhaps the fiftieth time since he began his law practice, Bill MacPherson considered the idea of raising sheep. Sheep were so restful. So pleasantly bland. They just stood around all day not arguing with anybody, not asking silly questions, and not minding that a dozen ewes all had to share the same ram. You never heard of a sheep filing for divorce; no sirree bob. They just stood around in their fields, placidly content with whatever mate was provided for them. Sheep never went off to find themselves. Bill pictured himself out on a green hillside with a clever collie (sort of a canine A. P. Hill), communing with nature, soaking up sunshine, and counting his lamb chops.

  He was jerked back to fluorescent reality by the sound of his mother’s voice, containing all the warmth of an injured timber wolf. “He’s driving me crazy!” she wailed.

  Bill closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, wondering whether he was supposed to respond as a son or as a lawyer. He opted for the second choice, thinking that the emotional distance of the attorney-client relationship might make for a calmer discussion. “All right, Mother,” he said gently. “Take it easy. What has Dad done now?”

  “He keeps coming back to the house, saying he forgot something. Last week he took the road atlas, the flashlight, and the sea-shell ashtray you made at 4-H camp.”

  “What did he want that for? I thought he quit smoking.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s too cheap to buy cereal bowls. What does it matter? I don’t want him wandering in and out of the house. And that’s not the worst of it! He’s killing the fish.”

  “The fish?”

  “The goldfish. Doug used to always accuse me of forgetting to feed the goldfish, and now he is convinced that they’ll starve unless he dumps food into the tank. But since I feed them every morning, the food he adds is more than they need. I can always tell when he’s been in the house-even before I look to see what’s missing-because there’s a little bloated body floating on top of the water.”

  “Okay,” sighed Bill. “So you want him to stay away from the house. Have you told him?”

  “Yes. He always says it’s the last time. He says he just forgot one little thing. And then three days later he’s back. Sometimes he comes when I’m out, and I panic and think a burglar has broken in, but the dead fish give him away.”

  “What does he say about killing the fish?”

  “Natural causes. He suggests an autopsy.”

  “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  Margaret MacPherson hesitated. “Can I have him arrested for trespassing?”

  “N
o, Mother, you cannot have him arrested. Why don’t you just change the locks?”

  “Because I can’t remember who all has keys! Elizabeth does, and you do, and I think Robert and Amanda have one set. Oh, it would be too much trouble to change all the locks and redistribute keys. Besides, why should I have to go to all that trouble and expense? Can’t I just have your father arrested?”

  Bill closed his eyes and thought about fields of cloudlike sheep. “Okay,” he said at last, “if you insist on indulging in legal carpet bombing, I will handle it. We will file a restraining order against Dad, specifying that he cannot come into the house to retrieve anything without your express permission, and that he cannot enter the premises unless you are present.” Bill was scribbling notes to himself on the yellow legal pad.

  “Don’t forget the fish!”

  “Right. The fish. The restraining order will absolutely prohibit Douglas W. MacPherson from feeding any and all fish at his former residence at 816 Mead Lane. I’ll get it typed up and formally present it to Dad’s lawyer. Will that do?”

  Bill’s mother gave him a reproachful look. “You don’t have to take that tone with me, Bill. I’ll have you know that it’s very stressful to have an estranged husband popping in and out of your house like Banquo’s ghost, and besides, I happen to be very fond of those goldfish. We’d had the fantail moor for almost three years.”

  “I’ll put that in the restraining order. Maybe it will mute the hilarity.”

  “Will your father and I have to go to court over this?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Bill, who hadn’t filed a restraining order before. “His lawyer will have to appear, though. And I’ll be there.”

  “But if he ignores the restraining order and barges in anyway, then we can have him arrested?”

  “Well, theoretically. I think if it’s just a case of fish murder, the judge might let him go with a scolding. He might order Dad to replace the fish.”

  “Impossible!” snapped Margaret MacPherson. “Doug can’t swim.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing. It was the first symptom of sanity Bill had seen in any of his family members in weeks.

  John Huff stood on the front porch supervising the unloading of the moving van. “Be careful with that sofa!” he called out. “Don’t scrape the upholstery against the door frame.”

  The movers swept past him without even pretending to heed his warning. “That goes in the room to the right!” he called after them. He got up and peered into the trunk to see how much furniture they had left to unload. The truck was still at least half full. They wouldn’t finish until after five o’clock. He was glad he wasn’t paying them by the hour.

  The movers had just unloaded an antique walnut desk and were stumbling precariously up the steps with it when Huff’s attention was deflected by the arrival of a white sedan pulling into the winding driveway. Huff did not recognize the dark-haired young man behind the wheel; for a moment he had thought that it was the sellers’ attorney Bill MacPherson, coming to welcome him to town, and perhaps to hustle a little future legal business. But while this young man looked like a lawyer, in his Southern prep’s uniform of spotted tie and khaki slacks, he certainly didn’t look like a welcoming committee. He was staring open-mouthed at the moving van and flipping through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard as he approached the house. Local tax assessor, thought John Huff, bracing himself for the confrontation. These yokels would soon learn that they couldn’t push him around. Huff sat where he was and waited for Mr. Power Tie’s opening salvo.

  He didn’t have long to wait. The young man looked at the moving van, jotted down its license plate, and said, “Well, my goodness, we’re busy this afternoon.” He waved his hand at the truck, the house, and John Huff. “And just what are we up to here?”

  “Well, I’m moving into my new house, and you’re trespassing,” said Huff. He believed in asserting himself at the earliest possible moment.

  The reply was an unconvincing imitation of a smile. “I beg your pardon? I am trespassing? Do you know who I am?”

  “No, I can’t help you there. Are you lost?”

  The young man drew himself up to his full height-about five seven-and announced, “Sir, I am Randolph Custis Byrd, and I have the honor to be the assistant director of art and antiquities for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Now please tell me what is transpiring here. I thought the elderly ladies were going to wait for us to assist them in vacating the premises.”

  “They didn’t wait. I guess with a million dollars they didn’t need any help with moving expenses from the state.”

  R. Custis Byrd stared in disbelief. “A million dollars? Are you serious? But where would they…” He peered into the back of the moving van. “They didn’t sell you the furniture, did they?”

  “No,” said Huff. “I didn’t want it. I’d rather furnish the house to my own taste.”

  “Furnish the house?” echoed Byrd. “What are you talking about?” Two movers in gray coveralls clumped past them up the ramp and into the truck, and emerged balancing a recliner between them. Byrd watched them go with an expression of horror that the recliner’s upholstery did not quite merit. “Why are you moving a lounge chair into the state art museum?”

  Now it was John Huff’s turn to look stricken. “Art museum? You must have come to the wrong house. Why, I paid a fortune for this house not two weeks ago!”

  “I hope not. This was the Home for Confederate Women. The state has decided to claim it for the people of Virginia because of its historic value. I have the paperwork right here if you’d like to see it. In return for the house, we were planning to move the eight current residents to a nursing home outside Danville, and to pay for their care for the rest of their lives. The poor old dears ought to be on their way to Bingo Heaven right now. Where are they, by the way?”

  John Huff set his jaw. “I tell you I bought this house.”

  “Well, you’ve been taken in by a fraud, sir,” said Custis Byrd in tones bordering on sympathy. “Who sold it to you?”

  “A Danville attorney named Bill MacPherson.”

  A. P. Hill had returned to the twentieth century, exchanging her gray infantry uniform for the navy-blue coat and skirt that was her legal uniform. Reenacting was an enjoyable hobby, and a way for her to feel closer to her great-great-grandfather the general, but the present-day A. P. Hill had no desire to live permanently in the past. The Springfield rifle, the brogans, and the rimless spectacles had all been put away until next weekend’s reenactment, a scripted skirmish to take place at a battlefield that was now a national park. Now she had to return to a more crucial battle: the trial of Tug Mosier.

  Because of the local sentiment about the case and the fact that the victim came from a prominent family, Powell had succeeded in getting a change of venue. Now the trial was scheduled for the end of the month in Stuart, a small town in Patrick County, some fifty miles west of Danville. She hoped that the new location would filter some of the emotion out of the case. At least she would have jurors who weren’t former classmates of Misti Hale or friends of the victim’s parents.

  Now she had to decide how best to proceed with the defense. She was consulting a possible expert witness, Dr. Arthur Timmons, a Richmond psychiatrist who had some experience in criminal cases. As Powell Hill sat in his waiting room, leafing through old copies of Smithsonian, she wondered which would prove the more difficult task: coming up with a way to help her client or persuading a prominent physician to consult for nothing.

  He had been cordial enough, though. Ushering her into his oak and green leather consulting room, he had listened carefully to her description of the Mosier case and the quandary over whether or not Tug was guilty of murder.

  “And what do you want me to do, Miss Hill?” he asked when Powell’s explanation finally wound down.

  “Well, I was wondering if you could examine my client and try to determine whether or not he did it. Give him some tests, perhaps.”

&nbs
p; Arthur Timmons considered the matter for a few moments. “Tests,” he mused. “There are some measures that we could take to try to restore his memory of the night in question. Hypnosis. Using a drug to put him into a semiconscious state so that he can discuss that night without inhibitions. But are you sure you want to do that?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” asked A. P. Hill.

  “Because he might remember. Right now you can plead your client innocent with perfect sincerity, since you have no conclusive evidence that he did it. But what are you going to do if I regress him, and he promptly confesses to the murder?”

  A. P. Hill looked thoughtful. “I suppose I would have to concentrate on mitigating circumstances,” she said. “Diminished capacity. Accident. I’d have to know the circumstances before I could make any decision about how to proceed. I think, though, that Tug Mosier would like to go through with the tests, if possible. He’s grief-stricken over Misti Hale’s death, and he genuinely seems to want to know if he did it.”

  Dr. Timmons scribbled a few notes and then looked up with a sad smile. “I think you’re taking a great risk by doing this,” he said. “It has been my experience that most trial lawyers aren’t interested in the truth. They’re interested in a game plan. But talk to your client, Miss Hill. If he truly wants to resolve the question of his guilt, I will do what I can to assist you.”

  “There’s one other thing,” said Powell. “I’m court-appointed, you see, and we don’t have any money to spend on medical experts.”

  “I assumed that,” said Timmons, still smiling. “Poor and honest seem to go together, don’t they?”

  Edith came into the office, closed the door behind her, and stood with her back against it. Her expression brought to mind the expendable blonde in reel one of a horror movie.

  “What is it?” chuckled Bill. “Mr. Trowbridge in person?”

  Edith shook her head. “It’s that ornery man who bought the Home for Confederate Women, and if you thought he was bad before, you ought to see him now. He’s about ready to spit nails.”