Tall Tail

by Rita Mae Brown

  Pushing open the door of Over the Moon bookstore, Harry spotted the book display right in front of her. Susan made a beeline for it.

  Harry and Susan adored Over the Moon, in part because of the featured books. Of course, they shopped at Barnes & Noble when in Charlottesville, yet something reverberated with them about the small store, with an owner, Anne DeVault, who loved books. Both friends were avid readers, although of quite different books. Susan favored works written by women about women. Harry loved history, any kind of history. She also couldn’t resist books that she had to order from Kentucky about various equine bloodlines.

  Susan called her a snob. Harry always giggled at that, because when it came to horses, she was. When it came to human bloodlines, she felt they were all besmirched. How many thousands of Virginians claimed to be descended from Pocahontas, known as “Poke”?

  “Did you make par today?” Anne asked Susan.

  “You know, I shot two over today, but I’m working on it.” Susan beamed. “Do you recommend anything?”

  “Every book in the store.” Anne smiled, left for the back room, returned handing a little book to Harry. “Just for you.”

  “Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma,” Harry read out loud as she fished in her golf skirt pocket for the modest sum the humorous book cost.

  Back in Susan’s car, Harry read out loud from her purchase. The two began screaming with laughter as Harry read aloud.

  “My God, that’s what Mom used to say,” Susan howled while still managing to keep the car on the road.

  “Oh, here’s one. Silverware. I can’t read this, you’ll have to look at the drawings, but it’s about what different patterns reveal about the woman. Counts if it’s inherited, even though she didn’t pick it. Well, Susan, the whole point of silver and china is they’re supposed to be inherited. If you buy something, you don’t have any people. Oh, listen to this, and this is true: Georg Jensen silver is expensive and beautiful but suspicious. I’m paraphrasing, but it says the owner of this silver probably has Yankee liberal tendencies.”

  Susan hooted with laugher. Both she and Harry, drilled from early childhood, never could quite shake the Dixie Dame imprint. “Well, it is kind of true. Meagan Underhill has Georg Jensen.”

  “She really is a Georg Jensen person,” Harry uttered with relish.

  “What is there about laughing about yourself and your people? Everyone is related to everyone in the South. Cousins, first, second, third cousins, first cousins once removed, and the dreaded shirttail cousins. You couldn’t escape your relatives even if you didn’t know them.” Susan spoke the God’s-honest truth.

  “Hang on.” Susan was careful backing out of the bookstore, as the parking was quite close.

  “Hey, you’re going in the wrong direction.”

  “No. We’re going to Mom’s. I want to give her that book and I’ll buy you another copy.”

  “Okay.” Harry took the cellphone that Susan handed her.

  “Call her to say we’re coming,” said Susan. “You know how she gets.”

  “Uh-huh.” So Harry punched in the numbers. “Mrs. Grimstead.” She listened as Millicent Grimstead recognized her voice. “Susan is on her way to see you and she has a present.”

  “Tell her I’m at Momma’s. Come on over here,” her modulated, cultured voice replied.

  Susan knew her mother deeply felt the decline of her father, Susan’s grandfather. She went to Big Rawly every day to help where she could, to keep things as normal as possible.

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ll see you shortly. Bye-bye.” Harry pressed the button. “Go to G-Mom’s. She’s over there.”

  “Right-o.”

  Within ten minutes, they turned right by Beau Pre, then continued down the drive to turn into Big Rawly, the Avenging Angel glaring from the graveyard, as always.

  Walking down the grand house’s long hall, Harry looked at the paintings of Holloway ancestors, as she had since childhood. The men on the east wall faced their wives on the west wall.

  Some of the men had died in wars, a few even suffering heroic deaths. Governor Holloway’s great-grandfather died in 1863, standing by his post under heavy artillery fire. His line held because of his steadfastness. Even with his arm blown off, he refused to be carried behind the lines. All the Holloway men had served in our various wars.

  As for the women, granted paintings flatter, but they appeared a good-looking lot, the change in fashions apparent. The governor’s maternal ancestor from President Monroe’s days wore a daring low-cut bodice, while Sam’s grandmother wore a high-necked dress, major pearls encircling her covered throat. The hallway was a journey through time, through fashion, through physical attractions.

  Better nomenclature for passing developed. Each portrait carried a story about the person’s passing, often relayed by Governor Holloway to Susan and Harry when they were young. Consumption became tuberculosis. Wasting became cancer. Malaise became stroke, blood disorder became leukemia. If anyone remarried, the second spouse hung on the wall to the sunroom, not exactly excluded, but the first spouse got to shine in pride of place.

  Harry knew Susan’s family history as well as her own. She found history and people fascinating.

  In the hall, the governor’s office, other rooms, huge glazed pots filled with walking sticks, caught one’s eye. Samuel Holloway collected them, and the house bore testimony to this unusual passion, which had started in his childhood. At ninety-six, he probably had more walking sticks than anyone in the state. In his will, he cited his many friends who would receive one when he was gone.

  After many kisses and offers for tea or more from Penny Holloway, the governor’s wife, the two sat down as bidden in the covered back porch.

  Susan’s grandmother read aloud from the humorous book Susan had brought and they all screamed. An attractive young woman ducked her head in the room.

  “Mignon, sit down,” Penny invited her. “We’re having too much fun.”

  “The governor felt sure you were laughing about him with his wife, his daughter, his granddaughter.” Mignon smiled slyly. “How shall I tell him he’s not the center of attention?”

  They all laughed. “Mignon, do invite him in. He hasn’t seen Harry in some time. This, forgive me, is Susan’s cradle friend, Mary Minor Haristeen, Harry. We all know one another”—she paused—“too well.”

  More laughter, and as Mignon disappeared down the center hallway, Penny conspiratorially mentioned, “He doesn’t know yet about Barbara Leader. He’s so frail and we’re trying to keep his spirits up. You do understand.”

  “Yes, G-Mom.” Susan nodded.

  “Yes, Mrs. Holloway,” Harry added.

  They heard the ninety-six-year-old man shuffling toward them, Mignon at his side. Stepping into the room, he burst into that dazzling smile which had long wooed Virginia’s voters. “There must be a recess in Heaven.” The ladies laughed and then he fixed his gaze on Susan and Harry. “Two good Democrats.”

  “Oh, Governor, only one,” Harry demurred. “I’m not good at anything.”

  “Nonsense.” He glowed. “Penny, my dear, this calls for a celebration.” He squinted at the mountains. “The sun’s almost over the yardarm.”

  Within minutes the drink caddy was wheeled out and Governor Holloway mixed drinks for the ladies, whether they wanted them or not.

  Susan and Harry waited until after his toast, then sipped a very good Tom Collins. Governor Holloway came from a generation of men that knew how to mix drinks, what to drink when, and how to hold their liquor. Ladies could drink sherry. Men could not. But anyone could drink a Tom Collins on a summer day. The governor drank his regular bourbon.

  Mignon sipped her drink, studying the two women just a few years older than her.

  Millicent Grimstead told “the girls,” as she thought of them, “Daddy’s writing his autobiography. Miss Skipworth is helping and Daddy declares she’s a whiz at research.”

  Mignon demurely lowered her head a mo
ment. “The Internet speeds everything up.”

  “Does, but news can’t be weighed. Everything is presented as though it is of critical importance. I believe this harms the political process,” the governor pronounced.

  “Governor Holloway has such a deep understanding of, I would say, statecraft.” Mignon flattered him, but it was true. “This will be a very important book.”

  “Think I’ll call it Move Over, Jefferson,” the aging gentleman joked.

  “Daddy, how about Where’s the Party?” Millicent Grimstead joked right back.

  “Sugar Pie, I’d be shot on publication day. It’s so partisan now, so crude. You can’t govern without compromise, and what passes for public servants today are narrow-minded ideologues. There, I’ve said it.” He held up his glass.

  The others held up theirs. “Hear, hear.”

  As Penny leaned toward her daughter, the resemblance between the three generations of women was remarkable. “Sam really must tell his story. The good, the bad, and the ugly, as they say. We all made mistakes, that’s human, but we learn from them, and I will brag on my husband. First he served in the war and truly was a hero—”

  The governor interrupted her. “Honey, now, there were fourteen million of us in uniform.”

  “Sam, your ship was torpedoed and sinking, and you, a young JG, leapt into the water and stayed there, swimming to help other men, pulling them to life rafts. You were the last sailor to be hauled onto a life raft.”

  “Honey, the war was filled with men who died for their comrades. I was lucky. I lived and”—he paused, dropping his voice dramatically—“came home to Virginia and married the prettiest girl in the state.”

  “Oh, Sam.” She blushed.

  They married in 1949, raised two daughters, and never stopped loving each other. Harry wondered why some couples draw together and others don’t.

  Mignon pretended to pout. “He won’t tell me those things.”

  The governor grew serious for a moment, “Ladies, if you’ve seen war, you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Daddy, I know that’s true because you never talked about it to Pauline and me, but we now have—what?—three generations of men who have never served. That’s frightening.”

  “Yes, it is.” His voice deepened. “Getting rid of the draft was a disaster. I learned to trust men I would have never met in any other way and they learned to trust me. I believe, I truly believe, that one of the reasons politicians today don’t cooperate together is they don’t know one another. I knew smart-mouthed boys from New Jersey and laconic cowboys from Idaho, and if I didn’t value them at first I sure learned to value them in good time. Our units weren’t integrated by race—that came later in a big way. I think that was a mistake, not preparing us in World War Two. We might have had name calling and fistfights, but we would have worked it out. What came later was a disgrace, and I was part of that disgrace.”

  A silence enveloped them until Susan Tucker said, “G-Pop, it was a different time. You apologized, you worked hard once you understood. I am proud of you.”

  His eyes misted, and he leaned toward his granddaughter. “Little Susie, you don’t know what that means to me.” Then he drew a deep sigh. “You get old. Your mistakes are underlined. You forget that you might have done a bit of good. And I assume no one cares much except for my family, but even you, Precious, when you were in your teens you seemed to me to live in another America.”

  “G-Pop, I had to learn, too.”

  Driving back to Harry’s farm, where Susan had left her car, Harry said, “You did a wonderful thing. We forget to tell old people, we forget to thank them.”

  “Back when I was a little brat, all I wanted to do was hide the fact that my grandfather was Governor Samuel Holloway. And now what pains me is when he dies, the damned media will rake it all up again, how he refused to desegregate the schools. How he defied Washington. The man apologized on his eightieth birthday. He apologized for how long it took him to understand, and he did make good on it! My grandfather has worked harder than anyone I know to raise money for scholarships to the University of Virginia and Duke, his two alma maters, for people of color. It took me a long time to see him for what he is: a man of his class, race, education, time, and gender. The new world had to seem like a repudiation of everything he worked for, and I was part of that repudiation.”

  “We all were, and mostly we were right. Change comes hard. Who knows what we’ll bitch and moan about?”

  “I already know. You bitch and moan about the weather.” Susan laughed.

  “Getting back to school desegregation.” Harry impishly smiled. “Sure gave us a lot of schools named for saints. Every church in the state fired up their own school.”

  They both laughed.

  Susan then said, “Fortunate we didn’t have to go through that. It was mostly over and done by the time we reached high school. But if there had been a school for you and me, a saint’s school, it would have been St. Rita’s.”

  “Why is that?” Harry puzzled.

  “The saint of impossible causes, and Harry, you are impossible.”

  Thursday, September 9, 1784

  Attached to a sash, a long, heavy cloth, six feet by four feet, was being slowly unfurled above the dinner guests. Francisco Selisse had observed such an arrangement in the rice country of South Carolina. Not only did it provide welcoming light breezes, it blew away the flies, which had been exceptionally persistent this summer. Waving the sash was an African American child of nine, dressed in summer livery, trying not to die of boredom.

  Servers glided back and forth from the summer kitchen, which, as was the custom in the hot South, was located a distance from the house. This meant the servers had to dash to the kitchen and carry the tureen or cold meats back to the main house. The second their feet touched the doorjamb, door open to the outside, they composed themselves for “the glide” so favored by Francisco and Maureen, his wife.

  Details of Caribbean-born Francisco’s early life were sketchy, but pointed to a man who, when young, was on the make. Highly intelligent and ruthless, he had made his way up. Some thought he started as a blackbirder, a slave trader. Others said no, Francisco worked for a series of island bankers, from whom he had gathered much knowledge, as well as his wife, Maureen. She was the daughter of a successful banker in Martinique. She brought with her not only heaving bosoms but a large dowry. Francisco, like most men, was enchanted with both gifts. Maureen, for her part, had learned how to use her breasts to get exactly what she wanted from men, hence the nickname “Nightingale,” a euphemism for prostitutes, all of whom knew how to use their bosoms. This was uttered behind her back by other women, including her own slaves, who could imitate her to a T. Never failed to cause eruptions of laughter.

  Now forty-seven, Maureen was still lovely of visage, even as she had thickened a bit with age. Like many good-looking women, she hated growing older, working too hard to capture her fleeting youth.

  Ewing Garth, ever sensitive to investment, cash as well as credit, trod softly around his neighbor Francisco. The two had made a few profitable investments together over the years. Ewing never invested more than he could afford to lose, and this was a lesson he drove home to Catherine. Ewing considered his dealings with Francisco as keeping harmony. Keeping tolerable relations with other businessmen was a key to Ewing’s success. As for Francisco’s wife, Maureen, Ewing loathed her. She would flirt, play the coquette, and try to get a rise out of him, literally. A Virginia gentleman knew all the steps of the social minuet, especially those in which a man pretends the lady before him is enchanting, be she seventy, forty, or a ripe twenty. Such flatteries were considered a lady’s due. Only a fool would act upon them, but every man had a duty to make a woman feel desirable, delightful, and admired. The reverse of this was every woman was to demure; she had to convey that the gentleman before her was a hero in disguise; and handsome to boot. This was the grease to the social wheels.

  Poor Ewing and his wife, Isabe
lle, practically had to hogtie their daughter Catherine when young to get her to behave in ladylike fashion. Rachel had been easy. Over time, Catherine perceived the value of such behavior. That didn’t mean she liked it.

  “Ah, Mrs. Selisse, you have outdone yourself.” Ewing smiled benevolently. “Your table is as beautiful as the food is superb.”

  She smiled back, with a flourish of her hand. “A secret from the islands.”

  Francisco swooped his spoon away from him, bringing the cold potato soup to his mouth. He liked his wife. Maureen helped his business, and he was not insensitive to her dowry, nor the connections she had brought into his life. Keeping a good table never hurt any man in the wider world. Francisco kept to his domain, Maureen kept to hers, and they succeeded.

  —

  At the stables, the carriage horses had been taken from their harnesses, sponged down, and put in a stall out of the lowering sun.

  Entrusted with their horses by Catherine, Jeddie Rice performed this service. He allowed Moses Durkin to help him. Moses, twenty-five, ran Francisco’s stables under the tutelage of DoRe Durkin, his father, who was slowing down. No one quite knew why, but the father suffered pains deep inside and they moved. No bleeding, no fevers, just strange moving pains that would abate, then return, bringing with them more fatigue. A few of the other servants complained of similar pains, but not much came of it.

  Jeddie rode as postillion while Barker O.—no last name, just O.—handled the graceful, immensely expensive open coach-in-four. Driving a coach-in-four was a skill not acquired superficially, and Barker was the best in central Virginia. He had been plied with offers to leave Ewing, offers of money to himself as well as a large sum to Ewing, but Barker loved the Garths’ horses. He also believed “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” He knew his master’s ways. He wasn’t eager to learn those of a new master. In the back of his mind he heard his mother’s whisper: “Never trust a white man. Some you can honor. Some you can even love, but son, never trust one.”

  —