Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

by Donna Andrews

  “That might work,” Rob said. “Thanks. Where should I put these?”

  I turned to see him holding up a pink wrought-iron flamingo.

  “Back in the box, quick,” I said.

  “Why?” he said. He was holding the flamingo out at arms length, inspecting it.

  “Put it away, now,” I said, dropping a set of fireplace tongs to race over to the box. “Mrs. Waterston will explode if she sees it.”

  “I don’t see why,” he said, as I snatched the flamingo from his hands. “It’s kind of cool in a weird way. I like it.”

  “You would,” I said, opening the case to shove the flamingo inside. “It’s a complete anachronism and—”

  “And you’ve got a lot of them,” Rob said, peering into the case. “Any chance you’d give me—”

  “Meg!”

  Mrs. Waterston was back. I slammed the lid of the case closed and sat on it, hard, for good measure, ignoring the yelp of pain from Rob, who didn’t quite move his hand fast enough to avoid getting nipped by the closing lid. And the small crash to my left, where a customer had dropped one of Eileen’s vases and was now cowering against the curtain at the back of our booth.

  “Yes?” I said, ignoring Rob, who was grimacing and shaking his injured hand. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Waterston?” I couldn’t quite manage a smile, but I think I achieved a polite, interested expression.

  “These people you brought are impossible!” she exclaimed.

  “Which one in particular?” I asked. Eileen had gone to the customer’s side and was making reassuring noises, I noted. I stood up from the chest, warning Rob, with a glance, not to open it again.

  “That female glassblower,” she said. “She’s wearing men’s clothes.”

  “Merry’s giving glassblowing demonstrations at noon, two, and four” I said. “She can’t wear skirts for that.”

  “Why on Earth not?”

  “Because it would be a serious fire hazard,” I said. “Burning was one of the leading causes of death for women in the colonial or any other historical era when cooking and heating methods involved open flames. One good spark and these skirts could go up like so much kindling,” I said, shaking my own skirts with resentment. “So, unless you really like the possibility of Merry reenacting the death of Joan of Arc in front of all the tourists, I suggest you overlook her gender for the time being.”

  “She could at least wear proper clothes when she’s not demonstrating.”

  “I’ll see if that’s possible,” I said.

  “Why wouldn’t it be possible?”

  “She may not have brought another costume, and it might be hard for her to make any sales at all if she’s spending all her time either demonstrating or changing in and out of costume.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Mrs. Waterston fumed. “Don’t these people realize we’re trying for authenticity here? Don’t they understand—”

  Doesn’t she realize that these people are trying to make a living, I thought; and I was opening my mouth to say so, and no doubt precipitate the argument I’d been avoiding for so long, when I realized that Mrs. Waterston was staring, openmouthed, at something behind my back.

  What now, I wondered.

  Chapter 4

  I turned to see what had stopped Mrs. Waterston in midtirade: a slender, twenty-something black man, wearing a turquoise velvet coat, a peach brocade waistcoat, tight black-velvet pants, and enough lace cascading at the throat and sleeves to decorate a bridal gown. From the ornate silver buckles on his shoes to the powdered wig on his head, he was a walking fashion plate from the late eighteenth century. He leaned with one hand on an elegant silver-trimmed black cane, inspecting a pair of my candlesticks through a quizzing glass, with a supercilious look on his face.

  “Oh my,” Mrs. Waterston murmured.

  “Tad!” I shouted, and rushed over to hug the new arrival.

  “Meg, dear,” Tad said, with more than the usual hint of a British accent. “You look divine!”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” I said. “I do clean up well when I try. You’re looking rather presentable yourself.”

  Tad replied with a graceful bow, and twirled so I could see his outfit from all sides.

  “That color’s great on you,” I said. “And the wig’s such a good touch.”

  A rather necessary touch. Mrs. Waterston would never approve of the dreadlocks hidden underneath.

  “Mrs. Waterston,” I said, turning to her. “May I present my friend Thaddeus Jackson?”

  “How do you do,” Tad said, with another bow.

  “What a lovely costume,” Mrs. Waterston said. “But are you sure it’s quite … authentic?”

  “Oh, completely,” Tad said, and began pointing out some of the finer details of his clothes, while I struggled to keep a straight face. I didn’t think Mrs. Waterston would dare come right out and say what she really meant—that however accurate Tad’s outfit was for the period, you’d have a hard time finding many African American men in colonial times wearing that much silk, velvet, and lace.

  I caught Tad’s eye, pointed to Mrs. Waterston, and made a little shooing gesture. Without missing a beat, he offered her his arm and, still talking, gently eased her out of my booth and sent her on her way with another sweeping bow.

  “I should have worn the other costume,” he said, reentering the booth.

  “Other costume?” Eileen asked.

  “Tad was originally going to come as a runaway slave, in homespun rags and leg irons” I said. “I talked him out of it.”

  “Oh, you should have done it, Tad,” Eileen said. “It would have done so much to raise people’s consciousness about the oppression and injustice of the times.”

  “Don’t start that again,” I said. I had noticed that Tad wasn’t his usual buoyant self. Was the subject upsetting him, or was it something else? “Tad, what’s wrong?”

  He shrugged.

  “I brought you something,” he said.

  He glanced around, then reached inside his coat and took a small, square, paper envelope from an inside pocket. A CD, I realized; I could see the luminous silver disk through the round cellophane window in the front of the envelope.

  “Better put this away before the Anachronism Police see it,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. I stuck the CD in my purse—not my modern purse, of course, which I’d hidden behind the curtain at the back of the booth, with all the other anachronisms, but the white linen haversack slung over my shoulder. “What is it, anyway?”

  “A patch for CraftWorks,” Tad said. “Nothing major. Don’t try to install it during the fair. Wait till you get home. It should work fine, but you want to do a full backup first. It’s all in the read-me file.”

  “What’s CraftWorks?” Rob asked.

  “The program I use to run my business, remember?” I said.

  “Run your business?” Rob said. “I thought the whole point was that you made everything the old-fashioned way, with hammers and stuff.”

  “Not the ironworking, all the financial and organizing stuff,” I said. “Keeping my books, ordering supplies, managing inventory, tracking stuff that’s in shops on consignment, paying bills, sending bills, applying to shows, and keeping my schedule—everything.”

  Normally Tad would have beamed to hear me give what amounted to a glowing testimonial for CraftWorks. Today he didn’t even smile.

  “Tad, that reminds me—I had this idea for something to expand CraftWorks,” I said. “Maybe you could put up a Web page where people could go to download updates and check out show schedules and—Tad? Earth to Tad?”

  “Sorry, I was zoning out,” he said, with a forced smile. “Look, maybe I should level with you about something.”

  “Okay,” I said. But before he could continue, Michael showed up, along with three other pseudo-French soldiers from his unit.

  “Ma chérie!” Michael exclaimed, and proceeded to introduce me to his comrades in a mixture of French and French-accen
ted English.

  Michael’s fellow officers all kissed my hand, and said polite things in French. At least I assumed they were polite things. I’d taken French in school but somehow it never quite took, and I was notorious for having spent two weeks in Paris without once eating anything that even faintly resembled what I thought I’d ordered.

  Michael, on the other hand, spoke French fluently, with an accent so perfect it caused native speakers to swoon with national pride and ecstasy. That was supposedly the reason he’d joined a French regiment, although before he decided the French had cooler uniforms, he’d been well on his way to developing an intense sympathy for the losing British side.

  At any rate, he didn’t seem to object to the polite Gallic nothings his friends were murmuring to my knuckles, so I assumed they weren’t actually propositioning me. I replied “enchanté” or “merci” to whatever they said and smiled a lot. I wished Tad would rescue me, but he smiled, waved, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Well, with any luck the French forces would drift off sooner or later. They were glancing at the portion of our booth they could see—Eileen’s side, actually—with polite uninterest.

  “Ah, they are yours, these potteries? Très jolies,” one said, in the offhand tone of someone who actually thought pottery was très boring but wanted to be polite to the demoiselle sharing a tent with his brother-in-arms.

  “No, my friend Eileen does the potteries,” I said. “I do the hardwares.”

  I stepped aside so the French could see my side of the booth.

  “You’re a blacksmith?” he exclaimed. His eyes widened, and he dropped both the blase air and his French accent. “Cool! Can you mend things?”

  “Metal things, yeah,” I said. “Do it all the time.”

  “Like bayonets?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You made this?” another of the soldiers asked, indicating my dagger.

  “Yes,” I said. “The blade, too; not just the hilt.”

  “Do you take commissions?”

  And so, for the next half hour, the faux French soldiers milled about my booth, examining my ironwork—especially the dagger—and apparently finding it to their satisfaction, as they grew more and more enthusiastic about commissioning me to mend or make various bits of weaponry and equipment.

  I confess, I was less than enthusiastic at first. Call me mercenary, and I won’t argue with you; I work iron for a living, not a hobby. And while I wasn’t exactly starving, I had long ago learned that I couldn’t pay the rent if I gave attractive discounts to everyone who was related to me, lived in my neighborhood, had gone to kindergarten with me, or, in this case, happened to share a hobby with my boyfriend. So when they asked me what I’d charge to make things, I gave them accurate estimates, possibly a bit on the high side, since in some cases I’d have to do quite a bit of research on top of the actual blacksmithing.

  I found myself warming to them when I realized they didn’t even blink at the prices I’d quoted. In fact, they all took my cards (including a stack to distribute to the rest of the regiment), kissed my hand several times each, clapped Michael on the back, and marched off in obvious high spirits, singing “Au près de ma blonde.”

  “You’ve made quite a hit with the guys,” Michael said, beaming. “You’ll have to come to all the events after this.”

  “Events after this?” Michael had only joined the group so he could participate in the reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown and help make his mother’s event a success. Or so he’d said. Was he really planning to keep on doing reenactment stuff? Since when had he and the guys become such buddies? Perhaps this was only a temporary burst of enthusiasm, sparked by how much he enjoyed running around in his French uniform. Maybe he’d lose interest again when he remembered that the National Park Service wouldn’t let reenactors pretend to be wounded or killed, even without the stage blood he’d offered to bring.

  “I think there’s a skirmish next month,” Michael said, taking a piece of parchment-colored paper out of an inside pocket. “Yes. Around Thanksgiving.”

  “I think both our families are expecting us for Thanksgiving,” I said.

  “Great; that’s perfect—I’m sure your dad would love to come, too. He’s been having a great time; all the guys love his booth. I’ll go ask him, shall I?”

  He ran off, clutching his parchment, without waiting for an answer.

  “Oh, Lord,” I muttered.

  Chapter 5

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Amanda asked, dodging a stroller as she crossed the aisle to my booth. “You seem upset about something.”

  “Michael’s having much too good a time doing this reenactment stuff,” I said.

  “Isn’t it sweet?” Eileen said. “They never really grow up, do they?”

  “No, they don’t,” Amanda grumbled.

  “He’s talking about keeping on with it after this weekend,” I said.

  “Well, that’s nice,” Eileen said. “It’s something you can do together, isn’t it?”

  “It involves camping out in ruggedly authentic colonial conditions,” I said. “I’m not very keen on camping out under any conditions.”

  “I’m a city girl; I know just how you feel,” Amanda said, looking around as if the nearby trees scared her more than muggers. “And my idea of camping out is staying at a hotel without a four-star restaurant.”

  “You wouldn’t like these outings,” I said. “The one I went to, they served salt beef and hardtack.”

  “Is that stuff even edible?” Amanda asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Theoretically, I suppose; although if you ask me, they almost make starving to death sound like a sensible lifestyle option,” I said. “I couldn’t wait to get to a McDonald’s afterwards. For that matter, neither could Michael.”

  “Maybe he’s not serious about keeping on with it, then,” Amanda said.

  “Sounded serious to me,” I said. “He’s gone off to Dad’s booth to enlist him, too.”

  “I didn’t know your dad had a booth,” Eileen said. “What on Earth is he selling?”

  “Band-Aids and cheap thrills,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “What?” Amanda asked.

  “He volunteered to organize the first-aid station,” I explained. “Somehow he convinced Michael’s mother that it would be a good idea to have it serve as an educational tool, too.”

  “What a wonderful idea,” Eileen said.

  “So he’s done up a replica of a what an army medical tent would look like in 1781, authentic down to the last gory detail.”

  “Oh, gross,” Amanda said.

  “Don’t let Dad hear you say that,” I said. “It’s one of his hobbies, collecting antique medical equipment. He’s absolutely tickled at having a chance to show it all off. Although all of the surgical instruments are reproductions that he had me make. You don’t find that many genuine eighteenth-century scalpels and surgical saws floating around, and if you do, you don’t take them out in humidity like this.”

  “He’s not actually getting any patients, is he?”

  “He had a few people earlier who thought they had heat exhaustion, but the authentic colonial operating table seems to have marvelous healing powers. None of them felt the need to lie down on one of the camp beds after seeing that exhibit.”

  “Imagine that,” Amanda said, chuckling. “Oops—got a customer back at the booth; catch you later.”

  Eileen and I had customers of our own, and for the next hour or so, my mood improved considerably as great numbers of sightseers and a smaller but satisfactory number of buyers wandered through the booth. The day stopped feeling like a ghastly mistake and more like a pretty normal first day at the craft fair.

  Well, maybe not completely normal. In addition to a reasonable number of tourists and shoppers in modern dress, the aisles thronged with soldiers—redcoats sweating under bearskin hats; the occasional French soldier, scanning the ground for mud that might sully his spotless white uniform and hordes of blue-
coated Continental soldiers, most with the red cuffs and lapels that indicated a Virginia regiment, but some with the white, buff, or pale blue trim representing other parts of the country. And occasionally unusual uniforms—a kilted Highlander; men in green whose waxed mustaches seemed to suggest Hessians; or a brace of frontiersman, ambling along in buckskins with long rifles over their shoulders.

  And women in long skirts, most wearing corsets. Although they corrected anyone who actually said “corset.” The proper term was either “stays” or “jumps,” and apparently there was a distinct difference between the two, though not one I could understand. They all looked the same to me, their upper bodies rising from their full skirts rather like ice cream cones and spilling out over the top to a greater or lesser extent, depending on personal preference or body type.

  I assumed they’d look down their noses at my less-authentic natural figure, but apparently, running around uncorseted merely labeled me as “slatternly.” They saved their most scornful glances for the women—usually very young—wearing neither sleeves nor caps.

  “Hmph!” one exclaimed when a bare-armed teenager ran by, looking more like a character from a Pre-Raphaelite painting than a proper eighteenth-century lady. “Ought to run that strumpet out of camp!”

  I deduced, from looking at the speaker’s outfit, that a respectable colonial lady could display almost any amount of bosom as long as she kept her arms covered and wore a mob cap or a wide, flat straw hat to preserve her dignity.

  At any rate, the colonial era was a great time to be a blacksmith. I’d brought a much larger than usual stock of small bits of hardware—hooks, tripods, trivets, and other old-fashioned oddments that people might find useful for cooking over an open fire, camping in an old-fashioned tent, and living generally under the eyes of the Authenticity Police. I was doing a decent business already, and I had a feeling things would improve after some of the shoppers went back to the colonial encampment and figured out what tools they’d forgotten to pack and how much more useful some of my hardware would be than whatever they had brought. Not to mention the large number of colonial dames and gentlemen I saw returning for a second or third time to study larger pieces with the sort of acquisitive look that crossed centuries. If even a tenth of them gave in to temptation before the end of the weekend …