by Jimmy Fox
“I don’t care what he call himself. You just leave him alone and let him be on his way,” Dora said firmly. She went back inside, confident of being obeyed.
“You a lawyer, huh?”
Nick continued stowing his belongings. “No, I’m not a lawyer. I’m a genealogist, someone who researches family histories. I’m in Natchitoches trying to learn all I can about a certain family that lived here during the nineteenth century. Some of the descendants now live in New Orleans, and I’m working for them.”
“What’s that got to do with us?” Shelvin asked, showing interest in hearing something besides gagging from Nick’s throat.
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
Shelvin stared off into the distance. “I always wanted to know what it was like to live in Africa, before slavery days.”
“I’d be glad to help you get started in genealogy, Shelvin. No charge. Hey, I’m not such a bad guy. Really.”
Nick wanted to come clean. He felt he owed it to Ivanhoe. But he couldn’t. Not yet, anyway, if ever.
Shelvin looked Nick up and down and seemed to come to a decision.
“Sure, I heard of them Balazar people just about all my life. They the ones you interested in, right?”
“Right.”
This guy was quite the detective. But he apparently didn’t see a connection between his family and that one, any more than a Smith would assume a relation to a Smythe.
“Since the mayor always telling us to be nice to tourists, I guess I better be,” Shelvin said. “There’s an old plantation outside of town once belonged to Balazar folks, people say. Used to be St. Denis Parish, way back. Me and my women go out there, and, you know…” He demonstrated with fingers what carnal choreography he and his lady friends performed. “Come on. I’ll take you there.”
Nick followed Shelvin, who drove at a maddeningly slow 20mph in his low-riding matte-black 1953 Ford pickup. Nick could feel the thumping of his audio system from thirty feet behind him.
After a succession of potholed parish roads, they ended up on a meandering, grassy lane bordered by ancient oaks. Through the trees Nick glimpsed vast fields, producing now only stands of immigrant shrubs and trees; now and then he saw a weathered, disintegrating tin-roofed sharecropper’s house.
The manse itself was nothing more than seven columns and remnants of two brick walls. Hyam Balazar had planned the approach with drama: the house once towered over the carriage roundabout that the gravel road unexpectedly led into; it must have been a breathtaking event to pull up in front of Mitzvah Plantation. Within the round enclosure stood a lichen-gray classical water nymph, her head missing, petrified in the act of emptying giant seashells into a dry pool. A new “For Sale” sign was nailed to one hoary tree. Artemis Realty, it read.
Figures, Nick thought. Natalie Armiger was systematic, he had to give her that. She was pursuing her own track to destroy evidence linking her to the Balazars. And she knew a lot more than she’d admitted.
Nick felt awash in a confluence of paradoxes flowing from the nymph’s empty shells. This place that Shelvin used as a sexual playground had been the setting for Hyam and Mulatta Belle’s unconquerable love, a relationship so far beyond mere physicality that it had stretched into the succeeding century; and even though, unwittingly, Shelvin represented the line of disinherited Balzars, robbed of part of their heritage and their “Portion,” he considered himself the master of this rotting kingdom.
“They say it burnt down about a hundred years ago,” Shelvin said, as they walked amid the steamy shadows.
Cicadas wailed, and then suddenly ceased as if strangled; but others took up the mournful antiphonal song.
“Was anything saved? Business records, books, letters?”
“Can’t say as I heard anything like that. How come I get the feeling you not telling all you know? You ain’t playing fair with me. I think there’s something going on here more than just this genealogical bullshit, man. I’m in New Orleans a lot. In the Army Reserve, and we got our summer exercises just across the river in southern Mississippi this year. I be looking you up one day and ask you again…where my mama can’t interrupt us.”
“Suit yourself. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not your enemy, Shelvin. One day, I may turn out to be the best friend your family ever had.”
“I heard that before, fool, from lots of white folks, and still got fucked over. When you prove I can trust you, then I will.”
Nick followed Shelvin back through the maze of deteriorating roads to a convenience store Nick recognized as a reference point from his earlier navigation of the town. Shelvin pulled his thumping truck into a parking place that seemed reserved for him, in front of the ice machine and the pay telephone. He got out of the truck and just stared at Nick, cross-armed, refusing to acknowledge his farewell wave.
16
The librarian explained to Nick in numbing detail, while her desk phone warbled annoyingly, that the most recent parish library tax issue had failed, and that workers were being cut right and left, so that even if the genealogical collection had not been transferred to Northcentral College last year, the library wouldn’t be able to serve the public in that area as it should, for the library is a servant of the public, dedicated to the ideals of furthering knowledge and improving the quality of life for…Nick thanked her over his shoulder as he headed for Northcentral College, and the Naomi Gascoin Widdershins Collection.
Because it was summer, there were only a few students on the campus of Northcentral. Tanned and supremely narcissistic, they slouched around in shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirts sporting images of the latest counterculture poseurs.
The overcooled air in the Gardner P. Singletoe Memorial Library had the smell of air in most public buildings. It seemed to Nick to have been recycled for thirty years, and suggested industrial-strength cleaners, hidden mold and mildew, countless trapped airborne viruses, and undiscovered carcinogenic materials hidden in the janitorial quarters and embedded in ceiling tiles. Nick stood for a moment in the ground-level lobby, a standard-issue Herman Miller seating area, wondering why anyone would still refer to the sixtyish terrazzo-aluminum-wood style of the decor as modern.
Up a flight of stairs, through several membranes of glass doors, past abused copiers, bad donated sculpture, awful student art, befouled water fountains, and a nasty-looking electronic theft gate, Nick found himself before the desk of Fabian Bunting, M.L.S.
As Nick introduced himself falsely, Bunting looked up from his stamping. Bunting’s body had the delicate insignificance of a small, nervous dog; his head seemed larger than normal because of his scrawniness. Nick detected a tendency toward monkish asceticism in the man’s weary but rapturous blue eyes.
“What a pleasure to have you here, Mr. Underwood,” Bunting said to Nick, in a barely audible voice, as if he were praying in his cell before sunrise. “My favorite time of year. I have the library all to myself, for weeks.” Apologizing for asking, he checked two of Nick’s fake scholarly cards.
“Oh, our Widdershins Collection is quite a triumph for the library and the college, indeed it is, Mr. Underwood. I shall have the honor this coming semester of conducting a seminar for our library-science undergraduates, during which we shall undertake to catalog the material that has so recently been entrusted to us. You are doing research, I believe you said, on…”
He had something of the stealthy inquisitor in his monk’s demeanor; Nick hadn’t yet mentioned why he was here.
“I’m doing an article on the Southern culinary tradition, and I’m looking for authentic plantation recipes in collections like this one.”
“How thoroughly appetizing,” Bunting said, with unconvincing interest. He probably subsists on water and stale bread crusts, Nick thought. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Underwood, I shall direct you to the section holding the Widdershins Collection.”
Bunting walked like a balloon in a breeze, not quite sure where he would go next. Twice he returned to his desk before they
had gone ten feet, once to close his inkpad, then to line up his four extremely sharp pencils. As they continued, he darted to a stack to adjust a book protruding slightly, then to a card file to close a drawer some thoughtless patron had left open. On the stairs to the third floor, he pounced on a crumpled piece of paper, shaking his head, apologizing, lamenting that the children simply would not obey the rules.
He gave Nick a quick description of what he might find in the several dozen lawyer’s cabinets that held the papers and books of the collection. There was a volume on hand, supposedly an index of the material, but Bunting confessed his doubt that it was complete, though it might possibly be useful as a starting place. With some self-effacing words and bows, he left Nick to his work.
Naomi Gascoin Widdershins had been the clerk of court in a neighboring parish from 1931 to 1970. Being of plutocratic background herself, she made a point of rescuing whatever was left when crumbling plantations were boarded up or torn down, as the old families died off or scattered. But then old Naomi went too far: when she retired, she took her precious collection with her, out of the public domain.
Nick knew this was not unusual; he’d run into such situations before, in other parts of the country. Clerks sometimes were unwilling to relinquish control of their beloved documents, or to allow profane hands to touch them. After their deaths, these irreplaceable hoards of information might end up in a historical collection, with luck; or, less fortunately, they might be piled in garbage bags at the curb, mistaken for run-of-the-mill personal papers of the deceased clerk.
Free of the solicitousness of the emaciated Mr. Bunting, Nick quickly located a promising case of bundled papers and lifted the glass door. The bundles seemed to have been kept separated according to plantation. For Nick, the names were evocative of the juleped euphemisms that finally could not sweeten the bitter reality of the antebellum South. Bonneheure, Montclair, Shadowick, Heatherdowns, Canebreeze…ah, Mitzvah! Finding it did indeed feel like a good deed, a commandment to do the right thing, as Nick knew the word connoted in Jewish tradition.
Now there was no time to linger over the tantalizing items–letters, bills of sale, household papers, most slightly charred. He checked around for surveillance cameras. Finding none, he smoothly slid his discoveries into his briefcase.
“Well, Mr. Underwood–”
“Ralph, please,” Nick said, standing again before Fabian Bunting’s desk, beaming with scholarly collegiality.
“Very well, Ralph. You aren’t leaving already?”
“I’m afraid I can’t work up there, Fabian. The conditions, positively deplorable. You see, there’s a fluorescent light that’s incredibly noisy. If there’s one thing I cannot tolerate it’s a noisy place of research. No offense to you personally, Fabian, but as a fellow academician, I am shocked. Shocked, that your fine facility would be marred by such…such…well, such gross incompetence!”
He was devastated. “Oh, my! Please, Ralph, have a seat for a moment. I am going to summon maintenance immediately. But it’s summer. Oh, dear me!” He put a hand to his temple, as if some throbbing pain had just erupted there in his conspicuous veins. “There is only one maintenance man on duty. Not our best, I’m afraid. Well, I’ll just make the call anyway, and go up myself to investigate.”
“Thank you, Fabian. You are most kind. I knew you would understand.”
“Oh, completely, completely. I am the same way. The least little noise or…disorder can make me lose my concentration.”
Fabian stood up, looking as if he didn’t know exactly what to do; then he caught a breeze and was off, stepping softly as if on eggshells toward the stairway, his concentration apparently back..
When he was safely out of sight, Nick walked over to the electronic theft device, slid his briefcase through the narrow gap between one of the posts and the wall, and made his escape.
17
Gwen was a retired paralegal from a small north Louisiana town. “Nine months,” she said, affectionately patting the stacks and stacks of notecards in her briefcase. “Nine months to compile this stuff, and I’m only halfway through my survey of northwest Louisiana. It’s my baby; it’s all right here. Can’t bear to be separated from it.” She tittered apologetically.
“My publishers in Little Rock are always on me to speed up, but I want it to be right, you know?”
In retirement, she’d finally been able to devote herself to her lifelong interest: the study of family Bibles and small cemeteries throughout Louisiana, those often overlooked places where the passages of life were lovingly, and usually accurately, recorded. Gwen asked Nick if he’d read her article on the headstone inscriptions of Claiborne Parish in ArkLaTex Memories?
“As a matter of fact I did,” Nick said, wishing he actually had. “Loved it.”
This was his last stop on Hawty’s list: Shady Dell Plantation, home of the archives of the Daughters of the Glorious Gray. A fiercely unfriendly woman watched over the shelf-lined reading room, formerly the grand ballroom of the three-story, square-columned, white Italianate mansion. The woman on duty watched Nick and Gwen with obvious suspicion, as she dusted one of the Confederate-soldier mannequins.
This wasn’t going to be easy, Nick warned himself.
With the possessive pride of the frequent visitor, Gwen showed him the splendid collection of family Bibles, forty-six of them, she explained. From Antwyn to Zimmer. Some of the books were bragging statements of conspicuous piety and wealth, with ornately tooled leather and gaudy clasps; others were unassuming, worn utilitarian objects of daily devotion. For some months Gwen had been laboriously transcribing the handwritten family chronologies and notations scattered throughout these books. Now working among the Js, she’d already passed the richly decorated quarto Bible of the Balazar family.
She was a sweet, pudgy woman, as likable as a stuffed toy. Nick was already sorry for what he was going to do to her.
He grabbed several Bibles, seemingly at random, the Balazar one among them. Then, he took a seat at a separate library table.
Thumbing through the Bible, he quickly decided there were three pages in the front he wanted: “Births,” “Marriages,” and “Deaths.” He kept his knife ready.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes went by.
Nick squirmed in the too soft, crushed-velvet, Victorian chair. He was getting desperate.
But just as he was about to do something rash like grab the book and dash out, Gwen said, “God! I just have to have a cigarette. You smoke? No. Well, I’ve tried my derndest to quit. I’m chewing that nicotine gum.” Shaking her head, she removed a wad from her mouth and wrapped it in a piece of paper. “Doesn’t do a bit of good. Watch my stuff will you? I have to go outside. The old bat won’t let me smoke in here, of course.”
Innocent as baby Nero, Nick commiserated.
The old bat followed Gwen out of the room, not so discreetly indicating her disapproval of Gwen smoking even exiled to the wide front gallery, where the soaring square white columns had endured the breath of cannons. Gwen’s briefcase was the kind lawyers and accountants use, a deep box-like affair. In a pocket inside the lid Nick noticed an extra pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. He took the matches, lit one, and dropped it and the matchbook in the briefcase. A brief, violent flare erupted. In a few seconds, smoke and flames roiled up from the crib of Gwen’s “baby.”
Poor Gwen. The world will just have to wait for your book…lacking, alas, the Balazar Bible details.
By the time the first of the smoke detectors started to blare, Nick had removed the pages he needed from the Balazar Bible and made it to the lobby, where he shouted, “Fire!”
The old bat ran past him, followed a moment later by Gwen. Several other Daughters of the Glorious Gray appeared on the curved stairs, pausing melodramatically before a mammoth triumphal painting of the First Battle of Bull Run, their faces mimicking the expressions of the snorting war-horses in the picture.
At least that’s the image Nick had as he left the building, ne
arly colliding with a black woman in a maid’s uniform, who ran in from somewhere with a fire extinguisher.
He drove toward the highway, gunning through every yellow light, consoling himself with the thought that maybe he’d helped Gwen kick the habit.
“Oh, hell! Just what I need!”
Blue lights flashed in his rearview mirror.
Nick wasn’t sure how fast he’d been going. The vision of Corban’s dead face again had commanded most of his attention.
For an interstate, I-49 was little traveled; Nick had become accustomed to the clear field. If need wasn’t the justification, some legislators, contractors, and their cronies must have made a killing on this thing. Ah, the Louisiana way. He figured he was about to find out firsthand about one of the new revenue sources the highway had brought.
Nick could see the officer gesturing with his arm, toward an exit. Why not just pull over on the shoulder? he wondered. Great! He would have to go in front of some judicial bumpkin to pay a fine. He had little cash on him, and he doubted any trustworthy person would take one his checks. He had too much precious cargo to spend a few days in a local jail while Hawty scrounged up enough to spring him.
The two cars pulled into the dirt lot of a boarded-up convenience store on the verge of being reclaimed by the pine forest behind it.
The officer got out of his car and began walking toward Nick. Nick didn’t have insurance, as required by state law, so there was no reason to go through the charade of searching his glove compartment for the papers. The guy might think he was reaching for a gun, anyway. Maybe he could talk his way out of this.
“Afternoon, officer. Was I speeding?”
“No sir. Problem is, you wasn’t going fast enough.” The man drew his pistol, which to Nick looked like more gun than rural duty required. “Get out of your car, Mr. Genealogist.”
