The Good Morrow

by Richard Patterson

  Chapter 4

  I

  Gary Winters, a large man with a manner carefully tailored to match his blue suit, introduced Ruthie to the team from Coastal Development Corporation. The conference room was all decked out with displays mounted on easels. There was a surveyor’s map of Bellevue plantation, a proposed street map of a real estate development called Southern Shores, and several watercolor renderings of homes, a resort hotel, a marina, tennis courts, a golf course, a restaurant, and a mall of high-end boutiques.

  “This is Bill Schaffer and Hugh McCall from our Atlanta office, and Tommy Phillips who drew up the actual proposal.

  Ruthie had on her best Southern Belle behavior as she smiled and shook each man’s hand.

  “How sweet of y’all to come all the way up here just to talk about this.”

  As they all began to find a seat at the conference table, Ruthie discreetly whispered to Gary.

  “I need to talk to you after the meeting. We’ve got a slight complication.’

  He nodded just enough to let her know he was accustomed to dealing with complications.

  “Gentlemen, the Abernathy family, as you know, holds a large area of undeveloped land on the coast. They have been approached by Syncom Industries with an offer to develop part of the land as a site for a large plastics plant, but they are looking for alternatives.”

  Ruthie felt compelled to emphasize the integrity of her motives.

  “We just couldn’t stand the thought of all those chemicals and stuff polluting the environment.”

  “Tommy has a proposal which could provide even more income to the family, both long and short term, while at the same time preserving the natural beauty of the area and even enhancing the wildlife with a game management program.”

  He passed around copies of a bound proposal.

  “We’ve got some figures here we can discuss, but first I thought Tommy should give us an overview of the proposal. Tommy.”

  Ruthie pretended she was more interested in what Tommy had to say than how the numbers compared to the astronomical amount she had squeezed out of those scumbags at Syncom.

  “There’re two proposals actually, and we can get into the pros and cons for each in a minute. Basically they are the same except the second includes condominiums as well as single family units, and is designed to attract a wider spectrum of income groups.

  II

  Lee and Kathleen were sharing Lee’s corncob pipe as they strolled through the woods towards the swamp. Their appreciation for the delicacy of the insects and the intricacies of the Spanish moss brushing through their hair was clearly enhanced by the quality of their weed. Sometimes one would see some aspect of the design of the bark on a tree that totally escaped the other but always the wonder itself was contagious even if one just wondered about the wonder.

  Lee’s ears perked up.

  “Wha’s’at?”

  “What, honeypie?”

  “That voice.”

  “Wha?”

  “Sshhh. Listen.”

  He stopped and held his hand up.

  A distant but booming voice came wafting through the forest on a breeze.

  “For I have learned

  To look on nature, not as in the hour

  Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

  The still, sad music of humanity,

  Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

  To chasten and subdue.”

  Lee ran ahead a bit and signaled to Kathleen to come look.

  In the distance Kathleen spotted a figure standing in a boat. It was Foster, poling a flat-bottomed boat through the shallow waters of the swamp. He stood erect and propelled himself with long, slow strokes of his pole as though he were crossing the River Jordan to meet his Maker. He recited in a loud singsong voice.

  “And I have felt

  A presence that disturbs me with the joy

  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

  Of something far more deeply interfused,

  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

  And the round ocean and the living air,

  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

  A motion and a spirit, that impels

  All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,

  And rolls through all things.”

  Beyond him a lone white egret took flight, rising to soar into the open sky.

  III

  The fog rolled in and began to enshroud the swamp. Foster reclined against a tree near where Lee lay flat on his back, and Kathleen had her head on Lee’s stomach. Lee’s pipe was still going strong, and he had one hand on Kathleen’s breast. Foster had no need of artificial stimulants to propel him through the chasms of human consciousness. He caught Lee’s eye for a moment, smiled and launched into another recitation, this time with a hushed tone and measured pace.

  “Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken, tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvelous green, set round with Nature’s own orchard trees – crab apple, wild cherry, and sloe.

  “’This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’

  “Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror – indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy – but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side, cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.”

  Foster let his voice trail off.

  Lee could not contain himself

  “Wow…This is without a doubt the best damn grass I have ever had.”

  IV

  A full moon broke through the moving clouds to cast a magical soft light on the mansion and the garden beside it. The house was completely dark, except for a very faint glimmer of light in a window overlooking the garden. A gentle breeze stirred the Spanish moss in the trees.

  Inside everyone had long since gone to bed, and there was only the movement of the faint shadows from the moonlight in the parlor. The second floor was equally still, except for a very faint flicker of light coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hallway.

  Foster sat at a desk facing an open window.

  There was a small candle flickering on the desk, and the curtains moved gently with the breeze. He held a large feather quill pen, and there were several sheets of paper on the desk, but his gaze was directed at the moon. He seemed to be in a trance.

  Foster’s hand moved mechanically to an inkwell, and he dipped the quill pen slowly into the ink. He placed the pen on the paper, but there was a long pause before he started to write. Only his hand moved.

  There was no indication in his face that he was even aware that he was writing. The pen moved with slow, careful strokes.

  V

  Foster was slumped over his writing table, sleeping soundly, as the morning light crept in through the window. The candle on the table had gone out, but the table was covered with pages of Foster’s writing.

  Birds singing in the garden below the open window roused Foster from his sleep. He sat up slowly, listening to the birds and admiring the overgrown garden below.

  Then he noticed the pages of scribbling spread out beneath his hands. A look of incredulous excitement swept over his face, and he scooped the pages up, hurriedly glancin
g at the contents of each.

  VI

  Foster burst into Bubba’s room where Bubba was fast asleep.

  “Bubba! Bubba!

  Bubba jumped up in the bed and started looking around frantically to see if the house was on fire.

  “What? What? What is it? What’s happened?

  “I’ve started writing!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve started writing!”

  Foster was pacing around the room waving the sheets of paper in the air and trying to catch his breath as though he had just won the gold medal in the hundred meter hurdles.

  “Last night I wrote fifteen pages of poetry. This place is holy.”

  Bubba had lost all hope of being able to go back to sleep, and he let himself enjoy being caught up on Foster’s excitement.

  “Well, that’s just grand, Foster.”

  “The Old Man knew. He understood.”

  Bubba smiled at the thought of The Old Man finally getting some pleasure out of life by winning a hand without even knowing what cards he held.

  Foster calmed down and stood at the foot of the bed shaking his head.

  “I’m an oracle.”

  “Let’s see what you’ve got there.”

  Foster straightened the pages with all due reverence and handed them to him as Bubba turned on the reading light beside the bed and put on his glasses.

  “It’s probably the first canto of an epic.”

  Bubba strained to find something he can read. Foster’s “writing” appeared to be a combination of Sanskrit, Chinese, hieroglyphics and chicken scratches. It was impossible even to tell which end was up.

  “Your handwriting is worse than The Old Man’s.”

  “It’ll have to be translated before you can read it.”

  “I’ll say. What language is this?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s a completely new language. It has some letters from our alphabet, but most of it is completely different.”

  Bubba glanced at Foster skeptically over the top of his reading glasses.

  “I wouldn’t tell anybody else about this just yet.”

  “No, I don’t think the world is ready for it either.”

  VII

  Foster tapped on his water glass with his knife and rose out of his chair at the dining room table.

  “I have an announcement.”

  Everyone stopped eating except The Colonel, who simply raised his tumbler full of bourbon in a toast and then returned to his efforts to spear a piece of meat with his fork.

  Bubba seemed a bit apprehensive.

  “The call to return to Bellevue has heralded an auspicious beginning to a new period in my work. I have decided to stay here permanently and to declare the entire plantation a wildlife sanctuary.”

  As usual Lee is the first to perceive the significance of Foster’s gesture.

  “Far out.”

  Ruthie threw an icy stare at Bubba from the far end of the table. His expression seemed to indicate that Foster’s decision was news to him. Everyone else just smiled politely and returned to the business at hand as Foster sat back down.

  Ruthie excused herself from the table and made a beeline for the nearest telephone. She dialed a number and dispensed with any pretense of formality speaking with a hushed urgency as soon as someone responded on the other end.

  “Who do you know at the Fish and Game Commission? Foster now says he’s going to declare the whole place a wildlife sanctuary and if I know Bubba, he’ll pull every string he can grab to help Foster… I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve done anything yet, but we can’t stall the probate forever.”