Probable Claws

17

January 18, 2017

Wednesday

“Ninety-one billion dollars. Ninety-one!” Harry exclaimed as she wrapped the snow globes in tissue paper before carefully putting them in a sturdy box. She was helping Tazio reorganize Gary’s office, now her new office.

“I never think of agriculture and forestry. I know I should but…” Tazio shrugged as she taped up a filled carton.

“Small farmer that I am, I sure do.” Harry set one globe aside, the flamingo looking skyward with shock. “Agriculture is Virginia’s largest private industry and forestry is third. Everyone is bedazzled by dot-com and coding but, Taz, Mother Earth remains the source of all wealth. Undergirds everything.”

“Well, I do remember you telling me that one large walnut tree can be worth from two to five thousand dollars, depending on the market when it is harvested.”

“Susan owns a fortune in walnut, those bottom slopes of the Blue Ridge behind my farm.”

“Didn’t her uncle will that to her? The one who was a monk?”

“Did. She pays me an annual fee to monitor the walnuts. Personally, I wouldn’t cut but a few of them. Too beautiful, too big. I feel that way about a lot of trees, like the big oak at Oak Ridge Estate. It was standing there when Tarleton raided the Upper James during the Revolutionary War, burning and looting while he searched for Patrick Henry, whom he had every intention of hanging.”

“I thought there weren’t many settlers this far from the Tidewater then.” Tazio, from St. Louis, knew a little Virginia history, starting in 1607.

The history of the New World as written down by its colonizers actually started before 1607, with Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony at Roanoke on the Albermarle Sound in what is now North Carolina. But those people disappeared. The 1607 group hung on, they starved, froze, did what they could, prayed a lot, but ultimately they did survive.

“Over one hundred fifty years later, Patrick Henry’s mother lived this far west. Remember, Dolley Madison’s mother was Patrick Henry’s mother’s sister.”

Tazio blew out her cheeks. “How do you remember all that? What I remember about Missouri history is Mark Twain was raised at Hannibal, and T. S. Elliot, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou at St. Louis. For a Midwestern state we haven’t been slack in the literary department.” She laughed.

“How do I remember?” Harry picked up the flamingo, turned him upside down, the snowflakes twisted down. “This cracks me up. He did have a wonderful sense of humor. Oh, back to memory. I attended public school in Crozet. Virginia history was drummed into our heads as was civics. I hear they don’t teach civics anymore, pretty much anywhere.”

Tazio, close to ten years younger than Harry and therefore in her early thirties, stopped oiling and wiping down her new large drafting table. “I was taught civics. You know what I think? You can chalk this up to me being mixed race if you want, but I truly believe this. Civics was yanked out of the classroom so people of color wouldn’t really know how government works at the local, state, and national levels. You’re much easier to manipulate if you’re ignorant.” She took a deep breath. “Guess that applies to whites, too.”

“What you don’t know can really hurt you, and for those who are poor, uneducated, they become dependent on government. That’s truly dangerous, in my book anyway. Docile people give way to a dictator. To anyone who promises them food, clothing, and shelter as a baseline. Not much work involved.” Harry added to the thought.

“I have to consider the baseline.” Tazio stepped back to admire her rubbing, changed the subject. “What a beautiful table, my drafting table is maybe half this size and not nearly as well made.”

“Taz, forgive me if I’m overstepping the line. We’ve known each other for some years, we work together to preserve the Colored School, to keep our history truthful. But we’ve never discussed race. I always figured if I made a mess, you’d tell me.”

“I would. The only thing I can tell you is it’s never far from my mind. I try not to dwell on it but there are things you can take for granted that I can’t. There’s always a bit of wariness there.”

Harry turned to face her friend. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to spend your time on that. With all your creativity I would wish that would consume all your thoughts, time.” She then said, “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“What sucks is that Gary was murdered. Is there still institutional racism and sexism? Sure. Probably not as bad as it was for Mom, who married an African American. But it’s there. You don’t wipe out centuries, or in the case of women, millennia of prejudice in a generation or two. That’s reality. But Gary, what was that? A talented man, a good man, a really helpful fellow. Poof.” She snapped her fingers.

“Haunts me. But it’s wonderful that you have rented his office. He would have liked that. He just adored you. He’d brag about your work.”

“He did?”

“All the time.” A big smile crossed Harry’s face. “He was a Virginian, remember. He wouldn’t tell you to your face. Didn’t want you to get the big head.”

Tears filled Tazio’s eyes. “I thought I was a pest.”

Harry came over, put her arm around Tazio’s waist. “Honey, he thought the world of you. He’d say, ‘If she wants it, she’ll become a famous architect, a society architect. She has it all.’ Then again, you are a beautiful young woman, and I think working with you, mentoring you, made him feel young.”

Tazio couldn’t hold back the tears. “Oh God, if only I could tell him what he meant to me. I never did. I never, ever did.”

“We forget to tell people we love them. I do it all the time. I couldn’t live without Susan. Do I tell her? No. But I’m there when she needs me or when Ned needs someone to help him canvass. I dutifully visit her grandmother and mother and I love them, too. Why is it we just keep our mouths shut?”

“I don’t know but I feel guilty.”

“Don’t. You’ve taken over his office. You’ve kept up some photographs of his work. You’re keeping most of his books and the old files. Your touches make it more colorful. He was pretty Spartan.”

“Funny. He could create such exquisite detail for his homes. Even your shed.”

“He could.” Harry kissed her on the cheek, then returned to the shelf. “He must have a million rubber dinosaurs and snow globes here. Say, do you mind if I take the flamingo to have something of his?”

“No. I’m keeping the one of Monticello in the snow. But all those knickknacks would drive me crazy. I don’t want to dust them. I’ll keep the dinosaurs, though. They make me laugh. Plus the dust won’t show so much.”

Laughing, Harry picked up a globe with a polar bear in it, blew some dust off it. “He didn’t dust.”

“Coop hasn’t found the 1984 file, has she?”

“Coop’s questioned everyone. She’s also tracked down every Ducati owner in Virginia. She works hard,” Harry remarked. “She doesn’t have a lot to go on. No, she hasn’t found it.”

“Ah.”

A scuffle by the back door sent Harry to the area. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting you.” Pewter, claws unleashed, sat in the middle of the small space.

“It’s the spider,” Tucker helpfully added.

Brinkley, sweet fellow, stood next to the gray cat. “It really is a big, big spider.”

“I am fearless!”

“Obsessed is more like it,” Mrs. Murphy dryly commented.

“Come on. Into the big room. I’m closing this door. I don’t know what you all are up to but it can’t be good with all this hissing. Come on.” She shepherded them into the room, closed the door tight, which she thought she probably should have done in the first place to keep out that wedge of cold air.

“What was it?”

“Goblins,” came the terse reply.

The two women worked for another two hours. What Tazio wished to keep was placed in the carton with tissue paper and newspapers.

“Keeping his pencils and T-square?”

“You bet. I’m keeping the files, too, as I said. It’s not a bad idea to have the building codes. He made marginal notes that would be helpful if I ever need to rebuild something built in 1979. I can download the codes but his notes are on the papers. A computer stores tons of material but you never get the marginal notes, the squiggles. And who is to say that a former client might not come in here someday and want an addition? It’s just a good idea. If we had building plans for the Colored School I would have poured over them. I mean, I haven’t studied them but I did notice odd citations regarding stresses, insulation ratings, new materials. Small initials, but I don’t know what they mean. Still, I’m keeping the files.”

“Well built, those three frame school buildings.”

“Sure are. I love the floor-to-ceiling windows. Natural light is always better than artificial. There was no electricity. Gary was right about structures from the past.” She sighed. “He was right about a lot of things.”

“What do we do with the cartons?”

“No inheritors. Well, no one wants his work things. I shouldn’t put it that way. No children. I’ll save stuff. You never know when something might be needed. There isn’t much storage space here. I can rent a storage unit for a hundred dollars a month, a small unit is less. This won’t even fill a small unit.”

“Think it will stay dry?”

“Oh sure. Can you imagine the lawsuits if those U-Stor things were sloppy? But this way it’s near but not in the way.”

Harry walked over to his desk. “I always like the blue light on his atomic clock.”

“Me, too.”

“And you’ve moved the tooth over here. Why are you keeping the tooth? It’s a big tooth.”

“It’s a dinosaur tooth.”

“No kidding.”

“I take it you weren’t one of those kids fascinated by dinosaurs?”

“No. I take it you were and Gary must have been if he kept a tooth.”

“I think this is from a meat-eater called Acrocanthosaurus. Big but not gargantuan compared to some other meat-eaters. I’ll find out when I have time.”

“Big. Big is the spider.” Pewter spoke from the floor.

“Spiders don’t have teeth,” Tucker said.

“No, but their mouth is sideways. Like little pincers.” Mrs. Murphy had observed spiders and other little crawlies. “Can bite you and inject poison.”

“Ugh.” Brinkley closed his eyes.

“Are we done?”

“We are. I’ll be open for clients next Monday. This location is so much better than where I was stuck in that cubbyhole at the edge of town. The rent isn’t bad.”

“Are you keeping his sign?”

“I’ll put it in here on the wall. Virginia Signs will hang mine tomorrow.” She was pleased. “It’s beginning to feel just right.”

They locked the door to the back as well as the front when they left. Cold air smacked them right in the face.

“This doesn’t only tighten your pores, it tightens your eyeballs,” Harry observed.

“Feels like snow, doesn’t it?”

Harry nodded, hurried past the space where Gary was shot. For one brief moment she, too, had been looking down the barrel of that gun. Then the killer slipped it back into his motorcycle jacket.

Harry didn’t know anything worth killing her over. Not yet.