Tail Gait

April 25, 2015

Two Hours Later

Foot traffic on the Downtown Mall filled the brick sidewalk going in both directions. The lovely weather brought out residents living in the area. Other people drove downtown for an outdoor lunch.

Relaxed in a director’s chair, Snoop sat under the overhang of the small crook of buildings next to the Paramount Theater. The shade felt wonderful. At his feet rested a colorful painted bucket. He’d made wooden letter openers with a sharp point, priced at two dollars each. People would walk by, notice how smooth and graceful they were, and figure for two dollars, how could they go wrong? Some folks were even nice enough to forgo making change, giving him a few extra dollars. With business this brisk, the night ahead looked promising, for Snoop would be able to buy a bottle of real liquor, not wine. He hated wine, although he’d drink anything if he had to do so. Even Listerine contained alcohol.

Half dozing, the shuffle of feet opened his eyes.

“Hey, man,” said Frank.

“Hey.” Snoop smiled at him.

Frank dropped next to Snoop, sitting on the ground. The bricks were hard beneath him, but he didn’t seem to care. “Heard some of the bastard’s funeral.”

“Who?”

“The Professor. Greg McConnell.”

Snoop said, “Why go, if you don’t like him?”

Frank grunted. “To make sure he’s dead.” He paused. “Taught me a lot about history, though. I’ll give him that. Taught me it all comes down to history.”

They both laughed.

A middle-aged woman stopped, picked up a letter opener, noticing the veining in the wood. “Red oak,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I can never resist red oak.” She fished two one-dollar bills out of her cloth shoulder bag, handing them to him.

“Thank you and hope you only open happy mail,” said Snoop.

Frank plucked a letter opener out of the painted bucket. “Downed tree?”

“One blew over near the railroad track. I stashed what I could. Been busy ever since.”

The railroad line ran parallel just south of the mall. The small old C&O station at the northern end was no longer in use. Another brick station farther away handled passenger traffic. All across the United States, tidy small stations had been abandoned. Many towns no longer had passenger service. Those that did had nothing near the standard of the old days. Still, anything was better than getting ensnarled in Washington, D.C.’s traffic a hundred miles north. A pity the nation’s capital wasn’t on the Buffalo border, close enough to Canada’s capital. Many a resident in these parts, Virginia, Maryland, a sliver of West Virginia and southern Pennsylvania, would have thrown a joyous going-away party, thrilled to shift the congestion to upstate New York. Of course, those who made their living in the maw of endless traffic might feel otherwise. Once just to feel truly free again, Snoop and Frank hopped a freight boxcar, rode to Culpeper, Virginia, then hopped one back.

Despite their drunken dreams of escape, the Downtown Mall and its surroundings was their home. The other alcoholics, the shopkeepers, the sheriff’s people, and even some of the patrons of those shops knew them.

The two men sat next to each other for another fifteen minutes, then Snoop said, “You gonna stay sober?”

A long sigh. “No.”

“The man’s dead. Seems like you should be happy.”

“I’m glad he’s dead. I wish I’d killed him. Wish I’d had the guts when I was young but then Olivia would have hated me. No win. Know what I mean?”

Snoop nodded. Frank had some sense, but then so did most of the guys down here. The lights might flicker upstairs, but they could think clearly enough between power outages. It wasn’t lack of brainpower that drove them to hide in the bottle. He was never really sure why he or anyone else sought refuge there. Maybe the inciting pain receded, but the drinking had become a habit. Once one was a bona fide drunk, those first deep pulls on the bottle felt like rapture.

“So?”

Frank shrugged. “Dunno. I walked out of the halfway house. Didn’t check out.”

Snoop nodded. “They’ll be looking for you.”

“Yeah, they will. I hid at the old man’s reception, but some of the guys from ’59 saw me.”

“Fifty-nine what?”

“Football team. Good year. Those were the guys who gave us jobs, off and on. I let them down.” Frank stared off. “Didn’t mean to.”

Snoop nodded. “Maybe you should go back to the halfway house. Then check out.”

“Aw, Snoop, I don’t have to learn a skill. I already got a skill: I can drink you under the table.”

They laughed.

“Got that right.” Snoop smiled broadly.

“And I have to be ‘reviewed.’ ” He tapped his head. “I’m not crazy. I might do crazy things, but I’m not crazy.”

Snoop poked at Frank with the letter opener he was holding on his lap. “What’s the craziest thing you ever done?”

“Hanging out with you!” Frank picked up a letter opener from the bucket and poked Snoop back.

“Thank you. Come on, what else?”

“Marrying three women. Man, one’s bad enough.”

Snoop roared and nearly tipped over in his chair. He knew Frank had no children, despite the wives. The men on the mall didn’t talk about the kids they’d left behind. Many had been in jail for missing child-support payments. That multiplied their feelings of worthlessness so the denials escalated, as did the drinking.

Snoop had four children, two grown now. He hadn’t seen them or the mother in five years. Couldn’t face them. Told himself she turned the kids against him, but truth was she hadn’t. He did.

The pair sat for a little longer. Snoop noticed a Charlottesville police car parking in the lot just above the Paramount, catty-corner from the main library, once the main post office.

He tipped his head. “Frank.”

Frank followed Snoop’s gaze, stood up. “I don’t want to go back. I belong here.”

“You gotta place to hide?”

“Yeah. Down by the new construction at the hospital. No one will be working tomorrow.”

Tomorrow was Sunday.

Snoop shook his head. “Can’t stay there forever.”

“No, but it will give me time to figure out how to get all these people off my back. Guess I shouldn’t have said I killed the professor. Was pretty well lit when I did.” He smiled. “Wish fulfillment.” As Frank started to leave, he leaned over to plunk Snoop’s opener back into the bucket.

“Take it,” said Snoop. “You might need it.”

“Maybe I’ll write you a letter.” Frank nodded his thanks and put it in his pocket. He melted into the crowd as he headed into a side street.

—

Harry and Fair reached the farm an hour before sunset. Her husband dropped her off, then drove to his clinic, as he had two horses there he wanted to check. On weekends an intern looked over any patients, but Fair liked to check in. He valued his human clients and often loved his equine ones.

Harry got out of her clothes in a hurry, and put on boots, jeans, and an old sweatshirt, then hurried outside to do chores. She blew through the water buckets, threw down hay, swept out the aisle, and then hopped in the old truck, two cats and the dog with her.

Minutes later, she turned onto the dirt road leading to Cooper’s place, passing the Jones family graveyard, a huge hickory in the middle of the place for the departed. The blackbirds favored that tree.

Pewter stared out the window. “If only they’d sleep.”

“Yeah?” Tucker thought the limbs were thick with birds.

“I could climb right up there and grab one.” The gray cat licked her lips.

Not especially motivated by thoughts of dispatching birds, Mrs. Murphy said, “They’d dive-bomb you.”

The conversation stopped as Harry stopped, cut the motor. She stepped down from the truck and lifted Tucker down. The cats easily jumped out. Harry reached back for a jar of honey she’d bought on the way back from Ginger’s reception.

The lights shone from Coop’s kitchen windows as the twilight deepened.

Harry knocked on the policewoman’s back door. “Your neighbor.”

Coop’s voice called out, “Come on in.”

The small visiting posse stepped into the clean, bright kitchen, a large butcher-block table in the middle of the room, a small eating alcove under a window.

Harry placed the honey on the butcher block. “You’ve been busy.”

“Had it with those old curtains.” Cooper noted a folded pile of curtains by the back door. “They’ve got to be older than you and I put together.”

“Well, there are people in Albemarle County who value antique curtains even if they do have smiling daisies on them.” Harry’s mouth curled upward, for they were just awful. “Brought you some honey.”

“Thanks. Sit down. What will you have?”

Harry looked at the wall clock. “If I drink black tea, I won’t go to sleep. Same with Co-Cola.”

“White tea? Or beer? Or bourbon?”

“White tea.” As Harry selected her bag from the offered box, Cooper put on the kettle, then pulled out two heavy mugs made in Bennington, Vermont.

“How did it go today?”

“A cast of thousands.” Harry filled her friend in on events: who was there, the endowed chair, the fund-raising. “Thought you might be there to direct traffic.”

“No.” Cooper shook her head. “Paperwork. Rick made me go to my desk. Do you know how much I hate paperwork? Harry, you can’t turn around without this and that to fill out and how anyone thinks they can actually get anything done is a mystery.”

Harry laughed. “It is awful. That’s why I make Fair do it.”

“Now, there is a good reason to get married.” Cooper brought over the teapot, then the cups and a bowl of sugar cubes, white and brown, plus granulated sugar in a bowl.

Neither woman took milk, but both had a weakness for sugar.

“Your choice of sugars.”

“M-m-m.” Cooper took a sip, raising her eyebrows. “Thanks to you, I’m learning to love tea.”

Harry smiled. “Took me years to like white tea, but now I do. Hey, I came to tell you about Frank Cresey lurking behind a pillar on the Rotunda. He slipped away, but wasn’t he in custody?”

“Was is the operative word.” Cooper took another long sip as the three animals prowled the kitchen floor in case any crumbs fell. “Hold on.” The tall deputy rose, pulled out a few treats, and tossed them down, as these three were regular visitors.

Large though she was, Pewter snagged hers first.

“So he was released?” asked Harry.

“His stories about the murder”—Cooper twirled her hand upward—“impossible. Once he was sober, checked out by the psychologist, he was sent over to the halfway house. The report was that he was cleaned up, was well behaved, cooperative. Then he walked out. And right now we don’t have the manpower to pick him up. He’s harmless, basically.”

“Offensive but harmless,” Harry concurred.

“The Downtown Mall isn’t my beat. The Charlottesville police will pick him up, I’m sure.”

Harry laughed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if Frank stood on the county/city line? You all would come for him, he’d step into the city. And vice versa.”

Cooper smiled. “One of these days, I swear it will happen.”

In Virginia, cities are incorporated, having their own law enforcement, mayor, city commissioners. Counties had sheriff’s departments and a board of county supervisors. Often the towns weren’t large enough in the counties to have mayors. Some did, some didn’t, but the county courthouse was always the hub. Confusing as the system might be, it worked for Virginians, and Virginians were quick to note they had managed since 1624.

Each of the original thirteen colonies kept their systems. Pennsylvania had townships, for instance. And not one of those former colonies would change its ways. As one moved westward, in theory, those states became easier to govern, or at least more streamlined. This fiction was easily exploded when a state squared off against the federal government. The attorney general of Missouri would fight just as hard as the attorney general of Virginia if he or she felt the clumsy hand of Washington squeezing its citizens or its coffers.

Made life interesting.

Tucker joined them at the alcove, looking up at Cooper with an expression of saintliness. “Might you have more bones?” asked the dog.

“Ignore her, Coop.”

“Oh, how can I? And it just so happens, now that I think of it, I bought some greenies. Plus I have a tuna bomb for the cats.” No sooner did Cooper distribute these treats than the three creatures entered a state of bliss.

Coop sat back down at the kitchen table. “Do you want anything? I actually have deviled eggs.”

“Oh, thanks, no. I ate my way through the reception.” Harry paused. “I’ll miss Ginger. He and Trudy were friends of Mom and Dad. I know you have to be, uh, careful about sharing information, but have you learned anything at all?”

Cooper looked into her teacup. “Not a damn thing.”

“I keep thinking it was a mistake,” said Harry. “Maybe the bullet was meant for someone else.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid you’re right, but Ginger’s death was like a bolt out of a clear blue sky. There’s no sense to it.” She finished her tea.

“We’ve investigated the Hemings angle, and then the uproar over blacks, then women being admitted to UVA in 1972. Yes, Ginger got a few folks angry, but those that signed letters to the editors from that time are mostly dead.” She stopped for a moment. “Except for Carroll Kruger, who, about ninety, I figure, held forth on how admitting blacks and women to the University of Virginia has ruined—ruined, mind you—that once great institution and he will never give them a dime.”

“He’s pretty rich.” Harry tapped the edge of her cup. “Do you think you ever completely eradicate prejudice?”

“No, but it’s only the ancient and the cranks who cling to race and all this sex stuff. I think we’re beyond that, most everyone. But, you know, something else will take their place, some new category of outrage.”

“Solves nothing and hurts many. And that’s what I keep coming back to, Ginger never hurt anyone.”

“Frank Cresey.”

“Okay, but Frank didn’t kill him.” Harry leaned back against the cushion on the alcove booth. “The only thing I can think of is it’s some form of academic anger, revenge. Far-fetched. His research consumed his life. Maybe he stepped over into someone’s territory and Ginger got the credit they thought should have come to them or he wrote about a subject first. I know professors and doctors are incredibly competitive regarding their research.”

“We thought of that, Harry.” Coop held up her hands, empty.

“When you combed through his desk at home and then at UVA, what was he working on?”

“I’m not a scholar. I don’t know what’s significant or not. He had old maps. Trudy said he would consult the maps of the time because that was what the people used. She said how Ginger praised those early brave surveyors. Uh.” She tapped her forefinger on the table. “There were some first-person memoirs of the Battle of Saratoga and prisoner-of-war camps, and materials on old roads. Professor Brinsley Sims has been a big help. He went through everything and said he didn’t find anything incendiary, for lack of a better word.”

“When the department is finished, might I look?”

“I’ll ask Rick, but why?”

“I’m born and bred here. I might be able to pick something up, you know, from his going through old family Bibles.”

“Harry, what could that have to do with Ginger’s murder?”

“Maybe an old crime provoked a new one.”

“It would have to be a very old crime.”

“Maybe, but then again, it kept being brought forward, in ways we don’t understand but Ginger did. I can’t think of anything else. And I know it’s out there, but, okay, think of this. The Constitution says that in order to be president of this country, you must be born here. Ever wonder why?”

“No. I figured it was one more rule, like initially only giving the vote to white male property owners.”

“Aha! You do know some history.”

Cooper smiled. “Enough to know the fussing and fighting will never end.”

“There is that.” Harry’s animals came over and flopped down, though they were listening. “If the presidency were available to a naturalized citizen, of course that person’s early years would have been somewhere else. Our Founding Fathers knew the experience of the New World was just that: A person from another place, from Europe, no matter how brilliant, ought not be trusted with being our chief executive. They can hold any other office, but not that one. You have to be of this soil.”

“Never thought of that.”

“They did, because they saw how feudal past continued to affect Europe even in the eighteenth century, and really even today. We were born of the Enlightenment. No feudal past. We truly are significantly different from Europe and Asia.”

“Well, okay.”

“See, these were the kind of conversations Ginger would have. The man just loved what he did. It spilled over and out of him, and he was never pedantic or boring at it.”

“The past is prologue,” Cooper repeated the famous axiom.

“The past can kill you.”

Cooper looked at Harry, then said, “I’ll see what I can do. I have nothing else to go on.”

“Good. It will keep me off the streets at night.”

Mrs. Murphy said to Pewter and Tucker, “No, it won’t. When she gets like this, she—”

Pewter interrupted. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Mrs. Murphy thought Pewter might be onto something for once. After all, there weren’t too many angels in Virginia.