Tail Gait

May 12, 2015

The back road from the Charlottesville Airport meandered through a few subdivisions closer to the airport. The farther west Harry headed with the animals in the station wagon, the more the land opened up: revealing plowed fields, and those where the orchard grass and fescue tips were now breaking through the soil. Overhead, enormous cumulus clouds billowed, in contrast to a startling blue sky.

She’d dropped off her husband at the airport, as Fair would be attending a veterinarians’ conference in Denver for the rest of the week. Sometimes wives would go to the conferences; other times, not so much. She liked Denver but knew her job was to stay home; her crops would begin their life cycle. Of course, it was too early to tell how each of these crops would fare, but to date the mixture of sun and rain had been perfect.

She rounded a long, sweeping curve. The very back of The Barracks was visible to her left, and farther to her left she could make out the construction for part of Continental Estates. When she reached Hunt Country Store, she couldn’t help it. She turned left. This was a long way around to either The Barracks or Continental Estates. It was also the only way. Neither property could be accessed from the west.

Passing the two square blue Barracks signs, she drove closer to Berta Jones’s driveway, turned left, and passed individual houses, all large, arriving at last at the great wrought-iron gates of Continental Estates.

“This isn’t the way home,” Pewter noted from the backseat.

“She likes to wander,” Tucker replied, next to the gray cat.

The cat squinted, looking out the window. “Wander? With her, it’s a magical mystery tour.”

Mrs. Murphy looked on the bright side. “Hey, at least we get to see a lot.”

“I can’t imagine what these gates cost to make, with the gilded pineapples right in the center,” Harry said to them.

For a moment, they thought she was talking about food, but she wasn’t, so they lost interest.

“Where are we going?” Pewter demanded.

“Pipe down, Pewter,” Harry called to her as she slowed, passing the finished houses on the main center street.

On a whim, she turned left, heading west to see if she could recognize any of the homes whose backside she had seen from the back airport road.

Each home varied from its neighbor and each was set deep on the one- to two-acre lots. A few even had five-acre lots. Not as far along as those on Saratoga, the center road, the dividing line between east and west in the subdivision, where the outsides of the homes were finished. The work here was being done inside. Some had a red-brick exterior, others painted brick. A few even had a stone exterior, and others clapboard. All were built in a style a colonial person, if he came back, would recognize. The subdivision would be alien to them, but its architecture wouldn’t be.

Harry ran down her window. The sounds of hammering, electric saws, and drills filtered into the wagon.

“Nasty noise,” Pewter fussed.

Tucker, too, found it jarring. “It’s the saws and the drills.”

Reaching a cul-de-sac, she slowly circled it and headed back out. At the intersection to the main drag, she turned left, driving back to that cul-de-sac. She cut the motor, sat for a moment, then got out, the two cats and dog with her.

They walked across a field and out to the milestone. Standing at it, Harry carefully turned in each direction. The Barracks presented rolling hills. As she turned west, the Blue Ridge came into view. She knew all those homes with great views of the mountains would wear a higher price tag. And why not? It was stunning.

“Come on.” Harry moved slightly southeasterly from the milepost as she followed old deep wagon ruts.

Reaching the shallow ravine, she looked across it, could begin to make out the deep gulley and a deep gulley beyond that.

Tucker looked down into the shallow ravine. “Long gone.”

“You know, guys, once upon a time this was heavily traveled,” said Harry. “According to Ginger—if I remember, when he gave us The Barracks tour—this was the back way into the camp. Saved time and miles. I never asked him when it fell into disuse. Maybe he didn’t know, but Garth Road, along with old Three Chopt Road, were the main east-west corridors. ’Course Three Chopt became Route 250, so anyone along that road could do pretty good with a business. Like goods, wagon repairs, all that kind of stuff. But Garth Road more or less remained large estates. Funny how things happen.”

Pewter’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry.”

“All right, come on.” She turned, walking back to the station wagon.

Once Harry and everyone were inside she cut on the motor and the air-conditioning. It wasn’t that warm but with the car closed up, it had gotten stuffy.

They sat awhile while Harry tried to imagine the activity here during the Revolutionary War.

Driving back down the center road, she noticed Marshall Reese’s car parked in the midst of much activity at one of the finished houses. He and Paul Huber, with his landscaping trucks everywhere, had blueprints unfolded on the hood of Marshall’s Mercedes.

Harry stopped. The men called out to her and she walked over, animals in tow.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Marshall smiled.

Noticing again the Band-Aids on his fingers and a gauze pad on Marshall’s palm, Harry asked, “What happened to you?”

“Stupid. Here I have Paul but I decided to plant a quince for my wife at the corner of the yard. Little did I know what I was getting into.” He chuckled. “I’ve gotten soft.”

“Yes, but no less stubborn,” Paul teased him, then turned to Harry, repeating Marshall’s query. “What are you doing here, Harry? We all know you’re a curious person.” He squeezed her shoulder good-naturedly.

“Wanted to see it after you repaired all the damage from the earthquake, which fortunately didn’t affect the landscaping too much.” She glanced down at the blueprints. “They’re still easier to read than something on a computer.”

Paul pointed to the center road. “You can see the homes that are finished are already landscaped. Crepe myrtles for summer, boxwoods, every kind of oak imaginable. Each home has a different palette, so to speak.”

“I noticed you haven’t put in Bradford pears or Leland cypress,” Harry replied.

“Love the Bradford pears,” Paul said. “Just love them, but they aren’t as sturdy as I would like, and if we use another type of pear, an older type, more work for the owner.”

She pointed to rows of trees lining each street. “Each street is different?”

Marshall answered, “We’re just firming up putting in the white dogwoods for this street. The first cross street will be pink dogwoods. Some streets will have conifers, others oaks, hickories, even persimmon. It will be beautiful, Harry. Distinctive.”

“No locusts?” Harry asked. “They bloom in the spring and smell divine.”

“Thorns,” Paul quickly replied. “We’ve narrowed this down to seasons and trees that can’t really hurt a child. Those locust thorns do damage. And we tried to avoid trees that have too many droppings, like black gum. Personally, I like black gum, but it creates more work for the maintenance crews.”

Harry looked at Marshall. “Maintenance crews?”

“Continental Estates will have a maintenance fee, a garbage collection fee. The monthly bills will be small, especially when the development is completely sold out, but this is the only way to ensure the elegant look. You can’t have one person who doesn’t trim the street tree in front of their house next to one who does. Just makes for bad feelings.”

“Guess it would.” Harry then asked, “How’s the endowed chair coming along?”

“Tim Jardine raised another million and a half.” Marshall broadly smiled. “The response has been strong.”

“Did Ginger ever see any of this?” Harry asked, indicating the development.

Marshall nodded to Harry. “He did. Paul and I drove him around, asked advice. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of another development on old land, some of it a land grant, but he knew it was unstoppable, so he accepted a historical look, if you will.”

“He even identified for me what was fashionable in gardening then,” said Paul. “There we had a lot of help from the Monticello people and Montpelier, too. A lot of help.” He put his hands in his pockets.

“A land grant?” said Harry. “I kind of remember Ginger, years ago when he gave us the tour, mentioning it, but, well, like I said, that was years ago.”

Ever eager to display his knowledge and his fidelity to his professor, Marshall said, “Continental Estates is on the Ashcombe land grant. A small piece of this is old Barracks land, Colonel Harvey’s land that was cut off from the hundreds of camp acres later by a grandson. But I can tell you I have thoroughly researched this chain of title.”

Harry’s face went white; she swayed a little.

Paul grabbed her elbow. “Harry, are you all right?”

Pulling herself back together, she hoarsely said, “Yes. Sorry. A little light-headed. Made me think of Frank Cresey,” she blurted out.

“Frank?” both men said in unison.

“He was obsessed with Ginger in a strange way. Read all of Ginger’s books, even after graduation. Would go to the library and read. Read anything about the Revolutionary War. Odd.”

“That is odd, but he had been a good history student. Ginger always paid him that compliment,” Paul agreed.

“What he was obsessed with was Olivia,” Marshall said. “Well, nothing can be done about it now, but Harry, it seems you, too, are focused on Ginger and his work.”

“Yes, I guess I am. I feel I have to find out why he was killed. So I come back again and again here to what fascinated him. It’s a little crazy. I’ll get over it.”

“Hope so.” Marshall smiled.

After thanking them for showing her the plans, she bid them goodbye, got herself and the animals in the station wagon, and took a deep breath to clear her head. Then she drove out.

She didn’t break the speed limit, although she wanted to. She drove straight to Susan’s, hopped out of the car, ran in the back door.

“Where you at?” she called.

“In the sunroom,” Susan called back.

“Get your purse. Come on.”

Susan walked out to Harry. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I figured out what Frank was talking about. You drive and I’ll call Cooper. Come on. Whatever you were doing can wait.”

Within minutes, Susan was driving. The cats and dog, alert, sat in the back. Harry had Cooper on her cellphone.

“Are you sure?” Cooper asked again.

“Yes. Chain of title. That’s what Frank meant. Susan and I are on our way to the county offices.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

—

In the wagon, under a conifer, windows down two inches, the animals fell asleep while inside the nearby building the three women leaned over the counter where land records are kept.

Given that Cooper was in uniform, cooperation was swift. But it would have been anyway.

The older lady behind the counter, Mildred Gianakos, laid out a large copy of an early map.

Pointing out the old roads, she said, “I think this is what you are asking. This is the Harvey land. It stayed in the family for generations. This is the Garth. All of this. Three thousand five hundred acres. Much of it in orchards.”

Harry tried to contain her excitement. “And you have the chain of title?”

“Copies. The original documents were fragile and irreplaceable, so way back, when they were photographed. They are all at Alderman Library, along with other early documents, climate controlled.”

Harry pointed to where she thought the original land-grant land was. “I thought this had been given by the king.”

Mildred went to her computer, pulled up information on original land grants. “Carter, m-m-m, that’s to the east.” She kept at it. “Why don’t you girls flip up the divider and stand behind me so you can see?”

They crowded around Mildred, quite handy with a computer, defying stereotypes about age.

“I had no idea there were that many land grants,” Susan said.

“The earliest ones were all east of here, around what is now Williamsburg, called Middle Plantation then; Jamestown, of course; and then once we reached the Fall Line, I mean, once colonists could live there, because it was a war zone between tribes, grants were given there, too. The Crown, depending on who wore it, gave the land grants as rewards, but also the recipient was expected to make the land productive. What the Old World craved was raw materials and exotic, exotic at the time, products from here.”

“Mildred, you sure know a lot,” Harry complimented her.

“Thank you, sweetie, but I had to learn. We get asked everything in here and lawyers are in and out like houseflies.” She giggled. “I didn’t say that.”

“Who else?” Cooper had been scribbling in her notebook.

“Historians. The late Professor McConnell could have worked my job, he knew so much. And over the last twenty years I would have to say that large home-building companies have been vigilant.”

Cooper’s antenna felt vibrations. “Like who?”

“Oh, Rinehart, Wade, Reese, even smaller ones. Some use the history as a calling card, but they do need to know where the boundaries are, you know, have there been disputes in the past, how were they settled? Plant a tree or build a fence two inches on the next man’s land and you could have a major problem. Hence, the lawyers in here.”

“I see.” Cooper hadn’t thought of that.

“Did Frank Cresey ever come in here?” Harry inquired.

“He did. Poor thing, but he was always clean. Quite the history buff. He would check whatever interested him at the time. Years ago, there were some questions about land out on Old Lynchburg Road. University of Virginia has a polo field there. He looked at those plats and chains of title.”

“Do you remember his last interest?” Pencil poised over her pad, Cooper scarcely breathed.

“Not long before he was killed, he was looking at much the same land you are, all the land that belonged to Ewing Garth as the Revolutionary War ended. Thousands of acres.”

“Garth?” Cooper knew the name.

“He bought the land grant that the Ashcombes held. Here, I can show you.” Mildred pulled up a facsimile. “The land was originally granted by their majesties, William and Mary, to Obadiah Ashcombe. His grandson Peter Ashcombe, a Loyalist, sold the entire grant to Ewing Garth.”

“For twenty thousand pounds,” said Harry. “My God, that would be millions today!” she exclaimed.

“It was very valuable land,” Mildred concurred.

Susan whistled. “Ewing had to be rich as Croesus.”

“He was.”

“February first, 1782,” Harry read the date out loud.

“Here’s the grant on the plat, here’s how it added to Garth’s lands. You can see he controlled both sides of Ivy Creek, the road east and west and a back road into The Barracks. So along with his crops and whatever, he controlled that road still in use today.”

“Did he establish a toll?” Susan asked.

“No, from what I understand from Professor McConnell and the other professors who have been in here—curious about the prisoner-of-war camp, that sort of thing—if you used Garth’s road, he occasionally would call in a favor. He must have been terribly clever.”

“And Frank knew all this?” Cooper asked.

“Yes, Officer, he did.”

Cooper pushed the pencil behind her ear. “I don’t see any problem with this.”

“Marshall Reese bought it for Continental Estates, after doing his research, of course.”

“Mrs. Gianakos, what would happen if there were a problem?” Harry wondered.

She frowned. “Well, that would depend on the type of problem.”