Tall Tail

Tuesday, September 14, 1784

Bent over his drafting table, Charles West squinted, moving the T square farther up the page. Karl Ix had built him a table to his exact specifications. It raised and lowered, plus the flat surface would tilt.

Piglet snored under the table.

A rumble of not-too-distant thunder awakened the dog. Charles walked over to the handblown glass window, four rows of panes horizontally, six vertically. He needed lots of light. Having seen Mr. Jefferson’s windows, which doubled as doors when slid upward, he had copied the design, somehow managing to pay for the considerable expense.

“Those are boiling black clouds,” Charles said out loud.

Thunder cracked again, closer.

“Staying inside is a good idea,” the corgi advised.

Although the sun had not yet set, a pitch-black sky had blotted out the late-afternoon light.

Peering out the window of his and Rachel’s tidy house, he looked south toward the main house built on a soft rise and saw candles moving from room to room in Ewing’s house.

“Piglet, storms do pass over England, but here in the summer it’s almost every day, or so it seems to me. This one”—he paused, whistled low, which made Piglet bark—“is flying, just flying, toward us.” No sooner had he said that than the west wind picked up, trees bent toward the east, their leaves fluttering like supplicants.

Although she had been working with her father, Charles worried about Rachel. He lit a candle, carrying it in a curving brass candleholder to each downstairs room facing west.

“Dammit.” The house was a simple four-over-four with a wide center hall. He put the candle on the hall table, placing a hurricane glass over it. He opened the front door and rushed outside from window to window, flicking the shutter holders, wrought-iron S’s resting on their sides, to an upright position. Closing the shutters, he dropped each small wrought-iron S.

“Come on, Piglet.” He hurried back in the house, bounding up the stairs two at a time. This proved more difficult as the wind now smacked the house. He lifted up a window, leaned out to pull a shutter closed. Fortunately, the wind pressed the shutter against the house so he could pull the other one shut, fastening them together from the inside with a wrought-iron bar that was longer than the S’s downstairs and inside the shutters.

There were only two rooms upstairs on the west side, but by the time he reached the second one and opened the window, the wind had blown the coverlet off the bed. Reaching out as far as he dared, he flipped one dark green shutter shut. The other one began banging against the house. He leaned out farther while Piglet grabbed his breeches, bracing himself.

The shutter flapped back with a bang. Got it.

Soaked in the front, Charles reached down to pat his friend. “What would I do without you?”

“True,” replied the sturdy but small dog.

Their bedroom, on the east side, seemed safe. The west side of the house felt as though a giant was slapping it with his open hand.

Charles peeled off his sopping shirt, hung it over the banister. Both man and dog thumped down the stairs.

Once in the kitchen, which ran the length of half the house, he opened drawers and found a dish towel. Wiping his chest made the soft red-gold hair stand up.

Back to the hallway, he picked up the candle, retreating to the main room where they would entertain visitors. Slumping in a chair, he listened to the wind.

“Come on.” He patted his thigh and Piglet without too much effort leapt up as Charles grabbed the fellow under the armpits.

The house shook.

—

While those two huddled together, Catherine, Jeddie, and John stayed in the main barn. Jeddie and the young boys he was training brought all the horses in when they perceived the temperature dropping, the black clouds rolling up behind the mountains. All the broodmares were safe and sound, in their special barn, nickered. They didn’t like the storm, but they were safe.

Catherine visited each horse in the main barn, offering a handful of oats. Some took them, some didn’t, but not one thrashed around in his stall or made a fuss.

A gust of wind shot down the center aisle. Cleaning rags blew around. In their hurry to bring in the horses, the boys threw rags over the stall doors, all of which had Dutch doors inside and out. The outside doors were shut.

John slid down the ladder from the hayloft, his hands and feet on the outside. He’d closed the hayloft doors, open to ventilate the hay and the barn.

“Black as the Devil’s eyebrows,” he remarked to his wife and Jeddie, standing with Reynaldo.

“I didn’t know anything was coming until I heard that horrible thunder.” Catherine felt another mighty gust of wind. She headed for the doors facing northwest. John sprinted ahead of her, as did Jeddie. The men pulled the massive doors shut, leaving the ones on the other end open.

“No point standing here in the aisle,” she said. “We can sit in the tack room.” A moan of wind overhead caused her to look upward.

Jeddie shook his head. “An evil spirit.”

Catherine walked into the room and little Tulli, one of the small stable boys who was learning to identify the different kind of bits, was shaking.

“I don’t want to see no dead people,” he stuttered.

Jeddie tried to reassure him. “Oh, I was just talking ’bout spirits.”

Catherine sat next to little Tulli, kicking her legs straight out to stabilize the old stool. She put an arm around him, rocked him.

John Schuyler smiled at his wife, realizing what a good mother she would be, how she loved children and animals.

“Tulli, don’t worry yourself about spirits. You are surrounded by good spirits. You can’t see them, but they’ll protect you.”

Jeddie picked up a bridle, a simple snaffle bit. “I always like what you say, Miss Catherine, about how any bit is cruel in the wrong hands. I’m trying to teach Tulli soft hands. He rides Sweet Potato.”

“I’ve seen him.”

Sweet Potato was a pony, and like most ponies, highly opinionated and smart.

Another blast of wind, branches creaking, quieted them.

Tulli started shaking again. Catherine pulled him closer.

“Do you remember your poppa?” she asked.

“A little. I remember he could juggle horseshoes,” the child said.

His father had died when Tulli was five. The man was cutting firewood for his family. When he didn’t come in the cabin, Georgia, his wife, walked out to see why he was taking so long. He laid on the ground, on his side. No one knew what took him away, but Georgia comforted herself and her two boys by telling them he didn’t suffer and God needed a strong man to fix things in heaven.

Tulli thought there was plenty to fix at the cabin, but even then he had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

—

At the big house, Ewing and Rachel put away his papers when the storm started. It was too dark to read, anyway. Rachel liked helping her father. She listened closely to him when he spoke of buying land. Catherine did, too, but she was more interested in her father’s multiplying business holdings: tobacco, hemp, corn, buildings by a landing on the James River in Scottsville, properties on the Atlantic down in North Carolina. Rachel liked the land itself. Watching her husband, Charles, create plans for building interested her. She couldn’t pass by places now without imagining a house or barn on a special site with good drainage.

Ewing enjoyed his daughters’ company. He liked teaching them. Both were prudent and never bleated about what they knew. Both sisters learned very early to listen. That way, you learn a lot more than you do if you talk.

Father and youngest daughter retreated to the kitchen.

“Knew it would be bad,” Bettina announced. “Knew it would be bad when the chickens ran under the henhouse. Chickens always know. Uh-huh. Always.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the sky so black.” Rachel observed the fury outside the kitchen door, opened it, as it was on the north side of the house. Wind blew small limbs, odds and ends not tied down in front of them, but didn’t blow into the kitchen, as the wind came from due west.

Ewing sat down at the kitchen table. “I remember a storm like this when Isabelle and I were first married. Just about blew us to bits. The river rose suddenly. No one understood why, ’cause there wasn’t that much rain. Must have been 1759, 1760.” He shook his head. “Where does the time go? Seems like yesterday.”

“Does,” Bettina forcefully agreed. “Seems like yesterday I could touch my toes.”

“You can still touch your toes. Put your foot on the chair,” Rachel teased her.

“You just wait, Miss.” Bettina laughed and so did Ewing.

The storm blew over; clouds hung, though. The sun set, but the only sign was a glimmer of lighter clouds over the mountains.

Everyone checked outside. Branches down, a farm wagon tipped over on its side. Not too bad, considering.

Catherine and her beloved John walked home.

Charles met Rachel as she reached the low gate. “I was worried about you,” he said to his wife.

“I stayed with father.” She looked around. “Let’s open up these shutters. Just in case the heat comes up. Hope it doesn’t. Be lovely to sleep in a cool night.”

They opened the first-floor shutters. Charles opened the ones upstairs.

Later, Piglet was curled at the end of the bed as Charles built small stairs so he could get up and down. He and his humans slept soundly.

Rachel never imagined she would allow a dog on the bed, but Piglet didn’t seem like a dog; plus, it made Charles so happy. She reminded herself that Piglet went through the war with her husband, so nothing was too good for the corgi, and of course nothing was too good for Charles.

In the middle of the night, the farm dogs set up a howl. Piglet awoke and howled, too.

Charles ordered him, “Pipe down.”

“There’s someone here,” the corgi answered.

The other farm dog called out, “Intruders!”

No one paid any mind. The humans went back to sleep.

“There’s someone here!” Piglet insisted.