Tall Tail

Sunday, August 7, 2016

“She looks so young.” Harry’s eyes misted as the photograph of her mother appeared on Fair’s large computer screen. She was feeling sentimental. Her dearest friends had gathered at her house to celebrate her birthday, and now looking at these old photos was making her emotional.

“She was,” Susan said. “Her senior year at Smith. I guess all your maternal side of the family attended Smith.”

Harry nodded, then smiled as a photo of her father appeared. Standing in a vaulted doorway at Cornell, his arms were thrown over the shoulders of two fraternity buddies.

Photo after photo of Harry’s family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, then the marriage photo of her mother and father at Greenwood Episcopal Church back in 1972. Two radiant young people, the bride’s veil now off her face, the groom in a morning suit, with a large crowd of friends surrounding them.

Ned pointed to the screen.

“Hey, isn’t that Samuel Holloway?”

“I think so. They were all good friends. There’s Miranda and George Hogendober.” Harry cited her longtime work partner and her late husband.

She missed working with Miranda as she missed the old post office.

Now peering over her shoulder, Miranda lamented, “George had hair in the photograph.”

They all laughed.

The photograph that drew the biggest laugh was the one of Harry and Susan in the new sandbox, followed by another photo of the ruined sandbox.

Watching the screen from the side, Pewter called down to Tucker, “She wore a bow in her hair.”

“Little girls did that. Still do.” The corgi thought bows silly.

Sitting in Fair’s lap, Mrs. Murphy enjoyed the pictures. Included here were images of long-deceased dogs, mostly German shepherds, and other kitties.

After the show, Harry, Fair, Susan, Ned, Miranda, the Very Reverend Herbert Jones, BoomBoom Craycroft, Alicia Palmer, and Cooper repaired to the kitchen. Susan pulled a giant devil’s food cake out of the refrigerator and lit the candles, which glowed against the vanilla icing.

“How did you fit that cake in our fridge?” Harry wondered.

“Moved the shelves,” Fair informed her, quickly adding, “Don’t worry, I’ll put them back.”

“Okay. Blow out the candles and make a wish,” Susan ordered her friend.

Harry blew them out in one big, long breath. “I’m not telling my wish.”

“Can’t. Then it won’t come true,” BoomBoom affirmed.

In the living room, thankfully cool, as Harry had put air-conditioning in the old farmhouse years back, the happy group ate their cake, drank some champagne, and reminisced.

“I can’t believe we wore our hair like that in college,” Harry mused.

Harry was moved. “I can’t believe you all gathered up these pictures and took them down to Rae Tait and she did this, given all that’s happening at Crozet Media.”

“Said she had a wonderful time scanning them in.” Cooper smiled. “It beats us asking her more questions.”

“Such an odd thing.” BoomBoom put her plate on the coffee table. “Why would anyone go through Rae’s files when all that expensive equipment was there? The keyboard, soundboard, everything? Video equipment, apart from the cameras, costs a pretty penny.”

Ned put his arm around his wife’s shoulders as she sat next to him. “Well, you know they weren’t druggies, or they’d have cleaned out anything that could bring a dollar.”

“Cooper and I went through all that was left, the outtakes,” said Harry, then looked at Cooper. “Did I just say too much?”

Cooper shrugged. “No. It helped to have two sets of eyes looking at the discarded footage, or I should say unused footage.”

“The outtakes we saw from Ed Cunningham’s website had the governor in some of them,” said Harry. “Seeing him at Mom and Dad’s wedding, I’m reminded what a handsome man he was. Still is.”

“Many politicians are.” Susan poked her husband, who laughed.

“Hey, not me,” Ned replied.

“You are to me.” Susan blew him a kiss.

“Ned, you’re good-looking and not fat. That’s a victory.” Harry teased him. “I mean, you’re even older than I am, or your wife.”

“That reminds me.” Susan rose, left the room, returning with a wrapped tube, a big bow in the middle. “Happy Birthday.”

Harry shook the tube. “What’s this?”

“Open it. Then we’ll all find out,” Fair encouraged her.

“Leave the empty tube,” Pewter begged.

“Why? You’re too fat to fit into it,” said Tucker. A hint of malice pricked her ears.

Pewter shot over to the dog, boxed her ears, then returned to sitting under the coffee table.

“What was that all about?” BoomBoom wondered.

“Around here you never know.” Harry laughed as she gently edged out a piece of heavy paper. “What in the world?” Then she laughed. “I don’t believe you!”

Susan held up the paper, which was a birth certificate. But this birth certificate had been backdated three years, so that Harry would still be thirty-nine. “See, your mother lied on your birth certificate.”

Everyone crowded around to look and the certificate looked proper. They all laughed.

Alicia, unbelievably beautiful, like Sophia Loren is unbelievably beautiful, and who had been a movie star in the fifties and early sixties, studied the document. “Susan, can you get me one of these?”

Everyone laughed again and Fair poured more champagne. “To my wife. In my eyes, she will always be the most beautiful, the most fascinating, sometimes the most irritating, but always my girl.”

They cheered.

Mrs. Murphy somehow managed to wiggle into the tube. Pewter maliciously rolled it. Harsh words were spoken and the tiger cat backed out of the tube, intent on her revenge. Two cats flew out of the living room. A crash in the kitchen did not bode well.

Harry shook her head. “Oh, we’ll find it later.”

“Must be wonderful not to know how old you are.” Miranda laughed at the cats.

Tucker supplied an answer. “We don’t know like you know, but we know. Not so much years as memories. We remember everything.”

The humans talked, ate some more, drank some more, and loved every minute of being together, as old friends do.

Harry piped up. “Seeing the governor like I said earlier, young, handsome, makes you realize the power of time.”

“And burdens. Governor Holloway carried heavy burdens.” Miranda offered that insight. “His mistakes will stick to him, but I hope what he did for us will, too. He built so many state roads, he protected our battlefields from developments, he tried to keep the peace—unfortunately, in the wrong manner, but I think he brought prosperity to Virginia.”

“Being governor of Virginia means you have an easy or uneasy relationship with the president.” Ned spoke from his experience in the House of Delegates. “We are loaded with military bases and we all benefit from the huge shipyard in Norfolk. Federal money pours into this state, but the governor has to be wary of the president. If the president is not of the governor’s party, might not be a smooth ride. Anything affecting the military affects Virginia. And Governor Holloway’s record on that is outstanding.”

“Best to remember the good things. He’s not long for this world.” Miranda said what they all felt.

“They’ll bury him at Big Rawly, won’t they?” BoomBoom inquired.

Susan said, “Holloways are always buried there.”

Harry involuntarily shivered for an instant. “That cemetery gives me the creeps. That huge monument with the avenging angel on top, the flaming sword. Ugh.”

“The Selisse tomb, the ravens like to perch on it.” Reverend Jones laughed.

“It’s like the Bizarre Scandal, isn’t it?” Miranda considered the story. “The scandal about the missing infant which brought down the Randolph family, oh, 1793. The Selisse story is much the same. We will never know the details, except that a slave killed the master. So many stories.”

“All done now.” Fair smiled, feeling the glow of champagne.

Harry laughed. “Oh, Fair, nothing is ever done in Virginia. Everything always comes back to haunt us.”

A booming howl followed by a long hiss and a clatter turned their heads toward the kitchen.

Eddie’s voice carried into the living room. “This is an outrage. The state of Virginia must assign state troopers to protect my grandfather.”

“What the—” Harry hurried into the kitchen.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter had knocked the TV remote off the counter. In running away, one of them had pushed the on button.

Eddie Cunningham angrily spoke to Bill Coates, the Channel 29 reporter. Given that Sunday’s news was usually tepid except for sports, this clip would blanket the state. “I believe my grandfather’s life is in danger. We now know that his nurse, Barbara Leader, was murdered. I demand that the state offer him protection.”

By now, everyone but the cats crowded into the kitchen.

Bill Coates pushed, “Why would anyone want to harm your grandfather?”

“You tell me!” Eddie’s face darkened. “I believe this goes back to his gubernatorial term when he refused desegregation. Racial tensions are again high and I fear this has provoked some unbalanced person to want to kill him.”

Bill Coates then looked at the camera and said, “Thank you, State Senator Cunningham. And now to the weather.”

“Is Eddie crazy?” Alicia wondered.

“No. Clever.” Ned calmly expounded. “It’s dramatic. Tensions are high and Ed means to capitalize on them. He’s throwing red meat to those people who want to turn back the clock, but he’s doing it in a way where he can’t be held to account.”

“Ned, he doesn’t need to do that,” said Fair.

“He’s laying his groundwork and the murder is a terrific gift. So many people are disaffected. Call attention to a racist event, a much-publicized racist event from the 1970s, make this murder look like revenge, you know, they got the wrong person, once he spins this out over the next week identifying Barbara Leader as the wrong person. Everyone will remember. He’ll dominate the news, he can vent anger, which even liberals can understand, since he’s defending his grandfather, worried about his safety. But Ed is aiming for a large constituency, much larger than he has now. It’s low, but it’s effective. To attack him for this makes the attacker look as though he has no family feeling. So Ed gets to have his cake and eat it, too.”

“Could Governor Holloway be part of this?” Miranda wondered.

“My grandfather would not countenance it,” Susan stoutly replied.

“True enough.” Ned agreed.

Cooper sighed. “Rick and I wanted to spare the governor stress due to his condition, plus his feelings over the loss of a nurse he liked very much. We’re going to have to call on him, though. Ed’s statement pushes us to it.”

“Obviously, my cousin doesn’t give a damn about G-Pop’s condition.” Susan could have strangled Ed right then.

“Politicians don’t care about people’s feelings. They want to manipulate them. They themselves don’t feel a thing except ambition.” Alicia felt cynical, and she’d seen a lot in her life to provoke that.

“Governor Holloway’s desegregation stand was so long ago. He’s changed.” Harry threw up her hands.

“Harry, there is no event too distant or absurd that can’t be used to stir people up,” said Ned. “What if those of Italian descent, you know, some young politician on the make, declares Al Capone was framed because of anti-Italian feeling? He was the victim of a government vendetta.”

“Didn’t they nail him on income-tax evasion?” Susan asked.

“He was too smart to be caught for his crimes, so they sicced the IRS on him,” Ned explained.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” BoomBoom couldn’t resist the nearly three-thousand-year-old quote.