Tall Tail

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

“I can’t ask her that.” Susan shook her head. “I know she won’t do it.”

Harry walked over to Susan’s bay window as they retreated inside due to the heat. “It would be terribly upsetting to exhume the governor, but what if he was killed?”

“Given his tenuous hold on life, whoever did it would be stupid,” Susan countered. “Again, given his deterioration, why kill him?”

“If I knew that, I’d have this figured out. Okay, what if he wasn’t directly murdered? But whoever was in the house, whoever knocked Mignon over the head, knew that violent exercise or even a brisk walk, given his state, would hasten his death. I talked about that to Fair, and the more I think about it, the more I think I’m on the right path.”

Susan rested her chin in her hand. “Well, given how quickly he was failing, I’d think any extreme exertion would stop his heart.”

“It’s possible that G-Pop heard Mignon get hit. Think about it. He tries to protect her, chase down the culprit, but his heart gives out.”

“It would be like him to protect her.” Susan turned this over. “It might be, but we shouldn’t say anything to G-Mom, or my mother, for that matter. They’re really feeling the loss. Give them time. I take that back. Until you or I find something, we shut up. They’re going through enough.”

“But what if your mother and grandmother find out whatever it is that created this mess? Then they’re in danger.”

“Harry, if they were in danger, we’d know by now,” Susan resolutely said.

“Not necessarily. Let’s try this. We go through his office.”

“Harry, I can’t go over there and root around my grandfather’s office at a time like this. You expect me to ask G-Mom and Mom? Come on, now, be reasonable.”

“She’s right,” Mrs. Murphy, sitting on the floor with Owen, Pewter, and Tucker, affirmed.

“There is another way. G-Mom and your mother run errands, have lunch, sometimes even play a few holes of golf on Tuesdays. Let’s drive by and see if their cars are gone. We go in and see what we can find.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“We aren’t stealing anything, we aren’t harming anything. We’re double-checking in a way that won’t disturb them. I’m willing to bet your grandmother wants to keep to her routine. It’s consoling.”

“And what if they come back while we’re there?”

“First, we go to Ivy Nursery, buy a lilac, his favorite bush. If they come, we run out back and begin planting it.”

“The lilacs have bloomed.”

“So we’re planting for next spring. Buy some mums for now. They won’t think anything of it, and it’s better than flowers from the florist.”

Susan smiled. “Have you ever seen so many flowers?”

“Overwhelming, and your grandmother sent them all to cancer wards for both adults and children here and in Richmond.” Harry’s voice softened. “Here she is losing her partner of—”

“Sixty-eight years.” Susan filled in the number.

“Sixty-eight years and she’s thinking of others.”

“Flowers can be shredded or chewed, but people should have sent more food. Mrs. Holloway would have given some to Harry,” Pewter opined.

“Doesn’t mean she’d share with you.” Tucker raised her eyebrow.

“The kitty-in-distress routine. Works every time,” Pewter bragged.

Noticing that Pewter was preparing to flop on her side and utter piteous cries, Owen ordered, “Don’t you dare. Not in my house.”

“Spoilsport,” Pewter said and huffed.

“Susan, come on. Let’s hit up the nursery. It’s ten o’clock, hot, and will get hotter. If we do have to plant because they’re in the house, it will be tolerable. If we get to go through his desk and they return, we’ll be doing it in a full furnace, but it’s worth it.” Harry made this decision for Susan.

“Well—”

“Susan, it can’t hurt!”

“All right. All right.”

Susan complained the entire way to Ivy Nursery and the entire way to Big Rawly.

“They aren’t here!” Harry jubilantly remarked. “Let’s take the lilac and the mums out back, pull out the shovels, so if they return all we have to do is zip out back.”

“Why do I let you talk me into these things?” Susan said, carrying the mums.

“Because you know there is something. I’m right. We just have to figure it out.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

They put the lilac and the mums under the shade of a large old poplar, then scurried back inside.

The governor’s library office smelled like his cologne with a dash of bourbon. The two cats and two dogs followed them into the office. Wendell had gone with Penny and Millicent.

Harry took charge at the desk. “You cruise the side drawers, I’ll pull out the large center drawer.”

Susan pulled out a double drawer, two front handles, but it was one big drawer inside. Down on her knees, she sifted through hanging file folders.

Harry lifted out a blueprint for a new potting shed. Underneath that were car and truck titles.

“He had a truck title going back to 1952!” Harry exclaimed.

“Was it a Ford?”

“Was.”

“That was the truck my mother wrecked when she got her driver’s license.” Susan smiled. “He said it was the best truck he ever owned.”

Moving to the other side of the desk, Susan opened the top drawer. “Envelopes, stationery, and what’s this?”

Harry took the copper bracelet. “Remember about ten years ago when people wore copper bracelets? Supposed to help the metal balance in your body.”

“That’s ridiculous. And I never saw G-Pop wear this.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t put it on when no one was around. Keep going.”

“Pushy,” Susan grumbled. “I hate it when you’re pushy.”

“I do, too,” Pewter commiserated.

Pulling open the bottom drawer, Susan carefully pulled out a huge, ancient family Bible. “Wonder why he took this off the shelf and put it in here?”

“Maybe to protect it from dust. It’s a little raggedy and very valuable.”

Susan opened it to the first page, neatly folded white papers were lodged there. “Hmm.” She began reading the papers. “Diagrams. Look.”

Harry replaced the contents of the long, narrow drawer and shut it while Susan placed the Bible in front of Harry with the diagrams.

“G-Pop’s mother, pneumonia. G-Pop’s father, fatigue, weakness, sudden collapse.” Susan read off the first diagram on large paper.

“He’s made a diagram of cause of death.” Harry pointed to the prior generation, G-Pop’s grandparents. “His grandfather was born in 1862 and died in 1930. Cause of death unknown. Suspected heart attack. Grandmother, breast cancer.” She looked above to reread the cause of his mother’s death. “Pneumonia.”

“People have always known what a heart attack is.” Susan was also fascinated by this diagram.

“A wide umbrella, you can shove a lot of stuff under it. In the end, everyone’s heart gives out. And people knew what cancer was, but I don’t know as they realized how many cancers existed. Breast cancer becomes obvious, as do any cancers producing large tumors. Wonder why he did this and how he researched the results.”

“Easy.” Susan flipped a few front pages in the large Bible, one on the right labeled “Deaths.” While not as artistic as an illuminated manuscript, the old Bible’s pages were impressive, as was the handwriting of successive generations marking Holloway comings and goings. Having a beautiful handwriting carried weight then. It bespoke years of practice starting when one was about six, and it bespoke education and respect. You had to be able to read and write to execute letters in such a high fashion.

“You’re right.” Harry noted the brief description of each passing just as she noted the birth weight of each baby, as well as how many did not live to maturity. “We take survival for granted. Look at the notes by these babies. ‘Weakened. Died in her sleep.’ Or this one, ‘Wasting disease, such pain. Age thirteen.’ Sad. How did parents go on? Seems like everyone, including your grandfather’s grandparents, lost one or two children.” Harry read again. “ ‘Cecil Holloway, born 1860, died 1863. Could take no nourishment.’ Your poor great-grandmother. Imagine watching a child starve and no one knows why.”

Susan soberly looked at the elegant writing in black ink, surprisingly unfaded. “ ‘Hortensia Kelly Holloway, born 1842, died 1888. Cause unknown. Died in her sleep.’ She lost two children, she lost her husband in the war, but somehow she kept Big Rawly together and she never remarried. Amazing what people live through and still accomplish. Do you think we’re as tough as they were?”

“No.” Harry continued reading, then pulled over the diagram.

“Some of these names have a red cross by them. His grandfather. The thirteen-year-old who wasted away. Goes all the way back to Marcia West Holloway, and there’s a full red line under her name. She died at sixty-six. What’s it say in the Bible?”

“Fainted. Never awakened,” Susan read.

“What’s on the other sheets of paper?”

Susan unfolded two more sheets, her grandfather’s upright handwriting very legible. “He wrote out the symptoms of leukemia, when he began to feel tired, headachy. This went on for longer than I knew. Years. He drew squares for when he’d feel poorly then a line up to a plateau.”

“You think he knew?”

Susan pointed to the second diagram. “Sure looks like it.”

“Look at this third diagram.” Susan pulled out another page. It was like the first diagram with the names, births, and deaths of Holloways but this carried forward.

“Your name is on here!” Harry exclaimed.

“It’s like play it forward. He has his name, no death date yet, but that red cross by his name. Penny’s name then Mom and Pauline, a red cross and question mark, and then a red cross by Edward and Edward’s daughter. None for me, and he even cited our children. Look, there’s Danny.”

“ ‘Tested.’ ” Harry puzzled over this notation. “Each of the cousins’ children, his great-grandchildren, have ‘tested’ written by their name and”—she squinted, for the writing was small—“ ‘negative’ by some. Red cross by others.”

“What is this?” Susan threw up her hands.

“I have no idea, but your children and their cousins were all born within the last thirty years.”

“Right,” Susan affirmed. “But so what?”

“These are the only names with ‘tested’ by them. My guess is that everyone born before those thirty years could not be tested. Maybe that’s why he has a question mark by some with a red cross.”

“Died from what?” Susan wondered.

“Well, HIV, for one,” Harry replied.

Susan pulled up a chair, sat next to Harry, studied the diagrams, looked back over the careful citings in the beautiful family Bible. “None of us have HIV, and if we did, apart from sorrow, how could it affect G-Pop?”

“Maybe he had it?” Harry questioned. “Got it before tests.”

“Harry, G-Pop died of leukemia, a blood disorder, and if you go down the list of family deaths, it’s possible other ancestors died of it. Weakness, anemia, that sort of thing, could all be attributed to leukemia. They just didn’t have a name for it.”

Harry leaned back in the big chair.

“Cancer passes, doesn’t it?” Tucker questioned.

“Some do.” Owen seriously considered this. “Golden retrievers get a lot of cancer.”

“Susan”—Harry sat upright—“when Danny played football for Western Albemarle High, didn’t he have to have tests? Stuff so the coaches would be alert should he become dehydrated, collapse?”

“Yes. We also had to take him for allergy tests,” Susan added. “My daughter, too.”

“Do you remember the tests?”

“I do. For some parents they caused a problem, especially the HIV test. That sent a few right through the roof. There was a test for a heart murmur, what we always called an athletic heart, a heart that skips a beat. They had to blow in a paper bag. Some kind of lung-capacity thing. The list goes on. I suppose it’s for the good.”

“More. Tell me more tests.”

Susan, picking up on the urgency in Harry’s voice, focused intently. “If anyone had a fracture from the past, even early childhood, we had to deliver a current X-ray. I tell you, getting the kids on the teams wasn’t cheap.”

“More. Or let me put it this way, apart from the HIV test, do you remember anything that surprised you?”

A long, long pause followed this. “Come to think of it, there was one. The kids were screened for sickle-cell anemia and the sickle-cell trait at birth. It was quite hush-hush. Only the parents were informed of the results, but the sickle-cell trait could develop into sickle-cell anemia, which can cause sudden death, say, if a football player is training too vigorously in high heat. That was a test done at birth. So Ned and I copied them and gave them to the coach, who promised secrecy. We didn’t care.”

“What do you mean?”

“The administration and the coaches believed that if a student was known to carry sickle cell, they might suffer discrimination. They were responsible about it and went to all this trouble because of the recommendations by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.”

“Western Albemarle is a high school,” Harry responded.

“It might as well be a junior college. It’s not like when we went to high school. Those coaches watch these kids with a hawk eye. If anyone looks a tad peaked, they sit them down. They’re real bears about concussions. I never worried that my kids would suffer. The coaches were vigilant and so were their teachers. Luckily, my two didn’t take drugs and made good grades.”

“Much of that due to you and Ned.”

“Thanks, Harry, but remember when we were in junior high and high school? It was all our peers. Fall in with the wrong crowd and down you go.”

Harry pulled the more recent diagram to her, comparing it with those of the ancestors. “Susan, what if your grandfather was trying to trace a hereditary condition?”

Susan’s eyes widened. “Sickle-cell anemia?”

“Exactly. And there is discrimination. Sickle cell was considered a black person’s disease. In the old days, if your grandfather had it, they wouldn’t tell him. They never told any white person. Doctors always said the white patient had leukemia.”

Susan whispered, “Maybe Dr. Fishbein did tell him. It’s a different time now.”

Harry murmured, “And maybe the governor began to figure it out on his own. Susan, it’s a different time for some of us. Plenty of people are trying to hold back the clock.”

“Dr. Fishbein only told the family G-Pop had leukemia.” Susan now wondered about this. “Harry, this is so upsetting and so confusing. If my grandfather knew he had sickle-cell anemia, I think he would have told us.”

“I think he would, too. Maybe he was on the cusp of truly knowing it to be true. Maybe that’s why he crawled to the graveyard, to the Avenging Angel. It’s in the graves, in the family.”

“Dear God.” Susan began folding the papers back together.

“For a lot of people it wouldn’t matter anymore, but for some, sickle-cell anemia would still be a stigma. If you’re African American and you carry the trait, who will marry you? And what if the person you hope to marry has the trait? Big decisions. If a white person has it and being white is really important to you, if you’re also carrying that taint of racism, sickle-cell anemia could be considered a disaster.”

No sooner was that out of her mouth than Susan blurted out, “Eddie!”

Harry pondered this. “Given his political base, it would create huge problems. And given his ambition, who knows what he would do? I’m trying not to believe it.”

Mouth tightening, Susan replied, “What is the old saying? ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Not that Eddie has absolute power, but he is a rising star, he speaks to overflow audiences.” She paused. “I don’t know. I don’t really understand it.”

“If we did, I suppose we’d be in politics,” Harry realistically said.

“Car!” both Tucker and Owen barked.

Susan hurried down the hall. “It’s Eddie! Put everything away!”

Just as Eddie entered the hall, Harry closed the large side drawer of the desk.

The cats and dogs sat with Harry and Susan as they had raced to the sunroom.

Susan and Harry waited for Eddie to find them.

“What are you two doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Susan fired back.

“Thought I’d see if G-Mom was here.”

“Eddie, you know she runs errands on Tuesday.” Susan fought to control her emotions, which worried Harry.

“What’s wrong with you? It’s not a crime to drop by and it’s not a crime to forget her schedule.”

“Bull, Eddie. And who are you to talk about crime?”

His eyes narrowed. “Susan, you’re off your nut.”

“I didn’t kill anyone, Eddie. You did.” Enraged, Susan had let the cat out of the bag.

Sitting on the back of the sofa, the two cats prepared to fight or flee.

Eddie waved off Susan as though she were a bug. “I don’t need to listen to this.” He turned to Harry. “I hope you don’t believe this nonsense.”

“What I believe,” Harry calmly stated, “is that your craving for power has warped you. The funny thing is, Eddie, I don’t think you believe half the stuff you’re saying. You’re throwing red meat to the reactionaries. You don’t care about women’s advancement, gay marriage, abortion, all that social stuff, any more than you care about cleaning up the toxic dumps we have in the state. You just want votes.”

His face reddened. “I do care. I care about giving away free money to people who sit on their asses. I care about all of it. And when I’m elected, you’ll see.”

Susan stood up to face him. “You will never be elected senator. You killed Barbara Leader because she knew G-Pop had sickle-cell anemia, not leukemia, and you have the trait as well.”

Shocked, he took a step backward. “How do you know that?”

“Research.” Harry stood up next to Susan.

Eddie backed up, reached a large umbrella stand by the sunroom door filled with umbrellas and a few canes. He pulled one out, then advanced on them. The big silver ram’s head would be lethal.

“Run!” Harry opened the door for Susan to bolt, then followed.

Eddie charged out the door after them. The two friends had a head start, but he was gaining.

“Susan, run to the cemetery,” Harry yelled. “We can dodge around the tombstones.”

“I think I can make it to the car.”

“If you don’t, you’ll be clubbed to death. We can keep him busy in the graveyard.” Now alongside Susan, Harry said, “He has that club, but it’s two against one. All one of us has to do is get behind him.”

Trusting Harry just as she trusted her to hand her the right club on the golf course, Susan put on the afterburners. The two women reached the cemetery, put their hands on the low stone wall, and vaulted over it. The cats followed suit. The dogs ran to the wrought-iron gate, where Owen lifted the latch. Just as the two corgis dashed into the supposedly peaceful last resting place, Eddie shot over the stone wall as though it was a high hurdle in track.

Susan and Harry split up. He moved toward Susan, swinging the cane like a maniac. She dodged just out of reach, but sooner or later he’d connect. Harry came back around. Knowing she was behind him, he whirled to swing at her. One close swing forced her to duck, hit the ground, and roll away. He jumped on her. Eddie tried to pin Harry with his left hand while raising his right hand with the cane.

Tucker leapt up, seizing his right arm in her powerful jaws. Owen grabbed his calf.

Screaming, Eddie didn’t let go of the cane. Instead, he tried to use it on the dog hanging on him.

Claws at the ready, Mrs. Murphy climbed up his back, ripping Eddie’s shirt, biting as she progressed. Pewter latched on to Eddie’s leg with Owen.

This gave Harry more time to roll farther away, and Eddie crashed down on the ground with the cane just missing her again. Even though Tucker hung on, Eddie was strong.

Susan, now behind her cousin, was angrier than she’d ever been in her life. She jumped on his bloody back as best she could, wrapped her right hand under his jaw and jerked as hard as she could. She heard his neck pop, but it didn’t break.

Harry, scrambling to her feet, ran up to Eddie, put both her hands together in a double fist, and smashed into his mouth. Jagged teeth came out.

Mrs. Murphy had crawled up on his head. She dug her claws in to stay aboard.

The two friends fought with all their strength. Finally, Eddie dropped the cane. Without a second’s hesitation, Harry snatched it up and swung over his head and down, straight into his skull. He sagged down. Susan slid off his back.

Yet another motionless body lay at the feet of the Avenging Angel.