Ciji Ware (20 page)

Nodding agreement, Sim sped forward past a large pond with graceful willows ringing its shore and trailing apple-green tendrils into the pellucid water.

A rolling lawn dotted with tall pecan trees surrounded a pristine white, two-story antebellum mansion. Doric columns graced a veranda on the first floor and supported a wraparound gallery on the second. A pair of massive oaks, perhaps one hundred feet tall, stood sentinel beside steps leading to the front door where a pair of smaller fluted columns framed the entrance.

Sim and Daphne gazed admiringly at the row of paned glass windows that stretched along the veranda—each window taller than a man and set off by shutters painted high gloss black.

“Isn’t it just about the loveliest thing you’ve ever seen in your life?” Daphne breathed.

“This place definitely gets the Gorgeous Award,” he agreed softly.

Sim parked his car toward the rear of the house near several outbuildings that appeared to serve as garage and wood shop. Daphne stood and stretched, absorbed in the rustle of new leaves as a soft, fragrant breeze blew across the open lawn.

“I looked up the house in my Natchez guidebook,” Sim said. “The core of Gibbs Hall existed as far back as seventeen eighty-one.”

Daphne shaded her eyes with her hand. “Really? Well, I’d say that the current structure looks to have been built in the early to mid-nineteenth century. It’s classic antebellum, isn’t it, with those columns and the double gallery.”

They walked across the lawn and followed a slate path to the front door. They hadn’t reached the welcome mat when the door was slowly opened by an elderly, rotund gentleman wearing khaki pants, khaki vest, and knee-high leather boots. Daphne gave a sidelong glance at Sim’s identical attire and nearly burst out laughing.

They
look
like
an
L.L. Bean father and son ad!

On the short drive to Gibbs Hall, Sim had given Daphne a thumbnail biography of Bailey Gibbs, a retired general practitioner and former president of the local Audubon Society. He had long been a passionate bird watcher and founded one of the finest private bird sanctuaries in the country on the remaining forty acres of his family’s former plantation.

“Ah… Doctor Hopkins. Right on the dot,” their host said, holding out his hand. Then the plumpish gentleman, who looked to be in his seventies, removed a pocket watch from one of the many pouches sewn into his khaki vest. “I may be Southern, but I’m mighty pleased when guests show up when they say they will. We’ve about fifteen minutes for a glass of iced tea, and then it’s bird feeding time.”

“Doctor Gibbs,” Sim replied, beaming, “it is a pleasure and an honor to meet you at last.”

“Likewise.” He shifted his gaze to Daphne. “And Miz Duvallon! Liz told me to expect you, too. Glad your pretty face didn’t slow him down this mornin’—not that I would have been surprised if it had! You’re as lovely as your Cousin Madeline Whitaker was when she was a girl,” he said, winking slyly. “I was a second-tier contender for her hand, until I met my Caroline, but Maddy and I have remained friends ever since. Come in, come in!”

Daphne was ushered in ahead of the men. “Thank you so much, Doctor Gibbs, for letting me tag along today,” she said over her shoulder. “The grounds and your home are magnificent.”

“I’m sure, by now, you’ve seen scores of old places like this,” he declared modestly, as he led the way directly to the back veranda. Daphne barely had time to take note of the elegant foyer blanketed in handsome Persian carpets and distinguished by a mahogany grandfather’s clock and a carved sideboard with graceful curved legs that ended in fanciful ball-and-claw feet.

An elderly black woman, introduced as Leila Washington, awaited them with a pitcher of iced tea. She greeted the visitors with a friendly smile and then returned to the kitchen while Dr. Gibbs indicated that they should take seats on the white, bent willow chairs lined up on the wooden veranda. Handing out the tall, frosted glasses, he gazed at Daphne intently, and said, “You’re a Whitaker, aren’t you? On Marcus Whitaker’s side?”

Startled by his direct question, she nodded. “He was my great-uncle. Marcus and my Grandmother Amelia were brother and sister, so that when Marcus married Maddy, she and my grandmother became sisters-in-law.”

“Then Maddy is really your great-aunt,” Dr. Gibbs interjected.

“Correct,” Daphne said, “but since she’s a generation younger than my grandmother, we always called her Cousin Maddy.”

Dr. Gibbs nodded sagely, while Sim looked faintly confused.

“Grandmother Amelia married George Kingsbury and had two daughters: my mother, Antoinette Kingsbury Duvallon, and my aunt, Bethany. Maddy descended from
another
Whitaker on her father’s side—my namesake, Daphne Whitaker Clayton.” Daphne cast a sympathetic glance in Sim’s direction. “I don’t know how much sense any of that makes to an outsider—or even to me, sometimes,” Daphne concluded with a laugh.

Dr. Gibbs chuckled. “Around these parts, those danged Whitakers are allied through a confounded web of family affiliations to the Claytons, the Drakes, and even the Gibbses, but nobody remembers exactly who’s kin to whom anymore. Most of ’em can be found in the Natchez Cemetery in little vainglorious, fenced-off sections loaded with marble angels and headstones with fancy carvings telling the world how great they are. Me?” he said with a pixieish grin, patting his generous midsection. “Just plant this Gibbs in the ground under a bird feeder on the rise this side of Whitaker Creek.” He pointed vaguely toward a stand of trees at the far end of the lawn. “You know, don’t you, Daphne, that Devon Oaks, a mile or so from here, once belonged to Marcus Whitaker’s family? That graceful old relic suffered mighty heavy damage in the terrible Tornado of 1840, but like we did here at Gibbs Hall, thank God, the old place survived. Some others in these parts weren’t so lucky.”

Daphne took in her host’s recitation of family lore in shocked silence. The old photograph Marcus had pointed out to her once, so long ago, showed cotton fields stretching practically to the front door. Until Maddy had told Sim where it was, Daphne had assumed the place was across the river in Louisiana, like so many other plantations in the area. Instead, Devon Oaks was practically next door to Gibbs Hall.

She smiled weakly and allowed her eager companion to quiz his fellow ornithologist about which surviving species of birds, painted by Audubon nearly two centuries ago, he was likely to encounter in the region. Meanwhile, Daphne couldn’t help but recall her distraught thirteen-year-old namesake ferociously playing her harp to drown the sounds of a terrible family trauma taking place under the Whitaker roof, apparently not far from the very spot where she was calmly sipping iced tea.

“Well,” Dr. Gibbs said decisively, setting down his glass with a thump on a whitewashed willow-reed table beside his chair. He pulled out his pocket watch once more, and proposed, “What do you say I show you my back forty, m’boy? You too, Daphne, if you’re game.”

“I’m longing to see it, Doctor Gibbs.”

They rose from their chairs and followed their host down a few stairs to the lawn. “I admit it,” he said, walking gingerly toward a dirt path marked by two miniature versions of the gateposts that had greeted them on their way in. “What I’m about to show you is my pride and joy. It’s been mighty hard, at times, to keep the bird sanctuary going, now that my Caroline is gone, but whenever I get lazy, or feel like chucking the whole thing, I hear her voice saying ‘Now, Bailey Gibbs, don’t you dare! Get out there with your birdseed. We don’t want our friends to eat poison!’”

With Dr. Gibbs as Pied Piper, Sim and Daphne wound through a dense wood not unlike the Natchez Trace itself. A hundred yards along the footpath a large clearing suddenly materialized. In its center stood a charming, hexagonal white cottage surrounded by bird feeders of all descriptions dotting the nearby landscape. The enclosed, gazebo-like structure looked a bit larger than a child’s playhouse. It was encircled by a small porch, and fresh white curtains hung in each window.

Their guide pointed overhead to a miniature version of Gibbs Hall itself, secured to a pole at least ten feet tall. Five or six birds fluttered in and out of the small-scale windows to feed on birdseed that Dr. Gibbs and his helpers restocked every few days from atop ladders specially designed for that purpose, he explained proudly.

“Those are just chickadees,” he noted for Daphne’s benefit, “but we love all birds the same ’round here… scarce and common alike.”

A few minutes into the tour, the old man halted and peered at Sim to assess his reaction to the unique collection of bird houses.

“I know, I know, Doctor Hopkins. It’s not your classic bird sanctuary where our feathered friends are safe on the land and living off local flora, but Caroline and I began as your average bird lovers who simply fed birds outside our windows for our own enjoyment.”

“The urban environment encroaches everywhere, these days,” Sim said diplomatically. “I’m sure the feeders attract and sustain the local birds, but the rest of your land probably does an important job of supporting migratory types as well.”

“Oh, Sim.” Daphne interrupted excitedly, pointing to a bird feeder that could only be a replica of Cousin Maddy’s house. “Look! How wonderful!” She turned to Dr. Gibbs and smiled wistfully. “I hate to say it, but
your
Bluff House looks in far better condition than the genuine article on Cliff Avenue.”

“Your poor, dear cousin has had her share of troubles these last years, that’s for danged sure,” Dr. Gibbs said softly. “These old places cost a fortune to keep up.”

Daphne turned in place, and as she gazed around the wooded glade, it became obvious that over the years, Dr. Gibbs and his wife had built models of all the well-known houses in and around Natchez.

“We’ve created our very own Pilgrimage Tour here, you see?” Gibbs said with a pleased smile. “Here’s Linden…” he said, pointing. “And over there is Rosalie. And that’s The Elms.”

“And isn’t that Monmouth Plantation?” Daphne asked, gesturing toward a minuscule white mansion with square pillars. “That’s where Sim is staying.”

“You must be enjoying a royal visit here in Natchez, m’boy.” Gibbs chuckled and gestured expansively. “You see, as we educated ourselves over the years about the plight of the birds, it became Caroline’s fondest dream to turn what was left of our land into a bird sanctuary and to build these reproductions to guarantee we’d always have these creatures to delight us.”

“The scale and design…” Daphne murmured. “They’re
perfect
!”

“Caroline’s family is related to practically everybody ’round here, and she loved all the houses in these parts,” Gibbs confided, “so, once I retired, we started buildin’ ’em in our wood shop, house by house.” He pointed to the cottage. “Just after the birdhouses were built, she got sick. So, I built her her own little gazebo to watch the birds from.”

The elderly doctor’s expression grew solemn as he invited them to have a seat on a pair of rocking chairs on the diminutive porch with its panoramic view of the clearing in the woods.

“Last year, she begged me to enclose the gazebo and turn it into a cottage so she could stay inside, rain or shine, and watch through those big windows, there,” he explained, gesturing in the direction of the squares of plate glass fitted into each of the house’s six sides. “Just before she died, I installed a shower and a toilet, and we both camped here for several weeks, with just Leila kindly bringing us our meals on a tray.”

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was husky with emotion.

“My Caroline looked like a little bird herself, at the end. One sunny afternoon, she passed away in my arms right here, while we sat in this very rockin’ chair, her on my lap, light as a feather… peacefully, to the sound of birdsong.”

Daphne felt her eyes grow moist.

“You and your wife created a magical place, Doctor Gibbs,” Sim said quietly. He reached for one of a matching pair of binoculars resting on the nearby railing and lifted them to his eyes. “A sanctuary, indeed…” he murmured.

“M’boy, all you have to do is just sit in that chair, and Audubon’s birds will come to
you
,” he said with obvious pride. Then he added, “That is, what’s left of ’em. Between the drilling for oil up and down the Mississippi Valley and the pesticides and the defoliants used on the cotton ’round here, we’ll be lucky if the birds in these parts will last another fifty years.”

“No,” Daphne protested, awestruck by the chattering sounds of birds everywhere.

“It’s true,” Simon confirmed, nodding. “That’s one of the reasons I came to Natchez on this photography project. The Mississippi Flyway from Canada to South America is in real trouble, thanks to us humans.”

“And as the birds go… so go the humans,” Dr. Gibbs predicted fiercely. “Ask Maddy,” he said, addressing Daphne. “Ask half the folks in Natchez who’ve had relatives die of cancer.” He made a helpless gesture toward the cottage. “Ask me.”

“I take it, then, that your wife died of cancer, too?” Daphne inquired softly.

“A different kind from Marcus and Clay—who were both my patients, by the way. Caroline’s was strange, too, in its own fashion. She had a relatively rare brain tumor. Deadly. Untreatable. It’s called GBM, for glioblastoma multiforme. Never saw one in thirty years of my practice, and then saw a swarm of ’em in the last ten years. The medical literature has finally confirmed that a swath of it, these days, runs from Houston to New Orleans and points north.” He laughed harshly. “I guess Natchez is ‘points north.’”