Sins of the Fathers (9 page)

Nell looked up and shook her head. “If he thinks a Bayard is gonna support his family, that particular Texan isn’t as smart as they all let on to be.”

Iola grinned and announced to their guests, “Bayards don’t work. Anybody ’round here could have told him that, if he’d bothered to ask before he let his daughter get hitched up to one. Never was a Bayard to work, even if his family went hungry.”

“They ran a plantation. And farmed,” Katharine pointed out.

Iola reached for Nell’s cigarettes. As she lit up and blew twin streams from her nostrils, Katharine wondered how long it took a person to asphyxiate on secondhand smoke.

“They never run nothing,” Iola informed her. “They hire others to do the running while they drink and party.”

“And they marry money,” Nell added.

Iola nodded. “That’s one thing Bayards do real well, marry money. But they don’t work. If somebody would give Burch a job where all he did was party and let other folks work? He’d be in hog heaven. I figure the reason he wants to build these houses is that he fancies hisself walking around in a yellow hard hat watching other people work, then having neighbors around to party with. But don’t expect him to dirty his hands.”

Dr. Flo spoke again. “But he is willing to sell off some of the island when he needs to. That sounds wiser than his father.”

Nell snorted. “Don’t you believe it. That’s Mona’s doing. When it comes right down to it, Burch will bleed over every square inch he sells.”

“And Dalt will fight him every inch of the way. He don’t want a bunch of strangers living in his backyard.”

Katharine was confused. Was Iola championing the man she’d been accusing of murder not a minute before?

“But it’s Burch’s land?” She hadn’t meant to ask. She hadn’t even meant to speak. Something about the island—its people and its stories—was drawing her in against her will.

“Half of it is,” Iola corrected her. “Asa wrote his will leaving half the island to Dalt and half to Burch. He knew Dalt wouldn’t share with Burch in his lifetime, and lordy, that man may live past a hundred.”

“Eighty his last birthday and still as chipper as Mama,” Nell contributed. “Of course, she’s no spring chicken.”

Iola clamped her lips around her cigarette and glared at her daughter.

Nell laughed. “Well, she’s not a winter chicken, either. Mama gets along pretty well for an old lady of sixty.

“Fifty-nine,” Iola said stubbornly. “But Nell’s right. Selling land was Mona’s idea, according to Chase. She told Burch they might as well get the good out of the land before he loses it to taxes. She even persuaded her daddy to finance the project after Burch builds and sells his first two houses, to show he’s serious about it. She’ll keep after him until he does it, too.”

Nell sniffed. “Mona likes life’s little luxuries, and they’re scarce on the ground at the moment.” She handed her mother a stack of checks and a deposit slip with a flourish. “I like life’s little luxuries, too. Why don’t we sell this place and get ourselves a life?”

“Because nothing would please the Bayards more.” Iola snapped the answer without thinking, but then she leaned back in her chair and waved her cigarette like a parody of a star of the gilded age. “Of course, I might be persuaded to sell when this land is worth a million an acre and I can retire in style.” She gave a raspy laugh. “Like that’s going to happen. What’s really gonna happen if Burch builds his houses is that the county will up the taxes until folks like us—” she eyed Katharine’s diamond, a full carat that had belonged to Tom’s grandmother, and flicked her eyes toward the door, like she was remembering the new Cadillac “—ordinary folks won’t be able to pay. We’ll have to sell out for whatever Burch will give us.”

Nell blew a puff of smoke her way. “Which is a good reason to sell out to Dalt now.”

“I wouldn’t sell to Dalt Bayard if he was the last man on earth. You know that. Besides, this land is right on the water. It ought to bring in a lot more once the place starts developing.”

“Like you’d ever sell it for it to be developed.” Nell looked at Katharine and curled her lip. “Mama keeps threatening to donate the land to the county for a park, but I’m not gonna let her do it. This business is all we’ve got, and I’ve worked as hard as she has at building it up.”

Katharine was wondering how she could get out of further involvement in what was obviously an ongoing battle when Dr. Flo stepped forward with a contribution. “Burch’s development is going to be put on hold for a while, anyhow, until I can research graves we looked at this afternoon.”

“Is that right?” Iola blew out smoke and regarded Dr. Flo through the haze.

Dr. Flo nodded. “There’s nobody else can give him permission to move them, and I won’t until I’m certain they belong to my family.”

Iola picked up the checks and stood. “More power to you. I’d best be getting to town with these, even if Nell has been so slow that the bank is like to be closed. Good to meet you.”

“You know good and well you’ll use the night depository,” Nell called after her.

Iola’s raucous laugh floated back as the Cadillac convertible roared to life.

Nell clasped her hands before her on the desk and took a deep breath. “What did I tell you? Can’t sit still for more than ten minutes. Shall we see if Tick has your shrimp ready?” She bent to pat the fat dog beside her wheel. “Wake up, Samson. We gotta roll.” She waited until he lifted himself and waddled toward the door, then wheeled herself around the desk. As she led the way out the door, she told her guests cheerfully, “So help me, I’m gonna kill Mama one day.”

The contrast between the frigid office and the outdoors was so intense, Katharine felt like she was strolling into hell. Ms. Morrison (Katharine still could not think of her as Agnes) settled herself and her shrimp on the backseat with Samson and the shotgun at her feet. “You all talk to Nell and Iola some?”

“Some.” Katharine eased out of the lot, aware that her own shrimp rested in a skimpy Styrofoam cooler in back, its lid so unsteady that the whole thing could topple at the first curve. Tom would really be thrilled to come home and find the car smelling like shrimp plus dirty dog.

Ms. Morrison laughed. “Then you know all there is to know about Bayard Island. I’d wager they told you every blasted secret anybody’s had on the island for the past fifty years.”

Dr. Flo chuckled. “Just about.” Even Katharine, concentrating on not spilling the shrimp until she could get them into something more solid, smiled.

“I thought they would. There’s no better way to learn about the island than from the Stampers, especially if they are together. What one doesn’t tell you, the other will, for spite if nothing else. They tell you about Bert’s accident?”

Dr. Flo nodded. “And their fire. It sounds like their family has had it rough.”

Katharine was having it rough, too. Her chiggers were driving her crazy. Once she got past the twisting part of the road, she pulled up her left leg and scratched her ankle, hoping the other two were so engrossed in conversation they wouldn’t notice.

“Right rough,” Ms. Morrison agreed. “I appreciate Iola and Nell hanging on like they do. If they close down and sell the property, I’ll be the only thing standing between this island and ruin.” She reached up and laid a big hand on Dr. Flo’s shoulder. “I hope you’ll think long and hard before you give Burch permission to move your graves. I know I have the deed to that property somewhere. I’ve been looking through Granddaddy’s papers, but I haven’t found it yet. You could buy me time.” Without waiting for an answer, she told Katharine, “That’s my mailbox on the left. You can drop me off there.”

No house was in view down the sand and shell drive.

“She’s going to have a ways to walk,” Dr. Flo said softly.

The forest grew close to the drive, but Katharine figured it couldn’t do much more damage to her paint than the trip to the cemetery already had. “I’ll drive you home. You have Samson and the shrimp.”
And the shotgun
, she mentally added.

“I’d be grateful,” Agnes accepted without fuss.

The roof came into view first, tin gleaming through the treetops—but that was all Agnes’s place had in common with Bayard Bluff. This house was small, shaped like a
T
and built of boards and battens that had never known paint. Katharine suspected if she went inside she would find the living room and a bedroom on each side of a wide front hall with bedrooms above them, and an eat-in kitchen and storeroom in the wing at the back. The space over the kitchen was a screened-in sleeping porch. The side of the house faced the drive so that the front porch—also screened—could face the slough, which glided past like a water snake broad enough for the small motorboat tied to a weathered dock. Fishing poles leaned against the rusty bark of a cedar in the front yard. Four hens and a rooster scratched in the sandy yard between the house and the slough, in the shade of live oaks laden with moss.

“This is charming!” Dr. Flo exclaimed.

Katharine doubted that the fastidious professor would ever want to live there. The whole place looked like a hotel for bugs.

Agnes dismissed the compliment, but with an undertone of pride. “It’s comfortable, but it’s not as old as Bayard Bluff, which was built in the seventeen nineties. Ours wasn’t built until 1874. I think some branch of the Bayard family lived here before it was deeded to granddaddy. Will you all come in and have a glass of tea?”

“I’m not sure we have time.” Dr. Flo sounded regretful. “It’s already past four, and we still have to visit an attorney down in Darien and get to Jekyll.”

“It won’t take long,” Agnes countered, “and I’ll give Katharine butter to put on those chiggers. Looks like she got quite a few.”

Katharine was embarrassed that her surreptitious scratching had been noticed, but admitted, “I’d be grateful for butter. And tea. My throat is parched from smoke.”

Agnes gave her rumbling laugh. “Nell does fill the place up a bit, doesn’t she? But bless her heart, it’s about the only pleasure she’s got.” She climbed down from the car and helped Samson out. He lumbered over to a large oak near the water, where there was a depression in the sand just his size.

“Nell’s got Miranda,” Dr. Flo pointed out as she climbed down.

“Miranda belongs to Nell’s older brother, Jack. He’s in jail for selling drugs and not likely to get out anytime soon, so his wife divorced him and took Miranda down to Waycross. She comes up to spend summers with her granny, but if she keeps carrying on about Chase like she’s started doing this year, she may not get to come for a while. Iola says she’s too old to be keeping up with a teenager’s hormones.”

“That family really
has
had some tragedies, hasn’t it?” Katharine exclaimed.

Ms. Morrison gathered up her shrimp and her gun. “The greatest tragedy as far as I’m concerned is Nell. I taught her in school, and she’s real bright. Could have gone to college if she’d gotten a little help, but that was right before the HOPE scholarships came in and Iola said she couldn’t afford to help her. Iola suggested that Nell ask Dalton to help—sort of a ‘This is one last thing you all could do to make up for my legs’—but all Dalt would agree to was to swap Nell’s college education for the ten acres and Iola’s promise to get off the island. She wouldn’t do that, so Nell’s been stuck right here, working in that office six days a week.” She sighed, then motioned with one thick hand. “You all come on in, now.”

As they trooped from the kitchen down the wide front hall, Katharine gave herself a mental pat on the back. A living room was on one side and a bedroom with a snowy chenille spread on the other. The house could have been gloomy, for the floors were made of wide, unfinished boards and both walls and ceilings were tongue-and-groove boards, but someone had painted the walls creamy white and spread bright rugs on the floor.

Their hostess showed them to comfortable rockers on the front porch and went to fetch their tea. The air felt cooler there—perhaps because of the water and maybe because of a breeze that stirred the moss in the oaks. The hens clucked companionably. A nanny goat and two kids bleated in a pen on the far side of the house, beside a modest garden. Two cats—one large, one small—curled on a table at the end of the porch. They were what Katharine’s children used to call “Halloween cats”: orange, black, and white.

Dr. Flo rocked gently. “This is very peaceful.”

Katharine scratched her ankles and waited for relief. Ms. Morrison reappeared with a big pat of butter on a white crockery plate. “Rub it on thick, now,” she instructed. “You want to smother the little buggers. Tea’s coming in just a minute.” She lumbered back to the kitchen.

Katharine spread butter lavishly on each bite and willed the chiggers to smother.

Ms. Morrison reappeared with a tray holding crystal glasses of sweet tea with slices of lemon and leaves of fresh mint. She passed the tea and handed out dainty cloth napkins. “My grandmother’s stuff,” she mumbled. “Don’t get to use it too often.” She sank into a rocker that was rounded to fit her sturdy hams.

Katharine rocked and felt the chiggers’ itch abating, content to let the other two carry the weight of the conversation.

“I was just telling Katharine that this is a very peaceful house,” Dr. Flo commented.

“I’ve lived here most of my life, and there’s no place on earth I’d rather be. I cannot bear to watch Burch push over noble trees in order to fill the island with strangers who consider it their God-given right to exploit the island for their own comfort. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Dr. Flo stirred her tea and sipped it gratefully. “How long has your family lived here?”

“My grandparents moved in in 1892. Whoever had been living here before had recently died, I think. But I don’t know what happened to their children.”

“Children?”

“Let me show you.” She shoved open the screened door and led them down the front steps. The house rested on brick pillars all around. She led them to the one at the right corner of the porch, where concrete or tabby had been smeared over the brick and four small handprints pressed in with the date, 1874.

“I don’t know who the children were,” Ms. Morrison said as they resumed their seats. “Don’t know a thing about the prior tenants. Granddaddy moved here in 1892, like I said. He was the first cousin and great friend of Miss Ella Bayard, who was both Dalton’s grandmother and his step-great-grandmother.”

“Do!” Dr. Flo exclaimed.

Their hostess beamed at having shocked them. “At seventeen she married Claude Bayard, who was over forty and had a fifteen-year-old son, Hamilton. When Claude died eight years later, Miss Ella waited a year, then married Hamilton. They were apparently very happy together. My mother said they were the nicest Bayards she ever knew. I didn’t know him well—he died when I was five—but Miss Ella lived until 1953. We always regarded her as the great benefactress of our family.” She rocked and ruminated for a minute.

“Granddaddy was an Episcopal priest, but he was never strong and he had some sort of collapse right after he finished seminary. Miss Ella wanted to help, and she had both money and influence in these parts because her daddy was rich and she had married Claude Bayard. She arranged for Granddaddy to serve a church down the road and to hold weekly services in the Bayard Island chapel, which used to be in that clearing near the cemetery. After she married Hamilton, she persuaded him to deed Granddaddy this house and eight acres, including the land where the church stood.”

“They would have had a long walk to church in the heat.” Dr. Flo delicately fanned herself with one hand.

Agnes flapped one big hand toward the side of the house where the nanny was bleating. “It’s only a skip and a holler along the slough.” She took a hefty swig of tea and wiped her mouth with a dainty napkin that looked incongruous in her big, rough hands. “Dalton Bayard may be a son of Satan, but his grandmother was a saint.”

“And you grew up in this house?”

“After I was seven. My grandmother died and my parents moved back in to take care of Granddaddy.” She laughed. “I’ve never ventured far from my roots, Florence. I grew up in the house where Daddy did and later taught math where he used to teach English.” She looked contentedly at the vista of broad live oaks and ancient cedars, bordered by the ribbon of water.

She had answered one of Katharine’s silent questions: how she managed to buy groceries and gas for the blue Honda parked in her yard. With no mortgage and few bills, she should live comfortably on a teacher’s pension.

They rocked companionably for several minutes, imbibing the peace of the place. Dr. Flo brushed away a circling fly and asked, “You don’t know anything about the Mallery who was buried near the Guilberts, do you, Agnes?”

Katharine hid a smile. Those two had certainly gotten to a first name basis pretty quick. She still had her own reservations about a woman who shot first and asked questions later.

Agnes furrowed her brow. “Mallery. Mallery. Seems like that name is familiar.”

“One of the graves is that of Elizabeth Mallery Bayard,” Katharine reminded her. “Mother of Claude.”

“Yes, but there’s something else. Seems like I saw that name once in old papers around here. As a kid I used to spend rainy days rummaging in drawers, because my folks have always been pack rats and I never knew what I might come across. While I’m looking for my deed, I’ll see if I can find anything about a Mallery or the Guilberts. How would I get in touch with you if I do?”

Katharine gave her the phone number at Posey’s beach cottage and Dr. Flo recited her home number. Katharine shifted uneasily in her rocker when Dr. Flo inquired, “Do you have children? What happens to the land and this house when you are gone?”

Agnes apparently had no qualms about discussing her demise or her estate. “It goes back to the Bayards, unfortunately. That was a stipulation of Miss Ella’s grant. From what I understand her son, Asa, pitched a hissy fit when he heard his parents were giving away some of their land, so Mr. Hamilton wrote the deed so that our family could own the land in perpetuity, but could not sell it or leave it to anyone except the Bayards. I watch my back when Dalt’s around.” She gave a bark of laughter that made the cats look up uneasily and Samson give a low
woof!
She bent to give the dog a reassuring pat before she added, with a twinkle in her eye, “The only thing that ever tempted me to get married was the notion that I could pass on this land to my children. I decided that was too high a price to pay.”