“So you’ve said, Mr. Shepherd. I know it sets a haint upon you, especially of an August, and no wonder. It’s no small thing to see bloody murder.”
I signed the letter and handed it back. “I’m inclined in this case to stand out of the way. If I ever had to choose, I might just be a coward and save my own skin.”
“That’s people,” she said. “That’s how the Good Lord made us to be.”
“No, I’ve known brave men. Lev saw his children murdered, and never gave in. Even young boys, like Sheldon Harte. I’m told they loved life even more than I do, it’s why they became revolutionaries. And ended up bludgeoned, or dead in a lime pit.”
She stood waiting. For a happier ending, I suppose.
“What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won’t even stand close to the blade. I’m one of those. We don’t bend anything.”
“You do, though. Look here, I’ve got boxes of letters downstairs, as you said yourself. People telling how you’ve saved their day. Do ye think that’s ordinary?”
“I give them a lark. A few hours to forget about a disappointing family, or a boss who’s a tyrant. But all that mess is still there, when the book ends. I don’t save people.”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “Mr. Shepherd, here’s your trouble. You don’t know your own strength.”
July 3
The Pack Square Soda Shoppe could not have been decked out with more flag bunting if it were the president’s train car. Romulus was dazzled, mostly by his buffalo-like ice cream sundae. Mrs. Brown was rosy-cheeked, sipping cola through a straw. “You ought be thrilled,” she said. “A Hollywood movie.”
“You keep saying that. I am thrilled.”
“Well, ye barely look it,” she said. She had on the blue Kerrybrooke beret (wear it many ways!), identifying this as a Social Adventure of the highest order.
“You don’t,” Romulus agreed.
“You pipe down. We men have to stick together. We don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves the way women do.”
He glanced at his shoulder, then took a whitecap of cream off his cheek with the back of a hand.
“It’s not really settled yet, for one thing. Where am I going to find an agent?”
“Did Mr. Lincoln say you have to get one? Or just that it would be helpful? What did he say about that exactly?”
“Find someone to negotiate the contract, for the motion-picture option. He can’t do it, this is between Hollywood and me. An agent is customary. Or a lawyer.”
“Well, lawyers, I have known a few. Working for the city. Not that they could reckon out a motion-picture contract.”
“Mr. Lincoln said brace ourselves for the press. They’ll step up the pursuit.”
A pea-green Cadillac hunched past like some kind of water animal, the small, split windshield like close-set eyes. They will never make another car to touch the Roadster. Mrs. Brown put us in a corner near the window so I wouldn’t be spotted in the shop. But even so, I could hear a couple of girls at the counter saying “him. It is. Isn’t.”
Mrs. Brown snapped her fingers. “I have a man! I think I have the business card in my jewelry case.” For a moment she sounded so modern, a regular Gal Friday.
And she saves the day, once again. Or might have, we will see. It’s a gentleman she met last year when he came to inquire about renting a vacant room. They had quite a chat in the parlor while waiting for Mrs. Bittle to return from the hairdresser’s. He’s from New York City, a lawyer, mostly retired. Moving to Asheville because his wife had died, and the daughter Margaret lived here. Grandchildren. He was not sure how he’d get along in Dixieland, but you can’t argue with a daughter named Margaret. Even Harry Truman knows that, ha-ha. They’d had the radio on in the parlor, and Mrs. Brown happened to wonder aloud what the stars looked like. The voices give a certain impression, but the actors might be less attractive than they sound. It was Duffy’s Tavern. The gentleman told her as a matter of fact the actress playing Duffy’s daughter might sound like a girl but she is a mature woman, forty if she’s a day. Shirley Booth. And the other one, Cass Daley, has an overbite like a lizard.
How did he know? He’s met them, that’s how. It’s his line. A radio and television lawyer.
I asked Mrs. Brown why he hadn’t taken the room.
“Mrs. Bittle wouldn’t let to him. She was sorry. He seemed very nice.”
“I see. Only good people here. Was he a Negro?”
“No.”
“Just too much of a Yankee?”
She glanced at Romulus, then back at me. “You told me in Mexico you use to work for some…that didn’t have Christmas.”
Even the word Christmas didn’t jog a glimmer of attention from Romulus. He sat glaze-eyed as a mystic, stirring his bowl of ice-cream soup streaked with a bleeding cherry. I tried to work out the puzzle.
“Oh. This man was a Jew?”
Arthur Gold. The New York Jew in Dixie.
July 22
Poor Mrs. Brown, in trouble with the Woman’s Club. She was so distracted today, she had to call Mr. Gold back twice to get instructions about mailing the motion-picture contract. She seems to think these women mean to throw her in a cauldron of bouillon. As one of three members of the Cultural Committee, she was not the lone perpetrator. But it was her idea to involve the children.
Their speaker was a girl named Surya, spending the summer with Asheville relatives, on leave from some school-term cultural exchange in Washington, D.C. It was Genevieve Kohler (neighbor to the relatives) who hatched the plot to have this girl from Russia as their Cultural Evening speaker. The ladies were in a jam; Decorating with the New Plastic Fabrics had canceled on short notice. Mrs. Brown thought of inviting local high-school girls, pointing it up as an inspirational talk. The girl had lived through war. She had overcome long odds to arrive in Carolina in time for a Rhododendron Festival.
Mrs. Brown said she looked as hale as a milkmaid, with brown eyes and dimples, and that the talk was both informative and audible. Little Surya spoke of her school in Russia, the free health program, and the Russian plan for old-age care. She contrasted the governing bodies in her country with the newly elected Communist government of Poland. She made favorable mention of the position of women in modern-day Russia, and equally favorable mention of North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Mrs. Brown said the girl was so unsophisticated and gracious, she doubted the child would have disparaged a spider, had it walked across her face. Yet she created a sensation. The Woman’s Club president, vice president, and sergeant-at-arms stood up as a block, interrupted the speaker to announce their devotion to America, and walked out. Some others followed. Mothers who had brought their girls, responding to the handbill distributed at school, left with daughters in tow, indignant at having been duped.