Chapter 6: RUMORS

Walking out onto the verandah and bounding down the stairs, Jess and Jay Dee found—rather than the cart they were expecting—two saddled horses being held by Uncle Jack mounted on his molly mule.

"Uh... what's this?" Well... that was stupid…

"Kinda look like horses to me, Jess," Jay Dee chortled. More like underfed ponies—but infinitely preferable to bouncing around in the back of a cart. One was a dappled grey mare no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen hands. The other, slightly taller and heavier, was a dun gelding with pronounced primitive markings. Both exhibited wide-set eyes over refined, concave faces, short-coupled backs and narrow chests, sloping shoulders and croups with low-set tails.

"But... where'd they come from?"

Uncle Jack grinned. "Where yo tink? Dey come from de barn, is whut."

It took Jess less than five seconds and a momentary flashback to comprehend what he was seeing and why they looked so familiar. As the war dragged on and remounts were becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, procurement officers on both sides had had to scrounge farther and farther afield to meet demands. Fine bloodstock had gone first, naturally... and then any saddle-broken animals, then plowhorses and mules. As the need continued unabated, anything with four legs that could carry a man or supplies was likely to be confiscated by a desperate cavalry officer.

An unlikely source was discovered in Florida's flourishing cattle country—the so-called 'cracker horse. While disturbed by the unhappy memories the sight of these two horses had triggered, Jess was nonetheless captivated by their presence. He'd ridden three crackers in his time as a military courier and appreciated their speed as well. He'd enjoy riding one today.

Jess sure did like that dun, but—in a burst of charity—gave his cousin first choice. Being an inch taller and a bit heavier, it would have been logical for Jay Dee to take the larger horse. However, sensing Jess' preference, he opted for the grey.

Mounting up, they followed Uncle Jack out of the compound and turned left onto the beach road.

After listening to Jess' brief summary of his sister's presumed fate and perusing what little information the Pinkertons had been able to acquire about Jess' sister Francine, Rosalie had offered her first suggestion.

"Says here they questioned the commandant at Pelican Spit about her husband. The man claimed he didn't have the records and didn't know where they were. Ignorant and lazy!" she sniffed. "All he had to do was refer them to the garrison commander at Port Bolivar."

"Why's that?"

"Major Andresson was in command of the occupation forces after the war. I got to know him quite well through mutual business acquaintances. Not socially, of course. Known for his impeccable maintenance of paperwork and attention to detail, to the exclusion of all else. Memory of an elephant. In other words, an unmitigated tightass."

Jess had to choke back his surprise at the expletive issuing from the lips of such a gentlewoman. Jay Dee laughed out loud.

"Are you sure you're not related to my Mom? You both tell it like it is."

"After retirement, Bill Andresson took up the position of lighthouse keeper over on the peninsula at Bolivar Point. He's mellowed considerably but his memory remains remarkably intact even though he drinks like a fish. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if he remembers your late brother-in-law. You'll have to take the ferry. That's about a twenty to forty-five minute crossing, depending on conditions."

"How dya know all this?" Jess inquired.

The moss-green eyes shuttered. "I know many things. For instance, how a bottle of rye whiskey improves conversation and loosens the tongue."

Rosalie Mount was dead right about that and another thing—everything Jess Harper wanted to know about his defunct brother-in-law he would hear from the former army major, swallow by swallow. No need to go poking through dusty old records.

Lighthousekeeping is a lonely occupation for a widower. William Andresson was overjoyed to have a captive audience. He did indeed remember that lowlife good-for-nothing scumbucket, Private Gilbert Brady. Deprived of sergeant's stripes more than once on account of his inability to follow orders or stay sober, the man was an embarrassment to his uniform. Good riddance when he was finally posted to Fort Laramie on the frontier. With any luck, the natives would lift his scalp.

"Met his wife once... sweet young girl. Shame how he treated her... your sister, you say? Sorry to be the one to tell you, but I heard she died. He abandoned her, you know, without a penny to her name or a pot to piss in. 'Scuse the French. A week after he'd posted out she came around to my office, wanting to know if we'd seen him or knew where he was.

"Brady left before his last paycheck was issued. I gave it to his missus instead—against regulations so don't tell anyone. She was already doing poorly. As I recall, there was another outbreak of either diphtheria or yellow fever going on at the time. Never saw her again... probably died in hospital. Heard a rumor she might've killed herself out of heartbreak... but that's just hearsay. Most likely succumbed to disease like hundreds of others."

After that very revealing hour with Andresson, Jess endured the return ferry trip hanging over the bow rail in a silent rage. Jay Dee and Uncle John maintained a discreet distance near the livestock pens on the stern. Heading back to the house, Jess rode on ahead, still not talking. So angry he was unable to talk... or even eat lunch when it was served. Instead, claiming massive headache, he trudged upstairs and closed himself up in his room.

Rosalie, Uncle John, Celia and Jay Dee sat at the table on the verandah. The old man had nothing to contribute, having absented himself during the character assassination portion of the meeting and gone off to chat with a contemporary doing yard work around the grounds. Celia had no idea what was going on, having missed breakfast. She, too, listened but didn't speak.

"I take it the information Mister Harper received was not to his liking," Rosalie commented.

"Not hardly." Jay Dee pulled out a notebook and handed it over. "I doubt he'd mind your reading this. Visiting that lighthouse keeper was a good idea. Maybe you've got other ones?"

"Possibly. Let me read this first."

Jay Dee pecked away at his food until the woman finished reading and returned the notebook, steepling her fingers.

"How much do you know about this sister and her husband?"

"Not a whole lot... mainly just what my father learned the couple weeks he stayed there at the ranch where Jess lives... but that's another story. Dad says he heard from someone else that Jess'd lost most all his family in a house fire but doesn't like to talk about it. Jess himself told me he'd lost contact with his surviving sister but a few years ago her husband turned up at the ranch. He was an Army deserter and wanted Jess' help to escape to Canada, where Francie was supposed to meet him later in Calgary."

"And did he? Help him, that is?"

"All I know is it didn't work out. Someone else told Jess that Brady lied, that he'd abandoned Francie and she'd committed suicide. Then they got into a fight and Jess killed him."

"So what Andresson said about her possibly having killed herself corroborates what he'd already been told. No wonder he's in a state."

"Except that Jess says he read her name in a newspaper, listing victims of an epidemic in Galveston... and Andresson said he'd heard that, too."

"Either way, she's still dead."

"But there's no real proof... and he won't accept that she's gone until he has tangible evidence—a death certificate or a headstone or something."

Rosalie smiled. "My, my... you're going to make a fine attorney some day."

"Me? Oh no... no. I'm going to be an educator like my folks. I think I'd like to teach science."

"That's very commendable of you, Jay Dee. Changing the subject, Celia is taking some of the older children to the beach after school. Would you care to go along? I'm sure somewhere around here we have a bathing costume that would fit you."

A few hours later Jess padded downstairs in his bare feet—something he rarely did at home. There wasn't anyone about in the front of the house. Following a hum of voices and muted laughter around to the back veranda, he found Rosalie and one of the older children efficiently beheading, shelling and deveining shrimp. Another girl was stripping husks off corn while a third was peeling potatoes and chunking them—along with bell peppers, carrots and celery—into a huge cast iron cauldron.

"Old-fashioned low-country boil tonight," Rosalie announced. "You're welcome to pitch right in and help clean these."

Jess had never cleaned a crustacean in his life although he'd once eaten lobster in a restaurant and was fond of oysters on the half shell with lemon juice and hot sauce. How hard could it be? And it would be unmannerly to refuse.

Not too hard, once he got the hang of it, except for shredding his fingers on sharp spines. In the meantime he related the results of the lighthouse visit, most of which Rosalie already knew but didn't mention.

"I reckon it was mostly a wasted trip," he concluded.

"Not at all... you learned much more than the Pinkertons were able to glean and now you have a springboard to your next search field."

"I do?"

"We have other options. Tomorrow we'll visit hospitals."

"We?"

"We. Yes. You and I. I know the right people... people to whom you might not be able to gain access on your own. Jay Dee is welcome to come although I can take notes as well as he can. He's quite competent, your cousin."

"So you already read 'em?"

"I did."

"Where is he, by the way?"

"Oh... I sent him off to go swimming with Celia and some of the children."

Swimming? Out there? Jess' eyes involuntarily swiveled toward the vast expanse of sparkling blue water shading to gray at the horizon line.

"That and clamming..."

What the hell is clamming?

The conversation veered off into comparisons of life by the seaside versus living on the land-locked high plains encircled by mountain ranges. Aside from that one childhood experience, Jess had never lived near the ocean, much less swam in it. Rosalie had never lived anywhere out of range of saltwater... or seen a snow-capped peak.

Little by little Jess was drawn out of his depression by Rosalie's running commentary on island subsistence and the most efficient usage of seafood. Shrimp heads and exoskeletons, for instance, weren't immediately destined for the compost heap. Instead, they went into another pot simmering on an outdoor fire pit—along with vegetable parings, fish heads and anything else with residual nutrient value. The resulting broth would be strained out through fine cheesecloth and used in soups and stews. At first repulsed, Jess came to understand this was just another version of the broth Daisy prepared from butcher bones.

The beach party returned, laden with net bags containing what appeared to be tiny, colorful triangular stones clumped together by filaments of seaweed. In their outlandish (to Jess' eyes) bathing costumes, they congregated on a wooden platform below the back verandah, showering off salt and sand under a sprinkler head attached to the wooden cistern supplying the house. Though much less revealing than Jay Dee's outfit, the girls' wet and somewhat translucent duds clung to their curves. Jess averted his eyes in embarrassment.

As Rosalie and several of the smaller children took charge of the net bags and commenced sloshing them in tubs of water. Jess stopped to investigate.

"What're them pebbles for?"

"They're not stones... they're bean clams—some people call then coquinas," Rosalie informed him. "Going into the soup along with everything else."

"Howdya pick the meat outta them little shells?"

"You don't. They go into the pot shells and all. You spit them out as you go along. Or crunch them."

"Oh."

Tuesday, October 14th... Tuesdays were Celia's days to volunteer at the community school. With her mother's approval, Jay Dee was allowed to visit as an observer rather than go with Jess and Rosalie. As transportation for only two people was required, this morning's conveyance was a black two-wheel gig with the little grey mare in harness. Rosalie herself was turned out in a stylish maroon traveling suit with a veiled chapeau. Jess wished he'd brought clothing more suitable to escorting a lady about the streets of Galveston.

Their route took them northeast along the beach road until it cut inland, then due north on Eighth Street for some twenty blocks before arriving at the congregation of buildings comprising the Island City Hospital. Rosalie directed Jess to drive around to a gated service entrance with a bell to announce deliveries. The guard swung open the gate with a nod of recognition toward the veiled passenger, relocking it behind them. From this aspect, the imposing brick structure seemed more like a prison than a hospital and Jess realized his palms were sweating. As they climbed staircase after staircase to the fifth floor, only the faint scent of antiseptic and the occasional glimpse of a white-coated figure affirmed its true purpose.

"Missus Mount to see Director Atkins," Rosalie announced grandly as they arrived at a reception desk defended by a weedy whey-faced woman with thinning hair screwed mercilessly into a tight bun. The nameplate on the desk identified her as Miss Standish.

"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist demanded suspiciously through spectacles as thick as beer mug bottoms.

"No, but he'll see me."

"I'm afraid the director is..."

Drawing back her veil, Rosalie trained a basilisk stare on the unfortunate woman, who seemed to shrink into herself. "No need to get up. I know the way."

"I... I..." The woman whimpered as she shrank down into her chair.

"What'd you do to her?" Jess whispered as they strolled down a dark corridor toward a double door at the far end.

Rosalie shrugged. "I have to deal with these official twits at every single visit. Leonard Atkins is a hard taskmaster—he goes through receptionists like green apples through a cow. Every new one thinks she sits at the right hand of the Almighty."

Giving a perfunctory knock on the door, Rosalie opened it and swept in, morphing into yet another different personality right before Jess' eyes...

"My dear Leonard... how very splendid to see you! I declare, you grow more handsome every day!"

A chubby balding gentleman somewhere in his mid- to late-fifties, 'Dear Leonard' had been poring over a mound of paperwork at his extravagantly massive desk. About to launch a complaint over the intrusion of unannounced visitors into his sanctum, he jumped to his feet and scrabbled around the rosewood monstrosity to take Rosalie's Mount's proffered gloved hand, upon which he deposited a slurpy kiss. Papers fluttered and flew to the floor in his wake.

"Missus Mount! To what do I owe the pleasure? Please, please... do have a seat. I'll ring for tea..." Belatedly he noticed the presence of another male and allowed a moue of disappointment to escape before making a recovery. "Leonard Atkins, sir, director of this facility... and you are...?"

"Jess Harper... friend a Missus Mount's. She's very kindly helpin' me look for a lost relative." Jess shook the man's moist hand and took a seat. Director Atkins reestablished himself behind his breastwork.

"Any friend of Missus Mount is a friend of mine. How may I be of service?"

As Rosalie explained the purpose of their quest in exquisite 'Southern belle' style, Jess noted in amusement her finely honed employment of batting eyelashes, balletic hand gestures and tragic sighs. Entranced by her every move, the director was all but drooling on his leather desk blotter. At the conclusion of her speech, Atkins directed his response at Jess.

"You are fortunate in having a personage of Missus Mount's standing in the community aiding you in your search, young man. Normally we do not allow members of the general public access to our records. However, in this case, an exception can be made."

Director Atkins had an array of speaking tubes depending from the side of his stupendous desk. Choosing one, he summoned Miss Standish, who evidently functioned as secretary in addition to receptionist.

"Adeline, have an orderly sent up to escort Missus Mount and her companion to the Records Room, and see to it they are provided with refreshments and anything else they might require."

Descending six flights of stairs to the records storage area in the basement wasn't half as arduous as the ascension. Jess maintained communications silence until they'd been installed in comfortable swivel chairs at a long work table with banks of overhead oil lamps providing brilliant illumination. The orderly trotted away to retrieve the first set of log books.

"What was that all about? Thought that joker was gonna fall on his knees an' lick your toes."

"Lenny Atkins is under the delusion that some fine day I might succumb to his charms and allow him to escort me to dinner... no doubt hoping that thereafter I might be lured to a hotel room. Somewhat on the order of a dog lurking under the dining table, hoping someone might drop a pork chop. You never know... it might happen!"

"You was leadin' that ole boy on like a rooster to the choppin' block," Jess accused, smothering a laugh.

"Guilty as charged, Mister Harper."

As they waited for the man to return, Jess summoned up the courage to satisfy his curiosity about this enigmatic lady.

"Miz Mount…" he began, then faltered.

"You have a question?"

"Yes, m'am… I do… but it's kinda personal an' I sure don't want to offend you."

"You'd have to work very hard to offend me. Ask away… although I suspect I already know the question."

"Well… it's like this. I come from a poor family. Real poor. Sharecroppers. We worked the land 'longside field hands… folks like Mister Greene. You get the picture?"

"I do indeed. Slaves, you mean."

"Yes, m'am. That's what I mean. Ain't never met… someone like you before."

"And by that you mean an educated, respectable, affluent, financially independent and evidently influential woman… who also happens to be colored?"

"Yes, m'am. That's it."

"Does this bother you, Mister Harper?"

"No, m'am. I'm just… I don't understand, is all."

"Allow me to provide an encapsulated history lesson. My people have been free Creoles of color for six generations. Our family prospered in the shipping industry—primarily in the slave trade. I was married right out of convent school, to a wealthy Creole gentleman of the same social strata—a business associate of my father's. We relocated here in order to open a branch office. We lived quite well although we had little social life—as you can imagine, being unwelcome in white society. With servants to tend my home, I had little to do all day to occupy my time. So I began studying—business administration, marketing, investment strategy. All in secret, naturally, as Paul would have been mortified. When he died seven years later, I inherited everything… including his half-share of the company. Then, as now, the business world was not receptive to the idea of a female magnate so I sold out and reinvested the proceeds in a number of diverse enterprises—as a silent partner and mostly in the North. When war came and yanked the rug out from under my fellow businessmen, I was able to survive—thrive, even."

Three hours later they emerged empty-handed into the shadows of the portico, waiting for the valet to bring around the gig.

"Maybe I should just give up..."

"Not yet. If I'd given it further thought, I would have realized the other hospital was more likely to have taken in your sister... particularly if she were destitute at the time of her illness."

"There's another hospital?"

"Oh yes... the one run by the Catholics. It's only a few blocks away. I suggest we break for lunch and then we'll tackle them."

"Whatever you say, Rosalie."