Bellewether

  “No, you didn’t.” She was very sure. “If he was right for you, you wouldn’t be so calm right now. You’d be curled up somewhere crying your eyes out.” With a long drink from her own glass she said, “When you find the right man, you’ll be devastated if he walks away.”

  Dryly I said, “Something to look forward to.”

  She smiled. “No, what I mean is, when it’s right, you really know. You feel it. There’s no ‘maybe’ anywhere.”

  “Is that how you felt when you met Darryl?”

  “Honey, when I first met Darryl he was dating my good friend. It didn’t take, it didn’t last long. He thought she was just too wild, and she liked her men more exciting. So did I, in those days,” she admitted. “But there was just something, and the more he came around, the more I noticed it. The more I liked it. When they called it quits it hit me hard. And then my friend told me, Malaika, just be honest with yourself. You know you want to call him, so go call him. So I did.” She took a drink, the ice cubes clinking in her glass. “Sometimes the right man just sneaks up on you.”

  I couldn’t picture Darryl—six-foot-something, handsome—sneaking up on anyone, and told her so. “But if I find somebody half as nice as Darryl, I’ll be happy.”

  “You will,” she assured me. “Like my friend said, you just have to keep it honest, with your man and with yourself. Men aren’t so complicated—what you see is what you get. But sometimes what we see is what we want to see, and not what’s really there. And that’s what gets us into trouble.”

  I considered this, acknowledging that I’d been seeing Tyler for a long time through a filter that had blurred his imperfections.

  All of us, Malaika had once told me, have our blind spots. And that made me suddenly remember why I’d come to see her in the first place.

  As I reached down for my tote bag I could feel the faintest first effects of alcohol, reminding me I also should have eaten lunch. But this was more important.

  “I found Violet,” I said, pulling out the sheaf of photocopied pages I’d been busy gathering. “Remember Violet, from the slave lease in Frank’s uncle’s files? Well, I had time this afternoon, you know, so I thought it would be a good thing before our next board meeting if I just went and looked through all the records from the Fishers’ store—the ones that Isaac Fisher said his family had donated to the library, to see, like Frank said, if we could find any account for Captain Benjamin that might show what he bought there. And I did.” I slid those papers from the pile to show her. “These are his accounts, they’re really interesting. They even tell us what his favourite kind of tea was. But,” I added, pulling out a second group of stapled sheets, “the Fishers kept a separate ledger at their store for black people who shopped there.” They were not the only storekeepers to keep a so-called “Negro register,” I’d come across them several times before while doing research, and I knew Malaika wouldn’t be surprised by its existence, but, “There’s Violet,” I said, pointing to the page. “Right there. See? ‘Violet, from Snug Cove.’ She shows up in 1754, and the last entry is 1760.”

  Malaika took the papers from me, reading through them. “There’s a Phyllis here from Snug Cove, too.”

  “I think that’s Violet’s mother. In the letter Reuben Wilde wrote his brother—wait, I’ve got that here as well.” I rummaged for my copy. Found it. “He says, ‘I have learned of the loss of my property’ and then he says he expects to be paid because she was ‘a skilled cook and not old.’ And then he goes on to talk about Violet and how she’s now twelve and he wants to be paid double or he’ll reclaim her. So I think it’s possible Violet was hired out here with her mother, and then when her mother died she was kept on. Phyllis,” I said, to bolster to my argument, “is in the Fishers’ store records beginning in 1742, but then she disappears in 1754, right when Violet starts turning up. And Reuben Wilde wrote this letter in April of 1754. So it would all tie in, if Phyllis was Violet’s mother, and that was the year that she died.”

  “Have you shown this to Frank?”

  “No. I’ve only just found it. I’m going to, though,” I said. “I’d like to bring it up at the next board meeting, but I think it’s only fair to let Frank know in private, before that.”

  Malaika agreed. “Better you than me, though. He won’t like it. It’s part of the legend of Benjamin Wilde that he never held slaves, so to learn he grew up in a house with them will be a hard thing for Frank to accept.”

  “Like you said, though, it comes back to honesty. Really, it—” I broke off, losing my train of thought as an animal streaked past the porch in a brown-and-white blur, plunging headlong into the tangle of flowering groundcover. “Is that Bandit?”

  Malaika said, “Yes. We’re not sure what he’s doing, when he does that. Sam thinks he’s chasing moles.”

  “Sam’s here?” I hadn’t seen his truck, but then I wouldn’t have. The driveway access to Malaika’s house was from a side road that dead-ended in a cul-de-sac around the back.

  “He must be. He probably came by to pick up the window.”

  It took me a minute to make the connection. “The window you bribed him with, so he’d come help at Fall Harvest?”

  “The very same.”

  “Must be some window.”

  “It is,” she said. “Come have a look for yourself.”

  The beagle had skidded a little way down the hill and now popped up again out of the flowers and with a quick wag of his tail bounded off again, leading us around to the backyard, where we found Sam and Darryl loading something large into the back of Sam’s truck, near the shed.

  Malaika said, “Hang on, now. Charley wants to see my window.”

  Sam corrected her, “My window.” But he stood aside to let me see, and then I understood why he had wanted it.

  “That’s beautiful,” I said, because it truly was. Victorian, and round, and huge—at least four feet across—it had been crafted of cast iron, with six petal-shaped glass panes all set around a central circle so the whole thing, with its flaking ivory paint and deeply bevelled edges, looked like an enormous flower.

  Malaika said, “I got it from an old hotel upstate that they were tearing down, and ever since I put it in the shed Sam here’s been hatching schemes to take it off my hands.”

  He grinned and didn’t bother to deny it. “Hey, you offered it. I wasn’t going to tell you no.” Securing it within the truck bed, he flipped up the tailgate. Taking off his gloves, he looked at me and asked, “She’s got you working on a Sunday?”

  “It’s a social call.” My thoughts felt slightly fuzzy. “Well, a little bit of work, but mostly social. We’ve been sitting on the porch. Malaika made us these amazing drinks.”

  “Uh-huh. They didn’t have tequila in them, did they?”

  “Maybe.”

  In her own defence, Malaika said, “I didn’t make them strong.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sam said again. And then to me, “Well, when you’re ready, let me know. I’ll drive you home.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I told him. “I can walk.”

  But half a minute later, I was pretty sure I couldn’t. “Sam?” I asked him. “Can you drive me home?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Malaika must have fetched my tote bag from the porch, because Sam handed it to me to hold before he reached to clip my seatbelt buckle safely into place. “Okay?” he asked.

  I wasn’t. Everything was spinning, and my face had gone all tingly, and I felt a little bad for Bandit, relegated to the narrow back seat while I took his place, but all I said was, “Yes.”

  The drive was mercifully short.

  Sam came around, opened my door, and unfastened my seat belt for me. As he helped me out, I said, “I don’t think I can move my eyebrows. Is that normal?”

  “Yep.”

  It seemed an easy thing to walk across the yard with him beside me, and his hand beneath my elbow kept me steady as I climbed the porch steps. Rachel let us in.

  “Is she all righ
t?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  She leaned in close. “Your eyes are shiny.”

  “Are they?”

  “Really shiny.”

  And then I was lying on the sofa in the living room, and somehow I’d been covered by my favourite crocheted blanket with the fringes.

  From the kitchen I heard Rachel’s voice, and Sam’s. Oh, good, I thought. She’s been polite and asked him in for coffee.

  And although the world was still spinning around me, it felt strangely peaceful. So I fell asleep.

  • • •

  It was a good thing that the next day was a holiday.

  When I arrived at work on Tuesday morning Sam was working on the scaffolding. I put my boots and hardhat on and went around to talk to him. “I don’t think I said thank you.”

  “Yeah, you did.” He grinned. “About ten times.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good. Because I really do appreciate it.”

  “Anytime. Malaika mixed those drinks for me and Darryl, once. I think there might be video, somewhere.” The clapboards had already been removed along this section of the old house wall, exposing the underlying sheathing boards that Sam was now examining for rot or insect damage. We’d been fortunate. The structure of the house was fairly sound.

  “And I’d be fine,” I said, “with Rachel looking after Bandit for you.” I’d reminded her that since it was her house she didn’t need to ask for my approval, but she had insisted on it anyway.

  She’d gone all through it yesterday. “He said he’d pay me for it. He’ll drop Bandit off here in the mornings and come by to pick him up, and he’ll bring food and everything. He’s really so adorable. The dog, I mean. Did you know he’s a rescue beagle?”

  I’d remembered Frank and Sam had used the term the day I’d first encountered Bandit, but I’d just assumed it meant that he’d come from the pound.

  Rachel had set me straight. “They use them to experiment on. You know, in laboratories. Sam says they use beagles because they’re so gentle and sweet-tempered they won’t even bite you when you’re hurting them. And after a few years when they ‘retire’ the dogs, some labs give them to rescue groups who try to find them homes. Sam says that Bandit didn’t even know what grass was when he got him. It’s his second rescue beagle. He had one before, a girl dog, but she ended up with cancer and he had to put her down. So he got Bandit.”

  “Beagles,” Sam said now, as he stood squarely on the scaffolding, “don’t like to be alone. So she’ll be doing me a favour.”

  “What about the doggie daycare place?”

  “Nah. There’s a Labradoodle there that’s always picking on him. He’ll be better hanging out with Rachel.”

  I was not completely fooled. I knew he’d talked to Rachel for a while, because she’d told me that he had. “He’s really nice,” she’d said. “He listens.”

  So I knew he knew that Rachel wasn’t finding this an easy time, and I suspected Sam just figured she and Bandit were a lot alike in needing some companionship from somebody who understood and didn’t push their boundaries.

  Whatever his true motivations, it was an inspired move.

  When I came down for breakfast the next morning, I found Rachel up and cuddling Bandit on the sofa. She was still in sweats and hadn’t washed her hair, but for the first time in four days she was awake before lunch, so I chose to count it as a sign of progress.

  “It’s called situational depression,” Gianni said that evening, leaning on the fence that lay between his mother’s garden and our gravelled yard. “I looked it up. It’s rough, but most people come out of it fine without needing meds. She just needs time.”

  I asked him, “Did she tell you what went wrong at school?”

  He shrugged. “She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t read the books, and didn’t want to. She just wanted to lie down and cry and sleep a lot, she said. Between us, I don’t think she wants to be a lawyer. I think that was for her father. And now he’s gone, she ain’t sure what she does want.”

  I had left that conversation feeling Gianni had just saved me all the fees I’d have been charged by a psychiatrist for that same diagnosis, and in keeping with his wise advice I’d given Rachel space.

  I had enough to keep me busy. At the end of the week when Frank chaired the next meeting of our acquisitions committee, I drew him aside afterwards for a talk and explained what I’d found about Phyllis and Violet, the slaves who had lived at the Wilde house for almost two decades.

  He listened in silence at first, with his head down. He read through the papers I handed him. Then he swore, once, but with feeling.

  I thought he might need space, too, but all he said was, “I’m guessing you’ll want to bring this up next week at our board meeting.”

  Frank liked directness, so I was direct. “Yes.”

  He nodded, and thrusting the papers towards me said, “Do it.”

  He didn’t go back to his car straight away, but walked off on his own through the woods on the path that I knew from experience led to the old family graveyard. I’d been there a few times myself. There weren’t many stones left—most had fallen or broken or been lost to time, and the few older ones that survived had been gathered and propped on a central stone monument topped with a carved bust of Benjamin Wilde gazing fearlessly over the cove to the waters of Long Island Sound, where he’d sailed as a hero.

  I knew Frank went up there from time to time. He kept the grass trimmed and straightened the stones when they needed it. And while he might not believe that his ancestors left any ghosts behind, I had a feeling he still had a few things to say to them on this particular visit.

  He kept to himself for a few days but by the next week he was back to his regular pattern of coming on site to keep up with the work being done.

  The engineer had been here, too, inspecting the repairs to the wood sheathing and the timber frame, and having met with his approval part of Sam’s crew were now on the north side of the house replacing siding, while the rest were on the south side of the roof removing shingles.

  It was not a job I would have wanted. Even though the south side of the roof, above the kitchen lean-to, wasn’t pitched as steeply as the front, you had to be a certain kind of crazy, I decided, to spend all day walking on an angle over thin boards that in places had been rotted through by insects and neglect and years of damp.

  I had a clear view from my office window of the workers on the roof. One was a woman who worked with a steady competence that didn’t make me worried, but one of her colleagues was a guy who looked younger than Gianni, with a hipster beard and hair tied in a ponytail beneath his hardhat. He moved like a mountain goat—a very reckless mountain goat. It made me nervous every time he crossed my field of vision.

  So the day I heard the crash and yell and looked up just in time to see a hardhat disappearing through a dark hole at the far end of the roof, I knew whose hardhat it would be.

  I don’t remember pushing back my chair and dashing through the doorway from my office into the old section of the house. I only know I reached him first.

  I found him standing on both feet within a shaft of sunlight spearing through a jagged hole in the sloped ceiling of the room above the buttery. Dust danced wildly in the dimness, sparkling in and out of shadow as it sifted from the opening above his head. It covered him. It settled in his beard and on his shoulders.

  “I’m okay,” were his first words to me as I raced in. “I’m good, man.” He repeated that, as if he was amazed to find himself unhurt. “I’m good.”

  Above us came a quick, deft fall of footsteps on the rafters and Sam’s face appeared within the new hole, blocking out the light. “What happened?”

  “Man,” his worker told him, looking up in awe, “it was like someone caught me. It was awesome! But I’m good.”

  Sam didn’t care how awesome it had been. “I’m getting Rick to take you to the hospital,” he said, “to get checked out. And when you work for me, you wear
your safety gear, you got it?”

  “Got it.” With a glance around the room, as if he half expected there’d be someone else to see besides the two of us, the bearded worker moved his hands to test them. “Cool,” he said, and sauntered past me.

  He had dropped his hammer. Or, to be more accurate, his hammer had smashed through a floorboard near where I was standing in the doorway, and was stuck there with the metal head embedded in the splintered wood, the handle angled upwards.

  Sam could see it, too. “Hang on,” he said, and shifting he manoeuvred himself through the hole and dropped down with a solid thud that raised another swirl of dust. “A good thing it was just his hammer, not his head.”

  He tried to ease it out, but like King Arthur with his sword stuck in the stone, looks were deceiving. It was really stuck. The floorboard lifted with it, and I heard the ripping sound of wood, and then Sam pointed to the gap now showing where the floorboard’s end had been, and asked me, “What is that?”

  I looked. It was a small cloth bag, or what was left of one, and when I saw what it had once contained I knew this hadn’t truly been an accident.

  • • •

  “And this,” I told the members of the board, “is what we found.”

  I set the tray down carefully that held the remnants of the little bag and all its contents, cleaned and catalogued.

  Malaika had known this was coming. So had Frank and Lara. But most of the others were looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  I didn’t blame them. To the average eye, the things that I was showing them looked more like things someone would throw away on purpose, not a find of any true significance: thin brass pins, several bent iron nails, small glass beads, a few fragments of pottery, oxidized lead shot, and two flat, triangular, water-smoothed stones that looked something like axe heads.

  I attempted to put things in context. Not knowing what everyone’s level of knowledge was when it came to the historical facts of the slave trade, I started with the Portuguese and rapidly moved on to, “So a large part of the slaves who ended up here in America came from what’s now Nigeria on Africa’s West Coast, and most of those were either Igbo or Yoruba, and in the Yoruba culture there’s a god, Eshu Elegba, who is kind of like a trickster god. He mediates between the gods and men and carries messages between the worlds, and he guards all the crossroads and all thresholds. And a slave here in America would follow the religion of their ancestors and if they were Yoruba they would leave specific offerings for Eshu on their thresholds. Archaeologists aren’t sure if these were meant to protect those inside the room, or harm those who might try to enter, but when you find these near windows or at doorways, what it means is there were probably slaves living in that room.”