Authors: James A. Michener
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Family Saga, #Sagas, #Historical, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Romance, #Eastern Shore (Md. And Va.), #Historical Fiction, #Fiction, #Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. And Va.)
In August 1976, when the real estate season was about to begin, Washburn Turlock convened his sales staff for a pep talk which would set the future course for his agency. As his fourteen salesmen finished their coffee, he startled them by distributing without comment his new advertising brochure. It was a shocker. From the cover leered a cartoon resemblance of Washburn dressed as a buccaneer, with sword, tricorn hat and pistol. Bold lettering proclaimed
TURLOCK THE PIRATE, A MAN YOU CAN TRUST.
When the gasps had subsided, he informed his people that from here on, this was to be the sales pitch of the Turlock agency, and he directed their attention to the first inside page, which contained a brief, well-written account of selected Turlocks who had occupied Eastern Shore lands for more than three centuries:
The original Timothy was no Virginia Cavalier. He appears to have been a petty thief who served his first years as a bonded servant, euphemism for slave.
This was too much for one of the women, who asked in a rather gray voice, ‘Washburn, do you think that wise?’
‘Read on,’ he told her.
Much was made of General Washington’s lauding of Teach Turlock, who was presented as a pirate devoting his energies to patriotic causes, while Matt Turlock was offered as a hero of the War of 1812. It was an
exciting brochure, modern, witty, directed precisely to the kinds of clients the Turlock agency hoped to attract. But it was what Washburn said in his sales pitch that morning that set the pattern for the new era:
‘The old days are gone, and if any of you are indissolubly linked to them, get out now. For new days are upon us. What are the characteristics, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you.
‘This agency no longer has any interest in properties selling for less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, I know that some cheap clients will find their way to us. Can’t escape them. But you can take a client only once to a ninety-thousand property. If he wants it, all right. If he doesn’t make up his mind on that trip, drop him. Let someone else make that sale. We’re not interested.
‘The reason I say this is simple. Who buys the cheap property, the place at ninety thousand? Some young couple. They keep it for forty years, and what good does that do us? One commission and that’s the end. But who buys the real property? The one for half a million? Some retired geezer in his late sixties. Lives in it five years and finds it too big to handle. Turns it back to us to sell. My father told me, “You get yourself four good properties at half a million each, you’ll find one of them coming back on the market every year. You just keep selling those four year after year, you got yourself a good living.”
‘We are after the client who thinks of a quarter of a million as nothing … chicken feed. We are going to wine him and dine him and three years later sell him a new place for half a million. What we’re really after is the million-dollar sale. On our lists right now we have eleven properties at more than a million each. Get out and sell them.
‘The secret of such salesmanship is to think like a millionaire. What would you like? Who would you like to do business with? That’s the reason for this new brochure … this new attack. Four billboards go up this week with the pirate theme. Why? Because a rich man is himself a pirate. That’s why he’s rich. He’ll want to do business with me. He’ll see me as a kindred spirit. You watch, this campaign will prove a gold mine.
‘But the second part is also important. Turlock, a man you can trust. We emphasize that in everything we do. A client hands us a deposit, then changes his mind. We are happier to refund his money than we were to take it. He’ll remember and come back. A young couple comes in here with forty thousand dollars. You bring them to me, and I’ll explain that right now we don’t happen to have anything
in that price range. I give them coffee. I take them by the arm and lead them across the street to Gibbons, who does handle cheapies. I give them a brochure and ask them to let me know what they find. And later, when they have two hundred thousand to spend, they’ll come back to us.‘When you get hold of a real client, provide what he expects—the history, the charm, the security, the gracious living. I was appalled when I found that Henry here had allowed that old shack on the Fortness place to be torn down. Henry! Didn’t you realize you had a gold mine in that shack? Have the owner spend two thousand dollars propping it up, then tell the clients, “These were the slave quarters.” Don’t you know that every man who comes down here from up North wants to imagine himself as the master of a great plantation … cracking the whip … overseeing the cotton. A good slave quarters on a piece of land increases the price by fifty thou.’
His intuitions were correct, and Turlock the Pirate became not only the most prosperous agency on the shore, but also the most talked about. Its agents wore conservative suits, drove black cars, spoke in low voices about Rembrandt Peale’s having lived in this house, or Francis Asbury’s having stayed in that one during his famous revival. The firm concentrated upon those houses located on the best rivers, and Washburn instructed his agents:
‘When clients ask you what the best locations are—how the various rivers rank socially, that is—you must tell them the story of the American military expert who went to Berlin to find out about the relative ranks in the German forces. An aide to the Kaiser explained, “First there’s God. No, first there’s God and the Kaiser. Then the cavalry officer. Then the cavalry officer’s horse. Then absolutely nothing for a long, long way. And then the infantry officer.”
‘On the Eastern Shore there’s the Tred Avon and its tributaries, Peachblossom and Trippe. Then there’s nothing for a long, long way. Then there’s Broad Creek but certainly not Harris. Then again there’s nothing for a long way. Then we have the Miles and the Wye and the north bank of the Choptank. After that, there’s absolutely nothing.
‘If someone should ask about land south of the Choptank, you’re to say, “It’s rather attractive … if you like mosquitoes.” But never take your car over that bridge. Turlock people are not seen on the other side.’
Washburn was in his office one September morning when what he judged to be an almost ideal client appeared. He was in his middle sixties, distinguished in appearance, had a gray mustache and was conservative in dress. He drove a Buick station wagon stylishly weatherbeaten, probably a ’74. He moved as if he knew what he was about, and when his wife appeared, she wore expensive low shoes and soft tweeds. They both looked like hunters, but they had no dog.
‘Hullo,’ the visitor said deferentially to the girl at the reception desk. ‘I’m Owen Steed.’
‘Of the local Steeds?’
‘Way back.’
Washburn came out of his office, smiled graciously at his receptionist and asked, ‘Could I intrude, please?’
‘This is Owen Steed,’ she said.
‘I thought I heard that name. I’m Washburn Turlock.’
‘We’ve seen your signs. My wife said she thought …’
‘I do a little genealogy,’ Mrs. Steed said quietly. ‘Weren’t the Steeds and the Turlocks …’
‘Intimately,’ Turlock said. ‘When my ancestors were pirates, yours were being ducked in the river for being witches. Unsavory lot, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Mrs. Steed said. ‘Rosalind’s Revenge. Is it by chance still occupied …’
‘A ruin,’ Turlock replied, and without allowing the visitors to sit down, he suggested that he drive them to the wharf at Peace Cliff, where he was sure the Paxmores …
‘Paxmore?’ Mr. Steed asked.
‘Yes, they’re an old family. Quakers.’
‘I’d rather not impose …’
‘They wouldn’t care, I’m sure.’ He reached for the phone to see if he could utilize the Paxmore dock for a short trip to Devon Island, but Mr. Steed thrust his hand out so imperatively to prevent the call that Turlock dropped the idea. ‘We’ll go to a wharf closer in,’ he suggested, and Mr. Steed quickly assented, ‘That would be better.’
Washburn Turlock had discovered that in selling really large properties, there was no substitute for taking his clients to them by boat, and he maintained three or four powerboats at spots convenient for exploring the Tred Avon and what he termed ‘the better rivers.’ There was something about seeing the Eastern Shore from the water that was ravishing; it destroyed inhibitions and opened pocketbooks. In proposing to show the Steeds their ancestral home, he intended to assault their memories and soften them up for the real sale he intended making later, but since this subsequent property stood on water, he observed a fundamental rule of the Turlock agency: ‘Never show an important property at low tide.
The client may be shocked at how shallow our water is.’ So he stole a furtive glance at a special German wristwatch he wore; it showed not time but the condition of the tide—was it high or low? What he saw satisfied him; the tide was coming in. ‘We’re off to see one of the great mansions of the Eastern Shore,’ he cried.
On the short trip across the Choptank he found that Owen Steed had gone to Princeton, like so many of his uncles, and from there had entered the oil business, in Tulsa, where he had risen to the rank of president of Western Oil. He had retired, apparently with what Washburn always referred to as a bundle, and was now seeking to renew his acquaintance with his past. He was a prime prospect for one of the million-dollar establishments.
‘Did you grow up at Devon?’ Turlock asked as the boat entered the creek.
‘I was born there, but I grew up with the Refuge Steeds.’
No information could have excited Washburn more. He had on his list a plantation of two hundred acres at the Refuge that would excite any potential buyer, but would be irresistible to a returning Steed.
The visit to Rosalind’s Revenge had precisely the effect Turlock sought. As the visitors landed at the crumbling wharf he said, ‘From here the Steed ships sailed to England,’ and as they climbed the disintegrating path he said, ‘Some of these trees go back two hundred years.’ At the mansion, its roof almost gone, he pointed out the two cannonballs lodged in the moidering wall and the great room in which Webster and Calhoun had dined. He was meticulous in his orchestration, allowing some grandeur to sink in but not enough to induce melancholy.
‘Couldn’t this be restored?’ Mr. Steed asked.
‘Of course,’ Turlock said promptly. ‘Except that the island’s disintegrating.’
He showed them how the persistent northwest storms had eroded Devon to the point that many of the slave buildings had fallen into the bay, and the visitors were satisfied that any chance of salvaging the famous old mansion had vanished decades ago. Mrs. Steed started to utter regrets about the loss, but Turlock quickly diverted her to happier possibilities. ‘While we have the boat,’ he said in an offhand way, ‘why don’t we look at a little piece of land that’s come on the market recently? One of the old Steed places. The Refuge.’
As they passed beneath Peace Cliff he observed Mr. Steed looking with some interest at the telescope house, then quickly looking away, but he attached no significance to the incident. Mrs. Steed, however, wanted to talk about the house, and Turlock told her that it represented the best seventeenth-century style. ‘One of our architectural glories. That and the Patamoke meeting house.’
He was about to comment on the telescope construction, knowing that
prospective clients enjoyed information about architecture, when he saw Mr. Steed staring back at the Paxmore house. Immediately he changed his tone, observing brightly, ‘Now we’re heading for Steed Creek.’ He paused, tried to estimate the degree of interest these two had in a real purchase, then added, ‘The creek invites you to look around … as a former resident.’ Mrs. Steed smiled.
Then the boat slowed, and Turlock adeptly turned it so that his passengers could catch a glimpse of the peninsula on which the Choptank chieftain Pentaquod had built his refuge in 1605. A lawn of more than an acre swept down from a substantial house surrounded by oaks and loblollies; a solid wharf jutted out from the shore, inviting someone to tie his boat; small white buildings stood to one side; and all about the place reigned a quietness that calmed the spirit.
The silence was broken not by the chugging of the motor, which Turlock had prudently killed, but by a loud raucous cry from one of the streamlets that defined the peninsula. It was a kind of cry that Mrs. Steed had never heard before, and as she looked about in some consternation, she saw above her a gray-blue bird with a long projecting beak and very long trailing legs.
‘Kraannk, kraannk!’
it called. Then, seeing the boat, it veered away, to land a short distance up the creek.
‘What is it?’ she asked, and Turlock told her, ‘Great blue heron. You’ll have scores of them here.’ It was a bold tactic, this speaking as if the client already owned the place, but sometimes it worked.
‘We’ll take it,’ Mr. Steed said.
Washburn was not prepared for this and he started to say, ‘But we haven’t mentioned—’
Mr. Steed interrupted him, ‘We’ll take it.’
‘But the price …’
‘You can haggle with Mrs. Steed, and I warn you, she’s damned good at haggling.’
Mrs. Steed said nothing. The peninsula was so magnificent, so infinitely better than she had imagined the Eastern Shore could be when contemplated from Oklahoma, that she felt no need to comment. Instead she leaned over and kissed her husband. Owen Steed had come home.
The Steeds never doubted that they had picked up a bargain. For $810,000 they acquired not only the Refuge itself, two hundred and ten choice acres with 9,015 feet of waterfront and all the buildings pertaining to the old plantation, but also two adjacent farms providing an additional three hundred acres of cornfields and woodland. ‘The beauty of the cornfields,’ Washburn Turlock explained shortly after they moved in, ‘is that when they’re harvested you can leave generous amounts of corn, which ensures geese unlimited. You can have three different sets of blinds—in the
water, on the shore and in pits throughout your fields. Mr. Steed, you can entertain half of Oklahoma, come next November.’