Long Upon the Land (12 page)

H
e was quiet for so long, that I touched his arm and said, “Why, Daddy? Why would you want to kill him?”

He sighed and seemed to pull himself back to the present. “Your mama and me’d just met and I was showing her the boundaries of her land out here when somebody took a couple of potshots at us.”

“Joby Earp?”

His cigarette had burned down almost to his finger and he stubbed it out in the ashtray on the arm of the glider. “Come this close to hitting her.”

He held his thumb and index finger less than an inch apart and I saw remembered anger flare in his blue eyes. “We never timbered that stand of pines ’cause your mama loved them too much, so I could show you the very tree. Still got one of Joby Earp’s bullets in it. He took to his heels when I ran after him, but I knowed it was him.” His voice turned as harsh and cold as I’d ever heard. “Beat the tar out of him when I finally caught up with him that evening and yeah, I’d’ve killed him if somebody hadn’t pulled me off so he could get away.”

He held up his fingers again. “
This
close them bullets came, Deb’rah. Any closer and Sue—”

He took a deep breath, then fumbled in his shirt pocket for his Marlboros.

“Won’t too long after that, the revenuers caught him. He couldn’t pay a lawyer so he spent the next three months in jail.”

I wasn’t going to ask how Joby Earp got caught, but I realized that this must have been when my grandfather stopped representing him.

“I’d’ve run him off the land right then, but by the time he got out, me and Sue was married and Joby’s wife come and begged her to get me to let bygones be bygones. Earla was a good woman with a hard row to hoe and Sue felt sorry for her. She’d took in his brother’s boys to raise, so I backed off, even gave the oldest boy—Vick—a chance to work for me. He won’t as good a driver as he thought he was, though, and didn’t want to be told. Always picking fights with your brothers.

“Them Earps got to be such a thorn in my side that I offered Joby more than the land was worth to buy him out, but he wouldn’t take it ’cause he knowed how it irked me to have them squatting there. So I just bided my time, waited till I heard he needed money real bad, then got somebody from the other end of the county to make him an offer. I got it for right much less than I’d offered Joby. Made him cuss me even more when he figured it out. Reckon Vick and Tyler grew up thinking they’d been cheated outten what was theirs.”

He flipped back the top of his Marlboro box. One cigarette remained. No matches, though.

“I’ll get you a match,” I said and slipped into the kitchen for some. I had Mother’s lighter in my pocket, but was still a little hesitant about letting him know that it was mine now.

He thanked me and the glider squeaked as he sat back and lit up. “First few years atter they moved, them boys used to sneak out here to fish in the creek, maybe shoot ’em a rabbit or two. Thought I didn’t know. But I usually heard about it. Long as that was all they did, I never said nothing. It ain’t easy knowing the land your people sweated over, maybe fought and died for, ain’t never gonna be yours again. I felt sorry for ’em, but it was Joby and Sammy they needed to be mad at, not me.”

“You have anything to do with him going to prison in June?” Dwight asked.

“Is that what he’s saying?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Guess that’s why—” He broke off and took a long drag on his cigarette.

“Why what?” I asked. “Why some of John Claude’s regulars have needed his services lately?”

Daddy turned to Dwight. “’Bout now’s when you’re gonna ask me if somebody can say was I here all Friday night and you know there ain’t. Maidie’ll say she’d of heard if anybody come up or if I’d gone somewhere in my truck. She says she don’t sleep as sound as she used to, but it’d just be her word.”

I almost had to smile. Maidie came to work for Mother when she was a teenager, met and married Cletus Holt, and had stayed on as Daddy’s housekeeper after Mother died. Their house lay on the other side of the dog pens and garden, only a few hundred feet away, but Daddy could have driven his old truck past their house with a brass band playing in the back and both of them would swear he hadn’t set foot off the place all night if they thought that was what he wanted.

“When’s the last time you saw Vick Earp?” Dwight asked.

Daddy shrugged. “Might be six or eight years, at least. Saw Joby last year at a fish fry. He kept his distance, but I knowed he still held a grudge against me. Yeah, I was the one let the feds know where to find his still back when he shot at us, but that’s the only time. If he’s thinking I had aught to do with this last time, he’s wrong. All the same, I reckon he’s gonna try to sling as much mud on you and Deb’rah as he can.”

“Don’t worry about us,” I said, patting his knee.

Had we been there alone, just the two of us sitting on the squeaky old glider watching the late afternoon fade into twilight, I might have seized the moment to ask about those days. “Your mama and me’d just met,” he’d said before his voiced hardened with anger for Joby Earp.

Instead, Dwight whistled for Bandit and we left Daddy there alone with the two hounds and his memories.

T
he rest of the week passed quietly.

Dwight sent his detectives out again to question everyone connected to Vick Earp, but they could turn up nothing new. His were the only fingerprints on the beer cans and still no sighting of his truck. After examining his phone records, Mayleen Diaz reported that most of his calls were either to his wife or his customers. He had called his wife and his dentist around noon on Friday and those were all. No incoming calls had registered for that day.

“Mayleen thought that was a little odd, but I said that would be normal usage for you.”

“Sticks and stones, Dwight,” I said.

As for me, domestic court started with a permanent custody hearing. One of my fellow judges had awarded temporary custody to Ted Latham, the father of a three-year-old. Mrs. Latham had not contested that decision because they had agreed that she could have the little girl from five o’clock on Friday till five o’clock on Sunday and he was not asking for child support. Mr. Latham was back in court to petition for permanent custody on the grounds that his ex-wife, who lived with her own mother, was negligent and often went out partying both nights that the child was there. He had photos and affidavits to back up his allegations.

Mrs. Latham hotly disputed that and accused him of trying to turn their daughter against her. With tears in her eyes, she begged me not to take away those two precious nights. “I’m still young, so yes, I have a life and I do go out sometimes, but not until after Melody’s gone to bed.”

I looked over the affidavits.
Sometimes
seemed to be every Friday and Saturday night. “Who watches your daughter while you’re out?” I asked.

“My mother.” She gestured toward an attractive woman seated on the bench behind her. She appeared to be only five or six years older than me.

“Who gets up with her the next morning?”

“Mom. But she’s always up with the birds anyhow, so for him to say Melody’s neglected is a lie. My mother worships the ground she walks on and doesn’t let her out of her sight the whole time she’s here.”

I had no doubt that she was telling the truth about her mother. I also had no doubt that it was the grandmother who was pushing to retain even that small amount of contact. My heart ached for her, but she was the one who raised a party girl and my first concern had to be for the child.

“There’s no clear evidence that Melody’s being harmfully neglected, but she certainly doesn’t seem to have your full attention,” I told Mrs. Latham. “Therefore, I’m going to award permanent custody to Mr. Latham and cut the visitation from forty-eight to twenty-four hours. That’s from five o’clock Friday afternoon till five o’clock Saturday for as long as you are living with your mother and your mother is physically able to tend to your daughter’s needs if you’re not there.”

I turned to the father. “If her current living circumstances change, you can come back to court and revisit the issue.”

I granted two uncontested divorces before lunch, and after lunch, I terminated the parental rights of a couple who had pretty much abandoned their three children for the joys of methamphetamine. The youngest child would probably have permanent brain damage from being in the house while the parents were making it. I have no illusions about foster care, but at least the children would no longer be exposed to meth. Both parents had been notified. Neither parent showed.

As the week went on and other cases took precedent, the Vick Earp murder began to slide to Dwight’s back burner.

“Ashworth says that the
Clarion
’s editor still calls her every day and there will probably be something more in the paper on Tuesday,” he told me.

Kate and Rob had invited us to join them at the beach for the weekend—“That fourth bedroom’s sitting empty,” they said—so after work on Friday, we left Bandit with Daddy and drove down to Wrightsville Beach.

We hiked along the wide white sands, paddled past the low breakers to ride the swells, built sandcastles, and looked for sea glass and Scotch bonnets. For meals, we pigged out on shrimp and grits, fried oysters, and crab cakes at nearby restaurants. After supper, we played board games with the children. When they were in bed, we took our drinks out to the rocking chairs on the porch to rock and talk. It was the dark of the moon and without any streetlights to wash them out, stars blazed overhead and the Milky Way clearly swirled across the sky.

Except that she’s a little taller and a half-size thinner, Kate and I look more like sisters than Dwight and Rob look like brothers. Dwight is taller and broader with brown hair and brown eyes, while Rob is built more like Miss Emily: small frame, red hair, green eyes. She always says that her four children split the genetic deck. Dwight and Nancy Faye look like their father, while Rob and Beth take after her. Dwight thinks that Rob is smarter and quicker on the uptake, but Rob thinks Dwight has more common sense, with a deeper understanding of the world and how it works. Rob and I talk law cases when we’re together; Dwight and Kate talk about growing things.

It was a good weekend and we were all sorry to see it end when we had to pack up and drive back home on Sunday.

Monday morning took me back to New Bern to settle the dispute between Wade and Caleb Mitchell over the two grave sites in Cedar Grove Cemetery.

I had called the Raynesford House first thing that morning and was told that Miss Josephine Raynesford could see me at 1:30. Actually, I was told that she would “receive” me at 1:30.

“May I ask what this is in reference to?” asked the man who took my call.

I murmured something about genealogy and his voice warmed. “Aunt Jo loves talking genealogy. Which branch of the family are you? Caswell? Oliver? Henry?”

“Oh, I’m not related,” I said. “I was hoping to learn about a family friend. A Walter McIntyre. Walter Raynesford McIntyre.”

“That’s my name!” the man exclaimed. “
I’m
Walter Raynesford.”

“The one I’m looking for died in the Second World War. But before that, he was engaged to a girl named Leslie who killed herself just before the war.”

“Really? What was her last name?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know it.”

“And this Walter was killed in the war, you say?”

“I think so. He was a pilot.”

“That’s not ringing a bell. Oh well. Doesn’t matter. If he’s one of us, then Aunt Jo will know. I’ll tell her why you’re coming so she can go ahead and look through her records. We go all the way back to the Isle of Wight in 1540, you know.”

I didn’t know, but I had a feeling I was going to find out.

Because New Bern was founded by some settlers from Bern, Switzerland, bears are a symbol of the town and fanciful bear statues dot the sidewalks in colorful clothes. My favorite is a British jurist in a scarlet-faced robe and curly white wig.

Inside the courthouse, any hope I might have had that the two elderly Mitchell cousins had reached an amicable agreement flew out the window as soon as I tapped my gavel to open the hearing. The only bright spot was that the Theodore Mitchell plot had been deeded to Edward Mitchell, their grandfather, which meant that they were the legal owners. No title search had been needed.

Unfortunately, neither man was willing to give up his claim to the two sites in the Edward Mitchell plot.

“This is what I can do,” I said. “As you two are equal owners to the four plots, it is within my power to give each of you one grave in each plot.”

Before they could jump in with objections, I held up my hand for silence. “Or I could give one of you both graves in your grandfather’s plot and let your cousin have the two in the Theodore Mitchell plot.”

Again they were ready to go at it hammer and tongs, but I rapped for silence with my gavel.

“Or,” I said, “and this is my final offer. Each of you will write down what you are willing to pay the other for those first two plots and hand me your signed offer, which will be binding. Whoever offers the most will get both Edward Mitchell plots, the other will get the cash and the two Theodore Mitchell plots. You may go find a quiet place to confer with your attorneys, but if you do not agree to this, then I
will
split the lots. This is not an auction. You have one bid and one bid only and I don’t care if the higher bid is only a penny more than the lower one. You have twenty minutes, gentlemen, and the clock starts now.”

The attorneys wanted to argue that they needed time to figure out what was reasonable.

I shook my head and looked at my watch. “Eighteen minutes.”

They scattered to opposite corners of the courtroom and there were indignant murmurs and much gesturing, but with three minutes still to go, both sides returned to their tables and I had their bids in my hand.

“Before I open these, I have one question,” I said. “Before you started fighting over who’s going to be buried where, were you two friends? Did you even like each other?”

“Of course we did!” said Wade.

“We had lunch together almost every day,” said Caleb. “We were boys together.”

I leaned forward. “And now you’re going to let a little piece of dirt end a lifetime friendship? Never to be able to eat lunch together again, to sit and remember old times?”

They didn’t answer.

“Both of you are wealthy men,” I said. “Successful businessmen.” I turned the folded papers in my hand. “No matter how much one of you bid, I’m sure the other could have bid more, but does it have to come down to this? Can’t one of you do the generous thing and keep your friendship while you’re both alive?”

I let the silence grow, then sighed and started to open the first bid.

“Wait!” said Caleb. “You’re right.” He turned to his cousin. “You and Hope can go in with our parents. Jenny and I will take the other plot.”

Sudden tears filled Wade’s eyes and ran down his wrinkled cheeks. “You’re sure, Caleb? Really?”

“Really. Your father was the oldest. You should have it.”

A moment later, those two old men were hugging each other, almost giddy in their relief at saving what they had almost lost. I signed the documents that would make it official and as they left to go have lunch together, I heard Wade say, “You pick the place and I’ll pick up the tab.”

One of the attorneys paused as he was leaving. “Just out of curiosity, could you tell me what the other bid was?”

I shook my head and put the papers in my briefcase.

Wade might have thought he was more passionate about family ties, but generous-hearted Caleb had outbid him by twelve hundred and two dollars.

The rest of the day was mine, so I drove over to Lawson’s Landing, part of the North Carolina History Center at Tryon Palace, and ate outside under an umbrella while overlooking the river. The salad was good, but the coffee was nectar for the gods. Better than anything I’ve ever gotten at Starbucks.

With time to kill before meeting Miss Raynesford, I stopped by Mitchell’s Hardware, an old-fashioned store founded by a distant cousin of Wade and Caleb Mitchell. Or so I was told. It still sells loose nails and screws by the pound plus dozens of other items you can’t find at a chain store. I bought some onion sets for the fall garden Dwight would be planting soon; and as long as I was there, I also bought two impact screwdrivers. One for Dwight and one for Annie Sue, my electrician niece who’s always griping about frozen screws.

Never too early to start Christmas shopping, right?

By the time I got out of that store, it was 1:20, so I scooted over to the Raynesford House and parked behind a black 1956 Cadillac convertible that had its top up. According to the nearby plaque, the white two-story house was built in 1813 by Enoch Raynesford and had been owned by Raynesfords ever since. Two broad wooden steps led up to a deep veranda that ran the width of the house and wrapped around one side. The shutters were painted black, and black wooden rocking chairs with colorful floral cushions were clustered along the veranda in groups of three and four.

Inside was the usual bed-and-breakfast display of old, though not necessarily antique, mahogany furniture—polished chests and sideboards and chairs upholstered in worn red velvet. Porcelain figurines sat on every surface and fake kerosene lamps shed soft electric light. I myself would rather stay at a modern impersonal motel than a historic B&B where a sudden move can send china doodads flying. I don’t want to move eight ruffled pillows before I can get into bed and I certainly don’t want to have to make polite conversation to strangers over my morning coffee.

A slender and very handsome middle-aged man came down the wide central hall to greet me when I entered. Except for a slight bump at the tip of his aquiline nose, he was almost classically beautiful and must have set hearts aflutter in his youth. His warm smile felt genuine, not something turned on and off for paying guests, and I found myself smiling back just as warmly.

“Judge Knott? I’m Walter Raynesford.”

He had such long, thin fingers that I expected a weak handshake. Instead it was pleasantly firm.

(“
Please remember just how green the grass is on your side of the fence
,” chided my internal preacher.)

(His pragmatic roommate grinned. “
Doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate the clover on the other side.
”)

“Aunt Jo’s in the sunroom,” Raynesford said. “Please come on back.”

He led me into a large and unexpectedly modern room, clearly a late addition. The whole rear wall seemed made of glass and looked into a beautiful formal garden with clipped hedges and beds of bright flowers.

Miss Josephine Raynesford stood as we entered. Early eighties, I guessed, with her nephew’s aristocratic bearing and remnants of great beauty in her face. She inclined her head graciously when he said, “Aunt Jo, may I present Judge Knott?”

Her lips pursed. “I’m quite certain you’ve heard every clever comment that could possibly be made about your name and title, Judge Knott, so I shall spare you.”