The Hunting Trip (10 page)

V

PREPARING FOR THE HUNTING TRIP (PART 2)

Executive Apartment One

The Warren

2700 Muddiebay International Airport Boulevard

Muddiebay, Mississippi

1430 Monday, September 1, 1975

S
oon, my precious,” Mrs. Homer C. (Carol-Anne) Crandall said to Mr. Randolph C. Bruce, as she hoisted her panty hose up and around her derriere, “we will have hours and hours—even days—to do the sort of thing we've just been doing instead of the thirty-eight minutes we have just had.”

“You're the one who insisted on having a quickie before your husband came home from the bank,” Randy replied.

“And it was wonderful, my precious.”

“Yeah,” Randy agreed without much enthusiasm. He had just noticed that the derriere up and around which she had just tugged her
panty hose seemed to be sagging a bit more than it seemed to be sagging the last time he looked.

“I have to worry about him,” Carol-Anne said, a bit petulantly. “You don't have to worry about the ladies.”

She was referring to the ladies with whom Randy lived—his grandmother, Mrs. Jefferson Davis (Abigail) Bruce, who was ninety-two and known as “Auntie Abby,” and her sister, Miss Penelope Warwick, who was ninety and known as “Auntie Penny.”

Randy had lived with them since he was twenty, when he was summoned home from Ole Miss and told by the two of them, in tearful chorus, that his “Mommy and Daddy had been called home to the Lord.”

He was later to learn that the call had come after his mother—not satisfied with his father's explanation of why he was taking a nap with a nude statuesque nineteen-year-old African-American upstairs maid named “Boopsie”—had opened fire with his James Purdey & Sons Best Grade 12-bore shotgun, causing two 1¼ ounce loads of #6 lead birdshot to enter his chest.

His mother, later that day, had been called home to the Lord after she put the 28-inch barrels of her own James Purdey & Sons Best Grade .410-gauge shotgun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, thus delivering ¾ ounce of #9 lead birdshot into her cranium.

She had been simply unable to face the prospect of being hauled off in handcuffs and shame to the Muddiebay County Jail as the sheriff said he was going to have to do, inasmuch as she had earlier that day attended the regular meeting of The Tuesday Luncheon Club and there had announced to the full membership her intention to “go home now and blow that
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philandering
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husband of mine into
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Louisiana.”

Considering that, the sheriff said, he was sorry but her explanation
that she didn't know her late husband's Purdey was loaded was not going to wash away what had happened.

Randy still had both shotguns. “Daddy's Purdey” was one hell of a gun for pheasant and other large wildfowl, and “Mommy's Four-Ten” was just about perfect to deal with the
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starlings that were always eating the expensive grass seed sown upon the lawn of “Our Tara,” the antebellum mansion that the Trust Fund owned and in which Auntie Abby and Auntie Penny lived.

When informed of the untimely passing of his Daddy and Mommy, Randy had been assured that he had nothing to worry about. He would now live with “Auntie Abby” and “Auntie Penny.” He was also told that his parents had left their only son all their worldly possessions, and that said worldly possessions had been left to him in the Randolph C. Bruce Trust, which would be administered by Auntie Abby.

A certain portion of the trust—actually a hell of a lot of money, but only a small fraction of the trust—would come to him on his twenty-first birthday, presuming he had by then graduated from Ole Miss. If he had not so graduated, the “On Majority & Graduation Bequest” would not be granted until he did. If ten years passed and he still hadn't graduated, the Trust Fund would be cashed out, and the cash given to Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Museum in Biloxi.

In the three years that followed—of the total of eight years he spent at Ole Miss—Randy learned many things. First and most difficult to live with was that Auntie Abby—in a noble effort to teach her only grandson that following in the philandering, gambling, and over-imbibing footsteps of his father, her only son, was a no-no—would shut off his allowance if she learned he was so engaged.

At this point, he came across an old Army adage, to wit:
If indiscretions you must have, keep them one hundred miles from the flagpole.

Reasoning that his flagpole might well be the one in front of “Our Tara” in Muddiebay, or one of the two from which the flags of the Confederacy and the United States fluttered on the lawn of the president of Ole Miss in Oxford (whom he suspected was reporting on him to Auntie Abby), he thereafter did his philandering, gambling, and over-imbibing at least a hundred miles distant from both locations.

This proved to have two beneficial results. The amount of his allowance was quite generous, as Randy's father, who himself claimed Ole Miss as his alma mater, understood the cost of philandering, gambling, and over-imbibing at the institution.

Because Randy now rarely had the chance to travel one hundred miles in search of sin—he was really cracking the books—he wound up with an astonishing amount of cash. He had never before really understood how expensive philandering, gambling, and over-imbibing were.

He was cracking the books, of course, so he could get what he now thought of as the
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degree and thus come into the Majority & Graduation Bequest. And in so doing, to his surprise, he found several books in his Business Administration course to be absolutely fascinating.

Among them were
Brilliant Swindles
,
How Charley Ponzi Almost Got Away with It
,
What
Exactly Is Usury?
,
Greed Pays
, and perhaps most important,
Why You Should Seek Legal Counsel Before You're Caught
.

The latter caused him to establish a much closer relationship with another student, a fellow native of Muddiebay, than had existed before Mommy and Daddy were called home to the Lord and he had to start thinking about his future.

Moses Lipshutz, who had been at Ole Miss for just over two years, was about to graduate and enter the Ole Miss School of Law.

“Moses, old buddy,” Randy said, “is there anything I can do for you here at Ole Miss?”

“Not unless you can get me into your fraternity . . .”

“Why the hell would you want to do that? My brothers in Kappa Omega Delta are, to put it bluntly, the dumbest
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kickers in the South. The only reason I joined was to get in their high-stakes poker games, which I milk regularly twice a month.”

“When I commence my practice, Randolph—”

“Call me ‘Randy,' Moses,” Randy interrupted.

“Why?”

“We might become friends.”

“Huh!” Moses snorted. “Fat
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chance of that.”

“You were telling me why you want to join the
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kickers in Kappa Omega Delta.”

“It would look good on my résumé when I begin my practice of law. The Ol' Miss Good Ol' Boy network, so to speak.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Indulging your fantasy, Randolph, my beloved Rachel, to whom I am betrothed, would like to be Ole Miss Homecoming Queen.”

“I can handle you getting into Kappa Omega Delta, Moses, buddy, but I don't know about the Homecoming Queen.”

“In case this has somehow escaped your attention, Randolph—”

“Please call me Randy.”

“I only address my friends by their informal names.”

“Sorry.”

“As I was saying, Mr. Bruce, in case this has escaped your attention, I am, and my beloved Rachel also is, of the Hebrew persuasion. There has never been a Hebrew in Kappa Omega Delta. And it should go without saying there never has been a Jewish Princess who metamorphosed into an Ole Miss Homecoming Queen. How are you going to handle that, Mr. Bruce?”

“I hold about fifteen thousand in markers acquired in friendly play
with my Kappa Omega Delta brothers. I could get you in if you were a Ubangi in a grass skirt.”

“Randy, ol' hometown buddy, I think I have underestimated you. You get me into Kappa Omega Delta, and I'll get those
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kickers—you did say Fifteen Large in markers, didn't you, old pal?”

“That's what I said.”

“Randy, my pal, you get me in
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KOD and turn those markers over to me, I'll have those
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kickers and their
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girlfriends standing in line to elect my Rachel to be Homecoming Queen, or to any other position her adorable little heart desires.”

Randy did, and Moses did, and that was the beginning of their lifelong acquaintanceship.

They graduated from Ole Miss together, Randy with a bachelor of fine arts degree in Southern culture after eight years of study, and Moses, after just over five years of study, with a bachelor of science (banking), a master's degree in business administration, and a doctoral degree in law. In other words, entitled to append to his name the letters B.S., M.B.A., L.L.D.

With graduation, Randy came into his Majority & Graduation Bequest. Accompanied by Auntie Abby and Auntie Penny, he went to the law offices of Tancey, Castleberry & Porter, where they took turns over three hours explaining precisely what the bequest was, what it meant to him, and why the sensible thing for Randy to do, now that he had come into all that money, was to let Tancey, Castleberry & Porter continue to handle things for him.

“There it is, Randy,” Burton Castleberry concluded. “Do you have any questions?”

“Just one, Mr. Castleberry.”

“And that is?”

“Can you get all the documents involved in my bequest over to the chambers of Dr. Lipshutz this afternoon, or will it take longer?”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“Because Dr. Lipshutz is my legal counsel.”

“Randolph,” Auntie Abby said, “I don't think that's wise.”

“Have you been at the bourbon again?” Auntie Penny had inquired.

“Randy, my boy. Not that I am in any way prejudiced,” Burton Castleberry said, “but you are aware that Moses Lipshutz is a Jew?”

“Oh, yes. That's why I want him to represent me legally. He marches in the sacred footsteps of Judah Benjamin, reverently remembered as ‘the Confederate Kissinger,' who was also a Jew. According to all accounts, he had a brilliant law practice in New Orleans before the War for Southern Independence, during which he served as, successively, attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state in the Confederate Cabinet, and was President Jefferson Davis's closest and most trusted adviser.”

“I never knew he was Jewish,” Auntie Penny said.

“And following the war,” Randy went on, “after having narrowly escaped the clutches of the infernal Yankees the day they arrested Jefferson Davis, he made his way to England, where he became legal counsel to Her Majesty the Queen.”

“Well, if a Jew named Judah Benjamin was good enough for Her Majesty,” Auntie Abby, who was a great admirer of the late Queen Victoria, said, “then a Jew named Moses Lipshutz is good enough for my Randy. Do what he says, Burton.”

The documents to which Randy referred were moved to Dr. Lipshutz's chambers that very afternoon. That very night, Tancey, Castleberry & Porter had a partners' meeting, during which it was decided to offer one Moses Lipshutz, L.L.D., a partnership in the firm.

“If he's under the roof, so to speak, we can at least keep our eye on him,” Burton Castleberry had argued.

On Moses's acceptance the next morning, the firm was renamed Tancey, Castleberry, Porter & Lipshutz, and Randy's documents returned to where they had previously been.