No Nest for the Wicket (10 page)
Read No Nest for the Wicket Online
Authors: Donna Andrews
Dad’s great ideas always made me nevous. I braced myself for an argument—probably over the proposed herb garden—but Dad’s enthusiasm had moved on.
“I’m going to train Spike to do something about the sheep!”
“Do what about them?” I asked, following Dad to Spike’s pen. “Chase them around until they have the ovine equivalent of a nervous breakdown?”
“Chase them back to Mr. Early’s fields,” Dad said.
“He’d be good at the chasing part,” Michael said. “It’s the ‘back to Mr. Early’s fields’ concept he’d have trouble grasping.”
“Or he could at least keep them out of your yard,” Dad suggested, on a more practical note.
“Oh, great idea,” I said. “Turn him into a sheep-chasing dog. Wasn’t that a recurring plot device on
Lassie
—they want to put Lassie down because they suspect her of chasing sheep?”
Lassie
—they want to put Lassie down because they suspect her of chasing sheep?”
“Killing sheep, actually, but yes,” Michael said.
“Farmers don’t much like the idea of a dog messing around with their sheep.”
“Farmers don’t much like the idea of a dog messing around with their sheep.”
“But look at him,” Dad argued, leaning on the fence of the pen. “Would any sane farmer suspect him of killing a sheep?”
We looked at Spike, who yawned sarcastically.
“Definitely,” I said.
“It might take him time to figure out how, but yes, I can see it,” Michael agreed. “He’s got that sociopathic gleam in his eyes.”
“You’re just prejudiced against Spike,” Dad announced, climbing over the fence. “You’ll see.”
He bent over to pick up Spike, who, surprisingly, didn’t bite him.
“Leave him here for now,” I said. “He’s already working as a guard dog, remember.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Dad said, standing up again. “Well, I’ll see if your brother can fill in for a while.”
“Fill in guarding the shed or herding sheep?” Michael asked.
Dad climbed nimbly over the fence again and trotted away.
“I’ll borrow a few sheep from Mr. Early to get started,” he called over his shoulder.
“Why bother?” I called back. “We had half a dozen of them a little while ago. If they’ve gone home, I’m sure a few more volunteers will show up before the day is out.”
“I don’t think he heard you,” Michael said.
“Oh, he heard me, but he’s pretending he didn’t. This is a recipe for disaster.”
“Cheer up,” Michael said. “There’s a silver lining.
What happens if the local farmers show up thirsting for Spike’s blood?”
What happens if the local farmers show up thirsting for Spike’s blood?”
“You’re not suggesting we give him to them!” I exclaimed.
“Of course not. But we can pack him back to Mom. Explain that he’s just not cut out to be a farm dog. That we can’t guarantee his safety.”
“You may have something there,” I said. “Just the same, let’s keep an eye on what he and Dad are up to.”
Just then, my cell phone rang, and I scrambled to pull it out. Kevin.
“Hello, Kevin,” I said, determined to set a good example of telephone etiquette. “How are you?”
“Not having much luck on this battle thing,” he said.
Maybe good examples were wasted on Kevin. At least he got to the point, which was rare in my family. Rare, and possibly worth encouraging.
“Found anything at all?” I asked.
“First of all, there’s no record of a Colonel Jedidiah Pruitt. There was a lieutenant by that name with the Thirteenth Virginia Cavalry, but no colonel.”
“So Mrs. Pruitt inflated her ancestor’s rank.”
“Hard to prove it—Civil War records aren’t perfect. But yeah, probably.”
“So was Lieutenant Pruitt the gallant hero of the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge? Or did Mrs. Pruitt inflate his gallantry along with his title?”
“Beats me,” he said.
“What do you mean? What did you find on the battle?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Yeah, and that’s weird.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I figure we’d have heard about it by now if it was a major battle.”
“Yeah, and Joss would have made us go there sometime, with it only an hour away,” he said, “Remember I said if I had trouble, I’d ask Joss?”
“Good idea.”
“Yeah, except Joss can’t find anything about it in any of her books, either. She tried a lot of variant spellings of Pruitt and Jedidiah. Tried all the spellings we could think of for Shiffleys, too. No go. She says she needs more information. Like when it happened and if it was part of another, larger battle. ’Cause the only thing she can think of is maybe the locals call it something different from what the history books do.”
“The way Yankees say the Battle of Antietam for what Southerners call Sharpsburg?”
“Joss used that example, too, only she said this would be like ignoring both names and calling it the Battle of Miller’s Cornfield, after a place where part of it happened. Which would be pretty stupid.”
“Unless you were one of the Millers,” I said. “Tell Joss I’m sorry I put her through all that.”
“She’s having a blast,” Kevin said. “She wants to come and visit you next weekend to interview the locals about it. Do some oral history stuff. Write a paper for one of her classes, or maybe even an article. So if you could start getting some leads, that would be great.”
I was tempted to suggest that if Joss really was planning a career as a historian, she should do her own research, but then—realized that wasn’t fair. She’d just turned her life inside out for hours, looking for information for me; the least I could do was ask around at bit for her. It would be months before I could afford any more expensive bribes to nieces and nephews, and I might need her help.
Especially if the undocumented Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge played a role in the upcoming Battle to Prevent the Outlet Mall. Besides, I still needed someone to take the twenty-three boxes off my hands. Maybe Joss.
“I’ll see what I can turn up,” I said. “Talk to you later.”
As I hung up, I realized I knew exactly whom to ask about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge. Someone I’d have consulted before now if Kevin and the Internet weren’t so temptingly available at the touch of a few buttons. Ms. Ellie, the town librarian.
“I’m going to town for a bit,” I said.
Just then, Dad came bounding up.
“Meg!” he exclaimed. “Can I use your computer?”
“What for?” I asked.
“I want to print out some pictures of poison ivy to show the boys,” he said.
“I’ll help,” Michael offered, standing up. Help, in this case, meant doing it himself, to prevent Dad from completely fouling up the computer as he had the last time he’d used it. “You go on to town.”
“Going to do some digging?” Dad asked.
“Don’t let Chief Burke catch you,” Michael warned.
“I just realized that we have library books due,” I said with great dignity. “I’m going to return them today, since we’re not playing croquet for the time being.”
“Ah, I get it,” Dad said, putting his finger to his lips. “Mum’s the word.”
He dashed off toward the garage.
“Good thought,” Michael said. “What Ms. Ellie can’t dig up isn’t worth finding.”
Eventually, I’d learn to call first, instead of assuming that everyone in a small town like Caerphilly would automatically be where I expected to find them whenever I felt like dropping in on them. Ms. Ellie was out of town at a library conference, according to Jessica, the teenage library aide. Unfortunately, Jessica couldn’t tell me how long the conference would last. All day? All weekend? All summer?
“Maybe I can help you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for information about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge.”
A blank look.
“Something about town history? Around the time of the Civil War?”
“Well,” Jessica said, “there’s Mrs. Pruitt’s book … . We have a copy in the reference section.”
“Perfect.”
Actually, it was far from perfect. I suspected Mrs. Pruitt had gotten a discount on a large consignment of stale adverbs and adjectives and was trying to use
them up as quickly as possible. But it had a chapter about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge.
them up as quickly as possible. But it had a chapter about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge.
Col. Jedidiah Pruitt’s long-suffering wife had just given birth to the fourteenth of their eventual seventeen children and he’d gone home to inspect the new arrival, accompanied by a small party of aides or adjutants, or whatever colonels drag around with them when they travel. Just east of Caerphilly, they surprised a numerically superior party of Union soldiers looting nearby farms. The colonel led his party in a strategic retreat, then rallied the townsmen—presumably in June 1862, when this took place, the war hadn’t yet claimed every able-bodied male over twelve and there were still townsmen to rally. Colonel Pruitt and his impromptu force caught up with the invaders in a wooded area and achieved a resounding victory for the Confederate cause—Mrs. Pruitt’s words, not mine. To me, it sounded as if the colonel had chased off a few chicken thieves and called it a battle, but my niece Joss had often told me that I had no appreciation for the finer points of military history and strategy. Someone had agreed with Mrs. Pruitt, since they awarded the colonel the Distinguished Medal of Valor, whatever that was.
I studied the photographs accompanying the text. A 1954 photograph of the battleground, covered with grazing black-and-white cows. Was it our eXtreme croquet field? Possibly. Or perhaps one of a hundred other local cow pastures.
I flipped the page and came to a much older photo: a man with more beard than face, standing beside a petite woman in voluminous skirts, who
was holding a baby so bundled up, you could only see a small part of his face.
Her
face; the caption told me these were Colonel and Mrs. Pruitt and Victoria Virginia Pruitt, the infant whose birth had brought the colonel home to achieve his glorious hometown victory. Mrs. Pruitt’s face looked vaguely familiar, so I supposed a few of the seventeen children had survived to help populate the town.
was holding a baby so bundled up, you could only see a small part of his face.
Her
face; the caption told me these were Colonel and Mrs. Pruitt and Victoria Virginia Pruitt, the infant whose birth had brought the colonel home to achieve his glorious hometown victory. Mrs. Pruitt’s face looked vaguely familiar, so I supposed a few of the seventeen children had survived to help populate the town.
I leafed slowly through the rest of the photos. Several were of bearded men in uniform, staring grimly at the camera, holding guns and swords. One was of two soldiers; the man on the left was holding, incongruously, an accordion, the other something that looked like a cross between a guitar and a ukelele. Most of them looked like any other Civil War-era photograph—the poses stiff and formal, the picture randomly splotched or faded. I couldn’t help lingering over one postbattle shot that showed several forlorn bodies lying beneath a tree. I couldn’t tell whether they were Union or Confederate, but evidently the colonel’s victory hadn’t been completely bloodless. Another, less graphic but equally heartrending, showed a tattered scrap of fabric—part of a sleeve, to judge from the remnants of a chevron—hanging from a rusting barbed-wire fence. I couldn’t be sure, since the photo was in black and white, but the dark stain on the fabric scrap looked like blood.
And a map.
“Yes!” I hissed. Jessica glowered at me for breaking silence, but she had a long way to go before she could replace Ms. Ellie.
I studied the map. I located the small road to town, which hadn’t changed its course in the intervening fifty years—it had been almost that long since the county last paved it. Mr. Early’s and Mr. Shiffley’s farms. Between them, the Sprocket house—which locals would still call the Sprocket house even if Michael and I lived there fifty years. The Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge had taken place along a rocky ridge between Mr. Shiffley’s farmhouse and the Sprocket house.
On our croquet field.
I used up most of my change making copies of the relevant pages of Mrs. Pruitt’s book on the library’s ancient copy machine.
I tried not to gloat prematurely. After all, it was a very small battle. Virginia was pocked with battlefields. This wouldn’t automatically kill Briggs’s outlet mall.
But it was promising. With a little more research and documentation …
At least Mrs. Pruitt had been reasonably conscientious about citing her sources.
The
source, in the case of the chapter on the battle—it had all come from a 1954 issue of the
Caerphilly Clarion.
The
source, in the case of the chapter on the battle—it had all come from a 1954 issue of the
Caerphilly Clarion.
Wonder of wonders, the library had back issues of the
Clarion
on microfiche. I had to surrender my library card to use the microfiche reader, but after that, Jessica was happy to hunt down the proper roll for me. I found the original article—a center spread with lots of pictures.
Clarion
on microfiche. I had to surrender my library card to use the microfiche reader, but after that, Jessica was happy to hunt down the proper roll for me. I found the original article—a center spread with lots of pictures.
Mrs. Pruitt had left out half the information in the article—the more interesting half, if you asked me.
The colonel received his Distinguished Medal of Valor not from the Confederacy but from the Caerphilly town council, which had invented the decoration on the spot, just for him. The paper showed a nice photo of his brother, Mayor Virgil Pruitt, pinning it on his chest. Nothing succeeds like nepotism.
The colonel received his Distinguished Medal of Valor not from the Confederacy but from the Caerphilly town council, which had invented the decoration on the spot, just for him. The paper showed a nice photo of his brother, Mayor Virgil Pruitt, pinning it on his chest. Nothing succeeds like nepotism.
Mrs. Pruitt had also omitted any mention of the three-day bash the colonel had thrown to celebrate his victory, complete with several pit-roasted hogs. Sometime during the evening of the second day, a group of marauders had looted and burned the Shiffley Brothers Distillery. Excerpts from the 1862
Clarion
(not, alas, available on microfiche) left it up in the air whether the marauders were the defeated Yankees taking their revenge or the colonel’s own troops, reprovisioning the victory celebration. As a final footnote to the affair, on returning to his command, the colonel himself was court-martialed and reduced in rank for going AWOL and missing the whole of the Seven Days’ Battle. Another thing Mrs. Pruitt had glossed over in her version.
Clarion
(not, alas, available on microfiche) left it up in the air whether the marauders were the defeated Yankees taking their revenge or the colonel’s own troops, reprovisioning the victory celebration. As a final footnote to the affair, on returning to his command, the colonel himself was court-martialed and reduced in rank for going AWOL and missing the whole of the Seven Days’ Battle. Another thing Mrs. Pruitt had glossed over in her version.
I used up the rest of my change making copies of the article. Then I tortured my eyes looking through fifty more years’ worth of microfiche for follow-up stories. There weren’t any. Which was odd, since, according to the article, the town had contacted the Park Service about the possibility of funding an archaeological dig at the battle site, and several prominent Civil War historians were coming to study the cache of old documents that had been found in a trunk in someone’s attic—presumably moved there from the ruins of a family farmhouse.
I did find one useful bit of information—proof that Lindsay Tyler hadn’t been a total stranger to the Caerphilly Historical Society. I found four different articles in the social columns that listed her as an attendee at the society’s meetings. Better yet, a photo, showing her, Mrs. Pruitt, Mrs. Wentworth, and half a dozen other ladies, all smiling at the camera as the newly elected officers of the society. Lindsay had been vice president and historian. I made copies of those, too.
No follow-up on the battle, though, and no clue where the old documents had ended up—not in the Caerphilly Town Library, though. I made sure of that, to the great discomfort of the poor library aide. To my dismay, she broke down in tears.
“I don’t know where it is,” she wailed. “It’s not my fault. I can’t be expected to know what everyone is doing with the computer.”
“I was using the microfiche reader, not the computer,” I said.
“They probably still think it was me!” she wailed.
“Think what was you?” I asked, fishing in my purse for a tissue. “Here, use this.”
I handed her a wad of paper napkins from Luigi’s. The top one wasn’t entirely clean, I noticed, wincing, but perhaps she found the familiar smell of pizza sauce comforting.
“Someone used the library computer to hack into a bunch of places,” she said. “And they accused me of doing it because it always happened on weekends, when I was here.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“They’d totally have arrested me if my computer-science teacher hadn’t stood up for me and told them there was no way I could possibly have figured out how to do it,” she said, lifting her chin, as if her teacher had vouched for her character rather than her technological shortcomings.
“They never found out who did it?”
“No, but now I have to keep a log of who uses the computer when,” she said. “Or any of the machines. Every time I turn around, there’s something else I have to do.”
“Tough job,” I said, trying to sound sincere.
“Yeah, but you know, it’s been really useful,” she said, interrupting herself to blow her nose with one of the napkins. “I mean, for figuring out what I want to do with my life.”
“You were thinking of becoming a librarian?” I said. I must have sounded dubious.
“Not anymore!”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Well, I’m not going to accuse you of anything, don’t worry,” I said. “Just tell Ms. Ellie I was here and that I’ll drop by to see her sometime soon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, sounding sullen. I had a feeling she wanted me to stay and hear all the reasons why she’d given up the idea of a career in library science. She’d still complain about the crazy woman who had insisted on turning the building inside out while looking for some missing papers, but Ms. Ellie would know I wanted to talk to her.
Back at the house, the picnic lunch had turned into one of those sprawling, loosely organized all-day
parties that generated spontaneously whenever you put a critical mass of my relatives in close proximity to a good supply of food. The Shiffleys seemed equally at home. The number of enormous pickup trucks parked along the side of the road had doubled in my absence. The buffet tables looked fuller than ever, though the overflowing trash cans (and the half a dozen black plastic trash bags nearby) suggested that we’d already produced legendary quantities of corncobs, chicken bones, potato peelings, watermelon and lemon rinds, well-gnawed ribs, and other picnic debris. A small group of Shiffleys was providing a musical accompaniment—ably assisted, I was pleased to see, by a couple of my relatives.
parties that generated spontaneously whenever you put a critical mass of my relatives in close proximity to a good supply of food. The Shiffleys seemed equally at home. The number of enormous pickup trucks parked along the side of the road had doubled in my absence. The buffet tables looked fuller than ever, though the overflowing trash cans (and the half a dozen black plastic trash bags nearby) suggested that we’d already produced legendary quantities of corncobs, chicken bones, potato peelings, watermelon and lemon rinds, well-gnawed ribs, and other picnic debris. A small group of Shiffleys was providing a musical accompaniment—ably assisted, I was pleased to see, by a couple of my relatives.
I strolled through the crowd, looking for one face in particular: Henrietta Pruitt’s. Now that I knew the story—well, not the whole story, but some of the less heroic details—about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge, I wanted to talk to her.
I found her in the kitchen, packing up to leave. Actually, Lacie Butler was scurrying around, gathering up Mrs. Pruitt’s wraps and the dishes on which she’d brought her contributions to the feast, while Mrs. Pruitt sipped a cup of tea and looked on with an air of long-suffering patience.
How is that so different from what your own mother does? my contrary side asked.
Mother would at least be polite. And Mother did the occasional bit of work. Right now, she was fixing more tea.
“Going so soon?” I asked Mrs. Pruitt.
“Well, it’s gotten rather … lively for me,” Mrs. Pruitt said with an unconvincing smile. “Too much noise just destroys my nerves.”
Mother was pointedly tapping her toes to the music and ignoring Mrs. Pruitt, other than occasionally refilling her teacup. If I’d been Mrs. Pruitt, I would have had someone else taste the tea first.
Just then the musicians outside reached the end of a set of reels, and loud applause and cheers erupted from the yard. Mrs. Pruitt shuddered delicately.
“On top of yesterday’s shock,” I said. “Seeing a dead body.”
“Yes,” she said, shuddering more dramatically. “Although I didn’t actually see the dead body, of course,” she added quickly. “Just the photo. Still—the very idea …”
She sipped again and closed her eyes as if stoically enduring unspeakable tortures.
“Yes, the photo,” I said. “I guess that’s why you didn’t recognize her. Only seeing the photo.”
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“I mean, I’d assume you’d recognize her, since she was a member of the historical society when she was here.”
“She may have attended a few meetings,” Mrs. Pruitt said.
“Enough meetings to get elected vice president and historian.” I pulled out one of my photocopies—the one with the photo of the society’s new officers.
Mrs. Pruitt studied it for a few moments.
“Oh, yes,” she said, handing back the photocopy. “I remember her now. Not a particularly satisfactory
officer, I must say. We never saw that much of her. You can see why I didn’t recognize her, of course. The years weren’t exactly been kind to her, were they?”
officer, I must say. We never saw that much of her. You can see why I didn’t recognize her, of course. The years weren’t exactly been kind to her, were they?”
Kind? If you asked me, the years had been downright lavish with their generosity. Lindsay had looked better at forty than many women did at half that age. But Mrs. Pruitt looked happier now that she’d found an excuse for her failure to identify the victim. Damn.
I changed the subject.
“By the way, I ran into a copy of your book at the library,” I said. “Fascinating stuff. Mind if I ask you a few questions about it?”
“Certainly,” she said. “Except—my goodness, look at the time! Lacie, how much longer are you going to take?”
“I’m sorry, Henrietta,” Lacie said. “Everything’s nearly ready.”
An optimistic estimate, since it took her twenty-five minutes to finish whatever it was she was doing. She might have done it faster if Mrs. Pruitt had continued to ignore her instead of micromanaging the process. Or was I merely miffed because Mrs. Pruitt’s nonstop harangue at Lacie effectively prevented me from continuing to quiz her about her history book?
Strange. Most authors I’d met were more than willing to talk about their brainchildren, whether you wanted them to or not.
Mrs. Pruitt finally bid Mother and me an effusive good-bye and exited, with Lacie trailing after, carrying
so much stuff that Eric went to help her, unasked. Silence reigned in the kitchen at last. For a few moments.
so much stuff that Eric went to help her, unasked. Silence reigned in the kitchen at last. For a few moments.
“What a ghastly woman,” Mother said.
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