The Ming and I (13 page)

Time is not easily measured while one is in a state of terror. Still, I would guess that we stared and
screamed for a full minute or so. I know that we all had sore throats the next day.

Who knows, we may have stood there and screamed until Monday’s docent came to our rescue if C.J. hadn’t dropped the flashlight. Then Mama—although she still swears it wasn’t her—accidentally kicked the flashlight down the stairs. God bless the woman in Beijing who put together the damn thing, but it wasn’t made to take a licking like that and keep on lighting. We were in total darkness again. Talk about screaming.

Fortunately for the folks up in Shelby, who were undoubtedly holding their hands over their ears, the lights came flooding back on. It took us a few seconds to realize this, however, and C.J. was the last to see the light. She was still shrieking, trying to climb Mama and me to safety, as if we were some flesh-and-blood step stool provided for her convenience.

“He’s gone!” Mama shouted above C.J.’s screams. “The ghost has disappeared.”

She was right. The hall stretched away in front of us, as empty as church the Sunday after Easter.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I gasped. “There really is nothing there.”

“Except for that,” Mama said, pointing to a blue cap lying on the worn carpet at our feet.

“I
t’s real, all right,” Mama said, picking it up. “It’s even warm.”

I felt the cap. “It doesn’t feel warm to me.”

“It feels like plain old wool,” C.J. said. “Kind of greasy.”

“What will we do now?” Mama asked. “We don’t know where he went, so we can’t give it back.”

Please believe me when I say that I respect my mother. I honor her as much as possible, whenever possible, but there are times now when I begin to wonder if she’s a sandwich or two short of a picnic.

“We’ll get my purse,” I said, “and boogie on out of here before a rebel soldier comes from the other direction and they start to fight.”

At that Mama and C.J. whirled around, taking me with them. Despite our six legs, we nearly fell flat on our faces. To our relief there was nothing to see but empty hallway. We turned again, this time much slower.

Somehow we managed to retrieve my purse and make it downstairs and out to the car without a serious mishap. Thank God the lights stayed on the entire time. As it was, Mama and C.J. had bonded so tight, it was downright obscene. I thought I was going to have to use pruning shears to separate them.

“Well, we’re safe now,” I said to an empty front seat.

“Not until we’re back on the main highway,” Mama rasped.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Siamese twins were still shaking. In the light from the house they looked like two frightened puppies.

“Oh shit! We left all the lights on in the house,” I moaned.

Mama coughed. “Who cares? The thing—the ghost—the Yankee—it may be following us.”

“Drive, Abby!” C.J. croaked.

I needed no urging. The way I pressed the pedal to the metal and peeled out of there would have made any teenager proud.

It all seemed rather silly when we were back on the highway. The closer we drew to Rock Hill, the sillier it seemed. At the gas stations there were people calmly filling their tanks. At the fast food restaurants folks were loading up on tacos and cheeseburgers, without as much as a backward glance. It was all so normal.

“The cap? Who has the cap?” I asked.

“Not me,” said C.J. “I hope I never see it again.”

“Damn! We have to have that cap. It’s our only proof.”

“Ahhh,” Mama sighed. “That feels much better. I was sitting on something.”

She held the offending object up, and in the light of a Burger King I could see that it was the cap.

We started to giggle. It was like prying loose the first chink in the Hoover Dam. First a trickle, then a stream, then the inevitable flood. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—ask any physicist—but I am convinced that we laughed harder than we screamed. Our relief was greater than our fear.

By the time we got back to Mama’s house we were giddy—hoarse, but giddy.

“What do we do now?” I asked. Since we were still on a high without a valley in sight, it was a reasonable question.

“Tiny Tim’s Tattoo Palace!” Mama squealed.

C.J. clapped her hands. “Oh goody! I drove by that place on my way into town. I’ve always wanted a tattoo, but I wouldn’t go to a tattoo parlor by myself, of course.”

Mama looked at me. “Of course.”

I groaned. My first valley was starting to resemble the Grand Canyon. “Give me a break, ladies. We have more important things to do than visit some sleazy shop where they poke you with needles that have been who knows where.”

“Like what?” Mama asked.

“Well, uh—for instance, we should take this cap to a Civil War expert.”

“It’s close to midnight,” C.J. said. “All the Civil War experts I know will be asleep.”

“Except the real experts,” Mama said. “We could pay a visit to Rock Hill Memorial Gardens, but funny, I’m not in the mood.”

That sent them into torrents of giggles, and they rolled around in the backseat like fifth grade girls. Perhaps it is petty of me to even mention this, but I found their juvenile behavior more irritating than sand in a wet bathing suit. Mama had never, ever been that chummy with me.

“Well, I’m going home to bed,” I announced. “Y’all want to act like children, be my guests.”

They tumbled out of my car in hysterics.

I was surprised and more than a little concerned to see the lights on in my house. I had left Charlotte well before dark, and I never leave lights on in my absence. I know, some folks think it deters burglars,
but I’ve been burglarized, and my lights were on at the time. If the truth be known, I live in constant fear that Dmitri will knock over a lamp and set my house ablaze. Something similar happened to my aunt Marilyn when she was in the bathtub. Always somewhat of a recluse, Aunt Marilyn’s neighbors suddenly got to see more of her than they ever hoped.

I circled my block three times before pulling into my driveway. A sane person would have called the police. I may have eventually gotten around to doing so, but just as I was beginning my fourth circuit, I caught a glimpse of my son, Charlie, through a window. I was tempted to pounce on the poor kid like a panther with a capital “P,” but I sneaked up on him instead. Trust me; Charlie can scream louder than Mama.

“How on earth did you get in?”

“Easy, Mama.” He held up a key. “You keep it under the doormat. Everyone knows that’s the first place to look.”

“Not everyone lets himself in.”

Charlie pointed to the phone. “Well, it’s a good thing I was here. That woman who called sounded awfully desperate.”

“What woman?”

“She had a real high-pitched voice. Kind of like a canary.”

“Did you get a name?” I asked patiently.

“She had a motel name. It wasn’t Howard Johnson, but it was something like that.”

“Could it have been Anne Holliday?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, she wants you to stop by and pick up a book on antiques.”

“Why? And did she say when?”

He shrugged. “Anytime, I guess. But soon. Like I said, she sounded desperate.”

I made the sternest face I could. “Charlie, I’ve told
you a million times to take down my messages. There is a notepad sitting right there next to the phone. What if—”

“Aw damn. You going to give me a hard time, too?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry, Mama, but I am royally pissed off.”

“Your daddy?”

“Who else?”

“What is it now?”

“It’s our plans. Derek’s and mine. You know, to become vacuum cleaner repairmen.”

I had been meaning to talk to my son about that very same subject, but somehow three murders managed to get themselves in the way. In the future I would have to eschew potential corpses if I expected to be a better parent.

“I suppose Daddy is ranting and railing. I bet he read you the riot act.” Who said I couldn’t be an active listener?

Charlie shook his head. There were tears glistening in his eyes.

“Man, I wish! Daddy doesn’t care at all. He actually
wants
me to do it. He said he’d give me the money to take the repair course.” Charlie’s voice cracked. “He said the world could always use another honest blue-collar laborer.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Buford had done something right. Buford the Timbersnake had taken a potentially disastrous situation and stood it on its head. I have nothing against vacuum cleaner repairmen, mind you, but Charlie’s brain deserved to go to college—
then
he could become a vacuum cleaner repairman if he so chose.

“Your daddy’s right,” I said. “Why bother with college if you already have a good-paying career in the palm of your hand? Besides, look at all the temptations you’ll avoid.”

“What temptations?”

“Girls. Sex. That sort of thing. Winthrop is sixty percent female. There’s no point in getting distracted by girls when you’ve got your life mapped out for you. No, Charlie, you are really lucky. You’re not even eighteen and you know exactly what you want.”

He stared at me. The tears were drying up faster than dewdrops in June.

“But I don’t know what I want. Not
really
.”

“Nonsense. Of course you do. You and Derek are going to make a mint taking apart old vacuum cleaners. Real hands-on stuff. You’ll like it.” I attempted a lighthearted laugh. “In the meantime all those other bozos will be stuck going to fraternity parties and hanging around some boring campus, trying real hard not to get seduced.”

His eyes were as dry as Phoenix in July. “That Derek’s a jerk. He can really piss me off sometimes, you know? Like yesterday he borrowed my Walkman and then left it at Carolina Place Mall.”

“Well, we all make mistakes,” I said.

Charlie glared at me. “Yeah, but Derek is an asshole—oops, sorry Mama. He just doesn’t want to go to college because he’s afraid he won’t get accepted. His grades weren’t that hot.”

“Grades aren’t everything,” I said. I could learn from Buford if I had to.

“Man, how stupid can some guys get? Fixing vacuum cleaners when I could be a doctor, cutting open someone’s gut, or a lawyer—”

“Ripping their guts out through their noses,” I said. Hey, I’m not perfect.

Charlie gave me a big hug. “You’re the best. Can I call Daddy now?”

I thought about the wonderful thing my lousy ex-husband had done for our son. I thought about the phone waking him up from a much-needed night’s
sleep. Perhaps he had an important court case in the morning. Then I thought about him sleepily reaching for the phone while Tweetie, her silicone boobs perky even in repose, twittered and twitched.

“You bet. Call him,” I said cheerfully.

Many antique dealers prefer to take Monday as their day off, and I am no exception. Most Mondays will find me down at Purvis Auction Barn down in Pineville, bidding on estate items, or if I’ve really been lucky, privately perusing collections of the recently deceased. I feel high when I’m buying. Even though I can’t afford to personally own all the items that come into my possession, just having them temporarily within my grasp is the purest pleasure I know. Sometimes I think my daughter, Susan, is right; money is not the root of all evil, the lack of it is.

I had my usual bowl of Special K and a tumbler of orange juice, but I didn’t head out to Purvis’s. Both my friend Wynnell Crawford, who owns Wooden Wonders, and Major Calloway, proprietor of the Antique Gun Emporium, keep their shops open on Monday. Wynnell is a dear, and the major is a dolt. Both are experts on Civil War collectibles.

I called on Wynnell first. It is much easier to deal with a “dear” on a Monday morning, and besides, I wanted to talk to her about what happened to Frank.

Wynnell was wearing a skirt and blouse set sewn out of rough weave burlap. I would require a bottle of calamine lotion and a syringe of horse tranquilizers just to touch the thing, much less wear it.

“It’s awful,” I said, referring to her outfit.

“It is awful,” she agreed, but she was talking about Frank. “Apparently he was shot in the back, fell, and hit his head on the counter. Have you ever seen a dead man, Abby?”

Wynnell, of all people, should know that I have. “Just a few less than Jessica Fletcher,” I said patiently.

“Why would anyone want to kill Frank?”

“Maybe it was a robbery. He sells guns, after all. Isn’t that what most hoodlums are after?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think Frank was robbed. You know what a fanatic he was for neatness. I couldn’t see anything out of place.”

“The robber might have been a Virgo,” I said, just to keep the conversation from getting too depressing.

“A Yankee Virgo, maybe.”

“Wynnell, we lost the Civil War. It’s time to give it up.”

“The War Between the States,” Wynnell drawled. “Can’t you at least say that?”

“That takes too long.”

“My daddy would have whipped me if I had said anything but The War of Northern Aggression.”

“Please,” I said, “we fired the first shot.”

“We had to,” Wynnell said. “The Yankees wouldn’t turn Fort Sumter over to its rightful owners, and when Buchanan tried to send reinforcements and supplies to the Sumter garrison, we had no choice but to stop him. Buchanan should have left well enough alone.”

There was no point in arguing. Wynnell could spend a year with the Hare Krishnas and never buy a single flower. It was this same stubborn streak that was responsible for her intense loyalty. Once she was on your side, you had a friend for life.

I opened the plastic Harris Teeter grocery bag I was carrying. “Tell me, is this authentic?”

Wynnell gingerly picked up the cap. “This is a Yankee cap.”

“I know dear. Think of it as a dead Yankee’s cap.”

“Oh well, in that case.” Wynnell examined the cap
carefully, turning it slowly in her hands.

“Where did you get this?”

“Roselawn Plantation. Is it authentic?”

“Very. And it’s in remarkably good condition. It’s a perfect example of what was called the ‘McClellan cap,’ which was modeled after the French
kepi
. It was one of the most popular styles among Yankee enlisted men.”

“Are you sure?”

The hedgerow eyebrows closed in a frown. “Is that a challenge?”

I hurriedly withdrew the question.

The eyebrows unlocked. “But don’t take my word for it, Abigail. Ask the major.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said emphatically. “How common are these?”

“This is the South, Abigail, in case you haven’t noticed. Most of the folks around here fought for our side. There weren’t a whole lot of Yankee soldiers living here.”

“I was thinking of war souvenirs,” I said.

“We lost,” Wynnell said bitterly. “Losers seldom collect souvenirs.”

“So it’s pretty rare to find a perfectly preserved Yankee cap like this around here?”

“Rarer than a virgin at a Yankee wedding.”

“Wynnell!”

The woman was incorrigible, and I told her so.