The Truth According to Us (15 page)

“So do I,” said Minerva. “Sometimes, on special occasions, I thank him twice.”

We were a first family when your mama was catching frogs for her dinner, Jottie seethed. You scratch a Davies, and you'll find yourself in a mess of crackers—

“There's Miss Beck,” said Bird around her gum. “Out on the sidewalk.”

Jottie glanced up, and her rage was quickly adulterated by solicitude. Poor thing looked like to die of the heat. “You want some ice-tea?” she called.

Layla's head jerked up. “Oh, yes, please!” She was almost panting. She entered the shadowed porch, nodding shyly to Minerva and Mae, Willa and Bird.

“Welcome to Droopsville,” Mae sighed.

Jottie poured, and Layla watched greedily as the tea popped and cracked on the ice. “Oh, thank you,” she breathed, taking it.

Jottie eyed her flushed face. “You have a long walk?”

“Yes. Well, maybe it just seemed long. I was on Locust Street, visiting Mr. and Mrs. Davies.” Layla took a greedy gulp of tea.

Jottie's eyes flicked to Willa, who was looking intently at the hem of her skirt. “Didn't Parker give you anything to drink?”

“Hot tea,” answered Layla. “In a silver teapot.”

“My,” snorted Jottie. “Bet you were real impressed.”

Layla caught her eye and smiled. “I didn't hardly know how to behave.”

Well now, thought Jottie, pleased, maybe this girl isn't so bad. “Have a cookie.” She gestured affably to the plate. “Keep up your strength.”

With two fingers, Bird removed the wad of gum from her mouth and said, “Dex Lloyd can bite his own toenails.”

“Famed across five continents for her sparkling repartee,” said Mae, dabbing at her forehead with a handkerchief.

“Was Parker a help with your book?” Jottie asked.

“Oh.” Layla hastily swallowed a large bite of cookie. “Why. Yes.” She smiled uncertainly. Was she supposed to be polite about him? She tried to evince some enthusiasm. “Mr. Davies and his wife have several items belonging to General Hamilton in their home.”

“His sword, his gun, his powder sack, and his sainted knee pants,” said Minerva in a bored voice.

“Minerva used to go with Parker Davies,” said Jottie.

“I was only a girl.” Minerva glowered. “I didn't know any better.”

“And neither did he!” crowed Mae.

Layla laughed with relief, and, emboldened, she asked, “I wondered—is General Hamilton related to the Mr. Hamilton who burned the boot yesterday?”

There was a split-second pause. “Yes,” answered Mae.

“Well!” Layla smiled happily around the circle. “It
is
a small town, isn't it? I wonder why he's not on my list. To interview, you know. As he's a direct descendant.” She looked, questioning, to Jottie.

Across the porch, Willa did the same.

Minerva intervened quickly. “Mr. Hamilton's unhinged. He's not in a state to be interviewed.”

“Oh dear,” said Layla, rattled anew by all she didn't know.

“These old families,” Jottie said thoughtfully, gazing at the street. “Sometimes their blue blood doesn't do them a bit of good.”

“What's that mean?” Willa said at once.

“Well, you look at the Hamiltons.” Jottie waved her hand vaguely,
indicating a world of Hamiltons. “Here's poor old Mr. Hamilton, unhinged, like Minerva says. But it's not his fault. All Hamiltons are unhinged. It runs in the family.”

Layla suppressed a smile. “What a shame for Mr. and Mrs. Davies,” she said gravely. “I understand they're both of Hamilton descent. They were quite particular on that point.”

“They've got a while yet. It usually doesn't come out until they're old,” Jottie reassured her. “Take General Hamilton, for instance. He was born mean. And stingy. But he didn't go crazy till later.”

“General Hamilton was crazy?” Willa asked. “That isn't what they say in school.”

Jottie gave a shrug. “I just don't know what else to call it when a man drives a sword right through his own son's foot.”

“He never did!” gasped Mae.

Willa frowned. “I thought you said it was a soldier.”

“I couldn't bear to tell you the ugly truth,” Jottie replied. “I wanted to shield you. But”—she shook her head sadly—“it was his own boy. Stabbed him right in the foot. Mrs. Lacey told me all about it.”

“This is a little different from Mr. Davies's version,” Layla said. She set her ice-tea down and reached into her purse, withdrawing a notebook. “But a good history book includes different perspectives.”

Minerva grinned. “Hear that, Jottie? Give her some different perspectives.”

Jottie allowed a moment for drama to accrue. “Well,” she began in her smoky voice, “you know that the General came to these parts in about 1758, dragging his poor measly little wife and baby girl along behind him. There are plenty of people who say he was the first white man west of the False River, but that's not true.” She looked at Layla. “He was just the meanest. The Indians were already here, of course, living in peace, but the General didn't consider them when he picked a spot to settle. He took land up near Everett's Pass, right in among them. Now, I'm sure Parker told you how partial the General was to God. He was one of those Calvinists. Harsh?” she asked. “They invented it, and the General was the harshest of them all. Some folks
thought that bringing the Gospel to the Indians would be the Christian thing to do, but the General pooh-poohed that idea.” Jottie batted the air with the General's disgust. “According to his way of thinking, they were all of them damned, and that suited him fine because he figured there was no such thing as a sin against the damned. He'd make a pact with one band of Indians and then turn around and sell them out to their enemies, till they were all murdering one another. He paid rum in exchange for scalps—that powder sack of Parker Davies's is made out of someone's skin, you know—”

“It isn't!” Minerva cried.

“It is,” Jottie said, implacable. “The General had a horse blanket made from the hair of scalped Indians, but there's nothing left of it these days. Pretty soon all the Indians were dead or dead drunk, and the General was snatching up their land right and left. Upshot was, seven years after he arrived, he was the fourth-largest landowner in western Virginia and a big hero to the new settlers. That's when the ‘General' business started. It was what you call a courtesy title, for killing all those Indians. But lo”—her voice sank ominously—“he came to believe in it and took to sashaying around with a sword at his hip.”

“I want to get to the foot,” said Bird.

“You are awful bloodthirsty for a nine-year-old child,” said Jottie. “Now. The General had a passel of girls. That poor wife of his had a baby a year for fourteen years. Some of them died, of course, but nine of them lived. Eight girls, and then, finally, a boy. The General named him Philip, after some Macedonian king…” The story of Philip unfurled, how his sisters took any husband they could get and left their little brother behind, to be worked half to death by the General. How, after years of misery, he wandered, lost, on a snow-lashed mountain, and met a girl—

“She wasn't an Indian, was she?” asked Minerva.

“ 'Course she was,” said Jottie. “Who else would be up there? But Mrs. Lacey said she was real civilized and all.”

“How old
is
Mrs. Lacey?” asked Layla in alarm.

Jottie smiled. “In her eighties. She was just telling me what she'd
been told.” On she went to recount the secret meetings between the boy and girl, how they'd managed for a time to be happy, until one day the General undertook to pace off his land—just in case he was being overtaxed—and discovered Philip in the woods, trysting with his Indian girl. “Out came that fancy sword, and the General made for the girl's throat.” In the nick of time, Philip jumped between them, and as the sword hovered in the air, he declared that he was leaving Macedonia, he and the girl together. “Which was a pretty brave thing to say.” Jottie looked around for their agreement. “The General said, ‘Nonsense, you're the heir to the kingdom of Macedonia, and you're staying right here.' ‘No,' Philip said. ‘No, I'm free and independent and I can go where I like.' And then”—Jottie's eyes widened—“the General lifts his sword up high and slams it right straight down through the boy's boot. Right through his foot, pinning him where he stood. ‘You'll stay,' he says.”

“Eew,” squeaked Bird, wincing.

“I know.” Jottie nodded.

“And then what?” asked Willa, leaning forward.

Jottie gazed into space. “Nothing hurts so much in the first minute as it's going to. In the first minute, you can bear all sorts of things. But when Philip saw the blood oozing up around the slit in his boot, he knew that something bad had happened inside. So he took the boot off and shook out three little toes. People say that's the moment when Philip began to go crazy himself.” She sat back in her chair. “The end.”

There was a pause.

“Wait,” said Willa.

“Wait,” said Layla at the same moment. Their eyes came together and apart. “What happened then? Did he die?”

“Who?” said Jottie.

“Philip.”

“Oh. No. It was just toes, that's all. You can get along fine without toes.”

“But you said he went crazy,” Willa pressed.

“Oh. That didn't show for a while. He went off, fought in the Revolution.
Came back, got married, had plenty of children. Everything was fine—and then one day he burned his own house down.”

“Why?” asked Willa.

“Crazy,” Jottie said. “Just like his daddy. It runs in the family. Like a curse.” Taste good? she inquired of Parker Davies in her imagination. It's your very own medicine.

“Parker always did seem a little crazy to me,” mused Minerva.

“You drove him crazy,” Mae said.

“That was an awful story,” broke in Bird bitterly. “He didn't marry the Indian girl?”

“No. Left her behind,” said Jottie.

“That's awful,” said Bird again. “I wanted a happy ending.”

“It's history,” Jottie reminded her. “You don't get what you want.”

“Reality is always so bleak.” Mae sighed.

“The truth will out,” Jottie said crisply. “No matter how hard Parker Davies tries to whitewash it.”

Layla lifted her notebook. “As the official historian of Macedonia, I have a duty to the citizens to make the true history of Macedonia known.”

“My, my,” Jottie marveled. “A duty.” She gave Layla a sidelong glance of approval. Maybe more than just a pretty face. Maybe a little backbone, too.

June 18, 1938

Dearest Lance,

Thanks for your not particularly comforting letter. I know you are terribly busy and important, but you might have given a bit more thought to the matter before you advised me to chuck the project and beg for Father's forgiveness. I expect I sounded slightly watery in my last letter, but anyone would be shaky on her first day in a new land. I only wanted sympathy, not instruction, and I couldn't think of leaving Macedonia now, as you so cavalierly suggest. It would seriously inconvenience the town council, as they depend upon having their book in time for their sesquicentennial in September, and it would embarrass Ben and make him despise me more than he does already. I can't go crawling to Father, either. Don't you see that it would be the height of hypocrisy to demand the advantages of being his child while refusing to do his bidding like a child? I won't marry Nelson, I simply won't—oh, no, I mustn't start thinking of Nelson! When I think of Nelson, I begin to brood morbidly on his apple cheeks and his starched hankies, until great shudders ripple down my spine.

In addition to my recently acquired (yet uncompromising) sense of duty, I intend to remain at my post because I am becoming a little interested in the history of Macedonia. Not much, I admit, in
The History of Macedonia
that the town council wishes me to write, but in the actual history. Character fascinates me—the power of it, I mean. One hero—or madman—may beget an entire history. For example, the little town of Macedonia exists solely because there was a lunatic named Hamilton who took it into his head to settle here and destroyed everything and everyone that opposed him. I suppose circumstance plays its part, too, but I think character, even a nasty one, holds a stronger hand, and I intend to give characters their proper due in
The History of Macedonia
, even if I am run out of town on a pike for my trouble. The town council, which is sponsoring the book, has firm ideas about its content: The centerpiece will be detailed descriptions of Macedonia's “First Families.” Mr. Parker Davies, the head councilman (or Head Councilman, as he prefers), outlined my obligations in a long letter, and it appears that I am not to dally upon little details like local industry and the Civil War. Mr. Davies very generously offered me the honor of visiting him and his wife, Belinda (!), in order that I might see the relics of his ancestor, General Hamilton, who founded the town. From the tone of his letter, I was convinced he had the General's head in a box.

Nevertheless, I replied like a young lady of breeding and found myself ushered over the Davies doorstep Thursday afternoon by a butler in a waistcoat. He led me to the Davies library, where Mr. and Mrs. Davies awaited me, sitting silently on a silken sofa. They shook hands gravely; their somber expressions were, I think, intended to indicate their general disapproval of relief, the people on it, the New Deal, and President Roosevelt, rather than particular disapproval of me—but I felt vaguely criminal, anyway. It's very demoralizing to be regarded as a problem rather than an individual.

Of course, they were perfectly polite—in the most condescending way. The waistcoat butler brought in tea without a scrap to eat
alongside, on the theory, I suppose, that food would encourage me in my headstrong determination to be hungry. They did give me a silver spoon to stir my sugar, but I could tell it pained them. I should have pinched it—I learned how at boarding school, and it would have served them right. Of course, I could have smote them a deadly blow simply by mentioning “my father, Senator Beck,” but I didn't do it. I haven't told a soul. I feel that if Father has spurned me, I must spurn him back, if only to prove that I really can be on relief like hundreds of other girls. I
can
get up and go to work and take my lunch in a cheap café and wash my hose in the sink and spend my last dime on a fan to cool my garret—and then find myself despised because of my poverty. One begins to understand the appeal of the guillotine.

Oh dear. I seem to have lost my story in a sea of righteousness. Where was I? In the parlor with the Parker Davieses, yes. After a few moments of dismal small talk—too much rain, apple crop ruined—Mr. Davies signaled with a dry cough that it was time to get down to the business at hand. I took out my stenographer's pad and pencil and sat, fingers poised, ready to record all the glorious details of General Hamilton's long life. There were quite a lot of details. Even as a lad, the General was marked out for greatness by throwing a rock an immense distance. And as a young man, the General was noted by George Washington for his exemplary morals and invited to dine at Ferry Farm, where Washington's descriptions of the land beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains filled young Hamilton with a longing to see this earthly paradise. I was solemnly shown the knee pants that the General wore to dinner, spotted with Washington's own gravy, and then we pressed on through the rest of the General's remarkable career. Oh, Lance, I'm making it sound funny—and it was—but Mr. and Mrs. Davies were horrid. Mr. Davies spoke slowly, with round O's and long throat-clearings and ponderous silences. Sometimes I couldn't tell if he'd finished his sentence or forgotten it, and I'd start to nod encouragingly, and then the old goat would hold up one finger to
stop me, as though I were interrupting him. “Hold your horses, hold your horses,” he said to me. “Now. The General. Had nine healthy children. Read out their names, Belinda.” Then Mrs. Davies shuffled through her papers until she found the list and read it while I furiously scribbled away. Why didn't they just give me the silly paper? Hours passed and my stomach roared and groaned, but they just kept plodding on through year after year of the General's life, until I was on the verge of desperation. Finally, the General passed on to his eternal reward, which I hope was roasting, in consideration of a little skeleton in his closet that I know of (and am planning to include in the history). Mr. and Mrs. Davies heaved themselves out of their easy chairs, and I put out my hand—but no! They weren't going to let me off so easily. I had to tour their house. “I know you'll be interested in the General's chiffarobe,” said Mrs. Davies, wringing her hands with excitement.

“Actually, you are completely wrong,” I replied. “The General's chiffarobe is of less interest to me than you can possibly imagine. In fact, I think the only thing that can approach the depth and quality of my lack of interest in the General's chiffarobe is my desire to see you and your husband go to hell.”

What I really said was, “Of course. How delightful.”

The chiffarobe, I quickly learned, was a pretext. They led me up one hall and down another, through miles of parlors and dining rooms, bedrooms and dressing rooms, all the while pointing out their antiques and heirlooms and then
pausing
ever so casually beside them. After a few of these interludes, it dawned on me that they wanted me to include descriptions of their furniture in
The History of Macedonia
. They were pausing to allow me to take notes on the wonders I beheld. Oh dear. I quickly got out my pad and made some scribbles that looked like shorthand to satisfy them. I would have done anything at that point. My spirit was broken. I was so terribly hungry. When we finally got to the chiffarobe (dark and creaky), I admired it dutifully and then mumbled something about not wanting to be late to the Romeyns' dinner—

Mrs. Davies's face soured up like lemons. “You're boarding with the Romeyns?”

“Yes. On Academy Street,” I replied.

“Such an unusual family,” she said, still sucking lemons.

“Oh, yes?”

“What a shame Jottie has to take in boarders.” She tried to look mournful, but her tongue was running over her teeth all the while. “Poor Mrs. Romeyn must be whirling in her grave.”

How I wanted to draw myself up and say, Do you imply that my presence dishonors her home, madam? But I wanted to find out what she meant even more. So I said, “Really?”

“Mmm. They were quite well off at one time, you know. Old Mr. Romeyn ran the mill—American Everlasting?”

“Yes, of course,” I murmured. “The mill.”

“And I'm sure the poor man
hoped
that Felix would take over the business, but,
well
, that was impossible after—”

Just at that fascinating moment, Mr. Davies broke in like an elephant lumbering through the jungle. “Please give the Romeyns our regards. Tell Jottie that the town council appreciates her contribution to the sesquicentennial festivities.” His wife opened her mouth—to tell me more of Mr. Romeyn's lost hopes? To spread scandal about the family?—but he shut her up with one of those restraining hands on the arm, the kind that says, Not One More Word. “Thank you for coming to visit us this afternoon, Miss Beck. If you find you have further questions, you may consult with Mrs. Davies or myself at any time, mumble, mumble, ponder…”

I took my leave, more interested in the last two minutes of conversation than anything that had happened in the previous three hours. What a dreary afternoon—how on earth am I to turn it into something at least a bit, a tiny bit, interesting? For as dreary as the Davieses are and all the other First Families may be, I have decided to try to make
The History of Macedonia
something good, something worth reading and keeping. I've been thinking about history a good deal in the past few weeks, and I believe it fails when it offers
only a tepid recitation of events and dates. A successful history is one that captures the living heat of opinion and imagination and ancient grudge. You are not the only Beck with ambition, and mine is to make my little book the best history of Macedonia that has ever existed (not that there's much competition).

Poor Lance. Have I annoyed you with my girlish prattle? Actually, dear, in point of fact, the foregoing isn't girlish prattle but a chronicle of my professional doings (I'm saving the girlish prattle for Rose). I do hope you aren't one of those tiresome men whose eyes glaze over when women talk about their work. Even the docile Alene may someday grow discontented with the contemplation of your virtues and seek a career, and you must be sure not to be dismissive about it. For you are a little dismissive sometimes. I notice it particularly when you smoke your pipe—you stretch your neck against your collar like a turtle, you clamp your jaw like a colonel, and you deliver your opinions like a bishop. I believe you should give up smoking.

Nine pages! This is the longest letter I've ever written, and that is no paltry distinction, as you know. I do hope this letter isn't overweight, because I really did spend my last cent on that fan for my room, and I can't afford an extra stamp. It was necessary, though. It seems hotter here than in Washington.

Love always,

Layla

…
The annals of American history are replete with bold men and true but none more obdurate than Magnus Hamilton, who came to western Virginia when he was little more than a youth and vanquished his enemies with steely resolve and clever stratagems. Early imbued with the harsh rectitude of his Calvinist faith, Hamilton's strict morals won him the admiration of George Washington, who, during a dinner at Ferry Farm,
regaled the young man with tales of his surveying expedition in the Shenandoah Valley. These were undoubtedly the inspiration for Hamilton's decision to go west in the summer of 1758, accompanied by his docile wife, Rebecca, and the first of their fourteen children, Mary
.

Their early years on Mount Everett could not be said to be tranquil. The General's lust for land overtook his morals, and he is known to have instigated more than one bloody massacre among the Indian tribes that lived peacefully in the area before his advent. Indeed, within six years of the General's arrival in the region, the local Indians were almost completely annihilated, by drink if not by the sword. A gruesome trophy of this desperate era remains in the possession of Hamilton's descendants: a gunpowder pouch fabricated from human remains
.