“In the fall these meadows are smothered with Jerusalem artichokes, hence the name Jerusalem Field. It’s a sea of yellow,” Aunt Daniella told Yvonne as they slowly cruised along the farm road.
“Sam mentioned they are new people. Want to foxhunt,” Yvonne replied.
“Good. I can’t abide it when people move here and this is the country but want to keep their city ways. They come because it’s beautiful but then they want things like Noise Ordinance laws.” She shook her head. “Will never work. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
“Until Attila.” Yvonne laughed.
“True, but they had one thousand years. We’ve had two hundred and forty-two years and we’re making a mess of it.” Aunt Daniella waved her left hand, her old wedding ring and engagement diamond, impressive, gleaming. “I count our beginning to be 1776. So I am ninety-four. How much of our history have I lived?” She said this with feeling. “I have seen systematic mistreatment addressed. Certainly those kinds of things are better than when I was young, but a hell of a lot more is worse. Just get out of people’s way. If people talk to one another, we work it out. I believe that because I’ve seen it.”
“I don’t know, Aunt Dan. What I see is entrenched interests, be it corporate or racial or gender-based. Now granted, human rights is different than, say, foreign policy, but I think we’re screwing up both.”
“Well, we always have, but then it straightens out. In my lifetime, foreign policy, I saw Stalin make a fool out of Roosevelt, Khrushchev do the same to Kennedy. Reagan got the better of Gorbachev and for a while the Cold War ended. So it swings and sways, but I am getting old and I’m getting bored. If you’re going to be corrupt, then at least be interesting.” She let out a peal of laughter.
Yvonne joined her, then asked, “Wind devils?”
A swirl of wind twirled around, then dissipated, a common occurrence near the mountains as tendrils of wind rolled down, often meeting crosswinds at the bottom.
“Sends scent everywhere.” Aunt Daniella noticed Weevil trying to figure it out. “There’s a lot more to hunting hounds than people realize. He’s sitting still. I know he doesn’t know what to do about a wind devil but he’s not stupid. He’s waiting to see what the hounds will do.”
“I imagine everyone will be glad when Shaker can follow by car. He can tell Weevil what to do about things like wind devils.” Yvonne watched as the hounds cast themselves.
“There they go. They’ve figured it out, which means Weevil will figure it out. Let them cast themselves. Scent had to be blown somewhere. They’ll find it.”
Hounds opened running toward a steep ravine. The farmland continued on top of the hill. Aunt Daniella and Yvonne could see a flash of gray horse or a hint of scarlet, but that was that.
“What do you think about the TV coverage of the grave sites at Old Paradise?” Yvonne asked as they waited.
“Good. The historical society added a lot to the seriousness of it. Not that Crawford didn’t present himself well and his historical concerns, but the people from Richmond really put it over.” She paused. “Why don’t we drive down there, to Old Paradise? We’re not far and who knows when the field will be back?”
“You don’t think we’ll get into trouble?”
“I do not,” the old lady said with authority.
Jerusalem Field, ten miles from Chapel Crossroads, just on the other side of Close Shave, was close so Yvonne turned around, edged out on the two-lane paved country road. Once she reached the Chapel Crossroads she turned right, cruised a few miles west, then turned left onto the long, winding drive, itself undergoing renovation.
“I can’t believe he’s got a subfloor over that basement. Half of the county contractors must be here.”
“At the Bancrofts’ breakfast Dewey Milford was talking about that. Said it was good for the trades but he was needing to hire people from as far as Goochland County.”
“Now there’s a name, Gooch. A governor appointed by the king, but what I wonder is why he didn’t change his name.” Aunt Daniella laughed as they slowed, stopping in front of the Corinthian columns. “How I would have loved to see this place in its glory.”
“Slaves?” Yvonne raised her eyebrows.
“There were slaves in Connecticut. Slaves were everywhere.” She thought a moment. “The DuCharmes, well, how does one say this? The good blood watered down from 1812.”
Now Yvonne had to laugh. “See that everywhere. Wasn’t that why the French had the Valois, the Capets the Bourbons, and the English the Plantagenets, the horrendous war between those two branches, and so it goes.”
“Mercer, my son, used to say you see it in horses, too. He also said a good mare’s first foal isn’t usually her best. I told him to be careful as not only was he my first foal, he was my only foal.”
“Tootie is mine.” Yvonne smiled.
“Beautiful girl like her mother.”
“Thank you, Aunt Daniella.” Yvonne started the engine again, mostly to keep the heater running. She slowly drove toward the stables, then past the Carriage House.
“There’s tape over there.” Aunt Daniella pointed behind the Carriage House, just visible in the distance.
“Hey, that’s why I’ve got four-wheel drive. I bought that Continental, which I love, but I wasn’t out here two months before I realized I needed, what is it you call some horses, mudders?”
They bounced over frozen ground, stopping in front of a marked-off area. “I suppose they’ll dig up some people. But then what is he going to do?”
“He’ll have to raise some kind of marker. Create some kind of graveyard.”
“But what if it’s where the Monacans are or the people they think are the Monacans? Won’t Crawford have to revisit tribal burial practices?”
Yvonne considered this. “He doesn’t have a choice as I see it. You know, Aunt Dan, this is going to turn into a big project.”
They silently looked over the land, a gentle roll at this part.
“I’m willing to bet Crawford has stopped the pipeline or at least stopped this route,” Aunt Daniella predicted.
“Good bet.” She headed back toward the elegant outbuildings in various stages of reconstruction. “You’ve been in the stables since they’ve been restored?”
“Last fall when Tom Tipton was here. All that stonework and then the wood inside, mahogany.”
“Lucky horses when the day comes that the stalls are filled.”
“That was one grave found early, the one inside the stable. Old Paradise, who knows what’s here?” Aunt Daniella then launched into Tom Tipton. “I know that you and your husband built an empire on African American concerns. Marvelous, really, think of the people you reached with first the magazine and then the media empire, but you know, Yvonne, the older I get the more I feel closer to those left of my generation. I don’t much care what color they are. When Tom Tipton was here, oh the memories and our reference points are the same. Getting old can make you lonesome. You lose your friends.”
“But you are surrounded by people, Aunt Dan.”
She nodded in assent. “I am fortunate but it’s not the same as your own generation. Maybe you have to get old to understand this and you are far from it.”
“I’m in my early fifties.”
“Fifty is nothing. Nothing.” Aunt Daniella laughed at her. “The late Joe Carstairs used to say that.” Realizing that Yvonne had no idea who that was, Aunt Daniella added, “Carstairs Liquor. The heiress. English. Gay. You know there were a lot of fabulously wealthy gay women when I was young and I give them credit. The girls they kept they kept well. Money creates responsibility. I suppose it doesn’t matter who you’re sleeping with.”
“Bet their lovers were beautiful.”
“Yes. Ravishing.”
“Did any of them try to keep you?” Yvonne’s lip curled in a secret smile.
“No, but I wasn’t usually taken where I would wind up at parties with the girls. They knew how to have a good time. I’m not so sure people do these days. Oh, there I go again, I really am getting old, but while we’re here let’s peek into the Carriage House.”
“Sure.”
Within minutes they parked at the Carriage House close to the restored stables, with still untouched stables behind the Carriage House that housed the driving horses.
The two peeked past the huge door.
“Let’s go inside.” Yvonne struggled with the door but she got it and the two slipped in. “You’d think there’d be security or something here, so much is going on.”
“Most of it up at the house and what is there to steal? Once Crawford has this place up and running, I’m sure there will be security, which I must say is so out of place at Chapel Cross.”
They both inhaled the odor of the fresh wood, for the lumber was piled up for future work, as they walked down the extra-wide aisle, peeking into the special parking places for carriages. That’s the only word they could think of, parking places.
“He’ll buy a Brewster Carriage, I’m telling you.” Aunt Daniella stopped to admire an old photograph still hanging on the wall.
“What?”
“The Rolls-Royce of American coaches. Crawford will have to have one and he’ll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, too.” She looked up at Yvonne, slightly taller than herself. “Every activity has its vertical scale. And let me tell you, coaching is expensive.” She walked toward the middle of the expansive place. “The tack room door is slightly ajar.” She pushed it open. “Yvonne!”
Yvonne hurried up right behind her. “Aunt Dan, this scares me. It really does.”
The two women stepped back into the huge aisle and Yvonne called the sheriff’s department. “Hello, may I speak to Sheriff Ben Sidell? This is Yvonne Harris. I am at Old Paradise and there is another body part.”
She was patched through in a second.
“Ben, I’m in the Carriage House with Aunt Daniella. We’ve found the other hand or what’s left of it.”