You never know what the weather’s going to be in the spring of the year. I’d worn a sweater the day before, but this day had heated up to an immoderate degree. By the time I walked to the car, which was not parked in the shade, I was about to melt. I put the windows down while waiting for the air conditioner to cool the interior. And waiting to cool myself down, too. Arthur Kessler had shown his true colors in his total disregard for the preservation of the past. Even though that past included a termite-riddled building. There was such a thing as the Orkin man, you know.
But Mr. Kessler had no concept of the value of tradition or history or what was important to other people. Just tear down and rip out whatever was in his way—that’s all that mattered to him. I would’ve gnashed my teeth if I’d thought it would do any good.
“Ma’am?”
I jerked back from the window as a face suddenly appeared next to mine. “What! Who are you?”
“Andy Jordan. Abbotsville Times. We’re running a special edition on the courthouse, and I’m doing a front-page article featuring local comments. Would you care to comment on what’s happening here?”
“I certainly would. Get in the car, young man, and I’ll give you a comment.”
He hopped to it, running around the front of the car and sliding into the passenger seat. He’d replaced the windbreaker I’d first seen him in with a T-shirt that had seen better days, but he still wore his Panthers ball cap.
He clicked his Bic pen and held a stenographer’s pad at the ready. “Okay, let’s have it.”
“First of all,” I said, more than ready to pour it out, “I am heartsick that the commissioners voted to turn a developer loose on what belongs to every taxpayer in this county. Arthur Kessler has no sense of history nor does he have any concept of the architectural value of that building, even if it is on its last legs. They don’t build them the way they used to anymore, and I’m speaking aesthetically, not structurally. I’m sure that whatever he puts up in the place of the courthouse will be a modern eyesore—stark, sterile and tasteless.”
Scribbling fast, Andy Jordan said, “Can I quote you on that?”
“You certainly may.” I took a minute to collect my thoughts. “And another thing, I asked him as courteously as I knew how—appealed to his civic responsibility, you might say—to at least save the figure of Lady Justice on the dome, and he as good as told me to go jump in the lake. Too expensive, he said. Too time-consuming, he said. Well, what’s the hurry, I’d like to know. That figure or statue or whatever it is up there was a gift from a grieving family to the town, and it was made in France more than a hundred years ago. If the building itself is beyond repair, as I’ve been told but which I’m not sure I believe, that figure certainly is not. It ought to be saved and placed somewhere to remind us all of what justice is, even though I haven’t seen much of it lately. And furthermore…”
“Hold on. Let me get that down.” He bent over his pad, writing furiously, his tongue sticking out of his mouth.
“Well, hurry up,” I said, my concerns boiling up and overflowing. “I don’t have all day. Now, as I was saying, I may be wrong—you can look it up somewhere—but that figure represents the centuries-old idea of fairness in the law and the blindness of true justice as far as the status of litigants is concerned. Or something like that. She is blindfolded, you know. Oh, and another thing, Lloyd was just reading about this the other day…”
“Who’s Lloyd?”
“My…just put the son of a friend. Anyway, he was studying this in Civics or History or something. The ancient Greeks, when they established the rule of law in Athens, well, they put up a statue to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, to remind them of the rule of law and of the right way to do things. And that’s important in this day and age, too, when everybody and his brother think that the law is something to get around and loophole out of. The people of Abbotsville need a reminder as much as anybody, and the figure of Lady Justice would serve the purpose admirably. She stands for something important and shouldn’t be relegated to the county dump, which is already full. But that’s another subject.” I glanced over at him. “Did you get all that?”
“Boy, did I ever.”
“You might add that Mr. Kessler not only does not appreciate history, he doesn’t know it, either.” I cringed as the air was rent by another crash of the wrecking ball. The car shuddered from the thud of falling bricks. I could hear the gasping awe of the crowd of onlookers and wondered if they were enjoying the spectacle or lamenting it. “I’ll tell you this, young man,” I went on, filled with grief at the loss and anger at the futility of my efforts to run Mr. Kessler out of town. “It is a crying shame what that man is doing to us. He is ruining our skyline forever. Who wants to see an upended box of condos instead of that gilded dome? I, for one, do not.” I paused to wipe my eyes, overcome with the unfairness of it all. “Did you get that?”
“Oh, yeah. Anything else?”
“No, that’s about it. Well, you might mention that there’s to be a barbecue soiree at Mrs. Horace Allen’s house this Saturday afternoon. Mr. Kessler will be there because he wants an opportunity to meet the people of Abbotsville. So anybody who would like to tell him how they feel about replacing a piece of history with an influx of new residents is welcome to drop by and speak their mind.”
“Oh, boy. Me, too?”
“Absolutely. Bring your pad and Bic, too.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. Now, if I can get your full name and address. Your age, too.”
“I am Mrs. Julia Springer Murdoch and I live on Polk Street. That’s enough for the paper, because I don’t want any uninvited drop-ins at my house. As for my age, you’re old enough to know better than to ask. Now, I’ve got to get home.” And I rolled up the windows and revved the motor.
“Yes, ma’am. Thanks, thanks a lot for this.” He opened the door and stepped out, talking to himself as he went. “My editor’s gonna love this. Man, oh, man.”
My feet and my spirits were dragging as I walked into the house. I felt as low as the courthouse soon would be. The annex was just a pile of bricks and shattered joists by now, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Well, Lillian,” I said, putting my pocketbook on the counter with a great sigh, “the annex was all but gone when I left, and they’re starting on the courthouse itself tomorrow.”
“You better move that,” she said with a nod at my pocketbook. “I’m rolling out dough here.” She sprinkled flour on a pastry cloth and smoothed the rolling pin over it.
“So you are.” I picked up the pocketbook and put it on the table, earning a frown from her. But I was too dispirited to care. “What kind of pie are you making?”
“Choc’late, for a change. None of that fruit looked too good at the produce stand this mornin’.” She lifted a round of pastry and fitted it into a Pyrex pie plate. “Lord he’p us,” she suddenly exclaimed. “You never did get no lunch, did you? ’Less you eat downtown, which I hope you did.”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, sitting at the table and propping my head on my hand. “Oh, Lillian, I am just heartsick at what’s going on down there.”
“Well, you better get over it. Lloyd be home here any minute now, an’ he don’t need to see you mopin’ ’round ’bout something nobody can change, once it done.” She walked over to the stove and stirred the chocolate mixture in a saucepan. “What you need to do is put all that behind you, and think up something you still can do something about.”
“You’re right about that,” I said, a tiny ray of hope stirring in the back of my mind. “Only thing is, I don’t know if it can be done.”
Footsteps and the sound of the screen door opening made me sit up straight and put a smile on my face. “Hey, Miss Julia,” Lloyd said as he entered the kitchen. “Hey, Miss Lillian. Something sure smells good.” He let his heavily laden bookbag slide off his shoulders onto the floor, then grinned at me. “I’ll take it upstairs soon as I have a snack. I’m about to starve. You wouldn’t believe what the lunchroom served today.”
“Set down then,” Lillian said, smiling at the boy, as she removed the saucepan from the stove. “I got cheese and crackers and some grapes for you. You, too, Miss Julia. You gonna cave in, you don’t eat something.”
She joined Lloyd and me at the table, bringing with her two cups of coffee and a glass of milk for Lloyd. “Now don’t y’all ruin yo’ supper. No need to be cookin’ all day if everybody jus’ pick at it.”
I nibbled at the cheese and crackers, my mind churning away. Finally, I said, “Wonder how hard it’d be to get up on that dome?”
Lillian frowned. “What dome?”
“The one on the courthouse, of course. Mr. Kessler is bound and determined to destroy everything in his path, but that statue on the dome is worth some little effort to save. And I’ll tell you this,” I said, my spirits reviving with a spurt of adrenaline, “if it can be saved, it ought to be. Just because Arthur Kessler won’t get it down in one piece, doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“You better not be thinkin’ what I think you thinkin’,” Lillian said, glaring at me.
“Of course not,” I said, waving my hand, but I probably was. “I know for a fact that the dome was cleaned and regilded some years ago, so that means somebody had to go up there to do it. All I have to do is find out who it was and send him back up again. This time with a wrench or a saw instead of a scrub bucket.”
Lillian frowned even deeper. “I don’t like the sound of that. You fixin’ to get somebody to steal something don’t b’long to you, an’ you get in trouble an’ whoever you get will be in the same turmoil, too.”
“No, no, Lillian, that statue is mine. Mr. Kessler gave it to me as plain as day. He said if it survived the destruction of the building, I could have it. He didn’t say a word about how or when it survives. All I have to do is find somebody who knows how to get up to it.”