“That’s good to know,” Gabe replied. “What will you be planting?”
“Don’t know yet. Some are already started in little pots and you have to look them over for the healthiest ones.” He took another sandwich. “This is good. I never thought of putting tomato with tuna.”
“Now that we’re going to have our own vegetables we can experiment with our cooking instead of eating the same old things day after day.” Gabe was serious but he was also giving Drew a new idea.
“Yeah, and you know what? The first time something comes up in the garden we can invite Mr. Williams over for dinner,” he said with enthusiasm as he swallowed a large bite.
“Good idea,” Gabe agreed. “By the way, Mr. Moultrie called to see how we’re getting along.”
“Did you tell him we haven’t found anything yet?”
“He didn’t even ask. He knows we just got here Saturday. I asked him how Great-Grandfather looked because I hadn’t seen any pictures around here. Have you?”
“No. I was going to tell you the same thing because it’s weird not to have a single picture of your family.” Drew looked puzzled. “Don’t you think so?”
“I guess they’re all packed away.”
“What’d he say Great-Grandfather looked like?”
Gabe repeated the description faithfully.
Drew listened, not eating. “Wish I could have seen him,” he said.
“Me, too,” Gabe echoed.
After lunch Gabe had great hopes of finding a clue when he returned to the office and opened the two-drawer file that stood beside the desk. What he found was that his great-grandfather had been a clipper. Folders labeled with many subjects were filled with clippings from newspapers and magazines.
He literally groaned. How in the world could he read all that stuff? But if he neglected to, would he be missing what he was supposed to discover? No wonder he was to be here three months.
He flipped through the folders: world history, U.S. history, black history, philosophy, religion, travel, South Carolina, North Carolina, weather, the environment, health, gardening, mechanics, carpentry, people in the news, the arts, food, and education.
Hadn’t Moultrie said this man had to teach himself to read? Obviously he’d carried the love of it all through his life.
When he, Gabe, died, what would he leave behind that people could go through and be impressed by? If only Moultrie could have brought him here while Great-Grandfather was still in this house so he could have absorbed some of the richness of his life!
There were also folders containing the plans for this house. Some of them had been drawn by an architect and others by Ezekiel Bell Jr. To Gabe’s untrained eye they looked equally professional.
He found statements and receipts for all of the lumber, the wiring, the nails and the hardware, everything that went into the building of the house. It was as if it had all been meticulously collected and saved for an accounting.
He scanned the folders again and made the decision that they would have to wait. If after he’d gone through the whole house and hadn’t found the clues, then he’d come back and read every item in every folder.
He sighed with relief as he closed the folder drawer. He was halfway down the stairs when the phone rang. He hurried back to the office and picked it up with a breathless “Hello.”
“Hello, Gabe, this is Makima. Were you running? You sound out of breath.”
Gabe collapsed in a chair. “I was halfway downstairs and had to come back up. I guess Great-Grandfather never got around to cordless phones.” Now, this call was a surprise. What did Miss Gray want this time? He noticed she’d called him Gabe instead of that haughty Mr. Bell she’d used before she stomped out the door yesterday.
“I want to apologize for the way I left your house. I lost my temper and said the wrong things to you. I’m sorry.”
In his surprise Gabe didn’t respond immediately, which seemed to make her hurry on.
“I was just so disappointed and I let that emotion take over. I hope you can forgive me,” she said.
“It’s all right, Makima. We all lose our tempers sometimes.” Her apology sounded sincere and he was glad.
“How are the two of you settling in?”
“Pretty well.”
“Have you met Sam Williams yet?”
“He came over and had breakfast with us. He’s a very interesting man.”
“He and Mr. Zeke were good buddies.”
“So I understand. He didn’t want the garden to die and today he showed Drew how to care for it and Drew seems to be interested.”
She laughed. “That sounds just like him. It was good talking with you, Gabe, and I hope to see you around.”
“Thanks for the call, Makima. I appreciate it.”
She’d been wrong and had seen it after she’d calmed down. Not everyone, however, would have called to apologize. Especially a pretty woman. So he truly did appreciate it.
It was a big plus mark for her.
Even so, he wasn’t going to let himself be drawn in by her good points or her physical attractiveness.
Been there, done that, and had been badly hurt.
Drew was his family now and that was all he needed.
Chapter 8
The sky was overcast and March winds had started to blow. Makima was glad she’d worn a pair of warm black pants and a long-sleeved red sweater.
“I’m going out for lunch, be back about one,” she told Eugenia Palmer, the program director, who sat at the receptionist desk when Makima wasn’t available.
“Have fun,” Eugenia said as she opened her lunch bag. Her sprouts on low-carb bread, plus an apple and a thermos of green tea were guaranteed to bring down her weight if she persevered and she was determined to make it work.
Fun wasn’t exactly what Makima anticipated, but she did enjoy her weekly lunch hour at her parents’ home as long as she could avoid certain subjects.
Today, only her mother greeted her. “Dad’s not going to be with us?” Makima was disappointed as it had been two weeks since she’d seen him.
“He had to go to Swinton to see someone. Said to tell you he’s sorry to miss you.”
Odessa Lines had been raised in the genteel home of a prominent minister. When the neighbor boy, Arthur Gray, had begun courting her, Reverend Lines had refused consent until Arthur had a steady job. Arthur and Odessa had both become teachers, but when Makima arrived, Odessa stayed home to raise her children. Arthur went into administration, rising steadily until he became principal of the high school.
Odessa closed the door behind Makima. “You warm enough, honey? It’s turned chilly so I made your favorite—vegetable-beef soup.”
Makima followed her mother into the spacious kitchen where the table was set for two.
“No wonder it smells so good in here,” Makima said appreciatively.
Her mother set two steaming bowls of soup on the table where there were already thick chunks of crusty bread and butter.
“This is delicious, Mom,” Makima said after the first taste. The broth was rich, the beef tender, the vegetables crisp. “I always tell you this soup could make you a lot of money if you sold it.”
“I only cook for my family and my friends.”
“Yes, I know, but this soup is special.” A gleam came into Makima’s eyes. “We could do a fund-raiser just with this soup.”
Ignoring the expression of coolness in her mother’s eyes, she plunged on. “We could sell it to stores and restaurants for church suppers and to homes. We haven’t done that kind of event before. What do you think of that?”
“Who would do all the work, making that much soup?”
“You’d have to supervise the cooking because it’s your creation, but we could get however many women you need in here to help.”
“How would you collect the orders for it?”
“Assign our best salespeople to go around to stores and restaurants, put ads in the paper, send out flyers, make phone calls. The
way we do most fund-raisers. The difference here would be selling to restaurants and some other businesses we selected.”
“There’re no preservatives in my soup, Makima.”
“I know. That would be a great selling point. Having the sale on a Friday and Saturday would be the best time.”
“What would you put it in?”
“We’d buy cases of sixteen- and thirty-two-ounce cartons.”
“How much would you sell it for?”
“Don’t know. We’d have to work out the cost of the ingredients, the cartons and any other expenses, then see what we could charge to make the effort worthwhile.” She helped herself to more soup from the pot on the stove. “Ready for seconds?” she asked her mother, who shook her head no.
Makima continued with her description of what she was already thinking of as the Souperior Soup Sale.
“We’d have to do it while the weather is still cool. I know the quilting ladies would be glad to come and prepare the vegetables. If it’s on the weekend we could borrow some large pots from the cafeteria or the churches. I’ll have to think of who would be best to approach the businesses.”
She stopped, realizing that she was speaking to silence. There was no response from her mother, who sat looking out the window. Makima felt her heart sink.
Her mother sighed. Her normally pleasant face was sad. “Everything with you now is the clinic. We can’t even have a little lunch together and talk about ordinary things. It’s always the clinic. It’s taken over your life, Makima.”
Makima laid her spoon on her plate and willed the tears from coming to her eyes.
“Do you ever think of anything else?” It was the tenderness in her mother’s expression that brought the tears despite Makima’s best effort.
She reached across the table to touch her mother’s hand. “Mom, I have to do this. I guess I can’t think about much else until it’s done. I know you don’t see it that way and I’m sorry.”
Her mother’s hand clasped hers. “I know it’s important. It was my baby that got killed. But can’t other people take it over? Why must it be you carrying the load? Jim and Betty Forbes’s two kids were hurt. Let them do some of the work.”
“Jim is on the board, as you know and he does work hard. Most of the board members work hard, but to be honest, no one seems to care as much about it as I do.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe they do, but because you take on the major load, they sit back and let you do it?” her mother said gently.
“I have sat back on some issues and waited for others to step forward,” Makima said defensively.
“What happened, honey?”
“Nothing. Or people who said they’d take care of it, then dropped the ball or were late or it wasn’t done right.”
“I see.”
They sat wordlessly, each looking out the window at the back patio where in warmer weather the luncheon would have taken place.
Her mother broke the silence. “I’m just a mother who wants to see her lovely thirty-two-year-old daughter have a life. I want to say just one more thing then we’ll talk about something else.”
Makima braced herself for what she knew was coming.
“I’ve always felt that you and Reggie would have been married by now. It was clear that he was in love with you, but after you became so involved with the clinic, I think you pushed him out of your life. I pray that won’t happen again, honey. You deserve a loving husband and children.” She patted her daughter’s hand. “Now, what about some dessert?”
Makima didn’t think she could swallow a bite, but she wasn’t going to refuse her mother’s peace offering.
“I’m ready for whatever you have.”
The hot tea her mother served along with an apple turnover soothed Makima’s throat and helped the light pastry go down.
“Tell me about church,” her mother said. “If I’d known Mr. Zeke’s heir was to be there I’d have let your dad go to Columbia by himself.”
Makima described meeting the Bells, the warm welcome the minister had given them and how she’d introduced them around after the service.
“Alana told me the oldest brother is quite handsome and she was disappointed she couldn’t get him to go to the movies with them.”
“The young brother, Drew, went and I thought that was nice. He’s almost the same age as Jeff, so he’s already met a friend.”
“Selina called me, she said he was very courteous.”
“Drew?”
“No, the oldest one. What’s his name?”
“Gabriel, but he said he goes by Gabe. He’s anxious to visit Miss Selina because she was such good friends with Miss Sarah.”
“Are they going to stay?”
“I’ve no idea.” She looked at the clock. “Thanks for lunch, Mom. I have to go. Eugenia’s sitting in for me.”
At the door they hugged each other, a quiet gesture of deep familial love even where understanding was lacking.
Makima drove slowly to get her emotions under control before returning to work. This was the second time Mom had done this and it had cut Makima to the bone each time.
It was beyond her comprehension that her family couldn’t give the dedication to the clinic that was required if it was to become a reality. This was a huge undertaking, so large that sometimes it scared her. When it did, she thought of June and she prayed, then asked for guidance as to what the next step should be.
In her darkest hours she thought that maybe her mom and dad lacked the degree of faith that she had. It was wrong to judge anyone else, but why couldn’t they see that only faith could carry them through. After all, they were the ones who’d instilled in her and her siblings the value of religion in their lives, as well as a work ethic and a solid education. When her mother showed a failure to understand the motives that drove her to make the clinic a reality, Makima couldn’t fight the despondency that came over her. It always took her several days to rise above it and to regain the conviction that what she was doing was right. No matter what others thought.
It took Gabe several hours to go through the books in the office. He was looking not only for slips of paper but the internal evidence from the books themselves.
The books on Africa were especially time-consuming as there were notes in the margins and cross-references his great-grandfather had made in his spiky script. Gabe scanned a number of these. If he stayed here and studied just these books, he’d know a lot more about Africa than he’d ever dreamt.
He could see himself spending evenings up here but that wasn’t his mission. Somewhere in this house was his treasured destiny, and he had to find it. He put the last volume back on the shelf and glanced around to see what had yet to be searched. The closet and the curio cabinet.
The closet held odds and ends of clothing, hats on the shelf and several pairs of house shoes on the floor. All were innocent of clues.
The curio cabinet was a handsome piece of walnut furniture that held six shallow drawers. The contents revealed another surprising aspect of his great-grandfather’s character. The drawers were filled with seashells arranged from small to large. The patience it must have taken for such a task was hard to conceive. Gabe recalled seeing a book about seashells during his search.
The bottom drawer was deeper than the others. In it were the largest of the shells. Gabe’s eye was immediately caught by a perfectly shaped ivory conch shell. He picked it up carefully. The back of his neck tingled.
There in its spiral was a piece of paper, tightly rolled to make it fit.
With great care he extracted it, put the shell back and closed the drawer.
His heart was beating fast.
He knew without a doubt that he held in his hand a clue his great-grandfather had placed there for him to find!
Chapter 9
Gabe took the piece of paper to the desk. He sat down and slowly unrolled it.
Great-Grandfather had made or had someone else make a scroll on parchment-like paper. It was the sam
e length as an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper but half its width.
It was decorated around its borders by evenly spaced scrolls in black ink. In the center of the page were what appeared to be sentences because of their regular pattern.
Gabe couldn’t understand a word of it. It might as well have been in Greek. In fact, he wished it had been because some of those words he would have recognized.
There were symbols at the top of the page, which he assumed to be the title, but the alphabet being used to relate the story was indecipherable.
He sat and looked at it a long time, trying to get some answers about it. One thing he did decide was that it had been written by Great-Grandfather because although the characters were printed, there was enough of the spikiness to identify the writer.
He went to the window in the next room. Drew was looking at the garden, a hoe in his hand.
Gabe opened the window. “Drew, I found something.”
Drew dropped the hoe. He had a huge grin on his face when he came into the office.
“Lemme see.” He put out his hand.
Gabe gave the scroll to him and watched the grin turn to puzzlement.
“You can read this, right?” Drew asked hopefully.
“Wish I could, bro.”
Drew plopped down in a chair. He turned the scroll upside down and then sideways. “It looks like a story,” he finally said.
“I think so, too.”
“Then why isn’t it in English so you can read it? Maybe it’s something else, a puzzle, or just a piece of paper Great-Grandfather picked up that he liked.”
“I don’t think it’s an insignificant piece of paper,” Gabe said thoughtfully.
“How do you know this is a real clue, Gabe? There wasn’t an arrow pointing to it, was there?”
Gabe knew Drew wanted to be convinced this was valid, but all he could give him was his intuition.
“No arrow. I was looking in the drawers of that curio cabinet over there. It holds a collection of seashells and in the bottom drawer there’s a conch shell. I knew when I saw it that it was special. I picked it up and the back of my neck tingled.”
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