Chellie rolled her eyes. “Honey, that’s the understatement of the year. At least when Mr. Norbert was alive, he kept up the yard. He used to have the prettiest camellias in town. Buttercups too. And roses. He’d cut roses and bring ’em in here, to Delores over at the bank, and church, of course. After Norbert passed, I think Ella Kate tried for a little while, but it all got to be too much for her. She’s gotta be eighty if she’s a day. Anyway, you’re young. And you’re skinny, but I reckon you’re probably strong too. You’ll do just fine, long as you don’t let Ella Kate mow you down.”
“Thanks,” I said, handing her my money. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
When I got back to the house, I was surprised to see a pickup truck loaded with rakes and mowers and other lethal-looking implements parked at the curb. A tall mound of tree limbs and vines was stacked there too, and I could hear the high-pitched whine of a chain saw.
I grabbed a bag of groceries and followed the racket up the driveway. A young man in jeans and a flannel shirt was flailing away at a sapling with the saw. When he saw me, he cut the saw’s motor.
“Hi,” I said. “Did I hire you to clear the property?”
“No’m,” he said. “Mr. Carter sent me over. He told me to tell you it’ll be billed to your daddy.”
That was fine by me.
When I let myself in the kitchen door, I found, to my relief, that Ella Kate seemed to have decamped.
Upstairs, I paused outside Ella Kate’s bedroom door. I tapped lightly, but there was no answer. As I’d expected, her door was locked.
But the next door down was unlocked. This one was another large, square bedroom, approximately the same size as the one I’d claimed for myself.
The wallpaper was peeling, but charming, with a floral stripe of blue morning glories. A narrow bed with a tall iron headboard and footboard was covered by an old army blanket, a worn quilt folded at the foot. The tall oak dresser had a delicately embroidered linen runner with what looked like hand-crocheted edging. Set on top of it was a tarnished silver comb and hairbrush set with a few white hairs still clinging to the bristles. Beside the brush sat a hinged double tintype portrait of the couple I recognized from the picture on the stair landing. I peered closely at them, trying to recognize my Dempsey ancestors. Was there something in the set of the chin? The woman’s was narrow, making her face nearly heart shaped. Her lips were thin and unsmiling, but the upper lip had a hint of a cupid’s bow. I’d spent a lot of time trying to get lip liner around my own cupid’s-bow upper lip.
I opened a narrow closet door. Apparently, I’d found great-uncle Norbert’s bedroom. Six white dress shirts hung stiffly from their hangers, their collars and cuffs yellowed with age and blotched with brownish rust stains. Four or five faded flannel shirts hung beside those, telling me that Norbert favored utility over formality. There was a rusty black suit with narrow lapels in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag, and on a nail hanging from the back of the closet door I saw three silk neckties in sober maroon and navy stripes. A hook held two pairs of denim overalls, softened from what must have been hundreds of hours of work and washings. On the floor of the closet were a pair of dusty black lace-up dress shoes, a pair of work boots, and a pair of paint-spattered high-top Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers.
Chucks! I picked them up and sniffed. They smelled like red clay and turpentine. I set the shoes down gently.
Back in my bedroom, I undressed and slid my legs into the Carharrts. They were as stiff as a board and ugly as mud. I surveyed myself in the age-clouded dresser mirror and frowned at what I saw. They were big and boxy, and though I’d used the size chart at the hardware store as a guide, they were four inches too big around the waist, and at least six inches too long. Not to mention the fact that they felt like sandpaper long johns. I could roll up the hems of the pants and cinch them with a belt, but until they’d been washed at least a couple of times, they just wouldn’t do.
But Uncle Norbert’s clothes might. I hurried down the hall, dressed only in my panties, bra, and socks, and helped myself.
Norbert had been tall, but thankfully, what my mother would have called a “string bean.” I pulled one of the flannel shirts over my head and rolled up the cuffs four times. The overalls, soft as an old blanket, were several sizes too long too, but I managed to adjust the straps, and with the pants legs rolled up, I judged them perfect. And what about shoes? The work boots were stiff and mud caked, but I took another look at those Chucks.
Uncle Norbert had been tall and slender, but his feet were surprisingly small for a man, maybe only a size larger than my own. With another pair of socks for extra padding, I decided, the Chucks would work like a charm.
I rummaged around in Norbert’s dresser until I found a stash of neatly washed and ironed handkerchiefs, including a large blue bandanna, which I folded and knotted over my head, kerchief style.
I was ready to do battle with Birdsong.
Although it was still chilly, not even fifty degrees, the day was sunny. I lugged a broom, a mop, a bucket of hot sudsy Pine-Sol, and my iPod out to the front porch. I slipped the iPod into the front pocket of the overalls, put in my earbuds, and got to work.
I’d downloaded the rereleased Michael Jackson Thriller album before leaving D.C., and now, with Michael and his celebrity buddies moon-walking in my head, I rocked it hard.
Starting at the front door, I swept my way up and down the porch, knocking down spiderwebs, desiccated insect carcasses, long-abandoned birds’ nests, and a forest of dead leaves as Michael sang “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Three times, because I kept punching rewind. But even after an hour of sweeping, dirt and mildew clung stubbornly to the worn wooden floorboards. I sloshed Pine-Sol all over the porch, and attacked with the mop, and “Beat It,” smiling with satisfaction as the water in my bucket grew grimy with the accumulated grunge. Four changes of water and two hours later, I decided the floor was done. I’d scrubbed down the old boards so hard that I could see bare wood shining through the faded battleship gray paint.
The windows, and “Billie Jean,” were next. The panes were so caked with grime I didn’t even attempt to start with the Windex. Instead, I hooked up a garden hose and splashed water all over the old wavy glass, sending a dirty river seeping down over my previously pristine floorboards. Damn. I’d have to give the porch another rinsing later. But for now, I washed and polished and spritzed the eight tall windows that ran across the front of the house, inside and out, until they sparkled like crystal in the afternoon sunshine.
I’d saved the front door for last. I scrubbed away layer after layer of dirt and dust, finally revealing, to my surprise, a faded red paint job where I’d thought was previously a dull gray one. Jimmy Maynard had been right. Birdsong was meant to have a red front door. And a handsome door it was. From the look of the bare wood peeping from underneath the old paint, I decided it must be heart pine. There were six finely detailed raised panels, with a beveled-glass insert and beveled-glass sidelights, along with a fan-shaped transom above the door that I couldn’t reach without a ladder.
With an old toothbrush I’d found under the kitchen sink, and “PYT” blasting into my ears, I worked brass cleaner into the large elaborately worked doorknob and faceplates, the knocker, even the faceplate around the cheap, splintered plastic doorbell. That doorbell would be my first rehab project, I decided. A door as grand as this one deserved better. I didn’t know where I’d get something like a reproduction doorbell in Guthrie. This might take a little research. Fortunately, research was my forte. And at least, I knew, Guthrie had a public library, because I’d passed it earlier in the day.
With the porch rinsed off again, the windows clean, and the brass shining brightly, I decided to step back to take it all in. The iPod was playing “Thriller” as I moonwalked down the wet concrete steps, and a few steps away into the yard.
I stood there, bobbing my head and singing along, thrilled with my results. Once the top layer of dirt was removed, I could see, f
or the first time, that Birdsong really could be something fine.
But my elation was mixed with the overwhelming realization of all I still had to accomplish. It had taken me an entire day just to get this far. The yardman and his chain saw were gone now, and three head-high piles of vines and tree limbs were stacked at the curb. The good news was that the house was actually visible from the street now. The bad news was that I could see the full extent of Birdsong’s state of decay. Ivy and kudzu crept over the side of the house, and had covered what little foundation plantings remained. My hands itched to start yanking at vines and limbs, but my arms were already screaming from the unaccustomed punishment I’d given them that day. No Pilates workout had ever left me this sore.
And the inside of the house. My God, I hadn’t even started there. Did I have enough energy left to at least open the front door and start sweeping my way from the front of the house to the back?
A tap on my shoulder made me jump nearly a foot. I whirled around, wild eyed, to see a bemused Tee Berryhill standing there, holding a lethal-looking machete in one hand and a pair of long-handled tree clippers in the other. He was dressed in a navy blue suit, and once again, he had a necktie stuffed in the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Jesus!” I exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”
He reached over and tugged at my earbuds. “I’ve been standing here for five minutes, watching your dance routine. I called your name, but you didn’t hear me. What the hell are you listening to?”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Had he seen the whole thing? The whole hip-swaying, finger-popping routine I’d done to “Billie Jean”?
“It’s Thriller,” I said lamely. “The rerelease.”
“Wow,” he said, walking up toward the porch. “It must work for you. The porch looks great. How long have you been working like this?”
“Hours?” I shrugged. “I lost track of the time.”
And I had. The sun had slipped below the tree line, and the air had gotten chillier.
“It’s after five,” Tee said. He held up the machete. “I meant to bring these over earlier today, but I got caught up myself with a hearing in Milledgeville. Anyway, I see you beat me to the punch. You got the yard cleared out yourself? You’re Wonder Woman!”
“Not really,” I admitted. “I was wondering how I could ever tackle this disaster, but when I got back from the supermarket and the hardware store, there was already a guy here with a chain saw. Your dad sent him over.”
“You got the Catfish running? Man, you don’t waste any time, do you?”
“No time to waste,” I said. “I did a walk-through this morning. And it’s even worse than I expected.”
He gave me a stiff pat on my shoulder. “Well, from the looks of things out here, you’ve made a good start. Are you ready to knock off for the day?”
“Yeah,” I said, already feeling the energy seep from my body. “My mind wants to keep going, but my body says, ‘Hell no.’”
“I vote for hell no too,” Tee said. “Now, what about some food? I know for a fact that Ella Kate doesn’t keep much in the way of food in the house. So Dad sent me over to bring you back for supper.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I’m a mess. And—”
“Come along,” Tee said, gently taking my arm and tugging me toward the front door. “Day shift is over. I guess you didn’t hear the mill whistle blow?”
“I haven’t heard anything but Michael Jackson for the past few hours,” I admitted. “Anyway, isn’t the mill closed? Why would the whistle still blow?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, heading up the front steps. “We’ll fill you in over supper.”
15
After I’d showered and was changing into some respectable clothes, I could hear voices downstairs. At one point, I heard a dog’s sharp bark, then a woman’s voice, and Tee’s, and then a door slamming.
He was sitting on a bench in the hallway when I rejoined him.
“Was that Ella Kate?”
He jerked his head in the direction of the front door. “It was. I invited her to join us for dinner, but she politely declined. I believe she had a previous engagement.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Politely?”
“Her exact words were ‘I’d rather choke than eat with her and you two ambulance chasers.’”
“Oh dear.”
“At least she didn’t throw anything at me this time.”
Tee filled me in on Guthrie’s social strata on the drive over to his house.
“That house there,” he said, pointing to an imposing brick Colonial Revival mansion a few doors down the block, “belonged to one of the Dempseys. Dad could tell you exactly which one. Local gossips say that what money he didn’t blow on wine, women, and song, he lost speculating on the stock market. It’s changed hands a bunch of times over the years. Now it belongs to some dot-com genius. She’s not even thirty.”
“Nice house,” I said, pressing my face to the car window. “And I bet she didn’t even have to kill any spiders to get it that way.”
He showed me the mayor’s house too, a gray-shingled bungalow with a huge old oak tree in the front yard. A tire swing hung from the tree’s lowest branch, and an assortment of brightly colored plastic toys lay on the ground around the tree. “He’s got triplets, all girls, four years old,” Tee said. “Poor guy, I don’t think he knows what hit him.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I know the feeling. My dad has twins that age.”
“You’ve got brothers who are four?”
“Half brothers. My stepmother is quite a bit younger. They’re little devils too.”
Finally, he pulled up to a charming white-frame cottage encircled by a low boxwood hedge and a dark green picket fence. A discreet wrought-iron sign hanging from the mailbox told me we’d arrived at berry hill.
“Oh!” I said with a sigh. “I love it already. Berry Hill. That’s adorable.”
He made a wry face. “The name was Mama’s idea. She even planted raspberry vines to grow on that fence, and there’s a patch of rabbit-eye blueberries out back. The birds eat up most of ’em now, but when she was alive, she put up enough jam to feed pharoah’s army.”
“How long has she been gone?”
He got out, came around, and opened my door, a true Southern gentleman. “Let’s see. She was diagnosed with breast cancer right before I took my bar exam, and six months later she was dead. So that’s, what? Ten years, I guess.”
“And your dad never remarried?”
He laughed. “Not for lack of trying. Every woman in this town under the age of eighty has done her level best to save ‘poor ol’ Carter’ from his pitiful life as a bachelor. He goes along and allows himself to be fixed up, but I don’t think he’s had a second date in all these years.”
I was about to ask about Tee’s own marital status, but now Carter himself was standing in the doorway, a clean dish towel wrapped around his waist and a glass of wine in his outstretched hand.
“Dempsey!” he said, giving me an impromptu hug.
“This is for you,” he said, handing me the glass. “I don’t figure you for a teetotaler.”
“You figured right,” I said, taking a sip. “And although I went to the grocery store, I totally forgot to hit the liquor store.”
Tee and Carter laughed at my ignorance.
“Honey, you can’t buy liquor in Guthrie,” Carter said. “We’re dry as dust. You’ll have to drive over to the next county to BJ’s Bottle Shop if you want a drink of anything stronger than Coca-Cola. Or come over here to Berry Hill.”
He walked me into the living room, and I stood for a moment admiring my surroundings. With its walls of horizontal pine paneling, muted chintz-upholstered sofas and chairs, worn oriental rugs and gold-framed paintings, the Berry Hill living room looked like a room that was lived in and enjoyed. The fireplace was surrounded by bookshelves crammed with leather-bound books, and a leather club chair pulled up beside the fireplace held a fol
ded-up copy of The New Yorker.
“What a nice room,” I said, pausing in front of a surprisingly good oil landscape.
“All of this was Sarah’s doing,” Carter said. “Tee and I just try to keep it from looking too much like a fraternity house.”
“You’ve done a good job,” I said, warming my backside in front of the fire.
“You should see what Dempsey’s done over at Birdsong, Dad,” Tee told his father, emerging from the other room with his own glass of wine. “It’s the first time since I can remember that you can tell what color the front of the house is painted.”
“And that reminds me,” I said. “Thank you so much for sending over your yardman. I had no idea how I was going to tackle that jungle. He worked wonders. Unfortunately, now you can actually get a good look at that paint Tee mentioned. Pink. Ugh.”
Carter handed me a polished silver tray. Perched on top of a paper doily were an assortment of warm miniquiches. I took one and tasted. “Nice,” I said, not bothering to hide my surprise.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Tee warned. “We’ve got a freezer full of this kinda stuff from the discount store over in Macon.”
We sat by the fire and chatted for a while, doing that practiced little dance you do when you’re sizing up new acquaintances for their potential as friends. The Berryhills, father and son, were easy to be around. I could tell by their verbal sparring that they were genuinely fond of each other.
After a leisurely cocktail hour, during which time Carter disappeared several times to “check on my masterpiece,” as he put it, he decided everything was ready.
“Hope you like salmon,” Carter said, again tucking my arm into the crook of his elbow to escort me into the dining room.
“Love it,” I said. “But then, anything you serve me will be a treat. I’m not much of a cook myself.”
“Neither is he,” Tee said, taking my other arm and steering me toward my chair as Carter went back to the kitchen. “But that never stopped him. Salmon, little dinky roasted potatoes, and poached asparagus with dill sauce, which is what’s on tonight’s menu, is his company dinner. The rest of the week, it’s strictly by the book. Monday is rice and beans, Tuesday’s baked chicken, Wednesday is Hamburger Helper, and Thursday’s some kind of casserole made with the leftover chicken.”
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