Jessica had no children of her own, so there was no one obligated to inquire into that or any of her other business. If Jessica had money--there had to be some--or a will, no one knew. She never in anyone's memory had given a gift of any value, nor asked for help of any kind.
Sissy was dispatched to bring lemonade and crackers. Marcia and Raff followed Jessica into the parlor, and were struck by the telltale scent of neglected old age, a mix of unwashed flesh and decayed upholstery with just a hint of urine. If this fazed Marcia, her composed features gave no sign. As the two women seated themselves, she gently nudged Raff and commanded, "Give your Aunt Jessica a kiss."
The ten-year-old was well practiced in this drill. He walked over and delivered a peck on Jessica's forehead, sidewise to avoid the hairy mole on her nose.
Jessica smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Raphael." Raff gave the expected response, "Yes, ma'am," and sat in a chair under the parlor window. A cat appeared from behind a pot of plastic ferns and rubbed against his legs, then sat back and stared up at him in hungry supplication.
Marcia drew her chair close to Jessica's, and the two fell quickly into soft, animated conversation. Jessica seemed to have memorized the genealogy of the Semmeses and all their collateral lines back into the seventeenth century. In particular, her archival knowledge of the Mobile Semmeses was total. The two women browsed through episodes about the local family and their antecedents, sharing pleasure in every detail, hopping from topic to topic. Raff was able to catch only fragments.
"Your cousin Tommy on your Aunt Sara's side...No, no, I'm sure of it, she's buried with little Mary Jo right there on the west edge of Magnolia Cemetery...Oh, I know, those were such dreadful days, there was such suffering...Well, believe it or not, I actually met him once, I must have been only five or six...No, I don't know what happened to them after they moved to Texas, that was such a long time ago...A captain? Oh, no, he couldn't have been a captain although I know Cousin Rosalee claims he was, because, think, he was only eighteen when he went in...Oh, my, yes, divorced not once but would you believe it twice...Arrested you say, maybe, but he was back in Mobile the very next morning...A Southern Baptist, now? Lord God have mercy on us all..."
Marcia was enraptured, as befitted an acolyte and the family historian-designate.
Raff tried to listen and learn something about his ancestry on the Semmes side, as Marcia had instructed him to do, but he couldn't hear enough or follow even a single story. He preferred to read comics; he was neither the genealogist nor the mathematician required for such a celebration of the deceased multitude. He closed off his mind and began to fidget. Reached for the cat, crossed and recrossed his legs, squirmed in his chair a lot. Then he let his eyes wander. There in a dim light next to the hallway entrance was an oil painting of the Confederate warship Alabama and next to it a faded photograph of the admiral who had commanded it, Raphael Semmes himself. And all around the room, frame almost touching frame, there were photographs of people, singly or in groups, many hand-tinted. Judging from the style of clothes, the pictures were about a century old, dating mostly to the late 1800s and turn of the century. Interspersed were also a few yellowed newspaper clippings, and above one a framed brace of military medals. Nearby hung a gold-trimned certificate from the Mobile Daughters of the Confederacy. In its center was the battle flag, its red faded to pink. None of the pictures was labeled.
After the better part of an hour, Sissy returned with the lemonade and a plate of soda crackers. "Scooter," said Marcia, "why don't you take your drink and go with Sissy to see the chickens?"
His face brightening with relief, Raff sprang from his chair. He stepped around the cat, which had drifted off into a ball of sleep, and followed Sissy down the hall. They proceeded through a kitchen filled with jelly glasses and cracked enamel cookware, and on out to the backyard. The yard was a small fenced-in enclosure lined by crooked catalpa trees, a broad-leafed species that seemed to thrive best in bare urban yards. Its packed dirt floor was spattered with chicken droppings and shed feathers. Along one side of the yard was a coop with a cast-iron roof and sides made of chicken wire. The interior, crowded with roosts and nest boxes, was a bedlam of hens making chicken noises. The smell of ammonia was overpowering. A rooster and several hens were running loose outside. They scattered as Sissy stepped in their direction and shooed them away with waving arms.
Walking the length of the coop, Sissy began to laugh, pointing to one thing or another, saying, "Look there! Look there!" over and over. Otherwise, she was a lady of few words. Raff tried but could not make out anything special in the places she indicated. When they reached the end of the coop and circled back, Sissy's commands continued and her laughter grew louder. Raff was getting rattled, and started to move past her on his return to the house. Sissy stopped laughing and came to a halt, as if to hold him back. Then she abruptly turned around and chased one of the loose hens down the length of the small yard. She cornered it at the angle of the rear wooden fence, gathered it struggling and squawking in her arms. She grabbed its lower legs with both hands and turned it upside down and held it that way, with its wings flapping and its head hanging down, for Raff to see. Then she walked over to a low wooden table next to the farthest coop, freed one hand, and picked up a small axe lying there. Turning to face Raff, holding up the chicken and axe, she uttered her last word of the day. "Dinner."
Raff was shocked and frightened by what was about to happen. Then he quickly pulled himself together. He was determined not to witness the execution of another large bird, the second in just a week, and this time in an unimaginably grisly manner. So he said loudly, "Thank you, Miss Sissy, that was fun," then walked to the back door of the house and stepped inside. Behind him, the rooster crowed. Sissy stood stock-still and watched him go.
Ainesley returned at the appointed time, and to the minute, afraid that Marcia might call him in to say hello to Jessica. After prolonged goodbyes, with thankfully no kisses asked this time of Raphael, he and Marcia climbed into the cab of the pickup and the family continued on their journey toward the center of Mobile. Marcia was silent, not easily jarred out of the pleasant interlude with Aunt Jessica. As they passed out of Satsuma, Ainesley turned to Raff with crinkled eyes and an ironic smile.
"Hey, Scooter, did you have a good time?"
Marcia scowled, watching her son from the corner of her eye. Raff hesitated. His best diplomatic response was needed to solve this little crisis.
"It was all right, I guess."
Marcia countered, "How was Sissy and her chickens?"
Raff looked straight ahead. He wanted off the hook, fast.
"Okay, I guess. She's a little strange, though."
"Insane, you mean," Ainesley said.
Like a spring-loaded trap Marcia snapped back with the correct upper-class response: "Ainesley, I told you before not to be prejudiced against anyone just because they're different from you."
6
THE SEMMESES' ANCESTRAL home was set on a full acre in the heart of old Mobile and situated on the Azalea Trail just off Old Shell Road. It was an authentic antebellum mansion, with a spiral staircase leading to the family living quarters on the second floor. It even had a name of its own, Marybelle, after the first owner's wife, who died during a yellow fever epidemic in the 1840s. The builder was Richard Stoughton, a furniture manufacturer who had come down from Providence with his family and set up a thriving business. Mobile was in its boom period then, having emerged as the key and virtually only transit port for the rich cotton and tobacco production of the Mobile Basin. In less than forty years it had grown from a ten-block village with mud roads to a small city.
When the Alabama legislature voted Alabama out of the Union in 1861, Stoughton knew that war was inevitable. He hurriedly transferred his funds to a New York bank, illegally as it turned out under Confederacy law. He put Marybelle and his extensive upriver property in the hands of a caretaker, and sailed with his family back to Providence. Despite the carnage afterward that laid w
aste to so many great mansions of the South, Marybelle remained intact during the war. Mobile was blockaded by the warships of the Union fleet, but otherwise out of the range of battle until it was occupied by infantry following the Battle of Mobile Bay. With the blockade throttling the supply of arms and other imports, little threat remained to Union forces on the move farther north, and Mobile was spared the ruinous fate of Atlanta and Savannah. The little city was not pillaged and burned like these other Confederate strongholds. Its citizens were able to lead more or less normal lives, albeit impoverished and closely watched for the short remainder of the war. Marybelle was heavily looted but remained structurally intact, and in fact was given extra protection as a Union battalion headquarters into the early years of the Reconstruction. Some family friends spoke of it jokingly as "Yankees' Rest" or, less kindly, "Bluebelly Haven."
Mr. Stoughton died in 1867, before he could return to Mobile. His heirs, comfortably settled in Providence, had no wish to leave. The prospects in their old home, they believed, were grim. And truly, in every aspect of life a darkness had fallen upon the South. Although the Confederate states were again part of the Union, in fact they were treated as occupied territories. Their industrial base, never large before the war, had been turned to rubble. Cotton, tobacco, and timber, the main economic base, were picking up, but at a slow and erratic pace. No one could gauge what kind of adjustment the newly freed slaves would make, where they would go, what labor they would accept. Their former white masters chafed under the punitive laws of the Reconstruction, their hopes laced with a sullen resentment at the radical change forced upon them. They prepared for an era of racial and civil strife.
Back in Providence, the Stoughtons could see that this was not a good time for defected Southerners to come home. With good reason they feared they might receive a hostile reception from the faithful who had stayed and suffered.
The family still held on to Marybelle and a scattering of cropland properties to the north of the city--of that they made sure in the restored federal district court. But Marybelle was now a liability. It generated no income while remaining at high risk from vandalism.
The Stoughtons decided to cut their losses and get out of the South altogether. They put up Marybelle for sale. It was quickly picked up by Thomas Semmes, an Alabama investor who had built a fortune before and during the war. He had sensibly traded most of his profits for waterfront properties in and around Mobile. The value of the land grew rapidly with the revival of the city as the major port east of New Orleans.
On this day, his fortunate descendants who currently occupied Marybelle were gathered, like aristocrats of old, at the porte cochere to greet the Codys of Clayville. Standing in front were Marcia's brother, Cyrus Semmes, and his wife, Anne.
"Well, isn't this wonderful, you all look so good!" exclaimed Anne, hugging Marcia. Cyrus and Ainesley shook hands, like businessmen.
"Yes, it's just so nice to be here!" responded Marcia.
Cyrus turned to his nephew Raphael with special attention. He shook the youngster's hand, then stooped and gave him a hug.
"Hey, guy, you're looking good, looking real good. We're all so proud of you, including Granddog."
Granddog was what Raphael as a toddler had called his grandfather when they'd first met.
The warmth of Cyrus's greeting was understandable. Standing before him was the sole male of the next generation in his immediate branch of the Semmes family. Cyrus's older daughter, Charlotte, now a sophomore at Emory University, scandalized her parents by refusing to join the Junior League. She vowed to join the Peace Corps after her graduation--and never thereafter return to live in "dull, dull old Mobile." Her sister, Virginia, a high school junior, was entirely different. A strikingly pretty blonde but something of an airhead whose principal interest was boys and whose idea of high culture was Nancy Drew books and rock concerts, she was considerably less promising academically than Charlotte.
They all walked into the splendor of Marybelle. Once again Ainesley, and now even Marcia, was struck not so much by its size as by its interior furnishings, which had been variously supplemented and refined during nearly 150 years of loving care. There was an authentic grandeur of family oil portraits along the main hall and staircase walls. The floor was the original West Indian mahogany. The banister of the staircase, a masterpiece of carved ebony, had been featured twice in Southern Living. The silverware they were about to use was a nineteenth-century Semmes heirloom.
The group proceeded directly to the long table of the dining room. Dinner had been prepared by a chef and her assistant from a catering service founded by one of those Junior League women on whom marriage had not looked kindly. The meal was now briskly served by the two Semmes house staff. The appetizer was crab gumbo made in the ineffably seasoned Mobile style, followed by a salad and main course of venison, quail eggs, and snap peas. California wines, including a Napa Valley merlot recently recommended to Cyrus by a business associate, were served to the grown-ups. Dr Pepper went to Raff and Virginia. Dessert was pecan pie a la mode.
The conversation cut back and forth obliquely across the table, so that all listened when any one person was speaking. Pleasantries quickly gave way to family news, then gossip, and finally stories of recent travel and amusing gaffes. Cyrus, a University of Alabama graduate, brought up the better-than-average record achieved this year by the Crimson Tide. If Alabama could defeat its archrival Auburn University in the upcoming classic match, it would have a clear shot at the Southeastern Conference championship. Football was one of Cyrus's passions, and he occasionally traveled up to Tuscaloosa with other alumni from Mobile for an important home game.
"If Coach Harrison loses the Auburn game, he's out of a job," Cyrus joked. "If he wins, we'll put him up for governor of Alabama."
Ainesley then managed to spring a conversation-stopper.
"I bet you didn't know, but one of my cousins, Bobby Cody, they usually call him Bubba, don't you know, is a left tackle on the Auburn team. He's had a great season and they say he might make All-American this year."
Grandfather Jonathan got up to leave at this point, annoyed at the Auburn reference and visibly tired, a result of his second heart attack four months earlier.
"I hope y'all will excuse me. It's been a long day, but then every day's been a long day for me lately. Marcia, Ainesley, and Scooter, we sure hope to see y'all again soon."
Virginia took the occasion to excuse herself also, to go to her room to study for a geometry exam, she said, but in truth to watch a bachelor reality show. Being properly brought up, she kissed her Aunt Marcia on the cheek, and then addressed Ainesley by carefully coached protocol. "Mr. Cody, sir, we're all so happy to see you and Scooter here. We want to see all of you again soon, y'hear?"
The Semmeses and Codys soon thereafter rose themselves and proceeded to the library for coffee, regular or decaffeinated, with or without chicory, and hot chocolate for Raphael. A variety of pecan candies, made at Cyrus's pecan grove out near Wilmer on the Mississippi line, were spread on a tray. Raphael took a generous handful, slipped some in his pocket for future survival purposes, and peeled off on his own to see if he could find any books on jungle adventure. He hit on a copy of William Beebe's High Jungle and scrunched up on an upholstered chair to read.
The three women--Anne, Marcia, and Charlotte--pulled their chairs close together to continue family talk. Marcia was primed for this gathering. The junior expert on Semmes lore, she was eager to share stories harvested from her mentor Aunt Jessica that afternoon.
This left Cyrus and Ainesley to square off. Given their different backgrounds and the continued anxiety of the Mobile Semmeses over the future of Marcia and Raff, there was an inevitable tension between the two men. But it went well enough. They needed no prompting, nor any reminder given by word or expression. They knew by instinct that they should seek common ground away from any topics or language associated with a privileged social class. The talk went from deer hunting, which was good this sea
son and how bow hunting was making a revival, to red snapper fishing off Dauphin Island, not so good lately, on to the troubles between Vietnamese and local shrimpers in the Gulf waters out of Pascagoula. Ainesley had thorough knowledge of these subjects, and he handled them well, adding that he thought they were letting too many of those Asian people into the country.
By evening's end an easy peace had settled over Marybelle. Talk in the library quieted to murmurs and soft laughter, and the telling of family stories. Ainesley admitted to himself that Cyrus was a "fine man," which within families in this region meant solid, a man of probity and success. Cyrus, for his part, thought Ainesley was responsible and hardworking, enough anyway to be sufferable, and he wanted the best for him. And not least, and thereby, the best for his own blood in the Cody household.
Ainesley's judgment was not misplaced. Cyrus Semmes at forty-two had led what most would call an exemplary life. Ten years older than his sister, Marcia, he had assumed very early the traditional persona of eldest son. Ainesley was impressed that this evening Cyrus had sat at the head of the dinner table, with his ailing father to the side.
Cyrus was not physically imposing. Scarcely an inch taller than the jockey-sized Ainesley, he was naturally stocky and starting to go to flab, which strained the waist buttons of his monogrammed shirts. Nor was he handsome in the conventional sense. He had thin lips that tended to tighten when he was lost in thought, slightly hooded eyes, and thin dark hair that had made a significant retreat from his forehead. He was a habitual pencil chewer and chin scratcher. He seldom laughed. Usually he just chuckled, and then only briefly, with a slight nodding of the head. Cyrus's smile was never brilliant; it was usually bestowed as a greeting or as a reward, and then only fleetingly. He was nevertheless a polished conversationalist, which meant that he listened a lot. He focused on others with a mild and friendly repose and he listened. That relaxed people. But on the other hand his memory for detail was frightening. He could summarize a two-hour business meeting in a few paragraphs, as though reading from a script. He spoke in complete sentences, in the manner of people who do not like to be interrupted.
Anthill Page 5