Harry inspected the long narrow hull. It still sported strips of tarnished brass on its stem and sheer. The boat was suspended at waist height on a once strong cradle that rode on rubber wheels. The heavy legs of the boat supports were soft to Harry’s touch and he knew that years of insects had eaten away most of their strength. A few more months of neglect and the boat would overwhelm its foundation and crash to the floor. As it was, he feared to touch it.
Hacker built “Miss Nanticoke,” 1912, 150 H.P. Van Blerck, Owner, Mahoney.
The information was carefully typed on a small piece of paper tacked to the rack holding the boat. The mahogany craft looked to Harry to be between twenty or thirty feet long with a curved deck in front extending most of the way to the stern. Six huge gray exhaust pipes stuck out three or more feet from the cowling. At the stern two small seats were side by side behind a great steering wheel and over a protruding rudder and propeller.
“Somebody fixed the legs,” said Harry, pointing to the unpainted two by fours that had been placed over the older painted legs.
“They been like that since I started coming in here,” said WeeJay.
The boy stood near the hull, his small frame stretched against the curved boat lines, his head barely as high from the ground as the boat’s deck.
WeeJay looked up at Harry and said, “You want to hear the story of Mister Mahoney?”
“Sure,” said Harry, and he listened as the boy, in his strong voice began to recite like a grammar school report what he had heard since childhood about Mahoney and the first River Sunday motorboat race.
He started by saying that he had heard the story from his grandmother when she sat out on the porch in her chair, telling him the history in the same way she informed him that she had heard it all herself years before from his Uncle Walker, that Walker sat in the same place as WeeJay on the porch those hot summer nights.
“Mister Mahoney had appeared one day in the spring of 1912 with a group of his friends, coming over from Baltimore on the steamboat. They were well dressed men and women, all young, the women in bright long dresses and the men in straw hats and blue blazers. Seeing them, people said they were rich, that they had as much money as the Terments, maybe more. They took rooms at the Chesapeake Hotel and had fun like other tourists walking on the streets of River Sunday. Before the steamer left Mister Mahoney’s raceboat was unloaded and moored near the town dock. That boat was the same one that now sits in Walker’s shop. While it was moored that long ago day at the town pier, it created a great deal of interest from the townspeople.
“Mahoney then went to the pier. He told them that this boat was a Hacker built just for him. He announced to the crowd that he was inviting some of his friends from other cities who had racing boats to come to River Sunday and to race for a gold cup. He held up the small trophy which became the official reward for racers every year afterward when the race was held.”
WeeJay’s voice was that of a child but his story was mature and measured. Harry could hear the same words coming from Walker and being transposed through the grandmother, an oral tradition of the finest kind of storytelling.
“On the morning of the race, Mahoney ordered the course to be swept. The course itself had been laid out as three legs around the monument with several full circumferences adding up to a thirty mile run. Sweeping the harbor was a necessity, Mister Mahoney insisted, since the boats ran at high speeds and any trash, logs or pieces of boat timber that were floating in the water during the race might put a hole in the hulls or jam the rudders and propellers.
“To add to the excitement a Wright Flyer airplane was flown over the harbor. A guard had to be kept at the airfield to keep away people cutting pieces of the wing fabric for souvenirs.
“At the starting line the Terment’s large steam yacht had arrived from Baltimore. On board were many of the invited notables of River Sunday. Men and women lined the sides of the yacht and sipped coffee in small cups at tables along her deck. On a wicker table in the yacht’s saloon was the trophy gold cup donated by Mahoney.
“All went well at the start of the race. Three boats lined up, clouds of white puffing smoke running back and forth across the harbor as their drivers tried to tune the handmade gasoline engines for maximum revolutions. Three other boats still sat moored in the shallows, their hatches open, their engines pulled apart with broken parts that their mechanics were unable to fix for the race.
“Mister Mahoney and his boat, Miss Nanticoke, started two boat lengths behind the other two racers. He did not begin to catch up until after the first ten miles of the thirty mile race had elapsed. Most of the gamblers on the harbor piers and at the Chesapeake Hotel porch were convinced that Mahoney was playing a safe race and probably expecting the other machines to break down so he could win on endurance only.
“When the yellow boat, the leader, did break down, the crowd cheered Mahoney’s wisdom in holding back. A small utility boat set off from the pier to tow in the yellow racer. Its driver was standing on its deck, his arms crossed in despair, as his engine screamed but was unable to push the boat forward. His propeller, handmade and weak owing to the technology of those days, had snapped off and was buried in the mud at the bottom of the harbor.
“The other driver raced ahead, on his way to make a record speed run. Mahoney began to approach. At each turn the crowd cheered as they found Mahoney ever closer to the leader. The leader, a white runabout built in Baltimore, was holding its own at about a boat’s length.
“Suddenly Mahoney’s boat rushed ahead or the other boat faltered, no one was ever sure. Mahoney crashed into the leader, stopping that boat dead in the water and sinking, while the Miss Nanticoke flipped upside down from the impact. No sound came from the shoreline where children and adults were watching from every sort of perch. The other boat sank and its driver and mechanic were rescued. Mister Mahoney was not so lucky. He was drowned, caught underneath, the hull visible even from the shore as an upturned curved line ending in a strutting propeller. Men climbed all over the floating deathtrap, finally managing to swim underneath and extract the body.”
“Tragic,” Harry said, running his hand over some of the brass cylinder jackets of the custom Van Blerck engine.
“His mechanic got killed too,” said WeeJay.
He went on to say that the hull of Miss Nanticoke disappeared after the race. Years later, Walker had found it rotting in a dairy barn near the Bay side of the Wilderness Swamp with some of its brass parts beside it in the straw. He brought it back on a trailer. Before Walker cleaned it up, it had grass growing from some of its deck seams and the stern rudder assembly was crushed underneath. The mahogany was discolored gray and white from where bags of fertilizer had been piled on top of the wood.
WeeJay added, “My grandmother told me that it looked like a dead body just pulled out of a grave. Walker pulled that trailer through town. She was real proud of Walker.”
“Coming through town, just like when Walker’s own boat was found,” said Harry.
“Just like,” said WeeJay.
“Then the town named the race after Mahoney?” asked Harry.
The boy nodded, and said, “’Cept they changed it when Mister Homer Kirby got killed. Then the race name was changed to Kirby.”
Harry reached up and touched the large horizontal steering wheel of the Miss Nanticoke. Outside the building, he heard a woman’s voice calling.
“WeeJay, where are you, son?” WeeJay walked toward the open boards to leave the shop. He spoke in a louder voice, bringing Harry back to the present.
“I got my own boat too,” he said, as though owning a boat were the real accomplishment of life.
Harry called after him, “WeeJay, what did you mean when you said Walker didn’t get a chance to race his own boat?”
WeeJay put his hands on his hips and faced Harry. “Somebody got him in trouble so he couldn’t race, is all.”
He ran outside. Harry climbed out through the vines and saw the boy hugging the wais
t of a woman standing at the back door of the house.
WeeJay’s mother had spotted them and was asking in a matronly voice from the back porch. “Now what you doing in that old barn, child?”
“I’m showing Harry about Walker for the paper.”
The mother saw Harry and wiped her hands on her apron. “I’m Louise Douglas,” she said slowly, smiling at Harry, as he held out his hand to introduce himself. Louise dried her hand again on her apron and took his. She was a thin woman in her fifties, wearing a blue cotton dress under the apron.
“Did my boy show you what you wanted, Mister Jacobsen?” she said.
“He was telling me Mahoney’s story,” Harry said.
“He got all that stuff from his grandmother. Too much foolishness,” she said.
“When Walker was alive,” she went on, “I was just a youngster. I come out and always set up on the deck of that old boat while he was working.”
“I’d like to do a story on this shop,” said Harry. “Maybe, after the regatta.”
She looked at Harry. “I guess I ought to thank you for offering. Not usual my family gets any offers.”
“Pretty hard to change the way people have always thought about him,” said Harry.
“We get along. It’s better than it was.”
“I hope so,” Harry said.
“WeeJay goes to the same school as the others do. Kids play together more now. It’s not all about Walker, you know, Mister Jacobsen. A few of the whites hate, same with some of the blacks. Less and less of them hating now so maybe that’s good.”
“What about all the children who played back then in Walker’s shop?”
“They were just like the rest of them. WeeJay’s grandmother never understood that. When Walker died, the children left too, like they had suddenly grown up. Ain’t a one ever come around. She said they would come back someday but they never did.”
“Kids don’t think about things like that. They go from one age to another and it’s like the past is all over, forgotten,” said Harry.
“I guess,” WeeJay’s mother said. “Trouble is my mother lived with it, thought they wouldn’t forget. She used to treat them kids as her own.”
“Why do you think he set the fire?” asked Harry.
She looked at him, then WeeJay, and Harry could tell she was deciding whether to trust him. “Some people, after a while, kinda come to the conclusion that he was angry about what happened to the General Store and took it out on the town. I ain’t sure if that was the reason. Walker had his mind on boats, that’s all. It’s all history now anyway. Ain’t nothing that can be done about it.”
“What was it like, the General Store?” asked Harry. He stood looking up at her, she standing on the back step.
“The white folks didn’t want no competition,” she said, nodding her head.
“You said it was white and black.”
“I mean the rich white folks didn’t want the competition,” she explained. “Lots of the poor whites worked at General Store.”
“Oh,” said Harry.
She said, “I figure was some rich ones that just didn’t want the General Store that’s all.”
“Most whites in town don’t seem to know much about the General Store,” said Harry.
“Don’t you know it so,” she laughed. “WeeJay’s grandmother had some of the stock in General Store too. Folks did in those days.”
“General Store had stock?” asked Harry.
“Oh, my, yes. I’d see her there at the kitchen table with the paper and pencil and the reports from the company and she’d be calculating how much money she had.”
She paused. “When it went down, that was the end of my scholarship too.”
“It was the source of your school funds?” Harry said.
“Yessir.”
“Did that bother Walker?” Harry asked. “You were his sister. It must have hurt him.”
“He didn’t like it none,” she said. “The same thing happened to other girls too. Money that they were going to get for school couldn’t be paid.”
“I guess Walker being in trouble with the law didn’t help matters any either?”
“No, made it worse for all of us,” she said.
“You said you weren’t sure that disappointment about General Store was the cause of him setting the town fire,” Harry said.
“Walker had a girl friend,” she said.
“I met her,” said Harry.
She nodded. “General Store had a fire at the office. She got burned some. Not killed just burned. It might have made him angry, I don’t know.”
“You think he died out in the Swamp?”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. Then she went on, “Listen, Mister Jacobsen, I got an idea for you. You go around and interview the families of color here in the county and find out their history.”
“Why would I want to do that?” asked Harry.
“Get your circulation up. Black folks be a lot more interested reading about their past than the past history of the whites.”
“Some of these people were probably slaves, I guess,” he said.
WeeJay came and stood beside his mother. She added, “You might bother some folks bringing out history, like that black folks built most of these old mansion houses.” She chuckled, straightening her apron. “I hear them talking about the fancy architects that come in here in the colonial days. Ask me, weren’t no more than some smart black man who set those bricks so fancy.”
Harry said, “I ‘m not worried about, as you say, bothering people. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll think about it. Maybe you can help me with the research.”
“I’d like that,” she said. “Haven’t done much writing since my days when I had that scholarship.”
As he walked back to the paper, a car came up alongside him and followed him until he noticed it. He turned and saw Lulu behind the wheel of her convertible and she was grinning at him.
“Lord, Harry, if you hadn’t turned around, I’d have had to honk my horn to attract you. What were you thinking about so deep?”
Harry shook his head, smiling.
“Want a ride?” she asked.
He said “Thanks,” and stepped over the low door and into the seat beside her.
“What did you say to my sister? I ‘ve never seen her so upset, Harry.”
“We talked about Walker and your husband.”
“That’s what did it. She still thinks he was murdered. Poor thing.”
He looked at her. “I’d like to ask you a personal question.”
“I don’t have any secrets.”
“Do you think your husband was murdered?”
“Honey,” she said, lurching the car slightly with the accelerator, “that’s past history. You want to go dig up all that it’s fine. Just don’t get me or any of my customers in trouble. I got enough problems with the Kirbys right now and I don’t want any trouble with my operating license.”
“Was it true?”
“Who knows? My old man had a big mouth. Too big. I was always telling him to stick to bartending. They say he hit a tree when he was sideswiped. I don’t know because I wasn’t there. I don’t even know what he was doing out on that road. Maybe he was going after some woman. I miss him once in a while but that was a long time ago. What’s done is done.”
She had stopped the car in front of the newspaper office.
Harry said, “I heard he was concerned about financial dealings in the town government.”
“I forgot about you, Harry. You don’t let things go, do you? Well, my old man, he didn’t know as much as I do, never did. Whatever he thought he knew wasn’t anything worth getting into trouble over, let me tell you. Nothing for your paper, that’s for sure.”
She smiled at him. “So, you coming by tonight?”
Harry shook his head. He still didn’t understand why, but when Lulu asked that question, his first thought was of Annie.
Chapter 14
Wednesda
y, August 4, 11 am
“I drove in by the airport this morning. You won’t believe whose plane is parked out there,” said Annie.
“Tell me,” Harry said. He had just returned to his desk from his visit to Walker’s boat shed.
“Do you know who William Elliott is?” she asked.
“Wall Street,” he said.
She nodded. “He is without a doubt the biggest native son we ever had. Bigger than Jake Terment or even Double X.”
Harry thought hard and then he connected the name. “Billy Elliott,” he said. “The friend of Catch Kirby and Peggy Tolchester in Walker’s Patrol. Billy’s that guy?”
”Elliott’s worth a fortune,” she nodded.
“Maybe he’s here for the regatta,” said Harry.
“He didn’t come last year,” she said. “Why would he come this year, especially with all the crowds? Anyway, I don’t think he’s visited River Sunday for years so maybe this visit is an event for the paper. What do you think?”
“I’d like to get his opinion on Walker’s motives,” said Harry.
“All I can tell you is that I’ve never had any luck interviewing the celebrities that come to River Sunday. Except, of course, these race drivers who want all the press they can get. The other famous people come down here to hide.”
Harry chuckled. “Could be he wants to make a big donation to his home town.”
Annie shook her head. “Keep dreaming.”
Harry said, thoughtful, “Where does he live? I think I’ll drive out there and see if I can talk to him.”
She laughed. “If he was a typical southern boy, he’d go north, make his money, then come back to live in the old mansion, like Scarlett O’Hara did.”
“Like Jake Terment,” observed Harry.
She nodded. “Only Billy’s parents didn’t have a mansion. His father was the town banker with a middle class income. They had a house near the hotel which got torn down a few years back and his mother’s family were farmers. He got this little parcel of land from his mother’s estate. I expect he just keeps a house here for duck hunting in the winter.”
Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3) Page 18