by Tamar Myers
I smiled graciously at her. There was no point in holding a grudge. After all, she’d only been doing her job. Besides, the smattering of applause from the assembled at the foot of the steps was both heartening and informative. In fact, it gave me an idea for a business venture, should the antiques business ever bottom out. What is it folks enjoy most when visiting a historic city? Not the history; that comes in second. What they enjoy above all else is the sense of history, that something happened here, that there were real-life Scarlett O’Haras and Rhett Butlers running around.
What if I updated that concept a bit? Tourists, I’ve noticed, are fascinated by us locals—even newly transplanted locals like myself. What if there was a tour that one could take that would offer a glimpse into the lives of contemporary Charlestonions? Warts and all. Of course the warts would be carefully scripted and the authentic Charlestonians would be paid actors. The drama students would prosper, as would I, and the tourists could return home with tales to tell, which would undoubtedly bring in even more tourists, and the service industries and area merchants would thrive. I could call the venture “A Peek at Charleston’s Private Parts”—or maybe not.
The rumbling of a male voice disturbed my reverie. “Earth to Miss Timberlake, I believe the expression is. Are you in there?”
“W-What?”
Thank heavens Colonel Humphrey seemed more amused than irritated. “Please come all the way in.” He addressed Melissa. “You may go now, young lady. And please close the door behind you. We don’t want to let flies, or tourists, into the house. They’re the two things I can’t stand.”
Melissa closed the door as the shocked tourists gasped. I couldn’t blame them. Wasn’t the Colonel famous for mingling with their ilk? Well, he certainly wouldn’t be on my tour of the Holy City.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said as he motioned me to follow him. “Yes, it’s an act. But if I didn’t have a little fun with them, I’d be tempted to run them over with my car. Did you know they climb my garden gate and peer into my windows? I’ve even caught them going through my garbage. And this was before I started putting on my little shows.”
Even at home, behind closed doors, the Colonel was a showman. He was still dressed in his blue and white seersucker suit and his trademark bow tie. Completing his regalia was the jade-topped cane I’d let go for a song—well, a very pleasant song.
“We have a garden tub,” I said ruefully. “It looks out on what we thought was a very secluded part of the yard. I used to love looking out at real gardenias whenever I took a gardenia bubble bath, but not since the time I looked up from my bubbles to find a family of four staring at me. Well, three of them were staring, at any rate. The father was too busy taking my picture.”
He chuckled briefly. “Doesn’t surprise me. Please, Miss Timberlake, take a seat.”
I glanced around to see my options. He’d led me into a large room with dark paneled walls and a stamped tin ceiling. The furniture was Victorian, the upholstered pieces in dusty rose velvet. On the floor was a pair of very large animal skins. One was zebra, the other that of a large antelope, maybe a kudu. On the walls, intermixed with electrified sconces, were the mounted heads of other unlucky beasts, most of them in ratty condition. I recognized a lion, a leopard, a rhinoceros, a Cape buffalo, a warthog, and more antelope species. The latter had widely varied horns; some short and to the point, and others twisted into astonishing shapes.
“Shot every one of these myself,” he said proudly.
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’m a Southern girl and hunting is an important part of our culture, although I personally am not into it. But we primarily hunt deer, of which we have an overabundance, or pigs, which are an introduced animal that uproot the forests and devour the eggs of ground-dwelling birds.
He pointed to the rhinoceros with his cane. “That’s a white rhino. Northern white rhino from the Congo, to be exact. Shot him back in the day when there were plenty of them. Now they’re almost extinct. Maybe only fifteen left.”
“Fifteen?”
“Yes. The southern white rhino is faring much better, but even then, there are less than twelve thousand of them.”
“Hunters,” I said, no longer masking my disapproval.
“Poachers, young lady. Not sport hunters like myself, who pay fees that help run the game parks.”
I had not come to debate conservation with him. But if an argument was what he wanted, who was I to disappoint him?
“A rhinoceros is a large animal,” I said. “You really can’t blame the native poachers. They probably have no source of income, and an animal that large would supply a lot of meat. Even feed a small village.”
“You’re quite right, my dear. Quite right, when you’re not wrong, which in this case, sadly you are. Rhinos are poached mainly for their horns. Often their carcasses are left to rot in the bush, where they become dinner for hyenas and vultures.”
I looked more closely up at the rhino head above me. The horn was ugly when compared to many of the antelope horns. It was impossible to believe someone would kill a magical creature like the white rhinoceros, second only in size to the elephant, for its horns.
“If what you say is true,” I said, “then the antelopes on these walls must also be endangered by now.”
“Some are, but most aren’t. You see, young lady, an antelope horn is just a horn. A rhino horn isn’t a horn at all, but a tightly packed bunch of hair. For centuries ground-up rhino horn has been used in Asia as an aphrodisiac, as well as for other medicinal purposes. In the Near East—Yemen to be precise—rhino horns are used as dagger hilts and convey status to the owners.” He pointed to the long sweeping horn on the rhino head above us. “That, my dear, isn’t even a real horn, but some kind of plastic. I sold the real McCoy to a Chinese merchant in the Kivu. Got almost a thousand dollars for it, and that was back in the 1950s.”
“Oh.”
He sighed. “Well, enough about rhinos. Let’s talk about what you’re really here for.”
“Yes, of course. You see, Colonel—”
“Allow me to save us both time, young lady. You are not getting that cane back. Not the one with the jade head. That’s mine. No offense, ma’am, but what caliber of antiques dealer are you? Surely, even a fair one would possess a basic knowledge of semiprecious stones. Not all antiques are made from wood and porcelain.”
“Then I guess I’m subfair. But to be fair, I have a lot on my plate now.”
“Everyone does. For all you know I could be dying of heart disease.”
“Are you? Uh, because—I’m sorry, if that’s the case.”
His eyes were small, not unlike the rhino’s, and all but hidden in the folds of time. But they twinkled now, as bright and blue as any I’d seen.
“Young lady, we all start to die the second we’re born.”
“Cliché.” I tapped my mouth gently for having misbehaved. “I meant to say touché. French was never my forte—which, by the way, is really supposed to be pronounced ‘fort,’ because it refers to one’s strong point, like the garrison type of fort. When pronounced ‘for-tay’ it becomes a musical term. Unfortunately hardly anyone gives it the preferred pronunciation these days.”
“Well said. You’ve got spunk, little one. If I was ten years younger I’d ask you to be my fourth wife.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Indeed not. I never joke about marriage.” He tapped the tip of the cane on the hardwood floor a couple of times. “Oh, what the hay, as they say in polite circles. Are you spoken for?”
I waggled my left ring finger.
He leaned forward, his mustache ends swinging like ribbon curls, and squinted. “Seems to me a feller would be wanting to make more of a statement if he had a fine filly like you in his stable. That little chip would be plum lost in a sugar bowl.”
Lost in a sugar bowl? I’d never heard anything so rude—at least not directed at me. I was tempted to show him the fine filly’s backside as I h
eaded for the door, but that meant leaving empty-handed. Instead, I decided to drag out the Southern woman’s best friend: Miss Bless Your Heart. The Colonel was from Kentucky, one of the border states, whereas I was from the Deep South, where charm dripped from lips just as surely as dew dripped from the overhanging boughs of oak trees. If sugar was what was on his mind, that’s what I’d give him. The man would never see it coming.
“Why bless your little old heart, Colonel,” I said, opening up the sugar valve. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be blind.”
“Blind?”
“This is a two carat stone, sugar pie. VSI, G color. A feller, as you put it, would have to be blind not to see this rock.”
“Hmm. Still, I would have done better by you.”
“I choose to take that as a compliment. Colonel, do you mind if we get down to business now?”
“I thought we had. My answer, by the way, is still no. The cane stays.”
Too much sugar can be bad for one’s teeth—mine were certainly on edge. Who knew it could be bad for the eyes as well? I could swear that I saw the warthog blink.
“Colonel, who did your bidding for you at the so-called locked trunk sale on Saturday?”
He swayed with surprise. “Bidding?”
“Well, I know you weren’t there. No offense, sir, but you don’t exactly blend into the background. But someone was there on your behalf, bidding in your name.”
“Young lady, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you mean.”
“But you do. I know it for fact, Colonel. I have a list of names.”
He took a step forward. “Miss Timberlake, let’s keep our voices down, shall we? These walls have ears.”
“And eyes, Colonel. They would have legs and tails as well if you hadn’t seen fit to slaughter them.”
He nodded. “Good one, if I do say so myself.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper as he crossed the room. “Yes, I did send a representative to the sale Saturday. And you can be sure that young feller who runs it is going to get a piece of my mind for having shared that information. As to what my representative was doing there—well, I’d have to say he, or she, was doing the exact same thing you were.”
“I disagree. I’m a dealer. I get my inventory from sales like that. And, of course, auctions. But surely you didn’t expect your rep to find any stuffed animal heads in that shed. Then again, given that it was a storage shed, maybe you’d gotten wind of some pack rat trophy heads—”
The Colonel’s arm was as quick as a striking snake. In a flash his cane darted out, the tip of it punching the warthog’s right eye.
“Ow! That hurt, damn it!”
Now I knew I was hallucinating. Dead warthogs seldom speak, or so I’d always been led to believe. And certainly not in English.
12
Now make yourself useful,” the Colonel ordered the dead beast, “and bring us mint juleps and some of those benne crackers.”
“Yes, sir.” The warthog sounded like a female to me.
The Colonel turned to me, his face breaking into a wreath of smiles. “This warthog normally has only one eye. The other, a glass one, of course, got lost when I moved down here from Louisville. I confess that I rehung the head over a hole in the wall, and that I have been known to observe my guests through the empty socket. But not very often, mind you. It’s quite unpleasant in there.”
Since the Colonel had previously offered me a seat, I saw no reason to put off sitting. My poor legs just barely got me to the nearest chair, so weak and rubbery had they suddenly become.
“There was a lady in there? Behind the warthog head?”
“Not a lady, my housekeeper. My representative, as you just called her.”
“Colonel, you could have blinded her.”
“Hardly. This thing has a rubber tip, and besides, it didn’t go in all the way. Trust me, I’ve been practicing.”
“So she does that a lot?”
“More and more, it seems.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Perhaps it was the absurdity of it all, perhaps it was the banana peel syndrome. At any rate, as long as the housekeeper was well enough to serve us refreshments, there was no real harm done.
The Colonel laughed as well. “Serves the old biddy right,” he said. “Last week she put Exlax in my chocolate pudding. I couldn’t leave the house for two days. That’s why I couldn’t make it to the sale.”
“Colonel, I just remembered I’m on a very strict diet. I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass up the refreshments.”
“What kind of diet?”
“It’s called the Sundown Diet. I’m not allowed to eat anything during daylight hours.”
The Colonel roared with laughter. He laughed so long and hard that I began to fear he might go into cardiac arrest. Anxiously I fumbled around in my purse for my cell phone. It had been years since I’d taken a CPR course, and frankly, I’d rather that the paramedics be the ones to give him mouth to mouth.
“I like you, little lady,” he said, when he could finally speak. “You’re a pistol. You sure you don’t want to dump that feller of yours?”
Mercifully, for everyone’s sake, the sudden appearance of the housekeeper put an end to his proposal. It also left me speechless for a minute. The woman was the spitting image of Julia Child; tall, slightly slumped at the shoulders, and with a twinkle in her left eye. Her right eye, however, was blinking rapidly.
“You don’t need to worry about the mint juleps,” she said, looking directly at me, but by no means whispering. “I only mess with the old goat’s food, not his drinking. I don’t believe in wasting alcohol. As for the benne wafers, they’re still sealed in their original wrapper.”
I adore benne wafers. The word benne means “sesame” in Mandingo, a West African language. Slaves from that region brought the recipe with them to America, and today the crisp little treats are enjoyed throughout the Deep South, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Charleston.
Since eating sesame wafers is said to bring good luck, and drinking enough mint juleps helps one not to notice bad luck, I decided that it would be in my best interest to accept the proffered snack.
“By the way,” the housekeeper said as she held the tray out to me, “your drink is on the left.”
“I heard that,” the Colonel growled. However, he sounded more amused than irritated.
The housekeeper was still looking at me. “Ma’am, can you do me a favor?”
“Certainly—if I can.”
“Tell the old goat I’m going to the movies tonight, and if he wants any supper he’s going to have to fix it himself.”
“Tell the old goat yourself,” the Colonel growled again.
“No need now,” the woman said. She set the tray on the coffee table—a very bad resin replica of an elephant topped by glass—and strode from the room.”
“Uppity old witch,” he said.
“Conceited old coot,” she said.
“Mighty fine mint julep,” I said, and took a gulp of my drink.
“Well,” the Colonel said, when it was just the two of us again, “where were we?”
“I was here, sir, watching you flirt with your housekeeper.”
“How’s that?”
“Shame on you, Colonel, for asking me, a happily married woman, to be the fourth Mrs. Humphrey, when there is another woman so desperately in love with you she can’t see straight. Literally. The good news is that you love her too.”
I could see anger and embarrassment battle for dominance on the battlefield that was his face. “This is outrageous. Miss Timberlake, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I took a second big sip just in case he meant what he’d said. “Believe me, I’ve seen this a hundred times; boy and girl fight constantly because they’re both too proud to put their true feelings on the line. But then by seventh grade they usually sort things out. Except that by now they’ve moved on to other people. Colonel, you don’t want your charming housekeeper to turn to
someone else for affection, do you?”
Uh-oh. I’d done it now. The Colonel was puffing with rage. He trembled as he steadied himself enough to lift the cane high and poked at the air above my head.
“Get out of my house, young lady. Get out now.”
I grabbed my purse from the floor beside my chair. “But I was hoping to see your cane collection.”
“Out!” he roared.
If there is status to be gained by being ushered into one of the mansions south of Broad, then there has to be something that is lost when one is thrown out on one’s ear. That thing is dignity. You don’t realize it’s there when you have it, but you sure know when you don’t. The fact that a new clump of tourists now clustered at the base of the stairs only made matters worse.
“Shame on you,” a sweaty woman hissed. “You can’t just go into people’s houses like that. You must be from up North.”
“I most certainly am not,” I said, gathering my shreds of dignity as if they were scraps of cloth to cover my nakedness.
“Hey, I resent that remark,” a second woman said. “I’m from Pittsburgh, and we are some of the politest people on earth. It’s you Southerners who need to learn manners. Why just this morning a woman with a Mississippi license plate stole the parking space I saw first.”
“So that was you!” the first woman said. “I’ll have you know I circled through that parking garage three times. I saw the space about to open and before I could circle back around you zipped in out of nowhere. Didn’t you see me waving my arms?”
“I saw you almost crash into me, that’s what I saw. Just because you drive an SUV doesn’t mean you can bully your way into a spot that isn’t yours. Is that what you call Southern hospitality?”
The woman from Mississippi put her hands on her hips. Her forehead was beaded with sweat and it ran in rivulets down her neck. Given that it was a somewhat balmy spring day, I concluded that she must have been in the middle of a hot flash. If indeed that was the case, she should be granted some leniency.
“Yankee go home,” she said, spitting each syllable out like a watermelon seed. Given her Deep South accent, that totaled seven seeds.