Miss Julia Paints the Town

by Ann B. Ross

  I glanced at some of the signs as I threaded through the crowd. Several read: SAVE OUR COURTHOUSE, others: PRESERVATION NOT RUINATION, and more than a few: DEVELOPER, GO HOME. A low chant of “Don’t tear it down” began and gained in strength as a huge crane with a wrecking ball dangling high above it was unloaded on the far side.

  I gathered, as I sidled through the onlookers, that that’s what they were waiting for—to see the ball make its first mortal hit on the courthouse. I tried not to think about it, just moved on through, searching for Arthur Kessler, the architect of destruction.

  I finally spotted him, standing with his hands in his pockets, surveying with a satisfied look on his face what was being done on his authority. A few commissioners stood behind him, watching just as raptly, as slabs of concrete were wrenched from the parking lot and diesel motors growled and a worker began to climb up into the cab of the crane. I wouldn’t have shown my face if I’d been a member of the county commission.

  “Mr. Kessler? I mean, Arthur?” I tapped him on the shoulder, fearing he couldn’t hear me for all the noise.

  He jerked around with a menacing frown on his face. Then, seeing me, it quickly turned into a pleased-with-himself smile. “Decided to come watch the excitement, huh?”

  “Not really,” I said, although I had to practically lean against him to be heard. “I want to ask you something. See that figure up on the dome?” I pointed above one of the huge trees still standing and beyond the tip of the crane. “See how she’s holding out scales in one hand and a sword in the other? And she’s blindfolded? That’s because she represents justice, balancing truth and lies on her scales and cutting through all the lawyerly obfuscation with her sword. It’s an image of Lady Justice and it has an important history that ought to be preserved. Could you tell them to be careful of it and not ruin it? It would be a lovely gesture if you’d donate it to the county. I mean, since you’re planning to wreck it, anyway.”

  He threw his head back, shading his eyes with his hand against the glare of the midday sun. “You mean, way up there on the top?”

  As I nodded, he looked back at me. “Mrs. Murdoch, there’s not a way in the world to save that thing. Not without a lot of extra time and money it would take to send somebody up there to get it. Sorry, it’ll have to come down with the dome and the rest of the building. But, sure, you can have it,” he said with a careless shrug, “if it survives.”

  “But, Arthur…”

  “We better step back,” he said, drawing me with him. “They’re about to tackle the annex.” And sure enough, the crane cranked up to a deafening roar and began to turn slowly on its tracks toward the addition on the back of the courthouse.

  As I opened my mouth to argue some more, he glanced at me with one of his know-it-all smirks. “I think you’ve got images and figures or whatever on the brain. Seeing something on a blank wall this morning, and now worrying about something sticking up on the dome. You’re a nice lady, Mrs. Murdoch, but you need something else to occupy your mind. I don’t have time for this.”

  I turned on my heel without a word and parted the crowd before me as I walked away from there, my face flaming and my head held high. A nice lady, I thought to myself, I’ll show him nice.

  As I reached my car, I heard the crash of the wrecking ball, then the splintering of wood and the clattering of bricks as the first blow against the annex was struck.

  Chapter 34

  You never know what the weather’s going to be in the spring of the year. I’d worn a sweater the day before, but this day had heated up to an immoderate degree. By the time I walked to the car, which was not parked in the shade, I was about to melt. I put the windows down while waiting for the air conditioner to cool the interior. And waiting to cool myself down, too. Arthur Kessler had shown his true colors in his total disregard for the preservation of the past. Even though that past included a termite-riddled building. There was such a thing as the Orkin man, you know.

  But Mr. Kessler had no concept of the value of tradition or history or what was important to other people. Just tear down and rip out whatever was in his way—that’s all that mattered to him. I would’ve gnashed my teeth if I’d thought it would do any good.

  “Ma’am?”

  I jerked back from the window as a face suddenly appeared next to mine. “What! Who are you?”

  “Andy Jordan. Abbotsville Times. We’re running a special edition on the courthouse, and I’m doing a front-page article featuring local comments. Would you care to comment on what’s happening here?”

  “I certainly would. Get in the car, young man, and I’ll give you a comment.”

  He hopped to it, running around the front of the car and sliding into the passenger seat. He’d replaced the windbreaker I’d first seen him in with a T-shirt that had seen better days, but he still wore his Panthers ball cap.

  He clicked his Bic pen and held a stenographer’s pad at the ready. “Okay, let’s have it.”

  “First of all,” I said, more than ready to pour it out, “I am heartsick that the commissioners voted to turn a developer loose on what belongs to every taxpayer in this county. Arthur Kessler has no sense of history nor does he have any concept of the architectural value of that building, even if it is on its last legs. They don’t build them the way they used to anymore, and I’m speaking aesthetically, not structurally. I’m sure that whatever he puts up in the place of the courthouse will be a modern eyesore—stark, sterile and tasteless.”

  Scribbling fast, Andy Jordan said, “Can I quote you on that?”

  “You certainly may.” I took a minute to collect my thoughts. “And another thing, I asked him as courteously as I knew how—appealed to his civic responsibility, you might say—to at least save the figure of Lady Justice on the dome, and he as good as told me to go jump in the lake. Too expensive, he said. Too time-consuming, he said. Well, what’s the hurry, I’d like to know. That figure or statue or whatever it is up there was a gift from a grieving family to the town, and it was made in France more than a hundred years ago. If the building itself is beyond repair, as I’ve been told but which I’m not sure I believe, that figure certainly is not. It ought to be saved and placed somewhere to remind us all of what justice is, even though I haven’t seen much of it lately. And furthermore…”

  “Hold on. Let me get that down.” He bent over his pad, writing furiously, his tongue sticking out of his mouth.

  “Well, hurry up,” I said, my concerns boiling up and overflowing. “I don’t have all day. Now, as I was saying, I may be wrong—you can look it up somewhere—but that figure represents the centuries-old idea of fairness in the law and the blindness of true justice as far as the status of litigants is concerned. Or something like that. She is blindfolded, you know. Oh, and another thing, Lloyd was just reading about this the other day…”

  “Who’s Lloyd?”

  “My…just put the son of a friend. Anyway, he was studying this in Civics or History or something. The ancient Greeks, when they established the rule of law in Athens, well, they put up a statue to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, to remind them of the rule of law and of the right way to do things. And that’s important in this day and age, too, when everybody and his brother think that the law is something to get around and loophole out of. The people of Abbotsville need a reminder as much as anybody, and the figure of Lady Justice would serve the purpose admirably. She stands for something important and shouldn’t be relegated to the county dump, which is already full. But that’s another subject.” I glanced over at him. “Did you get all that?”

  “Boy, did I ever.”

  “You might add that Mr. Kessler not only does not appreciate history, he doesn’t know it, either.” I cringed as the air was rent by another crash of the wrecking ball. The car shuddered from the thud of falling bricks. I could hear the gasping awe of the crowd of onlookers and wondered if they were enjoying the spectacle or lamenting it. “I’ll tell you this, young man,” I went on, filled with grief at the l
oss and anger at the futility of my efforts to run Mr. Kessler out of town. “It is a crying shame what that man is doing to us. He is ruining our skyline forever. Who wants to see an upended box of condos instead of that gilded dome? I, for one, do not.” I paused to wipe my eyes, overcome with the unfairness of it all. “Did you get that?”

  “Oh, yeah. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s about it. Well, you might mention that there’s to be a barbecue soiree at Mrs. Horace Allen’s house this Saturday afternoon. Mr. Kessler will be there because he wants an opportunity to meet the people of Abbotsville. So anybody who would like to tell him how they feel about replacing a piece of history with an influx of new residents is welcome to drop by and speak their mind.”

  “Oh, boy. Me, too?”

  “Absolutely. Bring your pad and Bic, too.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it. Now, if I can get your full name and address. Your age, too.”

  “I am Mrs. Julia Springer Murdoch and I live on Polk Street. That’s enough for the paper, because I don’t want any uninvited drop-ins at my house. As for my age, you’re old enough to know better than to ask. Now, I’ve got to get home.” And I rolled up the windows and revved the motor.

  “Yes, ma’am. Thanks, thanks a lot for this.” He opened the door and stepped out, talking to himself as he went. “My editor’s gonna love this. Man, oh, man.”

  My feet and my spirits were dragging as I walked into the house. I felt as low as the courthouse soon would be. The annex was just a pile of bricks and shattered joists by now, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Well, Lillian,” I said, putting my pocketbook on the counter with a great sigh, “the annex was all but gone when I left, and they’re starting on the courthouse itself tomorrow.”

  “You better move that,” she said with a nod at my pocketbook. “I’m rolling out dough here.” She sprinkled flour on a pastry cloth and smoothed the rolling pin over it.

  “So you are.” I picked up the pocketbook and put it on the table, earning a frown from her. But I was too dispirited to care. “What kind of pie are you making?”

  “Choc’late, for a change. None of that fruit looked too good at the produce stand this mornin’.” She lifted a round of pastry and fitted it into a Pyrex pie plate. “Lord he’p us,” she suddenly exclaimed. “You never did get no lunch, did you? ’Less you eat downtown, which I hope you did.”

  “I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, sitting at the table and propping my head on my hand. “Oh, Lillian, I am just heartsick at what’s going on down there.”

  “Well, you better get over it. Lloyd be home here any minute now, an’ he don’t need to see you mopin’ ’round ’bout something nobody can change, once it done.” She walked over to the stove and stirred the chocolate mixture in a saucepan. “What you need to do is put all that behind you, and think up something you still can do something about.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said, a tiny ray of hope stirring in the back of my mind. “Only thing is, I don’t know if it can be done.”

  Footsteps and the sound of the screen door opening made me sit up straight and put a smile on my face. “Hey, Miss Julia,” Lloyd said as he entered the kitchen. “Hey, Miss Lillian. Something sure smells good.” He let his heavily laden bookbag slide off his shoulders onto the floor, then grinned at me. “I’ll take it upstairs soon as I have a snack. I’m about to starve. You wouldn’t believe what the lunchroom served today.”

  “Set down then,” Lillian said, smiling at the boy, as she removed the saucepan from the stove. “I got cheese and crackers and some grapes for you. You, too, Miss Julia. You gonna cave in, you don’t eat something.”

  She joined Lloyd and me at the table, bringing with her two cups of coffee and a glass of milk for Lloyd. “Now don’t y’all ruin yo’ supper. No need to be cookin’ all day if everybody jus’ pick at it.”

  I nibbled at the cheese and crackers, my mind churning away. Finally, I said, “Wonder how hard it’d be to get up on that dome?”

  Lillian frowned. “What dome?”

  “The one on the courthouse, of course. Mr. Kessler is bound and determined to destroy everything in his path, but that statue on the dome is worth some little effort to save. And I’ll tell you this,” I said, my spirits reviving with a spurt of adrenaline, “if it can be saved, it ought to be. Just because Arthur Kessler won’t get it down in one piece, doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  “You better not be thinkin’ what I think you thinkin’,” Lillian said, glaring at me.

  “Of course not,” I said, waving my hand, but I probably was. “I know for a fact that the dome was cleaned and regilded some years ago, so that means somebody had to go up there to do it. All I have to do is find out who it was and send him back up again. This time with a wrench or a saw instead of a scrub bucket.”

  Lillian frowned even deeper. “I don’t like the sound of that. You fixin’ to get somebody to steal something don’t b’long to you, an’ you get in trouble an’ whoever you get will be in the same turmoil, too.”

  “No, no, Lillian, that statue is mine. Mr. Kessler gave it to me as plain as day. He said if it survived the destruction of the building, I could have it. He didn’t say a word about how or when it survives. All I have to do is find somebody who knows how to get up to it.”

  Chapter 35

  “I know,” Lloyd said, brushing cracker crumbs off his shirt.

  “You do? Who?”

  “Mr. Poochie Dunn. We saw him on the dome that time our class toured the courthouse. Well, not on the dome exactly, but way up there on that little walkway around it. Miss Spenser got real mad at us ’cause we wanted to watch him instead of a trial. She made us write a paper on justice in America, which I didn’t think was fair.”

  “Poochie Dunn,” I said, letting the name roll off my tongue. “I didn’t know he was still alive.”

  “Oh, he alive all right,” Lillian said. “Not even a ole man yet, though he look it. He mos’ly wander ’round the streets, not turnin’ his hand to a lick of work.”

  “Well, I’m about to give him a job.” And I got up and opened a drawer, looking for the telephone book.

  I ended up calling Etta Mae first, mainly because Poochie Dunn wasn’t listed, at least under that name, and because I needed her help to find him.

  “Sorry to wake you,” I told her since she sounded as if she’d been taking the nap I’d recommended. “But plans have changed and our focus is redirected.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I was just down at the courthouse, and it’ll be a pile of rubble by this time tomorrow, the way they’re going. Now, Etta Mae, there’s still something that can be salvaged from this swath of destruction Arthur Kessler’s bent on making. If we hurry. So, here’s the question: Do you know how to get in touch with Poochie Dunn?”

  “Poochie Dunn? Why?”

  “Because I want that statue and he’s the only one who can get it for me.”

  “What statue?”

  “Oh, Etta Mae, you know. The statue of Lady Justice up on the dome. Mr. Kessler’s not making one effort to preserve it, but he said I could have it if it survives the demolition. Well, I have no intention of taking a chance with that wrecking ball pounding away at everything. We’ve got to get our hands on that statue tonight, and Poochie’s the one to do it.”

  Lloyd’s eyes popped and Lillian yelped behind me. “Tonight! You not gonna do no such a thing.”

  I waved my hand to quiet Lillian, while listening to Etta Mae’s response.

  “Well, okay, I guess,” she said. “Poochie’s not always clicking on all cylinders, you know. Maybe that’s why he’s willing to climb that high. Nobody else would do it, that’s for sure. He lives in a boarding house across from the old depot on the street that goes out to the lumberyard. You know the one I’m talking about?”

  “I’m not sure. Will you go with me?”

  “Sure,” she said, sounding wide awake by this time. “And if we don’t find him
there, why, we can just drive up and down Main Street. He wanders around a lot.”

  We arranged for her to come by for me in an hour, a delay that didn’t set well with me but I had to accept it. She needed time for a shower and a change of clothes, as well as time for the drive from Delmont. And for several layers of makeup, if I knew her.

  “I can’t just sit around doing nothing,” I said, hanging up the phone and turning back to Lloyd and Lillian. “I am so agitated I’m about to jump out of my skin.” My head jerked up at the sound of a car pulling in the drive. “Oh, there’s Sam. He’s a little early today. Now, you two, not a word to him about this. He has enough on his plate without adding Poochie Dunn to it.”

  Lillian shook her head. “Well, he oughtta be told what you up to.”

  “I’ll tell him, don’t worry,” I said, hurrying to the door to meet him. “But in my own good time.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, opening the oven door to check on the roast, “an’ I know when that’ll be. If it up to you, Mr. Sam won’t know a thing till you get whatever you thinkin’ ’bout doin’ already done.”

  I ignored her, pointed my finger at Lloyd and said, “Not a word now.” He grinned, and I opened the door to my sweet, trusting husband.

  As always when I saw his eyes light up, my heart lit up, too. “Julia,” he said, and in front of everybody he put his arms around me and kissed me good. I didn’t deserve him, but I was glad I had him. So there, Helen Stroud and all the other women who would snatch him up in a minute if I ever let my guard down.

  I disentangled myself, slightly embarrassed, but pleased by such an ardent display of affection. “My goodness, what a nice welcome. But come sit down and tell us what’s going on downtown.”

  He took a seat across from Lloyd, spoke to him and shook his hand in greeting, pleasing me with his gentlemanly attention to the boy. Then he looked up at me. “Well, sweetheart, the courthouse is as good as gone. I’m sorry, since I know you wanted to save it.”