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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2019 by Andrea Bobotis
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Lisa Amoroso
Cover images © Leanna Dawn Bourgeois/Arcangel, Juj Winn/Getty Images, Cullen Macias/Shutterstock, Bublyk Tamara/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bobotis, Andrea, author.
Title: The last list of Miss Judith Kratt : a novel / Andrea Bobotis.
Description: Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks Landmark, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033669 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Heirlooms--Fiction. | Family secrets--Fiction. | South Carolina--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.O265 L37 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033669
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For my mom, spinner of stories
Murder Stuns Distinguished Family
Quincy Kratt, age 14, sustained a fatal gunshot wound to his person in the early hours of Friday, December 20. Young Mr. Kratt was a scion of the cotton industry in Bound, South Carolina. His father, the influential businessman Brayburn Kratt, is one of our local captains of that industry. The principal suspect in the shooting is a negro called Charlie Watson, who is employed by the Kratt Mercantile Company and whose whereabouts are as yet unknown.
York Herald, Saturday, December 21, 1929
One
May 1989
Whenever I hear a train’s horn in the distance, that bruised sound, I think of Quincy. He spent half his days down at the depot, true enough, but it’s the nature of the sound that reminds me of him, how it’s at once familiar and remote. How upon hearing it, I feel obliged to lift my gaze and weigh the horizon, but how it leaves me with less than I had before, eyes reaching toward something I’ll never see. After all, where that train’s headed, stretching across some unseen field, is anybody’s guess. Same could always be said of my brother.
That afternoon, the train’s horn made me wonder: What would remind my brother of me? I thought it might be a good question for Olva, who was sitting with me in the sunroom, both of us warming our old bones, I on the cushioned seat and she the uncushioned (her preference), our feet sharing the wicker ottoman so that, now and again, my foot accidentally nudged hers. The sound of that faraway train settled in my ear like a teaspoon of water, but Olva, eyes closed, was humming a cheery little something, and every few bars, a smile surfaced on her face.
When I asked the question “What would remind Quincy of me?” her smile fled the room.
Perhaps it was unfair of me to saddle her with the question, especially since she was ignorant of its context. The train’s horn was another reminder, an urging. I opened my mouth to tell her I was planning to write an inventory of the Kratt family’s heirlooms but closed it again. I suppose I wanted to savor my idea, unspoiled by others’ opinions, for a bit longer.
And she had not yet answered my question about Quincy. I had expected her to say something like “Miss Judith, do you mean back when your brother was alive? Or are we referring to his present-day ghost?” Because Olva is always willing to humor me. She didn’t grow up with brothers and sisters and so has a limited understanding of the vagaries of siblinghood, the way devotion is splintered with contempt, but she also has the knack for answering all manner of questions, even the type that might require her to put words in a dead brother’s mouth.
I saw her face tighten around an idea, something twisting its way from her mind like a screw digging its patient way through a plank, when, all at once, her face released, and she resumed her humming.
So I asked the question again.
“What do you think anyone—not just Quincy, it doesn’t matter who—would associate with me?”
Again, her humming faltered, and just at the verge of my being able to identify the tune.
“Maybe it’s the scent of rose water,” I suggested—just for something to say, not meaning it. “The kind Mama taught me to make from scratch. The one I let you borrow when we were teenagers.”
Olva gripped and released the arms of her chair. Her eyes took a slow tour of the sunroom before finding mine. “Why, it’s this house, Miss Judith,” she said. “When people think of you, they think of this house.”
A little oh rose from my mouth, a bright note of satisfaction.
Olva never lets me down. She was right, of course. I am inseparable from this house, its six thousand square feet sitting on four acres, not to mention the adjoining five hundred acres of our family’s land that spills out to the west and north as far as the eye can see. When people think of me, surely this great structure assembles before their eyes. I would not be put off if my name called to mind phrases such as triangular pediment, columned portico, and Palladian window. Then again, most people in these parts could hardly be expected to possess even passing knowledge of architectural vernacular. If the words Colonial Revival fell out of your mouth in their presence, they’d go looking for a big white tent under which they’d hope to find everlasting salvation, courtesy of fire and brimstone.
“Olva,” I said, looking over at her. She had closed her eyes, as if trying to gain ground on a nap. “Olva,” I said, louder this time. “Invitations to this house were hard to come by, weren’t they? Back then, I mean.”
Her eyes opened softly. “Yes,” she said before closing them again.
Olva was right. Invitations were in limited supply. That is, u
nless you had some standing in town, or unless my father, Daddy Kratt, requested your presence. His requests, hard and brusque, arrived at the arches of people’s ears like orders. Any invitation to our home was pretense for an interview, in which Daddy Kratt would appraise how much you might help him build his empire in Bound. Lurking outside the study, I sometimes eavesdropped on these interviews, feeling relief, a gentle uncoiling in my chest, that I was not on the receiving end of Daddy Kratt’s abrupt questions. You never knew when he might choose to speak. Words dropped from his economical mouth with no warning, and if people made the mistake of attempting small talk, they were always taken aback by his reply, even if they anticipated it.
My father might have been frugal with his words, but he spared no expense for this grand house. Built from sand-yellow brick, it was like the sun itself, or so Daddy Kratt made it feel, with the whole of Bound orbiting around it. He modeled much of the house on the famous Biltmore mansion, right down to the copper showerhead in the upper bathroom. So you see, when I am long gone from this earth, I will not be dissatisfied if my name invokes little more than the plumbing. Yet I suspect I’ll be remembered for more, starting with the other handsome items that populate the Kratt family home: the mahogany secretary in the hallway, the peach R. S. Prussia vase on the mantel, my grandmother’s pie safe in the kitchen. I could go on and on.
The furniture was practically begging me to share my news.
“Olva,” I said, and I didn’t have to look over, because I knew she was listening. “I am planning to write an inventory of the items in this house.”
I waited for Olva’s reply, which didn’t come. The silence held a faint whistling.
“Olva, I am planning to write an inventory of the items in this house.”
“A fine idea.”
How right she was! It makes good sense to put down a record of the things in this house, seeing as Olva and I are its last human fixtures. Such evaluations require a long perspective. Having been on this earth seventy-five years, I stand that test.
I turned to her. “I can anticipate the question in your head.”
“Can you.”
“You are wondering for whose eyes this inventory is intended. Seeing as I have no heirs. A reasonable question.”
“I imagine so.”
I sat up taller as I came around to my point. “By virtue of my inheritance, I am”—I searched for the word—“I am the keeper. Not just of the Kratt family’s valuables but of its stories, too. I tell you, Olva, I woke up seized by the idea. Given its intensity, I was half-surprised not to find a hole burned through my pillow.”
“May I ask what the urgency is?”
It was not a question I had anticipated. I thought about the piece of mail I had hidden from her earlier in the week.
“The timing is right. That is all.”
As I set out to write this inventory, I am amused by the thoughts that take residence in my mind. The distant train, for instance, with its whale call, fills the house so resonantly in certain moments that it feels nearly like a thing, and I would not be surprised to glance up and discover the sound sitting in the corner, having materialized into a noble mahogany armoire.
Years ago, the train’s arrival was the highlight of the day. When it signaled its approach, boys out hunting would hotfoot it back from the fields. Shops would shutter, and mothers could be seen ferrying picnic baskets to the depot with their young ones in tow. The turnout was a more accurate measure of our town’s population than any census could pinpoint. Men, women, and children would gather to watch on the depot platform or the wide knoll facing it, and most likely, not one had any real reason to be there other than to marvel at how the train, one moment hammering toward town, could in the next be easing into the station, as if the weight of their scrutiny alone had subdued it.
The depot was one of the places where my brother, Quincy, collected his information. He didn’t work for the train company or any of our local businesses, but I guess you could say he was a merchant in his own right, selling the secrets he learned about people. In return, he earned a little money and the racking dread of everyone around him. Never seemed enough, though. I suspect he would have traded it all for a single slap on the back from our father. The railroad inundated us with goods, but for Quincy, recognition was always in short supply. It was a shame. He never did have a head for letters or numbers, but he sure could get a read on people.
I have occasion to think of Quincy frequently these days, as many of the things in this house call out his name. And it is good to remember him, even if it causes discomfort, because don’t memories have duties just like everything else in this world?
Here was another question for Olva.
I turned to her and asked, “Aren’t memories a little like furniture of the mind?” We were still sitting in the sunroom, watching the late-day sun unburden its remaining light on us.
“Yes, Miss Judith,” she replied and left it at that. She was tilting her head back and forth in the way she does, considering a procession of ants ticking along the footboard.
Olva and I share the belief that the world reveals itself to you if you take the time to sit and wait for it. Waiting, I’ve found, is not most people’s area of expertise. Olva is a blessed aberration. Just this morning, she studied a praying mantis for upwards of an hour, admiring the feline strokes of its arms and that long body curved like an ancient sword. As I watched her, it dawned on me that the measured way she tilts her head, combined with the giant spectacles that burden the bridge of her nose, sometimes give her the appearance of a praying mantis. I told her as much, and she seemed to take it as a compliment.
“What I mean,” I continued, “is that our memories orient us just like the furniture in this sunroom.”
Olva seemed to think about this. “And the view sure is different depending on where you’re sitting.”
Now, that was not at all what I’d meant. She’d taken my comment a tad literally. A rare slip for Olva, who knows my mind better than anyone. We grew up together, after all. Then it occurred to me that we have never moved any of the furniture in this house. Each piece sits where it did when we were children. It suits me, I suppose, when everything is kept in its proper place.
While I grew attached to the furniture, my brother had his own special relationship with things. Quincy’s commodities, you understand, weren’t the kind you could touch or lift. They were vaporous, coming to him through hushed voices over fences or eavesdropped conversations, and although they might have remained as innocent as air if left undisturbed, he was a great conjuror, capable of transforming whispers into millstones. Because of this, people pussyfooted around him as if they might bring down the sun if they sneezed.
No one was immune to Quincy’s snooping, not even our own mother. We were teenagers when he discovered Mama helping Olva and the other colored folk pick cotton. Quincy promptly alerted the field foreman, a hulking, glandular fellow whose skin, the color of ham, wept sweat even when he wasn’t out in the sun.
“Olva,” I said, glancing over at her. She had moved on from studying her ants and was sitting there with a gentle gaze. “What was that field foreman’s name? The one Quincy sent to reprimand Mama.”
Olva’s body jerked as if the chair had abruptly withdrawn its comfort. “I can’t say I recall,” she said.
In fact, I knew his name (Amos something-or-other), but the piece of information was less important to me. I had gotten caught up in the memory. “Quincy was hoping Mama would be punished,” I went on. “But when that foreman realized who Mama was and that Daddy Kratt might become embroiled in the conflict, he merely congratulated Mama on how clean her cotton was, which was a polite way of saying she hadn’t picked very much for a full day’s work. Poor Quincy. He was always trying to claim Daddy Kratt’s attention.”
I turned to Olva, in search of a shared laugh, but she was staring out the window.
“I’m planning on doing some spring cleaning,” she said.
“It’s springtime, so your timing is germane.”
Her gaze floated back into the room. “Sometimes, all the things must be taken from their boxes before they can be put back again.”
“Don’t you go moving around things so I can’t locate them,” I replied. “I’ve got my inventory to think of.”
My eyes sifted through the contents of the sunroom—the silver-plated butler’s tray, the Amsterdam School copper mantel clock, the Hamilton drafting table. My younger sister, Rosemarie, is still living, but no one should be fooled into thinking she might be another source of information about our family’s heirlooms. She hasn’t set foot in Bound for ages. A month ago, we received another blank postcard from her, postmarked from Huntsville, Alabama. Over the years, Rosemarie’s blank postcards have turned up, all addressed to Olva and hailing from different cities along the East Coast: Lowell, Baltimore, Englewood, and more. “All mill towns,” Olva once remarked. “Or once were.” I asked Olva if she didn’t think the one from Alabama was insultingly close, but she merely gave a half smile and resumed her dusting.
Leaving those postcards blank was a melodramatic gesture, but that is Rosemarie for you. One spring during our grammar school years, she adopted a family of slugs that had taken residence on the retaining wall of our front porch. I found her early on a Sunday morning lying belly down, her head telescoped out over the edge of the porch, watching the slugs squander their riches in long glistening trails. So lost was she in this diversion, it escaped her notice that her new companions had also feasted on Mama’s petunias.
Rosemarie was wearing a white cotton frock, one of the pieces of Easter clothing that Aunt Dee had sewn for us. I had watched her cavort around in it with Easter service still a week away. The frock had already scaled the tallest water oak in our front yard and scuttled beneath the canopy of our crepe myrtle, flush with buds.
“You’ll ruin your frock,” I said, my arms folded, standing behind her outstretched body. I studied the hem of her dress, fringed with dirt.
The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt Page 1