A Statue for Jacob

by Peter Murphy

  It wasn’t a meeting we could have had productively the previous afternoon. We were too busy congratulating ourselves to focus on mundane questions such as what to do next, and anyway we felt we deserved a little celebration. After we emerged from court, I had run interference for Dave by giving an impromptu press conference with Sam while he made good his escape. I’d seen him running the gauntlet on the way into court, and he hadn’t had a great morning. I didn’t want him to go through that again while he was coming to terms with having a live case on his hands instead of the slam-dunk order for dismissal he had been expecting. Sam and I had no difficulty in attracting the attention of the assembled reporters, and unlike Dave, we had no constraints about talking to them. After that, Arlene had ordered Sam and me to take a long lunch while she got up to speed back at the office. After lunch we weren’t in the mood for serious work.

  But now, there we were, the currently successful van Eyck team: Sam; me; Arlene; Powalski; and Jenny, our latest intern from Kate Banahan’s Wills and Trusts class who, like her predecessor, was very bright, but unlike her predecessor, actually had some idea of how an office works and was providing Arlene with some real support. We commandeered Reg to take a few pictures to commemorate the occasion. After all, we had no guarantee that we would have such an optimistic occasion again. Reg had finished work on my tax affairs now. The auditors were due in the office early the following week. It was an unwelcome diversion, but at least Reg had assured me that my affairs were in order. He took some great shots of the team, seated around the table and smiling.

  Arlene had prepared an agenda. She handed out copies.

  ‘Y’all are the new superstars since yesterday,’ she began. ‘The phone’s been ringing off the hook with media wanting interviews. They’re all over me like white on rice. I feel like the chief ticket-seller the day before the rodeo. I need to know what y’all need me to tell them.’

  ‘Local radio stations?’ I asked. We’d already done a number of talk shows and interviews of that kind, so I assumed it was more of the same. After the scenes at court the day before, I should have known better, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that we were playing in another league now. It had occurred to Sam. With her background in theatre, she was more at ease with publicity than the rest of us, and this wasn’t coming as a surprise to her.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she smiled.

  ‘Hell no, hun,’ Arlene said. ‘We’re talking the networks – CBS, NBC, you name it. PBS wants an “in-depth sit-down”, whatever the hell that is. Then we’ve got the news channels, CNN and such, and that’s before we get to the Washington Post and God only knows how many other newspapers and magazines. If y’all do everything they want, you’re gonna need six weeks just for that; forget about working on the case.’

  She brandished the stack of phone messages she had taken and emails she had printed out.

  ‘I need to know what I’m supposed to tell these guys, y’all.’

  Sam reached out a hand.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Be my guest, hun.’

  Sam looked through the messages. After a minute or two, she looked up.

  ‘All right. What we need to understand here is that we’re not interested in making our case to Middle America. We’re not fighting an election. We’re involved in a potentially highly political lawsuit that affects the federal government. But it can’t hurt to make the best case we can to the Washington establishment, because it could all come down to politics in the end, regardless of what the judge decides.’

  ‘That’s not a great thought, hun,’ Arlene said. ‘Are y’all saying that the judge –?’

  ‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘Judge Morrow’s not going to be influenced by anything we say – or anything the government says – to the media, nor should he be. I’m talking about looking way ahead. I’m talking about what happens if we win: actually getting our hands on the money; actually getting funding allocated for a statue, assuming we get that far. The court may make an award in our favour, or it may not. That’s going to depend on the law. But if they go with us, we then have to enforce the court’s order, and my guess is, that’s going to be about politics.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ Powalski said. ‘In the end, down the road, we’re going to have to deal with Washington.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said.

  ‘And that means that we can’t afford to waste our time or resources,’ Sam said. ‘We need to focus on the interviews that will reach our target audience, and forget the rest. Give them a press release, but that’s it. There’s nothing they can do for us anyway, except maybe help to get the word out about the case, but the family’s doing that for us already. It’s not a productive use of our time to run ourselves ragged trying to pander to every radio station that’s desperate for an unusual story. And that’s all it is to them, an unusual story. In a few days, a local cheerleader is going to be caught smoking dope in the high school gym, and they won’t care about us any more. That’s how it goes.’

  ‘So, what is a productive use of our time?’ I asked.

  ‘PBS first,’ Sam replied. ‘That’s huge. If I had to choose one, I’d trade all the rest for that one. Then CNN, then the Washington Post, the New York Times and the LA Times. Maybe the Wall Street Journal, but we would have to be careful there; their editorial policy isn’t likely to be too favourable towards us. Then the networks if we have time, but only if they give us the national and international news segments. That’s it. The rest get press releases.’

  Jenny raised a nervous hand.

  ‘Miss Harmon, I’d be glad to take a shot at writing a press release this afternoon. I’ve done some for student organisations at Georgetown.’

  ‘Go for it,’ I smiled.

  Arlene nodded.

  ‘All right, then. Y’all better clear your calendars, and tell me if you have any dates to avoid, ’cause I’m fixin’ to start making calls once we’re through here, and once I do, y’all are going to be busier than a nest of hornets in a maple syrup factory.’

  ‘What’s next?’ I asked.

  ‘Item two on the agenda,’ Arlene replied. ‘We’re getting requests for you and Sam to do a road trip, maybe more than one.’

  ‘A road trip?’ Sam asked, smiling.

  ‘I don’t know what else to call it, hun. What we’ve got is eight or nine groups of family members in different parts of the country that want you to come down and talk to them.’

  ‘What parts of the country?’ I asked.

  ‘And that’s the point, right there,’ Arlene replied. ‘We got to the people from the major cities at the convention, so you know it’s not them. What we’re talking about here is the city of Sorryass, Wyoming – some small town in the back of beyond where the good folks don’t see the need to drive anywhere outside the city limits, never mind fly to New Orleans for a family convention. I’m from Lubbock, Texas, y’all, and I know whereof I speak. I know Sorryass, Texas, and trust me, Sorryass, Wyoming, is no different. There’s a Sorryass in every state in the Union, and when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. Here’s the list.’

  I looked at it, and I immediately understood Arlene’s reluctance. This would be a difficult road trip, criss-crossing the country, flying between towns with small airports or none, or driving vast stretches of Midwestern interstate – and with very little to show for it except to boost some local egos. It wouldn’t be a productive use of time, unless…

  Arlene read my mind.

  ‘I’m not hearing,’ she said, answering my unspoken question, ‘that these good folk have any new information to give us about the loan documentation. They say it’s about putting the word out about the case and signing up more plaintiffs. But, you know what, folks? Go get y’allselves a computer and learn the magic of email.’

  ‘Maybe we should do one or two of these,’ Sam ventured. She had been reading over my shoulder. �
�I can see going to the Carolinas, and maybe Iowa, if they could turn it into more of a regional meeting. Kiah, I could take a couple of these on my own if you don’t have the time.’

  ‘No,’ I replied decisively. ‘Arlene’s right. We have six weeks, and if we’re not careful, we could spend all our time doing interviews and personal appearances. It’s going to distract us from what we should be focusing on – and that’s finding some documents to use as evidence.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Powalski said. ‘Look, I’m in touch with these people as soon as Arlene signs them up, and I’m asking them for anything they have. Let’s just say that so far, there hasn’t exactly been a stampede to come forward with useful material.’

  He sounded frustrated, and I couldn’t blame him. There were times when the needle in the haystack simile didn’t really cut it.

  ‘Which is why,’ Arlene said, standing and putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder, ‘I think there’s one y’all have to do.’ She smiled. ‘I kinda kept this one for last.’

  We all crowded round to read the message. It was from Aunt Meg, and it was marked urgent. She wanted to show us something, she said, something no one else had seen. She wanted us to come to visit her in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, as soon as we could.

  ‘This has to be whatever she didn’t want to talk to me about at the reunion,’ Powalski suggested.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We do this one. Let’s give her a call and set it up.’

  40

  Two days later we took an early morning flight to Philadelphia. It had been a strange few days all across the north-east of the country, with sudden violent storms, the temperature alternating between cool and oppressively warm and humid, as if the weather couldn’t make up its mind whether it was still summer or whether fall had begun. The day we arrived was summer; it was already sticky when we touched down just after eight in the morning. Powalski rented us a car and we made the short drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike towards King of Prussia, where Arlene had arranged for us to stay the night at the Radisson Valley Forge Hotel, a stone’s throw from the national park. I think she chose the place partly because she wanted to take the park tour, but it was unlikely we would have time this trip. We dropped our things at the hotel and set out to see Aunt Meg.

  Aunt Meg lived in Conshohocken, a community in Montgomery County, just off the interstate. Her house was a large, three-story, rickety-looking wooden structure, the whole of which was surrounded by an enveloping porch. At the front was a collection of porch furniture – chairs and a couple of tables, all apparently of different designs – and there were hooks in the ceiling for a hammock, though the hammock itself was nowhere to be seen. On approach the house looked dark even in broad daylight, though the dark brown paint was recent, there was a pleasant herbaceous border in front of the porch, and the generous area of land around the house, which included some old oaks, was well kept.

  Aunt Meg answered the door with another woman, a friendly soul with a full face and deep brown eyes, in her forties, I guessed.

  ‘Welcome to Montgomery County,’ Aunt Meg said. ‘Come on in.’ She kissed Sam fondly on both cheeks, and shook hands with the rest of us.

  ‘This is Alice, who comes in every day to make sure I’m still alive and not doing anything too stupid.’

  ‘I do some cleaning and drive once in a while,’ Alice smiled. ‘Aunt Meg doesn’t need much more than that, and I get told off if I fuss too much.’

  ‘As if I would tell anyone off,’ Aunt Meg grinned. ‘She does fuss too much though, sometimes. Come on back to the dining room. We’ll have enough room to sit in there. Would you like some coffee? You must have had an early start this morning.’

  The idea of a cup of drinkable coffee sounded good to all of us. We’d grabbed a cup of a very indifferent brew and a plastic croissant at the coffee bar in the boarding area in the few minutes we had before our flight, and it hadn’t helped.

  ‘I’ll make it,’ Alice volunteered.

  She left us alone with Aunt Meg. The dining room was formal, almost Victorian in its austerity. The dark wooden table could have accommodated twelve for dinner very comfortably; the matching chairs had high, straight backs, and hard padded seats in a dark mauve design. The carpet seemed to reflect the same colour. Two corner cabinets held collections of plates and glassware. The windows were covered by long off-white lace curtains, and the blades of two ceiling fans rotated in a leisurely sequence in the high ceiling above our heads. Aunt Meg fitted in with the room’s décor, wearing a long black dress, with a small white scarf tucked in at the top. We sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘We came as soon as we could, Aunt Meg,’ Sam began.

  ‘Yes, I know, my dear. I also know that you don’t have a great deal of time, so I don’t plan on wasting any. But if you will allow me, I do have something to ask.’

  ‘Of course. We’re here all day. We’re not going back to Arlington tonight.’

  ‘Good, because before we get to what I have to show you, I’m going to ask you to indulge an old lady. I want to take you on a short drive. It’s not far. There’s something I want you all to see, something I think may make a difference.’

  ‘I’m not sure we can all fit in our car,’ Powalski observed.

  ‘It’s no problem. Alice will drive me and you can follow behind.’

  Anxious as we were to see any evidence Aunt Meg might have, we could hardly say no, and in any case, it sounded intriguing. Alice arrived with our coffee and some delicious cinnamon-flavoured cookies of a kind I didn’t remember ever tasting before.

  ‘They’re called “speculaas”, ’ she replied when I mentioned how good they were. ‘They’re from Holland; not the kind of thing you find locally. I have to go into Philadelphia. But they’re worth it, aren’t they?’

  ‘She spoils me,’ Aunt Meg said.

  ‘So she should,’ Sam replied.

  I think we all felt better after that. We piled into our car and Powalski pulled effortlessly into the light traffic behind Alice’s station wagon. She led us along Interstate 276, turning briefly on to State Highway 23, and finally taking an exit marked Fourth Street, which led us back under the Interstate’s overpass. We turned again into River Road.

  And we came to the church I had visited in my dream: the church where I had seen Isabel.

  I knew it instantly. There were some differences. If there had ever been a high wall enclosing the graveyard, it had gone. There was a low rustic stone wall as we entered the graveyard, but beyond at the far side, without any obvious boundary, were houses. Of course the area would have been developed since Isabel’s day. But the layout of the church and the graveyard was unmistakable to me. In my mind, at least, I had stood in this place before. And as I gazed at the setting of my dream, leaning a bit unsteadily against the car, I noticed something else. The roaring sound, which in my dream I hadn’t been able to turn to identify, was there. In my dream I’d speculated that it might have come from an aqueduct carrying water. Now when I closed my eyes, the sound was the same sound I’d heard in my dream. But my roar of water moving along an aqueduct was the roar of the traffic on the interstate.

  Aunt Meg had gathered everyone except me together on the other side of the street, where a gate led into the graveyard. I knew the gate. I had used it in my dream, and just beyond it was the spot where Isabel had stood. I was shaken. I was feeling hot and clammy. Aunt Meg was looking back across the street at me. Somehow, I managed to force my body up from the side of the car, and I made my way slowly towards them.

  ‘You OK, Kiah?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just got up a bit too early, not enough sleep.’

  Aunt Meg was still looking at me.

  ‘This is the Old Swedes church,’ she explained. ‘Leastways, that’s what everyone has always called it. Its real name is Christ Church, and these days it’s Episcopalian, but it g
oes back a ways. As the name suggests, this was a Swedish settlement originally, and it’s always been called Swedeland or Swedesburg. Jacob would have been a man of about thirty when the church was originally built. It hasn’t changed too much since then; the tower was added after his day, but other than that, we’re looking at something Jacob himself saw many times. He would have worshipped here often. So did Washington, by the way, while the army was here. The river’s just over there, and we wouldn’t have had those houses then, so he may have come in by boat from his camp.’

  ‘This is where so many of the old van Eycks are buried?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes. Let’s go in, and you can see for yourselves.’

  We didn’t have to walk far. There was a large collection of gravestones and memorials, not exactly grand but certainly well made and well kept, that bore the names of van Eycks, from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth, and we didn’t explore every inch of the graveyard, so no doubt there were others.

  ‘But nothing for Jacob,’ Aunt Meg said as we gathered around one large tomb. ‘He’s here somewhere. This is where they laid him. Everyone in the family agrees on that. But no grave stone.’

  We looked around in silence for some time, as if trying to make some memorial of Jacob exist, to conjure one up from somewhere.

  ‘Why?’ Sam asked.

  Aunt Meg shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t have the money, or maybe there was no record of exactly where they buried him. Who knows? But it’s a shame, don’t you think?’

  And that was when I saw the other difference. In my dream, the whole graveyard had consisted of unmarked graves. I had seen no gravestones or memorials at all. But there were gravestones and memorials everywhere here. Just not for Jacob.

  41

  By the time we returned to the house, the warmth of the day was getting to us all. The afternoon was unsettled and humid, and the clouds were gathering overhead, promising an early evening thunder shower. Until it came to bring relief, the warmth would continue to be uncomfortable. We gathered in the dining room where the heavy lace curtains were either keeping the heat out, or keeping it in: there was no way to tell. The softly whirring ceiling fans did nothing except to move the warm air gently around the room. Alice brought a large jug of iced lemonade, which tasted wonderful, and Aunt Meg arranged us around the dining table. I noticed a heavy black file folder on the table. She waited for some time before beginning. She smiled.