Sins of the Fathers (8 page)

“I’ll tell Tick.” Ms. Morrison walked heavily through the door. Samson lifted his head to watch her go, but didn’t move.

Katharine was certain she and Dr. Flo had been maneuvered here for a purpose, but what was it?

Nell picked up a key chain with a yellow seahorse dangling from it and ran the seahorse back and forth through her fingers while she contemplated her visitors. “Miranda called and said you all stopped by the store. She figured you were looking to buy one of the houses Burch is set on building.”

“Oh, no,” Katharine protested. “We were looking up family graves.”

Nell’s eyelids flickered. “Chase says Burch has to move their family cemetery and needs permission for a couple of the graves. Those the ones you were looking at?” She waited for Katharine’s nod, then asked warily, “You kin to the Bayards?”

“No. They were Dr. Flo’s graves.”

Nell looked from Katharine to Dr. Flo like she thought they were trying to put something over on her. She narrowed her eyes, making it clear she wasn’t about to step into the trap.

“A Gilbert and two Guilberts,” Dr. Flo added. “Have you ever heard of them?”

“Never heard of anybody on this island except Bayards, Agnes, and us.” She lit another cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “There’s an old slave cemetery behind the church just over the bridge.”

Dr. Flo tilted her chin. “My people were not slaves.” Her voice was soft, but firm.

“Well, I don’t see how the graves could be yours. The Bayards—well, let’s just say they have always been real rigid about some things.” Nell took another drag and muttered on the exhale, “Bastards, every last one of them.”

Dr. Flo pressed her lips together and inhaled sharply, but did not reply. Instead, she moseyed over to the large front window, which was so crusted with salt it looked milky, and stood with her back to them. Katharine felt like the professor had abandoned her to carry on the conversation. “Chase seemed nice enough,” she said, for lack of any other topic.

Nell stubbed out her cigarette like she was grinding somebody into the ground. “Yeah, but like Mama keeps reminding Miranda, God visits the sins of the fathers on the children to the third generation, so Chase is likely to reap what the rest have sown. There hasn’t been but one generation of Bayards yet who did right by other folks.”

Appalled by the theology, Katharine objected as tactfully as she knew how. “I don’t think that generation thing is a threat, do you? I can’t see God sitting up in heaven waiting to zap the grandchildren of people who sin.”

“That’s what the Bible says: ‘The sins of the fathers will be visited on their children to the third generation,’” Nell spoke with the kind of conviction it is useless to argue with, “so Chase isn’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.”

Katharine turned toward the door. “I guess I ought to go get my shrimp.” Dr. Flo could do her own talking if she wanted to know more about the island. Katharine hadn’t buried any ancestors there.

Nell opened her top drawer and took out a flat white envelope. “Agnes will get it for you, but you pay me.” It was more command than suggestion.

Katharine reached for her wallet and handed her three bills.

“Plus two for the cooler,” Nell reminded her. She added Agnes’s five and stuffed all the bills into the empty envelope. Was that a day’s income? How did the family manage to survive?

Nell restored the envelope to its drawer and waved Katharine toward one of the visitor chairs. “You all might as well sit. When Agnes and Tick get to talking, she tends to be a while.”

When Katharine perched on the bare steel, she felt chill seep through her pants. Dr. Flo remained by the window, peering out at its impressionistic view of the dock. Nell lit up again. Katharine looked at the ashtray and wondered how much Nell would save in a year if she smoked her cigarettes down to the filter.

Nell blew a perfect smoke ring toward the ceiling, watched it rise, and spoke as if talking to herself. “Anything you want to know about this island, I can tell you. Daddy farmed for Dalt and Asa Bayard, and his daddy did, too.”

What Katharine really wanted to know was where she could find a spot to thaw out and whether Nell had anything salty and greasy to kill those blasted chiggers. She would have made a polite excuse and gone outside, except Dr. Flo turned for an instant and sent a silent message.

Katharine wasn’t sure what it meant, but she interpreted it
Keep her talking
.

“Agnes said Burch doesn’t farm.”

Nell shook her head. “You can’t make the kind of money Burch and Mona want by farming. This land has been raped by Bayards for two hundred and fifty years, just like the rest of us. It can’t put out like it used to.” She took a couple of puffs.

“What does Burch do instead?”

Not that she cared. Katharine tried to remember the path that had led her from her own house and all she had to do back there to this isolated seafood business on the edge of nowhere, discussing the private lives of people who were no more real to her than soap opera characters. The journey seemed as hazy as the office air.

Nell gave a bark of a laugh. “Do? Burch? Nothing, to speak of. He dabbles in real estate a little, but he doesn’t sell much. I don’t know why he thinks he can build and sell houses. Mona, now—” another drag on the cigarette “—she’s a decorator up in Savannah and does real well—or so Chase says. I’ve never had any call to hire her, myself.” She looked around the barren little office and gave another raspy smoker’s laugh. When Katharine didn’t join in, she added with a touch of venom, “She doesn’t make enough to support them in the style to which they intend to remain accustomed. I can tell you that.”

Since childhood, Katharine’s mother had instilled in her a distaste for gossip. She had heard more than enough about Burch Bayard and his wife. “When did you all start this business?” She wished Agnes would come back so they could get on with their own agenda. First on her list was a bottle of water and fresh, hot air.

“Around thirty years ago, when I was five. Not long after my accident. Mama had bought that little store up on U.S. 17 the year I was born, and she was running it while Daddy worked for the Bayards, to supplement what Daddy made. Then a tractor turned over on Daddy and me one morning while I was riding in his lap, ‘helping him plow.’” Her fingers sketched the quotes. “Daddy got killed and my back was broken, so I couldn’t ever walk again.” The hand that stubbed out another half-smoked cigarette trembled.

“How awful!” Katharine pictured the man on the tipsy tractor holding his little girl, feeling the machine lurch beneath him and begin to roll. What must Nell’s memories be like?

Nell took a deep breath of plain air—if the air in the room could be called plain—and exhaled before she continued. “It
was
awful, but good came out of it. Mama took Dalt and Asa to court and several witnesses testified that Daddy had been telling anybody who would listen that the dadblamed tractor was pulling to the right and likely to tip. Judge Whaley decided in our favor and awarded us a real good settlement. The Bayards couldn’t come up with cash, so Mama asked the judge to make them give her ten acres on the slough and build her a dock and a shed to start this business. Her daddy had two boats and was wanting to retire, so she and her brother went in together. He bosses the crews and she and I run the packing and shipping end of things. I keep telling her we could do better down in Darien, but she won’t leave the island. We get by.”

From the decrepit state of their buildings and trucks, it looked to Katharine like they were barely hanging on, but appearances can be deceptive. For all she knew, this was one of the most lucrative seafood operations on the eastern seaboard.

“How did Dalton Bayard take the decision?” Dr. Flo inquired without turning around.

Nell gave her a surprised look, as if she had forgotten the professor was there. “Kicked up a real ruckus. Threatened to appeal and everything, but Mr. Asa wouldn’t let him. Mr. Asa claimed they didn’t have the money for a lawyer, but folks say the judge had some kind of hold over the family. Afterwards, though, people said it was a good thing Judge Whaley was already planning to retire. Once he’d crossed the Bayards, he’d never have won another election in this county.”

Katharine picked up on something she had said earlier. “You don’t want to be on the island?”

Nell grimaced. “Not really. I’d rather work where there are other people and places to go for lunch. Besides, like I said, I think we could make more money somewhere else, but Mama is as bad as a Bayard about this island. All my life Dalt has been coming by here pestering her to sell—he plumb hates us having a piece of his precious land—but Mama’s like a barnacle. She’s attached herself here, so here she’s gonna stay, come hell or high water. Of course, now that Burch is talking about developing the island, I find myself in two minds. I don’t want to spend the next thirty-five years here, but if we left, that would be like giving in to the bulldozers and a second Yankee invasion.” She shrugged with a laugh. “I guess I’m as bad as Mama.”

Tires crunched on the gravel. “Oh, drat, here she is now. I thought I’d got her out of my hair for the afternoon. Lately she rattles back and forth between the store and this place like a cat that’s lost its kittens.”

The woman they had seen at the store opened the door and stomped in. “You got today’s deposit ready?”

Nell reached for another cigarette and took time to light it before she replied. “Not yet. I figured you weren’t coming back and we could make the deposit on our way home. Where did you hare off to?”

“We needed beer down to the store. I bought some and put it in the cooler.”

Nell gave a little snort. “For the tourist rush?”

“Don’t you be pert, missy.” The older woman seemed to notice the others for the first time. “I’m Iola Stampers, since my daughter don’t have the manners to introduce us. Weren’t you down to our store, earlier?”

Katharine offered her hand. “Yes, we were. I’m Katharine Murray and this is Dr. Flo Gadney.”

Dr. Flo turned from the window and moseyed over to join the party. “Nell has been telling us about how you won a lawsuit and started this business.”

Iola heaved a sigh that was far more dramatic than her daughter’s. “It ain’t been easy, I can tell you that. We’ve had a lot of trials and tribulations in our lives, but the good Lord has preserved us through them all.”

“Miranda mentioned that you all had a house burn down.”

Iola nodded with another sigh. “Yep, except it was a double-wide. It used to sit right over yonder—” she motioned toward a solid wall “—looking out at the marsh. Convenient for Nell and her chair. We had a ramp and everything. A real pretty place, too, and quiet excepting for those pesky gulls. But it burned while Nell and I were picking up a few things in Eulonia one afternoon. Dalt Bayard told the insurance folks he saw it get struck by lightning, so they put it down to that, but I didn’t see no lightning out this way when we was in town. Fortunately, we hadn’t sold our house, so we went back there, but I’d rather be closer to the business. May bring in another trailer one day.”

“Dalt will kill you,” Nell warned, pulling a stack of checks from a drawer.

Iola grinned, showing two gaps where upper incisors used to be. “I’d like to see him try. You work up that deposit while I talk to your guests. Would you like to sit?” She motioned to Dr. Flo.

“No, thank you. We’ve been riding all day. I’d rather stand. You take the chair.”

Iola sat while Nell turned on her calculator and started entering checks. “I already told them I wish you’d sell up and move off this godforsaken island,” she told her mother.

Iola crimped her mouth. “What I wish is that you’d do the work you get paid to do. I need that deposit.”

Nell crimped her own mouth in fair imitation of her mother. “You’d have had it if you had stuck around. You won’t get to the bank before it closes anyway.” With a little flounce she bent over the keys.

Katharine was embarrassed. She’d been raised to keep family battles private.

Iola slid down in her chair and stretched out her long bare legs, marbled with varicose veins. “I can tell you one good thing about us keeping this land. It kills Dalt Bayard a little bit every day, knowing we own it.”

“Killed Mr. Asa, too,” Nell murmured without looking up, explaining to the others, “He died not six months after the trial.” She picked up the cigarette without looking in its direction, and put it unerringly in her mouth while her other hand punched in numbers. Katharine wondered if she ever got burned.

Iola nodded and explained to their guests, “He got shot while hunting and died before anybody found him.” She let that sink in, then added, “Some said he shot hisself, because he couldn’t stand to have his son on his back all the time.” She gave Katharine a quick, penetrating glance and lowered her voice to a whisper, “Some said Dalt shot him because his daddy let go of land.”

“Mama!”

Iola shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past him.” She spoke to Katharine. “He’s meaner’n the devil hisself and twice as proud. What’s he got to be so proud of? I ask you that. Old drunk, never spends a penny these days on anything except liquor. Chase told Miranda that Burch asked Dalt to let him mortgage Bayard Bluff, to get him started on that building project, but Dalt said he’d see him in hell first. They don’t exactly get along.” She slewed her eyes toward Nell.

Nell refused to be goaded again. She took time to blow another smoke ring and watch it rise before she said, “Just because you’re family doesn’t mean you have to get along.”

Iola shrugged. “No, but family is family. You stand together in times of need. Chase says Burch and Mona are scraping the barrel these days. He ain’t sure they’ll even have enough to send him back to that lah-ti-dah school next fall. And Chase says his other granddaddy—Mona’s daddy, who is a big-wig developer out in Texas somewhere—well, he won’t give Mona another red cent, either, until Burch sells two houses. The old man gave Mona a right good bit of money when they got married. He was an oilman before he got into land development, and is really loaded. I mean, really! But Chase says he thinks a man should support his own family.”

Katharine couldn’t tell whether Iola was talking to Nell, to her and Dr. Flo, or a bit of both. What she could tell was that Chase talked too much family business outside the family.