The Cane Mutiny (11 page)

“I ain't gonna ask,” a man responded.

“Harvey, you always chicken out. I have to do everything myself.”

“Yeah? You make me take out the garbage.”

You can bet I'd rewound the spring in my step so as to slow my pace. How often does one get to be the object of so much attention, yet have their shoes entirely free of toilet paper?

“Harvey, ask!” the woman ordered.

I turned and smiled. “Is there something I can help you with?” To add to the occasion, I affected an accent so Deep South, it made Vivian Leigh's accent sound like that of a Brooklynite by comparison.

“Yeah,” Harvey said, “the wife wants to know where we go to catch the boat over to Fort Sumter.”

I was tempted to steer them wrong, but nonetheless gave them impeccable directions. Then holding my head high, I ascended the remaining steps and pressed the yellowed plastic doorbell. A second later, when it opened, I gasped in shock.

Y
ou're a woman,” I managed to say, after an embarrassing length of time.

“There's no denying the fact,” she said with a laugh. She was, by the way, fully made up to resemble the old codger, but was still dressing. Her unbuttoned weskit vest revealed unmistakably feminine attributes.

“Neat getup,” I said. “How much does he pay you?” It was undoubtedly a rude question, but it just sort of slipped out.

“Ten bucks an hour, and I don't have to pay taxes. Of course I don't fool everyone. Sometimes when the tourists catch on they give me tips. But sometimes they're just pissed. Once, a man gave me a hundred dollar bill and asked me if I was interested in working in Hollywood. Of course I knew that was a come-on.”

I smiled. “It sounds like fun. Is the Colonel here?”

“Oh, I'm afraid he doesn't come to the door for tourists.”

“I'm not a tourist; I'm a local. I'm here on business.”

She frowned. “Is he expecting you?”

“No, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I popped in for just a minute or two.”

“He would mind; he's upstairs napping.”

Seeing that she majored in drama, and was probably a darn good actress, there was no way I could tell if she was speaking the truth. Except to call her bluff.

“Yoo-hoo, Colonel Humphrey! Abigail Timberlake Washburn calling Colonel Beauregard Humph rey!”

The young woman reacted by straightening her back, thrusting out her assets, and frowning. Her frown lines, by the way, did not match with the greasepaint wrinkles on her forehead. All that posturing would merely have been annoying had she not also whipped out her cell phone.

“I'm calling 911 if you don't get out this minute.”

Technically, I wasn't inside, but on the threshold. A proper lady would have apologized for not having called first and then backed out gracefully. I'd like to think that I would have done just that, had not a gentleman from one of the square states—his
pleasantly flat accent gave proof to that—decided to involve himself.

“Hey lady, don't you know it's rude to bother the locals. This isn't a zoo, you know. The locals aren't animals on display.”

“Yeah,” a woman from Tennessee said.

“She's probably from New York,” a man with distinct California diction said.

“Hey, I resent that,” a woman from Lower Manhattan intoned.

Rather than turn and face my linguistically diverse detractors, I chose to have it out with the college girl. More precisely, I appealed to the old man upstairs.

“Colonel,” I called, “I just got a lovely collection of antique canes in, and something else you will undoubtedly find very interesting.”

Before the girl's itchy finger could hit the numeral 9, the real Colonel stepped out of nowhere. “Melissa, she's fine,” he said.

Melissa growled as she palmed the phone and stepped aside.

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 headed 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.