— All right Harry please, that's enough now please. That's enough.
— All right Christina but, Harry listen, naming this law clerk his executor he's not even part of the family, he drinks and…
— Name anybody he wanted to Oscar, anybody he'd trust to carry out the provisions of his will exactly as he wrote it, take it through probate and…
— He trusted him all right, Father trusted him but what about us, we don't even know him he drinks and…
— One place the law's absolutely clear, catch an executor pulling any fast ones he's in a hell of a lot of trouble and if anybody knows that your law clerk does.
— Well but, and do we have to pay him?
— Estate pays him, don't know the laws down there could be up to three percent unless he elects to waive it or…
— Oh Lily thank God here, just put the cup here, Oscar? will you just let all this rest for a while? It's a simple estate it's a perfectly simple will, we're the joint beneficiaries we always took that for granted didn't we? And I mean you of all people, the way you've felt about Father talking about him standing by you and all the rest of it shouldn't you be the very first one to respect his wishes? let him go like he wanted to instead of some Viking funeral and God knows what else?
— I didn't mean that Christina, a Viking funeral I just thought, he could have made me his executor couldn't he? if he trusted this law clerk down there with a drink in his hand more than he…
— Well my God you drink don't you? will you look at that bottle beside you that was full a few minutes ago?
— Yes all right but, but he could have named Harry couldn't he? Harry's a lawyer, that three percent to keep that three percent in the family couldn't he?
— No wait Christinia, look Oscar. You've got somebody down there who knows the courts, knows the State laws can get the will through probate with drinks in both hands, an estate as simple as this one a few legal papers he can clean the whole thing up without a lot of…
— Yes but how do you know, you both keep saying it's a simple estate how do you know it is, maybe there are things we don't even…
— Don't worry about it, I asked him to send up a copy of the will and…
— You mean you've talked to him?
— We've both talked to him Oscar. Harry called him first thing and I talked to him later, he's bringing some papers up here and Father's personal effects that's about all there is, now…
— But why didn't you tell me!
— They just told you didn't they? I mean honest you're going to drive everybody crazy like this Oscar, how she's been tiptoeing around all day trying not to upset you, you okay Christina? You want to go in and lay down before the movie?
— Oh my God, that!
— No wait it's almost time! Turn it on it's right after the news, I have to go to the bathroom turn it on! as he heaved up and away, leaving them to the vision of a lady in impeccable lingerie stirred by a gentle breeze over phantom breasts smiling serenely on an unruffled landscape of a country morning after a satisfactory bout with an overnight laxative, all of them ensconced in varied degrees of discomfort by the time he reappeared to recover the sanctuary of the sofa where he came down unsteadily aping the writhings of the middleaging arthritic on the screen enduring languorous massage with a heat penetrating unguent and a Florida backdrop Kissing Pain Goodbye when suddenly the room shook with the sound of cannon fire, the screen with a tumult of plunging horses, flaring rockets and the Stars and Bars and men, men — look! as
The Blood in the Red White and Blue
unfurled before them, going up in flames for the stark parade of names sprung from briefs, dockets, decrees, each more hateful than the last till finally the smoke cleared, the music died and now the room echoed with the clop clop of a horse and carriage seen approaching up a drive adroop with Spanish moss from the pillared veranda of an antebellum mansion by an imposing liveried black — there he is! that's that, that Button that friend of Basic's, his brow arching disdainfully as a decrepit horse and buggy bearing an aging woman and a handsome intense young man standing to snap his whip imperiously came close for an exchange of unheard words to be pointed scornfully on their way, glimpsed from behind a curtain by a ravishingly beautiful young woman in negligee — there she is! he hissed after their retreat back down the drive, pulling up before a small farm house badly in need of repair as a musical melange of sombre chords appropriated from the alcoholic ramblings of Stephen Foster seeped in to set the tone for a long montage of hammering, wood splitting and split rail fencing, the decrepit horse yielding the buggy's traces for the plough under a blistering sun rows of tobacco leaves, stands of corn, rivulets of sweat connoting manlydom on white skin and servitude on the black knelt by lamplight at the old woman's knee tracing the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 with a black finger on the white page escorted by the pirated strains of a gospel hymn yet to be written and, nearer to hand from the sofa gasps of recognition and wheezes of impatience rising on the wings of the gamebird smashed by the burst of a shotgun to scurry frantically through the brown grasses fleeing for the crevice of a stone wall from what was happening, the clatter of hooves, the crash of underbrush, Hunting Musique! With Horns and with Hounds I waken the Day And hye to my Woodland walks away, tempestuously bosomed, flaming hair'd, where Mars destroys and I repair, Take me, take me, while you may, Venus comes not ev'ry Day, three million dollars worth of stardom buskin'd in finest calf, twilled thighs spread wide astride the pawing stallion looming over him he rais'd a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down undoing the front of his overalls, Flush'd with a purple grace he shows his honest face mingling the sweating badges of his low estate with perspiration born of highborn sport beading her open breasts. Now gives the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes provoking here a giggle, there a gasp of outrage at — this clumsy, vulgar, did you see it! That scene I wrote in all its classic simplicity turned into trash dragged through the mud in the most vulgar clumsy, the whole thing right from the start, my whole prologue they used the dialogue for their scenario right from the start, did you see it Harry?
— What? clearing his throat, recovering his gaze from the salt swells of the carelessly buttoned feast nearby no more attainable than those his eyes had strayed from on the screen at the sound of that giggle, — oh. Satire Oscar, they're just satirizing the whole genre don't you think? the plaintive tones of the oboe given way to a vocal frenzy heralding a long forgotten movie star gnashing gleaming dentures at her small audience confiding how she kept them in place.
— We forgot the popcorn.
— Is there any more ice cream?
— That's always their escape Harry, make a real mess they pretend they did it on purpose and call it satire.
— More wine? A very Merry, Dancing, Drinking, Laughing, Quaffing, and unthinking Time not long in coming with the wedding at Cross Creek where soon enough The Sprightly Green In Woodland Walks, no more is seen; Arms and Honour Set the Martial Mind on Fire, And kindle Manly Rage. Plenty, Peace, and Pleasure fly; Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drum, Sound a Reveille, Sound, Sound, — too loud, will you turn it down a little? as the secular masque of the old order took its farewell in the orotund tones of a Union commander and Lover of Poetry high on a bluff above the Potomac shaking an officer's hand with 'I congratulate you, sir, on the prospect of a battle,' uncostumed artifice of breast and sinew given place to brawn and those sweet beads of perspiration to rank sweat, the curried stallion in the Woodland Walks to a drayhorse mired on the bank below and that lone shotgun's burst to the crash of small arms fire from the higher ground in the woods beyond through gunsmoke lain like a pall over his green regiments, and echoing Sir Walter Scott with a bugle blast worth a thousand men the Lover of Poetry went down with a Rebel bullet through his heart, his prospect of a battle gone withershins in a tumultuous rout down the steep bluff for four small boats to carry them back across the wide river white as a hailstorm with bullets fired from the abandoned heights and of those thousand men nine hundred lost, shot, drowned, or left for prisoners on the dark Virginia shore.