The cats sitting on the top rail of the three-board fence way in the back pasture observed all this. Tucker sat below.
“Let’s hope she doesn’t get obsessed with this,” Mrs. Murphy remarked.
“Just wait. Old firearms, history.” Pewter’s tail hung straight down. “She’ll start reading about battles where those things were used. She’ll have to practice and be a good shot. She’s using a pistol her ancestor used in the Revolutionary War. Who cares?”
“The horses are watching like we are. Two humans shooting at a target. Just seems boring.”
After a half hour of this the two women walked back to the barn. MaryJo, rifle over her shoulder, stopped to place it in her Range Rover.
“MaryJo. If you have time let’s drive over to the school. I’ll call Cooper and Tazio. Maybe they can meet us there,” Harry suggested.
MaryJo checked her Baume and Mercier watch. “We’ll need to take separate vehicles. I have to go home to dress for dinner with a client.”
“Business must be good,” Harry said.
“Good enough for me to buy that rifle.” MaryJo smiled. “You and Fair should consider more aggressive investing. Just a thought.”
Within twenty minutes the two women met Cooper and Tazio at the formerly named Crozet Colored School. In respect of history, however painful, changing the name seemed a bad idea.
Tazio opened the thick door to the ninth- to twelfth-grade building. As she did so, her dog Brinkley, a yellow Lab; Tucker; and the cats decided to stay outside and play as the sun was low on the horizon.
“Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” Tazio beamed, her smile warm.
“Does,” Harry agreed.
“Bruce told me they cleaned it up after he and the boys had their poker game here while we had our wildlife meeting,” MaryJo added.
“Thought if we were here, we could come up with an idea for a fund-raiser. There’s still work to be done,” Harry told them. “Ned is approaching the county commissioners about using this to teach history. Having students from the county spend some days or a week studying as did the children from the past. Given all the schools we now have that would cover months.”
“Susan called me about that. Great idea. But a fund-raiser?” Tazio questioned.
Harry jumped in. “The more people that see this, the better. We can print up a card or small booklet about the history. We’ve got three buildings. Let’s use them for a blowout party. Cocktails in the elementary school. Dinner here. Dancing in the storage shed, which is this size. That will take some work but we can do it.”
“When?” Cooper was intrigued.
“What about an early spring party or St. Patrick’s day?” Harry tossed out those two times.
As the humans deliberated, mulling over how to decorate the buildings, work out food, the animals chased a deer who easily dumped them.
“Fast,” Tucker acknowledged.
“And she knows the territory better than we do.” Mrs. Murphy sat down.
Brinkley turned back toward the school. Nearing the buildings, a squirrel scrambled over the storage facility.
“Go away!” the squirrel shouted.
“Oh, shut up.” Pewter bared her fangs.
“I’ll throw acorns.”
“You have to find them first.” Brinkley laughed.
“Drop dead.” The gray fellow with the flicking tail ducked into an opening he’d made where the roof and sidewall met.
“Let’s get him.” Pewter was working at the door.
With joint effort they only managed to pound on the locked door, but the noise was considerable.
“That doesn’t sound good. Let me check this out.” Harry opened the door to the high school, the racket loud now.
“My dog’s in on it.” Tazio joined her.
Didn’t take them a minute to reach the storage building, four frantic animals at the door.
Tazio fished the keys out of her pocket, opened the door, and was nearly knocked over as they rushed in.
Harry stepped inside, cut on the light. “What the—?”
Cooper, now behind her, also stopped.
As the squirrel disappeared, the animals shut up, then Tucker said, “Old cologne.” The others agreed.
MaryJo walked through the door.
A black Tahoe sat on the low wooden floor. Two large barnlike doors at the rear of the building would allow a vehicle to be driven in, unloaded.
They could see a mesh cage, a few large feathers inside, in the back of the Tahoe. Cooper opened the front door of the vehicle, opened the glove compartment
She read the registration.
Pierre Rice.
March 3, 1786 Friday
“B. See. Butter.” Eudes pointed to a small crock of freshly churned butter.
Mignon, standing next to him at the long, clean preparation table, stared down at the ABCs she had written and rewritten over the last two weeks.
Eudes thought the best way to teach Mignon how to read was through cooking. So for a, he had her write out a for apple, b, butter. Each time he would place food on the table, he would tell her how to write it down. She’d search through her letters, then put them together.
Eudes also taught her the sounds for each letter. She pleased him being a quick study.
“It’s magic.” She grinned.
“What?”
“That scratching on paper means something. Magic.”
“Mignon, that magic goes back thousands of years. I can hear a man’s voice from ancient Athens.”
“You can?” She was dazzled.
“I could if I read Greek, which I don’t, but I have some translations.”
“Eudes, you are a learned man.”
“And why am I a cook in a whorehouse, pardon me, a place of relief and renewal?” He laughed. “Money. If I taught Latin to that handful of boys, free black boys, who wanted to read I would starve. Not a penny in teaching, plus I would be curt with a child who didn’t want to learn.”
“How did you learn?”
“First off, I’m a free black man, as is my family. I asked my father, a joiner and a good one, would he send me to school. Instead he hired a tutor. No distractions. No other boys. Just old Mr. Disston and me. I learned. When I began to shave, my father declared it was time to learn a profession. I liked his work but he said it relied on whether men were making money or not. Pick a trade that people always need. Well, they need to eat.”
She looked at him admiringly. “I wish I knew how to think like that.”
“Honeychild.” He patted her forearm. “Where you were, what good would it have done? You did what the master told you to do.”
She nodded. “But people learned things. Mr. Selisse had coopers, and barrel makers, he had men who could plane timber so you could see your reflection in it. And the boys and men in the stables, they knew a lot.”
“Guess you’re right. What did you learn? You don’t talk much, Mignon. I’m a deep well. You can tell me anything.”
She felt she could. “As a little one, I was in the kitchen, where I learned to make and cut out cookie dough. When I was bigger, I could knead it. The cook, she knew a lot, but she was jealous. I had to watch her and there were older girls above me. But I learned a bit.”
Georgina blew through the double swinging doors. “Friday. We’ll have our afternoon crowd and it’s bitter cold out there. What do you have planned?”