We’ll all be starting school again tomorrow, and we hear we’re gonna have a real nice teacher this year. That’ll be good, real good, we wouldn’t want to have to repeat that exercise in concentration that we had to do in Miss Hornfellow’s class. Folks just might begin to wonder.
Miss Amy and the Law
by Lee Somerville
The first time the professor saw Miss Amy Betts was in June. That was June sixth, three days before he killed her brother Jim. On that morning, with Jim and Amy both still alive, “Professor” J. C. R. Scoggins and I drank coffee and ate Danish rolls in the Branding Iron in Caton, Texas. Our current caper was a land promotion deal.
“We will get the options, Mr. Gaines.” Professor Scoggins leaned across the table, stared at me with cold, ash-gray eyes. “The corporation expects us to deliver. We will, won’t we?”
I shook my head. “The Betts family won’t sign.”
“Betts?”
“Jim Betts and Amy Betts. Old bachelor brother and—” I hesitated, since Amy was only two weeks younger than I was. I remembered sandpile days, sixty years ago. I remembered the barn loft and hot times on the verandah in the 1930’s. Then I made myself say it, “—old maid sister. The Betts family holds the key to the land our corporation wants. The family has land on both sides of that road.”
“Since you are a native of Caton County; the Betts family is your assignment, Mr. Gaines.”
“I visited them last night. Jim won’t sign.”
“His sister?”
I shook my head. “Amy has been reading Gone With the Wind again. Every time she reads that book, she assumes the character of Scarlett O’Hara, determined to hold onto family land despite poverty and difficulties.”
Scoggins smiled and beckoned the waitress. “More of these wonderful Danish rolls, my dear,” he said in cultured, pear-shaped tones. Stroking his dyed mustache, he gave the waitress the benefit of his beaming, synthetic smile.
She wiggled her fat rump in a middle-aged revival of the sex urge. Professor J. C. R. Scoggins, his title as phony as his smile, had that effect on women. That’s why the corporation had teamed us together. I knew the country, but over the years I had lost a lot of drive. I’d been inside too many jails, had experienced too many failures. Once, years ago, I might-have been as good a con man as the professor. All the corporation expected now was that I would guide him to the natives and let him close the deals.
“If Miss Betts plays the roles of fictional heroines, we have no problem, Mr. Gaines,” the professor decreed. “Apparently you do not understand the traumas and desires of once-wealthy gentry. Gentlefolk have Achilles’ heels. Now, in the interests of psychology, tell me about Jim and Amy Betts.”
Jim’s old high-cab farm truck pulled to the curb outside as if on cue. Scoggins’ dyed eyebrows rose and his lantern chin dropped. “Who is that?”
“Jim and Amy Betts.” I took the rolls from the waitress, pointed with my thumb. “Jim brings eggs and produce to the Branding Iron on weekdays.”
Scoggins looked past Jim’s lean, bony frame. I drew a controlled breath, tried to keep from showing my memories. Amy looked like a plump little Kewpie doll. Barely more than five feet tall, she was dressed in a pink and white flowered dress and a years-ago white hat trimmed with artificial flowers.
“Very eccentric,” Scoggins whispered.
Maybe so, but to me she looked as fragile and delicate as a fine piece of Dresden china. Cute little white curls, done in the style I had liked back in the 1930’s, poked from under that ridiculous hat. Even at age sixty-seven, her cheeks still had that peaches-and-cream complexion. She nodded at everybody in sight on the street, smiling myopically from behind gold-rimmed spectacles.
Maybe it was that shortsighted stare from behind those old glasses. Maybe it was her perpetual play-acting, her perpetual dream world. But the expression on her face was gentle and helpless, just as it had been years ago. Anybody looking at her would know she was wonderfully innocent and untouched by the 1980’s. It was a look so sweet, so naive, that it would be hard to describe.
I rubbed my forehead, unconsciously fingering the scar she had put there when we were eight years old.
“Eccentric,” Scoggins repeated. “Ah, this will be easy. All we have to do is play on her feeling of history and family pride. Like taking candy from an infant.”
She stopped daintily in front of the Branding Iron door, waiting. Tod Tull, the owner, almost broke his neck running to open that door for her. She waited until Jim got a box of eggs and started inside. She nodded graciously at Tod, stepped inside his restaurant like a queen entering a ballroom.
The fat waitress said something, and Amy nodded. She smiled at me, then veered to a table on the other side of the room when she saw Scoggins. The waitress brought iced tea and cakes.
Clearly, from all this service and respect, Amy was still Queen Bee in Caton County, Texas.
Scoggins drummed long fingers on the tabletop. “Does Jim Betts always bring produce to the front door?”
“No Betts ever went to anybody’s back door, professor.”
He forgot his cultured pose. Grinning like a desert lobo, he showed a long gold tooth under that dyed-brown mustache. “Ah, Mr. Gaines, we have an advantage. Psychologically speaking, no man can afford more pride than money. This will be easy.”
Three days later, he stopped smiling. We had had success up to a point. We had convinced some of the landowners along that dirt road that their worn-out Caton County land was of little value. Give us options to buy at this figure, we had said, and we’ll try to interest a development firm we know into buying the entire block of land. We’ll have to get options on the entire block, of course. Scoggins had smiled and talked fast, and like I said, he had a few signatures.
Most of those who hadn’t signed had said they would do so when Jim and Amy Betts gave options on their land. And since their land was essential to the block we had to secure, our success or failure depended on Betts signatures.
We phoned, made an afternoon appointment. Jim was stiffly formal, more regal in overalls and brogans than most men would have been in tuxedos. Amy was sweet Southern hospitality right out of Margaret Mitchell. No servants now, except a hired man for Jim, so she served iced tea herself on the east verandah.
Scoggins turned on the charm. Looking at the antiques cluttering the place, he asked about a Captain Betts who had come from Virginia to Texas to form his dynasty here.
Amy gasped in pleased surprise. Jim nodded and said that Betts had started with the grant of a league and a labor of land, a considerable amount. He’d added more, of course, but the Civil War had temporarily halted Betts operations. Amy broke in, excited, talking about her grandfather’s war record.
“Ah, yes.” Scoggins stroked his mustache and went further into his act. If we could secure options on the desired land, he said, this firm in Dallas would create a development here. One of the requisites of any such project would be the naming of streets. A street would be named for their grandfather, of course, and another for their father. Other streets would honor deceased members of the Betts family.
Jim’s eyes narrowed as they used to do when I sat too close to Amy. Apparently Jim knew a con man when he heard one.
Amy didn’t. “I just love to talk about history!” she said in her little girl voice. She sat on the rattan couch, fanning herself with a palmetto fan, cool and composed in the ninety degree afternoon heat. “Professor, when you return to university teaching, you must research all the history of our county. Did Bob tell you that steamboats used to ply up and down the Red River near here, taking Betts cotton to New Orleans?”