“She’s ninety-five,” said Russ.
“I’ll bet she’s still as sharp as a bee’s ass. You’ll see.”
They passed through St. Michaels, a town so quaint it looked as if it belonged in an antique store window, and then, off Route 33 still farther toward the Chesapeake, they saw a discreet sign, expensive and muted, that said and pointed the way, without explanation.
Russ turned down the drive, came to a gate under overhanging elms. A guard stopped them.
“Visitors,” Russ said, “to see Miss Longacre. Mrs. Longacre.”
The guard, uniformed and black, nodded and let them pass.
It had to have once been the estate of a robber baron or steel or railroad tycoon. An asphalt road curled across land which grew tenuous as they progressed through the high, fluttering reeds, and then at last yielded to a crescent of garden and lawn scalloped out of the marsh, dominated by a brick mansion. The building was gigantic, monstrous, capped with a mansard roof, green copper in the sun, and festooned with balconies themselves intricate with wrought ironwork on many levels and multipaned windows: unbearable ugliness that spoke of the violence and inevitability of capital. Russ thought it was a relic from a nineteenth century full of black smoke and grinding engines, an arrogant eyesore that faced five miles of serene marshlands and beyond the shifty sheet-glass calm of the bay. It had the look of a place where rich people came to die.
Russ pulled into a parking space marked , noting that his was the only visiting car. Out on the grounds he could see ancient people hunched in wheelchairs, being guided about by black nurses or aides, whatever.
It was two in the afternoon. The sun was bright, the sky Windex blue. A vee of geese flew far overhead; an egret stood on one leg off to the side of the house, by a little pool.
“Let me do the talking,” said Bob. “I think she’ll remember me.”
They walked in, both in suits, and felt their shoes crack on the linoleum in the hushed silence. There was no sense of the medicinal in here, but more the devotional; it felt to Russ like a religious space.
They came to a counter, where two well-dressed women suspiciously watched them approach.
“Hello,” said Bob. “I’m wondering if it’s possible to see one of your patients—”
“Residents,” he was frostily corrected.
“—residents—named Mrs. Connie Longacre. I’m the son of an old friend.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Swagger. Bob Lee Swagger. Tell her I’m the son of Earl Swagger. She’ll remember.”
They sat and waited for the longest time, and finally a woman came.
“She is frail. But she’s alert, coherent and tough. I can give you no more than half an hour. Try not to excite her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob.
She led them through double doors, back through vast rooms that were largely empty, and out on a veranda that faced the bay but from such elevation that one could see the lacework of islands and marsh and miles of blue water. The far shore was not visible, though in the distance green islands poked out of the waves.
The old lady sat facing the view in a wheelchair. She was swaddled in blankets. She wore dark sunglasses and most of the flesh had fallen from her face, revealing taut, powdery skin well fissured with wrinkles. But two bright dabs of rouge brightened her gaunt cheekbones and her hair, snow white, sat on her head like a pillbox hat.
“Miss Connie?” said Bob.
“Lord, I’d know that voice anywhere,” she said brightly, turning. “I haven’t heard it in forty long years but I hear it every night before I go to bed. He was a wonderful man, your father. Do you know that, Bob Lee? Most men are not wonderful, it has been my experience to learn, but your father truly was.”
“Yes, ma’am. I wish I remembered him better.”
“Did you ever marry, Bob Lee? And have children?”
“Yes, ma’am, finally. I met a fine woman, a nurse on an Indian reservation in Arizona. I look after horses now. We have a daughter named Nicole, Nicki. She’s four. We love her a great deal.”
“I’m happy. Earl deserved a grandchild. I wish he could have known.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “Ma’am, I’m here with an associate, a young writer. His name is Russ Pewtie.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Longacre,” said Russ.
“Here, take my hand, young man. I want to steal some warmth from you.”
Russ put his hand out and she seized it fiercely, her fingers cold but still tight with strength.
“There. Now, Russ, you describe for me what is before me, please. I insist. I want to borrow your eyes. I’m told it is beautiful, but I have no way of knowing.”
Russ bumbled through a description of the scene, feeling less than articulate.
But she was kind.
“You speak well,” she said.
“He’s a writer,” Bob said.
“What is he writing? Is he writing your life story, Bob Lee? That would be an exciting book.”
“No, ma’am. He is writing a book about my father and how he died.”
“A terrible tragedy,” said Miss Connie. “A terrible day. Worse than any day in the war. Worse in some ways than the day my son and his wife died. My son was a drunk. If you drink and drive in fast little cars, you must face certain consequences. So be it. But your father was doing a job important to the community and setting a moral example. He deserved so much better than a guttersnipe like Jimmy Pye.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bob. “We came to talk about that. About what happened that day. What was said, the timing of it, what you remember. Is that all right, Miss Connie?”
“May I ask why?”
“I just want to know how my father died,” Bob said.
“Any son’s right. Go ahead. Ask away.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, I did. He arrived at the cottage at about two. He made an awful deputy who was hanging around go away. Most men did what Earl told them; he had that way. But Earl was upset. He didn’t show it, because your father was a man in control. He didn’t say much, he did a lot. He was a still man, a watcher. When he spoke he had such a deep and raspy voice, just like yours. But he was bothered by Jimmy. He could not understand it. He believed in Jimmy.”
“Why was that, do you suppose?” Russ asked.
“I look at the two of them, Jimmy Pye and Earl Swagger, and I see the two Americas. Earl was the old America, the America that won the war. When I say ‘the war,’ young man, of course I mean World War II.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“With young people today, you can never be sure what they know. Anyway, Earl was sturdy, patient, hardworking, stubborn, very courageous. Jimmy was the new America. He knew nothing. But he was handsome, slick, clever, cute, and evil. He only cared for himself. His theory of the world put him at the center of it, that was all. He never cared even for Edie White except to have her and say to the world, no one else can have this beautiful thing. She was a lovely, lovely girl. Earl would not allow himself to face the truth about Jimmy. That was his flaw, his hubris. That’s why it’s tragedy, not melodrama.”
“Did my father—what was he working on those last few days? Was there an investigation, a project? I have to know what he was thinking.”
“I was only with him for a half an hour that last day, maybe less. Then I left and he and Edie were alone. I never saw him again; by the time I got back, she was sleeping. But … I do remember this. He had found a body that day, earlier.”