“Bite your tongue, Tysinger,” said Osborne. “They’re our bread and butter.”
“Yours maybe, not mine,” he growled.
“What do you have against Floridians?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” said Joyce. “Deborah, this is Sam Tysinger. And you didn’t meet Sunny Osborne either.”
Mrs. Osborne and I nodded to each other and murmured politely, but I was curious about Sam Tysinger’s attitude. “What’s wrong with Floridians?”
“Depends on whether they’re seasonal or tourists,” he said.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Lord, no, child!” said Sunny Osborne. “Seasonal people have wealth and education. They buy expensive second homes here and that gives them a vested interest in preserving and maintaining our community. Tourists merely come to have fun and don’t care how much they trash up the place because they’ll be gone in a week.”
Sam Tysinger snorted. “At least the tourists spend money. Seasonal people just drive up everybody’s property taxes, and don’t add a damn thing to the local economy except for real estate commissions and cluttering up the ridges.”
“Of course they contribute,” said Bobby Ashe, stroking his outsize mustache. “We wouldn’t have such a large office staff without them.”
“That’s right,” his wife chimed in. “We hire people to clean their houses, take care of the yards—”
“Minimum-wage crap,” the little man said scornfully. “And even that dries up during the off-season.” He took a swallow of the drink in his hand and said to me, “Seasonal people want to pull up the drawbridge as soon as they’ve got their piece of a mountain. They want to live in a quaint little old-timey setting. Stop development. Turn back the clock. They’d like it if the roads weren’t paved so the tourists would be discouraged from coming.”
“Quilt and jelly. Quilt and jelly,” said a stylish older woman who’d turned to us from a nearby conversation. “They think that’s all we mountain women do. Quilt and jelly. I was having my nails done back in the summer and some woman at the next station wanted to know where I went to pick blackberries because she wanted to make herself some authentic mountain jam. I was the only local in the shop at the time and I guess she heard my accent.” Her exasperation gave way to a nostalgic smile. “I sent her down to Potter’s Bottom, where the chiggers and the mosquitoes are thick as fleas on a hound dog. Gave her a real sample of authentic mountain life.”
“Now wait a minute,” Sunny Osborne objected. “There’re always going to be those who think we’re dumb because we speak with a twang, but most of them want second homes here because they love it. And a lot of them give as much as they take. They contribute to the library and to the hospital and—”
“Things they use,” Tysinger said with a cynical snort. “They don’t want any kind of industry here. There’s almost nothing for the young people. And—”
“And I say it’s time we stopped boring Deborah to death,” said Joyce. “She doesn’t want to hear this.”
Matt Dodson shrugged. “All I’m saying is, Freeman probably has less Negro blood than me, so why did Dr. Ledwig get so bent out of shape over it?”
“Probably because you don’t want to marry his daughter,” Sunny Osborne said.
“And you’re not carrying a flag,” said Lucius Burke. “Freeman could just as easily call himself Native American or white—according to his statement, he’s descended from them on both sides, but by calling himself black he hopes to make people question what it really means to be black. He says he wants to make all racial designations irrelevant.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Liz Peters. “I don’t know why we still have them anyhow. Whenever I have to check off my race, I always check ‘other.’”
I laughed. “Me too.”
Bobby Ashe frowned. “But aren’t there legitimate reasons for people to know what race you are? Entitlement programs? Or what about medical reasons? Sickle-cell anemia, for instance?”
Sam Tysinger gave him a sardonic look. “And every Jew should write down his religion in case he develops Tay-Sachs?”
“I don’t think Dr. Ledwig was worried about sickle-cell anemia, or Tay-Sachs either,” said Liz Peters. “He was a bigot, pure and simple.”
“You’re bad-mouthing a good man who’s not here tonight to defend himself,” Norman Osborne protested. “Look at all the good he’s done for Cedar Gap. The hospital. The geriatrics clinic. He’s building a new senior center, too.”
“Another one?” asked Tysinger with a puzzled look on his face.
“He’s building onto the new senior center,” said Mrs. Osborne. “At least that’s what we hear that his will provides, but maybe we’re speaking out of turn till everything’s probated, right, honey?”
She squeezed his arm and he patted her hand affectionately.
“Right you are, darlin’.” He gave a rueful smile. “Always opening my mouth at the wrong time.”
“Ah, Sam’s still mad because Carlyle got the planning board to rule against his sign,” said Lucius Burke.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Joyce Ashe. “Come on, Deborah. If they’re going to start rehashing that, let me introduce you to some people with more interesting things on their minds.”
“What was that about a sign?” I asked as we filled our plates at the buffet table a few minutes later.
“Sam owns several gem mine attractions around the county.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help smiling. I still have the little half-carat ruby I’d found in my bucket of mine tailings when Mother and Aunt Zell and I tried our luck at “mining” for gemstones. It cost Daddy more than it was worth to have it cut and set in a silver ring that we gave Mother for her birthday and which came back to me at her death, but I treasure its associations and said so.
“They’re popular with the tourists,” Joyce agreed, “but some of the seasonal people think they’re tacky. They were grandfathered in when the new land use rules took effect, but Sam had a big ol’ ramshackle billboard right where this one Florida man had to look at it every time he drove out of his driveway. Sam couldn’t prove the man helped that sign fall down during a thunderstorm this summer, but it’s a fact that the man did make a big donation to the hospital’s building fund, and permission to put a big one back was denied. Now, you be sure and get you some of this chopped broccoli and raisin salad. I don’t know what the caterer puts in her dressing, but it’s delicious.”
I followed in Joyce’s wake as she worked the room, introducing me to several people along the way. It could have been a meeting of the Cedar Gap Chamber of Commerce. By the time we got out to the terrace, I had exchanged names with the owners or managers of most of the stores along Main Street. I had also met a dean from Tanser-MacLeod College who vaguely remembered the twins, the owner of an independent bluegrass label, and a heart surgeon from Long Island who was considering a second home that was listed by the newly formed Osborne-Ashe High Country Realty.
“See?” said Joyce, as we moved on. “Not all the seasonal people are from Florida.”
As we approached the edge of the terrace, she was called back inside by one of the white-jacketed servers to attend to a minor domestic crisis. Most of the nearby tables were taken by people who were already in deep conversation with one another, so I set my plate on the wide wooden railing and looked out over the tops of descending trees that were a hazy blue in the moonlight.
“Enjoyin’ the view?” drawled a voice behind me.
“It’s lovely,” I said, smiling up at Norman Osborne, who joined me with a drink in his hand. “Do you ever get tired of it?”
“Never. It’s not just about buying and selling either.”
“There’s gold in them thar hills?”