"White-boy blues," I said.
"Whitepreppy blues. WhiteMidwestern preppy blues." He biffed my upper arm, jock-style. "God, we were crazy. Toke up on the way to school. Get wasted from Thursday night to Monday morning. We had one honest-to-God musician in our band, the guy played theshit out of the blues. Amazing player,amazing. We'd show up in front of these Albertus frat boys who didn't care about anything except a steady beat, and ... it was like hearing God play guitar. You probably heard of him. Goat Gridwell?"
Gridwell's power-guitar blues jams had sold millions of records through the seventies and into the next decade. Whenever someone had made me listen to a Goat Gridwell record, what struck me was how much better he was than most guitarists who played that kind of music. I remembered noticing his yellow-gold hair and green eyes on the cover ofRolling Stone and thinking that I had never before seen a face that looked cherubic and dissipated at the same time.
"Our senior year, he got kicked out of the academy and took off for San Francisco. I asked Laurie if she'd ever heard him play, and she had no idea. To her, all music sounds the same. Anyhow, Goat got too rich and too famous. The old story. Fried his brain, the poor bastard. He's back in Edgerton now. There's nothing left. I slip him a couple of bucks now and then, but the guy stares right through me."
If I were Goat Gridwell, I'd ignore you, too,I thought.
"So one night after dinner, I forgot to lock my door. I'm sitting on the floor with 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' blasting through my speakers and smoking dope. Wham! In comes my father. Cobden goes nuts. He let me stay in school, but I had to cut my hair, and he let me know that if I ever got into trouble with the law, I wouldn't get a penny from the trust."
"Are you worried about the case in Kentucky?"
“It's nothing but dust and hot air. Be gone in a week. But this might interest you. Yesterday afternoon my wife called the attorney for the trust, Parker Gillespie. He's the son of Charles Gillespie, who set it up. Seventy-three years old, loyal as a pit bull. Laurie never showed the slightest interest in him before, and all of a sudden, she's looking for an education. You tell me, what did she ask Gillespie?"
"No idea," I said.
"She's concerned about the clause my lather added to the agreement. If I'm convicted of these crimes I of course did not commit, am I really disinherited? Unfortunately, Gillespie said, that would be the case, Mrs. Hatch. Then she asked, What's my son's position? Well, in the absence of any other male heir the child would inherit the whole of the trust. Who would look after the trust? she asks. That is the role of the administrator, Gillespie said. Laurie asked him, If the worst happens, will you continue to administer the trust, Mr. Gillespie? Gillespie told her he would be pleased to give her all the assistance she desired. Beginning to see the picture? She wants the money."
"She wants to protect it for Cobbie."
Hatch's sneer was worthy of Uncle Clark. "Cobbie wouldn't inherit until thirty-five. In the meantime, the administrator has discretion over the money. Laurie would appoint herself administrator and grab whatever she wanted. That's what she is about."
"Thanks for the explanation," I said. "Take me back to town."
“I want you to see something, remember? You'll be astonished. History is going to rise up and speak." He smiled in spurious camaraderie. “I'd never forgive myself if I didn't show it to you." He switched on the engine and dropped the car into gear.
•67
•Sixty years ago, the overgrown field had been a meadow, the stark remains at the edge of the wood a tall stone house with dormers and a portico. I was trying to control the disquiet brought on by the feeling that if I walked into the woods about thirty feet to the right of the ruined house, I would find a lightning-blasted oak.
"Has anyone ever told you about the old Dunstan place?"
"After his brother was killed, Sylvan imported the stones from England and had it rebuilt."
Hatch raised his eyebrows."England? It was Providence, Rhode Island. That's why this street is named New Providence Road. I know more about your family than you do."
"That wouldn't be hard to do," I said, thinking that there were things about the Dunstans Stewart Hatch would never know or guess.
"Do you know who originally built the place?"
"Who was Frank Lloyd Wright?" I said. "Sorry, Alex, I hit the buzzer by accident." My cars were ringing, and my stomach was queasy.
"A man named Omar Dunstan. He turned up in Providence in the 1750s with a bunch of West Indian servants and a lot of money. Dunstan called himself an importer and shipowner, but none of his ships ever docked in Providence. He made frequent trips to South Carolina, Virginia, and New Orleans. What do you think he was importing?"
"What are the blues?"
"Human beings. His men bought or captured slaves in West Africa and the Caribbean and sold them in the Southern colonies. Dunstan wasn't married, but he produced three or four children who almost never left the house. The neighbors heard strange noises and saw peculiar lights in the windows. There were rumors about witchcraft and black magic. Finally, a party of citizens raided the house with the intention of driving the family out of town. They were too late. The place was empty."
I had to sit down, and I parked myself on the hood of the Mercedes.
"The place stood empty for decades. Its reputation was so bad that the city couldn't find anyone willing to tear it down. People called it 'the Shunned House.' In the end, they built a fence around it and let it crumble for the next hundred years."
The Shunned House? It rang a bell too distant to be identified. Stewart Hatch's voice wavered like a bad radio signal before the emanations coming from the ruin.
"During the Civil War, two brothers named Dunstan escaped from the stockade, where they were being held for corpse robbing. In 1874, Omar and Sylvan Dunstan turned up in Edgerton and moved into the Brazen Head. Before long, they had enough money to set up in business, Omar as a pawnbroker and Sylvan as a moneylender. These were Reconstruction days, remember. Ten years later, they had taken over the bank and were living out in the boonies on Cherry Street. When floods bankrupted people, they foreclosed and Sylvan bought their properties for next to nothing. I always thought it was kind of strange that Omar was the one who got killed, because people here really hated Sylvan. Like to hear my father's theory?"
"Life wouldn't be complete without it."
"No one but Sylvan ever saw the so-called gunman who shot his brother and rode off down the street. My father thought Sylvan made him up because he killed Omar. By then, Omar was turning into a respectable citizen. He owned half the properties on Commercial Avenue. My father said Sylvan didn't give a damn about respectability. And he was tired of sharing Omar's wife."
“I heard about their arrangement," I said.
"Sylvan shipped these stones from Rhode Island and brought out a crew of Portuguese workmen he put up out here in shacks. He said he wanted the house restored to its original condition, and the local guys didn't know enough about the detail work. People in town thought he didn't want them to know what his house was like."
"There were rumors," I said.
"Chains attached to beds in the attic. Concealed hideaways. Weird stuff. You know what small towns are like. Sylvan could have let people in, showed them around, but instead he holed up and fended people off. When he came into town, he carried a gun. His kids grew up like animals. Some of them ran off, no one knows where. A couple got killed swimming in the river and fighting in taverns. Howard, your grandfather, stayed on the plantation, even though he hated his old man. Supposedly, Sylvan shot himself cleaning a gun, but some said your grandfather did it for him. Sounds like poetic justice to me." Hatch's voice came from a long way away.