9
Mr. Eberhart was watering small pine trees with a green plastic mop pail. He walked in a fast limping stoop from tree to tree. Standing with one leg crooked and with his long-billed cap fitting tightly on his head, he looked like a heron.
“Why are you watering these pine trees? It rained yesterday.”
“It didn’t rain enough. They planted these seedlings too early. The rains don’t come till after Christmas.”
“Didn’t you used to run a nursery in Asheville?”
“Atlanta and Asheville. For forty years.”
“How would you like to run a greenhouse now? Perhaps several greenhouses.”
“What kind of greenhouse?” He had not yet looked up.
“An old kind. About fifty by twenty-five feet. No fans, no automatic ventilation, no thermostats.”
“That’s the kind I started with. You cain’t build them like that now. What kind of heat? That’s what put me out of business. My gas bill was nine hundred dollars a month in the winter.”
“No gas bill. No electric bill. No utilities. It runs on cave air.”
“Cave air,” said Mr. Eberhart, watching water disappear into the sandy soil. Now he looked up.
“That’s right. Cave air. A steady flow winter and summer. A steady sixty degrees. Is that too cold?”
“Cave air. I’ve heard of that around here.”
“Is that too cold?”
“Not for lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, or parsley. Or some orchids. What is your monthly utility cost?”
“Zero. Unless you want to live there and turn on the lights.”
“Cave air.” He couldn’t get it through his head.
“Did you say orchids?”
“Sure.” He put down the can, adjusted his cap, picked up a handful of soil. Standing alongside Barrett, he spoke quickly in an East Tennessee accent. He gave his long-billed cap a tug. They could have been a couple of umpires.
“You can grow your cymbidium cooler than that, or laelia. But you don’t want to repot your cymbidium.”
“Okay.”
“I got my own way of growing vanda — that’s what you call Hawaiian orchid. Don’t nobody know about it. I’ve applied for a patent. You’re a lawyer. You want to know what it is?”
“Sure.”
Mr. Eberhart moved closer. “I use chestnut chips and a steady temperature. Most people think they got to have seventy to eighty degrees. But what vanda don’t like and you got to watch is your sudden temperature change. And up here you can give them full sunlight.”
“We got plenty of both, chestnut and steady temperature.”
“That’s where your money is.”
“Where’s that?” Arms folded, they gazed out over the St. Mark’s putting green.
“In orchids.”
“Is that right?”
“You want to know who buys orchids now?”
“Yes.”
“The colored. I sold five hundred corsages to one colored-debutante ball.”
“You want the job? I can get you some help.”
“Sure. When do I start?”
“Next week.”
“Okay.” He went back to watering the pines but called after him. “I’ll tell you where else the money is.”
“Where?”
“Lettuce. If we got the room.”
“We got the room. Do you know what a head of lettuce costs you up here?”
“No.”
“A dollar and a half.”
Mr. Eberhart blinked. “Did you say cave air?”
“Yes.”
“I got to see that.”
10
Before he found Father Weatherbee in the attic, watching trains, he was stopped by a big florid fellow wearing an L & N engineer’s cap. The man had a nose like J. P. Morgan — there were noses on his nose — and wore a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons.
“Aren’t you Will Barrett?”
“Yes sir.”
“Boykin Ramsay of Winston-Salem. Reynolds Tobacco.”
“Yes sir.”
“You own this place.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t charge enough.”
“Is that right?”
“I understand you’re going to start a Council on Aging here.”
“I hadn’t heard of it. It sounds like my daughter’s idea — I was thinking of starting something else — farming in cave air.”
“I’m eighty-five years old and I’m here to tell you I don’t need any goddamn Council on Aging.”
“I see.”
Mr. Ramsay grabbed him around the shoulders and pulled him close. “Come here, Will,” he said with a heavy but not unpleasant bourbon breath. “I want to tell you something.”
“Okay. I’m here.”
“I’m going to tell you the secret of getting old.”
“Okay.”
“Money.”
“Money?”
“Making money and keeping it. If you work hard and make money and keep it, I’m here to tell you you don’t need any goddamn Council on Aging or educating the public and all that shit. That’s how come the Chinese were right or used to be. They kept their money and kept the respect of their families. That’s the secret.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I’m married to the sorriest damn woman in North Carolina and I got three sons who the only reason they are working is I won’t support them. They’re all waiting for me to die and I’m just mean enough not to. I came up here to take care of myself. Will, you be a mean old son of a bitch like me and you’ll have a long happy life.”
“Is that right?”
“And I’m also up here to play golf. I hear you’re a real sandbagger.”
“Well—”
“Let me tell you something, Will.”
“All right.”
“I’m eighty-five years old and I play eighteen holes of golf every day. I line up nine mini-bottles of square Black Jack Daniel’s on the tray of the golf cart when I start out and knock back one on every other tee and I break ninety. Council on Aging my ass. How you going to counsel me?”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“Come on down to my room and I’ll counsel you. I got some Wild Turkey.”
He looked at his watch. It was three-thirty. She might still be at the greenhouse. Suppose she went back to the greenhouse and forgot about time and got becalmed by her four o’clock feeling. Suppose they came to get her. What would he do if they took her away?
“I just thought of something. I have to go out for a while.”
Mr. Ramsay pulled him close. “Just remember one thing.”
“Okay.”
“Hang on to your money.”
“Okay.”
He was backing away. He had to find her. His need of her was as simple and urgent as drawing the next breath.
11
Bars of yellow sunlight broke through the clouds and leveled between the spokes of the pines. She was singing and planting avocado pits. They had sprouted, tiny spiky Mesozoic ferns.
He had heard her from a distance, standing still in the cold dripping woods, and did not recognize her. The voice was unlike her speaking voice, bell-like, lower-pitched, and plangent. It was as if she were playing an instrument. Now as he stood close to her in the potting shed, the voice had a throaty foreign sound.
The dog watched him but she did not know he was there until he stood behind her and touched her. Unsurprised, she blushed and fell back against him, crossing her arms to touch his.
“Look!” she cried. “It’s my first crop! They’re already sprouting!”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he said.
“Transplant?”
“No. Sing.”
“I was a singer.”
“What was that song?”
“It is called Liebesbotschaft. Love’s Message.”
“What does it say?”
“The lover is asking a brook to carry his message of love to a maiden.”