Folly park, p.20
Folly Park, page 20
Temple dropped to her knees beside the colonel, and Dot hurried out from behind her table. She grabbed a handful of baby caps and blotted at the blood darkening the hair on one side of his head. Someone shouted, “Call 9-1-1!”
A moment later, a tourist touched Temple’s shoulder. “I’m a doctor,” she said.
Temple moved aside and looked up to see a teenaged boy hanging out of the window of an SUV filming the scene on his phone. He was laughing.
Five minutes later, a fire truck screamed up, followed soon after by the police. The EMTs conferred with the doctor and the now-conscious colonel, did a quick examination over his protests, and then roared away. Two reenactors helped Colonel Townsend to his tent. One of the policemen went off to direct traffic while the other addressed Jerry, his neighbors, and the reenactors.
“Look, folks. You’re going to have to get a business license to keep this yard sale going after three days, but only if the zoning ordinance says you can. In the meantime, you have to get along, or I’m going to shut it all down—the sale and the camp. And you’re going to turn over that potato launcher right now,” he added sternly.
The reenactors and neighbors grumbled and eyed each other morosely. Temple stepped forward. “Maybe I can help them come to an agreement.”
“Is that okay with you all?” the cop asked. A few heads nodded. The cop shrugged. “Good luck.”
THE REENACTORS HAD LIT THEIR cooking fire and the neighbors packed up their tables for the night by the time Temple had worked out the final terms of the cease-fire. She’d shuttled back and forth across the road a dozen times and missed lunch to talk to Jerry, who had nominated himself the leader of his group, and Major Hollowell, who was standing in for Colonel Townsend. She listened patiently to every petty grievance.
In the end, Jerry induced his friends to remove false claims of age, attribution, or authenticity from their signs. The reenactors promised to ignore whatever was going on across the street. In return for these concessions, Temple had agreed to sell some of Jerry’s nails in the Folly Park gift shop—properly labeled as reproductions—and the reenactors would be permitted to station a representative up at the house to speak with the tourists about the Civil War. The policemen, Tim and Bruce, skeptical the truce would hold, assured Temple they would check back soon.
Exhausted by the negotiations, Temple walked slowly back up the drive. Passing the overseer’s house, she kept a wary eye on the door, half dreading, half hoping that Al would come out. But the door remained closed.
Temple thought about her grandfather. How could he have treated Mary and Olivia and little Al so badly? She was ashamed of him and of herself. For only now, only because of what Betty Jean had told her, did she finally admit that the way her grandfather had talked about the past, ever since she was a child, betrayed his fidelity to the cult of the Lost Cause. Its proponents painted the Civil War as an epic clash between two civilizations—the materialistic, industrialized North tragically defeating the honorable, pastoral South. They were nostalgic for a past that never existed, where benevolent masters, devoted to their “people,” cared for them throughout their lives. The war had been fought, they claimed, to preserve their culture or to protect states’ rights. But Temple was a historian. She knew better. The lost cause they never talked about was the right to buy and sell other human beings.
TEMPLE WAS PICKING AT HER dinner, wishing Vee were there to talk things over with, when her father yanked open the screen door. She hadn’t even heard his car. As usual the judge got right to the point.
“What do you think you’re doing? I just saw Stuart Sprigg on the news yacking about slave mistresses passed between brothers! What is that nonsense? You’re going to foul up this election if you don’t shut up.”
Her father wore a golf shirt, so Temple figured he must have seen Stuart’s interview at the club.
“You mean keep quiet so your developer friends aren’t scared off? I can’t. I’m trying to save Folly Park.”
The judge crunched savagely down on a breath mint. “You’re so lost in the past you don’t see that Beau could save this whole region’s economy, not just one stupid house no one gives a crap about. When are you going to learn that people don’t care about history?”
He’s wrong, Temple thought. Al cares about history. The tourists care. And all the people texting and calling and leaving comments on social media. The reenactors and Dot care enough to fight about it. Temple picked up her plate and set it in the sink before she turned to face her father. “What exactly do you think people care about?”
“To be entertained,” the judge snapped. “To forget about their crappy lives and everything that’s going wrong in this country. You can’t entertain people with this place. All the stuff you’ve been making up to keep Frank Poe at bay is pathetic. It reeks of desperation.”
“I’m not making it up.”
The judge’s eyes were like chips of flint. “What you don’t get is that nobody cares whether you are or not.”
“Lots of people care.”
The judge snorted derisively. “They only act like they care because they think it makes them look progressive and enlightened to be interested in some biracial baby who was born so long ago nothing about it matters. Pretty soon everyone will get tired of the whole thing and move on to the next scandal or injustice the media is screaming about. And after they’ve posted their stupid opinions all over social media, they’ll just go back to binging on garbage streamed to their phones.”
Temple didn’t know where to start to combat this barrage of cynicism, but her father wasn’t finished.
“Beau’s base isn’t happy about this. I’m telling you to stop now or there’s going to be trouble.”
Is that a threat? Temple wondered as she heard another car pull up. She went outside, her father at her heels.
Hunter and Mrs. Glass got out of their white sedan. So did Beau. Like the judge, Hunter and Beau were wearing golf clothes. The Glasses had apparently given Beau a ride from the country club. It was immediately obvious he was quite drunk. Lurching out of the car, he stumbled a few steps before he fell hard on his behind. His dental plate popped out and landed in his lap.
The sight of Beau in the state he was in seemed to snap whatever was left of the judge’s self-control. He turned on Temple and let loose a volley of invective. He accused her of purposely sabotaging Beau’s chances of winning the election. He declared he was sick and tired of her sentimental liberalism and gullible ignorance. He criticized her profession, her lack of ambition, her embarrassing causes, her personal appearance, and her colossal stupidity in letting Rich get away.
The others appeared to be stunned. Hunter Glass looked back and forth between Temple and her father. Mrs. Glass stared, her face white, while Beau sat slumped on the gravel. Temple did not move and tried to stop hearing. But when her father mentioned her grandfather, his words were like a hot needle stabbing at an open wound.
“You’re just like your grandfather. Hiding out here feeling sorry for yourself, mooning over the past, and pretending to write a book no one wants to read. You make me sick!”
Mrs. Glass rushed forward and grabbed the judge’s arm. “Stop! Do you hear me? Stop it!”
The judge wrenched out of her grasp. “Stay out of this, Ava.”
“I will not! For God’s sake, it’s downright cruel!”
The judge glared at Mrs. Glass. “It’s only your own guilt that makes you stand up for Margaret’s daughter.”
“Margaret’s daughter? Temple is your daughter, too, Harrison, and if you weren’t such an ass, you’d know it!”
Hunter put out his hand, as if to restrain her, but Mrs. Glass ignored him. “All the time you thought others were betraying you, you were the one who was cheating. Look what you’ve done—destroyed your marriage, pushed Harry so hard you may as well have killed him. You’re doing the same to Beau, and you’re treating Temple just like you did poor Margaret. You’ve betrayed everyone you love!”
“You talk to me about betrayal in front of your husband? That’s rich.” The judge laughed harshly.
Temple saw Hunter Glass staring at her father with unconcealed loathing.
“Hunt knows about our affair, Harrison,” Mrs. Glass said. “I told him the truth—that you were the worst mistake of my life. I told him the same day I told Margaret and drove her to the airport and put her on a plane to New York.”
“You told her?”
Mrs. Glass didn’t seem to care that the judge’s fists had clenched, his face twisted with fury. “Yes, I did,” she said defiantly.
“You bitch.”
Mrs. Glass’s hand flew to her mouth.
“That’s enough!” Hunter snapped. He put his arm around his wife and led her to the car. After he had settled her in the passenger seat and shut the door, he turned to face the judge. “You’re banned from this property, Harrison,” he said with cold authority. “I’ll have you arrested if you set foot on it again. You and Beau leave right now. I’ll be following you.”
Stalking to his car, the judge threw himself into the driver’s seat.
Hunter handed Beau his dental plate and helped him to his feet. Beau stared blearily at Temple as he fumbled the plate into his mouth. The judge blasted the horn, and Beau shuffled past her.
After both cars had driven away, Temple tottered into the house on legs that felt like rubber. She sank to the floor just inside the door. Her father’s viciousness, Mrs. Glass’s revelation—she couldn’t seem to process what had happened. The whole thing felt unreal. She curled up in a ball on the cracked linoleum.
After a while, Chick yelped at the screen door. Temple got up slowly and let him in. Sensing something wrong, he whined and pushed at her with his wet nose. He was such a nuisance, Temple took a shower to get away from him. It didn’t help clear her mind. Her father had a special talent for finding fresh ways to express his cruelty, and one of his barbs had hit the mark and festered. He’d mentioned her grandfather’s book.
For as long as Temple could remember, her grandfather had been writing a comprehensive history of the family. They’d had a pact to trade manuscripts when she finished her dissertation, but he didn’t live to see that. She hadn’t had the heart to look at his book, but now she wanted to. Reading what he’d written about their shared origins might help her somehow regain something of what she’d lost that day. She went to her closet and dug out the sturdy hat box that held his manuscript.
The typed coversheet of the thick stack of yellowing paper read: FOLLY PARK PLANTATION: A HISTORY OF THE LAND AND PEOPLE, BY CHAUNCEY TEMPLE SMITH. Temple turned to Chapter 1. On the first page were two long, single-spaced paragraphs describing, in great detail, the genealogical roots of her ancestors going back to fourteenth-century Great Britain. For the general reader it was probably dull stuff, but the litany of familiar names passed down through generations soothed Temple’s raw nerves like a child’s favorite bedtime story. Reaching the end of the page, she turned it. The next page was blank. Assuming the paper was stuck together she turned another page. It too was blank.
It took five more randomly selected pages to convince Temple of the truth. Those two paragraphs were the sum total of her grandfather’s life work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Eyebrows lifted high, Martha silently handed Temple the Preston’s Mill Progress. Temple’s own copy of the Monday morning paper had been so soaked by dew she hadn’t even tried to unroll it. The front-page headline was printed in letters five times their normal size and read: THE WAR IS ON! The accompanying story reported that Beau was calling upon all like-minded people, near and far, to come to a rally in the town square on Saturday. He was fighting back against Frank Poe’s “scheme to destroy Southern heritage by removing treasured historic monuments to honor and sacrifice—like his own ancestral home, Folly Park.”
Temple felt sick. Beau had chosen to hold his rally on Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
Martha shoved her cell phone under Temple’s nose. She’d taken over Folly Park’s social media channels for Wanda, and as she scrolled through them, Temple’s worst fears were confirmed. Like a contagious disease, news of Beau’s rally was spreading fast. Already, the event had been branded the “Rebel Rally” by a white nationalist group recruiting a busload of supporters. The Ku Klux Klan was fielding a contingent, and a biker group called The Cause was traveling from their home base in Georgia.
In response, racial justice advocates posted dire warnings about violence, and Frank Poe’s supporters exhorted people to confront “the racist heirs of Nazism.” The civil libertarians posted fervid homilies about the difference between free speech and hate speech. These voices were countered by the Heirs of Confederate Veterans, who lauded Beau’s efforts to “prevent the erasure of the history and legacy of the Southern cause.” There were also profanity-laced cries to “shut down lying liberals once and for all.” A number of reenactors planned to come out to support Colonel Townsend and his men in response to a viral video titled REDNECK CONFEDERATE SHOT IN HEAD that neglected to note the incident was a case of friendly fire. Various pundits and talk-show personalities had also lobbed their soundbites into the online melee.
Appalled, Temple hunted desperately for an official announcement or any other sign that Beau’s campaign denounced the venom of the public discussion or discouraged the participation of hate groups at the rally. She found none. Beau didn’t answer when she called his cell, and Pixie and Julia’s phones went directly to voicemail.
WHEN TEMPLE PULLED INTO Frank Poe’s yard twenty minutes later, the barnyard was buzzing with young men and women talking urgently into phones or frenetically tapping on laptops. A group of older campaign volunteers had been sidelined to stuff envelopes at a picnic table.
The young people swarmed around Temple. “What are you doing here?” one of them challenged.
“I just want to talk to Frank. I’m not involved with my brother’s campaign.”
“You expect us to believe that? You live in a shrine to white supremacy!” a young woman scoffed, and others added jeers and insults. Temple stood silently under the barrage.
Emerging from the farmhouse, Frank Poe waded through his supporters. “What’s going on here?”
“Can we talk?” Temple asked.
His manner quite a few degrees chillier than it had been at the hospital, Frank brusquely agreed to give her five minutes.
“How are Wanda and the twins doing?” Frank asked when Temple sat down across from his desk in a cozy room lined with bookcases.
Temple assured him they were fine. Then she got to the point. She told Frank that Beau had no real interest in saving monuments. He and her father had been talking to developers about Folly Park, proof they were just using the issue to drum up votes. She said she hoped Frank could see his way to leaving the house off his targeted list. Not only would it escalate tensions to go after such a popular local site, it could derail an initiative she believed he would support. Temple told Frank about her plan for the girls’ home, and Senator Alden’s interest. She offered to share credit with him when the deal was done.
Behind his desk, Frank listened impassively. “I appreciate you telling the truth about Folly Park’s history,” he said. “And the girls’ home is a nice idea. But it’s too late now.”
“It’s just a few weeks.”
“I mean it’s years late. Decades. A century. Do you have any idea what my folks went through to hang onto this farm since Reconstruction? They had to train dogs to keep the Klan away. My great-uncle was lynched. My grandfather was beaten and left for dead. My mother had to prove title in court twice. And we’re the lucky ones.”
Stricken with shame, Temple said in a small voice, “I want to help.”
“We’re past that. Your brother started a war.”
Frank stood, signaling her time was up. At the front door, he said, “We’re organizing a counterprotest for the rally, and things could get ugly. Maybe you should sit it out.”
DRIVING BACK THROUGH PRESTON’S MILL, Temple passed a dozen people in front of the general’s statue waving signs calling for its removal. Her stomach lurched. But she couldn’t think about that now. Being out of joint with Al and Betty Jean was bad enough. She couldn’t lose another old friend.
Mrs. Glass was in the sun porch, lying on a chaise in a dressing gown, her silver-gray hair gathered into an untidy chignon. Without makeup, Temple could see networks of tiny lines in her face. When the green marble eyes opened, they quickly filled with tears.
“Oh, darling, can you ever forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
Mrs. Glass drew a tissue from her pocket and blotted the corners of her eyes.
Temple sat down on a rattan chair. “I need to know about my parents.”
“Don’t confuse needs with wants,” said Mrs. Glass. “You don’t need to know. But I believe Margaret would want me to tell you.” She gazed past Temple, where a man was clipping the boxwood hedges in the garden.
“Your mother told me she was not happily married for a single hour. Being with your father was soul-crushing. That was the exact phrase she used. I’ve always remembered it.” Mrs. Glass shook her head. “They married without really knowing each other. Because of her beauty and reserve, people always assumed your mother was more sophisticated than she was. Your father was handsome and charming, and he was older and used to getting his way.”
Mrs. Glass told Temple that her mother had quickly discovered her husband wanted her only to be a social ornament, a prop for his career ambitions. The only time she didn’t feel invisible was when he was annoyed or disappointed in her, and that was often.
“After years of failing to please him, Margaret realized she would never succeed. She withdrew, went back to painting, and spent more time in her studio at Folly Park. She loved you and your brothers, but she said it became harder and harder for her to go back home.”
