Рита Браун - Tall Tail

“I do, too. Before I go, where did you go to college?”

“Savannah School of Art and Design.”

“Ah.” Harry grinned, opened the door to heavier rain. “The best.”

She slid in the driver’s seat, wet on the left side, but it wasn’t terrible.

“I could have drowned.” Pewter wailed, quite dry sprawled out in the back.

“A raindrop fell on the tip of her tail. It’s too terrible for words,” Tucker solemnly intoned.

Whap!

“Ouch.”

“Pewter, let’s go back up front.” Mrs. Murphy hustled the fatty forward before a real fight broke out.

Once in the passenger seat, the tiger next to her, Pewter squinted at Harry, who started the motor, shut the windows. “Nobody has any idea how much I suffer.”

Tuesday, September 14, 1784

Bent over his drafting table, Charles West squinted, moving the T square farther up the page. Karl Ix had built him a table to his exact specifications. It raised and lowered, plus the flat surface would tilt.

Piglet snored under the table.

A rumble of not-too-distant thunder awakened the dog. Charles walked over to the handblown glass window, four rows of panes horizontally, six vertically. He needed lots of light. Having seen Mr. Jefferson’s windows, which doubled as doors when slid upward, he had copied the design, somehow managing to pay for the considerable expense.

“Those are boiling black clouds,” Charles said out loud.

Thunder cracked again, closer.

“Staying inside is a good idea,” the corgi advised.

Although the sun had not yet set, a pitch-black sky had blotted out the late-afternoon light.

Peering out the window of his and Rachel’s tidy house, he looked south toward the main house built on a soft rise and saw candles moving from room to room in Ewing’s house.

“Piglet, storms do pass over England, but here in the summer it’s almost every day, or so it seems to me. This one”—he paused, whistled low, which made Piglet bark—“is flying, just flying, toward us.” No sooner had he said that than the west wind picked up, trees bent toward the east, their leaves fluttering like supplicants.

Although she had been working with her father, Charles worried about Rachel. He lit a candle, carrying it in a curving brass candleholder to each downstairs room facing west.

“Dammit.” The house was a simple four-over-four with a wide center hall. He put the candle on the hall table, placing a hurricane glass over it. He opened the front door and rushed outside from window to window, flicking the shutter holders, wrought-iron S ’s resting on their sides, to an upright position. Closing the shutters, he dropped each small wrought-iron S.

“Come on, Piglet.” He hurried back in the house, bounding up the stairs two at a time. This proved more difficult as the wind now smacked the house. He lifted up a window, leaned out to pull a shutter closed. Fortunately, the wind pressed the shutter against the house so he could pull the other one shut, fastening them together from the inside with a wrought-iron bar that was longer than the S ’s downstairs and inside the shutters.

There were only two rooms upstairs on the west side, but by the time he reached the second one and opened the window, the wind had blown the coverlet off the bed. Reaching out as far as he dared, he flipped one dark green shutter shut. The other one began banging against the house. He leaned out farther while Piglet grabbed his breeches, bracing himself.

The shutter flapped back with a bang. Got it.

Soaked in the front, Charles reached down to pat his friend. “What would I do without you?”

“True,” replied the sturdy but small dog.

Their bedroom, on the east side, seemed safe. The west side of the house felt as though a giant was slapping it with his open hand.

Charles peeled off his sopping shirt, hung it over the banister. Both man and dog thumped down the stairs.

Once in the kitchen, which ran the length of half the house, he opened drawers and found a dish towel. Wiping his chest made the soft red-gold hair stand up.

Back to the hallway, he picked up the candle, retreating to the main room where they would entertain visitors. Slumping in a chair, he listened to the wind.

“Come on.” He patted his thigh and Piglet without too much effort leapt up as Charles grabbed the fellow under the armpits.

The house shook.

—

While those two huddled together, Catherine, Jeddie, and John stayed in the main barn. Jeddie and the young boys he was training brought all the horses in when they perceived the temperature dropping, the black clouds rolling up behind the mountains. All the broodmares were safe and sound, in their special barn, nickered. They didn’t like the storm, but they were safe.

Catherine visited each horse in the main barn, offering a handful of oats. Some took them, some didn’t, but not one thrashed around in his stall or made a fuss.

A gust of wind shot down the center aisle. Cleaning rags blew around. In their hurry to bring in the horses, the boys threw rags over the stall doors, all of which had Dutch doors inside and out. The outside doors were shut.

John slid down the ladder from the hayloft, his hands and feet on the outside. He’d closed the hayloft doors, open to ventilate the hay and the barn.

“Black as the Devil’s eyebrows,” he remarked to his wife and Jeddie, standing with Reynaldo.

“I didn’t know anything was coming until I heard that horrible thunder.” Catherine felt another mighty gust of wind. She headed for the doors facing northwest. John sprinted ahead of her, as did Jeddie. The men pulled the massive doors shut, leaving the ones on the other end open.

“No point standing here in the aisle,” she said. “We can sit in the tack room.” A moan of wind overhead caused her to look upward.

Jeddie shook his head. “An evil spirit.”

Catherine walked into the room and little Tulli, one of the small stable boys who was learning to identify the different kind of bits, was shaking.

“I don’t want to see no dead people,” he stuttered.

Jeddie tried to reassure him. “Oh, I was just talking ’bout spirits.”

Catherine sat next to little Tulli, kicking her legs straight out to stabilize the old stool. She put an arm around him, rocked him.

John Schuyler smiled at his wife, realizing what a good mother she would be, how she loved children and animals.

“Tulli, don’t worry yourself about spirits. You are surrounded by good spirits. You can’t see them, but they’ll protect you.”

Jeddie picked up a bridle, a simple snaffle bit. “I always like what you say, Miss Catherine, about how any bit is cruel in the wrong hands. I’m trying to teach Tulli soft hands. He rides Sweet Potato.”

“I’ve seen him.”

Sweet Potato was a pony, and like most ponies, highly opinionated and smart.

Another blast of wind, branches creaking, quieted them.

Tulli started shaking again. Catherine pulled him closer.

“Do you remember your poppa?” she asked.

“A little. I remember he could juggle horseshoes,” the child said.

His father had died when Tulli was five. The man was cutting firewood for his family. When he didn’t come in the cabin, Georgia, his wife, walked out to see why he was taking so long. He laid on the ground, on his side. No one knew what took him away, but Georgia comforted herself and her two boys by telling them he didn’t suffer and God needed a strong man to fix things in heaven.