Рита Браун - Tail Gait

Lionel threw in his lot. “Nelson, I think Jennifer and I can scrape up fifty thousand dollars. That might pay for the phone bills, the trips to talk to people personally.”

“Hear, hear!” the others cheered.

“I assume the history department will be the ones hiring this person. Why can’t we save money by hiring a young man or woman,” Lionel said, adding hastily, “one on the way up, with salary escalators?”

“That’s part of a discussion with the university,” Rudolph remarked. “We can’t do anything without their being on board.”

“I doubt they would pass on such a generous offer,” Lionel wryly commented.

“Well, we know the university can’t endow a chair. Chairs are always endowed by individuals. Then, too, the budget is approved by the legislature.” Willis sourly added, “That’s the damned trouble with state schools.”

“So it is, but state school or not, this is one of the leading universities in America,” Marshall proudly stated.

Rudolph waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, but it’s so difficult for a state school to compete with a private institution like Yale or Stanford.”

“That’s a discussion for another day.” Nelson guided the conversation back to the topic at hand. “Are we all together on this? The goal is to raise initially ten million, and we’ve already got two.”

“I’m in.” Willis nodded. “I always do what the quarterback tells me.” Willis was a good fullback in 1959, a position somewhat in flux today with the various offensive formations.

The rest of the meeting was taken up with each man agreeing to fund-raise from a list of names given to him, all known to him. As the meeting was breaking up, Paul said to Nelson, “What about Ginger’s publisher? He won award after award, so he had to have made them money.”

“He did, but a history bestseller isn’t like Fifty Shades of Grey .”

Marshall, overhearing the query, stepped in. “Given some of the punishment out there on the field, I think we could write Fifty Shades of Black and Blue .”

Nelson smiled slowly.

Marshall smiled back. “With Trudy’s permission, I did contact his publisher. They will give us one hundred thousand dollars, a goodly sum for them.”

Paul shook his head. “Strange business. I don’t understand it.”

“I’m not sure the people in it understand it. Probably what makes it exciting. Building a high-end home is fulfilling, some creativity is involved, but pretty much, it’s cut and dried. I prefer more of a sure thing,” Marshall remarked.

“Well, you sure hit it,” Paul replied.

As the men filed out, Nelson began to clean up the glasses, not many.

“Nelson, the cleaning service will take care of that,” Marshall said, then changed the subject. “I thought that went very well, did you?”

“I did. I just want to make sure that everyone feels included even if they can’t write a check.”

“You thinking about Frank Cresey?” Marshall mentioned a spectacular failure from the seventies, now a homeless resident of the Downtown Mall. “You know, Frank wouldn’t give us money even if he had it. He always blamed Ginger for his flameout.”

Nelson quietly agreed. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“If Olivia had been my daughter, I would have done the same thing.”

“Yes, I think most of us would. Frank drank too much, even when he played football.”

“Drank, hell! He had FUTURE ALCOHOLIC tattooed on his forehead. But he was handsome. All-American. A fun party boy. Olivia thought he was a knight in shining armor.”

As Marshall closed the door to the office, he flicked off the lights, one of which shone directly on the Fry-Jefferson 1755 map. “On today’s date, Lincoln was assassinated.”

Nelson murmured, “You always remember historical dates, but I suppose we should all remember that one.”

“Ginger’s murder doesn’t have the repercussions of a presidential assassination, but it’s terrible. Can’t get it out of my mind.”

Walking with Marshall to their cars, Nelson agreed that he couldn’t get it out of his mind either. What he didn’t say was that one of the things he had learned in Ginger’s history class was that violence is like a firecracker. One pop sets off explosions. He truly hoped that was not the case now.

December 19, 1779

Short and wiry, uneducated but intelligent, Edward Thimble packed mixed mud and straw between the open spaces separating the fir trees used as sides for barracks. His hands were raw from the wet mud.

Charles, next to him, also shoved mud between the spaces. “Poor stuff. Still, we have to try something.”

The marksmen stuck together. Those captured from other units gravitated toward these men, and the guards thought that was fine. Charles West was a natural leader and kept his men working. They loved him. Few other British officers cared to work alongside their men or share their hardships; he was a rarity. As it was, most captured British officers were being housed in individual homes in the area, while others had remained in Cambridge. Their hosts, although aware that these men were the enemy, were also aware that they were well born and sophisticated. And, like all Colonials, they aped their “betters” even as they wished to form their own country. Hosting a British or Hessian officer carried social cachet.

“A storm is coming.” Piglet lifted his handsome head, sniffing toward the north.

“These people need crofters,” Sam MacLeish grumbled. “Not one house in eight hundred miles was thatched. If we could do that, we’d be warm enough.”

“So you think they have the right kind of reeds?” Edward asked.

“Nah, but we can use straw. If we can find some straw or convince the guards to give us some, I can get up there on that worthless roof. Tree trunks with split fir trees overlap. Do not these outlaws know how to build?”

“You saw the brick homes.” Charles remembered some large, handsome houses between Saratoga and Charlottesville, Virginia—now their home, more or less.

The Albemarle Barracks—tossed together west of Charlottesville and northwest of Scottsville, the local gathering center on the James River—afforded an inspiring view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but little else.

Farmers, cobblers, and tailors from Charlottesville and Scottsville began to frequent The Barracks, as they called the prisoner-of-war camp. It was not heavily fortified; there was no need to do so in winter, as most of the captured had sense enough to know they wouldn’t survive long in these winters. Not that a vicious wind and snow could knock the Scottish lowlands or northern England, but the weather here seemed wilder somehow. As for the captured Scots from the Highlands, they could endure anything. They planned their escape for spring.

The Barracks had been thrown up in haste; more were under construction.

The American Captain Schuyler walked by. “Chinking.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?” said Charles, on the north side of the long twenty-four-foot wall. He raised his blonde eyebrows.

“That’s what we call filling in the spaces between logs. Unfortunately, what you have isn’t the best, but it’s a beginning.”

Sam MacLeish called down to Charles, “Sir, might you ask the captain about some straw or reeds?”

Charles looked directly into John Schuyler’s eyes, as was his habit. “Might we have some, Captain? To help with the roof? Begging your pardon, but these barracks are…”

Edward finished the sentence, “…windy.”

Captain Schuyler did not commit himself. Instead, he changed the subject, turning to Charles. “Your drawing book, where did you learn to draw? You drew as we marched. And you draw now.”