Clause & Effect Page 4

  John Greenleigh’s name leapt out at me. Darlene had been correct about his role in the pageant. That wasn’t the deciding factor, of course, but why kid myself? In the days to come, I’d undoubtedly regret being such a pushover, but in my heart, I was already committed to doing my bit for Lenape Hollow. If I learned a little more about my own family history in the process, so much the better.

  I closed the cover and looked around for Shirley. A scowl on her face, she was briskly wielding a dust cloth. I couldn’t tell if the sour expression came from her dislike of the chore or from her obligation to stick around to keep an eye on me when she undoubtedly had better things to do.

  “I’ll need to take this manuscript home with me,” I said.

  “Sorry. Archive materials do not circulate.”

  “Surely you can make an exception.”

  “Not unless I want to give Gilbert Baxter an excuse to fire me. He’s very particular about our holdings staying in the building.”

  I knew better than to try to fight that battle. Petty bureaucrats just dig in their heels when you try to make them use common sense. “Do you have a copier?”

  “No copying is allowed, either. The director says it damages the originals.”

  I hadn’t formally met Gilbert Baxter yet and I already disliked him. “I can understand the reasoning behind such a rule if we’re talking about an eighteenth or nineteenth century book or document, but this script is hardly an antique.”

  “Sorry. If it were up to me, I’d say go ahead and take it, but he’ll insist it’s irreplaceable because it’s one of a kind.”

  “I suppose that logic also prevents me from using a scanner?”

  “I’m afraid so, but there’s nothing in Baxter’s rulebook to keep you from bringing a laptop or tablet in with you when you come back. You can type up your own copy and make changes as you go. Didn’t you just say you’d have to do that in any case?”

  The thought of that much keyboarding nearly made me change my mind about tackling the project. I repressed a sigh. With a copy, I could have scribbled on the pages to my heart’s content, making corrections and marking places that needed more attention—work that could then be done by some other lucky volunteer. I might even have been able to rope someone else into doing all the typing.

  “I suppose I can come back tomorrow—”

  “We aren’t open again until Tuesday afternoon.”

  I leveled my stern “teacher stare” at her. “You do know there’s a deadline for this project, right? And that the historical society is the entity that’s sponsoring the pageant?”

  Shirley looked thoughtful. “Well, I’m here on Mondays. And the carpenters will be starting work that morning. I guess you could come in then, too.”

  I feigned enthusiasm. “Great. What time?”

  “Eight o’clock too early?”

  I was always up by that hour, although not necessarily in a fit state to interact with other people. I swallowed my automatic objection and agreed that eight would be fine.

  It was going to be a long week, no matter how early in the day it started.

  Chapter 5

  I was waiting at the front door, laptop case in hand, ten minutes before the time Shirley had told me to meet her on Monday morning. The small parking lot at the back of the building was empty when I arrived, but not for long. Shirley showed up first, driving a zippy red sports car. It was joined almost immediately by Gilbert Baxter’s dark blue sedan and Charlie Katz’s white panel truck. All three drivers entered by a rear door. It took Shirley a couple of minutes to come and let me in, and when she did, the historical society’s director was right behind her, looming in the vestibule and looking peevish.

  “Who is this, Shirley? We’re closed to the public today.” He spoke with a slight lisp, as if he had recently acquired dentures and wasn’t yet used to wearing them.

  I stuck out my hand. “You must be Gilbert Baxter. I’m Mikki Lincoln, the person you and the board of directors recruited to whip the pageant script into shape.”

  “Oh, yes. The, er, celebration of our 225th.”

  I hid a smile. It appeared that I wasn’t the only one who went out of my way to avoid saying “quasquibicentennial” out loud. For some of us, the syllables simply refuse to flow trippingly off the tongue.

  “I don’t know about this. With all the construction going on, it’s not a good idea for anyone to be wandering around unsupervised.”

  “You could let me take the script home with me,” I suggested.

  He fussed with his goatee, alternately ruffling and smoothing it. “I don’t see how that’s possible. It would set a bad precedent.”

  It had been worth a shot.

  In the exhibit area, Charlie had already started work. This seemed to involve a lot of banging and scraping, but I didn’t think it likely the construction would interfere with my access to Archives.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Shirley said, echoing my thought. “Ms. Lincoln will be working upstairs, well out of Charlie’s way.”

  Baxter frowned at her. His features smoothed out only slightly when he turned to me. “I want it clearly understood that you aren’t to wander into the work area.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” I resisted an urge to salute.

  Satisfied that I’d obey his orders, he turned his back on us, strode the few steps necessary to enter his office, and closed himself inside.

  Shirley rewarded me with a conspiratorial grin. “He’ll leave you alone now that he’s asserted his authority, such as it is. In any case, he’ll go out again in an hour or so. He never sticks around here very long at a time.”

  “Good.” I was unimpressed by the director, and glad he wouldn’t be hanging over my shoulder while I was trying to concentrate.

  “You know how to find Archives.” Shirley handed me a key. “In addition to the rules you already know about, food, drink, pens, and smoking are strictly forbidden.”

  “No problem.”

  Since it was only a little after eight in the morning, I’d recently consumed my usual breakfast of toast, coffee, and juice. I was good for two or three hours of typing before I’d need to take a break. With luck, I could transcribe a healthy chunk of the manuscript before I ran out of steam.

  I set to work with a will, but my pace was abysmal. In order to copy the text, I had to read it. I suppose a professional typist can make a duplicate without giving any thought to the words on the page. Court stenographers seem to be able to record testimony without really hearing it. I’m not that focused.

  Right off the bat I realized that the pageant had an enormous problem. Grace Yarrow, whoever she was, had chosen to use a voice-over. Her narrator literally told the audience what they were seeing.

  Boring!

  As I typed, I couldn’t help but think how much more lively the scenes would be if the characters spoke for themselves. Unfortunately, that would mean doing a major overhaul of the script—a total rewrite. So far, I’d made only small, copy-editor-style corrections, but my resistance was weakening.

  “Don’t even think about taking on a job like that,” I muttered to myself.

  Did I want to write dialogue? No, I did not. But I knew in my heart that if this pageant was performed as written, no twenty-first-century audience would sit still for it. In today’s world, like it or not, a successful production has to take into account the shorter attention span of people under the age of forty. In the parlance of the theater, this show was a turkey.

  Perseverance is one of my few virtues. I soldiered on, and before long several other things began to bother me about Grace Yarrow’s script. Ronnie had mentioned the political correctness issue. It didn’t take me long to find the first instance of that problem.

  Historically accurate speech is sure to offend some people, but it galls me to use anachronisms. If the speaker was a settler in the 1790s, he’d use the word savage, or maybe redskin or red man. Were either of those any less problematic? Was Indian? Th
e English language is littered with linguistic traps, no matter how sensitive its speakers think they’re being.

  At least the legendary Tom Quick did not appear in the bicentennial pageant. He might have. He lived in this part of New York State at about the same time as the founding of Lenape Hollow. Who was Tom Quick? He was a pioneer who was notorious for his hatred of Indians. He went out of his way to hunt down and slaughter them, and the killing didn’t end with his death. After he died, vengeful natives hacked his body to pieces and distributed them among their villages to prove their great enemy was really dead. Unfortunately, since he had succumbed to smallpox, he ended up killing more Indians in death than he had in life.

  I thought about that as I once again typed Native Americans instead of savages. I backspaced and changed the word to Indians. A few pages on, I stopped and used FIND AND REPLACE to substitute indigenous peoples. I stared at this word choice, still not satisfied.

  Oh, the hell with it, I thought, and made a mental note to do more research on the issue. Beset by the sneaking suspicion that I would find lots of controversy and no definitive answer, I went back to copying the text word for word.

  A little farther along, I stopped again, this time to wonder what Ms. Yarrow’s qualifications had been as a historian. There was no author bio at the end of the manuscript. Neither had she included a bibliography of her sources.

  Well, what did I expect? I felt my mouth twist into a wry smile. If the way I’d been selected was any indication, poor Grace Yarrow had probably been pressured into writing the pageant because no one else wanted the job. I envisioned her sitting at home with her typewriter—the one with the wonky key—banging away on deadline. Had she even had time to do research? Probably not.

  I’m no expert, either, but we were required to take New York State history in seventh grade. Parts of what we were taught have stuck with me, and I have the added advantage of having heard, firsthand, my grandfather’s stories about our family. I took a break from typing to flex my fingers and reread the part of the narration that was bothering me.

  Josiah Baxter was one of the earliest settlers in Lenape Hollow and the following year he persuaded his father, Joshua Baxter, who was formerly from Scotland but for some time a resident of Connecticut, to move west. Joshua, his wife, and his sons Ephriam and Nathan, stopped first at Thunder Hill and then settled in Lenape Hollow. His son William joined them in 1796. Josiah’s wife brought apple seeds with her, which she planted promiscuously among the logs.

  No, I thought. That’s wrong. I’m certain of it.

  My grandfather had been proud of his ancestor, John Greenleigh. One day when I was ten or eleven, he showed me several passages in a very old book. The first had to do with the founding of Lenape Hollow. The second, in another section, related how John Greenleigh’s cousins settled in nearby Fallsburgh.

  I stood up, stretched, and scanned the shelves of the long, narrow room where I’d been working. It would have been useful to know the title of the book I was looking for. I could picture it in my mind, but “medium-sized with a black cover” wasn’t much help. I wondered what had happened to the copy Grampa showed me. I couldn’t remember seeing it among his effects. Had he borrowed it from the library or from a friend? After all this time, there was no one left in my family to ask.

  Even though I’d only been working for a little over an hour, I decided this was as good a time as any to take a break. I opened the door to a screech that ranked somewhere between a cat being strangled and the scraping of fingernails on a blackboard. It took me a moment to recognize it as the sound of nails being pulled out of a thickness of wood.

  So long as I was shut inside the archives room with the noisy air conditioner turned on, the racket Charlie was making had been muffled. It grew louder with every step I took along the hallway. He was ripping down a section of wall. Puffs of plaster dust drifted up to meet me as I descended to the main floor of the building. It was a good thing someone had thought to cover the displays with drop cloths. They’d have been a bear to clean.

  Skirting the construction area, I headed into the vestibule and poked my head into Shirley’s office. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure, but you’d better close the door behind you. It won’t shut out the crashing and banging, but if we talk very loudly we might be able to carry on a conversation.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. It was a challenge just to hear myself think.

  “I didn’t realize sprucing up the place would involve quite so much tearing down.”

  She laughed. “Neither did the board of directors, but it turns out that there’s considerable water damage in a couple of places. It warped the cheap paneling a previous board put up to cover walls that had seen better days. Charlie will have to install new Sheetrock before he can plaster and paint. But you didn’t come down here to ask me about the renovations. What can I do for you?” She waved me into the visitor’s chair in front of her desk.

  “I’d like to consult a book. An old one. I haven’t had any luck remembering the title but it contained short histories of each of the towns in Sullivan County and had lists of local businesses at the back.” I smiled, remembering another tidbit. “My grandfather proudly pointed out his grandfather’s entry—George Greenleigh, farmer, twenty-five acres.”

  “I expect that would be the Gazetteer and Business Directory of Sullivan County, N.Y. for 1872–3,” Shirley said. “Compiled and published by Hamilton Child and including excerpts from James B. Quinlan’s History of Sullivan County.”

  “That sounds about right.” I was impressed by how quickly she’d identified it. “Do you have a copy?”

  “We have three, which is the only reason I’m allowed to keep one in my office.” She didn’t come right out and say she thought the director’s petty rules were stupid, but I had no difficulty reading between the lines.

  Copy three of the Gazetteer was shelved on the bookcase behind her desk. Plucking it out of a pile of similar volumes, she handed it over with a flourish. At first I thought there had been some mistake because the book was bound in green and looked almost new, but when I opened it, I saw that the pages inside were spotted with age. That distinctive “old book” smell drifted up to me. Everything but the binding dated from the nineteenth century.

  It took me only a few minutes to locate what I was looking for in the section on Fallsburgh’s history. As I’d remembered, my ancestor’s cousin settled there in 1789. His name was Thomas Grant. The following year his father, Joshua, “who was formerly from Scotland but for some time a resident of Connecticut,” had also moved west. According to this account, written less than a hundred years afterward, Joshua, his wife, and their sons Joshua Jr., Ephriam, and Nathan, stopped first at Thunder Hill and then settled in Hasbrouck. Joshua’s son William joined them there in 1796, having previously lived for a time with his brother Thomas in Fallsburgh. Although the given name of Joshua’s wife was not recorded, a story about her was. She brought apple seeds with her to her new home and planted them “promiscuously among the logs.”

  “Bingo,” I said aloud. “The woman who wrote the pageant for the bicentennial appropriated one section of her script from the history of another town.”

  Shirley frowned. “That’s not good. It means we can’t trust the accuracy of other details, either. What do you suggest we do?”

  “It might be best if the board hired someone to write an entirely new script.”

  “Can’t you—?”

  “I’m a freelance editor, not a writer. I’ll be happy to make suggestions and proofread the final version, but I don’t have time to do a complete rewrite.” I lifted my hands in a “what can I say?” gesture. “The number of hours I can volunteer is limited. I’d like to help. I really would, but my first obligation has to be to my paying clients.”

  “There must be a way to work something out.” Shirley toyed with a pencil, brow furrowed in thought.

  I leaned forward, curious to hear what she would propose, but before s
he could make any suggestions there was a tremendous crash from the direction of the display area. Shirley and I sprang to our feet at the same time, but I was closer to the door. I reached the brass railing seconds later.

  At first all I could see was a great cloud of dust. It had begun to settle by the time I reached the lower level with Shirley at my heels. By then I could make out two vaguely human shapes amid the rubble. One thrashed about. The other lay still, partially covered by a large piece of wallboard.

  Coughing and swearing, Charlie pushed aside Sheetrock, paneling, and what looked like broken bricks as he attempted to stand. Smaller chunks of building material fell from his clothing once he made it to his feet. Dust and cobwebs coated his face and hair.

  Shirley was right beside me as I waded into the debris. Charlie didn’t look too badly injured, but he was swaying in an alarming manner. It appeared that most of the wall he’d been working on had collapsed on top of him. The other figure still wasn’t moving.

  While Shirley caught hold of Charlie to keep him upright, I shoved aside more fallen building material in an effort to reach the second victim. It wasn’t until I moved the wallboard out of the way that I got a good look at what lay beneath.

  Shock held me motionless. I wanted to scream, but was unable to produce so much as a squeak. I wanted to believe I was hallucinating. I tried to convince myself that I’d fallen asleep in the archives and that this was all a dream. Any explanation was preferable to accepting the truth of what was right there in front of me.

  As if from a distance, I heard Charlie’s voice.

  “Who’s that? I was working alone. No one else is supposed to be down here.” He took a step closer. “Oh, my God!”

  Shirley came up beside us. For a moment longer, all the three of us could do was stare at the grisly sight before our eyes. Then Shirley cleared her throat.