Ciji Ware (26 page)

“What an incentive,” Sim replied. “But starting Wednesday, I’ll be camping at night, if that’s all right with you. There are a few species I’m more likely to spot after dark.”

“Absolutely, m’boy,” Gibbs agreed heartily. “If I weren’t such a gimpy old fool, I’d go with you. ‘Mi back forty
es
su
back forty,’ as they say in ol’ May-hee-co. I’ll look forward to a complete report.” And with that, the old doctor waved Sim on his way.

In the woodlands, the temperature was at least ten degrees hotter than the previous day—a hint of the scorching summer yet to come. Sim retraced the path that wound past the charming white cottage and through the village of birdhouses. Soon he was headed down the grassy lane that led to Whitaker Creek.

By noon, he figured he’d covered about a third of the forty acres that made up the remaining lands belonging to Gibbs Hall. He’d sketched a rough map and squeezed off a few good shots, taking notes in a spiral-bound journal about the birds sighted. Sim imagined that—despite his modern equipment—his actions were very likely similar to the routine John James Audubon had followed when he foraged in these very woods for fowl to paint for his monumental
Birds
of
America
color portfolio.

Only
I
shoot
our
feathered
friends
with
a
camera
, he thought.

He relished the irony that Audubon, considered now to be the first genuine American naturalist, shot his prey with a gun, or bow and arrow, so that he would have motionless subjects he could replicate on canvas or paper. Sometimes the painter would kill several birds of the same species over a few weeks’ time so that he could finish a work and not be sickened by the smell of a rotting carcass. A conservationist he was not, Sim thought.

As the day wore on and hunger pangs began to gnaw in his stomach, Sim circled back in the direction of Whitaker Creek to find a pleasant spot for lunch. All morning he had remained on the side of the stream closest to the pillared mansion, so in a matter of minutes, he caught sight of the fallen log where he and Bailey had left Daphne to sit in the sun.

Ah
…
Daphne
…
the
beautiful, hugely talented wounded bird…

Sim pulled out his sandwich and began munching on it thoughtfully.

Daphne Whitaker Duvallon was definitely a woman on the mend, and certainly one who had learned through painful experience to look out for herself. The rigorous, sometimes ruthless world of professional music had apparently taught her to keep her guard up. New York also had probably toughened her. Made her a bit cynical, and properly so, Sim judged, considering her treatment by that Oberlin character. And the unhappy business with her former fiancé had also left her with a fairly negative view of men in general—which was probably a good thing too, he thought, grimacing slightly as he took another bite out of his sandwich.

I’d have taken her straight to bed, if she’d let me
…

Sim settled his back against the log and idly mused over the fact that the stunning Ms. Duvallon had reclined on the very spot where he was currently sitting. The mere thought conjured up a variety of randy images.

The lady from Louisiana was something, all right. A seductive combination of vulnerability and moxie, so different from the women he had dated in the years since his divorce, and certainly a far cry from Francesca Hayes, formerly Hopkins. He finished off his sandwich, willing his thoughts not to veer in
that
dangerous direction, but preferring to remain on the subject of the intriguing young harpist whose music had even played in his dreams.

Or was it a dream? The sound of harp music wafting upstairs at three a.m. at Monmouth Plantation had a piercing sense of reality. Even now, the lullaby floated in his head in a singsong rhythm not unlike the gentle lapping of the water in Whitaker Creek next to where he sat relaxing in the sun.

He gazed into the gurgling brook past a large rock that dammed the water into a pool large enough for a man to swim in. He wondered, briefly, if water moccasins frequented this spot, for the temperature had notched up another degree or two, and if it weren’t so risky, he would strip off his clothes and dunk his naked body into the cool, inviting depths.

The buzz of cicadas and the rustle of leaves lulled Sim into drowsiness. He turned his head, and through half-lidded eyes, stared into the center of the pool. The water there appeared dark and fairly deep. Its surface rippled in gentle, hypnotic waves outward from the large boulder at the stream’s edge. The sound of slowly advancing water slap-slapping gently against the rock was mesmerizing.

With no warning, a ghostly image slowly came into focus within the pool’s shadowy depths. A body could be seen a foot or so beneath the caliginous surface, then it bobbed closer… closer… arms outstretched… a halo of sparse gray hair drifting around the submerged head.

Drowned
…
drowned
by
his
own
hand
…

Somehow, Sim knew this, though he was at a loss to explain how. An overpowering repugnance assaulted him—not so much for the startling sight of a dead man in riding attire and boots drifting facedown in a creek—but for the heartache such an act of self-destruction was sure to cause those close to the stranger.

Sim wondered, suddenly, why he should even be
thinking
such thoughts. And then, in the same slow fashion that it had appeared, the specter in Whitaker Creek faded into nothingness, leaving the waters of the narrow stream to meander as always past the large rock and around the next curve in the landscape.

Sim shook himself awake from a strange sort of slumber that left him feeling as though he were in a jet-lagged daze. Who was that drowned man? What had transpired that would make the fellow wish to end his life? Scores of questions swirled in Sim’s head like the creek’s eddies. Who really knew another man’s secrets, he mused? Everyone kept some things hidden. God knew that was true for him.

Simon mopped his face with his paisley neck scarf and sat back on his haunches, both shaken and baffled by what he’d just seen… or dreamed. Wasn’t it true, he asked himself, that
he
was the one with secrets he hadn’t disclosed to anyone but his dying father—for they were too shameful even to contemplate? Perhaps, just now, he’d merely drifted off, a soporific effect of Leila’s delicious chicken salad sandwich and the midday heat. More likely, some deep corner of his brain had taken over, flying like a homing pigeon to the gray matter where he stored his guilt about what had happened with Francesca.

And then he began to wonder who, indeed, was the wounded bird.

***

“Hey, Daphne! I just got a
great
idea,” Willis McGee announced, and then fell into a paroxysm of coughing. He pounded his chest and tried to catch his breath.

“Gosh, Daddy, you sound awful,” his daughter Kendra declared. “Don’t you think that cough’s getting serious?” she asked Daphne, looking for support from the newest member of Willis McGee’s group.

“Maybe we should take a break?” Daphne suggested, glancing around the Under-the-Hill Saloon at brick walls studded with Rubenesque nudes, historic photos of old Natchez, and antique posters that urged local citizens to “Vote Dry!” Overhead, ceiling fans droned, creating drafts that were probably aggravating Willis’s ailments.

“Just… a little spring… cold,” the bandleader insisted between efforts to blow his nose with a cloth handkerchief that he kept stuffed in his belt. “That, and the danged smoke that people have blown in my face for years in places like this.” As if to emphasize his self-diagnosis, Willis succumbed to another spasm.

“Man oh man, sometimes I wish we could take this gig to California,” the drummer, Ebner Stimpson, said. “I hear from my buddies there ain’t no secondhand smoke allowed out there in public places
anywhere—
even in the nightclubs or on public party boats.”

Willis, recovered now, nodded at Ebner, the long-haired, fortyish son of a local black judge. A majority of his family members frowned upon his choice of a career—a fact he’d disclosed earlier with a kind of rakish pride when he’d been reintroduced to Daphne at rehearsal.

“Now here’s my idea,” Willis said, tucking his handkerchief into his belt. “We’re not hearing the harp enough so why don’t we put a microphone inside that thing, Daphne? You know… electrify it… like Kendra’s guitar or my electronic keyboard over there? I’ve even got a plug for my saxophone nowadays.”

“You think it would work?” Daphne replied, intrigued by his suggestion.

“Well, let’s try it and hear how it sounds,” Willis proposed.

Daphne grinned at Kendra, with whom she’d felt rapport the moment they’d swung into the first tune on their list of possibles. “It’ll be a war-of-the-strings,” Kendra warned, laughing.

“And wouldn’t it just be something if a harp could drown
you
out on the guitar?” Daphne teased while Willis rummaged through an aluminum case lined with black foam that cushioned a series of mikes in various sizes. “It’ll have to be awfully small, though, Willis,” she warned. “The holes in the sound board at the back of the harp are only about a half inch in diameter.”

“Got just the thing,” the bandleader exclaimed, holding a minuscule microphone over his head in triumph. “Now give me a moment to rig this baby up.”

Daphne and Kendra headed for the ladies’ room at the rear of the club. Daphne retrieved a lipstick from her purse and applied more coral to the remains of color she’d put on earlier at Maddy’s.

“Daddy was right,” Kendra said, pulling out a large, needlelike comb from her shoulder bag and poking it through her close-cropped Afro. “You sing real good, for a white girl,” she joked.

“I’m a rank amateur,” Daphne said, pleased to get a good review from a first-rate jazz guitarist, “but man… it sure is fun to play with you guys. Now, if I can just remember the
words
to half the songs we’re doing on Saturday.”

“Oh, you’ll remember ’em,” Kendra assured her. “I’m pretty blown away by what you can make that harp of yours do, lady. So, as far as the lyrics go, just close your eyes and think what the words really
mean
… and it’ll come to you nice and natural-like, y’know?”

“Hmmm.” Daphne nodded, pulling a small brush through her mass of unruly curls. She had been worried that Kendra McGee might resent her added presence in her father’s band—even if it were only temporary. To the contrary, the bandleader’s twenty-two-year-old daughter had been enthusiastic, as well as wonderfully intuitive when it came to blending her bass guitar with the lighter notes from the harp.

“Well, girl… we’d better git,” Kendra said, glancing at her watch with its two-inch, Day-Glo green plastic wristband.

The novelty watch was merely one aspect of Kendra’s startling ensemble. The shapely musician was wearing a tight cotton top in a color just short of psychedelic pink, and a pair of cut-off shorts that left nothing to the imagination. Daphne, on the other hand, had donned her pleated beige gabardine slacks and matching blouse and felt ridiculously conservative.

“I have a serious problem about what to wear Saturday night,” she confessed. “I came down here from New York for my brother’s wedding with very few clothes. What in the world am I going to put on? Jeans, probably.” She held open the door to the ladies’ room allowing Kendra to pass through.

“I don’t know, sugar pie. You’ll look good in anything. I kinda get the feeling nobody in the audience’s gonna care what you got on, once you open that mouth of yours.”

“Thank you for saying that, Kendra. You’re bolstering my courage.”

Kendra waved the arm sporting the outsized watchband. “Ah… don’t worry. You’ll do just fine.”

Willis was still battling his hacking cough, but his eyes danced with excitement when the two women returned to the bandstand. He pointed to Daphne’s tall, imposing instrument—all of its forty-seven strings now intact—and declared, “Now you just try that.”

The foursome swung into the first verse of the slow, languid tune “Embraceable You,” and as the melody unfolded, Daphne’s heart began to pound with excitement. The harp sounded ten times louder than usual and twice as mellow. It now produced a sustained, liquid quality, making it possible to attain emotional phrasing that was thrilling to her ear.

However, when the quartet tried out another tune, with Willis on his saxophone instead of his electronic keyboard, they immediately ran into problems.

“Hey, Daddy,” Kendra protested, “we
still
need a keyboard to hear the melody’s through-line, or everything’s gonna sound mighty muddy, seems to me.”