The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [76]
The lady smiled. “Which part of Little Rock are you from?” she asked.
Viridis was taken aback, to put it mildly, and her first thought was of some kind of conspiracy: somebody, maybe Nail himself, had gotten word to these people that Viridis was coming. But this woman was asking her which part of Little Rock she was from, as if there were divisions or distinctions, and—Viridis could not help noticing—this woman was not asking the question in the mode of expression or voice she would expect from a native of these parts.
“Why, the central part,” Viridis answered. “Why?”
“Louisiana Street, Center, Spring, or Broadway?” the old woman asked.
“West of that,” Viridis said. “Arch Street.”
“I guessed as much. That’s not exactly central. Well, as they say hereabouts, light down and hitch, rest your saddle. Come in and eat you some supper.”
“I’m just trying to find the Chism place,” Viridis said.
“You won’t find it in the dark, or even this fine moonlight. Are they expecting you? They won’t be able to give you a decent bed.”
“I don’t want to impose on you,” Viridis said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve room for your whole family, if you’d brought them with you. Well, maybe one of your brothers would have to sleep on the floor.”
Viridis was delighted. She accepted the offer of hospitality and discovered that the woman had the whole large house to herself, eleven rooms, simply but tastefully furnished. Behind the house was a small stable, where Rosabone was housed comfortably for the night.
The woman had just been starting to prepare her own supper at the time Viridis arrived, and it was no trouble for her to make a double serving of everything: roast pork, boiled potatoes in their skins with chopped parsley, fresh garden kale (it survives January’s freeze) cooked like spinach, and a light wheaten roll baked in a manner called Parker House. Viridis watched as these things came off of and out of a huge cast-iron and white enamel cookstove that gave off an additional fragrance of burning cedar logs, and of the sweet-potato pie they would have for dessert.
“Now,” said the old lady, “if I can just remember where the governor left that bottle of Alsace wine. Excuse me.” She disappeared upstairs, climbing the staircase with an agility that belied her years, more than eighty of them, Viridis guessed, and within a minute she returned, wiping the dust from, sure enough, a tall, narrow bottle of Gewürztraminer.
During the meal Viridis remarked, “You mentioned the governor. Were you speaking in the familiar sense of one’s husband, father, superior, or employer?”
The old woman smiled with amusement. “He was not my husband, but he was my ‘father,’ you could say. He was definitely my superior, and certainly my employer.” She paused to sip her wine, then added, “But Jacob Ingledew was also the governor.”
“Of Arkansas?” Viridis asked.
“Don’t the schools of Little Rock teach Arkansas history anymore?” the woman asked.
Viridis had actually taken mandatory Arkansas history in the eighth and ninth grades, but there had been so many governors and she couldn’t remember their names. She asked, with a smile, “Which part of Little Rock are you from?”
“East of Main,” the woman said. “Do you know the Pike mansion?”
“Of course!” Viridis replied. Her boss’s cousins, the Fletchers, owned the mansion that had been built by Albert Pike. “Did you live there?”
“No,” the woman said, smiling as if to excuse herself for misleading her guest, “but in the neighborhood, just a few doors to the east.”
The conversation died for a few moments before Viridis decided to ask, “What are you doing in Stay More?”
“I’ll be happy to tell you,” the woman said. “But first you must tell me: what are you doing in Stay More?