NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
The first person I meet at Hank Dumpty’s barbeque is Mr.Ramsay, introduced by Diddlie, who calls everyone else by their first name. The Ramsays own the Light House Gas Station on Maxwell Avenue. He has lived in Fauxmont all his life, and was a founding member of the Water Organization.
As there were no water mains out as far as Fauxmont in the early forties when the first houses were built, Mr. Ramsay, then a teenager, and his father, James Ramsay, planned and organized the water system for the neighborhood. Two wells served all the residents from two pump houses through a system of mains pressurized with air. Mr. Ramsay, is widely respected, but no one seems to know him very well. Diddlie tells me he was close to her husband, Stuart Dodgson. When Stuart died she lost her connection with Mr. Ramsay. He was famous for saying “We can fix it” whenever anyone called about a problem with the system. So far, the word is, he always has.
Hank Dumpty comes over, slogging through last year’s leaves, as a gust of wind blows dry oak and gum tree leaves up from the ground to gyre around us. It is warm in the sun under the bare trees but winter still chills the wind and shade. He greets me with his big hand, his scarred fingers are stained with barbeque sauce, and a shriveled brown oak leaf has landed in his hair, right on the wave, like a carefully placed decoration. He suggests we join the others over by the fireplace. We walk well away from his house where his wide brick fireplace with tall chimney stands by a patio surrounded by azaleas and forsythia. We sit down at a long picnic bench bracing against the wind, while the fire hisses and the meat sizzles. The nominating committee is all here. Hank introduces me to Daisy Briscoe who had missed the committee meeting though she is on the committee.
“Daisy is an artist,” announces Diddlie, and then Mr. Ramsay calls her “The flower of Fauxmont, adding that she grows the finest lilies in the area.
Daisy waives Mr. Ramsay off with a long arm. She seems long in many respects. She goes on and on in response to Mr. Ramsay’s question about Dante and Gabriel. “They don’t travel well. I didn’t bring them. I had them on the Acela to New York last year. Dante chewed his way out and Gabriel pooped and peed and ruined that wool hat he travels in. It had been my grandma’s, and she had worn it in Gstaad every season for years before the great depression ruined grandpa’s business. Maybe a dormouse can’t be expected to travel on a high-speed train. They were both terrified when the train jolted over some switches. They ran across the vacant seat next to me in a panic and it took half an hour to catch them again. I mean, imagine if we had pulled into Grand Central with those two loose in the car!
“Good guy, good guy” she chirps as she rubs her finger gently into a blue and gray woolen tea cozy on the table beside her. Rossetti is asleep in there. “He travels short distances well” she remarks. “I think he likes the tea cozy better than home.” Mr. Ramsay nods, smiling at her as Rossetti sleeps in his tea cozy.
Daisy is wearing a purple turtleneck sweater, long and thick, reaching down over her hips to her thighs gloved in tight brown corduroy. When I was introduced she stood up to give me a mock bow, holding on to the brim of her black bowler hat with a shopping list tucked in the band. Her straight black hair hangs down from under the hat as if hair and bowler were one. She asks if I remember her from the supermarket, gesturing towards Maxwell Avenue with long fingers. “Yes I do.” It was the other evening, in the early part of the storm during which Diddlie’s roof was hit by the tree limb. We bumped our carts together trying to maneuver them through the door into the store, she with a shiny black slicker and yellow so’wester, smiling apologetically with deep red lips stretched around her big teeth.
Hank Dumpty distributes venison, beer, sauces and salad, and grins at us all. He gets every one’s attention by looking in silence at those still talking until all conversation stops. He sits on a smooth topped stump at the head of the table. Before he could start Mr. Ramsay asks him how’s Helga?
“She is still up at the cabin. I came back because I have things to do.”
