NOT E: 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.
Lambert stands with a yellowish oak leaf dangling from his beard. It swings slowly under his chin, and twists a little to the right and back to the left. His facial fur is all cross-wise and his ears slant sideways like the horns of a steer. A piece of moss hangs above his right eye like a loose green eyebrow. You would think the leaf must fall at any second. It doesn’t. He seems to be staring at the ground, bewildered perhaps as he has just awakened from a snooze under the azaleas in front of bel’s living room window. He shakes himself and looks up at bel and she puts his leash on. The leaf falls. He looks back at the ground. He sniffs around bel’s feet and looks up again, his ears erect his attention focused. The moss is gone. He has a second leaf hanging from his beard. It has fallen from a white oak, grey and dry and bent. Even after shaking, his coarse long white fur holds like Velcro to any number of azalea leaves and a few twig fragments. Leaves from white and red oaks cover the ground visually unifying, the driveway and flowerbeds and all the bald patches in the lawn with a spread of textured browns that fell, quiet as snow, in a couple of days.
“I am not raking until those hickories drop”
Bel points toward the small grove of shag bark hickories stopping at the road and continuing in the yard on the other side, with brilliant yellow leaves. The fence zigzags among the trunks growing along her property line. Their branches over hang the lawn.
“We got a quarter inch in our rain gauge last night.”
“No wonder all these things have come down Fred!”
Lambert is barking. He pulls hard towards the road and the second leaf falls.
“Who’s that coming down the hill Fred? Can’t see in this mist.”
“Don’t think I know them.”
“No I haven’t seen those two Chihuahuas before.”
Two long-haired Chihuahuas zoom past twisting their leashes together and barking as they veer towards Lambert who is pulling towards them from the driveway. The couple on the other end of the leashes walk on in conversation, and don’t look up.
Hank Dumpty’s pale blue truck pulls up with a rattle of his dented tailgate. His thick arm partly covered with torn brown corduroy, reaches out of the open window elbow first. His hand drops to the door handle and opens the door from the outside. The engine idles roughly. More mist spreads from the tale pipe. He walks over as Lambert sniffs the air pulling now toward the truck.
“Bel, you seen our young radicals lately?”
He puts a big friendly hand on my shoulder as he speaks to bel. He has a box under his left arm.
“Who might you be thinking of Hank? How are you anyway?”
“You know that gun toting Nightingale kid and his boss, ah what’s his name?… “
“Entaglio?”
“That’s the one Fred”
“I have Hank. Abrecht was talking to Fred and Lou outside the Pie shop the other day.”
“Bel here’s your bird. Shot it yesterday up in New York.”
“Another tasty Thanksgiving for us Hank; thank you.”
“You got a place to hang it?”
“Sure, Steve will hang it in the shed when he gets home.”
“Should be just right in another few days.”
“Is that a wild Turkey Hank?” Lambert has caught scent of of the box and pulls towards Hank.
“Fred this is a pheasant. Can I interest you in one?”
“No thanks Hank we are going to my Father in law’s for Thanksgiving.”
“You bought a side-arm yet Fred?”
Lambert is barking at Hank’s box.
“No I remain unconvinced Hank.”
“Yeah! So do I.”
Bel pulls Lambert back and sits him down. He settles at her feet with a gentle growl culminating with a grunt.
“You are pretty well armed already aren’t you Hank?”
“I’ve got a few hunting rifles, and an old Army forty five, but Fred, that’s nothing to do with those two.”
The truck engine spontaneously revs up and then stalls.
Hank turns toward it. “It doesn’t like the damp … getting old like me.” Lambert is roused and starts barking again. Hank rubs his upper arm and then the large egg of his bald round head.
“You hear we lost Derwent?”
Bel settles Lambert at her feet again.
“No Hank, when?”
“He didn’t wake up Wednesday morning bel.”
“That’s yesterday Hank …”
“Yeah, Helga got a call from Rosalba and went over yesterday morning. We ought to get a funeral date today.”
“I never knew you and Derwent were all that close.”
“We weren’t but Helga was teaching Rosalba German and they kind of bonded, a couple of years ago I guess … no more than that. Hell! more like a decade ago … I think Rosalba was in college … yeah that was it … helping her with college German.”
“Hank he was the last surviving founder of Fauxmont.”
“He was … don’t think he was religious do you?”
“Never heard him talk about it.”
“God bless him anyway.”
“You think there will be a wake Hank?”
“They’re not Irish are they?”
Lambert is restless and starts squeaking at bel. She settles him once again.
“No, I am just talking about having friends and neighbors over.”
“Don’t know bel. Derwent knew some interesting folks.”
“How old was he?”
“Fred he must have been in his nineties.”
“No Bel, he was eighty nine.”
“Who did Derwent know Hank?”
“Most of the people involved in starting this place.”
“I gather it has complicated beginnings.”
“What’s that Fred?”
“Oh something about laundered money and so on, and a character called Aaron Macadamia.”
“You’ve been listening to Diddlie! She’s full of that hogwash, I’ve been hearing it for years.”
“So what so interests you about Faumont’s beginnings Hank?”
“I used to be a regular down at the H bar and chat with Banesh Hoffmann. Got to know him a little. He could write the book about this place, ‘The Strange Story Of Fauxmont’. In fact I suggested it to him with that title.”
“So what’s the strange story Hank?”
“He didn’t tell me more than a bit of this and that. There’s a lot of money involved alright.”
“Who’s Hank?”
“Ha! That’s the question!”
Lambert breaks for a squirrel running across the driveway in a crackle of dry leaf litter.
Bel holds him back.
“The houses were pretty small to start Hank. They don’t look like a lot of money was involved.”
“No, you’re right bel. Most of the folks who moved here weren’t rich. Derwent was a professor at Prestige U., Herman Intaglio taught there later I think, there were some lawyers and civil service types.”
“So where’s all the money you are talking about?”
“Where? God knows where it is now. If I knew that I’d probably be rich myself.”
“Hank I am getting back to your remark about a lot of money being involved when Fauxmont first started.”
“Somebody bought all this land for one thing. Then soon after, they sold it to the Fauxmont cooperative in a deal that is sealed for ninety nine years. Derwent may be the only living member of our community who knew what is in it.”
“Is that what Mr. Hoffmann told you?”
“Bel, Hoffmann got involved after that and took over the old Newton House which he renamed the H bar. He started out in physics so the idea was obvious to him.”
“Okay Hank, go on …”
“Well, his lawyer found out about this sealed deal when he was negotiating his acquisition of Newton House. In fact it is still listed as Newton House officially and he has a seventy seven year lease. He doesn’t own it. He has a lease which is up the same day the deal comes unsealed … and you didn’t hear this from me.”
“Are you sharing a secret with us Hank?”
“I don’t think Hoffmann would appreciate it if he found out that I had mentioned all this” Hank paused and rubbed his head again. “I better stop running my mouth, and get going.”
He looks at bel and bel is slowly nodding at him and with sympathy in her expression. Neither speaks. He hands me the box with the pheasant in it and turns toward his old truck muttering, “See you around.”
He climbs back in his truck. Lambert had fallen asleep and is roused again when the truck starts. I put the box over in the shed for bel and walk back. She and Lambert start his morning walk. He has a reddish leaf over his right eye and another grey one on that side of his face.
“Bel, when did Fauxmont get started?”
“I think the land was purchased late in 1945.”
“The H bar’s plaque says, “Since 1968.”
