Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Page 18

  “Yes, we helped him disappear,” said Hobble. “To make sure the outsiders did not come here, the raft from the seaplane was placed on the beach at Ocean City. My father thought that was the best way to keep the searchers from looking too hard around here. The Captain’s uniform with all the papers in its pockets was left in the raft. What my father did not realize when he put the raft on the beach was that people would think the Captain was a spy, would invent this fantasy of him going to a Soviet ship in the area. By the time my father realized his mistake, it was too late. However, the lie did keep anyone from searching for the plane all these years. Your grandmother agreed we had done the right thing.

  “She wanted him to be called a spy?”

  “She said that was best for the time being. She was very afraid of the people at Aviatrice who owned the seaplane and what they would do to recover it. She wanted it kept away from them, as she said her husband had wanted. We, in turn, were afraid of outsiders. When she asked my father to keep it hidden, she found him more than willing. Years later, after she died, we just kept on the way it was, keeping the plane hidden here. As I said, we knew of you, but you did not know of us.”

  “It was God’s will that you finally came here,” said Jonathan.

  “Amen,” said Hobble.

  Jesse spoke slowly, staring at the magnolia tree blossoms around him, “My grandmother put a United States flag on my bedroom wall when I was a little boy. I still have the flag. She told me always to be proud of that piece of cloth. My grandfather won it racing seaplanes against the best European teams. He brought home the honors for his country.”

  “Like the Olympics,” said Mike.

  Hobble stood up. “Come with me, Jesse Lawson. You and your friends. I want to show you your grandfather’s seaplane.”

  Mike put his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin smiled.

  Hobble noticed this and said, “You had figured out our secret?”

  Mike nodded. “We had the clue that the grandmother came here. I must admit, though, I couldn’t really buy the idea that the seaplane was here. It was just too unbelievable.”

  Hobble said, “That’s the very thing that has kept the plane hidden and unsuspected. That and the fear we instill in the outside world. The ones who fly over consider our buildings just like other farm and village buildings along the Eastern Shore, like other barns and churches.”

  Mike could understand why the old man’s name was Hobble. He had a malformed left ankle which caused him to lurch slightly as he moved. As if reading Mike’s thoughts, Hobble said, “We’ve all got something wrong with us here.”

  Hobble told them more about the night the seaplane crashed.

  “My father called in the others. Already the news of the lab explosion and theft of the seaplane was on the radio. They knew the danger to the village if they tried to hide the plane to keep it from the authorities, but they all voted to face it. They had some castaways from a German submarine that went down during the war. Their boat had been sunk by a plane like this one. These men were especially in favor of hiding the plane. To their way of thinking, if it was hidden or grounded, it could never hit another submarine again.

  “The greatest danger, though, that everyone faced was being invaded by the outside world to retrieve this aircraft. An investigation would destroy the village. Many of the members were former convicts who had escaped from captivity and would be returned to prison if discovered.

  “We agreed that the village had always needed a special place of worship. That night at midnight on the Fourth of July, we decided to build the Tabernacle. We reasoned that a place of worship would be an unlikely place for outsiders to search for the plane. This building would be big enough to hide the seaplane as well as conduct services. We built it to the east of the village, in a low place, a swamp near an old Nanticoke burial mound.

  “For the moment, until the Tabernacle could be constructed and made ready, we figured that the plane could be hidden under trees from Navy search planes looking for it. First, before dawn came, we had to get the plane up from the river. We did this with two ideas in mind. One, we wanted to get it up from the river. Two, we wanted to be able to get it back down there again when the time came to return it to its owners, any descendants of the Captain, like you, who came here looking for it.

  “There wasn’t any light that night, maybe a little starlight, but no moon. Just the fireflies and the mosquitoes. She was nose into the shore. Fortunately this model had wheels. Problem was there was no ramp so we had to get her over the bank. Without a lot of time to spare, the men and women built up a ramp of old tree posts cut down and cleaned up. To make sure we could put the plane back in the water some day in the future, we left the timbers of that ramp in place and planted the area to reeds and small brush so it would grow over and not be noticed.

  “We literally hauled her up there. Got the old traction engines and all our horses harnessed to pull it up through the fields. Fortunately we didn’t have to take out any trees in the fields, but a lot of brush was in the way. One wing of the seaplane was pretty torn up which did not make the traversing of the crippled plane any easier. We had to be careful to keep the plane from breaking up even more.

  “When we finally reached this place with a great growth of magnolias, we managed to get the plane in among the trees and covered up with canvas. We painted the cloth to look like grass and cornstalks so the plane could not be distinguished from the air.”

  “A small pond and swamp was at the location we had chosen. We drained all that and the resulting low place gave the plane a low place to sit. The high tail was essentially low enough so it wouldn’t stick up too high above the ground level. Then we could put a fairly low tent canvas over it. The building never was much, just canvas walls and roof, but it has served us all these years to fool the outsiders who fly over here. So far nobody has ever figured there was an airplane under all that roof.”

  Hobble turned to Jesse and smiled, “That is, until you came along, Jesse.”

  Jesse asked Hobble, “Do you have any suggestions on what we should do?”

  “Your grandmother said that someday you would be the strong man that you have become. She had great expectations for you. In turn, she wanted us to help you if you ever showed interest in clearing your grandfather’s name. If not, we were to wait until another generation came along. Until you made your choice, as you appear to have done, we were to hide the plane so that your safety and the safety of your family would be secure. During the years that she was alive, she worried that any release of the plane and the document what was hidden inside the fuselage would force Aviatrice to harm family members.”

  “Document?”

  “Your grandfather had completed a diary which we recovered. Your grandmother read all this material. She said that even though it would prove your grandfather’s innocence, she was sure the company would find a way to destroy evidence of their wrongdoing before honest authorities could be found to review it. Judging from what happened to your father and now this murder charge against your two friends, she was right to be careful.”

  “I can’t believe that Aviatice and Wall were afraid of anything,” said Mike.

  “Your grandfather thought Aviatrice had committed treason,” said Hobble. “That’s why he took the aircraft. You can read the material for yourself.”

  “They were the actual traitors, not Captain Lawson?” said Mike, his eyes open. He looked at Robin. She was surprised too.

  “That’s what I said.” Hobble looked pensive. “Tell me what you intend to do with the seaplane?”

  “Mike here wants to put it on display at his museum.”

  “How will you display it?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Hobble went on, “What would you do then, that is, if you found out Captain Edwards was not a traitor?”

  Jesse looked at Mike. Mike said without hesitation, “We’d make sure the history books were changed, rewritten.”

  “That’s th
e job of good museums and good research,” said Robin. “We tell the truth. Tell me, what condition is the plane in?”

  “It can be flown,” said Jonathan. “The seaplane is in excellent condition.”

  Mike said, “We expected to find substantial corrosion.”

  “The plane has been under cover since the day it crashed. Regal takes care of the engines.”

  “Who is Regal?” asked Mike.

  “You’ll meet him,” said Jonathan.

  They began to walk faster toward the Tabernacle.

  Jonathan had been joined by a young woman carrying a baby. She was accompanied by an older woman, with a pleasant strong face, who was introduced by Hobble as his wife.

  “Your grandmother was very proud of you, Jesse,” she said.

  “She must have come out here when she claimed she was going to Baltimore,” said Jesse. “Those were the only trips she ever took after Grandfather died.”

  Hobble smiled. “My father helped her arrange those trips. In those days, the men from Aviatrice would try to follow her. As a result, we were devious. Some of our men would drive her car to Baltimore as a decoy, while in another car, we brought her here.”

  “Did my father know?” asked Jesse.

  “He was not told. No one was told,” Hobble said.

  Hobble went on, “You never knew about us but we always knew about you.”

  “My great grandfather was an admiral in the Spanish American War, and in the old days, he owned a great number of farms like this one,” Jesse said to Mike and Robin.

  “Before the Lawsons,” said Hobble, “This land was owned by the Nanticokes. This was where they worshiped the old trees.”

  Hobble went on, “When my father was a young man, he worked up here on the farms. The local people called him Jim Bob. He had the same skin affliction as me. He made a living doing odd jobs for the white farmers and some of the folks in River Sunday. People thought of him as a half-witted black man and gave him work out of pity. Jim Bob was very smart however. He was smart enough to realize how to get along with the whites and to keep his mouth shut. Everyone knew Jim Bob but very few people really knew him.

  “The Admiral was a good judge of character. He had to have been to have got so high in the Navy ranks. He found out my father one day. Jim had a little house where he had his collection of books hidden. When he was around white men, he pretended that he could not read. Your great grandfather came along to pay him for a job and caught him reading Greek history.

  “ ‘What the devil are you doing, Jim Bob?’ the Admiral asked him.

  “He sat down right next to Jim Bob in the room of the house which was barely big enough for the two men and waited for Jim Bob to answer.

  “Jim Bob looked at the Admiral and thought for a moment then he said, ‘Admiral Lawson, have you ever considered being anything other than an Admiral?’

  “That made the Admiral think and he took a moment to answer this man in the ragged clothes who was basically his handyman but who was engaging him in conversation like a close confidante. The Admiral finally said, ‘Many times, Jim Bob. I expect reading that book makes you want to do more than clean out my barn.’

  “ ‘Well,’ said Jim Bob, ‘It makes me think that I ought to be doing something for other people much like you been doing for me.’

  “ ‘What do you want to do?’ asked the Admiral.

  “ ‘I want to bring in the weak and make them strong again,’ he said. ‘You know how to make folks be good soldiers. I recognize how to make folks be good people.’

  “So your grandfather built Jim Bob a house. Set him up in it looking out for the people around here. Would not take anything in return. The Admiral would come up here and sit on the porch with my father and they’d read the Bible together. That’s how my father came to meet the Captain. The Admiral would talk about his son testing airplanes.

  “The Admiral said he was trying to make up for all the killing he did when he was in the Navy. He said that in colonial times his family even chased the Nanticokes away, killing most of them, and taking over these lands. The soldiers cut down their holy magnolia trees so they could plant tobacco.

  “When the Admiral was alive, they harvested by old fashioned steam tractors. That’s why we keep up some of them in the fields. In the old days, though, the Admiral would go out and watch them run the harvest. He loved the steam whistles. Reminded him of his steam battleship days.

  “There was a harvest lunch for the workers in those days, always held at this house. My father would read from the Bible for the workers at the lunch. It got to be a tradition. In a way it was the only church for some of the workers.

  “In time the Admiral gave him more land and the village was begun. Others came and settled. My mother was one of those who came to live here.”

  Mike looked around him as they walked. The houses were neat, built of wood. In the afternoon summer heat, Mike could smell wood stoves and supper food being prepared. Paths among high grass went out behind the houses and Mike spotted large corn and soybean fields extending out on all sides from the village.

  Jesse pointed to two columns of smoke at the far end of a field. “They are using the old steam traction engines like the Amish do in Pennsylvania. Good machines but way out of date.”

  Jesse’s remark made Jonathan speak up, and proudly point out to Jesse, “The traction engines get good production. You would be surprised at their power. Regal keeps ‘em running for us. He’ll show you.”

  “No one knows more than he does about steam machinery,” Hobble said.

  Mike had never seen so many magnolias. They were everywhere, lining the road as well as in the front and rear of yards. There was no pattern to their placement except that every house seemed to have at least one large tree in front.

  “The trees,” he said to Robin.

  Jesse said, “There must be something in the soil up here. Something that the trees like, that makes them grow like this. Sometimes a plant is like that. It finds a habitat that is perfect for its growth.”

  The perfume gave the village a sense of unearthliness. It mixed with normal smells of village life, making everything, even the sweat of their bodies in the heat, have a tinge of its sweet aroma.

  “I’m told you met with my son at the store,” said Hobble. “You probably saw his bleached hair.”

  Mike nodded.

  “My son,” he added, “does not have this skin. He does not have my bad leg. He is, as we say, normal. He chose to be in the outside world with young people more like himself. Sadly, it was more than that. Here we all must start out our lives as equals. He is my son. It is hard for him to stop being the son of the leader and to become another worker in the village. You see, even here we have the pride that is so prevalent in the outside. My son’s feeling of importance make him unhappy here.”

  “He’s had no hardship in his past so he can not relate to the others,” said Mike.

  “That’s true,” said Hobble.

  “I know about that,” said Mike, remembering his own problems in conversations with his father’s military friends. He had never felt at ease with them because of his lack of combat service. He found out eventually that no number of bruising prize fights could match, in his father’s estimation, being shot at by an enemy of the United States.

  “We have a choice. Stay or leave,” Hobble continued. “My son is the first to leave.”

  Other villagers passed them. Mike could see that these were simple people. Many showed the marks of the hard life of the village. As Hobble explained, each had a story, himself or herself, of parents originally coming to the village handicapped, left out of society because of some infirmity, newly released from prison, or having escaped. All had seen no future until they came here and joined Hobble. Hobble told Mike and the others that these people had been saved from gutter lives of prostitution and drug use. Here, Hobble said, they learned self-respect again.

  “We are like an island in the American landscape. Our only fe
nce is our difference from the world. Our people come from the folks who are not wanted out there, who cannot find a home out there.”

  “We protect ourselves in the same way as the old Magnolia Whisper Nanticokes did, the ones who believed in the wisdom of these trees. Their secret was to have outsiders afraid of them. We copied their tradition. As long as that works we are safe. That sense of evil that outsiders see in us is our best defense.”

  “Don’t forget, my ancestor conquered this place once,” said Jesse.

  “Yes, but that person wanted tobacco land. We have nothing here that the outsiders want.”

  “The airplane,” Robin reminded him.

  “After you leave, that too will be gone,” Hobble replied.

  “I worry about what the outsiders will do until the plane is gone. What if you are hit by a well trained professional team?” asked Mike, thinking of the paramilitary men at the Queenstown airport.

  “We will win by disappearing into the land. The intruders will then give up and go away,” said Hobble. He saw Mike’s disbelief. “Look, the common wisdom is the best defense is an offense, right? Well, we say, the best offense is no defense. If we get attacked, we will do like many other weak armies have done before us. We will retreat, hide, fight if we have to but only when we have an advantage and can wear down the attackers. We know the land. In the adjoining farms, the farmers are our friends. There are many creeks on which to hide our boats, creeks with overhanging trees which cover our craft from the air. Our people can fight, if they must, up close and silently with knives, razors, broken glass, the weapons of the streets from which most of them came. We are not defenseless.”

  As they walked, villagers passed them, heading to their various tasks. The men and women greeted Hobble who in turn made comments to each about little matters, most of the discussion centering on family matters and inquiries about children. In time, they moved into a more deserted part of the village, an area where a large growth of trees and brush made the path seem to end. Ahead was a wide stand of bushes with sharp thorns, as heavy as jungle and with leaf filled branches. The brush stretched out for hundreds of feet in both directions and the foliage blocked the sunlight, reaching high over their heads.