Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(Yes, I’m starting another Lone Star Sons adventure. This is the first of the new series of adventures, set in the time of the Republic of Texas. Hopefully to be done in time for Christmas sales…)

The Matter of Jedidiah

“Well, Jim,” said Captain Hays one summer evening, as they sat outside the front door of the small adobe house off of San Antonio’s central plaza, enjoying the cooler temperatures which fell as soon as the sun was well-down and the light breeze which discouraged mosquitos. “I have a curious assignment for you and Mr. Shaw as the pair of my stiletto men currently at liberty – and this one might even call upon your skills as a man of law.”

“As long as it doesn’t depend on my sharp-shooting ability,” Jim Reade replied, and his commander laughed, wry laughter. “Where need we travel to this time, and for what duty are we being charged?”

Across the plaza, the light from lanterns hung swaying in the trees above the tables where the chili-selling vendors hawked their wares. A thread of music from a trio playing guitar, fiddle and concertina, hung in the air like the smoke from the chili-vendor’s cook fires. The old town of Bexar came alive after sundown, when the heat of the day abated.

“A plantation a little west of Richmond,” Jack Hays leaned back in the leather and stave Mexican chair, and drew on his pipe, sending a small spiral of tobacco smoke upwards. “Pecan Grove; established in the earlies by one of Austin’s first three hundred settlers. A Scot named Josiah Malcolm, emigrated in his youth from Perth, settled in the Carolina, then took up land in Austin’s grant. He died about ten years ago, leaving the entire estate to his wife, Mrs. Ada Malcolm. General Sam always had a soft spot for Mrs. Malcolm, since they were neighbors. The thing is now Mrs. Malcolm died … and in the will, she willed everything, lock, stock and barrel to a certain beneficiary. General Sam has asked me privately, if I could send someone to safeguard the life of that beneficiary.”

“And there is someone contesting the will?” Jim Reade asked. “Were there no natural heirs to the property, who would inherit if there were no will?” This certainly sounded intriguing. He was aware, in a manner of speaking, of Pecan Grove plantation, and of Ada Malcom as a redoubtable woman of strong character.

Captain Jack Hays shook his head. “There was a son, but he was the supercargo on a China clipper ship lost at sea, as I understand, about ten years ago. Great tragedy, as all their hopes were invested in him. The person contesting the will and threatening the life of the beneficiary is a nephew, the son of Josiah Malcom’s younger brother. A feckless, useless sort of man – I’ve met him a couple of times. A gambler and unlucky at it, which you’d think would be an inducement to give up games of chance, but Hake Malcolm is nearly as stupid as he is unlucky. Always coming round to touch up his uncle for a loan. Old Malcolm used to indulge him for the sake of the family, but Mrs. Ada put a stop to it, as soon as she gained absolute control of the purse-strings and did Hake Malcolm resent that. Told everyone who would lend him their ears for five minutes, about what a miser she was, to flesh and blood…”

“Technically, she was not flesh and blood, but to her husband” Jim pointed out, and Jack agreed with a nod.

“Anyway – General Sam was fond of her, and he’s never been accused of being ungallant to any woman, save perhaps his first wife. He’s tied up with the Legislature in session for a few months, and he had a letter from the Malcolm family lawyer regarding the estate and the beneficiary…”

“And he’s worried about the Malcolm beneficiary?” Jim hinted, and Jack Hays nodded again.

“Well, he is the president, after all,” Jack drew on his pipe. “The one who trusts us to deal with interesting and delicate matters. And the beneficiary of a substantial estate being in danger from a resentful man who gives every indication of contesting the will … that’s as delicate a matter as they come. There’s just one thing…” Jack waited for Jim to rise to the bait. Jim didn’t; Jack was always holding back a key bit of information as a tease. Finally, Jim said,

“So, is there something we should know about this beneficiary which we are to protect, for the honor of General Sam and the nation of Texas?”

“Why, yes there is,” Jack replied. “The beneficiary whose life may be in danger is a tame macaw named Jeremiah.”

For a number of years, I copied out interesting recipes by hand in a series of small books with lined pages and casebound covers. Many of them came from cooking magazines, such as Gourmet, but many came from the pages of various newspapers, to include the Stars and Stripes – from which I dimly recall reading one for a heavy, dark Caribbean Christmas fruitcake. It is in my mind that the woman who had originated it had a nice local business making and selling these fruitcakes – perhaps she had a cookbook published, and the S&S had merely published an extract from it. Anyway, I copied the recipe from a clipping, into the oldest of my hand-written books, which dates from my first hitch in the Air Force.

Caribbean Dark Fruitcake

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So I’m more or less resigned to getting spam calls. Because I have a small business, and the cellphone is my contact with potential customers, I have to answer when the phone rings, especially if the number on caller ID is with a south Texas area code. Usually crisply saying the name of the Teeny Publishing Bidness and adding “May I help you?” inspires the usual human caller to break the connection. When the inevitable pre-recorded message regarding my extended auto warranty, I say a couple of cuss words and break the connection. However, the robocalls which mention a legal action against me for a criminal offense, or a threat to suspend my social security number and advise me to dial “1” to speak to an investigating agent, or whatever … those I have had some fun with.

The call always goes to a boiler room – I can tell from the ambient sound, since I used to work at a call center. The person answering always has an accent – Indian, mostly. They announce themselves to be Agent something or other, with Social Security or some law enforcement agency – and I tell them straight out that no they aren’t: they’re scammers trying to scam money from senior citizens, and they are scummy human beings, and I don’t see how they can live with themselves, doing this for a living. I have a very nice, accusatory rant, but mostly I don’t get more than a couple of sentences into it, before they break the connection. Yesterday I did get a woman who at least had the sand to yell back, and insist that she would call again and again, and again … I cussed her out a bit more, threatened to file a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s office and promised to block the number her scummy, scamming enterprise was spoofing. At least that was a good few minutes that she wasn’t working over someone much more gullible than me.

Frankly, it’s kind of fun making these people’s work lives a bit of a misery. And it certainly relieves my feelings a bit. Honestly, I do wish that law enforcement would work a bit harder on pursuing these cases, although most of it seems to be based overseas. This guy, with his glitter-bomb packages and endless ingenuity – as well as knowledgeable friends in the internet security industry – is doing good work.

Five years ago, after we had to cut down the diseased and clearly dying mulberry tree which shaded the whole of my backyard, I worked up a design for a tall arbor; three lattice panels held up by four tall posts. I intended to plant a couple of grape vines to grow up over the trellis and replace the shade tree. I bought the materials – the posts, the trellis pieces, the 2x4s, a couple of sacks of cement and the hardware, and had Roman the Neighborhood Handy Guy come over with his post-hole digger and do the work. We had a lovely high-end tenor wind chime, a Christmas present from Mom, which Roman installed in the center of the middle arbor panel. I bought some grape vines at Rainbow Gardens, planted them in the ground by the outermost vertical posts, and awaited nature to take it’s course in covering the arbor with bearing grape vines. Which Nature has, in her own sweet time. One vine – the native adapted Spanish grape – romped up the post and into the lattice within a year or so, the other went at a more decorous pace, but now the end panels are well-blanketed in vines. Something – possibly the bitter freeze earlier this year – sent the grapevines rocketing into overdrive, and now both of them have sent three or four ambitious tendrils up into the center portion of the arbor. It will be most splendidly shady when the vines cover the entire arbor and shelter the back of the house as the much-mourned mulberry did on summer days when the afternoon sun burned into the yard like an unappeased fury.

Heck, I might even get some grapes out of the enterprise, if I can beat hungry birds and field rats to them.

The back yard is due for a serious reno, yet again. The forementioned bitter cold snap in February killed all the potted cycads, the Daughter Unit’s pomegranate shrub, the potted lemon and lime trees, as well as the calamondin orange, which had exploded the pot that it had been planted in and sent a taproot deep into the soil. Alas for that – we cut it down, dragged it all to the curb for city brush disposal this week. The native-adapted plantings, like the firebushes and Russian Sage have roared back after the killing frost annihilated everything above the ground and several inches beneath it, so there is some green in the place. And I have scored a sapling pear tree and a persimmon, in the last few months, to add to the tiny backyard orchard.

Betty, the single hen who survived the horrific slaughter earlier this year, also died a couple of weeks ago. Not certain how, or what of – a kind of organ prolapse, I surmise. We’ll start again with backyard chickens, when the back garden is grown enough to resist chicken depredations, and I can afford to have the back fence secured against whatever it was that got in and killed the other hens. Curiously enough, the chickens might have been responsible for a couple of rogue plants that appeared out of nowhere: a tomato bush and a pepper plant. I used to save vegetable scraps for the chickens, and obviously they excreted a couple of viable seeds in the right place … this is the first time that I have ever seen this in my garden and reminds me of a mention on one of the Ace of Spades gardening threads. Another gardener remarked that the best-bearing tomato plant at his place sprouted in the compost bin where he had thrown away the remains of a McDonalds’ hamburger. So between care of Wee Jamie and temperatures in the nineties in the late afternoon – the garden awaits a little careful tending over the next few months.    

The Daughter Unit and I, with Wee Jamie the Grandson Unit, made a road trip last Saturday – a completely enjoyable outing, even with the necessity of stopping several times to change Wee Jamie’s diapers on the hour-and a half drive to Kingsland on the Llano and Colorado Rivers. He slept for the most part, and excited the admiration of many, who noted the Overwhelming Cuteness of Wee Jamie. His eyes actually opened once or twice during these occasions.

We had an appointment for a presentation ceremony at the American Legion post in Kingsland for me to be presented with a quilt; the ladies of this organization have been working for several years on a project to present a patriotic-themed quilt to every military veteran who can be identified and nominated for one. The Daughter Unit was given one, shortly after finding out that she was pregnant, and so it was only fitting that we do another trip to show him off. The Legion post members were cheerfully foregoing up masks nine months ago – and this weekend, the matter was not even raised, nor was there any evidence.

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