Sunday

Jane’s cocoa wasn’t tasting so good to Pygmy at the moment, not that it was any less tasty than Saturday’s. She was about to explode and take out both Paul Giardino and Cornelia Cabot Holmes. Those two had been bickering nonstop since they arrived at Jane’s. It was the opening day of the festival and Pygmy was on edge to begin with, so she was beyond tasting anything but frusttration.

It had seemed like a great idea, bring them and Veronica together over a super breakfast and get a good start on the day. Pygmy expected that they’d set aside their differences and get in the spirit of the festival, focus on the opening ceremonies. At least they could behave like adults.

Paul had started it by making a big deal about woodchuck bacon, ordered two sides of it, knowing it would disgust Cornelia. Indeed, Cornelia pushed her oatmeal away, claimed to be unable to eat. They needled each other for the next ten minutes, first about diet, then about ethics, then just random digs and insults. Pygymy twice tried to bring up the subject of the festival, but Cornelia and Paul were too locked up to notice.

Pygmy felt like she was brokering Mideast peace talks, finally just lost it and shouted “Shut the fuck up” four times over, loudly enough for Jane to hear in the kitchen. Jane was talking to her brother, the sheriff, at the time. They both came out into the dining room to see what the commotion was about.

“What seems to be the problem?” Jane asked.

Pygmy, Paul, Cornelia, and Veronica sat dumb faced. Pygmy wanted to apologize but could not find the words, her head still flushed with annoyance at Cornelia and Paul, a migraine starting to swell up. Cornelia and Paul were embarrased to be the focus of Jane’s ire. Veronica was wondering how it all got started; after all they were just having breakfast, nothing at all happened.

“They were just having a difference of opinion is all” Ray explained. He had been watching with interest, as nonplussed as Veronica.

“A difference of opinion?” Sheriff Thom asked, somewhat rhetorically.

“Sorry” offered Pygymy, finally feeling clear enough to speak. She blamed only herself, and being on edge was no excuse.

Jane nodded her tentative acceptance of Pygmy’s apology, subject to better behavior in the future. She went back into the kitchen, followed by her brother. He had a problem investigation on his hands, a grisly murder which had attracted the interest of media in Syracuse and Albany (so far), the first homicide in Chenango County since 1989. He had driven down from Norwich to escape the relentless attention, have a bite to eat and mull over the case in peace and quiet. His was sure that it was the husband, but he had no motive and no witnesses. The circumstantial evidence was compelling for him, but the DA didn’t even want to convene a grand jury based on it. He was telling Jane about the case when the flare up happened. Jane was just listening, being an ear so her brother could think out loud, vent a bit.

Pygmy took a sip of cocoa. The other three were all head down into their food, including Cornelia. The cocoa tasted okay but she was still a bit tense and her head still ached. The silence helped. She wanted to discuss a few essential details about the show. She looked over at Ray, who smiled and winked at her to buoy her recovery.

“Could I please have some ice water?” she asked. Ray got the pitcher from the service stand and topped off all four glasses. The other three continued to eat in silence. Pygmy appraised them in turn. None of them had any real interest in art or the festival. She mused over the fact that rich people, “important” people, are so big on charity and cultural events, love to serve on organizing commitees and be known as benefactors. Why?

She figured Paul just wanted to flesh out his resume. Two years earlier he was also after Pygymy, had taken her on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend, in his mind anyway. He had her flown down to Teterboro in his corporate jet to join him in his skybox at Giants Stadium to watch the Giants in the playoffs. She liked football enough to watch it occasionally, if someone else had it on. She had never been to a game. She was surprised at the size of the skybox, larger than the Manhattan Avenue apartment she had grown up in, surprised too that there were a dozen or so other guests there. Some of them were ex-players. Paul introduced them, expecting Pygmy to be wowed but Pygmy didn’t know who they were.

Everyone seemed to be drinking and by halftime the effects were showing. There was an incident, someone brushed against her, might have been accidental. Somehow Pygmy did not think so. She went to the loo to recover. Paul was in the hallway when she emerged, kind of went all over her. An hour later she was back in the air, alone, wondering what she expected anyway. She felt nothing for him, so why did she even go to the stupid Giants game? She thought they were just friends, a mutual respect thing. She liked him because he lived large, he liked her because she was creative, strong, and self-sufficient.

That was the year that Paul had joined the committee. He showed up on campus the week after the game to apologize. His sincerity impressed her enough to have lunch with him at the faculty club. He said he wanted to “do something for the school.” Pygmy told him about the festival, which he had never heard of, and he signed right up. Just having his name on the letterhead was enough. He didn’t put much time into it, just attended 2 or 3 meetings, sometimes via telephone.

Cornelia was slightly more hands on than Paul. She showed up at most of the meetings and some of the festival events. Cornelia had been on the committee since before Pygmy’s time. She had a crush on David going back to 1967. She was a sophomore at Barnard, majoring in psychology and philosophy. She didn’t attend many classes, was more involved with the commune she started on East 3rd Street. She met David at a party. She wasn’t his type, too naïve and too much into the hippy thing. He tried to tell her nicely. She understood but continued to show up at his openings, and at the bars David frequented. One night at Max’s David was feeling generous; invited her to his table. They got tipsy and spent the next three days together. That was it, David claimed. After that they were just friends, meaning she kept in touch and David pretty much ignored her, until he joined COVA, started the festival and needed an infusion of cash.

She was an only child, spoiled beyond recognition. Both of Cornelia’s parents were absurdly rich, Leonard “Sonny” Holmes, a Tulsa oilman/cattle rancher, and Priscilla “Binky” Cabot, herself sole heir to a manufacturing fortune. She grew up with homes in Tulsa and Boston, went to school in Switzerland. Her parents were opposed to her moving to New York, insisted that she reside at the Pierre and hired a chauffeur/bodyguard to look after her. She financed 100% of the commune’s expenses from her allowance, the impact barely noticeable.

The commune broke up following the drug-induced suicide of its nominal guru, Leo, a happy go lucky Puerto Rican flower child from the Bronx who felt trapped in the role. “Bad Trip From The 5th Floor” read the Post’s headline, with a photo of two cops on the sidewalk, flanking Leo’s covered body. Cornelia stopped taking LSD, or any other drugs, dropped out of school and went on an extended trip to India and Nepal, where she immersed herself in Tibetan Buddhism. Her parents died in a plane crash while she was abroad, her father himself the pilot, touring the ranch when bad weather hit. She came home for the funeral, two months shy of her 21st birthday.

Or so David told the story.

Pygmy thought about that. Her parents (stepfather anyway) were still alive and well and living in the same rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan Avenue, both pushing 70. She had left home way too young, which must have hurt her parents. She felt guilty about that. She never really was hostile to them, just acted like it for a few years. They were closer than ever and that gave her a comfort that nothing else could. What did Cornelia have? Paul? David?

Neither Cornelia nor Paul were much help in the day to day details of planning and managing the festival. Veronica was more productive in that regard. Pygmy knew very little about Veronica, had only known her for a couple of months and had not had much opportunity to get to know her. Local girl who moved away, got divorced and moved back fairly recently, opened a Bed and Breakfast, sold real estate as well. She wasn’t very outgoing for a realtor, Pygmy thought, seemed to be the shy, self-effacing type, anxious to please. Pygmy had no complaints about her. On the contrary she found Veronica reliable and efficient, was more and more dependent on being able to delegate tasks to her. Indeed she was counting on Veronica to coordinate all the staff and student volunteers who would be working the opening day ceremonies, and was confident that Veronica would do well. That would free her up to be on the podium with David and the featured speakers.

David would turn up an hour or so before the program started. He’d only be in the way before then. He usually spent the afternoon at home, entertaining some close friends. This time he had added Donald Loomis to the party, a spur of the moment invitation over breakfast that morning at Jane’s. Professor was surprised. It had beens years and years since he’d been invited to anything off campus.

David’s place was on state route 255, a few miles south of the hollow, about a mile north of I-88. David told Loomis that it was across the road from the Grubaker farm, a house and another building on the hillside. Loomis knew the Grubakers’ place but did not recall a house on the west side of the road. It was easy enough to spot David’s place from a half mile away, perched way up the drumlin, at least 300 yards. He recognized the house when he saw it. It was a bungalow in the prairie/craftsman style, built by a professor at SUNY Binghamton back when that school was still Harpur College. Now it came back to him, he and his wife had been invited there once. The professor’s name was Murphy, Something Murphy. That must have been 1955. It was dark inside. That was all that came back to him. The second building hadn’t been there.

The driveway was insanely long. Professor parked on the shoulder of the road and walked uphill. The snow had melted off the driveway, leaving it very muddy, but it was hardpacked and there was enough gravel for a car to make it, even with rear-wheel driver. He had skiied over 700 miles that season so it took little effort. David watched in amazement as he bounded up the hillside, made a mental note that he had to get back to regular workouts.

As he drew closer, Loomis studied the second building. It was a simpler structure, a tallish A-frame with skylights and a second floor deck, roughly 30x60. Professor wondered if David was also a stargazing buff. The deck commanded an extraordinary view in three directions. It was about 500 feet above the river, which could be traced about 10 miles to the east. This was where the river exactly followed the contact zone between the Susquehanna Hills and the Appachians. He had read that in “Roadside Geology Of New York.” When he had visited the house the first time it was summer and the view, though thrilling, was quite different with all the foliage. Now it was a study in white, evergreen, and grey, bare hills in every direction, the long valley stretching to the east.

David came out of the second building to greet the Professor, apologized that he was “in the middle of something” he wished to finish up. He followed David up a wooden stair onto the deck and inside sliding glass doors. The upstairs was one large room, 25 feet wide and 50 feet long, with four skylights and 3 picture windows along each side. The only furniture in the room was a beat up sectional sofa facing the doors, 3 or 4 feet inside. There was paint splattered all over the floor and walls. A number of canvasses on stretchers or frames were propped along the back wall. There were brushes, tubes and buckets of paint, palettes, and empty cans strewn around as well, leaving little room to walk. Professor sat on the sofa and watched David as he applied brush to canvas on an easel.

“I’ve done this every winter. Every winter the view changes.”

Professor regarded the painting in progress and then the view. “How do you mean that? I don’t see where there’s much manmade difference, and the hills haven’t moved.”

“Ah, but the light changes, and the color.”

“Of course. I should have thought about that.” said the Professor, thinking once again about the night sky.

David smiled and put the brush in a can. “Enough for now.” They walked to the far end of the room where there was another stair leading down to the first floor. “My workshop” David explained, gesturing at a diametrically opposite environment, altogether neat and orderly. There was a lathe in one corner and a lithograph press in another. One wall had shelving built along most of its length, with cubicles for supplies and tools. The other wall had a series of specialized workbenches, with equipment for lapidary, engraving, silkscreening, sewing, and woodwork. In the middle of the floor was a potting wheel and chair.

“Do you do all those things?” Professor asked.

“Sure, hobby stuff. Mostly I paint.” David answered.

A car horn honked. The first of the other guests had arrived. They went out to meet them, an art dealer and an artist from Toronto. The four went into the bungalow. It was also one large room, about 30 feet square, sparsely furnished. It was quite dark, the walls paneled in cedar, the floor wideplank pine with a dark stain. A cobblestone fireplace took up much of the northern wall, a wide slate bench along its front, a long black leather sofa facing it. There wasn’t much of a kitchen; evidently cooking was not one of David’s passions.

The four took seats at a dining table. There were eight places set. David wheeled over a cart with a built-in liquor cabinet and served drinks. The Canadians had scotch and water. Donald passed. David fixed himself a bloody mary, complete with celery and bitters, and put on a Paolo Conte CD. It occurred to the professor how masculine the place was, the sort of décor one associated with the West. The Canadians, however, seemed not at all masculine.

Another couple of men arrived, a German named Casper, which seemed odd, who spoke with an accent, and a Venezuelan named Rodrigo whose English was flawless. David and the other guests fell into a spirited gossip and conversation about art. Professor changed his mind and had a bloody mary when drinks were offered again. The last two guests, New Yorkers, showed up at 12:30. Professor was onto his second drink and forgot their names within five minutes. David went over to the kitchen area and put something in the microwave. Everyone crowed over the aroma that wafted out.

It took David longer than expected to heat everything up, and in his tipsiness he dropped and lost the dish of pickled beets. He pulled himself together well enough to get the rest of it served without incident. David had convinced Jane to cater the affair, told her to make anything she wished, as long as it had three courses and dessert and fed eight. The first course was corn chowder with buttermilk biscuits, the second a salad of fennel, radicchio, hickory nuts, and feta cheese with a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil. The main course, minus the beets, was venison meatballs with brown gravy and scalloped potatoes. Dessert was pumpkin pie. All the guests were suitably impressed, even the snobby New Yorkers, who were actually natives of North Carolina. David was delighted.

They moved to the fireside for coffee and “un digestif” as David put it. Rodrigo asked the professor if Loomis Hollow was named after his family.

“Not to my knowledge” replied the professor, which naturally the others found a curious way of putting it. “That is to say I have not found any generalogical link between the family it was named for and mine. Any relationship would go back to the 16th century at the latest. Of course, there might not be any relationship at all.”

“So are there two Loomis families here?” asked David.

“Well, it’s simply a coincidence. The hollow is named for a family that doesn’t live here any longer. My grandfather moved her from Philadelphia, settled in the hollow around 1880, when Loomis Hollow was already its name.”

Casper was intrigued, but had not followed all of it. “But how do you know that you’re not related? What do you know about the other family?” he asked.


“Ah! The Loomis clan was notorious, horse thieves and burglars who operated with impugnity for many years. They victimized hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in Central New York, from Lake Ontario to Cooperstown and everywhere inbetween. They didn’t so much live in Loomis Hollow as use it to stage some of their nefarious operations. They rustled horses and sold them down in Maryland and Virginia, to the Confederacy.”

“So, they were rebels?” one of the Canadians was asking.

“Not at all. They also stole horses down there and sold those horses to the same people they had stolen from up here. They might have done the same out west as well. There is some evidence, hearsay evidence, that they did business with the James Gang, even that Jesse James was seen around Loomis Hollow.”

The other seven were all riveted to the professor’s words.

“Who is this Jesse James, please?” Casper, the German, wanted to know.

David looked at his watch and announced that fascinating as the subject was, it was time to venture on to campus.

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