Prologue

                                                                                1008 Cotton Street

                                                                                Cole, Miss

                                                                                Thursday, August 4, 1949

Dear Charlotte,

    Every since Al came to get your things I have wanted to write.  Such as which I have been in.  Well, it sure is a good thing you took the stand you did.  Never would I believe you would have gotten that portrait without some law behind it.  When the portrait came down Warren was in the hall with me.  "Now, that grandfather--I am going to take Grandfather to California.  My daughter has asked for it." I believe it was his idea to get both of them.  I am glad my father had a say so about something.  He (Warren) should have given you girls that portrait.  Well, the van arrived July 21--11:30 AM, finished 7:30 PM.  I was beginning to think the walls were going.  Nothing left, you know I told you he said, "I am going to have the family bible" while the things were being taken out.  I did not respond.  The next morning, when he went to breakfast--I went around--no tables for the bibles to be on--I looked everywhere for them--nowhere to be found.  In the afternoon when he was on the porch I went out and asked, "By the way, where did you put the family bible?" "My, you know before I knew it they got it on the van.  I will have to send them to you,"--as we were going inside the house for his afternoon coffee--he made it himself--"The hall is rather spooky." "Yes," I said, "all empty houses are spooky.  I hope our ancestors (referring to the portraits--he did not want--"are pleased with us and what has been done."  After this he said, "You know some of those antiques were rather dusty--just the same they will bring a good price"--finally believe his idea is to sell them.  I had need for more of that china, he did not ask me if I wanted any of it. I had told him I would like some of the cut glass but none was left.  I never saw anything like it.  John said he was mad because of the stand--did you see he--did not intend to give or rather trade both houses but you see I had told G. I. what I would do, I had them worked up about a suit, his idea I think was just to to give me this with a string.  John said he never will understand how I got both of them.

    The Sunday morning he left he called me--handed me the front door key--"I am not going to tell you good bye," with that he burst into tears, he was like the girl going to have a baby minus a husband.  The old Negro Manny said, "Gal, you got shame too late!"--he got sorry too late.  I guess he arrived safely last Wednesday.  I have not heard.  The van left Tuesday.  Friday night, Chitique--is that the way you spell her name?--phoned, you know what about? That old gun or whatever it was, that sat in the hall, she wanted to know if it got on the van.  Next morning, Warren called me--he had it--the gun.  "Is this John's? I am going to express it.  Chitique called me last night about it.  David wants it."

    So, the gun fired the last shot.  You know what I told you when she was here the last time, how she was going through the family bible--after he told me he was going, then she wrote him to bring them--have you ever seen anything like it? I will never understand his attitude.  As Ernestine Daniels said to me the other day, "It may seem cruel Mary Agnes to say this to you but he has shown you how he felt about you through the years."  What would she have done through the years without her three daughters.  Well, let's talk about Richard.  Mab phoned last night that he was doing fine, I know you feel relieved.  I hope he won't have to spend all of his vacation in bed.  Have started work on the other side of the house.  It is going to be real nice.  Hope to be finished by 1st of Sept and have it rented--unfurnished.  I hope you can read this scrawl.  Am sure you will destroy this letter.  You will see in The Cole News about Margaret Seldon Jones.  It was so sad.  I feel sorry for John and her mother and that cute son of hers.

    Love to all--

                                                                                Mary Agnes

    Chuck Wharton, the twenty three year old great nephew of Mary Agnes Pierson Shreve, found the letter in a box that had been passed down through the generations.

    "Look at this, Mary Beth," he said to his wife, "you might have to help me figure out the scrawl!"

    "Gosh," Mary Beth replied, "how can you read this? Save it and I'll help you figure it out another time!"

    Chuck threw the letter back inside the box, put the top on the box, then placed the box in a bookcase.

    "I'll go cook us some supper," Mary Beth said.  "Want another beer?"

    "Uh--sure," Chuck replied, his mind on many other matters.  "I'll get it!"

    As Mary Beth boiled pasta and spaghetti sauce, Chuck repaired to their front porch, where he lit a cigarette and reflected on how times had changed so much in their village of Cole, Mississippi.

    What that letter was all about, he had pieced together by identifying old family pictures and portraits over the years.

    Mary Agnes, his maternal great aunt, had lost her mother, Agnes, during he birth.  Her father, Frank Pierson, was said to be so overcome with grief, he "took to the bottle" and remained on a shared family plantation in nearby Grand Gulf.  In essence, Mary Agnes and her two sisters, Wren (a nickname for Clara Warren) and Eleanor, were reared by their aunt, Clara Pierson Hammond, whom they alternately referred to, over the years, as both "Aunt Clara" or "Mama."

    That the three Piersons married three Hammonds made the genealogy all the more puzzling for Chuck--no one had ever really figured it out--but after reading the letter, the sights and sounds of a major, sometimes nasty feud over the will of Clara Pierson Hammond came to life.  Warren was her son.  Chituque (misspelled in the letter by Mary Agnes), who nickname was Chiquita and, real name, Estelle, Warren's daughter.  Warren was the only blood son of Clara, and he and Estelle's mother (whose name remains unknown) were divorced when Chiquita was a baby.

    Wren, Eleanor, and Mary Agnes knew Clara as "Mama," and, since Wren and Eleanor died before "Mama," Mary Agnes had been stuck with the late 1940s mess that people get themselves into when material things start to mean more than familial love.

    Eleanor had two sons, William and Warren Lendy.  William lived in Colorado, Warren, in North Carolina.  They had known Clara as "Bud."

    Chuck Wharton was the grandson of Wren, who died years before he was born; the great nephew of Eleanor; and the great nephew of Mary Agnes, who had no children.

    At the time Grandma or Mama or Bud or whatever you want to call her died, all her descendants expected to get something from what was a vast acreage of plantation land in Grand Gulf, several houses and elaborate furnishings, china, silver, jewelry, and art, not to mention money.

    Alas, the only heirs named in Clara's will were her son, Warren and, ironically, the other Warren, the younger son of the late Eleanor, in North Carolina.

    Mary Agnes, with advice ranging from amateur to professional legal, a sense of humor and a sharp tongue, had somehow managed to end up with the family house on Cotton Street, the main thoroughfare of Cole, and lived there with her husband, John, until his death in 1951.

    One theory about why Mary Agnes did not inherit much and, the younger ones (except Warren), nothing, was because Clara or Mama might not have liked John, a veteran of World War I who sold his family pharmacy, or, as the local newspaper tactfully put it, "assisted in the conduct of the store," when, in reality, his fondness for "the bottle" and Roi Tan cigarettes seemed top priority.

    "I once told Mama that I'd leave nothing to John because he told me his niece and nephew were well fixed and they didn't need anything from him," Mary Agnes wrote in another letter to Charlotte, Chuck's mother, "but I thought I told her when I go I'd leave everything to you girls," the two "girls" being Charlotte and her older sister, Clara.

    Suddenly, Chuck's trance to the past was broken by the sound of the telephone ringing from inside, and he went to answer it.