Free The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton

lore than most of us. Because she visited May Hill in the upstairs she knew almost as much as my father about who and where and when. And she knew, for sure, our own histories, quoting our remarkable toddler sentences to us, shaking her head in wonderment. For a reason we could not put in plain words, Gloria’s mastery of our legends embarrassed us for her; and furthermore, we didn’t think Stephen liked her familiarity, either. He was the one to state the obvious. “I doubt May Hill wants to do an interview.”
    “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Gloria said. “She loves to talk about history.”
    All that time my father, while he sloshed around the press in his big galoshes adjusting the wooden forms, was trying to figure out the fifth-cloth mystery. “Liveland Raspberry,” he called out. “You saved some Liveland Raspberries!” There really was an antique variety, a punky-striped early apple with that wrong-fruited name.
    “Oh, Jim!” Gloria cried. “I made it too easy for you.”
    “Wow, Gloria.”
    Stephen was back to reading the paper, no interest, it seemed, in Gloria’s skulduggery. He said, “I hope they choose Birch Bayh to speak at the convention. Indiana! Give up your native son so we know you’ve got more in you than Dan Quayle.”
    My father was maybe laughing at Stephen’s joke but he was also still smiling at Gloria’s whimsy and at the care she took to delight him. He said to his cousin, “That would put Bayh on the map, wouldn’t it?”
    “This is terrific about Bill Foster,” Stephen said, moving on to the sports page, to the Baseball Hall of Fame topic.
    “About time they put him in there,” my father said. The amber liquid was already running down the stack of cloths and into the broad tray at the bottom of the press. He took a paper cup from the sink and stuck it into the flow. “Oh, golly, Gloria, I’ve got it. The tartness of the Liveland. Right at the back of the tongue. This is powerful. This is just the kick I need.”
    Then how pleased she was going to be through the rest of the morning, standing in her yellow waterproofs at the bottling line, filling jug after jug and screwing the caps on very tightly, her bare hands raw.
    “I’m not,” I muttered to William, “interviewing May Hill.”
    He was staring at the press, the way you do when even if you want to you can’t blink, you can’t turn away. In that trance he made a slow pronouncement. “I…think…you should.”
    “I want Mr. Gilbert. I want to see his exotic pets. His poison dart frogs.”
    The grinder started up again, the noise snapping William back to earth. “You can’t,” he said. “He’s a felon.” He said, “Frankie?”
    “What.”
    “You have to. You have to interview May Hill.”
    When we were downstairs playing with our cousins we sometimes heard her heavy flat footfall, May Hill doing what up there? Gathering locks of hair, apparently. Pressing the hair in books.
    “Maybe she’ll take you to the attic,” William said.
    “I’m not going!” I wanted to remind him, in case somehow he’d forgotten: Scram-bambow .
    “There’s a sea captain’s trunk up there. The first Lombard’s trunk.”
    “No, there isn’t.”
    “There is. Sherwood told us. Pa said so. And a cage for a circus monkey.”
    “So what?”
    “It’s your chance,” he said. He was staring again as if in the presence of a mystery. “Your chance,” he repeated.
    How could William be on Sherwood’s side? Because, what if it was a trap? Sherwood sending me into the lair. To be put in that cage. I said then what would surely end the discussion. I said, “I’ll go if you come with.”
    “It’s an interview,” he considered, ignoring my proposal. “You ask her questions and she, she talks.”
    We had hardly ever heard May Hill speak and so it was preposterous, the notion of conducting an interview with a subject who was mute.
    “Frankie!” he said.
    “What.”
    “I’ll be downstairs with Adam. I’ll wait for you