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The woman returned after a few minutes, carrying an oblong metal box. The box had a panel on top which slid lengthways to remove it. On top was a small ring. She had set it in the middle of the table and then had remained there for a moment, until Stokely's glare drove her off.
"Please press the button next to the door when you are finished," she said, baring her teeth once more in her death grin.
We looked at the box. None of us made a move to open it. Finally, Stokely pointed in deference to me.
"Go on, Evan. This is your baby," he said.
I slid the top off the box slowly, more for effect than anything else.
The three of us bent over the box, peering in to see what was in it.
Stokely struck first. "Cool!" he said, and reached down to pick out the first thing he saw. It was a gold pocket watch, the kind with a fob.
"Patek Phillippe!"
"That should be worth a shekel or two," I said. His attention was diverted. I reached into the box and pulled out two sheafs of papers, each bound with red ribbon, and set them on the table. Tess and I began to sift through them, while Stokely continued to find other valuables.
There was a necklace, a ring, and at the bottom of the box, some share certificates in The Chesapeake Railroad.
"Booty!" Stokely's eyes were lit up.
The first document was title to Valhalla, dated January 24, 1897. I gave it to Tess, saying "Here's your birthright." She began to flip through it.
The second document was thicker. I guessed about ten pages. It was handwritten in cursive. Across the top it said SHAREHOLDER'S AGREEMENT. It was dated in the English style, with the day coming before the month. This agreement is dated this, the 26th day of May, Nineteen hundred and sixteen.
"My birthday," I said to noone in particular.
The text of the document was written in flowery legalese.
WHEREAS, in order to engage in business together this agreement is made on the date herein set forth between THOMAS ALLEN MACKENZIE and HELMUT KARL HOEFLINGER, (hereinafter known as the Shareholders) , regarding their ownership in the Stock of UNIVERSAL BUSINESS IMPLEMENTS, (hereinafter called the Company), a corporation incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. This agreement supersedes any other agreements previously entered into by the Shareholders.
The agreement went on in that vein and became increasingly incomprehensible with each page. The key sentence was that under the terms of the agreement, Helmut would own 25% of the shares of the company, and MacKenzie would own 75%. There were also provisions for the repurchase of shares in the event of the death of either party, for the distribution of dividends, for the dissolution of the company, and for a host of other possible events.
We were looking at a historic document. The birth of one of the biggest corporations on the planet. This was a piece of paper which would be of interest to historians everywhere. It was something that was valuable in every sense of the word.
"Stokely. Check this out! It's the Shareholder's Agreement which started UBI."
Stokely put the watch and the jewels aside and took the paper I was offering him. He looked at it.
"Oh yeah, this is one of the earlier shareholding agreements between old man Helmut and MacKenzie. Helmut eventually sold all of his shares to MacKenzie shortly before he died. They originally had 50% each but then Helmut gradually sold off his portion. It's a pity really, can you imagine how much that would be worth today if he hadn't sold the rest?
We're talking billions here."
"So you knew about this already?" I was disappointed.
"Oh yeah. The Aunts have copies of most of the UBI documents hung on their wall in 1819 Q Street. The first agreement, the share certificates...all that sort of stuff. They have kind of a shrine to old Helmut. A whole roomful up on the fourth floor. Didn't you ever go up there that summer?"
Stokely and I had spent a dream summer after our sophomore year babysitting the Aunts' mansion in Georgetown. They had gone for a eight week cruise in the Caribbean out of New York, and our deal was that they would let us housesit free of charge as long as we would drive up to the docks and pick them up on their return. We had had the time of our lives.
Imagine being able to bring home a girl you've just met at a party to one of the toniest sections of Georgetown, and stop for effect just outside a four story mansion, fumbling for the keys on purpose. This conversation happened more than once that summer.
"Which floor is your apartment?"
"Apartment? No, this is our house."
By the time the truth came out, that you were nothing more than a glorified houseboy, the damage had been done, so to speak. As Stokely would put it, you would be a leg up on a leg over. That summer gave me an exaggerated view of my persuasive powers.
The flip side to the splendour we lived in was that we had to be exceedingly careful about everything we did in the house. We acted as though the floor was paved with eggshells. Stokely was paranoid about breaking things or putting things out of place. I thought he was exaggerating, until the Aunts came back and we sat down for our first meal.
Just as at Valhalla, their kitchen was immense and very well stocked with every conceivable implement. Aside from their garden, their passion in life was collecting recipes, receeps as they called them, and planning elaborate meals.
They were real packrats, and saved everything, including milk cartons and plastic yoghurt containers.
At that first meal, a yoghurt container was our downfall. Aunt Lillian, the older of the two, put down her silver Queen Anne spoon at the end of the soup course and looked down the end of her nose at Stokely.
"Stokely, you wouldn't have happened to have taken one of those plastic containers from the kitchen would you?"
Stokely hemmed and hawed and finally owned up. Indeed we had taken one to a tennis tournament we had played in, and had promptly forgotten about it. We were talking about a yoghurt container here, not the crown jewels. The Aunts, if they had wanted, could have bought a plastics factory. That incident gave me a healthy respect for their powers of memory and control.
I don't want to give the wrong impression about them, however. They were not Hetty Greens, the old miser who held on to everything to spite the world. On the contrary, they were in their own way quite generous and thoughtful. Certainly they were always wonderful to me. They had over the years developed patterns of behavior to safeguard their position and were quite particular about following those patterns. They were also a lot harder on members of their clan than on outsiders. I fell into some intermediate category, and though I was chided for the yoghurt container escapade as well, in my case the venom was just not there. Nonetheless, these two tiny women could be quite intimidating, and I had kept a respectful distance that summer from those parts of the house which were clearly theirs .
"No, I never went up there," I said, surveying the things we had found. "What do you think of this, Tess?" I asked indicating to the goods spread before us.
"Amazing," she said. "Your detective work has turned up quite a treasure trove, Evan." She looked at me and though she was shaking her head, her eyes showed a new glimmer of respect, of genuine surprise at the confluence of events which had led us to that little room.
"What are we going to do with this stuff?" she asked. This was directed mainly at Stokely.
I know that Stokely's first inclination would be to somehow keep everything for himself, but with Tess there he wouldn't give way to that part of his nature. She was like the regulator on the carburator of his moral engine.
"We'll give this to the Aunts. We're going up to 1819 at Thanksgiving, and we'll get these documents framed and make a little presentation. They'll be thrilled."
The Haynes' year was filled with traditional events, revolving around family get togethers at Valhalla or 1819. Stokely's parents, their two uncles and aunts, and host of cousins would all converge at Easter at Valhalla and every Thanksgiving at 1819. Christmases were reserved for each individual family, but Thanksgiving was always in Washington.
This suggestion clearly met with Tess's approval.
"That'll be perfect," she said with genuine enthusiasm. "They'll be so surprised."
"How will we get this stuff out of here?" she asked. We looked at the goods in front of us. Though they weren't bulky, they were certainly valuable, and we didn't want to carry them piecemeal.
"I think Brunhilda can help us," announced Stokely, and reached over to press the button which summoned the martinet to meet us. He then replaced everything in the box.
She came almost immediately, as if she had been poised outside the door listening in to what we were saying.
Stokely was imperious. "I wonder if you could please get us a bag of some sort to carry some of these articles." He waved his hand at the box, where only the papers were visible.
"Yes, of course," said the woman, and left the room to return a few minutes later with a velvet sack with RST on the outside.
The whole process had taken a little less than an hour. We trooped back up the marble stairs, victorious soldiers heading home from a campaign. The others were happily playing cards in the café where we had left them. Stokely held the bag high as if we had just robbed the bank. He took out the watch and the jewels and spread them on the table to the gasps of the others. As we were college students at the time, none of us had any material possessions to speak of. I remember the flush of victory as I was clapped on the back for my detective prowess, and the references to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. What I remember most from that moment though was the quiet look I received from across the table from Lydia who said nothing but said everything with her smiling eyes.
This time the weekend was well and truly over. I remember another moment, coming back to Duke up the long drive through the pines towards the huge chapel which dominated the university skyline, listening to Led Zeppelin on the radio. Though I still had another seven months to go in my college career, I knew that an imperceptible corner had been turned. I knew that something had happened to change my life, though I had no idea how or when or where.
Think of an oyster. It is called a bivalve because its muscles work back and forth to sift water to and fro through its body. Most of the time the water just passes through, leaving nourishment and little else. Then, for no particular reason, a grain of sand becomes lodged in the flesh, and gradually over time around this grain a protective shell begins to grow, imperceptibly at first but gradually larger until one day a pearl is formed.
Again, I can now look back on that weekend spent on the Mobjack Bay long ago, and I can see that two tiny grains of sand were lodged in the oyster of my destiny, one that allowed me to see the white beauty of love, and one which turned into a black pearl and showed me the other side of human nature, the dark side which is a part of us and which can either destroy us or merely test our resolve.
Seeds were sown that weekend, and only the passage of time and the terrible beauty and pain of love will tell which side will out in the end.
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