Eden was in Iraq. Mesopotamia, not Africa.”
I gave a mental groan. Surely I hadn’t risked my life with a maniac driver just to spend yet another evening debating evolution and creationism?
Fortunately, Liz Peters wasn’t that easily sidetracked. “Whether he’s mostly white, Chinese, or Mesopotamian, the fact remains that Daniel Freeman calls himself an African-American, and there are precious few in Lafayette County.”
“Not my fault if they don’t want to live here,” Bobby Ashe said. “Joyce and me, we don’t care about the color of any client’s skin, long as their money’s green.”
“Have you sold a single house in Pritchard Cove to any blacks?”
“As a matter of fact, we did. Remember the Gibsons?”
“Oh right.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “One season fighting those damn flamingoes, then they gave up and bought a place outside Asheville.”
“Flamingos?” I asked.
Joyce Ashe shrugged her ample shoulders. “Someone kept planting plastic flamingos along their drive and —”
“Every lawn jockey isn’t in the shape of a pickaninny,” said Liz Peters.
“It was a joke, Liz. Not a good joke, but not racist.”
“Some things aren’t funny if you’re on the receiving end,” she snapped. Turning to me, she explained: “The implication was that the Gibsons were black Florida trash and didn’t belong in Pritchard Cove with white Floridians.”
“Floridiots!” said a short bald man, who’d been listening silently. “They can all go to hell.”
“Bite your tongue, Tysinger,” said Osborne. “They’re our bread and butter.”
“Yours maybe, not mine,” he growled.
“What do you have against Floridians?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” said Joyce. “Deborah, this is Sam Tysinger. And you didn’t meet Sunny Osborne either.”
Mrs. Osborne and I nodded to each other and murmured politely, but I was curious about Sam Tysinger’s attitude. “What’s wrong with Floridians?”
“Depends on whether they’re seasonal or tourists,” he said.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Lord, no, child!” said Sunny Osborne. “Seasonal people have wealth and education. They buy expensive second homes here and that gives them a vested interest in preserving and maintaining our community. Tourists merely come to have fun and don’t care how much they trash up the place because they’ll be gone in a week.”
Sam Tysinger snorted. “At least the tourists spend money. Seasonal people just drive up everybody’s property taxes, and don’t add a damn thing to the local economy except for real estate commissions and cluttering up the ridges.”
“Of course they contribute,” said Bobby Ashe, stroking his outsize mustache. “We wouldn’t have such a large office staff without them.”
“That’s right,” his wife chimed in. “We hire people to clean their houses, take care of the yards—”
“Minimum-wage crap,” the little man said scornfully. “And even that dries up during the off-season.” He took a swallow of the drink in his hand and said to me, “Seasonal people want to pull up the drawbridge as soon as they’ve got their piece of a mountain. They want to live in a quaint little old-timey setting. Stop development. Turn back the clock. They’d like it if the roads weren’t paved so the tourists would be discouraged from coming.”
“Quilt and jelly. Quilt and jelly,” said a stylish older woman who’d turned to us from a nearby conversation. “They think that’s all we mountain women do. Quilt and jelly. I was having my nails done back in the summer and some woman at the next station wanted to know where I went to pick blackberries because she wanted to make herself some authentic mountain jam. I was the only local in the shop at the time and I guess she heard my accent.” Her exasperation gave way to a nostalgic smile. “I sent her down to Potter’s Bottom, where the chiggers and the mosquitoes are thick as fleas on a hound dog. Gave her a
“Now wait a minute,” Sunny Osborne objected. “There’re always going to be those who think we’re dumb because we speak with a twang, but most of them want second homes here because they love it. And a lot of them give as much as they take. They contribute to the library and to the hospital and—”
“Things they use,” Tysinger said with a cynical snort. “They don’t want any kind of industry here. There’s almost nothing for the young people. And—”
“And I say it’s time we stopped boring Deborah to death,” said Joyce. “She doesn’t want to hear this.”
Matt Dodson shrugged. “All I’m saying is, Freeman probably has less Negro blood than me, so why did Dr. Ledwig get so bent out of shape over it?”
“Probably because you don’t want to marry his daughter,” Sunny Osborne said.
“And you’re not carrying a flag,” said Lucius Burke. “Freeman could just as easily call himself Native American or white—according to his statement, he’s descended from them on both sides, but by calling himself black he hopes to make people question what it really means to be black. He says he wants to make all racial designations irrelevant.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Liz Peters. “I don’t know why we still have them anyhow. Whenever I have to check off my race, I always check ‘other.’”
I laughed. “Me too.”
