MM Video

This link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k08wEGekzkI) should take you to a short video that was made in my home. If not, go to YouTube.com and enter “Margaret Maron’s Christmas Mourning” in the search box. Hope it whets your appetite for the whole book!

CHRISTMAS MOURNING Excerpt

This scene takes place a few days before Christmas. As a surprise gift for Deborah and Dwight, her nieces and nephews have rigged up colorful lights for the pond. When they get home that evening, they find most of her family around a bonfire down by the pond:

The colored lights that shimmered on the surface of the water must have revived ancient memory because when there was a lull in conversation, Daddy said, “I ever tell y’all about the first Christmas after my daddy passed? The tangerines?”

There was a chorus of noes from his grandchildren and calls of “Tell us” from my younger brothers and me. Robert, being the oldest, smiled as if he knew the story and already anticipated our reaction.

“Well,” said Daddy, “the way it was is that I was still three months shy of turning fifteen when my daddy died and left me the man of the family. There was Mammy, and Sister and Rachel and the twins . . .”

His voice always trails off whenever he mentions his younger twin brothers, Jacob and Jedidiah. Jacob had drowned in Possum Creek when the two were sixteen and Jed immediately ran away, lied about his age, and joined the army. He was killed in a training exercise at Ft. Bragg before he ever got out of the state.

“Anyhow, it was getting on for Christmas and we was poor as Adam’s housecat. Mammy’d already told the little ones that Santa Claus probably won’t gonna be able to find our house, but they didn’t believe her and just kept talking about what they was gonna find in their stockings. Mammy’d made a rag doll for Rachel outten a flour sack she’d bleached white and did its hair and pigtails with tobacco string. Sister’d used pokeberries to dye a sack purple and stitched up a little doll dress and bonnet. I whittled out new slingshots and whistles for the boys and Mammy’d sent me over to the store to trade some eggs for a little poke of Christmas candy, but all the same, it was looking like a mighty thin Christmas.”

Tenderhearted Ruth, who was seated on the tarp nearest him, squeezed his wrinkled hand and said, “Oh, Granddaddy, you must’ve felt just awful.”

Cal was solemn-faced, as if trying to get his mind around a Christmas with nothing plastic or electronic under the tree.

“Now right before Christmas, there come a rain like I ain’t seen in no December before nor since. Was like a hurricane only not no wind, just a hard, hard rain coming straight down like water outten the pump in our kitchen sink. Possum Creek flooded something awful. Getting on toward nightfall next day, a truck drove into the yard and it was a man up from Florida looking to buy a couple of jars of whiskey from my daddy. Said he had two more deliveries to make over in Cotton Grove and he needed something to keep him warm on his trip back home, ’cause he was freezing to death up here.”

Daddy paused and gave a foxy grin. “He must’ve finished off a jar of something a little earlier though, ’cause it struck me that he was well on his way to being right warm already.

“Well, he left when we told him Daddy was gone, but it won’t thirty minutes till here he come again, walking this time. His truck’d got stuck trying to cross the creek and he wanted me to help him get it out. See, the road won’t paved back then and the bridge was down almost level with the water, so mud was up to his axles before he ever got to the bridge. He said he’d give me fifty cents if I’d help him. Back then, fifty cents was like five dollars now, so I went right out to the lot and hitched up ol’ Maude.”

“Who was ol’ Maude, Granddaddy?” Cal asked.

My heart lifted at his unconscious use of that name because it meant that he felt himself a part of my family.

Best mule we ever had,” Daddy explained. “Strong as a Cub tractor and biddable as a dog.”

High praise indeed.

“When we got down to the creek, we unloaded the back of the truck to lighten it some and I seen he was carrying a pile of Florida fruit. Wood crates of oranges, tangerines, and some big yellow things I ain’t never seen before. First time I ever laid my eyes on grapefruit.

“We stacked them boxes up on the creek bank and I tied a rope from Maude’s traces to the back of the truck, then that man heaved on one side and I heaved on the other and little by little we could feel it start to pull loose.

“The thing was though that Maude was a-straining so hard that just as the truck come free, she let loose with a load of her own and the man stepped right in it. Well, sir, he jumped back and when he did, his feet slid out from under him and he flailed back into that pile of crates. ’Fore you could say Jack Robinson, two crates of them tangerines tipped over and went tumbling down the creek bank where they busted open on the rocks and the high water just carried ’em right away.

“That man was cussing Maude and cussing me and even though I helped him load the truck back up, when I asked him for my fifty cents, he told me I oughta be a-paying him fifty cents for them tangerines and he just drove off without a thank-you or a kiss-my—”

At this point, Daddy broke off and lit a cigarette to cover his chagrin at nearly using a crude expression in mixed company.

“So what’d you do, Granddaddy?” asked Annie Sue.

“Won’t but one thing I could do,” he told her. “I took Maude back to the mule lot and got my dip net and a gunnysack and went down to the fish trap I had rigged up a little further down the creek. Sure enough, when I got to it, there was all them shiny orange tangerines bobbling around in amongst the brush that’d got backed up from my trap. Took me almost a hour to fish them all out and lug that gunnysack back up to the barn. I give Mammy enough so everybody’s stocking got tangerines, even mine and hers. Then I lugged the rest of ’em to Cotton Grove and traded for some store-boughten stuff Mammy’d been needing. Thanks to ol’ Maude, it was a real fine Christmas.”

CRACQUELURE

[NB: this short story first appeared in The Store of Joys: Writers Celebrate the North Carolina Museum of Art's Fiftieth Anniversary, published in 1997. Spoiler alert: although the people in this story are fiction, this does illustrate how I researched Fugitive Colors, the last Sigrid Harald novel.]

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Startled, she looks around and sees a guard, a pleasant, smiling, gray-haired man, slightly smaller than his dark gray uniform.

She smiles back politely. "Yes, it is."

"You really like these pictures, huh? I saw you here yesterday, didn't I? And maybe last week, too?"

"Yes."

Heretofore she's been unbothered in this quiet room of the museum. Italian primitives don't seem to be high on the pop charts of most visitors.

"You taking an art course?" the guard persists. "Maybe writing a term paper?"

She glances down at her note pad. A reasonable guess. The pages are covered with scribbled notes and crossed-out possibilities.

"Not exactly."

"Reason I ask, not a lot of people stop for a second look unless it's for a course or something."

That figures, she thinks. Despite the brilliant colors and all the gold, everything in this small gallery has an austere religious cast. This might be the Bible Belt, but the Bible of authority is the King James Version, the imageless Bible of Calvin and Wesley, not the illuminated gospels of medieval Catholicism.

"Actually," she says, "I'm researching a book. Is there someone here who could talk to me about a picture?"

"That Madonna?"

"Yes."

Once the Renaissance hit its stride, Mary would soften into a real mother with rosy cheeks and rich blue robes and she would gaze fondly at a chubby pink infant straight out of a Gerber baby food ad. In the early 1300s though, Mary was an unsmiling, abstract idealization and in this case, the baby that balances stiffly on her boneless hands has the solemn brow of a miniature adult.

She decides abruptly that she has wasted enough time wandering through the museum's collection of religious art. This picture will fit the needs of her current book as well as anything else. The period is off-beat enough to interest the character who is slowly taking shape in her mind and surely one primitive Madonna is much like another.

Isn't it?

"You might could ask somebody at the front desk," says the guard.

###

"Oh, I'm so sorry," says the receptionist. "Our curator of painting will be in Italy all summer, but maybe one of our interns could help you."

The receptionist summons a young man who appears knowledgeable about the period.

"Researching a novel you said?" he asks when they are standing in front of the picture she's settled on.

"Yes. A mystery novel. I need a picture that someone would kill for and I thought a Madonna might make an ironic contrast to the modern art setting I'll be using. This one looks interesting, but I need more information so I can sound as if I know what I'm writing about."

"Well," he says dubiously, "it's certainly a fine example of the period. Are you going to have it stolen from us?"

"No, no. I'll fictionalize a legitimate sounding provenance. Maybe change a few details. After six hundred years, you can't prove that this artist didn't paint one more picture, can you?"

"Probably not," he says. "Especially since uniqueness wasn't a great virtue back then and artists rarely signed their work."

The young man is steeped in knowledge recently acquired in pursuit of a Ph.D. and he is happily voluble about the techniques the artist must have used. He explains how the wooden panel was prepared to receive paint, why the gold leaf around the Madonna's head was applied over a base coat of red, why the flesh tones are now the greenish gray of terre vert instead of a rosy pink, and he discusses the problems of restoration and maintenance. He even explains some of the symbolism inherent in the picture. "Her face, her head, her halo—those three concentric circles echo the Trinity, and the red swaddling clothes foretell the crucifixion."

He is patient and he answers her questions without patronizing, but she goes away vaguely dissatisfied, feeling as if she's just been released from an Art 101 lecture.

She borrows library books about fourteenth-century Italian art. Several are literate and lively, and all are full of technical terms and aesthetic speculations that bring her no closer to the nameless something that she senses she is lacking.

She returns the books and spends the rest of the summer writing, hoping that the killer's passion for the picture will become clearer as his personality emerges.

She decides to make him an international art dealer. European.

French?

Too bloodless.

Italian then?

Yes. Mature and cultured and a lover of beautiful things. A citizen of the world who moves easily between his gallery in Milan and a smaller, satellite gallery in New York. A decent, well-respected man who makes a comfortable living dealing in 20th Century European art; a warm man, well loved by his friends; a man she herself would enjoy knowing.

"Why would someone like you kill for a Sienese Madonna?" she asks him.

He gazes back at her with intelligent brown eyes and does not answer.

###

Summer passes, autumn arrives, and she continues to doubt the validity of the motivation she has, by default, given to her character. She goes back to the museum and stands again in front of the picture and is pleased to realize how much she has learned since she first chose it.

Thanks to that young intern and the books she has read, she now has more knowledge—more vocabulary, anyhow—with which to assess the picture. She knows this is the central third of a wooden triptych, she knows that craquelure is the technical term for the fine red lines of the bole ground that show through the cracked gold leaf around the Virgin, and she can see clearly how the proportions of the figures have been altered to fit the religious requirements of the age. "Hieratic medieval theology wrapped up in a single painting," she can tell herself glibly.

But she's no closer to the essence. Something is still missing and she wonders if she's too far removed in time and temperament. Perhaps she should choose a more accessible work? One of the French Impressionists or maybe an American realist like Copely or Eakins?

And yet—

"You ever talk to the curator about that picture?" asks the guard, who has approached unnoticed.

"No."

"I hear he's back from Italy now."

She takes a second look at the man and is dismayed by the changes three short months have made.

He's shrunk even more inside his uniform and his skin is now almost as gray as the Madonna's.

"Fugitive colors," she thinks and doesn't realize she has spoken out loud until he nods.

"Yeah, that's what he called it," he says. "I asked him once how come so many of the faces have that ashy green skin and that's what he said. I forget exactly how it worked—something about how the artists used white for light and put in the shadows with green and then painted over both of them with some pink to make it look like real skin? But the pinks, they didn't hold up good—fugitive colors, that's what he said."

He gazes at the picture with proprietary pride.

"You like it, don't you?" she asks, surprised. (And is immediately ashamed of the snobbery implicit in her surprise.)

"Yeah," he says simply. "The real colors may be gone, but you can still imagine how she looked when she was first painted—all pink and red and gold. That's twenty-four-carat gold, you know, and it must've really shined when it was new. And I like it that she's serious. See the way her fingers curl around that little foot, all sweet and tender? She knows she's the Mother of God."

His gaunt face echoes the same certainty.

"Sometimes, when nobody's in here, I think about what it must've been like back then, back when it was new and had all its parts. It used to have two little side panels, you know? See where they hinged? They folded down over this one and when it was shut, it must have looked like a plain wood box. I think about a gloomy little stone chapel where the good priest comes to say mass. He stands the closed box up there on the altar, then he lights the candles and opens it up and the Queen of Heaven glows like the golden promise of salvation in a world all dark with sin and disease and——"

His bony fingers sketch the glory of his imagination and she wonders if he knows he is dying.

He sees her staring at him and breaks off. "Sorry. I guess I shouldn't be bothering you and you trying to look at the pictures."

She assures him that he isn't bothering her and to encourage him, she says, "It's too bad that the gold leaf has cracked so badly."

"Oh, I don't mind that. It's like one of those pictures you see in medical books, isn't it? Where they show somebody without his skin and you can see like a net of healthy red blood vessels?"

He gazes intently at the delicate red lines that spiderweb the gold.

"Blood of Christ," he whispers, almost as if he's forgotten she's there. "Blood of life."

Yes, she thinks. He knows.

And suddenly her elusive character stirs within her. For the first time, she who has no faith can feel the depth of his.

And the core of his despair.

"Now you know, too," he tells her.

——— Margaret Maron

DEBORAH'S LEE / STEPHENSON CONNECTIONS

John Herman Lee began the law firm of Lee and Stephenson with his friend William Brixton Stephenson Sr. John Herman Lee’s son is John Claude Lee, married to Julia. John Claude is presently the senior partner in the firm.

John Herman Lee’s younger sister Catherine married Brix Sr’s son Richard Stephenson. They had two daughters: Susan, who married Kezzie Knott and Ozella, who married Ashley Smith (uncle of Deborah’s good friend Portland). Susan and Kezzie are Deborah’s parents. When Deborah was in private practice with them, the firm changed its name to Lee, Stephenson and Knott. When she took the bench, it reverted to Lee and Stephenson.

William Brixton Stephenson Sr.’s other son was William Brixton Jr., married to Jane. They are referred to as Brix Senior and Brix Junior. Brix Junior retired when his only son, Reid, passed the bar and became the junior member of the firm. Reid is divorced from Dotty and they share a son, Tip.

Therefore, Deborah’s mother Sue was first cousin to John Claude Lee through her mother and first cousin to Reid through her father, which means that Deborah is first cousin, once removed to both men, but neither man is kin to the other.

***************************

SHORT STORY

I began by wanting to write poetry, then switched to short stories because they are short. This is the shortest one I ever wrote. 288 words. It appeared in Long Story Short, edited by Marianne Gingher for UNC Press (2009).

DEVIL'S ISLAND

“They say only madmen survive there,” said the captain in his thick colonial patois. “These prisoners are more low than the lowest. Vile beasts. Men in name only. No decency, no—how you say?—humanity. How will such a one as you survive?”

The prisoner shrugged and looked down at his hands, uncallused nobleman's hands. "I enjoyed woodworking as a child. Perhaps I'll take it up again." He tossed off the last of his wine, then leaned across the table to clasp the strong hand of the man who had become his friend during this long voyage to the most brutal penal colony in the empire. "Don't worry, Captain. I'll survive. The Emperor credits me with a traitorous ability to lead, to rally men to a cause. If he’s right, I can help these wretched remnants of mankind—for they will be men, no matter how sunken in bestiality."

Before the captain could reply, a subordinate entered and saluted. “The patrol craft approaches, sir.”

The captain stood heavily. "I must return to the bridge.”

He wanted to offer the prisoner words of optimism, but when he looked at the finely bred boyish figure dressed in the absurd uniform of the colony—white robe, blue cloak, rough leather sandals—all optimism died.

There was a jarring metallic clangor as the airlock of the patrol ship matched that of the starcruiser. The exchange was effected, then the patrol ship fell away, descending to the penal colony. In less than an hour, the captain received official notification: Prisoner released in that sector known to inmates as Judea.

And all the way back to the civilized planets of the Empire, the captain wondered what form the prisoner's inevitable madness would ultimately take.

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