As soon as the spring burn was done the turkey hunting would begin on Bent Pine Plantation. Usually Amos King welcomed it, but this year it’s approach brought him dread. He sensed it could bring disaster.
Amos occupied unique positions on Bent Pine. Hunting wagon driver, or mule skinner, in quail season, turkey caller in turkey season, boat paddler for spring bream fishing, bar tender at cocktail hour whenever any of the Johnsons were down from Boston or New York. He was seventy, had been born and lived his entire life on Bent Pine, except for three years in the Army during the Vietnam War when he had seen two tours of duty as an infantryman. He was still haunted by memories of that, would wake from nightmares finding himself back there, being stalked by Vietcong.
Amos had learned from infancy, and had it reinforced in Vietnam, to be constantly observant of all around him. His parents, who had also worked on Bent Pine, taught him to watch the Johnsons, and all white people, to read their feelings and intentions, and to keep his own to himself.
He watched the members of the Johnson family, owners of Bent Pine since 1885, like a hawk as they annually came south to the plantation Thanksgiving week, then occupied it intermittently until the end of February. Three generations came, the patriarch James, a widower now eighty, his sons Fred and Robert age fifty three and fifty, and their wives Alice and Mary, and occasionally their college-age children and non-family hunting guests.
The Johnsons’ sporting uses of Bent Pine were ritual, following conventions adopted by earlier generations and designed for order and efficiency and pleasure. Quail hunting visits usually began with Thursday morning or afternoon arrival by plane, pick up by plantation van at the Albany or Tallahassee airport, cocktails at six, dinner at seven thirty, brandy after in the living room, off to bed usually by ten. Coffee and orange juice delivered to bedrooms at 7:30, breakfast served in the dining room at 8:00, pickup of the guns at the front door at 9:00 by the mounted dog handler, scout, horse holder and mule drawn shooting wagon with Amos driving, a Lab or English Cocker by his side. Four guns, two down for each point, would be mounted or riding the wagon depending on their individual choices. The shotguns would be twenty or twenty-eight gauge, rarely .410, side-by-side or superposed, and placed in brackets on the wagon or in saddle scabbards. Breeches were opened to assure the shotguns were not loaded. The dog handler-hunt master delivered the unvarying safety lecture and the party was off.
At noon the party would lunch in the field or back at the house depending on the day’s plan. The hunt resumed at three and continued to dusk or until a party limit of twenty four quail were harvested. The pointing dogs, pointers only on Bent Pine, rode in cages on the wagon and hunted in braces for thirty minutes to an hour depending on temperature. They were steady to wing and shot and responded to the handler’s whisper. The retriever swiftly brought downed birds to Amos on the wagon and he placed them in a wire basket at his feet.
Drinks were served in the gun room after the hunt. Then showers followed by dinner at 7:30. On Saturday a morning quail hunt only. A second day-and-a-half of quail hunting usually occupied Tuesday and Wednesday.
In March and April turkey hunts were guided by Amos and Ed Hale, the manager and head dog trainer of Bent Pine. Two parties of one to three guns each left the Big House before dawn and set up in blinds, one party under supervision of Amos, one under supervision of Ed Hale, who would do the calling. Turkeys abounded on Bent Pine and often the parties returned to the Big House for brunch with gobblers and great stories of their calling in by Amos or Ed or both.
Amos’s wife Martha was in charge of the Big House of Bent Pine, a position of honor and heavy responsibility. She supervised a staff of three in the kitchen plus two maids. Amos’s mother had held the job before her. Like Amos, she was ever vigilant for the goings on of the Johnson clan members. At night after Amos and Martha returned to their bungalow from the Big House they ritually sat together at the kitchen table and talked of their observations over hot chocolate.
The week after Christmas they had each detected that something not right was going on between Robert and Alice. Alice was the wife of Robert’s brother Fred. The Kings knew nothing good could come from this. The brothers had since childhood been rivals for their parents affections and quick to anger if they felt partiality was being shown by either parent to the other child or any member of the other child’s family. The atmosphere on Bent Pine was always better when only one son’s family was present, Amos and Martha had long observed.
“What can we do,” Martha asked Amos. “Not a thing,” Amos answered, as Martha knew he would. But Amos had decided he would do something, talk to the lawyer Mr. Ben Reach.
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“Amos King wants to see you. I booked him for four tomorrow afternoon,” Joanne said.
“Say what about?”
“No. And I detected he didn’t want me to ask,” Joanne replied.
That means it’s something to do with bad blood among the Johnsons, or among the help on Bent Pine, I’ll bet, Ben thought.
Amos arrived fifteen minutes early for the appointment. Joanne showed Amos into the library-conference room where Ben was working on a memo for the court in a baited dove field case. Ben put aside his papers and rose to shake Amos’s hand. They were old friends and Ben and Sam loved to fish the Bent Pine Plantation lakes and to shoot dove with Amos handling a Cocker to retrieve.
“Good to see you Amos. How is Mizz Martha?” Ben opened.
“She is just fine, Mr. Ben. How you been doing?”
“I’m fine too, looking forward to fishing at Bent Pine soon if the latch string is still our,s” Ben answered. “Of course it is and I’ve seen some big bream getting ready to bed,” Amos said.
“How can I help you, Amos?” Ben cut to the chase.
Haltingly, and at first with considerable embarrassment, Amos explained what he and Martha had inadvertently uncovered.
“Mr. Ben, I don’t think there is any thing to be done, but I have such a worry about what we know and what I fear might happen if Mr. Fred finds out, and he is bound to find out the way Mrs. Alice and Mr. Robert is carrying on, I just had to get your judgment.”
Ben was astounded. Not by the fact a man had fallen for his brother’s wife and she for him, a story as old as Genesis, but by a coincidence involving himself.
Just three days earlier Ben had received a call from Fred Johnson’s New York lawyer. He wanted advice on what Georgia law might have to say about the effects of divorce on the Georgia partnership owning Bent Pine Plantation if Fred divorced Alice. Fred, Robert and their father James were the partners. The New York lawyer had let slip that Fred had a lady in the wings he desperately wanted to marry when he divorced Alice and that he planned to break the news to Alice soon.
“Amos, I have just one piece of advice for you, old friend. Remember, you did not cause this problem, and you have no duty to try to solve it. I want to tell you not to worry, but I know not to do that because of your nature and Mrs. Martha’s. This thing might solve itself before Turkey season gets here.”
Amos left Ben’s office somewhat relieved from his burden and looking forward to telling Martha about his meeting (she did not know he had planned it).
Ben told Sam what had happened when he arrived at five for their daily drams of The Macallan. (He first made Sam a consultant on the case so he would not be breaching legal ethics).
“What are you going to do?” Sam asked. “Listen and you will find out,” Ben said.
Ben called out to Joanne, who was about to exit for the beauty parlor, “Please get that New York lawyer for Fred Johnson on the phone”
Five minutes later Joanne called out to Ben to pick up the phone. Ben put it on speaker so Sam could hear.
“Mr. Kline, I find I cannot represent Fred Johnson on his divorce. No, I will not be representing anyone else. I do offer one piece of free advice to your client. Do not go Turkey hunting on Bent Pine until he concludes his divorce from Mrs. Alice.”
EPILOGUE
Neither Johnson brother showed at Bent Pine Plantation during turkey season. By the opening of dove season both brothers were on the way to being divorced. Robert was betrothed to Alice, and Fred to his lady-in-waiting. Meanwhile domestic relations lawyers in Boston and New York City were engaged in discovery in the divorce cases where the issues were the sizes of spousal support and equitable distribution awards the brothers would owe to Alice and Mary. The adultery was of no concern to the courts.
The one apparently innocent victim in the messes was Mary, wife of Robert. In truth Mary was delighted by the turn of events. She had long been enduring, not enjoying, her marriage to Robert. She found him a bore, had soon after their wedding twenty three years before. She was delighted by the prospect of escape from her marriage with wealth sufficient to sustain her lifestyle. She was not currently in love with any man (or woman — she harbored no lesbian or bisexual aspirations ). She would be thrilled to be free of the Johnson clan, the sooner the better.
Such was the state of affairs (no pun intended) when Ben got a call from patriarch James Johnson, who asked for an appointment to discuss the future of Bent Pine Plantation.
Ben didn’t think Amos King’s revelation to him of the Robert-Alice affair created any conflict of interest problem for him in advising James, so they met.
Ben learned James held a controlling interest in the partnership with dictatorial powers of management, powers he could pass on to a successor. He learned too that the only member of the generation just below him that he cared for at all was Mary. She was in his eyes sensible, and she had good relationships with his four grandchildren, two her own children and Robert’s, two Fred’s and Alice’s.
James would leave his controlling interest in the Bent Pine Plantation in trust for Mary’s benefit for her life, remainder among the grandchildren, but giving Mary a special power to say in her will which grandchildren would get what shares plus a power to leave any part or all to charity if she saw fit. James wanted her to have leverage with any grandchild who broke bad and got out of line.
There was a tax catch — when Bent Pine passed to grandchildren a generation skipping tax would be owed. But during Mary’s life she could allow the grandchildren to use the plantation as her guest without attracting the tax. James secretly reveled in the pain this would inflict on his sons, in his eyes now ingrates and fools.
When Ben explained James’s plan to Sam Nixon, MD, his consultant on the mental health aspects of the plan, Sam just shook his head.
“I’ll never understand the super rich,” Sam said.