“It’s understandable when you consider the odds of a town this size producing a world-class athlete,” Franklin replied.
“I guess they’ve forgotten how long it took before he was recognized as world-class,” she remarked.
On her first visit to Belle Pointe just before their wedding, Buck had still been stuck in the minor leagues, frustrated and keenly ambitious, but it had not mattered to Anne whether he ever made it into the pro ranks. She was that much in love with him. What did matter was that he spent so little time with his family. His father had died before they ever met, but his mother and Pearce, his older brother, were in Tallulah. Although Buck harbored resentment and hurt over things that had happened after his father died, she wondered if he hadn’t overreacted. People said things, did things, in the wake of a family trauma that could be worked out. To Anne, it seemed a shame to simply withdraw from his family when he had such an interesting heritage.
“There’s the turn to Belle Pointe,” Franklin said now, as they approached the ornate iron gate. “Won’t be long before folks around here find out you’re back for a visit. They’ll wonder where Buck is. What’s your plan to deal with that?”
“I don’t have a plan,” she said, gazing at the house where Buck was born. Stretching on all sides were endless cotton fields, but the house itself was surrounded by shade trees, mostly oak, sycamore and the unique and stately magnolia. Brightening the grounds nearer the house were hot-pink azaleas in full bloom.
“It is a fantastic sight, isn’t it?” Beatrice said, following her gaze.
“Yes.” She knew she would never forget her first look at Belle Pointe. It was high summer when Buck took her to meet his family. They’d driven past miles of lush cotton fields and suddenly there it was, an antebellum gem of classic Greek Revival design. She’d gazed enthralled, thinking the place looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, a white pearl in a green sea.
Franklin slowed the car. “When I see it, I sometimes get a feeling that the clock at Belle Pointe stopped somewhere in the nineteenth century. Same thing with a few other landowners around here as well. How they’ve managed to hold on to such a unique lifestyle is truly remarkable.”
“Yes, remarkable,” Anne murmured, studying a tall water tower painted like a cotton boll. “I thought the same thing myself when I first saw Belle Pointe.”
“Of course, most of the original plantations were divided up as families came on hard times. Beatrice can tell you something about that.”
“My daddy lost our land when it was sold for back taxes,” she explained at Anne’s puzzled look.
“Oh, no,” Anne murmured.
“He was a very stubborn man,” Beatrice said.
“I’ll say.” With Belle Pointe behind them now, Franklin picked up speed. Anne guessed there was a story there, but neither offered more details.
“On the other hand,” Beatrice said, “the Whitakers have managed to hold on to Belle Point for five generations. They’ve even added to the original acreage. And with your mother-in-law managing things, that’s not likely to change—at least not in this lifetime.”
Anne welcomed any scrap of information about Victoria Whitaker. From the start, she’d been a bit in awe of Buck’s mother. “Buck doesn’t talk much about Belle Pointe…or his family, so while I’m here I’m going to try to get better acquainted.”
“The Spectator’s archives are a good place to start,” Beatrice said. “With your journalism background, you should feel right at home poking around down there, right, Franklin?”
He slowed as a farm vehicle pulled onto the road in front of him. “More than poking around in those dusty old shelves, I’d love to have you working right alongside me. I could use a good journalist.”
She hadn’t thought about going to work. She hadn’t thought about anything much beyond getting away. At the sound of an airplane, she turned her gaze skyward and watched a crop-duster preparing to land at a small airfield. Another mile or two and they would be at Tallulah’s town square, which was about all the downtown amounted to.
“Considering my own fascination for the Delta and its culture,” Franklin said, “it puzzles me how someone with Buck’s heritage could stay away for years, even with the exciting career he chose.”
“Maybe his career is exactly the reason,” Beatrice said. “He’s bound to be thinking about what he’ll do when it’s over, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable that he’ll want to spend more time here. I know John Whitaker expected Buck would eventually wind up farming at Belle Pointe. When he was a boy, he had a real connection to the land, far more than his brother, Pearce.”
She gave Beatrice a surprised look. “You knew Buck then?”
“I knew of him,” she said, smiling. “Remember, Tallulah’s a small town and I’ve been here all my life. Actually, I went to school with Victoria.” When Franklin stopped at the only traffic light on the square, she waved at two elderly women crossing the street. “We were classmates, but we didn’t socialize much and never at all after Victoria married John. My goodness, I remember the buzz when John surprised everyone and picked a local girl to marry.”
“It sounds like a storybook romance,” Anne said, fascinated at this glimpse of Buck’s parents. She was dying to know more. From the start, she’d been curious about her mother-in-law, but in their rare visits she’d found Victoria to be a very private individual, almost severely so. And although Buck talked about Belle Pointe and his childhood, he rarely said much about his parents.
Franklin eased away from the light. “Like I said, folks always figured Buck would come back to his roots one day.”
“Well, looks like folks were wrong,” she said as Franklin negotiated the square.
“Speaking of John Whitaker,” Franklin said, as if picking up a thread of conversation, “I met him when I came down in 1971 with that PBS crew. He was a real Mississippi aristocrat. I recall us getting into a discussion of the literary influence of Faulkner and Hemingway and other great Southern writers.”
“He gets into those discussions frequently if he can find any takers,” Beatrice said, with a wink at Anne.
Franklin cleared his throat loudly. “Well, it was right up my alley, that discussion. I’ve always regretted not having a chance to know John a lot better. His death a few years later was a great loss to this town.”
“Buck was in his senior year of college when it happened,” Anne said. “He was devastated. It was so sudden.”
“Yes, indeed.” Franklin slowed for another stop sign. “At the time, your mother and I were still in Boston, of course.” He glanced over and smiled at Beatrice. “I never dreamed then that I’d wind up here.”
“That makes two of us,” Anne said dryly.
“Surprised you, didn’t I?” he said, chuckling.
“On a scale of one to ten?” she asked. “Only about ten and a half.”
“If we want to talk of surprises, how about the one where my daughter wound up married to John Whitaker’s son?” Shaking his head, he added, “Now there was a whirlwind courtship if ever there was one.”
“He warned me that I didn’t know Buck well enough,” Anne said to Beatrice.
Franklin braked as a pickup backed out of a parking space in front of the Piggly Wiggly. “Well, isn’t that what fathers do?”
Anne, fighting a smile, put a finger to her temple. “I believe you said something like, ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’”
Beatrice made a face. “Not very original, was it?”