Read Bookmaker, The for Free Online Page B

top. To the right was a red brick building with castle-like spires called Ventress Hall.
    This was a lot of architecture and culture for an Orange County boy to take in. Conspicuously absent were the mini-malls filled with yogurt shops, fast food restaurants, nail places, and 7-11s. Oxford seemed to have stores that provided all these things and everything else modern American’s think they need. They just did it with a rustic southern style and a nod to small-town life now mostly faded into nostalgia.
    About two miles outside of town , Matador said, “Here we are, home sweet home.”
    He turned left into a long driveway that circled about a football field ’s worth of well-kept lawn surrounded by those trees where the leaves just drip-hang from the branches like a Dali painting. The house looked like something out of Gone with the Wind . The antebellum mansion was adorned with large marble columns supporting the second story. The feature that really stood out to me was what looked to be Civil War-era cannons. There were two on one side of the deep porch and an even larger one placed directly in front of the house—aiming at anyone who dare step onto the property uninvited. The cannonballs themselves sat patiently nearby in neatly stacked piles on both sides of the porch.
    I grabbed my bag from the trunk and followed Matador up the steps to the porch leading to the front door. We were greeted by a middle-aged, heavy-set black woman with a tow-headed toddler on her lap who couldn’t have been more than two. The boy jumped into Matador’s arms.
    “This here is Preston’s great-grandson Tucker, Corynne’s little boy,” he said , lifting the little guy into the air, making him laugh hysterically.
    Matador put him down and Tucker slowly walked up to me , handed me a little blue wooden train, and said, “Choo choo…choo choo.”
    “That’s right,” the woman said. “Good, good Tuck, yes that is a choo choo train.”
    Matador introduced us. “This here is Delotta Carter. She’s the one who keeps this place running. Her family’s been at the Walker Manor since….well…. since forever.”
    “Welcome to Walker Manor , Trent, we’ve been expecting you. You need anything you come find me, you hear? Now, after you make your introductions to everyone, I’ll show you to the back house where you’ll be staying. I think you’ll be pleased with the accommodations—no complaints yet,” she said with a big smile.
    “Nice to meet you,” I said.
    Little Tucker reached up for me to give him his train back. Once I did, he said, “Up up up,” reaching his arms out to me. I looked to Delotta to see if it was okay. She nodded, so I picked him up and he immediately reached for my sunglasses, pulling them off my face and trying to put them on himself.
    “Tucker, you stop that right now,” came a voice from inside the house.
    Now, the old-timers always claim they remember where they were when they bombed Pearl Harbor. And most of the men of that same generation could tell you exactly what they were doing when Bobby Thompson hit the “Shot Heard Around the World.” Well, this was my moment: when out stepped the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. This was all new territory to me. I felt my knees weaken and my throat dry up. I hoped my face didn’t give me away.
    “I am so sorry. Usually he’s better behaved than that. But he does seem to like you—he can be shy around strangers,” she said with a smile that just about killed me.
    “I’m Corynne, Corynne Walker. We’re so glad to have you here, it’s about all Papa can talk about.”
    Hoping to God I had a straight face, I said, “Oh no problem at all, he actually looks better in them than I do.”
    She was magnificent—her thick brunette hair fell softly to the middle of her back, framing almond-shaped green eyes and pouty down-turned lips. The kicker was the sundress: white with yellow flowers throughout, cut at the knee, teasing the eye into looking at her