Hat Trick: A Professor Deshpande Mystery

NOTE: JUNETEENTH WAS A LANDMARK EVENT IN U.S. HISTORY AND HOPE. THIS IS FOR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY WHO EMBRACE THAT HOPE.

“I am asked -- in fact, asked often enough frankly to annoy the living shit out of me -- if the arts, and in particular the textile arts, were the best and highest use of my powers as a woman, as a black woman, as an educator and a civil rights advocate and activist. Most of the time, it comes up at family suppers and reunions.”

Appreciative laughter rustles through the still Central Illinois Wednesday afternoon air. Not just the academics, the post-grads, accustomed to coming up on the short end of family or community expectations, but also the preachers and teachers and the Amtrak and the Subway and the Starbucks workers on synchronized break from the Intermodal Hub and the servers and cooks and clerks from up and down Campustown enjoying a summer respite, who could relate, too.

“And every semester, I catch hell from at least one young student who may know my own youthful escapades from some magazine interview or their black studies prof or from a grandma or aunt who shared in the struggle, and feel let down that first day my wrinkled, stylish ass walks into the classroom. What happened to the Thea Mason who helped shut down the Northwestern Student Union for three days chained to the Coke machine and mortified her mama getting in Time magazine shaking a fist at the cops outside the Chicago Conrad Hilton in ‘68. What happened to that fiery young gal? Well, in her own way, Mama could thank herself for that. And Harriet Powers.

“Harriet Powers was born into slavery near Athens, Georgia, in 1837. Today, her works are on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. You see, Harriet Powers discovered her special gift early on on John and Nancy Lester’s plantation. She could create. She could illuminate and educate and even liberate through her art. She could sew – taught by her fellow slaves and her ‘mistress,’ and like so many throughout our history, Harriet literally took the meager scraps she was given and stitched them into something of lasting value. You get to Washington, stop by the National Museum and gaze upon The Bible Quilt – plain old cotton, hand and machine-sewn African-style applique, not much more than six-by-seven feet. But within this limited expanse are the stories of Adam and Eve, Eve and her son in Paradise, Satan among the seven stars, Cain killing Abel, Cain going into the Land of Nod for a wife, Job, Jonah and the Whale, Jacob and his ladder, the baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion, Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces of silver, the Last Supper, the Holy Family, and Christ's ascension to Heaven. The story portrayed in the spiritual ‘We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder’ was popular with slaves, who related to the hunted, homeless Jacob and his ladder symbolizing escape from slavery. ‘Fact, it’s widely believed she selected these stories overall as coded messages of loss and escape.

“Now, my folks took me to see that quilt as a girl, and of course, I was full of questions. How many of you’ve ever heard of ‘slave’ quilts, abolitionist quilts? Slaves escaping north to freedom along the Underground Railroad looked for quilts hanging on a line that depicted abolitionist cause patterns for the Railroad, Jacob’s Ladder, the North Star, the Slave Chain. Symbols stitched into these quilts signaled respite or offered directions along the long, dangerous journey to freedom.

“Well, I was hooked. If you can find the August 30, 1968 Time, I actually made that fetching blouse the officer managed to rip after I expressed my dissatisfaction with the political status quo.

“What I’m saying is, we are a mosaic, a patchwork of sorts pieced together from what we were allowed to gather, what we were able to take, what we had to build ourselves. Bits and scraps and parts that together, today, make a glorious whole. Whether in the sciences, education, medicine, the arts, literature, the trades, the streets and corridors and counters where hardworking people work with pride, or even in fashion. Today, June 19, we celebrate that rich mosaic, that patchwork of traditions and struggles and tragedies and triumphs that forms the fabric of our community. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, neighbors and allies, I present to you The Millington Juneteenth Quilt.”

**

“Professor Mason?”

The Mattel-pretty young blonde had stationed herself squarely behind Thea’s shoulder, which only heightened the professor’s irritation. The detail work and concentration of her discipline had left her with knots in her 76-year-old fingers and cervical vertebrae. The two 11-year-olds manning the card table off the third turn of the Campustown Circle stared blankly at the interloper.

“Just look at the work here,” Thea instructed, thrusting a braided, tricolored Juneteenth BLM bracelet at County Fair Barbie. “Tanya and Donita have been making these since third grade, and they give most of the money they make to help classmates buy school supplies.”

Somewhat to Thea’s surprise, the blonde closely examined the piece. “The weave is so symmetrical, so tight. You do this totally by hand?”

The girls nodded as one, still taking stock.

“And only $5 each,” Thea noted.

“Gimme four, please,” the blonde nodded. “Oh, and I’d like one of each of the others, too. I work at the Historical Museum downtown -- we’d like to get more local art into our gift shop. I get my bosses on board, could you handle an initial order of, oh, maybe 200 of these?”

Heads bobbing eagerly, they looked to the stunningly stylish old woman who’d been on stage only 20 minutes earlier. Thea nodded back, curtly. “Payment in advance to help with the materials, and you get whatever markup over and above $5 per unit. I see what you charge for those Route 66 T-shirts.”

The blonde shrugged. “Here’s my card; have your folks call and I’ll tell you if we’re a go.”

“You better not be jerking those young ladies around,” Thea warned pleasantly as they moved out of earshot.

“Look at the card,” Reese Witherspoon’s more symmetrical sister urged.

“Executive director,” Professor Mason mused.

“No bosses to run anything past. I just wanted everything aboveboard before we clear the space. Now, in other business, think I could borrow your expertise?”

“In civil disobedience, academic power politics?”

“How about the millinery arts? Presidential intrigue?”

Thea halted. “All right -- you got my attention. And you should’ve been upfront with those girls. Might have been instructive to meet a young woman who answers to no one. Well, almost no one.”

**

“Abraham Lincoln’s hat,” Thea murmured, eyeballing the stovepipe atop the case full of Attorney Lincoln’s correspondence and their alternately genial and terse in-kind responses. She knew better than to touch without gloves. “That’s a little on the nose this fine Juneteenth, don’t you think? And you have to know the genuine item’s at the Smithsonian. Even though I can tell at first glance this isn’t the real McCoy.”

“Beyond our budget,” Bronte Garrison grunted. “The beaver hat we’ve used is from a Chicago costumer who does period reproductions for exhibits, TV, movies, and the Shubert and other Loop theaters. One of the partners was a University graduate, from your School of Arts in fact, and she made it gratis for the museum out of appreciation. A flawless job, down to the black memorial ribbon the president added after his son Willie’s death at the White House.”

Thea eyed the chapeau, then arched both brows at Bronte.

“Of course, this is not the reproduction,” the curator added. “As I’m certain you could tell. And that’s the issue. Somebody switched stovepipes on us. Well, on the president.”

Thea glanced over at the tall, homely, bearded, bareheaded mannequin at the entrance to the former county courthouse gallery.

“You saw we’re remodeling the third floor here, so the Lincoln Exhibition is temporarily closed. We discovered the substitution yesterday before the construction crew arrived.”

“Before?” Thea demanded.

Garrison nodded. “And I personally walked out with the custodian Monday night —I was working late digitizing documents, and Jason insisted on walking me to my car. We’re short-staffed these days, and it was just me and our volunteer docent Geoff here. School’s out, and only a couple guests dropped in all day. They have to pass the main desk to get in. You know, it’s fine if you want to examine it.”

“Only if you got some non-latex gloves. This is the real deal.”

“Real? It looks pretty cheap to me. It’s not even beaver, right?”

To Bronte’s surprise, Thea reached into her Homage Minimi and extracted a pair of teal surgicals. “Felt, for sure. But quality felt -- rabbit, I believe. Tight felting, smooth finish – what they called a ‘mercury finish’ for the mercuric oxide used to soak the pelts. You know where the term ‘mad as a hatter’ came from? The mercury caused heavy metal poisoning in the folks who felted hats.

“And look at the craftsmanship, especially the stitching. Though strange there’s no crown ribbon.” Thea lifted the hat, examined the flat brim. “Here’s the kicker. See that? Double felt – two layers. The way they did it back in the day. Lincoln’s days. Point is, whoever your thief traded the genuine article for a reproduction.”

“Shit,” Bronte breathed.

“Yes,” Thea concurred, staring inside the crown like a prestidigitator with an AWOL rabbit. The professor paused, staring at an inked logo on the sweatband. “Ah, you wanna get this under lock and key ‘til I can check a few things?”

The museum director peered over Thea’s shoulder at the symbol – a stick figure head topped with what appeared to be a straw hat. With a flash of residual irritation, the older woman replaced the hat on the counter.

“Look, I got lunch,” Thea said, tersely. She refused the elevator, instead taking the winding stairs past orange cones to the circular ground floor desk. A gratuitously well-groomed old guy glanced up expectantly.

“Bronte, you remember I got that thing today? The T-shirt vendor’s coming by at noon or so, and the new shot glasses are ready.”

“I’ve got things. You just enjoy. Geoff, this is Professor Mason, from the University, who’s agreed to consult on the Lincoln situation.”

“That’s an overstatement,” Thea replied, and Geoff regarded her anew.

Garrison didn’t skip a beat. “I can authorize a fee.”

Professor Mason scanned the racks and shelves lining the corridor beyond the desk. Plastic settlers, Route 66 memorabilia, science kits, maps and both glossy trade paperback and self-published histories of Millington and surroundings. “I guess you know what my terms are,” Thea murmured.

“Right next to the railroad whistles, where the chocolate cows were,” Bronte pledged. “By the way, would you like some chocolate cows?”

“Wasn’t part of the deal.”

**

“Well, could you truly label someone a thief who replaces their spoils with an object of higher value?” Saanvi posed as she speared golden beets, goat cheese, and kale. “This hat is of some value?”

Like many mid-sized Midwest downtowns once lined with department stores and Woolworths and shoe shops and diners with rapid shopper turnaround but rendered obsolete by malls and beltway commerce, Millington’s old “main drag” was now a haven for hipster artisans, fair trade locally-roasted coffee and gluten-free cupcakes, an antique mall and “gently used” fashion boutiques, and bistros that carved alfresco niches out of the narrow sidewalks and unused curb space.

“I think it may be,” Thea said, coaxing steam from her green lentil chili as a dead Starbucks cup rolled past her heels. “But maybe not the way Malibu Barbie thinks.”

“I was told Bronte Garrison came here from the Charlotte Museum of History – no small credential,” Saanvi offered diplomatically.

“That ain’t exactly a lateral move, you know. Anyway.” Thea pulled up her phone gallery and displayed the last image, the odd glyph on the top hat’s sweatband.

“It looks like a child’s drawing of a man wearing a hat,” Saanvi frowned. “Or, you know, that symbol – the banned symbol. No smoking, no firearms, or to use your generational context, no nukes.”

“Hah,” Thea laughed nastily. “You’re wrong on both counts. You can see it on the multimodal hub wall, I believe between the Tubman panel and the West Street Protest.”

“The Juneteenth Quilt?”

“I mentioned those slave quilts, the coded messages sewn into them? Hold on.” Thea Googled up tiles of images, finally selecting a table of glyphs and expanding the image with thumb and index finger. “Individual square patterns were incorporated, from the Bow Ties recommending a change of clothes to avoid being conspicuous, to the North Star, which advised slaves to steer toward the star on a course toward Canada. Stitched symbols also had significance. This glyph, the one printed in the band of our mysterious stovepipe, means ‘Good road to follow.’ What that means in this context is beyond me.”

Saanvi nodded and smiled up as a pierced server dropped the bill equidistant between them. “All right, let’s consider. Your stovepipe is of superior quality but lesser material. It is branded with a symbol significant to escaped slaves and abolitionists. And you told me there was no ribbon encircling the crown. Could you tell if the ribbon had at some point been removed?”

“No signs of torn stitches or discoloration where a ribbon might have been.”

“Did the hat look as if it had ever been worn?”

Thea pushed her bowl aside. “No apparent staining on the sweatband or inside the crown.”

Saanvi smiled serenely, in that manner that strangely did not raise Professor Mason’s hackles. “You might look to your Harriet Powers for enlightenment. Oh, and I believe it’s your turn to pay.”

**

“How you doing?” Bronte inquired, this time approaching on Thea’s flank. “Brilliant, by the way, looking at the vendors.”

The professor swiveled from the spreadsheet on Garrison’s monitor to face the museum director. “I imagine you can’t monitor every box or palette that comes in or for that matter leaves. You had two vendors Monday – a jewelry maker from Towanda who left a single small package of her latest at the desk and according to Geoff stopped for a couple minutes to chat. The other one dropped off, amusingly enough, three cases of assorted caps.”

“Silkscreen Road, local apparel printer,” Bronte prompted.

“I know their work,” Thea said drily. “The vendor, Jake? Geoff says he was on the phone and directed him to the men’s. Now, Jake the regular delivery guy? So why doesn’t he know where the museum john is by this time? Unless Geoff remembers it wrong. Or told it wrong.”

Bronte perched hard on the curve of her desk. “What are you saying? Why would Geoff lie?”

“Can’t picture his motivation, or Jake’s. Not that the motivation is really that important. Not an uncommon trick — get hold of a vintage lot of felt in a warehouse or attic, study up on old-school blocking, stitching, and the like, and fashion yourself a brand-new ‘antique’ that will pass the sniff test. Well, an amateur sniff test,” Thea added modestly. “Somebody pranked you folks, and I recommend you order another stovepipe and find a community theater or high school drama class short on period headwear.”

Professor Mason waited for Bronte’s response. The young woman stared intently into her eyes, breathing slowly as wheels turned. Thea smiled sadly.

“Ah, shit, I can’t do it,” she sighed. “Of course, it’s authentic. Not all slaves were out picking cotton or living in a shack out in Lower Intestine, Georgia. Some were free help for merchants and tradesmen in the Southern cities, and, like Harriet Powers, they learned valuable skills along the way. Like hatmaking. I’m 99.99 percent this stovepipe was created by a slave, most likely in the service of Albert Garrison Milliners, late of Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Our man saw a way to speak for his own, for his cause, directly to the Union’s seat of power. And how appropriate to use Underground Railroad code to tell President Lincoln himself he was on a ‘good road’ — the road to ending slavery. If your great-great-great-whatever-granddad had made this gift, he would have used the highest-quality beaver. Our man used his ‘owner’s cheaper rabbit stock. And he knew Lincoln would choose to wear his mourning ribbon rather than the milliner’s. As a mercantile slave, it wasn’t hard to post his gift to 1600 Pennsylvania. But it never reached Lincoln, did it? If you went to this trouble to make all this known, you must have some documentation proving what I say’s true. Bronte? Girl?”

“It was Lincoln’s people,” Garrison said wearily. “Old Albert said it was an inauguration gift – he supposedly was furious Henry took it on himself to use his materials, to represent himself through the family business. Lincoln’s chief of staff had sent it straight back – to the shop – with a letter offering their ‘thanks’ but declining the gift.”

“Politics,” Thea muttered. “With the North and South divided over so many issues well beyond slavery, his toadies probably were nervous about the optics of the president accepting, much less acknowledging a gift that suggested clear and radically direct support for abolition. Wasn’t ‘til his second term he pushed a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. What happened to ‘Henry’? You got a full name?”

“Albert didn’t…” Bronte looked away. “Albert never kept the…the bill of sale. This was in my grandfather’s estate, and Dad sent it on to me, knew I’d find it interesting. I wanted to go public with it, tried a dozen times, but somehow…”

“You couldn’t,” Thea supplied, more gently than she’d intended. “Instead of owning up to the sins of the fathers, you recruited me to ‘discover’ Henry’s story, this piece of history.”

Bronte Garrison dutifully turned back to Thea. “It didn’t seem like my place.”

“Actually, young lady, it was exactly your place. Now, let’s get to work.”