Dawson's Fall

by Roxana Robinson

That day, Tuesday, the light is cool and promising, the air fresh. They turn down Rutledge: Charleston has launched itself into the business of the day. The street vendors are wheeling carts along the pavement, calling their wares. On Broad Street there is traffic: buggies, phaetons, mule-drawn farm wagons. Around them is the steady clop of hooves, the grinding of wheels, the clack of footsteps. People stride along the sidewalk. A white dog sits down to scratch urgently at his ear. The melon man gives his strange cry, “Barcalingo! Barcalingo!”

  The sign stretches all the way across the front of the building: “News and Courier.” The building is tall, three stories, and solid. It has big windows and a classical doorway, tall fluted columns, a stone pediment. Sarah feels proud when she sees it. It’s so dignified, so substantial. It reassures her.

  McKissick comes out onto the sidewalk. He’s a reporter, a small busy man, with a wide mouth and pointed ears, like a leprechaun. He’s been with Frank for years. He greets Sarah cheerily, and she asks him for news about the competitors, the Sun and the World.

  “I’m glad you asked, Mrs. Dawson,” McKissick says. “I hear the Sun is closing.”

  “Closing!” Sarah says triumphantly.

  “It’s what I hear,” McKissick says, pleased. He rises slightly on his toes, then settles.

  “Why don’t you give me news like that, McKissick?” Dawson climbs down to the sidewalk. He’s wearing his new overcoat from London, fitted, elegant. His black bowler hat, dogskin gloves. He carries his light Malacca walking stick.

  He holds up his stack of books so Sarah can set hers on top of it. As she leans down toward him, her books tip, and several slide down to the sidewalk.

  “Mrs. Dawson,” Dawson says. “That’s the first sign of age I’ve seen in you. Are you losing your grip?”

  “Apparently,” she says.

  He leans over to pick up the fallen books and his own pile tips, cascading to the sidewalk.

  “Captain Dawson,” she says, “that’s the first sign of age I’ve seen in you.”

  He straightens, laughing, books stacked against his chest. He sets his chin on the top one, holding them in place. He’s getting jowls, she thinks, fascinated. That really is a sign of age. She feels surprised and tender. They will grow old together; it has already begun. The thought makes her happy.

  “Remember to pick me up at three,” he says, “no matter what I tell you.”

  “I’ll be here,” she says.

  “And remember the boots.” He doesn’t say “Jane’s” because he doesn’t want Isaac to hear.

  She nods.

  His hands on the books, he kisses the air discreetly, and turns to go. The big street windows give onto the downstairs office, and Sarah watches him stop inside to talk to a reporter, the books stacked against his chest. Even from behind his stance is familiar, the shape of his head, the line of his shoulders.

  Sarah tells Isaac to move on, and he slaps the reins against Brownie’s back. He says his word—she can never quite make it out. Gerrup? Get up? Chirrup?

  The errands will take all morning. Isaac draws up outside the stores and the shopkeepers come out to the carriage; they all know her. At the dry goods store she asks for a jar of leather cream for Jane’s boots.

  At the pharmacist’s, the owner comes out. Mr. Gaskell is a small man with thinning hair, very black. Sarah told Frank she thinks he dyes it; Frank said the poor man should be allowed to dye his hair if he wants. Mr. Gaskell wears a long white jacket. When he reaches the carriage he bows. He is cheerful and friendly.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Dawson,” he says, rubbing his hands. She gives him her list: powder for sun protection, oil of peppermint, salve, tooth powder. He goes inside while Sarah waits in the carriage. A boy comes out with her order, packages tied with string, and a carton of Pear’s soap.

  “Did I order that?”

  “No, ma’am,” he says, “but we just got some in, and I know the captain likes to keep it in stock.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah says. It’s comforting to feel known, to feel that someone keeps track of her family’s needs.

  Her last errand is on the outskirts of town, at the stonemason’s. Slabs of stone are stacked haphazardly outside the big barnlike building. Sarah’s here to order the gravestone for Miss Celena. She’s been here before.

  The interior is bare and dim, high ceilinged, with small windows up in the roof peak. Stepping inside Sarah feels the air gather around her. She came here before, with Frank, after the funeral. She and Frank stood together at the counter to choose the stone, and the words to put on it, but all she could think of was that small wooden casket, its tiny brass handles.

  The men had stood close to the edge of the grave, holding the ropes as they let it down. The little casket—so light it had nearly slid off the ropes—descended unevenly, then disappeared. She hadn’t stepped closer. She hadn’t wanted to see it at the bottom, resting on the pale soil.

  She puts that from her.

  Mr. Roberts is lean and balding, with a sober manner. He stands behind the long counter. When Sarah comes in he has a chair brought for her. He knows every family in Charleston who owns a cemetery plot. He knows the stones that already stand in theirs; he knows where it is. He knows there are two Fourgeauds and one Dawson. So far. He takes the long view: everyone will be his customer in the end. He leans over the counter while they discuss the stone, the shape, the lettering.

  A bird has gotten inside the building. It flutters up among the shadowy struts, a sudden swift flapping, then silent settling. As Sarah talks she has the confused feeling that the anxious bird, flying back and forth, is what they are trying to put at rest. She talks to Mr. Roberts about the marble, thinking about the small stone for Philip Hicky. She thinks of Miss Celena, struggling to breathe. She’s glad to do this, put them to rest.

  * * *

  ON THE TRIP BACK McDow had watched Hélène from the corner of his eye. She kept her face turned away from him.

  Everything had gone wrong for him. He’d wanted to go to the quiet part of town where they could walk about unobserved. He wanted the feel of her in his arms, the grip of his fingers.

  He knows the colored people up there. He has patients there, people who were in that insurance business with him. They owe him favors. He’s sure he could have gotten someone to let him use a room. He wanted to get Hélène down on a bed, he wanted to put his hands on her. He could feel her pillowy breasts, that soft white skin. Her skin was French. The thought of her French skin, naked against his hands, roused his blood.

  Everything had gone wrong.

  The detective, then that doctor. The world presses against him. Dunn, with his red mustache and big square teeth, was certainly following them. Standing there by that groundnut woman as though he’d come all the way to Cannon Street by chance.

  Hélène has gone around the corner to her house. McDow opens the door to his office. He wants to hit something. He feels the world pressed up against his chest jagged and hostile. All this is because of Dawson. He remembers standing in Dawson’s house when the telephone rang. How he jumped, and how she laughed at him. The memory fills him with heat. He feels scalded by shame for being startled, rage at being laughed at.

  In the vestibule hangs the tin box on the wall. He checks it for messages: Mrs. Fair wants a house call. She lives nearby on Ashley Avenue.

  In his office McDow opens the lower cabinet of the secretary in the corner. He takes out the bottle and sets it to his mouth. He tilts his head back and swallows once, then again. He feels the fire slide down into his chest, a relief. He puts the bottle back in the cabinet. He stands up, then leans down and opens the cabinet again. He takes out the bottle. Another swallow, then another.

  Out on the sidewalk he looks toward the Dawson house. Sometimes she sits in the upstairs window, singing. Not today, though he thinks he sees a dim silhouette, back from the window. He feels her presence, a dark, glowing pulse, but she’s cut off from him. This makes him angry. It’s Dawson that’s done t
his to him.

  He rings the bell at Mrs. Fair’s house. Her maid, elderly and rheumy-eyed, opens the door. Without speaking she takes him down the hall to the bedroom. The air is close, sweetish. Mrs. Fair lies in bed, propped up against the pillows. She’s in her fifties, a dark-skinned mulatto woman, lively and opinionated. Her husband’s a gambler, well-known in Charleston. Rosey Fair, he’s called.

  “Mrs. Fair,” McDow says, “Good morning.” As he comes into the room he finds himself listing slightly to one side. This takes him by surprise and he takes an extra step to stay upright. The world seems slightly uneven.

  “Doctor,” says Mrs. Fair. “I am so glad to see you. I’ve been feeling poorly.” She smooths the sheet over her belly. She’s a handsome woman, with a broad face and a drift of small dark freckles across her nose. Her hair is reddish, crinkled, pulled back untidily.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” McDow says. “Maybe it’s this in-between weather. Gets to everyone.”

  McDow comes over and sets his bag down, staggering slightly. He sits on the bed, to steady himself.

  “I surely hope that’s all it is, Doctor,” says Mrs. Fair. “You know I don’t have time to be sick.”

  She’s wearing some kind of bed jacket, silk and lace, over her nightgown. Her heavy breasts are flattened against her chest but he sees the shadows of her nipples.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” he asks. That’s the right thing to say. His brain is clouded by something.

  “It’s my throat,” Mrs. Fair says plaintively. She lifts her chin to show her fleshy mottled neck. Deep lines circle it as though a thread has been tightened at intervals. “I can’t exactly say what’s wrong, but I can hardly swallow. And my chest is tight.”

  “Any pain?” asks McDow. “Is it tender?” He puts his hands on her throat and palpates it, looking discreetly at the ceiling. He slides his fingers up and down its length. It’s warm and pulsing.

  Mrs. Fair swallows; he feels the muscular spasm beneath his fingers.

  “Not exactly pain,” she says, and puts her hand just below the base of her neck. “A kind of closeness. Breathlessness.”

  “A tightness?” asks McDow. He’s not sure what he’s asking. The nipples are standing out beneath the soft layers of fabric. They’re more erect now. He’s certain of this.

  “A tightness, exactly,” says Mrs. Fair. “It seems like I can hardly swallow. Or breathe, either. My chest feels full.”

  McDow looks down at her. Her fraying hair fans out around her face. Her full, loose body seems to press itself against his consciousness. The blowsy unbound breasts, the hump of the belly, the dark secret below. He knows what’s there, warm and private. He senses it waiting for him. A kind of wildness is growing in him.

  “Let me listen to your heart,” he says.

  He leans down toward the floor, nearly overbalancing, and takes the stethoscope from his bag. As he leans down he can smell her, a strong musky odor, with a suffocating undertone of flowery cologne. He puts the earpieces into his ears and takes the metal disc. He moves his hand down, slipping it under the covers, inside the V of her jacket, then the neck of her nightgown. He sets the metal disc on her bare skin, just below her left breast. He gazes solemnly at the ceiling. He feels the heft of her bosom, large and unconfined, spilling over his hand. He feels it against his fingers. He moves them slightly, rubbing them against her flesh, pretending to feel for the heartbeat. He knows the real heartbeat is between her legs. Still looking up at the ceiling, he slides his fingers up over the big drooping swell of the breast. He sets them on either side of the nipple, which is swollen and huge. He tweaks it.

  But this is wrong.

  The bed erupts, rocking and plunging, and the air explodes with noise. The woman is yelling and throwing herself around, plunging over to one side. She’s yanking open the drawer in the nightstand. He’s pulled his hand away as though it were burned, but she keeps on yelling his name, yelling for Maudy, as she pulls something from the drawer.

  “Get out of here! Out! Out!” she yells.

  It’s a pistol, he can see that. He’s already moving, leaning down to grab his bag. She levels the barrel at him.

  “You get out of my house, you weaselly trash!” she yells. He hears someone else call out, then footsteps, but he’s already moving, on his way out. He runs for the door, but he’s watching her, holding her in his gaze as though that will keep her from shooting him, and when he reaches the door he finds he’s miscalculated. As he turns he slams his head hard into the jamb. He draws back and keeps going, head stinging, eye tingling, his bag banging against his leg and Mrs. Fair still shouting. Maudy’s in the hall, frowning, her rheumy eyes angry, but she doesn’t know what to say to a white man. She stands back as he runs past.

  “Doctor!” she calls after him, but he’s out the door.

  Out on the street he stands still. He feels as though he’s been attacked by hornets. He feels the sting all over his body, the shame of being threatened by a woman with a pistol. He blinks rapidly, again and again. His whole body stings.

  He heads off downtown. The hardware store on Broad Street sells guns. He won’t stand for this. His own brother has a Smith & Wesson, even cowardly Arthur, who has run off home again. The vile Mrs. Fair, waving her flabby arm, the barrel glinting. Even she has a gun.

  His head is thick with rage and whisky. Dawson is behind all this. It’s Dawson.

  35.

  March 12, 1889. Charleston

  SARAH REACHES HOME just before noon. The wagon from the nursery is waiting on the street, packed closely with their trees. The roots are balled in burlap, and they stand close together, like a miniature forest. The palmetto rises above the others like a tower, its leaves erupting in a green spray.

  Sarah runs upstairs to take off her cloak; it’s turning hot. She calls for Hélène, who sits in Warrington’s window sewing.

  Sarah calls to her in French. “No singing? What’s happened to my nightingale?”

  Hélène looks doleful. “If Madame had my problems she would not sing either.”

  “What problems?” Sarah asks, not wanting to hear.

  Hélène shakes her head again, as though she doesn’t want to talk about them. Then she does. “It’s impossible to tell you what I’ve had to put up with while you were away, from the kitchen.” She’s afraid the others will tell Sarah about McDow.

  Sarah knows she means the servants by “the kitchen.”

  “I haven’t heard a word from anyone,” she says. “No one has complained,” Sarah says briskly. “You have no problems there. So, sing, please!”

  She hurries downstairs.

  The nurseryman is a big burly man with a mustache that doesn’t conceal his cleft palate. Sarah can hardly understand him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He talks cheerfully and unintelligibly as they walk about. She shows him where everything will go, the scarlet oak and magnolia along the back fence, serviceberry beside the oak. She wants the palmetto by the front gate, where everyone will see it.

  The man’s assistant is young and lean, with very dark skin and very high cheekbones. The two hoist each tree into the wheelbarrow, and then the boy trundles it through the garden. Sarah walks with him, showing them where to dig. She herself is a gardener, and knows every plant on the place. There’s a dilapidated shed against the back fence that she won’t let anyone touch because a huge staghorn fern has clambered on top of it and is living there so happily. In Baton Rouge she had a narrow strip off the front porch, where every morning she ruined her nails and her complexion pruning and weeding. Digging in the damp earth: she loves the smell of it. These new trees are treasures. She pictures them when they’re mature, massive: the magnolia, towering, glossy leaves and satin petals, the scarlet oak aflame. The pair of fringe trees, Chionanthus, will have a conversation with each other, and erupt in the spring in cream-colored sprays. A tall serviceberry, with its upright calligraphic branches. She feels enlarged by the arrival of these beauties. It’s as though a compan
y of dancers has come to take up residence.

  The day has cleared and brightened, and now the pale sun is beating down. The boy takes a shovel from the back of the wagon and begins to dig the holes, starting with the palmetto. Sarah goes with him, to make sure they are in the right places, then she stands on the galerie, watching. Her forehead is damp, and she takes out her handkerchief. She presses it against her temples, first one side, then the other. The two men slide the palmetto in together. It tilts at first, and then they straighten it. It stands like a green sentinel by the gate. She can’t wait for Frank to see it.

  * * *

  DAWSON IS AT his desk, scanning a new bill from the paper supplier, when McKinley comes in. He’s holding a copy of the paper.

  “Hello,” Dawson says. “Come in. Sit down.” He puts down his pen and leans back in his chair. He holds his wrist, flexing his fingers. “Do you find this? My hand gets tired now in the mornings. It used not to happen until late afternoon.”

  McKinley shakes his head. “If you were a reporter,” he says, “you’d only have to write once a day.”

  “Maybe I should go back to reporting,” Dawson says. “Let someone else run the paper.”

  But McKinley is not there to chat. He sits down, sober.

  “I’ve read your piece on Pickens,” he says. His manner is not collegial.

  “Oh, yes,” says Dawson. He frowns.

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” says McKinley.

  “I’d have thought it was clear,” Dawson says.

  “Blacks will be up in arms,” McKinley says.

  “Oh?” says Dawson, and waits. He doesn’t like this accusatory tone.

  “How can you talk about them this way?” McKinley asks. He looks at the paper in his hand and reads from it. “The difference between the ‘instincts, character and conduct of the two races.’ Their moral purity, or lack of it. You make it sound as though they’re all criminals.”

  “The races are different. Their crime rate is much higher than ours,” says Dawson. “That’s a perfectly well-known fact.”