* * *
McDOW STARES as though this were happening without any connection to him.
His chest is on fire. He can’t encompass it: the sound of the shot—was it from him?—and the strange interior look on Dawson’s face, that unexpected shift of his weight, the slow collapse, the dark ink spreading onto the carpet.
After a long time he moves to Dawson’s side. He feels the wrist for the pulse. The flesh is flaccid, it yields. There is no beat. Dawson’s eyes are open and fixed. Dull.
McDow wonders if he should get help; he thinks confusedly of calling a doctor. Medical assistance.
It’s fatal. He sees that.
He should do something. His mind is blurred and fumbling.
He does nothing. Minutes pass by. He may faint; his eyes go dark. He is alone here. The room seems to close around him, the air thickens. He can hardly breathe.
37.
4:00, March 12, 1889. Charleston
CAPTAIN DAWSON LIES on the floor, inert, enormous.
The body seems to take up the entire room. The dark overcoat is flung open onto the big chest, exposing the high white collar, the silky folded tie, the black high-buttoned jacket. The legs, in striped trousers, turn outward, feet splayed. The abdomen is huge, swollen from internal bleeding. But it’s the face McDow can’t look away from. Dawson’s head is turned to one side, and his eyes are open and still. The mouth is parted. Narrow lines of red have made their way down from the side of the mouth, the nose, down the slack cheek, disappearing into the collar. The blood is shockingly dark, nearly black. Dawson’s eyes are open, the whites gleam. They seem to move. McDow thinks they follow him, that Dawson is watching him. He’s both dead and watching.
McDow can’t think how he has come to be here in this room with this body of death. He feels resistance, rejection of the sight. The body seems to radiate some kind of inaudible alarm. He can’t stop it.
The street windows are opaque. He pulls down the blinds on the piazza side, then goes out the back door and up the outside stairs to the second floor of the piazza. He walks up and down, glancing sideways at the street to see if anyone has heard the shot. No one’s walking about, though a carriage and driver stand waiting outside McBurney’s house. McDow goes back downstairs and lets himself in to the office.
The body is still there. As he stands looking at it he hears the gong. The noise is loud and terrifying. Someone is at the door.
A chill moves through him: Dawson’s body lies in front of the inner door. For a moment McDow does nothing, then he picks up the pistol and steps through the vestibule to the outer door. He leans over, listening: he hears shuffling, breathing. He opens the door a few inches and peers through the crack with one eye.
A man on the other side stares at him. He can see the face: it’s a policeman, a light-skinned colored man called Gordon. McDow had seen him on the street earlier, coming back from the disastrous trip with Hélène. Gordon was on the corner, wearing civilian clothes. Now McDow thinks he must have been put there to watch him.
* * *
McDOW CROUCHES SLIGHTLY, hidden behind the door. The pistol is in his right hand. He can hear his heart thundering. He says nothing, only one eye exposed.
“Dr. McDow?” Gordon says.
“Yes,” McDow answers. He hears himself breathing.
“Everything all right in there?” asks Gordon.
“Yes,” McDow answers. They stare at each other through the crack. McDow’s heart gallops. Gordon’s amber eye is wide open. They are inches apart.
“Heard there might be some trouble,” Gordon says. “Someone heard a shot.”
McDow feels himself loud and silent. He refuses to speak. His heart, though.
After a minute McDow draws his face away from the door. He is still watching the policeman as he closes the door on the other man’s gaze. He turns back to his office.
The body is still there. The coat is still flung open, the black jacket exposed, feet splayed. It’s still here in the room with him.
He must hide it. He must hide it before Gordon comes in. He’ll come back.
He can bury it. There’s a closet under the interior stairs. The floor is only loose wooden planks laid over earth. He’s used it before to bury medical detritus, surgical scraps.
He grasps one of the hands and tugs, trying to drag the corpse across the floor. It’s like dragging a sand dune, a mastodon. Dawson will barely budge. He braces himself and tugs harder, but the glove comes off in his hand and he staggers backward. He drops the glove and seizes the bare hand. The fingers are cold and unresponsive; he recoils, then regrasps the hand. He grabs the other one as well, pulling the arms over the head. He begins pulling, bracing himself for each tug. The thing shifts heavily across the carpet. The other glove comes loose; he grabs the wrist. He braces himself with each step, moving backward. When he nears it he opens the door to the stairwell. The closet door is nailed shut, he did this himself, recently, when the hinges broke. He leaves the body by the closet door.
He puts on his hat and walks out to the barn, feeling exposed and strange. He brings back a hatchet and spade, holding them low and awkwardly. Inside, the body is still there. He has to step over it to reach the closet.
He prizes the nails free with the edge of the hatchet. He takes off the door and sets it against the wall. He leans into the closet. The lintel is low, and he bangs his head on it hard. He prizes up the floorboards, exposing the earth.
The space is about eight feet long, three wide. Easily big enough. He leans in to start digging and bangs his head again, painfully. It’s too dark; he needs some light.
He steps across the body again. He doesn’t look at the eyes. He goes out through the piazza door and heads for the corner store. On the sidewalk he passes his neighbor Edward Lafitte, who gives him an odd look. Lafitte stops to speak but McDow ignores him.
Lafitte says, “Doctor.”
McDow stops.
“Your hat,” Lafitte says, pointing. “It’s dented, and there’s whitewash on it.”
McDow doesn’t answer. He takes his hat off and rubs it on his elbow. He smiles, to show Lafitte everything is fine. He can’t remember exactly how to smile; he thinks it’s like this, raising the lips and pulling them back. The air is seething. The world is speeding up, everything is going faster and faster.
At the store he asks for five cents’ worth of apples. He doesn’t want to raise suspicion by asking for candles first. The shopkeeper picks out six apples from the barrel. McDow asks carelessly for a nickel’s worth of candles.
“Don’t wrap them,” McDow says, and counts out the coins. His heart is thudding. His chest has become huge. He puts the candles in his pocket. He walks outside with the packet of apples. Across the street, on the corner, stands Gordon, conspicuously not looking at him.
The body is still there. It’s still huge. It seems ready to burst. It’s so silent! McDow is appalled by it.
He steps over it. Inside the closet he lights a candle and sets it into the soil. He takes the spade and crouches, hitting his head again. He crouches lower and begins digging. The soil is loose and friable. He shovels quickly, fearful, piling the earth on either side of the hole. He thinks of Gordon knocking on the door; he thinks he hears the gong, but it’s his imagination.
When the hole is large enough he backs out, crouching. He drags in the body, tugging, then pushing.
The head stops at the far end. It won’t go any farther. He shoves and lunges, but it won’t move. It’s mostly buried, though, and now his pulse is hammering. He crouches and slides the floorboards down again over the body. The nose is the highest point, and thrusts the board into a slant. McDow uses the shovel like a sledgehammer on the board. He tries to pound down the board, flattening what’s underneath it, but there isn’t room to raise the shovel high enough. The plank stays on a slant, tilted by Dawson’s head, his nose. McDow backs out, panting. It’s mostly hidden. It doesn’t need to be entirely buried. He nails the door shut again. No one w
ill come in here.
He goes back out into his office. The body is gone, but still seems to be present. He can still hear his heart. He remembers that the eyes are still open. He didn’t close them. He slid the boards over the face and the eyes were still open.
He takes out the bottle and has three more pulls of fire. He waits for the policeman. There is no one. He hears nothing from outside. He thinks of the body crammed into the space, the floorboards against the face. He can feel the face being crushed by the planks.
The air in here is taking up the air from outside, this room is taking over the rest of the world. What’s happened here is blotting out everything else. He feels his brain at the center of a huge whirling rotation, the spiral at the start of the universe. He’s right at the center of it.
He must tidy up. He sets the chair in place, neatens the papers on his desk. He puts the pistol in the drawer of the secretary. He opens the bottom cabinet and takes another swallow; another; then another. He feels better. He sits down at the table.
He can feel Dawson lying under the stairs. There is a smell. He can feel the face under the floorboards. The face beneath them. The eyes.
He should dig him up. This was wrong, utterly wrong. He sees that now. He must dig him up. He goes back to the closet and sets the hatchet blade against the nails, prizing them up. Chaos swirls through his head, like a hurricane in the room. He wrestles out the filthy planks.
He pulls the body out by the feet and drags it back into the office. The face is covered with dark abrasions from the floorboards that were set on top of it. McDow stands over it, smoothing his mustache. He is at the center of something; he has no idea what. The body is dirty and disheveled, the feet lolling apart.
He goes upstairs for a rag and basin. Emma, the cook, is in the kitchen. She looks at him but says nothing. He asks where his wife is. Gone to her father! says Emma. He comes down slowly. He’s holding the basin carefully, but the water slides back and forth, spilling. He sets the basin beside Dawson and crouches down. He wets the rag, wrings it out. He lays it over Dawson’s face. He digs into its contours, the bridge of the nose, the yielding eyes in their sockets, the hairline. Between strokes he dips the rag in the basin, releasing a dark murky cloud. He washes everything, brushes the sand from the silky creases of the tie, flicks it from the black wool.
He carries the basin through the hall, through the lumber room, into the little back space, full of cobwebs and broken tools. He puts the basin behind a sawhorse, on the windowsill.
The glove lies on the carpet. McDow puts it in Dawson’s fist and clasps the fingers around it; they don’t stay clasped, and he bends them again. Slowly they open. He tucks the glove inside them, as though Dawson had just taken it off.
Five o’clock. Time lies endless before him. All these hours stretching on into the evening, and then night, like the deserts of Arabia.
He can’t stay here in the same room with death. He puts on his hat and goes out, down Bull Street, past the Dawsons’ house. He doesn’t turn his head as he walks past, though he sees it from the corner of his eye.
Julia lives two blocks away, behind Mrs. Calder’s Hotel. He turns up the driveway, his footsteps, the oyster shells crunching beneath his feet. The sound seems deafening; he resists the urge to walk on tiptoe. He walks past the main house to the carriage house. Julia’s apartment is on the second floor; he steps inside and calls up the stairs. She opens her door.
“What is it?” She stays in her room, peering through the door. She doesn’t like it when he comes here.
“Come down,” McDow says. “I need to see you.”
She comes down to stand on the step above him. On the wall beyond her is a set of steel engravings, pictures of historical events marching up the stairwell. “What is it?”
“I’ve killed Captain Dawson,” McDow says.
He hears himself say the words. Now they are true. Behind her is the signing of the Declaration of Independence, bewigged men in a lofty room, gesturing with quill pens. She stares at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve killed him,” he says.
She steps down the last stair.
* * *
AT THE OFFICE HE unlocks the front door and they come inside. It is very quiet. Dawson is still there, lying on the floor near the back door.
Julia’s face goes white. She draws a breath and puts her hand on her chest. She turns her head away and goes over to sit on the settee. She puts her head into her hands. He hears her rapid breathing.
She says something, he can’t make out what. After a minute he understands she’s asking him questions.
“What happened?” She looks at him, not at the captain.
“He said he’d publish me in the paper,” McDow says. He doesn’t want to say anything about Marie. “He’d ruin me.”
As he says it he hears that it’s not enough. He makes a large gesture across his chest, as though Dawson had driven a steamroller over him. “He caned me.” He remembers Dawson’s huge thudding push against his chest. Did Dawson hit him with his stick at the same moment? He can’t remember; he might have. It seemed like caning. He was being attacked. He touches his head, where he’d run into Mrs. Fair’s doorjamb, and then against the lintel in the closet. It’s tender; he blames Dawson.
Julia frowns.
There is a silence. McDow raises both hands to his mustache and smooths it outward. He thinks of saying that Dawson refused to look at him. But he can’t tell her that. He can’t bear saying it out loud.
“He hit me,” he says.
She nods, waiting.
“With his cane,” McDow says, trying it out. “He caned me and threatened to publish me in the paper.”
“There’s mud in his hair.”
“I buried him,” McDow says.
She looks appalled.
“Under the stairs,” he says, gesturing. “Then I dug him up. It wouldn’t work.”
She looks down again. They stay motionless. He watches her; he hears her breathing. After a while she stands and smooths her skirt.
“I was standing by the settee when he hit me,” he says. “I fell back onto it and he hit me again with his cane.”
McDow sees the glove; it’s fallen out of Dawson’s fingers. He gives it to Julia, who puts it in Dawson’s fist. She clasps the fingers around it; they don’t stay clasped, and she bends them again. Slowly they loosen, open.
She stands and sets her hands on her hips.
“You’ll have to turn yourself in,” she says.
He stares at her.
While she was working on the glove it seemed that everything was slowing down and under control. When she says this, things start to speed up and swirl again.
“To the police,” she says.
“Yes,” he says, irritated. “I will, I will.” He is offended that she doesn’t know that he knows this. Everything offends him. The air is filled with stinging particles.
“I want you to stay here to look after Katie, when she comes back,” he says.
“Where is she?”
“Gone to her father’s, at the hotel. I want you to wait for her.”
She nods. He leaves by the front door.
He’d told her he’d turn himself in. Is that what she said? He will, he’ll turn himself in to the police. He looks around for Gordon, who may still be lurking nearby.
But first he needs to tell Marie. It’s past six o’clock, she should be home by now.
He goes around the corner to Bull Street. He walks back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house. Often Marie hears him, when he does that, and comes outside. She knows his footsteps, which used to please him but now alarms him. He walks up and down, but no one appears. He stops at the wrought-iron gate and stands looking at the house, up the flight of stone stairs.
He’s waiting for Marie, but it’s Mrs. Dawson who comes outside. She’s been listening for a footstep, though not his.
She stands on the porch, looking down at him.
>
She doesn’t recognize him. He stares at her: a small erect woman with pale eyes, at the top of the long stone stairs.
38.
March 12, 1889. Charleston
SARAH MORGAN DAWSON MEMORANDUM
At four o’clock, I grew very anxious. From that moment, the conviction that he had been murdered haunted me. Ten minutes, at the latest, would have brought him home. He never failed to warn me by telephone, or note, or messenger, of the least delay, knowing my anxiety and haunting fear. I had waited over sixteen years to see his murdered body brought home. The day had come. Our acquaintance had begun in such a threatened tragedy. I never doubted this would be the end. He shared my belief, great as was his faith in humanity.
At five, I had dinner for the children hastily served. I would not eat, because I said it would make him sad to eat alone, presently. The children were due at dancing school at five o’clock. It was ten minutes past, as they ran from the dining room followed by Hélène. They had caught up a cake apiece, and still wondering why “dear father” did not come, paused before McDow’s window, by which McDow had once more dragged their father’s body from its hidden grave. They were wagering which of the approaching cars would bring their father. He lay just the other side of the opaque panes of glass—murdered. The murderer must have heard their laughter as he performed his ghoul’s work of arranging, with Miss Smith, the mise en scène for an “act of self defense.”
And I—left to myself, I could no longer dissemble. I could neither read, nor reason with my vague fears & growing terror. I could only see him murdered—doubled up—and in a dark corner. And then I was ashamed of myself.
At six, exactly, I went on the front porch, to hear his step the sooner. I know it was six, because the gardener who never worked after the first stroke of six, was just coming around the house to take away his rake & spade. I begged him to take with him the dead vines I had pulled down as I waited. As he carried them off, I stood listening intently for the step I was never to hear, and gazing at a very beautiful sunset sky which I shall never forget. Suddenly, a great horror seized me. I felt that I was in the presence of an unclean devil.
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