Applewood (Book 1)

by Brendan P. Myers

  “I’m not buying it,” she said.

  Her eyes seemed to bore into him, as if she were staring directly into his soul or could read his mind. He looked down. After a few moments he dared to glance back up and saw that her gaze had not wavered. He realized then that she would wait to hear the truth until doomsday. She had all the time in the world.

  “Look,” he began, “I really am doing a report on the Colonel. It’s part of that special curriculum this year, you know? For the birthday?”

  She nodded, but her face remained as severe as her bun. He thought then he might give the truth a shot, or part of it anyway.

  “Last summer my friend Larry and me, we were up at his house in Maine. We found an old Chronicle from eighteen sixty-five, and it was…interesting. I was looking to see if maybe there was another copy around town.”

  “Where did you find the newspaper?” Curious now, she leaned forward a little and her face lost just a bit of its severity.

  “You won’t believe it, but it was stuffed behind an old framed painting, along with a bunch of other newspapers from the Grant administration.”

  Her face flushed after he finished the story. She leaned back, smiled, and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Young man, what you have just described is the secret desire of every historian. In fact, I know people who would gladly surrender years of their lives just to experience what you and your friend did.”

  He’d never thought about it that way, but guessed now it was kind of cool. He looked up and saw she was lost in some kind of reverie. More importantly, it seemed that all talk of school had been forgotten.

  “All right, then. Let’s get down to brass tacks. What is it you’re looking for specifically?”

  He thought a moment before speaking. “Well, first thing would be copies of the Chronicle from eighteen sixty-five. I think it was from around August…”

  He stopped when she put up her hand. “Young man, your friend may very well have the last and oldest copy that still exists. The Chronicle offices burned in the eighteen-seventies, and whatever they salvaged from that was lost when the new building burned down in the late forties. The oldest issue I have ever seen was dated nineteen oh-two, and that was found in an attic here in town.”

  Disappointed, he looked down, not really having a Plan B. “Anything you have on Pope might be helpful.”

  “Let me show you what we do have.”

  Getting up again, she walked around her desk and toward the door. Her dress made a swooshing sound as she bustled by. They walked back down the hallway, which Dugan noticed now was lined with old paintings and portraits of both men and women.

  About two-thirds of the way down the hall they took a left and walked into what looked like an old fashioned drawing room paneled in black walnut. There was a large stone fireplace in the wall opposite the entrance with big couches and overstuffed chairs arranged in front of it.

  “This was his library,” she said in a hushed, reverent tone.

  Dugan looked around to see ancient books lining every inch of wall space, the built-in shelves rising twenty feet to the ceiling. A wooden ladder on rails was available to reach the upper volumes. A series of metal freestanding bookcases were stationed at both ends of the room, with a long wooden table behind each to afford visiting historians, scholars or truants some measure of privacy.

  “We left the books arranged in the same manner that Colonel Pope had them. This wall contains mostly Latin and Greek poetry and the dictionaries, of course: Latin, Greek, French, Italian. Philosophy takes up most of those upper shelves, and law books and legal history make up the bulk of the rest.”

  Dugan looked at the thousands of volumes upon the shelves and knew he would find nothing. Then he had an idea.

  “Did Pope keep a diary?”

  He looked up and saw her smiling sweetly at him, and thought that she was very pretty when she smiled.

  “You will make a great historian some day, young man. Knowing the right question to ask is what separates the brilliant from the hack. The answer to your question is yes, Pope was an obsessive diarist.”

  She went on as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “The answer to your next question is no, we do not have them.

  They were destroyed according to his wishes.” A shadow came over her face. “A terrible loss. A terrible loss. And so out of character for a man who obviously knew and understood the requirements of history.”

  Dugan felt that he too was at a loss. While this visit had given him some new and interesting facts about Pope, he knew it wasn’t at all what Harris was looking for. Dugan was surprised to realize that he even gave a shit about what Harris was looking for. Taken aback by the thought, he decided to try a different tack.

  “They make you dress up like that every day?”

  “No, no,” she said, smiling. “We are having a luncheon today for some of our benefactors, and as a matter of fact, young man, I need to run along now and see to it. It has been a distinct pleasure meeting you, and I welcome you back at any time.”

  She was giving him the brush-off. He knew he was running out of time.

  “You hear about the missing kids?” he asked bluntly, for no reason other than to get a reaction. He looked up and saw her smile frozen onto her face. She seemed unsure how to respond to his question.

  “Yes I have, and it is a terrible shame,” she finally answered.

  He looked straight at her imploringly, trying to make the same kind of direct eye contact that she herself had mastered. “Would you mind if I looked around a while?” When she hesitated, he continued, “I mean, I promise not to touch or take anything, and I can let myself out.”

  She took pity on him after a moment. “For a budding historian, of course, and again, you are welcome here any time, young man.” She curtsied gracefully before disappearing with a whoosh.

  Dugan stood a moment looking around the library. He noticed then that the room had a certain funk to it, perhaps from the old leather or sheepskin or whatever the hell else they had bound books in back then. He wandered to the shelves and glanced at some of the titles, most in languages he couldn’t read.

  Pushing the wooden ladder just to see how well it worked, he was impressed to find that one finger could make it glide silently to the left or right on the well oiled rails. He noticed a set of elegant matching volumes on an upper shelf to his right and was intrigued. He slid the ladder over and climbed up to read the gilded titles.

  He reached up to run a finger across the old leather and heard a loud snort come from behind him. He almost lost his balance and had to grab the ladder before turning around again. From his aerial perch, he saw now that one of the tables was occupied. This also explained some of the funk. Dugan saw the red checked hat and the earflaps first, and then the coat of nondescript color, white hair and unkempt white beard.

  Dugan stood a moment watching Skunk as he concentrated on a thick book flat on the table before him, filled with black and white photographs. He licked his finger before carefully turning each page slowly, at precise intervals. He didn’t look up or in any way acknowledge Dugan’s presence. Climbing down from the ladder, Dugan walked over to what he hoped was the relatively less aromatic opposite side of the room. He perused some of the more recent titles on the metal shelves there for a while before deciding he had gotten all he would get from this day’s visit.

  Before leaving, he again walked down the long corridor toward the office, stopping this time to examine individually each painting and old photograph that hung there. He was grateful to find that out here in the corridor and throughout the rest of the building, no doubt, it smelled of salmon. He could hear the distant sound of clinking glasses from a cocktail party somewhere in the vicinity, perhaps on the second level, and thought it strange for a moment that he had seen no one but her. He left the building a few minutes later, only to kick himself when he realized that he hadn’t gotten the woman’s name. He began to worry that this was becoming a habit.


  11

  Daniels’ Diary

  The next morning, after Dugan had assembled his newspapers, he reached around behind the hutch and into the hidden alcove for his Coke. He managed to get just one finger on it when he felt something else back there. His heart leaped in his chest and he whipped his hand out of the nook and banged it hard against a concrete pole. Swearing and shaking off the pain, he wiped his hand on his coat for a moment before looking down at it, not sure exactly what he expected to find. He waited another moment to let his heart slow, then lay down on his belly and crawled forward, managing to get just the top of his head halfway into the small gap. It was too dark and shadowy to see anything within.

  Thinking that maybe something had just crawled in there to sleep—or worse yet, to die—he looked around for something he could use to drag out whatever it was. He tried the T-shaped squeegee next to the pumps, but it was too wide to fit into the narrow crevice. He put his glove back on and waited a beat before reaching in to quickly yank everything out of the nook. Falling backwards onto his rump, he heard the Coke can roll around on the concrete before he sat up again and saw the book.

  It was old and small and bound in soft leather of some kind. He sat up further and stared at it a while before he decided to reach over and pick it up. Glancing at the front cover of the book, he saw nothing. He turned it over and looked at the back. Four separate and deep depressions ran across the rear cover in a semi-circle. It occurred to Dugan that these indentations were made by someone’s fingertips constantly clutching the book. Further intrigued, he looked at the spine but only saw weathered leather, so he opened up the book and began to read.

  Minutes passed as he sat next to the old gas pumps perusing the book, and by the time he realized it, he barely had time to make the bus. After rushing home from his route, he glanced around his room for a safe place and decided to stuff the book underneath his mattress as if he were hiding porn. While they waited at the bus stop, Dugan caught Jimmy up on his adventures of yesterday. For a reason he didn’t understand and couldn’t quite articulate, he decided not to share his discovery of that morning.

  In what had become almost a tiresome joke between them, at lunchtime Jimmy again began harassing Dugan for not yet approaching Harris. When he saw both Moon and Mike roll their eyes during Jimmy’s now standard harangue, Dugan suddenly got an idea. Glancing around behind him, he saw that Harris was seated alone. As his friends watched, Dugan got up from his seat and walked the four rows over to Harris.

  When he bent over and began to speak with him, Mike turned to Larry and said, “You don’t think he’s going to…”

  They watched as Harris shook his head and then held his palms up in an effort to ward Dugan off, but Dugan was insistent. After another moment, Dugan’s friends saw Harris take a sip from his milk carton before he half-stood to gather his books. After tucking them underneath his arm, he picked up his brown lunch tray and followed Dugan back to their table.

  Before sitting back down, Dugan grabbed an unused chair from the next table and slid it across the floor and into an empty space at their table. He motioned to Harris, who half-nodded an acknowledgment to Dugan’s friends before taking the place that Dugan made for him. The table went quiet as Dugan returned to his sloppy Joe, relishing the moment before he began to speak.

  “Umm, Jimmy, did you have something to ask?” he said, his mouth full of ground beef.

  He watched as Jimmy’s face turned the kind of bright red that only the blondest people muster. Jimmy had a silly grin on his face when he eventually turned to Harris.

  “Howyadoin?” he said. After a while, they all went back to eating their lunches, this time in total silence. That was all right with Dugan.

  * * *

  Dugan promised Andy he would stop by her house for a few minutes after school for her brother’s birthday. He didn’t mind too much because he and Alex had grown quite close. Dugan figured that was probably because every time he saw Alex, he would throw him up in the air as high as he could and then catch him gently on the way down. Alex would follow this with a series of high-pitched shrieks and giggles, shouts of “D-o-o-o-gan,” and the one word demand: again. Dugan couldn’t stay long though, and he had to beg off in the middle of the party. After sneaking a wet kiss from Andy, he rode his bike down to the supermarket and picked up the usual frozen dinners and pizza, before stopping by the meat counter where one of his customers worked.

  Mr. Murphy was the night manager of the meat counter and always saved the best cuts for Dugan. Today it was pork chops, thick and freshly cut. Murph wrapped them in white paper and then marked them half price before handing them across the counter with a wink and a nod.

  As Dugan rode home through the darkness, the temperature was moderate. At long last, it seemed that spring was making its presence felt, leaving behind the coldest winter in a century. Thank heaven for small favors, Dugan thought.

  It was almost 8:30 by the time Dugan made his way up the stairs of his otherwise empty house. He lay down in his bed and then reached underneath his mattress for the book. Pushing his pillow up higher against the headboard, he examined the outside of the book for a while. He ran his fingers across the weathered leather and then brought it to his nose for a sniff. He had only been able to skim the book this morning, reading a quick passage here and there before realizing he had to go, so he turned again to the first page to read what was written there.

  I do hereby swear and affirm that this is a true recounting of my service in the Massachusetts Twelfth infantry brigade during the years of Our Lord, 1861—1865.

  Isaac J. Daniels.

  Attested to on this the 28th day of August, 1928.

  He flipped open a few more pages and began to read.

  Three

  Grantham goes to war—Michael’s house—Requiem for a bus driver—The roadriver—The boys come clean—Research—Game planning—Godzilla takes Tokyo—Vacancy—Newcomers—Jimmy takes charge

  1

  Grantham goes to war

  April 28, 1861

  I write this first part from memory.

  It is with neither pride nor conceit that I tell you that my brother James and I were among the first to volunteer, upon hearing the news of the great disaster which befell our Union brothers, and with regards to the bloody happenings earlier in this month at Fort Sumter.

  It was April 20 of the year 1861 that we first heard the great clarion call to arms. On that day, a Mr. Ogden Smith came to our farm, situated in the northern section of Grantham Village, to report to us the ominous news. He informed us that Colonel Pope would himself once again don the uniform of his great nation, and for the second time take his beloved sons of Grantham off to war. Mr. Smith also told us of the muster that was to begin Saturday next, upon the hallowed grounds of Grantham Green, and in that manner he enjoined my brother and me to the cause.

  It was a heartbreaking scene the day my brother James and I bade farewell to our Ma, left alone with only eight-year-old Timothy, and with Jackson, a lazy but trustworthy itinerant laborer, to care for the farm. My brother James took an inventory at the time of our leaving and instructed me to record the following in this journal: six cows, twelve chickens, and a fine rooster. Agnes, who is betrothed to my brother, also came to bid us both farewell that day, amidst much tears and wailing.

  We kissed our Ma who said tearful prayers for our safety and comfort, and together we said the Lord’s Prayer before setting out to meet with the other men assembling on the Green. Ma had prepared some provisions of foodstuffs to take on our journey and also provided us with a heaping satchel filled with Grantham apples, the bounty of our beloved town.

  Half a day’s march took us into Grantham proper and to a remarkable sight. Dozens of men, pitched tents, the smoke of burning campfires and the char of roasting meat clouding all vision, but it was the passion, the passion in the justice of our cause that burned the brightest. The Stars and Stripes hanged proudly on every tent post throughout the encampment,
and I say truly that a fire burned deep inside the heart of every man assembled, to avenge the murder of our much beloved fallen brothers.

  How brave they must have been, those fine men, standing alone against the rebellion, upon the ramparts of Sumter, unable to repel the ungrateful and untrustworthy and deceitful southern cousins. How saddened those unlucky few left alive must have been to have seen the Stars and Stripes lowered, to be replaced by the devilish emblem of the rebellion, the X, the mark of the beast. I honored the memory of those brave men in my prayers that first night, after my brother James and I lay down by the warmth of a great bonfire to fall asleep under the twinkling lights of the New England sky.

  There was great confusion among the ranks during those first few days, as men from all the surrounding towns and villages, and also from unincorporated hills and valleys, came together in Union to join the great cause.

  To the Union! To the Union!

  Our third day on the Green we caught our first glimpse of the Colonel. He was unmistakable with his still thick silvery mane and long white beard, and O, what joy to see him once again in the uniform of his great Mexican adventure, to see him again attired in blue frockcoat, gold buttons agleam, and on his shoulders the great symbol of our nation embroidered in gold, the lone eagle, talons clutching deadly spears! Not a man among us that day could doubt in the inevitable success of the great task before us, as long as it was the Colonel himself who would lead us in battle.

  We saw other, lesser men, who had also donned uniforms worn in the wars of their youth, but none of them still fit so well as did the Colonel’s. It was with some amusement that my brother and I looked at these men, whose great paunches now hung heavy over their belts, proof of how blessed they had been in the interim, by both fortune, and with the plenty that only peacetime can provide.

  On the third day the first attempts were made to bring order to the surrounding chaos. After the troop rolls were announced, we began to find our places among our new comrades in arms, our newly adopted brothers. We were greatly pleased, my brother and I, to be serving among our own Grantham brethren, but our ranks would also include brave men and boys from Hopkinton, and Bellingham, and Ashland, and Worcester. Never was there a finer group of men assembled, nor was there ever on this earth a stronger belief in shared and common purpose. I say to you now there was not a man among us who doubted the rightness of our cause.