Hot Valley

by James Lear

  “So I am your secretary, Bennett?” I asked at length, when I felt confident that I could muster a cheery tone. “What does that entail?”

  “Writing letters. Taking dic—” He paused. “—tation. Accompanying me to functions, remembering people’s names, keeping my diary.”

  “Ah, your diary.” I noticed that the locked, leather-bound volume had accompanied us to St. Albans.

  “My appointment diary, Jack.”

  “And what sort of appointments do we have?”

  “Meetings with the good burghers of St. Albans. Bank managers. Chairman and board of the chamber of commerce. Prospective clients.”

  “Are we setting up in business?”

  “Indeed we are.”

  “What are we selling?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Yup. An important line of work, Jack, in these uncertain times.”

  “And we’re opening an office here in St. Albans, are we?” I thought it was highly unlikely.

  “If it seems propitious, yes,” Young said, combing his hair and straightening his necktie. “You can’t rush into these things. Any good businessman does his research first. Gets to know his market. That’s what we’ll be doing. How do I look?”

  The light shining through the window showed up his receding hairline, which no amount of crafty dressing or combing could altogether conceal from the malicious eye. For the first time, I saw Young as a seedy, second-rate actor, a crook.

  “You look just dandy, Bennett.”

  “So, come here and kiss me.”

  I did as I was bidden. Why did I always melt at the touch of Young’s lips—on any part of my anatomy? I swooned in his arms like the heroine of a cheap novel, and soon we were fucking on the big brass bed. The mattress was soft, the sheets—as the desk clerk said—were clean, at least to start with. And yet, for all the familiar, intoxicating pleasure, my mind was elsewhere, wondering what manner of man this was.

  We finished, and I dozed, exhausted, on the rumpled white linen, unwilling to pursue the troubling thoughts that were chasing through my brain. Young sprang up, dressed quickly, readjusted his precious hair, and took his leave. I slept, but was worried by dreams.

  That night, and for many nights to come, we dined with St. Albans’s most prominent citizens. We were entertained in hotel restaurants, and we did our share of entertaining. Young never seemed short of cash, and I did not ask any questions about where it came from. He discussed business, the state of the economy, the opportunities in St. Albans for a branch of his “expanding insurance concern,” and he spoke a great deal about his desire to invest heavily in the business community. All of this was greeted with shining eyes and firm handshakes by the good townspeople, not least when I was trotted out as the “secretary,” always ready with a line about cost analysis, projected accounts, percentages of net and gross, and so on. My idle hours at my father’s office, listening to Mr. Windridge’s interminable nasal drone, had not been wasted after all, and I could bluff convincingly about things I did not truly understand. Young was delighted, and squeezed my knee under the table if I had come up with a particularly glib-sounding line. Our friends smiled and nodded at each specious pronouncement; they understood no better than me. They wanted only appearances, and those we could give them in abundance.

  Young grew more affectionate as I proved myself to be a malleable helpmate. He was busy, too, and grateful to have someone “back home” (as he called the Station Hotel) who would help him to relax and take his mind off the cares of the day. I did not ask questions, I was always ready to fuck, and I didn’t complain if Sam, the desk clerk, joined us. Young was an arrogant man, and having two souls in his possession delighted him. It didn’t exactly disgust me either, and as for Sam, he would have sold his mother to be in my shoes as Young’s secretary, I believe.

  Meek and submissive I may have appeared, but inside I was a monster of suspicion and doubt. Had Young known half the things I was thinking, he would have cut my throat as I lay in bed.

  One evening, as we dressed for dinner, he was spending even more time than usual on shaving his chin and dressing his hair. He selected a particularly fine necktie—a new one, I thought, and expensive, by the look of it. “Make yourself presentable, Jack,” he said, tossing me a neatly folded white shirt, fresh from the laundry. “We have an important engagement.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “We are dining with our first major investors.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, wondering whether or not the hapless “investors” knew how much of their money was going to end up in Young’s bottomless pockets. I had already formed some ideas of just how Young paid for his lavish way of life, and none of those ideas was particularly flattering. I did not yet know exactly what form Young’s criminality took, but I accepted it as a fact of life. And I was, I knew only too well, his accomplice.

  Dinner that night was a farce, at least to my eyes, but Young and I both played our parts, and our two guests- Mr. Jobling, a dry goods merchant, and Mr. Butterworth, a civil engineer—seemed genuinely excited at the idea that their dollars would be the “seed corn” (as Young put it) for what would undoubtedly be one of the great success stories of the 1860s. “Insurance,” Mr. Jobling said with pride, “is the future. Insurance is how we will rebuild the Union. Insurance,” he said, accepting a refill from Young, “is God’s plan!”

  “Amen!” Young said, his voice trembling with passion.

  I had heard the term “confidence trickster” before, and had read accounts of their practices in the more lurid periodicals that my sister Jane smuggled into the house, and it now occurred to me that I was in the clutches of just such a one. Young’s protean character, his ability to attune himself in an instant to the opinions of his company, equipped him well for this shady trade. Had he not won me over with a night of fucking in an inn? And had I not seen him, time and again, tailoring his politics to those of his companions? Now, it seemed, he was even ready to take up the tattered remnants of faith—although the only time I’d ever heard him mutter God’s name before was in moments of sexual excitement.

  Messrs. Jobling and Butterworth left the hotel well fed and watered, their stomachs fuller, their wallets emptier than when they had arrived. Young issued them share certificates, which I had written out in my finest copperplate just that morning, with many a florid turn of phrase. They believed that they were now investing in a sound business proposition. They might as well have thrown their money down the nearest well.

  Young, then, was a con man, of that I was sure. Looking back, I see now that that was the least of my worries—that these little deceptions were simply a way of financing his larger plans. Had I known… Ah, well, the story would have been very different. At the time I was still half in love with Young, or at least with his body. My doubts—and they were teeming, like bees in a hive—were pacified by his lovemaking. Of all forms of blindness, willful blindness is the most pitiful.

  That night, as we lay in bed after our customary sport, I stayed awake, staring into the darkness. I saw dim shapes of furniture, I heard muffled voices from other rooms—and my own thoughts were likewise ill-formed and indistinct. I knew that Young was bad news, that I was compromising myself by the association, that I should get out now before I landed in jail. But I could see no way of removing myself from a situation that, for all its drawbacks, was the only certainty in my life. I could not go to Montpelier, to my old friend James and his family, whom I had betrayed by my disappearance. I could hardly think of returning home; the shame I had brought on my parents would not make me welcome there again. And where else would I go? I had no friends, no money, no letters of introduction except those useless documents I was supposed to have delivered to the Vermont State Agricultural Bank in Montpelier. And the roads were no longer safe. The war was progressing—that much even I knew, from my ostrichlike position. Confederate forces had invaded the North, crossing the Potomac River into
Maryland; if Maryland fell, what would prevent the collapse of the entire North? And where could a young man in my position possibly go for safety and friendship? Only to the cities, perhaps, to lead a quiet and restricted life…

  Aaron’s words came back to my memory, as sharp as a knife. You’d drift around. Maybe you’d end up in Boston or New York, in rented rooms, watching your life run down the drain, wondering if it was worth all that pain and trouble…

  And I saw Aaron’s face, his hooded eyes, his thundering brow, the angry set of his jaw as he struggled to keep himself in check. I had laughed at him then, teased him as a virtuous fool, lain on the floor and wiggled my ass at him, goading him, mocking him. I had so little respect for him—and yet, through it all, his counsel was the one thing I had still that was bright and pure. Every word he’d said to me in those last days in Bishopstown came back to me as a reproach, but also as words of hope.

  Aaron. Aaron watching me across the office, smiling as I scratched away at the work I hated. Aaron hustling me out of the family dining room to ask me why I didn’t like him. Aaron’s warnings, Aaron’s weakness, and above all, Aaron’s great strength. Well, I had driven him away into God knows what danger. I needed him now—not as the big slab of black meat that I thought he was when we met, something to be consumed and enjoyed, a toy to be played with and cast aside—but as a friend and mentor. But Aaron I had lost—and in his place, snoring beside me without a care in the world, was Bennett Young, a weasel to a lion. Oh, what a falling-off was there…

  Spring turned into a blazing summer as we plied our dishonorable trade in St. Albans, gathering investment in the great, glorious insurance business that, Young told his growing circle of dupes, would be launched with much fanfare in the fall. He took out a lease on a swanky office on Main Street, employed a signwriter to emblazon the words “Northern Rock Life Insurance Company” in gold letters on every window, fitted himself out with a fancy swivel chair and a leather-topped desk, all of it on credit. Potted palms in brass jardinieres, bentwood hat racks, and a couple of fine Turkish rugs completed the stage set. To the casual visitor, the Northern Rock office bespoke calm confidence, solidity, trust. To my eye, it looked like the front parlor of a pretentious whorehouse.

  I spent the days sitting behind a desk, writing out investors’ certificates, filling in ledgers with columns of figures that I plucked from thin air, writing and responding to correspondence. I was just as much a part of the illusion as the leather-topped desk, the potted palms. I wore a clean white shirt every day, I plastered my hair down with oil, I kept my fingernails clean and trimmed, and I addressed visitors in my best New England accent. I was meek and deferential. I made them feel good. If the Northern Rock was a whorehouse, then I was one of its most popular whores.

  Young was in the office for appointments, and played the role that was required of him. The investors he had wooed and won were now treated with a certain dismissive, patronizing grandeur—and they loved it. They spoke of Young in reverential tones as “the coming man,” and they thrust their daughters in his path whenever possible. Had he been that way inclined, Young could have fucked every heiress in northern Vermont—and, for all I know, he did, such was his lust for power and adoration. There may be several children now growing to school age who owe their lives to his appetite for submission. It was hard to tell, for Young was always ready to satisfy me when I wanted it—and, despite the growing contempt in which I held him, I found him as desirable as ever. Perhaps more so. I hated myself for sticking with him, for loving him in the craven way that I did, and the more I hated myself the greater the pleasure of submitting to him, of wallowing in the filth of an unsuitable, degrading attachment. And if I opened myself completely to him, lost myself in the sensation, I could almost blot out the recurring visions of Aaron that came to me with increasing frequency throughout those strange, hallucinatory months leading up to the raid.

  I first learned of Young’s real plans when he was out of town one night, visiting an investor—or at least that’s what he told me. For all I know he could have been fucking someone’s son, wife, or daughter. I did not care, and I certainly did not ask questions. I was the biddable servant, so drowsy with pleasure that I did not look beyond the charmed circle of my own satisfaction. I smiled and wriggled when he kissed me good-bye, I lisped some platitude about hurrying back, and bent my head to my dishonest task as Young stomped out of the office in his brand-new, not-yet-paid-for alligator shoes. He looked so pleased with himself, so sure of his plans, as he strutted down Main Street. He had forgotten, I suppose, that he had left his diary in the hotel. Perhaps he thought it was no longer worth hiding from me. Perhaps he thought my curiosity was dulled, or that there was no need to conceal his plans, so close were they to fruition. I waited for an hour before I slipped out of the office, turned the sign to “closed,” and hotfooted it back to the Station Hotel.

  Sam was at the desk, as usual. It was his habit to treat me with cold disdain if I was not with Young; when we were together, he simply ignored me. It irked and amused me in equal measure that Sam could be such a chilly fish, considering that we had shared a bed (and Young’s cock) on many occasions, and had even “performed” together for Young’s amusement when he was “in the mood for a show.” I had fucked Sam in the mouth and the ass, in every position, over every piece of furniture that the Station Hotel provided, for Young’s delectation, as he sat back with his legs hanging over the arms of a plush upholstered easy chair, toying with his cock, goading us with obscene suggestions. Sam gave a good impression of loving every minute of it when we were “onstage”—but behind the scenes he let his true feelings show.

  “What do you want?” he snapped, as I approached the desk for the key.

  “I need some papers from upstairs.”

  “I can get them for you.”

  It occurred to me for the first time that, perhaps, Young had warned Sam to frustrate any attempts I might make at independent action. How deeply was he in the plot?

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “I insist, Mr. Edgerton.”

  “Please just give me the key.”

  He sat behind the desk, coolly eyeing me. I could have punched him. My face was reddening in anger, and I might have given myself away with a careless word, had it not been for the arrival of a splendid matron and her mouselike daughter who sailed up to the desk and demanded Sam’s attention. Thus distracted, he could not prevent me from lifting the key from its hook and bounding up the stairs.

  I jammed a chair under the doorknob, dropped to my knees beside the bed, and rooted around for the small valise that contained Young’s personal effects, including the diary. I knew it would be locked, and I knew the diary itself would be secured in the usual way, but I had taken the precaution of copying the keys from the office. It was the work of an instant to unlock the valise, to burrow through the wads of cash and forged identity papers—I did not stop to read them, and barely had time to wonder how many identities “Bennett Young” had—before I found the object of my quest, the leather-bound notebook, complete with brass padlock, in which Young was accustomed to write every day.

  I heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and a knock at the door.

  “Mr. Edgerton.”

  Sam had dispatched the new guests.

  “Just a minute.”

  The doorknob turned, but he could not get in. I had to think fast.

  “Could you let me in, sir?” He could not raise his voice, nor use the language I’m sure he would have preferred, for fear of other guests hearing.

  I unlocked the padlock and flicked through the pages of closely written script. Spelling mistakes leaped to my eyes; Young was a prolific writer, but not well schooled. I saw my name several times in the later pages, but did not stop to read what he had said about me.

  “I won’t be long, Sam. I’m just…making myself comfortable.” Thank God for our New England squeamishness about matters digestive; even Sam would think twice before
interrupting a man at his stool.

  “Why didn’t you go at the office?”

  “I was caught short,” I said, words dancing before my eyes. “I think it was the fish we had in the restaurant last night. It’s given me—”

  “Please, sir,” Sam said, in a hushed and frightened voice. “The guests!”

  I made a revolting noise with my tongue and lips, the best approximation I could muster of a vile and liquescent torrent of shit hitting a chamber pot. Sam groaned audibly outside the door. Prissy fool, I thought, to be so easily disconcerted.

  I flicked to the most recent entry and read this:

  All is ready. I meet tonight with Harper Bucking-ham and Foster, Lees men from Gorgia. Weapons and ammunishun $20. Tomorrow to Jenkins Point to meet with Teavis Bruce Collins Doty Gregg Wallace Scott and new rigimint and plan raid. Sam with Jack, safe.

  I could not puzzle out the meaning of these words, but some of them—weapons, ammunition, regiment, raid—were clear enough. Sam’s hand was on the doorknob again, rattling it more insistently. I buried the diary at the bottom of the valise, thrust it quickly under the bed, and pulled my pants down.

  “Couldn’t you wait? Jesus, there’s no privacy in this goddam hotel,” I said as I let Sam into the room. “Sorry about the smell.” He held a handkerchief over his nose. “What do you want, then?” It was easy to sound cross.

  Sam said nothing, but darted around the room, looking for something. His eyes glanced down at the bed, then up at me, down at the bed again.

  “If you think I’ve got Bennett Young hidden away in here for a quick fuck, you’re very much mistaken.” I put on my most pompous voice. “He’s out visiting investors.”

  “I know that.”

  “Are you in the habit of coming uninvited into guests’ rooms, Sam?”