by John Dunning
There was a cafe and a beer hall, a glass shop, a blacksmith, a druggist. Some used only personal names: Phillips, Jones, Kelleher, Wilcox. “Phillips turned out to be a dealer in rugs,” she said. “Jones was a butcher. Kelleher was a dentist and Wilcox owned a grocery store. If Burton and Charlie had their picture taken, where was the photographer?”
She received the news about Erin deadpan, but over the next hour her mood darkened. “I’m going out to Fort Sumter tomorrow,” she said, “take a break from this monotony and let you have fun with your friend.” She apologized reluctantly for the catty remark and tried to look ahead. “Don’t mind me. If she’s a lawyer, maybe she’ll have some idea how we can get out of this mess.” “I think she wants to take on Dante in a bare-knuckles brawl.” “You already did that and look where it got us.” She tried to turn the talk back to Fort Sumter. “One of the librarians told me there’s a ranger out there who knows something about Burton. Maybe he can shed some light.” I didn’t say anything but I doubted it. I asked her about tonight. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She had found a health food store and she planned to lock herself in, eat in her room, meditate, exercise, go nowhere, and not answer the phone. “Don’t bother me unless there’s an earthquake.”
* * *
At six o’clock I retrieved my car and drove the three blocks to the Mills House. Erin came down looking lovely and I told her so. I was on my best behavior, somewhere between smarmy and suave, decked out in my dark coat and tie. I held the door for her and took her hand as she sank into the car, and for the moment there were no wisecracks between us. I had found a seafood place on Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant. We were early enough to get a spectacular table near a window facing a sweeping marsh. The food was good, fishing boats passed beneath us, and the setting sun turned the creek into a ribbon of fire.
It was the pleasantest evening I’d had in a long time and there were long, casual moments when the specter of Dante and his thugs seemed very far away. Outside, she said, “You know what I’d like to do? Take off my shoes and walk on a beach somewhere, without much risk of running into Archer.” I consulted my map and a few minutes later we were heading back through the city, over the Ashley River and out to the coast. It was a good drive across miles of marshlands dotted with small wooded islands, and I could imagine what it had been like before growth, the scourge of our time, had turned too much of it into a long, continuous suburb.
Folly Beach is a little town with a few flashing neon blocks, a shooting gallery, a game room, pavilion, and rides. The carnival atmosphere disappeared at once as I turned south into the night. I found a place to park and we kicked off our shoes and went barefoot in the moonlight along the edge of the surf. The wind was strong and a little cold for the season; Erin curled her hand into mine and drew herself close. I draped my coat around us like a cocoon, she snuggled against me, we stood wrapped together like that, and at some point I lifted her chin and kissed her. She pulled us tighter and I buried my face in her hair. My old heart was going a mile a minute.
“Now look what you’ve done,” she said. “We can never be friendly antagonists again.”
“I thought that was pretty friendly, actually.”
“Yes, but now what are we going to do about it?”
“That’s a tough one. The answers can range all the way from nothing…”
“…to everything.”
“The prospects boggle the mind.”
“But how to decide? Do we take a vote?”
“That would be pointless without some way of breaking a tie.”
“I’ve never been much for casual sex,” she volunteered airily.
“At the same time, I’m not getting any younger.”
“Are you having trouble with your, uh…”
“No, I’m fine as of today. But the male body was not made for endless periods of celibacy. Deep, unexpected flabbiness can occur.”
“Maybe I’d better talk faster.”
I had to laugh at that.
She said, “If we eliminate casual sex, where are we?”
“Sounds almost like we’d have to get serious.”
“If that turned out to be the case, what would you say?”
“What do you want me to say, I love you?”
“Not unless it’s true.”
“That’s my point. If I did say that…”
“Yes?”
“How would you know it’s not just some scuzzy male ploy to get my way with you?”
“I’ve got pretty good vibes.”
“Experience will give you that.”
“I beg your pardon! I don’t just fall down for every dude I meet.”
“Still, you must have some way of—”
“Forty days and forty nights.”
I took that under advisement, then said, “I’ll bet there’s a clue there somewhere.”
“Once we reach a certain point, we take forty days and forty nights to get to know each other. But back to the original question: If you did say ‘I love you,’ how would you know? Have you ever been in love?”
“Sure. Once.”
“What was she like?”
“A lot like you, actually. Not as crazy but very quick. Smart as a whip.”
“What happened?”
“My performance left something to be desired.”
“Well, since we’ve already established that you’re not physically challenged, I take it you were being your usual boorish and dictatorial self.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not something you can answer okay to, Janeway. Either you were or you weren’t.”
“I didn’t trust her.”
“That’s a biggie. Oh, that’s very big. You don’t ever want to let that happen again.”
“I’ll try,” I said, but I couldn’t help thinking how often history repeats itself.
She burrowed closer than I thought possible. I felt her fingernails through my shirt.
“You’ve got to give up your need to run things,” she said. “I don’t do well with that.”
“Maybe I could work on it.”
“Would you really?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“We’ll see. I’m about to tell you something that will test you severely. Are you ready?”
I wasn’t but she told me anyway. “I canceled my plane reservation this afternoon. I’m not going back to Denver, I’m staying with you. God help Mr. Dante if he bothers us.”
She unwound herself, spun away, and stood shivering in the wind. “So what do you say, Janeway? You lost once because of your attitude—are you going to blow it again?”
She squinted at her watch. “Hey, I think our forty days and forty nights just began.”
CHAPTER 29
I remembered half a dozen moments in my life, crossroads where everything would be different if I had gone the other way. I could tick them off in no particular order. When I became a cop. When I stopped being a cop. When I discovered Hemingway and Fowles and those three lovely books by Maugham, all in the same month. When I became a bookseller. When I found, won, and lost an unforgettable woman. Now this. Suddenly my world was shaken. Everything in it was different.
We met again at dawn. My telephone rang in the darkness and when I lifted it she said, “You sound awake, I hope.” I said, “I am awake.” She said, “Have you had any sleep?” Not much, I admitted: not enough to matter. She asked for the time; I looked at the clock and told her it was four twenty-seven. That’s what hers said too, as if clocks were suddenly untrustworthy. “Meet me on the Battery,” she said. I told her I’d pick her up, I had to come past her hotel anyway, but she wanted to be met at dawn at the top of the steps where the rivers join and the wall gets higher. “It’ll be so much more dramatic that way.”
The wind of last night had blown dark clouds over the city and the day promised rain. I walked over, arriving at first light after a fifteen-minute hike. She stood looking out to sea like the French lieutenant’s woman. She heard me coming: didn’t
turn but wiggled her ringers in an endearing “hi, there” gesture. I climbed the steps to the high wall and wrapped my arms around her. She sank against me and I kissed her neck. “How are we doing?” I said.
“So far, so good. Thank you for not pitching a fit last night.”
I thought the jury was still out on that. Then she said, “Our lives are changing, old man,” and I heard the jury coming back early.
“It looks like there are two of us now,” she said. “That takes some getting used to.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I’ve been on my own forever.”
“Never a guy to answer to. Never somebody to lay down the law.”
“I’ve been way too career-minded. Maybe now I’ve got to be more…what’s the word?”
“The word is reasonable,” I said dryly. I spelled it for her, enunciating each letter clearly.
“You’re a regular walking dictionary. What can this mean?”
“You talk tough and you make a lot of noise. You set your mind on something and that’s it.” I gave her arm a squeeze. “You’ve got a few good points as well.”
“Do I tell you what to do?”
“Not in so many words.”
“How, then? I expect you to make your own decisions. But once you’ve done that, then I get to decide what I’m going to do.”
I could have said, That’s the same thing, but didn’t. I still had the feeling she was somewhere between loving me madly and walking the hell out of my life.
“This is why I actually believe in the forty days and forty nights,” she said.
“That seems like a long time in these wild, permissive days.”
“Does to me too. But it’s a good, honest test. Separates the wheat from the chaff.”
“Then it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for chaff.”
“Never fear. I’m a little self-conscious saying it, but right now I feel…glorious.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s good.”
“It is good, and don’t look so troubled about it all.”
“You know why. It’s this business with Dante. Can we talk about that?”
“Of course. See how reasonable I am?”
“I want you to leave. And it’s got to be soon, before anyone knows you’re here.”
“Now see, that’s a dictator talking. How am I supposed to respond to that?”
“Let’s start again from a more tactful place. Will you please go back to Denver?”
“Certainly. Shall I book a flight for two or will Koko be coming with us?”
I stood at the railing and stared despondently out to sea. Somewhere in that gray void, Fort Sumter would be showing off her ruins for the new day. Right here, Charlie Warren had walked up to Richard Burton and asked what he was drawing in his notebook. Erin put an arm over my shoulder and tousled my heavy head. “Cheer up. Interesting days lie ahead.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“I’m giving up law,” she said a moment later. “I plan to stay current and take on a case if it speaks to me, but my days working for a big law firm are over. I gave notice on Monday.”
“What are you going to do, then? Aside from writing; I mean in real life.”
“I thought we’d settled that. I’m going to buy half an interest in your bookstore.” She tugged at my sleeve. “I’ve got a feeling there’s a world of books out there at a whole different level than where you’ve been playing.”
“Half a dozen levels, and they all take lots of money.”
“I’ve got some money. If we can get past this bump in the road, ‘ life could be fun again. Will you teach me the book business?”
“From the ground up. So to speak.”
Out on the harbor the sun had broken through and the fort appeared, a tiny black dot in a psychedelic mist.
“Koko’s going out to Fort Sumter today.”
“Have you told her about me?” “Yes, I have.”
“That’s a pretty dreary-sounding yes. I take it she wasn’t thrilled.”
“She’s a funny woman. Sometimes it takes her a while to figure out what she thinks.”
“Tell me about her.”
I told her and she said, “God, she hates me already.”
“How could she hate you? She doesn’t even know you.”
“She’s probably heard how unreasonable I am.”
I pushed at her arm and pulled her back again.
“I think you should go to the fort with her,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”
“What’s that going to accomplish?”
“Archer may call, and you can pave the way for me with Koko. Do you like her?”
“Yeah, I do. She can be difficult, like somebody else I know. But she’s got character.”
“I think she likes you too. If you know what I mean.”
“Erin, she’s twenty-five years older than me.”
“Just a hunch I have.” She smiled wisely. “Anyway, do what you can. The three of us are going to be together for a while and it’ll help if we can tolerate each other.”
CHAPTER 30
The threat of rain blew away and by noon the day was sunny. We caught the two-thirty boat, taking seats on the upper deck in a warm sea breeze. It was a thirty-minute ride, sweeping us past the city’s most elegant waterfront homes and on across the harbor to Fort Sumter. Koko had called her lawyer and her insurance company. The wheels were in motion on her house; there was nothing to do but push ahead. Our pilot droned into the PA system about the notable places we were passing in the city and pointed out sites of Civil War action to the west, but I didn’t hear much of it. I was thinking of the days to come, and where our trail might lead if everything here petered out.
Koko wanted to go north, to Florence. She was hoping some record might be found of the Wheeler family, where Burton and Charlie had spent those few days 127 years ago. Charleston had disappointed her. “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” she said. “These people put so much stock in their history, they keep records of everything, that’s why I knew we’d find at least some evidence of that photographer. Now that doesn’t look so good, does it?”
I told her to cheer up, we weren’t dead yet. But that choice of words cast a harbinger across my path and I saw the Reaper’s face in the white, billowing clouds. Whatever was coming between Dante and me was inevitable now, like a river pushing everything out of its path. If he didn’t find me, I’d find him.
Today the harbor held a deceptive sense of tranquillity. Hard to imagine it filled with gunboats and bursting shells on this quiet day 120-odd years later; harder yet to understand the national lunacy that had led us there. For a moment I wondered what those Rebels, strutting around like peacocks, would have done if they’d known what a disaster they were bringing upon themselves and their sons, but I knew. Destroying themselves was just in their nature.
The fortress rose out of the water and took on color and life, a pentagon of red bricks turning pale with age. The boat made a circle and eased in toward the dock. It had a full load of passengers with both decks crowded, and we sat in the sun until most of the people were off. Two rangers met us on the pier. Koko told them she was looking for Luke Robinson, and we were directed inside the fort, where we found a uniformed man giving the tour.
What remained of Fort Sumter was the outer wall, and under it the shadowy gun rooms with vintage cannons, dark passages that went into black places under the wall, and the brick ruins of the officers’ quarters. Running down the length of the old parade ground was a black battery, a fort within a fort that was obviously of a different era. The ranger was explaining it as we came in. It was called Battery Huger, built as part of the coastal defense system during the Spanish American War. Today it housed the museum, rest rooms, and a small living space for him and his wife. Nearby were the remains of a small-arms magazine that had exploded in 1863, killing eleven men and wounding forty, leaving the wall still blackened and leaning from the
force of it.
We waited through the tour, about twenty minutes, then the crowd was sent off to explore on its own. Koko approached the ranger, a lanky man in his thirties with a grand mustache.
“Mr. Robinson?”
“Yes, ma’am, at your service.”
Koko introduced us. “I was told you might know about the time Richard Burton spent in Charleston.”
“Oh, wow, where’d you hear that?”
“In town, at the Library Society.”
“I didn’t know librarians talked about people’s private research projects.”
“I’m a librarian myself. I promised her it wouldn’t go any further without your consent. We’re looking for proof that Burton was here in May of 1860.“
“Good luck. You’re chasing a real will-o‘-the-wisp. We haven’t found a single thing you can take to the bank.”
“You seem to believe it anyway.”
“Whatever I believe, it’s just my own opinion—mine and Libby’s. She’s my wife.”
“Would you mind telling us why you believe it?”
He laughed lightly. “How much time you got? Never mind, I know when the boat leaves. It’s just not something I can answer in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Come on upstairs.”
We climbed a narrow staircase to the upper level of the battery. There, in the smallest imaginable living space—a bed, a bookcase, a microwave oven, a table, two chairs, a small dresser and a closet, all in one tiny room—we met his wife. She was dark-haired and pretty in a crisp uniform, with a ranger hat in her hand, as if she had been about to go out. Instinctively my eyes scanned their books and found all the Burton biographies on the top shelf.
“Libby, this is Ms. Bujak and Mr. Janeway. They’re interested in Burton.“
She brightened at once and we had to go through it all again: how we got their names, what we hoped to find. It turned out that Libby had been the instigator of their Burton research, and only later had her enthusiasm spread to her husband. She was like a pixie, warm and giving, immediately likable. She said, “Sit down, stay awhile,” and we all laughed. Outside, people were already moving back toward the dock. Our time was short.
