by Doug Burgess
The Robies loved Little Compton, and began spending more and more time here. They built that second wing that comes out the back, just for their music room and servants’ hall. It must have been very gay. They kept their house in Tennessee, of course, which Colonel Robie ran through an overseer that he cabled every week. Did he have slaves? Of course he had slaves, what plantation owner didn’t? What does that have to do with anything?
Well, you know what happened next. The Robies came up to Little Compton in late March of 1861. Isabel would join them in a couple months. She was at a convent school run by the Ursulines in New Orleans. But in the spring of that year some damned fool named Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter, and pretty soon everybody was shooting at everybody else. The Robies were trapped. They loved Rhode Island, but they were good Southerners, and Colonel Robie was passionate about states’ rights. He wanted to go right back to Tennessee and join up, but he couldn’t leave Mrs. Robie alone in hostile territory, and it was too dangerous to bring her with him. It was a sad time for them. Most of their Southern friends melted away, and the local society that had welcomed them before turned cold and hostile. Colonel Robie made no secret of his Rebel leanings. He even tried to hold some kind of fundraiser here, inviting his Tennessee friends over. Eunice played “Dixie” on the pump organ and Colonel Robie passed round the hat for the gallant defenders of Southern liberty. Then the police showed up and tried to throw everyone in jail. Colonel Robie paid them a hundred dollars and they left.
But it must have been lonely for the Robies, all the same. And there was the problem of Isabel. She was still in New Orleans, and New Orleans wasn’t looking any too secure that summer. The city was right at the mouth of the Mississippi River, the very first place the Union would attack. Isabel was still only sixteen. Mrs. Robie wanted her home…in Little Compton, that is. So Colonel Robie sent a telegraph to a man he knew in New Orleans, a steamboat captain by the name of Henry Bilodeaux. Bilodeaux ran the Peninsular and Delta Consolidated Fruit Company, which hauled bananas and other fruits from Central America. There was no refrigeration in those days, so a ship had to be fast enough to get from Cartagena to New Orleans before the fruit rotted. The General Kearny was a very fast ship. She was a steam packet with sails fore and aft and those big paddles on either side that look like Ferris wheels. The General Kearny was not a passenger liner, but Colonel Robie was a rich man and he wanted his little girl home. He commissioned the Kearny and hired Captain Bilodeaux himself to pilot her.
That wasn’t all. Colonel Robie was a good Southerner, as I said, but he wasn’t a fool. He didn’t know how long this war would last or what would happen once it ended. He knew the time was soon coming when he wouldn’t be able to telegraph his overseer, and the Union gunboats were stopping all Southern ships anyway. His cotton plantation was doomed. So Colonel Robie did the only sensible thing, which was to sell everything he owned and convert it into hard cash. Not scrip, but gold coin. It was minted with the Confederate stamp, but Robie figured he could melt that down if he had to. And he encouraged his other Southern friends in Newport—there were a few left, apparently—to do the same. Captain Bilodeaux was their agent. They sold their estates and amassed a pretty pile of gold, which was supposed to ride them out through the war. Now, this took time. Months, in fact. But the Ursulines were taking good care of Isabel, and Colonel Robie knew it would still be a while before the Union got around to capturing New Orleans. They were still trying to end the war in Virginia.
Finally, by December, everything was in place. Captain Bilodeaux loaded about thirty cases of gold pieces onto the General Kearny. He gave Isabel his own cabin, while he bunked with the First Officer. She thought it was a grand adventure. The Robies had always come north by way of the Mississippi, disembarking in St. Louis and taking trains the rest of the way. It was her first time on a big steamer.
The General Kearny left New Orleans about a week before Christmas. She hauled up Union colors once they were clear of the Gulf and ran along the coast as fast as her engines could go. Captain Bilodeaux was a clever man. He didn’t try to evade the Union gunboats that intercepted him. Sailed up right under their lee as pretty as you please, and handed them a fake cargo manifest that said the Kearny was carrying cotton to the Union mills in Pittsburgh to make wadding for muskets. He even had some bales of cotton loaded on top of the gold to make it look more convincing. Anyway, they let him go. By Christmas Eve the General Kearny passed a few yards east of Cape May light, and turned to starboard to clear Long Island.
It was bitterly cold. A nor’easter passed over them near Hatteras and coated the ropes with a veil of ice that glittered in the sunlight. Isabel thought it looked like a fairy’s barge. She had never felt winter, and every morning she came up on deck wearing the captain’s spare boat cloak over her shoulders. He gave her a spyglass and set her to watching for Union commerce raiders. But he wasn’t really concerned. This far north there wasn’t any danger.
But Captain Bilodeaux wasn’t as clever as he thought. Because it turns out there was a spy on the docks in New Orleans, and he reported back to General Benjamin Franklin Butler of the Union Army that a ship had just left harbor carrying a whole cargo of gold coins—which was just what the Union needed. There wasn’t enough time to contact all the patrol boats, so instead General Butler found out where the Kearny was headed and wired ahead to Boston. By the time the ship passed Long Island there were already three Union gunboats waiting for her in Narragansett Bay.
Captain Bilodeaux had told the Robies to expect him on Christmas Day. They spent the whole afternoon up in the widow’s walk, gazing out at the sea. You can see every ship that comes into Newport or Providence from up there. All day long they waited, and all day long there was no sign of the General Kearny. Finally, just as the sun was disappearing into the sea, Mrs. Robie saw a trail of smoke on the horizon and called down to her husband. Colonel Robie came rushing up the stairs with his telescope. Sure enough, it was the Kearny. She had made good her pledge, and was steaming triumphantly into the bay with sails set and flags flying. And she was moving fast. “Isn’t she a grand old buster?” Colonel Robie said to his wife, who agreed.
But then Robie saw something else. A little ways behind the General Kearny were three more trails of smoke. Now, to his horror, he saw why she was moving so fast. The Union gunboats had cornered her like hunters with a stag, and she was fleeing them as fast as she could. Captain Bilodeaux still had a chance. The sun was almost gone, and once night came it would be near impossible to see the General Kearny. He could drop ashore at some inlet somewhere, unload the gold and Miss Isabel, and then turn tail and slip back out into the harbor. With any luck, and with his sails stored and his engines running soft, he might sneak right past them into open sea.
That was the plan, anyway, and for a while it looked like it might work. The General Kearny was the fastest thing on the water, and the gunboats never had a chance. The sun set, and the ships disappeared. You couldn’t even see the trail of their smoke in the sky. Colonel and Mrs. Robie rejoiced. They were sure the Kearny would get away. And so she might have done.
But then, just as the stars began to shine over Narragansett Bay, there was a sudden burst of orange light. It was as if the sun changed its mind and rose again out of the sea. Colonel and Mrs. Robie saw it and wondered what it could possibly be, until a moment later when the sound of the explosion reached them over the waves. The red and orange flames flickered against the sky for a long moment, then settled into the horizon and disappeared.
Who knows what happened? Maybe Bilodeaux clamped down on the safety valves to get just an extra knot or two of speed. Maybe the bunkers were empty, and all the coal dust ignited. Or maybe the Kearny was just going too damn fast, straining her boilers past their breaking point, until finally a little hole opened up no bigger than a thumbnail and the whole ship was blown to pieces.
That was the end of the General Kearny. When the gunboats caught up with
her, all they found were a few bits of broken wood and a seaman, alive, a cook’s apprentice. He’d been in the rigging when the explosion came and was blown right clear. They say he was stone deaf for the rest of his life. Well, after the Union boats took him on board and cleaned him up, they did a few circles, looking for the cargo. But it was all metal, wasn’t it, and would’ve gone straight to the bottom. Funny thing, that. The ship went down within sight of shore, in shallow waters, but they never found the wreck. The Army Corps of Engineers was out there for months, dredging away. They wanted the gold. But the old bay fooled them, moved the wreck around, carried it out to sea maybe. They’re still looking. Was just a couple years ago a crew came down from Woods Hole. They used the same sonar scanners that helped them find the Titanic, but no luck. It’s almost as if Captain Bilodeaux is still down there, keeping the gold safe until the ghosts of the Confederacy come to claim it.
But that did little good for Colonel Robie. He watched on Christmas night as the sea claimed his fortune and his daughter, and it would be cruel to say he was more upset by the former than the latter. Either way, he was ruined. Mrs. Robie went stark raving mad. They had to commit her to Bellevue. But Colonel Robie was made of stronger stuff. He didn’t fall apart all at once, but piece by piece. They say he spent weeks down at Fogland Beach after the explosion, combing the sands. Hour after hour, day after day, even when it was piercing cold and the sand was covered in snow. God knows what he was looking for. But the sea gave him nothing, not so much as a coin or bit of china. Certainly not his daughter. And so, once he was sure nothing else would come to him, he threw a rope over one of the beams and hanged himself. Right in this parlor.
Some will tell you he’s still down at Fogland Beach. I’ve never seen him myself but a good friend of mine, Elsie Butler, did. He was tall and very thin, walked with a stoop and wore a hat pulled over his eyes. His clothes were black and sodden from years of tramping the dunes. You couldn’t see his face, she said, because he was looking down at the sand.
But I have seen the light, of course. Everyone has. Some people mistake it for the Palatine Light, which is not the same thing at all. That was a German ship that wrecked off Block Island in the 1730s, and if it’s still burning there, it is no affair of mine. But the General Kearny is real enough. You can see her yourself. Go down to Fogland Beach on Christmas at sunset and look out to the sea. Bring a good heavy coat and some coffee—you may have to wait a while. The spirit world doesn’t know from Daylight Savings Time. But if you wait long enough, and it’s a clear night with not too much haze, you’ll see her. A red-orange ball of fire blazing away, marking the spot where the General Kearny went down. It’ll glow for a few moments, just as it did then, and then will be gone.
Of course it’s all true. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.
Chapter Seven
The fog lasts for three whole days and nights. Then on Sunday it’s gone with the daybreak. Pastor Paige preaches a sermon about clarity emerging from chaos, and Grandma falls asleep with her mouth open. It’s only eleven-thirty but I can already tell this is going to be one of her bad days. She wakes up angry, frustrated. The coffee is too bitter, the eggs too runny. On the plus side, she has finally accepted my presence in the house. But she thinks I am some kind of hired hand, a throwback to the days when the Hazards had a cook, a gardener, and a parlor maid. Now she gives orders in a peremptory voice and looks furious when I don’t rush to obey. This morning’s fight begins over pantyhose. She wants to put them on herself but the flimsy gauze ensnares her feet and winds itself around her ankles. “I can do it,” she insists, as I help her up from the floor. Without a word I disentangle her, straighten out the hose, and start guiding it up her legs. “Stop that! Stop that! What are you, a pervert?”
Next come the clothes. Grandma decides she would like to wear a frilly black bathing suit from the Eisenhower administration. “It’s a cocktail dress!” she insists. “And don’t tell me it’s too racy. I know the Caldwells are going to be there tonight.”
I don’t know who the Caldwells are, or care. I pull the bathing suit from her hands, more roughly than I should, and hand her a tartan jacket and skirt. She hates these now, though it used to be her favorite outfit. The tartan is from the Lynn family, which we are related to in some obscure way. Hunter green with a vein of scarlet. She wore it with a frilly blouse, high collar, and a Wedgwood cameo at her throat. Grandpa called her “The Duchess.” But that was a long time ago.
An hour and a half later she is dressed, a near-perfect facsimile of Grandma. But her temper hasn’t improved. Dr. Renzi says church is good for her; it calms her nerves. She remembers all the old hymns, and can recite the paternoster with her eyes closed. Familiar surroundings are a comfort also. The United Congregational smells like every church in New England, regardless of age or denomination: a unique amalgam of flowers, floor wax, dry rot, cleaning fluid, stale air, and deodorant. Grandma is happy here. She pats my arm as I hand her the hymn book, and for one moment there is a flash of recognition. She knows who I am. But then one of the Dufresne kids starts to whisper something to his sister, and Grandma turns around like an unbound Fury. “How dare you? This the day the LORD hath made, you little shit!” Mrs. Dufresne claps her hands over her son’s ears and hustles him off to the fellowship hall. I know I’m going to hear about this later.
We come home to a house filled with gray light. Grandma announces she is going to “make lunch,” a varied project that sometimes produces food, other times a random collection of household objects piled on the plate. But today she seems particularly determined; from the upstairs bathroom I hear pots slam and dishes rattle. I peel off my clothes and turn the shower knob all the way hot. I remember this room better than my own apartment: faux-marble wainscoting like blue cheese, pink shag carpet and a matching plush pink toilet seat cover, a family of Technicolor ducks marching in formation above the towel rack, all lit by a glorious confection of chrome, nippled bulbs and frosted glass suspended on a brass pot chain. Even the same bar of Yardley soap on its tray. Grandma’s been threatening to redo the bathroom for thirty years. Now I guess it’ll stay as it is.
Lost in the past, I catch sight of my reflection. It is like one of those ghost movies. Candyman, Candyman. My eyes are set in a face that is not my own, above a body I barely recognize. How I hated the sight of all that bare, white, peachy-soft skin! But now I’ve concealed a good part of it: shoulders, arms, midriff, all hidden under the protective camouflage of ink. Sometimes my tattoos remind me of who I am, like crib notes written on the sleeve. Except these are on my skin, and each is a memory. The antlers Marcus saw, for example, belong to a stag on my left shoulder, flanked by four books representing knowledge. It comes from a fountain in Rome, the Fontana Dei Libri, tucked into an alley near the Church of St. Ives. The church was just around the corner from my pensione when I was a graduate student. Nobody knew about the fountain—it wasn’t in the guidebooks, so tourists just passed by like it didn’t exist. Each afternoon I came with a pile of books and whiled away the hours on a small stone bench. My clearest memory was of an afternoon in late August with Marcus Aurelius in my lap. His Meditations, that is.
I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.
How comforting those words might have been to the girl that stood shivering in front of this mirror, slathering on cold cream, wishing she could wash off her own skin along with the makeup. Now the man that stares back really is me, and it’s this room that has become a lie. I gaze wonderingly at my perfect face until steam fogs up the beveled mirror.
Candyman.
By the time I come down it is almost an hour later, but Grandma is still hard at it. The mixer is revving out of control, and it sounds as though she is trying to extract a baking tray from und
er a tower of pans. There is an almighty crash. “Grandma?” I call out, worried. Silence. I’m taking the stairs two at a time, thinking of Aunt Emma buried under her cookware. Then I pass the front room. Grandma is fast asleep in her chair.
The kitchen door stands partly ajar. The light is on, the mixer is still running. As I put my hand on the doorknob it stops abruptly. The light bulb on its chain is swaying back and forth, like someone has been playing maypole with it. The mixer is empty and cold. All the cupboard doors are closed, the pots and pans innocently silent. And yet on the center island, just under the swinging light, is a plate with two pastrami sandwiches and a pickle. The pastrami I recognize from the fridge; the pickle I’ve never seen before in my life. Someone even drew up two glasses of milk; there is frost on the rim.
“Thanks,” I tell the Hired Help, and bring the drinks and sandwiches into the living room. Because really, what else am I supposed to do?
In the afternoon Grandma watches her shows. Or at least she thinks she does. Real television upsets her. She doesn’t know any of the characters, and plots seem needlessly complex. “Who is that guy?” she asks, pointing at the protagonist of a sitcom she has been watching for three quarters of an hour. “Have I seen him before?” Commercials drive her mad. “It used to just be pasta sauce and laundry detergent. What the hell is ProMaxium?” Actually, she has a point. But after about a week of this I began sneaking DVDs into the machine. Now she watches Matlock or Golden Girls and falls happily asleep in her chair. She has just nodded off when there is a knock on the door.
