The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  And Father would always try. He’d set his hand on that child’s convulsing frame and command the spirits to come out, and by the looks of things, they would—only to come back the next day or the week after. After a time, the boy’s family ceased to trouble us.

  Possessed, that was the word I remember the boy’s father using. But possessed by what? I wondered. All I could see was absence. A shell where a human being had once lived.

  Of course, I had only Poe’s account to go by. But if I was right about Lea Marquis’ illness, she had reason, suddenly, to be a sorrowing spinster. And though I had yet to meet her, I confess I sorrowed in her behalf, for who knew how much longer her body could last under such a dire sentence?

  Poe’s own words came back to me on a draft of cold air: The death of a beautiful woman is Poetry’s grandest, most exalted theme. . . .

  Well, I couldn’t get behind that myself. But then, I was on my way to a funeral.

  This was the day on which Leroy Fry’s body was to be committed to the earth. What cerements he wore, I couldn’t tell you, for his coffin was never opened from the moment the six bombardiers hoisted it from the hearse to the moment the earth closed it round.

  Poe had been right about this, at least: you couldn’t find a much better place to be buried than the West Point cemetery. Or a better time than a November morning, with fog rolling like surf around your shins and the wind hissing among the stones and brambles . . . and leaves raining down, the year’s last leaves, massing in scarlet drifts round the white crosses.

  I was standing not ten feet from the gravesite, listening to the muffled drum, watching the procession of banners and black plumes. I remember how the bier creaked under the coffin’s weight and the way the cord grated as the coffin was lowered into the ground. And yes, the sound of dirt clods on that stark pine box—a sound that seemed to come up through the ground, right through the spikes of grass. Most of the rest is a muddle now. Leroy Fry’s father, for instance—I must have seen him, but I don’t recall. Mrs. Fry I remember. A freckled, stooped woman in black crepe, with a doe’s eyes and ears, emaciated in the arms and shoulders, plump only in the cheeks, which were puffed and pink. She coughed out little pellets of air and kept rubbing away tears that weren’t there—her fists left trenches of red alongside her nose—and she gave no sign of listening to anything, least of all the Reverend Zantzinger’s sermon, a long parade of shouting dragoons and thundering hooves.

  Once Leroy Fry was in the ground, I would never again dream of him. Or else I was dreaming round the clock now. Because the horses, drawing away the empty hearse, weren’t they moving at half their usual speed? And the chaplain—surely, he took upward of an hour to brush one speck of dirt from his sleeve. And why was it that after the bombardiers fired their volleys over Leroy Fry’s grave, the mountains caught the report and refused to part with it? It kept echoing, I mean, and building, like a trapped storm front.

  And what, finally, could explain this? Leroy Fry’s mother, standing before me. Scarred with sun, pinched with grief.

  “You’re Mr. Landor, aren’t you?”

  There was no getting round that one. Yes . . . yes, I was. . . .

  She hesitated for a long while. Unsure of the etiquette, maybe. In her normal life, she would never have gone up to a man as she was doing now.

  “You’re the one who’s looking into . . .”

  “Yes, that’s so,” I answered.

  She nodded vigorously, without meeting my eyes. And I nodded, too, because I couldn’t say the things that were expected of me: how sorry I was, what a terrible loss it was . . . for you, for all of us. . . . Nothing like that would come out, and it was a great relief to see her giving up on speech as well and instead fumbling through her reticule, from which at last she drew a tiny clothbound volume with gilt edges.

  “There’s something I’d like you to have,” she said, pressing the book into my hand.

  “What’s this, Mrs. Fry?”

  “Leroy’s diary.”

  My fingers closed round it, then fell slack. “Diary?”

  “Yes, indeed. I believe it goes back at least three years.”

  “I’m not—” I stopped. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall any diary being found with his personal effects.”

  “Oh, no, it was Mr. Ballinger who gave it to me.”

  For the first time, she sought out my gaze, and held it.

  “Mr. Ballinger?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  “Yes, can you imagine?” A smile stirred on her lips. “He was a good friend of Leroy’s, and he said as soon as he heard what—what happened with Leroy, why, he went straight to Leroy’s quarters to see what could be done, and that’s how he came to find this diary, and he knew there should be nobody looking at such a thing but Leroy Fry’s own mother, and that’s how he came to give it to me, and he said, ‘Mrs. Fry, I want you to take this back home to Kentucky with you, and if you feel like burning it, you go right ahead, it’s up to you, but it’s not right anyone else should look at it.’”

  That’s how it came out: one long sentence, each word diving after the next.

  “Oh, it was awful considerate of him,” she said. “But look here, I’ve been thinking it over, Mr. Landor. Seeing as how you’re the one what’s looking into the whole business, and the whole Army is practically depending on you, well, then, it seems only right that you should have it. What would I do with it, anyway? I can hardly read the thing. Well, look for yourself, it’s all twisty and gnarly, isn’t it? Can’t make head nor tails myself.”

  Which was, in fact, the very idea. Leroy Fry had taken the usual precaution of crosshatching his entries—running vertical columns across horizontal ones—the better to foil the prying eye. It was a practice that could leave such a jumble of letters that even the original author might have trouble transcribing it. You had to have an eye trained for such things. An eye like mine.

  And in truth, my eye jumped right in, and my brain followed straight after, and I was already sorting out the patterns when I heard Mrs. Fry’s voice—felt it, I should say, like a drop of hail on my scalp.

  “He should be caught.”

  Looking up from the pages, I peered into her eyes, and I knew then she wasn’t talking about her son.

  “He should be caught,” she said again, a little louder. “What Leroy did to himself, that was one thing. But nobody ought to have gone and done what they did to his poor little body. That’s a crime, or should be if it’s not.”

  What was there to do but agree? Yes, yes, a terrible crime, I said, fumbling, wondering if I should take her hand, lead her somewhere. . . .

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fry. You’ve been a great help.”

  She nodded, absently. Then, turning halfway round, she watched her youngest son’s coffin disappear under the last spadefuls of dirt. Nothing for the Army to do now but mark the site with one of those spotless crosses, blazing white in the red and gold leaves.

  “It was such a nice service,” said Mrs. Fry. “Don’t you think? I always told Leroy, I said, ‘Leroy, the Army will do for you.’ And you see? I was right.”

  If I thought I’d be rewarded for my find, I would have to think again. Hitchcock gave it his best full-dress frown when I waved it in front of him. Couldn’t bring himself to trust it or even touch it. Crossed his arms like bayonets and asked me how I knew it was Fry’s diary in the first place.

  “Well, Captain, I guess a mother would know her own son’s handwriting.”

  He asked me what would have kept Ballinger from tearing out any incriminating pages. I said he likely wouldn’t have known where they were. Fry had not only crosshatched his entries in microscopically tiny letters but also written some in reverse, Hebrew-style, making the whole thing about as penetrable as a cuneiform.

  But here was what Captain Hitchcock really wanted to know: Why hadn’t Ballinger just thrown the whole thing away? If the diary was worth taking, why risk letting anyone see it?

  And to that I had no good answer.
Maybe, I ventured, Ballinger had nothing to fear from these pages. Ah, but why then would he have taken such a risk in the first place? Interfering with an Academy inquiry was serious business, grounds for dismissal or worse. (It was all I could do to keep Hitchcock from keelhauling him on the spot.) No, the only explanation I could come up with was the one that was least likely.

  “And what’s that?” asked Captain Hitchcock.

  “That whatever’s in there, well, Ballinger wants it to be known. Someday. By someone.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, he may have a conscience.”

  Well, Hitchcock scoffed, and who was I to stick up for the young man? I didn’t know him, and what I came to know of him wouldn’t have put me on his side. But I do believe there’s something about the human soul that wants to be known, even in its ugliest corners. Why else does a man— myself included—bother putting words to paper?

  16 June. Today begins a grate Adventuere.

  That’s how Leroy Fry’s diary starts. Adventure it was, though not for me, not at first. Nothing but drudgery. With a pen in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, I worked steadily by the dwindling taper light, the diary on my left, a transcribing notebook on my right. The letters swarmed over me, up and down, backward and forward. On occasion, I had to lift my eyes from the page just to blink them clear, or close them altogether.

  Oh, it was a slow business . . . maddening . . . an agony. I had only about two pages finished when Poe came knocking. So softly I almost didn’t hear. The door tickled open, and there he stood, in his shabby boots and his cloak newly torn at the shoulder, bearing still another brown-paper parcel.

  Texts, I thought. I’m drowning in texts.

  “Mr. Poe, you needn’t have rushed it over tonight. I’m quite occupied, as you can see.”

  “It was no great difficulty,” he said, softly, in the dark.

  “But all this—all this writing you’re doing,” I said. “You’ll wear yourself out before you’re done.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He dropped straight to the floor, and in the sputtering light from the tapers, I could see him staring up at me, with an air of deep expectation.

  “What is it, Mr. Poe?”

  “I’m waiting for you to read it.”

  “You mean now?”

  “But of course.”

  He never asked me what the other document was, the one in my lap. He must have imagined I was simply biding my time until he could report back to me. Maybe I was.

  “Well, then,” I said, taking the pages from him and stacking them lightly in my lap. “Not quite so long as the last one, I think.”

  “Perhaps not,” he agreed.

  “Can I—might I get you something? A nip of something, if you’re . . .”

  “No. Thank you. I’ll just wait for you to finish.”

  And so he did. Sat there on the cold floor, watching every word rise from the page to my eye. And whenever I glanced his way, he was in the same position, watching. . . .

  Report of Edgar A. Poe to Augustus Landor

  November 17th

  My previous encounter with Miss Marquis had been of so inconclusive a nature as to make me wonder if I should ever again set eyes upon her. A stranger was she to me still,—and yet the prospect of being forever segregated from her was beyond sufferance, and it was with heavier heart than usual that I plied myself once more to the Sisyphean round of mathematics and French. How sterile seemed to me the picaresque antics of Lesage, and the logical flights of Archimedes and Pythagoras. I have heard that men deprived of all light and sustenance may slumber for more than three entire days and deem it of no greater duration than a catnap. Happily would I have exchanged their lot for mine! Yoked within the span of each new day lay an endless caravan of days. Seconds elapsed like minutes, minutes like hours. Hours? Were these not Eons?

  Dinner came—I lived still. But to what avail? Every energy of mind lay in abeyance; shades of the deepest melancholy darkened my path. On Wednesday evening, as I listened to the beat of tattoo calling all cadets to their slumbers, I dreaded lest the insufferable gloom which pervaded my spirit should succeed in swallowing me whole, leaving behind nothing more than my bedclothing and the musket which hangs—with what forlornness!—on the wall above my head.

  Onward came the dawn, and the beating of reveille. Shaking myself free of Sleep’s gossamer web, I found one of my roommates, young Mr. Gibson, standing before my pallet with an expression of reptilian glee.

  “A message for you,” he cried. “And in a woman’s hand!”

  True enough, there was a slip of paper with my name inscribed upon the back. And yes, the lettering gave every evidence of the graceful arabesques and curlicues so widely associated with the weaker sex. I did not dare presume, however, that the hand in question might belong to her— though every truncheon beat of my heart cried it to the icy dawn air: It is She! It is She!

  Dear Mr. Poe: [it read]

  Would you be so good as to meet me this morning? I believe you have a brief interval of liberty between breakfast and the day’s first recitals. If that be the case, and if you can forbear to look kindly on my petition, I shall be waiting for you at Fort Putnam. I promise I will not keep you long.

  Yours,

  L.A.M.

  I ask you, Mr. Landor, who could resist such a summons as this? The gentle importunity of these words, the unaffected elegance of her penmanship, the faintest effluvium of perfume from the stationery. . . .

  Mistress Time, in all her mercurial vanity, now saw fit to make the remaining hours pass as quickly as a dream. Upon being released from the squalid confines of mess, I took silent leave of my gray confreres and, without another thought, launched myself up Mount Independence. I was alone now. Alone, yes, and happy, for could there be any doubt that she had preceded me through this tangled brake and woodland path? It was no hardship, then, to climb over the soft spangled moss and splinters of rock, to scale the ruined ramparts of that ancient fortification which housed the unfortunate Major André during his final days on Earth, for her dainty boots had blazed the trail.

  Passing beneath an arched casemate overgrown with vines, I came to a fringe of cedar bushes and there discerned, on a broad table of granite, the half-reclining figure of Miss Lea Marquis. She turned her head as I approached, and there appeared on her face a smile of the most unforced and most infectious enthusiasm. All the vexation which had disfigured her person during our last encounter had been superseded entirely by those native fires and graces which had so commended themselves in our first meeting.

  “Mr. Poe,” she said. “I’m so happy you could come.”

  With a slight and graceful motion, she indicated that I might seat myself alongside her, a position I assumed with all due alacrity. She informed me then that her sole intention in arranging our interview had been to thank me for my ministrations toward her in her hour of need. Although I had no recollection of any extraordinarily chivalrous conduct on my part, such acts of caritas as I had performed in guiding her safely home had, I soon found, been more than amply recompensed. For upon learning that I had missed evening parade on her account (and been duly reported, by the three-headed dog of Locke), Miss Marquis had hastened at once to her father and assured him that without my kind intervention, she might well have come to harm.

  Well, as soon as the good Dr. Marquis received these tidings from his only and beloved daughter, he wasted no time in petitioning Captain Hitchcock in my behalf, relaying to him the entire history of my magnanimous acts. The commandant, to his everlasting credit, not only absolved me of demerit but excused me from the additional round of guard duty which Locke had assigned me and, in closing, let it be known that my conduct would do justice to any officer of the United States Army.

  Neither did the amiable Dr. Marquis confine himself to this single charitable office. He further intimated that he should be glad of a chance to express his gratitude toward me in person and could imagine no bet
ter means of accomplishing that end than to receive me once more as an honored family guest at some date in the very near future.

  What a reversal of fortunes was this, Mr. Landor! I, who had despaired of ever again beholding Miss Marquis, was to be vouchsafed still one more chance to revel in her company, under the benign and approbatory supervision of those who held her . . . I was going to say more dear than I . . . I find I cannot.

  The air, as I have reported, was chill at that early hour, but Miss Marquis, wrapped in a pelisse and cape, gave no evidence of undue hardship. Instead, she applied herself entirely to the scene which lay before us, lofty Bull Hill and old Cro’ Nest and the rugged range of Break Neck, stopping now and then to finger the ribbon-strap of her sandal.