The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “Up where the rich folks live,” said the cabbie.

  The houses were huge Gothic Victorians with broad lawns, turrets, slate roofs, porticos, like wooden castles or, in the case of the house that Mark Twain had built, like a wooden riverboat with balconies and railings to make an old river pilot feel at home. Harriet Beecher Stowe had lived around the corner from Twain.

  They were long gone, but the Bishops had lived in their house on Farmington Avenue for three decades.

  It was six thirty. Gilbert feared that he might be interrupting dinner. But he rang the bell, took off his hat, smoothed his hair.

  It seemed that Gilbert had arrived on a night when Mrs. Bishop was at her ladies’ league meeting, so, as Samuel Bishop joked, “Even newspaper editors have to babysit now and then.” His four-year-old was riding around in the foyer on a red fire truck. “That’s Charlie,” he said.

  Gilbert said, “I was just passing through and I thought I’d say hello.”

  Bishop chuckled. “Passing through? We’re sort of off the beaten path up here.”

  Gilbert played with his hat in his hands.

  “You’ll stay for dinner? I’ll have the maid set another place.” Bishop had a likable smile and a devilish Clark Gable mustache that matched his personality.

  While little Charlie picked at his ground beef, Samuel Bishop warmed to conversation with an adult. They talked about the newspaper business, Hartford and the growth of the insurance business, and Bishop offered his vision of New England’s cities as places where men would come to work more with their minds than with their hands.

  “The day of industry is coming to an end in New England,” said Bishop. “You see the men who work in Hartford. They add columns, they analyze, they think rather than labor. I’m expanding to serve them. They read my papers, they listen to classical music and entertainment—”

  “Precisely,” said Gilbert. “They will also need places for recreation, because we’re physical creatures, too. That’s why I’m building a ski resort in Vermont. Do you ski?”

  “We ride the train up to Stowe. Little Charlie has taken to it like a fish to water.”

  When the gentlemen retired to the study, little Charlie went to the fireplace, sat down with his picture book, and started turning pages.

  Gilbert took a glass of port and said how well-behaved the boy seemed.

  Charlie looked up. He didn’t miss a trick.

  Samuel said, “He enjoys listening to gentlemanly dealings. It’s how a boy learns.”

  “Well, then,” said Gilbert, swallowing port, pride, and trepidation, “let him listen to this: I wasn’t just in the neighborhood. I’ve come looking for a loan.”

  “A loan?” Bishop laughed. “For what?”

  “For my ski resort.” Gilbert thought he would have to launch into a sales pitch, but Bishop interrupted him with—

  “What can you offer as collateral?”

  Gilbert could not believe it was that easy. “Why, a piece of the business.”

  Bishop said nothing.

  Little Charlie flipped the pages of his book.

  So Gilbert said, “What would you say to a first draft of the United States Constitution, with annotations from the Founding Fathers?”

  “Founding Fathers?” said Bishop. “You mean like George Washington?”

  Little Charles looked up. “George Washington?”

  Bishop flicked his eyes at his son and smiled. “The boy learns fast and early.”

  “I may have a line on such document, if—”

  “Ah, to hell with it.” Samuel Bishop waved his hand.

  “To hell with it?” Gilbert thought he was cooked.

  “I like skiing. I’ll be a silent partner. I’ll take the hill as collateral. This Constitution you’re talking about, show it to Charlie if you ever get your hands on it.”

  THE LOAN MADE the difference.

  Gilbert and Mary Beth moved to Vermont in June of 1934. By September, they had built fifty one-room cottages, each with its own woodstove and bathroom. They bought a depot hack to carry people from the station at Barre. They spent hundreds advertising Amory’s at Mount Morton. And it didn’t snow.

  The next winter, it snowed like hell. But nobody came.

  Why get off the train after six or seven hours and ride the depot hack for another hour to a small resort that no one knew about, when the train went all the way to Stowe?

  So Gilbert and Mary decided to begin their third season by inviting everyone they knew for a free weekend of skiing. They printed invitations and sent them across New England, to the Bishops in Hartford, to the Amorys in Portland, even to the McGillises in Millbridge, though Gilbert knew that they would never come, not with a dying mill to nurse.

  And on the day before the guests were to arrive, a blizzard blew into Vermont.

  Ordinarily Gilbert would have been thrilled. Snow. White gold. But a bearing in the bull wheel had gone, and the bull wheel ran the T-bar tow, one of the prime features of Mount Morton. Gilbert, who had learned to do his own maintenance to save money, took his tools and climbed the top of the slope to repair the bearing.

  It was early afternoon when he started, but by dark he still had not finished. And he saw failure looming on the day that he hoped would inaugurate the do-or-die season at Mount Morton. So he brought up lanterns and kept at it.

  The wind was tearing out of the northeast. The snow whipped against his face. He could not feel his fingertips. But still he kept at it.

  Sometime around seven o’clock, a gust of wind bit through his jacket and sweater and into his chest. Once it was there, it stayed, and it grew, and grew, until a simple pain became a crushing weight.

  Mary Beth, looking out from the family quarters in the big house, saw the lantern suddenly fall. She threw on her coat and boots and scrambled to the top of the slope.

  When she got to him, his flesh was cold.

  She tried to haul him down, in hopes that a warm house would warm his heart back into motion.

  The snow whipped at her face and the wind cut into her flesh, and after she had dragged him a short distance, she knew it was hopeless.

  This tough Vermont woman, who had lived so independently for so long, sat down in the snow beside the body of her husband and began to cry.

  And that was how they found them the next morning. The New England weather, which had brought them together, would keep them together for eternity on their mountainside.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN PETER FALLON DECIDED to stop running, he usually ended up at Fallon Salvage and Restoration. It was no fortress, but it was as close as you could get in Boston. The chain-link fence was topped with razor wire. The warehouse sat in the middle of a half acre lot at the edge of a South Boston neighborhood. The sodium vapor lighting turned night into day, and during the day the neighbors in the three-deckers could be counted on to watch for strangers.

  Peter Fallon had gone to ground. Considering what had happened in the air that morning, the ground looked pretty good.

  “Small planes are deathtraps,” Danny Fallon was saying.

  “Unless you have a good pilot,” said Peter.

  “A good pilot might have noticed that the oil pressure was dropping before she went to aw-shit mode.”

  “I suspect it was rigged,” said Peter. “So did the girls I was flying with.”

  “Pretty?”

  “Yeah, but not your type,” said Peter. “They stayed behind to answer questions. I rented a car and got back here as fast as I could.”

  “That means you’re in aw-shit mode yourself.” Danny cracked a beer and handed Peter a can, too. “Time to call in your big brother. Wah wah wah. Save me. Save me.”

  “They have Evangeline,” said Peter bluntly.

  “Shit.” The beer can stopped just south of Danny’s lips. This meant he was shocked, because no beer can lasted long that close to Danny’s lips. “Who’s they?”

  “Gun nuts. Militia. Survivalists. She gets loose when they ge
t the first draft of the Constitution.”

  “Shit.” Danny took a swallow of beer. “Gun nuts. Scary. Especially these days.”

  “At least I know what they want. Then there’s the other one. He killed Bindle, chased us through Portland.”

  Danny’s son Bobby came into the office. He was carrying the twelve-gauge shotgun that he hauled out whenever Uncle Peter suggested that he should watch the front gate.

  “I wish you’d put that thing away,” said Peter.

  “You said you needed protection,” Bobby answered.

  “Then get a bigger gun,” said Peter. “Because the other guys have AR-15s.”

  “Guns,” cracked Danny. “About time we got them off the street for good.”

  “We might need a few,” answered Bobby, “because a nigger just pulled up at the gate.”

  “Nice talk,” said Peter. “Did you bother to see if it was Antoine?”

  “Antoine? Eddie Scarborough’s kid?” said Danny. “Oh, shit. I just saw—sorry.”

  EVANGELINE CARRINGTON SPENT a few hours wandering, but there was no place to go, so she wandered back to the camp, made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and sat in the sun. Working on her tan seemed like the best way to stay out of trouble.

  Her guards were the four guys who had been in that dustup at the gun camp. But they seemed to have stopped worrying about her. No one watched her. No one followed her a second time up to the latrine pit.

  Scrawny and Mercer were more interested in cleaning their weapons. The one they called Hotshot sat in his tent and read a Tom Clancy novel. The fourth, called Butcher Bob, sharpened a knife and butchered the bodies of half a dozen squirrels he had shot.

  Evangeline took a nap, an even better way to stay out of trouble. She was snapped awake by the sound of small-arms fire. Before she knew where she was, she leaped to her feet and ran outside.

  Then she heard male laughter, coming from the little rise that shielded the latrine pit. Then bup-bup-bup-bup. They were target shooting.

  By then, she was bored enough to go and watch. She followed the sound up to where the boys where having their afternoon squeeze-a-few session. When one of them noticed her, he nudged the shooter, and all four turned.

  “Hey, it’s Lady Mace,” said Mercer.

  “These are big mean guns,” said one of the others. “Hope they don’t scare you.”

  They all snickered, which was a bad idea. Nothing annoyed her more than snickering … at her.

  Mercer held out the .44 Magnum. “Want to squeeze one off?”

  They all snickered again.

  She took the gun, raised it with both hands, and pointed it at the target, which happened to be a picture of Harriet Holden. This gave her a moment’s pause. Then she squeezed the trigger. Boom. The huge handgun recoiled like a cannon.

  Boom. A hit beside Harriet’s ear. Boom. Above her head. Boom. Boom. Boom. A perfect semicircle.

  Before the sound stopped echoing, Evangeline handed the gun back to Mercer. “There. I just gave her a halo.”

  “We thought you was against guns,” said Scrawny.

  “I’m against stupid gun laws.” She decided not to stay and talk. Walking away would leave a better impression. She went back to her tent and flopped down on the cot.

  After a while, she heard the boys building a fire. The sun was dropping. It was getting chilly. Time to eat.

  Then she heard someone outside her tent. She could see the toes of Mercer’s boots below the flap. He cleared his throat.

  She got up and pushed back the canvas.

  Mercer was scowling. He always scowled. “Nobody said you could shoot.”

  “Nobody asked.”

  He was holding two bottles of beer. “You want one?”

  She hesitated. This might be his first move when he was seducing some biker chick, but she could use a beer. What the hell.

  “You ever eat squirrel? Soaked in a little vinegar and pepper sauce?”

  She took a swallow of beer. “Squirrel. Yum.”

  He gestured to follow him. “You better hope your boyfriend comes up with something soon, or you’ll be eatin’ a lot of it.”

  “Where’s Batter?” she asked.

  “Gone down to Bangor,” said Mercer.

  Down. There was a clue, if she did decide to sneak off. They were north of the most northerly city in the state. So they were way north.

  “He don’t want people to think he’s doing anything different.”

  “Does the judge know about this—?”

  “Don’t say ‘kidnappin’.’ “

  “I’m your guest. Why else would you give me a beer and … squirrel?”

  Mercer also gave her his scowl. The fat-crease at the back of his neck made him look like a bull, pumped full of testosterone, nothing but trouble, even when he seemed in a good mood. “Woman can shoot like that, she gets a beer. But she don’t get to make fun of us.”

  “I’ll never learn.”

  “The judge is old school,” said Mercer. “Too much of a gentleman. No … this is our play.”

  There were no songs around this campfire.

  Butcher Bob skewered the squirrel bodies.

  The one called Hotshot was still turning pages in his Tom Clancy.

  Scrawny kept sneaking glances at Evangeline, as though he couldn’t get the image of her ass out of his mind.

  Finally, Evangeline smiled at him, and he took that as a sign to start talking. “You know, we’re sorry for what we done.”

  “Like hell.” Mercer drained a beer and pulled another from the cooler by the picnic table. “We have to do what we have to do. We’re fightin’ for a way of life.”

  “Damn right,” said Butcher Bob.

  “That’s why we come up here on weekends,” said Hotshot. “To practice livin’ in the wild.”

  Butcher Bob rested the skewered squirrels on a rack above the flames. “The day may come when we have to do it for real.”

  “Why?” She thought she knew the answer.

  “Because of you or some other do-gooder takin’ our guns,” said Mercer. “Or because the rest of the world has blown up and the survivors are headin’ this way. We aim to be the ones who last. Us and our families. So we’ll have our guns. It’s our right.”

  “Is it your right to kill a man on a Portland street?” She knew as soon as she said it that she should have kept her mouth shut.

  But Mercer and the others laughed.

  Scrawny said, “We fooled you, hunh?”

  “We didn’t kill that guy,” said Mercer. “We hit him with a Taser, then we put him out with a big syringe full of Demerol. Drove him down to the high-speed ferry and loaded him on.”

  “Probably woke up halfway to Nova Scotia,” said Hotshot.

  That made her feel better.

  “Yeah,” said Scrawny. “If he had any money, he lost it at the craps table once the ferry went into international waters.”

  “We ain’t murderers. But, we’ll fight for our rights and for this. It’s the last wilderness in the east,” Mercer went on. “The loggers leave us alone. But flatlanders are comin’, plannin’ their big developments because the loggin’ companies are sellin’ out. And we don’t have the money to fight them.” Mercer took a long swallow of beer. “Sure would like to get my hands on some money and buy all this.”

  “Yeah,” said Scrawny. “A lot of money.”

  “Right.” Butcher Bob lifted one of the skewers and tested the meat. “Times are tough…. Squirrel?”

  She gave it a look, tore off a piece, took a bite. It tasted like … chicken. “Pretty soon, there won’t be anyone can cook squirrel like that any more.”

  “That’s what we’re fightin’ for,” said Hotshot.

  “To cook squirrel?” she asked.

  “No!” Mercer jumped up, and he was so big that he blocked the heat from the fire. “Don’t you get it, lady? We’re the last real Americans.”

  Just then, they heard the sound of an engine
somewhere to the south. Mercer’s cell phone rang. It was Batter, on his way in. “Maybe he’s got some news.”

  IN SOUTH BOSTON, Peter Fallon sat with Antoine Scarborough and studied the material from Charles Bishop. It included a note from Bishop: “This should have been forwarded to you three days ago. My instructions were not followed. My apologies. See you on Sunday.”

  Orson Lunt had arrived from Newport, too. He said that he was tired of parties, and he hated to “miss a meeting of the brain trust.” Peter was glad to have him, because Orson always gave good advice.

  They clustered around the computer in Danny Fallon’s office to read the e-mailed files: letters, newspaper articles, an editorial about the great flood of 1927 with a note, written by Samuel Bishop to his wife. “Do you notice how I’ve quoted your ancestor?” The line that he had underlined was, “This is America. In America, we get up in the morning, we go to work, and we solve our problems.”

  “I like that,” said Peter. “In America we solve our problems.”

  “But look at this one.” Antoine took them to another document. It was an invitation to Samuel Bishop to attend the “seasonal opening” of the Amory ski slope.

  “So?” asked Peter.

  “There’s a note on the back of the invitation.”

  Antoine hit another button and another scanned image appeared, handwritten: “Dear Samuel: I hope you can come. Accommodations await. I admit that the first two years have been difficult, so you have not seen a return on your investment. I have put heart, soul, and all but a few resources into the project. Those few I have secreted behind fireplace bricks or under the floorboards because—ha, ha—no matter what FDR tells us, we have more to fear than fear itself.”

  Antoine looked at Peter and Orson. “Didn’t someone find the log of the Mayflower behind a few fireplace bricks about fifteen years ago?”

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “I wish it had been me.”

  Orson stroked his mustache, sat back, crossed his legs. “I think this Gilbert Amory is speaking metaphorically. Ha ha.”

  “Have you ever been in a deposition, Orson?” asked Peter.

  “I’ve had the displeasure. Yes.”

  “Then you know that lawyers jump all over metaphorical talk. They pretend they don’t understand it. Gilbert was a lawyer. I think he was telling Bishop exactly where he was going to put his prize possession.”