Her Loving Husband's Curse (6 page)

It’s the land, Lizzie. The Americans are greedy for the land. And now they will force the people to go away when they will not leave it all behind. When they will not pretend they were never here. It’s beginning already.

As I look through the window all is dust. Even into the night the chalky air rises and swirls, settling on cornstalks, clothing, faces, leaving a pallid mask on everyone. There is the grit-covered white man I see here often who comes to trade with the natives. Now he is speaking to my neighbor.

“
Ridge and Boudinot signed the treaty in Georgia,” the white man says.

“
No,” says my neighbor. “Chief John Ross won’t allow it. He thinks we can keep our land.”

“
It’s done, Friend. They’re taking your land and sending you away.”

“
No,” my neighbor says again. “Chief John Ross has gone to Washington to talk to the government. They will listen. They will see why it’s wrong to take our land.”

“
Ridge and Boudinot thought there was no way the government would let you keep the land—that’s why they signed. Removal will start soon. I thought you should know.”

The trot-trot-trot of horse’s hooves comes faster and closer. I heard it long before the men talking outside. Suddenly, the horse stops a few feet away. I see the stern-faced, blue-suited officer dismounting, his bayonet at his side. My neighbor’s family have come outside, his mother-in-law, wife, and daughters, huddled close to one another, watching.

The wind picks up, and everyone disappears in the dust. Through the haze I see the officer nod at the white man. He doesn’t look at the native man or his family as he walks through their open doorway. He scans their possessions, their basic furniture, the spinning wheel, the beads and stones and pestles. He eyes my neighbor’s pretty black-haired wife with a suggestive gleam that boils rage from the soles of my feet to the tips of my hair. For a moment I am back in Salem in 1692, and I feel the constable at our door, cruel as he drags you away. I can hardly restrain myself from ripping the officer man to shreds. How dare he impose himself on this family. What have they done?

The native man must also sense danger and he stands protectively in front of his women.

“
What do you want here?” the white man asks.

“
I have orders to take inventory of the belongings inside,” says the officer.

“
So you can confiscate it for yourself or sell it?”

“
I have orders.”

“
Seems awful late into the night for that. Can’t you come back tomorrow?”

“
I’m here now.”

The officer brushes further into my neighbor’s house, his back stretched tall, shoulders back, a sad apology for his height—the Napoleon complex, I believe it’s called. He needs to make a show, the man in the uniform, the man with the orders. This is all a show of Power. You will do what we make you do. When we want what you have you must give it to us. When we want you to leave you must leave. There is no other way.

The white trader notices me and nods. I can see in his face he is kind, but I have come away from the window. I do not want to be noticed. I hear the officer mount his horse, and the horse trots away, faster than he came. My neighbor and his family are left alone for one more night.

CHAPTER 4

James arrived at his office in the library, turned on the computer, and logged in to check his e-mail. There were the usual messages, white noise from the English department, notes from students asking about assignments, requesting extensions, making excuses, or all of the above. He remembered the red-filled bags, and he took them from his black backpack and slid them into the brown-paneled icebox beneath his desk. He hit the button to print his notes for his Shakespeare seminar that night, impatient because he was late to meet Sarah in the library. They would be home together soon, but he wouldn’t lose one moment with her. He wanted to spend every hour of every night with her, holding her, kissing her. He missed her when she wasn’t there. And if he could steal a kiss before he had to teach, he would.

He stopped when he heard the footsteps come down the hall. For a moment he thought he heard Hempel’s heavy, plodding steps, but he shook that paranoia away and heard short, shuffling paces instead. He smelled musk, so it wasn’t a student since twenty-something boys don’t douse themselves in Old Spice. After the knock, he opened his door to see Goodwin Enwright, head of the English department, fiftyish, balding, wearing a white button-down shirt and brown tie over blue jeans and running shoes.

“James,” said Goodwin, “I was hoping to catch you before you left for class.”

“Here I am.” James gestured to the chair where his students sat during office visits. Goodwin shook his head.

“I can only stay a minute. I have an idea for a new class I want to run by you.”

“What is it?”

“Vampire Literature.”

James struggled not to gag, jump, or scream. “Goodwin, I don’t know…”

“Hear me out, James. We’ve been stagnant as a department for a while and we need to be innovative. We’re a university now.”

“I know. I saw the sign outside.”

“We want to shake things up, so we took a poll of English students and asked for ideas for new classes. Turns out they’re crazy about vampires. So what if we offer a vampire literature class? And what if you teach it?”

James didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but since he would bleed from his eyes if he cried, suspicious during a conversation about vampires, he chose to laugh, or at least force a hearty smile. “I don’t know anything about vampire books, Goodwin.”

“Sure you do. Everyone does, unless they’re dead.” Goodwin slapped James’s shoulder like they were buddies out for a beer. “You’re not dead, are you?”

“Not very.”

“I bet you know more than you think. There’s that book that’s so popular with the girls these days. What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. The one about the sparkly kid?”

“
Twilight
.”

“That’s it. I was thinking the class could cover the development of vampire literature. People think Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
was the first vampire novel, but it wasn’t. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel
Carmilla
and
Varney the Vampire
by James Malcolm Rymer came first.”

“
Carmilla
is about a lesbian vampire who preys on a lonely young woman.”

“See, so you do know some of the books.”

James sighed. “Maybe you should ask Angela to teach the class. She’s younger. She might like the idea.”

“Younger than who? We just went to her fortieth birthday party last month at the Lyceum Bar and Grill. I distinctly recall seeing you and Sarah there. So Angela’s forty, and what are you? All of thirty now?”

“Something like that.”

Goodwin pulled over the empty chair and sat down. “You’re one of the best we have in the English department, James. The students rave about you on your evaluations every term. We want someone young, someone the students like to teach the class. We’ll try it out once and see how it goes. What have you got to lose?”

James rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “It’ll have to be a night class,” he said.

“What could be more fitting?”

James shrugged. He wasn’t concerned that Goodwin suspected anything, but he was unnerved that he was the one asked to teach the class. Teaching about vampires? It was too ridiculous. But he couldn’t think of an excuse, a good excuse, in the moment he had to come up with one, so he nodded.

“Excellent,” said Goodwin. “I knew you could be reasonable when you wanted to be.” He walked through the open door, then turned back, his hand on the doorknob. “It’ll be fine. Just start with the early stuff like
Carmilla
,
Varney the Vampire
, and
Dracula
, pull in some Anne Rice, throw in that sparkly kid and another one or two of the newer books and you’ve got a class. You can send me the course syllabus next week.”

While James waited for Goodwin’s shuffling footsteps to disappear, he stared out the window, trying to find the humor in the situation, Professor Wentworth teaching a vampire literature class. He looked at the time on his computer screen, grabbed his book bag, and locked his door. As he headed to the elevator, he decided he was right to agree to teach the class. He didn’t want to make himself conspicuous by being too difficult. He thought of the line from
Hamlet
, Act 3 Scene 2, the play his seminar was discussing that night. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” James said aloud. Gertrude was complaining about the queen in the play within the play meant to represent her own mean deeds. James was complaining about the vampire books when he was afraid others would see…

“I think the vampire class is a great idea.”

“Timothy…” James looked around to be sure no one else was close enough to hear, then shook his head at the dark-haired boy. “First of all,” he whispered, “you should know better than sneaking up on me, and second of all, it’s rude to listen in on conversations behind closed doors.”

“I didn’t sneak up on you since I was here first, and I can’t turn my hearing off, and neither can you.”

“That’s true enough,” James said. “I’m surprised you think the class is a good idea. Last year you were ready to tear Levon’s throat when he said how he didn’t like vampires.”

“That’s why this class is a good thing. It’ll show people how everything they know about vampires is based on myths and legends.”

“The class isn’t about outing vampires. Those myths and legends are the basis for most vampire literature.”

“I know.” The elevator opened and they stepped inside. Timothy looked thoughtfully at the doors as they closed, and James could see some idea forming within the boy.

“That’s it!” Timothy shouted. His black eyes widened, the smile brightening his young-looking features, and he grabbed James’s arm, nearly pressing James into the steel wall in his enthusiasm. “People should know the truth about vampires!”

James shook his head. “We’ve had this conversation before. People won’t understand…”

“Listen! I’ll write a book about what it’s really like to be a vampire! I’ll write about my life, about the car accident where my parents died, how the vampire man bit me, how I was turned, how you and Howard found me and helped me. What a great part of the story, how this werewolf adopted a vampire boy! I’ll write about how it’s hard because I’m eighteen but still look like a kid.”

“Timothy…”

“No, wait—here’s the thing: I’ll say it’s a
novel
. I’ll pretend it’s
fiction
. I’ll make up names and everything. This way I can be honest about my life but not have to worry about being discovered. But at least there’ll be a true vampire story out there, something based on reality instead of that
Dracula
garbage.”

The elevator door opened and Timothy skipped away, through the library to the campus outside. James shook his head, thinking it might not be such a bad idea. At least Timothy didn’t look depressed anymore.

Sarah stood on the corner of Lafayette, staring at the skeleton-like scaffold of the new library building. The night lights were on, and workers with their hardhats in their hands wandered past. The cranes stopped. The only movement came from the students moving to and from their classes.

“Hey, Mrs. Doctor Wentworth.”

Sarah saw Jennifer standing a few feet away in the parking lot. She walked around the orange construction cones to hug her friend.

“How are you feeling?” Sarah asked. “The library isn’t the same without you.”

“I’m better. I’m back at work tonight.”

“I thought you were playing hooky. I thought maybe you ran off with Chandresh.”

Jennifer smiled coyly. “I really was sick, but,” she giggled like a teenage girl, “I did see Chandresh.”

“Did you?”

“He came over to take care of me. He made me a potion his father used to make to cure people when they had influenza.”

“Did it work?”

“It’s not the same formula I use for healing, but I’m better. See?”

Jennifer spun around like a fashion model on a runway to show how healthy she felt. She looked at the skeleton frame and nodded. “Isn’t it beautiful? We’re going to have a library to beat even Harvard.”

“It’ll be a lot of work moving in,” Sarah said.

Jennifer smiled. “We can have your strong husband and my strong boyfriend help.”

Sarah looked toward Meier Hall, wondering if James had arrived. They walked to the U-shaped building and looked through the first-floor window of his Monday night classroom, but it was dark inside. “He must be in his office,” she said.