Leon Uris (13 page)

“And Emily, hidden away for none to see?”

Daisy sagged. “We won’t talk about your sister.”

Amanda arose deliberately and began to walk off.

“You’d be a fool to underestimate this man. He’ll stop you. He’ll stop anyone. The way your father adores you, he’ll destroy you before he lets you go, even if it means he must destroy himself in the process. Do you hear me, for God’s sake?”

“I hear you.”

“Hang on to this place you’ve won and learn to live in it. Don’t test him. Do not test him!”

•
13
•

Something tickled Zachary’s nose. His hand rubbed it as he opened his eyes and yawned. He saw Amanda kneeling over him and smiled.

She had teased him to awakening with a stem of hay. Zach propped on his elbows. He was in the barn of the Inverness stable.

“I wasn’t expecting you to arrive till noon.”

“I got off duty early yesterday. Captain Storm loaned me his chaise. Anyhow, I got here in the middle of the night and didn’t want to make a grand entrance. The guard and his wife invited me to sleep in the gatehouse, but after I got the horse fed and watered, I decided to open a bale and bunk in here.”

“You must be hungry.”

“Always,” he said.

“Are we going to Chesapeake Park?” she asked. “You promised.”

“You got permission?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“Let me grab my pack and clean up.”

Zach followed her to a kitchen as large as the one in his barracks. There were several servants’ tables, according to rank. A platter arrived with a Maryland breakfast, including fried chicken. “Sawyer will show you to the washroom. I’ll be back in a bit.”

He could not eat the platter clean. Zach gave off a happy stretch and followed the servant to a washing room and showers.

Zach returned to the kitchen and saw Amanda waiting at one of the tables with a black girl, of her age, sitting beside her, and assumed she was a member of the household staff. On closer look, the girl was dressed in a lovely way, with a stunning hairdo and a smart little bonnet perched on her head. She was altogether quite pretty.

“I want you to meet Willow Fancy,” Amanda said. “You heard me speak about her.”

Zach caught his bearings instantly, smiled and held out a hand gallantly. “Very pleased to meet you, Miss Fancy,” he said, and slipped onto the bench opposite them.

“Willow is my best friend,” Amanda said. “She was dying to meet you. Isn’t he gorgeous?” she asked as she turned to Willow.

Zachary blushed and became shy.

They made a half hour of banter, enough for Zach to realize that Willow was obviously educated and extremely well spoken. And finally . . .

“Zach, I had your chaise cleaned and your horse put out to pasture for the day. He might as well roll around and get a grooming later.”

“That’s nice.”

“Then off we go,” Amanda said.

Zachary felt a moment’s clumsiness, realizing Willow could not be asked to join them, but clearly the two girls had many such awkward moments and handled them with ease, embracing and bussing cheeks.

“He is gorgeous,” Willow whispered.

* * *

Down Butcher’s Hill they rode, pulled by a magnificent Hambletonian trotter. They skirted the docks, then went bayside until they were lured by the siren call of a calliope belching out “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and soon smelled the mixed aromas of bratwurst and popcorn through the archway which announced chesapeake park.

Zach excused himself and unhitched the horse and tied him in a reasonable stall, helped park the carriage, and spoke to the attendant, who held up his hands and scraped and bowed.

“Goodness, what did you tell him, Zach?” Amanda asked.

“I told him I’d better get the same horse back,” Zach answered.

Zach had never seen Amanda’s eyes so wide and sparkly. She squeezed his hand as they made their way down the midway.

Hawkers and balloons and cotton candy and windmills whirled on sticks and they tripped through the fun house and clung through the haunted house and then the house of mirrors. Amanda shrieked as she matched friends and family to the distortions.

“This one is Father!” she cried at the huge long head and stubby body.

Now a wiry, moose-jawed image. “Gunny Kunkle about to run us through ankle-deep mud!”

They skipped the freak show but were awed by fire-eaters and knife throwers and jugglers. The magician was awesome.

Zach wasted three nickels trying to knock down a pyramid of iron milk bottles with softballs. And another two nickels were blown to beat the man guessing their weight. They each sat in the weighing chair. The barker guessed them right on, as his little hidden foot pedal froze the chair at 170 for Zach and 119 for her.

“Too bad, Marine, better luck next time.”

“I’m really much lighter,” Zach whispered to her.

“So am I,” she said.

They rode the carousel, she on a unicorn and he on a fiery
dragon. He collected a brass ring on the third ride, to win her a baby doll.

Any Marine would have to step up in manly fashion, doff his jacket, take the heavy, long-handled mallet, and try to pop a weight up the scale to hit the gong. After three “ughs,” Zach gave up.

“Ohhh,” moaned a gathered crowd.

“Little lady?”

Amanda whacked the treadle and the bell bonged. The man gave her a chirping toy canary on a stick.

“Rigged,” Zach grumbled.

On they went down the midway, blowing a dollar and thirty cents, a deep whack in a month’s pay, but Zach had come prepared to spend! When hunger overtook them they devoured mutton on a stick, licked their fingers clean, and settled for a moment to enjoy sarsaparilla-flavored ice cones, which dripped through the thin paper cup.

“Sure is messy!” Amanda said, her hair bouncing in concert with her mood. “How many girls have you brought here?”

“None.”

“Oh . . . boo!”

“Well, none here. There’s the Riverside Park in Washington. It’s kind of a hangout for the guys at the barracks.”

“And a place to pick up girls,” she prodded.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but never anyone like the one who is with me now.”

“Zach,” she cooed, and kissed his cheek.

“How many times have you been here?” he asked.

That quickly, Amanda’s mood turned somber. She shook her head no, took a breath, and said, “We pass this on the way to Father’s shipyard. I begged him to take me and he finally broke down. Unfortunately I was dressed like a princess going to a coronation. Chesapeake Park was much simpler then. A pleasure garden. As we passed and people passed us, the gaiety around us seemed to become subdued. I realized Father’s Pinkertons, detec
tives from the yard, were trailing us to guard us, and men began tipping their hats and saying ‘Evening, Mr. Kerr,’ and the women curtsied and everyone sort of moved away from us. Even the house of mirrors wasn’t funny.”

An evening breeze off the bay was blessedly warm and tender.

“And?” Zach asked.

“Despite it all, there was enough wonderment here to want to come back and I asked to bring Willow. Zach, I was only six or seven and had been completely shut off and sheltered from everyday people and public glances. It was my first lesson in the world of black and white.”

“I didn’t really mean to . . .”

“No, let me finish. Negro servants were such a part of what was normal in my life, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t bring Willow.

“After that,” she went on, “Father would hire a carnival or small traveling circus complete with a merry-go-round and bring it to Inverness. Of course Father fixed all the con games, and the prizes handed out were magnificent. I threw mine away.”

Her sour memory evaporated when the band started the evening concert at the big gazebo. Zach and Amanda stretched out on the lawn near the benches with a hundred other couples, who were soon in the mood to spoon. Neither of them had ever felt closer to anyone than they felt at this moment.

When a medley of John Philip Sousa’s marches was played with spirit, it made Zach feel grand. He sat up and clapped in time and then offered her his lap as other spooning couples did, and Amanda put her head on it and he touched her hair and traced her face with fingertips feeling of down until her breath became so uneven she had to hold his hand still, lest she cry aloud with joy.

Later she gave her lap to him and both groaned beneath their breath.

The concert ended with a thumping “Stars and Stripes Forever” as the bay mellowed up for the evening. He tugged her gently to
her feet. Nighttime was coming. Chesapeake Park glowed with a merry mixture of a thousand gas lanterns and electric lights.

They strolled, just another pair of sweethearts, and stopped at the tunnel of love. The waiting line seemed endless, but their patience was not. They wanted some moments alone. The song from another calliope caught their attention and soon they were standing before the first Ferris wheel in Maryland, only the third in the entire country. It had been in the background all day, but now it loomed and seemed to be a thousand feet high, lifting open seats into a giant circle in the sky.

Amanda felt Zach’s hand go moist with sudden sweat and his lips paled. The wheel stopped for another couple, and another, leaving those on top dangling and swaying.

“We don’t have to go on it,” she said.

“Yes, we do,” he answered.

The attendant clicked the bar over their seat and the great wheel zoomed up counterclockwise, hurling them into space.

Now, over the top their chair went, and they could look down to the blizzard of lights and hear the cacophony of sounds of girls’ screams and barkers’ beckoning and the croaky toots of the calliope.

As they started to come down, the Ferris wheel stopped and their seat swung hard, as another couple was loaded on below . . . move a bit, stop and wait as another couple . . . and another . . .

She looked at him and she was alarmed by what she saw. Zachary was not quite together with things, his face glistening and his hands holding the bar in a death grip.

“Zach!” she cried.

He did not hear.

Any man who had been a Marine sergeant could read trouble on another man’s face. One of the nice parts about living with Zachary
was that he rarely showed such feelings. On this occasion the boy was giving off a telltale signal. Something had been gnawing at him for several days.

It was deep into the night, heading for three o’clock. Paddy sat on a bar stool opposite Zach, who was clearing the cash register.

“What’s on?” Paddy asked.

Zach tried to weasel out, but to no avail.

“I’m confronting a problem.”

Paddy leaned over the bar, poured himself a mug, and waited for Zach to unfold his words.

“I dream I’m falling and try to reach for a hand to grab me, but it’s never there. It happens all the time now, every night.”

Paddy grunted. “How much do you remember about getting stuck out on the fire escape?”

“It’s only been spoken of in drifts and whispers. I don’t really know.”

“You was three and a half, living with Brigid up on the fourth story, and you crawled out on the fire escape. The counterweight rope broke and the window slammed shut. You remember any of it?”

“Not truly.”

“We always thought it best, me and Brigid, not to talk about it in front of you. Anyhow, you was hanging on to the rail screaming and she busted the glass to get to you, but you wouldn’t let go, so she wrapped her arms around you and hung until the fire laddies coaxed you in. We should have spoken to you, but you were pretty much a tough kid and I figured you’d outgrow it.”

Zach snapped rubber bands around the stacks of bills, placed them in a sack and into the safe.

“After my last birthday, I realized that given another year or so, I’d be sworn into the Corps. If I can’t go up a ship’s mast, I can’t be a Marine, Da. I’d disgrace you, and the Corps as well.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!” Paddy growled.

“For the plain and simple reason that I saw how you came down on men who were afraid, because you were the one man
in the world who had no fear. And you couldn’t stand fear in others.”