The Deserter (20 page)

But Eben did not appear. Ida was unaware that she had missed him. She did not know that he had gone straight to the hotel and asked for her. Nor did she know that the proprietor, Jesse Kenney, had been drunk that day, so dead to the world that his place at the desk had been taken by his prim and proper wife, who had not been informed that a woman in a very shocking condition was sharing a room with that tawdry actress Lily LeBeau.

But Jesse himself was at the desk when Lily said good-bye and put a greenback on the counter. “This is to pay for my room for the next two weeks. Now Jesse, take good care of my friend.”

Jesse was surprised. “You're leaving, Lily dear?”

Lily leaned forward with her charming smile and whispered, “Hush, Jesse, she's not supposed to know. The dear child's eight months gone. I hope to God she'll have the sense to go home.”

Jesse winked and nodded and watched Lily flow out of the hotel with hatbox and carpetbag, a tall colored porter wheeling her trunk behind her.

Ida was at the station, continuing her vigil for Eben, when Lily appeared on the platform and climbed aboard a waiting train.

For a moment Ida was too astonished to think. But then, dismayed, she ran to the stationmaster. “That train, quick, quick, can you tell me where it's going?”

“That train, ma'am?” The stationmaster was a dignified old gentleman. “That there train is heading for Washington, D.C. If you intend to behold the greatest city ever seen by mortal eyes, you better get on board toot sweet.”

Once again Ida did not falter. Without stopping to regret the valise she had left behind in the hotel, she pushed through a thick crowd of soldiers and ran clumsily to the last car on the train. A porter was just lifting the metal step, but he lowered it again when she called out, “Oh, sir, please wait,” and then helped her aboard.

The steam whistle shrieked, and the great wheels began to move. Ida lurched into the car and found a seat. The painful truth had struck her like a thunderclap. Seth was not recovering his health in the peace and quiet of the country. He was in Washington, and Lily was on her way to join him.

Ida's seat was on the wrong side. Therefore she did not see her brother Eben on the platform, moving with the rest of his company in a slow tide toward another long line of cars.

Now that he had joined up, Eben did not need cash anymore, so with the last of the money his mother had given him he had bought an enormous horse pistol and stuck it in his belt. He had seen pictures of dashing Union soldiers decked out like that, sometimes with two pistols crossed over their chests.

There were a thousand men on the platform, edging forward little by little, waiting to board the train, funneling slowly into the cars. In the middle of the crush Eben was shoulder-to-shoulder with a first lieutenant in his company. The lieutenant looked down at him and backed away in terror. “Oh, by Jesus, will you look at the boy! He's got a gigantic firearm. He'll surely kill us all.”

Eben laughed, but he guessed that the pistol was a mistake. He should have bought a squirrel gun, because that was a weapon he knew how to use.

PART XV

THE CONCORD
ROSEBUD

A TRIFLE FISHY

T
he Theatre Collection was right across the hall from the Harvard Archives library. Through the glass door, Homer could see Mary at one of the tables. She looked up as he approached and pushed back her chair. Buzzed outside, she came running up to him, flapping her papers and whispering, “Oh, Homer, such discoveries.”

“Well, let's amaze each other over lunch. I could eat a yellow dog. Nothing so weakens the human frame as scholarly research. Well-known scientific fact.”

The passage of time had swept away their favorite eateries in the square, Elsie's Lunch, the Wursthaus and Grendel's Den. So they had to make do with a chic little place on Church Street. The modish ingredients in the salads and sandwiches were elaborately described on the menu. Mary chose a mysterious salad of apricot couscous, shaved jicama and mango puree wrapped in prosciutto, Homer a puzzling dish featuring anchovies, Gorgonzola, sun-dried tomatoes and brandied lentils. With the waiter hovering over him, he studied the wine list and said, “Let's have some of this Shiraz.”

“A bottle?” suggested the waiter.

“Certainly,” said Homer grandly while Mary fumbled her notebook out of her bag.

The waiter hurried away, returned with the bottle, extracted the cork, and threw up his arm like a pianist flinging out an arpeggio.

Mary grinned and held up her glass. “Pricey, very pricey. Will you start, or shall I?”

“Me,” said Homer. “Listen to this. There's a set of memoirs about all the Harvard men who died in the war. You know, the ones whose names are on the tablets. That nice librarian took them right off the shelf and handed them to me.”

“Oh, yes, Angelica Doyle, she's great.” Mary sipped her wine and laughed. “Memoirs, of course. All those fellow soldiers, naturally they wrote memoirs about their heroic friends. Oh, good for you, Homer. We should have thought of it before.”

Their oddly assorted plates appeared, and they tucked into them like good sports.

“So I looked up Otis Pike,” said Homer, “and he was there all right, among all the other men from the class of 1860 who died in the war.”

“Like Mudge,” said Mary. “Oh, just wait till I tell you. No, never mind. Carry on.” She looked at the pink object on her fork and popped it into her mouth.

“What's more,” said Homer dramatically, “I found his picture. Look at this.”

Mary stared at it. “But we've seen him before. Surely he's the man in the top hat.”

“I think so too. So the man in the top hat, the one who wrote the letter to his sweetie pie—remember the fan letter we found in the inside pocket of the coat?—you said he couldn't possibly be your ancestor, and you were right. He's Otis Pike.”

“Well, I'm glad my great-great-grandfather wasn't two-timing my great-great-grandmother.” Mary munched her sandwich and gazed at the amiable young face of Otis Pike. “But what on earth was Pike doing with a picture of Seth's wife Ida? She doesn't fit with that blowzy lady in satin rompers at all. Surely a respectable girl like Great-Great-Grandmaw wouldn't have been to the taste of a man like Pike, not if he liked his women fat and winsome like that lady in tights.”

“Well, for Christ's sake,” said Homer, “adultery isn't exactly a recent invention.”

It was an unfortunate remark, because not very long ago there had been a lapse from conjugal fidelity on the part of his wife. Embarrassed, Homer tried to pour another glass of wine and managed to knock it off the table. “Oh shit,” he said, jumping up and moving his chair. “I'm sorry.”

The waiter rushed up with paper towels and got down on his knees. His back looked unforgiving. “I could order another bottle,” suggested Homer brightly.

“No, no, Homer,” said Mary, “don't be silly. Here, you can finish mine.” She smiled apologetically at the waiter. “Coffee! We'll both have coffee.”

“Mary dear,” said Homer, “it's your turn now.”

“Oh, Homer, I found such wonders.” She was dizzily triumphant. “It matches, it all matches.” She scrabbled in her notebook. “Look at these. They're Hasty Pudding playbills.” She put a photocopy on the table and tapped her finger on a name.

Homer read it, then looked up, astonished. “Seth Morgan, the Concord Rosebud? Your great-great-grandfather, he was playing a rosebud?”

“Oh, Homer, they were all just being silly. Hasty Pudding has always been like that. They were just having fun. But go ahead, read the rest of it.”

Homer studied the playbill. “Fairy Bell and the Female Smuggler, we've seen them before. And also the Young Scamp.”

“Of course we have. They were in that strange letter in Otis Pike's coat, the one addressed to Otis. It was signed ‘The Concord Rosebud,' remember, Homer? ‘In the name of Fairy Bell, the Young Scamp and the Female Smuggler, don't do it again.'”

Homer thought about it. “So it was a letter from your great-great-grandfather Seth Morgan, pleading with Otis, reminding him about Fairy Bell, who was really … um, Steve Driver, and the Female Smuggler, who was really Charley Mudge, and the Young Scamp, who was—wait a sec—Stephen Weld.”

Silently Mary pointed to four lines in the middle of the playbill.

“Aha, I see. ‘
This Highly Acclaimed and Abominable Libretto Is the Frightful and Extraordinary Work of That Illustrious Knight of the Inkwell, Sir O. Pikestaff
.'” Homer looked up and grinned. “Our Otis again, the knight of the inkwell. He must have written all this sophomoric silliness.”

“I don't know whether to be glad or sad that they were having so much fun prancing around in women's clothes and singing hilarious songs, with no idea at all about what was going to happen to them.”

“Of course not,” said Homer. “It was 1860. The war hadn't started yet.”

“So they had no idea that two of them were going to die only three years later at a little town in Pennsylvania—the Knight of the Inkwell and the Female Smuggler. It seems so sad. But I suppose it's a good thing they had fun while they could.”

“Of course it is. So why not be glad?”

“Let me see that memoir again,” said Mary, “the one about Otis Pike.”

As Homer handed it over, a shadow fell on the table. It was the waiter. In glacial tones he inquired if they would like dessert.

“Uh-oh.” Mary looked around and saw a crowd of waiting customers glowering at their empty coffee cups. “No, no, we're finished. Come on, Homer.”

So she had to read the memoir for Otis Pike on the sidewalk. The weather had gone downhill. Mary did her best to shield the pages from the rain while avoiding the umbrellas bobbing along Church Street and swarming around the theater.

“It's interesting,” she said, batting at the paper, “this passage about being chastised three times for leaving the ranks. What does that mean, leaving the ranks?” She looked up at Homer. “Doesn't it mean deserting? So when Seth told Otis not to do it again, wasn't he warning him not to desert again?”

“Maybe.” Homer mopped his wet hair. “If so, then the letter worked, because instead of deserting, Otis was killed. What does it say about that?” He bent over the damp page. “…
in the very forefront among his gallant classmates … farthest forward in the field
.”

The subway entrance was a refuge from the rain. Thumping down the steps, they wrestled with the oddities surrounding the person of Otis Pike.

Mary put it into words as they dropped their tokens in the slot and bumped through the turnstile. “It was Seth who wrote the warning letter,” she said dreamily as they walked up the ramp to the outgoing trains. “And yet he's the one who is supposed to have been the deserter.”

“Fishy,” said Homer, “it's just a trifle fishy.”

THE
SCRAPBOOK

T
hereafter, they scuttled this way and that, following one lead after another.

“Brown,” said Angelica Doyle, “that's what you need, Professor Kelly. Francis Brown's roll of Harvard students in the Civil War.”

“Call me Homer,” said Homer. “You say there's a roll of students? But I've already got the memoirs.”

“No, no. This is a list of all the men who were in the war, not just the ones who died.”

“Oh, I see.”

Opening the roll of students, Homer understood at once that Francis Brown had been one of those diligent record keepers whose labors are of so much more value than those of geniuses in the literary line—writers and historians and stuck-up professors like, for example, himself.

ROLL
OF
STUDENTS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
WHO SERVED IN THE
ARMY OR NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES
DURING THE WAR OF THE REBELLION.
PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CORPORATION,
BY
FRANCIS H. BROWN, M.D.
CAMBRIDGE:
WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
1866.