He avoided my eyes.
“Oh, Jack,” I said. “Don't be such a fraidy cat. You're starting to sound like Wyatt Earp.”
21
One morning on the last day of October, after leaving Calder sleeping, I descended the stairs from the rented room to the agency, where I busied myself with making tea. I stoked the belly of the cast-iron stove with a few logs, put the kettle on top to boil, and closed the black door and brushed the ashes from my hands.
It was chilly downstairs, and I pulled my robe tight around me and considered what to have for breakfast. Did I want ham with my eggs, or bacon? Then I laughed out loud, because I realized that ham or bacon was the heaviest choice I had to make. My mind was free and my heart was light. The case of the spirit telegraph was now closed, the world had returned to what passes for normal, poisoner Moria was in jail in Marion County and was certain to be convicted, based on the results of the Marsh test, and my personal life was blessedly free of anguish.
It felt so odd to laugh that I self-consciously apologized to Eddie, who was watching unhappily from the bust of Jefferson above the bookcase. I knew he was unhappy because he was stretching his wings in an odd, diagonal manner, and one of his claws was raking the president's plaster hair.
“I know it's not the same,” I said. “But you'll just have to make do until we can find one of Mr. Lincoln. Honestly, I don't know why it would make any difference. It seems to me one dead president's head would be just as good to sit on as another. But no, you must have the Great Emancipator.”
Eddie regarded me with a critical eye, but said nothing in return.
Then there was a knock on the door and the expressman left a package tipped against the front door. Thinking it might be some correspondence or even a remittance from my editor, Garrick Sloane of Boston, I retrieved the package and locked the door behind me. Then I sat at my desk and tore open the brown paper wrapping, and lifted the lid of the box inside.
I gasped.
Nestled inside a mound of cotton was a small brass cylinder, green with age, attached to a skeletal bird's foot.
There was also a letter inside the box.
Ellwood Manor, Virginia
October 14, 1878
Â
Dear Miss Wylde,
Forgive the intrusion, but I believe it appropriate that you have the enclosed. As you will see, it is clearly meant for you. The story of how I came to find it is most surprising, because I awoke from a dream in the small hours before dawn this morning, a dream in which I was searching an owl's nest in an old barn on a corner of our property. Ordinarily, I refrain from such explorations, considering the history of the land here, but something about the dream convinced me that I must immediately go to the barn and search. I did, and, in a swale, found a barn owl's nest, just as it was in my dream, and in the nest, among the bits and bones and debris from decades past, found the enclosed. Having read your books, and knowing your biography, I knew immediately that the message inside was meant for you, and I also knew where in Kansas to direct this package. Allow me to give you some history that may help you understand the context of the message. Ellwood Manor, you see, was used as a field hospital during the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, just a few days after the Battle of Spotsylvania Court Houseâthe battle in which you believe your dear husband, Jonathan, was killed. The home, which was owned by the secessionist Lacy family, was first used as a field hospital by the rebels, then commandeered by the north. My parents, who were the caretakers of the home, had sent me to live with an aunt by the time of the battle. General Grant made his field headquarters nearby, and in the wake of the slaughter the house became a morgue, and the yard, a cemetery.
Afterward, my parents were sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington for the duration of the war. Ellwood Manor was vacant for more than eight years, during which time it fell into disrepair, a home fit only for ghosts and squatters. Recently, however, wishing to reclaim my birthright, I have returned to Ellwood Manor, and live in the caretaker's home with my husband and our daughter, where we have managed to make a life where once there was so much death. Had I returned sooner, however, your message probably would have been delivered earlier.
Strangely enough, my husband, too, is a veteran of the battles here, and we met five years ago, on my first visit back to the estate since my childhood, when he was taking a measure of the once bloody ground. He is away for the week on business, but I am anxious to share the discovery with him, although he is reticent to talk about his experiences during the war, and has a limp as a constant reminder of those bad old times.
As to the unusual method of communication employed, I can only guess that the remains must belong to one of the pigeons infrequently used to relay messages back to the telegraph posts, either by the army or the newspaper correspondents. Perhaps your Jonathan, or someone on his behalf, managed through an especially eloquent plea, or a well-placed bribe, to have your message sent as well. The unlucky bird must have fallen prey to a barn owl, a bad stroke of luck that resulted in the communication being undelivered these fourteen years.
If not for a dream, it would remain undelivered still.
Do not hesitate to call upon me, if I could be of any further service; though our distance is great, I feel we share a special kinship. Until then, I remain your trusted but distant friend.
Very truly yours,
Mrs. Jas. (Catherine Ann) Carter
My hands were shaking as I put down the letter. I picked up the pigeon foot, with the attached brass cylinder, and removed the corroded green cap. Inside was a tightly rolled message.
I teased the brittle paper out of the tube with my fingernails, then carefully unrolled it. At that moment, the teakettle began screaming, adding to the sensation that my nerves had suddenly migrated to the outside of my body. But I could not tend to it until I read the message:
MRS. J WYLDE, WOLF RIVER, MISS
HUSBAND BADLY WOUNDED
SPOTSYLVANIA MAY 13 BUT NOW
RECOVERING FIELD HOSPITAL
EXPECTED TO LIVE SENDS LOVE.
Mechanically, I went to the stove. I flipped up the whistle to silence it, then removed it from the heat. I walked back to the desk, sat down, and read the message once more, and then a dozen times after that. Why, if Jonathan had been expected to survive, had someone been buried under his name there? And what of the bloodstained book of Whitmanâ
Song of Myself
âthat he had carried into battle and that had been returned to me? Had he taken an unexpected turn and died before being able to return home? There were no clues to these mysteries in any of the 115 characters of the message.
For thirteen years, I held trance séances in which I tried to contact his spirit, awaiting the coded message that he had proposed beforehand, which would prove that our love had survived death. It never came.
There was a rattle on the stairs behind me, and Calder descended.
“I heard the kettle,” he said, buttoning his vest.
“Yes,” I said absently. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“Time I was up, anyway,” he said. “I have papers to serve and then there's the matter of Neal Jones, who appears to have skipped on his bond for theft. I may have to make a trip to his dugout in Comanche County to bring him back.”
I packed the skeletal claw and the other things back in the box, and slipped it into the top drawer of my desk. Calder came over and kissed me on the top of the head.
“Sounds like a busy day.”
“Yes, but I have time for breakfast over at Beatty and Kelly's, if we hurry,” he said. “What do you fancy this morning with our eggsâham or bacon?”
“Jack,” I said. “After I finish writing my account of the case of the spirit telegraph, which will take a month or two, I may want to make use of that lifetime railway pass I've earned and go east for a week or two. Take the manuscript in person to my publisher, Mr. Garrick Sloane in Boston. I would like to meet him in person. Would you mind?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “There's plenty here to keep me busy. Unless you'd like some company.”
“I was also thinking of visiting the Spotsylvania Court House and seeing where the battle was,” I said slowly. “I've never been there, and I think perhaps this is a trip I should make alone.”
Calder nodded.
“Are you going to try to find Jonathan's grave?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “No, that's a lie. Yes, that's exactly it.”
Calder thought for moment while he pretended to fix his cuffs.
“Why now?” he asked. “Has something changed?”
I said I didn't know.
“Will you tell me when you do know?”
“Yes,” I said. “Certainly.”
“Well, time is wasting,” he said. “I should be on my way. Join me for breakfast, if you have a mind. Or not.”
Things weren't as simple as ham or bacon any longer.
22
The days passed and winter came. The time was like a waking dream, going every day to my desk downstairs, writing all day, feeling the distance grow between Calder and me, but not knowing what to do about it. Then one day the account was finished and I packed it into a box and bound it with string and boarded the eastbound Santa Fe at the depot.
In less than a week, I was in Virginia.
It was the middle of December.
The trees were skeletal and the sky was pewter. It was cold, not as bone-chillingly cold as the Kansas prairie, but a routine kind of cold that left one numb, with blue lips and clumsy fingers. I had stepped from a coach on the Orange Turnpike to the lane leading up to Ellwood Manor. It was a walk of less than a half mile, and the red two-and-one-half-story manor house with its white portico was easy to spot. This was not my destination, however, and I continued on to one of the many dependent structures, a modest house that was near an orchard.
As I approached, I could see a little blond-haired girl of five or six, swinging on a rope that hung from the branch of a heavy oak. She was bundled in a heavy coat, a scarf and mittens, but her hair followed her parabola like the tail of a golden comet. A woman about my age stood nearby, occasionally giving the girl a good shove, and laughing.
They were sixty yards away. As soon as I stepped up the walk, they were cut off from my view by a corner of the cabin. Knowing it must be Catherine Ann Carter and her daughter, I considered going directly to them, but my hands were cold. Also, I decided it might be considered rude if I did not stop and introduce myself at the house first. I had not told Catherine I was coming, not wanting her to make a great fuss over my visit.
At the door, I placed my bag on the ground and rubbed my hands together to encourage the circulation. Once the feeling had returned, I knocked on the door frame and waited.
The door opened.
“Good morning,” I said. “I'mâ”
Then I had no words.
The man in the doorway was about thirty-seven, with blond hair that was going gray at the temples. He leaned lightly on a cane held in his left hand, and his leg on that side seemed not to be entirely straight. He was neatly dressed, clean shaven, and with familiar blue eyes.
It was, unmistakably, Jonathan.
“Ophelia,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course. But I don't understand.”
I looked at the hand that leaned on the cane. There was a wedding band on his finger.
“You're married,” I said.
“To Catherine,” he said.
“But you can't be,” I said. “You're married to me.”
“That was a lifetime ago.”
“Your voice,” I said. “I had almost forgotten the sound of your voice. I would cry myself to sleep in the dark, trying to recall it. It would come to me in dreams, but I could not remember it when awake. Am I dreaming now?”
“No,” he said, and his guilty eyes looked away.
“How?” I asked. “The book. They sent me the book. They said you were buried in a common grave at Spotsylvania.”
“The fighting at the Shoe,” he said. “Everything got mixed up in the mud and the gore of the trench. I lost the book, and it was found with the corpse of another, whom the federals buried with my name. I was covered in so much carnage, and my uniform was in such tatters, that it was impossible for others to know on which side I had fought, and it was impossible for me to tell them. I was brought here, first. When I had my faculties, I arranged for a message, but it wasâ”
“Lost.”
“Yes, lost,” he said. “Before the federals seized the house, I was removed to a private home in Orange County. It was weeks before I could walk, and months before my health returned. When it did, something had changed in me. My heart had grown cold. I became a wanderer.”
He couldn't have been discharged. That record would have been impossible to conceal.
“You deserted.”
“Yes.”
“That is why you changed your name,” I said. “Carter, of course. Your middle name.”
“They would have thrown me in prison,” he said.
“You were a member of the LaDue Survival Brigade.”
“Officially, I was dead. I was just another wounded rebel.”
“You deserted your army,” I said. “And you deserted me.”
“But I did not plan on hurting you,” he said.
“I waited for you,” I said. “I went through hell trying to get any piece of you that I could, back from the other side. I debased myself and was made a fool and made a fool of others. I held séances every year on the anniversary of your deathâon the anniversary of what I thought was your deathâand waited for the coded message, which of course never came.”
“J'attends ma femme.”
I await my wife.
Hearing him utter those words, my knees grew weak and I would have fallen to the ground had not Jonathan caught me in his right arm. He smelled the way I remembered, and that made me want to die upon the spot.
“Did you not love me?”
“I wanted to.”
I pushed him away and regained my footing.
“Please,” he said. “Don't tell Catherine Ann. It would destroy her.”
“And is it so much better that I have been destroyed?” I asked. “I was fourteen years old when I married you, and a widow a year later, and I have spent most of my life begging whatever deity who would listen to allow me to see you just one more time. That's all I asked, was to see you one more time. Oh, the things I have offered in trade for that . . . the kinds of bargains I made.”
I stopped.
“This is the price,” I said, thinking of Granny Doom. “My sense of myself, built upon a cherished and jealously guarded lie.”
I picked up my bag.
“You're a bigamist, Jonathan,” I said. “And that's the least of it.”
“Please,” Jonathan said. “It was so long ago. Can't you forgive me?”
I smiled.
“No,” I said. “And I can't forgive myself, either. This wasn't even all that good of a mystery. But the clues were there, all along. All of those desperate séances, with no contact. And Catherine's letter. If only I had read a little more deeply, but I was too distracted by the thought that you could be, somehow, alive.”
He smiled sadly.
“But I did survive.”
“I did not,” I said. “It broke me. And now I'm broken all over again.”
I picked up my bag, turned, and walked back up the lane to the Orange Turnpike without once looking back. But I did not cry. My emotions had been stripped as bare as the trees lining the road.