Revenant Rising (24 page)
Underway again, Bemus produces the directions Laurel wrote on a page from her little notebook. “Here,” he hands it to Colin, “call out my next exit. We’re not supposed to be on the pike very long.”
Caught up in examining the precise way she forms her letters and numbers, he almost causes them to miss the exit. From there on he concentrates on symbols instead of symbolism. With help of the landmarks and signposts she specified, they reach the park entrance fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
“Didn’t I tell you traffic would be light and we didn’t have to leave so early?” Bemus grouses.
“I’d rather wait than be late,” Colin says as they enter the Jockey Hollow unit of Morristown National Historical Park with his head swiveling every which way till he sights the designated meeting place. Then he’s grinning like a gypsy with a gold tooth when he spots the grey Range Rover at the far corner of the otherwise empty car park.
The gleam goes out of his grin when they draw closer and see that Laurel Chandler is using the time bought by her own early arrival to catch up on the news. She’s planted in front of the Rover with tabloids spread out on the bonnet for her obvious disapproval. They come to a stop close by. Colin does not immediately leap out of the Jaguar as was his first inclination. She alerts to their presence, turns to confront them wearing a grave expression that says she has seen it all. His inclination now is to tell Bemus to keep the motor running.
“I’m sorry,” she says when he gets out of the car. “I made a mistake,” she goes on when he steps forward to offer a proper greeting.
He retreats a step or two, braces to hear her resign the commission on the spot, and see her accelerate out of the car park and out of his life in a spray of gravel. Instead, she paces a short distance away, then back again.
“By the very act of being, I am perceivable,” she says, reprising the pacing. “As are you . . . and you.” She takes dramatic pause on the return to point a finger at him, then at Bemus who has now braved his way into the action.
“I was naïve to think I could somehow control public perceptions, especially the ones conditioned by
this
kind of crap.” She holds up one of the tabloids and pokes it hard enough to make a hole. “People will believe what they want to believe, what is convenient and entertaining to believe, and no number of bodyguards and no amount of high-minded intentions will change that.” The pacing’s now down to just three steps in either direction with her delivery cranked up to passionate. “The best defense—the
only
defense—is to be true to oneself, guard that truth within and without oneself, persist in demonstrating that truth regardless of how it’s. . . .” She falls silent, leaves off pacing and regards them with eyes gone wide and unblinking. “Oh . . . my . . . god, what
am
I doing?”
“Making some rather valid observations, I’d say,” Colin answers.
“I only meant to say I was sorry for being so mistaken and I . . . I got carried away.”
“That’s your interpretation, not mine,” Colin says. “I very much like what you said about perceptions—that by the mere act of existing we inevitably expose ourselves to the perceptions of others—the sort of perceptions not always based on truth, if I understand you correctly.”
“You do,” she says,” but the concept is hardly profound.”
“Useful to keep in mind, though,” Colin says.
“We were talkin’ about truth on the way here,” Bemus says. “If anything said about you in those rags is untrue, Colin’ll be glad to bring action.”
“I’m afraid the rags are too smart for that, Bemus.” She starts gathering up the newspapers. “There’s no sure way to prove that printing mouthpiece as two words instead of one was not a typo, and it’s pure conjecture to suggest that I’m unable to condemn one element of the music business without denouncing the entire industry as a whole. My inheritance is a matter of public record, as is my place of residence. My place of business is no secret either, so really, what’s the damage here other than being the subject of some sleazoid titillation? Only a day or two ago I heard myself wrongly described as babe flesh, so I guess I can stand to be wrongly portrayed as consort to a rock star.” She sounds only half as convincing as when she was going on about perceivability, and that could be because she’s addressing Bemus instead of him. Or, more likely, because his worries are growing like weeds.
She folds the papers together and Bemus offers to dispose of them in a dustbin on the other side of the car park.
“You can give him the day off if you wish,” she says whilst Bemus is out of earshot. “I’m certain you won’t be accosted here and I have no problem with returning you to the city at the end of the session . . . Oh, he won’t think I’m displeased with the way he handled things yesterday, will he?”
“Never enter his mind,” Colin says.
Given word of his early dismissal, Bemus is quite within reason to ask for assurances about alternate means of transportation, access to phone service, the general availability of park rangers, and the potential for ravening hordes to show up on a nippy early spring morning at the tail end of the workweek. He then disappoints by asking, “What’s Nate gonna say about this?”
“Nothing. Not unless you tell him, and we
know
that won’t happen, will it?” Colin flickers a warning scowl. “Off you go, then.”
The instant Bemus leaves the car park, Laurel takes charge, leading the way to the visitor center, where she insists on paying the admission fee and reviewing with him on a wall map the ground they’ll be covering today.
“I’ve been here numerous times and I still like to refresh my mind. The route I’m most familiar with combines portions of three trails and comes out to a little over five miles. How does that sound?”
“Brilliant,” Colin overstates.
“I estimate it’ll take three hours to go that distance at a moderate pace, bringing us back here a little after one o’clock. That work for you?”
“Anathing you say works for me.” He says too much without her seeming to notice.
“Ready?” Laurel indicates the direction they’ll be taking from the visitor center. “Oh, I should warn you, we’ll encounter standing water and a few muddy areas after yesterday’s rain.” She inspects his footwear no less critically than David did and nods her approval. She similarly scrutinizes and approves his leather bomber jacket. “You’ll be glad you’re dressed warmly, it’ll be cooler on the trail.”
She snaps closed the puffy insulated vest she’s wearing over a bulky Columbia University sweatshirt. Nothing to see there, but when she leads the way to the starting point, it’s apparent her jeans fit in all the right places. Her rubberized moccasins are sensible—downright ugly they are, and a far cry from the delicate high-heeled shoes he’s envisioning.
“I think we have an extraordinary day ahead of us,” she says over her shoulder, compelling his gaze to follow the finger she’s pointing at a sky filled with clear-blue promise. And more. More now that the entire universe has shifted with Bemus’s departure.
The trail widens, they go shoulder to shoulder. He saturates himself with her presence as she identifies the trees they pass; he drinks in the fine details of her left ear, the origins of the tendrils that have escaped her hair fastener, the way she licks her lips now and then whilst rhapsodizing about the trees.
The sheer pleasure she takes in her surroundings keeps him from drowning in her altogether, and alerts him to the importance of what she’s saying as well as the way she’s saying it. A bit more self-discipline allows him to register that the stands of old-growth trees do remind of the Kentish countryside, as David foretold, and that the understory is dense with dogwood not yet in bloom, as Nate sourly predicted.
“If I recall correctly, there are close to a hundred species of birds, perhaps as many as twenty species of mammals, and more than three hundred species of trees to be found here,” Laurel enthuses. “At risk of repeating myself, I love the forest trees most of all—black locust, tulip poplar, oaks, and hickory—and any kind of beech tree is a special favorite.”
At an overlook to several acres of cleared land, she hesitates. “I know my priority’s skewed and yet I always lament the hundreds and hundreds of acres of trees Washington’s soldiers had to chop down in order to build shelters during the encampment of 1780. I know it’s the winter soldiers—in every sense of the term—I should feel sorriest for, not the trees.
Pensive she is, then a bit tentative when she commences murmuring:
“
These are the times that try men’s souls . . . The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country . . . But he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered . . . Yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
.”
She stops to clear her throat, giving him the chance to take over. He carries on in hushed tones matching hers:
“
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly . . . It is dearness only that gives every thing its value . . .Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its
goods . . .
and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated
.”
When she gets round to looking at him, her expression’s gone beyond surprise; she looks worried, actually.
“I wasn’t expecting . . . that.”
“You weren’t expecting me to know the Byron either.”
“No, I wasn’t, even though Lord Byron was one of your countrymen. And I certainly wasn’t expecting you to know Thomas Paine, a turncoat from your standpoint.”
“I hope you don’t think we Brits ignore the writings of Thomas Paine just because he went to the other side. Give us a break, Laurel. We may have lost the colonies, but we gave up being pissed about it a bloody long time ago,” he says with enough mock seriousness to get a little smile out of her before they move on.
“In all fairness,” he continues, “I should admit I never read Paine myself. Whilst I was . . . unplugged, that passage was read to me over and over by my great friend, Rayce Vaughn. The sole emphasis was on the lesson about esteeming too lightly what we’ve obtained too cheaply, and that fit right in with his and everybody’s effort to get me back on my feet and keep me there.”
“I see,” she acknowledges and steps over a puddle. “My father read to me a lot,” she goes on after a bit. “He was a literature professor, so I heard a lot more Emerson and Longfellow than I did the Grimm brothers or Hans Christian Anderson. During the first few months after my mother died he wasn’t always up to doing the same for my younger brothers, so I filled in.”
“How old were you when your mother passed away?”
“I was twelve. She died giving birth to my sister, Emily. My brothers were five and three, the ages when children most need to be read to and encouraged to read on their own.”
“Did you read them poetry or did you let faerie stories creep into the mix?”
“I tried reading from
Hiawatha
one time and they liked the sounds of the Indian names—Gitche Gumee, Opechee, Mudjekeewis—much as you describe your little one’s response to catchy words, but that’s as far as the poetry reading went. After that I had to depend on the small library of children’s books we had on hand or on my father, once he felt up to inventing stories for them.” She sidesteps another puddle and brushes a stray wisp of hair off her forehead. “I should interject here that after our mother’s death, we had financial constraints and books considered frivolous were not in the budget. We weren’t allowed to take them from the library either.”
“Your
father
imposed this rule?”
“Heavens no, he’d never have done a thing like that. It was my grandmother’s rule, my maternal grandmother, the only grandparent I ever had. But I’m getting ahead of myself. To explain—my father was much older than my mother. He was forty-seven and she was twenty-two when I was born. Both his parents were dead by then and so was my mother’s father. My parents met and fell in love at Fairfield-Douglas University where he was her professor. When they married, it was against my grandmother’s wishes . . . My mother was expected to follow in her mother’s footsteps, complete her postgraduate work at Columbia, join the family law firm, and practice happily ever after. Instead, my mother married young, had four kids, and died young. Grandma never got over it.”