The Reservoir (2 page)

He takes a seat near the back, against the wall. His mind is a blur of images and sounds and fatigue.
O dem golden slippers!
Goddamn it.
Shall we gather at the river
. But why would he be thinking of that song and of his baptism in the pond with his brother so long ago?

“Huh?”

“No appetite after all?” repeats the waiter, a young blade with a curling mustache.

Tommie brings himself back to the world. “Of course I do,” he says. “I just—I’d prefer to take these back to my hotel.” The young man says he’ll box them up in a jiffy, and sweeps the plate away. Tommie wishes he had just paid and left. Now he has to sit and wait, and stare at the mud he’s just noticed on his overshoes. Best not draw attention to himself, he thinks, by cleaning them here.

Then back out into the street, where a boy offers to shine his shoes. Goddamn it all. Tommie smiles and thanks the boy, who touches his finger to his hat. In a quiet eddy of amber gaslight, he stops and wipes the mud off with his handkerchief. Calm yourself, he says inwardly. The boy noticed nothing—he offered to clean my shoes, not my overshoes, and he wouldn’t remember it as unusual anyway. I’ve been seen by scores of people already, and not one noticed me in any particular way. Too bad I haven’t seen somebody I know. Just in case. Might have to prove I was here along Main Street the whole evening.

Back at the Davis House, he greets Mr. Davis with as warm a hello as he has ever given. Davis looks up from his newspaper suddenly, as if he doesn’t recognize the voice. “It’s me, Tommie Cluverius. How are you, Mr. Davis?”

A walrus of a man, Mark Davis nods, his hand going to his large, hairless chin. “You go to the show?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. I went to the afternoon show and liked it so much, I went back again just now.”

“It’s just letting out?”

Why are people so curious about matters that don’t concern them, Tommie wonders. “No,” he says, “I stopped by Morgenstern’s for fried oysters, and had some fixed up for my lunch tomorrow.” He holds up the box. “Could you call for me at five in the morning? I want to catch the early train.”

“Find a young lady to take out?” Not looking as he jots down Tommie’s wake-up time.

Tommie smiles pleasantly. “No, unfortunately not. But I did enjoy the show.”

Mr. Davis leans back in his chair and tells Tommie to have an apple. “You look wide awake,” he says. “Might as well sit and talk a few minutes. Get your mind off your troubles.”

“I don’t have any troubles,” Tommie says, taking the apple. He stands and begins eating it, eyeing Mr. Davis. But the innkeeper appears only to want company.

“What was the show about?” he asks.

“I thought you said you didn’t go in for opera,” Tommie says.

Mr. Davis laughs. “I surely did,” he says. “But I don’t mind hearing the story, if it’s a good one.” Tommie starts in telling him about the French nobleman and the little girl rescued from the sea who becomes his ward. Mr. Davis yawns and asks him if there were any pretty girls in the show. “Yes,” Tommie says, “one or two. A blond and a brunet.”

Mr. Davis perks up. “A blond and a brunet, huh?” He crunches deep into his apple.

“Yes,” Tommie says. “The blond was prettier. Her hair was pulled up off her forehead and hung long in the back. She was a fisherman’s wife. She had a round, pretty face and a loose blouse, low-cut.” Davis licks the juice from his chin and stares into space.

Tommie has a hard time going to sleep that night. His mind is swirling with the events of the day and how they led to the evening and whether he has forgotten to do something crucial that could mean his life is now changed forever. It doesn’t seem possible, none of it does. He says the Lord’s Prayer softly into the darkness and thinks about the play he saw this afternoon, willing himself to believe he went back to the night performance, instead of meeting with
her
at the American Hotel.

He is sound asleep when the bellboy knocks on his door at five past five. He jerks awake, and for a moment he is still Tommie Cluverius, rising young lawyer from King and Queen County, Virginia, not a stain on his name, nor a care in his heart.

• CHAPTER TWO •

P
OLICE
J
USTICE
D
ANIEL
C
INCINNATUS
R
ICHARDSON
is sitting down to his midday dinner when his servant informs him that an officer is calling on an urgent matter. Richardson excuses himself to his wife and daughters and goes to the door. The officer briefs him—white girl found dead at the reservoir, suspected suicide, pregnant, no identification, Dr. Taylor taking the body to the almshouse.

Richardson tells the officer to keep him informed, then closes the door. He strokes his long sideburns, which join to his beard. He has a whalelike forehead, but otherwise handsome, craggy features, with penetrating hazel eyes, and he is possessed of a Lincolnesque stature. “Lord,” he says, shaking his head, then goes back to his dinner. One more year before he retires, and he hopes to God he doesn’t have anything more serious than drunk negroes, knifings, and dead babies to deal with. Running Union blockades off Cape Hatteras was child’s play compared with some of the things he has seen as magistrate. As he sits down he pictures a dead girl in the reservoir and takes a close, loving look at his daughters. To their questions he tells them what he has just heard, leaving out the pregnant part.

“I’ll never go up there again,” his older daughter says. She is thin-faced like her mother, and as cautious.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Richardson replies. “But nobody has any business up there at night.”

“Oh, Daddy,” says the younger, who has his dark coloring and his curiosity about the world, “everybody knows you can get through the fence. They board it up, and the boys pop it back open.”

“Well, you don’t have any business knowing that.”

“I didn’t say I’d done it.”

Richardson gives her a half-stern, half-amused glance and changes the subject to the upcoming cotillion at the governor’s mansion. His wife, silent on the previous subject, now takes over, and when the conversation turns to dresses Richardson mentally drifts away, eating his Saturday roast while thinking of simpler times, growing up by the river, spending whole days fishing and swimming with a companion or by himself.

Late in the afternoon the policeman returns to inform Richardson that a river pilot found a woman’s linen traveling bag floating along the coal docks. It contained women’s underwear and a change of clothes. A pair of underpants had a label bearing the name F. or T. Madison.

Earlier that morning, Tommie Cluverius is on the seven o’clock train heading east toward the rising sun. The scratches on the back of his hand hurt, but, more to the point, they are ugly and very noticeable. What can he say? He somehow caught his hand up in his watch chain getting on the train. Or reaching for the rail as the train lurched on the tracks. Yes, that’s better. He puts his hand in his pocket to see if it’s possible to do such a thing. But, he tells himself, he’s worrying for nothing—no one will notice anything. Now that he has nothing to do for the next hour, he sits there thinking about what he will say when he gets home. This morning he spoke to an acquaintance on the platform, then moved farther down, as though he wanted a car more toward the rear, when in fact he just wanted to avoid speaking. Mr. Davis is the only person he’s had a real conversation with since last night, and he noticed—how did he put it?—that Tommie was wide awake. What did he mean by that? Did he not mean agitated? Scared to death? Because that’s how he felt.

Now he pushes down a rising welter of dread and stares out at the farms flashing by, the cows swishing their tails without a care, the colored boys waving at the crossings. At a stop, he watches an ancient, gray-headed negro patiently repairing a stone fence, while nearby a handful of boys burst from a shack throwing rocks at birds feeding on freshly broadcast seeds. He cannot give in to his exhaustion just yet—he has to be cheerful until he can get back to Aunt Jane’s and get some sleep, or at least try to. He has business on Monday in Tappahannock, which gives him a couple of days to gather his wits. If only there were somewhere to go and hide for a few weeks, until it was safe to come out. Perhaps he should have headed west this morning, and kept going all the way to California. Certainly they could use a young lawyer out there. “Not since the Garden of Eden,” went the real estate ads, “has there been such an opportunity.”

When he arrives in South Point he debarks and heads over to the steamship terminal. His plan was to take the
R. E. Lee
up the Mattaponi to the landing at Clifton, but now he sees a friend at the dock and deviates down to the ferry landing. A few minutes later he’s across the river with his valise and is hiring a buggy to drive him the twelve miles to Little Plymouth. He’ll be home in a few short hours and then he can hide his face from the outside world.

Yet when they pull into the village, the old men sitting on the store porch, thumbs tucked in their overalls, have nothing better to do than holler to every passing vehicle, person, or animal. They’re friends of his father’s, and, in fact, one of them
is
his father. Tommie pays the driver and alights. “I can walk from here,” he says.

“Speak of the devil,” one of the men says. “Your pa was just bragging on you.”

Tommie grins sheepishly and shakes hands all around. And right off his father notices. “What did you do to your hand, son?” he asks.

Tommie glances casually as though he hadn’t noticed a thing. “I don’t know,” he says. “I must have caught it in my watch chain getting on the train. I didn’t notice anything at the time.”

One of the old-timers arcs a stream of tobacco juice across the porch into the dirt. “How’s business, Tommie?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“I’m gonna get me up to Richmond now the weather’s better. Find me a young lady. The wife’s gettin’ old and wore out. ‘Spect I’ll have any luck?”

“If anybody would it’s you, Mr. Taliaferro. You want any help selling that property, you let me know.”

“I will, I will, Tommie, when I get around to it. But if I was a young man like you, I wouldn’t concern myself with business all the time. How’s that lady friend?”

“Nola’s fine.”

“Well, you court her too slow and she’ll be gone. She’s a fine young woman too. Hm mm.” He murmurs appreciatively, the breeze lifting a gray lock.

Tommie’s father takes him aside and asks him to please stop and visit his mother on the way up to Aunt Jane’s. Tommie was planning on going over there later in the day, but he says of course he will. His father’s eyes droop and seem cloudier than the last time Tommie noticed them, his frame more gaunt and hunched, his beard longer and thinner. Since they lost the farm—after losing their youngest son—his parents have steadily declined. But at the same time his father’s spirit seemed to have been let loose, as though taking on the role of the defeated Southern farmer had freed him to become the rocking chair sage he had always wanted to be.

He takes his son’s hand and examines it. “Ask your mama to put some salve on that, son. And get some food while you’re there. She’d love to feed you a meal. Let her fuss over you just a little.”

Tommie promises his father that he will, then takes his leave and turns down the dusty street at the end of which stands the little house his parents moved into when they sold the farm nine years back. Tommie was fourteen then, and he and his brother went to live in their aunt’s farmhouse. His father had sold off bits of their property, before and after the war, just to be able to keep it. He had often reminded his wife that many a man had lost the works, yet she could not help thumbing back through the years to find little weaknesses in his husbandry, a bit of inattention here, a failure to gamble on an opportunity there—a running tally that when one of the “dark spells” came on she could lay at his door, in her mind if not in language, and say, “This is why I’ve come to this pass.”

During the war, there were blue-clad soldiers on the loose, intent on meanness after their Colonel Dahlgren was killed in an ambush. His men came back and burned everything they could set a match to—the courthouse, stores, clerk’s office, even the jail, which made no sense to anybody. But there were good times too in those days. Weeks would go by with no news of anybody hurt or killed, not a hint of war along the Mattaponi. And just the sight of morning dew on the cut cornfield or a twist of smoke from the chimney was enough to make your heart full. Mr. Cluverius would come in for his morning coffee and often as not slip his strong arm around his wife’s waist and tell her there was a new day coming—the farm was going to look better than it ever had, with a wide front porch, maybe a portico with columns and a balcony. She would laugh and shake her head, “I don’t need all that.” But picturing it nonetheless. So what if depredations on the garden were commonplace? Life was still good.

A year after Charles died, Mr. Cluverius hurt his back carrying a sack of grain. He cut back on his workload, and seemed to have less and less desire to get up in the mornings.

Now Tommie’s mother takes her time answering his knock, but then hugs and kisses him and tells him she hasn’t seen him in the longest time. The sweet scents of bourbon and soap issue from her crinkled face. “Just a week, I think,” Tommie says.

“Come in and I’ll get you some dinner,” she says. “Or are you expected at Aunt Jane’s?” It’s an old routine—he’ll eat a little something, even if only some cold biscuits and last year’s canned peaches. It’s just after noon, and though his stomach is gnawing him, the idea of eating anything makes him feel nauseated.

“I am a little bit hungry,” he tells his mother. He sits at the square table in the kitchen and pushes a stack of papers and books out of the way to clear a space. A broom leans against the other chair as though she has been cleaning just now, yet the dust and dirt seem little changed since the last time he was here. The water stain in the ceiling looks bigger.

Tommie’s mother sets a plate of cured ham and applesauce in front of him. “I wish I had some coleslaw to go with it. I know you like it. But I can put a pot of beans on. I just have to light the stove. The wood’s already in there.”

“No, Mama, don’t. This is all I want. I don’t have a taste for beans right now.”

“I have to put them on for your father’s supper anyway. You’re so thin, and you work so hard. Let me just look at you.” She leans back and peers up at him through the half-light. Her hair is still a rich chestnut, her eyes clear and filled with love for her favorite son.

Tommie shakes his head and inquires after her health. She removes a pile of clothes from the other chair and sits down and starts telling him the details of her last bout of illness. “And your father’s joints are mighty cruel to him. I expect it’s rheumatism. The doctor says it’s gout, but look at how thin he is. The liniment is some benefit, but the pills don’t help much.”

Tommie has heard all this before; he picks up a carved wooden object on the table and asks his mother what it is. She laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “Something your brother carved. I think maybe it’s a bear. He says it’s a mythical animal. What do you think it is?”

Tommie studies it a moment. “Could be a boar, or a bear. A mythical object?”

“Willie says he’s taken to carving things when he feels like his mind is wandering away from him. I thought that was a curious thing to say. I don’t think he’s been the same since he broke off with Fannie Lillian.”

Tommie stares at the carved animal. “That was years ago,” he says. “He’s had lots of girls since then.”

“Lillian was what they called her. Wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what they call her.” He does not take his eyes off the figurine, and it seems to him to be changing shape there on the table, sprouting horns and moving toward him. He feels suddenly so tired he can barely keep sitting up.

“What is it, son?”

“What?”

“Looks like something’s bothering you.”

Tommie shakes his head. He flashes to an image—ripples on the dark surface of the water. “No, I’m just a little tired.” He can hear the clanking of heavy machinery. Where?

“Go on back to the bedroom and take a nap. Nobody’ll disturb you.”

Tommie tells her that Aunt Jane is expecting him soon, and his mother smiles sadly. “Thanks, Mama,” he says. He kisses her good-bye and tells her he’ll be around in a few days and that he’ll get Willie to bring her some wood and fix her roof.

When he heads out the bright day has suddenly gone cloudy and cold the way it will in March. It’s a mile up the Trace, along fields and woods, to the turnoff for Cedar Lane; a buggy driver stops and offers him a ride, but he politely declines. He and his mother used to look at catalogues and picture books together and fantasy what it would be like to live in a big city or sail to a foreign capital and visit the castles and museums. He knew he was her favorite, and after Charles died she seemed to become even more attached to him, as though she could make up for the lost love by loving him even more. His brother, Willie, was happier working in the fields with the horses and machinery, but though they had grown to care about different things, Willie never, since the death of their little brother, ceased to take responsibility for protecting Tommie—the hard kernel of guilt born in Willie was countered in Tommie by a sense of unburdened freedom from guilt. Tommie would stand with his brother in the general merchandise store in Ayletts, sucking the sweetness out of a piece of penny candy and staring at the Currier & Ives lithograph of elegant, long-necked ladies with glittering jewels and parasols strolling with fine gentlemen. Since then he had been to balls in Richmond, seen elegant ladies walking dogs on leashes, and patronized saloons and houses of bad repute. But all through law school he dreamed of more—of travels to Washington and New York and beyond, of those dazzling lives he and his mother had imagined were out there waiting for them. His mother had kept her heart young with a stoneware jug her husband kept filled for her. Tommie alone of the family was left to carry out some as yet unfulfilled promise.