The Reservoir (9 page)

The rest of the short-lived meal is eaten in near silence, ending abruptly when Richardson slips his watch from his pocket and announces that they should be leaving.

“I’ll just go up and get a few things,” Tommie says.

“You don’t mind if Mr. Birney goes up there with you?” Richardson asks.

“Not at all. Come on, Mr. Birney,” he sings out, “you can help me pick out my traveling kit. Don’t worry, Aunt Jane, I won’t be taking much, because I won’t be gone long.”

Aunt Jane tries to give Richardson a five-dollar bill for the trip, but Richardson dismisses her firmly. “Ma’am, the commonwealth of Virginia takes care of our expenses.”

“Very well,” she says, straightening her spine, “I’ll give it to my nephew.”

Tommie comes down and reaches into the vestibule closet for his overcoat. Seeing mud on the one he wore in Richmond, he opts instead for a reversible coat, light on one side, dark on the other. He picks up his low-crowned gray slouch hat, but when Willie sees him fingering a tear in the crown he brings him one of his own—a brown version of the same hat. Willie leans in and says, “You take care of yourself. I’m going horseback for Mr. Evans right away.” Richardson notes the whispered remarks but cannot make them out.

Aunt Jane hugs him tight, not letting go until he pulls back. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she says. “This makes no sense atall.” He gives her what reassurance he can, and she hands him the five-dollar bill, as well as a twenty-dollar gold piece. She tries to say something, but has to stop and dab her nose with a handkerchief.

“I’ll be home before you know it,” he tells her.

Everything is happening so fast, Tommie thinks there must be something else he should do or say. Richardson has been keeping his eye on him like a sternly disapproving master, watching for any possible slipup, as if he can smell the fear palpable in the room like some desperate, befouled animal. Tommie already feels himself a captive, already knows that strange mixture of terror and relief.

“We’ve got to go,” Richardson says.

And soon they are rolling north along the Trace, the drag’s torchlights casting weird shadows against the dusky woods. Tommie sits beside Mr. Oliver, facing the two officers; through the little window between them he can see the road unwinding back toward where they’ve come. “What evidence do you have against me,” Tommie says, “if I might ask?”

“I’m not allowed to say,” Richardson replies. His face is a death mask, long shadows beneath eye sockets.

“Well, I can tell you now, I was in Richmond over the weekend, but I know nothing about any murder.”

“You knew the episode took place in Richmond.”

“Yes, I saw it in the paper.”

“And you want to know what we found?”

“Looks like I’ll need to prepare a defense.”

“Do you want to make a statement when we get up to the courthouse?”

Tommie thinks a minute. “No,” he says, “I believe I’ll wait and confer with my lawyer.”

“Suit yourself,” Richardson says. Birney nods in a pleasant way, then looks down so as not to stare. It is a long hour, relieved only by Mr. Oliver’s account of a robber who broke out because, he claimed, he hated the food so much he’d rather go back to his wife’s cooking. Tommie laughs heartily at the story, Richardson watching him in the gloomy light. A nice-looking young man, Richardson thinks. And well-spoken. Could he have killed that girl? He glances to Tommie’s hands, but they are hidden under a warming blanket. It
is
cold out. But Richardson has already noticed the scratches.

• CHAPTER NINE •

T
OMMIE’S VISITS
to Garolami’s and Lizzie Banks’s became a habit. Every few weeks he would scrape together what money he had—from Aunt Jane’s gifts (every week a dollar or two tucked into a letter) and what he could borrow—and went, as often as not by himself, down to Locust Alley. He rarely asked for Gretchen, preferring instead Tyler’s girl from the first night, an Italian beauty named Maddalena with long legs and a flowing peignoir. He liked wrapping her silky black hair around her neck and whispering in her ear all the most vulgar desires and imagery that had burdened his mind since his last visit. Sometimes he would spend the remainder of his hour reading Blackstone’s
Commentaries
or another law book—having recently switched his course of study from English to a more practical subject—with her lying prone beside him, as if to soak the dry pages in the sweet musk of sex. Or he might read to her from Keats or Poe—it didn’t matter, for she understood little more than the inflection and the rhythm.

It was hard to understand why Tyler didn’t want to go with him every time, nor why there was not a line outside at all hours of the day. He thought if he had the money he would certainly go every week, if not more often. And yet he wanted more. He wanted to have a regular girl he could take out for a stroll like other young gentlemen. He and Tyler would sometimes go up to the old reservoir on nice Sundays and promenade around the gravel walkway. A few men had young ladies on their arms, and it was rumored that couples sometimes sneaked into the reservoir grounds after dark for “virginal sacrifices.”

Back at home on holidays, he courted Nola, but he pictured her more as a wife than a paramour, and he saw nothing wrong in having both. According to Gretchen and Maddalena, lots of men did, men with the highest reputations.

Nola was flat-chested and, most noticeably, had large slate blue or gray eyes—he could not decide which, though it seemed to depend on the light. Or perhaps she could change them as easily as she changed from a sympathetic manager of new stable hands to a businesslike purchaser of dry goods, unmoved by any salesman’s story of hard times. Her eyes would linger catlike on one thing at a time before moving on, as though disapproving of what she saw. Tommie imagined that her beauty was the kind that would not last much beyond her youth—her mother had the same inquiring eyes, as well as the withered, disappointed look of a once vain woman.

Sometimes he and Nola would just walk in her shady garden and talk about their friends at school; other times they would go out to Heartquake Creek and sit on the mossy banks eating cold chicken and reading aloud to each other. They went one Sunday afternoon with Lillian and Willie down to the Mattaponi. It was a soft and warm day in early summer, just after Tommie’s third year of college. Nola was reading aloud from a religious novel by Edward Payson Roe: “He wanted once and for all to satisfy himself of her vanity and frailty, to prove that goodness is accidental, only a matter of not having been tempted.” A raucous heron flapped from a sycamore, and Nola stopped.

There was a little boat tied to a cypress stump along the shore, and Lillie announced that she wanted to try her hand at rowing. She claimed to have rowed many times, but she appeared unsteady as Willie handed her in. She gathered her skirts around her legs while he got in and rowed out to the middle of the river, within easy shouting distance from shore. The river was smooth and gentle and not much over head deep. Nola and Tommie watched with amusement—Tommie shading Nola with a parasol—as the others went to some pains to reposition themselves without upsetting the boat. Now Lillie took her turn at the oars. There was laughter and splashing, as Lillie, pulling too hard on one side, made the boat spin in a circle.

Willie, on his knees, tried to show Lillie how to dip and pull, his hand on the oar just below hers. Lillie seemed to lose patience and, getting into a crouch, stood as though to get back into the bow. One moment her hand was on the gunwale, steadying herself. The next moment she was falling backward into the water. She disappeared entirely, leaving nothing but a lavender hat floating on the surface. Willie jumped in after her.

What seemed like several seconds went by. Then two heads came up, and amid the coughing came Lillie’s high, vibrant laughter. Willie swam her and the boat in, then carried her over to the blanket and set her down. “I guess I should learn how to swim,” she said, laughing.

The young men were apologetic about not taking the proper precautions with a lady, while Nola fussed about, bundling Lillie in the blanket, and saying there was nothing to be done now except hurry home and hope she didn’t catch her death. “I don’t see that it’s a laughing matter,” she said, her eyes holding first Lillie’s wet skirts and then Willie—not exactly blaming him (for how could she?) so much as asking him why Lillie behaved the way she did, laughing where she herself would have been mortified.

“Don’t be silly,” Lillie said. “It’s warm and I’ll be fine.” She looked at the others as though they were crazy to suggest cutting short the outing on account of a little mishap. “Willie, you wanted to go swimming, go on. You too, Tommie. We’ll go hunt for lady’s slippers.”

The young men stripped off their shirts and shoes and went wading out into the river. They swam to the other side before they deemed it proper to turn around, and by then the girls were somewhere out of sight. They skimmed oyster shells for a while, the day’s excitement making them little boys again. Tiring of this activity, they floated on their backs and smeared pluff mud on their chests as they’d heard the Powhatan did downriver. A fish slapped the surface of the water, and Tommie was reminded of his baptism in the little pond behind the church the summer they moved in with Aunt Jane. Reverend Ryland had dunked both of them, and he had slipped out of the Reverend’s grip and stayed under a moment, opening his eyes underwater and noticing the way the green river grasses fanned out like tresses of hair. Willie had asked if he’d seen angels down there.

“Remember what I told you I’d seen under the water?” he asked Willie now. It just came out. He hadn’t intended to remind his brother of something they never talked about.

“Sure, I do. You said you saw Charles.”

“That’s right, because the river grass reminded me of how I’d thought of him, somehow gone down beneath the riverbed.”

Willie shook his head in a friendly way, then dove forward and tackled Tommie into the water. They began to wrestle, and Tommie suddenly felt the need to compete with his brother. The other day he had ridden part way with Lillie to her tutoring, when he was going to see Nola. She had asked him about a scrape he’d alluded to in a letter to Aunt Jane. He had been robbed leaving Locust Alley late one night and ended up with a cut on his face. Lillian wanted details.

“It’s unladylike to be interested in ugly things,” he told her.

She laughed. “Mr. Proud,” she said, riding off without a backward glance, posting straight-backed in her saddle.

He called for her to slow down. “Who’s proud now?” But she ignored him.

Now at the river he thrashed against his brother. But within a few short minutes Willie had Tommie in a bear hug from behind.

“Lillie’s a tart,” Tommie said. He didn’t know why he’d said it, other than to make Willie let go, though there was also something about Lillie’s flouting of convention, about the idea of her disrobing in the forest like a woodland nymph, that bothered and aroused him. Willie squeezed so tightly Tommie felt his eyeballs engorging—he couldn’t breathe another word, he thought his ribs might actually crack. All he could do was try to claw his brother’s hands away.

“Say that again and I’ll kill you,” Willie said.

Then they heard a shout and saw Nola waving a handkerchief. When they got back to the shore, Nola told them that she and Lillie were going on back home. The young men made vigorous protests, but now it was Nola who was firm that they were perfectly all right walking the mile home by themselves. Lillie had a yellow primrose bud in her newly braided hair. She appeared to have yielded to Nola’s bossiness—perhaps to show Nola she was indifferent about gaining the boys’ attention, Tommie thought, or maybe she’d simply tired of it herself.

That evening Tommie stood out in the yard smoking a cigarette in the dark, and when Lillie came up from the barn with a pail of milk he spoke to her.

“Oh!” she cried, setting the pail down. “Look what you made me do.”

She peered up at him, but he couldn’t see her eyes well enough to make out what expression was in them. “Do you think I should marry Nola?” he asked her.

She thought a minute. “You’ve been standing out here waiting to ask me that?”

“Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind. And, no, I don’t think you and Nola should marry. Not yet. You’re too young, both of you. Well, she’s not. But you—you act all grown up, but you’re not.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re just not ready, is all. If you’re in love with anybody, it’s yourself.”

This annoyed Tommie, and he took ahold of her wrist and said she was a sassy little thing and somebody ought to punish her.

“It won’t be you,” she said. “I’ve seen you studying me, Tommie. What are you thinking about?”

“Why can’t I look at you?”

“You know good and well why. Because of your brother.”

“I didn’t know you’d gotten engaged. Here I was thinking you were just waiting for somebody to come along and steal your heart.” He sniffed in, as though taking the words back.

“I ought to slap you,” she said. She stood there breathing hard, staring up at him, seeing everything he was made of, and Tommie could feel the heat and emotion radiating from her fierce little body.

He bent over and kissed her lightly on the corner of her mouth. She returned the pressure just enough to let him know she didn’t mind. “You’re not at all like your brother,” she said. “He’s good and honest. But you—I don’t know what you are. You just want what he has.”

Tommie took ahold of her upper arm, gently enough that she could have pulled away if she’d wanted to. “You don’t know a thing, Lillie,” he said. She stood like a caught animal, but she didn’t try to leave. He let go. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. She said something about the pine trees swaying in the wind, and he said, “I don’t give a damn about the pine trees. Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I did, Tommie. I don’t know that you should’ve said it though. I don’t think it’s even true.”

“I swear it is.”

“You shouldn’t swear. It’s against the Bible.”

“I don’t care if it is,” he said. “I wish I was in love with Nola, but I don’t think I am.”

“Then you should tell her that yourself,” she said. She picked her pail up and hurried off into the house. The fact that he’d kissed his brother’s girl didn’t seem wrong—there had never been a time when they didn’t use and wear each other’s things, and until recently there had never been a third person who shared secrets with just one of them. He was only doing what seemed right and fair.

On another dreamy afternoon by the river, a somnolent breeze to cool them, Willie was fanning Nola with her folding Chinese fan, its mythical river and green mountain swishing up and down, up and down.

Tommie was toying with Lillie’s tight sausage curls, and nobody cared because they were under the spell of “Lycidas” from Nola’s reading: “He must not float upon his watery bier unwept.”

Then somebody brought up Charles, and Tommie told how he imagined him going under—drawn to his own image on the dark surface of the water. He talked as they sat by the river, and it was easy, Tommie felt, for in that moment they were all in love. With each other? With life? It didn’t matter. They were so young and ripe and filled with passion they could bring the dead into their sacred unity. It was as though they were drunk without drinking anything stronger than lemonade. Someone mentioned the nebular hypothesis, and they went on about how everyone was spun off from that earliest dawn of cosmic energy and someday they would return to it.

Tommie focused on a delta of sweat on Nola’s neck as she laid her head in his lap, and he thought of the river of warm blood just beneath the surface and how they were all rivers, discrete yet connected each to the other, and the mystery of life seemed within grasp. The rebukes and slights they’d given each other had slipped away like shed skins, and all that was left was a perfect tranquillity among them, extending outward. They were profoundly happy and in love, really, with everyone in the world. Tommie pictured Willie and Lillie together in a blissful embrace—he was happy for them and at the same time aware of his desire for her, and there was no accompanying guilt or frustration, only a feeling of peace and harmony. A breeze feathered the soft leaves overhead. It was as if they were afraid to move, afraid of upsetting the spell of those few happiest moments.

That evening Tommie met Lillie outside the barn, and they kissed for the first time in a month—a lingering, yearning kiss, broken off by the sound of a fox screeching in the woods. She said, “Are you in love with me?”