And dark it was. Especially after the doorkeeper shut back up behind me.
I blundered down the hallway, testing my path with my cane and banging my knees, nonetheless. I struggled to remember the distances and the lie of things. But the place was a madman’s jumble. I veered wrong and tripped on the stairs. When I got back up, a bronze devil stared me in the face. He stood gleaming in the cast of a skylight, guarding secrets.
The Chinese grandpa did not pursue me, and a wise decision it was. He rustled off, croaking in his heathen tongue, and doors I could not see banged shut behind him.
Then there was stillness.
You have never known such eeriness. I could not hear one sound of the great city, nor any hint of life beyond my own breathing and footfalls. Twas a tomb, not a house.
I felt my way onward as best I could, working my way down the corridor and groping along the wall for the door that had led me to Mrs. Fowler once before. I did sense a light in the place after a time, just a faintness, like the glow that ghosts through a mine gone bad.
Full darkness would have been kinder. Monstrous shapes tormented the house, and the air itself seemed twisted. The house was made of angles that would never be righted.
The floor changed pitch beneath my feet and I nearly toppled a great pot.
Behind it I found the door.
The red chamber was lit by its pair of sconces, just as it had been the day I waited there. The jets had been turned low, yet the suddenness of the light burned my eyes. I saw the dragon lurking at the back of the room. He jumped about in a frenzy as my eyes struggled to focus. The gas hissed in the walls. I tore open the final door.
The lamp on the far wall of that cavern of a room drew me like the light at the top of a shaft. I stumbled through the clutter, and broke one thing of glass. Nothing living responded.
I felt as if my eyes had been put through a series of magician’s slides and tricked out of the world I knew. The shapes around me seemed to cheat gravity, floating in the corners of my eyes. Queer smoke filled the air like incense.
She was not in her chair. And I will tell you truly, I did not relish the need to search deeper into that house of horrors. But I steeled myself to it. I would have torn the place apart, brick by brick, to get at her. Then I saw her.
A candle showed me the way. At first it was only a faint glow behind a lacquer screen, the least light in the world. I shoved great brambles of junk aside to get closer, cutting my hands. Then I saw the sputtering flame and, a moment later, the woman.
She lay on a low foreign bed, reclined on a mass of pillows. So tiny and white she was, with the glass eyes of a doll. A long pipe lay on the floor. God forgive me for what I did then. I hardly know if she saw me, or cared from the place where she had journeyed. But I grasped her by the shoulders—by her dry-wood bones—and shook her. A faint puff of sickness rose from her lungs.
“You killed him,” I shouted. “You let your own son be killed. Out of your damnable pride…”
She smiled up at a lover.
“He lived out every word,” I bellowed. There were tears on my face. “Didn’t he? All the Christian love and the lot of it? And you wanted him dead… just so you wouldn’t have to live with the shame of that marriage…”
She parted her lips. Her teeth were brown fangs. And her eyes were a demon’s.
“Whoremasters…” she cackled, “… like father like son… only wanted their whores… I warned them… God would punish…”
I raised my hand to slap her face. Perhaps the wickedness of the house was infectious. But a shift of her eyes froze me.
“My son!” she shrieked. “My son!”
I whirled about, following her eyes.
A pale face stopped my heart.
Twas Mr. Lee. Staring down at the two of us. With a far continent of sadness upon him.
“My son…” she repeated, dropping down to a sob, “… oh, my son…”
Mr. Lee laid his hand, gently and carefully, on my shoulder.
“She’s dying,” he said. “Please leave her now.”
Chapter 15
As agreed, Tyrone met me at the depot upon my return. It had rained in the night, and the city froze, then thawed. We took Pennsylvania Avenue to avoid the mud of the side streets. There was peace on the town, with the shops closed for the holiday and the government quiet. Only the hotel bars and saloons went at a roar. As we walked, I told Tyrone all that I had held back. And I described my visit to Mrs. Fowler.
When I was done, a silence fell between us. Winter snapped in the air. Just past the National Hotel, a drunken private begged liquor money, so far gone he was not above approaching two officers with darkness on their faces. Twas a sham, all of it. The rules against selling drink to the soldiers, and the great honor of the uniform, and my hero, Little Mac. Oh, what is honor but the mask we put over our wickedness? Chapel called me, and prayer. But there was no time.
I have been lower, mind. But not often. The train journey had left me too long alone with my devils.
At last, Tyrone gave a little whistle and said, “As a doctor… you start thinking you’ve seen all there is. But isn’t humanity always ready with a surprise? And rarely a good one.”
“There is goodness in us, too,” I said. For I was anxious to believe it.
“My… attempts at religion,” my friend went on, “always foundered on the idea of Hell. I’ve never wanted part of a God who would make such a place as that. But there are times… there are times, bucko… when I almost see the need of it.”
Two provost riders loped past. One of the horses hiked up its tail, shameless.
“And Trenchard?” I asked. “Has he made any moves?”
Tyrone shook his head. “Your man’s on him. That Molloy. He’s not a bad one, you know.”
“He had God-given abilities, but threw them away.”
“Well, he’s been on Trenchard like a terrier on a rat. The good major’s packing out. Ready to run. Molloy says he’ll leave on the Saturday morning train for New York. Then it’s the steam packet to Liverpool.”
“We have today and tomorrow, then.”
Tyrone was every bit as glum as I was. “You’ll need proof, man. And hard proof it must be. You were right, and I was wrong. I see it now. Especially if McClellan himself has decided to bury the matter.” He sniffed at the cold and wiped his whiskers with the back of his hand. “Rumor has it the general’s down with typhoid, by the way. Even so, it sounds like you’ve got the whole Union ranged against you, and more troubles than Ireland.”
I gave the sidewalk a good rap with my cane.
“I will have justice,” I told him. “And a witness.”
Mrs. Schutzengel had held the dinner for us. It smelled rich, and heavy, and brown as sauce. She was a proud one, when it come to her kitchen. And if she never did mankind a great turn with her revolutions, she did many a fellow fine with her cooking. I could not tell her that there was no hunger in me. Only that I had no time.
“Save me a plate of your best,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She considered the sum of me. There was not much to strain her eyes.
“You are all only the bones now,” she said. “When der Herrgott gives us good food on this day…”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise you.”
The other lodgers perched around the table, looking at me with hatred in their eyes. For a man would sooner wait on Heaven than on his dinner. And I had kept them waiting long.
I broke away, with last apologies, leaving Mrs. Schutzengel to her gravies and disappointment. Mick Tyrone followed me back into the hallway.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to go along with you?” he asked. He would have come with a good heart, for he was a man looking for sustenance that food could not provide.
“No. It is a thing I must do alone.”
“We could both go. We could both look for him.”
I shook my head. “It is between the two of us, see. B
ut if you could look to the feeding of Molloy…”
Tyrone smiled his first smile of the day. “I think Annie Fitzgerald has that in hand. No nonsense to that girl. She’s already got him to bathe once.”
And I went. Pegging along through streets full of dinner smells and the musk of coal fires, with wood-smoke meandering from the shanties in the alleys. I went first to the rooms Livingston rented on K. Street, but he was gone and the maid said only that he never left word of his destination. Then I went back to the Avenue and checked the hotel bars. I suppose I see the convivial nature of such like, but there is sorrow in those places, too. Well, each man must deal with his own loneliness. There were fine buffets and handsome decorations, and there was endless laughter that day. The Union was forgetting its troubles. A fight broke out in the Clarendon, with blood and oaths, but there was laughter in that place, too. Laughter, but no Livingston.
The Willard was as crowded as a pit car at the start of a shift. Families got up grand ate in the big dining room, and there were parties in the smaller rooms. I checked each one, excusing myself before races familiar and not. There were great politicos, and generals with their tunics opened over their bellies, and women in winter velvets. Officers I did not know invited me to share their celebrations. It only made me think of Mick Tyrone. For he and I seemed terribly alike. The two of us were great ones for sitting off to the side and thinking overmuch. I liked him, see. And if I could not be with my wife and son on such a day, then I would have been with him in the warmth of Mrs. Schutzengel’s parlor, with a fine dinner inside me, talking over the ways of the world. Oh, it would have been better so. I checked the amber interiors of the costlier saloons and the restaurants with their harvests of smells. I went near all the way to Georgetown, but could not find Livingston. I began to worry that I had set Molloy to watch the wrong man, that the lieutenant had been the one to give us the slip. And I needed him.
The lamplighter was at his work by then, and the yellow beacons of carriages jolted through the streets, bringing the quality home from their visits and celebrations. There was hunger in me now, despite my sickness of soul, and I could do no more. I should have gone back to Mrs. Schutzengel’s. That is what I should have done, and what I wanted to do. Yet, I did not. I walked the streets, feeling small and inadequate. Fearing that I was even more the fool than anyone had made me out to be. That all of this was a waste that would come to naught. That the world would have its way, whether I liked it or no.
I decided to stop by the War Department to clear my desk. For I did not want to do it under the eyes of those boys. If I could not hang them, I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me go in shame and dismissal.
From the street, I saw a light up in our office. Twas Livingston.
He sat behind my desk—Anthony Fowler’s desk— in the radiance of an oil lamp. His skin was sallow and it looked as though he had not slept in days. That well-made uniform that never quite managed to make him soldierly hung open and his shirt showed stains where the tunic gapped. He smelled so powerfully of drink it was a wonder the flame of the lamp did not ignite the air between us.
“I knew you’d come back,” he said. I took Trenchard’s chair. It left me in the shadows. All of the light belonged to Livingston, who sat round-shouldered, with his hands invisible in his lap.
“I’ve been to Philadelphia,” I told him.
He nodded. “I know. We had a telegram.”
“I lied to you,” I said. “I want more. The price of keeping your secret has gone up.”
“I know.” His eyes had always seemed those of a boy, even when he was frightened. But now they seemed terribly old. He had seen far more than such a young man should.
“I want you to tell me that Trenchard shot Anthony Fowler. I want to hear it said out loud. And I want you to tell me exactly how he did it. And everything that happened afterward. Then you will tell it to the provost marshal.”
“I can’t,” he said. If a whisper can capture all the agony of a man’s soul, his did.
“You can,” I said. “And you will.”
“I can’t.” A single tear, big as a maharajee’s pet pearl, ke from one of his eyes.
“You were friends,” I said. “Like brothers. All of you. And you let Trenchard kill him.” I gave him a smile in the darkness. Twas an expression of wonder at the doings of Man, not of kindness or indulgence. “I know his mother was for it. And Trenchard’s father came around. I do not know Mr. Trenchard, though I know Mrs. Fowler is mad. But I can’t see how you could let it happen. You… or Bates. His friends.”
His head turned faintly back and forth, and he closed his eyes. “Can’t you see, Jones? Don’t you see it? We would’ve all been laughingstocks. Humiliated. We were… we’d always been so close. Always together, the four of us. Except when Anthony was off preaching about freeing the Negro and all that. His little enthusiasms.” His eyelids lifted slowly. But he looked down at the desk top, not at me. “We grew up together, went to school together. We volunteered together. People thought of us as one. The association was… indelible.”
Suddenly, his eyes searched me out in the shadows. As if he truly did expect me to understand, to condone, to forgive. “All Philadelphia society would have been made a laughingstock. And we would have been the laughingstock of Philadelphia. With one of us married to… to a blind nigger whore.” He lifted his shoulders and hands in a plea. “For God’s sake, Jones. You can’t keep a thing like that quiet. And Anthony didn’t want to. He wanted to tell the whole world. Can’t you see it was impossible? All of it. Ridiculous. We couldn’t let such a thing happen. Think of it.”
“I have thought of it.”
“My… my own marriage… would have become impossible.” He leaned toward the desk. Twas a slight gesture, but one full of passion in its queer way. His eyes, his face, the long scrape of his body pleaded to be understood. I saw then that Trenchard had been right in his prejudice against me. For I did come from a different world than their kind.
“Anthony Fowler believed in what he was doing,” I said. “Crazy or no. He believed in the words he spoke, man. There was goodness in him. And he was murdered for it.”
Livingston laughed and let himself fall back into the chair. “Anthony was as mad as his mother. Worse. At least she understood… that society… that…”
“He wanted to do a good thing,” I said. “Just that. To make his sacrifice. And who knows? Perhaps he even loved the girl?”
Livingston gave a snort. “ A nigger whore?”
“Just say it,” I told him. “Tell me that Trenchard killed him.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t.”
“Oh, and is there loyalty to friends now? Now are we all going to stick together? With the best one of you shot down in the street.”
“It wasn’t in the street,” he said.
I should have figured it out right there.
“I don’t care where it was. Anthony Fowler was shot down for what he believed. For his generosity of spirit, for the bigness of his heart. Madman or not. His murder was a wicked act. And Trenchard will be damned for it.”
“No.”
But the anger was up in me. And anger clouds the mind. “What do you mean, ‘No’? He’ll be damned to Hell for eternity for such a sin. Oh, you think he’s your great friend, Trenchard. For he’s the one everybody looks up to. Yes, he’s a great friend, that one. And do you know what else he did in Philadelphia, your friend?” God forgive me, for I will never forgive myself for what I told him then. There was no need of it. “He spent three hours in private apartments. With a woman. Do you know the name of the woman, boy?”
“No,” he said. “Don’t, Jones.”
Who knows what all he knew? And chose to overlook, so long as it was not spoken. For that is the way of society.
“One Miss Elizabeth Cathcart,” I said. With the cruelty of a beast upon me. “And do you think they were planning your weddin
g all that time? Or was he only telling her about your little trips to the doctor?”
“Don’t, Jones.”
“Oh, you’re loyal enough to him. You could let him shoot Anthony Fowler down like a bit of game. For your wicked, damnable pride.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. And you’re going to say it to me, and to the provost marshal, and to the whole world, if that’s what it takes. You’re going to say—you’re going to swear—that Charlie Trenchard killed Anthony Fowler.”
“I can’t.”
I jumped from my chair. Ready to beat him to the ground with my cane. “Why can’t you?” I shouted. “Why, man? Tell me why, then.”
“Because I shot him.”
That put me back in my seat. Nor could I speak at first. And I saw myself clearly for what I was: a vengeful man. I had set my heart on punishing Trenchard. Justice was only my tool. I had stumbled from one blindness to another.
Livingston wept with his face in his hands. “I killed him… I shot him… when he got into the carriage… when he came for the carriage… I did it…”
“Why, man? For the love of God? Why?”
“Charlie… he said he’d tell. He was going to tell my secret. If I didn’t do what needed to be done.” He looked up, face shimmering wet. “I had to do it. Don’t you see?”
We live to regret many things. I will always regret my harshness with the boy that day.
“Charlie’s got you beat,” he said. “Charlie’s got us all beat. He always wins. He’s leaving for England tonight, not Saturday. He’s got everybody fooled. And he’s just going to leave me here. Like this.” He gave me an imploring look. “We were friends, Jones. Real friends. But I suppose you wouldn’t understand a thing like that.”
“No.”
“Anthony was going to spoil it all. He didn’t care about us. Or his family. How we’d all look to society. All he cared about anymore were his damned niggers. And they weren’t real to him. Just some fantasy… some dream. He was crazy. He should’ve been locked up like his father…”
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