by John Enright
“You didn’t.”
“Shit, he was looking at my legs. I figured I’d ask him about chickens. The bottom line, girl, is that they never got around to quizzing me about how I was going to finance a million-dollar house. They just thanked me for my interest and said that I was a very strong contender to own this wonderful, secure piece of a proper community. A contender? Hell, no one else has bid on the place. You know that. What do you want to eat tonight? I feel like Greek.”
A few days later Amanda got a call from the realtor. They had a buyer for the house, a firm offer of almost the asking price. They advised her to take it. The market was tightening up. She agreed. It turned out the buyer was the HOA itself. The money was as good as in the bank.
The bank in this case being a joint estate account that that prick Barnett had made them set up to hold all assets of the estate until the rest cleared probate, at which time it would be split fifty-fifty, minus of course his healthy fee for slowing things up and forcing them into probate at all. It turned out Morgan couldn’t turn the trick as estate manager with the circuit court clerk after Barnett objected to her unadmitted status with the Virginia State Bar. So they had to wait.
Amanda saw Nemo’s hiring of Barnett as a personal insult and threat. Morgan saw it differently. “Captain Nemo is just looking out for his own interests, that’s all. Why should he hang around here waiting for it all to work out? That’s what lawyers are paid to do. Besides, I kind of dig the counselor. I like them steely cold and short like that.”
Morgan was doing her toenails. She was sitting on her bed, her foot up on the leather-bound hotel directory so as not to drip nail polish on the bedspread. Amanda was stretched out on her own bed watching. The smell of nail polish. In spite of the fact that Morgan was roughly Amanda’s age, she still had the petite body of a girl, thin and wiry with smooth long muscles. Her hair was clipped short in a natural Afro, gray unabashedly showing at the temples.
“If you like them like that, why don’t you get yourself one?” Amanda asked.
“Way too much trouble,” Morgan said, bending over like a kid to blow on her toenails. “They’re like pets. You end up spending your time feeding them and cleaning up after them. Much easier just watching them in the wild. Talking about in the wild, when is that brother of yours coming back, anyway? We can’t close this all out without him here.”
Amanda didn’t know the answer. She hadn’t heard from her brother since he had left, and the last she had heard from Barnett was that Nemo was out on a boat somewhere. There were all the probate papers and releases for him to sign before Barnett would allow Amanda access to her share of the estate. “What are we going to do about Nemo?” Amanda asked. Morgan had floated the idea of staying in touch with him and his new-found cash.
Morgan was doing the toes on her other foot now. “Don’t know. Haven’t met the Captain yet. You say he doesn’t need the dough, but I’ve yet to meet a rich man who would turn his back on a million bucks. They can always use another million. It’s worth a shot, though. One thing for certain—we get all this done, let him take his half, and get Barnett out of the picture. Get out of Virginia entirely, then see about playing Nemo.”
“But how do we stay connected to Nemo? He’ll just disappear again.”
“I’ll think of a way,” Morgan said, leaning back to look at her now finished nails. “I don’t think I like that color.”
***
When Dominick got back to Tavernier Key the condo was just as he had left it. The owner of the condo, an old acquaintance, had died months before, but Dominick had never returned his key, and he just moved in, figuring he would stay until someone told him to leave. It was a pleasure hiding out there where nobody knew him. He called Barnett and told him he was going sailing with a friend and would be unreachable. When the lawyer insisted on having some contact number, Dominick went out and bought the cheapest cell phone he could find, then called Barnett back, telling him this was the number of his friend’s cell phone, which would be on the boat with them. Barnett wanted to know where they would be sailing, and Dominick told him into the Bermuda Triangle.
He never went sailing, but after the first few weeks he did wander a bit, down to Key West to visit Fort Zachary Taylor right at the southern tip of the town and of the continental US. The South doesn’t get any deeper than this, Dominick thought, but Fort Taylor—and Key West—had remained in Union hands throughout the war. The fort had once been out in the ocean, surrounded by water, but now was surrounded by land and a partial moat. Its guns would now fire out over a state park and crowded beach, their only possible targets passing cruise ships. This fort, like Fort Ward, had never seen any hostile action. Its ten-inch guns had never been fired in anger. The deaths here had all been from yellow fever.
Then one day back at the condo the cell phone started ringing. At first Dominick didn’t know what that strange sound was. He was sitting out on the balcony reading. The sound came and went, an irritating jingle. He had left the phone plugged in on the kitchen counter. A far as he knew, it had never rung before. He went in and stared at it and it stopped, but an hour later it went off again and he answered it. It was the lawyer Barnett, insisting that Dominick return to Virginia to close out things on his mother’s estate. Dominick claimed he was still on the boat. Barnett told him to then land some place and catch a flight back, the sooner the better. Taking orders from the little device in his hand did not endear it to him, and when he left the condo a few days later Dominick left the cell phone behind, still plugged in and on the kitchen counter.
Florida was one of the first states to secede from the Union. Although the smallest Confederate state in population, it had a high proportion of black slaves. It was also the farthest from the action. Only one major battle was fought there in the entire war, up near the Georgia border. The Confederates won it. The Battle of Olustee. Who outside of Florida had ever heard of it? But in the ratio of Union casualties to number of troops involved it was the third bloodiest battle of the whole war. At the end of his first day on the road headed north, Dominick stopped at a motel outside of Jacksonville. It would take him at least another two days’ drive to get to DC. According to his map, Olustee was just an hour’s drive east of where he was. The battlefield was now a state park. It wasn’t as if he was in a hurry to get back to Virginia; he’d make a detour.
He checked out of his Jacksonville motel and headed west on Interstate 10, a flat straight slab through filled-in swamp and flatwoods forest, on basically the same general route that General Seymour’s federal troops would have taken in February 1864. Dominick found the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park easily enough, in the middle of Osceola National Forest—a deserted pine barrens hemmed in by swamps and a lake on the north. By all accounts it had been a fierce battle between fairly equal forces. It had lasted all day, with the federal forces finally retreating as dusk approached. There was no one there now on a steamy June morning, just a marker by the road and a monument with a Confederate battle flag lying limply on its pole. But on one single day, three hundred men had died in this space, two thousand were wounded, and another five hundred went missing. Dominick stayed in his car. There was nothing to be gained by walking around in the heat.
Wasn’t it strange that at the places built for war—the forts—there were no battles, while simple, innocent places next to nowhere—like here and Manassas—became fed on the dead? In fact, even at Olustee the Confederates had constructed fortifications just a few miles to the west, but the battle never got there. Olustee was now returned to its state of simplicity, but its innocence had been taken away.
Perhaps the only bright spot for the Union in the battle was an uplifting story that made the rounds up North later about the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-black regiment that suffered the heaviest casualties. General Seymour had left the 54th Mass along with the 35th US Colored Troops, another all-black group, to defend his rear as his remaining force beat a retreat back toward Jacksonvill
e. Members of the 54th Mass manually pulled a trainload of Union casualties for five miles until horses could be secured.
The fierce rearguard resistance of the black troops was a successful sacrifice. Even after their lines were broken, their presence slowed down the enemy as Southern soldiers dallied on the battlefield to murder the wounded and captured black Union troops, allowing the bulk of the Union force to escape. As he left, Dominick noted that, somehow appropriately, just down the road was a prison.
***
Morgan was sound asleep, curled up in her passenger-side seat tilted back as far as it would go. They were somewhere in New Jersey, maybe halfway home. The old Chevy was doing alright, although the front end did start to shimmy when it hit seventy, so on the interstate she had to keep it under that and everyone passed her. Amanda was used to it, but it irritated the shit out of Morgan, which was one of the reasons she went to sleep. That and the fact that the tape she had wanted to listen to was jammed in the tape deck. The car was that old, and so was the tape, Phoebe Snow.
They had to give up the hotel room in Washington when Morgan’s credit cards maxed out. “A million in the bank and we can’t pay for a hotel room!” Morgan had said, laughing, shaking her head, folding the hotel towels into her luggage. There had been no word from or sign of Nemo. Amanda had signed everything, but Barnett wouldn’t allow any release of funds until his client had signed off as well. They had had no choice but to head for home. Home was three hundred miles north, an old house on the Hudson, far enough up the river as to make Manhattan foreign. “Up the river” once meant Sing Sing. Their place was way beyond that.
Diligence, New York, was more real on a map than it was in person. On a road map it was a dot with a name. In actuality it was little more than a crossroads with a past and a borrowed zip code. There once had been a hamlet here with its own dock down on the river. Now at the crossroads there were just old stone foundations hidden in the weed trees. The nearest convenience store was eight miles away, up on Route 9W. Amanda stopped there to buy cigarettes. She got the usual chilly treatment from the clerk.
It had been raining on and off since New Paltz, but now, as sunset approached, the western sky opened up and the remaining clouds took on apologetic colors. Morgan had borrowed Amanda’s iPod and was listening to something, staring out the passenger side window. Morgan could get moody when they came back here. Amanda had learned to leave her alone. Otherwise you just gave her someone to pick on, and having someone to pick on did not seem to improve her mood.
You could see the big house from half a mile away, up on its lonely knoll. It was three stories high if you counted the peaked cupola. The late sun lit up the western windows. When Amanda had left, the countryside was just waking up from winter with tentative yellows and greens. Now it was in full-throttle green, tending to blue in the deeper shadows. Winter in the old house had been bleak and hard. Summer would be their reward. That’s the way things go—peaks and troughs, highs and lows. Nothing was constantly perfect, but, wow, the place sure needed a coat of paint.
Morgan had taken her earbuds out and was looking up at the house as a view of it flashed between the roadside trees. In a low voice she made the dun-da-dun-dun sound of a horror movie soundtrack. “Home sweet home,” she said. “Amanda, honey, when are we going to unload this place?”
“Soon we will have the cash to properly fix the place up. Then we can unload it. Patience, Morgan. It’s an investment. It’s not about immediate gratification.”
“Why don’t we just take the money and go to Costa Rica?”
“We could do that, but I despise the tropics.”
“Then why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go to Costa Rica.”
“Because it is my money.”
Most of the girls were home when they got there, their cars parked as haphazardly as always in the driveway. Amanda and Morgan received a warm welcome. Denise was off at a meeting somewhere, so no one was in charge and the place was a bit of a mess. Morgan put her bad mood to use as she started barking orders. Amanda went to her room. She was worn out from the trip. Seeing as Morgan did not drive, Amanda had driven the whole way herself. Her room was still locked and just as she’d left it almost two months before. She opened the windows. She thought about taking a bath but was too tired. She stretched out on her bed and was almost asleep when a knock on the door brought her back. She thought of ignoring it, but whoever it was would just knock again. “Come in.” she said, swinging her legs out of bed and sitting up.
The young woman at the door was a stranger to Amanda. She was thin and hesitant. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and hung straight and lifeless framing a pale face. She was shoeless and dressed in bib overalls and a faded T-shirt. She looked all but ready to disappear. “Morgan said to come up and see if you wanted anything,” she said.
“Who are you?” Amanda asked.
“My name is Susan. I just moved in last month.”
“Did someone leave?” Amanda rubbed her forehead.
“No. No, I’m rooming with Kathy. Is there anything?” She turned sideways to avoid Amanda’s looking at her.
“No, Susan, I don’t think so.”
“And I wanted to thank you, for letting us stay here and for those nice clothes that you sent. Some of them fit me. They were very expensive, weren’t they?”
Amanda tried to imagine this Susan wearing Marjorie’s clothes. “You’re welcome, Susan, and actually, yes, you could bring me a cup of herbal tea, whatever is down there.”
“I have some Sleepytime in my room. I could fix that.”
“That would be fine, thanks.”
Susan shut the door behind her as she left, and Amanda lay back on the bed. Where did these girls come from? Build it and they will come. She had lost track. They all melded together. Where would they go when the renovations got underway and they had to leave? According to the contractor the whole house would have to be jacked up six feet into the air to replace the foundation, and then the whole place would be gutted and refinished. They all seemed to have come in from the ether; they could return there. That was really Denise’s worry.
Susan came back with a hot mug of tea and a small plate of Lorna Doones. “From my private stash,” she said. “I only had so many left.”
***
God, he was sick of the numbers—the numbers that named groups of men; the numbers that parsed out their lives among the killed, wounded, missing, and captured; the numbered calibers of weapons and the gross tons of horse fodder. What would history be like if numbers were outlawed? Distances, they could stay. Geography mattered—so many days’ march. But after a while the numbered rest just numbed. History was not mathematics. Its calculus was conducted without any logical rules or agreed-upon values. All events emerged out of chaos unpredetermined. History was no more a science than interpreting dreams.
As he crossed the track of Sherman’s march to the sea, west of Savannah, Dominick wondered if he could have marched three hundred miles in crappy boots with a pack on his back and a Springfield musket on his shoulder. People walked more back then. Things took more time. His cruise control was set at 75 mph. Three hundred miles—Atlanta to Savannah—was a four-hour drive. Of course, he wouldn’t be doing any fighting or pillaging along the way. He would leave the pillaging to his half sister. Barnett had told him that Amanda had cleaned out the house and sold it. Quick work. Dominick wondered what she had done with that collection of grotesque modern art the Greek guy had left at the house when he went to jail. Marjorie sure could pick them. He stopped for the night outside of Fayetteville.
The next night he checked back into the Mansion House Suites in Alexandria, and it took only two days to settle things up with Barnett, get all the papers signed and everything. Dominick was surprised that Amanda had decamped. “Where did she go?” he asked Barnett.
“Home, I guess, somewhere up north, in New York. She’ll be glad for the release of funds. She seemed sort of desperate for them before she left.” They
were having drinks in one of those hushed, oak-lined bars lawyers were so fond of. The celebratory drinks were Barnett’s idea. “Have you met Amanda’s friend Morgan Custis?” he asked.
“No. What about him?”
“Not him, her. Morgan is a woman, Amanda’s counsel, interesting woman. I was just wondering if you knew her.”
“A Morgan le Fay?” Dominick asked.
“I wouldn’t know what that means.” Barnett took a sip from his Rob Roy.
“Doesn’t matter. Just an old English name, something from prehistory. What about her?”
“Oh, nothing specific. I just found her … ah, interesting, as I said, that’s all. Well, interesting and attractive in a dangerous way.”
Dominick looked around the bar, allowing the clumsy silence between them to linger like second-hand smoke. Ah, hormones, chemical attraction kicking in. Hormones were like dope, bad dope because they made you do stupid things. Other people’s private lives, especially their love lives, held zero interest for Dominick. It was the opposite of curiosity, whatever that might be.
“Oh, by the way, she did want you to contact her, either call or e-mail. She left me her card to give you.” Barnett pulled a flat leather card case out of his bespoke suit pocket, found the card, and handed it across to Dominick. It was a very simple if embossed business card: just Morgan M. Custis, Esq., Attorney-at-Law, and below that in the right corner a phone number and an e-mail address. He turned it over. There was nothing written on the back.
“She implied there was some unfinished business,” Barnett said. “It wouldn’t hurt to stay in touch. There still may be more wrinkles down the road. I would get your share of the estate account closed out ASAP, by the way, shut down that possible complexity.”
“Yes, of course,” Dominick said, putting Ms. Custis’s card into his pocket. “Where in New York is Amanda living? Did you say?”