The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “He knows where Evangeline is?”

  “No, but he may know where the Constitution is.”

  By then, Peter had read the introduction of Jarvis’s book. It began boldly:

  The United States of America is a Christian country. The men who wrote the Constitution were Christians, plain and simple. They believed in God, and if you asked any of them, they would say that they believed in Jesus Christ. I can say this with confidence, because I have read the Constitution. I have read opinions about it in the very handwriting of one of the Framers….

  That was why they were going to Newport.

  MAYBE IT HAD to do with the lumpy camp cot, the single blanket, and the temperature below freezing, but Evangeline didn’t sleep too well.

  Now, as the sky brightened, someone brought her coffee. It was the one from the car, the one called Scrawny.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?” she asked.

  “No plumbing around here, lady.”

  “Just an expression,” she said. “Where can I take a leak?”

  “You mean, like an outhouse?”

  “That would do.”

  “Ain’t got one of those, either. We got a hole up back of the tents. And they told me I had to keep my eyes on you at all times so you don’t get lost.”

  “Whatever turns you on.”

  In the dim light, she saw six tents in camo canvas and six ATVs, along with a couple of pickups parked under the white pines, all but invisible from above.

  Scrawny pointed to a little rise. “Up there.”

  She was a big girl. She’d been camping. She’d used holes in the ground before. And she was a travel writer, so she’d used the facilities in some pretty skeevy places. She remembered that open pipe in the floor of a dive in Marseilles…. So she went up to the top of the hill and down the little gully, turned her back, unsnapped her jeans, and saw Scrawny leaning against a tree.

  “This isn’t going to be pretty,” she said.

  Scrawny grinned. “Just doin’ my job, ma’am.”

  So she undid her jeans and slid them down. Then she squatted and … well … she just couldn’t. It wasn’t that she imagined him smacking his lips at the sight of her white ass glowing in the predawn light. Guys could imagine stuff like that if they wanted. It was just that he was … well … watching. Too weird.

  After a few moments, she stood quickly—so as to give him as little show as possible—and pulled up her underpants. She was bending to grab her jeans when she heard someone coming through the woods.

  “Goddamn you!” It was Jack Batter.

  He gave Scrawny a kick that sent him sprawling toward the shit hole. “Get up and give the lady some privacy.”

  Batter tossed Evangeline a roll of toilet tissue. “I told you last night, you’re our insurance. But you’re our guest, too. We don’ have much up here, but—”

  “Thanks. What time is brunch?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, lady. This is serious business. We’re in a fight for something that should matter to every American. It’s not a game.”

  “Guns off the street.” She pulled up her jeans. “No game to me.”

  “No game?” He came closer to her. The scar glistened in the rising light as if this guy were iridescent, maybe, or burning from within. “Then don’t play.”

  “You’re playing with me, telling me I’m free to go.”

  “You are.”

  She looked around: impenetrable walls of pine and spruce, broken here and there by a skinny oak or beech that had already dropped its leaves.

  This was logging country. The only roads were dirt, and all the land was owned by the Great Northern or some other paper company. And somewhere out there was the Golden Road, a true dirt highway that ran a hundred miles across northwestern Maine.

  All night, Evangeline had listened for the distant roar of big rigs powering along. If she could get loose, she might follow the sound to the road and flag a trucker…. But the woods were all silence … and trackless … and these guys knew it.

  Still, Batter told her to go. “Do Scrawny a favor. Get his mind back on business instead of on your pretty ass.”

  “What happens when I get back to civilization and tell them I was kidnapped?”

  “You haven’t been kidnapped. But you won’t get back without us.”

  “Then what happens when you take me back? Assuming that’s your plan.”

  “You worried that we’ll kill you if we don’t get the Constitution?”

  Evangeline nodded. She didn’t think she could speak just then, and she did not want any of these guys to see her fear, or hear it.

  Batter took a few steps toward her. “If this goes bad, we’ll drop you at the side of the road and point you in the right direction.”

  She didn’t say anything. For a moment, she couldn’t. At least she didn’t swallow down some lump in her throat.

  “Of course,” he said, “if you have us arrested for kidnapping, remember … there’s a lot of guys who like what we do, and I can’t vouch for all of them. Seeing members of the Algonquin Rod and Gun in jail might send them round the bend.”

  “Are you really just a rod and gun club, or some kind of right-wing militia?”

  “You wouldn’t see this lack of discipline in a real military force. But we come out here every week and train.”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever is coming. Communists, Al Qaedas, the government trying to take away our guns.”

  She was tempted to laugh in his face, but it was not a face to laugh at.

  He said, “They wrote the Second Amendment because they knew what we know: An armed citizenry is the best protection against an unjust government.”

  “I’ll take an educated citizenry. Less bloodshed.”

  “When Shays’s Rebellion started, Jefferson said, ‘What country ever before existed without a rebellion? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is the natural manure.’ He was educated.”

  “One man’s patriot is another man’s tyrant,” she said.

  Jack Batter looked at her for a long time. She thought there was another speech coming. But no.

  He said, “If I were you, I’d take my piss, then get back to my tent.”

  PETER FALLON AND the girls took off at dawn from an airstrip in Vermont.

  Kate Morgan was at the controls of the single-engine Beechcraft. Peter was in the copilot seat, Kelly in the back. They all wore headsets, so Kate’s voice sounded clear and modulated when she spoke above the sound of the engine:

  “We’re headed to an altitude of five thousand feet. Keep us above the traffic.”

  “This is how we met.” Kelly leaned forward. “I hired Kate to fly me to a speech in Buffalo.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” said Kate.

  “What?” asked Peter.

  “That the two of us should meet in a cockpit,” said Kelly.

  Peter considered a few wisecracks but kept them to himself. Lesbians could joke about each other, but smart-ass straight guys did not have an invitation to join the fun.

  Kate put the conversation back on beam. “The flight plan takes us down the Connecticut Valley, so we don’t have to worry about updrafts and such.”

  “From the mountains to the sea,” said Kelly, “from the top of New England to the bottom in—what?— an hour and half.”

  Peter wished Evangeline was with him, to see this and describe it for her readers: Flying Down the Spine of New England. Could there be a more beautiful vision anywhere, with the White Mountains on the east and the Vermont hills rolling away to the west? How would she capture the way the colors shimmered, the way the mountains cut long shadows across the earth, the way it felt to look out on that ancient landscape on a perfect October morning?

  “We’ll be in Clinton Jarvis’s condo by nine o’clock,” said Kate.

  “And you really think that he has the annotated draft?” asked Peter.

  “I’ve seen
it,” said Kelly.

  Peter had already told her he did not believe her. That was why they were in the airplane. If there was a another draft out there, Peter had to see it and see if he could use it to save Evangeline. And if the guy who owned the black Sebring owned this draft …

  That was an issue that Peter had not raised with Kelly or Kate.

  “Jarvis collects Founding Fathers documents,” said Kelly. “To build a case that the country’s roots are as religious as the Vatican’s.”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard of him?” asked Peter.

  “You might have done business with him and not even known it. He protects his identity and lets his money do his talking.”

  “Through people like you?”

  “Jarvis invested in my little radio show at the very beginning, when I was one woman crying in the wilderness,” said Kelly. “He has money in the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Coalition, the Morning in America Foundation—”

  “Morning in America?” Peter felt a circle closing. “Marlon Secourt?”

  Kate’s voice clicked on. “If you think Jarvis and Kelly are strange bedfellows, imagine Jarvis and Secourt. The quiet guy and big mouth.”

  “Is Jarvis a minister?” asked Peter.

  “No. Real estate. Grew up in New Hampshire, served in Vietnam, came back through California and decided to stay for a while. Orange County real estate. Now he owns shopping malls all across America.”

  “Where did he find Jesus?”

  Kelly said, “He’ll tell you Jesus has always been with him, and taken good care of him, too, in ’Nam and at the real estate auctions. Now he spends his money to thank God for his good fortune.”

  “And save America from moral decay,” said Kate.

  “You mean, save it from women like you?” asked Peter.

  Kelly sat back. “Like Kate says, politics makes strange bedfellows. Business, too.”

  After about an hour, Kate banked to the southeast, away from the river and out over a massive body of water that seemed to cover most of central Massachusetts.

  “The Quabbin Reservoir,” said Kate. “Boston’s water supply. In the 1930s, they bulldozed four towns, moved everyone out, and dammed the Swift River. Took three years to fill. Now it holds the best drinking water in America.”

  Kate tilted a wing to give Peter a better look. The rays of morning sun slanted in to the cockpit like beams of gold.

  “Makes you feel like an angel, doesn’t it?” said Kelly.

  Peter had to admit it. For a few moments, he almost forgot why he was in that plane. He just let the sensations of flight and light wash over him.

  Then he saw a steeple piercing the foliage southwest of the reservoir, and it focused him again. “That’s where the real angels are.”

  “A church,” cracked Kate. “That’s the last place I’d look.”

  “What started at that church started us on this quest,” said Peter.

  “How do you mean?” asked Kelly.

  “That’s the Pelham meetinghouse,” said Peter, “where Daniel Shays and his Regulators worshipped, where the Pikes worshipped, too.”

  “Angels?”

  “Freedom’s angels,” said Peter. “They rose up against the lawyers and businessmen and convinced the country it was time to go to Philadelphia and a write a new Constitution.”

  “Freedom’s angels,” said Kelly. “I like that.”

  “Of course,” Peter looked back at her, “those farmers would have been considered leftists if the term was in use back then. You’d be dead set against them.”

  “They were populists,” said Kelly, “fighting for the people, like me.”

  Peter backed off. Don’t alienate the only people who were helping you.

  “Kelly thinks she fights for the people,” said Kate. “But most people just want to do the right thing and live their lives and be left alone. The people are like gravity, always pulling the pendulum to the center.”

  “Thank God for gravity,” said Peter.

  Kelly said, “The guys who marched across this landscape weren’t interested in gravity. As you say, they were angels.”

  Peter looked down at the meetinghouse: a little front lawn, a driveway, a graveyard where the body of George North Pike probably lay. A car was turning at the corner. Once the meetinghouse had marked a crossroads, but the eastbound road now ended at the chain-link fence that surrounded the reservoir. Conkey’s Tavern, the Pike farm, and the Daniel Shays farm were all under water.

  “They dreamed what we all dream,” said Peter. “They wanted to live their lives. But they knew that sometimes you have to act, or time washes over you.”

  WHEN HE WALKED into Jarvis’s condo, Peter Fallon thought that perhaps, time had washed over him.

  Clinton Jarvis kept a printing of the Constitution in full view, in a locked stainless steel case with UV filtering glass, which was a good idea because the condo itself was mostly glass, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Newport harbor.

  Jarvis was waiting by one of the windows. He stood around five-eight, with a gray brushcut and a good build under his golf shirt, the sort of guy who looked as if he had seen action somewhere and carried it buried deep within.

  Then Peter recognized him. The designated driver.

  “I’m Clint Jarvis,” he extended his hand.

  Peter took it and said, “The Mount Washington Hotel. You were with—”

  “Marlon Secourt. One of our annual trips. Golf and rare books. Pleasure and pleasure.” He looked at his watch. “As a matter of fact, Secourt and I have a tee time at the Newport Country Club in a half an hour. But if Kelly wants to talk to me, I’m available.”

  Kelly looked at Peter. “See, strange bedfellows.”

  “It’s one of my goals in life to straighten Miss Cutter out. Her friend, too.”

  Kate answered with a laugh, flopped onto the sofa, began flipping through a magazine.

  Peter walked over to the glass case and peered down at a full sheet of newsprint, two columns of small, tight type. “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s a finished draft,” said Jarvis. “The first public printing, which appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, September 19, 1787.”

  So it wasn’t the first draft. That made Peter feel a bit better. But it was annotated, too, covered with scrawled handwriting, carets, edits, marginalia. He said, “Whose writing?”

  Jarvis looked over his shoulder. “John Langdon, New Hampshire delegate. It came to me through channels even a brilliant dealer like you wouldn’t have heard of.”

  “A Langdon descendant?”

  “Let’s just say someone who knew of my interest in the Christian foundations of our American story.”

  If Peter had been expecting a religious nut, he was disappointed. Jarvis spoke softly and economically and moved the same way. He seemed a reasonable man, one who understood his place and needed to impress no one.

  Peter asked, “Do you know for certain that John Langdon was a Christian?”

  “All the men at the Constitutional Convention were Christians,” said Jarvis.

  “Benjamin Franklin was Deist,” said Peter.

  “So he claimed,” said Jarvis.

  “Near the end of his life he said that he admired Jesus but had some doubts as to his divinity. He said he saw no need to worry himself over it, ‘when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble….’ Funny guy, that Franklin.”

  Jarvis nodded, as though he knew all that. “Still, born and raised Episcopalian, and a pew holder at his church. You can look it up at Adherents.com. Ever visited it?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” said Peter.

  “All sorts of statistics, links to religious biographies of famous people—”

  “I don’t really care about a man’s religion,” said Peter.

  “You should,” said Jarvis. “Starting with your own. Until you accept Jesus as your personal savior, you’re bound for damnation.”
He spoke calmly, as though telling a child why it was good not to go swimming right after eating. Why … you could get a cramp.

  “When this crisis is over,” said Peter, “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “What better moment for considering your faith than in crisis?”

  Peter looked at Kelly. “This guy is a friend of yours?”

  “Friend would be too strong,” said Kelly. “Business associate.”

  “Hate the sin but love the sinner,” said Clinton Jarvis. “Especially when she has six million listeners every afternoon. But back to you. If you’re in crisis, have you considered what would happen if you were not to survive it?”

  Peter didn’t like the sound of that. “Are you threatening me?”

  Jarvis laughed. “Why would I threaten you? If not for a chance meeting at the Mount Washington Hotel, I would never have laid eyes on you before.”

  Kelly said, “Mr. Fallon thinks there’s another draft out there, a first draft annotated by all the New England Framers.”

  “I’ve heard these rumors,” said Jarvis, “and done my quiet best to quash them.”

  “Because”—Peter rolled his eyes, pretending to look for a reason— “the more annotated drafts there are, the less valuable yours will be?”

  Jarvis laughed. “My document cost two million. I have garages that cost more than that.”

  “We’re not talking about a garage here,” said Peter. “We’re talking about the birth certificate of the nation.”

  “True. But I suspect my version is the one in question. It’s just that the story was garbled as it passed from hand to hand. Instead of first printing it became first draft.”

  That was plausible, thought Peter.

  Jarvis unlocked the case. “Moreover, when I bought it, I also obtained a letter from Rufus King to Langdon.” Jarvis slipped a letter out from under the Constitution. It looked ancient and authentic. “This is Rufus King: ‘You should know that I have destroyed the notes we made during our discussions of a bill of rights, as they are outside the purview of our present task, which is to deliberate on the Committee of Detail draft.’ “

  Here was something Peter hadn’t expected, and bad news if it was true, not only for Harriet Holden and Judge Carter Trask, but for Evangeline, too. He gave Jarvis a long look, trying to see behind that low-key exterior.