League of American Traitors

by Matthew Landis

  They slid on earphones and protective glasses, which had been hanging from the side of the booth. Kingsley took aim.

  BANG.

  Jasper jumped. The shot was louder than he’d expected, and it vibrated in his chest. Kingsley went through the steps of safety protocol to ensure that no more rounds were left in the gun before pressing a button on the side of the booth. The target whisked toward them on a metal track, and Jasper saw the neat hole in the bullseye.

  “Good shot,” he said, turning to Kingsley.

  “Now you.”

  Jasper took a bullet from the box and loaded the weapon, set his feet, and pointed downrange. The target seemed to sway from side to side—or maybe he was shaking? He tried to hold still and slid his finger to the trigger.

  Breathe in.

  Out.

  Half-in.

  Hold.

  Squeeze.

  BANG.

  The gun yanked his arm a foot in the air. Jasper fumbled through a safety check and brought the target forward.

  It was clean.

  “What did you expect on your first try?” Kingsley asked. “Again.”

  This time, Jasper was ready for the recoil, but he still missed the target.

  “Relax your grip.”

  Jasper kept missing. After each shot, Kingsley would offer some advice. Or curse. Usually both. None of it seemed to help. The ammo box was half-empty and Jasper hadn’t so much as grazed the target.

  “Maybe you need some motivation.” Kingsley ducked into the range office and fiddled with a computer. Downrange, a light flickered on the paper target, and suddenly it had features.

  It was Elsbeth Reed.

  “Steady, now,” Kingsley said. “Nothing to fear from this manky Libertine.”

  Jasper lifted his weapon. It’s just paper. The sights swayed back and forth. He swallowed and went through his breathing routine, but the gun still wouldn’t steady. Each time the sights lined up, he saw Elsbeth’s face and, suddenly, it wasn’t just a paper target anymore—it was horrible and paralyzing.

  Jasper lowered the weapon. He was sure Kingsley would freak out.

  Instead, the instructor gently took the gun and removed the round. “No shame in it.”

  But Jasper did feel shame—cold and icy, pouring down his back. Elsbeth had murdered his dad and he couldn’t even shoot a target with her face on it.

  “What does it mean?” he finally asked.

  “It means you’ve got a nervous system.”

  “But she killed my dad. Shouldn’t I want her dead?”

  “Wanting someone dead and doing the killing yourself are different things, lad.”

  “Guess this means I’m not cut out for dueling.”

  “You can overcome your nerves, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can teach the mind just about anything. But it’s the heart you have to concern yourself with. Not sure what’s going on in yours—too early for even you to know, I’d say—but it’ll make itself known when it’s time.” Kingsley jabbed Jasper’s chest with a meaty finger. “And when it does, you listen to it.”

  Jasper picked at his headphones. “Have you ever dueled?”

  “Think the headmistress would’ve given me the job if I hadn’t?”

  “Right.”

  “You want to know if I carry any guilt because you think that’ll help your decision, when the day comes, is that it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “It won’t. And anybody who says differently is a lying eejit who should have their ears boxed.”

  ****

  With Thanksgiving break approaching, Lacy pushed them even harder, imposing reading deadlines. It didn’t matter much to Jasper and Nora—they’d be staying on campus—but the others would be going home for a week, and they still hadn’t found the connection Jasper’s dad had been seeking.

  Jasper finished his Arnold biographies without finding a single historian who hinted that the general was anything but a gutless traitor. Most blamed Arnold’s historically hot and known Loyalist wife, Peggy, for his treachery, plus his giant wounded ego from not getting promoted. Plus the whole court-martial thing. Jasper wondered if maybe this was one of those fake 3-D images, and the artist was playing a trick on them—when you zoomed out and let your eyes settle, there wasn’t any hidden object to find. It was all just pixelated, historical chaos.

  They’d cleared a wall in the study room and had started taping up a timeline of the Revolutionary War. Their goal was to map Arnold’s road to treason and find a seam, anything that could potentially place the blame elsewhere. The Sunday night before break, Lacy called an emergency meeting to try and shake something loose in the hopes that Jasper could dig deeper into it while everybody else binged on turkey.

  “Okay, so Arnold captures Fort Ticonderoga, then loses the Battle of Quebec,” Lacy said. “In 1777 he wins at Saratoga, where he gets wounded, and also where he gets no credit because of officer politics.”

  “Dude almost lost his leg for the cause,” Sheldon said. “Least they could’ve done was give him some cred.”

  “You don’t get a prize for starting a race,” Tucker said. “You get it for finishing.”

  “But you get water along the way,” Sheldon said. “And people cheering you on.”

  “Focus, people,” Lacy said. “Arnold spends a winter at Valley Forge before Washington appoints him military commander of Philadelphia in 1778.”

  “Where he basically screwed himself by hanging out with Loyalists,” Jasper said. “And marrying one.”

  “Which brings us to Joseph Reed, my books.” Lacy tacked up a sheet that read Political Enemies. “As Governor of Pennsylvania, Reed starts a public attack on Arnold for his use of military wagons for a personal business venture, and the Loyalist wife thing. Reed really goes after him with not a ton of evidence. Arnold starts communicating with British spy John André in May of 1779, but then cuts off talks in October. The court-martial clears him of almost all Reed’s charges in early 1780, but he still gets a public scolding by Washington for the wagon stuff. In April, he starts talking with André again.”

  “Washington was the nail in the coffin,” Sheldon said. “All traitor after that.”

  Jasper stared at the timeline. The mobile swayed a little and grazed the top of his head. “Guys, Ira Boswell doesn’t fit into any of this.”

  “Exactly.” Lacy said. “And that’s your job over the break. Make him fit.”

  Tucker gave Jasper an accordion folder labeled with a sticky note. Miscellaneous. “I didn’t read these yet. Start here.”

  “Has Tuck the Information Annihilator been defeated?” Sheldon asked.

  “I’ve was busy,” Tucker said. “Texting your mom.”

  Nora choked on a strangled laugh.

  “Joke’s on you because my mom doesn’t text,” Sheldon said.

  “Oh, she texts,” Tucker said. “She texts.”

  “This conversation is making me uncomfortable, and I have to pack,” Lacy said. “Jasper, you good?”

  “Yup.”

  Lacy opened the door, and everybody heard Colton say, “Hey, Lace, thought maybe we could get some coffee after my shift ends.”

  “Sure, Colton. It’s almost one in the morning and I’m leaving in five hours and I haven’t showered in three days, so yeah I’d like to get some coffee. And maybe we can also go jogging and then look at the stars.”

  Silence.

  “Found a new spot to deer hunt if you’d prefer that.”

  Lacy sort of laughed. “Sorry. Okay, listen: I’m on the first shuttle out, so I’ll be eating a super early breakfast. If you’re up and not on Chesterton duty, we can have coffee.”

  “Where did he find some game?” Sheldon asked.

  “Maybe your mom,” Tucker said, staring at his phone. “She has game to spare.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sheldon gave Jasper ten bro hugs when he left at 6:00 AM the next day.

  Jasper went back to sleep until noon, and
probably would have slept the rest of the day if Nora hadn’t kicked at the door and said, “It’s seriously time to get your ass out of bed.”

  They made their own breakfast in the cafeteria kitchen—Jasper called it an omelet, but it was basically scrambled eggs with chopped up sausage and a bag of cheese on top. They wandered the empty halls, took smoke breaks in the courtyard, and made coffee jokes loud enough for Colton to hear. At one point, they caught Chillingsworth vacuuming the hallway and then decided they should be nicer to her, but probably wouldn’t. Nora showed Jasper the Civil War kids’ study room in the library. They’d turned the space into a place to practice graffiti before it was unveiled in more public displays. Nora had carved Abandon all hope, ye who enter here on the door. Jasper recognized the knife-work from the Cottonwood Gallows.

  NBB.

  Nora Something Booth.

  Her favorite spot turned out to be the rooftop above the girls’ dorms. It had a ratty couch and a terrific view of campus with gables on one side that blocked the wind.

  “Sorry you couldn’t go home for break,” Jasper said.

  “We’ve talked about your obsessive need to make everything about you.”

  “Right.”

  “You did me a favor. My dad got remarried and she’s almost my age. Calls me ‘Nor’ like we’re sisters. When I go home, there’s always a good chance I might assault her.”

  “You’re welcome, then.”

  Some geese crossed overhead. Colton’s boots clacked on the roof as he did the rounds, probably trying not to freeze to death.

  “Question,” Jasper said. “The awkward tension between you and Lacy. What’s that about?”

  “She’s mad at me,” Nora said.

  “Because you dueled?”

  “Because last year, when I was in a really bad spot, and she was being this super peppy and annoying cheerleader to get me out of my depression, I pretended. I acted like I was coming out of it just so she’d go home for spring break.” Nora leaned her head straight back and blew a long trail of smoke into the air. “But really, I just wanted her gone so I could take those pills and not have her be the one who found me.”

  Jasper wondered how Nora could say that so evenly. “Why don’t you just tell her you’re sorry?”

  “Are you my shrink?”

  “I’m just saying, if my friend did that after I tried to help them, I’d be mad.”

  Nora flicked ash over the side of the couch. “That’s because you’re self-absorbed.”

  “She probably feels like you left her.”

  “That still makes it about her.”

  “Right, but your deal is kind of all about you, so isn’t that the same thing?”

  Nora stared at the gray sky. Jasper could see his breath and wondered if it might snow soon. Apparently, winters here were endless. He thought about last Thanksgiving when his mom was on a crazy deadline, and they’d spent a week straight in front of the blazing fire eating takeout. It had been pure bliss.

  ****

  Jasper spent the next day in the study room with a new friend: an accordion folder called Miscellaneous. It should have been called Soul-Crushing Boredom. There was an email printout confirming his dad’s approved access to an archive in the New York Public Library housing some Joseph Reed papers; a list of other archives that held letters and legal papers from Reed’s career; and a list of donations collected by something called the “Ladies Association of Philadelphia,” which Google said Reed’s wife, Esther, started during the war to fund Patriot soldiers’ pay. There was also a clipping from a September 5, 1780, Philadelphia Gazette article reporting on a particularly deadly outbreak of dengue fever that had killed, among others, Ira Boswell; poor guy had left behind a wife and two kids. Another article from the Baltimore Sun in the 1930s went on and on about another Boswell—Charles—who had to liquidate his estate during the Great Depression. Apparently, Charles totally freaked out when they’d put his private library up for auction at a low price—he’d stormed the docket and took the lot off the list.

  File all this under “???????”

  It was getting late. And it was break, after all, so Jasper figured he didn’t have to feel guilty about taking one. In the corner, Nora was doing that jackhammer leg thing she did whenever her nicotine supply got low; pretty soon she’d be pacing back and forth. Jasper started repacking the accordion folder.

  And that’s when he found it—something so boring and so inconsequential that he’d almost skipped over it.

  It was a letter from Joseph Reed to his wife—or a copy of a letter—written in elegant, swirling cursive, the style of the 1700s, and therefore nearly impossible to read. Thank God his dad had transcribed it:

  My dearest Hetty,

  Knowing well my strong attachment to our family, I am confident of your sympathy regarding the financial troubles of Lt. Boswell and his family. I do not know any thing more disquieting than such a state of Uncertainty, and fear the gloom with which their sickly children suffer will assuredly worsen.

  Being that your association has such funds to alleviate their burden, and considering your desire to remunerate the soldiery directly, I request that a sum of forty dollars be dispatched to Lt. Boswell immediately. Yet because the General prefers alternate methods of renumeration, I beg you to keep this act of Charity discreet.

  Your most affectionate,

  J. Reed

  Jasper walked around the room, rereading the letter. He stopped at the mobile, watching it twirl until the names came into view.

  Washington.

  Reed.

  Arnold.

  Boswell.

  Jasper turned the letter over and saw his dad’s big, blocky, handwriting: WHY WOULD REED WANT TO HELP A MAN WHO SERVED ON THE STAFF OF HIS GREATEST ENEMY??

  “Maybe he felt bad,” Jasper said.

  “Are you talking to me?” Nora asked.

  “No. Just thinking out loud.”

  “It’s almost one in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” Jasper piled everything back inside the safe and locked it. The mobile was still spinning as he walked out of the room.

  ****

  Jasper had actually gotten so used to Sheldon’s awful snoring that he found it was hard to sleep without it. He stared at the ceiling and thought about Nora lying on the bathroom floor, dying, and then he was putting on Tucker’s borrowed jeans and a Whitesnake T-shirt and his coat.

  “But seriously,” Jasper said to Colton as they walked to the chapel. “How was coffee with Lacy?”

  “She said we should do it again.”

  “That’s progress.”

  They slowed as they approached the chapel door. “Careful with Nora,” Colton said.

  “Still pissed she almost took you out?”

  “She’s a black hole is all I’m sayin’. Don’t get sucked in.”

  The deep bass pounded louder than before; Pastor Bob must have gone home for the break. Jasper stood at the basement steps and watched neon lights bounce off the switchback walls. What if he wanted to—get sucked in.

  Wood creaked underneath his feet. Halfway down the steps, he paused for a whole minute. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, covered the walls in green spray paint. Maybe this was a terrible idea. Maybe Nora would freak out because he’d invaded her space. Maybe she’d finally get around to clawing his eyes out.

  But then the music faded for a second, and he thought he heard her sobbing.

  Jasper stepped cautiously into the dark room. A giant speaker system armed with lights shot neon streaks in every direction. Nora sat on the couch, wiping her face and nose with the sleeve of her hoodie. She stared up at a massive mural on the celling: a tall, skinny girl with black holes for eyes—the same one as her tattoo. Pink bubble letters read Hannah Rose Lincoln.

  Nora saw him and screamed, “IT’S TOO FUCKING LATE!”

  He crossed the room and drew her into a hug even though she fought back, writhing and screaming and cursing. It probably looked criminal to anybod
y watching.

  “I can’t fix it.” She sagged against him. “It’s too late.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  After a while, Nora pushed off of him and went outside to smoke. Jasper turned down the music. His ears hurt. He almost tripped over the masses of wires running between computers with towers stacked upon towers. They hummed and beeped, lights flickering and flashing. It looked like a serious gaming setup or something. Nora came back and settled on the couch a foot away.

  “So, that’s her?” Jasper asked.

  “That’s her.”

  “She’s really pretty.”

  “She was.” Nora showed him the inside of her left bicep. On it was tattooed the same girl, but older. Little kids were on each side of the figure, holding her hands. “She had a boyfriend. He was her second. Kingsley and I met him at the dueling estate in New York. They probably would’ve gotten married.”

  Kingsley.

  That took Jasper a couple seconds to untangle.

  “He was your second,” Jasper said. “That’s why you hate him.”

  “He actually tried to talk me out of it.” She kicked her boots up on a splintered coffee table. “I guess I blame him because it’s easier.”

  They stared at Hannah’s graffiti ghost on the ceiling for a while.

  “So you’re a living mural to her,” Jasper said. “The life she never had.”

  “Priests used to flog themselves in the middle ages. This is the modern equivalent.” Nora leaned to the side, and lifted her shirt to show her ribs, revealing an old lady in a rocker, surrounded by kids. “This felt like acid going in, but at least for a few weeks I didn’t hate myself.”

  “Right, but eventually you’re going to run out of ink space.”

  Nora pulled her shirt back down. “I plan to have lung cancer by then.”

  That explained the chain-smoking. “The Libertines would have challenged you anyway. If you’d won that duel, would you feel the same way?”