A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  “This is where the runaway slaves were kept,”she calls out.“Sometimes there’d be just one or two ofthem, sometimes as many as ten.

  Then, when the coast was clear, they’d get herded out and sent on their way—to Canada, mostly.Where they’d be free.The great thing about this space is that the temperature is always sixty degrees, winter and summer, as is true with many ofthe rooms in Eight Chimneys.”

  Marie goes on for a while longer, telling everyone aboutWendell Richmond, who was the master ofthe house from1820to1882,and about the escaped slave who gave birth to a child in this cellar, and about the artifacts ofthat time that have recently been recovered—the little tin earrings, the diary filled with sketches oftrees, fields, and other fleeing slaves, the un-explained human teeth.Then, finally, she steps into the old cloister and feels in the air for the lamp that has been set up—she has never looked more like a blind girl than at this moment, groping for the switch with al-most spastic waves, like a kid pretending to have lost her sight.

  The light comes on, revealing two mannequins that Ferguson got from the Fashion Bug at theWindsor Mall.One ofthem is dressed in overalls and a straw hat, the other in an old gingham dress, and both of them have been freshly painted brown.Ten by ten, the guests walk into the secreted room, have a look, and presumably imagine themselves hid-ing and hungry in such a place.It smells ofmud that has been there for-ever, and the paint that only yesterday was sprayed on the mannequins’ faces.When Daniel crowds in to look around for himself, Kate, refusing to be a part ofthe tour’s grand finale, has already left, and when he feels the tip ofa finger against his backbone, Daniel’s heart quickens:he knows it is Iris’s touch.He takes a deep breath and feels it again.It is just one fin-ger, a circumspect gesture, a child’s, a prisoner’s, but the force ofher fin-gertip stirs his blood.Then it is time for them all to turn around and let the next wave ofguests come in to look at what is, after all, just a storage room in the cellar ofan old house.When Daniel faces the other direction, he is behind Iris and Hampton, Nelson and Ruby.He could return the se-cret little touch, but he doesn’t dare.He doesn’t trust his hand;it is not inconceivable that once he touches her he will not be able to stop.

  Upstairs in the ballroom, the party has become more animated.The guests, released now from the dutiful march through the house and its claustrophobic conclusion in the cellar’s secret room, and further re-leased from the slightly hectoring quality ofMarie’s voice, are gossiping and joking with each other in increasingly excited voices.Daniel is look-ing to see where Kate is now and finally sees her across the room, stand-ing with Derek, whose face is very close to hers and who is speaking to her with what appears to be great seriousness.Daniel sees Iris, too;she’s talking with Ethan Greenblatt.Then he sees Susan with Marie.Susan is holding Marie by the upper arm and seems to be scolding her.Marie tries to yank her arm away but Susan’s grip is too strong.She continues to speak to Marie, with a rather cruel, powerful smile on her face, and suddenly Marie breaks free.

  Marie leaves the ballroom and heads straight out ofthe house, without so much as a jacket or a sweater.Seeing this gives Daniel a small jolt ofconcern, but before he can give it much more thought, Daniel is set upon by Upton Douglas, who swings his way over on his crutches, accompanied by a willowy middle-aged woman with an elegantly un-happy face, a widow from Buffalo, to whom Douglas has been showing houses in the area.Upton wants Daniel to talk to her about how grand it is to live in Leyden, its beauty, and convenience, its friendly atmo-sphere and myriad cultural events, and Daniel is trapped in this seem-ingly endless conversation.

  Finally, he feels a tug at his back pocket.It’s Ruby.

  ”Can I have Ginkie?”she asks.

  It takes him a moment to understand she wants her doll, and another moment to realize he no longer has it in hand.And then he remembers: when he felt Iris’s finger on his spine, his hands instinctively opened and the doll slipped from his grasp.

  “Oh, you know what, Ruby?”he says, scooping her up.“I think I accidentally left her downstairs.”

  “Where?”

  “Just wait here.Find Mommy, and I’ll find Ginkie.”

  He sets Ruby down and waits there for a moment while she hurries offto find Kate.When she has disappeared into the crowd, Daniel walks out ofthe ballroom and makes his way through the dining room, the kitchen, and the summer kitchen, where he finds Ferguson and Derek huddled together in intense conversation.Ferguson’s shoes are covered with fresh, wet dirt;there is a muddy patch on his right knee.

  “Daniel,”Ferguson says,“Marie’s gone missing.”

  “Have you seen her?”Derek asks.

  ”I saw her leave,”Daniel says.“Maybe halfan hour ago.”He has his hand on the door leading down to the cellar.He can barely even form this thought in his own mind, but the fact is that he hasn’t seen Iris for a while and he cannot help but wonder ifshe is still somehow in the cellar.

  “Well, you know whatIthink,”Derek says to Ferguson.“She’s blind.

  I don’t care how well she knows the property, things are torn up out there and where there used to be paths there’s nothing but fallen trees.

  And those boys from the juvey home are still at large and for all we know they could be out there right now.”

  “My God,”says Daniel.“You and Kate are really focused on thosekids.”

  “You would be, too, ifit happened to you,”Derek says sharply.

  ”What do you think I should do?”Ferguson asks.

  ”You want me to call it in?”

  Ferguson sighs, looks away, and Derek presses him.

  ”I appreciate your wanting to be discreet…”

  Ferguson sighs.“Call it in,”he says.

  ”I’ll be right back,”Daniel says, opening the cellar door.

  ”Where are you going?”Ferguson asks.

  ”My kid left her doll down there,”Daniel says.He waits for a moment and then quickly heads down the stairs, holding on to the banister, his legs trembling.

  A few lights have been left burning and he easily makes his way past the Richmond family’s cast-offpossessions.The sliding door to the secret room is still halfopen, and by the time he pulls it all the way to the side his heart is pounding violently.

  “Hello,”Iris says.She has been sitting on a small, rough-hewn bench and she rises as Daniel walks in.She is holding Ruby’s doll.She and Daniel stand there facing each other for a moment, and then she hands the doll to him.“Here.”

  “Thank you,”he says.The two painted mannequins seem to be staring at him.He looks at Ruby’s doll for a moment and then lets it drop from his hands.He puts his arms around Iris.

  “I was waiting for you,”she whispers.

  [14]

  Daniel and Iris rearrange their clothes.They are reeling.Their legs are weak.Desire summoned but unresolved leaves them nervous yet vague, like people awakened while dreaming.

  “Wait here,”Iris whispers, her lips an inch from his mouth.She turns to leave but he catches her, stops her, just to show that he can.She slips away from him and hurries out ofthe cellar, he hears the heels ofher shoes clacking against the wooden stairs,bang bang,it’s like being buried alive and listening to the hammer driving the nails into the coffin.

  He waits, and when he finally comes back upstairs, he is still trembling, but no one pays attention to his arrival, no one asks where he’s been, or what the matter is.They are gathered in front ofFerguson, who is addressing them all.

  “All right, then,”he’s saying,“here’s what we’re going to do.First, I want to thank you all for your help.My family appreciates it and I ap-preciate it, and I think ifwe go out there, and just do this in an orderly way, we’ll find Marie before she hurts herself.The police have been in-formed, but there’s not a hell ofa lot they can do right now.I don’t know what we’re paying our taxes for, but it’s not for helicopters.So it’ll be up to us.”

  Nine men and five women volunteer to form a search party to find poor Marie.Everything capable and char
ismatic in Ferguson is on display as he addresses the volunteers.His voice is powerful, confident;he has even produced a topographical map ofhis holdings, and he stands before it now and taps at it with his blunt, oil-stained forefinger.

  “This is where we are right now.The house is right in the center of the property, plus or minus three degrees.We can radiate out from the house, and since we’ll have seven teams, each team can cover roughly a forty-five-degree slice ofthe pie.”

  Susan has come up close beside him.Her expression is at once proprietary and serene, like a cat about to stretch out next to something it has killed.She is holding a large wicker basket with both hands;it is filled with what appear to be thick, red cigars, with pictures ofmedieval lions printed on them.

  Gathered in the entrance hall, beneath the stained and sagging grandeur ofthe painted ceiling, the volunteers choose their partners.

  Daniel doesn’t care whom he is paired with, as long as it’s not Hampton, but luck would have it otherwise.Hampton may not like Daniel but at least he knows him, however uneasily, and without actually saying any-thing he stands next to Daniel, as iftheir searching for Marie together is a foregone conclusion.

  “We need a way ofsignaling when we find her,”Susan is saying.“I’ve got Roman candles and everyone should take one.Ifyou find her, light the fuse, and the rest ofthe search party will know.”

  “Where did you get those?”asks Ferguson.

  ”Remember when we had that Burmese purification ceremony two Septembers ago?”Susan says, dropping the basket onto the floor.She cannot help reflecting upon how Ferguson had mocked the ritual, as he mocked all rituals, or anything new—except the ritual ofinfidelity and the novelty ofa new young body.“Help yourselves,”she says.She figures that everyone here knows that Ferguson is screwing Marie, and probably they assume that Marie has fled the house because Susan finally told that little whore what she thinks ofher—and they are essentially correct in that assumption, though“finally”might not be the right word, since Marie has known ofSusan’s enmity all along, and why she picked today ofall days to overreact is anybody’s guess.Ofone thing, however, Susan is certain:Marie will try to find a way ofturning this irritating little drama to her own advantage.

  “Be careful,”Susan announces, as the guests take the Roman candles out ofthe basket.“They pack quite a wallop.”

  The search party files out ofthe foyer, onto the porch.Daniel and Hampton head south-southwest, across a ruined expanse ofwild grass that soon leads to a dense wood ofpine, locust, maple, and oak.

  Once they are in the woods, the remains ofthe afternoon light seem to shrink away.The shadows ofthe trees—a shocking number ofwhich have fallen to the ground from the weight ofOctober’s sudden snow-storm—seem to pile on top ofeach other, one shadow over the next, building a wall ofdarkness.There had always been paths through the woods, made by the herds ofdeer that traversed these acres, or left over from the old days when there had been enough money to maintain and even manicure the Richmond holdings.But the October storm had dropped thousands oftrees, and the paths are somewhere beneath them, invisible now.Daniel and Hampton can’t take two steps without having to scramble over the canopy ofa fallen tree, or climb over a trunk, or a crisscross oftrunks, slippery with rot.And where there aren’t fallen trees there are thorny blackberry vines that furl out across the forest floor like a sharp, punishing fog.

  Here and there are little white throw rugs ofsnow.

  ”These vines are like razor wire,”says Daniel.Everything he says seems potentially disastrous, every word packed with black powder and a short fuse.

  “Damn!”said Hampton.A snarl ofvines has caught his cuffs, and as he yanks his leg free, the thorn tears his skin right through his sock.

  “Are you all right?”Daniel says.They are halfway up a gentle slope—

  it seems to Daniel that ifthey could get to the top ofthe hill, they might be able to seeoverthe trees and gain some sense ofwhere they are.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”Hampton touches his ankle and then looks at his fingertip:red.“I just wish Ferguson took care ofhis own mess.”

  “You mean Marie?”

  “He’s sleeping with her in his house, with his wife there.Insanity.

  What does the man expect?”Even now, he speaks formally, his voice deep and honeyed, every syllable distinct.

  “Not this, probably.”Daniel stands ten feet from Hampton.He feels moisture from the forest floor seeping through the thin soles ofhis Sun-day shoes.“Anyhow, are we really sure Fergie’s sleeping with Marie?”

  “That’s what Iris tells me,”Hampton says.“Ferguson’s known Marie since she was a little girl.And since he and Susan don’t have children, it’s like a sublimated incest.”

  “Is that what Iris says?”

  “Hasn’t she said it to you?”Hampton asks, raising his eyebrows.

  Oh Jesus, he’s closing in,thinks Daniel.

  They walk.The crunch oftheir footsteps.The cries ofinvisible birds.

  Daniel cups his hands around his mouth and calls Marie’s name, silenc-ing the birds.The noise oftheir footsteps on the brittle layer ofdried leaves that covers the forest floor is like a saw going tirelessly back and forth.They have no idea where they are going.

  They zigzag around fallen trees and swirls ofbramble.Daniel walks in front.He looks over his shoulder.Hampton is having a hard time keep-ing his balance.

  “I’m ruining these shoes,”Hampton says.He leans against a partially fallen cherry tree and looks at the sole ofhis English cordovan.The leather is shiny, rosy, and moist, like a human tongue.

  “Are you all right?”asks Daniel.

  Hampton nods curtly.“I hate the woods,”he says.“I don’t even like trees.I prefer landscape that’s flat and open, where you can see what’s out there.”

  “Well, you’re a long-range planner,”says Daniel.“So that figures.”

  Hampton frowns.He seems to be questioning Daniel’s right to be making glib generalizations about him.

  “My wife tells me she sees a lot ofyou during the week,”he says.

  “Well, you know, the kids,”Daniel says.“Kate’s daughter worships your son.It’s Nelson this and Nelson that.Constantly.”

  Hampton tries to remember the little girl’s name.He recalls it was the name ofone ofhis aunts—but his mother has four sisters by blood and three stepsisters, and then all those sisters-in-law.Hampton was raised in a swirling, scolding vortex oflarge, vivid women.

  “It’s like seeing what it’ll be like when Ruby falls in love,”says Daniel.

  Ah, right:Ruby.Actually, none ofhis aunts had that name, no one came any closer to that than his aunt Scarlet, a well-powdered librarian, whose upper arms were like thighs, and who, nevertheless, was usually in a sleeveless dress, which displayed not only her fleshy arms but her vaccination, a raised opacity ofskin and scar the size ofa pocket watch.

  And Scarlet wasn’t even her name—it was Charlotte, but one ofthe other nephews mispronounced it and Scarlet stuck.

  Hampton presses a button on the side ofhis watch, the dial lights up like a firefly for a moment.

  “It’s almost five o’clock.”

  “It’ll be dark soon,”says Daniel.“I wonder ifanyone’s found her.”

  “This is so messed up.”

  “Marie!”Daniel shouts, but his voice drops like an anvil ten feet in front ofhim.

  “I have to be on the nine o’clock train tonight.That Monday morning train’s no good for me.”

  Daniel keeps quiet about that, though he is by now, ofcourse, fully aware ofHampton’s hours ofdeparture and arrival.Infidelity is an ugly business, but it makes you a stickler for detail.You’re an air traffic con-troller and the sky is stacked up with lies, all ofthem circling and circling, the tips oftheir wings sometimes coming within inches ofeach other.

  They reach the top ofthe small hill, but the sight lines are no better than below.The only sky they can see is directly above them, gray, going black.

  “What do
you think?”says Daniel.

  ”I think we’re lost,”Hampton says, shaking his head.

  “Next they’ll be sending a search party after us,”Daniel says.He notices something on the ground and peers more closely at it.A dead coy-ote like a flat gray shadow.Sometimes at night, he and Kate could hear coyotes in the distance, a pack whipping themselves up into a frenzy of howls and yips, but this desiccated pelt, eyeless, tongueless, is the clos-est he has come to actually seeing one.

  “What do you have there?”Hampton asks.

  ”The animal formerly known as coyote,”Daniel says.

  Breaking offa low, bare branch from a dead hemlock, Daniel pokes the coyote’s remains.Curious, Hampton stands next to him.A puffof colorless dust rises up.The world seems so deeply inhospitable—but, of course, it isn’t:they are just in the part ofit that isn’t made for them.

  Here, it is for deer, foxes, raccoons, birds and mice and hard-shelled in-sects, fish, toads, sloths, maggots.Hampton steps back and covers his mouth and nose with his hand, as ifbreathing in the little puffthat has arisen from the coyote will imperil him.Iris has often bemoaned her husband’s fastidiousness, his loathing ofmess, his fear ofgerms.He has turned the controls oftheir water heater up and now the water comes out scalding, hot enough to kill most household bacteria.There are pump-and-squirt bottles ofantibacterial soap next to every sink in the house;ifIris has a cold, Hampton sleeps in the guest room, and ifNel-son has so much as a sniffle, Hampton will eschew kissing the little boy good night, he will shake hands with him instead and then, within min-utes, he’ll be squirting that bright emerald-green soap into his palm.

  An immense oak tree lies on the ground;Hampton rests his foot on it and then shouts Marie’s name.The veins on his neck swell;Daniel has a sense ofwhat it would be like to deal with Hampton’s temper, about which he has heard a great deal from Iris.No wonder Iris hasn’t told Hampton a thing.She is afraid.How could I have not seen it before?Daniel wonders.She has not told him, she will never tell him, and if she does Hampton will kill her.Or me.