The Reservoir

by John Milliken Thompson

  Then Bobby Valentine told the group about a duel his uncle fought in Oakwood with a newspaper editor who was against paying back the war debt to the federal government. “He got hit in the jaw by a flying piece of somebody’s headstone. I believe it was an Aylett.”

  “Naw,” Sid said, “my folks ain’t buried around here.”

  “Anyway,” Bobby went on, “he took it on the chin for Virginia’s honor.” This led to another chorus of bellowing in simulated outrage. Bobby told the group if anybody needed a job at his father’s plant, he would see that he got it.

  Tommie and Tyler were mostly quiet, listening to the tales of the older boys, though Tommie was able to pitch in a few wry little remarks that got some laughs. Harry, also a freshman, entertained the group with remarkably accurate imitations of their professors. James was the quietest of all, and Tommie saw that he was able to maintain his composure and place within the group without a great deal of effort. Perhaps, Tommie thought, he should model himself after James, who had a dignity the others lacked. He was also the best dressed, and Tommie could picture himself studying law someday and behaving in a similarly modest manner.

  A blind negro fiddler was playing at the front of the room, his foot tapping time in the sawdust on the floor. At the table next to theirs a group of rough men were playing cards. The man closest to Tommie had a purple wen on his forehead; he called out, “Play ‘Chicken in the Breadtray.’ ” Tommie looked over and saw him removing his wooden lower leg so that he could scratch his stump. The man shot him a murderous look and as Tommie turned back he heard the cardplayers laughing. His own kind were around him and he felt that never had he known such a fine group of fellows—he wanted to belong to them forever.

  Sid told Tommie and Tyler that they would make excellent candidates for the Bell Ringing Society. By tradition, at midnight during final examination week one member of the group would ring bells and holler like mad for a brief time. No one knew exactly who was in the society and where the next bell ringing would occur. Tommie said he would be proud to be a member. Then Sid suggested they all go over to Locust Alley to Lizzie Banks’s house. After a few minutes of spirited innuendo and guffaws, Tommie deduced that Lizzie Banks ran a brothel, where you could have the woman of your choice for five dollars. Students were welcome. James and Harry decided to save their money and go on home. Tommie did not have five dollars on him, nor could he afford to spend it, but his curiosity was so inflamed now that he quietly asked Tyler for the loan of a few dollars.

  No one but Sid and Randall seemed to have been there before, or to any such place. But the other three were game for the experience, and off they all went, no longer singing, nor quite so boisterous. When they got to the row of jammed-together houses, Sid went up and knocked on one that was indistinguishable from the others. A middle-aged woman, her hair wound into a severe knot, let them in as though she were ushering them into Sunday school. She introduced herself as Lizzie, and offered them sherry from a crystal decanter sitting on a table beneath a winding staircase. A tall mirror stood on one wall, half its silver missing, its carved gilt frame suggesting an opulent past; another wall held a convex mirror that afforded views down the hall and up the stairs.

  As nonchalantly as they could, the young men took seats in boot-scuffed wing chairs and sprung sofas artfully covered with antimacassars. They sat drinking superfluous, weak sherry, until presently a group of young women materialized from different parts of the house. The one who came to sit with Tommie had short reddish hair, plump arms, and an upturned nose; she called herself Gretchen. He liked Tyler’s girl better, a wispy woman with big sad eyes and long straight black hair. Seeing him looking at her, Gretchen pouted, “You don’t like me?” She had a hint of Irish in her accent.

  “No,” Tommie said. “I like you fine.” His voice seemed muffled and far away, but he felt pleasantly free of himself and he took another big sip of sherry. He banished Nola from his mind for the hundredth time, as well as visions of the crucifix, his mother, Reverend Ryland, the flames of hell, Reverend Hatcher, and semi-naked sinners moaning in eternal darkness as depicted in an old Sunday school booklet. In their place he put an image of Sid walking happily up the stairs with a laughing, buxom young lady, and he reminded himself that God expects us to sin, in order that we may be forgiven—a formula that had been lying ready for use in his brain since the day he’d conceived it at a long, otherwise dull revival at the Stratton Parish Episcopal Church.

  Gretchen led him upstairs past a red velvet wall hanging with gold tassels. As he passed, he ran the back of his hand along the plushness of the velvet for reassurance that his money was going to a worthy cause. The little room they entered was high-ceilinged and furnished with a low iron bed, a wooden chair, and a nightstand with a ceramic pitcher and wash basin. She went around to the other side of the bed, her back to him, and began unlacing her beaded basque; he sat on the chair watching her in the candle glow. Her back was suddenly bare, the basque hanging from her waist like a carapace she’d emerged from.

  She half turned, smiling in a coy way that struck him as artificial. “Need some help?”

  “No,” he said, pulling off his shoes. His fingers fumbled over his buttons. Finally he was down to his underwear, and, not sure what he was supposed to do, he came over and sat on the close side of the bed.

  Gretchen had used the time to strip down to nothing but pale skin and a gold necklace. She twisted half around again and placed a hand gently on his chest. “You’re a very handsome man,” she told him. No one but his aunt had ever called him a man before, much less a handsome man. Her breast swayed as she stroked him down to his navel. Then she was on the bed facing him, squatting on her heels, and the room seemed full of flesh. He was afraid of disappointing her even as she stroked between his legs and he felt himself swelling. He let her be in charge—let her slip his drawers down, place a rubber condom on him, as though she were a nurse and he afraid to look too closely at his injury. He touched her breast as she worked on him, and she didn’t seem to mind. But as she slipped the condom down he could not help letting go. She held him and murmured, “Mm-hmm, junior’s excited. That’s a good boy, that’s a good boy.”

  She handed him a towel, then lay beside him and told him how strong he was. “Next time,” she said, “I’ll be quicker. You’ll see.” She tapped his nose. They lay there awhile, and she told him about how she was going to earn enough money to go to New Orleans by riverboat; she’d had a gentleman customer from there, a man with a white suit, who told her she could have a job as a dancer if she wanted it. But she’d only just come to Richmond, so she didn’t want to leave quite yet. She was from Alexandria, and had left as soon as she could because she didn’t get along with her aunt and uncle who had raised her, her parents having too many of their own. While she talked, she let Tommie play with her breasts, until he felt the sadness of the world slipping away and desire coming back. He leaned in toward her as she was sitting up.

  “My, oh my,” she said. “We can go again, but it’s three dollars extra.”

  This hardly seemed fair, seeing as how he had not technically gone even once. But since he was not sure how such things were counted, all he could do was lament, “I don’t have but five.”

  “How am I ever gonna get to New Orleans if I give out special favors?” she asked, as though it were a problem they had discussed for years.

  “I could pay you later.”

  But she was already putting on her underclothes, and he didn’t want to beg. “You ask for me next time, hear?” she said. He said he would. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Tommie,” he said. “Tommie Merton.” It was the first name that came into his head, from church history—Walter Merton, thirteenth-century bishop.

  “Well, Tommie Merton, it was a pleasure to meet you.” She gave him a sassy little smile. “Now it’s time for you and me to get dressed.”

  • CHAPTER SIX •

  ON TUESDAY Richardson receives word from Mil
lboro’ that Lillian Madison got on the train on Thursday bound for Richmond. It was six hours late and didn’t arrive until three o’clock Friday morning. Richardson then learns from the conductor that the young woman was traveling alone and that she was staying at the American Hotel and expected to meet a friend in the city.

  The American Hotel sits on the southwest corner of Twelfth and Main in a row of iron-fronted buildings that arose after the war. It’s a white four-story with arched windows and green shutters and decorative cornices—one of the nicer hotels in town, with its own barbershop and restaurant. The entrance is down around on Twelfth, with a ladies’ entrance to the left. Richardson steps briskly in and asks for the manager on duty. There were several young women here that night, he is told. While waiting for the clerk who was on duty last Thursday night, he is shown the register; running his finger down the list of late-arriving guests, he comes across one of the last—F. L. Merton of Roanoke City. He taps it. “This Miss Merton,” he asks. “What was she like?”

  The day desk clerk doesn’t know, but tries to make helpful suggestions while they wait for Mr. Dodson, the night clerk, who has to be woken up at his house six blocks away. “She probably was one of the finer young ladies from Roanoke, visiting a sick relative or something. Though I don’t know her personally.”

  Richardson nods but is not really listening. He’s trying to imagine why Miss Madison would travel to Richmond and register under a false name, if indeed she did. The train conductor supplied him with a fairly good description that matched the reservoir woman—short, stout, brown hair, wearing a grayish dress, he thought, and a black hat with feathers; carrying an oblong clothes bag and a hand satchel. He’d also mentioned a red shawl. The Dunstans’ shawl could very well be hers. But best not leap too far ahead, he tells himself. He decides to make inquiries of the bellboys and night watchmen.

  The night clerk arrives shortly, nattily dressed for someone who has been rudely awakened. A dandy boy. Baby-faced, late twenties. As soon as he opens his mouth, Richardson knows he’ll give a good description but will be nervous and unsure of himself. “Ah, yes,” he says. “I do remember her. She arrived on that late train. She was wearing a charcoal-colored alpaca dress and a black hat with ostrich tips and a veil and bugle-gimp beads, I believe. Let’s see, a blue jersey jacket and there was a red crochet shawl around her shoulders. There may have been brown gloves. Possibly cotton, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure. We see so many people every day.”

  “You have a very good memory, Mr. Dodson,” Richardson tells him. “Now, tell me what else you remember about her.” Dodson says that she seemed like a well-bred young lady with good connections. She didn’t seem at all out of place. He did not see her again, but she sent a note by a newsboy, a short mulatto of about fourteen or fifteen years. One of the bellboys, Slim Lane, apparently took the note out to the newsboy, but the newsboy could not find the person for whom the note was intended and so Slim returned the note to the desk.

  “I went off duty at ten,” Dodson says. “The note was there when I came back and stayed there all day Saturday. But the young lady had already left—without paying her bill. So I tore the note up and threw it away.” Dodson then asks if this has anything to do with the reservoir girl, though he knows it does. Richardson only says that it might.

  Now he has Dodson digging through the trash, which the clerk is fairly certain has not been emptied in the past three days. They take two trash bins back to the clerks’ office and sort through handfuls of notes, orange peels, candy wrappers, pencil shavings, and other detritus, Dodson explaining that all manner of refuse gets left on the front desk even though the clientele is generally of the finest quality. Richardson pulls out a crumpled note and three torn ones, or rather pieces, and begins assembling them. Two of the torn notes have names that are not ones he’s looking for; the third one is inside three pieces of a ripped cream-colored envelope. The note is unsigned and appears to be torn from a larger piece of ruled paper. It reads, “I will be there. So do wait for me.” The envelope, pieced together, is more interesting. There is a name in cursive on the outside.

  Dodson says he glanced at the note before reinserting it into the envelope and tearing it up. He is almost certain it is the same note that Slim brought back undelivered. Richardson puts the three pieces of the envelope together on a table and asks Dodson to read the name. Dodson squints and says, “T. J.… Clements?”

  Richardson nods. He can see plainly what it says, but it’s not a name familiar to many people. He strokes his jaw, lost in thought. He and Dodson keep sifting through the trash looking for anything else that might have belonged in the envelope. Dodson cannot remember. The note looks complete in itself, but it’s odd that it was torn from a larger paper. Likely she was frugal, Richardson thinks. Probably she had grown up that way—large family in the country, scraping by after the war; she goes across the state to teach when she’s barely of age, if that. Even with much on her mind, the habit of not wasting paper was natural. He cannot yet form a picture of Cluverius, her cousin and possible seducer. But why “T.J.” when Cary Madison had clearly said “Willie”? Perhaps it was a nickname.

  Richardson meets with Slim Lane in the clerks’ office. Detective Wren has been waiting outside, but Richardson tells him he’ll have to wait a little longer—Wren can be useful, but he has an unfortunate way of bullying people into believing he’s in charge of an investigation he may never be paid a cent for. Making him wait is the best medicine.

  Slim is skinny and brown, in his mid-twenties, his nose as angular as a white man’s. He carries his head back, as though his neck were too weak to hold it upright, and he constantly shifts his eyes right and left in what Richardson at first thinks is nervousness, then realizes is simply a personal tic. Richardson asks him about the woman who was staying in Room 21 on Friday.

  “A yellow boy give me a note to take to her,” Slim says, darting his eyes right. His voice is nasal, his accent almost as Caucasian as his nose, as though the whiteness in him is concentrated in the middle of his face.

  “Who was this boy?”

  “Don’t know his name. I’d recognize him though.” His eyes shift to the left, making Richardson look to that corner of the room, as if for the ghost that Slim sees.

  “And what did the boy ask you to do?”

  “He said a man give him a note to take to the lady in Room 21.”

  “So the man knew she was in Room 21?”

  Slim’s eyes shift back and forth, pausing for the first time directly on Richardson. His Adam’s apple bulges. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, did he ask for the note to be delivered to a room or a person?”

  Slim shakes his head. “I disremember exactly. The yellow boy might know.”

  “Do you remember the name of the woman?”

  Slim says no.

  “Was it Merton?”

  “Yessir, I believe it was Murder, Murdon, yessir.”

  “And what was on the note?”

  “I didn’t look at it. It was on a little card. I took it to the lady in Room 21, and she said wait, and she handed me an envelope to take back out to the man. I give it to the boy, and a nickel. She give me one too.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I went back to work.”

  “Did you see the lady again, or the man that sent the note?”

  “Nosir, I never saw that man. The lady went out later in the morning and came back in at dinnertime.”

  “Did you see her after that?”

  “She went out again in the evening. Came back after dark and went out again. I didn’t see her after that.”

  Richardson tries to fix times to her coming and going, but gets different answers each time. Slim describes the woman as short and wearing a dark dress and coat and a red shawl. The last time she went out he believed she was carrying her clothes bag. He remembered that because most folks don’t carry their bags out at night.

  The night watchman, a black man in his
forties named Hunter Hunt, remembers her comings and goings a bit differently. Hunt claims she went out after dark, as did Slim, but says she did not return after that. He agrees that it’s possible Slim saw her and he didn’t, but that it’s also possible Slim mistook her for another woman staying in the hotel. He remembers a short woman with a red shawl leaving Room 21 with her clothes bag. Not long before this, along about nine o’clock, a gentleman called for her by mistake. He said he was waiting for a lady his sister went to school with, and the lady in 21 only looked something like her. So Hunt had him wait in the parlor, but when he looked in a few minutes later the gentleman was gone.

  “What did the gentleman look like?” Richardson asks.

  Hunt thinks a minute. “He was tall and thin. Had a mustache, a light-colored coat.”

  “As tall as me?”

  Hunt takes his time in answering, trying to judge Richardson’s height rather than the importance of the question, as Slim appeared to be doing. “I’d mostly say so, yessuh. But without him here, I don’t know.”

  “So the gentleman left the hotel without the lady?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “And did you see her go out?”

  “Nosuh. Round midnight I noticed her door open a crack and the light squeezin’ out. I knocked and went in. Looked like she was clean gone. Bed made, no bags, no lady. I turned off the light and closed the door.”