A Fugitive Truth

by Dana Cameron

  “You startled me!” he exclaimed, as he pulled the headphones off. I could hear Kenny G. “You must be the new one, er, ah, Dr.—?”

  “Emma Fielding,” I said, extending a hand. His hand was small and a little clammy from the ice in the glass.

  “I’m John Miner—Jack,” he said, transferring his drink back to his right hand and taking a big sip. “Welcome, welcome. What are you researching?”

  “Madam Margaret Chandler’s diary is here. I did a little survey at the Chandler house last summer, and it has a good eighteenth-century component intact, so I’m going back in a season or two. Then I found out her diary still existed, and here I am.”

  “Survey? Component?” He screwed up his face in puzzlement, and I realized I’d lapsed into professional jargon.

  “I’m excavating the site of her home,” I explained. “I’m an archaeologist.”

  I had been expecting the usual curiosity, even excitement, that comes when I tell people what I do for a living, but Jack only looked doubtful and cleared his throat. “Ah. How interesting.”

  Clearly, he wasn’t about to admit that he’d always wanted to be an archaeologist the way so many people did at cocktail parties. I changed tack. “What is your work? I read the letter describing who else would be here, but I can’t recall. You’re also doing the eighteenth century, right?”

  Jack brightened a bit. “I’m just putting the finishing touches on my book on the economic history of the Connecticut River valley during the Revolution. There are some very important manuscripts regarding the lumbering concerns here.”

  I tried to look enthusiastic, but economic history bores the pants off me. Fair enough; even folks in related fields couldn’t always get excited about the same things. “Well, it seems like this is the place to be then, isn’t it? I’m going for a walk, would you like to join me?”

  Jack was confused. “Where are you going to walk to? There’s nothing out there. Not for miles.”

  I laughed a little, figuring he was kidding. “I’m not going anywhere, just down to the library and back, have a look at the scenery.”

  He shook his head violently, scenery apparently not big on his list of priorities. “Oh no, no thank you. It’s just trees and cold out there. No, ma’am, not for me.”

  “Then I guess I’ll see you later—”

  “The rest of us are driving into Boston tonight for dinner, and if you like you could join us.” Jack was doing his best to be kind. He reached over and pulled out the batteries from a charger plugged in by the sink. “You can meet Michael and Faith. Faith’s staying in town tonight, doing work there for a couple of days, so you won’t get a chance to meet her until she gets back midweek. But perhaps that’s just as well, she’s er, a bit, um, you know…”

  I cocked my head and smiled vaguely to encourage him, but apparently Jack thought better of it. He carefully replaced the batteries in his stereo, placing the old ones in the charger. “But Michael, he’s just come in now. He’s in the parlor, um, I guess. Will you join us?”

  I considered it, then shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’m up to another long drive today. I’ll go for my walk, then unpack, get some rest. Maybe next time.”

  “Maybe next time. We have sort of a bathroom schedule for the morning,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a raccoon washing its food. “You could either go before me, about six-thirty, or after Faith, about seven-thirty.”

  “The later the better, as far as I’m concerned. This is practically a vacation for me, and I’m going to make the most of sleeping in while I don’t have to commute too far.”

  “Well, that’s all right then.” As I headed for the door, Jack looked concerned for a minute. “You do know it’s almost a mile to the library as the road goes, don’t you? It’s freezing out there.”

  I smiled: He needn’t have worried. I regularly ran five miles. “Thanks, I’ll be fine. See you later.”

  Realizing that Jack was at least right about the outside temperature, I decided to get a scarf. On my way back through the hall, I ran across the second of my three fellow Fellows in the darkened parlor. Or at least, I thought I had. All I could see was a large dark shape off to one side of the couch.

  “Hello?” I asked quietly, just so Jack wouldn’t hear, in case I was actually greeting a pile of coats or something.

  The pile stirred and a voice came mournfully from the depths of the cloth. “Oh God.”

  I looked around and flicked the light switch. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I wasn’t certain if you were a—” A piece of furniture, I almost said. “—asleep.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.” The man had an attractive face, chiseled nose, fine lips, and wavy dark hair that was just a little too long in just the right way. His eyes were still closed.

  “I’m Emma Fielding.”

  “Of course you are,” came the reply, heavy with weltschmerz.

  My eyes adjusted to the light, and I saw that the bulky lump was not a pile of coats, but a tall man wrapped in an enormous greatcoat and scarf. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and, not getting up or opening his eyes, stuck it out in front of him, presumably for me to shake.

  “Michael Glasscock. You’re looking at that eighteenth-century diary, right?” His eyes opened on pronunciation of his name, and they were stunning, a deep sapphire blue. He looked the way I always imagined Heathcliff did, and I admit, in spite of his odd behavior, my heart beat a little quicker and my breathing got a little shallower.

  Damn it. Why does just the thought of library work always have this effect on me?

  “That’s right.” He knew what I was working on! “Margaret Chandler’s husband, Justice Matthew Chandler, was a fairly consequential jurist in the early part of the eighteenth century. He had his finger in every important political pie, and there’s been some research done on his life, but no one’s ever done a full-scale excavation at the site of their house. And no one’s ever tried to see how Madam Chandler might have fit into things, aside from a few little articles from the turn of the century, you know, colonial revival “great lady as helpmeet” stuff. So I’m hoping to look at it all together, write the book, a little feminist theory, a little social history…” I did a little cha-cha in time with my plans. I really was showing off, but Michael Glasscock didn’t notice.

  “Oh. Goody,” he said in a monotone.

  I combed desperately through my memory. “You’re doing something on the American Transcendentalists, aren’t you?”

  “Idealists. God, they just didn’t have a clue, did they?” he said. Michael got up and stretched, catlike, then slunk over to prop up the mantelpiece. “I just can’t stand how naive they were. Painful.”

  That floored me; shouldn’t he have been acting more the role of the apologist, if he were interested in them? “Sure, naive, but they thought they could change the world with their ideals. Not such a bad thing.” Then I couldn’t resist asking. “What drew you to them?”

  “I study the history of American philosophy, and there was money in them,” he said, with a monumental shrug of resignation. “It pays the bills.”

  He must have seen the unconcealed look of surprise on my face, but Michael just laughed hugely and humorlessly. “Oh, God. You’re worried that I’m a cynic. Well, Emma, you don’t know the half of it. I take it you met our august colleague already. Jack about half in the bag by now?”

  “Uh, he’s in the kitchen.”

  Michael looked as if he expected my polite evasion, and it didn’t impress him. “He’s wandering from institution to institution on the strength of the book until it’s time for him to retire. He told you about the book, right?”

  I could only nod. Dr. Glasscock was a decidedly odd duck and getting odder every minute.

  “Those ‘finishing touches’ have been in the works for about seven years now and counting, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it. Why they don’t just let him go early so he can finish drinking himself to death in peace is just beyo
nd me.”

  “Oh.” It seemed the only safe thing to say, under the circumstances, but it wasn’t safe enough. Michael picked up on my reticence.

  “Oh, come off it, Auntie. I’m just being honest.” Michael patted himself down, then caught himself. “Shit, no smoking in this crypt. This place is going to be the end of me.” He sighed with galactic weariness. “I just thought maybe you would be someone who enjoys the truth as much as I do.”

  That nettled me—I always fancied myself as more than usually truthful and open-minded. “Yeah, well, facts are one thing, but I think that we of all people could agree that history—or the truth—is never as straightforward as one person’s take on it.”

  Michael was unaffected by my tart response. “Like I said, you don’t know the half of it.” He slunk back and resumed his place on the couch and once again, closed his eyes. “See you around, probably. If you could turn the light off on your way out, I would consider it a great kindness.”

  I got my scarf as quickly as I could and shut the heavy door to the house firmly, trying to get a little distance between me and my new housemates. When I found myself hoping that this Faith person would be a little more normal than the other two, I reined in my thoughts. I was just tired and new to the scene, more than a little suggestible and in need of fresh air. Researchers and academics of every stripe have their quirks, and everything would seem a little less enigmatic after I’d had a couple of hours to settle in.

  I set out briskly to chase the gloom from my mind and the cold from my veins. Following the road as it snaked away from the house, I moved over the hillocks on the slope on which the house stood, which eventually led out to a flatter stretch, delineated by a small brook. The wind wasn’t as bad now as when I’d been driving, and I could just detect the signs of life beginning to peep out of the dead-looking ground. Little pale green shoots reached up through the carpet of muddy brown leaves and small buds appeared on the trees and bushes around me. A little gazebo stood in the middle of an open area some way off the road and I was stopped in my tracks by the view when I climbed up into it. The hill on which the estate was settled dropped away into a plain and I could see the countryside for miles to the east, the rest of the Shrewsbury property with the thin line of the fence in the distance and Monroe’s lights nestled in the western Massachusetts hills farther south. The sense of exposure I felt took me unawares; although anyone from out of state might not have noticed the difference, it was unusual for me, accustomed to the crowded seacoast, to see such thinly inhabited expanses to the western horizon.

  Farther down the road, I found the library and security offices just beyond the next turn, nested snugly in a little dell surrounded by more of the imposing trees. The library clearly postdated the original house, as the Tudor-revival style in the United States came into vogue closer to the turn of the twentieth century, but the stone-clad walls and low gabled roof line complemented the older house. I remembered from somewhere that the annex had been originally used as a retreat and guesthouse. The building was two stories, with a one-story ell in back, but the low roof and spread-out design made it blend into the surrounding landscape. I decided that it was pretty but nothing special, unusual only for what I knew was locked up inside: one of the best collections of Americana anywhere. I turned around and headed back.

  I was halfway home again, really feeling beat now, when I heard the engine of a large car behind me. When I turned and saw that it was a security vehicle, an SUV, I moved a little closer to the side of the road so the driver could get by. The driver made no move to continue, so I waved him on. Nothing. I resumed walking and still he followed me, at a snail’s pace, not passing, not falling back. If he wanted something, he should have rolled his window down and asked, rather than trailing me like this. I let him follow for another fifteen steps before I got worried about what was going on, and suddenly cut across his path so that he had to stop again.

  I went over to the driver’s side window. I couldn’t see in because the glass was tinted, but I waited there anyway. Aggressive, for me, but I am learning that sometimes aggression is a good thing.

  The window lowered with the smooth whirr of a hidden motor and I found myself staring into the smirking face of a crew-cut blond security guard. This wasn’t the middle-aged guy I’d met down front—Constantino—this guy was a twenty-something and pure grade-A beefcake. He didn’t say anything, just let his car heater warm the great outdoors for a moment or two longer.

  “Is there some particular reason you’re following me?” I said.

  The guard flushed. “Can I see your I.D.?”

  With his jaw clenched as hard as that, I wasn’t really surprised that he couldn’t get a “please” past his teeth. A little vein pulsed near his shorn temple.

  “I haven’t got one yet, I just moved in.” I showed him my house key with the fancy Shrewsbury key chain. “Can I see yours? I don’t think that real security should be harassing people this way.”

  I knew he was making the most of his uniform and this flashy car that he didn’t own, and bullies never expect confrontation. That became even clearer when he backed off. “I’ll just take your name, for now.”

  I told him my name. “Emma Fielding. That’s Fielding, as in Samuel Richardson’s friend Henry,” I explained helpfully, just in case he was a fan of Tom Jones, which I think is one of the funniest novels in the English language. But I was starting to believe that he was beefcake between the ears, too.

  “I don’t care who your friends are, you’re not supposed to be on the premises without your I.D. badge,” he said, ignoring the fact that I’d just told him I didn’t have a badge. He very carefully clicked a pen and wrote my name down.

  What an awful lot of clipboards there seemed to be around here, and all attached to macho idiots. “What’s your name?” With the gate so securely guarded at the front and no one for miles around, and on top of everything else, presumably, he’d been told to expect me. I was determined to report this nonsense.

  He stared at me another minute. “Officer Gary Conner. I don’t like your attitude.”

  “I guess we’re even then. I don’t like yours.”

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at how immediately hostile he became, but I found myself settling into a ready stance out of habit. What the heck was going on around here, that everyone should be so wound up?

  Officer Gary Conner suddenly decided to depart from our little tête-a-tête. I jumped back out of the way, but he didn’t, however, pull away fast enough for me to miss the words “just like that other dyke” he spat out on the way past. Obviously he had many other calls of a similar nature to make, possibly kittens that wanted a jack-booted stomping.

  I just shook my head and wandered back to the house as the sunlight finally bled away in the west. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole; the acquaintances I’d made in the past several hours were no less strange than Alice’s. And this wasn’t even my first official full day.

  I sighed and let myself in the back door. Welcome to Shrewsbury, Emma.

  Chapter 2

  AS I DESCENDED THE STAIRS THE NEXT MORNING I smelled coffee and was grateful that I wouldn’t have to figure out the kitchen without benefit of caffeine. One good thing about the Shrewsbury library was that it didn’t open until nine in the morning, which meant that I was able to sleep in moderately late. In the field, I was forced to drag my carcass out of bed at the ungodly hour of six, or even earlier, which was anathema to my natural inclination to late nights. As the saying goes, I get more done between 1 and 2 A.M. than most people do all day.

  When I got downstairs, I found Michael sitting in the kitchen, staring out the window with a cup on the windowsill. He was wearing his overcoat over pajama bottoms, and it was abundantly obvious that he wasn’t wearing the matching top. The Wall Street Journal and a copy of the Weekly World News were spread out in disarray on the table.

  I sat down at a corner of the table and let the coffee have its way with me;
I could feel the crenellations in my brain deepening as my mind was resurrected from the chaos of dreaming sleep. After about five minutes of comfortably mind-blank silence, Michael spoke without turning around to face me.

  “Would you ever, on pain of your life, buy a mug like this?” He held up his coffee mug as if he were saluting the view outside rather than carrying on a conversation; he was funny about making eye contact sometimes, I was learning, either making too much or too little. I looked at my mug, and it had a row of ducks with bows around their necks, some with little galoshes on. One had a jaunty sailor hat.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Precisely. Made expressly for the aunt market, stocks depleted at Christmas time. Terrifying.”

  “What is it you have against aunts?”

  “Nothing, in principle. It’s the auntie attitude that I can’t abide.”

  Michael continued his contemplation of the world outside, and I put another pot on.

  “That’s some choice reading material you’ve got there,” I said, when I finally felt my spinal cord connect with my brainstem. Houston, we have contact.

  “Do you know what the worldwide readership of the Journal is? Close to two million a day. Do you know what it is for the News? Close to three a week.” Michael turned around and I could see that he was wearing his half-rimmed reading glasses. “That means that on any given day for every individual who believes that there is order in the universe and that it can be observed in this world through the laws of economics, history, and geopolitical diplomacy, there are nearly two who believe that a potato chip in the shape of Elvis’s head will tell them their lucky lottery numbers. You, my dear, are presumably one of the outnumbered former group, and it behooves you to pay attention to those other patterns.”

  “So which are you?” I asked, not at all convinced that his math or the numbers he was spouting were accurate, but dying to know what he was up to.