Wreck of the Gossamer

by Shawn McCarthy

  Kate looks down at the ground. “It’s in the past, Devlin! What kind of business could you possibly have in the North since you hate them all so?”

  He shrugs, returns to the rowboat, and starts to rearrange some bags that he’s loaded into the bow.

  “Our father would not be proud of you, you know,” she shouts after him. “Look what’s in your hand! Just look at it!”

  Devlin looks down. In his hand is a large carpetbag.

  “What are you planning?” she demands. “What are you going to do? Do you want to be like them? Is that it? Like those Yankees were when they came here?”

  “Just business, my dear. That’s all. Just doing a little trading with the good folks of New England. Is that so bad?”

  He settles onto a wooden seat and gives her a little salute as the oarsman embarks.

  Something has fractured in you, Devlin. Kate doesn’t speak the words aloud, but she thinks them. You’re broken and you’re someone I don’t even know anymore.

  When the dory is about fifty feet from shore, Devlin tosses the empty carpetbag in front of the sailor. “See that? I took that off the first man I ever killed. Shot him dead when I found him in the burned out parlor of my house. That was quite some years ago. Guess I kept it as a trophy.” He smiles an iniquitous smile as he holds the sailor’s gaze.

  The lad says nothing as he puts his back into his rowing.

  “So, lad. Once we reach the mail ship, Clayton says it’s just five days to Boston? Is that right? Think we can really make it there so fast?”

  “I reckon that’s about right, sir,” says the beefy teenager, “if we don’t hit no bad weather.”

  Boston. The very word gives Devlin a twitchy feeling in his stomach. Of all the Yankee cities, that one lurks as the absolute Yankee-est in his mind. It’s the center of all that he sees as vile and inappropriately proper, Northern, and Yankee in the world.

  And the insult that Massachusetts laid on South Carolina was particularly insidious in his eyes. They sent their offensive 54th Regiment to do battle with the sons of the South. Those were them damn colored troops. Them damn niggers, dozens and dozens of them with their silly blue uniforms and angry brown eyes.

  It wasn’t bad enough that the Yankees invaded his land, destroyed his family business and took all that he had. No, the Massachusetts folk had to compound that insult by doing what only a whorish state like theirs could do. They organized the black men, the very foundation of the Richards family business. Those Yankees, they trained them and then they sent them here to help ruin everything.

  Everything.

  Devlin looks the sailor up and down.

  “Where you from, boy?”

  “Atlanta, sir.”

  Devlin nods. “All right then. I guess you know the story then, don’t ya? Happened a few years before you were born, I suppose. But what they did to your town and your kin … well, I guess you very well know how I feel about them Yankees.”

  The boy nods hesitantly. “Before my time. But, yes sir. I reckon I do.”

  Devlin looks out to sea. “They took it all from me, lad. From me and my family. I was just twelve years old when that war started. Living the good life. Next thing you know I was sixteen and wearing a bloody gray uniform. Still wore it when the whole mess ended.”

  The young man nods.

  “They took it all away from us twenty-six years ago, boy. Every damn bit of independence and pride. A man doesn’t forget something like that, especially if it never comes back to him.”

  “No sir. I bet he don’t.”

  Devlin gets a vacant look as he talks. He looks toward the spit of land ahead of them and waits for them to round that point so that they can see the ship.

  “A man tries to recover from something like that for a long time, boy. Thinks that maybe just a few more years is what it will take. But if it don’t ever come back, part of you has to blame the people that took it. Ain’t that right? You just be true and go ahead and place the blame where it belongs. Nothing wrong with that at all.”

  “No sir, I guess there ain’t. Lots of folks have trouble letting things be, even now.” The lad rows for a bit, then adds, “I seen it myself. Just like you say. My uncles and some of my neighbors. They all lost stuff. Family and farms and money. Some folks down in Atlanta never got their homes built back up again after they was burned. Years later, some of them, well, they’s still kinda lost. They seem as bad in the head as them soldiers who came home after seeing too much blood. Them there folks, they live. They drink. They walk around looking into the distance. Just sort of existing.”

  The lad puts his back into the oars again as the ship comes into view. Devlin looks down and nudges the carpetbag with his toe. He makes a silent vow to himself that he’s not going to come back home to Charleston until he’s done with his trading. That’s what he’s calling this. His trading mission. He deserves a full bag. No one can say that he doesn’t.

  Chapter 9

  Flotsam

  Long slow squeak.

  It’s still dark when the shed door announces its movement like a trumpet call.

  Amanda isn’t sure if an hour has passed, or much more. She lies still and mouse-like under her tarps. She hears a scurry of human feet inside the shed. She dares not move as more than one hushed voice drifts over her hiding place.

  “Try over there,” one voice says. She hears hands paw through the coils of ropes that hang from the far wall.

  From outside she hears the soft click of a bridle as a horse mutters its discontent.

  “Find anything?” The voices have become a bit bolder. They believe the shack to be abandoned.

  "Yes. I think so,” It’s a young man’s voice. “There’s something here we can use to fix it. Just give me a minute!”

  Outside a man makes a clicking sound with his mouth. She can hear him leading the horse right up to the door. The morning air is so still that the sound of animal’s foul horse breath seems to fill the room. Amanda thinks it best to remain totally motionless. She won’t even peek out from beneath her canvas to see what’s happening. Soon there’s the sound of a horse collar being adjusted, then a stern voice as the horse starts to fight it.

  “All right there! Easy, boy, easy! I know it’s early. Settle down ….” She can hear a buckle being cinched.

  “You coming, William?” This time it’s a woman’s voice calling from outside.

  “Yes, yes! I said I was. Just a minute!”

  The young man still fiddling with the ropes in the shack is standing barely four feet from Amanda. “I just need to find the right length. I can’t believe that damn strap broke. Of all the times!”

  “Just take anything!” the man outside says. “We’ll make it work. If we don’t hurry up, we’re going to miss everything. Others will get there first!”

  “I can see others on their way up the road,” the woman adds. “Come on now, Richard. Be quick!”

  “I’m looking, all right?”

  Amanda hears one other voice outside the barn. That makes four in all, three men and a woman. From the give-and-take of their conversation, she guesses they’re all from the same family. As the young man exits the shack, he too starts to work on the horse collar.

  Amanda waits a full two minutes, then figures it’s safe to sit up, even though she still hears them outside.

  The urgency in the family’s voices tells her this isn’t just the start of another workday for them. These people are interlopers in the shack, just like her. They seem to be on their way to something important—something that apparently has put them in a race with others.

  What in the world is going on? Amanda thinks to herself as she creeps to the small windows. The people gathered to fix the horse collar are too preoccupied to see or hear her.

  “Go bareback if you have to, William!” one of the men shouts. “We need to get out there right now!”

  “Blast it!” William responds. “We’re going to need the wagon, ain't we? Well, ain't we? Then sto
p talking and let me fix the damn lead!”

  The woman gasps as she looks down the road. “How did so many people find out?”

  “Well, people talk,” William says as he works. “I hear tell that things have been washing ashore since midnight. Stuff is all over the place. Cousin Eddie said there’s already people picking through the sand from Nauset all the way down to the Chatham Light!”

  The woman looks over the men's shoulders. “William! Please!”

  “All right! I’ve got it.” Standing a bit back from the window, Amanda watches William lead the horse in a half circle. The four people climb aboard, and the wagon slowly rolls away. A moment later, she lets herself creep toward the door, carefully peeking out before venturing into the open air.

  The woman, whoever she was, had been quite correct. Amanda sees others on the road. Many others. A parade of townsfolk is a strange sight just before daybreak. They look like confused lemmings heading toward the sea.

  The rain has slowed to almost nothing, and the sky has started to clear. Slipping out the door, she flees over a dune, slipping into a scrubby thicket of dune grass and squatting low. Waiting for another wagon to pass, she slips through the grass and makes her way back onto the path. At this point it’s little more than a winding ditch curving down a gradual slope.

  There are people on horseback, in wagons, and on foot. They talk in whispers. She recognizes a face or two from town, but there’s no one she knows well. No one pays her any mind as she merges and walks along with the parade. Most of the people seem to be coming from Chatham and East Orleans and probably points beyond. They snake out through a flat area, and up ahead she can see them descending a dune.

  As Amanda reaches a narrow point in a path, she hears a hissing, clanking, steaming noise behind her. Stepping to the side, she spies a strange-looking cart coming up the ditch.

  Amanda has only seen photos of horseless carriages before. They are rare as hen’s teeth, and she’s heard stories about people racing out of their houses just to catch a glimpse of one. Now, one is coming at her, and the hissing, snarling contraption scares her.

  Other people react the same way, stepping out of the way and stopping to stare as the steam car sputters down the path. As it draws close, Amanda realizes the thing looks far different from any picture she’s seen. First of all, it’s huge. It must be twenty feet long and seven feet high. Rather than rubber tires or even traditional wagon wheels, this cart has huge solid wooden wheels that are four feet in diameter. They look like thick tavern tables turned on their sides. The front of the vehicle looks more like a mini version of a locomotive than a carriage. It has a fat black smokestack rising from a boiler tank. Along the edge of the stack sits a brass steam whistle. Amanda suspects it could pierce her eardrums should the driver elect to pull its chain.

  It is, basically, a small train built to run without a track. Its front wooden wheels pivot slightly left or right, allowing it to make gradual turns. As it pulls past, she spies a small plaque on the side of the boiler that says “Dudgeon.”

  As it descends the slope, the engine starts to sputter a bit. In a matter of seconds, the whole contraption hisses to a stop. The driver lifts his goggles, and Amanda can see that he’s a thin, pale older man. A woman of roughly the same age, possibly his wife, is seated beside him.

  “Great! Look at this now,” the woman huffs. “I told you we shouldn’t have taken this silly thing! We should have just used the horses and the wagon! We’ll never get there.”

  “Silence!” the man warns, but his voice sounds more amused than threatening. “It’s just the silly valve again. It’s still sticking. I can fix it in two minutes.”

  He steps out and hurries to the front of the hulking wagon. Amanda walks alongside. He nods quietly to her and fiddles with something deep inside the machinery.

  “Do you need help?” Amanda asks.

  “No … no, my dear … well ….”

  She hears a soft clank.

  “Well … yes, actually. Maybe if you just hold your hand right here. Careful now! Hot hot!” He moves her hand to the side. “No, no. Right here.” He places her fingers around a small bar that runs the length of the engine. “That’s it.”

  The woman inside the wagon leans forward to see what’s going on.

  “Agnes! Turn that big valve on the dash about halfway back!”

  As the two women handle their assigned duties, the man walks to the other side and bangs on a pipe. There is a new hiss and a sputter. “Now, young lady, pull!”

  Amanda yanks the rod back and feels the wagon lurch.

  “And there we go!” He walks back to the front of the auto and gives Amanda a smile. “This is a steam wagon, you know. Not one of those newfangled internal combustion engines! No, ma’am. It’s old and very temperamental!” The bar she’s holding grows hot, and Amanda pulls her hand away.

  “Much obliged to you!” The old man climbs back in, opens the dash valve to its full extent, and pulls his dusty goggles back down.

  “I know it’s not far, but would you like a ride to the beach, young lady?” he shouts. “Or at least as close as we can get in this thing?”

  Amanda studies the wagon with trepidation. “I don’t know. I’ve never ridden on anything like this … um … what do you call them? An auto-mo-beel?” She pronounces the name like three separate words that don’t quite belong together.

  “Not sure you want to ride this one then,” the woman says. “It’s not really a horseless carriage at all. It’s more like a junk pile.”

  “Hush!” says her husband with a brush of his hand. “This thing has been running fine for decades.”

  In addition to the pair of seats at front of the vehicle, there’s a back area that looks like a farm wagon. This section has a low bench running along either side. Amanda pulls herself up and into the deck. She can see that the benches are covered with dried chicken guano.

  “Sorry,” the gentleman calls back, “she’s been sitting in the barn for couple of years. I just got her running again last week.”

  Amanda elects to sit on the back gate instead. As they start to move, she studies her dusty shoes as the sandy road flies by beneath them.

  Amanda has never felt this sensation before. The speed is faster than a full gallop. They must be moving at twenty-five miles per hour or more. It’s terrifying, and every bounce makes her stomach lurch. She clutches the edge of the wagon just to keep from bouncing out.

  The ditch opens out onto Pochet Neck, and the view beneath her shoes becomes sandy with a hint of shells. Looking toward the front of the wagon as it slows, she sees a long line of other people. The group stands on a small sandy knoll, looking out to sea. The old man steers the steam car onto a flat spot where other wagons are sitting.

  On the eastern edge of the Pochet Neck, itself little more than a spit of dry land hanging into the brackish swamps near Little Pleasant Bay, there is a small bridge and a quick slope down to the Orleans end of Nauset Beach. Some of the people break for the line and start running. Up ahead there are arguments over who will take their wagons first across a group of planks that serve as a small bridge over a ditch. Amanda leaps out when she hears whips cracking and tempers flaring.

  “You go on if you’d like, dear,” says the woman. “We may be here for a while.”

  “I’m not even sure where I’m going, or even why all these people are here!”

  But Amanda’s words are lost as the steam engine starts to act up again, hissing loud and steady from under the tank. The noise drowns out all other noises.

  She walks ahead, crossing the ditch on foot. It’s not until she approaches the steep beach and the crashing waves that she finally sees what has attracted this early morning crowd. There is something out in the water to the east. Rather, there are thousands of somethings.

  Squinting against the golden glow of the rising sun, she can see huge waves, tremendous things that loom up to thirteen feet tall then fold in on themselves to hit the steep drop-off of t
he beach with a loud thud. These are the largest waves she’s ever seen on this beach, driven, no doubt, by the recent storm. Mixed with those waves are many pieces of wood—broken parts of what might have been a ship. Beyond the junk bobbing on the closest waves, she sees barrels floating about 400 feet offshore. Crates too, she thinks. There are also pieces of mast and rails and thousands of other things, some recognizable and some not. All of these things ride on the foamy crests like some kind of exotic waterfowl. They seem to glow in the slowly brightening yellow light.

  Amanda holds her breath, as if her breathing might somehow erase the view in front of her before she has a chance to fully understand it.

  But others don’t hesitate. They run toward the water’s edge looking like dolls standing before the huge waves. They wade into the surf, oblivious to the danger. Some of the wagons finally make it across the tiny bridge, and their drivers skirt the edges of the low sand cliffs, whipping their horses onward and looking for the best place to park near the water. She also sees lone riders, many of them bareback. They race up and down the beach. Riders hop on and off, pulling things ashore. Examining. Keeping or discarding. If what they pull ashore seems valuable enough, they stay with their prize, looking around for someone to help them drag it away. In the short time that she stands there, Amanda sees impromptu teams forming. Women agree to watch piles of supposed treasure while groups of men—growing from twos into fours and then sixes—pool their efforts to gather all they can find.

  Hypnotized, Amanda finally stumbles toward the water. She can see the rising sun directly behind the towering waves, illuminating anything that lurks within. With the help of the sunlight, she can see things lurking there in the water. Wonderful things. Not just the drifting wood and barrels from the shipwreck, but also the things that have lingered beneath waves for thousands of years. In the yellow light she also sees weeds and a pair of large fish and even a curious seal who follows a bobbing barrel toward the shore.