Turpentine

by Spring Warren

  Elizabeth is not well. Ill-suited for rough edges and her family will not sneeze in her direction.

  Brill

  Dear Brill,

  My illustrations of Semitherium equus will accompany a paper the professor presents to the Geographic Society in April!

  Dear Lill and Ry,

  It is blessed to advance knowledge. I spend my days in scholarly recourse, my education apportioned by the estimable Quillan. His home, at which I am a frequent visitor, is grandiloquent as to be near unbelievable, and is certainly the bar to which I endeavor. He insists on my seeing his tailor, but I care not to take advantage of the good man’s generosity.

  Quillan was a demanding taskmaster, and though I was discomfited by the ephemeral coal specimens, I was sidetracked by the education of image, the language of line, a semaphore of ink. A broken line reveals to a scientist certain meanings, as does the stippling of texture. One must not utilize a simple contour when a thick line is called for, just as one may not use a dit for a dot when speaking Morse code to the fellow on the other end of the line.

  Further, though Quillan seemed uninterested in educating me in anything but the most prosaic craft of illustration, I fattened my understanding of the work by reading book after book in the Yale library, or borrowed from the lab, and read in the evenings at Mother’s table or in my boardinghouse bed.

  I had a strange sense of being carried upriver, going against the current of time, bereft of the present, steeped in the past. I woke before dawn, arriving at the museum in mist and gloom and did not leave until night had fallen. As I labored, the late fall rains gave way to early winter snow.

  Quillan was thrilled with my drawings, though I constantly worried he would notice I drew not from the coal lumps but from the teaching specimens. I hesitated to reveal my neophyte vision, afraid that if he understood my inability to see the precious black fossils for anything more than scratchings in the soft surface I would be fired for my ignorance. The more he told me what good work I did, the more I wished to please him, and the longer my hours ran.

  My correspondence with Brill, in which I masqueraded as scientific giant, finally pinched my scruples hard enough to force me to broach the subject of my actual failings to Quillan.

  He was leafing through the pages of illustrations I had finished, nodding and murmuring. I cleared my throat. “I am pleased, Professor, that you are so … pleased….”

  “Good work, Ned, good work, yes.”

  “However.”

  Quillan’s head snapped up. “What is it? I suppose you want a raise? Be patient, Ned, be patient. When our project is complete, you are assured of your piece of the pie. Can’t help you until then.”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t … it’s the fossils. Truth be told, I have not been able to make heads or tails of them. They still look little more than abrasions to me.”

  The professor crossed his arms. “And yet your drawings are magnificent.”

  “I’ve actually been drawing from the teaching specimens, and I’m feeling much the imposter because of it, sir.”

  Quillan pushed away from the desk. “Have you heard further from your mother, Edward?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Unbeknownst to you—I didn’t want to get your hopes up—I’ve had feelers out.” He wriggled his fingers as if he himself had tickled out the information. “Your mother is living in England, married to a maker of condiments, mustards, and the like.”

  He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper, looked at it, then handed it to me.

  “My God, you’ve found Mother?” I murmured, as I took the form. The paper had my mother’s name, my father’s name, and my own. Below them, the name Reggie Snook, Snook Mustard Works, Devon, England, and the date of Mr. Snook’s marriage to my mother, in New York City, one month after she had put me on the train to Nebraska.

  Professor Quillan smoothed back his hair. “If you would like, I will put my man on finding an address so you may send a message.”

  I stared again at the paper, still trapped by married and mustard. Mr. Jamieson said the man was a purveyor of pickles and that my mother had not left for England until well after the auction, which did not occur until I had been in Nebraska for at least two months.

  I shook the paper. “I have obviously been strung along, Professor. It is beyond bearing. It is corrupt and degenerate, and I must get to the bottom of this … this wanton deception!” Though tremendously flustered, I glanced at Quillan. He looked irate and had stiffened his backbone. I remembered my manners. “Professor Quillan, it is amazingly generous of you to have gone to this trouble, and I cannot tell you how I appreciate it.”

  Quillan relaxed. “Not at all, Ned. I want to help you. You see, I have not been blessed with children, and it seems, viewing Mrs. Quillan’s fragile health, that is not likely to change.”

  Quillan sighed and looked so dysphoric, my heart wrenched. He supported his chin with one hand.

  “I suppose it is not surprising that I have transferred what paternal feelings I would have for my own flesh and blood”—he straightened and smiled, inclining his head my way—“to you, Ned.

  “I will help you find your mother and, further, take it on myself to give you the attention a young man needs. That attention, I may assure you, includes following your progress in the laboratory. Certainly, I can see that you feel you are not progressing at the speed at which you would like. You suffer from a lack of detailed and sensitive vision. Why do you think I gave you the teaching specimens? For the same reasons one stretches the net under the callow gymnast.”

  He stood to look out the window into cold daylight. “Given time, my boy, you will educate your eye and your mind, and your cloak of ignorance will be pushed aside. Until then, I want you to soldier on. Keep up your good work, my boy, make your mother proud, for soon you will be telling her of all your accomplishments. And do not worry. If I thought something was amiss, you can be assured I would intercede.”

  My head was spinning. Certain now I could not trust anything Alan and Jamieson had said, I was more than relieved to hear Quillan pledge his intent to find my mother and facilitate our communication. I felt my burden lightened and, further, I was touched. Quillan had good as called me son. He tracked down my mother to set my mind to rest. I thought he saw nothing but product, but on the contrary he cared about me and had faith I would overcome my shortcomings. I was not so naive as to believe that kindness was solely at the heart of his actions, but I did think I touched upon some paternal office in his ambitious soul, and—as one long deprived of anything paternal—it affected me deeply. “I will soldier on, sir.”

  “Good man.” He sat back at his desk and waved me off. “Get to it, then.”

  I was a little unsettled by the change in tone. “My mother?”

  “What about her?”

  “I would like to send word to her, if I might.”

  “Certainly, of course. Write to your heart’s content. You can send the good woman an entire trunk of letters, as soon as we get the address from my man.” He laughed a little at his joke.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you.”

  He looked off into space, frowning a little. “Never had much of a relationship with my own mother. Frankly, it is foreign to me that someone would want the complication of it, much less go scrambling after—”

  He glanced at my surprised face.

  “My want makes me all the more pleased to facilitate someone else’s relationship, however. Even … grateful … in a way that I can ensure its ongoing … health. But enough of this sentimentality. We have work to do.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Dear Mother,

  I know nothing but the most spectral details of your whereabouts and your situation. I pray this soon remedied with the help of my mentor, the estimable Wallace Quillan. I am in the employ of the Peabody Museum and am in such fine health as you have never seen me. But there is so much more I want to tell you, if ever we are reunited.

  Your son
, Edward

  The Christmas season arrived before I knew it. I mailed Lill a fine pen that cost me more than my week’s room, imagining her opening the gift, shining and golden, while surrounded with the brown life of the prairie. What would Osterlund give her? A stewpot, perhaps, or a bolt of serviceable cloth from which to shear diapers.

  Professor Quillan, in a burst of Dickensian good feeling, invited me to his home for Christmas Eve dinner. Though he continued to call me son, he hardly treated me with more warmth than he gave the janitor. Therefore, I was greatly heartened by the invitation.

  The first snows had melted, but on Christmas Eve it was finally cold enough, long enough, to keep the picturesque white shrouding on the streets and lawns. I rang the professor’s bell at the appointed hour. Even as Mrs. Quillan opened the door, which was decorated with a pine wreath shining with glass balls, the professor shouted from inside, “Let the housekeeper get it, you forget your place!”

  It hit me again what a beautiful woman Mrs. Quillan was, as pale and fine as Quillan was ruddy and stout. It was a pleasure to see something lovely again, especially as she seemed very pleased to see me. She showed no sign of hearing her husband’s complaint but put out a hand as soft as petals. A smile lit her lovely face. “Ned!”

  I bowed.

  “Please come in.”

  The housekeeper took my coat and Mrs. Quillan led me into the parlor for a cordial before dinner. An enormous spruce was afire with candles set on aluminum reflectors. Hand-blown ornaments in the shapes of birds and snowmen, pinecones and peppermints shimmered with the light.

  Mrs. Quillan patted the settee and handed me a ruby glass when I took the place beside her. “The professor is fussing with his cravat and will be down when the knot is to his satisfaction.” She smiled. “So we may talk. I have been more than anxious to hear your stories. Tell me, Ned—anything and everything about wild Nebraska!”

  I told her about Lill, about the homesteading families who arrived with wives and daughters. Her pale countenance took on color and she grew even more animated as I told her about the buffalo and the rolling plains. I made her laugh to the point of tears telling her about my travails with Chin.

  Quillan came down the stairs and into the parlor. He took Mrs. Quillan’s chin in his hand and looked at her critically. “Are you feverish? Your eyes are preternaturally bright.”

  Mrs. Quillan tossed her head. “Of course not, Professor.”

  Professor Quillan patted her hand. “Mrs. Quillan is my porcelain vas. See how fragile—her skin is so fine, almost transparent really. It is my second employment to keep her from harm’s way.”

  “Professor, you do me an injustice.” Mrs. Quillan smiled at me. “I am strong as a horse. If the professor would allow, I would lose this limpidity of mine and do some good in the world.”

  “My dear, you are like Hiram’s marbles. It is enough good done for the world to allow us to gaze upon you. Few others can do so much.”

  Dinner was a masterpiece of yellow squash soup and crusty bread, prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and Derby salad, followed by pumpkin, raisin, and pecan pies, topped with fresh cream. I barely spoke, being engaged with nothing but the tasting and eating of fine food. Mrs. Quillan laughed. “Professor, we must feed Ned more often. Look at the poor thing; he is virtually starving.”

  “Nonsense. A young man has better things to do. Eh, Ned?”

  I swallowed, wondering if he wasn’t aware that all my time was spent at the lab, or in some hours of sleep at the boarding-house. “I would be most pleased to share the fine food and fine company of your household, Mrs. Quillan. I think this is the best meal I have ever eaten in my life.”

  Mrs. Quillan laughed. “You see, Professor?”

  Professor Quillan harrumphed.

  Mrs. Quillan rang a bell. The housekeeper came in and Mrs. Quillan directed her to bring the packages.

  The professor frowned. “Packages, Mrs. Quillan?”

  “Small things, Professor. Tiny celebrations.” She handed a small box to me and a larger one to the professor. “You first, Ned.”

  Inside the box was a brass telescope small enough when compacted to fit inside my palm but extendable to eight inches. Thanking her profusely, I peered out the window and could see the family across the way at their dinner. The children around the table wore Christmas wrappings folded into party hats. The father laughed, his bald head topped with a bow.

  Mrs. Quillan pressed the professor to open his gift. He carefully untied the ribbon, and the paper fell away. His face grew red. “What is this?”

  Mrs. Quillan looked alarmed. “I was told it was the finest encyclopedia to date on fossils.”

  Incredibly, the professor threw it to the floor. “It is not, I assure you. The author is a scurrilous wag. I would as soon have a skunk in the house as that book.”

  “He seemed a very nice man.” She rose from her seat, rushed over, and picked up the book, opening it to the frontispiece. “He wrote the most charming inscription.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Quillan squared her shoulders, and her quiet voice took on an edge. “I went to a great deal of trouble to find this gift, to go to his reading, and to get it signed for you, Professor.”

  “You went to a great deal of trouble to fund a cheat and a thief!” He took the book from his wife’s hands and began flipping through it. “Wrong!” he shouted. “Wrong! And this, this is mine!” He pointed to another page. “Pure fiction.” He turned and shouted to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Bryan!” He shoved the book into the housekeeper’s arms. “Burn it!”

  Mrs. Quillan’s chin went up, her hands curled into fists, her lips tightened, yet she walked sedately to her chair. “Of course, I couldn’t know, Professor. If, perhaps, you would speak to me of your work…. Mrs. Bryan, if you please, after disposing of that”—she nodded at the book—“serve the coffee.”

  Professor Quillan tugged his waistcoat. “The men will have ours in the den.”

  Mrs. Quillan’s face flushed. “I will bid you good night, then. Ned, please come by again. I did so enjoy your stories.”

  I thanked her again for the gift, my own face aflame for her, then followed Professor Quillan into his den, where we stood awkwardly until Mrs. Bryan left a tray.

  The professor tossed a nugget of sugar into his mouth and slurped his coffee. “In the future, Ned, do not indulge Mrs. Quillan’s thirst for adventure tales. It wears on her, as you can see. I will be up for hours tonight while she is in a generally overstimulated if not hysterical condition. I will consider myself lucky if it doesn’t last for days.” He popped another piece of sugar. “I will call our physician, a pity on a holiday, but he has been out to us on others. Holidays—magnifiers of emotions. I have oft thought to ban them in our household entirely.” He hissed to himself. “Imagine talking to that man. A scurrilous im-poster and she thought him charming?” Quillan put on a small smile. “My beautiful wife is a particularly gullible and sensitive woman among a clan markedly so. Our marriage has been one of keeping her on even keel.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “How could you? Not to say she isn’t well worth the trouble.” His face softened momentarily. “Well worth the trouble.” He popped the last nugget in his mouth and motioned toward the library door. I gulped my coffee and followed him out.

  “Professor Quillan, I was wondering, have you yet heard anything from your contact? I have a letter I would like to send to my mother.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps, come to think of it, there is a missive at the lab I took to be nothing but a bill—no hurry in opening that, eh? However, it might indeed provide further information. Check with me the twenty-sixth, will you, Ned? Now, I’m sorry, but I have a … situation … to deal with.”

  I thought, from the foyer, I could hear crying, but it was only the cat, which ran in mewling when Quillan opened the door.

  I went around the side on my way back to Mother’s. Mrs. Bryan had tossed the book in th
e burning bin but had not lit the match. I opened the cover and read the inscription: To my fellow sailor on the seas of the past, may your substantive wind fill your sails. Charles Laramore. I turned a page. Judging from the credentials listed below his name, if Laramore was a cheat and a thief, he was an eminent one from Harvard. I flipped through thick text and hundreds of illustrations. Even reading briefly, I couldn’t believe the paleontologist was the quack Quillan said he was. The writing was concise, that of a man experienced and insightful. He could be a thief, however. There were illustrations of specimens he claimed to have discovered that I’d seen, dated seven years before, in Quillan’s lab.

  Mrs. Quillan had claimed him as a charming man. Of course, there was no precluding a man from being both debased and charming; look at Buck Mason. I glanced back at the blank windows of the Quillan house and, seeing no one watching, pushed the book under my coat.

  CHAPTER 16

  Dear Lill and Ry,

  I attended Christmas Eve festivities at the professor’s mansion. This morning I recuperate from rich food and elevated conversation in deep featherbed laziness. I will soon arise to find what Christmas holds for me. I hope yours proves to be as jolly as my own.

  Christmas Day was white and silent. I was intent on using much of it in the pursuit of indolence, enjoying the warmth under Mother’s floursack quilts and, when awake enough, reading the book I’d saved from the burning bin. Until then, I ruminated on the strangeness of the evening before and, discomfited, stared at the Chinese characters on the wallpaper.

  Mother Fenton claimed the Chinese cook was making up the stories of accomplishment on those pages, but she had only met orientals hobbled by our own culture. The Chinese had discovered gunpowder, porcelain, the printing press, had dynasties that lasted longer than the United States had been a country. And yet its citizens flocked to the States to be worked to death on the railroads, in our kitchens, washing laundry, and killing chickens. Why? A new land, a new West, the lure of the sun’s path. Follow it, become rich, become strong, golden as light.