Einstein's Secret (4 page)

Chapter Four

We parted ways, and I walked across the Lawn, planning to drive back to my apartment. After my little tête-à-tête with Eddie, there was no doubt about how I was going to spend the rest of the evening and probably a good chunk of the night. I’d be digging through my notes on Henry Clavin and searching online for anything that I’d missed.

Like the fact that he was still alive.

Students were strolling along the brick walkways, laughing, chatting, and enjoying the evening breeze. Charlottesville was always hot and muggy in late August, so any breeze, even a warm one like this evening’s, was welcome.

So welcome, in fact, that it inspired me to try and change my plans for the night. I veered south, toward the Iliad, ready to ask Laura out. It would still be coming on too strong, too soon, but it was better than succumbing to the lure of Einstein’s secret.

*

She was behind the counter, reading, but this time she looked up when I walked in and she definitely looked surprised to see me. “Was there something wrong with your order?” she said.

“Nah. I was just wondering if I you’d like to grab dinner when your shift is over? You know, to let me make up for taking the job from you.”

“It’s going to take dinner every night, plus subsidizing my rent, to make up for that.”

“Can’t do that. Don’t get paid enough.”

“Yeah, that’s the worst part. I’d kill for a job that pays less than working here.”

“I hear that teachers in Finland get paid top dollar.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“No problem. Dinner will be packed with helpful tips like that.”

“That sounds irresistible.” She brushed her hair away from her eyes. “My shift ends at eight.”

“Great, I’ll swing by then.”

“Just meet me at Jackson Hill at nine. You can join me for my hike.”

“…Okay. You hike at night?”

“You catch on quick.”

I laughed. “Where’s Jackson Hill?”

“Google it. And bring sandwiches for the dinner part.”

I liked this woman even more this time than the first time I’d met her. And I had liked her a lot that first time.

*

When I got to Jackson Hill, Laura was already there. She was wielding a flashlight and a blanket, waiting by her car in the small, unpaved parking lot.

I stepped out of my car, and she pointed her flashlight at the bag I was holding. “What’d you get?” she asked.

“A turkey and cheese. A veggie. And a tuna salad.”

“You covered all the bases.”

“To make sure, I also got a slice of chocolate cake.”

“Kind of defeats the purpose of a hike.”

“Yeah, but in a good way.”

She smiled, then walked over to the head of the trail. “The view from the top is unbelievable.”

“But it’s night.”

We started up the trail. “That’s the point,” she said. “The top of the hill overlooks Sherman Valley, which hasn’t been developed yet. So there’s no light pollution. You can see the night sky and the stars and what darkness really looks like.”

“You like the dark?”

“I like the dark of night.”

“You’re not secretly a vampire.”

“You’ll see when we get up there.”

“You mean, if you’re a vampire?”

She looked over her shoulder at me, and flashed another smile. “See why I like the view.”

We fell into silence as we settled into a steady pace. The air was cool and invigorating. She followed the trail like an experienced hiker, so I just followed close behind her, in her footsteps.

After a little more than an hour, we made it to the top: a small plateau that overlooked a dark valley. And just as she’d said, the dearth of lights from the valley below highlighted the open sky above, dark and speckled with bright golden stars. It
was
a striking view.

She unfolded the blanket, and I pulled the sandwiches out from my bag. I also pulled out a bottle of wine and cups.

“I brought a bottle of water, if you don’t like wine.”

“Who doesn’t like wine?”

We sat down.

“This beats a restaurant on the Corner,” she said.

“Yeah…”

“But it’s a bit romantic for a casual get-together?”

I grinned.

“I can make it less romantic,” she said. “I’m thinking of going to law school next fall.”

“And you invited me up here to talk you out of it.”

“Yep.”

“Guess what? I think it’s a good idea.”

“So does everyone else.”

“But you’re still not convinced.”

“You know how some people feel that there’s something they have to do?”

Like hunt down Einstein’s secret at all costs.
“Yeah.”

“I’m one of those people. I’ve wanted to teach since I was a kid, and I’m good at it.”

“What about teaching high school?”

“It’s an option. I’m a sub already.”

She took the veggie and I took the turkey and cheese. Then I poured us each a cup of wine.

“My mom was a high-school history teacher,” she said. “And my dad was a math teacher.”

“So it runs in the family.” I was hoping she wouldn’t ask about my family. “What do they think of law school?”

“I’m too old to worry about what they think.”

“So they’re against it.”

“I wish they were, but they think it’s a great idea. They’d love me to be a teacher, but they think it’s impossible to get a university appointment, and they think high-school teaching is a much harder life than it used to be.”

“You’d have to leave Charlottesville to go to law school, and my bet is you love it here. I mean look at this view.”

“That’s just it. I wouldn’t have to leave.”

“UVA is a tough law school to get into.”

“Are you doubting my qualifications, again?”

“I gotta stop doing that.”

“Yeah, especially because I already got accepted.”

“Congratulations.” That was impressive, but I didn’t want to add that, or she’d think I was doubting her qualifications once again.

“I deferred for this year because I was hoping to get your job,” she said.

“So we’re back to that.”

“The one thing you wanted to avoid.”

“Yeah.” Though I was glad we’d avoided talking about my family.

“So how’d you get into the history of science?”

I looked up to the sky and pointed to a spot just above the horizon. “That’s Ursa Major. The great bear. And that over there, that’s Orion.”

“It started with astronomy,” she said.

“You catch on quick.”

She grinned.

“From astronomy, I went on to chemistry and physics, but it turned out that I was good at the general principles, but not so good when it came to the nitty-gritty.”

“So history gave you a way in, without having to do the nitty-gritty.”

“As my dad used to say, where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

“Tell me about your dad.”

So, I had brought up the one thing I didn’t want to talk about. The attraction I felt toward her must’ve caused me to slip up, and my instinct was to pull back before it was too late. But Laura’s hazel eyes, sincere and direct, drew me further in.

“He died when I was really young,” I said. “I was five, so I didn’t really know him.”

There was an awkward silence, and I saw a tear form in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jacob.” She turned away to wipe the tear, then looked back.

“No big deal.” I pasted on a self-conscious smile. “It was a long time ago.”

So long ago that I had just one memory of my dad. We were in a movie theater and he was glued to the big screen up front. I looked up at him and saw that he was bathed in blue light. He laughed at some hijinks unfolding up on the screen, then looked down at me.

His eyes were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, then and since. They were alive with joy, a true incarnation of happiness. I laughed with him, so I could be part of his happiness, and not because of anything going on in the film. I don’t remember the film.

I learned later than my dad had loved movies and had started taking me to see them when I was three. Once I knew that, I replayed that memory of him, the only one I had, over and over again. My dad laughing in a dark movie theater with me by his side, sharing in his joy. I treasured that memory as if it were a classic film itself.

To end that train of thought, I focused back on Laura. She was looking down at the valley, sipping her wine, taking her cue from me about when to start up the conversation again.

But when I looked down at the valley, the vast darkness of the night engulfed me with a feeling of absolute loneliness. The same loneliness I’d felt during my freshman year of college. All my new friends were looking forward to going home for the Thanksgiving break, but I wasn’t. I had no home to go back to. My mom had died right before I’d left for college. She’d been everything to me.

“How long ago did you graduate from the program?” I finally said.

“Five years ago,” Laura answered. “And I lucked out when I finished. I got a one-year appointment at William & Mary. But they had nothing the next year. Then I was stupid. Or arrogant. I had an offer at a community college in Miami, but I didn’t take it. I held out for a better job that never came.”

I appreciated Laura’s long answer. It was just what I needed.

“Let me guess, the person who took that job is still there,” I said.

“Yep. And from what I know about him through a friend at Florida State, he loves it.”

“Well, nothing you can do about it now.”

“Except go to law school.”

“The perfect alternative.”

“You found another alternative.”

“I fell into it. A few years ago, I saw an opening for a job at USC. They’d gotten a National Science Foundation grant and they were looking for people to administer it. I applied and got the job.”

“What’s the job?”

“Developing science curriculums for high schools.”

“Kind of up your alley.”

“Yeah. I liked it just enough to make me lazy. I stopped hunting down every single teaching gig.”

“Well, it doesn’t take much to stop the hunt when you feel you’re hitting your head against a brick wall.” She stood up. “Let me show you what I was working on when I should’ve been applying to every opening in the country.”

*

She took me down another trail, on the east side of the hill, and though I didn’t know it yet, she was about to show me the real reason she loved Jackson Hill. “Back in the fifties, this entire area was real wilderness,” she said. “There weren’t any hiking trails, and even hunters didn’t come up this way.”

After we’d gone about three hundred yards, the trail leveled off, and the thick patch of forest gave way to a tiny clearing and a small log cabin.

“Welcome to Gray’s Cabin,” she said, and opened the cabin door. “After I moved back from Williamsburg, this is one of the projects that kept me busy. You know, while I was holding out for that perfect job.”

She stepped inside and flicked on a light, revealing a windowless cabin that had the clean, neat look of a museum exhibit, which it basically was.

At the far end of the cabin was a small cot, covered with a clear, protective plastic sheet. Along another wall ran a counter displaying metal plates, a metal pot, an iron skillet, and utensils. Catty-corner to the counter was a black, wood-burning stove. And along the opposite wall, there was a glass display case containing books.

“Corbin Gray built this cabin,” Laura said. “He was a UVA student in the fifties who wanted to live in the real wilderness for one year. No modern conveniences allowed. So he spent one year building this and the next year living in it.”

“Was he a beatnik?”

“He was an transcendentalist.”

“Emerson and Thoreau,” I said, trying to remember what else I remembered about transcendentalism.

“Exactly. He was ready to commune with nature, so he came up here for a year and lived by two rules. He wouldn’t leave, and he’d only eat what he could hunt, grow, or pick.”

“Wait—I’m missing something. How did this keep
you
busy?”

“I restored the cabin and made it a destination spot. It’s not exactly Disneyland, but, believe it or not, quite a few people drop by to check it out.”

She walked over to the display case and flipped open what must’ve been a guest registry on top of it. “Twenty-five people last week. Not a bad week, considering how oppressively hot it was. During the fall and spring, it’s about a hundred a week.”

I moved over to the case. Inside were the works of Thoreau, Emerson, Fuller, Whitman, and other transcendentalists.

She closed the registry. “In my third year in the doctoral program, I wrote a journal article on transcendentalism. While I was researching it, I found out about Corbin and this cabin. His adventure had fallen through the cracks of history.”

At the end of the display case, I saw something that startled me. It didn’t fit with the theme of the cabin, but that wasn’t why it startled me. It startled me because it was another strange coincidence.
Two coincidences.

It was an issue of
Life
magazine from 1955, the year of Einstein’s secret, and on its cover was a photo of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the subject of Alex’s bestselling biography.

I didn’t know it, but synchronicity was at work. I was far from understanding what these coincidences meant, but I was already entangled in their vortex. “How is that
Life
magazine connected to Corbin Gray?” There was definitely too much concern in my voice.

“Take a closer look.”

I did, and saw that in the lower corner was a photo of a scraggly mountain man with the caption:
Back to Nature
. So that, at least, was a partial explanation for the coincidences.

“That’s Corbin?” I said.

“Yep.”

“And what did he discover up here?”

“That there was a timeless quality to life. And that you could only get to it if you lived outside of society.”

“Outside of history,” I said, almost instinctually.

“Exactly. And that was the subject of my next journal article, and that article helped me get the job at William & Mary.” She looked over the cabin. The delight on her face let me know that restoring the cabin was enough of a reward of its own.