Letters (144 page)

Finally I interrogated Mr. Jacob Horner, an odd duck indeed, and his female companion, whom he called Marsha and the others called Pocahontas. I could make little sense of his account of Morgan’s death (Horner I gathered was a long-term “patient” at the Farm as well as some sort of administrator, and an old acquaintance of Morgan’s), but inasmuch as he’d been in the room when Joe either deliberately or accidentally shot himself—indeed, it seems there had been a scuffle between them: an inquest was being considered—I advised him to retain a local lawyer and requested from him, “for the foundation,” a copy of the account I urged him to set down for that lawyer.

On the subject of Jeannine they could or would say no more than I’d been told already: she’d come back “from Maryland” much distressed on August 11th, lingered unhappily at the Farm for two days, then gone with this “Pocahontas” person to visit Bray at Lily Dale for unspecified reasons (I suspect narcotics). Pocahontas had returned on the 15th; Jeannine had voluntarily stayed on. When I declared that she appeared to be there no longer, and that Miss Merope Bernstein was there instead, they shrugged. Perhaps “Bibi” had gone back to Reg Prinz? Such things happened.

Well. This Marsha-Pocahontas woman struck me as a bit evasive, but she might merely have been stoned, or drunk: she had the voice and manner of an old lush, not unlike Jeannine’s, but acerbic. The similarity made me weary, even cross. That Jeannine would have substantially mended her life if I’d kept her with me was neither impossible nor likely; I pitied her, hoped she was “all right,” and doubted either that she was or that if she wasn’t it was owing to foul play. Chances were she was boozing it up in New York City or Los Angeles. I had done enough; I was tired. Even so, I filed a missing-person report with both the Ontario Provincial Police and the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office (whose jurisdiction includes Lily Dale) before returning that night exhausted to Baltimore, to Cambridge, to the Dorset Hotel.

“This morning” (I mean Friday, but time has passed), from the office (nothing new), I tried to reach Prinz, Drew, and A. B. Cook by telephone—that last to ask exactly when and how Bray had turned up from the Prohibited Area and what
he
knew about Merope Bernstein and Jeannine, No answer at Drew’s house. No listed number in Manhattan for Prinz. Ditto for Cook or anyone else on Bloodsworth Island, where the operator doubted there was even telephone service. I gave up. Left the office. Came out here. Rebegan this letter around lunchtime. And have kept at it unremittingly through the weekend, pausing only to eat and sleep, determined to have done with it, with you, before turning my attention for the last time to myself.

There I have succeeded: my one success in recent weeks. It is Sunday forenoon now, September 7. Bishop Pike’s body has been found in the deserts of Israel; Joseph Morgan’s will be memorialized a few hours from now; Jeannine’s is still missing. Just time to wind this up, or down, and drive over to Marshyhope for Joe’s service—where, not
quite
done with guilty interest, I hope to press all relevant mourners for more information about What in the World Is Going On.

Did you expect a climax, Dad? A surprise ending, a revelation? Sorry. I here close my
Inquiry
for good, first opened 49 years ago this month. As you did not deign to let me know why you turned yourself off, I shall not tell you this time (as I did in 1937) how, when, and where I mean to do likewise. Commence your own Inquiry! Begin, what in your life you never once began, a Letter to

Friday, September 26, 1969

I, TODD ANDREWS, a resident of Dorchester County, state of Maryland, being of sound & disposing mind, memory, & understanding, do hereby make, publish & declare this instrument of writing as & for a Codicil to my Last Will & Testament, supplementary to my Codicil of 9/1/69 comprising Article Sixth of my Last Will & Testament aforesaid. To wit:

SEVENTH:
I give and bequeath to my Literary Trustee named in my Codicil of 9/1/69, in addition to my
Letter to My Father,
my
Inquiry
into his suicide, and the
Log of the Skipjack Osborn Jones,
this Codicil itself, if it survive the imminent demolition of the structure wherein I draft it and of myself, and whether or not it be completed, signed, and legally witnessed.

I write this by full-Harvest-Moonlight, almost bright enough to read by (but I brought with me a red-lensed pocket chart-light from the boat, along with pen, trusty yellow legal pad, and my 7x50 night glasses), in the locked & bolted Observation Belfry of the Morgan Memorial Tower, variously & popularly known as the Schott Tower, the Shit Tower, and the Tower of Truth. Drew Mack and some surviving fellow terrorists—dressed and painted as Choptank Indians to dramatize Redskin Rights in the event of apprehension—got in like burglars a few hours ago to do their work, mugging the night watchman for his keys and his watch-clock. But I entered, not long past midnight, as befits the Tidewater Foundation’s executive director & former counsel to MSU: with a gold-plated passkey presented symbolically by John Schott at last evening’s ceremonial dinner to me, to my counterpart on the State University’s Board of Regents, and to the governor of Maryland as represented by the comptroller of the treasury. A souvenir
Key to Truth,
which, broken off in the lock cylinder, insures my privacy to write and my freedom from rescue.

By this gorgeous light I can see clear across campus to the Mack mansion, where Jane is once again in mourning. Since her own—no doubt her first—Dark Night, Wednesday week last (9/19), when the yacht
Baratarian
was found derelict & half scuttled, with specimens of Harrison’s freeze-dried droppings aboard, and charts of the Mexican Caribbean, and very little else, Jane has suddenly looked her age: a metamorphosis more spectacular by far than mine because she had looked so inordinately youthful. I have done what I can to comfort her, without impressive success, and learned in the process that in fact she & Castine had concealed her late husband’s leavings lest I try to “pull another fast one” in the will case “as I did before.” And that the cache had nonetheless been stolen just prior to the Fort McHenry action—evidently but unaccountably by her fiancé! Whatever for, since her loss stood to be his? Neither Jane nor I can imagine. We rule out collusion with Drew as pointless and out of (Drew’s) character, whatever other connections the pair might have had. And we do not know what became of the crew & cargo of
Baratarian.
Jane declares herself inconsolable, and may be so. But I rather suspect that the opening next month of the first Cap’n Chick franchises and the early, favorable settlement of Harrison’s estate (now that the Tidewater Foundation is about to lose its director, and given Jeannine’s continued disappearance & Drew’s amenability to an out-of-court settlement) will go far towards consoling her; farther at least than my heartfelt but unavoidably detached solicitude.

Jeannine, Jeannine: what has our Author done with you? And if your little cruise with me furthered His plot, can you forgive me? We’ve little time.

My old heart pounds like a spring pile driver after an icy winter. What a heavy, hokey (but not untypical) irony it will be, if natural death prevents my suicide!

That
other
pounding—an almost furtive pounding, one could call it—is not my heart: it’s Drew and/or his associate Indians at my door. No, there’s no one in here. No, I shan’t open up. Yes, I daresay there is an Emergency of Sorts requiring immediate evacuation of the building; but I am not inclined to believe it a fire, as you now disingenuously claim, inasmuch as you have not seen fit to sound the fire alarm. Come on, Drew, you can do better than that. Saw a bit of light up here, did you? I’ll switch to the red night-vision lens on my pen light. And I saw you, too, my lad, with my 7x50’s, sequestering the watchman (I’m pleased you didn’t hurt him, or sequester him in the building you’re about to dynamite. May you at least acquire the Tragic-Humanist View of Terrorism). Very impressive you are, son, in your Indian redface, warpaint, braids, & matchcoat: the reincarnation, not of the lost Choptanks, but of your white ancestors in redskin drag who hosted the Boston Tea Party & related festivities. I wonder whether your discovery of my death at your inadvertent hands will prove the first step of your regression from radicalism to good old Stock Bourgeois-Liberal Tragic-Viewing Humanism; and I wonder whether I hope it will. I believe I do. Go away, now: time to make your mugged watchman’s rounds for him.

Good. And good-bye, Drew.

Come to think of it, that did not sound
quite
like Drew Mack’s voice, though it was familiar. Fort McHenry…Wedding scene…Germaine Pitt’s bridegroom? Not likely. No doubt Drew disguised his voice.

At last night’s banquet, my last supper, two Intelligence Types were much in evidence, trying hard to look inconspicuous. Did they have wind of Drew’s plan, I wondered, or were they keeping an eye on me? Drew himself (who now believes both Cook & Castine to have been undercover operatives for rival U.S. intelligence agencies, each sabotaging the other) says that I can expect surveillance at the least, maybe even some harassment, since my suit for subpoena of Prinz’s film of the Navy’s Accident at Barataria Lodge. Do your worst, lads, so long as you don’t foil today’s big bang.

The dedication ceremonies, my souvenir program announces, are scheduled to commence at 9:30 A.M. To the strains of Handel’s
Water Music
as performed by the MSU Brass Ensemble, an academic procession of the faculty, followed by representative members of the board of regents and trustees of the Tidewater Foundation, distinguished guests (the state comptroller and Dorchester County commissioners), and the now official president of Marshyhope State University: Schott’s maiden ceremonial since his confirmation, not counting the memorial for Joe Morgan. Prayer by MSU Chaplain Arthur Beille. National anthem. Welcoming remarks by the chairman of the board of regents and by the executive director of the Tidewater Foundation, who is to invoke Our Algonquin Heritage apropos of American Indian Day. Official presentation of the Morgan Memorial Tower to MSU by the state of Maryland, as represented respectively by President Schott and the comptroller. Acceptance speech by President Schott (“What is Truth?”). Itemization by the acting provost of the Faculty of Letters of the contents of the cornerstone: this week’s
Dorchester News;
yesterday’s Cambridge
Daily Banner;
this morning’s Baltimore
Sun (Congress complains of U.S. forces in Laos; Defense Dept. denies. Senator Goodell says cut off Viet War funds);
an Algonquin arrowhead found during excavation for the building (other Indian artifacts, unearthed from their burial ground, are on display in the tower lobby, otherwise unfurnished because of Structural Problems); a list of important historical events occurring on this date (General McArthur recaptures Detroit from Tecumseh and General Proctor. Holy Alliance against Napoleon signed in Paris); Polaroid photographs of the ceremonial itself; souvenir program of same; and—if I finish this in time and contrive to slip down, deposit it there, and slip back here—this draft codicil. (Lawyers learn how burglars work. I shall tape the belfry bolt to enable my return.) Official laying of cornerstone by President Schott, the general contractor, and a construction crew (it was to have been Peter Mensch and his stonemasons, but that stout fellow has gone to his reward). Benediction by Chaplain Beille. Recessional: Handel’s
Royal Fireworks Music.

These ceremonies will not take place. The fireworks will occur rather earlier than the
Water Music:
about 7:00 A.M., at sunrise. Charges of TNT, appropriately placed in the already opening foundation seams and other key structural members, will drop this architectural and pedagogical obscenity into its own foundation hole and rebury the Algonquin relics, together with some newer, paleface ones: a future enrichment of the past by the present.
This
demolition exercise, unlike the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Plot of 1967, has been competently engineered with the aid of construction blueprints stolen, along with explosives and detonators, from Mensch Masonry, Inc., and with the presumably expert advice of the late “Red Baron” André Castine.

Alias A. B. Cook VI? I shall never know. Erstwhile threatener with blackmail of his own fiancée? (I asked Jane quickly at our latest—and final—talk, hoping to tuck up that dangling thread of our Author’s plot.) Perhaps before their firm affiancement changed his strategy, or for some other, more complex reason? I shall never know. Some things Jane was “not ready to talk about yet.” So be it, my dear, and adieu.

On the bridge in ’67 and again at Fort McHenry two weeks ago, I frustrated Drew’s intention; I shall not again. At Barataria Lodge on Bloodsworth Island last week, I did him the favor of saving his life; he will return that favor this morning, unknowingly, by ending mine. It’s a few days past my equinoctial deadline for winding up 13 R, the last installment of my life’s recycling; but flexibility & leisurely improvisation have been of the essence of this reenactment, and shall be to its end. Yesterday Now!

6:15 A.M.:
I have spotted what look to me like the late Reg Prinz’s cameramen, with portable equipment, down by the empty dedication platform, filming the “cornerstone” (which has but one engraved face, the tower being round) by Available Light, of which there is more & more as the setting moon lights up the Chesapeake to westward while the approaching sunrise lightens the Choptank to eastward. They ducked for cover when a campus patrol car cruised by. Should they enter the tower (or stay where they are), they have about 45 minutes to live. If I try to warn them, Drew is likely to intercept me and thwart my Plans for the Morning. If I succeed in warning them, they may blow the whistle and thwart Drew’s plans as well.

Now they have reappeared from under the platform. The Associate Indian speaks with them, gesticulates; but he & Drew do not Sequester them with the night watchman. Perhaps they are in on the operation, either from its inception or as of now, and are merely discussing camera angles. Not a bad replacement for their confiscated footage of 9/16!