The Bookman's Promise (31 page)

Luke suggested a look through the museum while he did a few chores. “That’s probably where you’ll throw down your bags tonight. Last summer we had a fellow who was writing a book and that’s where he slept, on the ramp in front of the original battle flag.”

We spent the next two hours playing tourist, looking at old uniforms and muskets, minie bullets and bayonets, reading exhibit plaques. When we emerged the sky was dark gray in the east, with a thin streak of purple just above the western horizon. The setting sun broke over James Island, casting the harbor in a kind of eerie velvet light. Most of the boats had gone in now, and far away the church spires of the city were barely visible. I figured we still had some twilight time, and while I could see I walked off and made my own tour of the walls and the ruins around them. I walked along the gorge wall and stood where the original sally port had been. The wall dropped to a height of a dozen feet; below was a tiny beachhead, and straight ahead water flowed through the channel to the sea as the tide went out. A lone boat was still out on the water, cutting across the harbor in a slow arc maybe half a mile away: a skiff under power, with a canopy covering and three or four shadowy people on board. The sun cast its last orange rays across the water and I saw a glint from something—maybe a smoke being lit, maybe a light being tested or a tool being used on some sudden trouble. Maybe binoculars. I didn’t know what it was, but I stood still and just watched it.

After a while Koko came up beside me and we tried to find the city, all but invisible in the deepening dusk. “So,” she said. “What are we going to do and how are we going to do it?”

I watched the boat turn in toward the city and I made a few gruntlike thinking noises. At last I said, “My hunch is we’ll have to level with them. Mrs. R. may have some information but she’s like you, she’s cautious about who gets it.”

“I can’t speak for her, but for once I shall try to behave myself.”

“That would be good. I don’t want you clobbering me before we get on an even keel with her. We’ve got a few things on our side if we play it right.”

“Give me a
for instance
and maybe I’ll feel better.”

“She knows that we know about Charlie but she may not know much more than his name,” I said. “She was fishing pretty hard. She wants what we’ve got.”

“Whatever that is. But you’re still just guessing, and if she doesn’t know anything more than that, what good will she do us?”

“It may help a lot if she’ll tell us where she got that name. Maybe what she knows makes sense only when you put it with what we know. I think she’s got a hunch, just like me. That’s why she saved the Charlie card till the very end on Saturday, and that’s why she was standing on the pier waiting for us. She acts self-confident but I think she’d have been heartbroken if we hadn’t been there.”

“You’re reading way more into her than I would. I still don’t know how much we need to tell her.”

“You get what you give, Koko. I think we should level with her— tell her who Charlie was and where he came from, how Josephine turned up in your life and later in mine. If she asks us a question, answer it. Don’t dangle carrots in front of her, let’s just tell her what we know and try to establish some camaraderie.”

“That’s giving away a lot on a wing and a prayer.”

“But she can’t do anything with it without us, and without her we’re back on first base. She strikes me as a straight shooter.”

“All right, I’ll shut up and follow your lead. Your track record with her so far has been a lot better than mine.”

The boat in the harbor had come to a dead stop, drifting now with no obvious destination. “What’re you looking at so hard?” Koko said, and I told her I was just wondering if those people were in any kind of trouble. Impulsively I put an arm over her shoulder and hugged her hard, as if I could squeeze all the pain out of her unhappy life. I felt her tremble and she looked away, shunning any kind of sentiment as always. I said, “How ya doin‘ these days, Koke?” and I squeezed her hand. She said, “I’m fine, you fool, why wouldn’t I be?” I hugged her again and she laughed up at me. “I’m fine, dammit, go away, leave me alone.” I followed her around the point, pestering. “Talk to me,” I said, and she gave in with a sigh. “What do you want me to say, how glad I am to know you? I’m glad I know both of you, okay? Does that make you happy? No matter how it all turns out, I’m not sorry it happened. Is that good enough?” I hugged her again and said, “Yeah, Koko, that’s good enough for today.”

She walked away and I lingered for a moment, watching the boat in the harbor. There was no real need to worry about those guys, whoever they were, but I worried anyway, in a distant, passive kind of way.

Now in the last moments of daylight Luke and Libby came out to take down the flags. We all gathered on the right flank, where the string of flags represented Union and Confederate forces of the 1860s and the state of South Carolina, with the big modern U.S. flag in the center. Luke lowered the American flag and Libby snapped to attention with a crisp salute. Erin, Koko, and I watched from one side. Carefully they folded the flags, Libby draped them over her arms, and we started back toward their tiny apartment as the last of the sun vanished in the west.

“Time to eat,” Libby said gaily. “Who wants the great white shark fin?”

Their room looked smaller than ever with all of us crowded inside. In fact, it wasn’t much bigger than the utility room of a modern house, and we scattered our sleeping bags, still rolled and tied, and made good use of the floor. We lounged wherever there was a vacant spot while Libby cut greens and made a salad. Erin said, “I won’t even offer to help, I’d just get in your way,” and Libby smiled her appreciation. The time for niceties was at hand. Erin said how awful she felt that we hadn’t brought anything but Libby dismissed that with a wave. “Totally understandable. You didn’t think you were coming to dinner, you came to visit a national monument. Who brings food to something like that?” Luke said, “We’ll come to Denver sometime and you can treat us like royalty,” and Erin said, “I’ll stop feeling bad if you’ll make me a solemn promise to do that.” We were in the first stages of feeling one another out, strangers trying to find a comfortable meeting ground.

“Take off your jacket and get comfortable,” Luke said. “It gets warm in here.”

But I kept the jacket, preferring the heat to the necessity of trying to explain the gun I wore under it. We broke some ice, literally and conversationally. Nothing was said in these early moments about Burton or the quest that had brought us there. Once Libby caught my eye and held it for a moment, as if she knew that whatever was coming would be largely between her and me. I sensed it on her mind, but the moment passed in a lighthearted comment from Luke, leaving the Burton topic to find itself as the night deepened. First came the matter of getting acquainted. We four laughed as if we were old college classmates, and Koko watched us like a dorm mom, quietly amused from a chair by the door.

Luke was from Minnesota; Libby had been an army brat who happened to finish high school in St. Paul. They had defied her father’s attempt to rule her life, had married six years ago and joined the National Park Service as a pair. In their Charleston assignment they had found themselves liberals in a land of hot-blooded segregationists, John Birchers, crackers, and rednecks. “That’s how Libby sees ‘em,” Luke said.

“Not true,” she said. “I’m the first to tell you there are lovely people here.”

“As long as nobody talks race, religion, politics, or anything real. People here think Libby’s a communist. She meets the conservatives coming around the other side. They only avoid bloodletting because, one hundred thirty years after the Civil War, they still think of themselves as knights with pretty young women.“

“This man is a sexist pig,” she said behind her hand. “That remark does nothing but reduce me to some sexual airhead.”

“I’m only talking about what they think, sweetheart. These old birds like nothing better than reforming a young liberal woman. The better-looking she is, the more they enjoy straightening her out.”

“How do I stand him?” she said to the wall.

We commiserated with serious looks, there was more light banter, and in a while the food was ready. We ate with the door pushed open, watching the interior of the fort go from gray to black to really black. Still nothing had been said about Burton, but the night was young, our cautious probing seemed reasonable and our reticence proper. Libby smiled at me fleetingly, again her eyes said it would come when it came, and I hoped my own attitude conveyed no need for hurry. I strived for nonchalance: we were in Charleston, after all, where civilized society always came before business.

It was Luke who brought up the topic almost an hour later. “Lib’s an honor student,” he said. “She’s writing a paper on Fort Wagner. She wanted to do Burton, except—”

“Except there’s no Burton to be done,” Libby said. “I wouldn’t want to turn in a paper full of hot air, would I? I could kiss my honors good-bye then.”

“Maybe it isn’t just hot air,” I said.

“Yeah, but
maybe
won’t cut it. Look, I know Burton was here. I’ve got no tangible proof of that, but I know it in my heart. Even if he was here, I don’t know if he did anything but drink, chase women, and watch boats on the harbor. It’s all speculation, and academics tend to depreciate that. For me to make any use of it I’ve got to know where he was and when, most of all why. They’ll want to see footnotes and references, some proof that I haven’t been stealing my stuff from all their favorite old historians. If I could pin Burton down with new data, they’d sit up and take notice, but it looks like I’ll have to rehash those gallant black soldiers of the Fifty-fourth. I won’t get extra credit for a single original thought, but I do have a few new diaries, a few sources that haven’t been quoted to death. And that’s a story that never loses its appeal.”

She looked at me suddenly and said, “So what’ve you got for me that I can use in this academic quagmire?”

“We know who Charlie was.”

“That’s a good start,” she said brightly.

“Proving he was here with Burton is the tough part.”

“This will amaze you but I’m in exactly the opposite place. I don’t know who he was, but I know he was here, and Burton was here with him.”

“Still, there’s no proof.”

“Nothing that would change history. But I didn’t just pull the name Charlie out of thin air, either.” She stared me into the woodwork, all kidding aside. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

“That seems fair enough.”

Behind me I heard Koko cough. I said, “First maybe we should try to figure out what the whole story might be and who gets to write it.”

“That’s a novel approach.” Libby glanced at Koko. “You’re writing a book, I take it.”

“I’ve compiled some data,” Koko said. “Any book that comes out of it would be based on the memoir of an old woman who died recently. It’s actually her book.”

“Do I get to know who this woman was?”

“Charlie’s granddaughter.”

“Oh, wow.” A smile lit up her face. “Sounds like you’ve actually done a lot of work on it. The last thing you’ll want is to get scooped by a college student. And to be asked to contribute to the scooping, what an indignity that would be.”

“At the same time,” I said, “you’ll need it—”

“—nailed down tight. So where does that leave us?”

“Maybe we could give you enough for your paper,” Koko said. “And still leave me what I need for Josephine’s book.”

“Thank you but I doubt it. My paper is of the moment and it sounds like your book will be on the fire for some time to come. If I write a word of this, people will be all over it. And they’ll demand to know where to look for corroboration before they give me any credit at all.”

“Wouldn’t do ‘em much good. They’re not gonna find this in any archive.”

“Meaning what?”

“I’ve got possession of the tapes and transcripts. And there are no other copies.”

“But if you can’t make your sources public, what good is it?”

“It’ll all come out in due time.”

“Way too late for me, it sounds like. How do you know this is real?”

“Good Lord, hon, that’s what we’re chasing all over creation trying to do.”

“How close are you to verifying it?”

“Pretty close,” I said. “Close and yet so far.”

“Well, at some point we’ll have to trust each other,” Libby said. “We are honorable people, you know. If we give you our word, we’ll live up to it.”

“At least that’s what my uncle Dick Nixon always said,” said Luke.

“But I’ll have to know it all,” Libby said. “Everything you’ve got.”

This was met by silence as we considered what she was saying.

“I can’t write anything unless I know everything,” she said.

We ate quietly for a few minutes. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.

“Surely you understand that,” she said.

“Of course,” Erin said unexpectedly. “For your paper to be valid, it’s got to be based on source material that’s open to public examination. Or at least available long enough for somebody with impeccable credentials to verify that it’s real.”

“I don’t know any other way. They’d certainly demand to see what it comes from.”

“There might be another source—a more conclusive one—at some point.”

Libby just looked and waited. Cautiously, Erin said, “There’s a journal.”

“As in a journal kept by Richard Burton? In the master’s own hand, do I dare hope?”

Erin said yes with her eyes.

Libby took a deep breath. “What might the master have said in such a thing?”

“We hope it would confirm what Koko has on tape. We don’t have possession yet.”

“Sounds like you intend to get it, though.”

Erin shrugged. “Even if we do, it belongs to another party. It would be up to him what and if anything gets released. It’s totally his call.”

“This gets better and better, doesn’t it?”

“He’s a decent guy, I can vouch for that. My guess is…”

“Yes?”

She shook her head. “That’s crazy. I can’t go there, not till I speak with him. I’ve already said more than I should.”

“Well then,” Libby said. “How about some ice cream?”

We ate our ice cream and thought some more. Finally Erin said, “Look, if anything’s going to get done here tonight, you’ll have to trust each other at least this far. Agree that nothing coming from the other party, either directly or as follow-up, gets used without that party’s permission. And go from there.”

“You talk like a lawyer.”

“Oh, please, don’t hold that against me.”

“What do we do, sign our names in blood?”

“I’d suggest shaking hands and taking each other at our word.”

“That’s not very lawyerly advice.” Libby paused, then said, “I’m okay with it.”

“Koko?”

“Sure,” she said in an unsure voice.

I said, “As a demonstration of good faith, we’ll go first,” and I launched into the tale before anyone could have second thoughts. I told them how Josephine had come into my bookstore, how I had met Erin at the home of a Denver judge, and how Koko had been involved in Baltimore long before any of us. I told her how the old lady had died and of the deathbed promise I had given her. I left out the death of Denise, the Baltimore mob connection, and the facts of Archer’s beating.

“Oh wow,” Libby said again. “You’ve done a lot more on it than I have.”

I shrugged, and the moment stretched.

Suddenly she said what I hoped she’d say. “I’ll give you my part, for whatever it’s worth. Use it if you can. If you can find a way to share it, that would be lovely.”

She poured coffee. “I told you how I heard about the Burton club when I first came here, and about Rulon Whaley, the old man I met who thought Burton was a spy. Rulon was a true Charleston eccentric, but he had a forceful way of making me believe him. He told me about a photographer on East Bay Street who had taken a picture of two men in May 1860.”

“Burton and Charlie,” Koko said excitedly. “How’d he know it was them?”

“Long ago—forty years at least—he bought a bunch of papers at an estate liquidation. Ledgers, records, mostly junk. There was also some personal correspondence, but no one had ever attached any importance to it. Just old letters between obscure, forgotten people, that’s what anyone would think, looking at it. Rulon was then in his late twenties, just starting his law practice, but he had already read everything on Burton, and there was one letter that haunted him all his life. It had been written at the beginning of the Civil War by a young man to a former classmate. Apparently they had been best pals in school, and the fellow who wrote the letter was trying desperately to be a photographer.

“He was having a hard time of it. He was poor and the equipment was expensive. He was young, no one took him seriously, and photography itself was suspicious to a lot of people then. He had borrowed money from his friend to buy a camera and he was trying his best to get established, making portraits when he could get people to sit for him, shooting street scenes, whatever he could do to improve himself.

“One day the two men appeared. One was dapper-looking, the other…well, you could tell he had been around in the world. They had their picture made on East Bay Street. He remembered it because the worldly one had terrible scars on his cheeks. I’ve done a little photography, enough to know that’s the kind of thing you look for, something that sets off a face and makes it unforgettable. I don’t remember the exact date but I’ve got it written down, even to the time of day when the picture was made.”

“It was noon,” I said. “The sun was too bright and the photographer fussed over it. And Burton got impatient and almost walked away.”

“Yes! How did you know that?”

“It’s on my tapes,” Koko said. “Jo’s family had a copy of that picture but it got lost. We tried but we couldn’t find any evidence of a photographer on that stretch of street.”

“That’s because he never had a real place of business. He was living with his sister and her husband, people named Kelleher, and even that was just for a short time. I think he was only there for a month. I doubt if he ever had more than a hand-printed sign stuck in the window. By June, Kelleher had thrown him out.”

“Kelleher was the dentist,” Koko said.

“He was a dentist, and his wife was named Stuyvessant,” Libby said. “The photographer was nicknamed Barney—Barney Stuyves-sant. He was just a kid on fire with the artistic possibilities of the camera. Rulon gave me the letter when he knew he was dying.”

Erin said, “And just from that your friend was convinced Burton had been here.”

“Sure. How many men have scars like that? Rulon had already read everything about Burton, so yes, that’s the first thing he thought when he read Barney’s letter. He knew Burton was in the country then. He knew about the blank period that Burton’s biographers had never been able to pin down. He knew Burton had come through the South. And over time his belief grew stronger, even when there was nothing to back it up. That’s how he was.”

“So this is where we are,” I said. “Koko has a lot of anecdotal material on tape, which no academic or publisher would accept on its face value. You have a photographer’s letter, which seems to back us up, but it’s still not enough. And Erin has a lead on a journal that might solve everybody’s problem.”

“There’s one other thing,” Libby said. “I’ve seen the picture.”