The Deserter (15 page)

In the freight car Ida had not a minute to herself. Kneeling in the straw, crawling from one man to another, following the orders of the woman in the apron, she changed dressings and handed around slices of bread. When one patient handed her his Old Testament she found his favorite Bible story and began reading it aloud, but he already knew it by heart. “Oh, that's good,” he said, laughing, “the way Goliath says, ‘Am I a dog?'”

At Hanover Junction there was a rest stop where the Christian Commission had set up tables. They were serving out beefsteak and pastry. Ida stepped down from the baggage car into the fresh air, found a bench, took pencil and paper from her valise and began a letter to her mother.

Dear Mother and Dear Mother Morgan
,

As Seth is now in Baltimore, I have taken the cars to find him. If Eben has not started, tell him he need not come, because I am very well
.

I am sorry I could not telegraph, as the instrument in G'sbg was only for official use. I could not find Seth, but I believe him to be in Baltimore. I am told it is half-Secesh
.

Most sincerely, y'r loving Ida

P. S. I am really very well
.

P. P. S. I am told there is a railroad hotel. I will write again from there
.

PART XI

THE
BLOODSTAINED
COAT

THE GUN THAT
WON THE WAR

T
hree thousand,” said Bart.

Homer was scandalized. “But you said two thousand when we were here before.”

“Maybe I didn't show you the whole collection. There's this letter, it's extra. And this rifle here”—Bart stroked the gleaming walnut stock—“it's a Spencer repeater. Mostly it was the cavalry at Gettysburg got Spencers, Custer's brigade.” Bart picked up the beautiful gun and showed them the magazine that held seven cartridges. “Breech loader—you could fire fourteen rounds a minute. So they didn't have to reload after every shot and ram the cartridge down.”

Doubtfully, they stared at the gun.

“To be honest with you,” said Bart, lying in his teeth, “I've already got an offer for this rifle, but I hate to break up the set. If this genuine Spencer repeating rifle straight from Gettysburg was on TV, God knows what it would bring.”

Homer smelled a rat. By returning to the shop they had become sitting ducks. He had seen the look in Bart's eye as they walked in—
The suckers are back
.

He asked a skeptical question, “Where did you get this collection anyway?”

“Government auction. Unclaimed relics removed from the bodies of Civil War victims. Collectors, they bid against each other. I won this time, but it was pretty—”

“Pricey, I'll bet,” growled Homer.

“Your assumption is correct.” Then Bart ended his sales pitch with a masterly stroke. “This is the gun that won the war.”

Homer gave in. So did Mary. Five minutes later they walked out of the shop with the gun, Otis Pike's identification tag, and the bloodstained coat with all that its pockets contained, leaving behind in the hands of the proprietor a check for $3, 150.

Grinning, Bart watched them go, congratulating himself on his quick wit, because the rifle had been a last-minute inspiration. In the back room, running his eye over his shelves of miscellaneous relics, he had recognized the gun at once as Otis Pike's own personal firearm. And the yarn about winning the war always worked like a charm.

It was time to lock up. But just as Bart hung the
CLOSED
sign on the door, another customer turned up, a whiskery man so out of breath he could hardly speak. “I feel sure”—puff, puff—“you will not want to close your door because, you see, I am here”—puffity puff—“to purchase a few things that I understand you are offering”—gasp, choke—“for sale.” The new customer bent himself double, panting to recover his breath.

Generously Bart reopened his shop door and let him in. And then of course Ebenezer was disappointed in his quest because his third cousin twice removed, or perhaps it was his second cousin three times removed, had beaten him to it. But his wild drive to Gettysburg was not entirely wasted.

The wily proprietor of the shop spread other delectable items before his goggling eyes—a pair of drumsticks that had belonged to a famous drummer boy, a feather cockade that might once have adorned an artilleryman's dress cap, and a dirty little bottle possibly containing a few drops of the tincture of laudanum, that precious old standby in the pharmacopoeia of the Civil War surgeon.

The jewel was a .44-caliber Remington revolver, the gun that had won the war.

All of these things were pricey, very pricey, but Ebenezer snapped them up.

Afterward, as he approached his car with his bag of precious things, he fell prey to another huckster.

It was a smiling elderly woman peddling salvation, handing out pamphlets. She appeared before him on the sidewalk as suddenly as though descending from above.

Ebenezer stood stock-still beside his car and stared at her.

Fixing her pale eyes on his face, she handed him a pamphlet and said softly, “Good afternoon, dear friend. Tell me, wouldest thou be perfect?”

He gaped.

She toddled a little closer. “Wouldest thou inherit eternal life?”

Ebenezer was still transfixed. His mouth opened in wonder, a pink
O
in the cataract of his whiskers.

She crept still closer. “Wouldest thou, dear friend, have treasure in heaven?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ebenezer. “I would, I certainly would.”

THE POCKETS

I
n the motel they laid the Otis Pike collection down on the bed—the identification chain, the coat, and the articles taken from the pockets. Mary also put down on the bed the two little cases of photographs. Homer leaned the gun in the corner, having ceased to believe in it.

“Of course Bart cheated us,” he said. “We were babes in the wood.”

“Of course we were,” said Mary dreamily, “but just the same”—she touched the coat—“it brings it so close.”

They pulled chairs up to the bed and sat down to look at everything carefully.

“I'll make a list,” said Mary, pawing in her bag.

They began with the blue coat. “Not much blood on the outside,” said Homer. “Strange the way the stains look like fingerprints.” He undid the buttons. “Most of it's on the lining. You know, if we were paying so much per ounce of blood, we didn't get our money's worth.”

“Don't be such a ghoul,” said Mary, but she scribbled it down. An hour later there were ten items on her list.

1.  Brass tag on a chain identifying Otis M. Pike of the Second Massachusetts Volunteers (Seth Morgan's regiment).

2.  Union army sack coat, no stripes on sleeves (probably meaning a private). A few bloodstains on front of coat, lining somewhat stained.

3.  Contents of left front pocket—folded note, very mysterious—

FOR GOD'S SAKE, OTIS, IN THE NAME OF FAIRY BELL
,

THE YOUNG SCAMP AND THE FEMALE SMUGGLER
,

DON'T DO IT AGAIN
.

THE CONCORD ROSEBUD

Extracting the next item, Mary burst out laughing.

4.  Right front pocket, oilcloth packet containing photograph of curvaceous woman in tights, name printed below, “LILY LEBEAU.”

5.  Also in packet, dapper-looking man in top hat.

Homer gazed at the splendid mustachios and sideburns, the top hat, the prosperous-looking coat and vest, the watch chain. “Do you suppose he's Otis Pike?”

“I doubt he's my great-great-grandfather,” said Mary. She picked up the last thing in the oilcloth packet. “Oh, Homer, it's a fan letter.”

6.  Also in packet, a letter:

Dear Miss LeBeau
,

How often have I worshiped thine image from afar! I write now from the battlefield by moonlight amid the cannon's roar. Should I survive the perilous action of this day, I hope soon to soften your Marble Heart
.

Enclosed, the likeness of
—
A Passionate Admirer

“They go together,” said Homer. “The man who had his picture taken in the top hat wrote the fan letter to the woman in the fancy rompers in the middle of a battle. Only he never mailed it because he died that day. What about the inside pocket?”

Mary picked up the little book that lay on the bedspread, turned the pages and handed it to Homer.

7.  Taken from an inside pocket a small book, a play, the top edge bloodstained—
The Marble Heart, or the Sculptor's Dream
.

“
The Marble Heart
?” said Homer. “It goes with the fan letter.”

“Right! Lily LeBeau was a famous actress, I'll bet. He must have seen her in this very play.”

Homer took the little book and leafed through it. “It's just an old-fashioned melodrama. But look at this”—he showed a page to Mary—“some of the lines have new versions on the side.”

“Oh, Homer, how interesting, the stuffiness is gone. Look what he's crossed out—The eyes which coldly view thy tears.' It's so much funnier in the margin—‘All you need is a couple of beers.'”

Mary laughed, Homer laughed, and they went on to the next item.

The next letter was not in a coat pocket. They were through with the coat and its contents.

8.  Unfinished letter, salutation in a clear hand:

My dear wife
,

I am well, my dear, but I regret to say that many in the regiment were lost this morning. Charley Mudge and Tom—

The last items were the two little cases of photographs.

9.  Case bought on first visit to Bart's shop, with familiar photograph of a woman.

10.  Case stolen by Ebenezer from Gwen's attic, with two photographs—the same woman and a man, probably her husband. Glass over photographs broken. NOTE: THIS IS NOT PART OF “THE OTIS PIKE COLLECTION.”

That was it. They hovered over the bed, looking from one thing to another.

One thing was clear. Homer put two of the letters side by side, then declared firmly, “The dear wife letter and the fan letter to Lily LeBeau were written by different people.”

“Mmm,” said Mary. “You're right.” She reached across the bed for the strange note that began “For God's sake, Otis,” and set it down between the two letters. “What about this?”

Homer studied them, then tapped the letter addressed to “My dear wife.”

“It's in the same hand. So it wasn't Otis Pike who wrote to his wife, it was somebody else. Someone who also warned Otis about something—'For God's sake, Otis … don't do it again'”

“We know another thing,” said Mary. “The fan letter to Lily LeBeau was written before the battle in which Otis was killed. The ‘dear wife' letter was written afterward. And we know from the tablet in Mem Hall that both Otis Pike and Charles Redington Mudge died at Gettysburg. So the ‘dear wife' letter must have been written by a survivor in the same regiment, the Second Massachusetts.”

“Your great-great-grandfather's regiment.” Homer picked up the case with the single photograph of a young woman. “This was in the Otis Pike collection, but she was related to you somehow, not to Pike. Could Otis have gotten it from Seth?” Homer picked up the case with the two photographs side by side. “So here she is again, and the man with her must be your great-great-grandfather Seth Morgan, who survived the battle and wrote the unfinished letter to her and also the crazy letter from the Concord Rosebud.”

“Well, he's certainly not Otis Pike, because Otis must be the dashing guy in the top hat.” Mary studied the sober faces of the bearded man and the young woman in the double case. “But of course they may be different people entirely. A great-great-aunt and a great-great-uncle. Maybe the man is the
brother
of my great-great-grandfather. Oh, God, Homer, maybe they belong to Ebenezer after all.”

EBENEZER'S TRASH

T
he landscape of southern Pennsylvania moved slowly past the car windows—fields and farms and forests. Mary was bored. She stretched her arms and worked her shoulders up and down. “Oh, Homer, it's such a long way.”

Homer kept his eyes fixed on the highway. “Is any of that junk food left?”

“A few crumbs.” Mary found the bag of potato chips.

Homer fumbled in it blindly. “How many more miles before the next tack?”

She looked at the map. “A long way yet, about forty miles, I think.” She yawned, and in a fit of restlessness, reached into the backseat and picked up a bundle of the wastepaper that had been dumped on them by Ebenezer.

As a collection of historical documents it was absurd. “What's this?” She was staring at a sixth-grade essay written by a child named Mary Morgan: “Leanardo Davincy was born in 1452.” Angrily she tossed one piece after another over her shoulder. “Oh, Homer, that exasperating man. How could he be so gullible?”