The Deserter (25 page)

There were many more shelves to ransack in the Widener stacks, but today Homer was staying at home. He had a horrible cold. And in the slight mental imbalance that accompanies a cold, it occurred to him that war itself was something like a cold, an occasional affliction on the body of the human race. A poor wretch with a cold inhales a few shuddering breaths, waits a few seconds in fearful anticipation, and explodes in a violent convulsion. Perhaps the eruption of war was like that, a sort of global sneeze.

In Homer's abnormal state it seemed perfectly plausible. And then another weird notion occurred to him.

He explained it to Mary. “You know what we said before, how fishy it was. Well, now it looks fishier still. How could a man like Seth Morgan change character like that, from a tried-and-true soldier to a deserter? And how could a totally irresponsible runaway like Otis Pike die at the very front of the battlefield?”

“Well,” said Mary doubtfully, “maybe he had a change of heart, like the soldier in
The Red Badge of Courage
. Remember, Homer? He ran away at first and then in the next attack he was filled with reckless daring. Maybe it happened that way with Otis Pike.”

Homer brushed away
The Red Badge of Courage
. “Listen to this. I've got a theory. Instead of being inflamed with suicidal courage, Pike ran away again from the fight at Culp's Hill on the morning of the third day. Remember, this time it was his fourth desertion, and the punishment for that was death. Especially at Gettysburg, because General Meade had issued an order to that effect. So Otis took off—wait a sec. I made a map. Look, here's Culp's Hill where the battle was, and right nearby, this is the Baltimore Pike. One of the books says deserters ran away down the Baltimore Pike.”

“Mmm,” said Mary, looking at the map.

“Okay, so here comes Otis, trotting away along the pike, scared to death of being caught as a deserter and shot, when he comes upon the body of First Lieutenant Morgan, your Grampaw Seth, killed during the rebel bombardment. Terrible shame, his good old classmate lying there, all shot up.”

“You're dreaming, Homer. You can't possibly know that.”

“So,” continued Homer, paying no attention, “what does he do? He exchanges identity tags with Seth. Coats too. In a bloody coat he'll look like a wounded man, not a deserter.”

“But Homer, Pike died on the field at Culp's Hill. If the body was Seth's and not Otis's, how did it get back on the field of battle?”

“It's part of my theory,” babbled Homer. “Not only does Otis intend to get away from the battle without being shot, he means to be declared a hero too. In the dead of night he drags the body onto the battlefield and leaves it there way up front, the mortal remains of gallant Private Otis Pike, his promising young life sacrificed to the glorious Union cause.”

Mary shook her head sadly. “Don't you think, Homer, his old friends in the regiment would have recognized the body? They would have known it was Morgan, not Pike.”

Homer rose to this challenge too. “Face blown off. Pike obliterated Seth Morgan's face. How about that?”

Mary winced. “Oh, Homer, you're making it all up.”

“Of course I am. But if it's true, then your ancestor is exonerated. The shame of desertion would be attached to Otis Pike, not Seth Morgan, your heroic great-great-grandfather.”

“I'd like to believe it, Homer, but it's just too fantastic.”

THE SMASHED GLASS

O
f course it was too fantastic, but while Homer followed his will-o'-the-wisp theory, Mary tried to make sense of the articles in hand. They were solid objects with nothing wispy about them.

So while poor Homer was seized by fits of sneezing in the bedroom, Mary took the two little photograph cases out of her desk drawer, set them on the mantel side by side, and folded her arms on the mantelpiece to study them once again.

They looked back at her gravely, Ida all alone in the left-hand case, Ida with one of her husbands in the case on the right. Was it husband number one, Seth Morgan, or husband number two, Alexander Clock?

The smashed glass looked terrible, and it occurred to Mary that the sharp splinters might scratch the precious pictures. Impulsively she picked up the little case, fastened it shut with its tiny hook and slid it into her bag.

At Vanderhoof's Hardware, they would know what to do. Those good people were old hands at repairing broken windowpanes. They would replace the smashed glass in a jiffy. And then Ida and Seth/Alexander would be safe and sound. They would gaze serenely out of their little case at every succeeding generation of the family from now to the end of time.

But before driving off to the hardware store on the Milldam, she put her head in the bedroom door and said, “Oh, my poor dear.”

Homer was convinced that his cold was the fault of a student who had come to a conference wheezing and blowing his nose. He had handed the idiot boy a box of tissues, but by then, of course, it was too late. The powerful explosions had already sprayed their hooked germs isotropically in all directions, and they had landed on walls, ceiling and floor and attached themselves to Homer from head to foot.

“Can I get you anything while I'm out?”

“More tissues,” groaned Homer, mopping his nose. “Oh, God, I'm going to flunk that kid, I swear I am.”

Vanderhoof's Hardware had occupied the same premises on the Milldam for as long as Mary could remember. As a child she had reached up to the tall cupboards with their drawers of latches and screen hooks while her father bought a hacksaw or a bag of tenpenny nails from Grandfather Vanderhoof. Emersons had still been living on Lexington Road when
Great
-Grandfather Vanderhoof had come from Holland to found the family business.

Now it was his great-grandson who sold tenpenny nails at the same old store, along with electric fans and lawn mowers, coffeemakers and paring knives, outdoor grills and lawn chairs, hammers, paint and turpentine, who cut keys and repaired window screens and handled a glass cutter with nimble precision.

“I'm glad you guys are still here,” said Mary, taking the little case from her bag. “The town has changed so much. I mean, except for you people, it's all boutiques and gift shops now.”

“I'll tell you a secret,” said the young proprietor. “The only reason we're still here is, we own the building. All those other people are paying fantastic rents. Well, what have we got here?” He took the case from Mary and looked at the faces under the broken glass. “No problem. Want to wait? It'll take me five minutes.”

Mary watched as he got to work, gently prying the gilded frames loose with the narrow blade of a screwdriver. “Funny,” he said. “This one doesn't fit very well. This man here, his side sort of sticks up.”

“So it does,” said Mary, leaning over to look.

“There now, you see why? There's another guy underneath.” He showed her the buried photograph. “You want me to put them back the same way?”

Seth

A stranger's face looked out at Mary, but in the space below his likeness, someone had written a single word.

“Oh, no.” Mary pulled off her scarf and wrapped it around the second photograph. “Just put the top one back.”

“Well, okay, if you say so. It'll fit better anyway”

Mary watched him cut two new squares of glass and fit them over the faces of Ida and Alexander Clock. In her bag, tucked away securely in its deepest recess, lay the secret photograph.

As a loyal wife, Ida had displayed to public view the likeness of her second husband, but she had not wanted to forget her first. Whatever shame had been attached to First Lieutenant Seth Morgan of the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, his wife had not abandoned him.

Climbing back in the car, Mary had a crazy notion. She opened her bag, unwrapped Seth's picture and turned it over. The other side was smeared with faint brown streaks.

At home she found Homer fast asleep. She closed his door softly and went to her study to look for the photocopies she had brought home from the Harvard Archives library. She found the pictures of Mills and Mudge and, with them, the nearly blank page bearing only Seth's name and his regiment at the bottom—plus a few random streaks of paste.

If they matched the streaks on the back of the long-buried picture, it would mean that Seth's photograph had not been removed by his classmates in disgust; it had been taken—perhaps stolen?—by his devoted wife.

Mary put the photocopy and the photograph on the table and compared the two sets of streaks. They were the same in reverse.

There were stirrings in the bedroom, mutterings and soft whistles. Mary found Homer sitting up in bed. He was obviously feeling better. He was amusing himself with the old-fashioned stereoscope they had bought from Bart in Gettysburg, fitting one card after another into the wire holder.

He glanced up at her long enough to say, “Did they fix the glass on those pictures?”

“Oh, yes, and you'll never guess what turned up.”

But Homer was back in the sepia world of the 1860s. Mesmerized, he said, “Here, look at this one.”

Mary put the stereoscope up to her face and adjusted it until the two faded brown images jumped together. “It looks so real. What is it, that big stump?”

“Washington Monument, half-finished. Here, try this one.”

This time it was the Capitol building, its round dome half-hidden under a network of timber.

“Wonderful.” Mary gazed at the three-dimensional thrust of the scaffolding. “It's as though nineteenth-century Washington were popping right up into our own space and time.”

Homer handed her another card. “This one's the best, the Patent Office.”

“Oh, yes,” whispered Mary, awestruck by the blocky effect of the enormous building with its templed portico. “But you know, Homer, I'm wrong. It isn't as though the past were coming into the present. It's more like being invited back, as though we were joining the woman in the picture.”

“What woman?”

Mary handed him the stereoscope. “See her there on the sidewalk? A woman looking up?”

PART XVIII

THE PATENT OFFICE

THE SURPRISING
PATIENT

I
da would not soon forget the hospitals of the city of Washington—the shattered men sunning themselves at Campbell Hospital, the four-horse wagons rumbling up from the Sixth Street wharves with their loads of wounded men, the one-legged boy bouncing along the Avenue on crutches, the woman praying beside her dying husband at Armory Square, the devotion of the army surgeons, the kindly care of the men and women of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions and the quiet courage of the wounded wherever they lay.

Surely it would be the same in the Patent Office. Too much the same, Ida thought unhappily, fearing that once again she would not find Seth. Perhaps she had been on the wrong track from the beginning. It was not only her false friend Lily LeBeau who had led her astray. Her own foolish hopes had deceived her.

Therefore she had now made up her mind. Her confinement was near. As her hope of finding her husband faded, the concern for his child grew stronger. If she failed to find Seth today, she would go straight to the depot and take the cars for Baltimore, transfer to the other station and continue her journey home.

She had paid her weekly rent to Mrs. Broad and packed up her belongings. Her store of banknotes was almost gone.

At this early hour in the morning Seventh Street was nearly empty, except for a man in a bowler hat, fussing with a boxlike contraption on the sidewalk. On the other side of the street a woman at a newspaper stall stared at her, but Ida paid her no mind. Undaunted, she strode along the sidewalk toward the monumental staircase of the United States Patent Office.

Her healthy frame could still carry her swollen body any number of miles on flat ground, but the staircase was a challenge. Pausing to rest halfway up, she gazed at the massive columns soaring above her, amused by the hit-or-miss dignity of the city of Washington, its marble edifices alternating with acres of squalid debris. The portico of the Patent Office looked like the Parthenon.