"Go home, Ben, you're drunk and you're letting a crowd of strangers egg you on."
Ben swung out a fist that Ernest ducked easily, and then White put his fists up in defense.
"We found his pulse, boys," Sweet said, and the men hooted. They formed a ring as the two men circled each other.
"You don't even know these folks, Ben – don't let them egg you on."
The two men came beneath the shadow of a tree, in a lot beyond the hotels.
"Remember this tree, Ben?" Ernest asked. "Remember who they lynched here?"
"Shut up," Sweet said. He swung and missed, and Ernest pushed him hard against the tree. Sweet's head thumped backward, and he slumped and fell down. He tried to get up but Ernest lazily pushed him down again.
"You're drunk," he said again.
The crowd around them and filled the air with cat-calls, but they grew quiet when two men walked into the circle and one of them raised a hand to silence them. It was the sheriff and the visiting congressman, Noah Larr. The latter man was tall and solemn like a commemorative whiskey bottle of Robert E. Lee.
"This isn't over," Ben said.
"Good God, finally!" Ernest replied, his face wild and his mouth hanging open. "That's what I've been trying to tell everyone – you think it's over, but it's never over!"
Their eyes met in a moment of shared exhaustion, and Ben gaped at Ernest. But then the two interceding men stepped forward. The whiskey bottle Confederate walked between them.
"We got too much to celebrate to be fighting, gentlemen," he intoned paternally. "I didn't come back to my childhood town to see some amateur fisticuffs. Now a cockfight, maybe..."
Some in the crowd laughed.
"I understand you put that strip of land I sold you to good use," Ernest said to Larr.
The congressman frowned.
"Too bad you didn't keep your word," Ernest added.
"He's nuts!" someone in the crowded said. Others nodded. Ernest looked out at the faces. He could see here and there some faces of men he had saved from the Mock-Perfect’s folly and put up in the hotel. When he met their eyes some looked away.
The sheriff stepped forward. "You all go home," he said. "The next man who throws a punch gets to spend the night in jail. Now everybody break up and cool off."
Larr scowled like a disappointed grandfather. "It's a crime the way some people shoot their mouths off," he said, as much to himself as anyone else.
Mr. White turned his back on him and walked slowly away. The far ring of the crowd parted just enough to let him through.
White's feet carried him from the scene of the fight, across the town green, to the dark streets on the farther side. As he walked he felt the eyes of the old politician and the sheriff boring through him, but he didn't care.
He reached the far side of the empty square and sat on a bench. He had just begun to let the black and quiet wrap around him when he saw a tall womanly figure emerged from the shadow of a nearby building. She held her hands in front of her, one clenching the other.
"You can't stay out of trouble, can you?"
He looked at her. "Sorry Atalanta, this time it found me..."
Her brown eyes were full of sorrow and scorn. "Why did you come back here? You have to have known that coming back here would only cause trouble."
He stared at her: "I have a right to be here."
Her voice broke. "No you don't," she said. "Not anymore. I thought you might have changed since you went away, but you haven't. You don't need to drag people back through time because you've burnt out your life abroad. The folks here have moved past you and they deserve to. They have something to look forward to now."
He looked at her calmly. "I came here because I have work to do. I am trying to bury myself in my research. My life and my work run through this place the same as theirs – the same as yours."
Her dark hair showed moonlight through its wilder strands. Her eyes showed age at the edges but youth in their centers, and they seemed to be weighing him. He had a look of calmness and sincerity that absolutely aggravated and unknit her.
She took a deep breath. "Look Ernest," she said at last. "We can move on."
He stared at her like he did not know what she was talking about. "I'm not trying to drag you into things," he said.
"Maybe I ought to drag you forward."
"Just a few things to finish," he said. He bent toward her but she turned and he could only kiss her cheek. She left her shaking her head. He watched her go and then he turned back into the darkness.
*
Word began to get around that Mr. White had sponsored the Mock-Perfect's handful of ragged followers for their stay at the hotel. The news that he had broken his long-standing policy of disengagement and had personally dispensed cash prompted excitement and resentment in the town. He found himself besieged at his mansion for an afternoon with supplications, opportunities, threats and pleas. He had to hire guards and fix his gate, but not before being subjected to sobs and calls and beratings such as:
"You can't buy respect!"
"Please, my wife has polio..."
"The Lord sayeth, ‘To those I have given much...’"
"Tryin' to influence an election..."
"Internal combustion is old hat compared to this opportunity..."
"If you could just fix my piano..."
White fortified himself in his mansion and took out a full-page ad in the paper the next day announcing that his old policy of distributing funds solely through the New York foundation was still intact. For a day no one believed this, then some believed it and presented him with the requisite reams of paperwork, then all believed it and began to nurse a simmering resentment.
That night while his full-page ad was sinking in, he had Otto bring a guest to his residence. It was the woman he had seen quoted in the old newspaper clipping. He had discovered her married name and address from the postmaster, and early in the evening Otto drove to a small white house in the oldest part of town of town to retrieve her. The yard was filled with stalks of orange daylilies that had long since spread themselves out wild to every corner. They were almost exhausted from the long summer, save for one brave bloom or two.
Otto escorted her to his employer's house and introduced her to Mr. White. She was a short old woman with piercing blue eyes and a face as beautiful as a china teacup. She smiled at White.
"I don't believe a word they say about you. Your mother was so nice."
He led her into the parlor and set her down to coffee. After some pleasant moments discussing his mother, he told her the story he had heard about the young woman whose baby Isaiah had rescued. Her expression fixed a little, but she continued smiling.
"Oh yes, I knew the woman. Her name was Kaye Green. Let's see, what did I know about her? Her father had been moved off of his land by the coming of the railroads, and he had relocated his family to the nearby hills. His health had broken after that and the girl, who was wild in spirit, was sent to the Cherokee Mission by her exasperated mother. The girl proved bright but defiant and impervious to instruction and was sent home. She soon left her mother and made her own way in town, working as a housekeeper in the hotel and earning a small living plus her board. I have a picture of her," she said. She reached into her purse and retrieved a sepia portrait. She handed it over to him.
"How did you get that?" he asked. He looked at a young girl with brazen proud eyes and high cheekbones and a smile that mocked the photographer. Her face was framed by straight dark hair.
"Oh, we were girlfriends, just for one summer. I thought she had taste, you know – she seemed so interested in the world beyond, so I wanted to be, too. My mother thought she was wicked, but I guess that just increased her appeal to me. She got hold of magazines and newspapers from the men who would come through here on the train, pages full of stories and advertisements and products from the big cities. Her eyes would glow as she read over them and showed them to me. It was exciting. One day I took a day trip with her
to Tulsa. We looked in all the fine stores – of course, we couldn't afford anything, but she said she would some day."
"She had me try on hats and shoes and told me which ones looked good on me. It was fun hearing her talk. It made me feel brave, you know, to go into the stores in the big city and all. She always looked fine when she put on those tasteful clothes, but I always thought I looked silly."
"Then I started seeing less of her. She suddenly stopped working at the hotel, though she still lived there. Word got around that she was being kept by one of the big men in town, that she had smitten him. But she was an expensive girl, it seems, even for him. Other men courted her when one of them would not buy her everything she wanted, and soon there was acrimony between three of the leading men in town."
"Then she turned up pregnant, and each man's suspicions turned toward the other, and all at once none of them would have anything to do with her or with each other. She could not afford to live like she had without their support, and one day she just moved out of the hotel and was gone. Later she took to wandering into town, and she did not seem right anymore. She was large with child and miserable and cursed the men, none of whom would help her. The women folks who would offer help did so at arm's length, recommending her to the care of relations out of town to avoid scandal. I guess she finally took one of them up on it, because she was gone for several months. But then she did turn back up, more bedraggled than ever, only now with a baby as well. She took to calling out the leading men out in the streets, accusing them angrily, all the time with that poor baby not more than a month old clutched to her breast."
"In the end I think the men decided they had to do something about her. I think they decided to send her off to the state mental hospital and put the child up for adoption. But she resisted. Your father tried to save her, but only saved the child."
He looked at her calm blue eyes.
"I don't mean to hurt you or surprise you," she said. "You said you wanted to know. Chris was involved in most everything the other two were, at the time."
"Yes, of course," Mr. White said.
"Your mother was such a wonderful spirit," the woman said. "I sorely missed her."
White rose and thanked her for her time. "You've been an immense help." He walked her to the door. Otto appeared and escorted her on one arm into the night, out to the car to drive her home. Mr. White gently shut the front door and retreated into his house. As he did he heard the car hum to life behind him, to deliver the woman and her memories back to her house. He picked up his cup and paused to look at the green veins through the skin of his hand as if seeing them for the first time. They might as well be a map of the valley.
*
From Ernest White's Journal:
A WPA archeology team is working a few miles upstream from the dam site, hurriedly trying to excavate and catalog bones and relics before they are lost forever beneath the lake.
I asked the leader if they had petitioned the governor or the dam project manager for more time to excavate, and he said they had, but to no avail.
"Look at the sign in town," he said. "Look at the signs all up and down this valley. A blue lake and electricity. And $23,000,000 in the pockets of workmen who desperately need jobs. No one's going to argue against that, especially in times like these."
I asked him about the excavation - who were the people who used to live here.
He shrugged and poked a toe at the dirt and said he could not say for sure. They lived in this valley for thousands of years. The layers they were frantically excavating at this one site cataloged at least five distinct cultures, spanning centuries, drawn to these springs and this hollow and these cliffs.
I offered to help pay for the food and lodging of the teams of students he was bringing from the university to help with the site. He smiled and gave me the name of someone at the university to contact. I am afraid he thinks it is welcome but too little, too late.
*
In the Professor's continued absence Mr. White took it upon himself to begin having his archaeological treasures shipped in for the museum from his various warehouses overseas. He had assumed they were all safe and snug in Rome and Bulgaria, Briton and Paris and Bangkok and Bombay and Alexandria, but upon specific inquiry he found it almost impossible to obtain inventories from any of these sites. Prize treasures could not be accounted for and were said to be in transit – though no one could say to or from where. Telegrams flew. His primary curator, Mr. Maxwell, now telegrammed him directly to report that all the prior telegrams he had received were false, and that all his treasures were still, in fact, secure and accounted for. The flaw, he said, had been in the improved ledger system used to generate the inventory lists. But right after that he received word from his London man Lloyd Jenkins saying that this was exactly what Maxwell should be expected to say, since he had sold many of the real treasures and replaced them with forgeries. Then he received a message from a mysterious Miss Elsa Braun, whose voice sounded husky even in type, saying both men were frauds working for a guild of deposed Russians, and that if he would only provide a large sum of cash to set up a series of cunning traps, all could be resolved to his advantage. It got so absurd he gave up in frustration. He’d have Otto sort it out.
It was in the course of trying to decipher these conflicting messages that White received a called from a female reporter for a Tulsa newspaper. Would he mind doing an interview for the travel section of the Sunday paper? He consented to do so.
The woman arrived at the appointed time. She was a young woman, tall and amiable, with hair pulled back and carefully-outlined lips one notch bigger and redder than nature. After taking a few pictures of him on the front steps of his ‘mansion’ they sat down inside for the interview. Otto had set out blueberry pie a la mode and coffee for them. She began with a few innocuous questions then she cut to the chase.
"Someone said your teachings inadvertently drove a follower of yours in Europe, a young girl, to suicide, and that you paid a lot of money to keep her family quiet about it." Her eyes suddenly flashed like little black beads.
He smiled blandly. "What kind of fool would I be to get involved in something like that?" he asked
"I have no idea."
"If you are asking me directly," he said, "it just tells me you don't have any proof of this outlandish tale. And I doubt you'll ever find any."
"Sometimes the direct way works," she said.
He smiled, and after a while, she did as well. It was a warm smile like an image of a smile.
"Look," he said, relaxing and stretching his legs in front of him, "if you're going to come all the way out here, you should be writing about something interesting, like this massive federal dam project, and all the big men it's going to make. You scratch the surface and you'll find all the men who'll be leading this state in politics for the next quarter century, all right here. Oh, not all in plain sight, maybe, but right here nonetheless."
"I'll give it some thought."
"I'm surprised your editor didn't make it your top priority. There's career-making stuff going on here."
"We'll see. That's the editor's call."
"Of course, of course." He leaned back. "Your editor probably has his finger on the pulse out here already – no doubt a man or two here feeds him leads for stories now and then." He looked at her with calm smiling eyes like blue glass. She saw deeper into them than she thought and then noticed that he had noticed this, or intended this.
She looked away and tapped out a cigarette. "You people in the upper class learn to control yourselves at a different level, don't you?" she said. "Not all of you, but a few – like you – and I met Andrew Carnegie once – like him. Your eyes are instruments of control."
"Me – ‘upper class’? Hah! If that’s true then the term’s been hollowed out, or never meant much in the first place. I am a rural farmer and maybe an amateur archeologist, when I can overcome my inertia. But not upper class."
"I can see how you could have been a fak
ir," she said.
"Do you? If so, please tell me, because I was never very good at it."
"But you had the eyes, didn't you, that gave a depth for people to lose themselves in – to think that they were truly someone special?"
He laughed. "The only person these eyes have ever fooled is me, because I am on the receiving end of whatever they look at. And they tend to be attracted to anything gaudy or absurd. If a person can be their own fakir, then maybe you're right. But only if they can."
"I'm not so sure."
"Look, Ernest said, "How about if I help you salvage your long trip out here? Let me dig up some photos of my trips to Giza, or the Taj Mahal. Or of the colorful street life in Bangkok."
"That won't be necessary. We'll send a boy out if we need anything more."
"All right," he said. He paused, smiling down at his shoes. "So, do you enjoy this more than your old job? It's more respectable, isn't it?"
She had been packing away her notebook into her purse, but she stopped in mid-motion and looked at him.
He continued. "It beats running around at the behest of a private detective, snapping shots of adulterers, doesn't it? I suspect this move to respectable journalism is a great relief for you."
"I don't know what you mean."
He reached into his jacket and fished out a cigarette. "Did you know you tap your foot when you lie? It's because you still have a conscience. And that's because you thought you were bred for better things – then something happened. You've had to fight your way back to where you are now. You're proud of it, but it's made you hard. You have to be hard to ignore your better judgment for the sake of practicality."
She rose, and he rose too. He extended a hand.
"You had dance training for, what, six or seven year? Your poise all but announces it – the way you walk, the way you still hold yourself erect from the small of your back when you are seated. And I'd say you had to stop your training when hard luck befell you – along with the rest of the nation, of course. But as I've said, you've made your way back, and recently. Your dress is worn but your costume jewelry is new. But those earrings – they are special – they are from before any of this happened, aren't they – from before the hard times?"