All Those Vanished Engines (2 page)

Somtimes I had herd my father discussing these numbrs over the speaking tube with a sientist from Princeton. “Your rong,” I'd herd him say. “They ar arangd in desending ordr akording to the faktrs of 2.”

She pickt up her dol, a 19th century antique that had belongd to father, musty and evl lookng with a gutta-percha hed. She raised her arm and the bracelet slid away from her rist, winking in the sunlite. It was a valubl pees from our mother's famly. Now I coud see the first of the 4 niello plates, linkt together by simpl hinges. The insised patrn was clearest here. Later it woud be re-etched and redoubld, the blank places fild in.

The movement drew my atenshun to my sisters face, which until that moment had bin hidn in her golden hair. She was grimasing, “crying silently,” as she cald it, which ment it was a bad day, a “daynothing” or perhaps evn a “daybump” akording to her complikated lexikon. 4 clouds and 0 dors, meaning no filtr or barier between her and any source of hapines.

“Woud you like som brekfast?” I askt.

“No.”

“Mother woud like you to com down.”

“No.” She was studying the bracelet on her rist as if it ment somthing. Somtimes I imagind the hole world was a book to her, somthing to be red, evry detail loaded with signifikans. Of cors she had no time for ordinary books, evn ones she had made herself.

“All rite,” I said. “I'l bring you somthing on a tray.”

Latr, downstairs, I made my report. “She woudnt com. She was looking at her bracelet.”

Mother, a shy womn with a mole on her nose, sat down acros from me. “Its the only prety thing that evr came out of my grandmother's house. My cosn used to bounse me on his knee and call me his litl lump-cat.

Evryone thot he was exentrik but he was always kind to me. He was an old man, the only Confederate veteran I remember. Long white hair.”

Becos her parents life was so disorganized after her fathers court-marshal, she had had to liv with her mothers mother in Petersburg. This was during the 1920s and early 1930s. “Gram had an unlucky combinashun of senility and stubornes,” she said. “I usd to help her plant flowrs on Jefferson Davis's birthday—she was president of the Virginia UDC. Lisning to her, you nevr woud hav guest the South had lost the war. She talkt about “the caus” but nevr told you what it was. But it sure wasnt anything about slavery. She usd to talk about the Batl of the Crater—weve got our own siege now. Her mother was a Confederate spy.”

Becos the windows were snowd in, the kitchen was dark, lit only with electrik candls. Fire crackld on the harth. “She had platinum spectakls and her hair was puld back from her face, tite enuf to smooth out the lines. She nevr smiled becaus of her fals teeth. She usd to balans her chekbook with one hand while she was driving the “motorcar”—it drove me crazy. She said I was the same as her becos I had her name—Clara Justine. ‘Your a lost, lorn critter, same as me,'” my mother quoted in a quavring voice.

Normaly she was careful to expunj all traces of the South from the way she spoke: “But I usd to tel myself I was like the ugly duckling or els a chanjling from another famly. It terified me to think I mite be like her, part of her blood. Insted I was always a lost princess from a foren country, Serbia, or East Rumelia, or somplace like that in the Balkans, or els even somplace more majical, somplace underground—you no, Goblinland, tho Rumelia mite have been Mars as far as I knu.

She pausd. “Ellys like a chanjling now, of cours. My God it was hot. And dark. In the sumr she usd to tel Andrew to close up the house. He'd bring me the horible milk-toast around ten—I thot evrything she did was to spite me. The solipsism of youth. At eleven he'd rol the blinds down to the floor and close the curtans.”

“Who was Andrew?”

She shrugd. “Evryone had servnts in those days. It seems stupid to say, but I thot he was my friend.”

We sat on stools at the round tabl with the lion feet, pickng at the bacon and fryd bred. Father had already left the hous. My older sister was alredy gon, carying bukets of watr to the ice baricades. I was on the later shift sins I was only 14. My mother had an exemshn becos of Elinor, tho that was likely to chanje.

Now she got up to tend the electrik stove, and she was pakng som food into a basket. She rapped som warm bred in a towl. “My grate-grandmother was arestd with a basket of food for her brother in the Washington Artillery. But then when they serchd her, they found dispaches in her underpants. She dyed of tuberculosis, contracted in prison. Ive made som sandwichs, but I'm not sending any letrs. You take these to your sister. Shes on the dyk south of Weston Field where they play that game with the clubs and flags and the litl white bals. Then you come strate home. Its not safe to lingr.”

I puld on my rubr boots and butnd my wool coat with the woodn butns. My mother ajustd my wool cap and rapped a scarf around my mouth, like I was a litl boy. Then she pushd me out the door into the sno, into the cleft Father had cut to the kerb that he folowd to the largr kasm down the midl of Hoxey Street. Underfoot the ice was stird and broken by the horses hooves. The basket in my mitnd hands, I strugld down the street, the sno up to my shoulders in som places. It was a cloudles morning and the sun beat down. I past som of the men from the brik colej bildings in their make-shift uniforms, marching with their automatik muskets and electrik shovls—my fathers students, relesed for the durashun. For a few months there had been lektures in the evenings. But evryone was too tired now.

At the pond at the botm of Spring Street the men were cutting bloks of ice and I herd the chunk of the dynamo. Professor Rosnhime was there with his bushy beard that always lookt fake. Som of the boys had com to watch, and there I saw my frend. She waved and then came running. “Where are you going?”

“I'm suposd to bring this to my sisters.”

She frownd. “Its too erly for lunch. Let me sho you somthing.”

Nobody paid atenshun to us. She led me into the woods under the pine trees where the sno was shallo. She led me ovr the brook to the litl stone ice-hous where we met somtimes in summer. She was 16. “What do you want to sho me?”

“This,” she said and kist me.

We prest our cold lips together and then I followd her up the slope away from town. Finaly we stood in an opn medo on Christmas Hill where the wind had blown the sno away. I didnt kno if I shoud take her hand. Belo us we could see the dyk, the raisd embankment blockng the roads and sirkling the houses south of town.

We coud see where the enemy had torn down the trees and made a new road thru the woods and rold their enjns on the big logs. We lisend to the guns.

“Oh, look,” she sed. Mor guns now, and then the canons. Then we watcht the great behemoth slide down out of the wood, bellowing its smoke and steam, smashing hard thru the dyk and then exploding in a roar of sparks and dirty sindrs falling from the sky. The wind blew the smoke away, and we saw the soljers and the colej men along the dyk were lying down. No one was moving on the lip of the raw kratr where the enjn had blown up. But on the hilside we could hear the soft pop-popping of the guns.

“God oh God,” she sed.

I was carving the basket. I wanted to go bak, but she cot my sleve. We ran away, and I was crying. In the afternoon we ate the bacon sandwiches, crouching in a rocky del along the rij of the hil a few miles south of town.

We didnt go bak. Later after sunset, shivring and hungry, she tukt her chin into her coat. “Tel me a story,” she said—“your so good at inventing things. Coud you tel me an adventur story with a narro escape, but maybe with a happy ending at the end? Somthing with a boy and a girl who get away?”

Peopl said that about me, that I was good at making things up. But all I ever did was steal and plajerize and cobl things together. My mother used to say ther wer three things: the truth, our memry or percepshun of the truth, and what we make up. That nite I was too ankshus and tired and sad to think about those three things. I was woried about my famly and so was she. I thot I woud tel her a warm-wether story of the past. I woud use what was hapning rite now—she would like that. She woud recognize herself. But I woud mix her in with stories from my mothers childhood in Petersburg. And I woud cast them even farthr bakward into the safe time past, another 40, 50 years to shake them loos. What was Petersburg, Virginia, like in the 1880s or 90s? It didnt matr. Ther was no comfort in the truth. I stood up and clapd my mittnd hands and tryd not to think about what mite be watching our campfire, a glo between the trees of the wild wood. I blew out a mist of breth, choosing, because I could not think of a beginning, to start in the midl:

She had not been called down to supper, and it was already dark. She must have dozed off. Her candle had burned out. It was too hot in her room to lie under the covers, too hot to wear anything but her small camisole.

She lay clasping her doll with the gutta-percha head. She was startled when the sound came in the window from the Marshall Street side. Who was watching her? Her bedroom was on the second floor above the mews. Light seeped in through the wooden shutters. Of course before retiring she had bent back the window-lock with the penknife Cousin Adolphus had given her. She had pulled up the sash to catch the nonexistent breeze.

“You sound just like a book,” sed my frend. “So old-fashioned. ‘Before retiring…' And whats a camisole? No—dont tel me. I can gues. Sorry I interuptd.…”

The sound came again, a rattle on the slats. In the dark room she put the tray aside. She slid out of bed and retrieved her dressing gown from the hook inside the door. Then she pushed open the casement shutters and peered into the street. She saw someone standing below her in the narrow, cobblestoned mews, and she recognized the colonel's voice, a high-pitched whisper. “I've got the horses.”

“Where are you going?”

“Girl,” he said, “don't argue with me.”

Unsure, she crossed her arms over her chest.

He made a hissing sound. “Andrew didn't give you my letter? Be quick—”

They were interrupted by a soft knocking at the door on the other side of the room, and Gram's voice. “Paulina, dear, may I talk to you?”

She didn't sound angry. And what did she mean by “dear”? In the darkness, the girl climbed to the other side of the bed and to the door. She heard the old lady fumbling with the outside lock. But she had her own key on the inside. Turning it, she waited for a snarl as the knob shook. “Child, open this.”

“Just a minute.”

She found another candle stub, lit it, and pressed it into the candlestick on the tray where she'd been writing. She heard a noise behind her. The colonel had managed to climb up the wisteria vine below her window. Now he slid over the sill. Though he was dressed for riding, his shirt was made of institutional gray serge, and his cap bore an embroidered patch: Holyrood Hospital.

Too late he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror in the wardrobe door. He pulled the cap from his head and slid it into the pocket of his coat. Paulina was not reassured by his staring eyes and tangled hair. “Shush!” he said. “Don't say a word.”

“Child, open this door! Is there someone there with you?”

The colonel made an exaggerated grimace. He pantomimed the need for silence with a high-stepping tiptoe and a long finger in front of his lips. This display of his antic self made her forget about the cap, and when with stealthy tread he came to her and whispered in her ear, she did not pull away. “That woman, she intends to murder you.”

This was shocking news, of course. “Child, open the door.” The knob twisted back and forth, and Paulina heard something scratching at the lock plate.

“Furthermore,” the colonel said into her ear, “she is not even your grandmother.”

Before she had a chance to respond there came a crash and then another. Something was smashing through the panel of the door next to the lock, a blade of some kind. She'd moved over to the window, but now she turned. With the candle flame between them, she saw Andrew mostly in silhouette, lit from behind by the brighter gaslight in the hall. Dressed in shirtsleeves and suspenders, he carried an axe in his hand. He reached through the splintered panel and unlocked the door.

The wallpaper behind him was garish and red. His face shone with sweat. But then his expression changed. He ducked his head and disappeared, retreating back into the corridor. Paulina turned to her cousin; he had opened his shirt and pulled a long-barreled revolver from a holster underneath his armpit. He stretched out his left arm, pointing the gun, and for a moment they were alone.

He peered out the window. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and wiped his high forehead, running the fingers of his right hand over the crown of his head and back through his long hair. “I'll get dressed,” Paulina said, uncertain.

“Oh, but it's too late. They will have taken the horses.”

“But … didn't you say we had to go?”

“In a minute. When they arrest you, be sure to bring that book—what's that, your diary? Perhaps they will let you make a record. And your doll. You know it was the one thing they let you keep after the Battle of the Crater. A gift from your real mother.”

Eyes on the door, the gun silent in his left hand, he held out the other one and she took it hesitantly, for the sake of the lump-cat and his kindness through the years. “The diary is so I can talk into the future,” she said. “Maybe I can talk to the people there.”

He smiled. “Of course. That's what writing is. What else could it be?” He put up the gun and called out toward the broken door. “I surrender. There's no need.”