Maud smiled and stared out at the crowd, found men’s faces beaming at her, many women scowling. At what did they scowl? At the dancing spiritualist? The sensual horsewoman? The actress who reads poetry? The woman of fame who represents the power of the intuitive life? Well, whatever it is, Maud, they are scowling at you: you who merely by breathing in, breathing out, grow ever more singular.
Maud looked down at Quinn and saw neither the boy nor the young man (however briefly met) that she once knew. She saw a pacific smile and knew she was the cause of it, but saw, too, the trouble that lay behind it, had noted that trouble the instant she saw him in front of the mansion. It was the war, of course, and so she would begin with Keats, telling Quinn that he was perhaps half in love with easeful death.
“Thou wast not born for death,” she read, and eyed Quinn secretly, finding his smile gone, his face at full attention. Her geis was functioning. He was in the spell of her suggestion about the kidnapping. When they talked later she would invite him to Saratoga as her and Gordon’s guest. And once there . . . and once there . . . ?
She opened her second book and told the audience she had not publicly read this poem before this moment, and then began:
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,
He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar . . .
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
Maud read with great verve and sensitivity the next four stanzas, banishing male beamings and female scowls and replacing both with rapt attentiveness to the narrative, wherein Lochinvar avows to the bride’s father that he has come only to drink one cup of wine with the bride denied him and, when it is drunk, to have but a single dance with fair Ellen. And they do dance, as parents and bridegroom fume, and as bridemaidens watch approvingly. Then does Lochinvar assert himself:
One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran;
There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war.
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
Maud descended the stairs to stout applause, perceiving with pleasure that Quinn’s was the stoutest of all.
“Will Canaday has suggested I talk of the war’s reality,” Quinn said to the audience. “These cannon here look like reality to me . . . and these flags all full of holes. And those things over there in the Curiosity Shop made by rebel prisoners at Point Lookout: rubber buttons turned into rings, and carved with the word ‘Dixie.’ You could walk right over there now and buy a rebel button and that might qualify as reality. Albany boys in rebel prisons down in Carolina and Alabama are making things too, carving pictures of Abe Lincoln and the flag out of kindling so the rebs can buy them and pitch them in the fire.
“Reality in this war is not always what you think it is. Take the fight at Round Top, when the Forty-fourth from Albany was part of the brigade trying to take that hill. Just a hill like a lot of others in this world, but ten thousand of our men went after it, and only twelve hundred came out alive. A pile of dead people, that’s the reality I’m talking about. The bigger the pile, the bigger the reality. We did get that hill before the rebs, and that’s reality too. A lot of hand-to-hand fighting. When it looked like our boys might get their tails whipped, our batteries opened up and dropped a whole lot of cannon shot on top of everybody—the point, of course, being to stop the rebs. Fact that our boys were mixin’ it up with the rebs wasn’t all that important, and so they got themselves killed by their own cannons. Reality.
“Then there was the major that the general wanted to see but nobody could find him. This major, he was from Buffalo. He was one nice fella, and I knew just how good a soldier he was. The best. We didn’t want him to get into trouble, so we all went out looking for him. I found him under a bridge, having what some folks like to call carnal relations—with a brown chicken. That may not seem like it, but that’s reality.”
Several women exchanged glances at this remark, rose instantly from their seats, and left the gathering. Men snickered at one another and some squirmed. Quinn fell into a natural pacing up and down the platform as he talked, unintimidated by the task for which he claimed to be so ill suited.
“This reb from Texas,” he went on, “when our boys got him in their sights at Round Top he called out to them, ‘Don’t shoot me,’ and threw down his rifle. Soon as he did, one of his fellow Texans shot him in the back. Reality coming up from behind.
“And the attack at Cold Harbor, where seven thousand of our boys died in eight minutes trying to break through Lee’s line. Couldn’t do it. Our dead boys were spread shoulder-to-shoulder over about five acres. You could hardly find any grass wasn’t covered by a dead soldier. That was unnatural reality down at Cold Harbor.
“I remember a letter I helped a young boy from the Forty-fourth write. He wrote what an awful mistake other boys back home had made by not joining up with the glory of the Forty-fourth. He died of inflammation of the brain, somewhere in Virginia. There was also a measles epidemic that killed a bunch of our lads before they ever had a chance to get themselves killed by reb muskets. Sort of a reductive reality, you might call that.
“Then there was this close friend of mine from Albany who was a captain, and we used to talk about things that were real and things that weren’t, though we never put it quite that way, and one day I heard he got shot three times in less than a minute. Shot sitting down and so he stood up, and before he could fall over he got shot again, and then on the way down they got him again, and he didn’t die. Still kickin’ after twenty-three battles, and that’s one of the nicer realities I ever heard of in this war.
“I got my own reality the day I was hit by a spent reb cannonball. Just touched by it, really, and it wasn’t moving very fast. But it knocked me down, broke my leg and made me bleed, and I thought maybe I’d die alone there on the battlefield. I couldn’t even give a good explanation of why I was hit. The battle was long over and I wasn’t a soldier. I was just out there looking for survivors and some reb cannoneer maybe figured, why not wipe out that Yankee bastard? He let one go I never paid any attention to, and it got me. I might be out there yet, but then along came this grayback doctor and I see him working on hurt rebs. I called out, ‘Hey, doc, can you stop my bleeding and set my leg?’ And he said, ‘I cain’t set no laigs. I got soldiers of my own dyin’ here.’ And he went on helping rebs. So I called out and said, ‘Hey, doc, I got money I can pay you if you stop my bleeding and set my leg.’ And the doc looks me over and says, ‘How much you got, son?’ and I say, ‘I got twenty-five dollars in gold I been savin’ for my retirement,’ and he says, ‘Okay, I can help you retire.’ And he comes over and looks me up and down and says, ‘Where’s the gold?’ And I fished in my money belt and showed it to him, and he smiled nice as peach pie at me and went ahead and stitched me up and put a splint on me, and then he wrapped that leg so fine I got right up and started to walk. I gave him the gold and says to him, ‘Thanks a lot, doc,’ just like he was a human being. And he says, ‘Don’t mention it, son, but don’t
put too much pressure on that leg,’ just like I was a goddamned reb.”
The squirmers in the audience, spellbound since the mention of bestiality, were at last roused to indignation by the profanity, and a dozen or more men and women rose from their seats, a few shouting out to take Quinn off the platform. But as they left, Quinn moved to the platform’s edge, pointed after them and shouted, “Do you know the reality of Eli Plum of Albany?”
He stopped some in their exit and riveted the hardy remainder. Then he genuflected in front of them all and blessed himself with the sign of the cross.
“We called him Peaches Plum,” said Quinn, “and he was never worth much in any context you might want to discuss. He was one of your neighbors, and he and I went to school together here fifteen, twenty years ago. We were in Virginia, and we heard the drum corps beating a muffled Dead March in the woods near us and we all knew what was coming. Before long, orders came down to form with the whole First Division, and the Forty-fourth moved out onto elevated ground, facing an open field. The men formed a line, division front, facing five fresh graves.
“That, my friends, was a fearful sight. Also very rousing somehow, with all those brass buttons and rifles shining in the sun, and kids watching from trees, and older men alone on horses, or on top of rooves, and everybody’s eye on Peaches and four other boys as they came walking: two, two, and one. Peaches was the one, walking behind the drum corps, and followed by the provost guard, fifty of them with bayonets fixed. Five clergymen walked along, too, reading scriptures, and thirty pallbearers carried five new coffins. The procession went up and back the length of the whole line of battle and then the pallbearers stopped at the fresh graves. The five prisoners stopped, too, and stood there with their hands tied, a guard alongside each one of them. Then those five young men sat down on their coffins.
“I never got to talk privately with Peaches, but I dug up his story, once I saw it was him. Never wrote it, though, and I’m only telling it now because Will Canaday says you folks are hounds for reality.
“Peaches was a bounty jumper who joined the army eighteen times. You only got a fifty-dollar bounty for joining up when Peaches started his jumping career. Used to be there was enough henpecked husbands, and third sons, and boys who got girls in trouble, who were glad to go to war and improve their outlook. But the war kept on going and volunteers fell away to a trickle, and so the price of bounties went up, all the way to a thousand dollars, which is what they’re paying right now. Peaches, he made lots of money enlisting but he never got to keep it. When he’d light out he’d always bring the cash back home to his pa, like he was supposed to. Then one day after the draft came in, Peaches’s pa told him, ‘Go join up the army again, Peaches, only this time don’t come back because you’re going in place of your brother.’ This brother was a lawyer, a son the father couldn’t do without, the way he could do without Peaches.
“All those times Peaches joined up he never got close to a battle. He’d just disappear during the night off a train, or on a march toward some regiment, then head back home to Pa. But this time Peaches finally went to war. He saw a lot of corpses and didn’t want to become one of those, so he drew on his talents and his instincts, and he took out for points north. And he ran right into another unit and got court-martialed for desertion along with the four other boys who ran with him. They were all found guilty and the President approved they be shot as a warning to cowards and mercenary men in the army. I guess we all know how many good soldiers have the impulse to run, but somehow don’t, either out of fear, or good sense, or because they want to kill rebs. One youngster told me, ‘I’m stickin’ because we got justice on our side.’ Lot of rebs think the same way, but that doesn’t matter. Death’s all that matters, and I know you all want the reality of that, just like the folks back home in the real olden days who wanted to know how their war was going. And their soldiers would collect the heads and genitals of the enemy and bring ’em back home for inspection to prove the army was doing its job. Peaches never got into any of that kind of fun. He was just one of those poor souls who fumble their way through life, never quite knowing the rules, never playing by them even if they think they know them, always fated to be a pawn of other folks.
“Poor Peaches. Grizzled men around me were crying as the provost guard took up its position, ten guardsmen for each of the five prisoners, rifles ready, standing about fifteen yards away, while the captain of the guard read the five orders of execution out loud. The clergy came by and talked to each of the prisoners for a few minutes, and then the officers started putting those white blindfolds on the chosen five.
“I could see Peaches really clear, see him crying and quaking, and before I knew what I was doing I’d called out, ‘So long, Peaches, and good luck,’ which wasn’t very appropriate, I admit, but that’s what I said. Peaches looked toward my voice and nodded his head. ‘Okay,’ he yelled. Then his blindfold was on, the black cap was placed over his face, and it was ready, aim, fire. Four of the prisoners fell backward onto their coffins. Peaches took the bullets and didn’t let them knock him over. He crumpled in place and I never felt more an outsider in this life. All that pomp and panoply in service of five more corpses. It’s a question, I’ll tell you. But that’s all that’s left in me—a kind of fatal quizzicality, you might call it. I hope my sharing it with you has been of some value.”
And Quinn left the platform.
QUINN, THAT FORMIDABLE FOLKLORIST, walked along amid throngs of other souls like himself and he took sight of a picture photograph that revealed how a man will sometimes stand alongside of a horse. Quinn then said to himself, “I have a horse, but not so fine a horse.” This was a truth that served no purpose for Quinn, and yet he felt a goad. He went to his friend the editor, who wrote wisely about the great warps and goiters people must bear in this life, and his friend said to him, “I think it is time you took up with your platter.”
Quinn then went with his friend to a place where they met a man with chinwhiskers who opened a great door and took out from it The Great Platter of the Unknown that Quinn had long ago found at the bottom of a birdcage.
“This is a great thing,” Quinn said when he felt the heft of it. “I wish I knew what it was.”
“Well, you’ll never know that,” said his friend, “for you’re not smart enough.”
“I’m smarter than many,” said Quinn.
“We’ll not dispute that. Just carry it with you and it won’t bother anyone at all that you don’t know what it is.”
And so Quinn went to the slaughterhouse and bought a pig’s bladder and blew it up like a balloon and then soaked it in whiskey until it was strong and put the platter inside it and slung it over his back with a thong.
“You’re on your way,” said his friend.
“I am,” said Quinn.
“Do you know where you’re going?” said his friend.
“I do not.”
“Will you know when you get there?”
“I might,” said Quinn, “or I might not.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” said his friend. “I’m going in that direction myself.”
And so the two rode their horses, one each, and found themselves at the house where the woman known as The Great Mother had lived until she was done in severely. As they entered they heard the voice of an archangel in the music room. They stopped where they stood and Quinn said, “It is a man’s duty to sing.”
“And when one man sings,” said his friend, “it is another man’s duty to listen.”
So listen they did until the song came to a full stop. Quinn knew then that the archangel was a fellow named Moran.
Quinn and Will Canaday walked into the music room and saw that Maud was sitting at the pianoforte, looking into the smiling eye of the Moran fellow, and Quinn saw more in her eye than a beam of light. He resolved to tell her of this.
“I’m so glad you came,” Maud said. “We’ve been waiting for you both.”
“We didn’t know we were
coming until we got here,” said Will.
“That’s true,” said Maud. “But don’t let it bother you.”
“You’re dressed in mourning,” Quinn said to her, and she was: hair upswept and bound with a black ribbon, wearing a severe black bombazine dress with long skirt and half sleeves, the severity relieved by a descending bodice line designed for provocation.
“We’re having a wake,” said Maud.
“Who died?” Quinn asked.
“Hillegond.”
“Again?”
“Six months to the day. We’re remembering her, aren’t we, Joseph?”
“We are,” said Moran, “and I remember this fellow as well. He can’t sing a note.”
“You’ve a good memory,” said Quinn, and the two shook hands even though Quinn was of a mind to knock him down. He had not seen Moran in six years, which was also the last time he’d seen Maud. The man’s face was prematurely ravaged, probably by drink, which was what had done him in as a performer. In his cups he mocked his audiences and drove them away, making himself a pariah with theater managers. And so he gave up the drink and became a manager himself, of the Green Street Theater, establishing a reputation for recognizing talent by casting Maud as Mazeppa.
“Joseph was just singing to Hillegond’s memory,” said Maud, and she gestured toward the Ruggiero mural of Hillegond seated at the same pianoforte at which Maud now sat, Hilly in the obvious midst of supernal music. Quinn looked at the opposite wall, to find the matching mural of Petrus Staats totally covered with a tapestry of a brilliantly white unicorn on a field of golden flowers.
“I’m glad to see Hilly out in the open again,” said Quinn. “But why is Petrus still out of sight?”