Richmond Noir

The Battle of Belle Isle by Clay McLeod Chapman

Belle Isle

They dumped Benny by the river, wearing nothing but a green paper gown. Ambulance must’ve pulled over, rear doors fanning open. Bet the driver didn’t even step out to help her. Just kept the engine running when they left Benny by the side of the road, all disoriented, shivering from the cold. No clothes, no shoes, no idea where she was anymore. Started making her way toward the water, all sixty-three years of herself crawling down the craggy rocks, bare feet slipping over the algae. Rested just next to the James for lord knows how long. All numb now.

There’d been rain out west, so it wasn’t long before the river swelled. Couple of hours and the surface probably rose right up to her, currents taking her away. Carrying her downstream for half a mile. Two miles. Maybe more — I don’t know. Depends on where they ditched her in the first place, doesn’t it? Can’t shake this image of her floating over the rocks, half naked, whisked off into the whitewater. The rapids dragging her body along before bringing her back to Belle Isle.

This island had been our home.

After they shut down the Freedom House on Belvidere, you either had to migrate up to Monroe Park or toward the Lee Bridge, where the nearest mission was nestled into this neglected valley on the south side of Chesterfield County, about a mile’s walk beyond the city limits. It had been home to some battlefield long forgotten by now. Perfect for a skirmish during the Civil War — not much else. Only neighbors now were a couple of dilapidated factories, the soil all soaked with arsenic. Just about the only thing you could build on top of that poisoned property was a homeless shelter. And this mission — their doors didn’t open unless it was below thirty-five degrees. Come 6 a.m., you were woken up and tossed right back into the street no matter how cold it was. Locked their doors until the thermometer reached the right temperature again.

Me and Benny tried our hand at it for a couple nights, hefting everything we owned back and forth over the Lee Bridge, just looking for work. Got all of our belongings on our backs, like a couple of ragged privates marching with fifty pounds of provisions slung over our shoulders. Just praying for the mercury to sink below thirty-five. That one degree’s the difference between you and your own cot — even a cup of watered-down coffee — or freezing to death on some park bench.

Can’t call that home. Nobody should.

Richmond’s labeling all this shifting around revitalization — but I’m not buying it. Pushing us out to the periphery. Forcing us to find a new home every night. Their Downtown Plan has nothing to do with me. Never had Benny’s better interests in mind. When I first met her, couple years back, the boys-in-blue had just busted her lip for sleeping out in Monroe Park. She shuffled her way into Freedom House after curfew, an icicle of her own blood hanging off her chin. Weren’t that many cots left at that hour, so she took the one next to mine. Dropped her plastic bags, all her junk spilling over the floor. I leaned over, thinking I’d lend a hand, getting a slap on the wrist for my troubles.

Don’t touch my stuff.

Just trying to help.

Help yourself is more like it.

Asked her what her name was. Her jaw refused to move much because of the cold, just enough to keep her teeth chattering, so when she answered — Bethany — I didn’t hear the tha part. Her tongue missed the middle syllable, like the needle on a record player skipping over a groove.

Sounded like she said Benny.

No funny stuff now, she warned, brandishing her wrinkled finger like it was a blade. I’ll have you know I’m a respectable lady.

There have got to be thirty years between us! The hell are you expecting me to do?

Just better watch it, young man. I’ve got my eye on you.

Most folks made their way to Monroe Park after Freedom House closed its doors — but that was a trap, if you’re asking me. Used to be a training camp for Confederate soldiers. Military hospital after that. Lot of cadets ended up dying on that patch of land. Too many homeless ghosts out there now. People who spend the night there end up disappearing. Some say this city gives you a bus ticket to any town you want, one-way, no questions asked — just hop on board and bon voyage — but I’m betting that’s a rumor the boys-in-blue spread around town so you drop your guard and follow the brass right into the paddy wagon. Act like some mutt trusting the dogcatcher — transfixed by the biscuit in one hand, not even paying attention to the net in the other.

Benny’s vote was Monroe. Mouthing off about the handouts down there. College kids managed a meal plan in the heart of the park, serving up soup on Sundays or something.

Step in there, Benny, I said, and you won’t be walking out ever again.

You’re just being paranoid.

Sure shut down Freedom House fast enough — didn’t they? Sure don’t see the Salvation Army marching into Monroe to save the day. I’m telling you, Benny — the police own that park!

Then where the hell are we gonna go?

That left Belle Isle. You got the Lee Bridge reaching right over the James River. Just another memorial to another dead Confederate general. Connects the south side of the city to the rest, shore to shore, like a stitch suturing a wound. Got the James bleeding up from that gash, no matter how many bridges there are sewing up this city. But nestled in between the concrete legs of Robert E. Lee, there are about fifty-four acres of public park, all wrapped in water. The river splits, rushing down either side of the isle, its converging currents forming a sharp point at the tip. A real diamond of an island. Only way to reach land is to hoof it. Got this footbridge slung under the interstate, a little baby-bridge suspended from its father. You can hear the hum of automobiles passing along the highway just above your head — but down there, once you’ve set foot onto the island, it’s like the city doesn’t exist anymore. Sound of cars just melts away.

We’d be like — like our own Swiss Family Robinson down here.

More like Robinson Crusoe, Benny said, shaking her head.

No one’ll bother us, I promise. As long as we stay on the far side of the island, away from the footpaths, no one’ll even know we’re here.

You’re crazy, you know that?

No more missions, no more shelters, I said. We’ll never have to set foot on the mainland again.

Yeah, yeah — just lead the way, Friday.

There are ruins of an old hydroelectric plant tucked away on the far side of the island. Closed its doors in ’63, the electric company gutting out all the iron, leaving the concrete behind. Nothing but a husk now, all empty. Good for a roof over your head when it gets raining. We set up camp in one of the old water turbine rooms. Have to crawl through this hatch just to get in. The air’s damp down there. Soaks into your bones if you’re not bundled up enough. But the walls keep the cold wind from nipping your nose. Made that room a hell of a lot better than sleeping in some refrigerator box. The generator was long gone, the rotors removed, leaving behind this empty shaft as big as any room in those mansions you see lined up along Plantation Row. We’re talking ballroom here. Perfect fit for all of Benny’s stuff She hefted a whole landfill’s worth of accumulated junk along with her. A dozen plastic bags busting open at the seams, full of photographs. Toys. Anything she could get her hands on.

Home sweet home, Benny said. Started decorating the place right away, slipping her pictures inside a rusted wicket gate like it was some sort of mantelpiece. All the shorn cylinders were now full of photographs, every severed duct a shelf for her past.

Who’s that? I asked, pointing to this one black-and-white snapshot. Cute little brunette smiling for the camera. She looks familiar to me.

Who do you think?

You’re telling me that’s you?

Damn right I am.

Didn’t recognize you under all that baby fat.

Yeah, well — they fed me better back then.

The island’s supposed to be vacant once the sun sets. Every day, like clockwork, this ranger comes to lock up the footbridge. Not like that ever keeps the kids away. Teenagers always sneak in after dark, building bonfires. Spray-painting the walls.

We had a whole novel’s worth of graffiti wrapped around the place. Couldn’t really read what it said. The words were barely there anymore, losing their shape. Tattoos fading into your skin, reminding you of different times. Times when those tattoos would’ve meant something. An eagle, a globe, and an anchor. Semper Fi. Nothing but blue lines now, wrapping around your arms like ivy overtaking a statue.

First time Benny saw the ink on my forearm, we were trying to keep each other warm while those teenagers broke beer bottles against the other side of our living room wall. Had to keep quiet, holding each other. That’s when she noticed the lower fluke of the anchor, all fuzzy now, diving down deep into my skin. Gave her something to trace her finger along. Watched her run her pinkie over the lower hemisphere of the globe.

Bet it’s cold there right about now, she said, pointing to where Antarctica would’ve been.

Colder than here — that’s for sure.

We were in the thick of December by then, the temperature dropping off into the low thirties. It was only going to get colder the deeper into winter we went. That meant less visitors. Less dog walkers. Less joggers. Less families. Less of everything.

You know this used to be a prison camp?

Sure feels like one.

During the Civil War, I said. Over five hundred thousand Yankee soldiers, right here. Couple thousand at a time, freezing their asses off in the open air.

You’re lying.

It’s true.

The more we talked, the more our breath spread over each other. Good way to keep warm. Our mouths were our radiators now.

Since when did you become such a history buff?

They used to march prisoners over the bridge, I said. Corralled them together like cattle. They went through the whole winter out here like that. Freezing. Starving.

Sounds familiar.

Slid in next to her. Nestled my knees into the back of her legs, just where they bent. Had my face pressed against her shoulder, breathing into the bone.

They’d bring a surgeon out to check up on the men in the morning, figuring out which limbs he had to saw off from the frostbite.

Everybody in this city’s a goddamn Civil War aficionado, she said, inching off without me. Figured that was the end of the conversation — up until Benny turned back around, asking, So you gonna hold me, soldier? It’s cold out here.

Yes, captain.

Fell asleep first. I was always falling asleep before Benny — drifting off to the sound of her cough, these short retorts right at my ear, like some soldier in the trenches, the sound of musket fire just over my head.

Brought my daughter to Belle Isle once. Couldn’t even tell you when anymore. Years ago. A different life. Packed a picnic and everything. Had to get there early, just so we could lay claim to one of the broad rocks resting along the river. We’re talking prime real estate here. You ended up battling the sunbathers for the best spread. The Battle of Belle Isle.

Don’t go out too far, hon, I said. You’ve got to be careful about the currents.

Benny always had to hold me when I woke up. Wrap her arms around me so I didn’t buckle, bring me back to the present tense.

You’re okay, you’re okay, she’d say. Just another bad dream, that’s all.

Everywhere you step on this island, there’s another history lesson under your feet. Signs saying what happened at that very spot, almost two hundred years ago. Nothing but plaques in the ground. Never would’ve realized this place could hold so much pneumonia, so much dysentery. That’s Richmond for you. Too much history for its own good. Whole city’s a graveyard. It’s only when you have no home to call your own that you can see this place for what it really is. You’re standing on the graves of men no matter where you step.

The prison camp had been directly below the highest mount on the island, overlooking the river. I remember bringing Benny up there, showing her the view for the first time. We could see the Capitol building up north. To the west was Hollywood Cemetery, on the other side of the James. Petersburg wasn’t but so far off, if you squinted hard enough.

Can’t see why those soldiers wouldn’t just swim for it, Benny said, shaking her head. Lord knows I would.

They’d try, I said. End up getting shot right there in the water. Their bodies would drift downriver. Never set foot on dry land again.

How do you know about all this stuff?

I just pay attention is all.

Pay attention. A good parent pays attention.

Let’s go down there, she said, pointing toward the north side of the island.

Where?

Those big rocks — down there. Where the sunbathers all go.

I’m not setting foot down there, Benny.

Why not?

It’s off limits to us.

There’s a dam still standing, upstream, left over from the hydroelectric plant. Steers most of the water northward, around the bend and into the rapids. There are signs posted all around the island, warning families about the rapids. Always have a parent supervising swimming children, they say. Don’t let your kids go out too far unattended. A bit of the river’s funneled south through this concrete canal, into what’s left of the turbines. Generated enough electricity to light up half of Richmond back in the day. Benny’s body slipped around the south, into the canal. If she hadn’t been dead when she entered the water, she was once she washed into the turbines. Her green paper gown was wrinkled, clinging to her skin like tissue. One sock on her left foot, nothing on the right. Reminded me of those sheep you see getting their coats shorn clean. Once the wool’s been buzzed off their bodies, what’s left behind seems so much smaller than what was there before. Pink skin. Thin frame. Legs don’t even look real.

I’m staring at Benny, lying on her side in the turbine — and I can’t help but remember her all bulked up in her jackets, a layer of long johns underneath. She’d just gotten another coat, three sizes too big for her, pulled it out from the lost-and-found at some church. Made her look like a little girl wearing her daddy’s jacket, her hands swallowed up by the sleeves. Now she’s naked. I’m noticing all the bruises I’ve never seen before, the abrasions. All the liver spots and melanomas that were hidden from me. Her wrinkles are full of mud, as if the river has tried washing the years away. I’ve never seen her face so smooth. I can almost imagine what she looked like when she was a girl, like in that photograph. The mud in her hair has dyed the white right out, back to natural brown. Chestnut eyes to match her new brunette curls.

I see the expression in her eyes, glassed over — those last few thoughts that passed through her mind as she wrestled with the river, fighting for dry land.

Afraid. She looks like she was afraid.

I’m imagining her numb hands thrashing through the water, reaching for anything that’s going to save her. She’s wearing some sort of ID bracelet, orange plastic snapped into place. Her arms are so thin, nothing but skin and bones. The bracelet slides all the way up to her elbow.

Have her listed as DOE, JANE. Bastards even took her name away.

She’d been complaining about a cough all week. Hacking up phlegm in her sleep. Sounded awfully deep. Whatever it was, it was rooted within her chest, beginning to block her breathing. The air couldn’t reach her lungs without sounding wet.

Jesus, Benny. You sound terrible. Think you better have that looked at.

You my doctor now? Where am I gonna go?

How about a hospital? I asked, pressing the back of my hand against her forehead.

Hospital? Nah. Need to sleep it off is all.

It was easy to feel the fever burning through. Felt so warm, I couldn’t help but keep my hand there a little longer than I needed to. Hold onto that heat for a while. Couldn’t help but think about all those soldiers, sitting in the cold. Sickest prisoners were always taken to the hospital just on the other side of the island. They were made to stand and wait until their names were taken. Could’ve been hours before they got called up. If they survived that long, they were led to a ward already cluttered with dozens of others. Sheets were never cleaned. Beds full of vermin. These doctors would rush through the ward like it was a race, seeing who could finish first. I never blamed Benny for distrusting doctors. But there she was, sounding like she was drowning from the inside out. Running her finger along the anchor tattooed on my arm, only sinking deeper into her own lungs.

I’ll go to the hospital if you let me ask you something.

Okay, I said.

Why’d we really come here?

I didn’t say anything.

What’s so important about this place?

I made something up. Something about Civil War relics buried somewhere around here. If we found them, we wouldn’t have to worry over nothing ever again.

Hope you find them, she said, not buying it one bit, something pink making its way to her lips. Whatever’s buried here.

Fell asleep first. I was always falling asleep before Benny did. Closed my eyes and found a familiar flame, this burning yellow one-piece, slipping off into the water without me.

Don’t go too far out, hon, I’d said. Only up to your ankles.

We’d spread a blanket out across our rock. Lunch was behind us. All we had to do for the remainder of the day was rest next to the river. Take in the sun amongst all the other families. And swim.

But I want to go out there, Daddy.

Too dangerous, sweetie. You’ve got to be careful about the currents.

The what?

The currents!

Can’t say how long I’d been sleeping. I didn’t come to until I heard the family from the neighboring rock start shouting. I sat up, squinting from the sun. Couldn’t focus at first, watching this flash of yellow disappear into the river.

Her body had turned blue by the time I reached her. I dropped to my knees. Pressed my lips against hers and breathed. I tried pushing the air into her lungs. Her chest would expand. Her rib cage was a pair of ambulance doors fanning open. But the air only seeped out, her chest sinking back down again.

The air wouldn’t stay inside my daughter.

Benny didn’t wake me up the following morning. Didn’t ease me up from my dream like she usually does. I had to snap myself back. Woke up and found her just next to me, barely breathing. Her eyes were wide open, staring up at nothing.

Benny? What’s wrong?

I carried her across the underpass, back to the mainland. Hefted her the whole way to the hospital, just praying we’d make it. Lost the feeling in my arms fast, but I held onto her the whole time.

We’re almost there, Benny, I said. Almost there.

The sliding glass doors parted, welcoming Benny inside. I rushed her right to the front desk, all out of breath. The nurse took one look at us and froze. Stared at me like I was holding up the place.

You’ve got to help her, I begged. She’s sick with something.

What’s her name? Do you know her name?

Benny, all right? Now just do something!

Spent fifteen minutes in the waiting room. I quickly started to feel like I didn’t belong. Looking over all the wounded, the sick. Everyone waiting for a doctor to call out a name. This little girl sitting next to me was as anxious as I was to get the hell out of there, scuffing her heels along the carpet. Her mom took one look at me and moved her daughter a couple rows over Most folks were giving me a wide berth by then, sitting as far away from me as humanly possible. Then I caught sight of a couple of security guards coming my way. The nurse from the front desk was following right behind them, pointing at me. Panic set into my system, telling me I better act quick. But Benny wouldn’t know where to go. She’d think I left her there, just up and abandoned her. The guards picked up their pace as soon as I stood. I cut them off at the sliding glass doors.

They followed me as far as the parking lot before giving up. All the while, I just kept saying to myself, Belle Isle, Benny. Just meet me back at Belle Isle.

Three days I wandered around. Took every nature path I could find, weaving in and out of the woods. I read every marker I stumbled upon until there wasn’t a corner on the island where I didn’t know exactly what had happened. Class was in session. Time for my history lesson. Get up on my Richmond. Wait for Benny to come home.

The dead were buried on the western slope of the island. That’s what the sign said. Over a hundred prisoners of war dumped into the dirt. Nothing but burlap wrapped around their bones — the lice wriggling free, trying to hop out before the earth got shoveled over. The bodies remained on Belle Isle until 1864 — not long at all. Just a few years in the ground before they were dug back up and reinterred on the mainland. Their bones were taken away, while their ghosts got left behind.

Corporal Edwin Bissel from Iowa. Company D, fifth infantry.

Captain Spencer Deaton. Company B, Tennessee infantry.

Lieutenant J.T. Ketchum. Company M, Richmond artillery.

And now Benny. Couldn’t tell you where she was from. Couldn’t say if she had any family around here or not. Never mentioned any kids of her own to me. But Benny was my friend. She’s the only one buried on Belle Isle anymore, her grave unmarked, her body resting inside the vacant spot of some dug-up soldier. Only person who knows she’s out there is me.

I stuffed her photographs into my pockets, layering up. Every jacket was padded with pictures, a Kevlar vest of Benny’s memories to protect me. Hadn’t left Belle Isle for over a week. The footbridge felt like it was about to snap, rocking under the weight of the traffic passing overhead. I was a bit wobbly at first, setting foot back onto the mainland, as if I’d been at sea all this time. First place I went was Monroe. Make an appearance for the police. Send a message that I was looking for them. When you’re after the brass, it’s better to let them come to you. So I just rested myself on a bench along the northern portion of the park, right under a magnolia tree. Couldn’t have closed my eyes for more than an hour before I got my wake-up call. Nothing but a wooden baton in the ribs, two boys-in-blue encouraging me to move merrily along my way.

Time to get up, one of them said. Sleep somewhere else.

I’m looking for my friend.

Who’s your friend?

Benny.

He loiter around here too?

If I was going to find out what happened to Benny I would have to go through it myself. Couldn’t just waltz into the hospital and ask for a lollipop, expecting them to tell me what the doctors did to her. The only way I was slipping past those sliding glass doors was with an emergency. And for that I needed a little help from my friends. So me and the boys-in-blue did a little Civil War reenactment of our own right there in the heart of Monroe Park. Sure were looking like soldiers to me, more and more, anyhow. Their cadet-blue uniforms. Their Jefferson boots. One stripe on their shoulder for every five years of faithful service. I went ahead and shoved my elbow into the stomach of the closest artilleryman. He buckled over, leaving me and the other soldier to share a few fists back and forth. Got a baton straight across the face. Busted my nose right open. Wasn’t long before the other soldier got his breath back, swinging right along. Some swift hits to the stomach came my way. Then the chest. Before I knew it, I was on my knees, this heat swelling up in my gut.

We catch you in the park again — next time, we’re arresting you.

Where’s Benny?

Fed a few loose teeth to the pigeons, spitting them to the ground like bloody bread crumbs. Watched the birds scurry up, pecking away. Must’ve been hungrier than me.

Not gonna tell you again.

What’d you do to her?

I blacked out after that. It gets a little patchy from here on. Memories begin to blend together; it was pretty difficult to tell whose history was whose anymore. I woke up in a waiting room. Could’ve been there for hours, staring up at the ceiling. Hum of fluorescents might as well have been flies buzzing about my body. Felt this fire inside my stomach. An oil lamp had busted open in my belly, kerosene leaking from my spleen. Nurses hovering over my head. None of them liked the smell of me.

One of them said, Got another homeless here.

Speaking like I don’t understand English.

Humana? Unicare?

Acting like they couldn’t hear me. Where’s Benny?

Blue Cross?

What’d you do with Benny?

Kept hearing the same word, over and over — Insurance? Insurance?

All I had was an eagle and an anchor.

Another asked, Name?

I answered right back: Lieutenant J.T. Ketchum. Company M, Richmond artillery.

She called out, This one’s a vet, I guess.

Damn right I’m a vet. I served my country. I fought at the Battle of Belle Isle. I have defended this city my whole life. I have given Richmond everything. My daughter. My best friend. I’ve got nothing now. What’s left of me to give?

My colon, apparently. Had something hooked up to my side — I could feel it. A plastic bag. Reminded me of one of Benny’s bags with all her junk. One of Benny’s bags was attached to my abdomen, itching like a son of a bitch. Every time I tried scratching, some nurse slapped my hand away.

Just trying to help, I said.

Help yourself is more like it, she shot back, easing a needle into my arm. Suddenly the room went all soft. My tattoos felt fuzzy. The eagle on my forearm sank deeper into my skin, its talons dragging the earth down with it.

Just when you think you’ve got nothing left to give, there’s always something more for this city to take away. Even your history. I’m back at the prison camp. Gangrene’s lingering in the air. Rotten cheese. Got to keep the flies off — otherwise, they’ll lay their eggs in my wounds. Neglected men everywhere, suffering from exposure. Fingers and feet lost to frostbite. Typhoid fever. Dysentery. My miserable comrades are dying all around me as the morning shift takes over, new nurses asking the same questions — Anthem?

What’d you do to Benny?

Carefirst?

What’d you do to my friend?

Clothes are gone. My shoes are gone. Got me in this green paper gown now.

Green paper gown. Green paper gown.

I’m in a wheelchair, rolled out into the parking lot. It’s morning. Sun’s just rising. An ambulance pulls up in front of me. I’m told to hold my colostomy bag as it drops into my lap. Feels soft inside. The guy behind the wheel’s asking for an address.

Where you want to go? You got to give me an address, pal.

Only address that’s coming to mind is Freedom House. On Belvidere.

There’s no shelter on Belvidere anymore, he says as we drive off. Shut that one down a long time ago.

The ambulance stops. Back doors fan open. I’m met with the winter sun. I can see my breath fog up before me. I see the James.

I see the river.

Richmond could’ve cared less about Benny. She was just another blip of banal city bureaucracy. They dumped her along the river — up and dumped her as far away from themselves as they could, hoping the currents would carry her the rest of the way. What happened to her must happen in that hospital all the time. Because here it is, happening to me.

The driver won’t let me keep the wheelchair. All I get is my colostomy bag. He tosses a Ziploc next to me, full of photographs. None of these faces look familiar. Can’t tell if they’re my family or not. I slip the edge of the pouch between my teeth, carrying it in my mouth as I crawl across the rocks. My green paper gown softens in the water, adhering itself to my body like a second layer of skin. The river’s cold — but before long, all feeling is gone. I know I’m moving, I know I’m on my back. I can see my arms pushing through the water. My colostomy bag must be keeping me afloat, bobbing along the surface. Everything I own is inside.

A few photographs loosen themselves from the Ziploc between my teeth, floating along the water without me. Suddenly I’m surrounded by spinning pictures, swirling over the surface, moving downstream. One of them floats up in front of me. Black-and-white. Cute little brunette smiling for the camera. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Lost her in this river, long ago. Never been able to get her back. And here’s history repeating itself again. Like getting caught in a whirlpool. Sucking me under. Looking at that photograph, bobbing through the water — I’m watching my daughter swim downriver with me, the two of us drifting along together.

That’s Richmond for you. This city’s built upon bones. What isn’t buried simply washes downriver. It’s a matter of hitting the right current. Ease myself to the southern side of the James. Keep to the right and I’ll make it.

Got to make my way back to Belle Isle.

Got to head home.

A Late-Night Fishing Trip by X. C. Atkins

Oregon Hill

It was around the hour when the sun began to sink into the James River and the lights of downtown Richmond came on and made the city look as big and grand as it wished it could be. The air was warm and thick. It made me think of maple syrup. There was a small breeze that picked up when I pushed my good foot on the accelerator. One arm hung out the window, the other with a hand on the wheel and a smoke between the knuckles. I was driving into Oregon Hill and I wasn’t happy about it.

Denby and Reggie Baker had just moved into the neighborhood. Cheaper rent, they told me. If you happened to be meandering through on a shiny afternoon you might see why. Oregon Hill was a dirty place and it was a nasty place. It was a place where stray cats could raise families. The gaunt houses were packed together and looked like the trees out in front of them: old, tired, and resentful. The porches sagged into themselves like wet cardboard, and Confederate flags hung with no wind to give them false glory. The lawns, if they had anything growing in them at all, grew wild and unkempt. Random objects stuck out from these yards, rusted machinery that had long since ceased to operate, children’s toys. There were families here, white families, that hadn’t yet moved out into the depressing alcoholic counties beyond Richmond, and they had a hell of a chip on their shoulders. The nights were deathly quiet but there was always something moving, shadow-to-shadow, and whatever it was knew when there was someone in the neighborhood who didn’t belong. It was the feeling I had every time I paid a visit. And every time it felt like I was sneaking in.

I made a right onto China Street and parked a half a block down from where the brothers lived. I got out of my beat-up burgundy Dodge slowly, with my wrapped left foot in the air. I pulled out a pair of aluminum crutches, stood up, also very slowly, locked the door, and moved onto the sidewalk.

Many of the red dusty bricks that made the sidewalk were broken or missing and in between them grass sprouted. I tried to step quickly on my crutches without looking like I was in a hurry. Denby and Reggie might have been all right in the neighborhood initially because they were white. But it was their visitors who were going to end up getting them in trouble.

As I was coming up to the brothers’ house, I could make out two people sitting on the porch of the place next door. No light illuminated the porch and I couldn’t see their faces. Two men, from the looks of them. They sat in their chairs, smoking cigarettes, as silent as the neighborhood around them. I could tell by the direction of their heads that they were staring at me. I didn’t stare back. This wasn’t anything new. My skin couldn’t help but get that crawling feeling, a feeling that made me very aware of that same skin’s color. The two men could have been a part of the house if not for the smoke twisting into the air and the rising and falling red dots of cigarettes held by invisible hands. Behind their screen door, past the darkness, I thought I could hear something growl. It was a low growl that sounded like it came from something big. Maybe it was the house. I kept going and got to the place I meant to get to.

Denby and Reggie’s house didn’t put on much of a front. A pair of beat-up sneakers sat next to the door that had no screen and the address was missing one of its golden digits. I was coming up the three steps of the porch when the door flung open, smacking against the rail of the porch. A girl came stomping out.

It was dark so I couldn’t quite make out the hue of her eye shadow but I could tell it was Ebone and she wasn’t happy. It was all the swearing that gave it away. I’d always found it amusing to hear people with British accents swear.

Her hair was short and sleek and a golden bird shook violently under each earlobe. She wore a zebra-print tank top and black hot pants, all of this showing a lot of the dark smooth skin I had found myself admiring the one night we had gone out for drinks with some mutual friends. That night, she’d been dancing on top of a bar with a drink in each hand. Now, her heels ground into the porch wood and she came down the stairs and went right past me without any word I took as directed to myself. She headed on down the block and didn’t trip once.

When I turned back to the door, Denby Baker was standing there.

“Hey, bo.” His voice was raspy, as if it’d been rubbed raw with a Brillo Pad. It matched the beard on his face and the Newport hanging from his bottom lip. He readjusted his Yankees cap, adorned with the brothers’ trademark golden fish hook on the bill, and showed a perfect row of teeth while he held the door open for me to come through.

“Hey, Derb,” I said, and passed him on the way to the kitchen. I leaned against the counter in the middle of the room next to an empty sink and a large microwave. The only thing on top of the counter was a set of jade dice. “Thought you were done with her.”

“I am. That’s why she was all in a huff. I can’t even stand to listen to her talk. The accent lost its charm probably around the third time she scammed me. Ain’t no way I’ma hook her up with nothing. Told her to beat it. It’s nothing. Hey, how’s life on the crutch though, Levy?”

“Hell on the armpits. But at least now I can grow out my beard like you two bozos seeing as how I can’t work. I try to be a glass-half-full kinda guy.”

“Speaking of glasses half full, how about a beverage?”

“Night’s getting better already.”

He stepped past me and opened the fridge. All that was inside of it was a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best, a jar of mayo, a loaf of bread, and a very large plastic bag full of marijuana. He grabbed two cans of beer, opened one, and handed it to me.

I took a healthy sip out of the can and said, “Your neighbors aren’t creepy at all, by the way.”

“Yeah. They’re backwards as hell. But they’re all right. Just sit on the porch and drink. See some dogs in the backyard here and there. Big boys.” He took down practically half of his beer in one extended gulp. “Crazy thing is though,” he continued, “me and Regg see girls come over there every now and again. Half decent too — I mean, no peg leg or hook at the wrist. It’s suspect, real suspect.”

“Kiddin’ me?”

“Nope. Ain’t no gun to their heads neither.”

I gave him an unconvinced, “Huh.”

Reggie came running down the stairs. He looked almost identical to his brother except his hair came down to his shoulders, he was taller, and he was lighter in the paunch. He entered the living room wearing a ridiculous outdoorsman vest and no shirt underneath, long jean shorts, and sneakers with socks pulled up right under his knees. In his hand he had a plastic container with what looked like dirt in it.

“Let’s go fishin’, boys!”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Docks on the James.”

“I’m with it,” I shrugged and looked at Denby.

“Lemme grab the kush.” He took a small plastic bag out of a drawer and went to the fridge, filling it with marijuana from the larger bag. He stuffed that in his pocket, grabbed his beer, and we were out the door. The neighbors were no longer on the porch smoking.

We took their car. I kept my beer can low in my seat as we made a left onto Belvidere. In five blocks only six police cars passed us. We made a right onto Cary and slid down hills that brought us downtown. The streets and buildings looked like a world inside a lightbulb, all yellow and empty. Further down, past all the buildings occupied by suits in the daytime, the road became cobblestone.

Hotels and restaurants provided a different kind of light in Shockoe Slip. A group of brightly dressed young people stood outside of Tobacco Company contemplating where to get their next cocktail.

We made a left onto 14th and then a right on Main. The train tracks were raised into the sky above us, along with I-95. They created a dark ceiling, illuminated dimly by streetlights to give everything the grainy look that always made people from the West End reluctant to visit. When they did, they had to get drunk, and fast. The droves weren’t parading the streets this night, however. It wasn’t yet the weekend. But the traffic was still heavy.

We went past downtown, riding east on Main Street, past Church Hill, away from the city. Everything became very dark and the night lost the sounds that people made. There were more train tracks down this way and the James River became visible as we passed through or under a large building that must have served as a kind of gateway at some point in history. Now, it was only a shell. Richmond had a lot of that kind of history.

A large white yacht was harbored on the docks. During the week it gave tours. Tables with white cloth draped over them could be seen inside the yacht through the windows. We parked the car a little ways down from where the boat was docked and unpacked the fishing rods, tackle box, bait, and booze. In the daytime it was fine to fish next to the yacht. People from all walks of life came out, set up chairs, and spent long hours fishing amiably. We wouldn’t fish there though. Several lights set next to the boat and in the parking lot made the whole area very bright. There weren’t any other cars out there, which wasn’t any surprise, considering the hour. Still, it was too out in the open for what we had in mind.

Reggie took us away from the yacht toward where the trees came in and the river narrowed. We could hear the current rushing past in the dark. There was just enough light from the moon to make out a path. It wasn’t a long walk before we got through the trees and had to work down a thin path that took me awhile to navigate on crutches. The path led to a smaller dock with no one else in sight.

We set everything down on the dock and I started on a new beer. The brothers began to rig the rods. They used a Carolina rig, which had a weight on the line that would sink to the bottom of the river. There would be enough line after the weight that the bait we put on the hook would float up several inches. The moon was bright over the moving river, causing the rocks that protruded from it to glow. It seemed like the arrangement of the rocks changed every summer

We could see to the other side of the riverbank almost clearly, but where we were, with the trees hanging over us, shielding us from the moonlight, we were practically invisible. I guessed I could hurl a potato across the river and reach the other side. Maybe.

Reggie pulled out the plastic container of dirt and began to pick through it. When his hand came out he had a squirming night crawler.

“I got a feeling about it tonight, bo,” Reggie said to me.

“Yeah. A big catfish maybe?” I said between sips, watching Denby pack a bowl with what I could already smell was strong weed.

“That’d be great. Reel one of those big boys in. Yep.” Reggie stood up, his rod set and the worm dangling from the hook. He swung back gently, one finger holding the line, and then cast. It went out very far and made a good-sounding splash. Denby and I both commented that it was a nice cast.

“So what happened with your foot, Lev? Derb told me you jumped off a balcony or something?” Reggie asked, looking over his shoulder in my direction.

“Derb, damn, man. No. I didn’t jump off any balcony.”

He grinned, though I couldn’t see it. I could just tell by how the words came out of his mouth. “Who were you running from?”

“I didn’t jump off any damn balcony!”

“Whoa! Easy there, buddy. Just inquiring, just inquiring. What is it, Sensitive Tuesday?”

“It’s Wednesday, you idiot,” Denby said.

“What is it, Sensitive Wednesday?”

We laughed and the freshly packed bowl began to circulate. After I’d taken my first turn, each proceeding cast I made into the river became worse. I didn’t care very much. We were laughing and I forgot about my foot and the other things that troubled me and became comfortable on the dock in the dark. Several times I lost my bait, either in a terrible cast or getting snagged by the brush on the bottom of the riverbed. I slowly became more concerned with drinking, if only to balance myself out. I felt the rig finally pull loose from a failed cast and was reeling it in when we heard a single scream. It came from the other side of the river. It came from a girl.

The rod almost fell from my hands. Across the river we could see a girl skidding in the leaves and dirt down to the bank. She got back on her feet and started running along the bank. She wasn’t wearing much of anything. Her dark hair was long and looked wild in the moonlight.

Seconds behind her something came crashing down from the trees and almost rolled itself into the river. It was a dog and it was the size of a small bear. It got back on its four feet quickly and started chasing the girl. It didn’t take long for it to catch up to her. The girl’s screams were cut short but the few that she got out were the most terrible sounds I’d ever heard. Sounds that would stay with me for many years and echo inside my deepest darkest dreams. It was at that moment that I dropped my rod.

First it fell on the dock with a thud that shook all of us back to life. The metal of the reel clattered. The rod tipped over the edge and since I hadn’t reeled it in completely, the current took the weight and pulled the rod in as quickly as a vacuum sucking up a dust bunny. The splash shouldn’t have been so loud.

I looked back across the river and saw two men standing on the bank. We couldn’t make out their faces but we could tell they were facing our direction. Lights were suddenly beaming toward us where we stood on the dock. They had flashlights. Then the dog jumped into the river with a splash that told us exactly how big it was.

“Go! Go! Go!” Denby was half yelling, half whispering. The brothers were grabbing everything they could. The tackle box wasn’t latched and half of the lures and hooks and weights came spilling out when Denby tried to scoop it up. He left the spilled items there and put the box under his arm, with his rod in the other hand, and started running up the path into the woods. I was in front of Reggie and tried following Denby when I realized that was impossible, my heel was still broken. My leg twisted on the path and I went down. An incredible pain lanced up my leg. I grabbed at it and tried my best to be a tough guy.

Then Reggie was pulling me up and had his arm around my waist and we were moving. We couldn’t exactly run but I was skipping furiously. It didn’t make any sense that the dog had jumped into the water. I couldn’t believe it would make it across the river, and even if it were strong enough, the current would take it much further down than where we’d been spotted. It would never catch us in time. All that logic did little to ease the incredible measure of fear pounding inside of me.

We stayed on the path through the forest, more or less. I felt my legs being ripped by shrubs and branches as we stumbled along, made blind by terror and adrenaline. I couldn’t hear anything; I was breathing too hard.

The trees cleared away once again and there was still another hundred or so yards to the car. We could see Derby already at the car with the trunk open, throwing whatever he’d managed to grab inside. He slammed the trunk and then jumped behind the wheel. Instead of bringing the car to us, he sat inside and screamed from the window, “Come on! Hurry up!” I really didn’t want to keep him waiting.

Reggie got me to the door, opened it, and all but threw me in. Then he jumped in next to me, not even bothering to run around the car to sit shotgun. The vehicle started moving before Reggie got the door closed.

“Roll up the fucking windows!” Denby was screaming.

Reggie and I both looked toward the trees. If we could have rolled up the windows with a handle we would have. But all any of us could do was put our finger on a button and wait for it to come up at its own pace. The monster of a dog was moving full speed from the black of the trees. It had a savage way of running. I could see dirt hiking up from where its claws were tearing the earth. The lights in the parking lot showed us that the animal’s thick fur was reddish-brown and, even with the water it had just swam through matting down most of it, already beginning to puff back out. Its tail had a peculiar way of curling. Its face, which I could barely see, was stretched back across its teeth. We couldn’t see its eyes.

Denby put the car in reverse and we swung back wildly. By the time he shifted gears again we heard the dog smash into the back of us and felt the car dip with its weight. It clawed against the metal and started crawling forward. We screamed at Denby to start driving. He did. The dog was on the roof of the car then. The tires made a horrible sound as they went over the train tracks we’d passed to get to the docks. Then Denby came to a sharp stop. Reggie and I almost kissed the windshield with our foreheads. The dog didn’t have any windshield. It went flying in front of the car. Denby stomped on the pedal. We heard a piercing whine and felt the car thud viciously over something much larger than a speed bump. I turned in my seat and looked back out the window. The dog lay very still in the street. It still looked huge.

“What the hell just happened? Does someone want to tell me?” Denby was yelling from behind the wheel.

The brothers began talking over one another heatedly, each with his own theories. I sat quietly for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I felt like I had asthma. I needed a bellows shoved down my throat. We didn’t realize we could put the windows down until we were halfway to the brothers’ house. My shirt was soaked in sweat. It dawned on me I only had one of my crutches.

I wasn’t very vocal during the ride home. The brothers were doing enough talking. I was trying to wrap my head around what we’d just witnessed. A girl running around in her underwear next to the river. Sure, it was warm enough. So what about Cujo? More importantly, what about the guys who’d sicced him on the girl? The thought put a miserable taste in my mouth and I didn’t know how many drinks it would take to get it out. I wanted to take my throbbing foot and throw it out the window.

“Sorry about the fishing rod, guys.”

“Did the dog rip the throat out of that chick? What the hell do we do now?” Reggie was leaning forward, clutching the seat.

“I don’t know what all we can do. Call the cops, I guess.”

Maybe the body would still be there. Maybe both bodies.

“Do you think they got a good look at us?” Reggie asked.

“No shot in hell. No way. Not from all the way over there,” Denby said.

I thought briefly about how easy it was to run into somebody you didn’t want to see in Richmond. An asshole, an ex-girlfriend, a murderer. The city could be awfully small.

We turned into Oregon Hill. We’d been driving very fast up until then, but when we came to where the neighborhood started, Denby pulled it back to a crawl. I couldn’t make up my mind about whether this was the adrenaline leaving him or because he realized we were coming back into Oregon Hill. I would’ve felt safer driving around Richmond in the car or, even better, out of the city altogether, but I kept my mouth shut. It was very late by then. A few kids passed us on bicycles as we got out of the car. The bars were closed. We stood still until they rode off the block.

The living room held a large collection of DVDs and a flat screen on the wall. The television was a gift from their mother. Several framed posters of horror flicks hung on the walls. I sat on the leather sofa and took out a cigarette and lit it. It didn’t taste right in my mouth. I put it out in one of the empty beer cans on their glass coffee table. The room was cold, even in the summertime. Denby sat next to me on the sofa and Reggie took a seat in the corner of the room. We all stared at the floor or the wall or our shoelaces but avoided looking at each other. No one had anything to say, so we just sat there in the silence. Then we heard the kitchen door open. Reggie and I looked at Denby, as if it were his responsibility to lock the door. My eyes were all but bulging out.

Heels were clicking on the wood, followed by heavy boots. Ebone walked into the room. Her legs looked very nice in heels. Behind her was a black guy with a shaved head, a low-hanging gold chain, and wrists about as thick as my neck. He was only about seven feet tall.

“You really should lock your door, boys. I wouldn’t exactly rate this as a safe neighborhood,” she said. Her smile had as much venom as a King Cobra.

“This isn’t really the time, Ebone,” Denby started.

“I’m here to get that bag off of you, Denby. That’s why I brought Maurice here. I hate to get nasty but you know how I am when I don’t get what I want. I guess I’m spoiled.”

I stood up. “Now listen here, you crazy—”

Maurice took a step toward me. I sat back down. Ebone laughed.

“What the hell are you going to do? You don’t even have two crutches,” she sneered. “Tough guy on one foot.” She turned back to Denby. “So? Where is it?”

“Ebone, we already had this talk. I got nothing for you. If anybody should have anything for another body, it oughta be you. You swindled me, remember? Where do you get off?” I could tell he wanted to sound hard, but with the recent course of events and the present size of Maurice, his voice was strained and borderline soft. Though I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge.

She came up close to Denby and played with his ear. “You’re really gonna hold that against me, Denby? I thought we were friends?” she purred.

“Maybe if you make right.”

“I tried to do that earlier tonight. You didn’t seem to like my deal then.”

“Discounts are out, Eb.”

“Well...” She started walking away from him then. “I guess you and Maurice are going to have to play. I really think you’d have liked playing with me better though, Denby. We had fun once.”

Maurice walked further into the room. I grabbed my crutch, almost holding it as if it were a bat. It’s what I had a mind to use it as.

From behind Ebone we heard the door open again. Everyone froze and turned, looking toward the hallway leading into the kitchen.

Ebone started to back into the living room with us and came to stand next to Maurice. Two men walked into the room. One of them was very thin with a flat ugly nose and a trucker hat. The other was taller but had a beer belly that stuck out from under his white T-shirt and a full reddish beard. The thin one held a crutch he didn’t need that looked very familiar to me. The tall one had a gun in his hand.

“We havin’ us a party?” the thin one asked. He smiled and showed us his bad teeth. He raised the crutch. “I think you lost something.”

“Hey, neighbor, now isn’t exactly the best time...” Denby said.

No one seemed to care about Denby’s schedule.

“Normally, we don’t like to meddle, even if we do see folks we don’t particularly like to see in our neck of the woods, ain’t that right, Greg?”

“What, you mean niggers, Walt?” Greg, the taller one, replied.

“Precisely precise. And hell, we can even respect most anybody who enjoys the sport of fishing. I guess you boys just happened on a bad spot.”

“A little further up by the bridge ain’t bad fishin’,” Greg said.

“Who the hell are you hillbillies?” Ebone demanded. The sound of her voice made me wince. The timing was off too.

Greg motioned the gun at her and Walt barely had time to grab his wrist before it fired. It didn’t stop the shot but it did save her life. Instead, the bullet caught Maurice in the belly. His shirt began to show red quickly and he took a step forward. He made an awful sound. Greg fired two more times at the big man. Neither of these shots missed.

Maurice fell on his face and he was as heavy as he looked. The crash made almost as much noise as the gunshots.

“Jesus H, Greg! What’d you shoot for?”

“I didn’t mean to, but he looked like he was making a move, man!”

“Yeah, cause you shot him!”

“I thought we was gonna to shoot ’em anyway!”

“Yeah, but you was aimin’at her! Be a waste to pop her here. We can play the game with her. She ain’t a bad piece, even she is a nigger.”

I had a bad habit of talking before I thought better of it. Maybe two people getting murdered right in front of me made me act stupid. “Is that what you were doing down there? Playing a game? Siccing a dog on steroids to rip a girl apart? What kind of fucked-up country bastards are you?”

Greg’s face twisted up at that, but Walt just started showing us his teeth again.

“We love our dogs. They get bored just like we do. ’Cept they can’t drink no beer. Or at least they don’t like it all too much. And I do love to see a girl go for a run. Now, on your feet, gimpy. We gon’ take us a field trip.”

No one had been paying much attention to Reggie. It was a mistake not to pay attention to a man in an outdoorsman vest. No one had seen him unsheathe a machete in the corner of the room. Without a word, he swung it into Walt’s arm. There was a shrill scream, like an elementary school fire alarm. Greg pointed the gun at Reggie but I’d already consented to their previous command and gotten to my feet. I swung my remaining crutch into Greg’s face with all the muscle I had. The bolt I used to adjust the height of the crutch must have hit him right between the eyes. Blood spurted out everywhere and he fell to the floor, clutching his face, dropping his gun.

Ebone started screaming. She ran out of the room as fast as her heels could carry her. Denby scooped the gun up and pointed it at the bleeding men lying on his floor. The two who were still alive.

“Where the hell did you get a fucking machete from?” I yelled. I didn’t mean to yell. It just seemed like the only way anyone could talk at a time like this.

“I dressed as Rambo this past Halloween,” he said.

I got my cell phone out and called the police. My asthma was back.

In minutes there were enough cops at the house to have a parade. They took Greg and Walt to get bandaged up so they wouldn’t stain the backseats of their squad cars. We told our stories so many times it felt as if it were one of the movies in Reggie’s DVD collection. The officers radioed someone to check if the body of a girl or a dog could be found down by the docks. In an hour they got a negative on both accounts but found a lot of blood in the location we’d described. They found all the stuff we’d left behind on the docks as well. They only mentioned the beer. To be cute. They guessed the body of the girl would be found in the river.

The cops gave Reggie some trouble about the machete but relented some when they saw he owned every Rambo on DVD and had a life-sized poster hanging in the upstairs hallway. In any event, they took the machete with them. The entire time the police were in the house, Denby was constantly talking and moving around. It wasn’t surprising at first, since that was Denby’s way. Then suddenly it seemed like something more.

“Does Derb seem nervous to you, Regg?” I whispered discreetly to him.

“Could have something to do with all the tree we got in the fridge,” Reggie said under his breath.

I lit a cigarette and began massaging my scalp furiously.

They raided the neighbors’ house and didn’t find anything too peculiar, for an Oregon Hill residence, until they went into the basement. There they found three more dogs in cages, all different breeds, each about as eager to get its jaws on someone’s throat as the one we’d run over. They searched the truck the neighbors owned and found the body of the dog underneath a tarp. Of course, they wouldn’t leave their beloved pet behind. It was identified as a Chow but of considerably greater size than normal. So far the police had everything except the body of the girl. That would turn up. All we could do was wonder who she was.

When asked about the big black guy lying on the living room floor, we just said he was a newly made acquaintance we didn’t know all too well, which was kind of true. That didn’t sit well with them but there wasn’t much they could do about it right then. They found identification on him, took him out of the house, and told us to skip any foreseeable trips.

No one said a word about Ebone. Denby was doing most if not all of the talking by then, which Reggie and I were happy to let him do. I didn’t know why Ebone didn’t come up, but neither did I care very much to add anything else that would keep the police around any longer. I wanted them out almost as bad as the brothers did.

The sun was well upon its ascent by the time they all left. I sat on the leather sofa, leaning forward on my two crutches. My foot hurt, my shoulders hurt, my eyes hurt. But I couldn’t keep my good foot from tapping and my palms from sweating.

“So... why didn’t we mention Ebone? Besides the irritation it would cause?”

“She did me a favor,” Denby answered.

“How?”

“Before she left she must’ve took the kush out of the fridge. If the cops had found it, I’d be sitting between those redneck fucks for distribution.”

“Wow. Ebone comes through in the clutch. By scamming you. Again.” I leaned back, letting myself sink into the sofa as I closed my eyes.

“That bitch,” Denby grunted.

“Who do you think she was?” Reggie asked.

“Who?”

“The girl. That got killed.”

“Who were any of them? They probably all bought it. All the ones we’ve seen. All the same way. We’ve been living next to these guys for almost two months now. I’m getting sick thinking about it. What are we doing living here?” Denby said, smoking a Newport rapidly.

“The rent’s cheap,” I replied. The Baker brothers didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t go to sleep. I just kept my eyes closed. I was picturing myself walking out of the house and into my car and driving out of Oregon Hill. It was early so it wouldn’t be too hot outside yet.

The Heart Is a Strange Muscle by Laura Browder

Church Hill

Rachel’s beeper went off just as her back began growing numb, jammed against the pieces of broken and discarded furniture in the storage room. A second later, Bobby’s went off too. She unwrapped her legs from around his sweaty back, pulled herself up to a sitting position, and groped through the jumble of clothing and guns.

Six squads, Church Hill, multiple gunshots.

“They’re at it again, huh?” Bobby was already shoving his wilting erection into frayed boxers, reaching for his trousers. “No respect for a man’s lunch hour.”

Part of her training, Rachel could get into full battle rattle in two minutes flat. She slipped out the door while Bobby was still strapping on his holster, past the hedge of boxwoods that Vaughn loved for their evocative fragrance. To her they just smelled of cat piss.

She had moved to Richmond with Vaughn four years ago, his dream more than hers. He loved the Civil War, the relics, the history. They had spent hours together wandering the pretty streets up in Church Hill, the whole area looking like a nineteenth-century theme park with its gas lamps, wrought iron, and carefully restored brick houses. It was lovely, but for her money they could have stayed in Rochester.

She could say this for him: Vaughn always knew how to make anything sound good. Even when she was in the same place with him, sharing the same moment, he could make her see it differently. Strolling with him through Chimborazo Park, through the alleys where small crape myrtles wilted and the bright claws of someone’s abandoned steamed-crab lunch reeked in the August heat, Rachel could let herself relax into his descriptions of how things had been a hundred-plus years ago: thousands of wounded soldiers stretched out on the lawn under tents, surviving horrible injuries in the world’s largest hospital. Now, thinking it over, Rachel couldn’t imagine why he found the idea of all those festering wounds so romantic. But back then, she probably did too.

Romantic now meant late-night drives down by the river with Bobby. The kind of guy, actually, she’d had the good sense not to hook up with that whole year at Al Asad, though not for lack of opportunities. He was a big guy, knew how to carry himself, brown eyes, tight ass. Not super talkative, good guy to have around when things got rough, not given to whining, flirtatious.

Now she was actually sleeping with her partner, what Vaughn would have called fouling her own nest and Bobby would have called shitting where she lived. Except that he wouldn’t: they both felt right now that they were exceptions to this excellent general rule.

Riding down Broad Street with him, their sirens wailing, Coke turning warm and slushy in her crumpling paper cup, she asked, “Where we headed, anyway? Gilpin Court?”

He cut her a look sideways, slowing down just a little for the light on 25th before blasting on through. “Nah, it’s Libby Terrace.”

“They didn’t say who.” Before she could stop herself. There was one door she had thought about putting a few bullets through herself during one of her unauthorized midnight drives — past Vaughn’s new place, a renovated carriage house with a view of the old Libby Prison, where they used to starve the dysenteric Union POWs in filthy, overcrowded cells. Supposedly, Mr. Libby had built the giant corner house to give him a good view of what was happening there, and at a second, filthier prison down on Belle Isle. What he had hoped to see with his spyglass trained on the prison in the middle of the river, Rachel couldn’t begin to imagine. On the other hand, she pretty much knew what she was looking for on her late-night drive-bys.

She had gotten the “Dear Jane” letter her third month at Al Asad, when deployment no longer seemed like some kind of sick joke but before she was completely used to it. She had joined the Reserves for the college education because her mom didn’t have the money to help her out. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but then there they were, sweating away in the 130-degree heat, on the base everyone called Camp Cupcake because it had a Burger King and a nice gym and KBR lobster tails and T-bone steaks once a week. Well, yeah, lobster tails, but they were also getting mortared just about every night that February she got the letter.

When the incoming began at night she would put on her Kevlar, roll under her cot with a flashlight, and read the letter again: Dear Rachel, These are the hardest words I have ever had to write. Like hell they were. The mortars kept coming. If they landed too close, they could jar your organs. You didn’t even need to get hit with shrapnel to sustain permanent damage. When she got to the phrase she hated most — the human heart is a strange muscle — what the hell did he mean by that? Had he plagiarized it from somewhere? — Rachel didn’t care how close the mortars hit.

Her sergeant had taken her over to JAG, where it seemed like even the air-conditioning worked better Miserable-looking soldiers waited their turns to see the lawyers; Sergeant Mackey had stood with his hand on her shoulder, steady pressure, while the JAG lawyer — bland, smooth-faced, young — helped her fill out all the paperwork, professional, like everyone in that office, but bored like she had seen it a thousand times before, which she no doubt had.

Rachel’s friends moved all of her stuff out of the row house she and Vaughn had shared in the Fan, leaving behind the carved Victorian sofa with the apricot velvet upholstery, the Queen Anne end table from his grandmother, the framed engravings depicting scenes from the war — not her war. When she had arrived home last fall, she’d had to MapQuest the new Northside apartment she’d rented.

Another ambulance screamed by them, then another, jolting her out of her memories. They were already way up Broad Street. The car was stuffy, the seat sticky against her legs. Early afternoon in May and it felt like summer was already getting started. Rachel could feel the familiar adrenaline rush building, better than sex, really, though sex with Bobby was pretty good. She loved the familiar pressure of her Glock against her rib cage, loved the way details seemed to jump out at her from the street rushing by: coffee shop sign, dressed-up toddler throwing herself facedown in a tantrum on the sidewalk outside, the blur of summer annuals in riotous colors.

“Jesus, that’s a lot of action,” Bobby commented.

“Hang a right here,” she said as they got to the light on 29th.

“You been here before, huh?”

“Why you giving me that look?”

Bobby smirked at her. “We used to get calls from the neighbors, complaining about some chick’s bare feet pressed up against a car window.”

“Wasn’t me,” Rachel replied.

“Can’t beat the view,” Bobby said. “We should take a lunch break here some time.”

“What kind of a break do you have in mind?” Jesus, she was starting to sound like an idiot. So... high school.

He looked at her and reached out to tuck a stray piece of dark hair back behind her ear. He had great skin, freckled and translucent, a broad, slightly curved nose that she loved to trace with her fingers, brown hair that looked redder in the sun.

Behind the median filled with garish crape myrtles in bloom, Wehmeyer and Carlson were smoking a cigarette. Had they noticed? She’d be fucked if she kept it together for a year in Iraq, gave no one any reason for gossip, only to blow it now. Cops were worse than soldiers when it came to the rumor mill, and that was saying a lot. And once the rumors started, life would be no fun anymore.

“Nice place to eat a sandwich, talk.”

“Sure, Bobby.”

“Whaddya think, some rich drunk cleaning his antique guns?”

“Some loss,” Rachel said, and looked out the window again.

Bobby pulled to a halt on Libby Terrace, behind a couple of other cop cars. She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t turn her head. “You ever gonna tell me what happened over there?”

“I always liked that you never asked,” Rachel said, unbuckling her seat belt and swinging herself out the door She stood for a minute peering out at the glittering river, listening to Bobby slam his door, then turned back to face him.

“Rach, I been thinking,” Bobby began. In the harsh sunlight she could see his crow’s feet as he squinted at her. “It’s been what, six months, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah. Store rooms, lovers’ lanes.”

“Christ, Rachel, you could have me over for dinner. I could have you over for dinner. It doesn’t have to be this way. See a movie, for crying out loud. Whatever normal people do.”

“Cops aren’t normal people. Didn’t you tell me that the first day in?” Her chest was tightening. Maybe Vaughn was right, the heart was a strange muscle. She imagined hers as a tangle of veins leading nowhere.

“Is there a reason, something you aren’t saying?” Around them, the static of radios. To her left, Vaughn’s carriage house with its linen drapes in the floor-to-ceiling windows upstairs. Usually he kept them closed, but once, late at night, she had seen him silhouetted there, a drink in hand, looking out over the dark river and the twinkling lights of the city. Behind him, was that someone moving in the back of the room?

Rachel glanced around, trying not to be too conspicuous. His car wasn’t here, a good thing, otherwise the excitement would surely bring him out onto the street. She tried not to think about where he might be. When she was getting ready to head over there, during those four interminable weeks at Fort Drum, there was a second lieutenant always talking to them about SA — situational awareness. When you’re outside the wire, he would say, and you’re thinking about getting to the end of the day, a cold shower and a trip to the chow hall, it means you aren’t noticing the dead dog on the side of the road, the one with an IED hidden inside it that’s gonna blow you up as you’re driving past. Not that any of them needed to be reminded of that once they got to Iraq. But now: Bobby leaning against the car, popping his knuckles methodically, the faces of two little girls pressed to the window above them, a little white dog lying inert on the sidewalk. She felt her palms start to sweat, her heart thudding in her chest. Relax, she told herself, it’s hot. The dog’s just sleeping. Jesus.

If Vaughn saw her from the window, maybe he would think she was just another civil servant keeping him safe from late-night adulterers and drunks in the park. He probably didn’t know where her money came from these days.

With his little trust fund he’d never really had to work that much — maybe his problem, but at the time very convenient. Because if he didn’t have to work, she didn’t either. She could have fought harder for support from him, but that wasn’t really going to happen, not with a JAG lawyer. They were mainly there for the paperwork, and she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting and coming home to a mess — to Vaughn’s explanations and soulful looks, to tearful discussions over who got the Velvet Underground CDs and the Indian cookbooks. Besides, Vaughn’s mother had made her sign a prenup, which she and Vaughn had laughed about, back in the days when they were so smugly sure that they would never need it.

She’d taken the check that Vaughn sent her out of guilt, mailed it off to the bank, and tried to forget about it. She wasn’t going to be one of those fools pissing away her bonus on a Corvette. On the plane home from Iraq she had all these visions of flowers, grass, strolls in the park, drinks out with old friends. After two weeks sitting inside her darkened apartment, her staff sergeant — whose brother was a Richmond cop — called her about an opening on the force.

“Come on, Gallagher. Get over here, Barstow.” They walked, shoulders nearly touching, over to where the other cops were clustered. Sergeant Harris — dark-skinned, neat mustache that would have been in style twenty years ago, gray around the temples — gave her a look, then Bobby. She stared right back at him.

“Any casualties?”

“Just a couple of stray bullets from Sugar Bottom. One of them went through a guy’s door down on short 30th.” At the end of the street, a few neighbors, coffee cups in hand, peered over the hill. “Can you get them the hell away from there, Barstow?”

Pristine restored row houses lined one side of short 30th. A tricycle in a yard, pink and green chalk flowers on the sidewalk out in front. On the other side, a tangle of brambles, weed trees. Bobby caught up to her.

“Is that all you want, a quickie in the supply room?”

“Let’s just get these jokers out of here.” She walked fast, already starting to bark out orders, her uniform feeling too tight, the air heating up, the damp cloth under her arms starting to chafe. Her voice mechanical: “Clear the site, please. Until we have determined that the danger is contained, we’ll take any statements over by the park.”

A middle-aged guy with a short white beard. Two girls in their twenties who could have been students. An older lady, shoulder-length hair, big glasses.

Through the tangle of honeysuckle and weed trees three cinder-block sheds were visible, one with torn plastic replacing the windows. Sergeant Harris came up behind her. “Shot went through this guy’s door about ten minutes ago.” He nodded his head back to where a splintery hole interrupted the varnished dark surface of the wood. “Then another one heard a few minutes after that. We got the guys down there searching the area.”

One of the girls, cute, long blond ponytail, said to the sergeant, “I only wish you all were here as much during the day as you are at night. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s GREAT to have you by the park, but then this happens.”

Rachel stared at the girl, inscrutable-cop look on her face, mainly so she wouldn’t have to feel Bobby watching her She didn’t think she was here all that much, anyway. But it was still too much.

“We do what we can to protect the citizens, ma’am,” Bobby told her, and Sergeant Harris, weary, shot him a dirty look. “It’s not safe right now,” he told the girl. “Go inside.”

A bullet pinged against a tree on the hill and Rachel felt that familiar energy surging through her veins, time slowing, colors brightening. Head down, she ran in a low crouch to take cover behind a red minivan, gravel crunching under her feet, Bobby breathing hard behind her.

“You come here at night to see him, don’t you?” he said. “You still sleeping with him?”

From down the hill, a single cry, and then a burst of fire. She could smell Bobby, his sweat an acrid mix of sex and fear, next to her.

“If you know so much—” she started to say.

“Where’s the fucking SWAT team?” someone yelled behind her. From down the hill, silence.

“You’ve been following me,” she said. A woodpecker drilling the tree above them, the whirring of wings.

“Nah, I just wanted to know where he lived. In case he gave you any trouble.”

“What were you planning to do, pay him a visit?”

“Something like that.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Bobby: yeah, good in bed, quick with a joke, but what else? All the hours spent together bored on stakeouts, riding around the city, busting poor jerks for running stop signs. Had she been paying attention to anything these last months? She had spent all those hours looking out the window, letting the sights of the city entertain her like it was TV. I’ve got your back, he was always telling her. Whatever that meant.

Bobby peered behind the van’s rear bumper. “That blond girl? She’s the one he’s fucking.”

“Like I’m supposed to care.” Squabbles: high school again. Nothing from the bottom of the hill, then the sound of cop cars squealing to a halt down there. “Can’t we talk about this later?” Smelling herself now, that familiar sharp odor stronger than any of the spring flowers and damp earth. Who the hell was she kidding?

She looked past the splattered bumper of the van. On the left, quick low motion through the leaves. She turned fast, weapon at the ready: a black cat.

Bobby saying, “Surprised you didn’t know that, all the time you been spending here.” Sweating, urgent. In the side mirror of the van was a face framed in a glass transom, staring out, too dim to see. Rachel kept looking, hearing the rustling of a squirrel rushing through thick leaves and up a tree, her eyes adjusting. It was the girl with the blond ponytail, staring out through her door. Behind the girl, a man approaching. Vaughn. So why hadn’t his car been on the street? Was the Mercedes in the shop again? Situational awareness. It meant being right here, right now, the daily noise of life stripped away. Rachel wanted Vaughn to open the door, just so she could scream at him to get the fuck down, enjoy the startled expression on his face.

The window of the minivan shattered, and a shower of glittering fragments fell to the street. Absurdly, Rachel thought of her wedding day, holding hands with Vaughn, ducking their heads and laughing as they ran beneath a cascade of rice. In the mirror, she could see Vaughn staring out. She wanted him to stay there, forever stuck behind glass, watching. She wanted to be away from him, not caring. From the bottom of the hill, another gunshot exploded.

“I’m going down there.” Already on her belly, inching forward.

“Rachel, they’re drug dealers, who cares, the guys’ve got it covered.” She could picture the dark shapes moving through the cinder-block buildings down there, shadows. Picture herself closer now, uniform ripping on the thorny underbrush, her own breathing quiet, feeling alive, time slowed to that single moment. All those nights wasted up here, peering out at the lights of the city. Hip bones grinding against Bobby’s, his rough neck against her face, their muffled exclamations. That wasn’t wasted. She glanced back at him leaning toward her, looking hurt. She had liked it that he never asked, but now he was going to start. And there was so much, really, she just didn’t want to talk about. In the morning, she knew, she would call her recruiter.

“Jesus, Rachel, get back here.” His hand gripping her arm, a surge of feeling coming through her body. For a moment she paused, hesitated. She couldn’t afford to look back.

Then she pulled away and was moving again, already halfway across the street, her knees scraping against the gravel, heading for the impenetrable tangle of weeds ahead.

The Fall Lines by Dean King

Shockoe Slip

Based (loosely) on a true story

1807

It was a tobacco-stain of an August night in Shockoe Slip, so humid a body seemed to drizzle when it moved. Stench from the outhouses on the canal bank behind the hotels and shop fronts and the sweet fug of flue-cured leaf tarred the air. Inside the Eagle Tavern, bourbon whiskey and rouged cheeks shimmering in smoky lantern light raised a man’s threshold for swelter.

The General was down to his last few dollars. He held only a pair of deuces and a single bullet in his hand now. However, his eclipse had been a long time in the making. That it should happen here was ironic. He had been in many worse places.

An army officer since his youth, he had long understood he might perish of thirst in a deep Texas oak thicket or be pierced by an arrow on some damned buffalo plain. Many times over, he could have been gut-shot on the dunes of North Africa. By contrast, no matter how loudly the falls clattered, the bustling banks of the James, in the bosom of Southern plantation hospitality, did not seem an obvious threat. He was forty-three. His weaknesses included whiskey, women, and cards, but even more a liberal constitution, a vivid imagination, and not just a lack but an absolute rejection of caution. These last had once made him a force of nature and a charmer — a man who could lead a horse to water and make it beg for a drink.

The General’s aide-de-camp, Mustafa, sat across the room, measuring the crowd and meditating on the gold medal recently awarded to the General. It hung just out of sight around his neck, like a cursed scarab. Mustafa had followed the General to the United States from Egypt. As the General’s fortunes languished, he watched his behavior grow more erratic. The General, fearless at the worst of times, now drank as if to extinguish a fire and gambled as if to obliterate the past.

Mustafa understood what was eating at him, a man who had battled the longest of odds in the Barbary War and won. He had been biding his time, waiting for the General to figure out a way to set things right again. So abysmal were circumstances at the moment that Mustafa had begun to crave the scorch of bourbon too, a betrayal of his religion and a thing unheard of in his family.

The trial of Aaron Burr had gathered an impressive group of politicians, salesmen, gossipers, and whoremongers to the Virginia capital, at the fall lines of the James. Above the miasma, on Shockoe Hill, not far from Patrick Henry’s church, rose the state’s neo-Roman capitol, designed by President Jefferson. It was both a symbol of the city’s vanity and a beacon of hope to its Episcopal citizenry, who still enjoyed the full cornucopia of humanity’s sins.

In the Eagle, just down from Shockoe Hill, the din of pressmen, gentlemen farmers, lawmakers, slave traders, merchants, and unattached ladies was considerable. Their prosperous city of 6,000 souls had recently received its first bank charter, and a public library had opened. Their talk ranged from the price of tobacco leaf and the prospects of rain to the European war, but most of all to the trial being presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall and of particular interest to President Jefferson.

The General was a player in the drama. Prior to his exploits in North Africa, he had entertained a proposal from Burr involving the territories stretching west of the Mississippi and down into Mexico. The scheme — to hew a new kingdom out of this wilderness — had collapsed, and now the General was called to bear witness against Burr on charges of treason.

The General had testified that day. As he sat in the stand, a military hero, in a place, at last, where that seemed to matter, his luster had returned. That evening, when he took his seat at a gaming table in the Eagle, he felt fresh again, his battered confidence restored.

Across from the General, the gentleman from Shirley Plantation, a broad raw-boned man who was the largest property owner and slaveholder in the state, dealt, his massive fingers barely able to distinguish the cards. To the General’s left sat the principal of Southside Plantation, a man whose bald forehead was speckled red by the sun and whose teeth approached in color his few strands of brown hair. To the General’s right, a legislator from Maryland, a smart silver chain dangling from the fob of his waistcoat, observed the table with darting eyes.

“So you were the hero of Derna?” the legislator asked rhetorically, looking at his hand, an eyebrow raised. The General, still in possession of his instincts, instantly sensed this man to be a threat.

“The Marines were instrumental,” he replied, not looking up. “But it was my notion, so I received the shiny medal to show for it.” Any man who read the newspapers knew that he had, in fact, orchestrated the coup of a particularly inimical pasha, recruiting an army of cutthroats in Egypt, marching across Libya, and taking the Mediterranean port. The sudden and extraordinary blow had shocked the piratical Barbary dictators, who had immediately treated for peace. The General had effectively won the Barbary War.

“I raise a glass to you, sir,” said the Shirley man, with earnest admiration.

The others raised theirs, filled with Thorp’s corn liquor — bourbon — invented by an Episcopal priest at Berkeley, well before Kentucky was chipped off her mother state. “The Gen’ral,” they said.

The General neither smiled nor reacted. The twirl of a dress in the glint of lantern light had caught his eye. His mind leaped the sea. The pasha’s older brother, the rightful ruler of Derna, whom the General had found in Egypt and installed in place of his usurping younger sibling, had just as quickly been abandoned by the U.S. government, deposed, and beheaded. The General had used his persuasive arts to induce the man to risk his life in the cause of another man’s nation. Then he had walked out on him at the insistence of that nation. A lifelong soldier, the General still struggled to swallow his indignation. Though outwardly sure, he had come to despise himself.

The General laid down knaves over deuces, a lady high. Looking away, he gathered in the pot as if it meant nothing. He was a virtual chameleon when he wanted to be — having once, it was sworn to by good and sober U.S. Army officers, learned a certain Indian language, stained his skin to infiltrate the tribe’s village, and returned with intelligence that caused its destruction.

The General’s aide-de-camp sat in a dark corner.

“Do you know what they’d do to you?” Rosy O’Sharon said, when his eyes met hers.

“I am not a black man,” he countered in his bass voice. “My name is Mustafa. I am an Arab.” Rose’s head tilted a notch. He was tall, over six feet, square-shouldered, café au lait.

“Liar,” she spat. “A-rabs don’t drink.”

“They do not dwell in the devil’s lair either,” he responded flatly, eyeing the Marylander, who he noted wore a blade in his boot and a carefully concealed shoulder holster.

“Well, I seen slaves lighter’n you, doll,” she warmed, “but none as handsome.”

Mustafa watched her feet as she walked away. “Can you dance?” he called to her.

“I’m Irish,” she answered.

“Can your friends?”

The youngest brother of the feuding pashas, Mustafa had crossed Libya with the General and fought at Derna in his ragtag army, which numbered a dozen Americans, forty-odd Greeks and Italians, and some five hundred Turks, Mamluks, and Arabs. When the General requested that Mustafa continue in his personal employ, he had considered it an honor.

The General returned to the U.S. to great fanfare. In Washington, Mustafa had stood proudly in the background in his flowing white haik and a black turban. He took in his new country with glowing eyes, as he would a sumptuous meal of camel.

In New England, the General’s wife, however, received his two aides-de-camp — one Arab, one Italian — coolly. “William, with all due respect to your men,” she had stated, “they shall bed down elsewhere.”

“But, my darling, I need them nearby,” the General insisted, though with nothing of his usual force. “Gilo is a superb amanuensis. You can use his services.”

“That may be so, but they will be comfortable enough in the barn.”

As the weeks wore on, the two men had begun to realize that the daring leader they knew in Libya was not the same in this cold place. Over time, as the General’s plans stalled, the Arab and the Italian came to despise one another Gilo mostly smoked and sneered. Mustafa furtively courted the servant of a neighboring farm, meeting her at night in the woods to soothe her fears with cold fingers.

“You will only ruin her,” Gilo had chastised Mustafa.

When the General’s wife asked her husband to leave, Mustafa found that Gilo had been right about the girl. It wounded him far more than she knew when he revealed that he was leaving, far more than the elbow she delivered to his jaw, which chipped a tooth.

Gilo had found ways to twist the knife. “I won’t be missing nothing here. How about you, Mufti?” he prodded as they set out with the General. “No, this place is like a punch in the mouth.” When they reached New York City, Gilo, who served as the General’s purser, deserted them, taking along a good deal of the General’s cash.

A man with two tankards in his hands teetered up to the card game. “You shoulda seen the Gen’l today,” he crowed, slamming a pint down and sloshing it on the table. “For you, sir, a real hero, not one of them quill scratchers. Damn fine testimony today.” The Hall of the House of Delegates had been filled to capacity. The prosecution’s first witness, the General had slipped back into character, a field commander again, not to be toyed with by legal men. He described a conversation with Burr in Washington during the winter of ’05–’06. “I listened to Colonel Burr’s mode of indemnity,” he declared, “and as I had by this time begun to suspect that the expedition he had afoot was unlawful, I permitted him to believe myself resigned to his influence that I might understand the extent and motive of his arrangements.” The General, who had admired the scale of the former vice president’s ambition, if little else, paused for effect. “Colonel Burr laid open his project of revolutionizing the territory west of the Allegheny, establishing an independent empire there; New Orleans to be the capital, and he himself to be the chief.” The courtroom had been transfixed.

The General quaffed the tankard in two large gulps and chased it with a shot of sailor’s rum from another admirer, delivered by a plump lass with wet lips. As the Eagle filled with smoke, the General regaled the men at his table with stories of his military affairs. The Shirley and Westover men listened intently, he noticed, while playing cautiously. When the stakes started to rise, they folded. They attended to their pipes while the General and the Maryland sharp traded financial blows. At length the Shirley and Southside men were replaced at the table by new money, Willcox — “two Ls, sirs” — of Belle Air Plantation and Wilcox — “single barrel, my friends” — who had married an heiress and restored Flowerdew Hundred.

As the hour grew late and the smoke and din intensified, the fortunes of the General and the Marylander seesawed back and forth. For the Marylander, this was sport — or was it? The General wondered. He had every penny he owned on the table. He felt a sudden sense of doom, a keen feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had been played. He had enemies in high places, he knew, in Washington, where he had browbeaten more than one feckless politician. The medal he wore under his vest bore the tarnish of those who had betrayed their allies in Derna.

The presence of working women had slowly increased as they trickled in through the back door at intervals. They caught the General’s eye, like flashes of fish striking flies in the afternoon light. The pressmen huddled together at the bar The merchants and plantation owners mingled, clapping backs, laughing heartily, drinking, and puffing their long pipes. Some furtively pawed the women with leathery hands, maneuvering toward dark recesses. Others watched the card game. After several hours, it was winding to its conclusion, tension high as the final pot rose. The Marylander seemed to be forcing the bids. First Willcox swallowed his bourbon, shook his head, and folded. Then the single-barreled Wilcox threw down his cards in disgust.

The General eyed the pot with apparent serenity. It could keep him for weeks. If he lost, he would not be able to pay for his room the next day.

As if on cue, the back door crashed open. In danced a mulatta in bedouin robes, her face covered, her hands and hips swaying rhythmically to the strings pining in the back corner. A hush spread across the room, as the glassy-eyed dancer twisted and spun through the haze toward the card table.

The woman sashayed over to the General, whose fondest conquest had come in Rabat, where he had learned Arabic and donned robes, going native in every discernible way. She beckoned to him, and he rose as if in a trance, with a thin smile. She swayed around him, and he bit his lip. His eyelids sagged while he became lost in the music of her body. The men, clinging to their mugs and pipes, were mesmerized. The women, gathering up their tips, looked on, whooping encouragement. The dancer stroked the General’s collar When she popped free a button on his coat, a cry of encouragement went up from the crowd. She allowed her robe to fall open until the men could see nearly her entire breast. The General leered. The crowd clamored, circling inward around the pair. The General was back in his element, the center of attention, the commander. He maneuvered behind the dancer, swaying, his hands groping.

Mustafa kept his eyes on the Marylander, taking in the smirk on his face, rising abruptly as the man swiftly raked in the money on the table and headed for the door.

“Inshallah!” the General groaned. “Inshallah.”

The pressmen would report the scandal in the papers the next day. The General, a national hero and star witness in the Burr trial, had copulated with a woman in front of a crowd at a downtown tavern. The General would not know whether it was true or not. He would remember the white robes. And he would discover that his congressional medal had been taken from around his neck.

Rosie met Mustafa outside the back door. Shockoe Slip — a place stolen from the Powhatans and gilded by the slave trade — lay on a mosquito-ridden flood plain. The bloodsuckers swarmed at dusk. She led him across the alley into the brush near the johnnies on the bank, where the women met when they needed to discuss their private affairs. She showed him some bills and the glinting gold. He showed her what he had and lit a cheroot. Beneath the dappled stars and a crescent moon that lit both the Old and New Worlds, just above the river’s fall lines, the two talked briefly about getting out of town and danced in the Southern stink.