The Book of Speculation

26

Charlotte lay cloaked in the biting smoke of burning moss and deadwood. Though purported to be the next burgeoning place of industry, the town was barely more than a village built around two roads, Tryon and Trade. At their intersection was a courthouse, an impressive structure seated atop eight brick pillars that raised it ten feet above the ground. Below, a market buzzed, surrounded by a short stone wall. The people inside were stubborn, with a weedy toughness that had survived the war but not forgotten it.

“Chawbacons,” Peabody called them. Expecting a cosmopolitan city, he was mightily disappointed by the town’s lack in size and presentation. “The heart of industry, he told me. The finest minds in the South, why, they come from Charlotte, he said. And here we are in a veritable backwater. Mark my words, Amos, nothing but ill luck comes from trusting fellows in New Castle taverns. We ought to have pushed on to Charleston. Such time lost.” He muttered and smacked a gloved hand against his wagon.

“We must make the best of it,” he said as he addressed the troupe around the morning fire. “Culture is a balm to the soul. Here, friends,” he said as he smoothed his coat. “Here is a town that is sorely in need of culture, the likes of such as we can provide.” He declared that Amos and Evangeline were to be touted as beacons of learning and sophistication. “The Light of the World, you are, my good children. Be assured, should you have failings, this town will be none the wiser.”

Haunted by the memory of suffocating fish, Amos and Evangeline wished to remain within the wagon rather than in town, but Peabody would hear none of it; M. et Mme. Les Ferez would keep rooms in a tavern run by the improbably named Captain Cook and his wife. They were to dine in costume and conduct themselves in what Peabody considered grand style. The job was well done. Hat shops, tailors, or taverns, wherever they went stares followed. At the end of the day when they retired to their room in Cook’s, Amos and Evangeline closed their door and breathed in relief at the solitude.

Captain and Mrs. Cook were traveling to Charleston and had left the inn in the care of Louisa Tyghe, her son, and a harried kitchen maid. Mrs. Tyghe knocked too often, and her son trailed at Amos’s heels, having never encountered a man who wore his hair in such a fashion.

“You’ll be excellently looked after here, sir,” Mrs. Tyghe said, straightening her starched red apron. “The bed in your room, Washington himself has slept in it. He liked us so well that he gifted us his hair powder. Should you need powder, we offer you the privilege of using some of the great man’s own.”

Amos found the idea of using another man’s hair powder perplexing, but Evangeline had the grace to blush and thank Mrs. Tyghe before shutting the door in the woman’s face. Amos did his best to rub the soreness from Evangeline’s back and she began the ritual of combing and dressing his hair. At last they huddled on the mattress, weary from the town’s claustrophobic politeness — a politeness strangely at odds with the townsfolk themselves. Evangeline fell asleep quickly, but Amos remained awake. In the quiet, he rested his head against her stomach and listened.

On their second night the rains began.

Fine mist settled across the heart of Charlotte. Peabody ordered a stage erected in front of an enormous rail house, but the ground turned to mud and the platform sank under its own weight. Benno’s hands and feet got stuck in the soggy red soil. Pins slipped from Melina’s hands and fire eating was rendered impossible. Sugar Nip and the llama refused to be led from their wagon, forcing Nat to carry the small horse in his arms.

Yet crowds lined up for M. et Mme. Les Ferez. Word of the menagerie had spread, drawing people from across Mecklenberg County, people keen to be parted from their money for a moment of gawking.

Shop owners waited, young women swooned. Children, never had they seen so many children — little girls begging to touch Evangeline’s sleeve, or to pull her hair. Boys were fascinated by her, but also by Amos and the frilled attire that so differed from that of men they knew. Young lovers, spinsters, the old and creaking, all sought a glimpse into the beyond. Mrs. Tyghe visited and was rendered breathless by the interior of their wagon.

“Oh, my,” she whispered. “I daresay you are accustomed to finer things than you’ll find in Charlotte.” Amos hid a smile. Mrs. Tyghe would not have thought so had she seen his Wild Boy cage.

Exhausted at day’s end, they fell to bed without a word.

On the third night in Charlotte the sky broke. The rain brought mud from the hills and soot off the roofs in a ruddy deluge that bathed the town in its offal. Benno and Melina did not leave their wagons. Meixel stayed with the animals. The Catawba began to rise, flooding the Sugar and Briar Creeks and surrounding the town, yet Peabody insisted that Les Ferez work. A wondrous place, he’d been told. Politicians came from here, men of learning — yet the town was barely an outpost. Losses had to be recouped. If people wished to give money to fortune-tellers, then the fortune-tellers must work.

Amos turned cards until his fingertips were raw. Evangeline spoke until her voice became a rasp. When her voice failed, Amos did his best to dance the cards to amuse the clients. He pocketed cards Evangeline should not see — not since the river, not since the rain had started.

On the fourth day Evangeline woke to a sharp pain. Her scream was soundless.

* * *

Amos and Evangeline had not left their room after the morning meal, causing Peabody to demand Mrs. Tyghe wake them. She called their names and rapped on the door until her hand ached with it. Amos appeared. At the sight of him — hair ratted and standing on end, half-clothed and gasping — Mrs. Tyghe shouted. Amos blocked the doorway with his body and fumbled for a card. After several failed attempts at communication, he gave up and allowed Mrs. Tyghe to enter.

The curtains were drawn. Trunks were in disarray with clothing strewn about — boots, shoes, brushes, combs tossed aside. In the heart of the disorder, on the great oak bed where George Washington had slept, Evangeline clutched her swollen stomach.

Mrs. Tyghe had birthed several children, both living and dead. Recognizing the condition, she said, “Monsieur, your child is coming. It is not proper for you to be here; I’ll have the boy send for the doctor.”

Despite Mrs. Tyghe’s insistence, Amos would not be moved. He sat on the floor by the bed. When he reached to take Evangeline’s hand, she batted it away. In silences between spasms, they listened to the rise of the rain. The storm grew heavier, but Evangeline found the pounding water a comforting reminder of the outside world.

When informed of the impending birth, Peabody clicked his boot heels and ordered the troupe to Mason’s Tavern to celebrate, only to find it closed due to a flooded cask room. He settled for the parlor at Cook’s, which sat on higher ground. The whitewashed walls and broad brown ceiling beams made a warm den for the performers. Ale flowed and the troupe claimed chairs, tested cushions, and watched as the streets turned to mud, then streams. They waited. Evangeline’s child was in no rush to meet the day.

The doctor was sent for. Mrs. Tyghe’s son made the trek downriver toward the Waxhaws and the doctor’s home. When the boy arrived he was met by the doctor, who was well into sandbagging the house. The doctor’s wife emptied washtubs filled with river water out the windows. The boy delivered his message.

“Women have carried about birthing for many a year without the aid of men, good son,” said the doctor, wiping rain from his brow. “Sandbagging, however, is a different matter. Houses require man’s intervention. Give us a strong back and lift.”

The river continued rising. At midday the casks from Mason’s Tavern floated past Cook’s. The floor began taking water. The troupe lined the door with rags, sandbags, and tables to hold back the flood. Peabody took to a divan, reclining in relative safety while casting a suspicious eye to the rain. Benno and Melina balanced above the water on chairs. Melina asked if he would check on Amos.

“I believe I would not be welcome,” Benno replied. “And what would I do?” Rocking on the balls of his feet, he frowned at the encroaching water.

By late afternoon Oren Mapother, the son of Charlotte’s hatter, had drowned in the depths. The current would drag his body ten miles downriver toward Pineville.

Day wore into evening and Evangeline’s body fell limp into the mattress, covered in sweat that smelled of iron and salt. She bit her lip until it was bloodied. Amos crawled into the bed and smoothed his fingers over her cheeks. Her mouth moved as she tried to thank him and he missed her voice. Evangeline contorted. Loneliness lurked within worry and made him grind his teeth. If she died and took the child with her, could he live? If she died and left the infant behind, could he raise it? It might have her eyes. It might be mute. Could he love the child that killed her?

In the night the Stavish farm livestock perished. The cows and pigs had crowded into the corner of the barn, trying to escape. Under the press of water and the weight of so many bodies, the structure gave way and crushed the animals. Those that survived made for a curious sight as heifers paddled down Sugar Creek, necks straining to keep above the tide.

In the creek, along with the cattle, floated the body of Eustace Wilder, a drunkard who had the day prior touched bloated lips to Evangeline’s hand. He had stepped from his porch to shout at the storm, only to fall. The bald back of his head shone in the moonlight as the river coursed over it like a stone. The Presbyterian Church crashed down and pews piled against the courthouse walls like matchsticks. The streets of Charlotte were running over with scriptures.

On the second day of labor Evangeline took no food or drink. Melina was sent upstairs with bread but was turned away. The kitchen maid, fearing running through the dry flour, began to ration biscuits. The troupe became confined to tabletops. Peabody spread himself out over a stretch of the bar.

Amos dealt cards on the bed around Evangeline. What he read brought no peace, but he could not fight the slick rightness of a properly set card. He began to pick the trumps he desired, their words — happiness set beside her ear, home by her feet. He surrounded her with hope, each card a wish. He thought of life before her, the years in the wood and the running.

With night, the storm passed and the Catawba receded with the same swiftness as it had risen, pulling the creeks back with it. A last lightning crack signaled the birth of a girl, small, blinking, and silent. The father looked at the infant, red-faced and wrinkled with a dusting of hair as black as her mother’s. Her wide animal eyes met his. Amos felt his heart begin to slow and still, finding the weight of the air, and the rhythm of his daughter’s heart. On the crown of her head a circle of skin pulsed, shouting wonderful life, and terrifying him with her fragility. Had Evangeline been awake she might have seen Amos fade into the fabric of the room, vanishing into the gaze of their unnamed child. It was the first time he had ever vanished in joy.

The parlor of Cook’s Tavern woke. Chairs that had rolled with the water came to rest once more. Benno climbed from a perch near the rafters. Peabody set booted foot to sodden board. With Meixel’s help Mrs. Tyghe moved the rags, sandbags, and tables that had held back the water.

Into this slow-waking movement Evangeline descended, careful not to stir the child in the bend of her arm. Amos followed. One by one heads turned. Amos took the infant from Evangeline and handed her to Peabody. The girl yawned at the touch of Peabody’s delicate hands. A smile crept from under the curled ends of his moustache. He’d not held a baby since his son.

“Dear little signet,” he cooed. “Perfection, darling children. You have wrought perfection.” He looked to Amos. “Shall we, my lad?”

Amos nodded and Peabody held the child aloft. All eyes fixed on the squirming baby. He began.

“Friends, children, grandest fellows. We are touched by the ethereal. From such loss as we have of late suffered, the gods have blessed us with a child of our children, a daughter of the menagerie as there has never been. Most precious friends, ’tis our solemn duty to grant this child a name.”

Amos looked at his daughter and thought of the night he’d stood on a tree stump, when Ryzhkova had told him who he would be. His heart was tired.

“Ruth.” Meixel began the calling of the names. Faces crowded around the wriggling child.

“Dorcas.” This from Susanna, it being the name of a favorite aunt.

“Veronique.”

From Nat, “Mariah.”

“Danielle.”

“Lucinda.”

Names passed to and fro until Mrs. Tyghe emerged from the kitchen. “Bess,” she said. The baby shrieked out a piercing wail. “My mother’s name was Bess.”

“It seems the whelp has chosen,” Peabody said, returning the child to her mother with a soft pat on the back. “Bess she shall be. Quite well, for we must thank the goodly woman who has been kind in allowing our imposition.” He flashed a smile to Mrs. Tyghe.

The warmth of beginning unfurled. With tenuous hope they set forth to greet the day, and Mrs. Tyghe went about the business of running the tavern. Stark, cold light filled the entry as they opened the door on the world left by the flood. A small wave rolled in over the threshold.

Charlotte had been stripped away.

“God in Heaven,” Peabody whispered.

Gone were the tailors and the smiths. The grain mill lay in waste, destroyed. The courthouse had fallen to its brick-pillar knees. Trees lay like drunken men against hills and embankments. Bricks made pockmarks in shallow pools; there, the sign from Mason’s; there a child’s wooden horse half-hidden below the dark slurry. All that remained was encased in thick red silt. Mixed among the detritus were the same odd creatures that had been at the river. Dead, spidery legs in the air, their pointed tails stuck up from the mud like spikes. Though it lay far to the east, the air smelled of ocean salt.

Charlotte was no more. Cook’s stood, the lone building that remained unharmed.

Mrs. Tyghe clenched her apron in her fists. “Should my son be—”

The kitchen maid took her by the shoulders and patted her gently. “Hush, Louisa. He may yet return.”

Mrs. Tyghe lifted her head to survey the wreckage once more, and to search for her son. It was then that she spied, resting against the remains of a mounting block, the twisted filigree of the weather vane that had once sat proudly on the roof of the doctor’s home. Any small hope she had was consumed by fury.

“You’ve killed him,” she said. “You killed him sure as you stand here. Never have I met such cursed people. You brought this.” She nodded at Evangeline. “You come here, saying you tell the future, things only the Lord would know, then lie up in my bed and bring the flood. You took my son,” she shouted and turned to Amos. “You Devil, take you and your child. Leave here or I’ll find who still lives and let them set their guns on you. Get.”

Evangeline clutched Bess.

On the outskirts of what had been Charlotte, the menagerie’s wagons were waterlogged yet functional, the llama and pig had been lost, but the horses remained dry, safe atop the hill past Sugar Creek. They packed in haste. Peabody insisted that distance and time would remedy their misfortunes, though he found the words difficult to believe. Before the sun hit its peak they rolled onward.

“North,” Peabody told them. “I find I am done with the South. Philadelphia,” he said. “Philadelphia will welcome us.”

Evangeline knew his words were empty. Looking over the destruction and at the strange peacefulness of her child’s quiet face, she agreed with Mrs. Tyghe. Never had there been two such cursed beings.