Phanuel had no idea how far he had walked or how long it had taken. He knew only that the sun was going down. If he remained in his new circumstances, he could be assured of having neither food nor a place to sleep. Come morning, he would return to the Village hungry and exhausted, not to mention unshaven and, perhaps, too redolent to suit the finicky Arcangela.
He considered that his pace had slowed. He had walked away from the place called Historic Fair Mantle Village taking long, quick steps that struck the path with the resolution of a mallet upon stone. It was the most bizarre, incomprehensible day of his life, and he had again let himself consider that it was the kind of dream that people take for reality even as they perceive they're stuck in a dream. He thought that he could stomp himself awake, the way people try to scream themselves awake. It wasn't working. He sat on the side of the path, reasoning that he would simply have to wait until nature took its course, and he woke to a new day.
Part of the nightmare lay in the abandonment of Fair Mantle. Phanuel refused to accept that the people he knew, loved and trusted would let the town die off--like children squandering an inheritance, telling their parents, "I don't care. You and all you did are nothing to me." (To be continued...)
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
6. The Lost Graveyard
McChase had talked about printing a period newspaper for months. Now they had somebody who knew how to do it.
When a quick Internet search of local regional historic papers yielded no results, Arc grabbed her shoulder bag from the floor, swinging it clear of her desk as if practicing a hammer throw. “I’m going to research those newspapers,” she announced. “There’s got to be something that’ll light a fire under Phanuel.”
McChase, whose desk was across from Arc’s at the cramped, far end of the attic, perused the monthly accounts. “Who?”
“Phanuel. You met him at lunch.”
“Oh, that guy! I don’t think a nuclear warhead would light a fire under that lofty backside. Is he going with you?”
“Dressed like that? He’d attract a bit of attention--ya think?”
McChase waited until Arc was gone before searching for the lofty backside’s volunteer application in Arc’s 1950s-era metal desk.
Less than an hour later, Arc was barricaded behind a pile of musty, leather-bound books in the county college’s New Jersey Room, a comfortable receptacle, with ceiling-high mahogany shelves, dedicated to publications and research papers about the state. The Newspapers of Old New Jersey, a slender tome printed during the Civil War, was her last hope for information about the Fair Mantle Post. Her heart sank as the browning but still-flexible pages yielded no illustrations or descriptions. Its specialty was listings of contents and mastheads. The entry for the Fair Mantle Post was small, but not inconsequential:
Location: Fair Mantle-of-the-Delaware, Burlington County. Dates of publication: 1794-1798. Founder and Publisher: W. G. Blanchfield. Editor: P. B. Kerr. Contents: Federal, state and local news, obituaries, society, reviews of books, plays and concerts. Mr. Kerr became publisher after Mr. Blanchfield was accused of violating the Alien and Sedition acts of 1798.
The entry may not have said everything, but it was something, and something was better than nothing. After ascertaining that several other possible resources were in fact useless, Arc asked the research librarian to photocopy the page and returned to the Village with her prize folded neatly in the leg pocket of her cargo capris.
She was driving the two-lane county road that circled the park when her hands iced and her legs trembled to the point where she could no longer drive. After safely pulling over to the shoulder, she switched on her emergency blinkers and sat stock still, gripping the wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white.
P. B. Kerr. The editor’s name was P. B. Kerr.
Phanuel Blanchfield Kerr?
She remembered the grandly executed signature on the sign-in sheet, and she envisioned the face and figure of the person who had put it there. Was he a descendant, blessed in a bad way with a name that might resonate around the more historically minded residents of the region? Why else would he volunteer at Fair Mantle? Why else would he insist on printing the original newspaper?
Still shaking, but enthralled by her discovery, Arc drove back to Fair Mantle, resolved to speak to Phanuel before she saw McChase.
The picnic was long over. Though the Village offices were open until five, and the park itself closed at sundown, many volunteers were preparing to leave at four. Unable to locate Phanuel, Arc consulted the sign-out sheet, suspecting that he had left early. The name, like the man, was missing.
“Well, he’s got to be around somewhere,” Rache whined. “Let’s see if his car’s still in the lot.”
She glanced from her clipboard to the half dozen vehicles in the spaces designated for Village staff and volunteers. “Everyone’s here who’s supposed to be here. Except our Phanuel. He’s not on the list, but all that could mean is that he hasn’t registered to park here.”
“So he could be in any of the lots.”
“Well, if he drove in with his volunteer I-D, he should be in this one. Maybe he didn’t mind paying the parking fee.”
Rache’s radio squawked. It was Amundsen, who’d been driving around in search of diseased trees. “Folks, I got a possible unauthorized archeological procedure shaping up near the church.”
“Possible treasure perp, marking off paces so he can dig after dark,” Rache explained as she ran for her light truck.
A second light truck chuffed by as Rache drove away. Braking, Lill waved. “Sounds like your newbie might have something up that authentic-looking sleeve of his!”
“Phanuel Kerr? You’re going to arrest him? He hasn’t done anything!”
“Of course, we’re not going to arrest him. Being the solicitous professionals the state trains us to be, we’re going to ask him if we can help him find something. If he’s smart, he’ll take the hint and stand down. Hop in, and watch your taxes at work!”
Arc doubted that regulations allowed civilians to ride in rangers’ trucks, but she reasoned that, as the Village’s spokesperson, she was allowed to be shuttled to important sites if the Village was going to be placed in a position that required a flak.
Arc’s shoulder belt yanked tight as Lill screeched to a standstill, grumbling, “What the eff—"
Amundsen was lying facedown on the ground near the chapel, directing Rache, about fifty yards away, to move to his left. “Yeh, your legs are definitely shorter over there!”
“Amundsen!” Lill yelled.
He trotted over to the truck, brushing turf from his front. “There might’ve been a graveyard here. Did you know that?”
“Who told you that?”
Amundsen jerked his chin toward Phanuel, who stood placidly talking with Rache as she crouched and squinted at the lawn.
Lill was aghast. “Who told him that?”
“It’s history, Lill. Every early American church I’ve ever seen has a graveyard. You know the one up in Shrewsbury? The path to the church’s front doors is through the graveyard. If there was a graveyard here, don’t you think we should know what happened to it?"
At last Lill detached herself from the truck, slamming the door. “There was no graveyard.”
“I don’t know, Lill. The ground’s not even; it’s all dips and swales.”
“Amundsen, you’re all dips and swales. There was no graveyard! If there were, it would be on every single map we have in the archives and in all the appropriate records filed with the state and county. Savvy?"
Amundsen removed his Smoky Bear hat and scratched his buzzed, blond head. Lill stalked the turf toward Phanuel with the elegance of a harried rhino, her bulk augmented by the bulletproof vest all rangers were required to wear beneath their shirts. Arc followed, hoping she wouldn’t be too hard on Rache, who stood at the approach. Lill wheeled, instead, on Phanuel.
“What’s this nonsense about a graveyard?”
He opened his mouth as if to speak but hesitated, and squinted across the lawn, as Rache had done moments before. “Haven’t you ever noticed how odd it is that Fair Mantle, a verifiable town on a map, in the middle of the woods, miles away from the nearest municipality, would not have its own cemetery? If it didn’t have one, then where are the people buried?”
“The inhabitants moved away from here.”
“But their ancestors, the people who founded the town--Where are their graves? Or did the people who lived here dig up their dearly departed and cart them along as casually as they carted their furnishings?”
Lill circled Phanuel, keeping eye contact, forcing him to turn with her. “You’re dying to dig this place up, aren’t you. You’d like nothing more than to slip in here in the middle of the night, haul the metal detector out of your car and slink away with any coin or buckle or musket ball that you can find.”
He was amused, but respectful. “On the contrary. In the first place, I for one believe there are few things more heinous than not letting the dead rest in peace. In the second, I have no reason to believe this land contains musket balls or any kind of ammunition. No battles occurred here. If they had, I cannot imagine any profit in collecting spent ordnance.”
Lill stopped, studied Phanuel’s face. Arc had no idea what Lill saw, but she herself detected sadness seeping through a serenity whose source she feared she could neither tap nor understand.
Lill was not to indulge in insight. “Prove that you don’t have a metal detector, shovels, rakes, screens or any other archeological tools with you.”
Phanuel looked from Rache to Arc as if seeking translation. When none came, his eyes sparkled. He held out his hands and spoke through a slight laugh. “I have only what you see. Would you like to lop off my hands?”
“You’re not in a position to be cheeky, Phan’l Boy. Where’s your car?”
“I have no car.”
“How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
“From where?”
“That’s enough, Lill.”
Lill’s face twisted with fury as she turned to see who had the audacity to interfere with a ranger’s business.
Though she had never seen the woman so angry and obsessed with authority, Arc was not to be deterred. “Arrest everyone who has a theory about this place, and the state will be tied up in litigation for the next two hundred years.”
“She’s got a point, Lill,” Amundsen said stoutly. “Give it up, before a pile of civil rights violations hits the fan.”
Arc imagined steam bursting from Lill’s nostrils. The defeated woman stomped back to her truck and pulled away. She did not ask if Arc needed a lift.
The remaining rangers looked down at their heavy-duty shoes, embarrassed. Amundsen mumbled something about trees and drove off. Rache followed, shyly saying, “Neat idea, though--the cemetery.”
Arc was alone with Phanuel. “I’m sorry. Lill tends to be over-zealous.”
Phanuel clasped his hands behind his back, a pose that struck Arc as unaffectedly true to the period he represented. “I do admit that her willingness to suspect the worst caused me some concern.”
He looked tired. No, this wasn’t the time for Arc to grill him about his namesake. She really should wait till tomorrow. “It’s been quite a day for you. You don’t need to stay until five, if you prefer not to.”
“Thank you. Perhaps I won’t.”
They walked downhill, through the town, passing the bakery, whose working ovens still cast a delicious scent of warm, sugary products. The bookshop was closed for the day.
As they approached the back of the Visitors Center, Phanuel wished Arc a good evening, then strolled toward the nature trail, which continued two miles to the county road, then across the road on the other side of the park. He really doesn’t have a car, she thought, remembering his exchange with Lill. She almost went inside, but a slash of white in the yard snatched her attention: It was Phanuel’s laundered shirt, still on the line where she had pinned it late that morning.
Arc grabbed the shirt and dashed down the nature trail, shouting for her beleaguered volunteer to wait.
About a block down, she stopped, breathless, hot, sweaty. The trail, a slender dirt path in an emerald tunnel of arching trees and swirling shrubs, was empty. A mockingbird trilled jay calls and robin-song.
The grizzled ranger clipping trumpet vines from the trail eyed her curiously. “Who’d you lose, Arc?”
“One of my interpreters. A young guy, in historic dress. You must’ve seen him.”
The ranger looked around, perplexed. “Nope, nobody’s been here. Nobody except you.”
“But he was just—“ The look on the ranger’s face stopped her from concluding, “here.”
“If I see him, I’ll let him know you were looking for him,” the ranger said kindly.
“Yeah. Thanks, Rob.”
Arc bunched the shirt in her fist and ventured further into the emerald tunnel, irked that Phanuel—if that indeed was his name, and not some silly homage to history--had so charmingly tricked them and would probably plunder the place after all.
When a quick Internet search of local regional historic papers yielded no results, Arc grabbed her shoulder bag from the floor, swinging it clear of her desk as if practicing a hammer throw. “I’m going to research those newspapers,” she announced. “There’s got to be something that’ll light a fire under Phanuel.”
McChase, whose desk was across from Arc’s at the cramped, far end of the attic, perused the monthly accounts. “Who?”
“Phanuel. You met him at lunch.”
“Oh, that guy! I don’t think a nuclear warhead would light a fire under that lofty backside. Is he going with you?”
“Dressed like that? He’d attract a bit of attention--ya think?”
McChase waited until Arc was gone before searching for the lofty backside’s volunteer application in Arc’s 1950s-era metal desk.
Less than an hour later, Arc was barricaded behind a pile of musty, leather-bound books in the county college’s New Jersey Room, a comfortable receptacle, with ceiling-high mahogany shelves, dedicated to publications and research papers about the state. The Newspapers of Old New Jersey, a slender tome printed during the Civil War, was her last hope for information about the Fair Mantle Post. Her heart sank as the browning but still-flexible pages yielded no illustrations or descriptions. Its specialty was listings of contents and mastheads. The entry for the Fair Mantle Post was small, but not inconsequential:
Location: Fair Mantle-of-the-Delaware, Burlington County. Dates of publication: 1794-1798. Founder and Publisher: W. G. Blanchfield. Editor: P. B. Kerr. Contents: Federal, state and local news, obituaries, society, reviews of books, plays and concerts. Mr. Kerr became publisher after Mr. Blanchfield was accused of violating the Alien and Sedition acts of 1798.
The entry may not have said everything, but it was something, and something was better than nothing. After ascertaining that several other possible resources were in fact useless, Arc asked the research librarian to photocopy the page and returned to the Village with her prize folded neatly in the leg pocket of her cargo capris.
She was driving the two-lane county road that circled the park when her hands iced and her legs trembled to the point where she could no longer drive. After safely pulling over to the shoulder, she switched on her emergency blinkers and sat stock still, gripping the wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white.
P. B. Kerr. The editor’s name was P. B. Kerr.
Phanuel Blanchfield Kerr?
She remembered the grandly executed signature on the sign-in sheet, and she envisioned the face and figure of the person who had put it there. Was he a descendant, blessed in a bad way with a name that might resonate around the more historically minded residents of the region? Why else would he volunteer at Fair Mantle? Why else would he insist on printing the original newspaper?
Still shaking, but enthralled by her discovery, Arc drove back to Fair Mantle, resolved to speak to Phanuel before she saw McChase.
The picnic was long over. Though the Village offices were open until five, and the park itself closed at sundown, many volunteers were preparing to leave at four. Unable to locate Phanuel, Arc consulted the sign-out sheet, suspecting that he had left early. The name, like the man, was missing.
“Well, he’s got to be around somewhere,” Rache whined. “Let’s see if his car’s still in the lot.”
She glanced from her clipboard to the half dozen vehicles in the spaces designated for Village staff and volunteers. “Everyone’s here who’s supposed to be here. Except our Phanuel. He’s not on the list, but all that could mean is that he hasn’t registered to park here.”
“So he could be in any of the lots.”
“Well, if he drove in with his volunteer I-D, he should be in this one. Maybe he didn’t mind paying the parking fee.”
Rache’s radio squawked. It was Amundsen, who’d been driving around in search of diseased trees. “Folks, I got a possible unauthorized archeological procedure shaping up near the church.”
“Possible treasure perp, marking off paces so he can dig after dark,” Rache explained as she ran for her light truck.
A second light truck chuffed by as Rache drove away. Braking, Lill waved. “Sounds like your newbie might have something up that authentic-looking sleeve of his!”
“Phanuel Kerr? You’re going to arrest him? He hasn’t done anything!”
“Of course, we’re not going to arrest him. Being the solicitous professionals the state trains us to be, we’re going to ask him if we can help him find something. If he’s smart, he’ll take the hint and stand down. Hop in, and watch your taxes at work!”
Arc doubted that regulations allowed civilians to ride in rangers’ trucks, but she reasoned that, as the Village’s spokesperson, she was allowed to be shuttled to important sites if the Village was going to be placed in a position that required a flak.
Arc’s shoulder belt yanked tight as Lill screeched to a standstill, grumbling, “What the eff—"
Amundsen was lying facedown on the ground near the chapel, directing Rache, about fifty yards away, to move to his left. “Yeh, your legs are definitely shorter over there!”
“Amundsen!” Lill yelled.
He trotted over to the truck, brushing turf from his front. “There might’ve been a graveyard here. Did you know that?”
“Who told you that?”
Amundsen jerked his chin toward Phanuel, who stood placidly talking with Rache as she crouched and squinted at the lawn.
Lill was aghast. “Who told him that?”
“It’s history, Lill. Every early American church I’ve ever seen has a graveyard. You know the one up in Shrewsbury? The path to the church’s front doors is through the graveyard. If there was a graveyard here, don’t you think we should know what happened to it?"
At last Lill detached herself from the truck, slamming the door. “There was no graveyard.”
“I don’t know, Lill. The ground’s not even; it’s all dips and swales.”
“Amundsen, you’re all dips and swales. There was no graveyard! If there were, it would be on every single map we have in the archives and in all the appropriate records filed with the state and county. Savvy?"
Amundsen removed his Smoky Bear hat and scratched his buzzed, blond head. Lill stalked the turf toward Phanuel with the elegance of a harried rhino, her bulk augmented by the bulletproof vest all rangers were required to wear beneath their shirts. Arc followed, hoping she wouldn’t be too hard on Rache, who stood at the approach. Lill wheeled, instead, on Phanuel.
“What’s this nonsense about a graveyard?”
He opened his mouth as if to speak but hesitated, and squinted across the lawn, as Rache had done moments before. “Haven’t you ever noticed how odd it is that Fair Mantle, a verifiable town on a map, in the middle of the woods, miles away from the nearest municipality, would not have its own cemetery? If it didn’t have one, then where are the people buried?”
“The inhabitants moved away from here.”
“But their ancestors, the people who founded the town--Where are their graves? Or did the people who lived here dig up their dearly departed and cart them along as casually as they carted their furnishings?”
Lill circled Phanuel, keeping eye contact, forcing him to turn with her. “You’re dying to dig this place up, aren’t you. You’d like nothing more than to slip in here in the middle of the night, haul the metal detector out of your car and slink away with any coin or buckle or musket ball that you can find.”
He was amused, but respectful. “On the contrary. In the first place, I for one believe there are few things more heinous than not letting the dead rest in peace. In the second, I have no reason to believe this land contains musket balls or any kind of ammunition. No battles occurred here. If they had, I cannot imagine any profit in collecting spent ordnance.”
Lill stopped, studied Phanuel’s face. Arc had no idea what Lill saw, but she herself detected sadness seeping through a serenity whose source she feared she could neither tap nor understand.
Lill was not to indulge in insight. “Prove that you don’t have a metal detector, shovels, rakes, screens or any other archeological tools with you.”
Phanuel looked from Rache to Arc as if seeking translation. When none came, his eyes sparkled. He held out his hands and spoke through a slight laugh. “I have only what you see. Would you like to lop off my hands?”
“You’re not in a position to be cheeky, Phan’l Boy. Where’s your car?”
“I have no car.”
“How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
“From where?”
“That’s enough, Lill.”
Lill’s face twisted with fury as she turned to see who had the audacity to interfere with a ranger’s business.
Though she had never seen the woman so angry and obsessed with authority, Arc was not to be deterred. “Arrest everyone who has a theory about this place, and the state will be tied up in litigation for the next two hundred years.”
“She’s got a point, Lill,” Amundsen said stoutly. “Give it up, before a pile of civil rights violations hits the fan.”
Arc imagined steam bursting from Lill’s nostrils. The defeated woman stomped back to her truck and pulled away. She did not ask if Arc needed a lift.
The remaining rangers looked down at their heavy-duty shoes, embarrassed. Amundsen mumbled something about trees and drove off. Rache followed, shyly saying, “Neat idea, though--the cemetery.”
Arc was alone with Phanuel. “I’m sorry. Lill tends to be over-zealous.”
Phanuel clasped his hands behind his back, a pose that struck Arc as unaffectedly true to the period he represented. “I do admit that her willingness to suspect the worst caused me some concern.”
He looked tired. No, this wasn’t the time for Arc to grill him about his namesake. She really should wait till tomorrow. “It’s been quite a day for you. You don’t need to stay until five, if you prefer not to.”
“Thank you. Perhaps I won’t.”
They walked downhill, through the town, passing the bakery, whose working ovens still cast a delicious scent of warm, sugary products. The bookshop was closed for the day.
As they approached the back of the Visitors Center, Phanuel wished Arc a good evening, then strolled toward the nature trail, which continued two miles to the county road, then across the road on the other side of the park. He really doesn’t have a car, she thought, remembering his exchange with Lill. She almost went inside, but a slash of white in the yard snatched her attention: It was Phanuel’s laundered shirt, still on the line where she had pinned it late that morning.
Arc grabbed the shirt and dashed down the nature trail, shouting for her beleaguered volunteer to wait.
About a block down, she stopped, breathless, hot, sweaty. The trail, a slender dirt path in an emerald tunnel of arching trees and swirling shrubs, was empty. A mockingbird trilled jay calls and robin-song.
The grizzled ranger clipping trumpet vines from the trail eyed her curiously. “Who’d you lose, Arc?”
“One of my interpreters. A young guy, in historic dress. You must’ve seen him.”
The ranger looked around, perplexed. “Nope, nobody’s been here. Nobody except you.”
“But he was just—“ The look on the ranger’s face stopped her from concluding, “here.”
“If I see him, I’ll let him know you were looking for him,” the ranger said kindly.
“Yeah. Thanks, Rob.”
Arc bunched the shirt in her fist and ventured further into the emerald tunnel, irked that Phanuel—if that indeed was his name, and not some silly homage to history--had so charmingly tricked them and would probably plunder the place after all.
5. The Pragmatist's Way
As Fair Mantle’s church bells chimed noon, volunteers set aside their sewing needles and their blacksmith’s hammers, unfolded from their wooden chairs and workbenches, and shuffled to lunch in the picnic area off the nature trail behind the Visitors Center.
A young man in long cargo shorts and sandals grilled hot dogs and hamburgers over the flames that Lill and Rache had stoked in one of the area’s small, fieldstone fireplaces. Despite the shade, he wore sunglasses and a khaki-colored baseball cap that had a brown suede bill. His black polo shirt was embroidered with a little gold sheep that hung from gold bunting suspended around its middle. He smiled and waved the barbecue fork in greeting as volunteers filed onto the scene.
He listened, beaming, as Arcangela gestured toward Phanuel, who stood off to the side, reserved and patient. After handing the fork to Marston, the man approached Phanuel and shook his hand. “Welcome aboard! I’m Roy McChase, the guy who signs the checks. Arc tells me you’re interested in the printing press. Is that your specialty--printing?”
“Er, newspaper publishing, actually--” Phanuel looked from McChase to Arcangela, taken aback by the gusty informality that had left no room for him to be properly introduced.
“Cool! How did you hear about us? Did your ancestors come from Fair Mantle?”
“From the Highlands of Scotland…actually….”
“Oh yeah? Do you speak Scots Gaelic?”
“I’m afraid not. I can just about comprehend Scots English.”
“’Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin yet, or are yer drooms a beatin’ yet? If ye’re waukin, I would wait tae gang tae the coals in the morning!’”
McChase’s rendition of the Jacobite Uprising song incited cries of “Way to go, Mc C!” and “Free entertainment! Yes!”
Phanuel, however, showed no reaction to the outburst. When McChase asked him, “Who wrote those lyrics, Robert Burns or Adam Skirving?”, he replied with neither hesitation nor enthusiasm, “I believe it was Adam Skirving.”
“When?”
“In 1745.”
Somebody banged on the table in applause. “The man knows his stuff!”
“Don’t they both use the same refrain?”
McChase waved aside Lill’s question. “Just checking our docent’s sense of historical propriety, ladies and gents. Do you know how many volunteers end up performing the version that’s wrong for the people we interpret here?”
Rache squelched a cough as Lill backed away from her ear. McChase eyed them shrewedly. “Care to share, Lill? Fortune favors the bullshitter.”
“I said, ‘Do you know how many volunteers don’t even know their butt from a hole in the ground?’”
Most of the volunteers groaned and jokingly threw tiny bags of potato chips at her. McChase loudly clapped his hands together. “Okaaaaay, folks, on that invigorating note, let’s take a look at that printing press. Arcangela, Emmanuel—" He gestured toward the path that would bring them through the Village to the print shop, then fell in alongside Arc, leaving in the rear Phanuel, who pretended not to have heard the latest incarnation of his name.
Assured the trio was out of hearing, Rache blew her cheeks in grandiose relief. “That was close, Lill.”
The ranger puffed up in glee. “Yeah, but the G. D. boob really doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground!”
“Too bad the toilet’s fixed,” Marston mourned, shoving potato chips into his jaw.
“It isn’t,” Lill said. “His nibs didn’t want to sign the work order. Said he’d be damned if he was going to pay a plumber three grand to snake shit out of a toilet. He’d rather snake the slob who stuffed it up.”
The chips depleted, Marston stood, brushing off his hands. “Sweeeet,” he intoned, “very sweet…”
**********
Phanuel found the walk to the print shop insufferable, not because McChase sang Tranent Muir in a bad Scots accent, but because of the way he walked with Arcangela, keeping his head close to hers, saying things that only she could hear and giggle at. Phanuel silently bristled. He was angry that the man would feel no shame at acting the buffoon, and he was disappointed that Arcangela, for all her intelligence, would allow herself to be seen not only in his company, but approving his conduct. The distress heightened Phanuel’s anxiety at stepping into the office he had left only hours before. He had no idea what he would find. He feared to find nothing. He feared to find anything that could tell him what had happened in the time between the present and the moment that his uncle had thrown him out.
The shop was a large, open room, dominated by the printing press in the center and slanting composition tables on the sides. Two massive mahogany desks stood on either side of the door, beneath windows sectioned into eight, tiny panes of thick, wavy glass. The room was stuffy with new lumber and fresh paint. Clearly, the floor had been replaced, and the walls, repainted. The press appeared to be in good order. The mechanisms were clean, oiled, free from rust.
But the building itself was in too good an order. Gone were the prints and framed paintings that Uncle William had lovingly straightened on the walls every day after the maid had dusted everything. Gone, too were the stacks of back issues, the pile of type, the splatters and spots on the floor beneath the table where Rodney inked the plates. Every drawer was empty. So were the file cabinets and the composition tables.
McChase stood back, coolly eyeing Phanuel's search. “I love to see volunteers so enthused in their work!" he told Arc. "What do you expect to find, Manuel?”
“Whatever one would expect to find in a newspaper’s bureau: letters… paper…a broadsheet or two… a complete back issue would be lovely.”
“You’re looking for back issues from two centuries ago?”
Phanuel’s face flamed. After an instant in which he seemed to have frozen, he gently closed the drawer he had just opened. “Can you blame me? The place is remarkably preserved. It would be wonderful to print the Fair Mantle Post.”
McChase rapped his knuckles on the edge of the composition table. “That’s a grand idea. But we would need paper of the size and consistency produced in the 1790s—which we don’t have. We also would need type—which we don’t have. The problem becomes more complex when you realize we don’t even know what the Fair Mantle Post looked like.”
“But you have seen other newspapers from the period.”
“Oh, sure, that’s no problem. Some period newspapers have been preserved at other historic sites, and at major universities and libraries. This is the issue: If we publish something that we say is the Fair Mantle Post, we, as the representatives of history, have got to be certain it’s an exact replica of the Fair Mantle Post. Otherwise, we lose credibility.”
“Of course.” Phanuel was not about to give up. He pointed to the door at the back of the room. “Where does that lead to?”
“The cellar.”
“What’s down there?”
“Surplus reproductions: chairs, farm tools, kitchen utensils, all made on-site by our tradesmen and apprentices. Nothing pertinent to the publishing operation, if that’s what you were hoping.”
Phanuel nodded. “So what you have here is a working printing press that remains unworkable because you have none of the supplies necessary to reproduce the newspaper the presses once printed.”
“Yes. Basically.”
“Then what is the point of preserving the press?”
McChase shrugged. “It’s an attraction, as well as an educational tool. Plus, it adds color to the Village.”
“An educational tool?”
“Something that teaches more about the history of the Village.”
“Would it not teach more if you could print the newspaper?”
McChase laughed good-naturedly and playfully punched Phanuel’s arm. “The point I’ve been trying to drill into the state for years! Maybe you should come to the next meeting with me, and back me up.”
“Thank you, but I can’t imagine a heartier advocate than you yourself.”
“It’s not strength of words that counts, kiddo, it’s strength in numbers! Tell you what: You find examples of newspapers from the late 1790s that we can model the paper on, and I’ll do my best to find the backing to make it possible."
“Are you saying you would print a newspaper if you had the supplies, but you would call that publication something other than the Fair Mantle Post?”
“Precisely.”
“Then what is the point of calling this building the Fair Mantle Post, if the paper issued from here is to be called something else?”
“We can say the paper is a publication of the Fair Mantle Post. Living history museums do that sort of thing all the time.”
“But if this office printed only one publication, and that publication was the Fair Mantle Post, would not printing other newspapers be falsifying what actually happened here?”
McChase stuck his sunglasses atop his head and immediately pulled them off, exhaling deeply.
“Looks like our new man is a purist, Arc! I respect purists—I really do! Purists are our collective touchstone--our last line of defense against creating over-imaginative promos. The truth of the matter is this: we need to develop more colorful ways of raising money so the Village can continue. Perhaps additional newspapers aren’t historically accurate for this location, but, as I said, we would say they were published at the Fair Mantle Post, on the Fair Mantle Post’s press. No, it’s not the purist’s way. It is the pragmatist’s way. Money, not ideals, keeps this community running.”
“I see,” said Phanuel, after a moment’s thought.
“Then we’ve got a plan?”
Phanuel lowered his eyes. From where she stood, Arc tried to study those eyes, but the dark, impenetrable lashes rebuffed all scrutiny. What’s wrong? she wondered. McChase’s suggestion was reasonable. If she had Phanuel’s apparent knowledge about period newspapers, she’d have jumped at the chance to reproduce one from scratch. But perhaps he really was a purist, unable to bend in the direction of anything creative. She was sorry he was so anal. But she could not deny that she admired the strength of his convictions.
Phanuel’s ruminations ended with a request to give some thought to McChase’s proposal. McChase agreed, and left Arc to escort her new volunteer back to the barbecue. She found him a seat with Marston and several older women who interpreted the milliner’s shop, and brought him a hot dog, which he proceeded to eat with a knife and fork, despite the presence of the bun. Arc gripped her own dog between her hands and lustily chowed down. Mustard shot into her face like a severed artery.
Arc’s lunchmates almost choked with hilarity. Through the yellow haze, she could see Phanuel frowning. Mr. Prissy Pants was grossed out? No surprise there.
A plastic knife and fork appeared in front of her, propped on a little pillow of neatly folded paper napkins. Arc wiped her eyes, thinking that a completely different person had joined them for lunch. But it was Phanuel. His anality had fractured. He was laughing—albeit shyly--along with everyone else. He really is nice-looking, Arc thought, amazed at the human smile’s ability to transform a face. She suspected she could genuinely like him, but just as quickly reminded herself of the kind of person she was, and how people the likes of Phanuel Kerr would not associate with her if business did not force them together.
McChase, meanwhile, found Lill and Rache eating their own lunch in the rangers’ office. “Keep an eye on that new guy, will you? I’ve got a feeling he’s looking for things he can’t lawfully obtain.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Lill.
“Did you check out his car?”
“If he’s serious about what he’s doing, he would never leave a metal detector on the seat, where it could be seen.”
“What about the trunk?”
Rache blinked. “The trunk? We can’t get into the trunk.”
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you people the law around here?”
“Am I hearing voices, or did he just suggest we break into a car?” Rache whispered, aghast, after McChase abruptly walked away.
Lill shrugged. “He’s an asshole. Assholes don’t talk. They fart.”
“But he wants us to do something illegal! I mean, if he thinks it’s okay to do something like that, what else is he telling other people to do? What else is he doing himself?”
Lill chuckled. “What’s got you all hot and bothered? The rangers don’t take him seriously. Nobody does.”
Rache crinkled her chin as if she had found something distasteful in her mouth. “If he’s such a jerk, how’d he become the executive director? Who hired him?”
“The board of trustees,” Lill replied as she sank her teeth into the mountainous roll. Deli meat and lettuce squished through the circumference.
“Can’t they get rid of him?”
“Not unless they lose visitors and contributions suck.”
Rache shivered. “That’s creepy.”
“Naw, his contract is based on the Village’s performance. Standard museum procedure.” Lill swiped mayonnaise and shredded cheese from her chin. “Tell you what,” she said, casually studying the residue on her crushed napkin. “Leave Mr. Asshole to me. You keep an eye on Phan’l Boy.”
“Does that mean trying to get into his car?”
Lill choked. “Jaysus, I thought you were going to say, ‘Does that mean trying to get into his pants!’ (Though it might be a neat little perk!) Hell, no! You work for the state, not some freaky megalomaniac who thinks he knows everything there is to know about this place.”
“But maybe he does know everything. Fair Mantle was a small town.”
“Honey, Fair Mantle was generations old before it was abandoned. We’re only just beginning to scratch its surface. I’ve got a feeling we’ll need an earth mover to get rid of all the crap we’re sitting on.”
A young man in long cargo shorts and sandals grilled hot dogs and hamburgers over the flames that Lill and Rache had stoked in one of the area’s small, fieldstone fireplaces. Despite the shade, he wore sunglasses and a khaki-colored baseball cap that had a brown suede bill. His black polo shirt was embroidered with a little gold sheep that hung from gold bunting suspended around its middle. He smiled and waved the barbecue fork in greeting as volunteers filed onto the scene.
He listened, beaming, as Arcangela gestured toward Phanuel, who stood off to the side, reserved and patient. After handing the fork to Marston, the man approached Phanuel and shook his hand. “Welcome aboard! I’m Roy McChase, the guy who signs the checks. Arc tells me you’re interested in the printing press. Is that your specialty--printing?”
“Er, newspaper publishing, actually--” Phanuel looked from McChase to Arcangela, taken aback by the gusty informality that had left no room for him to be properly introduced.
“Cool! How did you hear about us? Did your ancestors come from Fair Mantle?”
“From the Highlands of Scotland…actually….”
“Oh yeah? Do you speak Scots Gaelic?”
“I’m afraid not. I can just about comprehend Scots English.”
“’Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin yet, or are yer drooms a beatin’ yet? If ye’re waukin, I would wait tae gang tae the coals in the morning!’”
McChase’s rendition of the Jacobite Uprising song incited cries of “Way to go, Mc C!” and “Free entertainment! Yes!”
Phanuel, however, showed no reaction to the outburst. When McChase asked him, “Who wrote those lyrics, Robert Burns or Adam Skirving?”, he replied with neither hesitation nor enthusiasm, “I believe it was Adam Skirving.”
“When?”
“In 1745.”
Somebody banged on the table in applause. “The man knows his stuff!”
“Don’t they both use the same refrain?”
McChase waved aside Lill’s question. “Just checking our docent’s sense of historical propriety, ladies and gents. Do you know how many volunteers end up performing the version that’s wrong for the people we interpret here?”
Rache squelched a cough as Lill backed away from her ear. McChase eyed them shrewedly. “Care to share, Lill? Fortune favors the bullshitter.”
“I said, ‘Do you know how many volunteers don’t even know their butt from a hole in the ground?’”
Most of the volunteers groaned and jokingly threw tiny bags of potato chips at her. McChase loudly clapped his hands together. “Okaaaaay, folks, on that invigorating note, let’s take a look at that printing press. Arcangela, Emmanuel—" He gestured toward the path that would bring them through the Village to the print shop, then fell in alongside Arc, leaving in the rear Phanuel, who pretended not to have heard the latest incarnation of his name.
Assured the trio was out of hearing, Rache blew her cheeks in grandiose relief. “That was close, Lill.”
The ranger puffed up in glee. “Yeah, but the G. D. boob really doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground!”
“Too bad the toilet’s fixed,” Marston mourned, shoving potato chips into his jaw.
“It isn’t,” Lill said. “His nibs didn’t want to sign the work order. Said he’d be damned if he was going to pay a plumber three grand to snake shit out of a toilet. He’d rather snake the slob who stuffed it up.”
The chips depleted, Marston stood, brushing off his hands. “Sweeeet,” he intoned, “very sweet…”
**********
Phanuel found the walk to the print shop insufferable, not because McChase sang Tranent Muir in a bad Scots accent, but because of the way he walked with Arcangela, keeping his head close to hers, saying things that only she could hear and giggle at. Phanuel silently bristled. He was angry that the man would feel no shame at acting the buffoon, and he was disappointed that Arcangela, for all her intelligence, would allow herself to be seen not only in his company, but approving his conduct. The distress heightened Phanuel’s anxiety at stepping into the office he had left only hours before. He had no idea what he would find. He feared to find nothing. He feared to find anything that could tell him what had happened in the time between the present and the moment that his uncle had thrown him out.
The shop was a large, open room, dominated by the printing press in the center and slanting composition tables on the sides. Two massive mahogany desks stood on either side of the door, beneath windows sectioned into eight, tiny panes of thick, wavy glass. The room was stuffy with new lumber and fresh paint. Clearly, the floor had been replaced, and the walls, repainted. The press appeared to be in good order. The mechanisms were clean, oiled, free from rust.
But the building itself was in too good an order. Gone were the prints and framed paintings that Uncle William had lovingly straightened on the walls every day after the maid had dusted everything. Gone, too were the stacks of back issues, the pile of type, the splatters and spots on the floor beneath the table where Rodney inked the plates. Every drawer was empty. So were the file cabinets and the composition tables.
McChase stood back, coolly eyeing Phanuel's search. “I love to see volunteers so enthused in their work!" he told Arc. "What do you expect to find, Manuel?”
“Whatever one would expect to find in a newspaper’s bureau: letters… paper…a broadsheet or two… a complete back issue would be lovely.”
“You’re looking for back issues from two centuries ago?”
Phanuel’s face flamed. After an instant in which he seemed to have frozen, he gently closed the drawer he had just opened. “Can you blame me? The place is remarkably preserved. It would be wonderful to print the Fair Mantle Post.”
McChase rapped his knuckles on the edge of the composition table. “That’s a grand idea. But we would need paper of the size and consistency produced in the 1790s—which we don’t have. We also would need type—which we don’t have. The problem becomes more complex when you realize we don’t even know what the Fair Mantle Post looked like.”
“But you have seen other newspapers from the period.”
“Oh, sure, that’s no problem. Some period newspapers have been preserved at other historic sites, and at major universities and libraries. This is the issue: If we publish something that we say is the Fair Mantle Post, we, as the representatives of history, have got to be certain it’s an exact replica of the Fair Mantle Post. Otherwise, we lose credibility.”
“Of course.” Phanuel was not about to give up. He pointed to the door at the back of the room. “Where does that lead to?”
“The cellar.”
“What’s down there?”
“Surplus reproductions: chairs, farm tools, kitchen utensils, all made on-site by our tradesmen and apprentices. Nothing pertinent to the publishing operation, if that’s what you were hoping.”
Phanuel nodded. “So what you have here is a working printing press that remains unworkable because you have none of the supplies necessary to reproduce the newspaper the presses once printed.”
“Yes. Basically.”
“Then what is the point of preserving the press?”
McChase shrugged. “It’s an attraction, as well as an educational tool. Plus, it adds color to the Village.”
“An educational tool?”
“Something that teaches more about the history of the Village.”
“Would it not teach more if you could print the newspaper?”
McChase laughed good-naturedly and playfully punched Phanuel’s arm. “The point I’ve been trying to drill into the state for years! Maybe you should come to the next meeting with me, and back me up.”
“Thank you, but I can’t imagine a heartier advocate than you yourself.”
“It’s not strength of words that counts, kiddo, it’s strength in numbers! Tell you what: You find examples of newspapers from the late 1790s that we can model the paper on, and I’ll do my best to find the backing to make it possible."
“Are you saying you would print a newspaper if you had the supplies, but you would call that publication something other than the Fair Mantle Post?”
“Precisely.”
“Then what is the point of calling this building the Fair Mantle Post, if the paper issued from here is to be called something else?”
“We can say the paper is a publication of the Fair Mantle Post. Living history museums do that sort of thing all the time.”
“But if this office printed only one publication, and that publication was the Fair Mantle Post, would not printing other newspapers be falsifying what actually happened here?”
McChase stuck his sunglasses atop his head and immediately pulled them off, exhaling deeply.
“Looks like our new man is a purist, Arc! I respect purists—I really do! Purists are our collective touchstone--our last line of defense against creating over-imaginative promos. The truth of the matter is this: we need to develop more colorful ways of raising money so the Village can continue. Perhaps additional newspapers aren’t historically accurate for this location, but, as I said, we would say they were published at the Fair Mantle Post, on the Fair Mantle Post’s press. No, it’s not the purist’s way. It is the pragmatist’s way. Money, not ideals, keeps this community running.”
“I see,” said Phanuel, after a moment’s thought.
“Then we’ve got a plan?”
Phanuel lowered his eyes. From where she stood, Arc tried to study those eyes, but the dark, impenetrable lashes rebuffed all scrutiny. What’s wrong? she wondered. McChase’s suggestion was reasonable. If she had Phanuel’s apparent knowledge about period newspapers, she’d have jumped at the chance to reproduce one from scratch. But perhaps he really was a purist, unable to bend in the direction of anything creative. She was sorry he was so anal. But she could not deny that she admired the strength of his convictions.
Phanuel’s ruminations ended with a request to give some thought to McChase’s proposal. McChase agreed, and left Arc to escort her new volunteer back to the barbecue. She found him a seat with Marston and several older women who interpreted the milliner’s shop, and brought him a hot dog, which he proceeded to eat with a knife and fork, despite the presence of the bun. Arc gripped her own dog between her hands and lustily chowed down. Mustard shot into her face like a severed artery.
Arc’s lunchmates almost choked with hilarity. Through the yellow haze, she could see Phanuel frowning. Mr. Prissy Pants was grossed out? No surprise there.
A plastic knife and fork appeared in front of her, propped on a little pillow of neatly folded paper napkins. Arc wiped her eyes, thinking that a completely different person had joined them for lunch. But it was Phanuel. His anality had fractured. He was laughing—albeit shyly--along with everyone else. He really is nice-looking, Arc thought, amazed at the human smile’s ability to transform a face. She suspected she could genuinely like him, but just as quickly reminded herself of the kind of person she was, and how people the likes of Phanuel Kerr would not associate with her if business did not force them together.
McChase, meanwhile, found Lill and Rache eating their own lunch in the rangers’ office. “Keep an eye on that new guy, will you? I’ve got a feeling he’s looking for things he can’t lawfully obtain.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Lill.
“Did you check out his car?”
“If he’s serious about what he’s doing, he would never leave a metal detector on the seat, where it could be seen.”
“What about the trunk?”
Rache blinked. “The trunk? We can’t get into the trunk.”
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you people the law around here?”
“Am I hearing voices, or did he just suggest we break into a car?” Rache whispered, aghast, after McChase abruptly walked away.
Lill shrugged. “He’s an asshole. Assholes don’t talk. They fart.”
“But he wants us to do something illegal! I mean, if he thinks it’s okay to do something like that, what else is he telling other people to do? What else is he doing himself?”
Lill chuckled. “What’s got you all hot and bothered? The rangers don’t take him seriously. Nobody does.”
Rache crinkled her chin as if she had found something distasteful in her mouth. “If he’s such a jerk, how’d he become the executive director? Who hired him?”
“The board of trustees,” Lill replied as she sank her teeth into the mountainous roll. Deli meat and lettuce squished through the circumference.
“Can’t they get rid of him?”
“Not unless they lose visitors and contributions suck.”
Rache shivered. “That’s creepy.”
“Naw, his contract is based on the Village’s performance. Standard museum procedure.” Lill swiped mayonnaise and shredded cheese from her chin. “Tell you what,” she said, casually studying the residue on her crushed napkin. “Leave Mr. Asshole to me. You keep an eye on Phan’l Boy.”
“Does that mean trying to get into his car?”
Lill choked. “Jaysus, I thought you were going to say, ‘Does that mean trying to get into his pants!’ (Though it might be a neat little perk!) Hell, no! You work for the state, not some freaky megalomaniac who thinks he knows everything there is to know about this place.”
“But maybe he does know everything. Fair Mantle was a small town.”
“Honey, Fair Mantle was generations old before it was abandoned. We’re only just beginning to scratch its surface. I’ve got a feeling we’ll need an earth mover to get rid of all the crap we’re sitting on.”
4. In the Privy
Phanuel closed the door and leaned on the basin with a heaviness he had never before felt in himself. As deeply as he resented the girl’s candor, he was grateful for the interference. His predicament was becoming too much to bear. He needed to get away from these strangers, if only for a few moments. He needed to think.
What did the prophet say? “Behold how the city sits solitary, which was full of people”? So it was with the Borough of Fair Mantle-of-the-Delaware. Gone was the cram of pedestrians, horses, carriages and commercial wagons, with all its noisy confusion. But gone where? Why did he alone remain?
Unable to find a cause or reason for his quandary, he remembered what he had always scoffed as fantastic tales from the Bible: Jonah in the whale. Elijah in the chariot. The parting of the Red Sea. Clearly, he was living through the end of the world as he had known it--a brain-fevered Dante guided by the specter of a woman. But was the woman who had accompanied him a benevolent spirit, or a mischief-maker acting upon instructions from Satan?
Until she had derided him about dying to get into the print shop, he had considered that he had indeed died and become a metaphysical entity contained within a place where souls could see and know all. Her name, Arcangela--the female form of Arcangelo, the Italian word for archangel--had supported this notion. But her comment had also assured him that he was alive, for he could not be dying if he was already dead. He wanted to tell her that it was his most sincere hope that he wasn’t dying at all, but he suspected she would laugh at him. The notion of anybody making light of his situation—even if the person could not appreciate its acuteness and oddity--made him debate how to explain himself.
While peering into the darkness of the Fair Mantle Post’s office, he had feared that he was taking too long to answer her and that his protracted silence appeared rude. He had apologized, but Arcangela had treated that apology with a coldness that usually denoted the most gross among all human failings: lack of compassion. Perhaps he was dead, after all—dead and sentenced to a place where continuous humiliation caused as much agony as any physical form of torture.
Surely, the manner of her dress—especially that odd, breeches-like attire and the bare, astonishingly hairless legs—suggested that she did things that no respectable woman would do and that could defile proper articles like skirts and hosiery. He half-expected her to disembowel him and throw him into a burning swamp, where he would spend Eternity with all the other damned.
But, as Uncle William always said, “Human nature prefers to hope.” Phanuel did hope, and he had hoped for the best as he followed Arcangela. News of the borough’s demise had shattered that hope into particles smaller than sand and just as impossible to piece together.
“They all abandoned Fair Mantle?” he recalled asking, unable to believe that friends and family had gone elsewhere on a whim.
He had thought the girl would snort, she looked so vexed! Instead, she had smiled at him as if he were a dim-wit and spouted a platitude about people wanting a better life for themselves. He had dared not show the chill that made him want to rub his arms. Clearly, the town had not been preserved in its entirety. Many sites were gone: His family’s house. Elinor’s house. The court house. The houses that had lined the hill between the millpond and the church. And the place he most eagerly wanted to see, if only to read the names upon the headstones. He needed to see if his mother and uncle were there. But greater than these, he needed to see if he himself was there. And he needed to see the dates.
So far as he could tell, the turf around the chapel held no evidence of the graveyard. Nor were there any signs of the rectory and the French rose garden that had been the pride and joy of the rector’s wife. Phanuel could understand the loss of bricks and mortar to the ravages of time, but not the loss of a graveyard. Where had all those people gone? Surely, they hadn’t all been dug up and brought to Philadelphia and larger, more attractive Jersey towns!
The perplexing disappearance had launched him into a quiet panic: twisted his insides and tricked him into thinking the ground was opening beneath his feet. He had pretended to rub the back of his neck while surreptitiously yanking a lock of hair nearest the top of his collars. It had the effect of a slap in the face. Revived and assured that he remained upright on solid ground, he had repressed a sigh and turned to find Arcangela watching him with bemused suspicion. He took comfort in the realization that he knew what should be where they stood; she did not. For a person who professed to know all there was to know about Fair Mantle, she was woefully ignorant. Oh well, pride really doth alwayth commeth before a fall, Phanuel considered, and the fall of his lovely guide was going to be delicious, if sad and unfortunate.
But what was it worth? What would it profit him to humiliate this woman? Would it send him home or wake him from this dream, which was making his past life feel more and more like the memory of an obscure nightmare? If he had somehow been consigned to a waiting-place between Heaven and Hell, perhaps he was being granted a time in which to save himself by way of practicing the Great Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. If that were the case, what better way to fight and diminish Satan than with the command of Our Lord Himself?
“What are you looking for?” The girl’s voice had snapped the regret he was beginning to feel for all the times he had refused to accompany his widowed mother to church. From the corner of his eye, he could see her eyes narrowed against the sunlight, looking in her bizarre attire more like a discarded French ship’s urchin than an instrument of the ultimate darkness. He was going to tell her the truth—had they not been intercepted by the people in those horrid getups.
Phanuel shook his head, unable to understand why people would want to pretend to be anything other than what they were born to be: themselves.
A slamming door and muffled laughter from the rooms below roused him into realizing that he couldn’t stay in the privy all day. He would be missed. And, somebody else might need the room.
He took off his waistcoat and shirt and fumbled with the toiletries the girl had given him. The brightly colored container of scent proclaimed the contents as--how was it pronounced? “dee-o-dor-ant” (whatever that was!)--and advised such silly things as “for underarm use only.” With its lid removed, the dee-o-dor-ant looked like a fat, pink-and-white candle without a wick. It had the consistency of waxy paste. The fragrance was heavily sweet. Did one use it before or after one’s ablutions? Unable to recall Arcangela’s instructions, he decided to apply it first like a soap and then like a balm, though he had no idea why anyone would want to embellish the region beneath one’s arms. When the dee-o-dor-ant failed to lather like soap, he picked up the lavender-colored bar in the dish atop the basin. To his relief, that bar really was soap, which provided the kind of more muted scent he was accustomed to.
Eventually he relinquished the soap, dried off, and applied the dee-o-dor-ant until the hair under his arms was smooth as a plank. It felt like a plank, too. Odd, but when in Rome, one had no choice but to do as the Romans do.
The clean shirt, he regarded with skepticism. The cloth was acceptable, but the stitching was loose and uneven. (He knew nine-year-old girls who could sew better than that!). Though he feared the thing would fall to pieces within hours, what else was there to wear?
His fears diminished as, tying his cravat, he found comfort in the crispness of the shirt’s fabric, and the clean, fresh scent. He was almost sorry to hide it all beneath the waistcoat (which, truth be told, also could have benefited from a laundering). And, he was almost sorry to concede that the girl had rightly predicted how he would feel once he had cleaned himself up.
There was but one more thing to accomplish before he returned to his new friends.
Phanuel eyed the giant, ceramic chamber pot beside the basin. Though it was set atop a ceramic pedestal the size of a small tree stump, the height was, nonetheless, accommodating. He was astonished to find that the lid concealed a secondary lid that, for whatever reason, covered only the rim of the pot. Puzzled, he thought it best to lift this lid, too. He was more baffled to see that the pot was wider than the lid suggested, and that it contained clean water. He suspected he would feel rather odd sitting so low in such a wide space, but he also considered that the people with whom he now communed were accustomed to no less. He lowered himself onto the pot with caution, bracing himself to stay above the water, grateful to achieve what nature intended in comfort, not in a rickety wooden privy or out in the woods. There was even the added luxury of soft, perfumed papers that one unwound from a fixture on the wall.
The real difficulty lay in disposing the evidence of his visit. He had thought to discard it in the customary manner: dumping it out the window, if not into the garden. He attempted to heave up the pot by grabbing it with both hands under the lip. When that failed, he knelt and wrapped his arms around it. But the thing simply would not budge. Upon examining the pot’s construction, he discovered it was attached to a miniature, lidded cistern that rose behind it and in fact provided a kind of chair back.
Having absolutely no idea what to make of the arrangement, he decided that the better part of valor was indeed discretion. He concealed his deposit with layers of the little perfumed papers and trusted that somebody would come along to empty the receptacle in the prescribed manner common among his hosts.
Rather than leave his shirt as the girl had instructed, he felt it would be more polite to hand it over. He found her at a desk at the far end of the attic, tucked so deeply into the corner that she had to bend low to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling’s severe slope.
“I ask your pardon,” he began, marveling at the way she moved her slender fingers along letters arranged on the board at the base of a box-like machine. “Where would you like me to leave this?”
The girl’s surprise struck Phanuel as genuine. “Oh…oh!” she cried, bowed nearly in half as she left her chair and came around the desk. “Let me show you what we do with the smaller articles—"
She remained fairly upright all the way back to the costume department, where she placed the shirt in the large basin against the wall, turned on the tap and poured blue liquid from a white container into the sink while the water ran atop the shirt.
“Always, always use cold water for cotton and muslin,” she said. Phanuel nodded, dimly aware that the young blacksmith who had accosted him outside was gleefully shouting something about “show time” and disappearing into the privy that Phanuel had vacated moments before.
“We’ll let it soak a couple of hours. Then we’ll hang it outside. It should be dry and ironed by early afternoon—providing the birds don’t use it for target practice.”
The advice was punctuated by a tortured cry from the little room.
Phanuel followed Arcangela prepared for who-knew-what but ready to help, nonetheless.
The girl pounded on the door. “Marston? What’s the matter?”
“Those effing kids were playing with the toilet again!”
Arcangela rolled her eyes. “Is that all? Use the plunger!”
“The plunger? Fekkit, Arc, I’ve already added to the riches contained therein. We’ll need a pile driver to break it up before we can dig it all out.”
“You added to what was in there? Hate to tell you, Marston, but normal people tend to look before they sit!”
The crunching sound was Marston fitfully scraping his feet on the bathroom tiles. “Aw c’mon, give me a break; I’m the victim here!”
“Right! We’ll figure something out. Sit tight—"
“Sit tight?!”
“Come on out, then! We’ll just tell everyone to use the public bathrooms downstairs.”
Phanuel wanted to ask why they couldn’t simply do what people always did to clean out the privies, but considered that their fastidiousness precluded any quick and reasonable solution to their problem.
“Excuse me,” he said, and went downstairs.
Arcangela followed. “You’ll have to forgive Marston, he can be a little rough around the edges.”
Was it Phanuel’s imagination, or was it a touch of panic that made her voice high and breathless?
“I was thinking that a bucket and fire tongs should help make matters more tolerable,” he said casually.
“A bucket and fire tongs?”
The girl skipped in front of him, clearly trying to block his route to the historically authentic parlor at the end of the Visitors Center. “That’s really very gallant of you, P, but we can’t use historic artifacts. We’re going to let the plumber handle this.”
The what? he refrained from saying.
He would later consider that it was more than the girl’s earnestness that struck him dumb. It was the intelligence…the confidence… the hazel-colored eyes that were the size of saucers. So what, if she laughed at him? He looked beyond the derision and saw both how deeply he needed to prove that he was not the simpleton she took him for, and the reason he needed to do so.
“Oh,” he said limply, and at once silently scourged himself for not saying something that mattered.
What did the prophet say? “Behold how the city sits solitary, which was full of people”? So it was with the Borough of Fair Mantle-of-the-Delaware. Gone was the cram of pedestrians, horses, carriages and commercial wagons, with all its noisy confusion. But gone where? Why did he alone remain?
Unable to find a cause or reason for his quandary, he remembered what he had always scoffed as fantastic tales from the Bible: Jonah in the whale. Elijah in the chariot. The parting of the Red Sea. Clearly, he was living through the end of the world as he had known it--a brain-fevered Dante guided by the specter of a woman. But was the woman who had accompanied him a benevolent spirit, or a mischief-maker acting upon instructions from Satan?
Until she had derided him about dying to get into the print shop, he had considered that he had indeed died and become a metaphysical entity contained within a place where souls could see and know all. Her name, Arcangela--the female form of Arcangelo, the Italian word for archangel--had supported this notion. But her comment had also assured him that he was alive, for he could not be dying if he was already dead. He wanted to tell her that it was his most sincere hope that he wasn’t dying at all, but he suspected she would laugh at him. The notion of anybody making light of his situation—even if the person could not appreciate its acuteness and oddity--made him debate how to explain himself.
While peering into the darkness of the Fair Mantle Post’s office, he had feared that he was taking too long to answer her and that his protracted silence appeared rude. He had apologized, but Arcangela had treated that apology with a coldness that usually denoted the most gross among all human failings: lack of compassion. Perhaps he was dead, after all—dead and sentenced to a place where continuous humiliation caused as much agony as any physical form of torture.
Surely, the manner of her dress—especially that odd, breeches-like attire and the bare, astonishingly hairless legs—suggested that she did things that no respectable woman would do and that could defile proper articles like skirts and hosiery. He half-expected her to disembowel him and throw him into a burning swamp, where he would spend Eternity with all the other damned.
But, as Uncle William always said, “Human nature prefers to hope.” Phanuel did hope, and he had hoped for the best as he followed Arcangela. News of the borough’s demise had shattered that hope into particles smaller than sand and just as impossible to piece together.
“They all abandoned Fair Mantle?” he recalled asking, unable to believe that friends and family had gone elsewhere on a whim.
He had thought the girl would snort, she looked so vexed! Instead, she had smiled at him as if he were a dim-wit and spouted a platitude about people wanting a better life for themselves. He had dared not show the chill that made him want to rub his arms. Clearly, the town had not been preserved in its entirety. Many sites were gone: His family’s house. Elinor’s house. The court house. The houses that had lined the hill between the millpond and the church. And the place he most eagerly wanted to see, if only to read the names upon the headstones. He needed to see if his mother and uncle were there. But greater than these, he needed to see if he himself was there. And he needed to see the dates.
So far as he could tell, the turf around the chapel held no evidence of the graveyard. Nor were there any signs of the rectory and the French rose garden that had been the pride and joy of the rector’s wife. Phanuel could understand the loss of bricks and mortar to the ravages of time, but not the loss of a graveyard. Where had all those people gone? Surely, they hadn’t all been dug up and brought to Philadelphia and larger, more attractive Jersey towns!
The perplexing disappearance had launched him into a quiet panic: twisted his insides and tricked him into thinking the ground was opening beneath his feet. He had pretended to rub the back of his neck while surreptitiously yanking a lock of hair nearest the top of his collars. It had the effect of a slap in the face. Revived and assured that he remained upright on solid ground, he had repressed a sigh and turned to find Arcangela watching him with bemused suspicion. He took comfort in the realization that he knew what should be where they stood; she did not. For a person who professed to know all there was to know about Fair Mantle, she was woefully ignorant. Oh well, pride really doth alwayth commeth before a fall, Phanuel considered, and the fall of his lovely guide was going to be delicious, if sad and unfortunate.
But what was it worth? What would it profit him to humiliate this woman? Would it send him home or wake him from this dream, which was making his past life feel more and more like the memory of an obscure nightmare? If he had somehow been consigned to a waiting-place between Heaven and Hell, perhaps he was being granted a time in which to save himself by way of practicing the Great Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. If that were the case, what better way to fight and diminish Satan than with the command of Our Lord Himself?
“What are you looking for?” The girl’s voice had snapped the regret he was beginning to feel for all the times he had refused to accompany his widowed mother to church. From the corner of his eye, he could see her eyes narrowed against the sunlight, looking in her bizarre attire more like a discarded French ship’s urchin than an instrument of the ultimate darkness. He was going to tell her the truth—had they not been intercepted by the people in those horrid getups.
Phanuel shook his head, unable to understand why people would want to pretend to be anything other than what they were born to be: themselves.
A slamming door and muffled laughter from the rooms below roused him into realizing that he couldn’t stay in the privy all day. He would be missed. And, somebody else might need the room.
He took off his waistcoat and shirt and fumbled with the toiletries the girl had given him. The brightly colored container of scent proclaimed the contents as--how was it pronounced? “dee-o-dor-ant” (whatever that was!)--and advised such silly things as “for underarm use only.” With its lid removed, the dee-o-dor-ant looked like a fat, pink-and-white candle without a wick. It had the consistency of waxy paste. The fragrance was heavily sweet. Did one use it before or after one’s ablutions? Unable to recall Arcangela’s instructions, he decided to apply it first like a soap and then like a balm, though he had no idea why anyone would want to embellish the region beneath one’s arms. When the dee-o-dor-ant failed to lather like soap, he picked up the lavender-colored bar in the dish atop the basin. To his relief, that bar really was soap, which provided the kind of more muted scent he was accustomed to.
Eventually he relinquished the soap, dried off, and applied the dee-o-dor-ant until the hair under his arms was smooth as a plank. It felt like a plank, too. Odd, but when in Rome, one had no choice but to do as the Romans do.
The clean shirt, he regarded with skepticism. The cloth was acceptable, but the stitching was loose and uneven. (He knew nine-year-old girls who could sew better than that!). Though he feared the thing would fall to pieces within hours, what else was there to wear?
His fears diminished as, tying his cravat, he found comfort in the crispness of the shirt’s fabric, and the clean, fresh scent. He was almost sorry to hide it all beneath the waistcoat (which, truth be told, also could have benefited from a laundering). And, he was almost sorry to concede that the girl had rightly predicted how he would feel once he had cleaned himself up.
There was but one more thing to accomplish before he returned to his new friends.
Phanuel eyed the giant, ceramic chamber pot beside the basin. Though it was set atop a ceramic pedestal the size of a small tree stump, the height was, nonetheless, accommodating. He was astonished to find that the lid concealed a secondary lid that, for whatever reason, covered only the rim of the pot. Puzzled, he thought it best to lift this lid, too. He was more baffled to see that the pot was wider than the lid suggested, and that it contained clean water. He suspected he would feel rather odd sitting so low in such a wide space, but he also considered that the people with whom he now communed were accustomed to no less. He lowered himself onto the pot with caution, bracing himself to stay above the water, grateful to achieve what nature intended in comfort, not in a rickety wooden privy or out in the woods. There was even the added luxury of soft, perfumed papers that one unwound from a fixture on the wall.
The real difficulty lay in disposing the evidence of his visit. He had thought to discard it in the customary manner: dumping it out the window, if not into the garden. He attempted to heave up the pot by grabbing it with both hands under the lip. When that failed, he knelt and wrapped his arms around it. But the thing simply would not budge. Upon examining the pot’s construction, he discovered it was attached to a miniature, lidded cistern that rose behind it and in fact provided a kind of chair back.
Having absolutely no idea what to make of the arrangement, he decided that the better part of valor was indeed discretion. He concealed his deposit with layers of the little perfumed papers and trusted that somebody would come along to empty the receptacle in the prescribed manner common among his hosts.
Rather than leave his shirt as the girl had instructed, he felt it would be more polite to hand it over. He found her at a desk at the far end of the attic, tucked so deeply into the corner that she had to bend low to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling’s severe slope.
“I ask your pardon,” he began, marveling at the way she moved her slender fingers along letters arranged on the board at the base of a box-like machine. “Where would you like me to leave this?”
The girl’s surprise struck Phanuel as genuine. “Oh…oh!” she cried, bowed nearly in half as she left her chair and came around the desk. “Let me show you what we do with the smaller articles—"
She remained fairly upright all the way back to the costume department, where she placed the shirt in the large basin against the wall, turned on the tap and poured blue liquid from a white container into the sink while the water ran atop the shirt.
“Always, always use cold water for cotton and muslin,” she said. Phanuel nodded, dimly aware that the young blacksmith who had accosted him outside was gleefully shouting something about “show time” and disappearing into the privy that Phanuel had vacated moments before.
“We’ll let it soak a couple of hours. Then we’ll hang it outside. It should be dry and ironed by early afternoon—providing the birds don’t use it for target practice.”
The advice was punctuated by a tortured cry from the little room.
Phanuel followed Arcangela prepared for who-knew-what but ready to help, nonetheless.
The girl pounded on the door. “Marston? What’s the matter?”
“Those effing kids were playing with the toilet again!”
Arcangela rolled her eyes. “Is that all? Use the plunger!”
“The plunger? Fekkit, Arc, I’ve already added to the riches contained therein. We’ll need a pile driver to break it up before we can dig it all out.”
“You added to what was in there? Hate to tell you, Marston, but normal people tend to look before they sit!”
The crunching sound was Marston fitfully scraping his feet on the bathroom tiles. “Aw c’mon, give me a break; I’m the victim here!”
“Right! We’ll figure something out. Sit tight—"
“Sit tight?!”
“Come on out, then! We’ll just tell everyone to use the public bathrooms downstairs.”
Phanuel wanted to ask why they couldn’t simply do what people always did to clean out the privies, but considered that their fastidiousness precluded any quick and reasonable solution to their problem.
“Excuse me,” he said, and went downstairs.
Arcangela followed. “You’ll have to forgive Marston, he can be a little rough around the edges.”
Was it Phanuel’s imagination, or was it a touch of panic that made her voice high and breathless?
“I was thinking that a bucket and fire tongs should help make matters more tolerable,” he said casually.
“A bucket and fire tongs?”
The girl skipped in front of him, clearly trying to block his route to the historically authentic parlor at the end of the Visitors Center. “That’s really very gallant of you, P, but we can’t use historic artifacts. We’re going to let the plumber handle this.”
The what? he refrained from saying.
He would later consider that it was more than the girl’s earnestness that struck him dumb. It was the intelligence…the confidence… the hazel-colored eyes that were the size of saucers. So what, if she laughed at him? He looked beyond the derision and saw both how deeply he needed to prove that he was not the simpleton she took him for, and the reason he needed to do so.
“Oh,” he said limply, and at once silently scourged himself for not saying something that mattered.
3. Authenticities
Sometimes it’s plain old right and just to give the benefit of the doubt. As Arc proceeded with the tour of the grounds, emotionally gnawed by her newbie’s occasional, incredulous outbursts of “Fair Mantle was abandoned!?,” she had no doubt that doubt was the last thing she was inclined to bestow upon Phanuel Kerr.
She thought it odd that a museum interpreter-- a de facto historian—couldn’t understand that it was not unusual for towns, especially obscure, insignificant towns in the Pinelands, to suffer economic reversals once the inhabitants believed they could do better elsewhere. She wondered about his academic background. Did he major in history? What about sociology or anthropology, or any of the other fields that investigated social trends?
They had arrived at the large field on the rise behind the town’s Episcopal church, whose steeple sat over the front doors instead of the sanctuary to the rear. Inside, costumed interpreters rehearsed their 1790s singing school. The mournful sounds of William Billings’s anthem “Chesterfield” swept through the open windows in plodding, minor-moded intervals that reminded Arc of a tolling bell: “Why do-o-ooo the mi-i-iiii-nutes mo-o-ooove so slow, nor my-y-y sal-va-a-aaaaaa-tion come?”
“They all left Fair Mantle?”
The challenge in Phanuel’s voice inspired Arc to smile patiently, as if beholding a toddler with an age-appropriate attention span. “Don’t all people want to seek a better life for themselves?” she called, trying to keep up with him as he walked around the church, sweeping his eyes from the church to the surrounding lawn and back again. “This was a teeny-tiny town. As I’ve said—“ too many times, she added mentally, “people just gradually moved away as Philadelphia and larger Jersey towns grew more attractive—Oof!”
She ricocheted off Phanuel, who had stopped without warning. Resolving not to steady herself by grabbing his arm, she simultaneously staggered and followed his line of sight toward the nearby woods. “What are you looking for?” she asked, annoyed. Before he could answer, they were surrounded by several trades interpreters who were astounded by the cut and quality of Phanuel’s outfit.
Until that moment, Arcangela had been proud of the Village’s 1790s clothing. But seen in such close proximity to Phanuel’s, the reproductions looked like cheap costumes that belonged in a Halloween parade or an amateur stage production. The volunteers fingered Phanuel’s sleeves and lapels with the good-natured enthusiasm of people who had just emerged from a cave and had never before seen a civilized man.
“Did you make this yourself?”
“Where did you get the material?”
“What pattern did you use?”
Phanuel jumped back, brushing off the gropers as if they were a swarm of earth-crawling insects. “I do ask your pardon!”
For an instant, the surprised Villagers regarded each other in suspended expectation, their mouths open in soundless gasps. Marston, the apprentice blacksmith, clapped his hand to Phanuel’s shoulder. “Hey, man, we didn’t mean any disrespect! We’re just in awe, ya know? We’ve never seen anything so much like the real thing.” The others nodded amid noises of assent.
“Well, you really should be more careful,” Phanuel primly chastised. “There’s a reason why this outfit looks exceptional, and it cost me dearly.”
Immediately, twelve-year-old Tommy mimicked Phanuel’s haughty tone and demeanor. Though Phanuel silently absorbed the affront, Arc made a silly crack about expensive clothes and ushered him to the Visitors Center, where she handed him over to Ranger Rachel for official park orientation.
She had retreated to her office and was working on a press release for the annual Village Ball fundraiser when Lill’s head popped in and announced, with the delicacy of a poison label, “You better check out the New One. He might be a lit-tle too authentic--if you know what I mean.”
The Visitors Center had been built as a single, long building behind the façades of several historical brick rowhouses down the hill from the church. At either end were educational displays about Fair Mantle and the Pinelands. The center was dominated by a long, combination display case and counter where visitors could ogle historic artifacts, obtain brochures and sign in for Village events. Rache sat on the floor at the end of the case near the entrance, doing an inventory of brochures. Phanuel was at the other end, with the maps and guest book. Rache regarded Arc with the pale, pinched features of mute agony. Though baffled, Arc maintained perkiness. “Hi, guys! How’s it going?”
The source of Rache’s distress became stronger as Arc approached Phanuel and discerned that the fellow’s dedication to authenticity had compelled him to forego a major modern toiletry. The result was a little like standing downwind of a belligerent skunk. Her instinct screamed, “Gag reflex!” Her brain, “Play nice.”
“Hey-ey-ey, Phanuel,” she managed to say through a sound that was part gasp, part laugh. “I forgot to show you the costume department! Can you spare him a minute, Rache?”
“Be my guest,” the petite ranger piped up.
Arc led Phanuel up the painted cinderblock stairwell off the main hallway and into a long, attic-like space where the roof slanted at both ends and along the sides. A door next to the reception desk led to a room where racks of clothing lined the walls. Arc opened this door, gestured for Phanuel to precede her into the room. “I think I kept you out in the sun too long,” she said with cheery confidentiality after she had closed the door behind them.
“Am I red?” he said, studying his hands.
Arc pulled a shirt from the rack and ushered Phanuel to the bathroom, which was in the corner, next to some shelves of hats and folded cravats and spotless, white, day caps. “Here you go,” she said, shoving the shirt into his arms. “You’ll feel better once you freshen up a bit!”
“I ask your pardon?”
O…M…G…how thick can you get?
Trying hard not to roll her eyes, Arc took toiletries from the medicine cabinet and set towels atop the toilet’s closed lid. Then she filled the thick-based pedestal sink with pleasantly cool water. If he didn’t get the hint now, she’d take him to the rangers’ station and hose him down.
“Here you go! Just leave your old shirt outside the door. We’ll have it laundered right away. Okay?”
“But—"
“See you in a bit!”
When Arc returned to the visitors counter, Rache knelt in front of her and tried to kiss her docksiders.
Arc skipped back, laughing. “Arcangela’s law of museum interpreters: The better they look, the worse they fit. I swear, it boggles the mind why people go to such lengths to look so good yet act as if they don’t want to be here.”
Rache coughed a laugh. “Lill saw him walking around the chapel, looking real hard at the ground. She thinks he’s got a metal detector in his car and is waiting for the park to close so he can sweep the place and dig up the goods.”
“Except he could be arrested if he’s caught trying a stunt like that. If he’s a treasure perp, he’d know that.”
“He’s definitely an odd duck,” Rache concluded after a moment in which the women stood in thought. “He didn’t seem to know what to do with the pen when I asked him to sign in. He picked it up and looked real hard at the nib. He used his left hand to steady the pen in his right hand before he wrote. And when he finally got the act together—“ She led Arc to the staff sign-in book behind the counter. It took two full lines to accommodate the florid declaration: “Phanuel Blanchfield Kerr.”
Rache chuckled. “Slightly full of himself, wouldn’t you say?”
“Full of something, that’s for sure.”
Arc groaned. Within two months her mandated student loan payment would probably force her to resign from the Village and live in a homeless shelter. At that moment she realized that her legacy to the Village wouldn’t be the programs she had developed or the volunteers she had trained. Her legacy would be cutting this breathing mass of hubris down to size and turning the stump into a human being who might be worthy of working and laughing with the very same people he thought were so beneath him.
She thought it odd that a museum interpreter-- a de facto historian—couldn’t understand that it was not unusual for towns, especially obscure, insignificant towns in the Pinelands, to suffer economic reversals once the inhabitants believed they could do better elsewhere. She wondered about his academic background. Did he major in history? What about sociology or anthropology, or any of the other fields that investigated social trends?
They had arrived at the large field on the rise behind the town’s Episcopal church, whose steeple sat over the front doors instead of the sanctuary to the rear. Inside, costumed interpreters rehearsed their 1790s singing school. The mournful sounds of William Billings’s anthem “Chesterfield” swept through the open windows in plodding, minor-moded intervals that reminded Arc of a tolling bell: “Why do-o-ooo the mi-i-iiii-nutes mo-o-ooove so slow, nor my-y-y sal-va-a-aaaaaa-tion come?”
“They all left Fair Mantle?”
The challenge in Phanuel’s voice inspired Arc to smile patiently, as if beholding a toddler with an age-appropriate attention span. “Don’t all people want to seek a better life for themselves?” she called, trying to keep up with him as he walked around the church, sweeping his eyes from the church to the surrounding lawn and back again. “This was a teeny-tiny town. As I’ve said—“ too many times, she added mentally, “people just gradually moved away as Philadelphia and larger Jersey towns grew more attractive—Oof!”
She ricocheted off Phanuel, who had stopped without warning. Resolving not to steady herself by grabbing his arm, she simultaneously staggered and followed his line of sight toward the nearby woods. “What are you looking for?” she asked, annoyed. Before he could answer, they were surrounded by several trades interpreters who were astounded by the cut and quality of Phanuel’s outfit.
Until that moment, Arcangela had been proud of the Village’s 1790s clothing. But seen in such close proximity to Phanuel’s, the reproductions looked like cheap costumes that belonged in a Halloween parade or an amateur stage production. The volunteers fingered Phanuel’s sleeves and lapels with the good-natured enthusiasm of people who had just emerged from a cave and had never before seen a civilized man.
“Did you make this yourself?”
“Where did you get the material?”
“What pattern did you use?”
Phanuel jumped back, brushing off the gropers as if they were a swarm of earth-crawling insects. “I do ask your pardon!”
For an instant, the surprised Villagers regarded each other in suspended expectation, their mouths open in soundless gasps. Marston, the apprentice blacksmith, clapped his hand to Phanuel’s shoulder. “Hey, man, we didn’t mean any disrespect! We’re just in awe, ya know? We’ve never seen anything so much like the real thing.” The others nodded amid noises of assent.
“Well, you really should be more careful,” Phanuel primly chastised. “There’s a reason why this outfit looks exceptional, and it cost me dearly.”
Immediately, twelve-year-old Tommy mimicked Phanuel’s haughty tone and demeanor. Though Phanuel silently absorbed the affront, Arc made a silly crack about expensive clothes and ushered him to the Visitors Center, where she handed him over to Ranger Rachel for official park orientation.
She had retreated to her office and was working on a press release for the annual Village Ball fundraiser when Lill’s head popped in and announced, with the delicacy of a poison label, “You better check out the New One. He might be a lit-tle too authentic--if you know what I mean.”
The Visitors Center had been built as a single, long building behind the façades of several historical brick rowhouses down the hill from the church. At either end were educational displays about Fair Mantle and the Pinelands. The center was dominated by a long, combination display case and counter where visitors could ogle historic artifacts, obtain brochures and sign in for Village events. Rache sat on the floor at the end of the case near the entrance, doing an inventory of brochures. Phanuel was at the other end, with the maps and guest book. Rache regarded Arc with the pale, pinched features of mute agony. Though baffled, Arc maintained perkiness. “Hi, guys! How’s it going?”
The source of Rache’s distress became stronger as Arc approached Phanuel and discerned that the fellow’s dedication to authenticity had compelled him to forego a major modern toiletry. The result was a little like standing downwind of a belligerent skunk. Her instinct screamed, “Gag reflex!” Her brain, “Play nice.”
“Hey-ey-ey, Phanuel,” she managed to say through a sound that was part gasp, part laugh. “I forgot to show you the costume department! Can you spare him a minute, Rache?”
“Be my guest,” the petite ranger piped up.
Arc led Phanuel up the painted cinderblock stairwell off the main hallway and into a long, attic-like space where the roof slanted at both ends and along the sides. A door next to the reception desk led to a room where racks of clothing lined the walls. Arc opened this door, gestured for Phanuel to precede her into the room. “I think I kept you out in the sun too long,” she said with cheery confidentiality after she had closed the door behind them.
“Am I red?” he said, studying his hands.
Arc pulled a shirt from the rack and ushered Phanuel to the bathroom, which was in the corner, next to some shelves of hats and folded cravats and spotless, white, day caps. “Here you go,” she said, shoving the shirt into his arms. “You’ll feel better once you freshen up a bit!”
“I ask your pardon?”
O…M…G…how thick can you get?
Trying hard not to roll her eyes, Arc took toiletries from the medicine cabinet and set towels atop the toilet’s closed lid. Then she filled the thick-based pedestal sink with pleasantly cool water. If he didn’t get the hint now, she’d take him to the rangers’ station and hose him down.
“Here you go! Just leave your old shirt outside the door. We’ll have it laundered right away. Okay?”
“But—"
“See you in a bit!”
When Arc returned to the visitors counter, Rache knelt in front of her and tried to kiss her docksiders.
Arc skipped back, laughing. “Arcangela’s law of museum interpreters: The better they look, the worse they fit. I swear, it boggles the mind why people go to such lengths to look so good yet act as if they don’t want to be here.”
Rache coughed a laugh. “Lill saw him walking around the chapel, looking real hard at the ground. She thinks he’s got a metal detector in his car and is waiting for the park to close so he can sweep the place and dig up the goods.”
“Except he could be arrested if he’s caught trying a stunt like that. If he’s a treasure perp, he’d know that.”
“He’s definitely an odd duck,” Rache concluded after a moment in which the women stood in thought. “He didn’t seem to know what to do with the pen when I asked him to sign in. He picked it up and looked real hard at the nib. He used his left hand to steady the pen in his right hand before he wrote. And when he finally got the act together—“ She led Arc to the staff sign-in book behind the counter. It took two full lines to accommodate the florid declaration: “Phanuel Blanchfield Kerr.”
Rache chuckled. “Slightly full of himself, wouldn’t you say?”
“Full of something, that’s for sure.”
Arc groaned. Within two months her mandated student loan payment would probably force her to resign from the Village and live in a homeless shelter. At that moment she realized that her legacy to the Village wouldn’t be the programs she had developed or the volunteers she had trained. Her legacy would be cutting this breathing mass of hubris down to size and turning the stump into a human being who might be worthy of working and laughing with the very same people he thought were so beneath him.
2. Arc and Effluence
Arcangela was aware of only two things: she had to be at Historic Fair Mantle Village in twenty minutes. And her life had become a horror.
She had been drying her hair and gulping down cold omelet like an osprey swallowing a fish when she thought she should open the white, page-size envelope that sat in the pile of papers and books she had moved to her bed from the table so she had room for breakfast. The front of the thing, beneath the plastic window that revealed her address, blared “important document” in bold red letters. She had let it sit for a week.
It was as bad as she had suspected. Her student loan was in default. Either she paid ridiculously high monthly installments that the state said represented her discretionary income, or the state would garnish her wages.
Arcangela sat on the edge of her bed, the half-chewed omelet like slimy pebbles on her tongue. For months she had been writing to the state higher education assistance authority about her inability to pay the loan. What did those people not understand about her income? She brought home two hundred and fifty dollars a week as a spokesperson for the Village. Times that by four weeks in an average month, and that’s what was available to pay rent, utilities, car insurance, gas and groceries. Already she was compelled to forgo female niceties like makeup and perfume, and human necessities like regular visits to a dentist. She frequently went to bed hungry. The state’s action would deplete her meager resources. If she was lucky, she could find a food pantry nearby. If not, she would go hungry all the time, instead of only at night.
So how did the state expect her to live? The answer immediately followed: It doesn’t. She was not supposed to have money for food and toiletries. She was not supposed to have money for utilities. She was not supposed to buy new clothes. She was not supposed to go to the movies, buy CDs, eat out, or do any of the thousand little things that made life a little more interesting and helped the economy. She was supposed to exist to pay off her student loan. It was debtors’ prison, twenty-first-century style.
Strangled by frustration, she threw the letter aside. She meant to hit the wall. She hit Cavia’s cage, instead. The little guinea pig scrambled to a far corner of her cage and crouched, stone-still, her face the wide-eyed, moodless mask of the typical guinea pig.
For the first time Arcangela realized she was not alone in her struggle to stay alive. There was Cavia, her pet. She wouldn’t be able to keep her anymore. She would have to find her a new home. If she couldn’t find her a new family, she would have to give her to the local humane society, which would give her to the local pet store, which would put her in a little cage at the front of the store, with a little sign that said she was up for adoption.
The thought of forcing Cavia into a strange environment broke Arcangela’s heart. She lifted the little animal from the cage to her shoulder, murmuring, “Sweetie doll, oh sweetie doll.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she walked around the cottage, repeating “sweetie doll, sweetie doll,” and rhythmically stroking Cavia’s silky back. At last Cavia’s signature purr emerged.
Making a guinea pig purr is as contenting as making a baby smile. Soothed by the familiar sound, Arc began to refuse to believe that things could get as horrible as she anticipated. She saw reason. Literally. As miserable as she felt, she realized that she would be less miserable at work, surrounded by people she had known for nearly four years and in a place that was as familiar and comfortable to her as home.
Knowing that she would never get to the Village on time, she called the state park office. The rangers always fielded museum calls before the Village offices opened. Ranger Lill answered. Arc had stopped crying, but Lill had been working with people too long not to sense that something was amiss. “What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as Arc said, “Hi.”
Arc couldn’t tell her the truth. The truth was too embarrassing. “Um…a problem at the house—“ She glanced at the hump in the carpet. “The floor is like…buckling. I’m waiting for the landlord. I may have to get out. I don’t know where I’ll go. I can’t afford anything else. I’ve got to find a place for my p-pet.”
“The floor is buckling?”
Arc struggled. “More like wavy. Like the floor in the printer’s building.”
Sudden revelation underscored Lill’s soothing “Ah-haaaa…How old is your place?”
“I don’t know. The main house is from the early 1800s. The cottage was an outbuilding.
“Ohmygoodness, is that all? Honey, have you been in Mike’s hardware place lately? You need mountaineering gear to get from one side of the store to the other, the dip is so bad! Now I’ll tell you what: If you don’t come in, we’ll understand. But please, please, please, please, please try to get here. We’ve got a new fella, a fantastic interpreter. He looks like he stepped out of a Charles Willson Peale painting!”
Lill’s enthusiasm was the tossed bucket of cold water that Arc needed to get moving. More than a little curious, she threw on the outfit that she seemed to wear with boring regularity during the summer: chambray longsleeved shirt over a black cotton tee, olive-colored cargo capris, dark brown docksiders. She twirled her nondescript-brown, chin-length hair, clasped it above her neck in a faux-tortoiseshell clip, and was ready to go.
Lill was in the bookshop with a young man who looked like he himself belonged in a museum. Arc gulped back a gasp, trying not to stare at the fine, high-colored face and the slender, not-too-tall frame that elegantly filled the simple but historically accurate suit. Lill had been right. He really did look like a Peale subject.
Lill boomed heartily. “Arc, This is Daniel. Daniel, this is Arcangela. She handles publicity for the Village and sometimes manages the gift shop. Daniel was just explaining some of the finer points of good, old-fashioned, double-entry bookkeeping.”
He bowed slightly before briefly clasping the hand Arc extended. The light touch made her wonder if he didn’t know that he should shake it.
Arc ogled Phanuel’s jacket. The fabric resembled bolts of broadcloth she had seen in Colonial Williamsburg, and the workmanship was miraculous. Nine running stitches to an inch, she guessed. The threads that delineated the buttonholes on the vest were neatly, snuggly aligned, not loose and uneven, as seen on garments made by the Village’s amateur tailors. Amazed, she blurted, “Did you make this yourself?”
“I? Make this jacket? No, I had it made in Philadelphia.”
“Who’s the tailor, a member of the B, A, R?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The Brigade of the American Revolution. They require all historic clothing to be handsewn. They’ll inspect your stuff, too, to make sure you’re presenting the proper image to the public.”
“The man who made this is from Paris.”
“Nice! I hear they’re big on Napoleonic reenactments over there. Looks like the guy had tons of experience making period pieces!”
“Ah,” the newbie concluded, straightening his jacket and glancing out the window.
Arc thought the glance was a signal to end the conversation. Mutely miffed, she ushered him outside. Briskly keeping to the shade of the knobby sycamores that lined the cobbled sidewalk, she rattled off facts about Historic Fair Mantle Village: How the buildings had slowly fallen into disrepair after the inhabitants had slowly died off or moved to more economically secure areas the likes of Trenton and Philadelphia. How the Village, known to locals, became part of the state park during the nation’s Bicentennial, when people had more of an interest in history. He listened politely, though there were times when Arc felt he had no interest in what she was saying. Was she a lousy tour guide? Or did he know the story already? She considered that knowing a little more about him couldn’t hurt.
“Lill said you were discussing bookkeeping. Are you an accountant, Dan?”
They walked several paces before he replied. “Er, I’m afraid the good lady didn’t hear me correctly. My name is PHAN-uel, not Daniel.”
“Phanuel? Like Fanueil Hall, in Boston?”
“Not quite, miss. It’s Anna’s father’s name.”
“Anna?”
“Yes. In Luke, Chapter Six, I believe.”
“Ah. Of course.” Ohhhhhh boy, a Bible thumper. Arc looked away, crushing a grin but widening her eyes in consternation. She went to church every now and then, and listened to Masses by Mozart and Beethoven, but openly religious people skeeved her out. She imagined this one in a crowded Evangelical hall, loudly singing out of tune and shouting “amens” as a man in an expensive, custom-made, silk suit proclaimed the glories of the Gospel into a mobile microphone.
They came to a small, brick building with a brass plaque that announced “The Fair Mantle Post.”
“Once upon a time this was the local newspaper,” Arc said as Phanuel rested his forehead against the rectangular window, tented his hands around his temples and peered into the darkened front room. “It’s closed most of the year. We can’t interpret it.”
A muffled “Why?” oozed through Phanuel’s statue-still position.
“The trustees think it would be a waste of time.”
“Nothing is a waste of time.”
“Actually, I think it’s the state’s way of saying that the cost of interpreting the shop wouldn’t justify the cost of running it.”
“Are you not all volunteers?”
“There’s the cost of ink and paper. And utilities.”
“Utilities?”
“Electricity and heat.”
“Electricity?”
“We don’t interpret the buildings with lights on, but they all have lighting for security purposes, indoors and out. The outside fixtures go on after dark. Indoor lighting is discreetly designed and used only when the public isn’t on the premises.”
Arc stepped away, thinking to dislodge Phanuel from the window. There was so much more to show him before the park opened to the public! But he stayed precisely where he was, in precisely the same attitude. She chuckled. “You’re dying to get in there, aren’t you!”
He said nothing. When he continued to ignore her, she tapped his shoulder. “Hey, Phan!”
His reaction could not have been more unsettling had he shouted and jumped away from the window.
Rather than exhibit any surprise, Phanuel held his pose for another long moment, then slowly lowered his hands and even more slowly turned to Arcangela. “I do ask your pardon.”
The voice was soft, but the deliberate spacing between words and the disdain that flared from his eyes suggested that Phanuel Kerr was the walking effluence of assdom.
She had been drying her hair and gulping down cold omelet like an osprey swallowing a fish when she thought she should open the white, page-size envelope that sat in the pile of papers and books she had moved to her bed from the table so she had room for breakfast. The front of the thing, beneath the plastic window that revealed her address, blared “important document” in bold red letters. She had let it sit for a week.
It was as bad as she had suspected. Her student loan was in default. Either she paid ridiculously high monthly installments that the state said represented her discretionary income, or the state would garnish her wages.
Arcangela sat on the edge of her bed, the half-chewed omelet like slimy pebbles on her tongue. For months she had been writing to the state higher education assistance authority about her inability to pay the loan. What did those people not understand about her income? She brought home two hundred and fifty dollars a week as a spokesperson for the Village. Times that by four weeks in an average month, and that’s what was available to pay rent, utilities, car insurance, gas and groceries. Already she was compelled to forgo female niceties like makeup and perfume, and human necessities like regular visits to a dentist. She frequently went to bed hungry. The state’s action would deplete her meager resources. If she was lucky, she could find a food pantry nearby. If not, she would go hungry all the time, instead of only at night.
So how did the state expect her to live? The answer immediately followed: It doesn’t. She was not supposed to have money for food and toiletries. She was not supposed to have money for utilities. She was not supposed to buy new clothes. She was not supposed to go to the movies, buy CDs, eat out, or do any of the thousand little things that made life a little more interesting and helped the economy. She was supposed to exist to pay off her student loan. It was debtors’ prison, twenty-first-century style.
Strangled by frustration, she threw the letter aside. She meant to hit the wall. She hit Cavia’s cage, instead. The little guinea pig scrambled to a far corner of her cage and crouched, stone-still, her face the wide-eyed, moodless mask of the typical guinea pig.
For the first time Arcangela realized she was not alone in her struggle to stay alive. There was Cavia, her pet. She wouldn’t be able to keep her anymore. She would have to find her a new home. If she couldn’t find her a new family, she would have to give her to the local humane society, which would give her to the local pet store, which would put her in a little cage at the front of the store, with a little sign that said she was up for adoption.
The thought of forcing Cavia into a strange environment broke Arcangela’s heart. She lifted the little animal from the cage to her shoulder, murmuring, “Sweetie doll, oh sweetie doll.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she walked around the cottage, repeating “sweetie doll, sweetie doll,” and rhythmically stroking Cavia’s silky back. At last Cavia’s signature purr emerged.
Making a guinea pig purr is as contenting as making a baby smile. Soothed by the familiar sound, Arc began to refuse to believe that things could get as horrible as she anticipated. She saw reason. Literally. As miserable as she felt, she realized that she would be less miserable at work, surrounded by people she had known for nearly four years and in a place that was as familiar and comfortable to her as home.
Knowing that she would never get to the Village on time, she called the state park office. The rangers always fielded museum calls before the Village offices opened. Ranger Lill answered. Arc had stopped crying, but Lill had been working with people too long not to sense that something was amiss. “What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as Arc said, “Hi.”
Arc couldn’t tell her the truth. The truth was too embarrassing. “Um…a problem at the house—“ She glanced at the hump in the carpet. “The floor is like…buckling. I’m waiting for the landlord. I may have to get out. I don’t know where I’ll go. I can’t afford anything else. I’ve got to find a place for my p-pet.”
“The floor is buckling?”
Arc struggled. “More like wavy. Like the floor in the printer’s building.”
Sudden revelation underscored Lill’s soothing “Ah-haaaa…How old is your place?”
“I don’t know. The main house is from the early 1800s. The cottage was an outbuilding.
“Ohmygoodness, is that all? Honey, have you been in Mike’s hardware place lately? You need mountaineering gear to get from one side of the store to the other, the dip is so bad! Now I’ll tell you what: If you don’t come in, we’ll understand. But please, please, please, please, please try to get here. We’ve got a new fella, a fantastic interpreter. He looks like he stepped out of a Charles Willson Peale painting!”
Lill’s enthusiasm was the tossed bucket of cold water that Arc needed to get moving. More than a little curious, she threw on the outfit that she seemed to wear with boring regularity during the summer: chambray longsleeved shirt over a black cotton tee, olive-colored cargo capris, dark brown docksiders. She twirled her nondescript-brown, chin-length hair, clasped it above her neck in a faux-tortoiseshell clip, and was ready to go.
Lill was in the bookshop with a young man who looked like he himself belonged in a museum. Arc gulped back a gasp, trying not to stare at the fine, high-colored face and the slender, not-too-tall frame that elegantly filled the simple but historically accurate suit. Lill had been right. He really did look like a Peale subject.
Lill boomed heartily. “Arc, This is Daniel. Daniel, this is Arcangela. She handles publicity for the Village and sometimes manages the gift shop. Daniel was just explaining some of the finer points of good, old-fashioned, double-entry bookkeeping.”
He bowed slightly before briefly clasping the hand Arc extended. The light touch made her wonder if he didn’t know that he should shake it.
Arc ogled Phanuel’s jacket. The fabric resembled bolts of broadcloth she had seen in Colonial Williamsburg, and the workmanship was miraculous. Nine running stitches to an inch, she guessed. The threads that delineated the buttonholes on the vest were neatly, snuggly aligned, not loose and uneven, as seen on garments made by the Village’s amateur tailors. Amazed, she blurted, “Did you make this yourself?”
“I? Make this jacket? No, I had it made in Philadelphia.”
“Who’s the tailor, a member of the B, A, R?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The Brigade of the American Revolution. They require all historic clothing to be handsewn. They’ll inspect your stuff, too, to make sure you’re presenting the proper image to the public.”
“The man who made this is from Paris.”
“Nice! I hear they’re big on Napoleonic reenactments over there. Looks like the guy had tons of experience making period pieces!”
“Ah,” the newbie concluded, straightening his jacket and glancing out the window.
Arc thought the glance was a signal to end the conversation. Mutely miffed, she ushered him outside. Briskly keeping to the shade of the knobby sycamores that lined the cobbled sidewalk, she rattled off facts about Historic Fair Mantle Village: How the buildings had slowly fallen into disrepair after the inhabitants had slowly died off or moved to more economically secure areas the likes of Trenton and Philadelphia. How the Village, known to locals, became part of the state park during the nation’s Bicentennial, when people had more of an interest in history. He listened politely, though there were times when Arc felt he had no interest in what she was saying. Was she a lousy tour guide? Or did he know the story already? She considered that knowing a little more about him couldn’t hurt.
“Lill said you were discussing bookkeeping. Are you an accountant, Dan?”
They walked several paces before he replied. “Er, I’m afraid the good lady didn’t hear me correctly. My name is PHAN-uel, not Daniel.”
“Phanuel? Like Fanueil Hall, in Boston?”
“Not quite, miss. It’s Anna’s father’s name.”
“Anna?”
“Yes. In Luke, Chapter Six, I believe.”
“Ah. Of course.” Ohhhhhh boy, a Bible thumper. Arc looked away, crushing a grin but widening her eyes in consternation. She went to church every now and then, and listened to Masses by Mozart and Beethoven, but openly religious people skeeved her out. She imagined this one in a crowded Evangelical hall, loudly singing out of tune and shouting “amens” as a man in an expensive, custom-made, silk suit proclaimed the glories of the Gospel into a mobile microphone.
They came to a small, brick building with a brass plaque that announced “The Fair Mantle Post.”
“Once upon a time this was the local newspaper,” Arc said as Phanuel rested his forehead against the rectangular window, tented his hands around his temples and peered into the darkened front room. “It’s closed most of the year. We can’t interpret it.”
A muffled “Why?” oozed through Phanuel’s statue-still position.
“The trustees think it would be a waste of time.”
“Nothing is a waste of time.”
“Actually, I think it’s the state’s way of saying that the cost of interpreting the shop wouldn’t justify the cost of running it.”
“Are you not all volunteers?”
“There’s the cost of ink and paper. And utilities.”
“Utilities?”
“Electricity and heat.”
“Electricity?”
“We don’t interpret the buildings with lights on, but they all have lighting for security purposes, indoors and out. The outside fixtures go on after dark. Indoor lighting is discreetly designed and used only when the public isn’t on the premises.”
Arc stepped away, thinking to dislodge Phanuel from the window. There was so much more to show him before the park opened to the public! But he stayed precisely where he was, in precisely the same attitude. She chuckled. “You’re dying to get in there, aren’t you!”
He said nothing. When he continued to ignore her, she tapped his shoulder. “Hey, Phan!”
His reaction could not have been more unsettling had he shouted and jumped away from the window.
Rather than exhibit any surprise, Phanuel held his pose for another long moment, then slowly lowered his hands and even more slowly turned to Arcangela. “I do ask your pardon.”
The voice was soft, but the deliberate spacing between words and the disdain that flared from his eyes suggested that Phanuel Kerr was the walking effluence of assdom.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
1. An Intellectual Clot
Phanuel sat up, shaking leaves from his hair. A grainy layer of baffling origin covered the hot, humid woods. Was the effect the result of early morning mist or poor eyesight? Poor eyesight, most likely, Phanuel concluded, feeling the short, dewy grass for the fragile, metal frames that were inclined to flee his face at the smallest provocation.
Rubbing his eyes in a futile attempt to clear his vision, he found his specs precisely where they should have been—slightly below the bridge of his nose, just as he always wore them. The discovery of the necessary addition to his countenance was cause for alarm, not relief. Why was he was still wearing the specs if he had been sleeping?
Phanuel’s hand had left a dense, gummy fog upon the lenses. Still sitting, he laboriously excavated a handkerchief from his coat pocket and thoughtfully rubbed the small ovals that brought the world to his eyes.
By the standards of July 1798, Phanuel Kerr at twenty-five had a pleasing appearance. The miniature portrait that his mother kept in her pocket showed the version of what any visitor to the site that oppressive morning would have seen: a fine-complexioned, oval face of apparently no distinction framed by lank, fashionably long, rosewood-colored hair that would have looked fuller if cut much shorter. As in the miniature, he wore a single-breasted, dark gray jacket that, seen full length, had two long, tapered tails. His chin nested in the knot of an elaborate cravat which was nested in the upturned collar of a white shirt and the standing collar of a striped waistcoat. The collar of the waistcoat nested in the standing collar of the jacket. Phanuel’s britches, which were not at all seen or suggested in the portrait, were of a lighter tan color.
Phanuel had graduated from the College of New Jersey, half a state away in Princeton. He could argue the finer points of the Greek and Roman philosophies upon which the United States were founded and held great hope for progress in society and the sciences. His mother had wanted him to read law, but as he preferred to read newspapers, he had decided to accept his uncle’s offer to help run the family publication, a respectable broadsheet called the Fair Mantle Post.
The summer of 1798 was rather a bizarre time for newspapers in the United States, which then consisted of the East Coast states from Maine to Georgia. The combination of nasty party politics and an undeclared naval war with France had inspired the Congress to pass the Sedition Act, which forbade the press from printing comments or cartoons criticizing or defaming President Adams and other lawmakers. Privately, Phanuel condemned the Act as a violation of the Constitutional right to free speech. But Uncle William, who had fought in the American Revolution, agreed with the president that the Act was a necessary measure in time of war.
That summer, the Congress had passed a law imposing the nation’s first income tax, which was meant to raise a standing army. Though many of his neighbors in sleepy Fair Mantle decried the tax, Uncle William, who remembered how the Continental Army had struggled without adequate funding, had lauded it. He decided to illustrate a pro-tax, pro-war story with a new etching of President Adams done by a local artist. The artist, a renowned perfectionist, would not relinquish the etching until it suited him by far more than it pleased Uncle William. Exhausted more from annoyance at the artist than from having to keep his pressmen waiting until after midnight to put out the evening edition, Uncle William went home. Before leaving, he told Phanuel not to take great pains in fitting the portrait perfectly in with the story, as that would mean re-printing an already-printed page, but to ”Drop it in where you can, with the jump” to an interior page.
When the product arrived, Phanuel, already bleary-eyed from hours of reading upside-down type face, surveyed the unprinted plates lining the slanted wooden boards against the wall, lifted out the customary notice about the Post’s willingness to print news regarding births, weddings, engagements, banns, etc., and placed the etching face up. The edition was printed and distributed a few hours later than usual, but well before dawn. Phanuel and the pressmen all went to their homes with a general feeling of relief at having accomplished their tasks.
The communal sense of satisfaction rendered Uncle William’s bellowing entrance the following day all the more unexpected. “You great, intellectual clot! It makes us look like we want the man assassinated!”
Uncle William shook the badly crumpled section of page in front of Phanuel's face. It was some moments before the younger man understood that the etching of President Adams hovered upside down amid the death notices and nowhere near the article relating to the President.
Phanuel recalled how he had been too surprised to say anything either in shock or in defense of himself. He had remained silent as his uncle, enraged, heaved him out the door and into the street. He had remained silent, too, as he dashed back and pounded on the door. But Uncle William also had maintained silence and refused to let him in. Within hours, the publisher was arrested for sedition under the very legislation he had applauded. The Fair Mantle Post was closed down, boarded up and guarded by the authorities.
Revisiting the scene of Uncle William in manacles, surrounded by soldiers, Phanuel slowly realized that he had not witnessed his uncle’s arrest. He had heard about it. Or, more accurately, he had overheard a conversation about it, for everybody in town had adopted Uncle William’s example and refused to speak to Phanuel or to grant him the smallest act of recognition.
One person alone had yet to cross his path: Elinore. She was the bookseller’s daughter, a girl whose intelligence outshone her beauty. Surely, she would speak to him, if for no other reason than to sell a book for her father.
It didn’t occur to Phanuel that the hour was too early for shops to be open until he had arrived at the neat, cobbled street and its line of tidy, brick and clapboard shops. In the awful humidity, the sycamores, already scabbed with the peeling, dry bark that presages autumn, cast still, monstrous shadows upon the slate roofs and shuttered facades. Remarkably, the bookshop’s cellar door was open.
Phanuel carefully descended the narrow, brick steps to an earthen floor grown lumpy with years of use. In the cool, dank darkness of the cellar he smelled wooden shelves and paper products. The stairs to the ground floor were on the far wall, he remembered. There, he saw the familiar wooden staircase and followed the dim light up the steps to a door that opened on to the narrow hallway. Phanuel at once knew that something was amiss.
The hallway split the building in two. The room on the right contained the familiar mahogany shelves, but they were laden not with the Morocco and lesser-quality bindings he knew so well, but slim, shiny, cheap-looking articles of unknown substance. The room on the left had glass casings filled with crusty, sometimes rusted, cannon balls, grape shot, and elaborately feathered writing quills. Signs everywhere were printed in a serif font he had never seen before.
A person popped into the doorway on his right. The impression he had was of a short, stout, blind man, for the person had closely cropped, tightly curled gray hair and wore large dark, thickly rimmed spectacles that forbade any view of the eyes. And the person was clad in the oddest outfit: pants the likes of what sailors wore, only cut with a slimmer leg and of an odd, dark green color. On top, the shirt appeared to be made of the same fabric. The sleeves were short and contained colorful appliqués with fancy writing. The collar was folded down and open. The flesh on the arm was pink and flabby. It shook as the arm extended for a handshake.
“Hi! You must be one of the new interpreters!”
The jolly voice was that of a woman. As Phanuel took the hand, silently noting how real it felt, he could not help noticing that protruding upper breast pockets on the shirt quivered when the person spoke. The individual was, indeed, of the female variety.
Phanuel’s eye caught the sign above the vast, mahogany counter in the room behind the woman. “Historic Fair Mantle Village,” it proclaimed.
Fair Mantle Village? Fair Mantle was a borough, not a village! And what was so historic about it? What had happened to the bookshop? Where was Elinore? Who was this woman? Why was she dressed so oddly?
Phanuel thought he must be having one of those dreams we take for real. He willed himself to wake up. The room spun, taking his breath, a feeling he thought remarkably realistic for a dream. He had heard of this sort of delirium happening to women whose stays were too tight. He ran his finger beneath his shirt collar. “Pardon me--” He muttered, concerned that opening his mouth too far would result in an indignity.
“Hot, hon?” The woman jovially slapped his arm. “Well, you’re a real trooper, wearing that getup in this heat! Here--”
She pulled him by the arm through a nearby door and made him sit on the wooden lid of what impressed him as an elevated, ceramic seat of ease. The thing was positioned next to a ceramic, square-shaped bowl adorned with metallic taps on either side of a spout sticking out of the upper portion of the bowl. Water gushed from the spout when she turned the tap on the right. “Splash some of this on your face. You’ll feel better.”
He studied the water, mute.
The woman backed away, laughing heartily. “You’re not going to hurl on me, now, are you?”
Do what on her? Hurl? Hurl what? What was that woman thinking?
Shaking his head as if to say no, Phanuel leaned over and retched into the sink.
Rubbing his eyes in a futile attempt to clear his vision, he found his specs precisely where they should have been—slightly below the bridge of his nose, just as he always wore them. The discovery of the necessary addition to his countenance was cause for alarm, not relief. Why was he was still wearing the specs if he had been sleeping?
Phanuel’s hand had left a dense, gummy fog upon the lenses. Still sitting, he laboriously excavated a handkerchief from his coat pocket and thoughtfully rubbed the small ovals that brought the world to his eyes.
By the standards of July 1798, Phanuel Kerr at twenty-five had a pleasing appearance. The miniature portrait that his mother kept in her pocket showed the version of what any visitor to the site that oppressive morning would have seen: a fine-complexioned, oval face of apparently no distinction framed by lank, fashionably long, rosewood-colored hair that would have looked fuller if cut much shorter. As in the miniature, he wore a single-breasted, dark gray jacket that, seen full length, had two long, tapered tails. His chin nested in the knot of an elaborate cravat which was nested in the upturned collar of a white shirt and the standing collar of a striped waistcoat. The collar of the waistcoat nested in the standing collar of the jacket. Phanuel’s britches, which were not at all seen or suggested in the portrait, were of a lighter tan color.
Phanuel had graduated from the College of New Jersey, half a state away in Princeton. He could argue the finer points of the Greek and Roman philosophies upon which the United States were founded and held great hope for progress in society and the sciences. His mother had wanted him to read law, but as he preferred to read newspapers, he had decided to accept his uncle’s offer to help run the family publication, a respectable broadsheet called the Fair Mantle Post.
The summer of 1798 was rather a bizarre time for newspapers in the United States, which then consisted of the East Coast states from Maine to Georgia. The combination of nasty party politics and an undeclared naval war with France had inspired the Congress to pass the Sedition Act, which forbade the press from printing comments or cartoons criticizing or defaming President Adams and other lawmakers. Privately, Phanuel condemned the Act as a violation of the Constitutional right to free speech. But Uncle William, who had fought in the American Revolution, agreed with the president that the Act was a necessary measure in time of war.
That summer, the Congress had passed a law imposing the nation’s first income tax, which was meant to raise a standing army. Though many of his neighbors in sleepy Fair Mantle decried the tax, Uncle William, who remembered how the Continental Army had struggled without adequate funding, had lauded it. He decided to illustrate a pro-tax, pro-war story with a new etching of President Adams done by a local artist. The artist, a renowned perfectionist, would not relinquish the etching until it suited him by far more than it pleased Uncle William. Exhausted more from annoyance at the artist than from having to keep his pressmen waiting until after midnight to put out the evening edition, Uncle William went home. Before leaving, he told Phanuel not to take great pains in fitting the portrait perfectly in with the story, as that would mean re-printing an already-printed page, but to ”Drop it in where you can, with the jump” to an interior page.
When the product arrived, Phanuel, already bleary-eyed from hours of reading upside-down type face, surveyed the unprinted plates lining the slanted wooden boards against the wall, lifted out the customary notice about the Post’s willingness to print news regarding births, weddings, engagements, banns, etc., and placed the etching face up. The edition was printed and distributed a few hours later than usual, but well before dawn. Phanuel and the pressmen all went to their homes with a general feeling of relief at having accomplished their tasks.
The communal sense of satisfaction rendered Uncle William’s bellowing entrance the following day all the more unexpected. “You great, intellectual clot! It makes us look like we want the man assassinated!”
Uncle William shook the badly crumpled section of page in front of Phanuel's face. It was some moments before the younger man understood that the etching of President Adams hovered upside down amid the death notices and nowhere near the article relating to the President.
Phanuel recalled how he had been too surprised to say anything either in shock or in defense of himself. He had remained silent as his uncle, enraged, heaved him out the door and into the street. He had remained silent, too, as he dashed back and pounded on the door. But Uncle William also had maintained silence and refused to let him in. Within hours, the publisher was arrested for sedition under the very legislation he had applauded. The Fair Mantle Post was closed down, boarded up and guarded by the authorities.
Revisiting the scene of Uncle William in manacles, surrounded by soldiers, Phanuel slowly realized that he had not witnessed his uncle’s arrest. He had heard about it. Or, more accurately, he had overheard a conversation about it, for everybody in town had adopted Uncle William’s example and refused to speak to Phanuel or to grant him the smallest act of recognition.
One person alone had yet to cross his path: Elinore. She was the bookseller’s daughter, a girl whose intelligence outshone her beauty. Surely, she would speak to him, if for no other reason than to sell a book for her father.
It didn’t occur to Phanuel that the hour was too early for shops to be open until he had arrived at the neat, cobbled street and its line of tidy, brick and clapboard shops. In the awful humidity, the sycamores, already scabbed with the peeling, dry bark that presages autumn, cast still, monstrous shadows upon the slate roofs and shuttered facades. Remarkably, the bookshop’s cellar door was open.
Phanuel carefully descended the narrow, brick steps to an earthen floor grown lumpy with years of use. In the cool, dank darkness of the cellar he smelled wooden shelves and paper products. The stairs to the ground floor were on the far wall, he remembered. There, he saw the familiar wooden staircase and followed the dim light up the steps to a door that opened on to the narrow hallway. Phanuel at once knew that something was amiss.
The hallway split the building in two. The room on the right contained the familiar mahogany shelves, but they were laden not with the Morocco and lesser-quality bindings he knew so well, but slim, shiny, cheap-looking articles of unknown substance. The room on the left had glass casings filled with crusty, sometimes rusted, cannon balls, grape shot, and elaborately feathered writing quills. Signs everywhere were printed in a serif font he had never seen before.
A person popped into the doorway on his right. The impression he had was of a short, stout, blind man, for the person had closely cropped, tightly curled gray hair and wore large dark, thickly rimmed spectacles that forbade any view of the eyes. And the person was clad in the oddest outfit: pants the likes of what sailors wore, only cut with a slimmer leg and of an odd, dark green color. On top, the shirt appeared to be made of the same fabric. The sleeves were short and contained colorful appliqués with fancy writing. The collar was folded down and open. The flesh on the arm was pink and flabby. It shook as the arm extended for a handshake.
“Hi! You must be one of the new interpreters!”
The jolly voice was that of a woman. As Phanuel took the hand, silently noting how real it felt, he could not help noticing that protruding upper breast pockets on the shirt quivered when the person spoke. The individual was, indeed, of the female variety.
Phanuel’s eye caught the sign above the vast, mahogany counter in the room behind the woman. “Historic Fair Mantle Village,” it proclaimed.
Fair Mantle Village? Fair Mantle was a borough, not a village! And what was so historic about it? What had happened to the bookshop? Where was Elinore? Who was this woman? Why was she dressed so oddly?
Phanuel thought he must be having one of those dreams we take for real. He willed himself to wake up. The room spun, taking his breath, a feeling he thought remarkably realistic for a dream. He had heard of this sort of delirium happening to women whose stays were too tight. He ran his finger beneath his shirt collar. “Pardon me--” He muttered, concerned that opening his mouth too far would result in an indignity.
“Hot, hon?” The woman jovially slapped his arm. “Well, you’re a real trooper, wearing that getup in this heat! Here--”
She pulled him by the arm through a nearby door and made him sit on the wooden lid of what impressed him as an elevated, ceramic seat of ease. The thing was positioned next to a ceramic, square-shaped bowl adorned with metallic taps on either side of a spout sticking out of the upper portion of the bowl. Water gushed from the spout when she turned the tap on the right. “Splash some of this on your face. You’ll feel better.”
He studied the water, mute.
The woman backed away, laughing heartily. “You’re not going to hurl on me, now, are you?”
Do what on her? Hurl? Hurl what? What was that woman thinking?
Shaking his head as if to say no, Phanuel leaned over and retched into the sink.
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