The Book of Speculation (4 page)

Over a series of weeks, Peabody taught his Wild Boy the art of reading people. Prior to each evening’s show he sat with the boy in the Wild Boy cage. Together they peeked through the heavy drapes and observed the crowd.

“That one there,” Peabody whispered. “She clutches the hand of the man beside her—that one’s half affright already. A single pounce in her direction and she’ll have a fit.” He chuckled, round cheeks spilling over white beard. “And the big man—puffed-looking fellow?” The boy’s eyes darted to a man huge as an ox. “See if he won’t try his hand against our strongman.” He murmured something about using the second set of weights for the show.

The boy began to think of people as animals, each with their own temperament. Peabody was a bear, burly, protective, and predisposed to bellowing. Nat, the strongman, broad browed and quiet natured, was a cart horse. Benno, whom the boy had started to take meals with, possessed a goat’s playfulness. The corded scar that pulled Benno’s mouth downward when he spoke fascinated the boy. The fortune-teller was something stranger. Madame Ryzhkova was both birdlike and predatory. Despite great age, her movements were twitching and brisk. She looked at people as though they were prey, her eyes bearing the mark of hunger. Her voice stood the hair at his neck on end.

*   *   *

They were setting up camp after leaving a town called Rawlson when Peabody took the boy aside.

“You’ve done well by me.” He tapped his hand lightly on the boy’s back and pulled him away from sweeping the cage. “It’s time I do well by you. We cannot continue calling you
boy
forever.”

Peabody led him between the circled wagons to where a fire burned and members of the troupe took turns roasting rabbit and fish. Darkish men some might have called gypsies played dice; Susanna, the contortion girl, stretched and cracked her bones against a poplar tree, while Nat sat cross-legged, holding the miniature horse securely in his lap, stroking its stiff hair with a dark hand. Weeks prior the boy would have been frightened by them, but now as Peabody tugged him toward the gathering, he felt only curiosity.

Peabody took the boy under the shoulder and hoisted him high into the air, then set him firmly atop a tree stump near the fire.

“Friends and fellow miscreants.” His silvery show voice stopped all movement. “We have tonight an arduous, yet joyful duty. A wonder has traveled among us in this Wild Boy.” The troupe closed in around the fire. Wagons opened. Melina, the juggler with striking eyes, stepped down from her wagon. Meixel, the small blondish man who served as a trick rider, emerged from the woods covered in straw and spit from tending the llama. Ryzhkova’s door creaked open. “This lad has earned his weight and is well on to making us wealthier. It is our duty to name him so that one day, my most esteemed friends, he will be master of all he surveys.” The fire burst and threw sparks like stars into the night. “A strong name,” Peabody said.

“Benjamin,” called a voice.

“A true name.”

“Peter.”

“A name that carries importance,” said Peabody. Inescapable, the voice buzzed inside the boy, tickling parts of his skull. He stared into the fire and felt his heartbeat rise.

“He is called Amos.” Madame Ryzhkova spoke softly, but her words sliced. “Amos is a bearer of burdens, as will be this boy. Amos is a name that holds the world with strength and sorrows.”

“Amos,” said Peabody.

Amos,
the boy thought. The seer’s eyes glinted at him, two black beads.
Amos.
The sound was long and short, round and flat. It was his.

Meixel found his fiddle and played a bouncy melody that started Susanna dancing and brought about drinking and laughter. Amos watched and listened for a time, but slinked away once he could tell he’d been forgotten. He spent his naming night stretched across the mattress in Peabody’s wagon. Silently he repeated this moniker, hearing each syllable as it had sounded on Madame Ryzhkova’s lips.
Amos,
he thought.
I am Amos.

Late in the night Peabody returned to the wagon and sat down to sketch in his book. It was long hours before he extinguished his light. As he did so, he spared a glance over his shoulder to where the boy lay. “Good night, my boy. Dream well, Amos.”

Amos smiled into the darkness.

3

JUNE 22ND

It’s an absurd hour for a phone call, but the more absurd the hour, the more likely someone is to be home. Though the sun is barely up over the water, Martin Churchwarry sounds as though he’s been awake for hours.

“Mr. Churchwarry? I’m so glad to reach you. This is Simon Watson. You sent me a book.”

“Oh, Mr. Watson,” he says. “I’m delighted to hear it arrived in one piece.” He sounds excited, almost breathy. “It’s rather fantastic, isn’t it? I’m only sorry that I wasn’t able to hang on to it myself, but Marie would have killed me if I’d brought home another stray.”

“Absolutely,” I say reflexively. After a brief pause, “I don’t think I follow.”

“It’s the bookseller’s occupational hazard. The longer you’re in business, the more the line between shop and home blurs. Oh, let’s be honest. There isn’t a line at all anymore, and Marie—my wife—won’t tolerate me taking up any more space with books I can’t sell but like the look of.”

“I see.”

“But you haven’t called about my wife. I assume you have questions.”

“Yes. Specifically where did you get it and why send it to me?”

“Of course, of course. I mentioned that I specialize in antiquarian books, yes? I’m a bit of a book hound, actually. I hunt down specific volumes for clients. Yours was part of a lot in a series of estate auctions. I wasn’t there about it specifically, I was there for a lovely edition of
Moby-Dick
; a client of mine is a bit obsessed with it.” There is a jovial bounce to his voice and I find myself picturing an elfin man. “There was a 1930 Lakeside Press edition in the lot I couldn’t pass up. I was lucky enough to have the winning bid, but wound up with some twenty-odd other volumes in the process, nothing spectacular, but saleable things—Dickens, some Woolf—and then there was your book.”

My book. I haven’t thought of it that way, though its leather feels comfortable in my hands, right. “Whose estate?”

“A management company was in charge of the event. I tried to follow up with them about the book, but they weren’t terribly forthcoming. If something has no provenance, their interest is generally low, and the lot it was part of was a mixed bag, more volume than quality. It belonged to a John Vermillion.”

The name is unfamiliar. I know little of my family. Dad was the only child of older parents who died before I was born, and Mom didn’t live long enough to tell me much of anything. “Why send it to me and not his family?”

“The name, Verona Bonn. Wonderful sounding. Half the charm in old books is the marks of living they acquire; the way the name was written seemed to imply ownership. It was too lovely to destroy or let rot any further, yet I couldn’t keep it. So I did a bit of research on the name. A circus high diver—how extraordinary. I discovered a death notice, which led me to your mother, and in turn to you.”

“I doubt it was my grandmother’s,” I say. “From what I know she lived out of a suitcase.”

“Well, another family member’s perhaps? Or maybe a fan of your grandmother’s—people do love a good story.”

Yes, a story. We are of course a good story. My hands slip and suddenly my coffee is on the kitchen floor, pooling in the cracked linoleum. I grab for a paper towel to mop it up and knock over the sugar canister. The old sour feeling settles in the center of my chest, a familiar sensation that comes with being the town tragedy. A mother who drowned herself, a father dead from grief, a young man raising his sister alone.

“Do you do this kind of thing often? Track down families of people who used to own your books?”

“More often than you’d think, Mr. Watson—Simon. May I call you Simon?”

Blood wells from the bottom of my foot, a dark red bloom mixes with the coffee and sugar. I must have stepped on a piece of the mug. “If you like.”

“Wonderful. I just last year came across a lovely edition of Scott’s
The Lady of the Lake
. It had a beautiful padded and embossed cloth binding. Inside there was a pressed violet that was forty years old if it was a day. A little piece of magic. The owner, Rebecca Willoughby, had written her name on the inside cover. Rebecca was deceased, of course, but I managed to find her niece, who was delighted to receive a book that her aunt had obviously treasured as a girl. She said it was a bit like meeting her aunt all over again. I’d hoped to have a similar experience with this book. Has it stirred anything at all?”

The conversation has jostled memories, but not pleasant ones. “You found me, so you must know my parents are dead.”

There is an awkward cough. “I’m terribly sorry. I apologize if I’ve caused any unpleasantness.”

“It’s been a long time.” I exhale. And the book is fascinating, and somehow connected to someone with an interest in my grandmother.

“If you don’t want it, I understand. I’d just ask that you send it back to me rather than disposing of it—I’ll happily pay the shipping. It’s just such a pretty book, and so old. I suppose I can convince Marie to let me keep one more.”

The thought of disposing of something that has survived so much is abhorrent. “No, I’ll hang on to it. And I’m perfectly capable of keeping it safe. Weirdly enough, you’ve sent it to the right person. I’m a librarian. I work with archives.”

“How perfectly apt.” Churchwarry laughs, and I begin to understand some of his delight in passing books on. There’s a certain serendipity, a little light that’s settled in my sternum.

He asks a favor of me, gently, as though expecting my refusal. “Will you let me know if you find out why your grandmother’s name is in it? It’s not important, of course, I just love to know my books’ history. A quirk of mine.”

I will look into it, not because he’s asked, but because I should. Too much of my family has been lost to the haze of time and forgetting. “I will,” I assure him before hanging up.

My hands feel large and clumsy. I stick a Band-Aid to my foot, shove on my shoes, and watch the sun climb over the water. I don’t mop up the coffee or the sugar mess. Later. An hour passes after hanging up from Churchwarry and the unsettling conversation. How I spend it, I can’t say.

*   *   *

Closing the door requires an abrupt tug, surprising it into shutting, another side effect of an aging house and slipping-away land. I’ll have to rehang it. Maybe Frank can angle it with a lathe. I toss the book onto the passenger seat, then wince. It’s a crime to abuse anything this old.

The drive to Grainger Library runs the long way through Napawset, through the three-block historic district, where all the houses are from the Williams family—colonial boxes built by brothers who divvied up the town in 1694—curving around the harbor road, past the marina and fiberglass boats Frank hates, winding through Port and the captains’ houses that tourists call charming. Port is packed with cars lining up for the ferry to Connecticut, and the big boat, huge jaws open, is swallowing sedans and sports cars. The harbor road climbs a hill crowned by a monastery, then dips down, following the salt marsh before turning toward the center of the island and a flat stretch of land, in the middle of which is the Grainger.

Leslie and Christina at the circulation desk confirm I’m late. No one is ever in first thing in the morning and the children’s reading groups don’t start until ten o’clock, but the ignominy of lateness is still present as I walk past the director’s office to my desk in reference. I hear the hollow thudding of Janice Kupferman’s heels pacing her office. Yes, she saw me.

Sliding into my chair usually feels like coming home, but today it’s troubled. I set the book on my desk and stare at it. I should start on grant applications, or the never-ending stream of purchasing requisitions that inevitably get denied. After a few attempts at a statement of need for an update to our electronic catalogs and reading lists, I find myself gazing at the reference stacks. The Grainger feels like mildew and has a mood of disrepair.

The library’s mainstay is the whaling history archive. Though Napawset never saw much in the way of actual whaling, Philip Grainger, the library’s founder, was a man obsessed. Upon his death he willed his entire collection of documents on whaling and Long Island to the library. Shipping records, art, nautical charts, market prices for whale oil and soaps, manifests—some sixty years of collecting housed in two large windowless rooms on the second floor. It’s Janice’s pet project and the source of our funding, though most of us wouldn’t mind seeing it go.

Over by an ancient microfiche machine, Alice McAvoy restocks shelves. There’s something hypnotic about her thick red braid. Not quite red—strawberry blond. I watch it sway, timing my breath to her hair. I can almost hear the gentle swish, almost disappear into the sound.

Alice turns toward the scratching rustle of a tweed suit headed in my direction. Janice Kupferman on the move.

“Simon? May I see you in my office for a minute?” Janice asks.

“Absolutely.”

Janice’s office is low ceilinged and fits her fireplug build, which leaves me distinctly out of place. Sitting in her office chair requires me to eat my knees.

“Sorry,” she says, seeing my predicament. “There’s never any money for furniture.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Yes, I suppose you would be.” A tired smile rounds the just-forming jowls that indicate passage through middle age. “How long have you worked here? Ten years, at least.”

“Could be. I’ve lost track.”

She sits across from me, putting three feet of wood-grain laminate desk between us. “I hate this,” she says. Each word is punctuated with a head shake that makes her earrings jiggle—dolphins, hung by their tails, peeping under a precise brown bob. “I really hate this.”

I’d sink into the chair but it’s too cramped. I know what’s coming. “Budget?”

“The town cut us this year. Badly. I’ll try and fight them as much as I can, but—”