Irish Alibi (2 page)

“That goddamn Sherman,” Magnus drawled.

Caleb cut short his account of Roger Knight's class. What would his uncle make of the fact that General Sherman's boys had attended Notre Dame during the War Between the States and that the general had been feted on campus after Appomattox?

The great fascination for Caleb of Roger Knight's class was the way the past was brought alive and surprising connections with Notre Dame brought out. With the zeal of a convert, Caleb had decided to write an article on General Sherman and Notre Dame for an alternative student paper. Because Roger Knight had mentioned that one of Sherman's sons had died while visiting his father during the siege of Vicksburg and another had died at Notre Dame and been buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery on campus, Caleb had taken Sarah on a tour of the place in an unsuccessful effort to find the boy's grave.

“Oh, he was moved after the war,” Roger said. “I should have mentioned that. Not that a visit to Cedar Grove is ever a waste of time. You must have noticed that great plinth marking the site of Alexis Coquillard's grave?”

“Who was he?”

Like most students, Caleb had come to Notre Dame historically illiterate. His knowledge of the past of Western civilization was hazy; even the events that had taken place on the North American continent during the past three hundred years were more or less a closed book to him. How then could he have imagined that the university to which he came had such a fascinating past? In Atlanta, he switched the topic of conversation to this broader and safer avenue.

“Is he a historian?”

“Roger Knight? No, his doctorate is in philosophy.”

“Good God.”

Caleb had already heard all he wanted to hear of his uncle's long-ago travails in philosophy courses at Notre Dame, although his reenactment of a lecture on the intuition of being was quite the performance.

“Tell me about your book.”

It sounded like a dozen other books for sale in the campus bookstore, but there seemed to be an insatiable appetite for them.

“Maybe I should have used a pen name.”

Was it that bad? “Why?”

Magnus grew pensive. However thoroughly transplanted he had become, Uncle Magnus's athletic allegiance was to his alma mater, not the highest recommendation in Atlanta, where he covered Georgia and Georgia Tech with some semblance of enthusiasm. But his fundamental loyalty emerged whenever Notre Dame faced Georgia Tech, and Magnus was the object of pointed jibes from his fellow sportswriters and the recipient of irate and threatening e-mails.

And now, just in time for the big contest between Notre Dame and Georgia Tech,
Irish Icons
had been published, and his uncle had been scheduled to autograph copies in the campus bookstore before the game.

In the Atlanta airport, waiting for his flight back to South Bend, Caleb had called his mother in Minneapolis to report on his visit to her brother.

“Why didn't Magnus ever marry?”

“Who said he didn't?”

“What happened?”

“Ask him.”

They parked and locked Sarah's car and then began to walk in the direction of music. The Notre Dame band was making its traditional circuit of the campus before heading for the stadium.

*   *   *

Before leaving, Magnus autographed every book on the table and then pushed back, thanking Jonathon, the clerk who had overseen his signing.

“I think I did pretty well.”

Jonathon nodded. Every author did well on a game day signing.

Restored to anonymity, Magnus elbowed his way through the crowd to the door. Outside Quintin Kelly was waiting. Magnus stared at him.

“You're smoking!”

“That's what happens when you light a cigarette.”

The aroma of secondhand smoke was overpoweringly attractive. “Can I have one of those?”

“This is a smoke-free campus.”

“Come on.” The autumn air was clouded with smoke and sweetened by the smell of burning charcoal. Quintin shook a cigarette free and extended it to Magnus. Magnus's hand moved toward it, then stopped. Thus had Adam hesitated when Eve offered him an apple. He decided to follow Oscar Wilde's advice. The only way to get rid of temptation is to succumb to it. He inhaled and a wave of dizziness swept momentarily over him.

“You got a ticket, Quintin?”

“I bought one from a scalper for a hundred dollars.”

“A bargain. Want to join me in the press box?”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

“Let me see if I can sell this ticket.”

Quintin realized a 50 percent profit on his investment, and they headed toward the stadium.

“My secretary,” Magnus explained when the guard squinted at Quintin.

Quintin drew a hand up his sleeve. “My shorthand.”

Inside they had to wait for the elevator, but soon they were rising in the car, which was crammed cheek by jowl with denizens of the press. The door opened onto a large area with a bar that was doing a brisk business. Magnus ordered a Bloody Mary for himself, another for his guest, and then led Quintin to his assigned place in the front row of the banked seats. Below them the field gleamed greenly as if it were an aerial photo. The stands were already almost full; the visiting band was being ignored by nearly eighty thousand fans.

“What a view,” Quintin said. “Am I glad I ran into you.”

As if to establish equity, he put his copy of
Irish Icons
on the surface before him. Magnus had taken a portable computer from his shoulder bag and was getting ready. The press box was equipped for wireless, and he was soon linked with the city room in Atlanta. A face appeared on his screen and began to speak. A technical exchange went on for several minutes, and Quintin looked out over the field. He was beginning to wonder if he wanted to have the conversation with Magnus he had come all this way for.

Over the next hours, Magnus was busy tapping out a running commentary on the game that unfolded below them, a blur of prose that would be shaped into something resembling English by a rewrite man in Atlanta. Georgia Tech scored within the first five minutes, but it proved to be their only points of the game. The Irish ran up the score until the third quarter and then sent in the second team. Third-stringers were playing before it was over.

Magnus and Quintin had had another drink at halftime and had another before going down in the elevator. Outside, Quintin offered Magnus a cigarette, and he took it eagerly.

“My wife smokes,” he said.

“I know.”

*   *   *

After the game, Caleb and Sarah went to Legends, the senior bar, which was senior indeed for the occasion, jammed full of alumni trying to communicate above the general din. It was impossible to get within ordering distance of the bar, so they borrowed bottles from a table whose occupants were replaying the game, designing plays on paper napkins, making body movements from a seated position meant to indicate what they would have had the linemen do.

“Another round,” a playmaker said when Caleb removed two bottles from the trove in the center of the table.

“Coming up.”

“Let's go outside, for heaven's sake,” Sarah said.

When they were leaving, they ran into Uncle Magnus entering.

“Caleb!” But Magnus's eyes were approvingly on Sarah.

“You'll die of thirst in here,” Caleb said.

“Is there somewhere else?”

“I have an idea.”

Magnus introduced them to his classmate Quintin Kelly. The two older men did not seem in need of more drink, but Magnus took the beer from Caleb's hand. Sarah gave hers to Kelly, who tried to pay her for it.

“It's all right. We stole them.”

“Ho ho.”

Truth is seldom believed. The benches that lined the walkways were filled with fans; others were seated on the ledge around the reflecting pool in front of the library. In the gloaming, Canada geese stared beadily at these invaders of their turf.

“Where are we going?” Sarah asked Caleb.

“It's a surprise.”

“Oh, no.”

“Tell me about Sarah,” Magnus said, taking her arm.

“Have you been smoking?”

“I quit.”

“You smell of tobacco.”

He pointed. “Quintin smokes.” He paused. “So does my wife.”

He let go of her arm and joined Quintin. “What did you mean, you know?”

“I don't follow you.”

“You said you knew my wife smokes.”

“A lucky guess.”

3

Sarah Kincade was a daughter of Memphis whose family could be traced back to the original colony of Virginia. An ancestor had been a senator from Mississippi whose seat had subsequently been filled by the sainted Jefferson Davis. On her mother's side, she was related to a member of the cabinet of the Confederacy. But it was not these political appointments that were the pride of the family. So many potential forebears had fallen in battle during the War Between the States that it seemed a miracle that the family had continued. But it had, prouder in defeat than it ever could have been in victory, its vast landholdings intact when the smoke of battle cleared. During the horrors of Reconstruction, the Kincades had persisted in pride and honor, no matter the carpetbagger who lay under a stone a hundred yards from the ancestral home—a stone on which had been chiseled
Sic semper tyrannis
. The Kincades had retained their Catholic faith with something of the tenacity of the English recusants. John Bannister Tabb, the priest-poet, had been a family friend.

Over the years, land had been sold but the huge house overlooking the river retained, as well as the home in Memphis where Sarah had been raised. Her father had been the first Kincade to go north to Notre Dame to school, and a tradition seemed established when her twin brothers, Malcolm and Eugene, now juniors, went off to South Bend. It was their experience that overcame her father's reluctance to send Sarah to what he still thought of as an all-male university. In her freshman year, she had met Caleb.

“Lanier?”

He spelled it for her.

“I know how it's spelled. Are you related to Sidney?”

The question drew a blank. No matter. His expression when he puzzled over her question caused his hitherto ordinary face to morph into the countenance of the ideal male she knew she was destined for. She had read Trollope's
Ayala's Angel
, and it might have been constructed from entries in the diary she had kept locked in a drawer of her bedroom desk. She felt she knew now why she had come to Notre Dame.

Caleb seemed unaware that fate, nay, providence, had brought them together, but even that unawareness was attractive to her.

The honors class they were both taking in their freshman year was a bore, but what is more binding than a shared discontent? Caleb was also taking a course from Roger Knight and acquired a standard for the appraisal of professors.

“But his reputation is all hearsay,” Sarah said.

Caleb shook his head. “I talked him into a late enrollment. I'm in his class.”

“When did you talk to him?” Her lower lip puffed out in an almost pout, and she widened her great gray eyes. Confederate gray. When she tossed her head, her long single braid bounced between her shoulders. She was half annoyed that she was not privy to all his actions.

“You can get into the class if you act fast.”

“What is it?”

“Notre Dame and the Civil War.”

Sarah said nothing. Their relationship had prospered because she had resolutely kept her proud ancestry offstage. Much as she was attracted to Caleb, certain as she was that he was her destiny and she was his, she did not dare risk providing him the occasion of making some unforgivable remark about the South. Her ears had already been offended by condescending remarks from students for whom the South meant only Florida and mindless hours in the sun.

“Sounds interesting.”

“I know nothing about the Civil War.”

“It's a vast subject.”

“Why don't you sign up for the course?”

She put a hand on his arm. “I find it difficult to pay attention when you're in the room.”

He actually looked away, then turned back to her. “Cut it out.” But his voice had softened. She touched the cleft in his chin.

“What's wrong?” He rubbed at his chin, then looked at his hand.

“It's still there.”

What she loved about him was the fact that he always thought she was kidding when she practically threw herself at him. They had so much fun together, but it was not a contact sport. Just buddies, that seemed to be his view of it. Sarah was patient, though; how could she not be, occupying as she did a providential role? Then he had confided in her his intention to write an article on General Sherman and Notre Dame.

“Do you think you should?”

“It's a fascinating topic.”

“But so controversial!”

“Controversial?”

How could she explain to him that the war that had once divided the country might prove to be a wedge between them? Her apprehension lifted when he put his arm about her.

“The Civil War ended in 1865, Sarah. It's ancient history.”

He really believed that.

*   *   *

It was while she was agonizing over the wisdom of introducing Caleb to her brothers that he met them without any intervention on her part. They confronted one another when their teams met in interhall football. In the final minutes of the game, Caleb caught an uncatchable ball and fell across the goal line for the winning score. Eugene, who had unsuccessfully defended on the play, helped Caleb to his feet. The two walked side by side off the field and were joined by Malcolm, who shook Caleb's hand. Sarah was filled with tenderness at the sight of her two burly redheaded brothers looking like bookends, each with an arm around Caleb's broad shoulders. It was all in the tradition of honorable conflict, noblesse oblige, the family's tradition and that of the old Confederacy. She had read of how opposing troops had exchanged banter throughout the night before a battle. She joined the trio as they returned to their halls with their teams.