Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel (11 page)

“God help me,” said the old man, “I don’t understand him. So damned moody—heavy in spirit. He reminds me of
him,
you know.”

Kermit’s skin prickled with surprise. He was obviously the subject of that sentence, but who was the object?

“You are not to suggest such a thing,” said his mother in an altogether different voice.

“Oh, for the—it was an
observation,
Edith, not a prophesy.”

“It is a terrifying observation. Kindly do not make it again.”

Another mystery had risen up. Smaller in scope than the one that had consumed him all these months but linked to it in ways he grasped at once. Who else could they be speaking of but Elliott?
Elliott:
The One Who Could Never Be Named. The one who had come into the world, like Kermit, with a white head and a dark heart and had left behind … an example. The kind that made mothers tremble.

By chance, Cousin Eleanor came to stay the very next weekend. To Kermit, she was no longer an object of clinical interest but a secret sharer. For the first time he could see that she was more like him than any of his siblings were: quiet, yes, almost comically solemn, averse to chatter, pained by group games. The experience of playing stagecoach with the Colonel so flummoxed her that she had to retire for an hour of solitude.

Something else Kermit couldn’t help but notice: Eleanor was poor. Poorer, at any rate, than he was. Her handkerchief was gray with use, and her brown stockings were torn (Ethel tactfully offered new ones), and one of the bows had come off her kid-leather shoes. She came alone by train, without even a governess, in a carriage that had to be rented at the Oyster Bay station. The driver declined to help her with her bags, but the next day he showed up half an hour early to take her back. Peering through the front window, Kermit could see him reclining against the harness, smoking a cigarette. Hatless and indifferent, looking all in all so worldly that a seed of hope sprang up in Kermit. Leaving by the side door and taking the roundabout way by the windmill and the pet cemetery, he stole up behind the carriage and tugged lightly on the driver’s cloak.

“Please…” Please,
sir,
he nearly said. “Do you know my cousin Eleanor very well?”

“Well enough, I guess.”

“Her family, too?”

The driver looked at him. “I’ve heard tell of ’em.”

“Can you tell me, then? What happened to her father?”

One corner of the driver’s mouth rose with great deliberation. “Well, now. Who wants to know? And how does he plan to make it worth my while?”

Kermit began to rummage through his pockets. “I could give you a dollar. And seventy-one cents. And a real, genuine Indian arrowhead. From Cooper’s Bluff.”

“Arrowhead.” The man smiled. “A regular J. P. Morgan, ain’t you?”

Kermit held out his treasure in both palms, but the man made no motion toward it.

“I’d be glad to tell you,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette. “All about your precious Mr. Elliott.”

Here, at the pitch of discovery, Kermit flinched. None of the questions he had been hoarding would stand clear. The only thing that came from his mouth was:

“He drank.…”

“Oh, that he did,” agreed the driver. “Worse than any shanty mick, that’s what my dad told me.”

“How did he die? Did he…”

Did he drink the wrong thing?
That was the only way Kermit could imagine a man drinking himself to death. Swallowing something bad without knowing it. Cyanide, strychnine.

“He died no better ’n anyone else,” said the driver. “My brother used to see him—cripes, this was seven, eight years back—your precious Mr. Elliott; he was living up on West 102nd. Shacking up with some slut, under some made-up name or other. And his wife just barely in the grave. And his
daughter…”
Half grinning, the driver cocked a thumb toward the house. “You’ve
seen
her, haven’t you?”

Two things were dawning in Kermit’s brain. He disliked this man. And his dislike was actually
feeding
the man, drawing the words from his mouth.

“Well, now, consider the sad case of your Mr. Elliott. All his fine friends have cut him. His money’s gone; his fine reputation, that’s gone. So what’s a gentleman like him to do? Why, he goes and jumps out a window, that’s what he does.” The driver stole a quick glance at the house. “Even
then
he couldn’t finish the job. Held on for a few more days before he kicked it. And what did he leave behind? An ugly daughter and a bastard son. Not a dime to his name. It never fails to amaze me, the doings of the civilized class.”

With a light flick, the driver tossed his cigarette butt into the air. It described a high arc and landed just short of Kermit’s foot. The boy was about to draw his boot away when the driver grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him off the ground, drew him so close that Kermit’s eyes leaked from the tobacco fumes.

“Go ahead,” the man snarled. “Tell ’em I told you. Then watch your throat, will you? I got friends
everywhere
.”

The man set him on the ground, and Kermit backed away from the carriage. From behind, he heard the front door slam. Out came Eleanor, her crooked, almost elderly figure shuffling toward the carriage.

“Good-bye,” she murmured.

Kermit opened his mouth. To warn her, he thought, but the driver’s threat still rang in his ears. Even with a loosed tongue, what would he have said that she hadn’t already been told?

He wandered in slow circles around the tennis court. Then, feigning illness, he took himself straight to bed and lay there for the rest of the afternoon, feeling the shadows lengthen across his counterpane. He was beginning to grasp why Uncle Elliott’s memory had been banished. It wasn’t because of how he’d lived his days but because of how he’d ended them. To a man like the Colonel, who worshipped so ardently at life’s altar, this must have been the worst betrayal of all: to toss such a gift right back in the Maker’s face.

Kermit closed his eyes; his lips traced a silent vow. He would not be Elliott. He would not be the man who jumped out the window. He would not be the photograph in the drawer, the shadowy figure of whom no one spoke. His life would be long, prosperous, crowned with love and success.
This I swear.

*   *   *

I
N
F
EBRUARY OF HIS
fourteenth year, Kermit went alone to Laurel Hollow to hunt for squirrels. The snow lay hard and crusty on the ground, and his breath seemed to freeze and crumble the moment it left his lips. The woods were soundless.

He came at length to the lip of a culvert, through which flowed a small stream, sluggish with ice. A crow started out of a hemlock tree, and Kermit spun toward the sound, then spun back. On the other side of the stream, a man stood watching.

After a few seconds, Kermit realized he was pointing his 12-bore pinfire gun directly at the stranger. Embarrassed, he dropped it to his side, put out a hand in apology. The man put out his hand, too. A different sort of motion: a wave or greeting.

Do I know you?
Kermit wanted to ask. But of course he knew him: the mustache and metal-rim spectacles; the top hat and morning coat and old-fashioned trousers. An absurd costume for hunting, but, then, the man had no gun and no clear reason to be there other than to say hello.

He didn’t look anything like a dead man should look. Truth be told, he looked in the pink, and Kermit felt no dread at recognizing him. It was more like spotting an old friend in a railway station: the surprise melting into anticipation. Only this wasn’t an old friend. And as the implications sank down, a cold rot seemed to rise up in reply.

At last, Elliott gave a courtly nod and a tip of his hat, then turned and walked back up the opposing hill, pausing at the crest before vanishing.

A few months later, Kermit was in the Groton library, half-dozing over his Latin declensions, when he looked up to find his uncle in the chair directly opposite. The same agreeable expression on his face—and, more, an air of politely restrained expectation, as if he were waiting for Kermit to do or say something. Once again, though, the words caught in the boy’s throat. He could only stare back and wait for Elliott to doff his hat, rise from his chair, and walk away.

It would have been the height of foolishness to tell anyone. They would have packed him off to an alienist—a sanatorium, an asylum—and what could he possibly say in his defense? That Elliott was incontestably real? As real as the branches of Father’s apple tree; the grove beyond Mother’s summerhouse; the beach at Cold Spring Harbor—all those places, in short, where Elliott
did
appear over the coming months, dressed as impeccably as ever, waiting as ever for Kermit to … explain.

By now the silence that built up during these encounters had become a comfort, because it kept the outer world from rushing in and gave every meeting the feeling of ritual, the more relaxing for being undefined. After a dozen or so times, Kermit ceased to be surprised by his uncle’s appearances, began even to welcome them—or, at the very least, accept them. The question of what his uncle expected—this remained in permanent suspension, but Kermit was in no hurry to resolve it. Answers no longer held the interest they had once had.

*   *   *

I
T WAS JUST A
few minutes past noon on February 27, 1914, when the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition prepared to launch down the Rio da Dúvida. Kermit climbed into the lead boat. João and Simplício pushed off with their oars, and a second later the current swept them up and bodied them forth. From somewhere far behind him, Kermit heard a single voice calling.

“Good luck!”

It was a voice he had never heard before. He swerved around. On the bridge overlooking the black river stood Uncle Elliott, as natty and unperspiring as ever, waving in his usual droll manner.
Speaking
—that was new. Calling loudly enough for anyone to hear (though Kermit was the only one who turned around).

“Bon voyage!”

8

Bon voyage.

In his mind now, the Rio da Dúvida winnowed down into a long kite string. He held on for dear life as it coiled and wound and then shivered to a stop. Down to earth he floated. On a branch directly over his head wobbled a single bead of dew, growing fatter and fatter as he watched, swelling at last to the size of a globe and only
then
consenting to fall, by the slowest of degrees. Every tree in the forest unfolded its leaflets and reached up to catch the drop—for this was the last water that would ever be—and the drop was glistening with terror, and the air screamed around it, and the jungle opened wide, black and gleaming.…

Kermit woke. He felt a pearl of dew sitting perfectly composed on his forehead. He heard the drowse of bees, the flutter of hummingbirds, the dry housemaid scuttle of cockroaches and scorpions. He smelled lilies—water lilies, unpacking their scents. Over his head, like a tiny vulture scouting him for signs of life, a mosquito was circling.

“Go away,” he muttered.

In the act of swatting at it, he stopped and stared at his hand.
His
hand, so lately paralyzed.
His
fingers, now swiveling freely in their sockets.

For some time he lay there, entranced by his newness. Then, from close quarters, he heard a groan.

“Kermit…”

The old man was stirring. Kermit rolled over, stared down into his father’s face. Only it was another face looking back: Thinner, younger, handsomer. A neatly trimmed mustache. A look of polite expectancy.

Kermit squeezed his eyes shut.
Please. Please.

He opened them again. And there was Father, reconfigured in all his jowliness.

“My spectacles…”

“They’re right here, Father.”

“Are they … all right?”

“Yes.”

“Not broken?”

“A little crack in the left lens.”

“Well. That’s the blind eye, anyway.”

The old man wrapped the spectacle tips around his ears and levered his torso up. Gazed around at the flowering trunks and the walls of vine melting out of the early-morning mist.

“I don’t believe I’ve been here before.”

“No.”

The Colonel tweezed a pair of ants out of his ear. “Where are we, do you know?”

“Here,”
answered Kermit, in an unconscious echo of Luz. “We’re here. Far from home.”

“And our hosts? Have we been formally introduced? Do we know who they are?”

Kermit was about to shrug, but something snagged in him.

“The Cinta Larga,” he said.

He was already reproaching himself as he spoke. He should have known at once. The moment he saw the bark wrapped around their waists.
The men of the wide belts.
Even among other Indian tribes, they were the stuff of myth. Glimpses of them were rare, and few who had crossed their paths had come out better for it.

“Cinta
Larga,
” the old man said. “By God, won’t Rondon be jealous? He wanted to be the first to see one.”

“We are quite blessed, it’s true.”

The Colonel rested his head in his hands. “Did I dream all that business?” he asked.

“No.”

“The jaguar and the … the after…”

“It happened.”

“Hmm,” said the Colonel, flexing his arms over his head. “Most remarkable.” With Kermit’s help, he lurched to his feet. “I don’t suppose they offer American breakfasts in this establishment.”

“The proprietors keep different hours, I believe.”

“Ha,” said the Colonel, peering over Kermit’s shoulder. “Not so different as all that.”

*   *   *

O
NCE AGAIN, THE
C
INTA
Larga had stolen up behind their captives in perfect silence and had deftly hooped them around.

“Come to wish us good morning,” said the old man. “Very decent of them.”

The number of warriors had at least doubled since last night, but the bark belts, the armlets, the hawk-feather headdresses—these were all gone, along with the spears and bows. Except for the liana scrolls around their penises, the men stood utterly bare.