The Cove (13 page)

“Almost anything they pleased,” Professor Mayer answered. “Ruser, the commodore, told me he went to museums and symphonies, even banquets. Then in 1917 the ship was seized and the men declared enemy aliens.”

Laurel grew dizzy for a few moments, the room tilting slightly before leveling again. She had walked three miles and hadn't eaten since breakfast, but that wasn't the cause. There was too much to try and understand. It was like stepping into what looked like a shallow stream and suddenly being underwater with a suckhole pulling her deeper.

“Are you all right, Laurel?” Miss Calicut asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” Laurel said.

“Let me get you some water, child,” the professor said.

He left the room and returned with a filled glass. Laurel took a swallow, then another.

“I suspect you've heard more than enough so we can go,” Miss Calicut said.

“No, ma'am, I want to hear more, I really do,” Laurel said, setting the empty glass beside the settee. “So the
Vaterland
wasn't a ship for a war but like the
Titanic
?”

“More impressive than the
Titanic
,” Professor Mayer said. “When I was up at Hot Springs last April, the men swore the
Vaterland
made the
Titanic
look like a river barge. Prussian bombast, I assumed, but then I did some research. It
is
the largest ship ever built, and Pompeiian in its extravagance—silk curtains, marble washstands, gold cutlery, even bath pools and a wintergarden. But no more. What wasn't plundered was thrown overboard.”

Professor Mayer went to the shelf and took out a book, withdrew a yellowing newspaper article and handed it to Miss Calicut.

“I probably should get rid of it. If found here it would only cause further suspicion,” Professor Mayer said, and sat back down. He closed his eyes a moment, let out a sigh as he opened them. “This whole matter is so ironic. I was initially summoned to Hot Springs to read postcards and letters, to make sure the internees were
not
spies.”

“Read it along with me, Laurel,” Miss Calicut said, and held it between them.

Below a photograph of the ocean liner was a caption.

War Charity Fete on the
Vaterland

Giant Hamburg-American Liner

Houses a Fancy Dress

Festival

To Aid Central Powers

“They were raising money for Germany, not us,” Miss Calicut exclaimed.

“Look at the date,” Professor Mayer said. “Nevertheless, I understand Mr. Hearst has had cause to regret his presence there.”

“The
Vaterland
's a troop ship now, isn't it?” Laurel asked.

“Yes,” Professor Mayer said. “It's called the
Leviathan
.”

“I knew that too,” Laurel said. “It was in the
Marshall Sentinel
a while back.”

For a few moments they were all silent. Laurel looked around the room. Next to the bookshelves was a painting of a blue sky above green hills, but the curtains shut out so much light the painting was drab as the bookshelves. It seemed a shame that the curtains were closed.

“The medallion,” Laurel asked. “You think it belonged to a German who escaped?”

“It's certainly possible,” Professor Mayer said.

“Didn't they think he got away on a train?” Miss Calicut asked.

“They presumed so,” Professor Mayer answered. “The boat he stole was found below the trestle. A mill worker later claimed to have encountered him, but the search dogs couldn't pick up a trail. Of course, someone could have caught him and decided to exact his own justice. Such things have occurred. American citizens have been hanged by mobs, just because they spoke German.”

“If somehow he was still around and he got caught, do you think people might do that to him?” Laurel asked. “I mean, if I happened to see him, would it be better not to say anything?”

“Of course not,” Professor Mayer said, “a man in such desperate straits is capable of anything, including killing, to protect himself.”

“Professor Mayer's right,” Miss Calicut said. “You have no cause to think he's still around, do you?”

“No, ma'am,” Laurel answered.

“After two months, he's surely far away,” Professor Mayer said.

“Surely,” Miss Calicut agreed.

“This medallion, what did you do with it?” Professor Mayer asked.

“I hid it.”

“Keep it hidden, child,” Professor Mayer said. “Were someone to see it there could be serious trouble for you.
Libenter homines id quad volunt credunt
.”

“Men are glad to believe that which they wish for?” Miss Calicut asked.

Professor Mayer smiled for the first time.

“Well done. I'm glad you took my Latin class and not my German. No doubt Chauncey Feith and his minions would accuse you of teaching the children to be spies. It is best to keep what we have discussed among ourselves.”

“I won't tell anyone,” Miss Calicut replied.

“I won't either,” Laurel said. “But that article. If you aren't of a mind to keep it, I'd like to have it. I'll keep it hid with the medallion.”

“I don't believe that would be wise,” Professor Mayer answered. “If someone found out I gave it to you . . .”

“I'd not tell them, I promise. I'd say I'd found the article and the medallion together.”

Professor Mayer hesitated a few moments longer.

“Please,” Laurel said.

“All right,” he sighed. “But show it to no one else, at least not until this war is over.”

Miss Calicut stood and Laurel did as well.

“Thank you for your time, Professor,” Miss Calicut said.

“Yes, thank you,” Laurel said.

“Well,” Miss Calicut said as they stepped off the porch, “we've had quite an afternoon.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Laurel said.

They walked back up Lee Street until they stood in front of Mrs. Jarvis's boardinghouse.

“Want to come in for tea and a piece of sweet bread?”

“Thank you, but no,” Laurel said. “I need to get back to the cove.”

Miss Calicut took her hand.

“Think about finishing school, Laurel. It's not too late. Even if you can't teach around here because of some ignorant folks, there are other places.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Laurel said. “Thank you for helping me, and not just today.”

Miss Calicut went inside and Laurel checked the clock tower. Both hands were on the three, pointing west toward the cove. She couldn't shake the notion that the hands being locked like that was some kind of omen. It could be two hands clasped or two hands bound. There'd be a telephone in the boardinghouse and she could have Miss Calicut call the high sheriff in Marshall, or Laurel could walk all the way to the county courthouse and find the high sheriff herself. That way no mob would get hold of him.

Capable of anything
, Professor Mayer had said, but Walter could have killed her and Hank while they slept, or stolen what little they had and gone on. He hadn't come to the cabin on his own or asked to stay. Laurel had brought him and Hank had given him a job. He'd have never come off the ridge otherwise.

But he had stayed, eaten their food and slept in their bed. They'd trusted him with their very lives but he'd not trusted them, even after he and Laurel had laid down together. Even after that. Laurel thought of the morning she'd heard him speak but believed it a dream. But the dream was thinking a man with no cause to do so would wander into the cove and want to stay there with her. How could she have ever believed such a thing for a minute, much less this long? And yet, he had come back when he could have left on the train, and the one word he had said, of all the words in German or English, had been her name.

Laurel passed the last storefront and soon only trees lined the pike. If she did go straight back to the cove, what about Hank, who'd told Michael Davenport he wished he could kill a dozen Germans for what they'd done. And the German who'd pretended to be wounded, tricking Hank with words, pretending to be English. She'd have to explain that the men at Hot Springs weren't soldiers at all, never had been, but that might not matter to Hank. He might turn Walter in anyway, or worse. It would be safer to tell Hank after the war ended. If Walter was still around. Maybe all he'd wanted was a place so lonesome no one would know him a German until it no longer mattered. Then he could return to New York or Germany or wherever he wanted, alone. Perhaps he had been willing to do everything possible to stay in the safety of the cove, even lay down with Laurel.

The ghostlike feeling she'd had last October came upon her again, so she watched for anything that would anchor her to the world—the feel of her feet on the pike, the chuffing of a woodcock, what shadow she might cast, most of all for what waited until now to show its brightness—the scarlet sumac and yellow clumps of sneezeweed, purple galax, and, as she crossed over a spring flow, the silver bark of a beech tree. She passed a last field where orange pumpkins squatted, close by a haystack golden in the afternoon sun. Laurel touched the newspaper article in her pocket, something else real. She stopped and took it out, read it again in hopes something might be in it to help her know what to do.

The giant Hamburg-American liner
Vaterland
, which has been resting quietly alongside her pier in Hoboken since the beginning of the war, was ablaze with lights last night above and below deck when the ship was thrown open to the public for a concert and festival in aid of the war charities of the Central Powers. It is expected that $7,000 will be added to the fund by the fete.

The big courtyard was filled with automobiles and the pier was decorated with colored lights and flags in honor of the occasion. Employees of the steamship line, dressed in fancy costumes, met the guests at the entrance and drove them on electric trolleys to the gangway.

Six hundred and fifty or more members of the German-American colony in New York and their friends paid $10 a ticket for admission and bought all kinds of souvenirs on board to aid the fund. After the supper served in the grand dining saloon there was a concert in the music room under the direction of Otto Goritz of the Metropolitan Opera Company, a cabaret show in the drawing room on the sun deck, dancing in the ballroom and all kinds of other entertainments to amuse the guests.

The women and many of the men wore fancy costumes and all appeared to enjoy the fun which had been provided for them. A portion of the starboard side of the upper promenade deck was fitted up with flowers and flags, where pictures of a tour through Palestine were shown, accompanied by orchestral music, including harps, and was labeled “In Heaven.”

The crowd filled the other place opposite on the port side, which was decorated with scenery, depicting the infernal regions, artistically constructed by the crew of the
Vaterland
and filled with small tables, where waiters dressed as imps staggered to and fro carrying trays laden with glasses of cheering beverages.

Commodore Hans Ruser sat at a table surrounded with a bevy of fair women, and appeared, for the time, to have forgotten the war was on. Vice-directors Julious P. Meyer and William G. Siskel of the Hamburg-American Line, who gave the use of the liner for the fete, were present to support the Commodore.

Among those who were on the list were Mr. and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst; Hy Mayer, the cartoonist; Major Hans Tauscher; Jacques Urius, the German tenor from the Metropolitan Opera House, and many others well known in the social and professional world. The officers and crew of the
Vaterland
were all dressed in muster uniforms, and it was expected that the last of the guests would leave the Hamburg-American Line pier this morning as the Hoboken milkman is going his round.

Laurel folded the article and placed it in her dress pocket. Her father's bad heart, her mother's infected thumb, Hank's conscription. They'd happened and she'd had no say in any of it. But she did choose to bring Walter to the cabin and to lay down with him, and now, another choice. Preacher Goins claimed at her father's funeral that all things human had been decided before God created the world, but Laurel didn't want to believe that. She could turn around and walk back this very moment to town. Or she could pretend she didn't know who Walter really was or tell him to his face she did know. But choose wrong and she would live out the rest of her life knowing it might have been otherwise.

When Laurel came to where she could turn off the pike or head on to Marshall, she went up the wayfare a few yards and sat on a log. What if Chauncey Feith was right, that the men in the camp were spies and Professor Mayer was one too? There was the newspaper article, but couldn't that be made up, just a trick to make folks think the
Vaterland
hadn't had a bunch of spies on it? She read the article again. Like something out of a fairy tale, and couldn't that be simply because it was? But the print and paper looked real, and in the upper corner the words
New York Times
and a page number, same as the
Marshall Sentinel.
Laurel placed the article back in her pocket.

An acorn lay at her feet and she picked it up, settled its roundness between her finger and thumb. She thought again of how Walter could have gotten on the train that morning when Slidell took him to town, left once and for all. Yet he'd come back to the cove, come back to her.

She had blinded herself before by expecting the best, first with Hank and Carolyn and now with Walter, when her whole life had taught her to expect the worst. If you can't believe some good things can happen in your life, how else can you go on? Laurel thought, but now she'd let herself ponder only the bad outcomes of what she'd learned, then decide which would be the worst one. She rubbed the acorn, feeling its smoothness but also its solidity. The woods were very quiet, no breeze to stir the leaves. A wagon passed on the pike, a whole family from the sound of the voices.