The Spy on the Tennessee Walker (18 page)

“Victoria went with ‘do,'” I said.

CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 39

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

SAN FRANCISCO

Mr. Lofter had news far less dire than I had imagined. He approved of my byzantine machinations to get nonprofit media foundations to underwrite special research projects and fund interns. He didn't approve of our business itself, of course, and certainly not of the frothy nature of our magazine. He also complimented me — and the publisher, who, sadly, had disappeared to get an adult beverage and was unlikely to return in the next twenty-four hours — on holding costs down. “Silly extravagance to have people on staff,” he said. “Benefits and all that. I like your model.”

“We do have staff,” I protested.

“Yes, but you have independent contractors as well, especially those photographers and stylists and illustrators. Keeps the overhead low.”

“Well, thank you, I guess.”

“I do wonder, Mrs. Fiori,” he said, “why you all soldier on in a dying industry. Really, there must be easier, more lucrative ways to make a living.”

Things were going well. It did not seem like the moment to engage in a defense of
Small Town
, to confess that I loved our silly little magazine. I loved all of the
writers and the designers and the columnists and many of our readers. I loved the fact that within the pages of our magazine we covered not just fashion trends, gossip, and restaurants, but substance as well. We poked fun at the Twitterization of our beloved
Small Town
, aka San Francisco. We covered unlikely heroes like Grace Plummer, the murdered socialite who got her hands dirty teaching young women how to garden and how to feed themselves and their children. We were not
The Nation
or
Charlie Hebdo
, but we labored in our own field, watching out for the city we all loved. Of course this lovefest did not extend in every direction. I did not love Mr. Lofter, but I didn't think that was going to break his heart, and in my own bumbling way, I seemed to be keeping us more or less on budget.

“Now, if I were you, Mrs. Fiori, I'd be thinking about some very dramatic opportunities to cut costs.”

“Oh, really?” I said, now feeling very ready to bid Mr. Lofter adieu. I glanced at my watch as non-discreetly as I could. “What did you have in mind?”

“You put your whole magazine out there on the internet. Maybe we don't even need a printed version. I'm always throwing out every magazine that comes in the house. It's just clutter. And the ink smells.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Lofter, it does smell. It smells wonderful! And that's part of why we print the magazine. I was just wondering,” I inquired innocently, “if you enjoyed receiving your complimentary subscription to
Small Town
? I started sending it as a gift to your wife, because she told me she enjoyed it so much but had to buy it on the newsstand.”

“She was spending money on that thing?”

“Yes, many people do. That's why we still have advertisers and we're still in business.”

He flushed. “Well, thank you for your time, today, Mrs. Fiori. And congratulations. You're the first editor I've worked with who could read a balance sheet.”

He left. I put my head down on the table, not sure whether to go seek somebody to high-five with or simply have a brief, delicious, quiet nap.

CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 40

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

OAKLAND

By the time I stopped at the grocery store and picked Zach up from goalkeeper practice, it was already 6:30. I tossed the mail on the dining room table and called upstairs. “Helloooo up there?”

“Josh? Michael?” Silence. And then I heard laughter on the front porch. I opened the front door to see Josh and Lexie locking their bikes. Immediately I was on RoboMomCop alert. Where had they been? What were they doing?

“Hello, Mrs. Fiori,” said Lexie, taking off her bike helmet and shaking out what Josh referred to as her “hot hair.” “Hey, I like your flower.”

I was puzzled for a moment until she gestured toward my shoulder and I realized she was talking about the felt flower Zach had given me for Mother's Day. She leaned closer, “Wow,” she said. “Pistils and stamens and everything. Very cool.”

“Lexie's like you, Mom,” said Josh. “She knows a whole bunch of goofy stuff.” I started to say that anyone who'd taken any science classes
at all
would know what a pistil and stamen were, but in some miracle of restraint I stopped myself.

And suddenly I felt the rare sense of knots loosening inside me. Lexie and Josh were just a teenage version of all of us who fell in love — sweet, naïve, lost in each other. Maybe it would last. Probably not. But my great-great-great-grandmother Victoria would not have approved of squelching young love.

“Come on in,” I said. “You guys must be hungry. And Lexie, please call me Maggie. When I hear Mrs. Fiori, I think someone's talking about my mother-in-law.”

“We're not really hungry,” said Josh. “We did our volunteer shift at the Food Bank, and they always bribe us with cookies.”

“Well, I'm starving,” confessed Lexie. “I didn't like any of those cookies.”

And so the lovebirds settled around the kitchen table and ate half a loaf of Michael's banana bread and polished off all but one of the tangerines, which disappeared as soon as Zach came tumbling downstairs.

“Lexie,” I said, “why don't you check in with your folks and see if it's okay to join us for dinner?” Of course she texted rather than called, and her mom responded in the affirmative in less than a minute. Grudgingly, I was beginning to see the finer points of texting compared to actual voice-to-voice human contact. Human beings, human voices: Who needed all that extra embroidery on relationships?

Dinner…hmmm. I opened the fridge, resolving once again to reform instantly, overnight, into one of those plan-ahead moms. Surely there was some large pot of cassoulet in there, just awaiting a warm-up. Had Michael and I discussed a dinner plan and I missed it?

My cell beeped in my pocket. Message from Michael:
I want something spicy for dinner. Picking up Thai. Home in 15. Is Lexie-the-cupcake joining us?
Message from me:
Lexie is joining us. We need to be more respectful of her. Time to retire the cupcake title.
Message from Michael:
Who are you? And what have you done with my snarky wife?

With dinner on its way, I turned to the day's pile of mail: junk, junk, junk, catalog, catalog, catalog, and a package! From Beau.

Zach came into the dining room and leaned on my shoulder. “Can I hang out with you, Mom?” he asked. “Josh and Lexie are doing homework in his room.”

“Absolutely. You're practically my favorite hang-out date, but don't tell your father or Josh. They've got a very low jealousy threshold. Hey, remember when Aunt Phoebe sent me those cool photos that set Dad and me off on our big quest to Oxford?”

He nodded, “That was
sweet
. I love having a mystery in our own family. And now you and Dad have sorta solved it, right?”

“Well, we know a lot more about Victoria — that's what Dad and I were talking about at dinner with you guys last night. That she was a nurse and a hero, she disguised herself so she could go into battle like a man, and learned information that helped the Union soldiers win the war — and put an end to slavery. And she secretly married a black man who worked for the Union. But there are still things we don't know. We know she was in some very important battles, but we don't know all of them. She was friends with a very famous poet, Walt Whitman, but we don't know if they stayed friends until he died. He was much older than Victoria, so he
died about fifty years before she did.”

I picked up the package Beau had sent and began slipping the twine off the wrapping. “But you know what? This whole adventure began with a package from Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Beau.”

We unfolded the paper and the bubble wrap layer, and once again, there was a soft, brown leather book inside, along with an envelope from Beau. “Is this going to be another poetry book?” groaned Zach, clearly disappointed that there wasn't spygear of some kind in the package.

“Let's see what Beau has to say.” I picked up Beau's letter and read it aloud:

“Dear Maggie, Phoebe and I enjoyed seeing you and Michael in our little town. Although Phoebe still feels apologetic that she didn't cook something Italian to honor Michael's heritage. She says to tell Michael that she is working on her gnocchi and will have a treat for him next time. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that you are interested in our family's history — and how impressed I am with the way you figure things out. When you deduced that Virgil Alexander Cranston was a nom de guerre for Victoria Alma Cardworthy, I knew that you deserved to know everything I know about Victoria.”

Zach pointed at “nom de guerre,” dashed off boldly in Beau's quick strokes. “What does that mean, Mom?”

“Literally it means a ‘war name,' but it's often used to mean just another name someone might assume because they're playing a role they don't usually play.”

“But Victoria did have a real name and a fake name for when she went to war, right? That was her soldier name.”

“That's right, honey. So, in this instance Victoria really did have a nom de guerre, in the middle of a war.” I read him more from Beau's letter:

“This little book is a record of every battle where Victoria was involved. And, it took me a while, but over the years, I've managed to decode Victoria's notations, with some help from the Mississippi Historical Society. I don't think you'll need any help in deciphering it, and I think that will be much more enjoyable to you than if I sent you the cipher key for her messages. If you get stuck, call me. I will give you two hints now. One, it's a standard alphabet manipulation cipher, and two, the music is in the name and the name is in the music.

“Phoebe and I send our love, and we hope that you will return to see us and cheer on Ole Miss again.”

I opened the book and saw that it was a kind of miniature ledger, a row of primitive pictographs across the top: a horse, a soldier's cap, a crutch, a tombstone. Below each image there was a number. And below that was some incomprehensible code.

“Whoa,” said Zach. “Mom, how are you going to figure that out?”

“Beats me, buddy, but I'll give it a try.” The door opened and Michael struggled in, holding two enormous brown paper bags, a bakery box, and his briefcase.

“Thai me up, Thai me down,” he said. “Dinner has arrived.”

Within minutes the table was set and the myriad white boxes emptied into bowls, sending fragrant whiffs of deliciousness into the air. No need to call anyone for dinner — Josh and Lexie followed their noses and migrated downstairs immediately, Zach was already seated at his place, chopsticks in hand.

Josh cleared his throat and stood up. “I think we should have a toast. To Mom and Dad coming home and to Lexie for making this a perfect dinner.” Michael and I did not make eye contact. Of course, Josh was showing off for Lexie, but still — a classy thing to do. We all raised our glasses — sparkling cider for the kids, a lovely but affordable Oregon pinot noir for us. Josh, ever the lawyer's son, did try to make the case that he and Lexie should be drinking whatever we had in our glasses, but no dice. I know sophisticated French or Italian parents would mix wine and water together for their kids, and think that was no big deal, but I didn't want to deliver Lexie back to her parents in anything resembling an altered state.

Over dinner, I explained the cipher-breaking challenge Beau had set before us. “I don't get it,” said Josh. “Beau knows the cipher info, so why doesn't he just send it you?”

“Where's the sport in that?” asked Michael. “Beau's thrown down the gauntlet. He's provided some clues, and he thinks we can figure it out. Well, he thinks Mom can figure it out, but we know she needs her crack team of consultants.” He gestured around the table with his chopsticks.

“Not tonight,” said Josh. “Lexie and I have tons of homework.”

“Saturday morning then,” I said. “Waffles and bacon at nine to sustain us. I'll do some research on how the standard codes and ciphers work, and then we can dive in.”

CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 41

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

OAKLAND

“I'm trying to channel Alan Turing,” said Michael. “Brilliant, eccentric, thinking outside the box.”

“Persecuted, misunderstood, not so great with human interactions,” I countered. “But keep channeling the brilliant part.”

Lexie had shown up at the door, cheerful, hungry, and ready to go. I relished seeing a beautiful young woman who seemed to have no food issues. She'd brought her laptop, and on it, she'd installed software that allowed you to launch any alphabet manipulation — advance ten letters, for example, so that A became J, B became K, and so on.

After breakfast, we moved to the family room — or, as Michael kept referring to it, the “war room.”

We decided to start with the cipher and tackle the code-breaking later. “Point of information,” said Michael. “Maggie, you were going to explain the difference between code and cipher before we dive into this.”

“And I am ready to deliver. Khan Academy was my go-to spot, because I think their folks are great ‘explainers.' Basically, codes are a kind of shorthand, taking a longer, more complicated word and creating
a meaningful shorter phrase. It's both a way to hide information and a way to shorten the time and space a message takes up — hence, Morse code. But you need a codebook to deconstruct the meaning, or it has to be intuitive in some way. Ciphering is much simpler — essentially you just pick a number, and you can shift a letter forward or backward by that number. The example Khan Academy uses is how, by shifting each letter by three, you can turn Hello into Khoor and vice versa.”

On a big Post-it easel sheet, we wrote all the names that seemed like possibilities to launch our de-ciphering quest.

Victoria Cardworthy, Eli Mays, Gabriel Hunter, Sarah Hunter, Jeremiah Cardworthy, Walt Whitman.

“How did you figure out Gabriel's last name?” asked Michael. “I never saw it mentioned in any of letters between Gabriel and Victoria.”

“I made the same journey that Alma and Victoria did just before Alma went off to war — I went to the cemetery in Oxford early one morning with Beau. I'm sure that Hunter was the last name of Gabriel's master — that was often how slaves were named. But Gabriel kept it after he bought his freedom and became a telegraph operator, so either he liked the name well enough or he had grown accustomed to it. So that's the name that's on his gravestone.”

“So, Mom,” said Josh, “how do we factor in the music angle? Uncle Beau said, ‘The name is in the music, the music is in the name.' What does that mean?”

“No idea, unless there's a way to find something musical encoded in somebody's name. We know that Victoria liked to sing, as did Gabriel, and maybe Gabriel's
sister, Sarah, sang as well. Plus, there was Walt Whitman and his ‘Song of Myself' — references to singing are in many of his poems. Oh, and Eli! In one of Victoria's journal entries she writes about the songs she and Eli used to make up.”

“But Gabriel is the only one who really was a musician, as far as we know, right?” asked Michael. “He had a horn — a bugle or a trumpet or some other brass instrument.”

“Duh,” I said. “Of course. You're right! So, since it's an alphabet cipher, maybe we should do some variations on his name and try shifting a number that's part of his name. In other words, Gabriel would mean that we'd shift the alphabet seven letters, Gabriel Hunter would mean we'd shift it thirteen letters. But just so we don't miss anything, maybe one of us should do Walt and one should do Walt Whitman — Victoria clearly admired him, and there's all that ‘I sing the body electric' stuff.”

Josh had created electronic alphabet squares for all of us so we could try different names without wasting paper. “Sustainable detective work,” said Lexie. The girl was growing on me.

Michael, Josh, Lexie, and I worked on our laptops; Zach used his iPad. Michael took Gabriel, I took Gabriel Hunter, Lexie took Walt, Josh took Walt Whitman, and, just to cover the bases, Zach took horn.

Counting the letters was a little tedious, but once we got the hang of it, it went quickly. But by mid-morning, it was clear we didn't have a winner.

“We could call Beau and ask for another hint,” suggested Michael.

“No!” said everyone else, including me. “Can't give
up this easily.”

Lexie said, “Okay, what if ‘name' means the name of a person and the name of a song or an instrument?”

“Good thought — like Nellie Bly Victoria or Song of Myself Whitman or Gabriel's Horn?” I said. We all started scribbling variations, counting letters, and testing the ciphers. Lunchtime came and went. Finally, at 1:30, as the allegedly responsible mom in the room, I called time out, and we broke for haute cuisine: tuna sandwiches.

In the middle of lunch, Zach asked to be excused. “You haven't finished,” I said. “Code and cipher breakers have to keep their strength up.”

“I'll be right back. I need to do something.” He picked up his iPad, now even grimier than usual, the screen covered with a faint film of mayonnaise, and went back into the family room.

The rest of us brainstormed other combos: Victoria and Nellie, Transcendental Walt…we were down to ideas that were lame and lamer.

Suddenly, Zach reappeared in the doorway, pumping his fist in victory. He turned his iPad around, and before our eyes, the ciphers were understandable:

Chancellorsville, We began on April 30, we ended on May 6. Merciful God was nowhere in sight. Every day more gruesome than the one before. Thanks to the brilliance of General Lee and mistakes by General Hooker, the Confederacy prevailed. But early in this terrible battle, the Union had a bright spot at Jenkins Ferry. The Second Kansas Colored Volunteers attacked with fierceness and courage, seeking
revenge for the many colored casualties in the Union engagement at Poison Springs. Union casualties: 1,694 killed, 9,672 wounded, 5,938 missing and captured. Confederate casualties: 1,724 killed, 9,233 wounded, 2,503 missing and captured.

Zach put the iPad down on the table and took a deep bow as we all applauded him. “Mrs. Fiori,” said Michael, “I believe there's a new know-it-all in the house.” We all bombarded Zach with questions. He held up his hand, enjoying the theatrical moment.

“The idea of the instrument and the name was right. We just didn't have the right combination. I tried Gabriel's horn, but I didn't know what to use for the apostrophe. So I tried Horn of Gabriel, thirteen letters, and it worked. How did you know it would be thirteen letters, Mom?”

“I didn't! I just used that as an example because there are thirteen letters in Gabriel Hunter.”

“You da man, baby brother,” said Josh. “Maybe you'll make something of yourself some day.”

Zach turned a deep, delighted shade of red. Praise from Josh was equivalent to winning the Nobel Prize.

“Mom,” said Josh, “where's that little book? I have an idea about what those pictures and numbers stand for.” I put a Xerox copy of the first page on the table — no need to take chances with mayonnaise migrating onto a 150-plus-year-old notebook.

“Look — the crutch must mean casualties. The numbers are the same as in the deciphered info. The tombstones mean deaths, the soldier's cap may mean
how many people are still standing after a battle.” He thought for a moment. “I don't get what the horse means.”

“Maybe the number of cavalry troops?” said Lexie. “When we studied the Civil War, I remember reading how important horses were and how many were killed in battles.”

“Plus,” I said, “Victoria — as Virgil — joined a Cavalry regiment, so she would have been particularly concerned about keeping track of horses.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon decoding the images and deciphering the little book. But thrilling as it was to be able to read Victoria's notations, battle by battle, the grimness of what we were reading made the room grow quieter and quieter. One after another, the battles took lives: the Battle of Franklin, the terrible losses of Pickett's Charge of the West, the cavalry-against-cavalry of Trevilians…page after page of casualties, deaths, and then, one day, a personally heartbreaking entry from Victoria:
Who am I without my Courage? He fell today, shot through his great heart. But even in his last moments, Courage looked out for me. He fell so slowly, so gently that I was unhurt in body, although I was deeply hurt in spirit. Farewell, good friend.

Josh read this passage aloud, his voice breaking at the end. He stood up abruptly and left the room. Zach burst into tears, and Lexie put her arm around him.

“Josh,” called Michael. “Come back a minute. We want to be together and think about Victoria and Courage for a few minutes.” Josh came back, clearly worried that some cheesy sentimental something was going to happen.

I glanced at Michael. He gave me his trademark ‘I've got this under control' look. I hoped he was right.

“There are so many reasons war is terrible,” he said. “And we hope you never know that firsthand. Mom and I were spared that, but you know that Alma and Morris served in World War II, and Victoria and Courage served heroically in the Civil War. You guys honor them when you learn about history — and when we learn from history.”

“Okay, Dad,” said Josh. “We get it. And it seems weird to get so wigged out about a horse dying — a long, long time ago, when there were thousands and thousands of people dying.”

“You remember what that vet at UC Davis told us when Raider was sick and we were all so upset?” I asked. “She said, ‘Love is love. There is no hierarchy.' I think we all reacted so strongly to Courage dying because Victoria loved him, and they were together through thick and thin.” I took a deep breath. “I think it's time to call Uncle Beau and let him know that your generation — Zach, Lexie, Josh — solved the puzzle. And then, it's time to figure out where we want to go to dinner to celebrate tonight.”

The kids called Beau, since it was their victory, while Michael and I convened in the bedroom. “Holy crap,” he said. “That went to a pretty dark place. Think we're terrible parents? Think we need to call Lexie's folks?”

“Chill pill,” I said. “I see little historians in the making. I wish someone had brought history to life like that for me when I was their age.”

“Hope you're right,” said Michael.

“Let's go somewhere Eye-talian. We'll make up for
Beau and Phoebe overlooking your culinary heritage. And let's invite Lexie's folks so we can demonstrate how normal we are.”

“Uh-huh. I guess it's my job to lead the charge on the ‘we're normal' front. And I call Pizzaiolo on the Eye-talian front.”