Woodsburner (32 page)

When Eliot finds Wright's Tavern, though, he is disappointed. The pleasant two-story building sits at the corner of Main and Lexington, right in the middle of town, where its handsome façade might easily be mistaken for someone's home. Eliot lingers in the doorway; the interior proves not at all as dark as he would have liked. The walls are bright, the tables clean, and there is no meat cooking at the fire, no heavy smell of grease in the airy rooms.

There are only a few patrons, and Eliot quickly spots his man slumped by the hearth; there is no mistaking such men, he thinks. One of the man's heavy arms is wrapped around an overturned tankard. His forehead rests on the table before him while a long shock of his stringy dark hair soaks in a shallow puddle of ale. A thickset woman in an apron smiles at Eliot, and he holds up two fingers and points to the brute. As she reaches for two fresh tankards, the woman's smile turns upon itself, becoming more
smirk than smile. Eliot is pleased. Everyone, it seems, knows Seymour Twine.

Eliot does not hesitate further. He approaches the large man boldly.

“Mr. Twine, you have kept me waiting,” he says, standing over the half-slumbering drunkard.

The brute lifts his head and rolls the bleary eyes that Eliot has come to expect from such men. Up close, he is much larger than Eliot at first thought.

“Bugger off!”

Other patrons look up from drinks and break off conversations at the sound of the man's angry growl. Eliot tries to imagine what the hero of one of his unfinished plays would do if faced with such an antagonist. He clenches his fists and sets his feet.

“Look here. I am not a man to be—”

With astonishing speed, the giant leaps to his feet and strikes Eliot square in the chest with the heel of his palm. The blow is clumsy, but it sends Eliot sprawling backward onto the floor. In the next second, the giant is standing over him.

“You got no business with me,” he growls.

For the moment, Eliot cannot breathe. He puts his hands in front of his face, shielding himself from the filthy boot heel hovering above his chin.

A voice behind the giant reins him in. “Briggs! Leave him be!”

Briggs lowers his foot, though whether at the insistence of the man who has shouted his name or in response to the fact that the barmaid has just brought over two sloshing tankards Eliot is not sure. The giant takes both drinks in his thick hands while Eliot struggles to his feet, winded. His breastbone aches, and he prods his chest gently, wondering if he has broken a rib. The man who called off his assailant is sitting at a table in the corner, next to a partition from which hangs a variety of cooking pots. Thin and
pale, dressed in a long black coat, white shirt, and cravat, he sits stiffly with hands flat on the table, as if he is afraid of wrinkling his stiff clothes. He motions Eliot closer by wiggling a lanky index finger without lifting the hand. With the same finger, he motions to the attentive barmaid.

Eliot obeys the finger. “I am in your debt, sir,” he says, brushing his sleeves, looking for damage along the seams of his coat.

“Indeed,” the man says casually. “He would not have hesitated to crush your jaw.”

“I thought I knew the man,” Eliot says, wincing, finding that it hurts to breathe.

“I would choose my friends more wisely,” the man advises. “Please have a seat—a blow such as you've received can disorient a man.”

The man's gray hair is cut close, covering his head tightly like a skullcap. He wears a pair of half-moon spectacles, which give him the look of a physician. As Eliot lowers himself into the chair at the table, he notices a black leather satchel on the floor just before a sudden wave of dizziness comes over him. He sits down harder than he intended. He wonders if he should ask the man to examine his ribs.

“I recommend a mild drink,” the man says. “Something to fortify you after your ordeal.” The man studies Eliot with concern, as if he were examining a patient. “Did you injure your head?”

Eliot rubs the base of his skull where it struck the floorboards. “I was told Seymour Twine was to be found here,” he says distractedly. He removes his hand from his head and examines it, checking for blood. “Apparently, he is not a man to be relied upon.”

“I should think not,” the man says, chuckling, as his eyes continue their survey of Eliot's features. “May I ask what business you have with this gentleman?”

“I cannot say for certain. I have never met the man.”

The thin man finishes his examination, and his eyes come to rest on Eliot's chest, as if he had decided where to make an incision. “I take it, then, that you are Mr. Eliot Calvert.”

“You?”
Eliot cannot hide his shock. “We were to meet at noon.”

“What time is it now?”

“It is already three-quarters past the hour.”

“And so we are meeting.” Twine's face does not reveal emotions of any sort.

“Do you always show such disregard in your business dealings?” Eliot asks.

Seymour Twine's small mouth flickers into a tight smile as the barmaid sets two pewter tankards on the table. She steps to the hearth, wraps a cloth around one hand, and from the coals retrieves an iron rod with a red-hot ball at its end. Eliot cringes at the thought that the implement might easily be employed as a weapon.

Twine nods appreciatively. To Eliot he says, “The secret to a good flip is in the beer. I have no taste for the eggs and cream that others use. Start with a good spruce beer if you can get it, molasses, and a half-gill of rum, and watch that the loggerhead is not left in too long.”

The barmaid thrusts the hot iron rod, ball end first, into one tankard and then into the other, holding it in each hissing mixture until Twine wiggles a finger to stop her.

“Nothing better to warm body and soul on a day such as this,” he says, as he curls his sinewy fingers around the foaming tankard. “Drink up, Mr. Calvert. Its inebriating effects are quite minimal, unless you are wholly unaccustomed to spirits.”

“I have not come to discuss the merits of flip with you, Mr. Twine.”

With the tankard at his lips, Twine mumbles before drinking,
“I seriously doubt that your customers crave my goods in the full light of day.”

“If we are to do business,” Eliot says, ignoring his steaming drink, “I must insist on a certain propriety in our dealings.” He knows he must put Twine in his place first.

“Propriety?” Twine lowers his tankard and licks the froth from his upper lip with a pale, sharp tongue. “I do not allow my customers to dictate terms, Mr. Calvert. I knew you would find your way to me. Your sort always does.”

“If you are going to presume knowledge of my
sort—
” Eliot says, and before he can continue Twine interrupts, spitting the froth from his flip as he speaks.

“And yet
you
would presume to know
me
well enough to think that a drunken animal like Briggs was
my
sort. A fine hypocrisy, is it not, Mr. Calvert? Did you honestly think I would meet you in the street in the middle of the day?”

“Mr. Punch informed me that—”

“I am sure whatever that lout told you bore little resemblance to my instructions.”

Eliot is dumbfounded. He knows that handling such men requires one to act the ruffian, and he is not unfamiliar with the role. He sits back and folds his arms across his chest. “There are others with whom I might do business,” he says.

“Then go to them.”

Twine finishes his drink and points to Eliot's full tankard. Eliot reaches for it and absently swallows a mouthful of the warm, heady concoction while Twine retrieves the black physician's satchel from under the table. He pulls out a wooden box the size of a serving tray. He stares at Eliot through his half-moon spectacles.

“But before you go, Mr. Calvert, you should see what you will miss. I assure you, never before have you seen the like.” Twine lifts the hinged lid, revealing a square of green felt.

Eliot has heard this kind of talk before, and he is not impressed. But when Twine draws back the green felt covering the stacks of glass plates beneath, Eliot cannot keep his eyes from betraying his astonishment. Twine begins placing the glass plates around the table, holding them carefully by their edges. He looks up to make sure that his actions are hidden by the partition hung with the cooking pots.

“No man who sees one ever refuses to see more,” Twine says flatly, without looking at Eliot.

Eliot has heard this before, too, but he cannot disagree, cannot help but stare in amazement.

Twine smiles. “Please, Mr. Calvert, do not let your flip grow cold.”

Eliot saw nothing like this in Punch's sack. The glass plates bear the real shapes and shadows of living bodies entwined. He holds one at an angle to bring out the full details of the ghostly images, black and gray and silver, floating on the shimmering surface. Twine explains the elaborate process required to make the smoky images: the calculated exposure, the long poses, the silver-nitrate and mercury vapors, the darkened rooms. Each plate guarantees that the image is more than just the suggestion of an act. It is a captured reflection, physical evidence that the act actually occurred.

“Where did you get these?” Eliot murmurs.

“Someplace where a man of your
sort
cannot.”

Eliot rubs his bruised breastbone where Briggs struck him, and beneath the dull pain he feels a discomfort of another kind. He thinks of his father marveling over the volume of Goethe in his bookshop.

Twine finishes the dregs of his flip, dabs at the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief, and pulls a scrap of paper from the box. From a pocket he fishes a nubbin of pencil with the letters
OREAU NO. 2
stamped on the remaining bit; he writes a number on the paper and slides it over to Eliot.

“What is this?”

Twine smiles. “The price men will gladly pay for one such portrait.”

Eliot stares at the number. He thinks of the house in Boston, where there is never a quiet room. He thinks of his plans for an office above his new bookstore, a simple space with a desk and a chair, and perhaps a small platform for rehearsing soliloquies. He pulls out his watch and checks the time, and he rubs the watch chain between his fingers. Eliot feels queasy, as if the room had suddenly begun to tilt.

“I'll need to think on it,” he says. “It is no small financial commitment.”

He senses another set of eyes on him. The man called Briggs is looking at him and grinning, as if they were old friends. The queasiness beneath Eliot's throbbing breastbone solidifies and drops. He realizes that the air has grown darker, heavier, full of the smell of cooking meat. He peers around the partition and sees the barmaid smirking at him. She is not as attractive as he first thought. Her skin is splotchy; the cut of her blouse hangs lower than seems proper. Eliot wonders what he is doing here. What kind of man has he become? He looks over toward the hearth, where hissing shanks of lamb and pork have materialized on the spit, and he feels an inexplicable urge to run over and stick his hand on the hot, sizzling meat, to feel the grease burn his skin and rouse him from his complacency. He needs to alter the fundamental order of his life, but it will require something drastic, something swift and furious and decisive.

“I don't know …” Eliot says uncertainly.

Twine begins to respond when the door flies open and the bright light catches him full in the face. Twine's pupils narrow as
if retreating into his head; the whites of his eyes flash. Eliot feels himself to shrink from the light.

From the bright doorway a dark silhouette bellows a single, shattering syllable.

“Fire!”

The first thing Eliot notices when he exits Wright's Tavern is that the streets of Concord have awakened. Shouts, the clatter of hooves, and the staccato crunch of wagon wheels fill the air. A crowd is gathering at the intersection of Main and Lexington, a few strides from where he stands, and from all directions men rush toward the center of town with a sense of urgency, some carrying shovels, some cradling hatchets in their arms. Women run behind them, holding kerchiefs over nose and mouth. Eliot did not notice it before, but now he hears a bell tolling loudly nearby, and in the few seconds it takes him to cross the street a dense, foreboding haze, more brown than black, slides across the face of the sun. It appears to Eliot that while he was absorbed in conversation with Mr. Twine the world beyond Wright's Tavern underwent a startling metamorphosis.

Eliot spots Otis Dickerson in the crowd. Red-faced and puffing, the man hugs the handles of a dozen new shovels against his chest. Their gleaming blades clank and scrape against each other as he hobbles through the crowd, offering the tools to the few men who have arrived empty-handed. Eliot calls out, but Dickerson ignores him until Eliot reaches his side.

“May I be of some help?” Eliot asks, gesturing toward one of the shovels teetering from Dickerson's embrace.

Dickerson adjusts his burden and hugs the shovels tightly, like a mother protecting her children. “If you take one, they'll all go.”

Eliot hears the distrust in the man's response.

“Did you find your associate?” Dickerson asks, speaking directly into the blade of one of the shovels.