Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories

CORRECTION OF DRIFT A NOVEL IN STORIES

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CORRECTION OF DRIFT A NOVEL IN STORIES

PAMELA RYDER

FC2 tuscaloosa

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The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 Copyright 2008 by Pamela Ryder All rights reserved First Edition Published by FC2, an imprint of the University of Alabama Press, with support provided by Florida State University and the Publications Unit of the Department of English at Illinois State University Address all editorial inquiries to: Fiction Collective Two, Florida State University, c/o English Department, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1580 ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ryder, Pamela. Correction of drift / by Pamela Ryder. — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-57366-142-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-57366-142-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lindbergh, Charles Augustus, 1930–1932—Kidnapping, 1932—Fiction. 2. Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 1906–2001—Fiction. 3. Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1902–1974—Fiction. 4. Hauptmann, Bruno Richard, 1899–1936—Fiction. I. Title. PS3618.Y358C67 2008 813’.6—dc22 2007039818 Book Design: Joanna Pierce and Tara Reeser Cover Design: Lou Robinson Typeface: Baskerville Produced and printed in the United States of America

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“Correction of Drift” appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review; “Keeper of the Cormorant” and “In the Hands of the Pigman” in Fourteen Hills; “Graveweed” in 3rd bed; “In the Sitting Room” and “Wanderlust” in Unsaid; “Captiva” in Columbia; and “Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy” in Quarterly West.

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With gratitude to George Rand, Gary Lutz, Deb Olin Unferth, Brenda Mills, Lou Robinson, Sharon Goldfarb, David McLendon, George Hirschberger, Victoria Masterson, Tina Fadlalla, and the staff of the University of Alabama Press.

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For Gordon Lish

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CORRECTION OF DRIFT In the Hands of the Pigman

19

Correction of Drift

41

Boy Is Gute, Etc.

61

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy

73

Wanderlust

97

In the Sitting Room

119

Keeper of the Cormorant

139

Captiva

159

Graveweed

183

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LINDBERGH BABY MISSING FEARED KIDNAPPED The New York Evening News March 2, 1932

DARING MIDNIGHT ABDUCTION NATIONWIDE SEARCH UNDERWAY The Dallas Daily March 2, 1932

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Investigators believe that the kidnappers are professionals interested only in extortion and not in unnecessarily harming the boy. Mercer County Mirror March 3, 1932

Investigators believe that the kidnappers are not professionals but a local gang. Mercer County Mirror March 5, 1932

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Police have found a crudely made ladder in the woods below the nursery window. The Garden State Gazette March 3, 1932

Police have found a cleverly constructed collapsible ladder in the woods beneath the nursery window. The St. Louis Star March 3, 1932

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In the Hands of the Pigman It remains unclear why the family dog, who often slept outside the nursery door, did not bark as the boy was taken from his crib, or why the Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh did not hear the rungs of the ladder crack. Princeton Free Press April 9, 1932

They lit out on foot, in wing tips, in oxfords—black & white, and oxblood brown—and sharp-toed boots of yellow buck with high tops and a fancy stitch—hurrying along the moon-bright road, following the markers of snowpatch in ditches and the vapors of the one of them ahead—hard breaths of men in suits and city shoes too thin-soled for a country thoroughfare, wrong for these parts. Pinstripe, worsted, herringbone. Sporting fedoras. Single file as they go, these three—over ruts and dips, over small stones heaved out by freeze along the road cut, the man in front clutching his suit coat closed one-handed at his throat, carrying in the other by its handle-grasps a satchel of the sort

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that country doctors or burglars are thought to keep, or spinsters traveling by rail might set in their laps—but he is none of these. Nor are the other two behind him, rounding a bend and swinging widely with the burden that they tote between them: a ladder carried by its sidepiece, the rungs crudely cut. Faint blue marks of carpenter’s chalk. A hasty nail here and there piercing together boards of sapwood and yellow pine. Measured. Sawed. Tested for their weight, for their steps—now hard upon the frozen road, this lane newly made through old stands of oak and ash, hacked through to the house beyond. A fieldstone in the old style, whitewashed and double-storied—they can see it through woods wind-swept of leaves, as it is this time of year when what went cold and slow of heart before the first frost tunneled underground to wait out warmer weather now starts to stir. In burrows. Dens. Back rooms. In boardinghouses of longing and petty discontent, abode of bail jumpers, repeat offenders, wife-smackers. In cellars and speakeasies. In foul alleys slimed with the spittle of idlers and shirkers skilled at no trade but the swindle, the conspiracy to commit. Clever with the concealed weapon; handy with the shiv. Men who winter in custody, in lockups, in sorry apartments of single occupancy or in flats where wives wait up. Wrung hands and handkerchiefs. Accusations. Alibis. In rented rooms and in dismal kitchens. In the corridors of old hotels lacking bellhop or porter where the rooms are rosy each evening with the pulse of neon in the window, bleak by the light of day. Dwellings of ne’er-do-wells set loose upon these far wooded districts, this frozen country lane. They move on with the moon behind them and the last seep of sundown on the hills and drifts. Lacework of trees above the ridge. So still a day. One of them remembering a sky such the same as this but long ago, one late afternoon of sledding—yes, the same light, he thinks, one of them does, and those trees, too,

20 Pamela Ryder

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in silhouette, the same—Billy! That’s enough I said. Now I said. You get on in here William. Why you’re half-frozen and where is your other mitten?—and the other one remembering the buckets of mums and buckets of roses in the evening at the trolley stop. The people stepping down from the lighted cars in the early dusk and saying: Evening, evening, yes good evening, not so cold for nearly Christmas is it? And well I see you’ve got your boy with you tonight. Helping out and learning the business are you Bean? And people walking on past or stopping to buy. A bud for your lapel sir? A bouquet to take home to the little missus? Pass me two of those long stems there Bean. That’s it Bernard and put in a sprig of baby’s breath for the lady. Scent of spring and cut green things this winter’s eve. Fern wrapped in paper and carnations in bunches: the all-white ones and the ones with petals spattered red—candy-cane carnations is what he called them and sometimes he called them peppermint. But aren’t you cold. Aren’t you cold and can’t we go home now Pop? and the third man remembering the cold the men brought in on their linen coats and the canvas bed they carried and the snow tracked in on the bedroom floor and Mutter takes the handkerchief she always holds to her mouth and takes it down but never says about the wet or tells them go back and wipe your feet the way she always says. The way she always tells him to. Instead she makes his name—Rudy—with her mouth like making a kiss but the spittle and they take up the canvas bed by the long poles and her mouth says something but the spittle again and the blood and they lift her in. Yes, so very still a day. They travel on under early stars and the tree shadows that stripe the road and fold over the slopes, accommodating each mound, each rut. A grove of spruce. Long cones. A storm-split oak, downed limbs cracked with many winters’ weight—but that one fork where you can put your foot. You get down from there Bean! You hear me Bernard? That branch will never hold—trunk split and decaying heartwood deep. The man in front stops and puts his satchel roadside on a stone. The two coming along just behind him set the ladder

In the Hands of the Pigman 21

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on its sidepiece. Cigarettes are shaken from the pack. Rasp of match head on the boot heel of his yellow bucks. They lean in, faces chrome-blue with moonlight, then flame-bright, and they stand hunched and stamping as they suck the smoke in long breaths. None speak. Whatever wind there was has ceased, or nearly so. The snow has started, a sifting of it down upon these woods—of late called the Colonel’s woods—a fine and grainy snow, imperceptible in its descent and told only as a hiss: the fall of it on the crown of a fedora, the hush of it one of them hears along the brim—a kettle hardly at a simmer. Do hurry with that tea will you please Mrs. Grogan and give your Billy there a cup. The whisper of it the other one of them listens for in the boughs of spruce, in the boughs of ash and—in the dune wind where the beach grass grows and in a shell cast up and held to his ear and the spits of foam sliding over his feet. Take him by the gill Bernard. Mind the hook there Bean. No downside up it goes with the slit longways down the belly and mind that blade—that’s innards just like you. Mind your fingers. And the sigh of it one of them knows beneath his boot soles, in the old leaves in the ditches—the long, locomotive hiss in the hollow of the station. Smell of steam and smoke. Mutter’s hand. Papa’s glove. The big valise with the broken lock. The latch. The scuff. Chocolate with the foil peeled back. The row of little window shades. One comes up. Papa’s glove. Mutter’s hand waving back. Rudy, sag tschüss, Papa! Sag tschüss! Snow clouds thin as mist at the tree line. The moon veiled. A shape blacker than the sky behind it drops from its perch, crosses overhead in silence and in silence ascends. “See that?” says one of them but no man will answer that he has. They take their final draws of smoke. They toss away the butts that rise and glow in brief, bright arcs—and fall as stars are thought to do, or comets might in stories. See that one Bernard? And oh another. There it goes Bean just like a snowball but a tail made of stardust that sparks and catches fire. Fix your coat. Button up. Watch now. Listen to your Pop. Oh you missed it. Oh look up boy. Look up.

22 Pamela Ryder

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The ladder is hoisted shoulder-high. On they go, following the road and the road-cut wall where roots protrude, finely branched and clutching their stones. Pale stems of gray birches. Small pools, still iced over. Now passing stump and stump. Logs in a stack. On now, where the road levels out, nearing the house with its walls glowing white as bone. Steady smoke comes from the chimney. The sky behind it bends and stars there tremble with the heat. Old snow in the eaves. The roof of layered slate. All is dark in the upper windows: bedroom, bath, bedroom, nursery—the boy—the baby—they suppose, having been put to bed. In the lower level, lamps have been lit. The shank of the evening, as it is said. Folks at home. Den, dining room, living room, kitchen. Light in the square and leaded pane above the front-room door. A crystal chandelier in the entranceway. A gilt-edged mirror. A table with a marble top and clawed feet clutching globes of glass. Don’t touch that Billy. Candlesticks. Bottles on the sideboard. Ice in a silver bucket. The butler would be poking the hearth, they suppose. Bright logs. Firedogs. Brass tools. The cook would be rewarming the Colonel’s dinner, the Colonel being late. I’m afraid my husband’s been delayed Mrs. Grogan. Well the boy can wait. The boy Billy yes of course but in the kitchen with you Billy. T-bone and gravy and corn cut from the cob in a dish with specks of pepper and butter and rolls in a little silver basket and ice cream in a cup. If you think you must Mrs. Grogan. Nothing contagious I should hope and take whatever time you need. After you serve dessert—that would be best and you’ll finish the silver before you go of course and whatever’s in the sink. And the Colonel—they suppose he would be having his dinner if the three of them came knocking—so courteously, so quietly knocking—the Colonel looking up from his plate, pushing back his chair, perhaps with some surprise. Perhaps glancing at the clock. And then he would be standing, wiping the grease from his mouth. Tossing down his napkin, one of them

In the Hands of the Pigman 23

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imagines—I’ll get that, Dear. Stepping from the table, coming to answer. Yes. Right away. Who’s there? Who is it? Neighbor or reporter? Pistol or blade? A wing-tipped shoe to breastbone or belly? The butler might be brandishing the poker. Yes, that would be swell, thinks the man in pinstripes. Or the cook with a pot—oh, that would be rich, thinks the one in herringbone. And the nanny or the nurse—one or the other—running for the boy, knowing from the start it was all about the boy—why else but for the boy?—as she scrambles up the stairs, thinking she might hide him. Catching her by her skirt, or ankle, or foot as she scrambles on the stairs and clutches at the banister; pulling her down there on the landing or sliding her down to the living-room floor. Holding her against their clothes: pinstripes wet with snow, herringbone flecked with blood. A rib cracked through by a sharp-toed boot; the sole of an oxford pressed upon a throat. And the wife—the Colonel’s wife—they had seen her— why, who hadn’t seen her?—front-page and stepping from a cockpit, in newsreels beside the Colonel cutting ribbons and once even waving with the boy—yes, with the boy, the very same—or smashing champagne to a wing. The Colonel’s wife in her fine shoes and stockings and her pretty silk dresses, walking that straightforward sort of way some women walk. The way American women walk, thinks the one in his boots and his worsted suit. Oh, yes, he has seen them, followed them in his yellow bucks down evening streets. Watched them in shops and windows and yards. Sitting in parks or trolley cars with their ankles crossed and stockings with seams and garters that peek and not the patched woolen hose Mutter wears most cold nights laid belly down upon their old featherbed and smelling of cabbage and Bismarck Schnitzel and whimpering to Papa with her mouth in her pillow: Bitte hör auf ! while the bedsprings shriek and Papa and Mutter dance like the dogs

24 Pamela Ryder

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chained up in the pigman’s alley. Like the one that stands on his feet like a person would stand or a boy would stand and the big Papa dog has white front feet like a pair of mittens and his feet hold the hips of the little brown dog. Walking up the back of the little brown dog who is chewing something ropey and pink she is pulling from the pigman’s barrel while the dog with the mittens walks up her back. Papa on her back. Mutter on her pillow and chewing on her pillow like a chained-up dog telling Papa: Ach! Du tust mir weh! Ach! Bitte! And now Mutter sees who is peeping at the door—catches her Rudy right there at the door and calls: Rudy geh weg! Geh weg von der Tür! No, the Colonel’s wife would have stockings of silk and slim-heeled shoes with the toe tips showing her painted toes. The pinned limbs; the luscious struggle. He can hear the sound of silk shredded. Satin sheets. Cries, tears—into a satin pillow. Ach, Rudy! Du tust mir weh! Bitte! Rudy. Bitte. The moon is high now, widely ringed—clouds in shreds surrounding—but the road still bright where they pass, the three of them shrugged in their suit coats and the light, fine snow falling on their shoulders, falling on their shoe tops; melting in ruts where they have stepped, wet along the window sills, the roof slate, the chimney rim; and falling on the branches, the roots and the boulders, the downed oak limbs, the broken boughs of spruce and juniper that cover the sedan where they have left it ditchside—hidden on the road where the road turns out; snow still falling to settle on the runners, wet on the fenders, melting on the windshield. They had motored into town—rumbled, fairly growled in the slung-low sedan, a rear window cranked down for the ladder length, the rest kept cracked for the smoke of their cigarettes. Spoke-wheeled, white-walled. Spare at the rear. The doors with the slightest blistering of rust. Past fields they went, rime-white where the land lay in the cold shade of hillsides, or russet in the afternoon sun. Rows

In the Hands of the Pigman 25

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of cornstalk stubble. Hardened furrows in fields turned under. Past ponds iced over or partly thawed where streams ran out of them or in and waterfowl circled or rested or rose partly up with outstretched wings. Following a creek for a time: fringed reeds, black alder, bare wands of black willow. Train trestle, wooden bridge and then at the railing with the writhing sack and Mother says: Let go Billy. I said let go. No you can’t hear them. Because they are sleeping. That sound is the river. You heard me: Let go. And then the foam closing over and then the bubbles coming up and spilling through a gully where brambles grow. Past gates and long rail fences; caged-in gardens full of old stalks of something and of snow, and cabins and shacks and front steps of other folks. Front yards of other folks. Stacks of split wood. Sheds and coops. A dog beside his barrel, tethered to a post. A shifting of paws. A scuttling at the door. Finish your dinner. No you can’t keep him. No he can’t come in. No not so much as a scrap I said and past goats following surefooted down a craggy hill. Old low walls of found stone. Salt lick. Pump handle. Silos. Troughs. Hay in tied-up bales or strewn about. Muddy barnyards—in one stands a lone tan cow—and then another, and another, and the one with horns—the bull? one man among them wonders, that one black and black & white— a kind of cow called a Jersey, another of them remembers; yes, that’s what it would be out here where we are, and that one with a calf. The sideways grind of jaw. The muscled tongue. Are you coming Bernard? Did you hear me Bean? And Mother hoisting the platter to the table: monstrous appendage surrounded by skinned potatoes. Parsley. Father standing in the place Father stands and taking up the long knife and sliding it through the thick purple curve of it. Pimpled at the tip and something grizzled at the root. Pass that mustard. What now Bernard? What is it now Bean and stop picking at that and eat. And pigs, too, there where the mud is unfrozen and black and inside the shed where they snort with their big strange snouts and snooze and eat their

26 Pamela Ryder

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corn and the happy pig Mutter points to just above the door—Schau, Rudy!—and there’s the happy pig on the sign above the door and he is all dressed up in a hat that a cook would have. A clean white hat like a mushroom on his head and a clean white apron and he’s holding a hatchet in his square little trotters and standing up just like a person would be standing if a person were a pig with feet like a pig’s on a sign above the door. The bell there on a spring. Mutter’s arms full of bundles. Komm schon, Rudy! Smell of sawdust. Smell of blood. Herr Fleischer! says Mutter to the pigman behind the counter. Herr Stümper! Mutter says. And the pigman is there right behind the counter in the same white apron that the happy pig has on the sign above the door but the pigman doesn’t have a mushroom hat but a flat straw hat and he touches his hat with his ordinary hand like a boy would have or a person would have and not a little trotter that the happy pig has on the sign above the door. Herr Fleischer! says Mutter. Herr Stümper! she says and he is bent behind the glass Herr Fleischer is. And down Herr Fleisher goes and into the case where the big head rests. The clean strange snout. The holes in his nose for sniffing all around. The eyes closed with lashes white and long upon the cheek scalded of its bristle and just behind the ear standing up so tall and clean and furred inside and soft is the pucker where the skin of his neck is sliced and the dribble of it pools at his jaw. At the curved-up ends of his happy mouth. Pinking the ice that melts where he rests and he waits all the while in his bright metal pan. Schweinefleisch, Herr Stümper! Mutter tells him. Zwei Pfund Schweinefleisch. Bitte. Zwei Pfund! First stars appeared above the horizon. They motored on under the rising moon. Beyond the fields and barns, the woodlands lay in shadow—forests, they thought, where deer must live. And bear and boar, they did suppose. And there, out there, where the snow starts up in little spins: a cave of sorts made where long ago boulders must have moved, rolled into each other as they have heard stones used to do, or there, in that grove or log or sheltered slope or hole where wild things must go,

In the Hands of the Pigman 27

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sleeping out their winters, dreaming such dreams she will for such a long while of sleeping with a blanket of roses spilling all the way down to the bright brass handles. The bright brass hinges. And his face or something like his face looking back at him in the lustrous wood but fun-house long and bowed with the slope of the lid while they walked him forward. Come on. Smell of wax and maybe meat and the sound of the hinge. Well yes Billy yes. I suppose it’s like a bed only closer at the sides and see the satin pillow. See there the rose that lifted from the blanket of roses and flies away in the road. See there the men who dug even with the ground so frozen and the carpet of something like grass cut close but too brightly green for wintertime or even spring that the men have set tight square and frayed around the hole. Dirt in their fists. His eyes watered in the cold. His nose. Don’t snuff son. Everyone standing huffing at their hands. See Billy. Something like a bed but only closer in. Come on. These dark slopes, cold fields, cold pastures; these Jersey hills they traveled, three turns off the county highway, two turns out from the town. A light snow slanted in the wedge of the headlights, collected in the running boards. Hot cloud at the tailpipe. Rattle of the ladder propped through a rear-door window. Steady tick of a stone frozen in a tread. On they went, slowed down inside the city limits, motoring past its places of trade, appearing in its storefronts, its windows of industry: Dry Goods & Notions with its bolts of plaid and plain and polka dot; Hopewell Beef & Hog with hooks in a row displaying pieces of local beasts; Mercer County Market with bins of red spuds and the last of the Winesaps; Midtown Pharmacy with its glass amphora and display of commodes and crutches and canes. Past Aldo’s Barber Shop where the chair has been left atilt and snippets of townsmen still cling to the razor and strop. Seeing themselves shuttling past, lengthening and bending then gone again at an alleyway, a cross street, a walkway; reappearing in the postmaster’s window, in the greenhouse glass, in the bakery door.

28 Pamela Ryder

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Tailpipe smoke in the windowpane. Whitewalls on the asphalt and cinders. Snow in the treads. Squeak of wiper. Rattle of the ladder. Windows misted with the steam of men who sweat despite the weather. Past homes of stucco, brick, clapboard. The three of them watching past the tied-back curtains and halfpulled shades where a woman wipes down the dinner table. A wife, perhaps, setting out the breakfast plates. A husband, perhaps, turning the page of his newspaper. Or a father, he might be, hearing the chime of the big hall clock. Setting aside his pipe. That squeak he makes on the stairs. Third one up. Closing the door. Checking the latch. Bracing the chairback below the knob. Left at a tilt. Untucking his shirt. Buttons. Belt. Folding the length of leather across his fist. Buckle end. Hitching up his pants. Letting the strap play out. The road bends left and ends. Before them lies a scattering of stumps, the clearing wide-cut. Wood edge, courtyard, wall of the house as white as parts of the sky now are: a passing cloud, moonlight diffused. They step into the Colonel’s yard. They walk there through the oblong cast of lighted windows. Snowpack squeaks beneath their soles, melts where they step on the courtyard cobbles in black and perfect shapes of sole and heel, boot and shoe. There, too—other tracks of what crept along before them: small clawed toes, impressions of a tail of a something that awakens on wintry nights. Climbs from its den or burrow or the nest it made in a boy’s lost mitten. Skitters though forest and field to the place where the plaster is cracked in the Colonel’s house or a window won’t close or a door is set not right in the jamb. Steals what has dropped to the pantry floor, scraped into the trash or missed beneath the supper table or swept into a corner. The three of them come along the slated path. Now just at the whitewashed wall. Now below the shuttered window.

In the Hands of the Pigman 29

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They press to the house; they are black against the pale. The ladder is righted, last rung to the windowsill. Snow is set loose from the gutter edge and glitters down the way some think that stardust might. It settles in the brims of their fedoras. It catches in a trouser cuff and a turned-up collar. The bottom ladder boards sink in a bit, the surface there uneven, a season ago spaded under—perhaps dug for a flower bed of violets or mums just beneath the frost line, or candy-cane carnations and the white petals flecked with red. They didn’t smell like peppermint. Not the way you said. No Pop. You said so but no they never did— where some things sleep on past the thaw and the first warm days and the setting of buds. Some will sleep on through the first spring moon; sleep as the last snow melts and the streams run clear on the stones; sleep on when the spring rains come and seep into their satin beds; sleep on as roots of oak and ash seek the polished wood boxes that become the vessels where the rain collects. Sleep on inside the rotting cloth, the wet. The satchel is set at the foot. Contents are handed out. Crowbar. Chisel. Sack. The sort that potatoes are toted in, or feed corn, or kittens. Scudding of old leaves along the wall and around their feet. From somewhere far off comes the howling of a dog, a note that rises so low and lonely. Perhaps the same one they passed miles ago. Yes, of course that one, the very same, one man now thinks, and he thinks that it would not be any other. The sound when Father takes the stick and smacks it on his palm and goes out to the yard and slams the door. No he isn’t. No he wouldn’t. That’s just singing. The same as singing is what howling is. What dogs will do when the moon is full and when Father walks out to the yard. A wing tip steadies the bottom rail. An oxford braces the sidepiece board. A boot of yellow buck steps up upon the rung.

30 Pamela Ryder

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The wind begins to rise and brings the smell of the woods— boughs of spruce and juniper split for the woodpile, cut for a clearing—the smell of fresh cut wood, and of sawdust and blood and there is the pigman reaching down past the counter behind the glass where you can’t see his face where the pig head rests. And the pigman puts his hand in the case behind the glass and he puts his hand on the tall clean ear and Mutter says: Rudy! Schau, Rudy! How old Mr. Pigman wiggles his ear! And the pigman looks up and his hat is straw and he hasn’t a snout but the pigman has a nose. Just a nose like his nose and the kind of nose any boy would have or any person would have and the hands hold a hatchet but the pigman hasn’t trotters like a pig ought to have but he does have hands just the same as a boy would have or a boy should have if he really was a boy. Up goes the hatchet he has in his hands. There it goes. There it goes. There it goes going down and it makes the sound coming down on the big wood block as it goes through the muscle and it goes through the bone and the wood-smoke smell of oak and ash, of the snapping logs in bright combustion, becoming heat and becoming light, escaping up the chimney stack and bending the stars, warming someone’s kitchen in someone’s house they passed along the road or along the way—or maybe from the house they passed in the town—the smell of it on the blowing snow, on the clean, cold air mixed with the scent of coming spring; of turned earth and planted fields and baled hay and the sweet green feed oh so much feed and corn to eat and rolls and butter and ice cream for their dinners and so happy for their dinners and then so full and soon they are sleeping or something like sleeping with their lashes long when their eyes fall closed, when their tongues come out—and their hearts grow so very slow and cold and they have no need to speak.

In the Hands of the Pigman 31

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State Police have discovered footprints belonging to one or more persons beneath the nursery window. The Sioux City Inquisitor March 6, 1932

It has not been determined if footprints discovered beneath the nursery window are those of the kidnappers or State Police investigating the scene. Hudson District Dispatch March 7, 1932

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LUCKY LINDY EN ROUTE At 7:15 this morning, The Spirit of St. Louis was sighted over the coast of Newfoundland as Charles Augustus Lindbergh headed out over the open sea. The Boston Beacon May 20, 1927

LONE FLYER LANDS AT LE BOURGET! ALL OF PARIS TURNS OUT The Philadelphia Ledger May 21, 1927

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Authorities have released an official photograph and description of the missing child. The Galveston Eagle March 11, 1932

Hundreds of sightings of the missing boy have been reported across the nation. The Sacramento Courier March 12, 1932

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REPORTERS DESCEND ON ESTATE OF FAMED AVIATOR LINDBERGH ASKS PRESS FOR RESTRAINT

Tar Heel State Tribune March 3, 1932

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Correction of Drift Colonel Lindbergh, who has avoided the press since his celebrated solo transatlantic flight, has not yet issued a statement. New York Sunday Sentinel March 3, 1932

He sees the open window, the shutters flung, the unlatched swell of wood (winter rains, a rot in the sill, warp). He sees the casement, the pane, the slant of the lintel (errors of mortar, mistakes of brick, and a balky sash). He sees the light on the floor. (“Mahogany,” she had said, “a warmer wood,” when he told her to spare no expense.) He sees the scattering of toys in the unslatted illumination of the moon: a clown in grosgrain with a grimace of lace, whose hat would horribly jingle (if one dared); the little airplane of lead with its propeller fixed by a pin (“No,” he had said, “not

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a replica—a two-seater, a stagger wire”); the bedtime book (the piggy outpuffed in his house of straw), spine-broke and page down to mark the place. He puts his hand to the wall in the doorway, leans into it so that it bears his weight. It seems that it is solid. He had supervised. He had seen to it. He sees the crib, the railings set with toys that slide and tumble—a mirror on a bar, blocks inscribed in ABCs, a blue bird on a stick. He sees a turn of a light along the wall (headlights on the drive?) and across the dresser: a runner of linen, of French knots (light blue) and leaves (lime) and the madness of the meticulously counted stitch; ointment in a dark jar (a “rub” she had called it); the book of baby care (“a tepid bath for fever”); the music box (“Skip to My Lou”) used for keeping diaper pins. He sees the silver-handled brush overworked in scroll (an initial?), with bristles for a baby’s head—too soft to be boar. (“What sort of beast?” he once asked his wife—his wife, the mother of the boy, the stitcher of needlepoint—when she once reached up to brush back his own hair. “Pegasus,” she had said, seeming serious and leaving him still wondering.) He sees, briefly in the passing light, the reflection of roses: tea roses (greenhouse) in a cup, the apparent slant as if about to spill (just the mirror at a tilt); the matching saucer placed to protect the finish, the varnish—veneer so like the color of the body of the boy toddling through the summer garden, and later in what would soon be spring, the color of his curls beneath the twigs, the old leaves, the gall of golden oak and maple woods. (Tooth, stink, skull: the work of scavengers, of botflies and buzzards; perhaps a crow?) Bird’s-eye, the auctioneer had said, knuckles to the maple. They had taken a ride in the country, an outing, a lark. There

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had been buttermilk, folding chairs, programs folded over in lieu of fans; flypaper and bids. “Just perfect for the baby’s things,” she had said when they hauled the dresser out. The finish was unscratched. The pulls were brass. The drawers themselves would be left unopened (“A pig in a poke,” the auctioneer had said). The mirror was intact, but cloudy (cumulonimbus, he had been thinking) and in need of resilvering. He sees himself in that new silver as the light swings around the room: north wall, east window, dresser, mantle, mirror: there the very burden of his arms, the rolled-up white of cuff, his hair in a bunch above his brow. He smoothes it back with his hands, as he has been seen to do in newsreels, as he has seen himself on the screen where they sat one recent Saturday night—unnoticed on the mezzanine—his wife (the mother of the boy, the arranger of tea roses, the reader of bedtime stories) beside him—an ordinary couple taking in a picture show. She in her smart suit of fine wool crepe and what he called her flapper hat—“No, a cloche,” she had said, not turning to him—no—but leaning into him to speak, whispering while all the while watching the screen, her face flickering in the light of his celluloid self that waved and walked in the framed acceleration of newsreel time: Climbing from the cockpit, newly transatlantic. (“Lucky Lindy,” reads the headline, “New York to Paris.”) Or stooping to a microphone, papers blowing from the podium. (Tailwind, he remembered thinking. Open the throttle, clear the trees.)

Correction of Drift 43

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Or seated in the rear of a black sedan. (Had someone checked the pressure of the oil? he wondered. Had someone checked the pressure of the air?) And riding out a blizzard of ticker tape. (Icing on a wing, on a strut, above the sea.) Or captured in a field of fedoras, pulled from the cockpit by the crowd; seeing himself lifted up and leaving in the windshield—his reflection receding in the windshield—carried away on the shoulders of strangers. He lifts his hand, watches his hand in the mirror, sees it move past the point it leaves the silver and the glass. He hears—or thinks he hears—a spray of gravel in the drive, brake and squeal. (Underinflation? he wonders. The slippage of a belt?) There are stones in a row all along the cut of the drive: a border, a wall. (There was a break in the clouds over Ireland, he remembers. Below him: old stone fences, a man waving at him with his cap.) There had been self-reliance, priority, order. (There was a quiltwork of crops: heartland wheat, sorghum, corn; his wingshadow always just ahead of him, dark on the harvest, steady on the field.) There had been stability, self-reliance. (Farmhouse, chimney, silo, rapid ascent.) There had been solitude, the safety of woods surrounding the house: stands of maple in the sour soil; hickory and sweet gum in the hills. (Forest, lake, forest, lake: cloud formations on the water; reflections off the fuselage.) There had been isolation, seclusion, the shelter of the mountains still patched with winter. (Floes off Nova Scotia; the fishermen pulling at their nets and pointing up.) There had been the windows shining with lamplight. (There were the outskirts of the city, the Eiffel Tower, the airfield.)

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There were the windows of home—she kept them lit when he was late—and coming up the drive, passing the row of stones, he could see the lights inside the house, inside the room where she waited supper or sat up sewing (satin stitch, French knot) or reading in the baby book (“steam a cough, feed a fever”). (Fog above Newfoundland and a drop in altitude: the breach of a whale, salt spray on his windshield.) He had seen himself leaving in the windshield, borne away on the shoulders of strangers. There was the shout, the hero’s welcome. There was the din, the hurrah. The moon had appeared on the horizon. He had noted the steadfast progression of wave, crest. Whitecap, peak. Birch, oak, and early snow on the ridge. Wind speed known by the force of the spray. Bearings determined by the blowing foam. The course charted by the motions of smoke rise (roof, roof, chimney, train). By the persuasion of a compass point. By confidence in stars, in woods, in brick. The shutter claps. The room is cold. (There had been a storm: rain turned to needles, zero visibility.) He sees the crib, the rail, the bars of moonlight through the branches of sweet gum and maple, and the tops of the sycamores along the ridge. He had cleared the treetops.

Correction of Drift 45

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He had looked out and seen his wheels above the leaves and he knew he had cleared the tractor, the trees and the telephone line, and he would teach the boy—his boy—the sleeper through bedtime tales, the boy of curls the color of golden oak. He would teach it all to the boy he held in his arms and buzzed overhead, lifting him to the clouds, landing on the airfield of the counterpane. He would hover above the horns of the moon, outjump the cow, outrace the runaway spoon and fork and he would teach the boy. He would teach him how to judge his rate of ascent and how to land in a leeward wind. And the boy would learn: attention to altimeter, to airspeed, to wind speed. Recognition of manifold-pressure drop. The reduction of drag. The correction of drift. He would teach him when to ditch and when to bail. He would know cumulus from nimbus and cirrus from stratus. The significance of scud clouds. Anticipation of a front. They would bring aboard squares of chocolate wrapped in foil and sandwiches wrapped in paper. And coffee—hot coffee for staying awake, slipping through a squall; for sailing through the transatlantic air and breaking records above the sea, above the heartland, farmland, forests. The boy would know—he would teach him—recovery from a spin and reduction of flutter. He would teach him dead reckoning, a sense of direction, and he would know north any night without a star. Any night, he would know, except this night: the slopes bare, the slow-rolling sedan on the unpaved lane (Featherbed Lane), the driver watching for the lights to dim in the unshuttered window, the moon rising with light enough for anyone unfamiliar with the graveled drive (Private Drive) to make his way. There was the veer, the zero visibility of the wall, rocks in a row (she had him paint one white: a warning stone, the one at the

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vertex of the curve). One—one of the ones unpainted—would be struck (bumper, body, grill). There would be a hollow where it was (the bumper)—a smooth cupping in the earth—dendrites, the burrow of a worm. (The skull would be found empty of brain, replaced by a clump of mud, a clod.) The sedan itself would go unnoticed. The stone in the wall would bear a chip of chrome (the grill) and blue (the body). Or green, perhaps, but then, a matter of semantics. (“You know men when it comes to colors,” the wife had said to that girl—that silly girl—when he had fetched the aqua-blue booties instead of the sky. Clearly she said “sky,” hadn’t she? Sky?) Yes, sky. And sea. Coast. Quartering wind. Condition of the rudder. Integrity of the struts. Icing on the airfoil. The chill, the open window. The men will pry the frame, dust the sill. They will check for handprints on the ledge, footprints on the path. They will re-create a second-story ascent and determine method of entry. They will assess the feasibility of a foothold on the bricks with a baby in tow; the likelihood of a fall—given how cumbersome to carry off a small boy toted on a shoulder or tucked into a sack. They will account for weight, for mass, for bulk; for pounds per square inch of step upon a makeshift ladder and wide-spaced rungs. They will interrogate, interview: Beg pardon ma’am, so sorry sir. The men will ask her (the wife, the mother, the stitcher of French knots): Was the window left open? Was he covered with a quilt? Was the bottle warmed? (“Test the temperature with a drop on your forearm.”) Was he fed by the breast? (“Hasten weaning with a dab of castor oil to the nipples.”)

Correction of Drift 47

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Was a story told? (“A story? Oh, yes. Let me see. Tigers turning to butter? No: the pig, it was; the pig with the house he had made of wood.”) Was a song sung? (“Bye, Baby Bunting.”) (“Oh! Dear me!” said the silly girl. “Who could have known?”) Was he fussy? (“Croupy.”) Was he coughing? (“Colicky. Or perhaps it was the tooth.”) Did he sleep soundly? Did he sleep fitfully? Would he sleep through the night or wake to be fed? Would he wake if lifted in the arms of strangers? Would he wake if lifted on the shoulders of strangers? Would he cry? If he were carried off, would he cry for his mama? If he cried, could you hear him through the walls of brick? Through the mortar and masonry? Was the counterpane pinned? (“Oh, yes, clear through. His cold little toes. So not to kick it off, you know. The chill: the shutter that would not close. A bit of a croup.”) Nothing alarming, certainly: a cold, that was all. “Much too much made of it,” he had said to his wife (the mother of the boy, the reader of the baby book). “Let’s not coddle the boy! The boy, not nearly a baby anymore,” he had said when that girl—that silly girl!—started spouting the words “croup,” “cranky,” “colicky,” and finally a “fussy.” “A tempest in a teapot!” he had said when his wife (the mother of the boy, the oiler of breasts) called the day much too damp and the woods too cold for a walk down the drive or an excursion into the hills.

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And oh! His wife all at sixes and sevens (she said). She preferred the ointment from the dark jar with the fumes of eucalyptus meant to be soothing. And then that silly girl saying, “But let me run off a little undershirt from a scrap of flannel; just the thing my old mum would do.” And furthermore it was right there in the baby book listed under “Chest: Congestion and Comforts”: “A bit of flax tucked in an undershirt, or a flannel close to the skin.” (“Or perhaps, and then again, he could simply be cutting a tooth.”) “Try a rubber teething ring, or a silver rattle chilled in a bath of ice.” (“Dear me!” said the silly girl, while his wife sat and read.) “In the event of convulsions, use a clean sharp lancet and cut the gum in the direction of the crown.” (“Dear me!” she said again, muttering to herself. “Why, my old mum just rubbed my gums with the oil of a clove or a bit of whiskey!”) “A wash with barley water or added to the bottle calms the senses and promotes sleep.” Was he put to bed with a toy of sorts? Something to clutch? A piggy or a rattle or a little red hen? How long would it take to give the boy his dinner? How long would it take for his prayers to be said? How long would it take for him to say his good-nights and his please-don’t-let-thebedbugs-bite? Given the abundance of beetles breeding in the leaf mold and the habits of button flies. How long would it take to tuck him in, for his head to go empty, his skull to become a rattlebox of clods? Given the cold. Given the decline in decay in the winter cold.

Correction of Drift 49

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How long for the grosgrain that tied up his curls to give way to the tendrils and tangles of vines? Given the thicket. Given the damp ground and seasonal overgrowth. How long would it take for his bath and his bottom to be washed and his bones to be picked clean? Given the scarcity of winter food and the hunger of scavengers. Given the habits of foragers: foxes, crows, sow bugs, buzzards. How long to nibble at his ten little toes?—the men will say and then move about the house, their thick rubber soles soundless (except for an occasional squeal. “Unsettling,” she would say) upon the floors of a warmer wood. The shutter claps. He steps to the foot of the crib. He sees the counterpane, the rail. He will be asked (he knows that he will): Was the rail still up? Was the bed disturbed? Was the counterpane still pinned clear through to the cat and the fiddle, the fork and the spoon? Was the fold still the way the silly girl had said the fold was made? The fray and stitch of it will be examined, sampled. Spots will be scrutinized: spit-up on a moon, a clue near the cow, a stain where the little dog laughs. Something for forensics will be sponged from the cat and the fiddle. Something to go on will be scraped from his hey-diddle dish: pablum, pap, or cream of farina. Or table food, scraps: the roast beef for dinner, and the last little piggy crying all the way home for barely a trace of a barley corn. For sorghum from the heartland, potatoes from a farm where the cows jump the moon and the pigs are pink, and potatoes are new and mashed for the baby with butter and a splash of cream. Confirmation of stomach contents. Post-digestive curdling. (“Consider a teaspoon of arrow root for mucus in the stool.”)

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(“Syrup of rhubarb stirred in a little water works well in cases of congestion.”) (“Flies in the buttermilk will turn in time to a maggoty tea.”) The men will ask for coffee, tea, and sandwiches. For access to the telephone. For ashtrays to be emptied. She (the wife, the mother, the sewer of the satin stitch) will boil an egg, slice the bread, pass the sugar, the cream, the fresh-brewed tempest in a pot. She will wait for the kettle to whistle. She will percolate and drip. The milk. The oil. She will sit and stitch. She will take a scrap of flannel and dab at her breasts while they watch at the window and reenact what they will call “the grab,” “the snatch,” “the lift.” They will sniff out leads, speak of suspects, speak softly, and they will say, “Not so lucky, is he?” They will issue a progress report and an all-points bulletin. They will step through the house and scour the woods and sift the sour earth of the garden. They will tap their pencils to their pads and to their teeth and to the tops of tables of oak and birch and bird’s-eye maple and ask for specifics, for details; request blueprints and aerial photos. They will construct charts, make lists. “A sleeper suit. Baby Bunting brand. One: a pair. One, the way a pair of pants is one, or a pair of scissors is…” “White, Ma’am?” “No, a cream color, really, a moonlight,” she will tell them. “And diaper pins. Two. And rubber pants. And a flannel shirt for close to his chest.” “Just this night run off,” the girl will say. (“That girl! That silly girl!” he will say. “What could she mean: ‘run off ’? Did she mean ‘sewed hastily,’ ‘stitched quickly,’

Correction of Drift 51

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or ‘run up’ on her sewing machine? That silly girl,” he thought, and all along had been thinking. Devoted to the boy! For that they were keeping her, the only reason they were keeping her as far as he was concerned, but keeping her distance and they both felt it when she took to calling him “Colonel.”) (“Colonel! The baby!” she will call from the unshuttered room. “Not in his crib! Colonel, have you got the boy?”) A sample, a specimen: snips of the flannel (she pinks it with the shears); a finger-length of thread (she breaks it with her teeth). A strand will be pulled from the silver-handled brush. The silver ring to soothe a tooth, labeled and bagged. Arguments will ensue: the dent of a second incisor, or a first? Or a smidgen of a crown. Had the gums been rubbed? Had the gums been cut? Had the throat been slit? Was the hole below the ear (nestled under a curl) the cause of death? Or a fall from a ladder—a broken ladder with an upturned rung (“Impaled,” they will say, and “stuck like a pig”) or skull-smashed with a handy stone, or the doings of rodents? Wood mice, woodchucks, perhaps a cottontail (less of a rodent than a rabbit or a hare, and certainly, certainly, no one would mention a rat)—all known to gnaw a cast-off bone. Was a story told? (“But didn’t you hear? The last of the pigs with a house of brick.”) “Colonel! The baby? Tell me that you’ve got the boy!” she called—that girl had called—when they hid in the study under the desk, or once, when they played up in the nursery with the counterpane (the cow and the moon, the cat and the fiddle) covering them up. Right there, she stood, inches from their noses,

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thick of stocking and foolish shoes, so near that it seemed to him she must have known it was a hide-and-seek with the both of them hidden in a cloud. The two of them concealed by the moon. The boy was ready to reveal them with a gurgle or a laugh, until he had clamped his hand (“clamped”—the word the men would use—a hand “clamped to his mouth”), if not “subdued” (yes, subdued) by some other means: chloroform, ether, the soporific effects of the bottle; thus the lack of noise, the lack of “fuss,” and by the way, the men will ask, did you ever try whiskey rubbed on his gums? Did you ever try castor oil dabbed on her nipples? Have you tasted the castor oil dabbed on her nipples? Have you tasted the salt in the spray as you buzzed so close to the sea? Did you know your elevation? Were you sure to check your gauges? Your fuel supply and compass? Did you correct for a stall? For drift? Account for deviation? Check the airspeed indicator? Would you make a calibration? Would you know your rate of climb? Would you know him by his curls? Would you know him by his clothes? Would you know him by his teeth and his ten little piggies? He stands at the foot of the crib. The counterpane is pinned. The little dog laughs to see such sport. The shutter claps. The shutter claps. He will be asked: Was the shutter bolted?

Correction of Drift 53

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He will be asked: Was the window open? They will say: Did you feel the spray from the waves and the foam through the open cockpit window? Did you feel the needles of rain? The stab? The stitch? He steps over the clown, the airplane, the open book. He makes his way to the dresser. The pulls are brass. The drawers are closed. The pig is in the poke. He lifts the lid of the music box (ebony? he wonders. Or walnut? A dark wood, nonetheless, with an inlay of a paler wood—a birch, he thinks, like the birches by the clearing). A paler wood, or a cooler wood, is what she might say (the mother of the boy, the keeper of baby teeth, the wearer of a cloche and a smart suit of fine black crepe). Too cold a wood, she might say (the mother of the boy, the bearer of a tea rose, the crier of tears) for an outing, an excursion, or a skip-to-my-Lou or a fly-in-the-buttermilk. Too cold a wood for the damp soil, but perfect for a smallish box, “perfect for the baby’s things,” for his diaper pins and a button or two; for a first tooth and his piggy toes; for a curd and a whey; for a curl tied with grosgrain, a strand tied with vine or a splinter of a boy’s muddied skull. A pale-wooded box would be perfect for taking his boy with him on a flight above the sea; a boy-sized box for keeping the ash, for holding the charred and flaking bone of a boy he will spill from the cockpit window; the singed and blowy bits of a boy he will be scattering in a field of cirrus and dusting a wing. It plays until the lid falls closed: Shoo, fly. Shoo, fly. Shoo. He goes to the window, the shutters. He reaches out twohanded and, arms spread, pulls them in. He lets his hand travel along the edges, examines the hinge, tests the latch. (He had inspected the flange of the barrel. He had noted the wing bracings, the balsa wood.) He studies the fit, the angle of insertion.

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(He had made adjustments for wingspan and structural load.) He tries the bolt. He notes the point of attachment at the gap and at the brick. He estimates the degree of warp. He leans out past the sill and on the ledge of brick: there the moon, the drive, the Featherbed Lane. There the rocks, the woods, a bit of a mist slipping down the mountain and settling in along the road. Upslope fog. Dew point. Condensation. These damp hills. This silent land. He remembers the sound of the engine: crankshaft, cylinder. He remembers the crackling of ice on a wing. He watches a leaf (last summer’s sweet gum, or sycamore, or maple) as it tilts on its edge and tumbles down the drive. He estimates wind speed and direction. He accounts for drift. He notes the cloud cover: stratus, eight thousand feet, maybe nine. Precipitation would be a possibility. And there, over there—past the yard, the drive: fog in the clearing that was to be the airfield, rising fog beyond the tree line. A consideration, certainly. But hardly a factor in takeoff. A cold drizzle might be predicted. But hardly a hindrance. And the ceiling would eventually be lifting. Still, visibility might be a little less than one would expect. But not so poor as to prevent a departure. A cold rain—even a sprinkling of snow—would not be so concerning; not worrisome enough to change a flight path or a destination. Not so troublesome as to postpone an excursion. Not so severe as to cause a delay in passage, in flight, in ascent.

Correction of Drift 55

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The writer of the ransom note shows an ability to create with his hands and may be a mechanic, an artist, or a carpenter, as noted in the formation of the letters f (as in fude), m (as in mony), and p (airplane). Certified Graphologist Report Ransom Note #13 April 10, 1932

A blood clot at the fracture line indicates the cause of death to be a blow to the head sustained by a fall or the force of a blunt instrument, such as a hammer. Coroner’s Report Mercer County, NJ May 13, 1933

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The upward slant of the letters suggests an intelligent individual with an outwardly friendly manner. However, the decrease in letter size indicates cunning, and the persistent strokes below base line hint at a weak self-image and emotional repression. Certified Graphologist Report Ransom Note #2 April 10, 1932

Investigators believe a German-English dictionary was used to compose the ransom notes. Prescott County Picayune April 15, 1932

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Boy Is Gute, Etc. “That is not how I spell ‘boat.’” Suspect in custody, upon being shown Ransom Note #9 New Jersey State Police Transcripts September 20, 1934

We hav the boy. He is in gute care. Keept quet und wait. Instrukshens follow. Keept waching youer mail. Den we will reveel ouer deal.

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Boy is in gute care—doan worry aboud dis. If you brig polize into it it too dangerus for boy. Tell anyeone und we mus cansel deal. Dis is ouer deal: Make mony redy. all usetd bills: 100,000$ in 20 $ bills 100,000$ in 10 $ bills 50,000$ in 5 $ bills Put notise in Brooklyn Newsappaer: I ACEPT DEAL. MONY IS REDY. After 8 houers we hav mony we tell where ist youer boy.

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Ware is notise in Brooklyn Newsapper? We finde diet for boy frum Frau Lindberrgh in classfide. Danken but no notise aboud deal. Und we will not cominucate untll you write so: I ACCEP DEAL in newsappaer. Mrs. Linberg: There is absolute not woory aboud the boy. We are feeding him the fude. Mr. Linberg: Doan think you outensmarts us. Ouer gang plannd dis kinderknap hole yeear. Now furder more dellaye und what hapens not ouer falt. We warn you no trapp or esl. We are wtaching. Boy gute in gute care etc. Beter than befor syou will see. We give more fude than you putt in newspapper diett. Stop assking aboud boy etc.

Boy Is Gute, Etc. 63

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Now you asking for prufe boy is gute. So we will sende sleeping suit of boy. Butt If you want sleeping suit of baby ad 300 $ for ouer expsensess. Haf your Airplane redy f;r pic-up of your boy. Secret servif may be wtaching you and you not even awear. Kepe quet und wait for mony drop instruckshen. Follow instucshun strickly Haf mony redy. We are wtaching evryting und will knowe if trapp is afoot. Whenn oeur mony in hande then we reveal boy.

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Yes Boy is gute. We haf gute kindernurse—experienced for youer boy. So doan worry jjus make Airplane und mony redy. Lindbugs haf plentie biG mony from Aiplane tripp Paris und bak. Coperate or ilse we cansul deel.

Boy is youer boy und if you doan wannt him t his all on youer hed.

Boy Is Gute, Etc. 65

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No we canut come to youer Hause. No. To dnagarous und maybee Polize trapp. You mus folow this instucksun strickley: Take car und drive to last supway stop Jerome Ave. 50 feete frum tiket boot is emtpy frankinfurther stand. Rapp up monky in plane pappr—Tappe pakage close titely. Putt pakage in behnd steps. We are wtaching etc. Come aloen.

Where is mony? Ouer man miss pick-up. Be cause Instrucshon not strickly by you. Now delay und to dnager to collekt mony—mus wait. Put anoder notise in newspaper Brooklyne Press: MONY UND AIRPLANE REDY. Und we maken new instuckshuns. You dropp mony to us in youer airplane. We are wtatching. You Limbergs not follow direckshen strickly we doubel mony. Boy is gute for now.

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You are coopertating gute. We finden youer notise in newspapper , We are keeping Youer Boy is on Boad Nelly. Small boad but safe. Enjoyabel seeside for youer boy. Kindernurse waching wit boy neer water. We providing Exacts locatsion when we haf mony in hande. Awate furder insrtukshuns soone.

Neu instrukshuns for mony drop inclosed: Haf all mony redy in brite yello packege. Drive youer car to Teter borrow Airfeeld NeuJersy 6AM Tuseday. Mr. Linebefgh stop at HANKS HANGER nexxt to Airfeeld. Mus be aloen. Underr rock on stepp new instuckinstrucshoens for mony drop. Go dierectly to youer Airplane you haf redy on Airfeeld. Fly a way accorting to direkshuns inclosed. Famus Mr. Lindberkg fly gute.

Boy Is Gute, Etc. 67

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WHat is holeup wit Aierplane? We knowe for fakt Mr. Lindbugrh has Aiplane. What not tink we haf boy or we meen bisness. ? Linbdbugrhs not want boy komme back? If 1 more stalls we will Know trapp afoote. Den deel is permently off. Den we cansel boy etc. Ya

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WANTED Information as to the whereabouts of

Chas. A. Lindbergh, Jr. 20 months old, hair curly blond, overlapping toe left foot, wearing one-piece sleeper suit Address all communications to Col. Chas. A. Lindbergh, Hopewell, NJ

Wanted Poster New Jersey State Police March 11, 1932

TIPS FROM PUBLIC POUR IN The Los Angeles Advance March 10, 1932

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Mrs. Lindbergh has informed the police that the boy’s toy pig is also missing. The New Detroit Daily March 12, 1932

A train set on the nursery floor was left undisturbed by the kidnappers. The Bay City Beacon March 12, 1932

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Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh have asked that the public limit correspondence to credible leads and reliable information only. Gulf-Coast Guardian March 12, 1932

What arrives, arrives in sacks: telegrams, postcards, letters largely unsolicited; notes and parcels packed in bags of canvas of a sailcloth weight, roped and grommetted at the neck. Unlike the one of gunny, the kind used for the containment of the boy, for the reduction of struggle. The gunny being looser in its weave, allowing the exchange of air, permitting inhalation of bits of hemp found inside the nose and mouth. Unlike the strands found along the windowsill: wool snagged from what might have been someone’s trouser seat, and cotton from the diaper or the footed sleeping suit.

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The mother of the boy is shown the color of the thread. Sorry to disturb you Ma’am, but is this what he was wearing? Would you mind taking a look? No, she wouldn’t mind. Yes, of course, certainly, give me just a minute. She takes a sip of tea from the cup on the bedside table. There is a sheaf of writing paper, a packet of stamps, a pen without ink. There is a bunch of winter roses someone has sent. The attached note of condolence has not yet been read. She rings for the maid. Violet, dear. Never mind another tea. I feel so thirsty, but I cannot drink. The bunch of winter roses has begun to wilt. She has been told that flowers must be removed from a room at night or they will take oxygen from the air. She has been told that there is too much ice left on the river for an adequate search. She keeps the bedside lamp unlit. She keeps a box at the foot with things to be put away: romper, porridge dish, the owl and the pussycat, muffler, mittens. Ma’am? Are you there? It will only take a minute. Yes, yes, I’m here. She takes another sip. The tea has gone cold. The maid has not remembered to remove the pits from the wedge of lemon. The napkin is frayed and bears traces of a

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stain. The pattern of the saucer does not match the pattern of the cup. The maid has not yet been up to add water to the vase or to clear away the mess. Violet, can you hear me? Has the mail been delivered? Have you wound the hallway clock? The hands click across the face and into position. The double doors swing open. A wooden bird emerges and emits a one-note whistle. These days, deliveries are often late. A small town such as this was unprepared and ill-equipped. However, neither rain nor snow nor sleet. The postmaster receives complaints. Two, three bags a day going out there with just one truck, don’t you forget. The truck turns out from the town on the county road and takes the trestle bridge across the river. Left on Featherbed Lane. Right on Lindbergh Drive. The mother of the boy can see the truck coming down the hill. She hears the tires on the gravel and the wet out front. She hears the motor: chug chug chug and cough and sputter to a stop. A cough like that, Violet, that’s what he has and a bad case of the sniffles and out somewhere in this weather in that sleeping suit not nearly warm enough. The doors on both sides of the cab swing open and the men climb down. They swing the tailgate flat and shove the sacks along the bed of the truck. There is soft new snow in the drive and icicles on the gutter ledge. Give me a hand with this, Ed.

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy 75

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Hatless, gloveless. Rope and canvas, abrasive to the knuckle. Couriers poorly appointed. Well, damn it all, Ed, but don’t these galoshes leak. Hallo, anybody home? Special delivery. Anybody here to sign for this? Hallo-oh? The cook stops stirring the soup and taps the spoon against the pot. The maid puts down her sewing. Violet, dear, would you get the door? Sign for whatever it is they’ve brought. And ask them if they’d like something hot. Elements are tracked in. Snow clings to a sole. Mudcake and heavy slop are carried in from the road. The weighty gloom of night. There are footprints in the slush. Brogan, shoe, galosh; a mark made by a slim-heeled boot? The sheriff has measured the width and depth. What do you make of this one, George? The ladder maybe, or someone carrying extra weight? What arrives is slung along the floor. Contents are spilled into bins. Packages are inspected. Cards are tied in packs. Correspondence is addressed “Colonel and Mrs.” with the exception of the occasional “To Whom It May Concern.” What remains is sorted by subject and divided into stacks: Advice Expressions of Sympathy I Told You So’s Sightings Dreams

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Dear Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh, I dreamed the boy was on a deck of some sort of ship. He was dangling his feet. He looked just like his picture in the papers—blond, everything. And a sailor’s cap. I hope this helps. Sincerely, Mrs. Madeline Taylor Miami Beach (The mother of the boy dreams of a cradle in the shape of a pea-green boat. An owl clings to a sail. A pussycat sits on the deck. A pig at the helm wears a sailor’s cap and a ring in the end of his nose. The face of the boy appears in the porthole. The canvas billows: bad weather, a squall. Tears. The boy rubs his fists into his eyes. The sails swell and snap. The cradle rocks and dips.) (The father of the boy dreams of a note in a bottle, written with the ink of a squid. The cork in the bottle has leaked. The ink on the note has run. The words cannot be read.) Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, Everyone says I can see things and I could see your boy sitting at a table. We had a tablecloth like that. There is a chocolate cake but no knife. We never got dessert. Don’t worry too much. Some children are happy away from home or at least happy-er. Your friend, Howard Taney Vancouver (The mother of the boy dreams of a boat and the boy is on the boat with a silver spoon in his fist. He’s much too young for quince, says the pussycat on the deck. And he’s much too young

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy 77

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for mince, says the owl on his perch. But what about a fish, says the pig with a ring at the end of his nose and a trout on a silver dish.) Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, I had a dream they are spoiling him and feeding him just what he likes. Sincerely, Lou-Anne Lutz Little Rock (The mother of the boy dreams of the boy with a fork and a runcible spoon. Minced fish, says the fork. Gone bad, says the spoon. Spoiled rotten, says the little dog laughing and turning up his nose.) Say, George, you still working those dogs of yours, your old what’s-his-name and that old girl Bethy? Let’s get ’em down here for the sheriff if it’s not too late to pick up a scent. The cook sniffs the steam from the soup. She adds a pinch of salt, the knuckle of a pig, an onion—minced. She sets the lid back on the pot. The cook has been saving table scraps: crusts, bones, trimmings of fat. Dear Mr. Lindbergh, I never dream dreams, just ask my wife, but here is one I had: that boy of yours was in an airplane and he was flying over water somewhere around where you are but I can’t say exactly where or what. Mr. Phillip Sears Phoenix

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(The father of the boy dreams only of snow and the windshield going white.) Snow showers are still expected. The canvas bags do not keep the weather out. Sometimes the pages of a letter are damp. Sometimes the script of the sender is wet and running the color of river ice. There is still ice on the river. The children from the town come to skate. The father of the boy is driving home, out from the town. He stops at the trestle bridge above the river. The signal light starts to swing. The train is coming. The gate comes down. He can see the ice on the river. The last of it, he thinks, and then a thaw and then warmer and then there will be spring; yes, spring will come and it will be just like any other. He looks down at the river. He can see the children skating on the ice. One of the children falls down and gets up. One of the children makes a figure eight. The father of the boy wonders if the ice is getting thin and remembers the sheriff standing on the ice. Yes, there is the place, there where the river splits and winds in its bed where the sheriff was standing on the ice and pointing with his stick. See that, Colonel? No sense in dragging this piece of river till ice-out, Colonel. Boy could be snagged somewheres near for all we know, froze if we find him or not too much rot at least. The father of the boy looks down at the river and down at the banks where he went with the dogs and the men and the sheriff through brush and drifted wood and ice-bent straw and bramble. High-water jetsam. Cloth caught on a branch of black alder. A river-washed rag: a pattern of roses, ruffled at the neck. No, it’s a girl’s, a dress. Someone else’s clothes. Some girl

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy 79

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maybe went for a swim long ago or last summer, or gone off the trestle bridge and gone under. And they went on through muck not quite frozen, stopping where a little creek came in and there the ice so thin and clear. He could see the strands of river grass under the ice, plaiting and unplaiting, and trout, too, under the ice: brown trout or brook or rainbows holding steady to the cant of the current, fin and tail and hardly a flicker; hardly a sway. The signal light swings back and forth. The stop bell clangs. The train is coming. The mother of the boy—his boy—asked him not to put the train set away. Oh please don’t put the train set away, not yet. Let’s wait. And oh not the crib, don’t put away the crib with the picture of a baby in a little sack held by a stork in its beak. And not his clothes, not the romper and the diaper, and not the bib with the face of the woolly lamb and not his piggy hat or his rabbit without a foot or the train set, please don’t, not just yet. The signal light flashes red on the rails and red on the trunks of the trees by the trestle bridge. The moon is on the wane; he can see it through the trees. The train is coming: chug chug chug. The children skate. One boy spins in a circle on the ice. One boy points at the train and shouts. His voice is a cloud that goes away. Chug chug chug and the sounds run together. Here it comes. Here it comes. Steam comes from the stack. The whistle is a scream, a wail through the woods. Where’s my daddy? Put me down. Let me go. Daddy. Daddy. Snow shakes down from the trees: oak, birch, black alder. Icicles snap. The train is going past. He did not put the train set away. It was really too soon; it was not even spring; it was not yet ice-out on the river. Please don’t put that away, please don’t, is what she said. Clickety-clack, he said to the boy. Chug chug chug and clickety-clack he said as they sat on the nursery floor. Clickety-clack and looky there! Here comes the big locomotive with a big steam stack and a cowcatcher in front for catching cows and now here come the

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cars with lights inside so you can see the people sitting and some people reading their newspapers and some watching for the station as the train rounds the bend and some just sitting looking out at the dark and now here come the boxcars full of freight and all sorts of things that people need and some boxcars are empty and some boxcars are where the poor men sit with their little bundles that they tie on sticks and hold on their shoulders or use as their pillows when they sleep in the straw and now here come the cars with slats: the cattle cars and lamb cars and pig cars with slats and in those cars are the lambs with their woolly coats and the cows with their big black noses and the pigs with their tails that curl and wiggle, and all the animals are peeking out at the river passing by between the slats, and between the slats the eyes of the animals are bright in the dark, oh they are pairs of stars in the dark and now they are red as they pass into the shine of the signal light, and here comes a caboose and let’s put this little man there so there will be someone standing at the rail and if we wave he might tip his hat and wave right back and then the train is going away. Going away. Now gone away. The children from the town slide on the ice under the bridge and into the downriver dark. The signal light stops. The stop bell stops. The gate swings up. Far down the track where the train has gone the trunks of the trees are darker than the ink that runs on a letter. And the clouds that drift by the moon and its wide, whitespattered seas are black as the squirt of a squid. Dear Mr. Lindbergh, You should see how all your servants write and if it is anything like the ransom note, that is how they will slip up. That is my advice and so good luck. Mr. Ira Rand New York City

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy 81

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(The father of the boy dreams of tracks in the snow: boot heel, tire tread, deer hoof, dog.) Snowmelt starts where the sun warms the ridge. The water goes stone by stone through old spillways and trickle beds, through trenches worn by deer that thirst and come down to the river to drink. At dusk, the tick of the clock seems louder. The hands go slowly across the face. The doors swing out. The bird emerges. The one-note whistle. The bird withdraws. Six o’clock. Late-winter dark. The men who haul the canvas sacks have made an extra trip. Hey, hold that door, Ed. And goddamn that clock, where do these people think they are out here, the Alps? The cook takes the trout from the pan of ice. Their eyes are flat, the pupils wide and black. She puts each on the cutting board to scrape away the scales and rainbows. She puts the red potatoes in the sink. The ice on the river makes a low booming sound in places it has started to crack. The cook cracks the ice with a little pick. She puts a piece in each glass and pours the water over. She butters the potatoes and slices the bread. She taps a spoon against a vase: the sound of an icicle falling from the gutter and breaking on the dooryard slate. She calls up at the foot of the stairs. Dinnertime, please. Please come to the table. Hallo-oh! Is anyone coming? Last night’s ham is in the soup. Tuesday’s lamb is gone to waste.

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Sometimes the father of the boy is not home for dinner. Sometimes the mother of the boy does not come down to dinner. Tonight there is a green-pea soup and trout with a sauce of lemon pepper. The salad is red-leaf lettuce and Bibb. Decent tomatoes are not to be had. Yams, yes. That boy, he was never fond of yams, not even brown-sugared, and never mind rutabagas! But then I told her what child is? Tonight the potatoes will be red, cooked in their jackets, white where the eyes have been keenly scooped. The cook has a little blade for cutting things up. The sleeping suit that the boy had been wearing is returned by mail, intact, except for a loose thread on the sleeve and a tear at the neck. The maid is given things to mend: the heel of a sock worn thin, a hole in the finger of a glove, a split in the seam of a trouser seat. As if I didn’t have enough to do these days. You’d think with all their money they’d just buy new. The maid puts a penny in the water in the vase of winter roses. She has heard that a coin will help the petals keep. The sewing basket holds an assortment of threads. Needles. Pins. A darning egg made of maple wood. A pincushion in the shape of a tomato. A silver thimble and a seam ripper. A silver scissor in the shape of a stork: the finger holes are wings and the blades are its beak.

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The men with the sacks rap their knuckles upon the jamb. Hallo, anybody here? Special delivery! Anybody home to sign for this? Nowadays the front door is left unlocked. Unlike the nursery window, which is lately shut and latched. Flakes of rust found where the frame was cracked were first thought to be blood. Crowbar, Colonel. Or hammer claw, I guess. Hard to tell which. The maid has misplaced her thimble. The maid has pierced the pad of her thumb while attempting to repair a hem. The dogs arrive in the back of the truck: hounds out for blood scent. They snuffle and snort through the slats. They strain at their ropes. Easy there now boys, you heel now. Wet snouts, pendulums of spittle, ears that swing. Their coats are the color of liver. Their bellies are the color of mud. Big Boy has a webbing between his toes for running through marsh or swamp. Red Nose can trace a scent through slush. Bethy is known for her jaws, her grip. You remember that detainee in irons this old girl chased down four miles through creekwater? Near pulled his leg clean off, didn’t you, girl? Yes, you did! You come here to your daddy. Red Nose growls at the bird in the clock. Big Boy howls at the moon. Bethy barks at the sun. All are fed scraps the cook has been saving. All are allowed to drink from the kitchen tap. All are encouraged to sniff and root: mattress pad, cotton romper, scatter rug, mat. All are permitted at the sacks, the

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packages, the special deliveries, the parcel that held the sleeping suit, returned to the mother and the father of the boy marked “Postage Due: Eleven Cents.” The wrapping is brown paper. The package is tied with twine. The dogs sniff the stamps and the paper and the ink. The mother sniffs the sleeping suit: March wind, mashed peas, brown sugar. Milk. A fiber of the twine is examined. The mother sniffs the sleeping suit: blood, bone, spoiled meat. The fiber of the twine will be compared to the marks on the wrists and neck. The sky is ropey, laden. The train is crossing the trestle bridge. Clouds rise from the stack. The limbs of the trees are white as bone where the steam has turned to crystals of frost. None of the boy was found below the nursery window. The sliver of brain recovered from the crack in the dooryard slate was sleet-washed of detectable scent. The diapers had already been scraped and soaked. The windowsill has been wiped clean. The maid has bandaged her thumb. (The mother of the boy dreams she is a dog with a bone in her mouth, trying to speak.)

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(The mother of the boy dreams of the boy drinking from a river. She wakes up thirsting and drinks the last of the cold tea in the cup. The father of the boy is asleep but she bends close to his head on the pillow. That soup had too much salt. I must speak to the cook.) (The father of the boy dreams he is a trout on the bank of the river, trying to take oxygen from the air.) (The father of the boy dreams he is a dog running by the river with a bone of the boy in his mouth.) The dogs run along the banks. They lope across the grounds unleashed. They prowl through the house and wet the rugs and the living-room drapes. They scrabble and slide along the polished floor as if it were ice. The maid is on her knees. The finish of the floor is badly scratched and in need of waxing. The maid complains. I can hardly keep up. Red Nose eats a boot, steals a chop, swallows a thimble. Big Boy finds a letter in the road that has fallen from the sack, fallen from the truck. Bethy brings home the foot of a rabbit, a black birch stick, a sailor’s cap. Well looky here. Where’d you get that, girl? Where’d you find that, girl? Show your daddy where that come from. Come on, girl—show your daddy.

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Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, We think we sighted your boy fishing off a bridge. We went past on the train and the other boys waved and the one that didn’t fit the description. We are not sure where this exactly was. Sincerely, Mary B. Hazlet Sioux City (The mother of the boy dreams of the sea: fog like soup, like pease porridge cold. Chug chug chug goes the engine of a boat. Clang clang goes the bell in the buoy. The waves rise. The buoy rocks. The pig and the little dog laughing are sighted on the beach. The pig picks up a stick. The little dog barks at the buoy. The pig holds his stick and points at the water. The waves rise. The buoy rocks. The pig takes his stick and writes in the sand but a wave takes the words away.) Dear Mr. Lindbergh, Well we spotted your boy in the window of a train. I am sure it was your boy except there was sun in the glass and all that steam in the station. My own boy went somewheres on a train, but that’s another story. You’d think he’d wave, but he didn’t—mine, I mean. Sincerely, Elmer Hubbard Topeka (The father of the boy dreams of the curve of the earth while he is flying high above it. The air is so cold, he can hardly breathe, and the atmosphere is thin. Below him, the oceans have frozen. A boy skates away, away, away and over the edge.)

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Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, Take my advice and tell your husband just pay up. Sincerely, Mrs. Harris Watson Bangor (The mother of the boy dreams she is climbing the stairs. Now going to the nursery door. Now knocking on the jamb. Hallo-oh, anybody there? The bird calls from the hallway clock. Time’s up, says the mother of the boy. Ready or not. Am I getting hot? Am I getting cold? It is much too cold to be off at sea with a pig in a pea-green boat. The bird calls from the hallway clock: Hey diddle diddle. The little dog laughs and licks his chops.) There is always the drool from the jaws of the dogs, hanging in a viscous drip, swinging from their tongues and spattering walls when they shake. Sometimes the packages are wet from the slobber when they sniff, and the ink on the letters and the parcels will run. Sometimes the sheriff will hold a page away from his face and squint. No, I can’t read that, could you? Lock them damn dogs up. To Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh: With all your money something like this was bound to happen so what did you expect? David J. Stiles Kansas City (The father of the boy dreams of coins tied up in a sack at the end of a stick.)

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(The mother of the boy dreams of pennies in a pot of winter roses and a piggy with a five-pound note.) Dear Mr. Lindbergh, I see a boy swimming in a river. There is a picnic on the bank and the mother has on a rose-flowered dress with a ruffle at the neck and father has a tear in his trouser seat. My mother had a dress like that. The father puts the newspaper on his face and takes a nap. The mother tries to see the boy but the sun on the water is too bright. So you folks best search in the river and all along the bank. Sincerely, Bobbie-June Lewis Lambertsville (The father of the boy dreams he is flying down the coast. He sees the plaits of seaweed on the beach. He sees a small boat thrown against the jetty. The waves rise. A buoy rocks. A pod of whales heads for the open water. ) Red Nose drinks from puddles of sleet in the hall, Big Boy from the pot of soup, Bethy from the upstairs tub. Bethy barks at the truck. Red Nose growls at the clock. Big Boy plays dead, sits, fetches a stick. They climb the stairs, enter a room, and push against a closet door. They sniff the hems of the skirts and the cuffs of suit coats and the seats of the trousers and the shoes in the rack. Put that down, Red, you can’t be chewing on them’s the missus shoes. The footprints in the dooryard mud and snow freeze solid at night. The moon rises pale behind the black stems of the trees.

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And the branches of birch and black alder cross the face of the moon like the hands of the hallway clock. The floor is scuffed: the scratch of the canvas, the grommets and the rope; the nails of the dogs. The maid complains. Doesn’t anyone bother to wipe his feet? The maid shakes the rags from the sack. There is worn-out bedding, tablecloths too frayed for keeping, a napkin with a trace of a stain, clothes past mending. She finds an old dress with a pattern of roses—soft and faded—perfect for polishing the floor. She cuts the ruffles from the neck. She notes that she is nearly out of wax. The cook has a little blade for cutting things. She slits the fish’s belly and trims away a fin. The maid has a little blade for cutting things. She takes the roses from the vase. She draws the blade lightly along the stems, avoiding the thorns. She has been told that superficial wounds will make the blossoms last. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh, Please accept these flowers as an expression of our heart-felt sympathy. Placing them in a cool room or a spot near a window will extend their life. Sincerely, Mr. and Mrs. Herman Kottmeier Binghamton The mother of the boy unlocks the window overlooking the drive. She tries to lift the sash. Violet, dear. This room is so close, I can hardly breathe. Please, let in some air. An icicle falls

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from the edge of the roof and breaks below on the slate. After the thaw, she will close the box she keeps at the foot of the bed. The petals will fall from the winter roses despite all attempts. The father of the boy goes into the hall. He reads the note left propped against the clock: We are out of wax and stamps and ink. He does not sort through the mail. He does not put on his hat. He pulls on his overcoat and goes out the door. The train is crossing the trestle bridge. The engineer pulls the chain that blows the whistle. Birds burst in a flock from the tops of the trees. The flock dilates, contracts, disperses: the pupil of an eye in the light. The engineer leans from the window and looks down the track. Rail, rail, break in the trees, platform, station house, bench. He pulls the chain for the whistle. The train slows as it comes to the station but it does not stop. The stationmaster has been eating his dinner. Potatoes, brisket, peas. He sets down his knife and his fork when he hears the whistle. He checks the watch on the chain in his pocket. He takes a drink of water from the glass. He takes his uniform coat from the back of the chair. He goes to the door. The stationmaster comes out of the station. His uniform coat is the color of ink. He reaches behind him and closes the station house door while putting on his hat.

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The train chugs into the station. The freight man hangs by his arm crooked through the bar. The people in the passenger cars look out at the station. The freight man holds the canvas sacks. He hurls them one-handed onto the platform. There you go, Earl, that’s all for today. The stationmaster tips his hat. The train pulls away. No one waves from the caboose. The stationmaster bends to the sacks. Several letters of condolence will be returned with postage due. Much of the correspondence in the category “Expressions of Sympathy” will be marked “Returned to Sender.” Several in the category “Dreams” will be “Undeliverable As Addressed.” The whistle blows as the train pulls away from the station. The pigs in the pig cars sway on their legs. They knock against one another. There is no room to fall. There is straw beneath their feet: chaff, stem, and blade. The straw is wet but there is no water. They slip where the wet has gone icy and slick. The train picks up speed. It comes to the river and the trestle bridge crossing. The rails bend ahead and glint like the river where the river splits and winds in its bed. A thaw has opened the ice on the river. The ice moves along on the open water. The pigs push their snouts to the spaces between the slats. The wind comes in cold. They snort and sniff. They press against each other. Bits of straw fall through the slats. Chaff flies above the water, snow-bright above the water.

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The pigs blink with the light coming in through the slats, with the bands of light on their bodies. Their eyes are pairs of stars in the dark. The steam comes fevered from the holes of their noses—beads of dew and crystals of frost on the hairs of their noses. They peer through the slats at the bright open water. And they sway with the steady rocking of the train as it clicks upon the rails—back and forth upon the rails—and they wait, and stagger, and thirst.

Dreams, Sightings, Expressions of Sympathy 93

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An anonymous tip has led to an arrest in the Lindbergh-kidnap case. The suspect, a German alien living in the Bronx, was taken into police custody today while his wife and baby looked on. The New York Informer September 20, 1934

Slats of wood found in the suspect’s garage match the rungs of the ladder used to enter the nursery window and carry off the boy. The Portland Morning Press September 24, 1934

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Wanderlust The suspect states he was at home with his wife on the night of the kidnapping. The Tallahassee Harbinger September 25, 1934

The missus is standing at the stove, basting the Rostbraten, salting the Spargel. The mister sits, hoping for a foot-long Coney Island dog. “No more Bismarck Schnitzel,” he has told her. “No more Rindfleisch in Bier.” There is a sizzling of fat, a spattering that smarts. She looks for blisters. He suggests butter. Where once she baked a Boston bean, now she stirs the Hühnersuppe. Where once she filled a jelly roll, now she beats the K irschencreme.

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“This is not the old country,” he has told her. “This is not the Rhineland.” She blots the grease. She rinses a platter. “Good-bye, Hasenpfeffer and Leberknödel,” he has said. “Hello, red hots and hot tamales.” She sets the table with her thick china dishes, a boat for the gravy, a cellar for the salt. In the center sits a tumbler with a sprig of something she picked curbside at the corner of Two Hundred and Decatur. The afternoons were long. The mister was usually missing. And she had taken to wandering a bit too far—a pioneer! she thought, in these parts largely unfamiliar: new territories of asphalt and broad avenues, of unclaimed properties and corner lots left to sprout weeds and wild yellow mustard, where, she thought, someone should be planting cabbage for Apfelkraut or cucumber for Gurken mit Kren. But this is not that sort of city. There are no spaded places where someone has staked tomatoes, or sown spinach or beetroot or onion. There are no vacant lots planted in peas for Erbsen mit Schinken or green beans for Bohnen mit Dill. This is a city without cultivation. This is a city that grows broken glass and rusted parts; a city that sprouts damage and rubble, she tells him when he asks or does not ask what she has done all day. There are no shrubs and sundial gardens, she says, when the baby is already in bed and he pleads guilty. There are no backyards bound by privet hedges or gooseberry fences, she tells him when dinner is spoiled and she has been sitting by the window, watching for him to pass beneath the streetlamp that lights the walk and shines in her kitchen. There are no flower shops along the street selling bunches of violets or Edelweiss for luck. No cheese shops selling Liederkranz and Limburger, or Tofen Käse for filling a Strudel. No Fleischerei selling Bratwurst and Leberwurst so pink or white and firm and fragrantly herbed in

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their skins. No Kaffeehaus or Konditorei selling ten kinds of Torte uprightly sliced and papered under glass; no fish stores where the fish are placed on ice and stay so silvery. This is a city of scales scraped into the street and dull eyes; a city of strangers that see you sideways and step too close by or almost touch while you wait for bread or meat. This is a city of blood-soiled hands and stained aprons and sawdust that sticks to the soles, and scales with no standard of weights and measures. A city that smells of creosote on cold nights when the shiftless stamp and shrug around oil drum fires and stand silhouetted before the flames with their sooty palms upturned for a penny. This is a city of trash heaps and trolley tracks, she told the mister: no swept-clean streets or cobbled lanes that lead to woodlands where someone in Lederhosen might hike past with a rucksack of mushrooms, and a Guten-Tag touch of his cap. No parks with flower beds. No fountains to sit beside with a hamper of black bread and cheese and a bottle for the baby. No outings in Loden and Dirndl with wine baskets and binoculars to the borders of the city where the roads become rutted and cozy and geese cross and quack and you climb to sunny vineyards and ruins of a castle keep. This is a city of open fireplugs that won’t let you pass, and boys with sticks and people you must step over on stoops. This is a city of squatters. Drifters. Loiterers. A city of boarded windows torn off by trespassers and thieves. These are the blocks of past-due properties and trampled paths where, she thinks, pioneering women like herself once must have walked— the ones whose recipes she reads in American Cooks and Successful Dishes. The ones she sees in Cakes Men Like and Colonial K itchen and picture books where women make johnnycakes, flapjacks, hoecakes, and pone. She had sat between the stacks and turned the pages: Sacagawea, headressed in feathers, smoking sockeye.

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Annie Oakley, standing on a mustang, gunning down her dinner at a full gallop. Dolley Madison in the White House kitchen, whipping an egg white and dishing up dessert. Each a woman like herself, she thought—a woman with Wanderlust, a pioneering woman, a pilgrim in a new land, of the same sturdy breed as the women in books who passed through here on wagon trains: spooning up spoon bread and dressing woodcock and snipe. Abigail Crockett in a coonskin cap, slicing persimmons and salting opossum. Pocahontas at Plymouth Rock mashing a pumpkin. Annabel Boone skinning a grizzly. Women turning spits and tending fires; women fixing orange fool and hasty pudding; indispensable women who did what women must do when men are out doing: scalping, hewing. Taming broncos and tumbleweed. Staking claims. Striking it rich. Women heading out in buckboards and bonnets, suckling newborns and raising babies and dough cakes under the canvas of Conestogas that passed this way and went west and west again for another coast and another ocean. No-nonsense women following their noses and the smell of the sea, setting forth in prairie schooners long before these parts became pavement and potholes, avenues and alleys; before this city became sidewalks that slant and dip and jiggle her baby to sleep on afternoons she tucks him in his blue wicker buggy, picks a direction, and starts pushing. Before this became a city of boys who play with sticks, of men who spit in the street, of dogs in packs, pushcarts. This is a city of women who shout window to window over cindery sheets, and women who walk where women shouldn’t be walking, and men—she tells the mister—men who loiter where the crowds thin out, where you

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start to hear the echo of your steps on the sidewalk and the little squeal of springs on the blue wicker buggy; men who “sss” at her between their teeth. There had been none of that, thank goodness. He was not that sort of man—the mister—not at all. He had been somewhat forward at first, and true—they had not actually been introduced. But he had made his own introductions. There was nothing improper, she recollected, in that initial “hello” he said when he first saw her, found her dusting the biscuit dough, her face plainly pale, cheeks not smartly rouged, but ruddy, her body largely boned beneath a dress woolly and Old World. He had noted the strength of her arms hoisting a tray of Parker House rolls, and the sturdiness of her hip where she toted a bowl. He watched her bagging baked goods, slipping in day-olds on the unsuspecting. Thin-slicing the rye. Skimping on string. Hausfrau, he thought. A crumb-sweeper. A table-scrap saver. A woman of hard-working stock who would keep hearth and home, kit and kinder, and keep track of every Pfennig. Oh, good-bye, American women!—always in need of nylons and pin money. Here was someone who knew how to darn a sock and be sensible; someone not so twenty-three skidoo. American women could turn your head, he thought, but here was a woman who would count change and keep accounts receivable. He had taken a number. He had asked her name. Hadn’t they met in Neckarsulm? No? Then, perhaps it was Hanover or Heidelberg? What about Düsseldorf ? Could it have been Bad Wimpfen? Wasserburg or Berlin? Ah, too bad—but he was sure he remembered her. “Certainly,” he did, he said. But wait—there was, it seemed, a friend of a friend that he finally remembered. There was the safety of an acquaintance that was, he said, “mutual” and “legit.”

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She could see him where he stood on the sidewalk as she holed her final doughnut. She could see him recross the street as she filled her last filbert square. After all, she told herself, he was not entirely a stranger. Hadn’t he said he knew so-and-so from Kübelstrasse in Heilbronn or was it Schneckenstrasse in Ulm? Hadn’t he been in and out of the bakery all day? Meine Güte! One fudge-nut jumble, three peanut creams, two macaroons, and a frosted snickerdoodle! He doffed his hat. He inquired. He helped her with her coat. He held the door open and offered her his arm. That very afternoon, as they strolled down the sidewalks of the broad avenue, he said he would show her the rest of the town—but not just the Bronx, he said. There was more to life than the Bronx, he told her. Other boroughs. Harlem. Hot spots. A cruise down the Hudson. Brooklyn. Rockaway. Brighton. Coney Island. Massapequa. Amusements. He took her on a trolley and a train—“crosstown,” he said when she asked which way they’d come and she feared they’d come too far. “Nonsense,” he said, everything was just a whistle stop away. “Nearly walking distance,” he said when they reached the borough and the boardwalk where, he said, the food was famous. He talked, and she was grateful. He was going places, making a go of it, he said. He spoke of investments, funds, brokerage, and bootstraps. He spoke of rising rung by rung up the ladder of success. He would be his own boss, self-made and self-sufficient. He shouted an order. They shifted with the crowd toward the counter: steam tables in midsummer, the grit and sizzle of fryer and grill. She found herself nearly pressed into him: his American shirtsleeves; his American trousers. Her damp and flowered dress. She watched as her food was handed hand over hand and over

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their heads: watery beer in paper cups; bread pinched and printed; Wurst wrinkled in its skin. She had never held such a thing—such a thing so damp and beaded in grease—in her fingers. She opened her mouth. The mustard was stinging; the Kraut was limp. She found something in the meat she could not swallow. “America!” he said. “America!” he said, that first day out together, waving his arm above the beach patched far and widely with blanket and blanket and hardly any sand to see when they swung on the seaside ride, miles—it seemed—above the boardwalk and just below the moon. The parachute, he assured her, always opened. There was nothing to fear—they were well protected: there was the strap, the buckle, the tightening in. There would be a slow, easy rise—a lifting. She would experience a mild centrifugal spin and finally a rapid descent. A bit frightening perhaps, but then, that was the whole idea, wasn’t it? It would just be a matter of seconds—a quick thrill—and then it would be over. Perfectly safe, he said, checking what kept her in for slippage, for give. Painless, he said, slipping a finger under a strap and ever so slightly brushing past her breast. Easy, he said, when he kissed her where the sand was wet and hard-packed under the boards. Above them: the sound of walking on wood. The light slanting down so she saw only horizontal slits of him—mouth, chin, open collar, notch of his throat, crest of his shoulder—as he leaned in, and beyond him the other lights of the Loop-theLoop and Luna Park, rising and falling on the sea. Screams, undulating and distant. The surf hissing. “Shh,” he said, when she opened her mouth to speak, to say just, “Oh!”—she wanted only to say—“Oh!” when his hand came up and covered her mouth and she smelled what smelled like herself. “Shh,” he told her, and then telling her how to do it, how American girls do it

Wanderlust 103

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and what he wanted done. After all, this was America. She had come to be an American and now she must adjust, fit in. He pushed the sand beneath her hips. He pulled. Lifted. She was ashamed of her underclothes: coarse and thickly crotched—if only she had planned! she thought—she would have shopped—there was that store—the one she passed each morning, selling corsets, fine cotton, silk. She should have found something silk, edged in lace, something new and pretty—but he seemed hardly to notice. He seemed not to hesitate, sliding his hand along her back, finding not the hook and eye he often found, but a buttoned camisole of sorts, a coarse shift of linen—the kind his mother had worn. His hands, she felt, were soft and hardly used, not calloused at the tips like the hands of a laborer or someone of a certain class. That was a comfort, certainly. And, after all, she thought that she had those friends in Ulm who knew him, or was it friends that he knew, and was it Ulm or New Ulm, or Weinsburg or Neckersulm? Remember? he was saying, the mutual acquaintance where she had worked in a bakery before coming over, floating over on the boat on the same sea that now sounded louder. Or was it Bremerhaven? Yes, Bremerhaven and the boatyards. Yes, the small office near the academy, or the weigh station, or was it on the way to the bank? Yes, it was there, where he said there was that trouble with the wife of the Bürgermeister, that business with the Polizei. A scrape, he called it, leaning in, bracing into the Atlantic sand. Nothing serious. Slightly more than a misdemeanor. Certainly less than grand larceny. Not quite a felony, he seemed to recall, holding her wrists with his uncalloused hands. Of course, he was younger then, he said. It would have been easy: a window left open, an opal brooch and a fine silver goblet once used by an aide to the Kaiser. Work fast and give them the slip, was what he was saying and what he always said, working faster now ahead

104 Pamela Ryder

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of the sea and something that must have scuttled too close for comfort, crabwise ahead of the foam and ahead of the print of the foam on the sand, and finally, she felt, must have pinched. She picked away the fronds of rubbery weed. There was grit in the folds, and around her the flotsam of butt, rind, the core of an apple. Her hem was wet. “America,” he said, where it’s rags to riches and stay out of the red. He had bought her strawberry pop, after. And a cardboard cone of pink spun sugar. She felt a stickiness, a seepage, and she wondered if what she felt wet was just something left from where they had scrambled from the tide. She wondered if what was on her lips was the salty sea. He ate caramel corn and something called a knish. He was not talking now. He was eating now, he said. He ate a pretzel. Candied apple. French-fried potatoes. Sugared peanuts. Lemonade and a frozen custard. She wished that she could put something cool where the sea had stung. He was eating. He was digesting. He said he was assimilating, getting American, giving up Schinkenspargel, fed up with Pumpernickel mit Käse and anything mit Schlag. From now on there would be butter on his bread instead of goose fat. He would have black-bottom pie instead of Nusstorte, and Waldorf salad instead of cabbage. He was giving up Bockbier for Lager. He would have a whiskey and soda instead of a Schnapps. This was America, not the Fatherland. Coney Island, not Oktoberfest. Why was she asking so many questions? Why was she holding his arm like a girl who was holding on? Nothing to cry about. Shh. There was nothing to cry about. He’d have money to burn someday, and that someday was coming. American women hold down the fort. The men go out and bring back the bacon. You had to think big. You had to stay in the black.

Wanderlust 105

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When opportunity comes knocking, he said, there was no need to wait your turn, take a number, get in line. They went once more to the boardwalk. He threw softballs at a stack of rubber bottles and won a kewpie. He shot BBs at a row of pressed-tin turkeys and won a bamboo cane. He took her to the steeplechase. He had her straddle something mechanical that pawed and pitched. He took her to the beach. Her attire, he told her, was unfit for public bathing. This was not a boat ride down the Necker. This was not the Blue Danube or Baden-Baden. This was the home of the brave. He could see the big picture. Stocks. Futures. Bonds. Commodities. He would make a killing The courtship was brief. The wedding was less than expected. She wanted a bouquet of baby’s breath and calla lily. She wanted invitations, calligraphy, garlands of tuberose hung pew to pew. Instead: a bunch of yellow mums and bracken; city hall and the municipal seal. They stood on the steps while someone took their picture. There was wind and just enough rain to be splattered in the street. She lost a hairpin. She snagged a stocking. Someone she didn’t know took them home. There were no porcelain place cards and Riesling punch to greet them. There was no reception dinner she had dreamed of: no Orangen und Endiviensalat and thin buttered bread with Westphalian ham. No Champignons mit Erbsen. No Mandeltort. No peppermints. Instead, friends—his friends—came over. Someone called for a toast and poured out whiskey. Someone suggested a game of poker. “Business associates,” he called them. There was one named Fisch. Another named John. Lenders. Backers. “Investors,” he called them. The market was bullish. Possibly an Otto. Possibly an Italian named Pete. Possibly a Viennese called Joe.

106 Pamela Ryder

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They spoke of bankrolls and C-notes. Out-of-state real estate. He had offers. He could get in at the ground floor. There were options in New Jersey, Port Jervis, New England. They could cross the Hudson. He had gone west and, if he had to, he could go wester. New York. Philadelphia. Chicago, if necessary. So long, hard times, said one of them. Hello, greenbacks. Gold notes. An economy of guns and butter was coming. Sawed-off or Smith and Wesson. This was America: cowboys and bank robbers. Gangsters. G-men. Who didn’t have one? It was only a matter of know-how and who you know. Tell them, “Joe sent me from Belmont.” Mention a friend in Melrose. Or Highbridge, Kingsbridge, Williamsbridge. Try Pelham Park at sunset, past the big rock at the duck pond. Or Hunts Point after midnight. Or Woodlawn Cemetery after hours, third stone, second row. Riverdale. Spuyten Duyvil. Hoboken. Ohio. Nevada. California, if need be. Go for broke and bottom dollar. The rush, he said, was on. She served coffee. They stayed late, and then later. She went into the kitchen and baked a Himbeerkuchen. But he said he wanted blueberry buckle, key lime, or Boston cream. “Make something upside-down with pineapples,” he told her. “Fix something American as apple pie.” She learned about the danger of over-braising. (T-bone instead of Sauerbraten.) She served eggs and scrapple. (“Over easy,” he told her, instead of Gefüllte Eier.) She learned safe substitutions for brown sugar and buttermilk. (Devil’s food instead of Dobostorte.) She became sensible about blanching. She learned the history of macaroni. (“Elbows,” he said, instead of Spätzle.)

Wanderlust 107

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She was smart about pans. She rolled out a pastry for two-crusts and custards. She crimped and saved for fresh cherries in February. She put aside her pennies for pancake and rouge and once found the same sort of shade she had found on his collar in the toiletries aisle at the five-and-dime. The same flowered scent she had smelled on the sheets. She observed him with the ladies. A stroll down the block with the baby bundled for a Sunday brought neighborly waves from neighborly wives, from waitresses and girls who waited in the shops, from ladies who stopped to chat with them—no, just with him. She was invisible, she was a presence, a strength, she thought, she was the steady hand on the handle of the blue wicker buggy when he stood and spoke and was pleasant, was kind, really. She was the one who knew he was just being sociable with women he’d rather not introduce. Wasn’t she, after all, the one he had married? A mother, a wife, he’d remind her—that’s who she was, and a fine one, at that—raising his boy, so strong and sturdy and so above that sort of thing, he’d later explain, he’d always explain when he’d explain about those ladies whose heels were a bit worn in the rear and whose stockings were seamed and of spurious means of support. He offers his hand by way of assistance—a stranger’s hand, an unexpected presence, presenting her with help as she pushes her baby in his blue wicker buggy. He came up behind her quietly, here where the slabs of sidewalk tilt and split or she would have noticed that the sound of his steps was not the same as the sound of the mister in the hall or on the stairs.

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She had not seen him come up behind her, here in the late afternoon stillness of the outskirts of the city, as she pushed the blue wicker buggy through this unwelcoming district of warehouse and disrepair. She had not heard him come up behind her here where the bricks lie in pieces and saplings grow in roof gutters and the wind spins little funnels of dust, and she almost expected to see tumbleweeds—she had seen pictures of tumbleweeds and pictures of cactus and prairie homes of sod stacked by stronghanded women, and cabins of logs split by women who lived with their sleeves rolled up. She had not noticed him until he was nearly upon her in this disused part of the city, this tract of failed factories and undeveloped parcels where the wind swings signs from rusted hinges, and she had been thinking about the pioneering women, the women like herself who struck out boldly and beside their men. Sustained them with black bread and roast goose and turkey stuffed with sage. Sutured their wounds with grizzlybear sinew and dug out buckshot and gave them babies. She had not been paying attention, her mind elsewhere, as she pushed her baby onward in his blue wicker buggy, here where the city becomes out-of-bounds and she was sure that what she smelled on the wind was the smell of the sea, or the boardwalk, or the water at least: Eastchester Bay, or Edgewater Park or perhaps the East River—she wasn’t sure which, but everything, he had told her, was within walking distance. Every way led somehow to some bay or sound or point or bulwark or beach. She had not noticed his shadow ahead of her. Had not seen it moving along the walls of the warehouse. Had not seen it bending along the planks of the fence here in the afternoon light.

Wanderlust 109

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Had not heard the echo of his steps and was taken by surprise, distracted by the symmetry of the long and empty street, the glint of light on the shards of broken bottle glass, the walls of brick and breaking sky that stretched out ahead of her, the loneliness that stretched out ahead of her. And feeling the breeze, felt it must be from the sea and if she walked on a bit more before sunset she would be in earshot of the boardwalk or at least within view of some water somewhere, possibly the sea. She had drifted. She had let down her guard, and now here he is—here, beside her, holding out his hand, having noted her moment’s hesitation at the curb. Here is the puddle, pothole. Here is the gutter. “May I?” he is inquiring, and then without further inquiry he takes the handle of the blue wicker buggy before she can speak. Oh, she had come too far! Too, too far, here in this lost end of a city of butchers and ransackers. This city of cinders and sidewalk dips and cracks that turn your ankle and sprout weeds for the dinner table. Oh, what had she been telling herself ? Why had she come so terribly far? Isn’t she a woman who should know better? Isn’t she strong? A pioneer. A pilgrim. Isn’t she sensible? The baby sleeps. The man tilts the blue wicker buggy. The springs make their little squeak. He is careful not to joggle. The front wheels come up. They clear the curb. The baby sleeps. The man keeps pushing the blue wicker buggy. An untanned hand. A silk knotted tie. A suit. Not a day laborer, she sees. No derelict or down-and-out. Now she sees. Not a someone to fear, she says to herself, and hopes to herself as they cross—so long is this crossing! The length of a prairie. The width of a desert. The breadth of an uncharted forest where savages hide behind ponderosa pines and boulders. The gutter is a canyon.

110 Pamela Ryder

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The puddle is river. He tilts them up to the curb again, and ever so slightly does the baby now squirm and coo. “May I?” he says again, and says so pleasantly, and saying so tugs down the blanket— “Just a peep,” he says. Oh, now it is done and there is no doing it over—no turning back, no one to call to, no one to hear her, no help to be had. But it does not matter. She will do whaever she must: kick her way away from him, tear at his suit and his silk knotted tie. If only she had bought a gun. If only she had been to Melrose and spoken to Joe from Highbridge. Or Kingsbridge. But was it Williamsbridge? Or Williamsburg? Jamestown. Or Plymouth. The big rock. The third stone? Was it east of West Tremont? Or west of the Mississippi? But it does not matter. She will subdue him with whatever is at hand: a stick or rock or broken bottle or piece of brick. She will leave him wounded. She will leave him bashed in and damaged here in this desolate part of the city. And he will lie bleeding into the cracks of the sidewalk where the weeds sprout while she runs with her baby against her breast. She will run far, and far: fleet as any Indian guide, sure as a scout. But he is saying good-bye now. He is walking away before she has a chance to fight or lift even a finger. He is glancing back at her—a slight smile!—touching his hat and bidding her good day. There will be no commotion. There will be no slaughter or felony occurring. No kidnap or ransom. There will be no bloodshed. Not today. He is off now, heading down the deserted street. And he is gone now, having turned a corner and turning down an alley. Retreating. Withdrawing. Going who knows where. It is a long way back.

Wanderlust 111

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Sunset has come and gone and the shadows have gone longer, darker. The wind has died, and when there was a wind, she thinks, it wasn’t from the sea. There is no smell of the sea, she knows now. There never was. Not in this direction. There was never any sound of the waves or shouts from the boardwalk. There were never any smells of French-fried potatoes or popcorn or foot-long dogs. There will be no more quick breads or casseroles. There will be no more pandowdy or corn bread or lemon meringue. No more watching the clock and watching for the mister from the window. No more nights of trying to keep the baby awake and waiting for the sound of the mister’s key in the lock, and listening for the front door to open. There will be no waiting up and keeping supper hot. No more dried-out dinners. No chicken potpies or chicken à la king or chowder. There will be no more salad molds or sandwich loaves or tomato surprises, she is thinking as she straightens the blanket that covers her baby. She is done with succotash and deviled eggs and New England pepper pot, she thinks as she turns the blue wicker buggy and walks in the twilight time of the city as streetlamps and kitchen lights come on and the evening fires are lit. Unafraid as she heads for home with the sounds of the nighttime city just starting up. There will be a roast tonight. A goose if she can find one— oh, but she will never find one. A chicken at least—for a Hühnersuppe or Huhn in Spinat. Or a Rostbraten—even better. A fine roast of beef with red potatoes and onions. And Rot Kraut mit Äpfeln served on the side, and asparagus—yes—a dish of Spargel, garnished with parsley and Kress.

112 Pamela Ryder

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And with it, a beer. Yes, he will like that: a Schwarzbier or Bockbier—something strong or even slightly bitter—poured down the glass, brimming with foam. He will take his place at the table while she stands at the stove and chops the parsley and the Kress. He will sit while she salts the Rot Kraut and arranges the onions. He will be there while she bastes the roast. He will sit while she stands beside him and sets the table with her thick china dishes, and while she fills his glass and waits for him to drink, and fills it once again. And he will reach up around her waist and pull her down to him, and take her by her wrists in his soft, uncalloused hands. And his mouth will taste of the warm, dark Bock.

Wanderlust 113

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Mrs. Lindbergh has requested that those persons in possession of the child adhere to the following feeding times and foods: One quart of milk during the day (warmed). Three tablespoons of cooked rice cereal every morning. Three tablespoons of cooked carrots, green beans and stewed fruit daily. One soft-cooked egg yolk at noon. Half-cup of apple or orange juice (room temperature) daily. The New York Reporter June 10, 1932

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A package containing a baby’s sleeping suit has been returned to the Lindberghs and identified as the “Baby Bunting” brand worn by the boy. The Washington, DC, Weekly June 14, 1932

Baby Bunting sleepers—the brand the Lindberghs buy! Now in fine stores everywhere. Advertisement The Atlanta Advance June 15, 1932

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In the Sitting Room Although interrogation of the Lindbergh staff of cooks, butlers and groundskeepers has failed to yield any new leads in the case, Miss Violet Sharpe, the family maid, will be detained for further questioning regarding her previous employment and her relationship with the missing boy. The Baltimore Monitor June 9, 1932

Madame rings: “Violet, dear!” as if this were a manor house on the Continent or the cottage in Sussex or the residence in Devonshire or York: “Oh, Violet!” and not stuck way out here in what they call “the colonies” back home. The Colonel had explained it all as she was shown about: a system of speaking tubes, a series of wires and bells permitting the staff to be summoned from anywhere in the house— “buzzed” or “rung” was what the Colonel said, so she—Violet—could be called, for instance, if he had misplaced his razor

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in the second-story bath, or downstairs dinner guests were waiting for dessert. Or, the Colonel said, up in the nursery, the boy—the baby—their little Charles—was wanting his porridge hotter, or Madame, dressing in the master bedroom, needed help with a clasp or hook. This was, of course, when Madame had taken the trouble to dress. When dinners were still given. When there used to be a baby wanting his porridge hotter. Back when Madame would sit at her stitching, evenings after the baby had been bathed and tucked and the lamps were lit against the early dark of winter woods at every window. “Privacy,” the Colonel said. Reporters, photographers— there was always someone lurking somewhere. Flying buffs and fanatics—someone always out there hoping for a glimpse. “Admirers,” Madame called them. “Troublemakers,” said the Colonel. Sightseers. Snoops. Crowds with binoculars, cameras. “Hey, Colonel Lindbergh!” someone would call from a carload of day-trippers. “Give us a peek at that baby boy of yours!” “Aw, Lindy,” someone would say, being hauled off the property. “How ‘bout a look at the missus?” “Lunatics,” said the Colonel. Someone trying to sneak past or sneak in. “Violet!” “‘Reliable,’” the Colonel read, reviewing her letter of reference. “‘Efficient,’” Mrs. Willoughby had written when the cottage was closed and the staff was sent off, services no longer required. “‘No vices.’”

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(It was the cook—thank goodness—who eventually confessed about the sherry. Or was it the port?) “‘Fond of children.’” “How kind of Mrs. Willoughby to say,” Violet said. How very kind, considering. Of course, no mention was made. Not of the boy—Mrs. Willoughby’s boy—young Master Paul. (Poor Master Paul.) It was absolutely irrelevant, what had happened in Sussex in her last place of service, in her last situation, in her summer with the Willoughbys, in the cottage, in the country, at the close of the summer. Absolutely, everyone said. There was no need to mention the Willoughby boy or the pond behind the cottage where there were peepers singing every evening. Or the willow on the bank. Or the larkspur blooming on the path. No need to speak of faded roses or shouldered picks and shovels. The fresh-turned earth of churchyards. The pitch of it flung from the hole: pebbles, soil, old bones, the little worms. The grit in her hair. “Careful, Mum,” the digger had said when she stepped too close and closer. The spark and clang of spaded stone. The seep and dark she could see down there in the hole. Mist. Damp. No need to speak of English afternoons of clotted cream and tea. After all, the boy—the Willoughby boy—had not been in her charge. And Mrs. Willoughby wanted scones. Mrs. Willoughby

In the Sitting Room 121

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wanted marmalade. Mrs. Willoughby wanted the madeleines arranged on the serving dish just so (“Don’t crowd them, Violet. A dozen is plenty!”) and sprinkled with cinnamon. And the trifle filled with gooseberry jam and sweetened cream, not sliced oranges and custard. And the silver service pattern of forget-menots. (“Violet, not the fleur-de-lis.”) “Silver polish for that platter, please.” “A sprinkling of salt on that spot.” “Use the teacups with the rosebuds.” “Fetch the sugar tongs and matching teaspoons.” “Oolong, Violet, not the Pekoe!” “Pots de crème beside each plate.” Mrs. Willoughby wanted the roses displayed in a nicer vase (“Violet, goodness, use the crystal”), the lemons cut in slices (“Never wedges, Violet”), the napkins folded in the shape of swans (“Turn the wings to hide the seam”) and (“Please”) a little stiffer crease. The cook was uncooperative. The cottage stove had a tendency to overheat. And marmalade, as everyone knows, requires constant stirring. Not surprising, it was said at the investigation, what with Mr. Willoughby away on business and Mrs. Willoughby—well, just busy—that the boy’s whereabouts had simply been “overlooked.” After all, he had been in nobody’s charge. Such a boy of such a tender age needing more looking after—Violet thought, but never thought to say. Hardly her place to give her views to the lady of the house. Hardly in a position to tell Mrs. Willoughby that a boy like that—the sort of a boy always being here and there or nowhere to be found at any given moment or too much around and always underfoot—that sort of boy was best not given the run of the place. Into the kitchen came that boy, for a taste of this or a lick of that. Into the dining room, rummaging through the server for a spoon for turning up worms or poking down in the cellar for a

122 Pamela Ryder

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jar for keeping pollywogs. Into her sewing basket for a length of string for catching little fishes with an elderberry stick and a quilting pin. Mud on his britches and sopping wet by midmorning. Scrapes on his shin by noon. Burrs in his hair and badly needing a brushing before his bath and bed, when Violet brought him his tea and he asked for a tuck-me-in-tight. “‘Tidy, quiet, considerate,’” read the Colonel—what Mrs. Willoughby had written, had so very kindly written when the inquest was over. When the Willoughby boy’s britches and shirts and books were put away. The beds were stripped and the linen was folded and the furniture was sold and what was left was sheeted over. When the sinks were scrubbed and the pipes were drained and the water shut. And the cupboards were emptied and the dishes were crated and the chips of wood and dust from the oaken box that was made for the boy were swept from the floor and the boy was tucked in tight. And a new space was made among the old skulls and spaded bones in the churchyard earth and the space was filled with the wet of late-summer rain and roses and the Willoughby boy. “‘Diligent, loyal.’” “‘Helpful in the nursery. Organized in the kitchen.’” Poor Master Paul was what everyone said when speaking of it; what everyone had called him when referring to the Willoughby boy that summer in Sussex. What the cook and the gardener and the constable had said so quietly while they all stood on the bank and watched what was coming up from the bottom of the pond. What Violet whispered to herself when she was finally off and on her way, on the sea, on deck, where she stood as cold

In the Sitting Room 123

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and wet as the boy had been—“Poor Master Paul”—she said to herself, when the steward on his watch, making his rounds inquired, “Dear lady, would you be speaking to me?” Why, yes, she would like to ask him: Was that buzz she was hearing coming from below deck, the vibration of an engine? Or was it from another a ship sending out a signal? A message over the wires? Over the air? A coded signal of distress? And yes, she had been wondering: Did he think that the sound of someone speaking in the engine room could come right up the stack with the cinders and smoke? And, yes, she would like to inquire: Had he ever been in a storm at sea? Did the lightning crack? Did the mast glow and spark? And was it possible, did he think, that the voice of someone speaking in a storm or fog might be amplified by the heaviness of the air? And lastly, had he seen the fog settle on the deck? Had he noticed it slip along the rail the way the mist from the pond at the cottage back home sometimes crept into the kitchen where she sat scouring a pot or turning a collar or polishing the silver, carrying with it the sounds of the pond: watery sounds of fish, frogs, waterfowl? The ring of crickets. Peepers. The evening buzz in the trees. The splash of something going under. “Violet!” She tried to hear. “‘Even-tempered, earnest, industrious.’” She set the spoon back in its box without so much as a clink and tried to listen. But all she could hear was a sort of a whisper.

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Wind, no doubt, in the kitchen flue. Steam, she supposed, singing in the kettle. “Violet! Are you coming with my tea?” The soft whistle of the spout. “Violet, the Darjeeling, unless we are out!” The hiss in a faucet shut off. The hush of earth as it slides from a shovel and rains down the hole and patters like rain on old bones, on earth-stained skulls, on the oaken lid. “‘Devoted, conscientious,’” the Colonel read. “‘An asset to any household’—well, then!” the Colonel said. Yes, she would be most welcome. She was just the sort of person. An excellent addition, and so forth. Just what they needed to get the new house up and running. Just what they were looking for. Would she like to see her quarters? They climbed the stairs. They passed the stairway window. She could see the woods at the edge of the clearing. Far cloud. Rust along the horizon: the light going dim with the last of the sun. First-floor landing: dumbwaiter, dustbin. Second-floor landing: broom closet. Mop. Bucket. Rags for the windows. Sponges for the bath. Bottles on the shelf. Rose soap for sheets. Bleach for cottons. Cedar oil for the woodwork. Lemon oil for the wainscoting. Solutions for stains: grass, earth, tea, blood. Cleaners. Caustics. Poisons for the drains and for polishing the silver. Crossed bones. Old skulls. Brushes for scrubbing the mud tracked in. For churchyard earth. Faded roses. For seep and dark in a new-dug hole. Second floor, top of the stairs: laundry chute, linen closet. Second floor, end of the hall: second bath, maid’s quarters.

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Not far from the bedroom if anything might be needed. Convenient to the kitchen. Not far from the nursery if something was missing. Did she find it to her liking? Would she like some time to settle in? Her trip—“the crossing,” he called it—did she find it tiring? Did she “find it tedious,” the Colonel asked, “going transatlantic—being so long on the sea?” “Oh, no,” Violet said. No. And she thought she might tell him how she had stood nightly on the deck and leaned so far beyond the rail that a cloud of moonlit spray surrounded her. She thought she might tell him how she had felt as if she might disappear into the salty air as she watched the bright glowing bow slice its way through the sea. Or how she lay in her berth in her cabin in steerage, so cold and soaked through that she thought she might catch her death. And she thought for a moment that if she told him—then perhaps the Colonel would tell her how it had been when he was so alone in the clouds, so long and alone in the air. She would like to ask him: Was it true—what she had read—what all the papers—all the news—had said about how he kept awake with the spray of the sea in his cockpit window? She would like to inquire: Did he ever see the birds that dip into the waves, just above the foam where the sea becomes air? Had he ever tilted in so the whitecaps touched a wing? Did the engine ever start to sound like someone buzzing or humming or—can you imagine it?—someone speaking? And did he ever feel he might take his plane and plunge himself into the sea? “Oh no, sir,” she told him. “Not at all tedious, not a bit. A comfort, if anything,” she said.

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“Ah,” he said, and nothing more about it; and not a word at all about his flight. She unfolded the sheets that had been placed for her there on the ticking. She made up the bed. Pull and tuck, top sheet and bottom so snug to the mattress. A hospital corner was what they had called it: ever so tidy and never a wrinkle. (Hospital corners, the nurse had said—the one who pulled the sheets so tightly at the foot, pulled the sleeves so tightly once around and across Violet’s chest and tied them so neatly at her back. The sheets had been stiff, Violet remembered—cold and somewhat coarse, smelling of bleach. She could smell it while they held her shoulders to the bed, pressed her down and parted her hair, and scraped the razor to the places they would press the wires in. She could taste it in the cloth they put in her mouth and told her to bite. She remembered the hand on the dial on the box, and then the heat, the burn, the buzzing in her head. She felt herself lifted up. She saw herself in a little boat in a storm at sea, perched on the crest of a wave, the just-tucked sheets in hospital corners coming all undone; the sheets becoming sails as she kicked and arced. She saw the mast bright and crackling as the lightning struck and the hand turned the dial on the box, notch, by notch, by notch as the undersides of the clouds were lit and the sparks fell into the waves with a sizzle and a hiss. She tasted the spray, the whitecap foam, the froth on her lips. She remembered the nurse who had untied her wrist so she could hold a cup. The ice they had let her suck for the place she had bitten though the cloth and her tongue had bled. The salve they had dabbed on her scalp where her hair had been singed. She remembered the nurse who told her that now, after this, she would be, well—“cured”—and she would not weep or rock.

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She remembered the nurse who had held her mouth for the tube so she would eat.) Hospital corners—Violet remembered as she made the double fold, evened out the edge. She arranged the coverlet at the foot. Pillow. Pillowcase. Lamp on the nightstand. Doily. Water glass. Towels on the rack. Curtain in the little window. She peered out. Above her—chimney top, roof tiles, gutter spout. Below her: the clearing, the cut in the woods made just the way these Americans do—all slash and hack and rough-cut stump of straggly oak cut down to the sour clay and a smattering of soil that was all just rock beneath the surface. All just clang and spark if someone were to take to it with a pick or a shovel or spade. If someone might want to add some cheer with a planting of roses, a patch of color in the clearing before the woods began again at the far front gate. And beyond the gate, a dip in the road. Barren fields. Old stone walls. The slit of a stream glittering down a hillside. Then farm, field again, town, steeple. Oh, yes, she could feel it now. Tired, after all. The crossing. The train. The ride from the station. Stair climb. Smooth and tuck. Pond. Pillowcase. Footstool. Coverlet at the foot. Might she have time for a rest before dinner? Would that be permissible? Might she have enough time, at least, for a cup of tea? Might someone offer: Pekoe for Violet, please. Light is how she takes it. Light, one sugar, and Violet likes a dash of cream. (“But didn’t you hear, dear? It is nearly time for dinner.”) And Madame would soon be ringing. The Colonel would be knocking. She shortly would be called for some sort of chore. Would she hear, so very soon, the sound of bells and wires? Would she hear her name come crackling through a series of speaking tubes: a call to the bedroom or the nursery or the kitchen? A summons to the sitting room? Of course she would. Someone would be calling,

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needing something. (“Violet, are you there?”—all static and hiss.) Darjeeling, Pekoe, if the Oolong is out. (“And a biscuit, please.”) And she would be on her feet—“Efficient.” She would be “up and running” to the sound of her name coming through the walls from somewhere to please come down and draw the curtains, now that the sun was setting. Now that cold might creep through a crack of an off-kilter window. To shut out a draft. Shut out the woods. To carry a tray. To rinse a dish. (“Violet, dear! A streak of soap?”) To pour the tea. (“One dunk, Violet; not too dark.”) Polish a spoon. (“Is that a bit of tarnish?”) Help the cook with dinner in the kitchen. Mince. Slice. Wedge. Wipe. Give something a stir? Arrange the dessert. (“Use a dish, please, for pastries and biscuits. A plate for cheese or pie.”) Clear the table. Shake the cloth. Turn back the covers. (“A diagonal fold, Violet, and be careful of the wrinkles.”) Run a bath. Fluff a pillow. Oh, the lateness of the day. The room so spare. The chill. Lamp. Pillow. The sheet tucked square and cornered. Coverlet at the foot. “Violet, dear!” What, what, what could Madame be wanting at this hour? Violet wonders: a glass of something for swallowing her pill for sleeping? Tea—with lemon—the way she takes it, and a portion of tart? Shortbread biscuit? (“Place the teaspoon on the saucer, Violet. Never in the cup.”) And the Colonel would certainly be wanting pie—(“Dear Violet, since you’re already up”)—a slice of pie, and topped with a cheese—pie is what Americans eat in the middle of the night. Or a sandwich with mustard and leftover meat. Would they see? Would the Colonel and Madam note that she might seem unsteady in her step? Madame would wonder. The Colonel would certainly inquire. Not quite a stagger. More a series of missteps, the motion

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somewhat off. What so small a glass of sherry (or was it the port?) before bed can do, she thinks, and now, moving about the room, feeling with her feet for slippers, that she might very well trip. In the kitchen, something might drop. There would be smash and clatter. And Madame would surely hear her. Most nights now, the Madame was up. She might offer to fetch her a book: “Would Madame care for a book?” Violet thought she might. Perhaps one of her own, but oh, no—she preferred tales of true confessions, Violet did. Not to the Madame’s taste. Not her cup of tea. Perhaps Madame might like to try a square of needlepoint. Soothing. Diverting. Something that she would want to frame and hang for the baby in the sitting room, in the nursery—for when the baby would be back all safe and sound. Perhaps a picture of a stripy stitched kitten with one paw up and a puddle of milk. Or Mother Goose in her apron and bonnet. Or a boy at a pond with his fishing pole leaned against a tree and hoping for a nibble. Or a Hansel and a Gretel setting out in the woods and a trail of crumbs for finding their way back. “Violet, did you fetch the biscuits?” “Violet, have you warmed up the porridge?” “Have you scrubbed out the tub?” “Have you folded the nappies?” “Is the soap on the sink?” “Are the towels in the rack?” “Do I feel a draft?” “Is a window still open?”

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Oh! thinks Violet, as she gets herself up and the room is a rocking deck and the floor is sliding away. The doily on the nightstand floating like foam. Madame was still ringing. Madame would keep ringing. “Violet, are you there?” Madame rang most nights now, while the Colonel slept— sat up most nights now in the master bedroom in the grey silk chaise. Or sometimes in the nursery—nearly bare now without the baby’s bed. But the rocker—that was left. Unlike the crib, which had been taken away with the note left on the sill and the broken shutter and the clump of mud on the nursery floor and the ladder that was left leaning to the nursery window. Oh, Madame would be rocking! Oh, Madame would be ringing: the sound of a spoon touched to porcelain or crystal; the sound of a shovel striking stone. Madame would be buzzing: the sound of a fly at a window, of a lamp when the light flickers. Of a saw being slid back and forth along a board, making chips of wood and dust. “Violet” through the speaking tubes. “Violet” in the walls. A nighttime transmission from the far-off sea. A creak in the floor from the rungs of the rocker. The squeak of a fingertip in the mist on the mirror. A hiss in the kettle when the water is boiled out. A sizzle in a pot. A crackling in the walls. A hum in the faucet. A drumming in the pipes when the baby has his bath. Reaches for his little duck! Beats his little fists against the water!

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Something had splashed, Violet remembered. Frogs, fish, waterfowl? Who could have known the depth? Who could have known the weight of the boy, the sway and crack of the branches of the willow? “Oh, someone!” called Mrs. Willoughby, who found the elderberry stick and the string and the silver fish. “Poor Master Paul,” said the butler, who called the constable. And the cook, who waded in and lost a shoe. And the gardener, whose sleeve was caught on the overhang of willow. While the fish was caught on the quilting pin. While the boy was caught on the chain and hook, and came up dripping with larkspur and lavender. Something had fallen, Violet remembered. A saucer on a ledge, a slippery dish? Who could have known the height? Who could have known the crack of a window pried, the snap of a rung? “Someone, please,” Madame had called when she found the crib was empty. It was the father—the Colonel—who found the window open. The butler who found the note on the sill. The cook who searched the woods and found the broken ladder. Violet who found the soap going soft in the sink. “Violet, are you there?” Madame is ringing. “Violet, please,” Madame will keep on ringing.

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Of course, no mention will be made. Madame will buzz and Madame will ask if her tea is nearly ready, if the Colonel has his pie, if baby could have his porridge just a bit hotter—but no mention will be made of the night when the room was cold and the window was open. Madame will ring and Madame will ask if the drapes have been drawn, if the nursery window has been shut, if the baby is warm enough—but no mention will be made of the night when the shutter was unlatched and the crib was empty. Madame will call, “Oh, Violet, dear!” and Madame will want to know—still she will want to know— “Just where are all the baby’s things? Oh please,” she will say as she says nightly now, “Where have they all gone? And where is the crib?” and “Violet, please”—would someone please tell her—please, right now—just where in the world was her little Charles? Would someone please tell her just where the baby is? Perhaps, thinks Violet, Madame would like a cup of tea and her medicine for sleeping. Or, Madame would like some help with her stitching: finishing a border, unraveling a tangle. Or a bit of assistance in tucking a sheet. Or an extra hand in unfastening a clasp or button or belt or hook. “Violet,” comes the sound in the wall along the stair as Violet steps. Oh, she thinks, so much steadier now. On her feet now, up and running. The faucet hissing while she fills the kettle. The stove is lit. She goes to the cupboard for a dish for the biscuits. A plate for the pie.

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The kettle is hot. The whispering spout. Oolong for Madame. Yes, Madame likes the Oolong. Prefers the Oolong. And Madame will take her tea in the sitting room. (“Two dunks, Violet. Not too dark.”) No cream. (“Please.”) A slice of lemon. (“Never a wedge, and alongside the cup, on the saucer. Not stuck so precariously there on the rim! Careful of the pits. Careful of the pulp!”) One half-spoonful of sugar. (“Rounded, Violet. Careful not to spill.”) Shortbread biscuit (“Oh, use a separate dish”) with a dab (“Just a bit!”) of jam. And a cup for herself, please. A cup for Violet. The Pekoe for Violet. Yes, Violet likes the Pekoe. Violet likes one dunk, light, no lemon. And Violet prefers a dash of cream. And Violet takes one spoonful of sugar. And Violet takes one spoonful of poison for polishing the silver. Caustics, cleaners, solutions for stains: the crossed bones, the smiling skull. The cap stuck tight. (“Three sharp taps, Violet, will loosen it up.”) White and rich as cream it is, with a bubble of foam. The bow slicing the water. The seabirds dipping in. How still and spare her little room! The bed turned down. Diagonal fold. The teacup drained. A faint sort of buzzing, perhaps from the lamp, flickering now. The bulb spent? The wire frayed? The sound, the stinging— pressed to her temples. Her name being called through static and fog. A dull kind of ringing, perhaps from the spoon: the sound of a spoon touched to porcelain, to crystal. The silence of something going under. The view from the window. Wood. Barn. Clearing. Pond: silvered and still now, without wrinkle or wave. The sheet so neatly tucked. A smooth and seamless sea where the wake closes over her. And she vanishes in the spray. And the sea becomes air. Foam on the crest. Froth at the lip. Far cloud. Pillow fluffed.

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Whitecap, wing. Coverlet at the foot.

In the Sitting Room 135

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Was that Anne Lindbergh we spied, out for a spin with her famous husband? Always in style—or one step ahead!—Mrs. Lindbergh looked smashing in a dark suit, contrasting scarf and a choker of pearls. And could it be that small hats and veils are making a fashion comeback? Celebrity Style May 15, 1933

The marine mollusk (genus Pinctada) produces a lustrous sphere of calcium carbonate—or pearl— in response to the presence of a grain of sand or other irritant that lodges itself between the creature’s soft body and inner shell. A Collector’s Guide to South Seas Mollusks

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Keeper of the Cormorant Sources have confirmed that aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, have left their Hopewell estate for an undisclosed location. The twostory house, site of the kidnapping of their first child, has been donated to the county and will be converted into a home for wayward boys. The Jersey Reader May 15, 1933

She stands in the drive. She wears the navy crepe—a summer wool, for travel. (Though the husband often comments on the impracticality of skirts.) The hat is matching, or off by just a shade. The shoes are slim and laced (perhaps too tight—something pinches at the tongue), and also blue, but more a midnight blue or ink. She prefers the smaller heel, and suede. And on the hat: the veil, caught in a fold along the brim, and extending just below the cheek (a mere web, lending a sadness,

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shall we say? or an air of mourning?—yes, let us say “lending an air of mourning” to the eyes). “Mosquito netting,” he liked to tell her, as a joke. The scarf is silk, of a color sometimes known as ivory, or eggshell, or candlelight, although the downstairs maid (the one now dead) once called it “China White.” He liked to say he owed his life to silkworms when recounting the ditches, the crack-ups. She knows the story of the tailspin north of Peoria and the collapsed chute south of St. Louis; about the bailouts into potato patches and barbed wire, and that crash landing in a field of wheat. She has heard about the rip cord he had to pull twice. But there was always someone—always—who still wanted to hear; always someone in the crowd with a camera: “Colonel Lindbergh! Look this way! How about one of you and the missus?” She has taken to keeping an undersized handkerchief ready in her sleeve. She wears a brooch on the lapel—gold, of course, in the form of a miniature hand wearing on its finger a tiny ring set with the smallest pearl. The matching strand (the hand motif repeated at the clasp) had long been packed away. Freshwater ones they were, these pearls she wore most often—discovered in a village port along the Yangtze. The Year of the Dog, was it? Or the Snake? Or the Rat? (Well, no.) But, of the Flood, nevertheless: the yellow river, brimless. The woman in a hat of woven reed dredged the mud between her toes and turned the mollusks up. “Silt,” the husband said, “or particle of river sand.” She did not tell him that she knew the way that pearls are made, or that she knew the way a strand of what is genuine should feel when rubbed against the teeth. She did not tell him

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of the ones she had worn when just a girl—seed pearls woven in a choker—a gift from a Pacific king (though Siam is what she would remember) at a dinner given by her father for the heads of state. Silver service. Monograms. A silent butler for the crumbs. A short recital while dessert was served: Madeira and mousse au chocolat. Sisters in taffeta of a color the mother called “daffodil”—Elizabeth, Constance, and Anne taking their turns at the freshly tuned piano: “Country Gardens,” “Clair de Lune.” The Parisian aide-de-camp asked her to dance, noticing (indeed) the décolletage above the shirring (it is called shirring, is it not?) at her breast? “Tum-tuma-tum-tum,” sang the German diplomat (as one would expect). Cigar ash on the hassock. Candle wax on the damask. Peonies on the baby grand. A ring left on the ebony—a defect in the glazing of the vase. That, too, long ago put away—the attic of her mother’s house? A shelf in the cellar? Or found out and never kept. But the pearls, she was sure, were with the rest of what the butler’s wife had helped her pack: a needlepoint in progress (ducklings, boots, the requisite puddle), the Book of Baby’s Progress (first steps, et cetera), a bonnet for the sun (“Oh, but leave the tam-o’-shanter on its little peg!” she had said), the coverlet of the crib (the Singapore shawl—or was it Peking?). The pearls, the husband said, could later be strung. He had offered coins. The woman begged for rice. The peasants (he called them “peasants”) came swimming to the pontoons, clinging to the wings; the propeller nearly cutting one of them in two. Dip and lurch. Water in the cockpit. He had fired a gun. Finally, the engine sputtering in their ascent, and a blue smoke mixing with the river mist. Below them lay a sampan overturned in their wake. (Shall we say she saw a dog or rooster or goat stranded on a roof ? A pair of oxen in their yoke, bellied up? Better yet: a baby in a basket of thatch. Yes—

Keeper of the Cormorant 141

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and let us have it turning with the current of the flood and sent downriver in the swell. The walled city, sinking. And the paddies, of course, always picturesque.) A rainbow appeared in the water spraying off the struts. “Dispersion of droplets,” he called above the noise. “Individual prisms and refraction of light.” She remembered upriver where they saw the cormorants and the choking ropes and rings they wore, the silver fish they could not swallow. So red inside their mouths, and tongues! Do all birds have tongues like splintered bone?—she wondered. He gave her castor oil and iodine to kill whatever river she had drunk. And later he brought her brandy, warmed in a cup. Her boy, her fair boy so liked the birds. How he laughed when a gull stole his buttered rusk! She filled a box of sand and hid the shells—cockles, moon shells, mother-of-pearl—and had given him a pail and tin shovel to dig. She has asked for Coquille Saint Jacques for lunch. He will say—her husband will—as he does, the shells should be washed after the meal, dried in the air, and stored away in cotton for future use. After lunch, he will tell her, “Please tell the cook.” She has asked the gardener to cut away whatever lingers on a vine or stem. Jardinière de printemps, she has told the cook. And if there are tomatoes—broiled, please, with parsley and seasoned crumbs. She has asked for tea with ice and mint, and rolls sprinkled with caraway. “No calls at lunch,” she tells the staff, the ones who will stay on. The groundskeeper will give the hedge a final trim. The cook will scour whatever she will not use today, wipe the silver, fit the spoons into their blood-red velvet box.

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There will be one teaspoon missing—(the one the downstairs maid had used to stir the cyanide)—just too badly pitted for repair. (“Fragile” and “fainthearted” is what he called the downstairs maid. “Slightly off ” is what he thought, right from the start. He had said as much, hadn’t he? “But a pity, even so,” she said.) The salad, she has decided, will be a cress with white raisins and slices of oranges, the bitter greens cut by the citrus and the sweet. The cook will tell her that the raisins are musty, and the oranges—well, nothing but pulp. Would she prefer a dish of steamed asparagus? Would she prefer a chilled soup of potato and leek? He—the husband—will ask her, as he does on departures, why the fuss? Why not sandwiches eaten on the road, in the car, in the air? It has always been enough for him. A container of coffee. A container of chocolate or tea. No need for anything else if they make it to Cincinnati, he would say when starting out. No need for more if they safely reach Buenos Aires. St. Petersburg. Tierra del Fuego. Or Nome or Anchorage or Glacier Bay. No need for more if they don’t. She remembers how he had to kick open the cockpit door: his head in her lap, vying for leverage; the crackling of the ice. The Inuit (“Inuit,” he had called them) had come to meet them, to see her, really—the white woman in mukluks, the parka hiding her belly. She was told that the baby would not be affected by the Arctic air, or by changes in elevation. She was told that he could not have felt the cold, being still asleep in his crib as he was pulled from between the sheets.

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Being still asleep—it is suspected—while being gunnysacked and slung. Being still asleep while being dropped from a height. While being skull-splintered and dumped. (“Note,” he had said, “how the molt hangs from the antlers.” She did. Shreds, yes: the blood, the rut.) The brain being freed from the bowl of bone, not forgetting the possibility of an unclosed fontanel. And if (perchance) the night air woke the boy as night air would, as March wind would, as an open window would when propped or warped—then certainly—why, the fall itself would be enough. “Instantly,” everyone told her. “Instantly,” the husband said. “Certainly,” and “Yes,” he said as a comfort, and “All theory and scientific evidence aside,” he said, and when the cabinet was opened and what was left (a blackened, leathery twist of a thing) was slid out for him in its chilled metal bed (casters, one supposes) and when the sheet (yes, another) was lifted he looked a while—a very short while it seemed to all—and said, “Certainly. Yes.” She was told, “Blunt object or bullet hole.” She was invited to sip a fishy sort of stew from a bowl that seemed to be something’s head. She was shown a spear hewn of walrus bone and artifacts of reindeer horn: woman’s comb, runner blade. She was given a ride in a kayak of seal rib and skin. The young, she was told, will swim to the hunters, having smelled the blood of the mother. Did she know that whales shed tears as salty as the sea? Did she know that the dogs are fed the lungs and the liver? The husband tells her that the dogs are not for petting, that

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they are unaccustomed to affection, and know only the sled, the cold, the tether. Did she know, he inquires, that the heart is cut from the chest and eaten first? She is told by the cook that there are hornworms in the tomatoes, slugs on the sugar snaps, thrips in the cress. “Horrid,” she had said, hearing of the death of the downstairs maid. “Unbalanced,” he had said. “And all that paint.” Yes, he was right; there was that: the powder, perfume, lipstick a tad too bright. She—his wife—would never get herself up that way, he said. Did he use the phrase “no wife of mine” when referring to the mouth of the downstairs maid—when describing her lips so red, and noting, too, the suggestion of a smudge? Did he say it once again when commenting upon the skirt of the downstairs maid—how the hem showed too much knee and the cut: too close, too tight? She—his wife—would never leave the house with her cheeks looking so pink and feverish. This, he turned and told his wife when the downstairs maid stopped upstairs: So, good night, Mrs. Lindbergh. Will there be anything else, Colonel, sir? She—his wife—wouldn’t be caught dead in something so clingy at the hips. Would never wear a shoe so arched or a stocking so darkly seamed. “A heel like that,” he said, “provides no traction—completely useless in grass or gravel or terrain you might consider rough.”

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“No sign of it,” he told them when they asked him if the downstairs maid had shown any sign of sadness or expression of regret. “Plenty of tears, of course,” he told them. (Well.) “No children of her own, you know,” he said. Overly attached to the boy, if anything. But incapable, of course. Simply unstable—a depressive type, driven to despair by the pressure of questioning (the inquest, the inquiry). Off the record, of course. “Overwrought,” and let it go at that. “But wasn’t there something,” she asked him, “some hint of it in those bright prints she always wore, the flowered skirts?” “Second-guessing,” he told her. “Out of the blue,” he said. At lunch, he does not say that he had watched her— watched his wife—from his study, that he saw her walking in the drive. He does not say that on such a busy day she might have better spent her time packing up the cupboards, or covering the baby grand, or seeing to the kitchen things—the kitchen things, at least—instead of frittering away such a good part of the morning. He does not mention that the crib has been dismantled and crated and how fine it will be to start with everything new and fresh. At lunch, she tells him that the asparagus is the garden’s last and the sauce is not hollandaise at all, but simply clotted cream and lemon zest. At lunch, she does not mention that she has decided not to take a cutting of the hedge along the drive, or cones from the birches on the curve below the nursery window.

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She does not ask if he has seen the shoes she had bronzed or the bonnet for the sun. She does not ask him if someone packed the humpbacked bear, the elephant with the jointed trunk, the lucky paw. “Dear,” she says, “have you checked the car?”—knowing that he has. “And do you have the maps?” She does not tell him that she has decided not to take a rootstock of the roses for replanting or that something is pinching in her shoe. Or that she noticed it this morning when walking down the drive—this morning when she should have been packing or planning or seeing to the details of departure or simply being more productive instead of strolling down the drive as she had one winter past. Was it just one winter past? Was it just one season short of a year of the Year of the Dog or the Rat or the Boy when she stopped in the drive on a blowy March morning? When she tossed the pebbles from the drive up to the nursery window and they clattered at the shutter and rang against the glass. She remembered the nurse coming to the window, coming to see what could be the matter: Tapping of twigs? Rattle of the latch? Windy day and thump of the shutter? And then, there he was—there was her boy, her fair-haired boy—and the nurse there, too, waving his hand: See your mama? Don’t you see your mama? Wave to your mama down there in the drive! The shadow of birches on the wall. March wind and the heave of bough. Tiny cones in the gravel. The rose vine bare except for hip and thorn. (“Oh, no, Dear,” she will say if he asks. “The wrong time of year for a cutting. Birches never sprout from seed. Rootstocks are not likely to take.”) The window gone white with cloud and glare.

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She does not tell him—not at lunch today or any other day—that this morning she noticed that the shutter still tilts on its hinge the way it did that day—that night—and that the nursery window still seems not to shut quite right, still seems to lend itself to entry by handhold or crowbar or wedge. She will not mention—not in the quiet of their nights or the silent spaces of their days—that he always thought to check the closure on the cockpit door, the stowage of the gear. She will not remind him—not today and not tomorrow and not the day she holds her second-born, or her third-, or any other—no, not on any day will she tell him that he checked the accuracy of the gauges, the condition of each indicator and dial, and that he never neglected the workings of the flaps or the handle on the cockpit door or the hinges. But the give in the nursery window. But the faulty shutter latch. But the cleft that was blamed for the cold, blamed for the whistle—(“the howl” is how she will come to think of it) when the wind came through. But the warp in the board. She will not describe—in her diaries—how after (after!) he had taken her outside for a walk down the drive and a look up at the window and had patiently shown her the pitch of the roof, had thoughtfully shown her the slant of the gutter, the improper degree of tilt; had helpfully explained the lack of incline resulting in the diminished velocity of run-off rain and melting snow, allowing the trough to fill with leaves and twigs and tiny cones, thereby further impeding the flow, providing a damn, thereby facilitating the backup resulting in the spill above the brim, permitting the drip, damaging the wood, increasing the warp, providing a wedge, bending the frame, weakening the glazing,

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loosening the glass, preventing an adequate descent of the pulley, resulting in a faulty sash, permitting the easy access, thereby allowing the inevitable entry, resulting in the empty crib. She will recall that, yes, he had organized the search. She will write in her diaries that he walked at all hours through the cold March woods and mud and wet in his shoes that were useful on any terrain, while she waited in the house for word, for news. She waited in the house with the humpbacked bear and the lucky paw and the tam-o’-shanter on its peg. She waited, never being foolish or fragile. Never becoming faint of heart. Waiting for him while he spoke with the men and stayed with the men with that easy tearless way of his, keeping their spirits up. How he walked with the men until he could not walk and how he never came to bed, never seemed to sleep. She will not mention that something pinches in her shoe or that he still tilts the bowl towards his chin when consuming soup. They were given meat of whale and of seal, and they sat with the Inuit thawing the strips above the smoke. “Asian stock,” he had told her. “Note the hair—how straight and black; the flatness of the lid, the yellow tinge.” She was told of a fluke that hides in the liver. She was warned of a worm that leaves a hollow of rot where it lives in the muscle of the heart. She had inquired what the heat of cooking could kill. The fire was small: sticks crosswise on the ice, kerosene, old maps. There was coffee from the thermos—or was it cocoa? Maybe tea?—and above them the ribbons of aurora borealis— all shift and flicker. (Dog howl here.) “Ionization,” he had said. “Atoms.”

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She had looked at the sky and the so many stars and she knew if she asked him to point out Polaris or any point of reference or the lights of the celestial pathway that would wing her home, he would know. He would know. At lunch, he says that he has planned a route that is direct but scenic. He says he has gassed the car and packed the maps. They will make good time today, he says, and be right on schedule by morning. It will be good for both of them, he says, this getting away. He asks if the rolls are wheat or rye. Are your bags ready? Is there any more butter? He tells her that he has seen to the bulk of the luggage. That he will settle up with the men who are loading the crates and stacking the cartons and see that all are compensated for their trouble. She knows he will offer his hand in a hearty shake, and he will say good-bye to the staff in that tearless, carefree way of his, in that confident way that he has. Someone—the butler, the husband?—has stacked their bags, she sees. Someone has forgotten a lock, has left open a latch, has left a strap undone. She notes, also, a gash in a hatbox, a scuff on a satchel. A valise has been overpacked. She wonders, but will not mention, the whereabouts of the box with the ABCs and the wooden duck that flaps. She thinks to ask about the storage of the rocker, the disposition of the hassock. She will attend to the lock, the straps, the latch. She will see to it that nothing more is lost.

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She will not be surprised when something (as they say) turns up missing: the silver sugar tongs. A hat (or two): the summer straw or the pancake beret. The needlepoint partly done. The scissors from the sewing kit. The pom-pom from the tam-o’shanter. A saucer from the Coalport set. The baby from his crib. A clipping of the Arctic flight. The pitted spoon. The scissors will be discovered sometime later in a shoe. The clipping will have been slipped into a book for safekeeping: Foundations of Flight, page sixty-eight. The needlepoint will be found folded in fours and tucked into a pocket, but (alas) damaged by mice. The saucer will be recovered but in pieces, hidden in the piano seat. (Of course, the downstairs maid will be blamed.) The sugar tongs, the baby, the pom-pom, the beret will never be recovered. The pitted spoon—(but that has been discussed, has been made quite clear, has it not?) She stands in the drive. She has no gloves or purse. A lacetrimmed handkerchief in a color known as “cream” (though sometimes called “bone” or “buff ” or “sand” or even “bisque”), and worn to match the scarf, peeks out of her sleeve. The hat—the matching blue (as noted early on)—is smallish, fitted to the head and gently upturned at the brim. The shoes are sturdy, but flattering to the foot. The heels are fine for motoring or for walking over any sort of slightly rough terrain: gravel drive or roadside stop or garden path. Yes, she says, the asparagus is all stalk. Already out of season and picked too late.

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He calls for the car. (“Certainly, Colonel. Coming right around.”) There will be the first bend in the drive and then the curve at the birches, and then the trellis and the roses where the road veers away from the house. Then hedge and hedge and hedge and finally the gate, where she will turn in her seat to look, or she won’t, or she will keep her gaze steadily ahead. Yes, she tells him, she remembered the coffee. “Cups? Spoons?” she asks the cook. (“Certainly, Madame. And sugar and cream.”) He faces the direction of travel and squints at the sky, as he does on such departures. And a light snack, she says, so we won’t need to stop. There is the sound of the motor and the car coming around. Tart apples, she tells him, and bread and cheese—Jarlsberg and some Camembert, perhaps slightly too ripe. The bags are rearranged. The last few things are brought aboard. She stands beside him in the drive. She shifts her weight. It is there in her shoe, but hardly an intrusion now: only an awareness at the instep; just a presence at the heel. He comments on the brooch at her lapel: Your mother’s, wasn’t it?

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No, she says, she hadn’t seen the pearls—but hadn’t they been packed? He notes that the birches have gone silver: underside of leaf, wind from the left. He suggests that she pin her hat. She does not tell him that pearls—when genuine—are gritty, never smooth, when pulled across the teeth. (Is it not the opposite of what one would expect?) Or that she barely feels what makes its wayward way inside of her, its bloodless burrow in the flesh.

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The hermit crab (subphylum Crustacea, order Decapoda) protects its soft, coiled abdomen by inhabiting empty shells of whelks, periwinkles, and moon snails. During a scarcity of such housing, it has been known to occupy cracked shells of coconut and hollow fragments of bamboo. A Field Guide to North American Beaches

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We are keeping youer Boy is on Boad Nelly. Small boad but safe. Enjoyabel seeside for youer boy. Ransom Note #9 April 2, 1932 New Jersey State Police Archives

The skull is unusually fragile and shell-like, due to exposure to the elements, and appears to be that of a human child. Mercer County Coroner’s Report May 14, 1932

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Captiva Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s new book, Gift from the Sea, is a radiant collection of meditations written while vacationing… The Washington Transcript Review of Books June 18, 1955

Something remote had been suggested. On this, at least, they did not disagree. “Unspoiled,” she had said. Lacking amenities. A cottage on a country road. Rose brambles in the yard, in the garden. A gate. “A hut,” he said, “preferably.” “Something rustic,” she said. A cabin would certainly do— if they could find one, surrounded by pine trees and beside a stream. Or overlooking a lake. Or a cove, perhaps. A bay. “Or a sea shack,” he said. Which was exactly why the house—the beach house, or “bungalow” as he called it—sounded as if it was just what they

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had been looking for: tucked away in a grove of bamboo, rustic but comfortable. Perfectly suited to their purposes, with a view of the Gulf from the bedroom window, the agent said, and a view of the dunes from the kitchen. And a Florida room that would bring in a wonderful breeze from the sea. It should be—would be—exactly what they wanted. They would pick up and go and take it sight unseen for the season. Without further discussion. And that would be that. “A getaway,” she had said, “like the old days.” Off at a moment’s notice, on expedition or jaunt. Zipping into their flight suits and tossing a few things into a sack: compass, charts, chocolate bars. Just the two of them. No fanfare or fuss. There were reporters, of course—there always were, back then. Lurking around the hangar—cameras poised, notepads ready. But he could always put them off: “Hey, Colonel Lindbergh!” they would call. “Tell us where you’re headed!” “South,” he would say, or “47 degrees and 19 minutes,” and once he told them, “Up.” “Remember that time, Charles—the trouble with the landing gear along the Gulf of Mexico?” she had said, when it was all still under discussion. “Three days out and no one knew where we were.” “No,” he said. “The carburetor, Anne. The choke.” “The fire we built on the beach,” she said, “and that red fish you caught, with all the bones! I guess we made the best of it.” “Had to,” he said. “And the sound of the palms—remember? And the waves while we slept?”

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Yes, he did indeed remember. And yes, he did agree; they should look for something tropical. And seaside, she said, if possible. But nothing too civilized, please. Somewhere in the Caribbean, she said. (But the heat this time of year.) Or back to Africa, the Ivory Coast? (But those unsettling reports of fever.) Or even the Pacific Rim. (Oh, dear. Typhoon season, wasn’t it?) Well, what about the Mediterranean? Might that not be better? The coast of Spain, for example. Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza. Was it Ibiza where she had found those tiny, tiny shells? Ibiza, yes. Or what about the South of France? “Charles, do you remember?” That had been lovely. Omelets, baguette, champignons in the little kitchen. A bouquet in a water glass by the bed. “But that was—when?” he said. “Before the war,” he said. “Way before.” “But that inn you liked so well. So quaint, with the stairs down to the water? I’m sure it must still be there. Remember you said that someday we’d come back.” Yes, he remembered. He remembered it all very well. The stairs. The vineyard. The fromage they had bought from the goat man on the hill. “Yes,” he said, “quaint.” But it would be France, after all. France, nonetheless: the glances on the street, the whispers and the murmurs in restaurants and shops. That concierge who had tipped everyone off. The conductor who exclaimed, “Monsieur! C’est un honneur!” as the train hissed and heaved ahead and everyone turned their heads to look. Always someone ready to corner him for an autograph, or wanting to say where he was when he heard the news. Someone—a man, it was most

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often—who so wanted to tell him—tell Charles—where he was when the plane was sighted, when the shouts went up, when the world was about to be told. Someone who wanted to say that he was there that night on the airfield, that night at Le Bourget—there with the thousands who sat on the roofs of their cars, watched the sky, heard the buzz of his engine, saw the silver tilt of his wings in the dark. Someone always wanting to say that he had come running onto the field and had touched him, actually touched him and carried him over the heads of thousands; handed him—Charles—her Charles—hand over hand above the heads of the crowd. (“Do you really think so, Charles? That there would still be a fuss, after so many years?”) And once in a while there would be someone else—a woman, usually—it was almost always a woman on the street or in a shop, handing Anne back her change or wrapping her package. Someone with something else to say to her—to Anne. That woman in Provence, for one, who had boxed the wine— the Chardonnay she wanted sent. “Désolé, Madame. Apropos du bébé, du garçon,” the woman said—said it without even looking up. And not just France, of course, when it came to all of that. No—it might be anywhere at all—if it was about the boy, their boy. That time in London—it had been a woman that time, as well, in a shop that sold the most fanciful papers for correspondence and cards of all kinds: thank-yous and regrets and condolences—and diaries of the finest handmade papers—some with gold flecks and embedded bits of fern and leaf—and custom stationery with any sort of lettering one could want in colors called “Tuscany” (a buff) and “Antilles” (a pink), and the one she decided upon: a sea-foam green called “Captiva.” And for her

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initials at the top, she thumbed through a little book of samples and selected what the woman described as “decorative.” Why, the way the stems of the letters curled around themselves and doubled up! More of a design than her initials, but that, she thought, was better yet. “Mrs. Lindbergh!” the woman at the . “Oh, how we counter had exclaimed when she saw the wept when we heard about the boy!” the woman said. And then when she—Anne—was about to leave: “Would you like to see our line of pens? Or perhaps some sealing wax?” And there was that time in the theater—Beaumarchais, as Anne remembered it; she had gone into the lobby to pick up their tickets. “Deux billets pour l’orchestre; mis à côté sous le nom de Lindbergh,” she told the woman behind the brass bars of the little window—the woman who slid the tickets along the marble slot and touched her hand ever so quickly, saying, “Ah, Madame!”—saying it to her, just to her, as if he—as if Charles— weren’t even there. “Ah, Madame,” she said, after all this time.

AML

No, Charles had said, after hearing all of that. Not France again. No. “Then, never mind about France,” she had said. It was perfectly permissible, absolutely fine to cross France off their list. But elsewhere on the Continent? Mightn’t that be all right? Italy, for example. The Amalfi coast! The tip of the boot! True—they weren’t fluent. And, also true—if something went amiss, travelwise or regarding connections or, God forbid—some emergency back home—why the country was positively primitive! Not Italy, then. But what about England? No, not London, but the high country instead. Cliff, heath, and the sea below. Not quite the beach, but overlooking ocean, at least. There was, after all, a standing invitation from the Duchess and the Duke. The manor house, the grounds. They wouldn’t have to lift a

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finger—as the Duchess liked to say. They wouldn’t even have to venture out to town. That might be pleasant, might it not? That is, if one was willing to endure the Duchess and her jewelry and—oh, yes—the way she liked to arch her brows with pencil and paint the borders of her mouth. And then there was the Duke with his howling dogs and his dark cheery looks. And it would mean dressing for dinner. Peering over a centerpiece, peeking through stems and petals. The Duchess describing her charity work; the Duke with his stories of the African campaign. And after dinner, after dessert wine and Stilton and brandy and a rubber of bridge, their hosts had announced it was time to retire. It would be “an early morning,” the Duke reminded them—there was the hunt, of course. The Lindberghs wouldn’t be forgetting that, would they? It would surely be the highlight of their visit! And there were still last minute preparations that needed tending to in the stable; instructions to be given to the diggers and the whippers-in. So. Would the Lindberghs like to see the rest of the house before bed?—“the tuppence tour,” the Duke had said, by way of a little joke. Well, of course they would, though Anne was a bit tired—the flight in, the motor ride through the highlands, the wine, she said. But yes—the Lindberghs would, of course they would. Though it would be the north wing only, the Duke explained—the rest of the house being closed off. “Sealed off,” the Duchess said. Empty. Except for a room or two for keeping clothes off-season, and a hall near the door for storage, the rest of the house just wasn’t in use anymore. “What with the lack of official functions these days,” said the Duke, “and a dwindling number of guests,” they simply could not keep the whole house open.

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“The heating costs alone,” said the Duchess. “The general upkeep, the expense.” Along the stairs, an assortment of decorative hangings were pointed out: pewter sconces believed to have been commissioned for the Plantagenets; a portrait of a distant nephew to the Duke, a descendant of the sixth illegitimate son of Richard the Second (all agreed a likeness was evident); the family coat of arms and crest: a sleuthhound proper on a ducal coronet; the head of a stag with dust in its lashes and its tongue flaking paint. The room they were assigned had a view of the garden— all roses, they were told—though there was too much fog to see it. And a view of the closed-off wing, as well, if one leaned from the window and looked far enough to the left. The four-poster bed was fourteenth century. One of the finials was a reproduction, the Duke confessed. The bedding smelled slightly of camphor; the lace-trimmed pillows of must. There was an unraveling of the canopy lace along the edges. There were tassels at the corners which did not match. There were noises in the night: the chiming of a clock, a hush through the plumbing, a creaking of hinges when the wind swayed the casement window. And a commotion of sorts—a series of sounds she could not exactly place: a vibration or a thumping or the sound of something running. As if something were hurrying along a corridor or tumbling down the stairs or scrambling about, Anne thought, in some very distant part of the house. Perhaps where the Duchess and the Duke slept. Or where the servants lived. Yes, it must be the servants’ quarters, because someone of the staff would most likely be up and busy with this or that.

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Or else it could be one of the dogs, the Duke’s dog. Didn’t the Duke mention a favorite dog? One he never kept with the rest in the kennel? Why, it could be that—the sound of a dog set loose in the house! Or something else loose somewhere in the house, the very farthest part of the house. Or perhaps in the closed-off part of the house. Yes, she thought—perhaps from there. As if something there had been left behind in the dark or had gone unnoticed when the wing was shut. Or had found its way in—crept in or flew in or burrowed inside and now could not get out. She lifted her head from the pillow: clock-tick from the dresser, the drip from the bathroom sink. She waited for the sound, the other sound—listened and waited—but it did not come again. Well, she thought. There you have it! It was nothing at all. It was just the effects of being so tired out! Because it had been such a long day. And such a drawn-out evening. Dinner served so late! And that wine they served, that too sweet wine—had she had too much? Apparently so! It was really all too much! Oh, and sleeping so uneasily—even fitfully, she might say—that was to be expected when one eats just before bed. Just what one would expect when trying to sleep under such circumstances in a strange bed and hearing the sounds that an old house makes! Oh, yes, she thought. That’s what it was! What you would hear in any old house—in this old house or in old hotels and even that time in their very own house—that one night in their old country house—just that one night, but all night long: a scrambling sound she had heard in the room off the porch. All night she had heard it—on and off—as though something from the woods had gotten in. “And why not?” she had said to Charles that night—there were woods all around, of course!

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Woods filled with all kinds of things that would be trying to get in. Squirrels or rabbits, or even a fox—that’s what it could have been. A smaller animal of any sort, or even a bird, because birds were always flying in if a window was open or the porch door had been left ajar. But that was how it was in the country in a country house. That was to be expected in a place like that. Especially if it was empty off-season. If no one was around to keep things out. And it was always so hard to keep things out! She had even asked Charles to take a look, oh please get up and take a look!—but of course there was nothing unusual to be found. No, not a thing. But that was how things were in such an old house. Sometimes you heard things and sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you found things and sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes dinner was late and sometimes it wasn’t. All kinds of sounds in a very old house! In their old country house and certainly, she thought as she settled her head back on the lace-trimmed pillow—certainly in an old, old manor house such as this. By morning, the fog had lifted. She cranked the handle of the casement window. Below, in the garden, there weren’t any roses. Just a straggly hedge. A fountain full of leaves. A border of old brick. A sundial misplaced in a shady spot. And the closed wing? Yes, there it was! She could just see the end of it if she leaned out along the sill. It looked much like the rest of the house, except for the grass sprouting in the eaves, and the ivy that had overgrown the windows, and the moss in the gutters. A bitter marmalade was served at breakfast. Toasted bread was set cooling in curious little racks. There was a crust on the rim of the sugar bowl. There was discourse on the cleverness of foxes. Distribution of boots, crops, jackets.

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After breakfast: the requisite outing with the hounds. She remembered the hounds—how their tails beat against their brindled bodies and against the fetlocks of the horses like whips. How their tongues hung long and slick. The fields had been wet, she remembered. There had been an early-morning rain, and as they rode, the mud splattered up. She remembered the countryside just going green: birdsong in the hedgerows, and fruit trees—pear, or perhaps they were peach—in bloom and the hounds swirling around the legs of the horses. And she remembered the sound of their running— the horses and the hounds, like a soft sort of thunder, and the fox scrambling along an old stone wall, up and down for some way out, but the hounds there at every turn, keeping on and keeping on, and their baying—oh the sound!—with their wet little mouths and black lips and sharp little teeth as they came upon the fox where she lay in the field stubble, had finally come to rest in the field stubble, on her side in a sunny spot and spent with running, her sides heaving for breath and the baying of the hounds as they came upon her and shook her to pieces with their sharp little teeth where she lay in the sun in the field stubble. How the petals of peach—or was it cherry?—drifted down. Her slender paws. Bits of fur. The piece of her jaw that came away. The cubs they tore from her belly. The mud. Lord Something who produced the blade. And Lady Something who snatched the tail away as soon as it was cut. “Hurrah, Mrs. Lindbergh!” Lady Something had said when Lord Something smeared the bloody stem of it across her face. “Your first kill! Hurrah!” How everyone laughed and cheered. “Quite the sport, your wife,” the Duke had said to Charles right then.

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“Yes,” he said, “quite,” he said as he had heard them say, “Hurrah,” and he saw them crowd around her, saw the stripe of blood above her mouth as if she’d fallen, as if she had been shoved and had stumbled and had hit something—the edge of a desk or a nightstand or something of that sort as she stood pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, standing there with them all around her, and her face the way it was that time when the engine stalled over Omaha. Or that time they ditched in a storm in the Yellow Sea. And finally: a lunch served at the end of the ride, the end of the hunt—or rather, a “luncheon” (the Duchess announced) arranged in their honor, set up in an old gazebo. “For our favorite American guests,” the Duke said. “A picnic,” said the Duchess, “the way you Americans do.” Foie gras, white asparagus, meringue tarts, tepid tea. The serving dish was passed. The kill was forgotten. The horses had been tethered to a rail, thirsting; their flanks trembling, lathered. The afternoon going cool. A dog whined and yelped nearby in the woods—“Lad,” they told her, when she asked what was the matter. It was “Lad,” they said, who had been misbehaving, who had gotten off the scent and chased after a rabbit; Lad who had been dragged off into the wood “in need of a lesson,” though Lad was a favorite of the Duke’s but “sorely in need of the lash. ” As was “Flag.” As was old “Brindle Bob”—who always lagged behind. “Probably a rheumatism,” the Duke explained. But “no excuse, nevertheless.” The tongues of the horses worked the bits: froth and flecks of green and red. The foie gras was greasy, congealing on the roof of her mouth. The whipper-in began to explain the method of enlarging the livers of geese.

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There was that darkness around her eyes, as if she’d been hit. Lady Something had Charles by the arm. Lord Something was passing a flask, but only to the men. The asparagus was flaccid. The meringue had begun to sweat. There was a flowering vine—“wisteria,” the Duchess said— spiraling around the old gazebo posts. Lavender blossoms that drooped. A coil of it that had grown inward, in the shadow of the overhang. Pale leaves. Aborted blooms. An old hornet’s nest suspended from a withered stalk. It was papery, the layers of it flayed in places. A piñata, she thought. So like a piñata, this hornet’s nest was: the very size and shape of it, and the way it swayed a bit—so like the one Charles had put up for the boy, for that first birthday party they had held in their old country house, in the big room off the porch. Yes, a hornet’s nest so like the piñata, like the one she was remembering—except that the nest was grey, not blue. And of course without a big blue parrot face painted on it, and without the crepe paper cut into a fringe that was supposed to look like feathers on a bird, the head of a bird. The boy had pointed. “Buddy!” he called and she had taken him in her arms and held him up for a closer look. “Well, yes! It is a birdie,” she told him. “Exactly right. Very good. Very, very good.” And then there were all the other children wanting to hold the stick; all of them calling out to hold the stick and be the first. When it was his party, after all—her boy’s first birthday party; and even if he was too little to run with a stick and swat at the big parrot, he should be the one. And how they helped him walk—he was just starting to walk, taking his sweet little steps right up to the big paper face, and then

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he was running on his own two feet—thump, thump, thump and running through the room with the stick in his hand and they showed him how to hold the stick and how to bash it in. “Buddy!” the boy called after the whack and smash. Cinnamon candies! A shower of little stones of cinnamon, rattling, clattering down. And taffy twists in waxed paper, and little toys spilling all about: a rabbit’s foot on a chain. (Feel how soft the little foot.) A wooden whistle. (Hold your ears!) A scruffy doggie on a stick. And the other children pushing in for a candy or a prize. “Careful now!” she called as the children scrambled around the room. Yes, she was remembering, and the hornet’s nest in the eaves of the gazebo was so like the piñata—but after the damage, when everything was over, when it lay in shards and the fringe was in shreds. And then wind came up, that high-country wind, spinning dry leaves in a corner of the old gazebo and lifting the dust. Blowing grit. The trees along the hedgerow sighed and heaved. Napkins flew from the table—rose like doves—so white like doves, she thought—and fluttered away! Somewhere far off lightning cracked. A cuff of thunder. The horses huffed with nostrils wide and pulled until the reins were taut. And then dogs were loose and running—right up the gazebo steps! The sound of their feet and their scrabbling little nails on the hollow floor as they swirled around them under the table and underfoot. The tea was overturned. The wind rose again, and the hornet’s nest swayed on its stalk. And she thought it might fall, might burst open and set loose a lone hornet who had stayed on when the season had ended; the one not foolish enough to venture out when the cold had come but had lived inside this broken globe and now that spring had come would be turned out.

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The cries of the dogs. (And that old dog—remember, Charles?) The blood across her face, drying on her lips, flaking there, like rust. No, he had told her. Not the high country, not the manor house, not the Duchess and the Duke. He had thought not. No. “Well, fine,” she had said. “Never mind about the Duke and the Duchess.” No matter. Why, they—she and Charles— they had the whole wide world to choose from, she said. Whatever and whenever would please him. That was what most mattered. But, yes, she said, the idea about the water, the sea—his idea for doing something by the sea, going somewhere by the sea—“Wonderful, Charles. And come to think of it, let’s not go so terribly far this time. Not Europe, this once. I certainly agree”—now that she had a moment to mull it over. She hated to leave the children—hated to be so far away and leave the children home. “The children?” he asked. What could she be thinking? The children were “long grown and out of the house,” and on their own so very long ago. “Not so very,” she said. They were hardly grown, she wanted to tell him. Barely grown. And her first—why, he would never be grown. But of course this was something she never said aloud. Never told Charles right out. What she never could say to anyone right out—“My first, my youngest”—because, of course, it just wouldn’t make any sense. Not to anyone. “Ah, Madame,” that woman had said about her first, her youngest. Though it hardly made sense that she thought of him as her “youngest”— now that so many years had come and gone. But that was how it was. That is how she thought of him: her youngest, her first.

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That is what she called him, still called him after so many years gone by. Though she never called him anything—not anymore. Never mentioned his name anymore. Hardly a reference anymore—no, not to any of it. Except that time—that one time about the hornet’s nest. What she had said to Charles right then, after the hunt. And except for that time at the theater. It was Beaumarchais after all, she remembered now, when she took the tickets into her hands and told Charles what the woman had said. And that time in the shop—those women in the shops. Those few times. Hardly ever. So, they had decided, it would be “stateside” after all. And if that was the case, if that would be best, then “Why not the country house, the old farm?” she said. When had they last been up? How many summers had it been? “Ages,” she said, “since the party, I think.” Though she couldn’t remember exactly when. They could open the place and have the children up—the whole family up. All of them together on the big wraparound porch, and they could all stay until time for apple picking if there was anything left in the old orchard, what with no one looking after the trees or taking the time to prune and so forth— and well, if the trees hadn’t bloomed at all this year, then they might do some digging in the garden! Maybe even start up the tiller if it wasn’t too terribly rusted and put in some tomatoes and lettuce and dill—for that potato salad with the cut-up dill he liked—if it wasn’t too late in the season. Because what they had to do was simply make a decision and just pick up and go this minute, yes this very minute, or even this week or at least sometime before the end of the

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month—and even if it would be too cold for going in the ocean by then, they could still hunt for shells on the beach. “What shells?” he said. “What beach?” But didn’t he remember: the beach where the sand from the roots of the pines jutted out into the bay? But as for shells—Charles was right about that. There just weren’t any. An occasional sea urchin or crab or something hiding in a tide pool. But that was about all. They had taken walks, had gone on a “shell hunt” as she called it, and hadn’t found a one. But she had found a pretty pebble or two: pink with streaks of gold. Well, not so gold when she held it in her hand, after she had dried it off and placed it on her palm. So much duller there. As if somehow the polish had come off, if it had been polished—but of course, it hadn’t. But pretty, when she first saw it in the water: the gold glinting there against the pink, so bright against the places where the bottom of the pool was black. And of course, there were the wildflowers all along the way—goldenrod and seaside lavender. She might still have a sprig pressed inside a book. In her diary, she thought—that diary with its pages of handmade papers and pieces of petals and twigs. Of course, it would be all dried out by now—faded, of course—and smashed so flat that it might not look like a flower at all after all this time; at least it wouldn’t look at all like the way it used to look. But even if there weren’t any shells, it was pleasant walking, all the same. (Wasn’t it?) Getting a bit wet (but that was all right!) where the sea lapped at their feet. Watching the birds, the little ones—sandpipers, she thought—that ran so fast along the rocks that their legs went by in a blur. (Remember, Charles? The seabirds?) And, yes, he remembered.

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But, no. No, he told her. Not the old house up on the coast. There would be too much to do, he told her, in the way of repairs: the downstairs sink, the railing on the porch, the sag of the doorjamb in the big room off the porch where anything at all might have gotten in. It was generally unsafe, he felt. No place for children to be playing, to be letting the door slam all day long. Leaning along where the old rail might just give way with their weight. And as for the apple trees—he doubted that this season they’d bring anything to bear. And furthermore, it was already turning cold along the coast, already nearing first frost up there. How odd of her to think of going north! It was already far too late. Very well, she had said. Not the old farm, not their country house, then. She had forgotten how much there would be to do—just the thought of opening up the house again, airing out and cleaning up all those empty rooms! She had forgotten just how long it had been. But the idea of being by the sea—he agreed about that, didn’t he? And if it was too late in the season to venture north, then why not head south along the coast: the Carolinas? The Outer Banks? (Well, no. It would soon be turning cool, and by the time they had the details sorted out it would be nearly fall, and colder still.) Or Georgia? (Hmm.) Or Florida? Well, now there was a thought! Florida. Not too far—not terribly far. But far enough to feel like really being away, being somewhere else. Because everything was different in Florida. It was almost

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like another country, Florida was. And very much like being in the tropics: such different birds and flowers and trees, and even a different look to the sea. And perhaps she would write—she had been meaning to do something more than her diaries. Something more serious than her scribblings on the paper with the pretty handmade papers. And he—Charles—could do some fishing, if he liked. Spear fishing, as he had done that one time—the red fish— remember? There must be something that still could be had for the season—a cottage on the beach or on an inlet or an island—or even something on a key. There were so many keys: Deer Key and Blue Key, Key Biscayne and Key West. Or they might try the west coast, along the Gulf where the sand was as fine and white as confectioner’s sugar, she had heard, and the beaches were known for their shells—“famous for shells.” Yes, a spot along the Gulf—that would do nicely. A seaside cottage, a house on the beach, or, as he liked to say, “a bungalow.” Something secluded. Something remote. And it certainly seemed to be—remote—now that they had made their way down the coast and had finally turned off the highway for the long up-island road. “Off the beaten track,” the agent had said and they both agreed that it was, as the hotels and marinas and roadside stands thinned out and the orange groves gave way to groves of cypress and they drove through the heat of the bottomlands thick with bird sounds and bamboo. They were lucky to have gotten a house at all, the agent had said, especially on such short notice. Though there might be a bit of cleanup to do. But, she assured them, everything would be tidy and swept. “Broomclean,” the agent had said; that was how the previous tenants

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would leave it. A bit of dusting, a sprucing up might be in order. “But,” Anne said, “nothing nearly so involved as opening up the old country house, the old farm.” Or so tiresome as having to make repairs or reopen rooms or dig in the garden or prune fruit trees that might be half-dead with neglect. No luncheons to be given in their honor, thank goodness. No one to tell them the time to retire or the time to be up, and no one to dress for at dinner. “No one in shops or trains or city streets to make a fuss,” she said as they sat with the roof of the car rolled down and waited to cross at the island bridge. The sun was high and bright. Below them: the Gulf, blue as gemstone. A pair of pelicans passing just above them. (Look, Charles!) And then motoring on again on the road up-island, winding along the Gulf. Seabirds. Mangrove. Eucalyptus. Palmetto. The sun winking down through the fronds. “‘Fourth house down. Conch shell and key on the stoop,’” the directions said. “First house,” she counted out loud. “Second. Third.” Then—there it was. Fourth house down. Yes, this was it. The roadside brush opened up. He turned into the drive. The sound of the tires crushing stone and shell. He shut the engine off. Branches of bamboo bending in at their rolled-down windows, brushing against them as they stepped out. Catching at her skirt. She went behind him along the path, holding her hat on her head against the wind coming off the Gulf—and peering

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through the bamboo in the yard; looking past the branches and leaves to the cottage door and the step. Going along a border of driftwood that lined the walk. Past one big piece of it that had toppled in the way. He stopped to tip it up. Stepping along the little path of shells and past a gardenia in bloom with its white petals lifting and blowing about. She leaned in to sniff. And though there were no brambles—no roses—in the yard—there was a hibiscus at the step and a bougainvillea clinging to the post. And there was the conch shell, just as the note had said, right there on the stoop. And the key as well when he tipped the shell up by a lip—wrapped and folded in paper, and wedged in the cleft. They climbed the two-step landing to the door with the little window in it. He put his face to the glass, his hand above his eyes. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s have a look.” He stepped back. He put the key in the lock. And then, right then, she thought she heard something inside—something there, moving in there, just on the other side of the door. He tried the key. A jiggling was required; a rattling of the knob. And there it was again: not the sound of the door or the knob or the key or the lock, but a clattering, as if something had fallen, had been tipped off a shelf. Or was it more of a thumping sound? Yes, more like thumping than clattering, this noise from inside the house—but sounding far away—as if it were thunder—but somehow close by, as well, this sound of something running in the darkness of the room on the other side of the door. As if something had gotten in: wood rats or

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rabbits or something from the dunes, looking for a place to hide, or children looking for a place to play or run about, or something small and frightened finding shelter from the wind and the heat. Some small thing caught in an empty house, the way some small things are when a house is left. He worked the key again. He turned it in the lock. The knob moved in his hand. He put his shoulder to the door and shoved. There was a rush of heat. A slight smell of must. But, oh, not dark—it was not dark at all—but filled with light spilling through the windows, golden through the yellowed shades; flooding the walls, flowing across the ceiling and all along the floor. So bright and warm and very still! And nothing running! Of course, nothing was. Their footsteps sharp and hard along the floor. Their voices clear in the empty rooms, resounding from the walls: “Look at this bed—we should turn the mattress.” “I wonder if there’s linen.” “Does the stove work? Is the phone turned on?” “The closets are small, but the kitchen is fine, don’t you think?” A dustpan in the bedroom. A mop in the living room. A book left behind on a shelf. On a sill: an empty cup. And see, she said—it was not “broom-clean” (that agent!)— not at all. It would need some cleaning up: the leaves blown in along the floor. The little clouds of dust along the woodwork. Grit on the sills. A clot of something in a corner. She moved it with her foot: a husk of feathers, of bone—a bird, sparrowsized, with wings folded in and eyeholes empty and tiny claws curving over on themselves, as if it had taken something in its foot. As if it had held a twig of hedge or a stick of bamboo or the edge of a nest.

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“Probably off-course,” he said. As if there once had been something there to clutch. Well, it would just be one more thing to pick up or sweep away or toss out. Dust and leaves and bits of bamboo tracked in. Blown in petals and stems. Sand blown up along the steps and the landing and the porch. The rust around the faucets in the sink; stickiness on the tabletop; the grime in the tub. It would all take a bit of work—time and work and scrubbing and dusting—floors, shelves, windowpanes, windowsills, counters, cabinets, tables, tiles. “A little elbow grease,” she said. And the musty smell? Well, there it was: in the pantry, in the kitchen, in the closets and the dresser drawers. But that was to be expected, wasn’t it?—that smell of things that have been put away, no longer needed; things that are stored out of season and out of sight. It was just what one would find in any place one might rent—a summer cottage or a cabin or a bungalow by the sea. In any sort of place that has been empty for a while— abandoned or boarded up. In any kind of room that once was filled with light but has long since been forgotten and shut. But with the breeze coming in from the sea—with the Florida room windows thrown wide open—and the scent of the hibiscus and gardenia and bougainvillea coming in, soon everything would be aired out. “In just a matter of hours,” she said. Or in a day or two. At most.

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Plate #202: female plover performing broken-wing display, leading predator away from nesting area Birds of the Eastern Forest

Plate #163: plover “nest” on bare pebble base (eggs cryptically colored) Nesting Behaviors of North American Birds

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Graveweed The tour of the Lindbergh estate does not include the interior of the house or the wooded site where the body was found. The nursery window, however, is visible from the courtyard just below it. Picture-taking is not permitted. Please remain with your guide at all times. Historic Hopewell Visitor’s Guide Hopewell Township Chamber of Commerce

Above us: the window. Winter, of course, or early spring, and seasonably cold, as they say. Much like today. Snow at the roadside, gusts. In the eaves: thaw, shagbark leaf, and the small crack from the weight of the ladder. A rattling in the gutter pipe. The chipping of a redpoll. A migrating bunting. The foraging grosbeak, distinguished from the purple finch by its wing bars and rump. A musical call often given in undulating flight. Note the feathering where the soil has been disturbed. Hoarfrost on the stems of larkspur. A step or so away from what was the flower bed will add perspective. Paperwhites, mainly: Narcissus papyraceus, described in her diaries. Trefoil, too, was mentioned. Also:

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marigold “Amber Miss.” The records are much yellowed: notes saved in a sprinkling can, in a scrapbook of clippings. The flight, certainly, and the publicity. A photograph of the Colonel on the airfield. A petal of the bouquet presented in Paris. Dates on the wall of the groundskeeper’s cottage and penciled on packets of seed and shards of terra cotta. A border of mums: “Sienna” and “Minstrel Dawn.” A ground cover of periwinkle, also called “Graveweed.” Note the ornamentals just past the doorway: cranberry viburnum for attracting waxwings. Bittersweet for the occasional vireo. Hackleberry. Hips. Plans for a rose garden had been abandoned: hybrid “Brigadoon.” The miniature “Lemon Beauty.” “American Cloud,” in honor of the Colonel. For her: “Lady Lindbergh,” formerly called “Evening Pink.” She tended to be pale. But then, the effects of photography. The bulb, the flash. The color of skin against the dark of mourning dress. No hole was dug. A crypt was considered unsuitable, given public interest. Given “the nature of the case.” One can picture vials of earth. Mementos of shale and pebbles to the highest bidder. A brisk trade in grave soil. Step away from the path. The burrow of the wood rat. The tunnel of the yellow-nosed vole. Note the stripping of bark, the gnaw, the sap. The borings of the yellow-shafted flicker in the sugar maple. And the pileated woodpecker, identified by its distinctive drumming and conspicuous crest. Its call, a hesitant “kuk.” Hemlock on the nearest slope. Tamarack. Favored by crossbills, of course, and wintering longspurs. An understory of witch hazel. Many of the maples here have been cut. Birch preferring a clearing, as do certain ground feeders: starling, meadowlark. Pin oak where there would have been the runway. The hangar, perhaps. Wind sock on the ridge. The forest floor, you will notice, has been raked and graded. Undergrowth slashed. Stump. Sinkhole. Tangle of greenbriar. Clematis. The ubiquitous creeper. The

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shelter of the ditch. The gentle layering of debris. The protrusion of an oak-dark foot. Tannin, of course, will weep. The Colonel was informed first. The headline, as you may remember: “Hope Dashed.” The mother was not advised of the appearance of the flesh. The stain. The dispersal of bone. The remains were weighed. A sample of the overlapping toe, formerly referred to as “this little piggy,” was taken. And the picked-clean skull—well, but for a single tuft. Formerly described as “flaxen” or “golden.” The term “tow-headed” used more frequently in print. Fraudulent locks were sold on the steps of the county seat. Wanted posters. Pictures of the boy: “Reward” and “Little Lindy.” Handbills. Lemonade and ham sandwiches. Pop. Souvenir ladders in miniature. The original was crude. Doweled. Lumberyard grade yellow pine, an evergreen of longer leaf. Favored by both the siskin and titmouse for nesting. Identified by the grain. The incriminating smell of pitch. The preponderance of nail holes. Plank “number 16” similar to what is called “the missing slat.” Expert testimony regarding knot and annual ring. Matching the irrefutable floorboard concealing the ransom. The undeniable distance to the nursery window and the corresponding length of the rail. The width of the ledge. Deceptively unsturdy, and there the undoing. The carpenter, it seemed, had not accounted for the added weight. The term “baby,” being—in this case—loosely applied. The blanket remained pinned in the crib, while the note—left on the sill. The sack? Presumably burlap or sailcloth or canvas duck. Sensing instability, the loss of equilibrium, one might release such a bundle. Permitting handhold on the ladder. An attempt to seize something stable. To clutch. One might wonder if they dropped together rung by rung. Perhaps the child was hurled. Tossed. Shall we use the term “lobbed”? The possibility of an accomplice. Footprints were inconclusive. Tread. Sole. A

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suspicious heel. Circumstantial rabbit tracks of the usual pattern. Also: an eyewitness description of a woodchuck in its “scurrying” gait. The impression of the ladder in the garden loam. The softness of a thaw. Still, a fall from a second story. Was there an “audible crack”? Debate ensued about the fontanel, which should have been closed at such an age. But then, perhaps a premature cleft of bone. Perhaps merely the poke of a stick by way of police investigation. And of course, the possibility of an actual fracture or the work of indigenous wildlife. The white-footed rat, for example. The New Jersey ferret. Forepaw. Incisor. The lack of opposable thumb, which would explain the missing digits and the fibula found at some distance. Excoriation of the cranial vault across suture and foramen. The coroner’s description: “deflated appearance of the chest and belly”; the disappearance of the innards. One might consider any number of carrion birds—the turkey vulture, known locally as “buzzard.” The less common black, recognized by its longnecked silhouette. Certainly the eastern raven—known for its hoarse “croak”—unlike the distinctive “caw” of the common crow. One might picture foxes—the red fox, common in this vicinity. Please note the track, comparable to that of the coyote. The feral dog. Imagine, if you will, the characteristic snapping. A length of intestine usually taken in the teeth. She often said aloud that she could eat him with a spoon. Though he preferred pudding or his little fists full of cake. The press was excluded, as usual. Conical hats were provided and favors of baby-blue crepe. Candies. A small bunch of daisy fleabane—she referred to them as “nosegays”—and sprigs of baby’s-breath. Paper whistles that unfurled with forced exhalation. An arrangement at the “gift table”: mittens, alphabet blocks, jacks. A caged bird—presumably a parakeet—was presented for singing but escaped and was lost in the draperies. The candle wax appeared

186 Pamela Ryder

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faintly nibbled. The piñata took the gash and spilled. The placard of the donkey and its tail was also tattered. The maid presented something of her own sewing. The nanny hardly approved. There would be spit-up, shouldered—and soured bottles. A dribble of snot. A cough correctly termed “barking.” What a pity that the dog never stirred! What a pity that the “cry” or the “wail” or the “snap” went unnoticed. But then, the wind—the previously mentioned “gusts.” Take into account, if you can, the evening sway of trees. The cry of a nighthawk. A sworn statement as to the squeak of the silver-haired bat. A nocturnal call of the owl incorrectly described as “screech,” whose song is a series of short descending notes, followed by a quavering whistle. Moreover, the distance of the other wing. The hallway separating the second bedroom. Drowsiness after dinner: chestnut-stuffed quail, buttered squash, and something undoubtedly au gratin. The probability of dessert cordials, or the “nightcap,” or—in the case of certain members of the kitchen staff—the proverbial “nip.” Hounds were provided with certain pieces for sniffing: bootie, tam-o’-shanter, bib. The nursery floor muddied by the paw. The crib pad moist with slobber. The scrambling of the canine foot on mahogany, on teak. Too, the incessant pulling on the leash, the inevitable slosh through swamp or watercourse. Coincidently an offshore locality. The so-called “hide-out.” Or shall we say, “lair”? The location of the boy for “safekeeping” aboard the boat, the name being “Nelly, ” revealed in the letter of ransom. The mother imagined portholes, tide. Wrote of, in her diaries: the child comforted by the cry of seabirds. Subdued by a gentle rocking. Kittiwake. Common tern. Ring-billed gull. Told from the herring by the narrow tail band and from the mew by the larger beak—valuable field marks for viewing at a distance. Fond of whelk. Cockles. Moon snail. The child given shells for his amusement, she

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imagined, or the head of a fish—the perpetrators lacking the foresight to provide an actual toy. “In lieu of appropriate playthings,” she wrote. Longing for the nearly hairless bear or what he called his “Dickie bird” on a stick. Playing, instead, with fins and scales and coming home—she hoped, she wrote—“stinking”—but nothing that a warm bath wouldn’t fix. Or, she decided, left to play in the sand: shovel and pail. Chasing a shorebird or wave. Plover. Or whimbrel, resembling the bristle-thighed curlew, except for its somber back. Or a buff-breasted sandpiper, which, when flushed, zigzags much like a snipe. She imagined him smelling of seaweed and his diaper full of grit. And if a little thinner, a few weeks of his favorite foods would do: buttered noodles, custard, sugared currants from the border at the edge of the lawn. Frequented by mockingbirds. The boat-tailed grackle. The solitary vireo, whose last three notes of song are dirgelike. Pleading. Often tame. A persistent singer. Recognized by the eye ring. Note the “cherry black” twig. Note the scattering of last summer’s stones. The tendency to sprout early in the season, a few weeks before the warmer weather, when she pictured him playing in the garden, rescued. Or, shall we say, “ransomed.” Spring songbirds returned. The scarlet tanager. Redwing. Oriole. Favoring shade trees, especially elms. Also: orchards. Dwarf plum and green pear. Told by the orange-yellow breast. Song, in juveniles: “tee-teedee”—plaintive, incessant. Swallows. Poorwills. Blue-winged warblers. Cloudless skies. Warm nights and nightingales. Stars. A bloom of larkspur and paper-whites. Trefoil “Blue Lassie.” Iris “Red Duet.” Bobolink. Least flycatcher. Known to line its nest with what it might find on the forest floor: tufts of his hair described as “flaxen,” spiderwebs, bits of lichen. Or what it might capture in the air: thistle, also called “silk,” and milkweed floss. Also: down and the summer molt of the mourning dove. The vesper sparrow.

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The common wren. A familiar visitor to thickets and tangles. The heart-faced owl. Fringed along the primary feathers, permitting its noiseless flight. Distinguished by the color of the plumage: buff above, with paler underparts. Lacking a distinctive “hoot.” Known by its soft, ascending cry and a harsher note against intruders. By the “begging” sound in fledglings. And by the toneless “hiss” given at the nest.

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