laughed up at me. “I’m fine, dammit, go away, leave me alone.” I followed her around the point, pestering. “Talk to me,” I said, and she gave in with a sigh. “What do you want me to say, how glad I am to know you? I’m glad I know both of you, okay? Does that make you happy? No matter how it all turns out, I’m not sorry it happened. Is that good enough?” I hugged her again and said, “Yeah, Koko, that’s good enough for today.”
She walked away and I lingered for a moment, watching the boat in the harbor. There was no real need to worry about those guys, whoever they were, but I worried anyway, in a distant, passive kind of way.
Now in the last moments of daylight Luke and Libby came out to take down the flags. We all gathered on the right flank, where the string of flags represented Union and Confederate forces of the 1860s and the state of South Carolina, with the big modern U.S. flag in the center. Luke lowered the American flag and Libby snapped to attention with a crisp salute. Erin, Koko, and I watched from one side. Carefully they folded the flags, Libby draped them over her arms, and we started back toward their tiny apartment as the last of the sun vanished in the west.
“Time to eat,” Libby said gaily. “Who wants the great white shark fin?”
Their room looked smaller than ever with all of us crowded inside. In fact, it wasn’t much bigger than the utility room of a modern house, and we scattered our sleeping bags, still rolled and tied, and made good use of the floor. We lounged wherever there was a vacant spot while Libby cut greens and made a salad. Erin said, “I won’t even offer to help, I’d just get in your way,” and Libby smiled her appreciation. The time for niceties was at hand. Erin said how awful she felt that we hadn’t brought anything but Libby dismissed that with a wave. “Totally understandable. You didn’t think you were coming to dinner, you came to visit a national monument. Who brings food to something like that?” Luke said, “We’ll come to Denver sometime and you can treat us like royalty,” and Erin said, “I’ll stop feeling bad if you’ll make me a solemn promise to do that.” We were in the first stages of feeling one another out, strangers trying to find a comfortable meeting ground.
“Take off your jacket and get comfortable,” Luke said. “It gets warm in here.”
But I kept the jacket, preferring the heat to the necessity of trying to explain the gun I wore under it. We broke some ice, literally and conversationally. Nothing was said in these early moments about Burton or the quest that had brought us there. Once Libby caught my eye and held it for a moment, as if she knew that whatever was coming would be largely between her and me. I sensed it on her mind, but the moment passed in a lighthearted comment from Luke, leaving the Burton topic to find itself as the night deepened. First came the matter of getting acquainted. We four laughed as if we were old college classmates, and Koko watched us like a dorm mom, quietly amused from a chair by the door.
Luke was from Minnesota; Libby had been an army brat who happened to finish high school in St. Paul. They had defied her father’s attempt to rule her life, had married six years ago and joined the National Park Service as a pair. In their Charleston assignment they had found themselves liberals in a land of hot-blooded segregationists, John Birchers, crackers, and rednecks. “That’s how Libby sees ‘em,” Luke said.
“Not true,” she said. “I’m the first to tell you there are lovely people here.”
“As long as nobody talks race, religion, politics, or anything real. People here think Libby’s a communist. She meets the conservatives coming around the other side. They only avoid bloodletting because, one hundred thirty years after the Civil War, they still think of themselves as knights with pretty young women.“
“This man is a sexist pig,” she said behind her hand. “That remark does nothing but reduce me to some sexual airhead.”
“I’m only talking about what they think, sweetheart. These old birds like nothing better than reforming a young liberal woman. The better-looking she is, the more they enjoy straightening her out.”
“How do I stand him?” she said to the wall.
We commiserated with serious looks, there was more light banter, and in a while the food was ready. We ate with the door pushed open, watching the interior of the fort go from gray to black to really black. Still nothing had been said about Burton, but the night was young, our cautious probing seemed reasonable and our reticence proper. Libby smiled at me fleetingly, again her eyes said it would come when it came, and I hoped my own attitude conveyed no need for hurry. I strived for nonchalance: we were in Charleston, after all, where civilized society always came before business.
It was Luke who brought up the topic almost an hour later. “Lib’s an honor student,” he said. “She’s writing a paper on Fort Wagner. She wanted to do Burton, except—”
“Except there’s no Burton to be done,” Libby said. “I wouldn’t want to turn in a paper full of hot air, would I? I could kiss my honors good-bye then.”
“Maybe it isn’t just hot air,” I said.
“Yeah, but
She looked at me suddenly and said, “So what’ve you got for me that I can use in this academic quagmire?”
“We know who Charlie was.”
“That’s a good start,” she said brightly.
“Proving he was here with Burton is the tough part.”
“This will amaze you but I’m in exactly the opposite place. I don’t know who he was, but I know he was here, and Burton was here with him.”
“Still, there’s no proof.”
