on duty, and guys like Dante don’t stay alive by being fools. But that’s what old Judge Petigru said about the secessionists of olden days, that South Carolina was too small for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum, and look what happened anyway. My uneasiness persisted and grew as I moved around the battery above the black ruins.
Whatever I had heard, it was gone now: nothing but the wind assaulted my ears, that and the sea washing against this ghostly black shoal. I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to stand at the edge of the fort and behold the nothingness, and that meant I had to go down through the old parade ground and pick my way back up to the right flank where the high ground was. From there I had a sweeping view: more pitch-blackness than I could ever remember in my life. I circled the old wall, keeping my light pointed down in front of me, and at last I came to the point where I turned off the light and just stood there. Nothing…
Nothing.
I walked along the gorge and down the left flank. From there I could see into the tiny room where Libby and Luke were talking, washing dishes, putting things away. It floated in space and a few minutes later she drew a curtain across the front window. Almost at once their light went out.
I turned back toward the channel, feeling rather than seeing it. Morris Island, I thought: Fort Wagner. In that void it was hard to imagine what had happened over there: one of the great epics of warfare, overshadowed by Vicksburg only because that involved greater numbers and grander strategy and bigger names, and because it was coming to its climax at the same time. I stared at the nothing and closed my eyes, which made no difference at all, and when I opened them I seemed to see the flash of a very old rocket against the eastern sky. Just for a moment I imagined that battle and all those black warriors charging up the beach to certain death. I thought of death…Thought of Denise…
And strangest of all in that time and place, I thought of Dean Treadwell and his unshakable faith in everybody’s bastard, Hal Archer.
Dean and Hal…
I thought the unthinkable and I shivered in the wind.
I picked my way back across the ruins to the battery. Erin stood at the museum door, waiting.
“What are you doing? I was just about to come looking for you.”
“Without a light? You’re smarter than that.”
“Never mind the light. What’s going on out there?”
“Nothing. Go to bed.”
She bristled at my abruptness. “Is this how it’s going to be, being your special friend?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got forty days and forty nights to resolve stuff like that.”
“Thirty-eight as of this morning. This doesn’t bode well for us to make it to thirty-seven.”
I felt her come close in the half-light. I saw her in shadow.
“I want to get this thing resolved,” she said. “It’s not in my nature to live like this, worrying about a madman every waking moment.”
“I intend to resolve it.”
“How?”
“How I should’ve done in the first place. A little grit, a little steel, a little help from an old friend.”
“Okay,” she said calmly. “Whatever that means, I want to be in on it all the way.”
“I don’t need an attorney for this kind of work.”
That was a stupid thing to say, I knew it almost before the words were out, and she reacted as if she’d been slapped. She slammed me back against the wall and whirled away down the ramp. “Well, fuck you, Mr. Janeway.”
“Hey, Erin, wait a minute.”
She stopped and looked back.
“That didn’t come out right.”
“It sure didn’t, you barbarian son of a bitch.”
“I’m sorry.” I reached out to her.
She gestured wildly with her hands. “Jesus Christ, you are such an idiot sometimes.”
“I am, I am.” I made a helpless shrugging dipshit motion. “I know I am.”
“Goddamn male chauvinist turkey-farmer dickhead. What am I going to do with you?”
