I gave him my assurance. We stood. Neither of us offered a hand.
“All this for a lady, you say?”
“That’s right.”
He was silent for a long moment. I felt uneasy.
“Will you be staying around here afterward?”
“Leaving tomorrow.”
He nodded judiciously. “Good idea.”
“There can be another hundred,” I said, worried suddenly that he held all the cards and I none, “if this goes right.”
“That would be generous compensation,” he said. “Most generous.”
“You’ll get it first thing in the morning.”
“Fine.” The small eyes roamed over me as if filing away every detail. “And let’s not forget our rule of discretion.”
I wanted badly to be out of that stifling room, away from his scrutiny.
“Certainly not,” I said.
I spent most of the afternoon sitting among the tall reeds on the western bank of the Chemung, pondering and planning. I dangled my feet in the water and surveyed the site of the prison camp. Several dilapidated wooden barracks remained; they looked long deserted. An encircling fence with guard walks and a tower had collapsed at several points. Even in bright sunshine the place had a melancholy aspect. I tried to imagine myself held prisoner here in this shallow valley with its low rim of forested hills, struggling to survive blasting summer heat and winter freezes, knowing that any day I might fall to lethal fever or virulent pox.
I pictured the card games: soldiers and prisoners hunched over plank tables, faces intent, coins glittering. Did a fortune actually lie in that grave? If so, I’d be a rich man. I’d help Andy’s mom. And what then?
Evening fell and the air began to cool. I wandered around town. On Baldwin Street, a half block above the river, I saw a brass business plaque: J. LANGDON, COAL DEALER. I asked a passerby where the Langdons lived and was directed to 21 Main Street, across the street from Park Church. Livy and Twain would be wed there, I remembered.
The mansion sat back from the street among tall elms. The grounds covered an entire block. The dwelling itself was enormous and spare, with a dull brown stone facade and narrow windows. I wondered if Twain were inside writing just then, or courting Livy in some obscurely romantic Victorian way. I liked that idea. Not least among the things I envied in Twain was his helpless submission to his sense of love.
After an early supper I set out to make the preparations I’d formulated. At a livery stable on the edge of town, near Elmira Female College, I arranged for a team of horses and a flatbed wagon. Then I asked about a driver. The proprietor brought forth his son, a pimpled lout who struck me as stupid and avaricious, a combination perfectly suited to my purposes. Telling him I’d pick the boy and the rig up later, I rented another horse, a small mare. I mounted unsteadily, feeling their amused looks, and rode from the stable. At first I felt very awkward, but my confidence grew as we moved along at a steady canter. Woodlawn was not far distant.
Sketch in hand, I examined the Confederate graves. A wooden marker near the end of the second row read:
CORP. K. O’SHEA
CO. F
25 N.C. REG
C.S.A
I stared at the sod below with a thrill of excitement. So far everything had matched Twain’s story. Was the money really only a few feet away? Part of me was repulsed by the idea of digging up the grisly remains. Another part wanted to begin the job right then and end my jitters. The profits might be great, but so were the risks. I turned away reluctantly, impatient for darkness. Glancing upward—and wishing I had not—my eyes encountered the gloomy monolithic hulk of the federal facility on the hill above.
Chapter 11
A new moon limned the trees but seemed to penetrate no lower. We bumped and jolted over a road that looked like a channel of ink. The boy’s name was Seth. He’d evidently been thinking.
“Ye’re robbin’ a grave, aint’cher, mister?”
Since the road went past the cemetery, and since we carried shovels and a lantern, and since I’d given him twenty dollars to keep mum about our night’s work, it wasn’t exactly a brainstorm on his part.
“We are salvaging” I corrected.
He sniffed. “Paw guessed it, soon’s you hired the wagon team this time of night.”
“Did he tell anybody?”
“Paw’s closemouthed when it comes to others’ business. That’s ’cause he’s a businessman.”
It was too dark to see the boy’s expression. Was he being subtle? “There could be a little something for your pop too, in that case,” I told him.
“Paw’d like that.”
We drove through the cemetery gate. It was about one-thirty. I’d come out an hour earlier to make sure the guards had gone. Now I had Seth stop the wagon while I climbed down and listened. Crickets chirped. An owl suddenly said, “Hoo-hoo, ho-hoo,” sounding like, “Who cooks for you?” It startled me, even as my mind framed the answer: Nobody. Few lights still shone in the town below. I was deliberately jumping the gun on Costigan.
There was a bad moment when we reached the graves and lit the lantern. I was convinced that everybody for miles could see it. The owl hooted again, mocking. I saw lurking shapes in surrounding shrubbery and trees.
“You gettin’ nerves, mister?”
I took a breath and commanded myself to relax. Weren’t the guards’ lights visible each night? Why should ours cause suspicion?
“No way,” I said. “Let’s do the job.”
We dug at opposite ends of the plot. The sod came up easily. Mounds of black loam began to encircle us. The blade of my shovel cut into the earth with a “shoosh,” then dumped the soil with a “plup.” I tried not to think about the blade going through into the corpse, maybe its face. Christ, what a thing we were doing.
