Pete Hamill - Forever

“Cor-mac.”

Kongo pulled him close. Cormac could see his eyes and teeth, smell Africa and the sea and hard work rising together from his skin.

“Come with me.”

He released his grip and began to walk, making no sound as he moved. They headed toward the North River. Streets vanished in rising mist, the river water now colder than the air. At the river’s edge, Kongo paused, as if waiting for a scent. Finally he relaxed.

“You need to kill that man?”

“Yes.”

“Before the big trouble?”

“I hope. And I now have a way in, to his big house.”

He explained about the proofs of the posters.

“Good,” Kongo said. “My friends, they have watch the house. And we have a man in the stable, he is with us.”

Cormac felt his blood streaming through his arms and legs.

“Here is what we do,” Kongo said.

Quaco waited on the driveway in a borrowed phaeton while Cormac stood at the door of the mansion. The late-afternoon light was rosy, the wind soft. Three armed men watched him as he waited for payment for the posters. Cormac remarked on the end of winter and the beauty of the house. The men grunted. Cormac hoped they would not search him, for his long coat covered the sword. And nothing could cover the beating of his heart. The door opened. The lean man with the coarse skin, now dressed in the more formal clothes of a butler, handed him an envelope. Payment for the posters.

“The master says good work indeed,” he muttered. “And there’s a bit extra for delivery.”

Cormac thanked him and turned away, glancing at the stable, where three of the earl’s Africans were watching and smoking. He climbed back in the phaeton, and Quaco flicked a whip. They trotted back down the road to the south. When they were out of sight, Cormac thanked Quaco, asked him to hold the envelope until he saw him next, and dropped into the forest. He moved toward the river, along the Indian trail marked by Kongo on a rough map. The trail wandered past mounds of ancient oyster shells to another path that zigzagged down the cliff to the river’s edge. He waited in the shrubbery until the sun slipped down behind New Jersey and the sky turned mauve. He searched for the large boulder from Kongo’s map. Saw it twenty feet down the muddy river edge. On the near side of the huge rock, out of sight of the earl’s house, was Kongo’s boat. He was poised at the oars.

“Good,” he whispered as Cormac climbed in. The African began rowing back upriver, until they saw the glow of the earl’s house against the darkening sky. Cormac could make out the earl’s dock, and the stairs leading up the cliff, and then the house itself, the balconied facade facing south, rosy near the roof from the final light of the vanishing sun. The March wind turned colder.

“Until later,” Cormac said. Kongo tapped his shoulder with a fist.

Now Cormac was driven only by the quest for the earl. He removed the long coat, and the sling for the sword, and dropped both on the bottom of the boat. He held the sword, feeling its weight and power. Then jammed it into his belt and waded ashore. Kongo said nothing. There was a plan. Now Cormac must make it work.

He knew the house from another sketch, made by Kongo’s man in the stable. And as he moved through dense woods, approaching the southern side of the house, Cormac saw the huge oak tree, its branches leading toward a second-floor balcony. He began to climb the trunk, but his shoes were wet from the riverbank. He removed them and gained traction with his bare feet, rising on the trunk into the branches. Through the sparse leaves of the tree, he saw an armed man dozing on the deck behind the first floor, and the line of the railing leading down to the river. He climbed higher. Lantern light burned beyond the doors of the second-floor balcony. That was the goal. The earl’s study.

Cormac paused, now feeling oddly calm, gathering strength, and then crawled out upon the thick oak limb leading to the balcony. The limb held his weight well but was three feet short of the balcony. He must leap. Silently. And grab the rail. Hoping that nobody saw him. Hoping he didn’t fall twenty feet to the ground. He looked down. A wide path of gray gravel surrounded the house. He saw nobody on patrol. Inside the room, a shadow moved. Bulky and male. The earl was home.

Cormac stood now, legs bent, on the thinnest end of the tree limb, balanced precariously, about to leap, when he heard footsteps below on the gravel. A man walked around the corner. A face familiar from the earl’s company in town. He carried a musket and whistled in the dark. If he looks up (Cormac thought), I’m dead.

He gripped the branch above him for balance. He stopped breathing. He held himself as still as the tree itself. The man below continued walking around to the deck in back, his whistling fading away.

Cormac thought: Now.

I must go now.

And he did.

He leaped. Fell short. Grasped the balcony railing. Held hard, his naked feet splaying for traction but finding only air. He saw himself falling. Imagined being impaled on his own sword. Imagined the earl opening the door, pistol in hand.

Silence.

Then he swung himself, his body twisting, and felt one bare foot catching the lip of the balcony. Now, he thought. I can do it now. He heaved, holding his breath, and then he was up, weightless, safe. He stepped over the rail and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times. Exhaling as silently as possible. Hoping there was no dog.

Cormac looked in at the room. The earl was at a desk with curved legs made of polished wood. French, like the goods sold on Hanover Square. Empty bookshelves rose behind him. There was a door in the wall past the desk. Closed, with a key in the lock. There was a pistol on the desk beside his ink pot. And he could see the three porcelain balls, red, white, and blue, that the earl had used to entertain his men outside a building in Belfast. He was wearing a white ruffled shirt, open at the neck, and his coat was folded carelessly on the desk where he’d dropped it. His brow was furrowed. The posters were stacked to the side of his writing space. He finished writing, blotted the paper, began addressing an envelope. Some vagrant thought passed through him and he smiled. Cormac turned the door handle gently. And stepped inside with his sword drawn. He moved quickly to the desk.

The earl looked up with alarmed eyes and reached for the pistol. Cormac placed the blade of the sword across his wrist, took the pistol and shoved it in his own belt.

“What is this?” the earl said.

“I’m the past, sir.”

“You’re a lunatic is what you are.”

“Perhaps.”

“There’s no gold here, no specie, nothing for you to peddle in town. I have a dozen men guarding this house. I—”

“I don’t want gold,” Cormac said. “I want an explanation.”

The earl chuckled in a dry-mouthed way, the diamond flashing in his mouth. Cormac saw a woman’s portrait on the wall behind the earl. Dark hair, long, aristocratic neck, rosy skin.

“An explanation of what? The laws of gravity? The Magna Carta?”

“I want to know why you killed my father.”

Now the earl studied Cormac’s bearded face in the muted light. Searching time, searching memory. He glanced at a wall clock, then at the door, and smiled in a nervous way.

“I’ll tell you what killed my own father,” he said, his voice suddenly blithe and light. “Whiskey. Or whiskey and rum and too much wine. Don’t let anyone tell you that the gout can’t kill a man. You could have asked my mother.” He gestured at the portrait. “She died of him, of living with him, suf fering with him.” He shook his head. “Sad. I never did get to know either of them.”