Mark Dunn - American Decameron

During Albertha’s withdrawal, Tad let slip a smile that was quickly transmuted back into the stone face of the impassive detective.

“Your mother is handling this quite badly, Tad,” said Thomas to his son. “I don’t think either of us approves of your making sport of it. Please give me the letter, and let’s have an end to all this nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense, Pop. Sis has written the letter in code. You can help me if you like, and Mom, too, but I won’t relinquish the letter until I’ve finished deciphering it.”

Thomas scratched his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of impudence from you. You may have always been Peck’s Bad Boy, but now you’ve become Peck’s Hopelessly Incorrigible Boy, and I’ll not have it.”

“And I refuse to give up this letter until I’ve tested my theory. I love my sister far too much to do that to her.”

All the wind had suddenly deserted Thomas’s sails. He dropped down upon Tad’s bed like a lead weight. “Why would she write to us in code?”

“Because she couldn’t do anything else.”

“Why did she not come to us and simply say that she didn’t want to go with Longnecker? If he is the dangerous man that you now purport, we could all have stood against him.”

“Maybe he’s more dangerous than we could even imagine, Pop, and she didn’t want to see her family harmed.”

Thomas thought about this. Then he said, “Let’s decipher the code and see what it is that your sister’s trying to tell us.”

Dear Mom and Pop,

My husband haswon myheart at last. I’msorry to hurryoff like this as you napso peacefully, and I will pineaway for youlike a little kidwithout his marblesin the street. But it will not killme to try to be a good wife to Adam who loves me so much. It will helpme immeasurably if you try to understand. I’mnot a little lostlamb. I am a grown woman now, and it fitsme. I getpleasure from making Adam happy. And he has comeinto my life only to make me happy. He has great plans for us away from Battle Creek. Soonhe is going to buy meevening gowns of lavender and tulle, and diamond solitaires and a bright red CadillacModel A. Please don’t comelooking for me. Ifyou do, it will mean that you don’t trust meto make this important decision about my life.

You will always be inmy thoughts and in my heart. Adam has hisown parents, but they aren’t half as wonderful as you are.

Love,

Your Ethel

husband has my I’m hurry nap will pine you kid marbles street kill help I’m lost fits get come Soon me Cadillac don’t come If me in has his

Through employment of the anagrammatical talents of Tad, his mother and father, Albertha the cook, and the chief inspector of the Battle Creek Police Department, the message was, within a matter of three hours, successfully and decisively decoded:

Help. I’m kid nap. Come get me. I’m in Cadillac, Pine Street. Hurry. My husband has lost his marbles, has fits, will kill me if you don’t come soon.

Ethel was rescued with all speed. Adam was returned to the lunatic asylum from whence he had escaped. And Thomas and Elizabeth Ellsworth’s oldest child vowed never again to fall in love with a good-looking newcomer to Battle Creek who wanted something more from her than simple directions to the Battle Creek Sanitarium. She vowed something else as well: to value every moment her younger brother spent in the thrall of his fictional detective idol, for she had laid her hopes for rescue at the feet of Tad’s inquisitive nature, inspired by Mr. Holmes.

Love and trust between siblings can be powerful forces for good. But then, everyone knows this. It is, to borrow from the famed sleuth, elementary.

The man writing my husband’s obituary asked where he went to college. “Haverford College,” I replied. Then I smiled. Just that morning I had asked my grandson Tommy to go out and buy me a Haverford College sweater. I wanted to bury Lindsay in it, you see. My late husband had always said he wanted to be buried in his old college sweater. Because the moths, as I had earlier discovered, had had other ideas, I was forced to improvise.

I’m a resourceful widow.

I may be mistaken, but I think my Lindsay was the last surviving member of Haverford’s Class of 1904. He was almost ninety when he died this week. He had been in touch with several of his classmates — the “Nineteen Fours” they called themselves — throughout their entire lives. Deep friendships were forged in those days, the kinds of friendships I don’t think the college kids of today could ever understand.

The saddest thing about my husband’s senility was the loss of all those memories. We’ve had a good marriage, and a long one, but there was something special about Lindsay’s college days that no love of wife or child could take the place of.

In the last year of his life Lindsay would often forget who I was, or he’d fail to recognize his children and grandchildren. I would also have trouble making sense out of the things he’d say — things sometimes mumbled, sometimes spoken with volume and authority but still totally incomprehensible. The doctor said that Lindsay’s gibbering was nothing more than the expression of thoughts — fractured, disjointed thoughts — that his brain could no longer assemble and process in a rational manner. I tended to agree with his opinion. For this reason, I never prodded Lindsay to explain any of the random statements he made. I’d nod and smile and comb his hair because it was always mussed. The attendants at the nursing home could have done a better job of keeping him looking nice. Lindsay was a beautiful man. He was kind and funny and good to the children and me. It seemed in those last few months that he was dead already — that some stranger had come to take his place, or worse, some living entity incapable of speaking beyond senseless prattle, unable to love in the deep way that my husband once loved, powerless to remember even a single detail of a life well worth remembering. To be robbed of memory seems to me the most insidious assault of all.

On one of my visits last summer I thought that I would write down some of the things he said. It was a silly thing to do, I know it. But the words were delivered by a familiar voice that still resonated for me, because this was all that I had left: the shell that resembled my husband in appearance and the voice that used to come to me from across the dinner table, from behind the steering wheel of our car, over the telephone from his office, in the intimacy of our nocturnal bed.

“Gods and hook fish!”

I scribbled it down. “Gods and hook fish.” What did it mean? Well, it can’t possibly mean anything, can it?

“Ye gods and little fishhooks, Baldy!”

Baldy’s getting sentimental. Somebody muzzle him. He sits by the fire and sucks his pipe and reminds us that it will all be over soon. Our final quarter. One quarter more and then it’s out the door — or doors: those stately doors of Roberts’ Hall. Funeral-marching. Diplomas in hand. Must we, Baldy? Must we think about it?

Who knew that 1904 would be the year that our bully lives came to a crashing halt?

Bonny seems poised to speak. Bonny has a tendency to get philosophical. He’s got those big ears and he looks about twelve but he’s the class sage by reputation and he won’t let us down. He’ll say something that will take the lumps out of all of our throats. Say something, Bonny. Say something soothing and sagacious .