Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

“You’re a piece of work. You really are.”

“You think you get all this for free?” Doug said, gesturing at the paintings and the antique furniture.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Free? I was making loans before you were born.”

“Sure. And every year the interest rate got better, didn’t it? Government caps came off, and you could charge twenty-five percent on Joe Six-Pack’s credit card, and get him to pay you for the privilege of keeping his money.”

“What are you? Some kind of Socialist now?”

“I’m nothing,” Doug said. “I’m just saying, you take the advantage you can get. That’s how you got what you have.”

“Yeah, with one difference. It was legal.”

Doug smiled, leaning back against the bookcase. “That’s right,” he said. “And the governed have consented and all is well in the hearts of the people.”

Holland sank onto the bench in the window, all his fretful motion spent. As he stared over the darkened field from where Doug had come, the two of them listened to the sound of trumpets from the tent outside, their high, shiny notes rising on the night air.

EARLIER, AS CHARLOTTE and Henry had approached the gates, they’d been confronted by the expressionless faces of the guards.

Don’t be fooled , Wilkie whispered. They’re not here to protect you. And I know what you’re thinking — that it’s always a conspiracy with me. But just remember, they said I was paranoid, that I’d invented all that business of a plot against my life, but you know now how the FBI listened in on me, how they followed everything that went on in the Brotherhood, and I’m supposed to believe your white government didn’t know there were gunmen there at the hall waiting to kill me? You’ve been uppity, Charlotte. You’ve thwarted one of their kind. Now watch , he said. They will take your protectors from you .

And so they did, insisting the dogs be tied up to a tree. No animals allowed. They would be given plenty of water, they said, the more barrel-chested of the two claiming to be a lover of dogs.

You come to Sodom and leave your minister tethered at the gate? Sam asked, despairingly, his pompous head thick with sweat. God’s grace may be infinite, woman, but to think that He should give us help against sin without our asking and crying and weeping to Him for His help; to think that God should save us and we never set apart any time to work out our own salvation. What reason have we to believe such things? God is in Ill terms with you. He visits you not with His great consolations. Despite what you think of your victory, all things are against you; the things that appear for your Welfare, do but Ensnare you, do but Poison you, do but produce your further Distance from God .

God is a character, Charlotte thought, as she handed the leashes over to the men. A well-rounded character in a well-rounded book.

And she and Henry continued on up the hill, the ministers’ voices fading behind them.

Just three days earlier, after her vindication had been called out from the judge’s bench for all to hear, she had taken Henry for a walk up to the nursery to pick out saplings for planting once the mansion had been leveled. But all he could summon was a barely disguised disappointment at the result, as if returning five acres to their property and nature’s way were more burden than triumph. Sam and Wilkie, however, had been the larger disappointment. All spring she had calmed herself with the thought that once the strain of arguing her case was over, the dogs would relent. After all, it was for them, as well as herself, that she had fought so hard to beat the intrusion back.

Instead, their berating of her had grown incessant, their talk traitorous, reminding her that in siege warfare, it didn’t matter how high or thick your city walls were if the enemy’s agents were within.

And so just when she’d thought she might at last turn her eye to the future, Charlotte had found herself once more having to call up memories in defense: how quiet it had been in the woods, say, on a late afternoon in August as the thunderheads gathered and you could see up beyond the pale evergreen and birch, where against the powder-gray sky the black-and-orange wings of butterflies danced in the last shelves of light, fair creatures of an hour that she might never look upon more. — then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink .

“They were the same age, you know?” she said, as Henry glanced into the drinks tent.

“Who?”

“Keats and Eric. When they died. Twenty-five. Though of course Keats had written a good deal more and of much finer quality. But there we are. Correspondences — they keep you company.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, I don’t expect you do.”

“Over here,” he said, leading them across the way into a second, quieter marquee, this one artificially cooled and full of elaborately set tables. He pulled out two chairs for them to sit.

“Why on earth did we come here?” she asked.

“You were invited, remember? By Glenda Holland.”

“Ah, yes. The woman who’s trying to pull the ladder up behind her. She thinks siding with me and the Historical Association will somehow absolve her of her wretched taste.”

“Why is that woman staring at us?”

“Which one?”

“That black woman over there,” Henry said. “In the beige dress.”

“I haven’t a clue,” Charlotte said.

Eventually, the woman approached. Apparently she’d heard Henry pronouncing on something or other down in the swamps of Florida.

Once she had left, Charlotte examined the place card in her hand. The number one was written on it in elaborate script. A very fine pen had been used to make such a mark, she thought, the ink strained through the nib to near perfection, not seeping at all into the crevices of the linen paper. A quick, sure stroke. You would have such place cards at a wedding. And tables like this. Eric’s family being Catholic, the ceremony would have been important to them. Who wouldn’t like it to look as it had for Henry that day he danced with Betsy on the parquet?

In what dim hollow of her mind, she wondered, had such fantasy never died?

Guests began filtering in for dinner. A bass drum sounded from the stage, followed by the heraldic notes of horns, as the assembled musicians struck up Fanfare for the Common Man .

“I’ve always rather liked this piece,” Henry said. “You remember Daddy used to love Copland.”

“I suppose he did.”

“With the record player in the window. Out on the porch. You remember.”

Late Sunday mornings with the newspaper and the breakfast tray and Charlotte in one of her blue cotton dresses and afterward their father would go back into his study and keep working. The never-ending work on behalf of the People. The work of justice conducted in the dependable medium of statute and brief.

The second burst of horns ceased, followed by a bar of silence and then again the low rumble of percussion.

“It’s just the right sort of optimism,” Henry said. “Confident without the swagger.”

“But isn’t it amazing,” she said, “what context does. The émigré Socialist homosexual cheering on the New Deal. And yet what becomes of Copland here? Pure bombast. Congratulations for pirates.”

“I’m just saying it’s a good bit of music.”

“Well, it’s certainly a simpler world if you can cabin things like that. One discreet experience after the next.”

“For Christ’s sake, can’t you give it a break? I didn’t have to come up here, you know. It’s not as if you enjoy my company.”