11

Snow’s great-aunt Esther was ninety-two years old, so she claimed when she was invited to give her age. Clicking dental bridges with the tip of her tongue, she held court from the head of the kitchen table, a thick knitted shawl draped over her shoulders to hide her fragility, a brightly colored scarf draped over her head to cover her baldness. “Don’t be so polite—help yourself to more,” she instructed the Weeder, pushing a serving dish in his general direction. She hiccupped once, brought her arthritic fingers up to her mouth and held her breath for a moment. Then she edged her hand away and waited with wide eyes to see if she would hiccup again. When she didn’t a sly smile illuminated her face. “If there’s one thing that doesn’t impress me it’s politeness. You know what they say? They say politeness doesn’t put butter on parsnips. I don’t have the faintest idea why anyone would say that but they do.” She lost her trend of thought, turned sharply to Snow and demanded, “Where was I?”

“You were talking about politeness. You were saying it didn’t put butter on parsnips.”

Esther seemed surprised. “I said that! I must be mad as a hatter.” She turned back to the Weeder. “Some folks think I am, you know. Mad as a hatter I mean. The way I see it life is a loop. You start off stark raving sane, moving yourself around like a piece on one of those racetrack board games that were the rage back in the twenties. You get to the point where folks begin to suspect you’re a bit weird, you keep on moving round, you come to the part where they think you’re off your rocker, and further along they’re whispering about whether to commit you or not, that’s how crazy you are, and you keep going on round till you reach the place where you’re certified mad as a hatter, and then whoops, you’re over the starting line and back into sanity country, ‘cause in your madness you see things more clearly than the folks who are reckoned to be sane. Which is where I’m at now, young man, and what I see”—Esther fixed the Weeder with her unblinking mischievous eyes—”is you’re running from something. Own up, young man. I saw you peeking through the blinds when you got here, you did it again when you came down to supper, but that wasn’t what tipped me off. What tipped me off was your eyes. They’re brimming with fear. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, being afraid. In my experience, which is considerable, folks who are afraid lead fuller lives. Personally I understand fear; fear runs through my body the way sap runs through a tree. I live in fear that each day will be my last on God’s earth. Well, I can’t, knock wood, complain. I’ve lived more than most. And loved more than most. And been loved more than most.” She glanced tenderly at the ancient fox terrier snoring away at her feet. The dog had lost all its hair because of a skin disease and was as pink-skinned as a newborn pig. “I like to try and imagine what visions are flashing through her head,” Esther said, watching the dog’s legs and tail twitch. “I expect she’s remembering some juicy rabbit that gave her a run for her money.” She hiccupped again but disregarded it. “I hope to God I twitch in my sleep,” she said with sudden vehemence. “I hope to God I’m remembering some of the juicy rabbits I’ve chased in my time.” She shrank tiredly back into her chair, smiling, clicking a bridge. “I hope to God I’ve got a chase or two left in me.” A faraway look came into Esther’s eyes. She let her tongue toy with the bridge for a while, then turned absently toward Snow. “Where was I, dear?”

“You were saying that Silas here is running from something.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Esther insisted.

Snow nodded.

“You know who he’s running from?”

Snow nodded again. “It’s someone named Nate. The thing you have to understand about Silas”—Snow looked across the table at the Weeder, discovering a truth as she heard herself say it—”is that he’s running slowly enough to make sure he gets caught.”

Esther hiccupped in exasperation. “That sounds like something fraught with meanings. I don’t know as I have the stamina to poke under the surface of things anymore. I’ve got another question for the both of you.” She looked slyly from one to the other. “Are you two sleeping together or apart?”

Snow blushed and said “Apart” just as the Weeder, without thinking, said “Together.”

Once again Esther fixed him with her unblinking eyes. “She’s got the rights of it and you’re just hoping the wish will become parent to the act. Fact is you’re not intimate enough to sleep together. The way I figure it, you can be intimate without being sexual but the vice versa is a natural disaster for everyone concerned. Course the young folks today don’t see things quite like that, but when they’ve put as many years under their belts as I’ve put under mine they will. Good Lord, I do go on, don’t I? If folks are destined to be lovers time is the one thing they have going for them—they don’t have to rush. They can afford to let nature take its course, which is one of the great luxuries of life that has been more or less discarded. Clocks have been speeded up. Everyone’s in a mad rush, though they don’t have any idea where they’re going. Folks are so busy getting nowhere fast they don’t bother to communicate anymore.”

Esther’s tongue pried a bridge loose in her gums and snapped it back into place. “In my experience,” she said, scraping back her chair, pushing on its arms to raise herself into a standing position, “the more intimate folks are, the more they have a tendency to communicate in codes. Are you interested in codes, Mr. Sibley?”

The Weeder stood up. “As a matter of fact I am.”

Esther indicated with a jerk of her head that she expected the Weeder to follow her into the living room. “Tell me about it,” she ordered. She brushed him away when he tried to take her arm and, swaying slightly, started toward the door. The Weeder turned back to help Snow clear the table but she waved him away too. “This is what you came for,” she said.

“Where was I?” Esther asked as the Weeder settled onto the couch next to her.

“You asked me about my interest in codes.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that. But that’s as good a place as any to pick up a conversation. Truth is I don’t sleep when I go to sleep.” Here she cackled at a memory. “My father, may he rest in peace, used to say old age was a shipwreck but it’s only in the last twenty years that I understood what he was getting at. Since sleep is out of the question I like to keep the conversation going as long as possible. So, young man, I invite you to tell me about your interest in codes.”

“I’m interested in one code in particular,” the Weeder said. And he told Esther how his man Nate had arranged with A. Hamilton to send back information using coded phrases taken from Addison’s play, Cato.

“My father was something of a Revolutionary War buff,” Esther remarked. “He would have loved to hear your stories about Nate. He was mighty proud of the fact that his great-grandfather was one of the first killed by the British—he was shot dead leading his men against the North Bridge at Concord. My father’s grandfather was born during the Revolution. I remember my father boasting about how his great-grandmother once helped an agent of General Washington’s. …”

“His great-grandmother would have been Molly Davis,” the Weeder said excitedly.

Esther clicked a bridge into place in surprise. “Now how would you know about Molly Davis?”

“And the agent she helped was my man Nate.”

“Your man Nate, who you’re running away from but slow enough for him to catch up with you?”

The Weeder smiled, nodded. “Did your father ever mention Nate’s name in connection with Molly Davis?”

Esther thought a bit. “Don’t remember him ever talking about Nate, to tell the truth. But I remember him describing the arrival of General Washington’s agent in Flatbush. Molly, I’m embarrassed to admit it, had a slave—”

“John Jack.”

“That’s the one. John Jack. He happened on someone spying on her through the window. He rammed a gun into the small of the man’s back and marched him around to the front door.” Esther leered lecherously. “Your man Nate, if he and the agent were one and the same, was a voyeur, young man!”

“How did your father know so much about Molly Davis?” the Weeder asked.

“I suppose he learned some of it from his father and grandfather, and some of it from Molly’s penny notebook.”

The skin on the Weeder’s face tingled. “What became of this penny notebook?”

Esther said, “Why, I imagine it’s still tucked away in that old sailor’s chest of his in the attic. Do you want to take a look at it?”

Speaking very quietly the Weeder said, “I’d jump at the chance.”