THE HORRID BANG

So it was all over, except for one small detail.

Mary came upon it while clearing up everything, inserting new folders in her file cabinet, packing a box with the child’s nightdress, the Shaker bonnet, the bloodstained coat and the two little cases of photographs.

Only the handkerchiefs remained to be put away. And it was while she was tucking them back in their silken envelope that the delicate fabric of the lining gave way, releasing a wrinkled sheet of lavender paper. It was another letter from Lily LeBeau.

Mary unfolded it, expecting another piece of foolish silliness.

Lily’s letter was silly all right, and foolish in the extreme, but it delivered a blow.

21 April ’65

Darling Ida,

Tho not in touch these 2 yrs this is to inform you unfettred by any restraynt that we are safe and sownd. Such ecsitment! We were backstage at the time but when we heard the HORRID BANG we were AGAST as you can immagin but we wayted not a moment. We galoped awy on our trustie steed well acshully a hack with an old nag!

S. wore a grey wig and my black mantua and bonnet you remember the one with yellow posys and fethers and by good luck his whiskers was all shaved off beforehand so as to look like ancient Grease so we were 2 RISPETABLE LADEYS! Because he was always talking about the old days in that club when they dressed up like girls! How I laffed! We were so quik we got across the Chayn bridge altho I heard they baricaded it soon therafter to prevent excape of You Know Who, but one of the gards was a gentelman friend of mine so I really had to laff!! We gave the hack man $50!!!

The theatre here is more of a tavern not ezactly what we are accostomed to. For yr sake I hope the baby was a boy, tho prefering girls myself.

Yr loving Lily

Mary pushed open the door to the porch and shouted at Homer. He was banging out a dent in the aluminum canoe, making such a din that he didn’t hear. But when she screamed at the top of her lungs, he put down his hammer and followed her indoors.

“Look at this, Homer,” she said, thrusting the letter at him. “It’s a bombshell.”

“Another letter?” Homer’s attention had drifted far away from the problems of his wife’s remote ancestor. He glanced at Lily’s letter. “What on earth is she talking about?”

“Oh, Homer, don’t you know? Can’t you see?” Mary ran to her file cabinet, wrenched open a drawer, and jerked out the folder for Ida Morgan. “Look at the playbills,” she said, rattling them under his nose.

“Well, of course I remember the playbills. They’re all cut up with scissors.”

“Exactly. Ida did it. She cut out a name from all of them. The same name, one of the actors.”

“One of the actors?” Homer gaped at her stupidly. “You mean Seth Morgan? Otis Pike?”

“No, no, of course not. Homer, just look at her letter. There was a horrid bang, and then Lily and Otis escaped from the theater and ran away. It was April 1865, and only a week later they were safely across the border in Canada.”

Homer understood at last. He said, “My God.”

“So that’s what the family was so ashamed of. Oh, poor Ida, if only she could have known that it wasn’t Seth who was mixed up with all those people, it was Otis Pike. No wonder they kept it hushed up, all my ancestors, generation after generation.”

“Of course,” agreed Homer. “What could have been worse? The truth at last.”

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,

With the pomp of the inloop ’d flags with the cities draped in black,

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,

With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,

With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber faces,

With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs.

—Walt Whitman