Back Bay (26 page)

It was too dark to see the man’s features, but Fallon noticed a fringe of white hair beneath the baseball cap. “They have almost every issue on film,” he offered. “Do you want this one after I’m through?”

“No, thanks. Too many other things to be doin’.” The man said goodbye and returned to a viewing machine in a distant corner.

Fallon had rarely seen an old grad look so tattered, but he didn’t give him another thought. He was too preoccupied with the death of a young boy in 1814 to know that the man who had just been standing beside him was Jack C. Ferguson.

No Harvard graduate, Ferguson was familiar enough with the systems to get a pass into any private library in Boston. He had followed Fallon down to the microtext room, seated himself at a nearby machine, and pretended to read wartime copies of the
New York Times
until he could look at Fallon’s screen.

Fallon was certain now that Lovell had gotten the tea set to Boston, and he was willing to believe that something had happened to it in the Back Bay. The death of Horace Taylor Pratt III, the week that the tea set was supposed to arrive and the day after the death of an anonymous black who was probably Jeff Grew, could not be a coincidence.

Fallon rattled through another month of the
Boston Gazette
and found nothing else. He couldn’t concentrate, anyway. He had to talk to someone about his findings, his theories, his suspicions. He packed up his things and left.

Professor James Hayward lived with his books and his clocks in a comfortable old house just off Brattle Street.

He had come to Cambridge in 1941 from an impoverished ranching family. The eighteen-year-old Harvard freshman brought with him an acute case of asthma, which made ranch life miserable and military service impossible, and a fascination with the people who had forced the American frontier from the Appalachians across his own Wyoming to the Pacific.

At Harvard, he found rich soil in which to nurture his passion.

He spent eight years earning degrees, while earning money as a dishwasher in student dining halls, a cab driver in Boston, and a history tutor in Kirkland House. His first book,
Manifest Destiny and the American Spirit
, was expanded from his dissertation. It was nominated for a National Book Award and secured James Hayward a tenured position on the Harvard faculty.

He bought his house, opened its doors to his students, and settled into a life which had continued to challenge and satisfy him. Or, as he told Peter Fallon one night, after three bourbons had left him especially cynical, “It took me eight years to scrape the cowshit off my shoes and find myself a nice soft spot in all this academic bullshit.”

Over the years, he had lost his hair and the hard edge on his Wyoming accent, while growing a paunch that looked like an air bubble expanding out of his slender body. However, he was still a commanding figure at the podium, a brilliant guide in seminar, and a friend to most of his students. His lecture course, “The West, 1803 to 1890,” began with the Louisiana Purchase and ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee. In his seminar, he turned to the east. “The War of 1812: New England and the Nation” explored the national problems created when Northern Sectionalism clashed with Southern Expansionism. It was always oversubscribed.

James Hayward’s work was his life. He had never needed anything else.

In his ninth book, Hayward was studying the effects of Eastern press coverage on the conduct of the war with the Plains Indians. He was reading an account of the Battle of Little Bighorn when the doorbell rang.

Peter Fallon was standing on the porch with the afternoon sun broiling in around him.

“Come in, Peter. Come in and sit down.”

Fallon stepped into cool darkness, and Hayward went to fetch iced tea or something stronger, depending on his mood.

The shades in the living room were drawn tight to keep out the heat. A lamp next to Hayward’s easy chair provided the only illumination. Fallon found his way to the overstuffed sofa and sank into relaxing gloom. The only sound was the gentle ticking of
Hayward’s eighteen antique clocks, each beating with a different pitch and rhythm. They soothed like so many massaging fingers. When Hayward returned with two glasses of Molson’s Canadian, Fallon’s head was thrown back and his eyes were closed.

“Wake up and have a beer,” said Hayward.

“I’m not asleep.”

“Have a beer anyway. It’s after four, and I’ve been reading all day. A positively fascinating book written in 1933 by a doctor who lived with the Sioux and the Cheyennes. It’s called
Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself
. He got to know the old warriors who fought Custer at Little Bighorn. They told him that the men of the Seventh Cavalry panicked, and better than half of the troops committed suicide. Imagine. The vaunted Seventh Cavalry!”

Their meetings had always begun like this—Fallon catching his breath while Hayward rattled on about some new book or especially good student paper. Hayward had been the senior reader of Fallon’s undergraduate thesis and had advised Fallon all through graduate school; Fallon was Hayward’s teaching assistant. A solid friendship had developed between them, although enough formality remained that Fallon never considered addressing his teacher as anything but Professor Hayward. First-name familiarity would come with the doctorate.

“I’m having a few problems with the dissertation,” said Fallon. “I could use a little guidance.”

Hayward smiled. “That’s what I’m here for. Of course, if I had seen the last three chapters when you promised them, I could be of more help now. Any idea of when I can expect to be reading about Horace Taylor Pratt?”

“I don’t know. I’ve come across so much information about him that I really don’t know what I’m going to do with it all.”

Hayward sensed a note of defeat in Fallon’s voice. “I’ve never met a historian before who was disappointed when he ran across new information.”

Fallon did not respond directly. Instead, he described Dexter Lovell’s note and everything that followed it, including the news stories he had just read. “The point of all this,” he concluded, “is that someone is lying, or at least mistaken, about the story of the
tea set, either Hannaford or the facts which I have uncovered in the last week.”

“So what?” Hayward had little patience when he thought a student was wasting time.

“I want you to tell me what you think of all this. Should I keep digging? Should I forget about it? Should I try to find this Ferguson guy?” He realized he was whining. He took a swallow of beer and lowered his voice. “I’m confused. I know it’s almost out of the question that the tea set in the museum is a fake, as this Ferguson claimed before he disappeared. I’m fairly certain that Hannaford’s researchers just made a mistake when they blamed the original theft on Captain Prendergast. I’m probably the only person who knows for certain that Lovell took the tea set.”

“Peter,” Hayward interrupted, “what bearing does any of this have on your contention that New England emerged from the War of 1812 with more political and economic power than any other section of the country?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “None! What bearing beyond a footnote or two does any of this have on your analysis of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile? None! I don’t know what’s come over you lately, but whatever it is, get out from under it. Week by week, your discipline deteriorates, the quality of your work diminishes, you disappear for days on end, and now this! Tea sets when you should be trying to draw serious conclusions about four years of work!”

Fallon tried to defend his activities as important research. “If Pratt saved his company or bought himself a little extra time by fencing the tea set in Europe, I think that knowledge has bearing on my dissertation.”

“Then use it! Don’t come wandering in here like Little Boy Lost and ask me what you should do. You’re a big boy. Plug your information in and get on with your work.”

“But right now I can’t prove that Pratt sold the tea set. I’m sure it reached Boston, but I don’t know what happened to it after that.”

“Then speculate, for God’s sake. What do you think historians do? We aren’t lawyers. We’re interpreters. If you can’t find specific evidence to support a conclusion that the tea set saved Pratt’s ass, take a stand on the basis of what you have, then be prepared to
take the heat.” He was on his feet now, gesturing grandly to make each point, as though he were giving a lecture. “It’s all part of the process. You make a judgment, and somebody says it’s bullshit. You argue, and pretty soon, you’ve both learned something. The dialectic of history.”

Fallon smiled at that last phrase. It was one of Hayward’s favorites, and he found a way to sneak it into every lecture.

The Seth Thomas on the mantelpiece struck five o’clock. The grandfather in the entrance hall and the banjo in the kitchen began to sound, and within a few seconds, every clock in the house was chiming. The symphony lasted about a half minute, just long enough for Hayward to sit down and cool off.

“Peter, you’re too bright to need guidance on something like this. You’re not having trouble deciding what to do with this note. Your problem is a lot deeper. It’s been boring its way to the surface since last fall, when you started applying for jobs.”

Peter nodded. His professor knew him well. “I’ve been second-guessing myself lately. When you realize you’ve spent four years at something that offers you no immediate future, you begin to wonder if you’ve wasted your time.”

“You’ve wasted it only if you’ve learned nothing, and if you’ve been listening to me for four years, I can guarantee that you’ve learned something. Moreover, you have two job offers, which is more than most history Ph.D.s can say. This is a damn tight job market, and you should be glad you have anything, regardless of tenure. Go home and finish your dissertation, then accept one of those positions, no matter what you think of the schools.” He took out his pipe, scraped the bowl, and packed it with tobacco. In a moment, his head was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. “If you want somebody to solve your problems for you, I’ve just done it.”

“Stop trying to make me feel stupid.” Fallon rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. “Every time I see my old man, he tells me I should have gone to law school. Lately I’ve begun to agree with him. That in itself makes me feel about as stupid as I can get.”

Hayward shook his head. He hated to see one of his best students so confused. “I told you four years ago that law school was a
practical choice, a sensible alternative to a career in history, where there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find work. I also told you that the historian has a very important role in our society, a position of tremendous responsibility. Whether he’s a university professor, a high school teacher, a writer, he is the controlling voice in the events which have shaped our society and our national character. When he writes about the American Revolution or the
Federalist Papers
, the Dred Scott Decision or the campaign against the Plains Indians, he decides for the rest of us what is significant. He’s the window through which we see our past, the mirror in which we see ourselves.”

“You were always the master of the aphorism,” cracked Fallon.

“I’ve been lecturing for thirty years,” answered Hayward a bit crankily. “I’ve given that speech before. Next time I deliver it to a prospective student, I’ll emphasize the hundreds of hours of research and the loneliness of the work. Somehow I thought you were mature enough to know that the glamour came after the drudgery.”

“I always knew it,” said Fallon. “I embraced your philosophy, and I believed that what I was doing was vital. I still believe it. But something’s wrong. The jobs I’ve been offered promise no excitement, no prestige, and damned little money. The daily routine of classes, writing, and research has dulled me, made me feel flaccid…” He hunted for a better word. “… emasculated. I sometimes wish I’d been drafted and sent to Vietnam. I could at least feel that I’d seen a little bit of life before retiring to the library.” He finished his beer.

Hayward began to laugh. “You make all scholars sound like eunuchs. We lead very active lives, my boy. Just ask my old colleague Mr. Kissinger. Not everyone gets to be Secretary of State, but we serve on presidential committees, we participate in political demonstrations, and we write excellent angry letters to the
Times
. Some of us who are balding, paunchy, and charismatic also have wonderful luck with female graduate students.”

“I’m not talking about you.”

“You’re not talking about too many people I’ve ever known here, either.” Hayward stopped joking and leaned forward. “If you
have the brains, aggressiveness, and ego to get into this program and perform well for four years, I don’t understand how you can feel emasculated at the end of it.”

Unconsciously Fallon bounced his legs up and down on the balls of his feet. He sensed that Hayward wasn’t going to be much help. “Can I have another Molson’s?”

“Help yourself.”

Fallon sucked down half the beer in the kitchen. He always felt more eloquent when he had a buzz going in his head.

“I hate to admit failure,” he said as he sat down again. “I hate to accept my father’s prediction that ‘all this history bullshit,’ as he calls it, will be useless. But the study of the past has been losing its fascination for me. Until I stumbled onto this note, I was working on nothing but stubbornness. Now, I’m excited again. I’m tracking down clues to an ancient mystery.”

“And who cares if you solve it?” Hayward grunted.

“I care.” Fallon finished the second beer. “What if that tea set in the museum isn’t the real one? What if I figure out where it is, just by being a good historian? And what if I find it?” Fallon’s voice rose with excitement.

Hayward cleaned and packed his pipe. Whenever he needed a moment to think, the pipe became his prop. “Peter, I think you’re crazy.” It wasn’t quite the answer he’d been reaching for.

Fallon laughed. “The more I listen to you, the more you sound like my father.”

“Look, there’s nothing more I can offer you, Peter. Your choices seem fairly obvious. You can quit right now and start collecting material for law-school applications. You’ll have a helluva time explaining why you left graduate school a few months away from the doctorate, but I’m sure you’ll think of something. Or you can take whatever time is necessary to satisfy yourself about this tea-set business, but when it’s over, you’ll still have to confront your disillusionment with your work. Harvard puts no time limit on the completion of dissertations, so you can come back and finish it any time in the next fifty years. Of course, those two schools out west won’t be too interested in hiring you this September if you don’t have your doctorate. Or you can go home, sit down at your
desk, put all your problems out of your head for three months, and finish. You’ll have better perspective when it’s over.”