Sleeping Beauty, Chapter 3
Nov. 17th, 2020 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHere is Chapter 3 of Sleeping Beauty! The idea behind posting these was to motivate myself for NaNo, which has been… only semi-successful… but tbh the fact that I’ve gotten any writing done this month feels like a minor miracle. What a month! What a year! God help us all!
Next Tuesday is the last Tuesday in November, so I was planning to do my last Sleeping Beauty post then. Torn between doing Chapter 4 or just skipping to the first sex scene (which is actually not a sex scene, it’s a tasteful asterisk scene followed by “We have WILDLY diverging views on what just happened and what it means.”)
Astute readers may notice that I’ve changed Russell’s mother’s nationality since the first chapter. Such is the first draft life.
Andrew screamed.
He was glad, in that moment, that he had come alone, even though it meant that he was probably going to be run through with a Civil War cavalry sword, just so no one else heard that scream. Russell Krause (who else could it be?) took the stairs in two bounds, ramming Andrew against the wall so all the air left his body.
Before he could catch his breath, Russell Krause jammed a hand over Andrew’s mouth. “Be quiet. My father will kill you if he wakes up.” His voice was urgent, but hushed. “You wouldn’t be the first burglar he murdered, and in this very hall. Be still, I tell you.”
His urgency was so intense that Andrew’s ears pricked, listening too, even though he knew the house was empty. The hand over his mouth was firm, but not painful. The handle of the riding crop dug into his cheek. They stood so close together that he could feel Russell Krause’s heartbeat, vibrating in his own body like the thud of a large drum.
At last Russell Krause slackened his grip. “No one heard,” he said, relieved; and yet puzzled too, and with a growing note of dread in his voice as he said, “They’re all sleeping like the dead.”
“Russell…”
Again smack of the riding crop. “That’s Lieutenant Krause to you!”
“Lieutenant Krause,” Andrew began again. “You realize it’s 1964.”
“No.”
Andrew’s mouth was dry. He attempted to moisten it, then could think of nothing to say, and then, at last, flicked on the flashlight.
Russell winced and stepped back, lifting a hand to shield his face from the brilliant light. Andrew flicked it off again.
“That’s an electric flashlight,” Andrew said, almost apologetically. “I know you didn’t have anything like that in 1864. And if you look outside the windows, you’ll see the electric streetlights…”
“Yes,” Russell said. His voice had gone very flat and strange, and Andrew noticed for the first time that he spoke with a slight accent, unplaceable, because it was not the accent of a place but the accent of a time. “Yes; I saw those when I woke up. Like the lights of fairyland…”
He sat quite suddenly on the stairs. His cavalry sword clattered against the steps. “It’s just as Katie said,” he said, and pressed a hand to his head. “And here’s me not believing her…” And then, to Andrew: “What’s the date?”
“May 16, 1964.”
“A hundred years,” Russell said. “Katie said I would sleep a hundred years unless awakened by a kiss of true love; and of course with my sweet Julia dead…” He seemed to be talking to himself more than Andrew, bent over as he sat, rubbing his hand over his forehead; but all of a sudden he sat bolt upright. “My father is dead. Oh, thank God.”
For a moment he remained stiff as a poker. Then he sagged back against the steps. That sudden relaxation of tension seemed to release Andrew, as well, who had been standing almost paralyzed. He came over and sat beside Russell, the width of the steps between them.
Russell sat up again quite suddenly. “Is this your house now?”
“I – no,” Andrew said, stumbling over his words in his embarrassment. “No, as a matter of fact I – actually I did break in – but I’m not a tramp, and I’m not a burglar, you see I’m a college student and my friends and I – this is an abandoned house – and we broke in, but not to steal things, just because…”
“A prank,” said Russell, nodding. “I’ve been a college student too. And your friends, they’re…” He looked around.
“They’re back at the dorms. You see I lost my keys,” Andrew said, and took them out of his pocket and shook them, as if Russell would need a visual aid to understand keys, although of course he had to be familiar with them, keys were in the Bible. “And I came back and…” He spread his hands.
“Here I am. I must have given you the fright of your life.”
“Well… Yes. We’d thought you were a waxwork,” Andrew added, and grew flustered, remembering again how he had shrieked when Russell spoke to him.
Russell tugged at the fingertips of his left cavalry glove, then pulled the glove tight over his hand again. “Did we win the war?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And the South kept quiet after, and didn’t rise again?”
“Well… They haven’t been quiet exactly. But there hasn’t been another war.”
“No, of course they’re still kicking. You couldn’t expect anything else from them, God help us all.” He was silent a while, his head tilted back, looking at the moonlight coming in through the fan-shaped window above the door. “Lincoln must have won the election, then. We couldn’t have won the war without him.”
“I – yes,” said Andrew, who had not realized that Abraham Lincoln’s reelection had ever been in doubt; and then he thought, Dear God, I’m going to have to tell him about Lincoln’s assassination.
He remembered how he had felt when he heard of Kennedy’s assassination: the drop in his stomach, like a punch in the gut. The feeling like a hangover all the next week, the sense that he had drifted into a reality that could not be true.
And he had only the shock of the assassination to cope with. Russell had just woken up in a whole new century, to boot.
“Good. To Hell with McClellan. He always was a snake in the grass just looking for a chance to surrender.” Russell turned over the riding crop in his hands. “And Jefferson Davis, did we catch him and string him up high?”
“Ummm… I think he wrote a memoir about the war later on, so I guess not. Listen, Rus – Lieutenant Krause, I mean…”
Russell caught the urgency in Andrew’s tone, and turned toward him. “What is it, then?”
“It’s about Lincoln. I’m so sorry. He saw us through to the end of the war, and then – he was assassinated. I’m so sorry,” Andrew said again.
The natural flush blanched from Russell’s cheeks. He sat for a long moment, still as a waxwork again; then he surged to his feet, and paced a little way on the floor, his cavalry boots loud on the tiles and his head bowed. Then he thrust his head back, and checked his pockets, and then turned toward Andrew again. “Could I trouble you for a handkerchief?” Russell asked, and Andrew was startled to see tears on his cheeks, silver in the moonlight.
“Oh! I’ve got a Kleenex, I think. That’s a disposable handkerchief,” Andrew said, and dug in his pockets, and was glad to produce one, although Russell held the flimsy thing gingerly, as if he expected it to come to pieces in his hands.
“Will the wonders never cease.” Russell dabbed his face. “Thank you,” he added. “For the handkerchief and – the news; it can’t have been a pleasure telling it, and so I thank you for taking the trouble.”
“It’s all right.” Andrew felt such an intensity of compassion for him in that moment that his stomach had grown taut in sympathy. “If there’s anything else you’d like to know…”
“No!” Russell shouted. Then, more gently, “No, I think that’s enough for tonight. And you’re probably needing to go back to Beecher College, anyway.”
“Come with me,” Andrew said.
He said it on impulse. He remembered how they had all gathered together after Kennedy’s assassinations, people weeping in the chapel, Andrew and his girlfriend Carol holding hands in a pew, drawn together by the news although they broke up after all three weeks later.
It seemed wrong to leave Russell alone with his sorrow in this dark shadowy house.
Russell eyed him. “You don’t even know me.”
“Well – no. But I know what it is to lose a president you love,” Andrew said; “We lost President Kennedy last year” (Russell gave a little start at the name Kennedy, but said nothing), “and you’ve lost a lot more than that, besides. I don’t think you ought to be alone. And anyway there’s no food in this house,” Andrew added, this thought only striking him now, “and you probably don’t have any money – not that you could spend in 1964, at least. So you’d better come with me.”
***
“What a wonderful road,” Russell said.
They had filled a carpetbag with such clothes as seemed capable of looking at least vaguely modern, and set out again down Hill Road toward Beecher College. It was not a wonderful road at all, and Andrew almost said so: it was cracked and neglected, clearly not repaved for years.
“A macadam road even here,” Russell said. He sounded dazed; and when a car drove past on Washington Street, its headlights slicing through the darkness, he threw up an arm to cover his eyes. “What is that?”
“A car,” Andrew said. “A horseless carriage.”
Russell let out a wild crack of a laugh. “Of course, of course. Well, they said the future would be full of wonderful things…”
A motorcycle roared by. Russell grabbed Andrew’s arm.
“That’s a motorcycle,” Andrew said, and tried to recall if bicycles had been invented yet in 1865. He had the vague impression that they were later in the century, Gibson girls riding their bicycles in the park and stopping at an ice cream parlor, a Meet Me in St. Louis sort of thing.
But evidently he was wrong, because Russell said, with a clear attempt at steadiness, “A sort of velocipede?”
“Yes! A motorized velocipede. The cars are propelled by motors, too,” Andrew added, and then wondered if motors had been invented yet in 1864.
Russell was still holding his arm. Andrew wanted to shake him off, or rather knew that he ought to shake him off; but it seemed unkind, although maybe that was just an excuse because he liked the feeling of Russell’s hand…
They had reached Washington Street. Russell stopped, peering this way and that along the empty road. “It’s all right,” Andrew told him. “We can cross now.”
“They come up so fast, out of nowhere,” Russell said. But he crossed in step with Andrew.
“That’s the last of the cars for now,” Andrew told him. “There are no cars allowed on Beecher campus.”
Russell’s grip relaxed. Andrew thought he might let go, and was glad and sorry when he didn’t. But it was all right, wasn’t it? Men walked arm-in-arm in Victorian times, he was pretty sure. His high school English teacher Mrs. Stotz was forever having to explain this sort of thing to the snickering class. In the nineteenth century men could be affectionate to each other without anyone interpreting it that way.
The class had giggled like mad over Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed in Moby-Dick. Andrew thought of the single narrow bed in his dorm room, and his heart gave a nervous slam.
“It’s so different,” Russell said, “than Beecher College in my time.”
Andrew bestirred himself. “They’ve built it up a lot since then, haven’t they? That’s the library,” he said, gesturing to the building that loomed above them. Russell eyed it and said nothing, and Andrew added apologetically, “It’s new. I know it’s hideous.”
Another wild burst of laughter. “It’s nice,” Russell said, “that you are not as good at architecture as you are at lights and roads and – ” He stopped. “Why, that’s the Main Hall.” He let go of Andrew’s arm after all, and ran forward till he had an unobstructed view of the cupola, illuminated with a floodlight in the night; and then he turned around, taking in the campus. “It’s just as wonderful as Professor Hiram said it would be. I wish he could see it.”
“Professor Hiram? Did you study at Beecher?”
“Papa hired him to teach me Greek and Latin before I went east to boarding school. That was before they even started the Main Hall, there was just a brick building that burned down one day while everyone was at church, and no one knew it was burning because the visiting preacher rambled on and on… But Professor Hiram said that was Providence. God was clearing the ground so they could build up the college better. And they have,” he said, doing another turn to take it in. “It’s as beautiful as Harvard Yard. Is that the chapel?”
“That’s the Union,” Andrew said. “They built it after World War I…”
His voice dwindled: he quailed at the prospect of explaining both world wars. But Russell didn’t react to the words, and Andrew saw that this was all so new and strange to him that a lot of it was passing right over his head.
“The dining hall’s closed for the summer, but the Union Grill is open, so I usually eat dinner there,” Andrew said. Then: “Are you hungry? The Grill’s closed for the evening, but I could get you something to eat in the kitchen at Trevor, I’ve got cereal at least…”
What if Mark and Billy were playing blackjack in the kitchen like they did sometimes? How the hell would Andrew explain Russell? God, he could hear it, Mark joking around like he did, Did you go back to kiss him, Andrew?
No, no. His upper lip prickled with sweat. The best defense was a good offense, he’d jokingly ask if Mark had kissed Russell; Mark was the last one out of the room… And once he’d gotten Mark on the defensive, he’d tell them that the curse had ended because a hundred years had passed.
Andrew jumped about a mile when Russell touched his arm. “That would be mighty kind of you,” Russell said.
“Oh! It’s nothing,” Andrew said, scrambling to remember what they’d been talking about. “Cereal! Right!” Had cereal been invented yet in the Civil War? “Or Mark might have bread for toast. You’d probably like that better. If he’s up I’ll ask him…” God, he was dead meat if he walked in with Russell actually clinging to his arm.
But Russell didn’t try to take his arm again. “Could I trouble you to show me the rest of campus first?” he asked.
A reprieve. “Yes, I’d be happy to,” Andrew said.
He showed Russell the first girls’ dormitory, Ormsby, built in 1888, and the actual chapel, with the stained-glass windows designed by Tiffany, and the old Carnegie library which, with the opening of the new library, had become the campus museum. The new girl’s dorm, the dining hall, the fraternity quad, the Weber Gymnasium built in 1912… “Weber?” Russell said. “Which Weber, do you know?”
“Klaus, I think,” Andrew said, and was suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, I hope I’m not boring you with all this trivia. I’m just – the college history interests me.”
“And a piece of Providence that is for me,” Russell replied. “I knew Klaus Weber when he was a little boy in skirts, who cried when I stole his toy soldier… I was a terrible child. He must have been an old man when he gave the money for this place. Or left it in his will perhaps.”
They both gazed up at the high arched entry to the gym. The streetlamp cast a heavy dark shadow that swallowed up the doors.
The clock on the Union tolled the hour: midnight. “That’s most of the campus,” Andrew said. “Why don’t we go back to Trevor Hall and see about something to eat?”
Russell shook himself. “Trevor Hall,” he said amiably. “And who’s that named for?”
“A famous alum. He was a war correspondent…” Andrew decided, again, not to get into all the wars just yet. “That’s where they house the summer workers. The guys, I mean, the girls are over in Ormsby…”
The only thing worse than running into Mark and Billy would be running into some of the guys who hadn’t broken into the Schloss. How on earth would Andrew explain Russell in full Civil War uniform, with his cavalry sword at his side? This is my cousin, the Civil War reenactor. He fell into character and can’t get back up.
Butuck was with them: the kitchen was dark and silent, indeed the whole hall seemed to be asleep. Andrew flipped on the light – “How did you do that?” Russell asked, so Andrew showed him, and waited patiently as Russell tried the switch three times, and then took a step back with his hands clasped behind his back, and said, “I didn’t think. Will that damage it?”
“No, no. I mean – I guess if you did it tons of times, maybe. Here, let me show you the refrigerator.”
Andrew opened the refrigerator door so the cold air wafted out. He expected that to knock Russell flat, and was knocked flat himself when Russell said casually, “We have refrigerators.”
“You did?”
Russell nodded. “Cleaner than this,” he added.
“Well, it’s a dorm fridge, what do you expect?” Andrew protested.
Russell was opening the top door of the fridge. He stepped back, still not knocked flat but perhaps, after all, a little impressed by the freezer. “Where’s the ice, then?”
“Oh!” Andrew understood suddenly: they must have used refrigerator as another word for icebox, rather as his grandmother used icebox to mean refrigerator. “There’s no ice in it. It’s cooled by electricity. Generally,” he said, “everything’s done by electricity these days. The stove’s electric, and the toaster too… Do you want toast? Mark won’t mind about the bread.”
“It’s sliced,” Russell said, in wonder.
He leaned over the toaster to watch the bread toast, too, his eyes shining as the wires grew red-hot. He watched while Andrew scraped margarine over the toast, and took an eager bite – and then his face took on a funny look. He swallowed hard, and told Andrew apologetically, “Your butter’s off.”
“Oh! That’s not butter. It’s margarine. It’s a butter substitute.”
“It’s meant to taste like this?” said Russell.
“Is it that bad? Here, I’ll get you some jam,” Andrew said. “There’s grape or raspberry…”
The raspberry jam was not a success either: Russell didn’t complain, but Andrew could tell he didn’t like it. “I could get you something to drink,” Andrew offered. “Milk or orange juice…”
“Orange juice!”
“Oh… yeah. It’s – you make it by, um, juicing an orange. Have you ever had it?”
“Orange juice,” Russell marveled; and suddenly he smiled at Andrew, a smile so warm and sincere that it flooded Andrew with a confusion bordering on terror. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “I’m a stranger in your land, and you’ve given me food and drink and good welcome like Lot welcoming the angels; and after I greeted you like a thief in the night.”
In nineteenth-century novels Andrew loved these overwrought speeches, but meeting one in real life mortified him. “It’s nothing,” he said, and added hastily, “I mean, for all you knew I was a thief in the night, breaking into your house and everything.”
“Well. A thief died beside Jesus on the crosses at Calvary, and Jesus promised solemnly that they should see each other in paradise.”
Oh God, and now religion, too. Andrew hefted the jug of orange juice like a shield. “Orange juice?” he asked desperately. “It’s really cheap now,” he added. “I mean, you just buy it at the supermarket in a carton, it’s not like I juiced the oranges myself or anything, I… Here,” he said, and filled a plastic cup, and put it on the table.
“Thank you kindly.” Russell picked up the cup, and paused, and tapped it with his fingernails. “What’s this, now?”
“Plastic.”
“Plastic,” Russell echoed; and then he shook his head and said, “No, I don’t care to know. Plastic’s a problem for tomorrow. You know it’s strange,” he said, “I woke just as the sun was going down, and I’ve been awake only a few hours by the clock. But I’m worn to a shadow.”
“Oh! Yes, you’ll want to go to bed,” said Andrew. It hit him again, like a freight train, that he had only the one bed. “You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” he blurted.
“That’s fine. I’ve been sleeping on the ground long enough, I don’t know I could sleep in a bed,” Russell said. Then, delicately: “Now if you’ll be kind enough to show me the necessary first…”
“Oh! The bathroom. Yes, of course. Just as soon as you finish your orange juice.”
Russell really must be getting tired; he did not attack the bathroom with the same aplomb he had shown for the campus or the kitchen, but hung back in the doorway, blinking at the bright fluorescent lights. Andrew showed him the urinals, and the flush toilets (“I’ve read about such things,” Russell said doubtfully), and acquainted him with the taps and the showers, which he eyed more doubtfully still.
Then there was nothing for it but to take Russell to his room.
Andrew’s room, that summer, was at the far end of the hall. He was very much aware of Russell walking behind him, just a little too close, or perhaps it was just that Andrew was so very conscious of him there.
Lot welcoming the angels indeed. More like one of the Sodomites pounding on the door.
And now they’d reached Andrew’s door, and Andrew’s key turned easily, and opened the door and flipped on the light. “Home sweet home,” he said, holding out an arm as if to present it: the long narrow institutional bed pressed up against the wall, his desk under the window with the view of the white Main Hall cupola in its spotlight. The basket chair tucked into the corner, the battered chest of drawers, the moddish rug patterned in orange and brown squares. The walls were still bare: he had only moved in a week ago, and had not yet gotten around to putting his posters up.
Russell tossed his carpetbag at the foot of the bed. “The bed’s plenty big enough for two,” he said.
Only if those two spooned. Andrew’s throat was dry again. “Well – not really,” he said.
“If one of us sleeps on the floor, it’ll be you,” Russell told him, and as if to underscore the words, he sat on the edge of the bed and began to take off his cavalry books. “I’m more than happy to share, and I won’t be turned out like a dog.”
His eyebrows drew together, and Andrew realized with horror that Russell was genuinely angry. Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby-Dick were absolute strangers before they were assigned to share a bed in that inn, after all. Andrew’s objection to sharing the bed could make no sense to Russell.
Andrew would have agreed to share the bed just to keep the peace if he had found Russell less absurdly attractive. But there was no way he’d make it a whole night without having some sort of physiological reaction to that physique, and if Russell noticed… God, he’d be repulsed. That would be bad enough in normal circumstances, but to throw that at him on top of Lincoln’s assassination and the entire twentieth century…
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said now, struggling to think of some acceptable reason for refusing to share the bed. “It’s just that I kick really horribly. My brother used to complain…” This lie had the virtue of being true: he and Tom had shared a bed when they were small, back when the family still lived in the apartment, and Andrew really had kicked at the time. It was just that he had been three years old then. “Of course you’re right, though, you’re my guest, you take the bed. I’m sorry.”
They got ready for bed in silence. Andrew took the pillow off his basket chair and the blanket folded at the foot of the bed and tossed them on the orange and brown rug. The college-issued chest of drawers squealed as Andrew opened a drawer to remove his pajamas. He knew Russell could not be watching him, but nonetheless he changed as quickly as he could, and got a peculiar shock when he turned around and found Russell sitting on the bed in shirt and drawers.
When Andrew first saw Russell on the stairs, he had looked about ten feet tall. Now, seeing him for the first time without the uniform coat and the cavalry boots, Andrew realized that Russell was no taller than he was, and actually thinner, no meat on his sturdy bones: the impression of magnitude had come from his bearing and manner, not actual size.
It all made him look much younger. “How old are you?” Andrew blurted.
“Almost twenty-two. Listen,” Russell said, and then, after a pause – “I don’t know your name.”
Andrew struck his own forehead. “I never introduced myself. I’m Andrew O’Connor.”
“It’s an Irishman you are, and no mistake.” Russell’s voice took on an Irish brogue as he said it, which strengthened as he added, “And my mother an Irishwoman, though she’d wash my mouth with soap if she heard me say it.” He returned to his normal voice, with that faint strange accent, “Listen, Mr. O’Connor – ”
“You can just call me Andrew. No one calls me Mr. O’Connor except Mrs. Graetz.”
A slight pause. “Well, Andrew then,” Russell said, and he sounded very pleased. “And you can call me Russell. I’m sorry I was such a bear about the rank, only I’m just out of the army, you see, and you have to insist there. Listen, Andrew, I don’t give a hoot if you kick. I’ve slept through far worse in the army, and I’d feel that much better about it if I’m not kicking you out of your bed.” And, to underscore the point, he tossed back the blankets, opening an inviting expanse of plaid sheet.
Andrew’s face was hot. He clasped his sweaty hands behind his back. He wanted terribly to take Russell up on it. The bed was so narrow they almost wouldn’t be able to avoid touching. Russell might sling an arm over Andrew’s chest; his breath would brush Andrew’s neck, his curly hair (was it as soft as it looked?) against Andrew’s cheek…
And there Andrew would lie, extracting carnal pleasure from something that Russell offered in all innocence. “I’m fine on the floor,” Andrew insisted.
“Well.” There was a little pause. Russell slid under the sheets, and pulled them up to his chin. “Suit yourself,” he said.
Next Tuesday is the last Tuesday in November, so I was planning to do my last Sleeping Beauty post then. Torn between doing Chapter 4 or just skipping to the first sex scene (which is actually not a sex scene, it’s a tasteful asterisk scene followed by “We have WILDLY diverging views on what just happened and what it means.”)
Astute readers may notice that I’ve changed Russell’s mother’s nationality since the first chapter. Such is the first draft life.
Andrew screamed.
He was glad, in that moment, that he had come alone, even though it meant that he was probably going to be run through with a Civil War cavalry sword, just so no one else heard that scream. Russell Krause (who else could it be?) took the stairs in two bounds, ramming Andrew against the wall so all the air left his body.
Before he could catch his breath, Russell Krause jammed a hand over Andrew’s mouth. “Be quiet. My father will kill you if he wakes up.” His voice was urgent, but hushed. “You wouldn’t be the first burglar he murdered, and in this very hall. Be still, I tell you.”
His urgency was so intense that Andrew’s ears pricked, listening too, even though he knew the house was empty. The hand over his mouth was firm, but not painful. The handle of the riding crop dug into his cheek. They stood so close together that he could feel Russell Krause’s heartbeat, vibrating in his own body like the thud of a large drum.
At last Russell Krause slackened his grip. “No one heard,” he said, relieved; and yet puzzled too, and with a growing note of dread in his voice as he said, “They’re all sleeping like the dead.”
“Russell…”
Again smack of the riding crop. “That’s Lieutenant Krause to you!”
“Lieutenant Krause,” Andrew began again. “You realize it’s 1964.”
“No.”
Andrew’s mouth was dry. He attempted to moisten it, then could think of nothing to say, and then, at last, flicked on the flashlight.
Russell winced and stepped back, lifting a hand to shield his face from the brilliant light. Andrew flicked it off again.
“That’s an electric flashlight,” Andrew said, almost apologetically. “I know you didn’t have anything like that in 1864. And if you look outside the windows, you’ll see the electric streetlights…”
“Yes,” Russell said. His voice had gone very flat and strange, and Andrew noticed for the first time that he spoke with a slight accent, unplaceable, because it was not the accent of a place but the accent of a time. “Yes; I saw those when I woke up. Like the lights of fairyland…”
He sat quite suddenly on the stairs. His cavalry sword clattered against the steps. “It’s just as Katie said,” he said, and pressed a hand to his head. “And here’s me not believing her…” And then, to Andrew: “What’s the date?”
“May 16, 1964.”
“A hundred years,” Russell said. “Katie said I would sleep a hundred years unless awakened by a kiss of true love; and of course with my sweet Julia dead…” He seemed to be talking to himself more than Andrew, bent over as he sat, rubbing his hand over his forehead; but all of a sudden he sat bolt upright. “My father is dead. Oh, thank God.”
For a moment he remained stiff as a poker. Then he sagged back against the steps. That sudden relaxation of tension seemed to release Andrew, as well, who had been standing almost paralyzed. He came over and sat beside Russell, the width of the steps between them.
Russell sat up again quite suddenly. “Is this your house now?”
“I – no,” Andrew said, stumbling over his words in his embarrassment. “No, as a matter of fact I – actually I did break in – but I’m not a tramp, and I’m not a burglar, you see I’m a college student and my friends and I – this is an abandoned house – and we broke in, but not to steal things, just because…”
“A prank,” said Russell, nodding. “I’ve been a college student too. And your friends, they’re…” He looked around.
“They’re back at the dorms. You see I lost my keys,” Andrew said, and took them out of his pocket and shook them, as if Russell would need a visual aid to understand keys, although of course he had to be familiar with them, keys were in the Bible. “And I came back and…” He spread his hands.
“Here I am. I must have given you the fright of your life.”
“Well… Yes. We’d thought you were a waxwork,” Andrew added, and grew flustered, remembering again how he had shrieked when Russell spoke to him.
Russell tugged at the fingertips of his left cavalry glove, then pulled the glove tight over his hand again. “Did we win the war?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And the South kept quiet after, and didn’t rise again?”
“Well… They haven’t been quiet exactly. But there hasn’t been another war.”
“No, of course they’re still kicking. You couldn’t expect anything else from them, God help us all.” He was silent a while, his head tilted back, looking at the moonlight coming in through the fan-shaped window above the door. “Lincoln must have won the election, then. We couldn’t have won the war without him.”
“I – yes,” said Andrew, who had not realized that Abraham Lincoln’s reelection had ever been in doubt; and then he thought, Dear God, I’m going to have to tell him about Lincoln’s assassination.
He remembered how he had felt when he heard of Kennedy’s assassination: the drop in his stomach, like a punch in the gut. The feeling like a hangover all the next week, the sense that he had drifted into a reality that could not be true.
And he had only the shock of the assassination to cope with. Russell had just woken up in a whole new century, to boot.
“Good. To Hell with McClellan. He always was a snake in the grass just looking for a chance to surrender.” Russell turned over the riding crop in his hands. “And Jefferson Davis, did we catch him and string him up high?”
“Ummm… I think he wrote a memoir about the war later on, so I guess not. Listen, Rus – Lieutenant Krause, I mean…”
Russell caught the urgency in Andrew’s tone, and turned toward him. “What is it, then?”
“It’s about Lincoln. I’m so sorry. He saw us through to the end of the war, and then – he was assassinated. I’m so sorry,” Andrew said again.
The natural flush blanched from Russell’s cheeks. He sat for a long moment, still as a waxwork again; then he surged to his feet, and paced a little way on the floor, his cavalry boots loud on the tiles and his head bowed. Then he thrust his head back, and checked his pockets, and then turned toward Andrew again. “Could I trouble you for a handkerchief?” Russell asked, and Andrew was startled to see tears on his cheeks, silver in the moonlight.
“Oh! I’ve got a Kleenex, I think. That’s a disposable handkerchief,” Andrew said, and dug in his pockets, and was glad to produce one, although Russell held the flimsy thing gingerly, as if he expected it to come to pieces in his hands.
“Will the wonders never cease.” Russell dabbed his face. “Thank you,” he added. “For the handkerchief and – the news; it can’t have been a pleasure telling it, and so I thank you for taking the trouble.”
“It’s all right.” Andrew felt such an intensity of compassion for him in that moment that his stomach had grown taut in sympathy. “If there’s anything else you’d like to know…”
“No!” Russell shouted. Then, more gently, “No, I think that’s enough for tonight. And you’re probably needing to go back to Beecher College, anyway.”
“Come with me,” Andrew said.
He said it on impulse. He remembered how they had all gathered together after Kennedy’s assassinations, people weeping in the chapel, Andrew and his girlfriend Carol holding hands in a pew, drawn together by the news although they broke up after all three weeks later.
It seemed wrong to leave Russell alone with his sorrow in this dark shadowy house.
Russell eyed him. “You don’t even know me.”
“Well – no. But I know what it is to lose a president you love,” Andrew said; “We lost President Kennedy last year” (Russell gave a little start at the name Kennedy, but said nothing), “and you’ve lost a lot more than that, besides. I don’t think you ought to be alone. And anyway there’s no food in this house,” Andrew added, this thought only striking him now, “and you probably don’t have any money – not that you could spend in 1964, at least. So you’d better come with me.”
***
“What a wonderful road,” Russell said.
They had filled a carpetbag with such clothes as seemed capable of looking at least vaguely modern, and set out again down Hill Road toward Beecher College. It was not a wonderful road at all, and Andrew almost said so: it was cracked and neglected, clearly not repaved for years.
“A macadam road even here,” Russell said. He sounded dazed; and when a car drove past on Washington Street, its headlights slicing through the darkness, he threw up an arm to cover his eyes. “What is that?”
“A car,” Andrew said. “A horseless carriage.”
Russell let out a wild crack of a laugh. “Of course, of course. Well, they said the future would be full of wonderful things…”
A motorcycle roared by. Russell grabbed Andrew’s arm.
“That’s a motorcycle,” Andrew said, and tried to recall if bicycles had been invented yet in 1865. He had the vague impression that they were later in the century, Gibson girls riding their bicycles in the park and stopping at an ice cream parlor, a Meet Me in St. Louis sort of thing.
But evidently he was wrong, because Russell said, with a clear attempt at steadiness, “A sort of velocipede?”
“Yes! A motorized velocipede. The cars are propelled by motors, too,” Andrew added, and then wondered if motors had been invented yet in 1864.
Russell was still holding his arm. Andrew wanted to shake him off, or rather knew that he ought to shake him off; but it seemed unkind, although maybe that was just an excuse because he liked the feeling of Russell’s hand…
They had reached Washington Street. Russell stopped, peering this way and that along the empty road. “It’s all right,” Andrew told him. “We can cross now.”
“They come up so fast, out of nowhere,” Russell said. But he crossed in step with Andrew.
“That’s the last of the cars for now,” Andrew told him. “There are no cars allowed on Beecher campus.”
Russell’s grip relaxed. Andrew thought he might let go, and was glad and sorry when he didn’t. But it was all right, wasn’t it? Men walked arm-in-arm in Victorian times, he was pretty sure. His high school English teacher Mrs. Stotz was forever having to explain this sort of thing to the snickering class. In the nineteenth century men could be affectionate to each other without anyone interpreting it that way.
The class had giggled like mad over Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed in Moby-Dick. Andrew thought of the single narrow bed in his dorm room, and his heart gave a nervous slam.
“It’s so different,” Russell said, “than Beecher College in my time.”
Andrew bestirred himself. “They’ve built it up a lot since then, haven’t they? That’s the library,” he said, gesturing to the building that loomed above them. Russell eyed it and said nothing, and Andrew added apologetically, “It’s new. I know it’s hideous.”
Another wild burst of laughter. “It’s nice,” Russell said, “that you are not as good at architecture as you are at lights and roads and – ” He stopped. “Why, that’s the Main Hall.” He let go of Andrew’s arm after all, and ran forward till he had an unobstructed view of the cupola, illuminated with a floodlight in the night; and then he turned around, taking in the campus. “It’s just as wonderful as Professor Hiram said it would be. I wish he could see it.”
“Professor Hiram? Did you study at Beecher?”
“Papa hired him to teach me Greek and Latin before I went east to boarding school. That was before they even started the Main Hall, there was just a brick building that burned down one day while everyone was at church, and no one knew it was burning because the visiting preacher rambled on and on… But Professor Hiram said that was Providence. God was clearing the ground so they could build up the college better. And they have,” he said, doing another turn to take it in. “It’s as beautiful as Harvard Yard. Is that the chapel?”
“That’s the Union,” Andrew said. “They built it after World War I…”
His voice dwindled: he quailed at the prospect of explaining both world wars. But Russell didn’t react to the words, and Andrew saw that this was all so new and strange to him that a lot of it was passing right over his head.
“The dining hall’s closed for the summer, but the Union Grill is open, so I usually eat dinner there,” Andrew said. Then: “Are you hungry? The Grill’s closed for the evening, but I could get you something to eat in the kitchen at Trevor, I’ve got cereal at least…”
What if Mark and Billy were playing blackjack in the kitchen like they did sometimes? How the hell would Andrew explain Russell? God, he could hear it, Mark joking around like he did, Did you go back to kiss him, Andrew?
No, no. His upper lip prickled with sweat. The best defense was a good offense, he’d jokingly ask if Mark had kissed Russell; Mark was the last one out of the room… And once he’d gotten Mark on the defensive, he’d tell them that the curse had ended because a hundred years had passed.
Andrew jumped about a mile when Russell touched his arm. “That would be mighty kind of you,” Russell said.
“Oh! It’s nothing,” Andrew said, scrambling to remember what they’d been talking about. “Cereal! Right!” Had cereal been invented yet in the Civil War? “Or Mark might have bread for toast. You’d probably like that better. If he’s up I’ll ask him…” God, he was dead meat if he walked in with Russell actually clinging to his arm.
But Russell didn’t try to take his arm again. “Could I trouble you to show me the rest of campus first?” he asked.
A reprieve. “Yes, I’d be happy to,” Andrew said.
He showed Russell the first girls’ dormitory, Ormsby, built in 1888, and the actual chapel, with the stained-glass windows designed by Tiffany, and the old Carnegie library which, with the opening of the new library, had become the campus museum. The new girl’s dorm, the dining hall, the fraternity quad, the Weber Gymnasium built in 1912… “Weber?” Russell said. “Which Weber, do you know?”
“Klaus, I think,” Andrew said, and was suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, I hope I’m not boring you with all this trivia. I’m just – the college history interests me.”
“And a piece of Providence that is for me,” Russell replied. “I knew Klaus Weber when he was a little boy in skirts, who cried when I stole his toy soldier… I was a terrible child. He must have been an old man when he gave the money for this place. Or left it in his will perhaps.”
They both gazed up at the high arched entry to the gym. The streetlamp cast a heavy dark shadow that swallowed up the doors.
The clock on the Union tolled the hour: midnight. “That’s most of the campus,” Andrew said. “Why don’t we go back to Trevor Hall and see about something to eat?”
Russell shook himself. “Trevor Hall,” he said amiably. “And who’s that named for?”
“A famous alum. He was a war correspondent…” Andrew decided, again, not to get into all the wars just yet. “That’s where they house the summer workers. The guys, I mean, the girls are over in Ormsby…”
The only thing worse than running into Mark and Billy would be running into some of the guys who hadn’t broken into the Schloss. How on earth would Andrew explain Russell in full Civil War uniform, with his cavalry sword at his side? This is my cousin, the Civil War reenactor. He fell into character and can’t get back up.
Butuck was with them: the kitchen was dark and silent, indeed the whole hall seemed to be asleep. Andrew flipped on the light – “How did you do that?” Russell asked, so Andrew showed him, and waited patiently as Russell tried the switch three times, and then took a step back with his hands clasped behind his back, and said, “I didn’t think. Will that damage it?”
“No, no. I mean – I guess if you did it tons of times, maybe. Here, let me show you the refrigerator.”
Andrew opened the refrigerator door so the cold air wafted out. He expected that to knock Russell flat, and was knocked flat himself when Russell said casually, “We have refrigerators.”
“You did?”
Russell nodded. “Cleaner than this,” he added.
“Well, it’s a dorm fridge, what do you expect?” Andrew protested.
Russell was opening the top door of the fridge. He stepped back, still not knocked flat but perhaps, after all, a little impressed by the freezer. “Where’s the ice, then?”
“Oh!” Andrew understood suddenly: they must have used refrigerator as another word for icebox, rather as his grandmother used icebox to mean refrigerator. “There’s no ice in it. It’s cooled by electricity. Generally,” he said, “everything’s done by electricity these days. The stove’s electric, and the toaster too… Do you want toast? Mark won’t mind about the bread.”
“It’s sliced,” Russell said, in wonder.
He leaned over the toaster to watch the bread toast, too, his eyes shining as the wires grew red-hot. He watched while Andrew scraped margarine over the toast, and took an eager bite – and then his face took on a funny look. He swallowed hard, and told Andrew apologetically, “Your butter’s off.”
“Oh! That’s not butter. It’s margarine. It’s a butter substitute.”
“It’s meant to taste like this?” said Russell.
“Is it that bad? Here, I’ll get you some jam,” Andrew said. “There’s grape or raspberry…”
The raspberry jam was not a success either: Russell didn’t complain, but Andrew could tell he didn’t like it. “I could get you something to drink,” Andrew offered. “Milk or orange juice…”
“Orange juice!”
“Oh… yeah. It’s – you make it by, um, juicing an orange. Have you ever had it?”
“Orange juice,” Russell marveled; and suddenly he smiled at Andrew, a smile so warm and sincere that it flooded Andrew with a confusion bordering on terror. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “I’m a stranger in your land, and you’ve given me food and drink and good welcome like Lot welcoming the angels; and after I greeted you like a thief in the night.”
In nineteenth-century novels Andrew loved these overwrought speeches, but meeting one in real life mortified him. “It’s nothing,” he said, and added hastily, “I mean, for all you knew I was a thief in the night, breaking into your house and everything.”
“Well. A thief died beside Jesus on the crosses at Calvary, and Jesus promised solemnly that they should see each other in paradise.”
Oh God, and now religion, too. Andrew hefted the jug of orange juice like a shield. “Orange juice?” he asked desperately. “It’s really cheap now,” he added. “I mean, you just buy it at the supermarket in a carton, it’s not like I juiced the oranges myself or anything, I… Here,” he said, and filled a plastic cup, and put it on the table.
“Thank you kindly.” Russell picked up the cup, and paused, and tapped it with his fingernails. “What’s this, now?”
“Plastic.”
“Plastic,” Russell echoed; and then he shook his head and said, “No, I don’t care to know. Plastic’s a problem for tomorrow. You know it’s strange,” he said, “I woke just as the sun was going down, and I’ve been awake only a few hours by the clock. But I’m worn to a shadow.”
“Oh! Yes, you’ll want to go to bed,” said Andrew. It hit him again, like a freight train, that he had only the one bed. “You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” he blurted.
“That’s fine. I’ve been sleeping on the ground long enough, I don’t know I could sleep in a bed,” Russell said. Then, delicately: “Now if you’ll be kind enough to show me the necessary first…”
“Oh! The bathroom. Yes, of course. Just as soon as you finish your orange juice.”
Russell really must be getting tired; he did not attack the bathroom with the same aplomb he had shown for the campus or the kitchen, but hung back in the doorway, blinking at the bright fluorescent lights. Andrew showed him the urinals, and the flush toilets (“I’ve read about such things,” Russell said doubtfully), and acquainted him with the taps and the showers, which he eyed more doubtfully still.
Then there was nothing for it but to take Russell to his room.
Andrew’s room, that summer, was at the far end of the hall. He was very much aware of Russell walking behind him, just a little too close, or perhaps it was just that Andrew was so very conscious of him there.
Lot welcoming the angels indeed. More like one of the Sodomites pounding on the door.
And now they’d reached Andrew’s door, and Andrew’s key turned easily, and opened the door and flipped on the light. “Home sweet home,” he said, holding out an arm as if to present it: the long narrow institutional bed pressed up against the wall, his desk under the window with the view of the white Main Hall cupola in its spotlight. The basket chair tucked into the corner, the battered chest of drawers, the moddish rug patterned in orange and brown squares. The walls were still bare: he had only moved in a week ago, and had not yet gotten around to putting his posters up.
Russell tossed his carpetbag at the foot of the bed. “The bed’s plenty big enough for two,” he said.
Only if those two spooned. Andrew’s throat was dry again. “Well – not really,” he said.
“If one of us sleeps on the floor, it’ll be you,” Russell told him, and as if to underscore the words, he sat on the edge of the bed and began to take off his cavalry books. “I’m more than happy to share, and I won’t be turned out like a dog.”
His eyebrows drew together, and Andrew realized with horror that Russell was genuinely angry. Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby-Dick were absolute strangers before they were assigned to share a bed in that inn, after all. Andrew’s objection to sharing the bed could make no sense to Russell.
Andrew would have agreed to share the bed just to keep the peace if he had found Russell less absurdly attractive. But there was no way he’d make it a whole night without having some sort of physiological reaction to that physique, and if Russell noticed… God, he’d be repulsed. That would be bad enough in normal circumstances, but to throw that at him on top of Lincoln’s assassination and the entire twentieth century…
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said now, struggling to think of some acceptable reason for refusing to share the bed. “It’s just that I kick really horribly. My brother used to complain…” This lie had the virtue of being true: he and Tom had shared a bed when they were small, back when the family still lived in the apartment, and Andrew really had kicked at the time. It was just that he had been three years old then. “Of course you’re right, though, you’re my guest, you take the bed. I’m sorry.”
They got ready for bed in silence. Andrew took the pillow off his basket chair and the blanket folded at the foot of the bed and tossed them on the orange and brown rug. The college-issued chest of drawers squealed as Andrew opened a drawer to remove his pajamas. He knew Russell could not be watching him, but nonetheless he changed as quickly as he could, and got a peculiar shock when he turned around and found Russell sitting on the bed in shirt and drawers.
When Andrew first saw Russell on the stairs, he had looked about ten feet tall. Now, seeing him for the first time without the uniform coat and the cavalry boots, Andrew realized that Russell was no taller than he was, and actually thinner, no meat on his sturdy bones: the impression of magnitude had come from his bearing and manner, not actual size.
It all made him look much younger. “How old are you?” Andrew blurted.
“Almost twenty-two. Listen,” Russell said, and then, after a pause – “I don’t know your name.”
Andrew struck his own forehead. “I never introduced myself. I’m Andrew O’Connor.”
“It’s an Irishman you are, and no mistake.” Russell’s voice took on an Irish brogue as he said it, which strengthened as he added, “And my mother an Irishwoman, though she’d wash my mouth with soap if she heard me say it.” He returned to his normal voice, with that faint strange accent, “Listen, Mr. O’Connor – ”
“You can just call me Andrew. No one calls me Mr. O’Connor except Mrs. Graetz.”
A slight pause. “Well, Andrew then,” Russell said, and he sounded very pleased. “And you can call me Russell. I’m sorry I was such a bear about the rank, only I’m just out of the army, you see, and you have to insist there. Listen, Andrew, I don’t give a hoot if you kick. I’ve slept through far worse in the army, and I’d feel that much better about it if I’m not kicking you out of your bed.” And, to underscore the point, he tossed back the blankets, opening an inviting expanse of plaid sheet.
Andrew’s face was hot. He clasped his sweaty hands behind his back. He wanted terribly to take Russell up on it. The bed was so narrow they almost wouldn’t be able to avoid touching. Russell might sling an arm over Andrew’s chest; his breath would brush Andrew’s neck, his curly hair (was it as soft as it looked?) against Andrew’s cheek…
And there Andrew would lie, extracting carnal pleasure from something that Russell offered in all innocence. “I’m fine on the floor,” Andrew insisted.
“Well.” There was a little pause. Russell slid under the sheets, and pulled them up to his chin. “Suit yourself,” he said.
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Date: 2020-11-17 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 05:47 am (UTC)*sorry not sorry
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Date: 2020-11-18 02:45 pm (UTC)And of course, as you say, with Russell this is going to be much more pronounced.
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Date: 2020-11-18 07:04 am (UTC)Poor Andrew, all twisted up in shame and guilt. You're gonna be ok!!!
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Date: 2020-11-18 02:42 pm (UTC)ANDREW JUST SNUGGLE THE MAN, good God. He's alone and lonely and confused in a new century and all he wants is a cuddle!
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Date: 2020-11-18 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-18 02:41 pm (UTC)In my youth I went on the opposite journey with margarine and butter; when I was small we used margarine, and then we switched over to butter, and butter was DIFFERENT and I didn't like that. Now of course I am a born-again butter convert, but it took some time.
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Date: 2020-11-18 02:51 pm (UTC)... Okay, I mean, they *are* substitutes in many ways. I used to use nothing but margarine for cookies until everyone got all up in arms about trans fats (also it was about that time that I started caring about how things were made: could I conceivably make this myself at home, or does it require a factory?) And since they're both fats, they can have a similar mouth feel, and if neither is too highly flavored, and if you don't *want* a flavor in the fat you spread on your toast, then it can work. BUT.
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Date: 2020-11-25 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 01:46 am (UTC)