She pointed to a long, sandy beach across the channel, facing the sea to our right. “That’s Morris Island. Fort Wagner sat near the end, just where it hooks in toward the city. Union forces tried their best to take it in the summer of 1863. Get Wagner, get Sumter—that’s how they figured it; get Sumter, get Charleston. Get Charleston and they could close down the whole Southern seaboard. But they never did any of that, not till the Confederates pulled out and left it to them in 1865.”
We stood on the point, the right gorge angle she called it, and looked where she looked. “That narrow beach on Morris Island is where the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Infantry was butchered trying to dislodge the Confederates. Not to take anything away from those black warriors, you’ve got to admire the Southern fighting man. You don’t have to like his cause to know he and his pals were a tough, valiant bunch.”
We stood there for a while. The day was almost perfect, the sun warm, the harbor full of sailboats. Closer in, smaller, power-driven craft skimmed across the water. Libby walked to the right gorge and shaded her eyes, peering out toward the long, flat island. “Lots of ghosts out there,” she said. “Over here too. I just felt a breath tickling my cheek.”
“My gosh, I felt it too,” Koko said. “That wasn’t the breeze I felt.”
Libby put a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry, they won’t bother you. They are ghosts of a time when women were put on pedestals and cherished. You must be sensitive to spirits.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“That doesn’t happen to everybody but I feel it all the time. I’ll be out here on the wall and suddenly I’ll get a feeling someone’s here with me…as if he’s just touched me or tried to whisper some mysterious thing in my ear. What about you two? You feel anything just then?”
Erin shook her head and Libby gave me a penetrating look. “I never feel anything,” I said. “I never think, I barely believe in people, and I let ghosts alone.”
“Shame on you. If there are spirits anywhere, how could they not be here? I feel a constant connection with the men who died here…Here comes Luke, you’re saved by the bell. I was about to break into lecturitis profundis of a kind that’s not covered on the tour.”
He came toward us from the left face, walking briskly along the edge of the wall. All his reticence from Saturday seemed gone and he greeted us warmly. “Good to see you,” he said, shaking hands. “Libby’s been awaiting your arrival nervously, to say the least.”
“Oh, stop. That’s not nerves, I’m just overworked. Too much to do, too little time.”
I introduced Erin and Luke shook her hand. “Glad you’re here. The more the merrier.”
“I’ve got to go down for a while,” Libby said. “Got a little housekeeping to do and a few last fs to cross before I turn in my paper tomorrow. Luke will show you around, give you the lay of the land. Pay attention, people, it gets dark here when the sun goes down.”
“It gets very dark, even on a clear night,” Luke said. “I’ve got a hunch tonight’ll be cloudy again. In any case, watch where you step. We don’t want any broken legs.”
He walked us around the ruin as the afternoon waned. We went through dark catacombs under the walls, and he told us what each of them had been. When we climbed back to the top, the tour boat was well out in the harbor.
“There she goes,” he said. “You’re officially stuck here till tomorrow.”
Luke suggested a look through the museum while he did a few chores. “That’s probably where you’ll throw down your bags tonight. Last summer we had a fellow who was writing a book and that’s where he slept, on the ramp in front of the original battle flag.”
We spent the next two hours playing tourist, looking at old uniforms and muskets, minie bullets and bayonets, reading exhibit plaques. When we emerged the sky was dark gray in the east, with a thin streak of purple just above the western horizon. The setting sun broke over James Island, casting the harbor in a kind of eerie velvet light. Most of the boats had gone in now, and far away the church spires of the city were barely visible. I figured we still had some twilight time, and while I could see I walked off and made my own tour of the walls and the ruins around them. I walked along the gorge wall and stood where the original sally port had been. The wall dropped to a height of a dozen feet; below was a tiny beachhead, and straight ahead water flowed through the channel to the sea as the tide went out. A lone boat was still out on the water, cutting across the harbor in a slow arc maybe half a mile away: a skiff under power, with a canopy covering and three or four shadowy people on board. The sun cast its last orange rays across the water and I saw a glint from something—maybe a smoke being lit, maybe a light being tested or a tool being used on some sudden trouble. Maybe binoculars. I didn’t know what it was, but I stood still and just watched it.
After a while Koko came up beside me and we tried to find the city, all but invisible in the deepening dusk. “So,” she said. “What are we going to do and how are we going to do it?”
I watched the boat turn in toward the city and I made a few gruntlike thinking noises. At last I said, “My hunch is we’ll have to level with them. Mrs. R. may have some information but she’s like you, she’s cautious about who gets it.”
“I can’t speak for her, but for once I shall try to behave myself.”
“That would be good. I don’t want you clobbering me before we get on an even keel with her. We’ve got a few things on our side if we play it right.”
“Give me a for instance and maybe I’ll feel better.”
“She knows that we know about Charlie but she may not know much more than his name,” I said. “She was fishing pretty hard. She wants what we’ve got.”
“Whatever that is. But you’re still just guessing, and if she doesn’t know anything more than that, what good will she do us?”
“It may help a lot if she’ll tell us where she got that name. Maybe what she knows makes sense only when you put it with what we know. I think she’s got a hunch, just like me. That’s why she saved the Charlie card till the very end on Saturday, and that’s why she was standing on the pier waiting for us. She acts self-confident but I think she’d have been heartbroken if we hadn’t been there.”
“You’re reading way more into her than I would. I still don’t know how much we need to tell her.”
“You get what you give, Koko. I think we should level with her— tell her who Charlie was and where he came from, how Josephine turned up in your life and later in mine. If she asks us a question, answer it. Don’t dangle carrots in front of her, let’s just tell her what we know and try to establish some camaraderie.”
“That’s giving away a lot on a wing and a prayer.”
“But she can’t do anything with it without us, and without her we’re back on first base. She strikes me as a straight shooter.”
“All right, I’ll shut up and follow your lead. Your track record with her so far has been a lot better than mine.”
The boat in the harbor had come to a dead stop, drifting now with no obvious destination. “What’re you looking at so hard?” Koko said, and I told her I was just wondering if those people were in any kind of trouble. Impulsively I put an arm over her shoulder and hugged her hard, as if I could squeeze all the pain out of her unhappy life. I felt her tremble and she looked away, shunning any kind of sentiment as always. I said, “How ya doin‘ these days, Koke?” and I squeezed her hand. She said, “I’m fine, you fool, why wouldn’t I be?” I hugged her again and she laughed up at me. “I’m fine, dammit, go away, leave me alone.” I followed her around the point, pestering. “Talk to me,” I said, and she gave in with a sigh. “What do you want me to say, how glad I am to know you? I’m glad I know both of you, okay? Does that make you happy? No matter how it all turns out, I’m not sorry it happened. Is that good enough?” I hugged her again and said, “Yeah, Koko, that’s good enough for today.”