SETH: Who is?
SARA: I blew it. So damn careful, and I blew it.
SETH: Honey, I don’t follow you.
SARA: What time is it?
SETH: Close to midnight.
SARA: Late.
SETH: It’s early yet, Sara.
SARA: No, no. Late. He’ll die.
SETH: Who’ll die?
SARA: Big jackass.
SETH: Who, honey?
SARA: On a stupid bridge.
SETH: Somebody you know going to jump off a bridge?
SARA: I circled it, you know. So damn careful.
SETH: The bridge?
SARA: Of course not the bridge. How can someone circle a bridge?
SETH: I don’t get you, Sara.
SARA: I don’t even know you.
SETH: You know me. This’s Seth here.
SARA: I mean, to tell you such personal things.
SETH: What’s so personal about a bridge?
SARA: Who’s talking about the bridge? That’s the second, plenty of time to worry about that.
SETH: What’s the first?
SARA: What?
SETH: The first, Sara.
SARA: It’s not a sequence.
SETH: Huh?
SARA: It’s a date, not a sequence. The second.
SETH: Huh?
SARA: Huh, huh? Saturday. The second The second Give me some more of this. Please.
SETH: What about Saturday?
SARA: Nothing.
SETH: You said…
SARA: You boring fucking nigger, what do you want from me?
SETH: I’m trying to help you.
SARA: My ass.
SETH: Sober you up, is all.
SARA: He says as he fills my glass.
SETH: You asked for another one.
SARA: Sober me up when he’s gone, why don’t you?
SETH: Who, Sara?
SARA: Nobody. Dead and gone on his stupid bridge.
SETH: Which bridge?
SARA: How many bridges are there around here?
SETH: Henderson?
SARA: Oh, smart.
SETH: The railroad trestle over Henderson Gap?
SARA: Oh, smart, smart.
SETH: Is somebody going to do something to it? On Saturday?
SARA: No.
SETH: Who’s going to do it, Sara?
SARA: Nobody.
SETH: Your forty-two-year-old friend?
SARA: Nobody.
SETH: Arthur Sachs?
SARA: Nobody.
Seth presses a button and the tape is abruptly silenced. He looks at me. My mouth is dry.
“So?” I ask him
“So, Mr. Sachs?”
“So what?”
“So you are going to blow up the Peace Train, Mr. Sachs.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s why you’re here, Mr. Sachs. Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re doing a fine and noble thing.”
“Your admiration is misplaced. There’s nothing on that tape that would indicate..
“I'm reading between the lines, Mr. Sachs. Sara’s very worried about something happening to somebody on the bridge over Henderson Gap come Saturday, November second. Now it may be sheer coincidence that the Peace Train’s coming over the bridge that day, but I don’t think so. You’re here to destroy that train. I applaud you for it.”
“Save your applause. You’re making a mistake.”
“I want in, Mr. Sachs.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to be there when you do it. I want to help you.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm black.”
“So?”
“And being proud of George Washington Carver isn’t enough any more. Who cares if he invented the peanut?”
“He didn’t invent the peanut.”
“Or discovered it, or whatever he did with it. It’s time a black man made some genuine history in this country.”
“Then go write your novel.”
“This is better than a novel. This is real.”
“You think so? This is fantasy, Seth, Sara’s little pipe dream, the result of too much booze. Forget it. There’s nothing here for you. Write your book. You’re both Immigrant and Wasp, remember? How can you miss?”
“Mr. Sachs, you’re not going to blow that bridge without me.”
“Nor with you, either. There is no bridge, it’s all imagi…”
“Either you do it with me, or I’ll make sure nobody does it!”
“Fine.”
“I’m warning you, Mr. Sachs…”
“You don’t scare me. I have no plans for destroying any damn bridge. Your threats are meaningless.”
“My time has come, Mr. Sachs. Our time has come.”
“Then go find your own bridge, okay? I’m taking Sara home.”
We argue about that for a while, too. In the end, I leave without her, promising to return at six o’clock.
I know I have lost both arguments.
I am becoming frightened.
HESTER ANNE PRATT
University professor. Born New York City, August 4, 1911. Daughter of Miles and Elizabeth (Holdsworth). A.B., Wellesley College, 1932; M.A., Columbia, 1935; Ph.D., 1942.
Tchr. high schs. NYC, 1936-38; instr. English, N.Y.U., 1939-41. Asst Prof., West. Meth. U., 1946-48; Assoc. Prof., 1949-54; Prof. 1955 to present. Chairman dept. 1956 to present.
Recipient Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, 1961, Member International Assn. U. Profs, of English, Modem Language Association of America. Phi Beta Kappa. Club: P.E.N. Served to captain, WAC, 1942-46. Author: The Salem Delusion (with R. J. Frame) 1949; Rebecca Nurse, Study in Courage, 1952; Mather, McCarthy and the Witches, 1958.
Hester Pratt lives year-round in a contemporary house ten blocks from center of town. Since arrival at Western Methodist University 1946, has employed as housekeeper black woman named Fanny Hollis. Mrs. Hollis lives with husband and son in Negro section near railroad tracks. Husband (Luther) is handyman at university. Son (David) was student, suspended in sophomore year, now works at Shell Station on Route 17. Mrs. Hollis has two married daughters, both living Burbank, California, husbands working at Lockheed Aircraft. Mrs. Hollis would answer no questions about employer although investigator assured her only soliciting information for local housing authority. Told him to come back and ask Miss Pratt personally for any information about herself.
Hester Pratt is sixty-three years old; many colleagues who taught with her in New York City have either retired or are dispersed around country. After obtaining Masters at Columbia, she taught Bronx Vocational High School and later Machine and Metal Trades. Administrative Assistant latter school remembers her well, says imbued fine sense of language in students primarily interested in learning trade. Pointed out specific case boy studying automotives, later wrote novel dedicated to her. (These Angry Streets, Juan Ricardo Guardabrazos, Simon & Schuster, 1944.) She attended Columbia nights for doctorate while teaching in city system and later N.Y.U. Received doctorate June 1942, spent summer in Salem, Beverly, Danvers, etc., gathering material for projected book about 1692 witchcraft trials, published seven years later (with collaborator). Widowed mother Elizabeth, living with sister in England, killed air raid August 1942. Pratt did not return to teaching in the fall, enlisted in newly formed Women’s Army Corps September 1942, second lieutenant’s commission. Worked in Pentagon, Washington, D.C., until January 1943 when transferred London.
Whereas earlier report Cornelius Raines (July 28, 1974) suggested no relationship any other woman, information that both Pratt-Raines in London area during WW II indicated further investigation advisable. Discounting obvious dislike Pratt by colleagues and students questioned (all agree she wrote books on subject well-qualified to discuss: Witchcraft), it would nonetheless seem evident that Pratt-Raines relationship does date back to mid-1943 when Raines was Air Force colonel flying bombing missions from Norwich, two hours outside London. It appears certain, too, that relationship continued throughout war until time of Raines’s discharge December 1945 when he acquired assistant professorship Western Methodist U. where wife Charlotte already held teaching post. Pratt’s many enemies on campus insist she followed him there after her own discharge. Only one man, an associate professor Classics, suggests Raines sent for her. Fact remains Pratt arrived to begin teaching fall 1946, and Raines was married at time.