The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Charlotte lay cloaked in the biting smoke of burning moss and deadwood. Though purported to be the next burgeoning place of industry, the town was barely more than a village built around two roads, Tryon and Trade. At their intersection was a courthouse, an impressive structure seated atop eight brick pillars that raised it ten feet above the ground. Below, a market buzzed, surrounded by a short stone wall. The people inside were stubborn, with a weedy toughness that had survived the war but not forgotten it.

“Chawbacons,” Peabody called them. Expecting a cosmopolitan city, he was mightily disappointed by the town’s lack in size and presentation. “The heart of industry, he told me. The finest minds in the South, why, they come from Charlotte, he said. And here we are in a veritable backwater. Mark my words, Amos, nothing but ill luck comes from trusting fellows in New Castle taverns. We ought to have pushed on to Charleston. Such time lost.” He muttered and smacked a gloved hand against his wagon.

“We must make the best of it,” he said as he addressed the troupe around the morning fire. “Culture is a balm to the soul. Here, friends,” he said as he smoothed his coat. “Here is a town that is sorely in need of culture, the likes of such as we can provide.” He declared that Amos and Evangeline were to be touted as beacons of learning and sophistication. “The Light of the World, you are, my good children. Be assured, should you have failings, this town will be none the wiser.”

Haunted by the memory of suffocating fish, Amos and Evangeline wished to remain within the wagon rather than in town, but Peabody would hear none of it; M. et Mme. Les Ferez would keep rooms in a tavern run by the improbably named Captain Cook and his wife. They were to dine in costume and conduct themselves in what Peabody considered grand style. The job was well done. Hat shops, tailors, or taverns, wherever they went stares followed. At the end of the day when they retired to their room in Cook’s, Amos and Evangeline closed their door and breathed in relief at the solitude.

Captain and Mrs. Cook were traveling to Charleston and had left the inn in the care of Louisa Tyghe, her son, and a harried kitchen maid. Mrs. Tyghe knocked too often, and her son trailed at Amos’s heels, having never encountered a man who wore his hair in such a fashion.

“You’ll be excellently looked after here, sir,” Mrs. Tyghe said, straightening her starched red apron. “The bed in your room, Washington himself has slept in it. He liked us so well that he gifted us his hair powder. Should you need powder, we offer you the privilege of using some of the great man’s own.”

Amos found the idea of using another man’s hair powder perplexing, but Evangeline had the grace to blush and thank Mrs. Tyghe before shutting the door in the woman’s face. Amos did his best to rub the soreness from Evangeline’s back and she began the ritual of combing and dressing his hair. At last they huddled on the mattress, weary from the town’s claustrophobic politeness—a politeness strangely at odds with the townsfolk themselves. Evangeline fell asleep quickly, but Amos remained awake. In the quiet, he rested his head against her stomach and listened.

On their second night the rains began.

Fine mist settled across the heart of Charlotte. Peabody ordered a stage erected in front of an enormous rail house, but the ground turned to mud and the platform sank under its own weight. Benno’s hands and feet got stuck in the soggy red soil. Pins slipped from Melina’s hands and fire eating was rendered impossible. Sugar Nip and the llama refused to be led from their wagon, forcing Nat to carry the small horse in his arms.

Yet crowds lined up for M. et Mme. Les Ferez. Word of the menagerie had spread, drawing people from across Mecklenberg County, people keen to be parted from their money for a moment of gawking.

Shop owners waited, young women swooned. Children, never had they seen so many children—little girls begging to touch Evangeline’s sleeve, or to pull her hair. Boys were fascinated by her, but also by Amos and the frilled attire that so differed from that of men they knew. Young lovers, spinsters, the old and creaking, all sought a glimpse into the beyond. Mrs. Tyghe visited and was rendered breathless by the interior of their wagon.

“Oh, my,” she whispered. “I daresay you are accustomed to finer things than you’ll find in Charlotte.” Amos hid a smile. Mrs. Tyghe would not have thought so had she seen his Wild Boy cage.

Exhausted at day’s end, they fell to bed without a word.

On the third night in Charlotte the sky broke. The rain brought mud from the hills and soot off the roofs in a ruddy deluge that bathed the town in its offal. Benno and Melina did not leave their wagons. Meixel stayed with the animals. The Catawba began to rise, flooding the Sugar and Briar Creeks and surrounding the town, yet Peabody insisted that Les Ferez work. A wondrous place, he’d been told. Politicians came from here, men of learning—yet the town was barely an outpost. Losses had to be recouped. If people wished to give money to fortune-tellers, then the fortune-tellers must work.