Letters

He is stopped at its entrance by the man he was seeking when last we saw him, and just now enquiring after: Drew Mack, evidently put ashore. He pushes past him into the magazine. Shouting oaths, Drew follows after. Sure enough, an explosion follows — the one that woke us across the harbour — but not, Zeus be praised, from the magazine: it is down below the ramparts on the West Branch side. In the magazine itself, however, there is found another mighty charge of explosives, all set to be blown by a wireless detonator. Mr Andrews is already contending to the police that Drew Mack discovered and defused the device, perhaps saving thereby Fort McH. and the lives of all present. Drew says nothing. The police set about taking statements, clearing the area, calling again for the bomb squad.

687

Alongshore, meanwhile, down where Captain Napier did his gallant thing, the police who’d kept on in that direction find the grim debris of our wake-up explosion: the shattered fibreglass remains of the Boston Whaler — most revealingly a piece of her transom bearing the last four letters of the name Surprize: one can imagine with what significance to the revolutionaries! — and the equally shattered remains of an adult male body, clothed in early-19th-century costume and bearing a miraculously undamaged 18th-Century pocketwatch, still ticking.

I.e.,

we must presume, A. B. Cook VI, late self-styled Laureate of Maryland, Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in English at Marshyhope State U., and… heaven knows what else. Though no portion of him suitable for positive identification could be found, neither has the laureate been since; no reason to doubt it was he went to smithereens where his ancestor did, but less equivocally. How that came to pass, however, is fittingly uncertain. The official explanation soon became that Cook was killed either accidentally by explosives meant to simulate Napier’s diversion, or in an heroic attempt to disarm explosives planted by Rodriguez & Co. to destroy the patriotic shrine. He is by way of becoming already, in the media, a martyr to the Star-Spangled B., as well he might have been. Rodriguez and Thelma, on the other hand and interestingly enough, maintain that Cook was an F.B.I, agent out to blow them up, or plant the McHenry demolition to rouse public opinion against them and, by association, against the antiwar movement! (Merope Bernstein, they allege, had become his companion-in-infiltration-and-subversion.) This explanation too, Ambrose at least believes, while admittedly farfetched, is by no means impossible. I turn my wedding ring upon my finger, and agree. A. B. Cook! We shake our heads.

Thus much for the Dawn’s Early Light, by which now (I mean roughly half after eight, when the basic outlines of the above are coming clear to us late arrivals) it occurs to Ambrose that the “F. S. Key” letter given him by Cook had been described by its giver as “in fact a letter to [his] son,” which he would want back. Perhaps it will, if not prove the key to these mysteries, at least cast some light upon them? He hurries to the dressing room barracks for his costume coat (my heart is aflutter; what will Cook be saying to his “son,” and where are the yacht and that young man?) and finds that Cook’s letter is no longer in it: only yours — its envelope neatly slit, its return address neatly snipped — which we shall read shortly, over breakfast. Bruce calls to us: Missing, is it? We are being filmed and recorded on hand signals from Prinz, flanked by his sturdy Tweedles. Yeah, missing, the Author glowers at the Director. Prinz cues Brice, who remarks (Voice Over): No doubt it will wash up in a bottle somewhere. See you at Barataria on Tuesday. Cue now to Brice, who adds: Mister Cook would want us to see things through to the final frame.

Prinz: Cut.

And The End,

for us, of the Dawn’s Early Light scene; for me, of the whole bloody movie, which as you know turned bloodier on that same fell Tuesday. There was no more for us to do. A search was ordered for Baratarian. Rodriguez and his colleagues were hauled off to be charged next day in the U.S. District Court with conspiring to destroy government property; they pled innocent, repeated their countercharge against the F.B.I., were released on bail, and went fatally down to Bloodsworth Island. On the strength of Andrews’s statement, Drew Mack was not arraigned; he too, and his defender — who seems to have become his shadow! — returned to Cambridge and anon to Barataria Lodge. Merope Bernstein, one hears, went back to spend Yom Kippur at Lily Dale with Jerome Bray: an atonement beyond our fathoming. And we old newlyweds, likewise, still shaken, returned to the Eastern Shore.

First, however, stopping for breakfast at a coffee shop near Fort McHenry, and there at last reading your surprise blessing from Ye Hornbooke of Weddyng Greetynge. Thank you, and Amen to it!