Page 31 of The Invisible Hour

The first step was to encourage him to return to the living. He agreed to join his Bowdoin friend Horatio Bridge in Augusta, Maine, where he celebrated his thirty-third birthday. But that night he was as drunk as he’d ever been and could scarcely remember what had transpired. Some men think too much of themselves, and some see only their flaws. Nathaniel had always been plagued by all that he should be and wasn’t, but now he seemed truly haunted.

When he returned to Salem from Maine, he was more disheartened and miserable than ever. Elizabeth stood outside his door and heard no sounds from within his chamber. No books lifted from the shelves, no pen on paper, nothing at all. For a writer not to write was the worst malady. Again, their uncle was consulted, and a plan was agreed upon. Robert Manning would convince Nathaniel to come back to life in the best way he knew how. Robert made his way upstairs and pulled up a chair close to his nephew’s bed.

“We can make this right,” Robert said.

“I swear she came from another time,” Nathaniel told his beloved uncle. “And yet I was in love, and my love was returned, and now I’ve lost her and sometimes I wonder if she ever existed at all, or if I invented her as I would my characters.” Nathaniel was glassy-eyed, his face racked with emotion as he sat up in bed to face his uncle. “Is it possible that we dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep?”

Robert was studying his nephew, a kind and weary expression across his face. “We can never know what is possible.” Nathaniel’s uncle was also burdened with a strain of desire and urges that he kept to himself. “Life is not always what we wish it to be.”

Nathaniel leaned back, exhausted from his wild thoughts. “If she was a mythological creature that I invented, that would mean I was mad. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think anything of the sort. I think you’re a fisherman, a pursuit that would clear your mind. Come with me to Lenox.”

Robert Manning had always considered fishing to be curative for the soul. The quiet hours spent in nature, the splashing echoes of rivers and streams, and, of course, the beauty of trout, every variety a wonder to behold, could calm a man’s restless soul.

“Whatever has happened to you, you are still the man I know,” Robert said. “Let’s go for trout.”

The men studied one another. It wasn’t really a suggestion, but rather a decision that had already been made by all who loved Nathaniel as they’d clustered in a distraught group in the parlor not more than an hour earlier, worried for his future. They decided upon fishing then and there, convinced that a trip to the countryside might soothe his distress. Nathaniel was their shining star, and all their hopes rested in him. Let his life begin again, more simply at first, so that he could be healed each and every day. In Robert’s eyes, fishing not only could lead Nathaniel to recovery but also remove him from the grasp of his worried family fluttering around him, making matters worse.

“What do you say, boy?” Robert asked, for even though Nathaniel was thirty-three, a man in every way, to Robert he would always be that boy who loved to visit his uncles in Maine, where he had freedom to wander through the woods and swim in every pond he came to.

Robert had looked upon Nathaniel and his sisters as his own children. He knew that all things begin with kindness and that all hope began with trust. Robert sat there with the worry evident in his large dark eyes, his nephew’s champion as always.

“Remember when you were nine, and you thought you’d never be well again?” he said. “Let us see if healing can happen another time.”

Nathaniel thought about all Mia had told him about the town of Blackwell, not far from Lenox, and he surprised both his uncle and himself by agreeing to the suggestion that fishing was the answer to his woes, if only to ease his family’s worries.

“We will go,” Nathaniel told his uncle. “Why wait another day?”

THEY FOUND THEIR WAY to the Jack Straw Tavern, a comfortable inn not far from Lenox, just outside the town of Blackwell. There were rooms to let on the second floor, plain, simple chambers that would allow them peace and privacy. The Jack Straw was a rural place, nearly six miles from town, and Robert had often stayed there while fishing in the streams and rivers nearby. He preferred the Eel River but often fished in the Last Look River as well. Their rooms were at the rear of the building, with windows that overlooked Hightop Mountain, a towering green peak where bears were said to be found in every cave.

Blackwell was a small, clannish town, filled with folklore. There were stories of eels that could turn into women, and a ghost who haunted the river, and of a garden where everything that grew turned red. It was a place that intrigued Nathaniel, for he knew it was here that Mia had found his book on a shelf in the library, and here that she had spent her early years. The surrounding area was beautiful, with vast green vistas and so many orchards that the air was scented with the aroma of apples, not yet ripe but fragrant all the same. Berkshire County was still untamed land, and a person could forget the foolish rules and regulations of polite society and wander freely here, in rough clothes and with an interest in nothing more than the natural world around him.

Nathaniel found he could breathe more easily once they’d arrived. The air was sweet and fresh, far cooler than it was in Salem, painted with a bluish tint when one gazed into the distance. He felt closer to Mia here and to what they had shared, for she’d often spoken of Blackwell and the farm where’d she’d grown up, with its rules and its heartless leader who had ruined her mother’s life. Nathaniel had lost his appetite when she vanished, but now it returned to him, and he and Robert had a quick dinner at the bar. The area was famous for a dish called eel pie, but they ordered roasted salt potatoes along with a stew of barley and chicken instead and were easily satisfied by their simple meal. Along with the food, they had mugs of the local ale, called Love Me Twice, said to be an aphrodisiac for some, so sweet that swarming bees were drawn to it and were made drunk by the fumes rising from the barrels set out behind the inn. The beauty of the place was everywhere, in every leaf and hill, and though the food was simple it was tasty, and before he knew it Nathaniel had cleared his plate.

“You’ve begun to recover already,” Robert said hopefully.

Nathaniel was certainly relieved to be gone from Salem. It was the city of his nightmares, one filled with misfortune; every street he walked in that city was a street his cursed ancestors had trod, never remorseful for their dreadful treatment of women declared to be witches. He much preferred to be a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps he should think of all that had happened as a dream, and not wish for more, other than to write the book that Mia would one day find.

Uncle and nephew said their good nights, having planned to meet at an extremely early hour in the morning, so they would arrive at the river when the fish were waking. They flipped a coin to decide where to fish, and Nathaniel’s heart flipped as well when heads came up. The Last Look, the river Mia had said she had often visited. He wondered if when he approached the bank, he might walk back into that dream of his and somehow see her once more, and he had a surge of excitement, brought on by his desires and by the ale he’d been drinking.

Once Nathaniel was in his room, he unpacked the small bag he’d brought, placing his clothing in the bureau drawers and his old fishing boots beside the door. He’d worn his black coat for the journey, and now, in the overheated room, he removed it to hang upon the back of the chair. He fully intended to think of nothing but fish and mountains and pine trees and keep his mind preoccupied, but he couldn’t stop himself from imagining Mia swimming in the pond, her black dress left in the grass. He sat on the narrow bed, his head in his hands. The hour was late, but summer light lasted long here in the mountains. Nathaniel heard the birds outside his window, swifts and swallows and sparrows, all nesting in the eaves of the Jack Straw Tavern. It was likely that his uncle was already asleep in his room, or perhaps he’d stayed at the bar for another ale or two. The birds’ racket would be silenced once darkness fell. Love was cruel and unpredictable, and yet he wanted it more than words, more than anything. He was a madman, it was true, but wasn’t every writer? He set out the paper he had brought with him, and the pen and ink. He sat at his desk, but he, who in the past could not stop writing, now did not put down a single word. He could not think of a single story, other than his own. Instead of writing he fell asleep, and all night long he dreamed of her.

IT WAS NOT YET dawn when there was a knock upon his door. Robert stuck his head in, surprised to see Nathaniel asleep in a chair, his head on the desk. “Ready for the river?” his uncle said. “Wake up and join the living!”

Nathaniel was clearly not yet on the mend, for his bed had not been slept in, and when he came down from his room, he wore the wrinkled clothes he’d spent the night in. All the same, Robert clapped him on the back and pretended all was fine. Lovesickness was curable; it always had been if it was caught in time.

They would be headed for the Last Look River, where there was said to be a mysterious variety of blue trout, a catch prized by local fishermen, that could only be found in the rivers outside of Blackwell. Robert had brought the rods, along with flies that he’d crafted himself from sewing thread and blue jay feathers tied onto a single hook. If the problem was that Nathaniel could not write, well, that was more difficult to remedy. Still, fishing and writing had a good deal in common. You had to wait and be prepared to catch what came your way. You had to know the difference between a shadow and the real thing.

The violet-colored dawn would lead to a glorious late summer day, and the air was not yet suffused with heat. Though it was not officially autumn, there were already a few yellow leaves in the swampy areas. Nathaniel was in better spirits once they began to walk, although when they reached the river, he suggested he head out by himself to the far side of the bank, out beyond some bramble bushes full of berries. Robert wanted the day to be congenial and uplifting, and he protested at first, but Nathaniel convinced him such tactics were best.

“A lone fisherman always does better, as you well know,” he told his uncle, clapping Robert on the back.

They both settled into their separate areas behind the bushes. But fishing did not interest Nathaniel on this day. He was too busy imagining Mia’s last time at this river. Ever since, she had carried the book he was to write wherever she went. What tale did he have to tell that would impress her so? In the past, stories had come to him all on their own. Characters walked onto the page, in grief or in mourning or filled with delight. He picked up one of the flat black stones and flung it across the river so that it skipped, spooking some frogs in the reeds. It was his responsibility to write the novel that she’d found; he must think of it as an honor and not allow himself to be wrapped up in regret, which caused writers to go utterly blank.

Nathaniel stepped over the rocks until the water was waist high. The Last Look River was fast and treacherous. People said it was a siren that called to men who sat on the bank. They said that trout in this part of the Berkshires could turn themselves into women if they desired to do so and fall in love with mortal men. It never ended well, just as Elizabeth had said. Men cannot live with mythological creatures. Several people had drowned in the very spot where Nathaniel now found himself, and their last look at the world was of the cold green water that drew them down into a whirl, and the trout all around them and the rocks lining the riverbed.

Nathaniel understood the urge to leave the world behind, but when he looked upward, into the boughs of the trees, each leaf reminded him why he wished to be alive, even while he was aching with loss. By the end of the day, he was drenched and cold and happy. He was a writer, he would write the book for her, even though he had no idea what it might be about. He had managed to catch two trout, to prove he had truly been fishing, not only imagining. He had the trout in his bucket as he walked upriver, only to discover Robert asleep beneath one of the huge old oaks. In Robert’s bucket there were six trout, three of them blue as the sky. Nathaniel waited for his uncle to wake, delighted to have more quiet time to himself. He thought of luck and love, how both came to you uninvited, and stayed only as long as they wished to, beyond anyone’s command.