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Chronicles of the Shade – Episode 7 – “Aunt Viva’s Locket”

by Editors

Chronicles of the Shade©*

Episode 7 –

Aunt Viva’s Locket

Late June 2007

Lance Carter sat brooding in front of his phonograph, swirling the lemon twist in his vodka and gin martini. Dinah Shore was singing “Blues in the Night” with Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra playing in the background. Yes, he said to himself, in response to the lyrics, I’m the one singing the blues. He had spent a full day in the Elliptical Office and in the library of the Grey House searching for the hidden tape erasers. Fortunately, he’d had the premises to himself. President Liar was in Kansas preaching to the fast diminishing faithful, and Condo Spice was in Ragtad trying once more to raise false hopes for peace prospects in Jiraq. Ricardo Chancey was holed up in his bunker devising strategy for bombing Iroon with his new number one boy, Abe Elliott. Yet Lance had found nothing, and he finally concluded that it was hopeless. The tape-erasers had been embedded in the walls. There was no way that he could dig them out, and he therefore could see no way to remove intact the two tape recordings that he had secreted in the room.

A message had been waiting for him at his office, where he had stopped before returning home. It was from Wilby Goode, who said that it was urgent that the Shade provide him with evidence of the wrongdoing of Liar, Spice, and Chancey, and do it soon. Wilby had heard through a confidential source that the trio was planning to use “nucular” weapons on Iroon. Chancey was urging a quick strike, whereas Spice thought they should wait until they could cobble together some Middle East allies, such as Sudsy Aramia and Jurdeen. No matter what the time frame was, Wilby thought the attack was a done deal. He said that Senator Gramsey Linden, the wimpish head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Attorney General Ratoberto Gonsalves were right now conspiring to find a way to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. Wilby should know. After all, he was an investigative reporter with high-level sources within the Beltway. Lance sagged in his chair. He had let Wilby down. He had let Lara down. Most important, and most hurtful, he had let himself down. He thought that with his power to glide unnoticed through the halls of the mighty he could uncover wrongdoing and make it known to others. He had failed. He was a failure.

He tried to rouse himself from his funk by thinking of happier days. The martini was beginning to warm his body, and he took Aunt Viva’s golden locket from his shirt pocket and opened it. From it he took the carefully folded scrap of paper and looked at the three words penned there, and the two sets of initials beneath them. He remembered when Aunt Viva had first shown him the locket. Her mother, Vérité L’Amour,

had bequeathed it to her along with its contents. Vérité had told Viva that an American army lieutenant had given it to her for safekeeping, but he had never returned after the Great War ended to retrieve it. Neither Viva nor her mother knew what the words meant, but they treasured the keepsake as a memento of the 1918 liberation of France.

Upon graduating from Farragut Academy at age 17, Lance had taken a year off to visit his Aunt Viva in France. Lance’s mother thought it would be good for the boy to broaden his experience; and, truth be told, Lance’s mother found his presence awkward for her because, except for summers, he had spent his entire school career at the austere Academy nestled off the Florida Intracoastal, and he seemed almost a stranger to her. Aunt Viva, on the other hand, desperately wanted to see the boy, and she pleaded with his mother until the trip was arranged.

Aunt Viva met him at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Her flaming red hair told Lance immediately that it was she erupting from the crowd around the gate towards him, with arms outstretched and a broad smile enlivening her face. «Mon petit garçon!» she exclaimed, and then, upon looking up at him, added with a laugh, “No, not so small at all!” She hugged him tight. Then she turned and waved her arm, saying, «Allons-y! Allons-y!»; and then they were off to her château.

Mother had said that Aunt Viva was a madcap. She had not exaggerated. In addition to being a fine horsewoman, Viva was an expert balloonist. On weekends she would take Lance up in her hot-air balloon, and they would float over the countryside. Frequently, she would rendezvous with other balloonists and skim with them over the landscape—gliding, soaring, and dipping as they adjusted the burners under their balloons. One such morning, as Lance looked about him, he saw myriad, bright dots of color languidly rising like party bubbles in the liquid blue sky. Then Viva adjusted her burners and they drifted above all the rest, higher and higher into the cooling air.

When they had risen far above the other balloons, Viva shouted over the blast of the burners, “I want you to hear something. But you must remember to be perfectly still and not say a word.” With that, Viva turned off the burners. Then she extinguished the pilot light. Her green eyes were riveted on his; that and her tousled, red hair made her look, as he now recalled, just like Lauren Holly. After only a few seconds he heard the unimaginable: it was the sound of silence. Viva’s silver laughter broke the stillness. “Yes?” she said.

Lance replied, “Yes, oh yes! It’s wonderful!”

“So, now we return to the world,” Viva spoke as though to herself. Then, as she took the butane lighter from her jacket pocket, she smiled at Lance, tilting her head to the right, as was her charming habit, so that one long flame of red curl rested at the center of her forehead, “That is, if I can get the pilot light lit again!” She again laughed that silvery laugh and lit the pilot, and the burners roared into life. As they drifted slowly to earth, she opened the locket and showed Lance its contents.

“What does it mean?” Lance said.

“I don’t know,” said Viva, snapping the locket shut. “I know I can tell you only this, dear boy: when I die, you shall have this locket. Viva looked deeply into his eyes, showing something in her gaze that bordered on some half-remembered sadness. “It was given to me by my mother, and it was given to her by an American. Because you are American, you should have the locket.”

Lance was caught up short in his reverie by remembering Viva’s promise of long ago. His sojourn in France had ended all too early. A year went by and he was back in the United States. Although they exchanged letters frequently, he never saw Viva again. After his four years at Princeton—his mother having died suddenly during his junior year—and after another three years in the army where he had gone to OCS and served as an intelligence officer, Lance was recruited by the Agency at Langley, where he spent a miserable two years. He had been profoundly disappointed by the Agency’s practices, so he resigned and took over his father’s seat on the Stock Exchange. Eighteen months there were enough; so his restless journey took him to Wyoming, where he bought and operated a cattle ranch. After three, hard-working years, Lance decided that he really wanted to spend his time doing research in history and political theory. He applied for an M.Phil. at Oxford, and, thanks to his good undergraduate record, he was accepted as a mature student at age 34. Two years later, as he was putting the finishing touches on his thesis, a letter arrived from Viva. She wanted him to accompany her on a mountain-climbing trip to the Himalayas after he finished his degree. At the time, he was deeply involved with Lara, but he told her that he wanted to see Aunt Viva again. She had to be nearly 80 years old, still taking risks, and this might be Lance’s last opportunity to visit her. Lance told Lara that he would meet her in Philadelphia that very summer.

Fate intervened. Lance was only weeks short of finishing his thesis when he heard that Aunt Viva had died. Viva’s balloon had drifted over the English Channel in a heavy fog when an RAF fighter flying out of Brize Norton clipped her orange and green balloon and sent her tumbling out of her basket into the cold waters of the Channel. A nearby fishing boat had retrieved her lifeless body from the water. She was still wearing her golden locket.

Lara understood when Lance told her that he had to leave immediately for France. He attended the somber funeral, attended by all Viva’s friends and fellow balloonists. He learned that he was the sole beneficiary of her will. Except for a monetary settlement to a few of her retainers, Lance had inherited everything—the château, the savings accounts, the stocks and bonds—everything. Lance was disconsolate. All he wanted was to have Aunt Viva back. Yet at the reading of the will, Lance learned a curious thing. He had thought that Aunt Viva was his mother’s older sister. This was not true. Aunt Viva was actually his grandmother. Vérité L’Amour was given with child by an American military officer, who later left France. Viva was their daughter. Always a precocious child, Viva took an itinerant gypsy as a lover at age 15, and the result was a daughter—Stella. At age 16, Stella was swept off her feet by an American businessman on holiday in France—Stanley Noland Carter. Stanley was the seventh and last son of a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian, Lancelot Stanley Carter, and an Oklahoma cattleman’s daughter. The other six sons inherited land whereas Stanley was left with none. Hence, the name “Noland.” Stanley, however, had business acumen, and he parlayed that into a fortune in the stock market. Viva allowed Stanley Carter to take her daughter to the United States, where Stella gave birth to Lancelot Stanley Carter, II.

Lance pondered all this as he sat in his Reagan, D.C. townhouse, toying with the locket Aunt Viva had left to him. He read the words on the paper again: “Preserve the Union.” How could he do this? How could he preserve the union? His powers had failed him. Then he remembered Aunt Viva’s words to him: “You are an American. You should have the locket.” Yes, he though, he was an American. He possessed American ingenuity, just as his father had. There must be a way.

Then it came to him, as simple as the turning of a key in a lock. He searched his telephone directory for the number of a metallurgist friend. Then he dialed the number. “Hello,” he said, when the call was answered. “This is Lance Carter, and I have a request to make of you.”

TO BE CONTINUED….

Next Week: Episode 8: