baskets, ancient weapons and glazed mannequin expressions—though nothing more—their attention quickly shifting, drifting?, soon enough prodding their teachers to take them outside again to the ships on which the settlers first arrived, reconstructed ships, which is exactly what their teachers do, taking them away, that giddy, pastel stream, leaving me alone with the dark glass cases and all they don't display.
Where is the starving time of 1610? The 1622 Powhatan Indian Insurrection which left almost 400 dead? Where are the dioramas of famine and disease? The black and broken toes? The gangrene? The night rending pain?
"Why, it's right here," says a docent.
But I can't see what she's talking about.
And besides, there is no docent.
• Colonial Williamsburg. Wow, even further from the truth, or at least my truth. The tidy streets offer nothing more than a sanitized taste of the past. Admirable restoration, sure, but the "costumed interpreters"—as the brochure likes to describe these would- be citizens of the American legacy —nauseate me. I'm not exaggerating either. My stomach turns and heaves.
Mary Brockman Singleton speaks amiably about the Brick House Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street and the way her husband succumbed to the grippe. It makes no difference that Mary Brockman Singleton died back in 1775, because, as she's inclined to tell everyone within earshot, she believes in ghosts.
"Didn't you know," she delicately informs us. "Numerous poltergeist sightings have been reported at the Peyton Randolph House."
A few people murmur their patriotic approval.
A good time as any for a question. I ask her if she's ever seen a bottomless staircase gut the heart of whatever home she really lives in, when Colonial Williamsburg closes down for
the night and she, not to mention the rest of all these would-be interpreters here, change back to the memory of the present, hastily retreating to the comfort of microwaves and monthly telephone bills.
What does she know about interpreting, anyway?
Someone asks me to leave.
• Near the campus of William Mary, surrounded by postcards thick with purple mountain majesty, and they are purple, I hyperventilate. It takes me a good half hour to recover. I feel sick, very sick. I can't help thinking there's a tumor eating away the lining of my stomach. It must be the size of a bowling ball. Then I realize I've forgotten to eat. It's been over a day since I've had any food. Maybe longer.
Not too far away, I find a tavern with cheap hamburgers and clean tap water. Across the room, eight students slowly get drunk on stout. I start to feel better. They pay no attention to me.
Everywhere I've gone, there've been hints of Zampano's history, by which I mean Navidson's, without any real evidence to confirm any of it. I've combed through all the streets and fields from Disputanta to Five Forks to as far east as the Isle of Wight, and though I frequently feel close, real close, to something important, in the end I come away with nothing.
• Richmond's just a raven and the remnants of a rose garden trampled one afternoon, long ago, by moshing teenagers.
• Charlottesville. The soft clicking of Billy Reston's wheels—come to think of it sounding alot like an old projector—constantly threatens to intrude upon the corridors of a red brick building known as Thorton Hall, and yet even though I check the NSBE, I can't find his name.
A bulletin board still has an announcement for Roger Shattuck's