Meet Me In Gettysburg — III

The moment he told me, my heart felt to stop. He explained that she came once a year for the past 6 years.

"Her name's Beatrix Barrett. She is a beautiful woman. She is about your age," he guessed.

"I've never known a Beatrix before in my life," I marveled. "But how do you know it's her?"

I wondered for a moment if it was the alcohol getting the better of him, but he didn't seem that drunk. It never seemed as though the alcohol affected him as it did me and I realized I was probably gushing like an excited child.

"She told me last year. She stayed here in the same room you are in, the Lincoln, and she came down to ask for toothpaste one night. Forgot to pack it. And so we started talking casually. Had a drink, and then another, like you and I are now and have been for the past week. People like to tell older folks things, especially when they are drinking. She asked me if I believed in reincarnation. I said no. She laughed and said she was sure she loved someone who died at Gettysburg, which is why she came. She said she recalled a letter he wrote her. The last line of which was 'Meet me in Gettsyburg.' She said it over and over again. Repeated it like she was on a trance. Said she has always been a history buff since she was a kid and drawn to here. She seems like a conflicted soul."

"She believes."

"She does. But I'm fairly certain she thinks you're a ghost. It's much easier to meet a ghost than a real person, you know. Much easier to explain to yourself."

"What is she like? Is she married? Single?"

"Well, she didn't say. I dont recall a ring. But she's a beautiful woman. She's a professor of literature at Vanderbilt, I believe. Or maybe it's Villanova. Starts with a V, anyway. Valparaiso, maybe. Hell, I dont know. She's a writer, as well. Signed a book for me that is up in my room. They made a Hallmark movie out of one of them, she told me. She was quite embarrassed about that for some reason. She carries a sadness about her. Like a person who is mentally ill. She is conflicted and I think she'd be even more conflicted if she knew you were alive. One of them socially akward types."

"Why does she think I'm a ghost?"

Ben shrugged. "Maybe it is easier that way. Or it is too unreal to imagine it otherwise."

"When does she come?"

"Summer. Like most. It varies, though. She came last year for the Christmas party the week before Christmas. Brought me a gift, even. 6 or 7 years straight now she's been coming. Though last year, she wasn't as she was the years before. She was always so bright and cheery. Maybe it was the holidays that made her sad. It is hard being alone at Christmas. She didn't divulge much. She was courteous and sweet, but like a closed book. Not even the schnapps could loosen her up too much. The way she told the story though, it was with great relief and pleasure."

"Is there a way you can contact her for me?"

Ben took a deliberate drink. "Well, there is a way, of course. We have her name and number on file. I'd dare say she is the only Beatrix Barrett who's ever srayed here. But we aren't supposed to, and I don't think it would be wise."

"But it's so unreal! How can this even be? You have to tell her. Or give me her number so that I can."

"It certainly changes one's perspective on things quite a bit. But it's been such a natural thing up to now, don't you think? It seems that it would be rather unwise and unnatural to alter that. You just need to stick around here and wait. And when she comes back, if she comes back, you'll be here. Where it goes from there, well, that will be up to you both."

"What if she doesnt come?"

"Then contact her, but not until."

I nodded in agreement. I knew he was right, but my overwhelming desire to meet her trumped my patience. What would I say if I called. Or what would Ben say. And how would she take it? Knowing that I am not a ghost as she had presumed me to be? The fact that she came alone was promising. But I could not blame her if she were in a relationship and it was not my goal to displace anyone. I was married, too, after all. It was very human of us to make such a mistake. But what if she didn't see it the way I saw it. What if she only sought me for some sort of resolution rather than a romantic reunion. What if I had been all wrong to believe in something that would carry me for a century or more, trailing the scent of it like a bloodhound.

"I'm too old for this job, Henry. I can put in a word with the owners and recommend you for it, if you're looking for work. They are good people. Then you could be the innkeeper and you'll be certain not to miss her. It doesn't pay all that damn well, but it's a live-in position. You'll have a room. And you'll be here when she comes."

"Where will you go?"

"Oh, I don't know. Might go on a cruise. I ain't got much time left on this ball. Might as well spend it the way folks without much time left ought to spend it. Shuffleboard. Margaritas. Bikini models. That sort of thing."

I shook his hand and he arranged for me to meet the owners, who were, in fact, very good people — John and Laura. I decided not to share with them the story as to why I came to Gettysburg, or why I gave up being a lawyer to be here. I thought they might have deemed it too odd to hire me. They must have thought of me as a bit eccentric, but they agreed to let me have the position on Ben's recommendation. They probably thought I was running from someone or something. Maybe they thought I embezzled money or was hiding from a disgruntled former client that sought to kill me. I don't think they would have guessed in a million years that I was doing quite the opposite. I was running to something for the first time in my life. Chasing down a dream rather than simply dreaming it. Rather than just taking things as they come, jobs I happened to get, people I happened to meet, love I happened to be offered, I was searching for someone who could not be anyone else.

A month past and we were in the heat of August. Ben sent me a postcard from Costa Rica. He had fallen in love with an aristocratic English woman and decided to stay — to live out his years on the beach. He asked if Beatrix had returned, said he hoped she did. He left an address to write back. Said he hoped things were all well. And they were, besides for the fact she hadn't yet come and as the days passed, I was losing hope. I had on more than one occasion looked up her name and number. She did in fact work for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and I memorized her number and thought to call her on several occasions. I also had her email and thought how easy it would be to send her an email. She was a writer, after all. She would appreciate an email, or so I told myself. But it was such an unnatural way to meet, so I abstained and kept faith in her return.

I read the book she signed for Ben which he left for me. It was called "When I Come Home." I bought the other six and the first picture of her that I saw was on the back of one of those. She was beautiful, simply stunning. I looked her up on Facebook and adored the rarity of her posting pictures of herself. Her novels were extraordinarily written and though they all told the same tale, they did so uniquely. They were stories of lost and found love. Each in their own way. Different settings and characters. A different predicament and details. The same sort of end. The one she never got. The one I never got because we weren't together. But they were all hopeful in that the lovers were reunited.

I was particularly struck by how well she wrote of being with the wrong person, once it is in fact realized. That betrayal of self and intense love and loyalty for someone the character didn't even know to exist. I wondered if she wrote what she imagined it would be like when we met. If I had in anyway, even obscurely, influenced her words or inspired them. But I also wondered if I was being too presumptive. It is possible that she loves another and hasn't room in her life for who she thinks of as a ghost. Would I only ruin her life, if I were to put her in such conflict?

I waited for her and I waited for her. I watched seventeen reenactments and took part in five galas and three grand balls, twenty two karaoke nights at the local tavern, and fourteen Gettysburg addresses well before the much heralded annual recital in November. There is one guy who does the anniversary address on November 19, the preeminent Lincoln, but leading up to him there are dozens and dozens of Abraham Lincoln knock-offs who give the famed address at the site it was given for curious and anxious tourists who wonder as they sit there how much does he resemble Lincoln, or how much does he sound like him. Tourists generally don't know when the address was given, nor do they care. November is not a time they can readily travel so there they sit as though they are subject to a privileged peeking through a torn shroud of history, smiling sheepishly as they do, though the occasion, even in its millionth revival, is most solemn.

Some Abe Lincolns are better than others. Just like the Ben Franklins in Philadelphia. I wore a period appropriate brown suit and tie and participated as a dignitary of time of sorts and watched from the allotted seats where others did the same. Pretending to be astonished and honored by President Lincoln's presence, and at the end, by the brevity of his speech, even going so far as to check my pocket watch with my eyeballs doing their best deviled egg impression. I had very much in fact become a living part of Gettysburg. It was as though I died there and was reborn a historical ambassador. A chameleon of sorts. Sometimes a soldier reeanactor, many times over a ghost for the ghost tour, a spectator of President Lincoln's, an innkeeper, an impromptu tour guide, and the carrier of a broken heart — a role that I kept to myself.

September 14, 2024, and there she was. I'd write that in a diary if I kept one. I caught a glimpse of her in the mid-afternoon sun and she was appropriately doused in sunlight as she was in my memory so that all that was clear of her was a silhouette and simple brushstrokes of life that was painted on the air. She was wearing a pale yellow dress, not a period dress, but a flowing sun dress, and she stood in sneakers with a throng of other tourists who were looking on, watching the Abe Lincoln du jour who was in the middle of his famed speech, hanging on every syllable. I was froze. I sat there and looked at her and it was as though I was looking across every one of those 161 years with great awe and trepidation. The build up was such that I could not move a muscle and before I resolved that I must, the speech ended and she disappeared almost as though she never was at all.

I searched for her and spotted her getting into a car and driving away. Again, I was unable to move to stop her. She was talking on a cellphone and oblivious to me, or to anyone for that matter. I tried to see which way she went, but her gray car was lost amongst a few rows of others and disappeared and I felt dizzy and terribly weak suddenly, as though I wasn't myself. As though I wasn't anyone or anything at all but the figment of someone's imagination.