The Book of Fate

102

Martin Kassal could read when he was three years old. He could write when he was four. And by five, he would sit next to his father at the breakfast table, eating his raisins and French toast while reading the headlines in the newspaper. But it wasn’t until he was seven that he finished his first crossword puzzle. Designing it, that is.

Sixty-one years later, Kassal tapped at his moon-chin, skimming his way through a small beaten paperback called Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Even with his tinted reading glasses, he still needed to lean close to see, and as he pulled back slightly to flip to a new page, he was so engrossed in the symbols of the sacred rivers, he didn’t even register his phone until the third ring.

“Is this Ptomaine1?” a female voice asked with an accusatory tone.

“I’m sorry — who’s this?” Kassal asked.

“Tattarrattat is my screen name. Also known as Mary Beth Guard to my friends,” she added with a huffy laugh at her use of the longest palindrome in the Oxford Dictionary, second edition. “I saw your posting on the message boards… about the glyphs you were trying to identify… the four dots and the cross with the slash…”

“Of course. No, of course. And thank you for getting back so quickly.”

“Hey, you posted your phone number. I figured it was an emergency. By the way, I like your screen name. Ptomaine. From NPR, right? Famous historic American. Put his first name inside his last name to get a word. Ptomaine. Tom Paine. Cute,” the woman said, almost as if she were looking for a date.

“Yeah, well… aheh,” Kassal said, wiping his forehead. “So about those symbols…”

“The glyphs — sure — I knew them immediately. I mean, I stare at them every day.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I work at Monticello. Y’know, Virginia? Home of our wisest and greatest President, Thomas Jefferson — and I don’t just say that as an employee.”

“These were symbols used by Jefferson?”

“Actually, by Meriwether Lewis.”

“Of Lewis and Clark?”

“Oooh, you know your history, Ptomaine,” she said sarcastically. “Of course. But what people don’t realize is that the main reason Meriwether Lewis was picked to explore the Louisiana Purchase — in fact, maybe the only reason he was trusted with the task — was because a few years earlier, he did such an incredible job as Jefferson’s personal secretary.”

“Huh,” Kassal said, already scribbling a note to use the info in an upcoming puzzle. “I didn’t realize Lewis was Jefferson’s aide.”

“Very first aide to any President. Right after Jefferson was elected in 1801, one of his first jobs as President was decreasing the number of officers in the army. The Revolutionary War was long over, the conflict with France was winding down, and they were trying to shrink the ranks.”

“So the political consequences…”

“Very good. Were staggering,” Mary Beth explained. “You have the political bug too, eh? Have you ever been to Monticello? I’d be happy to show you around.”

That was always the problem with the message boards. The odds were good, but the goods were odd. “I’m sorry, I’m just in a bit of a rush—”

“Okay, I get it — you’re married. My apologies. I’m just not good at reading these things—”

“Yes, so, aheh — you were saying about Jefferson… that the political consequences of firing officers…”

“Of course, of course. The politics were tricky to say the least, so to avoid putting his foot in it, Jefferson asked Lewis to secretly rank the loyalty of each army officer. That way, they’d know who to fire and who to keep on board.”

“So those symbols,” Kassal said, looking down at the “those were…”

“… Lewis and Jefferson’s coded rating system to make sure none of the officers would ever find out what Jefferson’s opinion of them actually was: whether they were trustworthy, apathetic, or a political enemy. So when the War Department supplied Jefferson with the list of all the brigadier generals and lieutenants, Lewis took his secret symbols and put…”

“… a handwritten mark next to each name,” Kassal said, studying the exact same symbols two hundred years later on the crossword. “To everyone else, it looked like the random blots of a fountain pen…”

“… right again… but to Jefferson, it was a guide to which of his officers were honest Abes. In fact, if you ever do come h— We actually have the original list on display, plus the key that Jefferson used to decipher the codes. It’s beautiful to see up close — all the flourishes in the old script.”

“Certainly sounds tempting,” Kassal said, making the kind of face that usually goes with biting a lemon. “But… Mary Beth, is it?”

“Mary Beth,” she said proudly.

“If I could ask you one last favor, Mary Beth: Now that I have the signs — the four dots and the cross with the slash through it — can you just read me the cipher so I know what each of these stands for?”