he rummaged awhile among a multitude of boxes in hallways and dry-rotted black holes of rooms. He learned a little about the other businesses that had been here, but nothing especially relevant for his project.
He made his way to the fourth floor, in increasing heat. Was it just a wild-goose chase? That seemed more and more likely with every step.
The fourth floor consisted of one large, long room; it would have made a good indoor basketball court, in more temperate months. The naked walls, ceiling, and floor offered a course on the construction methods of the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It seemed this floor had always been the dumping ground for the major debris of decades, and Nick now found himself amid a beckoning archaeological site. Something was here, something crucial. He could feel it.
Feeble light from the street windows illuminated in colorless relief a blanket of dust covering everything. His slightest movement created minuscule tornadoes that sent galaxies of dust motes swirling up his nose and into his eyes. He poked around several piles of stuff, until a random swing of his fading flashlight found in the far corner of the room the old barber chairs.
Or what was left of three or four of them. The good chairs had long ago been commandeered, and now no doubt served as decor in some Americana-themed eatery. Other telltale signs of the barber’s trade were evident to Nick: drawers with scissors and combs, razors, brushes, and other implements that Ivanhoe must have used for the minor surgery barbers performed in those days; some bottles of whimsical and ornate design, that probably once held the rainbow array of tonics and scents Ivanhoe splashed on his customers’ faces and scalps; striped poles, and signs advertising the many grooming services available at “Balzar’s Tonsorial Emporium”; an oak file cabinet, which stood sentinel over rat-eaten piles of account ledgers.
And there, atop the file cabinet, inconspicuous below similarly mildewed and gnawed volumes, was Ivanhoe’s diary, the most momentous impossible gap Nick would ever be likely to discover in a long life of genealogical research, if such were to be his fortune.
.
14
Pacing around downstairs, in what once was Balzar’s Tonsorial Emporium, Nick eagerly plowed into the diary. He couldn’t resist.
It was a meticulously kept, almost-daily journal of Ivanhoe’s life and dreams. A priceless find for a historian, and no mean discovery, either, when viewed from a strictly monetary angle, Nick thought. These things today could fetch four, maybe five figures at auction. He’d never been much a drinker of the collectivist Kool-Aid so often ladled out in academe; profit was just fine and dandy with him. But he suspected that in the case of this little prize, Armiger would never let him reach the auction room.
Ivanhoe’s handwriting was self-assured, his spelling reasonably good, his attitude proud. From the very first words, Nick sensed that he was a man with a clear-eyed view of what was right, a man who had always striven to keep his conscience clean. He instantly envied and respected Ivanhoe.
Nick began to carefully turn the pages, pausing at entries that grabbed him. He knew the journal would require months, years of close study; even the first few passages gave him tantalizing hints of what lay deeper within.
From The Diary of Ivanhoe Balzar:
Mulatto Barber of Natchitoches
We buried my beloved Mother in Natchez, her Bible on her chest, this day of our Lord April 14th 1869. She told me before she died,–Son, you are as good as your brother Jacob, and don’t let him take nothing away from you, because your Father, may he rest in Peace, wanted it that way. The law of the land is on your side, now–she said. She been keeping my Father’s letter, ever since he passed, near ten years ago. Just before she passed to her Reward, she gave me the letter, and I have hid it so that Mister Jacob can’t find it, and I won’t show it, no! not for my own life. Some day Providence will make all things right. And til that glorious time I am going to make this rekord so my Children and their Children after them will know Hard Work, Clean Living, and Faith in the Almitey is worth more than the riches of this sinful world, that only causes hatefulnis, pain, and sorow, the which you can see in the way Mister Jacob and his half-sister treat all us others. Remember, my Children, when you are born, to trust in the Good Book,