Even on his tour of the county that day, every...
Even on his tour of the county that day, every time Orcutt mentioned the Morris Canal, the Swede thought first of the dead uncle he had never known, a beloved brother who was much missed by his father and for whom the child had come to believe the canal beneath Raymond Boulevard was namedEven when his father bought the Central Avenue factory (no more than a hundred yards from the very spot where the canal had turned north toward Belleville, a factory that virtually backed on the city subway built beneath the old canal route), he persisted in associating the name of the canal with the story of the struggles of their family rather than with the grander history of the state
After going around Washington's Morristown headquarters--where he politely pretended he hadn't already seen the muskets and the cannonballs and the old eyeglasses as a Newark fourth grader--he and Orcutt drove southwest a ways, out of Morristown to a church cemetery dating second hand chanel back to the American RevolutionSoldiers killed in the war were buried there, as well as twenty-seven soldiers, buried in a common grave, who were victims of the smallpox epidemic that swept the encampments in the countryside in the spring of 1777Out among those old, old tombstones, Orcutt was no less historically edifying than he'd been all morning on the road, so that at the dinner table that evening, when Dawn asked where MrOrcutt had taken him, the Swede laughed, "I got my money's worth all rightThe guy's a walking encyclopediaI never felt so ignorant in my life
"How boring was it?" Dawn asked"Why, not at all," the Swede told herMore there than you think when you first meet himMuch more to Orcutt than the old school tie He was thinking particularly of the Easton whorehouse but said instead, "Family goes back to the Revolution
"Doesn't that come as a surprise," Dawn replied"The guy knows everything," he said, feigning indifference to her china mulberry sarcasm"For instance, that old graveyard where we were, it's at the top of the tallest hill around, so the rain that falls on the northern roof of the old church there finds its way north to the Passaic River and eventually to Newark Bay, and the rain that falls on the southern side finds its way south to a branch of the Raritan, which eventually goes to New Brunswick
"I don't believe that," said Dawn
"I refuse to believe it
"Oh, don't be a kid, DawnIt's interesting geologically" Deliberately he added, "Very interesting," to let her know he was having no part of the Irish resentmentIt was beneath him and happened also to be beneath her
In bed that night, he thought that when Merry got to be a schoolgirl he'd inveigle Orcutt into taking her along on this very same trip so she could learn firsthand the history of the county where she was growing upHe wanted her to see where, at the turn of the century, a railroad line used to run up into mens gucci watches Morristown from Whitehouse to carry the peaches from the orchards in Hunter-don CountyThirty miles of railroad line just to transport peachesAmong the well-to-do there was a peach craze then in the big cities and they'd ship them from Morristown into New YorkWasn't that something? On a good day seventy cars of peaches hauled from the Hunterdon orchardsTwo million peach trees down there before a blight carried them all awayBut he could himself tell her about that train and the trees and the blight when the time came, take her on his own to show her where the tracks used to beIt wouldn't require Orcutt to do it for him
"The first Morris County Orcutt, " Orcutt told him at the cemetery, pointing to a brown weathered gravestone decorated at the top with the carving of a winged angel, a gravestone set close up to the back wall of the churchProtestant immigrant from northern IrelandEnlisted in a local militia outfitJanuary 2, 1777, fought at Second tiffany jewelry wholesale TrentonBattle that set the stage for Washington's victory at Princeton the next day
"Didn't know that," the Swede said
"Wound up at the logistical base at MorristownCommissary support for the Continental artillery trainAfter the war bought a Morristown ironworksDestroyed by a flash flood, 1795Two flash floods, '94 and '95Big supporter of JeffersonPolitical appointment from Governor Bloomfield saved his lifeSurrogate of Morris CountyEventually county clerkThe sturdy, fecund patriarch
"Interesting," said the Swede--interesting at just the moment he found it all about as deadly as it could getHow it was interesting was that he'd never met anybody like this before
"Over here," said Orcutt, leading him some twenty feet on to another old brownish stone with an angel carved at the top, this one with an indecipherable rhyme of four lines inscribed near the bottomOne died in his thirties but the rest lived long livesSpread out all over Morris men's omega watch Cou