Deaths Excellent Vacation

couldn’t confirm a particular factoid. Invariably they’d say something to the effect of, “Oh, sorry, I got that out of the Boatner’s I keep here on my desk.” As I got the hang of things, I did the checking from my own sources and rarely had to touch base with the writers. In time I no longer bothered to take note of which writer had actually written the pages. That being the case, I hadn’t realized that I’d been working on one of Palgrave’s chapters until he appeared suddenly in the door of my office. It was four fifteen on a rainy Friday afternoon. I had been looking forward to the weekend.
    “Worm castles,” he said.
    I swear the temperature dropped by ten or fifteen degrees. He had a purple file folder in his hand and was tapping it against the door frame.
    “Worm castles,” he repeated.
    “Excuse me?” I said.
    He opened the folder and turned it so that I could see the page of text inside. There was a single red check mark in the margin. He sighed heavily. “You have queried the term worm castles in my sidebar on dwindling Union rations.”
    “Ah. So I did. Please, Mr. Palgrave, sit down.” I tipped my gym bag off the folding chair in the corner.
    He stayed where he was. “Mr. Clarke—” he began.
    “Jeff,” I said. “Please call me Jeff.”
    He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. “Whatever for?”
    “Well, it’s just—if we’re going to be working together, I thought it would be nice to be on a first-name basis.”
    “Do you imagine that we’re going to become friends, Mr. Clarke?”
    I tried to read his eyes. “I just thought—” I broke off and tried again. “It’s casual Friday.”
    The answer appeared to satisfy him. “Yes, of course. Jeff.” He somehow broke it into two syllables, as if translating from Old English. “Let us review the offending section of my description of food rations during the Chattanooga campaign.”
    “Look, I was simply checking the sources. I didn’t mean—”
    “As always, a staple of the Union fighting man’s diet was hardtack, a hard, simple cracker made of flour, water, and salt. Hardtack—a term derived from tack , a slang term common among British sailors as a descriptive of food—offered many advantages to an army on the move. Cheap to produce and virtually imperishable, hardtack easily withstood the extremes of temperature and rough handling to which it was subjected in the average soldier’s kit. Indeed, the thick wafer proved so indestructible that soldiers were obliged to soften it in their morning coffee before it could be eaten. This extra step offered an additional advantage—at a time when improper storage conditions meant that many of the army’s foodstuffs were infested with insects, a good soaking in coffee allowed any unwanted maggots or weevil larvae to float to the top of the soldier’s cup, where they could easily be skimmed off. As a result, the soldiers often referred to their hardtack rations as worm castles .”
    Palgrave stopped reading and looked at me expectantly. “Well? This did not meet with your approval?”
    “It’s perfect,” I said. “Very concise and informative. But I need a source for the phrase worm castles .”
    “A source?”
    “I’ve checked every source in the packets you were given. Furgurson, Foote, Livermore—all of them. I’ve found any number of slang terms for hardtack. Tooth dullers. Dog biscuits. Sheet iron. Jaw breakers. Ammo reserves. But I can’t find worm castles .”
    “I don’t see the problem.”
    “I need a citation. It may be just a formality, but I need it. My job, as I understand it, is to check the facts—even the trivial ones. If somebody says that Grant’s first name was Ulysses, I have to check it. You can’t just say that Civil War soldiers walked around using the phrase worm castles without a source. What if they didn’t?”
    “They did.”
    “I’m sure they did. I just need you to tell me where you got it.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Clarke, I have worked here for thirteen years.”
    “I appreciate that. And I’ve only worked here for a few weeks. So I’m asking you to help me do my job.”
    “You may rest assured that my facts are in order.”
    “With respect, I can’t take it on faith. I need a source.”
    “I am the source.”
    “But how do you know it’s right?”
    “It just is.” He closed the folder and stared at me for a long moment. “Per aspera ad astra,” he said, walking away.
    I