The Considerate Breeze of Dauphin Street

In the town of Mobile, Alabama, some years before anyone thought to call the war between the States Civil, there lived a man named Ephraim Cobb. He firmly believed, often publicly with a confidence that could crack a teacup, that he understood how things worked.

Ephraim was a clerk by profession, which in Mobile at this time meant he could read well enough to be trusted with ledgers and add well enough to be distrusted with other people’s money. He wore his hair parted as though it were a treaty line. He kept his coat buttoned with the zeal of a man guarding principles inside. He wore his opinions like a watch chain, always on display, lightly jingling when he walked.

On a particular April morning, warm as a biscuit and damp as a promise, Ephraim stepped out onto Dauphin Street with a notion. The notion was that truth, like sugar, had a proper place and could be neatly measured. If one simply followed the rules as he did, kept their accounts balanced, their prayers short, and their laughter suspicious, then life would repay the favor with predictability.

This belief was about to be tested by a sequence of events so ridiculous that several respectable citizens later claimed they had been embellished beyond reality. The facts, however, cannot be disputed.

It began with a hat.

Not just any hat, but Ephraim Cobb’s own hat, which he had brushed that morning to a shine suggestive of his moral fiber. As he stepped into the street, the hat lifted just a pinch,like a polite gentleman tipping his brim. He reached up, missed, and then the hat lifted again. This time with a giggle of movement it escaped and sailed off toward Bienville Square.

“Now see here,” Ephraim said to the wind, which, as usual, pretended not to listen.

The hat danced ahead of him, pausing occasionally as if considering whether to be caught. Ephraim pursued it past the apothecary, where Mr. Blanchard leaned in his doorway laughing so hard he forgot his own cough which caused him to rattle. Then past the fishmonger, whose mullet flapped in sympathy while the day's catch lied in repose.

“Help me!” Ephraim cried, though it was not clear whether he meant help catching the hat or help preserving his dignity.

A crowd gathered, as crowds do when dignity is lost. Children joined the chase with enthusiasm, understanding that rules are flexible when adults are flustered. A pair of dockhands placed bets on whether the hat would make it to the river. The Reverend Potter observed from the shade of the steeple and murmured something about trials and humility, but no one listened.

The hat finally settled, almost gracefully, mocking its owner, on the head of Miss Lila Beauregard. She had just stepped out of her family’s dry goods store. Lila was known in Mobile for her quick wit and fast smile. She regarded Ephraim’s hat as though it had made a deliberate choice, and the proper one.

“Is this yours, Mister Cobb?” she asked.

Ephraim took the hat, breathing as if he had outrun a thought. “It appears,” he said stiffly, “that things are not as orderly as one might hope.”

Miss Beauregard tilted her head. “Perhaps things are exactly as orderly as they should be,” she said, “not as one may hope,” which Ephraim filed away as nonsense to be corrected later.

Shaken but restored, Ephraim continued toward his office near the Custom House, where he was to tally shipping receipts and, if time allowed, judge the handwriting of others. He did not notice that his papers rustled in a conspiratorial way, or that the weather had developed a personality.

Inside the office, Mr. Horace Finch, Ephraim’s superior and a man shaped like a moral warning, was pacing.

“Cobb,” Mr. Finch said, “the ledger from Bayou La Batre has gone missing.”

Ephraim straightened. “That’s impossible.”

“Nevertheless,” Finch replied. “It was here yesterday. Now it is not. That ledger contains the record of a shipment whose owner disputes the count. Without it, we have confusion. And you know how I feel about confusion.”

Ephraim knew Mr. Finch felt about confusion the way cats feel about water and preachers feel about jokes in their sermons.

“I will find it,” Ephraim declared. “The truth leaves tracks.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Finch sniffed. “See that you do.”

Ephraim began his investigation with logic, which led him directly to the docks, where logic traditionally loses its shoes. There he questioned sailors whose stories contradicted one another with admirable enthusiasm, and longshoremen who shrugged as if shoulders were designed for philosophy. Needless to say the truth left no tracks on the shore of the bay.

One sailor, red-bearded and amused, said, “The ledger might’ve blown away, been mighty windy today.”

Ephraim scoffed. “Books do not simply blow away.”

The sailor pointed at Ephraim’s hat, which had begun to tremble slightly. “Hats do.”

Ephraim ignored this. He next consulted Mrs. Delacroix, whose boardinghouse overlooked the river and who delivered opinions with her meals. She served him coffee and a theory involving a runaway accountant, three ducks, and the moral failings of the once great town.

“Everything moves,” she said, pouring his black coffee. “You just don’t see it until it bumps you.”

Ephraim left unconvinced but caffeinated. All the while, Mobile went about its business. Cotton bales groaned, church bells practiced seriousness in somber tones, and the bay pretended it was not listening. People talked of the weather, and the weather listened carefully.

By afternoon, Ephraim had followed every sensible lead and several that had disguised themselves as sensible. He found nothing but a growing irritation and a persistent feeling that he was being duped.

At last, tired and heated, he sat on a bench in Bienville Square. Children were playing tag. A dog chased a philosophy he would never catch. Leaves skittered down the block like a small Mardi Gras parade.

Miss Beauregard approached him with a parcel. “You look as though the day has misplaced you,” she said.

“I am close,” Ephraim insisted. “Order will assert itself.”

She sat beside him. “You might consider that order doesn’t assert,” she said gently. “It only suggests.”

At that moment, a page fluttered from the parcel, landing at Ephraim’s feet. He bent to pick it up and froze. It was a page from the missing ledger. He looked up.

Miss Beauregard smiled. “Your book has been helping us wrap ribbons all morning. Quite useful.”

Ephraim stared. “How did it…?”

She shrugged. “It came in through the open window. Seemed rather determined.”

Ephraim returned the ledger to Mr. Finch, who was relieved and offended in equal measure. He received no praise, only a lecture on windows.

That evening, as the town settled and lamps blinked awake, Ephraim walked home along Dauphin Street. He felt unsettled, his certitude loosened like buttons after supper. He paused, removed his hat, and held it firmly.

“I prefer things to stay put,” he said aloud.

The air around him moved, warm and patient. It was then, and only then, that the truth could no longer be withheld.

“I have been with you all day, Ephraim Cobb. I lifted your hat not to mock you, but to invite you. I turned the pages not to steal, but to circulate. I am the motion you blame and the breath you forget to thank. I am the wind that moves through Mobile, through ledgers and hats and thoughts. You cannot see me, but you live by me. I do not disrupt order, I reveal that order is alive and dynamic.”

Ephraim felt this, not as words, but as understanding in his heart. He placed his hat back on his head, looser this time.

“Perhaps,” he said softly, “truth travels on the wind.”

And I, pleased, breezed away.