Linguistics of Love

My office is on the top floor of a brick building which used to house the staff who lived on campus in the early days of the university, but has now been converted into the offices of the Anthropology and History departments. It still has the charm of the original architecture on the outside, with a wrought iron railing along the front stairs and painted shutters encapsulating the windows.

I make my way inside, preparing to get back to work as soon as I sit behind my desk. Whenever a puzzle is laid out before me it takes over. I think that’s what I like about linguistics, there’s always a mystery to be solved, one that can have multiple interpretations. My most recent research focus is centered on a set of letters the school recently uncovered. They appear to be war correspondence, but in a language the History and English departments couldn’t piece out, so they’d made their way to my desk. I’m a few paces away from my office, when a head peaks out of the door across from mine.

“Dr. Carter,” says the tall man now leaning against the doorframe of his office.

“Dr. Jones, I told you, just call me Evelyn,” I correct with a smile.

“Well then, like I said, you just call me Sam,” he smiles and pushes his tortoise shell glasses further up the bridge of his prominent nose.

I smile and feel heat in my cheeks. I clear my throat, balking at the unprofessional nature my thoughts quickly slip into. My mind is suddenly occupied with two items of attention, the letters and Sam Jones.

“Will do,” I finally respond.

He smiles, a dimple creasing his cheek.

“How are those letters coming along?” He asks.

I lean against my doorframe, opposite to him, and give a quick glance back into my office.

“I think I’m getting somewhere. I don’t think it’s exactly a language, but more so a mix of them into some sort of code,” I chew my lip in thought.

Sam makes a thoughtful noise, “Multiple languages, interesting. How did you figure that out?”

“Well, I started by looking for any familiar words and I found certain prefixes and suffixes tend to be left uncoded. However, the prefixes appear to be Latin and the suffixes appear to be Greek. The main issue now is that the root words are coded and I’m not sure exactly what type of code it is,” the words spill out of me in an excited rush.

I expect him to be bored, but Sam nods along with each word, as if he’s pausing to hold onto each one before digesting it. He smiles and tucks his hands into his front pockets. It should be a crime for one person to be so intelligent and so devastatingly good looking at the same time. Of course, I would never say that aloud. While I love languages and linguistics, talking on the other hand is not my forte. I think that might be why I like language as much as I do. Being able to look at communication and decode it in an academic way makes me feel at ease. It’s when nuance and emotion becomes involved that I feel myself clam up, expressing myself through my own words is far more difficult than any deep dive into language and history could be.

“Well, if you find yourself needing any help let me know. Historical perspective help, that is,” he clears his throat and smiles

I return the gesture, “Of course. Thank you, Sam.”

He winks and turns to head back into his office.

He winks.

I stand outside our offices for a second too long. As befuddled as I’m left by every interaction with Sam Jones, I find solace in my work and easily lose myself once back at my desk. I slide my glasses back onto my face and slip gloves on to protect the letters as I look through them once more. The solution is so close, as if I’m a breath away from figuring out the code and unlocking the true meaning of the letters, but there’s a door I’ve yet to locate that has all the answers. There is something missing.

Hours spent poring over work lead to little progress, but I think I’ve figured out now what I need. I believe this is a version of a cipher code with a keyword to base the decoding on. Each letter of the keyword would shift the letter of the original word. For further security, it seems the original root words were given double vowels to confuse anyone who came across the letters. I can only wonder what was important enough that a code of this measure would be needed. It must be connected to some espionage or a treason, possibly a turning point of war. According to the History Department, the letters are from the Civil War era, but their origin story is unknown.

There’s a knock at my office door. I take a glance down at my watch. I’ve stayed far longer than I’d planned to, enraptured by the work. It’s a Friday night, I’m sure plenty of people my age would be out enjoying a drink and company, but not me. Even as an adult I can’t seem to escape my studies, always caught up in the next intellectual project and putting socialization to the wayside. The knock on my door makes me suddenly self-conscious. I’m sure whoever it is, most likely one of the office janitorial staff, is expecting the room to be empty.

“Come in,” I sigh.

Sam peaks his head through and gives me a smile.

“Burning the midnight oil?” He asks.

I lose all sense of words and stare at him, unsure what to say. He saves me the embarrassment of stuttering out an answer by walking into my office, shutting the door and taking a seat in front of my desk. He holds up a brown bag, the bottom saturated with grease stains.

“I figured you’d need some brain fuel to keep going,” he says and places the bag neatly on the corner of my desk, a safe distance from the letters.

I clear my throat, “Oh, wow, thanks. That’s- that’s really kind. I hadn’t realized anyone else was here. I’m a little embarrassed to be honest.”

“Embarrassed? About what?” He looks incredulously at me, but begins to unpack the food, aluminum foil wrapped items and bags of fries, his arms flexing beneath rolled up sleeves.

“It’s almost 11pm on a Friday night. Most people would be out or at least not voluntarily still at their office,” I give a short laugh.

“Most people don’t have unknown history at their fingertips and the intellectual ability to solve a 160 year old mystery. It’s impressive,” he gives me a genuine smile and pats the seat next to him.

I slide the glove off the hand that I was using to hold the letters and come around to take a seat beside him. I sit down and Sam reaches to grab the leg of my chair, scooting it closer to him with graceful ease. I have to suppress a noise of both shock and glee as he does so.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, but I heard you were vegetarian, so I got veggie burgers from Jimmy’s. And you can’t go to Jimmy’s without getting fries with their house sauce. It would be criminal,” Sam jokes and hands me a foil wrapped burger.

I unwrap the burger and he splays the fries out on the flattened paper bag, opening sauce containers for convenience. The burger is mouth-watering, dripping with cheese and stacked high with toppings. I go in for a bite and sauce dribbles down my chin.

“I need to know who Jimmy is so I can personally thank him,” I gush, my shyness melting away, and look at Sam.

Sam grabs a napkin and wipes my chin clean. I blush.

“I like the glasses. They suit you,” he says, hand pausing briefly on my chin before dropping away.

“Oh, I forgot I had them on,” I say and slide them further up my nose out of habit.

Sam clears his throat and settles back in his chair. He nods toward the letters and my desk cluttered with books, pens and notes on various pieces of colored paper.

“Make any breakthroughs?” He asks.

“I think so. I’m pretty sure the root words require a keyword cipher, one that repeats and alters the letters of the root word. The thing is, I’m not sure what the word could be. It really could be anything. I just wish I knew more about who wrote the letters so I would have a starting place to figure out what word they could have chosen.”

Sam makes a contemplative noise and finishes off his burger.

“Well, I am a historian. I could do a little digging. If you don’t mind, that is,” he says and stands to look at the letters.

“Actually, that would be great,” I say and join him on the other side of the desk.

“Great,” he smiles down at me and then reaches for the letter sitting on top.

Before I can think, I reach out and grab his hand with mine.

“Oh, be careful. The integrity of the letters,” I squeak out.

I expect Sam to be embarrassed, but he simply looks at me and then our joined hands. I think I should pull away, but he readjusts our hands. The corners of his mouth turn up and suddenly the world is all Sam. It’s as if fire caught at the edges of a picture and burned away everything but the center. And the center is Sam Jones.

Sam pulls me closer and I float into him. He doesn’t release my hand, but with the other he reaches for my face and readjusts my glasses. The corners of his mouth turn up to a soft smile, but his eyes are anything but soft.

“You are the most intelligent, beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he breathes.

“I think that’s just the Jimmy’s talking,” I somehow manage to say.

He huffs and shakes his head, then we’re kissing. His hand drops to my jaw, the other further entangling our fingers. I’ve spent my career deciphering and studying words, but this moment holds more depth than any written or spoken language. This moment is beyond syntax.

He drops my fingers and presses a firm palm into my lower back. I intertwine my fingers behind his neck and deepen the kiss. Sam grunts and I know if he could he would sink as far into this moment as he could and stay there, because I feel the same. We pull apart, chests moving rapidly to catch up with the loss of air.

He skates a thumb lightly over my bottom lip, “So this research project.”

I swat at his chest and we both laugh. Then, sitting at my desk and Sam returning to his office to grab his laptop and books, we get to work. I now have a research partner. A tall, dark and handsome one at that. As curious as I am to solve the mystery of these letters, a small part of me would be okay if this research went on forever.

<3<3<3

Weeks later, progress has been made both in regards to the letter and with Sam. What started as a simple project and has turned it into something more. Sam has been taking a deep dive into the history of the college, as he found that the letters were left by professor fleeing from Sherman’s March across the South. Sam has a theory that the professor was one of the two involved in the writing and sharing of the letters, but we haven’t exactly found out why. As for the linguistics aspect, I’ve tried plugging in a litany of words for the cipher, even creating a list of phrases of the time or war related words. The list lives on the chalkboard in my office, each word crossed off once deemed ineffective. The process is lengthy.

I finish my lunch, a Jimmy’s veggie burger, and shoot Sam a quick text, taunting him with a picture of me mid-bite. I return to work, getting back to the list of words. I’m crossing out the word “Dahlgren,” a naval gun favored by the Union, when Sam bursts through my office door. I smile at him, then I notice the look on his face. He’s figured something out. His eyes look down at the papers clutched in his hand, scanning the words. I wait for him to speak, not wanting to break his concentration, but desperate for the information altogether.

He chews on his lip, “I think I’ve found something.”

I nod, “That seemed pretty clear.”

Sam gives me a half smile, never one to miss out on a joke, then continues on.

“I don’t think these letters are war correspondence,” Sam continues and circles my desk to meet me at the chalkboard.

“What makes you say that?” I ask, watching him reach for the roll of tape on my desk and turn back to the board.

Sam doesn’t answer me, but begins to tear strips of tape and hang up papers. First, he sticks a portrait of Benjamin Fortsworth, the professor who we’re now sure wrote one half of the correspondence.

“This is Benjamin Fortsworth,” Sam points with his free hand, the other still clutching papers.

I nod, perplexed, and he continues.

“And this is him with his wife, Madeleine Beauchamp Fortworth. This is their marriage certificate, which is dated 1861.”

He points to the picture of the couple, then the marriage license.

“And this,” he continues, pointing at the paper with the list of names, “is a log of travellers on a ship that left the US for France in April 1862.”

“Okay, but why is this so important?” I ask.

Sam raises a finger as if telling me to wait, then tapes more papers up to the chalkboard.

“This death certificate shows that Madeleine died in France shortly after her arrival; she never returned to the US.”

“That’s sad, Sam, but I’m confused. What does Fortworth’s wife dying have to do with the letters? Was he writing them to her?” I ask.

“That’s the thing. I don’t think these letters were between Fortworth and his wife, but between Fortworth and this man, Bertram Barnes.”

Sam points to a man who appears in the various old photographs, the images worn by time and in the typical style of 1800s photography.

“Barnes and Fortworth were friends for many years. They even lived on the same property after Fortworth’s wife died, according to these land deed and census records. And they both died within a month of one another, while living on the same property, according to these death certificates.”

I follow Sam’s gestures around the board as he explains each document. Then he lands on one with Bertram Barne’s name, an enlistment card.

“The only time the two were not together was when Bertram left for the war and, coincidentally, when Fortsworth married . He decided to fight for the Union even though he lived in the South, it seemed his family wanted little to do with him after that,” with this Sam tapes up a letter addressed to Barnes and looks at me.

“Okay, so Barnes and Fortworth wrote the letters. They were technically on different sides of the war, Barnes was fighting for the Union and Fortworth was stuck in the South with his property and job. They coded the letters because- what? They were sharing secret information? Espionage?”

Sam shakes his head, “According to my research, Fortworth was never involved in the war. He never enlisted, he was never drafted and, after the war, he received no recognition for espionage or any other type of service. Of course, he could have done it of his own volition, but -”

Sam trails off.

“But, what?”

“They were lovers,” Sam says plainly, turning to me.

I arch an eyebrow, “What? How did you come up with this? It just sounds like a hunch to me, Sam.”

Sam shakes his head once more and begins to pace.

“I was in my office looking through this information and you texted me. Your name popped up on the screen and I clicked it open to see the picture you sent, you smiling with Jimmy sauce dribbling down your chin and I- I just thought,” Sam stops pacing and looks at me, an arms distance away.

“Love. That’s the answer. It’s what motivates people. It makes them spend their lives making it work, makes them do anything in order to be near that one person. Love is what makes someone, who appears perfectly healthy from the outside, slowly die within from heartbreak until they can’t face the world without that one person.”

Sam takes a step closer to me and I look up at him, my mouth agape.

“Realizing that I love you, led me to the answer. Love is the keyword to the cipher.”

I give him an incredulous look, still unable to speak and he reaches to grab my face.

“Now, it may be a hunch that love is the answer to our research, but it’s no hunch that I love you, Evelyn. I love you. I love you with all the certainty I’ll ever have. And, as a historian, I’m personally jealous of whatever scholar gets to come across our love story once we’re gone from this world, but not too jealous, because I’ll have loved you.”

Sam’s fingers brush my jawline and my heart hammers the fastest it ever has. I look into his eyes, all research forgotten, lost to the emotion bared so blatantly within them. I don’t think there are words or language that could ever describe how I feel, but I think I know where to start.

“I love you, too.”