Shadows of Glory Page 8

  “A penny, gen’rul, please?”

  Now thrifty we must be, if we are to buy railroad certificates or grand sewing machines, and begging is not to be encouraged, for it harms the moral constitution.

  Yet, I fished out a coin for the little one, and more than a penny.

  “Hypocrite again!” you will say. But I could think only of our little John, and of the fragility of all human protections. I have known the hurts of children in my time.

  Off he ran howling in triumph, with me wondering whether I had given him too much for his own good.

  I had no more time for the admiration of mechanical progress. For time is money, too. I had an afternoon journey before me, with the sleigh already ordered up and waiting.

  First, I had a purchase to make.

  I went along the lovely street, considerate of the ladies when we passed between the snow piles narrowing the boardwalk. Across the way, I saw Mr. Douglass take himself into a bookseller’s. For my part, I went into Munger’s, an apothecary shop advertising ALL MEDICINES AND SUNDRIES.

  The place smelled of bitters. A bald-headed counter fellow grinned a great toother to see me approach.

  This was a matter of some delicacy. Fortunately, we were alone.

  “Look you,” I said. “I have an acquaintance who is troubled in the lungs.”

  “A temporary affliction?” he asked, quelled in manner. “Or do we speak of . . .”

  “Consumption,” I got the word out. “I fear it is the consumption.”

  His smile bloomed again. “Well, we have just the thing! A miracle of modern medicine. The very latest elixir. You’ve come to the right place, my friend.”

  He scooted around from the back of the counter, bending forward in his hurry, and searched along a row of well-dressed shelves.

  “Your friend may be thankful,” he said, “that we live in modern times. Here it is. Right down here. ‘Winchester’s Hydrophosphates.’ Guaranteed infallible, if the patient is susceptible to cure.” He held the lettered bottle out to me. “It’s the very latest in tonics, recommended by the best physicians of New York City and Boston.”

  “How much is it, then?” I asked.

  He looked at me soberly. “Well . . . it comes in different sizes. Seven-ounce bottle for one dollar, or six bottles for five dollars. Then there’s a sixteen-ounce bottle for two dollars.”

  Medicine is an expensive thing. But I was determined. Both for the goodness of the deed and to buy me an excuse to see her.

  I did the mathematics. Now, I can be chary of expenditure, and I considered buying only a dollar bottle. But the larger bottle was the bargain, clear. And I would not be mean of purse with a dying girl.

  “I will have the two-dollar bottle,” I said. Before he moved for his cash box, I held him with my eyes. “A cure is guaranteed, is it?”

  He laughed, but kindly. “Not from a single bottle, no, sir. But it’s a start. Your friend can try it out. If he or she doesn’t see a wonderful improvement . . . well, then we’ll try something else. But hundreds of documented cases claim that a full course of Winchester’s will rid the body not only of consumption, but of asthma, chronic bronchitis and . . . female complaints.”

  “But she will see results? She’ll feel them?”

  He nodded gravely, then smiled again. “As long as she’s susceptible to cure. Nobody can do a thing for those who won’t be cured.”

  That made eminent sense, and I paid him.

  As I was going out, a grand fellow stopped me. Upright, with a mighty beard and a fine Sunday topper on his head, I would have thought him president of the bank.

  “Major Abel Jones?”

  “I am he, sir. But you have the advantage—”

  “Stafford Cleveland,” he said. “Editor and publisher, Yates County Chronicle.” He extended his hand. And then I saw he was a scribbler sure, for ink blackened his fingernails and the creases in his knuckles. As we shook, he continued, “We’re the paper on the right side of the issues up here. Lincoln party, you know.” He handed me his card.

  I could not imagine what interest a newspaper fellow would have in me.

  “I have not yet had the pleasure, sir, of reviewing your newspaper. But I am a regular reader of the Evening Star, Washington’s finest—”

  “Major Jones, how about an interview? My readers want the Federal view on these murders and this conspiracy business. And I’d also like to do a story on Washington’s view of the British threats of war and—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, pushing along. For I realized I had been ambushcadoed.

  The fellow followed me, near knocking down a woman with her packages.

  “Where’re you going? Major Jones? The people have a right to know!”

  I stopped and gave him a look. Now I like a good newspaper, but where would we be if lowly government officials such as myself, who cannot see the great design above them, went blathering to the press? Oh, that would be a sorry time. You might as well let the village idiot preach the sermon and Frenchmen set your morals. No, silence is a virtue. Let the great men talk, for they know what is to be said and not.

  “Sir,” I told him, “I cannot talk to a newspaper man. And I must not talk to a newspaper man. And I will not talk to a newspaper man. For it is not my place to talk to a newspaper man.”

  “The people have a right to know, Major Jones. When there’s a danger of insurrection . . . atrocious murder on the roads . . .”

  I lifted the head of my cane and fair shook it at him. For his presumption startled me. What if all newspaper fellows were so? Demanding answers of every decent sort going about his business?

  I will admit my reaction was too fierce, for Stafford Cleveland turned out a good fellow in the end, and he wrote a fair page. But that is hindsight. And I was not myself, given the troubles inside of me and out.

  “The people have a right to know,” I said. “But I have no right to tell them. Even if I had a thing to tell, which I do not. Perhaps you should talk to your own Sheriff Underwood, and not go nattering after a Federal officer at his duties.”

  He looked nonplussed. “But Underwood sent me to you.”

  I saw the beauty of it then, for I am not always slow of mind. All at once, I understood how the game is played with these press fellows.

  “You really need to talk to the coroner’s assistant,” I told him. “He’s the fellow that knows, see.”

  I left him scribbling a note. Clutching the bottle of medicine, I hastened toward the livery stable. For I was late.

  Nonetheless, I went a block out of my way to avoid the window with the Singer.

  “I’M REG’LAR JOHN,” my driver told me, standing ready by the sleigh. His Ethiopian visage gleamed against the winter paleness. “Call me that cause I does everything reg’lar. Yes, sir. Reg’lar to church, reg’lar to work here, and reg’lar home to dinner, long as work ain’t got me held fast.”

  I thrust out my hand. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  He looked at me oddly. After glancing around us, he briefly took my hand.

  “You know your way then?” I asked him.

  He gave me a ready smile. “Know my way? Reg’lar John been up and down this county summer and winter.” He soothed a spark of restiveness in the lead horse—from which I kept my distance. “You just name me a rabbit by name, I take you right up aside his hole.”

  “You know the Kyle place then?”

  Of a sudden, the fine fellow changed. Shrinking against the flank of the stallion.

  “I knows it,” he said, voice lowered.

  The alteration in the man was pronounced. As though I had raised my cane to threaten him.

  “You seem hesitant, sir. Something wrong, is it?”

  He shied his eyes toward the grit and snow of the livery yard. “No, sir. Nothing wrong. We going anyplace you wants to go. It’s only . . .” He lifted his eyes back to me, examining me more closely than before. “ . . . well, there’s an unkindness in folks down that way. Don’t li
ke the Negro. Or any other color of outside people. They figures if they does right and stays up there in the hills, we all ought to stay down here and let ’em alone.”

  Now, I have seen something of the world. I know the disdain of the African is not a phenomenon that stops at the boundaries of Dixie. And I had no wish to endanger the good man.

  “Perhaps, sir, it would be better if I took another driver? If the residents dislike—”

  He waved his head at a greater horror. “No, sir. No, sir. I’m the reg’lar driver. And I does everything reg’lar.”

  “But I would not have you endangered, see.”

  He shook his head again. His woolen cap had a tassel atop it. The little ball swung from side to side. “No danger now. I just minds my own business while you does your business. I just minds my own business and takes care of my sleigh and my team. Anyways, only other fellow could go is Bucky, and he’s blacker than a bucket of coal. Can’t drive worth a bean, neither.”

  “Well then,” I said, for time was running, “shall we go? You have the blankets?”

  “Plenty of blankets, sir. Just like you said. They all tucked in back, you see? You going to be plenty warm, don’t you worry.”

  He climbed up on his perch behind the horses, did Reg’lar John. Although the cost was greater, I had specified a larger vehicle, so that I might sit on the bench behind, farther from the monstrous brutes who must pull us. Mind you—I paid the difference from my own pocket and did not beleaguer our national treasury.

  When I was seated and settled, with the blankets snug about me, the driver raised the whip. Then he hesitated.

  “Folks say the Kyle farm haunted now,” he told me. “All kinds of haunt doings up there. With that magic fellow.”

  “You believe in spirits, sir?” It was a topic newly of interest to me.

  He shook his head and the little tassel swung. “Don’t matter what I believes. It’s what is that matters. See now. In the Bible, Jesus . . . He raised up folks from the dead. Got up Himself, too. So maybe some folks gets up ain’t supposed to? Sneaky like? Though I’m not saying they will or they won’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told the simple fellow, “we shall be safe.” Although the truth was that I had my own fears in my heart. With the last sweat of my sickness down my back. And my pistol under my greatcoat.

  We retraced the route the sheriff and I had taken the day before. I wondered if I had only been under a spell those lifelong hours ago, if those highland views would so affect me upon a second inspection. The splendor of the white-clad moors and glens, of that endless parade of ridges, had intoxicated me. But I had been fevered. And disappointment is the common reward of too much expectation. Much that we have seen is painted finer in the mind than in the fact.

  I was not disappointed. We had not the glory of the setting sun, for it was high afternoon. But beauty has as many shapes as evil. Now, in the pure light, the trees seemed made of glass. Their iced limbs dazzled to hurt the eye. Weighted branches broke off, loud as shots, a skirmish in the groves. When big limbs fell, the horses shied, but my driver kept them under control handsomely. Where the road followed the ridgeline, you could see to China. Except for the teamster of a lumber sled, we did not pass another traveler.

  Reg’lar John asked if he might sing, and I have never minded a pleasant melody. He had a warm, manly voice and, to his credit, the songs he chose were hymns and moral anthems. I joined him in a few, but did not assert the power of my lungs, for I did not want to shame the poor fellow. No one sings a hymn quite like a Welshman. And it was clear the horses were accustomed only to Reg’lar John’s musicality, for they acted queer whenever I sang out.

  We passed the tree where I had been hung in effigy. The cornshuck head still dangled by the rope, but the driver did not notice and I did not wish to alarm him. A bit farther along, we approached a settlement and Reg’lar John gave the horses a taste of the whip. We passed between a pair of taverns and turned toward the heart of the highland plateau. The driver did not sing as we shushed through the hamlet. Twas cold, and few bodies stirred. But a fellow leaving a privy and another splitting wood paused to look us over.

  When we had gotten a piece beyond—following a slighter road with fewer sleigh tracks—Reg’lar John called back to me:

  “Two taverns back there? One called ‘Bull Run,’ other ‘Manassas.’ Union-minded folks goes to Bull Run, but them that got no liking for President Lincoln and this here war, they goes to Manassas. Terrible fights when everybody gets to drinking. Nothing else to do up here in the winter. Not much in summer, neither.”

  “I would not have thought,” I called out over the rush of the runners and the clop of hooves, “that there would be so many people opposed to abolition this far north.”

  Reg’lar John shrugged his shoulders, then leaned back toward me. The tassel of his cap dangled. “Some folks just contrary,” he told me. “Even in the Bible, there’s folks inclined towards hating other folks. Way I looks at it, poor white folks lucky to have the black man to go opposing. Otherwise, they’d have to go opposing themselves, for all the spite they got to use up.” He teased the whip in the air, alerting the horses without lashing them. “There’s just a meanness in this world,” he told me. “Even Baby Jesus couldn’t get it out of folks. So I just minds my ways and keeps reg’lar.”

  WE PASSED THROUGH COUNTRY POOR as the Pushtoon hills. The tidy farmhouses near the town had long since given way to shacks. Instead of barns, there were sheds of gray boards, their roofs buckled under the weight of ice and snow. If not for the occasional trail of chimney smoke smudging the sky, you would have thought the landscape abandoned. The sleigh rode roughly.

  “Not far now, that Kyle place,” Reg’lar John told me. He had given up singing entirely.

  To pass the time, I asked if he knew Frederick Douglass, the Negro fellow who was my fellow lodger.

  “Oh, yes, sir. Yes, now. Everybody knows Fred Douglass.”

  “And you think him a good man?”

  “He’s a powerful, speechifying man. Brave man, even when there’s no call for it.” He gee-upped the team.

  “You admire him then?”

  “Much as I admires any unhappy man.”

  “You think him unhappy, sir?”

  “Well . . . I’m not saying yes or no. But he does put me in mind of that priest fellow them Irish folks got. All raging against what the Lord set down here, and bent on fixing it all by himself.”

  “But surely . . . you would not accept injustice? I’m told Mr. Douglass is a great advocate for your people. A shining example . . .”

  He glanced back at me with a rag of a smile. “Folks are different. Big folks like Fred Douglass and that priest fellow goes straight for the bull. That’s their way. But Reg’lar John going to work his way around that pasture, ’cause he don’t got no business with any bull and don’t want none.”

  “But . . . you said you go to church regularly, sir? As Christians, we must all stand up to injustice!”

  “Kyle place just down there.” He pointed his whip toward a brown house behind a gnarl of trees. “Sir, I hopes to be a good Christian and to die in the Grace of the Lord. But there ain’t no hurry about the dying part. See, I figure if folks nailed up Jesus for speaking His mind, I better just go quiet and reg’lar about things. That just works out best.”

  HE KNEW I WOULD COME. For I had not been the first. Whatever else the Great Kildare was or was not, he was an experienced hunter of souls. And he knew the quarry would come for the bait he had set out.

  He did not even make a game of it. He only looked me up and down as I stood atop the steps before his door. All of the previous night’s anger had drained from his demeanor, leaving only a mocking smile behind his beard. He put things directly:

  “You want to see my daughter, I expect?”

  I did, indeed. No, “want” is too soft a word. I had to see her. For a night and a day, I had struggled against the thought of her and the message she had brought me
from beyond. Throughout the long drive, I had jailed her at the very edge of my mind, in a place akin to a dream. But I had to see her. Had I glimpsed a thing forbidden, or only been a fool? I had to know.

  I held the pathetic little bottle out toward him. He glanced at its jacket of brown paper, but swiftly raised his eyes to mine again. There was no kindness in those eyes, nor aught else that I could decipher.

  “Medicine?” he asked, before I could explain. “Leave it, if you want.”

  “I must see her,” I said. I stepped forward, as if to prevent him from shutting the door. Although he had not moved to do so.

  “I know,” he said. “But you can’t.”

  I looked at him pleadingly. How do you force a man to grant you an interview with his daughter? I mustered up what little I knew of these types, these mesmerists and dark performers.

  “I’ll pay,” I said. “To speak to her.”

  He nodded. Nothing I could do or say would surprise him. “Something can be arranged,” he said in a dismissive tone. “But not now.”

  “Please, sir. I have . . . questions.”

  “Everyone has questions for Nellie. But let me save you further display, Major Jones. The reason you can’t see her is that she isn’t here.”

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  He smiled again. His lips did not part, but his beard bristled and spread, and the thin mouth curled.

  The Great Kildare extended his arm toward the white horizon. “Out there,” he told me. “Perhaps toward the lake. She communes with the spirits.”

  “I’ll find her,” I told him, desperate as a lover.

  He kept his voice low and coldly polite. He did remind me of the Englishmen he aped. “I wish you luck. For all the good it will do you.”

  I took the shambles of my heart and my bad leg back toward the sleigh. In the yard of the place, two ugly men with trouble in their faces were giving hard looks to Reg’lar John. They had the Irishness upon them. My driver ignored the fellows, brushing the ice and slop from a horse’s withers.