El Paso: A Novel (18 page)

NEXT MORNING, COLONEL SHAUGHNESSY’S
NE&P Train No. 1 had stopped at the Memphis railroad depot, waiting for coal to be loaded on. In twenty-four hours he had made 550 miles. Saturday was bright and many people crowded the station, including peddlers and vendors of newspapers, pies and cakes, hair tonics, and straw hats. There was also a clown walking on stilts and a man with a performing bear.

Timmy and Katherine pressed their faces to the windows of
The City of Hartford
, drinking all of it in. Even though they’d sailed with the Colonel on
Ajax
, this was the greatest adventure of their lives. Timmy, who had more of his father’s temperament than the Colonel’s, was especially excited when the Colonel described for him Buck Callahan’s superb ability as a craftsman and woodcarver. Timmy’s current interest was in building wood models—ships, airplanes, automobiles—all of which came in kits with glue, paper, and balsawood. But Buck, the Colonel said, would show him how to make things out of real hardwood, substantial things with heft and strength: animals, birds, things with curves and depth. He nearly couldn’t wait.

Strucker was amused by the bear, which was doing a sort of dance with a cane while its owner, a dressed as a gypsy, cranked out a tune on a hurdy-gurdy. For most of the morning, to the disgust of Beatie, Strucker had indulged himself in orange juice and gin and by now was basking in its glow.

“That bear is quite a sight,” exclaimed the authoritarian Junker. “It looks almost human, does it not?” Strucker was wearing an expensive-looking dark green vicuña smoking jacket with a yellow silk ascot. When he arose from his parlor chair to get a better look from the window, Xenia could have sworn she heard him click his heels.

“Maybe it’s just a man in a bear suit,” Xenia remarked hopefully. Like Arthur, she didn’t like Strucker much, despite the man’s reputation as a cultivated internationalist and despite the Colonel’s high opinion of him as a yachtsman. Strucker represented himself as a businessman who professed to be appalled with the stupendous bloodletting recently unleashed by what most Americans commonly assumed was German greed. But Xenia’s experience with Germans was that they rarely turned on their own kind—even the Americanized ones, which Strucker was not—and she found the urbane Saxon a bit too suave to be true.

The Colonel had gone to the telegraph depot in the train station to see if his Boston office had transmitted him any messages of importance. As he was returning to the car, the performing bear act caught his eye.

“Look,” Timmy said, “there’s Grandpa.”

“Your grandfather certainly enjoys animals,” Xenia said.

The Colonel was transfixed with the bear act, sporting a strange sort of smile on his face. The bear was not a particularly large specimen, but standing on its hind paws, it was nearly tall as the Colonel. It was unmuzzled and, with its mouth open, appeared to be smiling.

The organ grinder quit grinding and began feeding the bear peanuts, which it ate shells and all. The Colonel stepped forward from the small crowd and began petting the bear on its head. The bear responded by licking the Colonel’s fingers. The Colonel was talking to the gypsy, who began nodding his head.

Out on the platform the Colonel was still speaking to the gypsy, who was now waving his hands and shaking his head. The Colonel pulled something out of his coat pocket and displayed it for the gypsy, who began emphatically shaking his head.

“My God!” Xenia said. “He’s going to have it in here with us. He’s trying to buy it!”

“Buy what?” Timmy asked. It never occurred to him the Colonel would go so far as to
buy
the bear, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow
invited
the bear onto the train.

“The bear, you dummy,” Katherine told him. Xenia shot her a disapproving look but said nothing, and Katherine was sorry she’d used the word.

“What?” Strucker inquired. “The Colonel is going to buy this bear?” He was watching Katherine appreciatively from the corner of his eye. Before long . . . he thought, she would be a very handsome woman.

Katherine caught his glance and it made her uncomfortable. She was caught in a transformation she did not really understand. A year ago she had stopped wearing her blond hair in pigtails and now let it fall around her shoulders. And she had noticed lately the way boys and some men looked at her. She knew she was pretty—she’d certainly been told it enough ever since she could remember—but she didn’t comprehend all that it meant, and thought about it from time to time. In any case, for now, to the great relief of her father, she was mostly interested in horses.

“The bear is for us?” Timmy wondered. He suddenly imagined in some way the bear sitting in one of
The City of Hardford
’s plush parlor chairs, with a bib around its neck, drinking a glass of milk . . .

Now the Colonel was waving more money in front of the gypsy’s nose and the man was clearly wavering. His gestures now included shrugging of the shoulders.

“What’s going on here?” Beatie said, emerging from the bedroom section of the car.

“We think father is trying to buy that bear,” Xenia said.

“What bear?”

“The one out there on the platform.”

“That’s absurd. What would we do with a bear?” Beatie huffed, peering out the window.

“Look,” Xenia said. Out on the platform it appeared a deal had been struck. The gypsy was now nodding his head and had accepted a wad of paper from the Colonel. In return, the Colonel accepted the bear’s leather rope leash from the gypsy.

“He’s done it,” Xenia groaned.

“You must be mistaken,” said Beatie. “We can’t have a bear. Bears are for zoos.”

“Wanna bet?” Xenia said.

“He must have been drinking again,” Beatie wailed. “Has the Colonel been drinking this morning?”

The Colonel led the bear toward the train on its leash while the gypsy watched with his hands clasped. His face seemed a long mask of sorrow, but every so often he glanced down at the wad of bills the Colonel had given him.

ARTHUR TOOK OFF FROM KIRKSVILLE
just after sunrise. At last he had a fine, clear day, and his spirits soared with the
Grendel
. He wondered to himself what his life would have been like without flying, and as the day went by reflected on the bittersweet memories of his first rendezvous with ethereal things.

It had been, most oddly, nearly five years earlier at a dance in New York and a chance encounter with a beautiful woman,
not his wife
, at the Astor Hotel. Arthur had stepped out of the ballroom for a moment to smoke a cigar when he saw walking toward him from the lobby entrance an exquisite female accompanied by the famous actors John and Ethel Barrymore. She was tall and breathtakingly beautiful and Arthur managed a slight bow as she passed by. He thought for a moment she hadn’t noticed him, but she suddenly stopped her laughter with her companions and gave him a smiling nod. The Barrymores stopped, too, and in the awkward moment Arthur said, “I am a great admirer.”

Barrymore began to say something, but the young woman cut in, “Of mine, I hope.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Arthur. Her smile, her lips, her blue eyes all dazzled . . . “But I . . .”

“I am Harriet Quimby,” she said, “and these are—oh, but of course you know.”

“Yes,” Arthur said haltingly. “And I am Arthur Shaughnessy.”

“Miss Quimby is the theater critic for
Leslie’s Weekly
,” Barrymore said by way of introduction. “We have all just come from one of Georgie Cohan’s silly farces.”

“We’re going to the lounge for a supper. Would you join us?” Harriet Quimby said.

Arthur was stunned at the brazenness, but somehow, coming from her, it did not seem untoward. After all, these were theater people. He suddenly felt brazen himself. “Well, I am in here,” he said, nodding toward the door to the ballroom. “Why don’t you come and join me? There’s plenty to eat and drink, and grand music, too.”

“A dance?” Ethel Barrymore said.

“Yes, the Nine O’Clocks,” Arthur replied. “But we’re quite sociable. After all, this is New York. And it would be a grand coup for me to introduce your party to my friends.”

“It’s not a costume ball, is it?” intoned Barrymore, who in fact was dressed in evening clothes.

“Heavens, no,” Arthur replied. “Just a little get-together of friends. We do it twice a year.”

“Well . . .” Ethel said. “You are so kind . . .”

“Oh, let’s!” Harriet Quimby injected, taking them both by the arms. “We might get to meet fashionable people.”

Barrymore looked mischievously at his sister and Arthur led the trio into the grand ballroom of the Astor, where five hundred people were dancing away. He threaded them toward his table, where Xenia was seated with their friends, and made his introductions. The rest of the guests were duly impressed by the Barrymores because even if they
were
theater people, they were presently the most famous theater people on earth. Barrymore danced with Harriet, Arthur danced with Ethel, and when they had all settled back down at the table and champagne and various canapés and caviar had been brought and consumed, Arthur found himself next to the beautiful Harriet Quimby, who asked, “And so, Mr. Shaughnessy, what is your profession?”

Arthur told her—at the time, he was not first vice president and general manager, but simply vice president in charge of freight operations in the New York office.

“How interesting,” Harriet said politely.

“No, not really,” Arthur replied. “Not unless you find the moving of all sorts of things all over the place interesting. I would think your work at
Leslie’s Weekly
far more fascinating than what I do.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Barrymore interrupted. He quickly swallowed a mouthful of Beluga caviar to finish his thought. “Harriet is the rarest of avis—she is an aeroplane flier, as well.”

“You . . . are an aviator?” Arthur asked.

“The only female in the world to drive a flying machine,” Barrymore declared cheerfully.

“No, that’s not so,” said Harriet. “There is another, my friend Miss Moisant. Her brother was killed in an exhibition near New Orleans last year. You might have heard of it.”

“Well, that’s just . . . well. I think it’s wonderful,” Arthur said.

“Why don’t you come out to the aerodrome and see us sometime?” Harriet said.

“Where is the aerodrome?” Arthur asked.

“Near Mineola, on Long Island,” she replied. “We’ll be flying tomorrow afternoon.”

NEXT MORNING ARTHUR HAD PUT XENIA ON THE TRAIN
back to Boston and went straight to a motorcar agency, where he rented a long red Chrysler convertible and drove it to Mineola and the Moisant aerodrome. He arrived at about two, just in time to watch Harriet Quimby glide to a perfect landing on a lush grass strip in her new two-seat Blériot monoplane, painted pure white. Arthur had seen airplanes before, but never a monoplane—all the rest had two or three sets of wings. Harriet emerged from the cockpit in a peach-colored flying suit and white silk scarf. She looked stunning.

“Oh, Mr. Shaughnessy, you’re here!” Harriet cried. “What a delight!”

“Well, yes,” Arthur said a little sheepishly, “I thought it would be smart to see what the competition is up to.”

Harriet Quimby laughed heartily. “Oh, I don’t think your big railroads are going to have to worry about us in our little flying machines,” she said. “We only do this for a pastime. To soar with eagles . . .”

“That’s a handsome machine of yours,” Arthur ventured.

“Would you like to go up?” It seemed to Arthur an especially warm invitation.

“Well, I . . .” Arthur hesitated. Would he?

“Oh, do! I promise I won’t do anything rash. No loops or anything. Just straight and level—the
first
time.”

Arthur shuffled a little. He had in the back of his mind thought this might happen and that he would find himself sailing though the skies with the beautiful Harriet Quimby, but now . . . and a woman . . . but if she would do it, how could he . . .

“They’ve fueled me up,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. Arthur stood mute. It’s now or never; carpe diem, Arthur . . .