El Paso: A Novel (19 page)

SO ARTHUR SHAUGHNESSY CLIMBED INTO THE COCKPIT
of Harriet’s airplane and began for himself an experience that, to his mind, changed his life forever.

Harriet was an expert flier. She had performed acrobatic stunts at the inauguration ceremony of President Madero in Mexico City in 1911, and only a few months before had become the first woman to fly across the English Channel. She was a marvelous instructor, patient and good-humored. In four weeks’ time, Arthur was flying solo, first in a little Curtis biplane trainer, and then Harriet’s own Blériot.

Arthur went home to Xenia in Boston on Fridays and returned to New York on Mondays, but during the week, as the spring days grew longer, he would drive out to Mineola with Harriet in the afternoons for a few hours of flying time. Afterward, they would ride back to the city and often dine together. Sometimes Arthur wondered what his reaction would be if she moved to take things to a different level. She was a joyous, free-spirited woman whom most men would probably find irresistible, but, at least in Arthur’s company, she blithely reversed her occasional advances, reaching out and touching his arm sometimes during an animated exchange, but then withdrawing her hand immediately.

For her part, Xenia did not attempt to strip Arthur of his interest, either in flying or in Harriet Quimby; he talked freely with her about his flying experiences. Quimby she could understand, but flying she could not. It seemed to be constantly on Arthur’s mind, a preoccupation she hoped would eventually wane. Then, one day in mid-May 1912, Arthur announced to Xenia that he had invited Harriet to come to Boston to stay with them while she was participating in a big flying exhibition over Boston Harbor.

Xenia was gracious and even grateful, because she assumed that if an affair had been in progress, Arthur would not invite the woman in question to stay in her home. Both Harriet and her flying machine arrived a week before the air show, courtesy of the NE&P, and Xenia gave a big dinner for her and, when the evening was done, had satisfied herself that she in fact liked Harriet Quimby very much and hoped they, too, might become friends.

Moreover, Arthur had arranged for Harriet’s date at the dinner to be Mick Martin, who arrived full of fun and stories and dressed in a fine tuxedo with a gold wolf’s-head collar piece that had sparkling rubies for its eyes—gaudy, but Mick could bring it off. When Harriet left the room for a moment, Mick had whispered to Arthur, “Thanks for this, bucko. She’s a stunner, all right.”

In the beginning, Mick and Harriet hit it off grandly. He not only took her to lunch next day, but went flying with her later, and then took her to dinner by themselves that night. Xenia remarked to Arthur that this might be the start of serious intentions and he agreed, although he felt somewhat slighted, since he himself was attracted to Harriet. Somehow it still bothered him that Mick was getting the girl, as usual.

Several nights later they were all going to the theater but Mick wasn’t present. When Arthur asked if he was coming, Harriet said, sharply, no. Xenia later asked Harriet, but her answer was vague, and when Xenia persisted, Harriet made it plain she didn’t wish to pursue the subject. Arthur asked Mick about it, too, and got a similar reaction. Clearly something had happened.

On the afternoon of the aerial show Harriet flew a number of stunts before a crowd of thousands, and as her finale she was to fly all the way out to circle the Boston Light, twenty miles to sea and back. She had asked Arthur to fly with her, but he was busy in the crowd with his parents, Xenia, and the kids, and so Harriet took along the organizer of the event, a man in a straw boater and an ice-cream-white suit. The two took off in a clear late afternoon sky and the throngs cheered as her plane faded to a black speck on the horizon. Not long afterward, after circling the lighthouse, Harriet’s plane reappeared, the sun glinting golden on its white gossamer wings.

Then, just as the Blériot returned over the tidal flats toward a landing, it seemed to tip downward. The tail rose, higher and higher, until it looped beyond vertical, and to everyone’s horror a body suddenly was ejected from the aircraft, clutching what appeared to be a hat, legs and arms thrashing as it headed thousands of feet downward toward the flats—and then another; they could just get the glint of the sun on the peach-colored flying suit. The plane, pilotless now, slowly righted itself and spiraled down in ever-decreasing circles as the two bodies smashed into the mud of the inner harbor shore.

It had happened so suddenly. People rushed from the shore out onto the flats, floundering knee-deep in the gray mud toward where the bodies had landed. The airplane inexplicably glided to an almost perfect landing way out on the flats, its wheels sinking into the mud and the engine still running until the propeller dug into the muck and stopped.

They hauled the crushed, mud-covered bodies of Harriet and the air show organizer to shore, but Arthur had already hurried off a stunned Xenia, the kids, and his parents as quickly as possible. He spent the next days under a cloud of despondence, and wondered if he would ever fly again. He was among the mourners at Harriet’s funeral and joined the sad cortege to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

That had been nearly five years past, and Arthur Shaughnessy the orphan-tycoon had continued to fly. Now he had long since flown past Kansas City and was headed for Wichita. The reception he found there was far greater even than the one he’d received in Kirksville. There must have been a thousand people on hand to greet him, and again he was feted and bedded in style and comfort. He figured he was winning the race by now, though by what margin he could not tell. He calculated he had flown about eight hundred miles.

MEANWHILE, THE NE&P NO. 1 WAS ROLLING ALONG
through the flat Arkansas farmlands from Memphis south and west toward Dallas, heading into a huge red setting sun that reflected through the windows on the Colonel’s face as he declaimed over the situation in Mexico. A layer of haze from Strucker’s cigarette drifted across the salon, almost like a fog. Beattie fanned her nose at it.

“I do not exactly understand these communications,” said the Colonel, holding up a telegram that had been received from his Boston offices at the Memphis depot. “There’s been some sort of trouble at Valle del Sol, some kind of cattle rustling. People were . . . well, it’s garbled.”

“My stars!” Beatie cried. “Cattle rustling? I thought that went out with the last century.”

“I don’t know why they can’t be clearer about these things,” the Colonel grumbled, shaking his head. The family had all gathered in the parlor section of the dining car, waiting for dinner to be served. From the galley, pungent aromas of roasting beef floated through the car. The children had occupied themselves with a Ouija board, while the others listened to the Colonel’s assessment of the situation in Mexico. They had spent the afternoon playing with the bear, which they had named Sherman in honor of the late Union general. Timmy had wanted to name it Teddy, but the Colonel wouldn’t hear of it—he’d name nothing of value after what he called “that four-eyed backstabber.”

After a while, the bear had been banished to the baggage car and the Colonel sat at his elegant walnut desk in
The City of Hartford
and spread out several telegrams that had been waiting for him at the station. Strucker was sitting in his great parlor chair methodically soaking up gin, but was witty and charming, at least by his own lights.

As the train rocked and clattered into the twilight, Colonel Shaughnessy was lost in his own thoughts about his crumbling empire. He had his people all over Washington working feverishly to secure even one of the lucrative government war contracts that the other roads seemed to come by so easily. Maybe his attitude toward Woodrow Wilson had something to do with it; maybe Wilson had heard that the Colonel had referred to him as a “namby-pamby” during a poker game in Philadelphia a few months back. Maybe it had gotten out that the Colonel had secretly given money to the walrusteen former president William Howard Taft in hopes he might run against Wilson in the next election. Or perhaps it was someone else in Washington whose toes he had stepped on. In any event, just one of the contracts to ferry munitions, grain, clothing, and other war items to Great Britain and France would be enough to dig him out of this present hole. It was infuriating—but he was not done yet. Not by a long shot.

Scanning his communications from Boston, the Colonel found most of them routine until he came to the several messages concerning the general situation in Mexico.

“A fine kettle of fish,” said the Colonel. “Someone’s stealing my livestock and, from what I can make of it, sounds like they’re blaming it on Pancho Villa.”

“Sounds pretty serious,” said Xenia.

“Well,” the Colonel replied, “he’s supposed to be way over in the state of Coahuila, and that’s a lot of miles from Valle del Sol.”

“Cattle stealing,” Strucker observed. “It appears you have a delicate situation on your hands, my dear Shaughnessy.” Strucker was secretly delighted by the news.

“Yes, well, if it’s so,” the Colonel replied. “But these people get hysterical—especially the Mexicans. They see Villa everywhere down there. Think he’s some kind of Robin Hood character—steal from the rich, give to the poor—that kind of nonsense. They even believe he can actually change himself into animals to thwart his enemies—dog, owl, wolf—and disappear into the wilderness. It’s getting to be ridiculous. Every time some two-bit bandit wants to steal something, he pretends to be with Villa. Goes on all the time. Villa’s never bothered us before. Let’s be sure our facts are straight before we go making a lot of assumptions.”

“Where will we get these facts?” Strucker inquired.

“El Paso,” the Colonel replied majestically. “They know everything at El Paso.”

AT DAWN, ARTHUR PUT
GRENDEL
INTO A SKY
so clear blue it looked drinkable. A pale full moon hovered on the western horizon.
Grendel
left Wichita behind, with Amarillo ahead, where Arthur would put down about midday to refuel, then take off again to land in desert scrub for the night. So far Arthur had only had to change oil, clean the firing plugs, and tighten two hose clamps. The machine was performing marvelously.

But above the plane’s monotonous drone, something had been eating at him ever since the farewell dinner at the Palmer House in Chicago—that remark by his father about being a “quitter.” The more he tried to put it out of his head, the more it returned, like a sour rhyme or idiot tune. Groton. Well, he decided, to hell with it, maybe his Old Man hadn’t been thinking of that at all.