The Styx (14 page)
“You’d best stand where you are, folks. I believe it would be in your interest,” Byrne said, not knowing himself whether that was good advice.
He saw that Harris had already pushed the lawyer aside and was heading down the track, dragging the boy behind him, the child’s toes tripping on every rail tie. He’d already covered half the distance and called back with a warning that the crowd was only now realizing: “You want to blow one of your children to that kingdom with us, counselor, you’d best get to it.”
No one moved except Byrne, who began backing his way down the tracks. The crowd stood mesmerized until a woman, likely the boy’s mother, tried to break away but was restrained by the lawyer. On the streets and in the filthy tenements of New York, Byrne had witnessed a dozen acts of self-preservation and utter despair that led hopeless people to sacrifice their children. But these were not those kind of people.
Byrne caught up to Harris’ side and looked ahead. Several sticks of dynamite were bound together and wedged under the western rail. A line of sheathed cord ran from the explosives down the embankment and off into a stand of saw palmetto.
“Seen one of these before, lad?” Harris said. The boy he had by the scruff was still wriggling his skinny arms and legs like a pinched snake. But he stopped his squealing when the question was asked, perhaps thinking it had been directed to him, perhaps listening for the answer.
“Yeah. It’s a charge that gets blown when whoever’s at the end of this cord sends an electric charge through the wire,” Byrne said, recalling what he’d seen during the bridge building next to his neighborhood.
All three of them, including the boy, followed the offending cord into the bushes. Harris raised his voice: “And if they wish to blow this little tyke to pieces they can send that current now.”
Byrne winced at the bravado. But Harris was right. If they were going to explode their makeshift bomb they’d have done it by now, or simply waited until Flagler’s car was directly over it and taken out the train, the track and a dozen passengers.
“They’re only here to make a point,” Harris said softly. “Which doesn’t mean they won’t just blow it when we give the kid back.”
The boy had been silent till then.
“Maaaawww!” he cried out.
“Couldn’ta said it better myself, boy,” Harris said. Then to Byrne: “Do you know how to disarm the damned thing?”
Byrne looked down.
“Best guess, I’d just yank the wire. No electric current, no trigger, like snappin’ off the firing pin on your pistol,” he said in a voice that made it sound more like a theory than an absolute.
“Fuck then,” Harris said. “I’ll bring the boy over between you and the bushes and you yank the wire.”
Without being able to tell what the men were doing, the farmers and families became restless and started to move up the tracks. Byrne got to his knees, found the charge into which the insulated wire was crammed and pulled it loose, digging the dynamite out from the rail and tucking it under his arm.
“OK. Let’s go.” He took a step back toward the train. Harris stood still, looking from the explosive pinned next to Byrne’s ribs then up into his eyes.
“It’s safe?”
“I’ve seen ’em do it all the time at the bridge,” Byrne said.
Harris hesitated for one more beat, then yanked at the boy and followed. When they approached the lawyer, his mouth was loose and hanging slightly open. Nothing came out. Those in the crowd were staring at the package under Byrne’s arm. When Byrne climbed up onto the engine rigging, the engineer and fireman aimed their eyes at the same thing and were equally quiet. Harris didn’t let go of the boy until he had one foot up on the iron stair and then he shoved the child to the ground toward his crying mother. He raised a thick finger and pointed at the lawyer: “Don’t make threats unless you’re willing to carry them out, counselor. This ain’t no war, sir. It’s business.”
With that he signaled the engineer to continue forward. As the train began to crawl, Byrne saw two men emerging from the palmetto bushes, their faces up but defeated, their big hands at their sides.
“No more stops,” Harris ordered. “We need to get to Palm Beach.”
Byrne climbed back over the rigging of the coal car and into the traveling compartments, still a bit dazed by the entire episode. He was working his way toward the back of the train when he realized the sudden gasps of air from some of the passengers and their quick movements to get out of his path were based on the fact that he was still carrying a load of dynamite. When a young mother grabbed her two children and pulled them close, covering their heads with her arms, he looked down at the dark red sticks in his possession: “It won’t blow up unless you light it, ma’am.”
Still, he took off his jacket and covered the offending package before entering the club car. There were already several men up against the bar, taking some comfort from short glasses of bourbon, and he determined to keep his face down and scuttle on through before anyone asked any questions. But when he looked up to eyeball the rear door he saw that Mr. Faustus was in a corner and was involved in an intense conversation with Mr. McAdams, who Byrne had not seen out of his own coach car since the beginning of the trip. It appeared an intense discussion because Byrne could see the muscles of the old man’s jaws flexing, grinding his teeth in some effort of restraint, and the skin of his scalp had turned a shade of red not unlike the color of the dynamite Byrne held in his arm.
McAdams on the other hand was as cool as if he were at a summer social, raising his drink to his lips with profound grace and smoothness while whispering something to Faustus that had struck the older man silent.
M
ARJORY
McAdams left the Royal Poinciana and walked the distance back to the Breakers alone. The heat of midday reached only into the high seventies with the ocean breeze rising. She strode briskly. Those who nodded and smiled their greetings as they passed would have been instead turning their eyes away if they could see the visions she was conjuring in her head: the fire-seared trousers of a dead man, his shirt melted into his charred skin, his body lumped onto the crude lean-to floor like a roll of soft dough settling flaccid without the shape of formed muscle and air-filled lung, and the flame-scarred face with the obscenity of rolled bills protruding from the mouth and that one single eye that had turned a milky white as if the fluid inside had actually boiled. McAdams shivered in the heat, breathed deeply, and extended her stride. She tried again to reconstruct the face as it appeared when the man was alive. And what of the watch? Had Pearson or any of the others noticed that exquisite silver pocket watch the dead man was wearing on a chain attached to his vest? She had seen it. Certainly Pearson would not have missed it.
She spoke only briefly to staff at the Breakers and made her way to her suite, which was oceanfront and on the third floor, which she preferred despite the stairs. The maid was finishing with the bed and was gathering linens. McAdams searched the young woman’s face as she had the other workers, looking for pain or some sign of loss.
“Hello, Armie, are you all right?” McAdams said.
“Ma’am?” the girl said.
“I’m sorry, your name is Armie, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you. Excuse me, were you, living in the Styx, Armie, and how did your family fare in the fire?”
“Uh, yes ma’am, I was in the Styx, ma’am, but I ain’t got family with me, ma’am.”
The girl was younger than McAdams but many of the locals and even women from other parts of the state and beyond followed the work that the trains and resorts had opened for them.
“Do you have someplace to stay, Armie? Someone to stay with?”
“Oh, yes ma’am. Mizz Fleury, she say she already found us a roomin’ house on the other side of the lake, ma’am. We gone stay in a big place over near the church on Mr. Flagler’s order hisself,” the girl said, her chin and voice rising with the use of the man’s name as if she was talking of a proud uncle. “Mizz Fleury say Mr. Flagler gone build us our own places in West Palm an ride us to the island ever day for work.”
“How nice,” McAdams said, but the tone of her voice set the girl to lower her eyes and turn to gather the linens and leave. McAdams did not doubt the rumor. Flagler was noted for innumerable projects he had built along his burgeoning railway. But she had been around wealthy, powerful and paternal men enough to know that there was always a price for their philanthropy. When the girl offered to bring in fresh water for her basin McAdams declined and let her leave.
Alone in the suite McAdams again washed the grit and salt sheen of humidity and sweat off her face and then removed her blouse and did the same for her arms with a sea sponge her father had given her as a present from a place in Florida called Key West. She removed her skirt and sat on the edge of the bed and washed down her legs as well. When she was finished she pulled a sitting room chair over to the double French doors to the balcony and then opened them to the beach and ocean. A salt breeze was blowing in, sweeping back the sheerings of the curtains. She sat and crossed her ankles on a European ottoman, and with the wind brushing the silk of her camisole and her bared legs, she dreamed she was flying.
She was a child in a tree, most likely one of the huge oaks at the family’s vacation home in Connecticut. She’d been allowed to climb there, the rules for young ladies and societal appearances be damned in the summertime, said her mother. In the dream she was high in the upper branches and a mist floated under her, obscuring the ground below. She felt frightened and glorious at the same time, the wind in her face, the gauze below and an odd smell of salt in the air though she knew they were nowhere near Nantucket, which was the only place she’d been to smell the sea. She stepped out farther on the limb, standing up but keeping her balance by grasping the thin branches just above. The exhilarating feeling of simply stepping off, spreading her arms and soaring over the familiar grounds of their summer getaway was glowing in her head. But that glimmer of ultimate danger kept her feet in place. She raised her nose to the wind and closed her eyes. The freedom of soaring, or the fear of death? Decide, my dear. You could fly for seconds or for miles. You could fall screaming for fifty feet, or soar forever. She stepped off. The air in her lungs caught in her throat as she went out and down. She was falling, but at the same time hearing a knock at the door, someone assaulting the wood, the noise snapping her awake in midflight.
Marjory’s eyes shot open and her hand went immediately to her chest. The knocking was real and shook her awake and she lurched forward, seeing the empty blue sky before her at first and then the horizon, the ocean, the beach, the railing, and finally the floor beneath her.
“My Lord!” she said and caught her breath, closed her eyes and touched her face. Now she distinctly heard the knocking at the door, stood and realized her state of undress. In reaction she brought her spread palms up in a butterfly pattern to cover her exposed breasts.
“Uh, coming!” she called out. “One moment please, I’m not decent!”
When she had draped herself in a housecoat and slipped her shoes back on, she finally went to the front door of the suite and opened it. Before her stood a tall black man, his hat in his hands, the brim pinched between the tips of extremely long and strong fingers. There was a sheen of sweat on his face and he was dressed in the manner of a bellman.
“Yes?” McAdams said, still out of sorts from her dream but her head clearing by the second.
“Excuse me, Miss McAdams. I’m very sorry, ma’am, to disturb you, ma’am. My name is Santos, Carlos Santos. I come to fetch you for Mizz Fleury, ma’am. She needs you to come meet her, please and it’s in a hurry, ma’am.”
His voice was urgent, his eyes also. McAdams stepped back and took a second accounting. He was a muscular man, one could tell by the squared shoulders, the stretch of fabric over his arms and the V-shape of his chest tapering down into thin hips. McAdams recognized the look and then studied the face, clean shaven and with astonishing green eyes.
“You’re the ball player, yes?” she said.
“Uh, yes ma’am.”
“I’ve seen you during the games, the ones with the Cuban Giants that Mr. Flagler displayed out back.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said again, with no less humility at being recognized.
“If I’m not mistaken, you played third base, yes?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And pitched one game?”
“Yes ma’am.”
The baseball games, always played by Negro teams, were organized by the hotel during the winter months and were a favorite among the guests. McAdams had become quite enraptured during the first season that the Royal Poinciana was opened. The Cuban Giants were an especially entertaining team with a group of athletically talented men who seemed unbeatable. Most of the hotel guests knew of course that relatively none of the players were actually from Cuba but played under assumed names so they would be allowed to participate in venues where Negroes were not allowed.
“I believe I saw you hit a home run against a Mr. Sachel Paige,” she said, recalling a game from one of those earlier seasons.
“Yes ma’am. Uh, but Mizz Fleury, ma’am, she really needs to see you ma’am,” he said, taking a step back as if to draw her out of the room by creating a vacuum.
“Oh, of course,” McAdams said, gathering herself. “Right away, Mr. Santos. If you could wait in the lobby, sir. I will be right there.”
McAdams dressed in her most conservative black skirt and a ruffled blouse that buttoned high on her neck. She supposed the clothes she selected were in response to the fact that she had been in such a mode of undress when Mr. Santos was just outside her apartment door. She rolled her hair and tucked it up under a straw hat and went downstairs.
Santos was just near the entryway. She went directly to him and again he drew her outside by backing his large, muscular body away. Not seeing Miss Fleury, she looked questioningly into the black man’s eyes.