The Banished Children of Eve (6 page)

Dunne took a seat by the window. Only a handful of other passengers. He picked up a newspaper and pretended to read. The ferry went ahead slowly, its whistle shrilling a warning to the river traffic to steer clear and respect its right-of-way. Outside, all that was visible in the gray-black mist were the gliding shadows of other boats. It was a long time since Dunne had been on the East River, not since he had gone to see Dandy Dan on Blackwells Island. He put down the paper and watched the beads of rain race down the glass, one into another, ceaselessly. Somewhere north, beyond Blackwells Island, where the East River meets the Harlem, was Randalls Island, his boyhood home, in the sense that it was where he had been for the longest single stretch.
Fog and rain mostly, at least that's the memory of it. Must have been sunny, hot days aplenty over those four years, but it's not them that stick in the mind. The cold and wet is what's there. Cold gruel to eat. Cold tea to drink. The smell of damp sheets and pillows, musty, moldy, the black lettering on the covering the first thing you saw every morning:
THE NEW-YORK ORPHAN ASYLUM.

The last year there, on a frosty, windy afternoon, the warders brought everyone down to the south end of the island, from the smallest kids who could barely walk to the biggest. They gave out drums and flags. Only thing to ward against the cold was the thin gray smock everybody got, boys and girls alike, no warmth in them clothes of any kind. Walked back and forth as the sun got hid by clouds and the wind off the river grew fierce, the little ones crying and whining, the warders telling them to keep moving, till finally the steamer appeared, a gleaming white boat trailing fat, glorious plumes of creamy smoke across the darkening sky. Pulled so close to shore you could
see the plush red cabin and the waiters carrying trays of drinks and food. The warders said that Miss Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” wished to pay a visit to the orphan children that was the partial beneficiaries of the proceeds from her last concert at Castle Garden. Probably the only population in the city of New York, besides them in the lunatic asylum, didn't have a clue who Jenny Lind was, and some of the little ones expected she'd be a real nightingale, half woman, half bird, fluttering in the sky. No such creature appeared. The boat idled off shore. Been late leaving the city and the captain wanted to be through the Hell Gate before dark, so the only glimpse of Miss Lind came when she appeared briefly on deck, a shawl around her shoulders, and at her side a bulging figure who the warders said was the great impresario and bunko hisself, Mr. P. T. Barnum.

Hadn't been so cold, some of the kids would have been grievously disappointed to discover that the Swedish Nightingale wasn't covered with feathers, but they was too frozen to notice, jumping up and down, banging their drums, doing everything possible to fight off the cold. Boat only stayed a few minutes more, long enough for the newspapermen to scribble a fancy description of the city's gratitude for Miss Lind's generosity as demonstrated by the singing, dancing inmates of the New-York Orphan Asylum. Then it sailed off, leaving behind nothing but its tail of luxurious smoke, and everyone ran as fast as they could to the orphanage, the only time we was ever eager to get back behind its doors.

Next evening, two of the kids put a log in the water and tried to sail to the Manhattan shore. Couldn't have lasted long in water that cold, with the tides so strong. Was a month before the river gave them up, their bodies found floating in Deadman's Bend, across from Corlears Hook.

The ferry docked in Brooklyn with a loud thud. Dunne got off. He walked a block to the Swordsman Hotel. The streets were busy but seemed far removed from the battle scene across the river. The Swordsman was a faded wooden building that catered to the whores who worked the ferry trade. “No S
AILORS
,” read the sign on the door. Dunne paid the charge for a room. The clerk winked as he handed him the key. “Should any visitors arrive, I'll send her right up to your room, sir.”

“Do that,” Dunne said.

The room was on the third floor. It held only a bed and a dresser. Dunne took off his shoes. He put his claw, file, and the loot from Brooks Brothers beneath the mattress. The pillow had a large stain on it the color of tobacco.
Dunne took a handkerchief from his pocket and covered it. He put his head down. As disapproving as Dandy Dan would have been of his conduct so far this day, of this Dunne knew Dan would approve. Rest, he was fond of saying, is the single most important thing a man in our line of work can get.

True enough, especially when scheduled to meet with Waldo Capshaw, a grudging, niggling croak of a man, the way all fences are, a Protestant True American to boot, the sharpest of that sharp race. An invitation to his house means a moneymaking scheme is afoot. Got to have your wits about you if you're not to be the goat.

Through the fragile walls of the hotel came the noise of huffing and grunting from next door, the mounting creak of bedsprings rising and falling, faster and faster, a momentary moan, then silence.

Well,
Dunne thought,
there's one thing that's the same on both sides of the river.
In an instant he was asleep.

T
HE RAIN SCATTERED
the small crowd in City Hall Park. The band of musician soldiers wrapped their bugles and drums in their canvas coverings. Men without umbrellas ran for the portico of the Hall of Records across Chambers Street, willing to risk pigeon droppings over rain.
Stephen Collins Foster, umbrellaless, didn't run. He walked at his regular pace toward the Astor House.

As he went past the sagging, weather-beaten barracks that had been erected as a temporary measure two years before and had become a dreary and permanent part of the park, the music filled his head, the instruments still outside their canvas, the sounds forming themselves into notes and half notes, scales and bars, black marks on white paper, a three-cent royalty per sheet, thirty thousand in the first printing, a song for the nation's warriors, the printing presses never stopping, sixty thousand in the second printing, the presses
gwine to run all night, gwine to run all day, an' his rider's drunk in de old hayloft, Oh! Doo-dah, day!

He stuck his hands into his pockets, the fingers numb and red. The traffic was heavy on Broadway, and he stood on the curb, the rain playing its own music in the puddle at his feet.
Dat, dat, dat, doo-dah, doo-dah.
A wagon went through the puddle, the monotoned rush of its wheels spraying red-brown water over his feet and pants. There was a break in the traffic. He ran across the street in front of a white omnibus with
SOUTH FERRY
in red letters on its sides. The driver pulled on the reins when he saw Foster, dragging the horses to a halt, and yelled an inaudible obscenity, but Foster was already on the pavement, running up the worn marble stairs into the rotunda of the Astor House. A throng of politicians, newsmen, brokers, and Army officers stood in front of the counters that encircled it. Behind the counters, men in white jackets carved steaming roasts and hams, sliced pies, shucked oysters and clams, laid portions onto white plates and pushed them across to the omnivorous crowd.

Foster listened: flatware clanging against dishes, dishes clanking against countertops, glasses clinking against glasses, a roar of voices echoing against marble walls and plaster ceilings. He rubbed his hands on his pants, blew on his fingers, and put them back into his pockets. He dug past the two nickels he knew were there, down to where a folded banknote could escape the touch of his benumbed fingers.

Nothing. Only the coins.

Most mornings, he groped his way out of the New England Hotel, out of his cold bed, the sheets and blanket too thin to warm his blood, down the Bowery to Catherine, into Mike Manning's Saloon, home to the cheapest whiskey outside of the Five Points. He sat as close as he could to the cast-iron stove, the coal-fired warmth pungent and piercing, going up his arms and legs, into his bones, a penetrating warmth. But it was against the house rules to sit there without a drink, so
he put a nickel on the counter for two shots of what the patrons called “Mike Manning's Revenge,” colored camphine or rectified oil of turpentine, whichever was selling cheaper, diluted, with a touch of beef broth to give it the soft brown hue of real whiskey. Swill. But it let him sit there. Manning would follow Foster back to his table by the stove, put the shot glasses in front of him. Foster would lower his face almost to the level of the tabletop, tip the liquid into his mouth, close his eyes, and swallow. A fire would start in his throat and fall into his stomach. The warm glow would spread, kill the thumping in his head, and still the tremble in his hand.

Money well spent, and Foster didn't begrudge Mike Manning his nickel. Today he had gotten out of bed late and skipped his visit to Manning's. He decided he would find refreshment elsewhere, in more convivial surroundings. But here, in the rotunda of the Astor House, a nickel would buy only a glass of beer. Access to the trays of food, too, yet two glasses of beer weren't much to hold a man until evening, when the bar of the New England Hotel would fill up and Jack Mulcahey or some other soul, recognizing the nation's debt to America's first original musical voice, would advance him a loan and throw in a drink to boot.

He was too wet and cold to think about going back out into the rain. And if he didn't buy a drink and have something to eat, one of the somber clerks would soon be over inquiring if he had a room here or was waiting for a guest or required directions to any of the city's numerous cultural and architectural points of interest. No thanks. Two glasses of beer would have to do. Some dry crackers. A slice of ham. Nothing too heavy. His stomach rejected anything in bulk except beer or whiskey or Mike Manning's Revenge.

He stood and ate.
He lifted the beer with both hands and licked the foam from the inner rim of the glass. The chorus of lunch continued around him. He walked straight ahead, past the potted ferns and the mahogany, marble-topped reception desk with its stern-faced clerks scribbling like music critics in the ledgers opened before them:
A Treatise on the Distemper of Current Popular Lyrics.
By Calliope. They loved anonymity. Clerks and critics. You rarely knew their names.

He sat in a lounge chair by the fire, stretching out his feet so close to the coals that the wet leather of his shoes hissed and steamed. He took out a pad of paper from his jacket pocket. It was soggy from the rain. He put it down by the side of the chair, facing the fire. Tomorrow morning he was scheduled to meet Daly at his publishing office on Grand Street with the song he had already been paid for. Something about summer and love. No, he had sold that one to Daly two years ago. “Our Bright Summer Days Are Gone.” He printed the word
“GONE”
in large letters at the top of the page. Underneath he began to write, quickly,
“doo-dah, doo-dah, doo-dah.”
He drew a line through it. Daly was a sympathetic type. Bumped into him by accident about a month ago. Hadn't seen him in over a year. Daly was waiting to catch the horsecar across Canal Street to the Hoboken ferry. Stepped into Sardmeister's. A glistening German place. Smell of beer and pickled meat. Bought dinner and put a twenty-dollar gold piece on the table.
Bring me a song. Something happy.

Foster put the pencil tip on the paper. Nothing. Forget the war. Nobody wants to hear about it anymore. Tried that already. “We Are Coming, Father Abraam, 300,000 More.” Music composed by Stephen C. Foster. Bad verse turned into bad lyrics. They wanted the music to save it. They paid for it, then said it sounded “too funereal.” But they paid. He tapped the pencil tip on the paper. Morse code.
H-A-P-P-Y.

Jane was working as a telegrapher at the Greenburg station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a few miles outside of Pittsburgh. Couldn't say he missed her. The pain he felt was not from absence but regret. He had put her through
a decade of hell. At least for the first few years of their marriage, there had been money. And fame. Mrs. Stephen C. Foster, wife of America's minstrel genius. Those first days of their honeymoon in New York, the music publishers had fallen over themselves to entertain the couple. The reporters had written about them. At night, when they came back to the hotel, the clerk brought them to a small room behind the desk. It was filled with flowers, bottles of wine and liquor, gaily wrapped presents. “People have been dropping them off all day,” the clerk said. “They read you were here in the papers.” Foster picked up a small, bulky envelope. He opened it. Inside was a woman's black silk stocking with an address pinned to it. He and the clerk laughed. Jane blushed.

For the first two nights, he pretended to be so tired and filled with whiskey that he fell asleep. She lay with her breasts pressed against his back and her arm over his. He didn't move for what felt like hours. At dawn, he rose and went downstairs and ordered breakfast sent up. On the third night, she went up ahead while he uncorked a bottle and shared it with the desk clerk. He stayed longer than he should have. When he opened the door to the room, she was in bed with the quilt pulled up to her neck.
Close the door,
she said. She pushed down the quilt and knelt on the bed. She was naked. She cupped her breasts in her hands so that the nipples stuck out between her fingers. “Come to bed, my love,” she said. She lay back on the bed, her legs open wide. In almost a whisper she sang, “Open thy lattice, love, listen to me! While the moon's in the sky and the breeze on the sea!”

Had she really sung that? The first song he ever published. The year before he left Pittsburgh. She had sung it to him once, but maybe not that night, maybe he was confusing that night with another time. What did it matter? Song or no song, he had dropped down on the bed beside her and put his hand over hers. What had he said?
I'm sorry, Jane.
His mouth was so dry his tongue felt as if it were made of cotton. He fell asleep. He tried many times after that. Usually after drinking heavily. A few times successfully. They made
a daughter. But he came to their bed much as he had gone to milk the cow his father kept behind their house in Pittsburgh. Something to be avoided, if possible. A cloud that hung over you, a duty, a chore, another impediment to happiness.
Stephen,
Jane said,
what is it you want? Name it.
He had no answer. At least none he could speak.