The Banished Children of Eve (71 page)

Below Union Square, the traffic began to move again, but there was soon another bottleneck and the coach swung onto Houston Street, following a familiar detour down Allen, across Division, through Chatham Square to Pearl. When they reached Chatham Square, the traffic was thick again. They came to a halt. Bedford tapped the pane high on the wall in front of him. Andrew's sweat-drenched face appeared.

“There's terrible congestion today, sir. Work stoppages and the like, a lot of people addin' to the normal delays.”

“I'll walk the rest of the way,” Bedford said. He got out, carpetbag in hand.

“Fierce day for walkin', sir, specially with a bag.”

“Do me good. Go to the boat and deposit the luggage. I'll make my way directly there when I'm finished at the office.”

“Whatever suits you, sir.”

In front of a row of secondhand-clothing stores, clerks dragged out racks of jackets and pants. They unfolded canvas awnings to protect their merchandise
from the sun. A squad of soldiers marched down Park Row in the direction of City Hall. Bedford remembered that General Zook's funeral was today: A fallen hero of Gettysburg, Zook had helped defeat a gold boom. Now, in death, he was helping foul up the traffic.

The office was quiet. Bedford put the carpetbag beneath his desk and rested his feet on it. He reviewed his calendar. Only one appointment. A broker from Philadelphia who had requested a meeting by letter several weeks before. The missive had been florid and overblown, promising an opportunity for instant riches “unseen since the days when the Phrygian king could, by mere touch, turn coarse elements into gold.” When the broker was ushered in, he proved to be a match for his literary style. Ample of flesh, with a flowing mustache and a large pearl ring on his right middle finger, the visitor from Philadelphia spoke in a theatrical whisper, as if afraid someone might have his ear pressed to the wall. He began with an account of the recent cholera epidemic in his city and the ravages it had inflicted. His voice sank lower. The strangest phenomenon had occurred, he said. In one particularly dilapidated quarter, where the Paddies were all crammed together with their usual disregard for cleanliness or sobriety, a district where you would expect the cholera to thrive, there had been only a few cases, and those relatively mild. The medical authorities ascribed it to happenstance, a change in the wind. The Paddies attributed it to the Virgin and held a special service in her honor. But his interest aroused, the visitor said in a voice so small that Bedford had to lean forward to hear, he found both explanations inadequate and set out on his own to discover the true cause. He made a visit to the district and immediately noticed that it was dominated by gasworks, gigantic tubs of iron that commanded the eye and the contents of which demanded the attention of the nose. After several weeks of inquiry, he ascertained not only that the cholera had barely touched the neighborhood but that the incidence of dysentery and autumnal fever had approached zero. The broker sat back in his chair and paused, as if to let the facts he had related sink in.

Bedford suddenly had a deeper appreciation of
the desperate nature of his own existence these past months. Sitting in front of him was a second-rate promoter in search of gullible investors. The thought that he had even bothered to respond to the man's request for an appointment, that the letter alone hadn't tipped him off to the confidence man behind it, made Bedford feel sad and a little depressed. How far he had fallen!

“You see, Mr. Bedford,” the stout visitor said, “I have stumbled on an investment opportunity of huge proportions. If you'll forgive the pun, it's been right there beneath my nose all the time!” He leaned in close to Bedford's ear: “The salubrious properties of gas! Sir, it is as though the Sangreal itself has been dropped into my lap!” He stood and raised his hands to heaven, revealing two wet circles of perspiration in the armpits of his coat. He began to enumerate the blessings that would fall on those perspicacious enough to put capital behind his discovery.

Bedford sent the man off with the promise to give serious thought to his proposals. As soon as he was alone, Bedford deposited in the trash the ream of papers his visitor had left with him. He decided to forgo a last visit to the Exchange. He didn't want his ponderous sadness to be their last memory of him: the hunched shoulders and dolorous face shared by all those defeated on the Street. He went directly to Old Tom's and ordered his regular meal, but except for the brandied coffee, he left it untouched. The place was almost deserted.

Bedford paid his bill. The cashier was a young white man with a badly pocked face whom Bedford had never seen before. The cashier nodded toward the knot of colored waiters huddled in conversation in the corner. “Their nerves is all ajangle with the fuss over the draft. Was a drunken Paddy in here this morning screamin' how the time had come to set the nigger in his place.” The cashier smiled as he spoke.

“The service was fine,” Bedford said. “Same as always.” He was unsure which of the colored men had served him. They all wore the same solemn expression. Old men with sugar-sprinkled kink, it seemed they had always been this way,
as ancient and serious this morning as the day he had his first meal there.

When he came out of the cool interior of Old Tom's, the sun dazed him and made him feel faint. He grasped the carpetbag tightly and walked up to the corner of Vesey. By now the bag Andrew had put aboard ship was destined to sail alone to Long Branch. Bedford looked up at the clock in the steeple of St. Paul's Church. A half hour before the boat to Albany sailed. Connections to all points west.

Tears welled up in his eyes. An overwhelming sense of finality took hold of him, and a tremor ran through his body. The city he had set out to conquer had taken back everything he had wrested from it: house, business, wife, reputation, the respect of his peers. All gone. For an instant he felt paralyzed with fear, and then he remembered that years ago, when still a boy, he had stood on this very corner with Stark, who had pointed out this was where the great John Jacob Astor had once lived. “Was a step up in the world for the young German immigrant,” Stark said. “But the dull Teuton and his plodding wife were not seduced by their progress. Though the surroundings were more substantial than they'd known before, they filled the rooms with foul-smelling furs and skins, boarded the windows against thieves, and relentlessly plowed their profits into real estate, money breeding money until it compounded into an imperial fortune!”

Bedford lifted his carpetbag, felt its weight. A good deal more than Astor had started with. His melancholy retreated a bit. Across the street, in the graveyard of St. Paul's, a row of green and gold flowers drooped with the heat, their heads bowed toward Wall Street. They did not toil or sow, but fortunes had been built on such as them. He recalled more of Stark's musings on the mysteries of man's relationship to money, how Europe had once been dotted with tulip exchanges that housed a manic bidding for bulbs. “The bubble burst,” Stark had related, “but by then the wise had taken their profits and gone on to safer investments.”

Bedford turned and walked toward the river. On a normal day he would be on the floor of the Exchange
at this hour, appearing confident and assured, no matter what. Never give in to fear. That was the first law of the market. And of life. The opportunities were always there for those who didn't lose their nerve. Fortunes to be made from fur, flowers, whatever was at hand. Who could know?

Across West Street, looming over the sheds that lined the waterfront, were the smokestacks and riggings of steamboats and sailing ships. There was movement everywhere, carts, horses, coaches, wheelbarrows, people. Families of Swedish and German immigrants watched as all their earthly possessions were lifted by the arms of the rusty cranes into the hold of the Albany boat. For a moment, everything they owned in this world was suspended over the dark waters of the Hudson, and they stood in studied, prayerful silence, their eyes rising and descending with the progress of the crane.

Bedford went up the gangplank. The boat vibrated with excitement. The purser took his ticket. Deckhands scrambled about and snarled at everyone to get out of the way, shouldering aside the unheeding. Bedford went up above to the first-class parlor. The hubbub below barely intruded through the thick red drapes and heavy carpets. Bedford had a glass of whiskey and went outside again. Everyone was aboard. The longshoreman were casting off the lines.

A whistle blew. One of the ship's officers cried out, “All aboard the
General Schuyler!
”

The deck shook as the great paddle wheel turned and the boat backed out of its mooring into the Hudson. People waved and cheered, threw bits of paper from the decks. Bedford put the carpetbag down between his feet. With its contents he would begin again.
Pay the bearer on demand.
Pay him whoever he is, wherever he may be, Denver, St. Louis, San Francisco, city, village, or frontier outpost. Without these notes and the specie they represented, what was the grandest and most substantial of residences but a monument to impermanence?

West again, Charlie!
He felt gripped by the same spirit that had infused him as a boy. It had been
misplaced, not destroyed.

Off in the distance, on the northeast fringe of the city, a heavy column of smoke swirled into the sky, as though an entire block were going up in flames. People crowded the railing to get a view. Bedford felt someone pushing persistently against him. He turned to confront a short, husky, pug-faced Irishman. “Sir,” he said, “if you ask, I'd be happy to try to make room!”

“Don't bother tryin' to talk to him,” a passenger on the other side of Bedford said. “He's deef as clam, and there's another around just like him.”

F
OSTER KNEW HE SHOULD NEVER
have listened to Cassidy. Took all day to get home. Waited for a conductor to provide a free train ride. When that phantom never appeared, they hitched a ride with a cartman and didn't reach the hotel until dark. Bought a few rounds for Cassidy and the other one, whatever his name was. Wasted money, wasted time. Still no song for Daly.

This morning, a letter was delivered to the hotel and stuck beneath his door.
Dearest Brother.
The usual remonstrations …
the conduct of your life … the company you keep. … You are wasting your great talent … the wages of sin.
But no money. Not even any mention of it. Long on advice, short on cash.
Fraternally yours, Morrison.

Foster bent over the washing bowl and splashed water in his face. He avoided looking at the mirror above the bowl, knowing what he would see: wasted eyes, wasted face, wasted everything. He dressed quickly, perspiring from the effort. Another brutally hot day. He searched about for something to write on, but there wasn't so much as a scrap. He ripped the back of the envelope from the letter and stuck it into his pocket. He went down the stairs and through the lobby, eyes straight ahead. Wasn't in the mood for conversation. As soon as he went out,
the full glare of sunlight hit like the blast of an explosion. He groped his way along the wall until he reached an adjacent doorway that provided some relief. His legs trembled. He needed to sit. On the opposite corner, on the south side of Bayard Street, was a saloon he usually avoided, a Five Points way station filled with cutthroats and whores. This morning it looked quiet and deserted, its windows bathed in shadow, a cool retreat, a place to sit and rest. He would give himself another hour.

The saloon was as empty as he had hoped. He gulped a whiskey, took out the nub of a pencil from his pocket, put the envelope facedown on the bar. Thick, expensive paper. White, fresh, virginal. He poised the pencil.

The bartender came by and poured Foster's glass full. “On the house,” he said.

Foster saluted him with his glass. For an instant he entertained the thought of missing his appointment with Daly. Drop a note and make another date. The coward's way out. He decided against it. Daly was a sociable Irishman, not merely talkative but agreeable, never pugnacious or threatening.

Be direct and honest:
The song is not yet done, but you will have it soon!
You
have my word on that!
He drained the glass and walked outside, steadier on his feet than when he entered.

The street was almost deserted, but from around the corner of Mulberry, down toward the Five Points, came a cheerful chorus of voices. A moment later a horde of cavorting children flooded the street. They jigged and twirled and twisted in a spontaneous dance, and tossed paper into the air. A ragamuffin of no more than five stopped directly in front of Foster, bent down, and laid a book open on the ground. He put his bare foot on it and with both hands ripped the spine apart, then tossed the book high into the air. The pages fluttered overhead and fell about the boy's feet. He ran on. Foster picked up the purple cover. It was inscribed with gold lettering.
The Five Points House of Industry: A Hymnal for Children.
A page of music was stuck to it. “Our Gentle Savior,” by Geoffrey Graves. The bars and notes and
clefs were all familiar. Foster hummed the music to himself. “Gentle Annie.” His song.

Cheats and plagiarists everywhere. Even in the Kingdom of God. He threw the remnant of the book back down to the ground.

There was a tug on his jacket. A small boy had his hand in Foster's pocket. Foster grabbed the boy's arm and pushed him away. A second boy came up from behind and tried the same trick, but as soon as Foster turned, the boy ran off. The procession continued. More hymnals were ripped apart, their pages scattered. Behind the children came a band of laborers. They carried hods, iron posts, crowbars, axes, awls, whatever tools could be used as weapons. From a window above the saloon, an old man leaned out and shouted, “Where ye off to, boys?”

“To hang Robert Noonan!” one of the laborers yelled.