The Styx Read online

  Last night when word jumped across the railroad bridge to West Palm Beach that the Styx was burning, a handful of her neighbors made it across the lake before some official closed off access to the island, stating that only firefighters were allowed across. No one, of course, of any such capacity ever arrived at the site of the blaze. Ida was there. So too were a couple of the stable boys and three cooks who were on duty at the Royal Poinciana Hotel on the lakefront a mile or so away. The boys had made foolish attempts to run in close to the flames to rescue things they deemed valuable. The women simply stood and watched and wept. By sunup an assistant hotel manager, a southern white man of indeterminate age, had arrived and gently herded the onlookers back to the Breakers with the promise of food and clean uniforms and then with equally gentle words reminded them that they still had to report for work today.

  When the manager stood in front of Ida May she seemed to look straight through him.

  “Mizz Ida,” he said quietly, “ya’ll going to have to supervise your people back at the hotel, ma’am.”

  Her eyes were not those of some unfortunate in shock, but of a woman who could envision her duties on some chalkboard slate only she could see.

  “I will do my supervising from here, sir,” she said, tempering her manner as not to sound like she was giving the orders. “May I suggest sir, that when folks are finally allowed to cross back from West Palm, you could please have a few at a time come out to their houses. I will make sure they can see what they need to see, sir. Then I’ll get their work schedules right and send them back.

  “Will that be acceptable, sir?”

  The assistant manager seemed to focus on something slightly beyond the crown of her head while he considered how to explain it to his own superiors and make the plan his own.

  “I’ll take these folks with me,” he said. “And send the next directly.”

  When he walked away Ida took up her spot in front of the ashes of her house and supervised the comings and goings. She watched the disbelieving expressions of each new arrival as they approached the blackened cluster of charred timbers and ash. And when the faces broke with despair or with anger, she passed her whispers of strength or possibilities along.

  “Gone be alright now, Mazzie. You safe, that’s all that matters. Right?”

  “Careful now, Earl. You know the Lord don’t take anything ya’ll really need. You know that, Earl. Right?”

  “It’s OK now, Corrine. Come here, give a hug, sweetheart. Your children are all safe, right? They with you and that’s everything, you know?”

  After an hour or so that particular group would straggle back from their individual tragedies, their skin smeared with soot, the men carrying the head of some metal tool or heat-warped tin box, the women with a scrap of seared cloth, a blackened iron cook pot or an empty, charred picture frame.

  Marjory McAdams was aboard the third wagonload to arrive. She had left the Styx while it was still dark and the sparks of the fire were just beginning to settle. She’d waited there with Ida May for hours after young Thorn Martin had left in the calash, promising he’d soon return with help.

  “I cannot believe someone hasn’t responded,” she’d said in the middle of the night, looking expectantly back down the road to the hotel as if a fire brigade would surely come swinging round the corner at any second like it was midtown Manhattan. Ida May had ignored her comments, knowing the truth and thus the futility in the young woman’s expectations. Marjory had finally given up trying to talk Ida into returning to the hotel with her and had marched off on foot. When she returned now, she had not changed her clothing, which was still soot-stained. Her face had been hastily wiped clean but she had not even taken the time to change her shoes, which were dust-covered, as was the bottom eight inches of her skirt. In the light of day, the destruction before her had changed from the smoky blur of varying shades of gray and black to the stark outlines of broken angles and spires of charred wood pointing oddly up like giant corroded fingers. The rising wind from the ocean had just begun to sweep the browned wisps of smoke from the surrounding treetops. Marjory waited until the new arrivals passed Miss Ida’s consoling whispers and then watched them as they walked into the remains, their heads moving back and forth, taking in the alien sights and saying nothing. When they had all wandered off she approached the head housekeeper, softly cupped her shoulder and bent her cheek to the woman’s grayed and soot-stained head.

  “I have heard that everyone has been accounted for, Mizz Ida. Everyone is alive. Thank the Lord that the fair drew most everyone across the lake. That in itself is a blessing.”

  The old woman did not move her head, neither away from nor into the consoling hug of the young white girl. Her only reaction was a slight movement of her cheeks, which sucked in as if a small taste of bile had entered into her mouth.

  “My father says Mr. Flagler is on his way from New York City this very day,” Marjory said. “You know he’ll take care of you all. He’s a good man. My father said there is no doubt that he will find quarters for you either at the hotel or across the lake so don’t you worry.”

  Ida did not respond. She had been across the lake many times to the new city of West Palm Beach. The cheap, tossed together buildings did not bother her. And the few merchants there were just starting out so they were not yet profitable enough to turn away colored folks with money to spend. Ida had even gone to a service there at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, which was a simple wood plank structure built on pilings on a plot of scrub pines at the edge of the town. She recalled the preacher as young and full of a heartfelt passion. So the idea of moving yet again was not something she feared. Ida had made new starts before. This would be no different than her family’s move from Charlotte when the Abernathy family began buying up farm acreage to expand that city, or in Savannah years later when she’d been displaced by a new mercantile warehouse being built near the waterfront. As a woman whose family had always worked for others, Ida May Fluery knew the rules of the real world: when money comes to a place, those who are not owners are pushed aside.

  Her natural skepticism, born of nearly sixty years of experience, told her this situation was no different. No different, that is, until screams started sounding from the far depths of the Styx.

  The horses were the first to hear. The team had just started to pull away with a wagon load of residents when their ears pricked up at the unnatural sound, then their nostrils flared and they balked in their traces.

  Miss Ida may have picked it up next and mistook the high, keening noise as some kind of animal cry. But the third wail, closing quickly from the east, caught the attention of everyone at the clearing and all of those in the wagon and they all turned their heads.

  “What in Christ’s name now?” said the driver.

  In the distance the image of Shantice Carver could be seen stumbling into view, and Miss Ida let a snort escape through her nose. Marjory looked at her in surprise as she had never witnessed a derogatory utterance come from the woman in the two years she’d known her. The young Carver woman was in a half jog, her arms bent at the elbow and hands up in her face as if to cover her eyes from some horrific sight, yet her fingers were splayed enough to allow her to see where it was she was running to. With her arms in such a position, she seemed to toddle more than run and the high-pitched noise coming from her mouth gradually turned from unintelligible screeching to words: “Theysaman, theysaman, theysaman…”

  No one moved to meet her, but the anguished cries seemed to pull Marjory out of her initial shock and she alone stepped forward. She realized the distraught figure was certainly more than a girl and from the bouncing of her bosom was more in the line of a young woman. Still, she took the poor thing by the shoulders and allowed her to bury her face into her own neck as if comforting a child.

  “It’s OK now, it’s OK.”

  Despite the tableau of emotion, those in the wagon were now only mildly interested, as if they had seen such a display before, or had re
ason not to feel much compassion for this one of their own. But Miss Ida relented and walked over to the embrace between the two women, which had gone on long enough to have become an embarrassment.

  “All right, Shantice. All right,” Miss Ida said with a voice not exactly comforting but still understanding of the situation. “It’s a hard time for everyone. What has you so all tore up, girl?”

  At the sound of Ida’s voice the woman stepped back away from Marjory and again her fingers went fluttering up into her face.

  “Theysadedman, theysadedman, theys…”

  “All right, all right, now slow down, woman. Cain’t nobody understand what you’re trying to say with all that screechin’. You take a good long breath now and slow down.” It was obvious that the woman had taken stern orders from Miss Ida enough times in the past to nod her head and immediately start to suck air into her mouth and begin to swallow. Her next words were both several octaves lower and decibels quieter.

  “Mizz Ida, ma’am. They is a dead man yonder near my place.”

  This time those listening in the wagon began to rise and jump down on the ground. The driver was now too entranced himself to complain though he stayed in his seat.

  “All right. All right, Shantice,” Ida repeated. She reached out to take the woman’s shaky hands in her own and covered them as if calming both of their hearts.

  “Who is it, Shantice? Tell me who it is that’s dead?”

  Now the small group was stone silent, waiting for grief to slap them.

  “It’s a stranger, ma’am,” the woman called Shantice said. “I ain’t never seen him before, ma’am, honest to God.”

  Ida’s brow furrowed in skepticism, a reaction that caught Marjory by surprise as much as the woman’s plea for believability.

  “Now, Shantice, get yourself together, woman. You know every man in the Styx and most every other man on this here island. You think hard who you seen out there,” Ida ordered the woman.

  “I ain’t never seen him, ma’am. God’s truth. He’s all burnt up, an he gots money…” At this point the woman’s hands started back to fluttering and her voice began to cry and climb. “He gots money in his mout,” she finally said, her fingertips now dancing near her own lips.

  With the new information Ida shook her head with incredulity and started to turn back into the group as if this tale was a child’s exaggeration that went beyond belief at a time already full of unbelievable events.

  “An he’s white, Mizz Ida,” Shantice blurted out, her words catching the elderly woman in midstride and freezing everyone within hearing distance. “It’s a dead white man.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE train was ready when Flagler was ready.

  After a breakfast of hot oatmeal and weak coffee, during which his new supervisor gave him his duties until such time they were out of the city, Michael Byrne was positioned at the head of Flagler’s car number 90 where he was instructed to “stand ready like a Pinkerton man and don’t let anyone approach while Flagler and his wife are boarding.”

  With a newly requisitioned knee-length woolen coat, Byrne stood rather comfortable in the cold, his hands clasped behind his back like he’d been taught as a police recruit, only moving up and down the loading platform. No one was within a car’s length of number 90. The other passengers and material being loaded were up the tracks where the less glorious coaches and boxcars were aligned.

  Byrne cut his eyes to the north when a contingent finally arrived out of the clouds of steam. Flagler was not difficult to pick out. He was the one in the middle, wearing a dark suit without an overcoat despite the cold. He was of average build—about five-foot seven and a thin one hundred and forty—despite his reputation as a giant of the business world. His most distinguishing feature was his full head of snow-white hair and a thick broom mustache to match. His back was straight, his chin held high, and his gait was best described as leisurely. He moved at a slow pace, though not because of any obvious infirmity. He was simply not a man in a hurry, nor one who needed to be.

  Byrne knew little about the man other than he was rumored to be in his late seventies and had long ago become rich as the partner of John D. Rockefeller when the two of them established the Standard Oil Company. His was a station of the upper class that a man like Byrne was well to stand out of the way of and at attention to. Flagler’s world was nothing that a working-class Mick such as he could ever understand, nor would he want to. They’re different, the rich, and so be it.

  Walking a half-step behind Flagler was a woman whom Byrne assumed was his wife. He was careful to only glance at her as not to catch her eye, and he noted that just from her profile she looked many years younger than Flagler and was dressed in the fine conservative style of a woman of means. Her skirts were not flowing; her coat was not of ostentatious fur or fabric. Her dark hat was certainly large but plumed with only a small shaft of feathers the kind Byrne had never seen even though he’d stood guard at several dignitary functions or special performances at the Metropolitan Opera.

  Following behind the couple was Flagler’s personal valet and a phalanx of business types carrying briefcases. And then the porters wheeling an entire baggage cart loaded with luggage. Harris nodded an unspoken greeting to Flagler and then helped Mrs. Flagler with a hand boarding the step rail. Then the two disappeared into their car. Byrne would barely see even a glimpse of them for the rest of the trip.

  He and Harris helped load the baggage, and within ten minutes of Flagler’s arrival, the train whistle ripped through the enclosed space under Grand Central Station and the train pulled out.

  Hours later Byrne’s eyes were still watering, and it was from something besides the cold. The train was only minutes out of the rail yards at Jersey City, heading south. There was something foreign in the air that seemed to sear the insides of his lungs when he took deep breaths. He was stationed at a designated spot at the forward door to private car number 90, where Harris had placed him.

  “No one goes past you without Mr. Flagler’s personal word,” Harris had instructed. “I’ll be back once we get underway again and take you on a bit of a tour.”

  So Byrne stood on the outside platform and found that if he inched his back close to the adjoining car in front, he was able to withstand the cold by hunkering down into the turned up cowl of the coat and burrowing his hands deep in its pockets. The morning’s events—seeing Flagler and his entourage close up, the glimpse of the rich interior of the private train car that he was to guard and the melancholy sight of New York City fading behind them—had spun so quickly in his head he was just now able to use the minutes alone on the platform to assess his decision to take on this assignment.

  If he was to be nothing more than a bodyguard for Flagler and a watchman for his rail car then he’d made a mistake. The work that he’d done for Captain Sweeney—putting together the names of certain Tammany bosses and politicians and documenting their travels to and from the opium dens and brothels of the Lower East Side—had come with the promise of a certain career. Sweeney had been impressed by young Byrne’s ability to write, a skill not learned through schooling but from pure memory and copying of words and phrases picked up from newspapers and signage on the streets and the handbills that Danny was sometimes paid to give out. Sweeney had then been shocked further by Byrne’s photographic memory of faces and seemingly flawless ability to attach names to such faces.

  The young police officer’s lists and detailed observations had, according to Sweeney, been invaluable in the department’s battle against corruption, but the changes would be slow in coming. At one point, the captain had said it was too dangerous for Byrne to stay in the department. Thus, the Pinkerton offer.

  The arrival of Danny’s telegram had been an additional push and had given him this Florida destination and Sweeney encouraged it.

  “A perfect solution. Go south into the sun for awhile, Michael,” Sweeney said. “It’ll be like a fine vacation and then you can come back home when things calm dow
n a bit and these bastards from Tammany Hall are out on their arses. Then we’ve got a job waiting for you, son.”

  But now he was second-guessing, watching the buildings of Jersey City shrink down with each mile and the landscape becoming greener and more expansive than he’d ever witnessed as a city boy. Florida seemed a foolish dream now. What if he couldn’t find his brother? What the hell would he do in the sun anyway? Only rich New Yorkers or people with tuberculosis went to Florida seeking a place to stay warm and breathe more easily. As if the thought alone caused it, Byrne bent over in a coughing fit, and as if on cue Harris nearly knocked him overboard coming through the door to the other cars.

  “Don’t be afraid of it, lad,” Harris said, again sporting the smile that said, I know what you don’t know. “It’s the air, son. Your city lungs’ll have to get used to it.”

  Byrne straightened and spat down onto the rail bed rushing by below.

  “Why,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “What’s in the air?”

  “Nothing,” Harris said, now starting to laugh. “There’s nothing in it but clear, clean air the likes of which you haven’t taken a breath of since you were born in some Irish tenement what with the soot and smoke and rubbish stink of place.

  “It’s like a taste of pure water that you pour into your mouth for the first time. It’s so different your body isn’t ready for it. Keep breathin’, boy. It’s good for you.”

  Byrne took a shorter breath, but his eyes were on Harris, and the burn of his deprecating tone was running up into his ears.

  “Your name isn’t Harris is it?” he finally said, his eyes holding the big man’s.

  The older detective lost his smile.

  “It was O’Hara when my father and two sisters got to New York in 1860, lad. The old man figured it was better changed unless you wanted to starve with the rest of the Irish. You might do well to consider it, Byrne,” Harris said. “Now, let’s take a walk.”