The Americans

by John Jakes

  Billowing smoke and sparks behind it, the Union Pacific express sped across the darkness of Nebraska. More stars than Carter had ever seen illuminated the sky above the prairie. Soon, though, the stars paled, and anxious passengers crowded the platforms between the cars, pointing to the northern horizon. It glowed like a furnace.

  The brilliant red light seemed to be sweeping toward the train. The whistle blared. The train picked up speed. At Carter’s elbow, a conductor said, “Prairie fire. We’ve got to go like blazes so it doesn’t catch us. You can see the wind fanning it. Moving it this way.”

  And in front of the wall of fire, dark specks leaped and darted. Deer? Bison? Carter watched in awe.

  The danger was short-lived. The express outran the fire, which dwindled to a scarlet smudge in the northeast, then vanished. Once more the conductor tore off a section of Carter’s ticket.

  He stared at the remaining sections, trying to fathom why the sight of them bothered him so much. All at once he understood. The excitement of the journey and the novelty of the sights had diverted him from the answer for a while. He might be escaping to a new city, but he certainly wasn’t escaping to a new way of life. The ticket didn’t represent fresh opportunity, but a variation of all he’d rebelled against for years.

  Other people restricting his freedom. Telling him what to do.

  The ticket wasn’t a symbol of fresh opportunity. It was a symbol of Gideon’s will. Gideon’s wishes. Gideon’s plan for his life—

  “Well, by God, it’s my life!”

  He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. The Pullman porter, a sad, slope-shouldered old black man, thought Carter was calling him, and came hurrying along the aisle.

  “Beg pardon, sir? Did you want me to make up your bed?”

  The accumulated resentment boiled over. He jumped up. “Yes! Get to it!”

  “I will, sir. Right this minute.”

  The man was cringing, almost servile. That pleased Carter. It wasn’t that he felt as the trainman did about blacks; the porter’s skin had nothing to do with Carter’s reaction. What he liked was being in control of another human being—black, brown, red, white, it didn’t matter. Only the control mattered. The control achieved by some method that would not get you killed; Ortega and the Red Cod had taught him to set that limit.

  Control of others was what he wanted from life. Instead, he had the ticket.

  When the lower berth was ready, he climbed in. Thus far on the trip, he’d slept soundly. Tonight he was restless. He cursed volubly whenever the train swayed or jerked. Hour after hour, all he could think of was the ticket.

  “Sleep well, sir?” the porter asked in a hopeful tone when Carter climbed out between the green curtains the next morning.

  “No. I had a miserable rest.” He knuckled his eyes, noticed the respectful look on the porter’s face. How could he make everyone treat him that way? He knew. By following the advice he’d given Will. By being somebody.

  He couldn’t do it by going on to San Francisco, though. He couldn’t do it by swamping floors or cleaning toilets in some nigger-owned hotel—that was for damned sure. He had to strike out in a new direction.

  “I’m not spending another night on this rattletrap,” he announced.

  “I thought you were going all the way to California with us, sir.”

  “I changed my mind. What’s the next stop?”

  The porter consulted his watch. “North Platte, Nebraska.”

  “When will we be there?”

  “About ten.”

  “That’s where I’m getting off.”

  The porter bobbed his head. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”

  The only other passenger to leave the train at North Platte was an old farmer from second class. Carter stood on the platform in the sun as the locomotive drivers began to shunt back and forth and the whistle blew. The moment the train pulled out, he knew he’d made a dreadful mistake. North Platte seemed to be nothing more than a collection of railroad sidings, unpainted commercial buildings and small, mean houses set down beside a dirty river in the middle of a sea of prairie grass. A stiff breeze filled the air with dust. It was only April but the sun was scorching. Sweat turned his linen shirt sodden beneath his new Marshall Field jacket.

  He hoisted his two cowhide valises and trudged toward the main street. He felt hot, tired, and overcome with guilt. By bolting from the train, he’d betrayed Julia’s trust.

  He stopped a man emerging from a general store whose elaborately painted sign read:

  H. & M. K. BOYLE OF NORTH PLATTE

  —General Merchandise—

  “Mister, is there a clean, inexpensive hotel in town?” The plainly dressed townsman eyed Carter’s fancy jacket and dusty button shoes. “Try the Platte Palace.” He jerked a thumb into the sun’s glare. “Two blocks down. The widow Butts runs it.”

  “Obliged.”

  Carter touched two fingers to his forehead, picked up his valises, and walked on. What he saw around him was discouraging. Shimmering heat devils on the horizon. Blowing dust. A godforsaken little town whose loftiest building seemed to be its grain elevator.

  But he was free of all the ticket represented. Free. He had to remember that.

  ii

  The Platte Palace Hotel was two stories high, half a block wide across the front, and deserted. He entered and saw a woman dusting the lobby counter. The woman was plain, heavy-breasted, in her early forties. She looked uncomfortable in her worn, high-necked dress of black silk.

  She gave him a hard look. Her gray-green eyes had a curious intensity. He endured the stare without a sign of annoyance, then put on his most charming smile.

  “I just got off the train.” He pointed to a chipped writing desk near the large and dusty front window through which the sunlight streamed. “Do you mind if I sit and write a note?”

  “I suppose not.” The tone of the reply said she wished he wouldn’t.

  Carter set his valises on the rug. The movement stirred motes of dust and set them whirling faster in the sunshine. He sank down in the chair. It creaked. He opened the desk drawer. It contained nothing but Union and Central Pacific timetables.

  “You’ll have to get your own stationery,” the woman called. “I quit supplying it after my husband died. Too many people steal it, and it’s expensive. My husband was always giving things away. That’s why we were always broke.”

  Carter nodded. Why was the woman staring at him so intently? Was she angry because he intended to use the desk? Well, the hell with her. He found his unused ticket, held it up.

  “I have paper.”

  She sniffed and gave him another oblique look. She tugged nervously at the waist of her dress, tightening the material over her breasts. He noticed that as she did so, she stood in profile. He was beginning to catch on to her game.

  The woman disappeared behind the partition which contained the pigeonholes for mail. All the pigeonholes were empty.

  A train whistle sounded in the distance. Carter bent his head over the desk whose top was illuminated by the blazing sunlight. He began to feel confused and depressed. Where could he go? How could he support himself after his money was gone? He only had fifteen dollars left. He was in the middle of a vast, unfamiliar country. Friendless. Alone—

  He pulled an old steel pen from the inkwell. On the back of the ticket, he began a letter to Julia.

  In brief sentences, he told her he’d left the train in Nebraska. He told her he couldn’t go on to the Hope House and the menial job waiting there. He told her he had to do what he wanted, not what someone ordered him to do.

  He stuck the end of the pen in his mouth and chewed on it. With a start, he realized the woman had come back and was watching him gnaw hotel property. He stopped. Smiled. She returned the smile and slowly leaned her elbows and her pendulous breasts on the counter.

  The pen scratched in the silence:

  I don’t want you to worry, which is why I am sending this. And I don’t want you to be hurt,
or fret, if you don’t hear from me for a while. I must sort things out and make my way on my own. I’m grown now. I can do it. I will write you from wherever I land in a few months, and am sure I will have good news about what I have decided to do in the future.

  What lies, he thought, his face glum and his belly beginning to hurt as he realized the enormity of the step he’d taken. He had no idea where he’d go, or how he’d get along when his traveling cash ran out. All his thoughts about freedom—all his plans to control his own destiny— seemed ludicrous in view of his situation.

  But his mother mustn’t know that. She’d be upset enough when she learned what he’d done. Despite her low opinion of him, he loved her, and he owed her at least a little peace of mind. He finished the letter by saying:

  Above all, please do not worry. I will be fine. Say hello to Will.

  Yr. affectionate son,

  Carter.

  iii

  He scratched a horizontal line under his name and added a few ornamentations to it. He started to chew the pen again. He heard a floorboard squeak. He jerked the pen out of his mouth, getting a small splinter in his lip as he did so.

  A shadow fell across the desk. He spat the splinter away and tucked the letter in his pocket, then glanced up. The stocky widow was standing there, her arms folded beneath her breasts as if to emphasize their size.

  “Done?”

  “Yes. Just now.”

  “That’s good. I can’t stay here all day to see that you don’t steal anything. I have rooms to clean upstairs.”

  “All right.”

  He pushed the chair back, accidentally brushed against her as he stood up. With a startled breath, she stepped away. He couldn’t reconcile her scowl with her strange, searching gaze. Her eyes moved quickly across his shoulders, down to his waist, back to his face.

  “I’ll buy an envelope at the store,” he said. “Thanks very much for letting me—”

  “How old are you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “How old?”

  “In another few days I’ll be twenty-two.”

  “Why did you stop in North Platte? Do you know anyone here?”

  He shook his head, smiled that charming smile. “It seemed as good a place as any.” That was better than telling the truth—that North Platte looked like a hellhole.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kent. Carter Kent.”

  “I’m Mrs. Olga Butts:”

  She extended her hand. They shook. Her palm was moist and warm. She gripped his fingers longer than necessary.

  Continuing to smile, he felt an ache spread through his midsection. He was alone. He had no way to get along except by using his wits and his one talent. The talent that had come to him from his grandmother, and his father.

  It was such an ephemeral thing to pin his hopes on, that talent. But he had nothing else. And because of his own impulsive actions, he was desperate.

  He struggled to make sure the desperation didn’t show. “Happy to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Butts. It’s a pleasure to see anything resembling a friendly face. I haven’t run into many lately—” He sighed, hoping he wasn’t over-doing it. He was.

  She became suspicious. “What kind have you run into? Are you in trouble with the law?”

  “Mrs. Butts—”

  “You’re old enough to be a thief. A bank robber, a train robber—a man who takes advantage of women.”

  But she didn’t move away from him. Her breathing had grown rapid. “Tell me the truth, Mr. Kent. Are you evading the authorities? Is someone chasing you?”

  “No one would chase me, Mrs. Butts. I’m not worth anything. Nobody’d want me.” She denied that with an admiring glance, he noted from a corner of his eye.

  “Where are you from, Mr. Kent?”

  “St. Louis.”

  He began to feel exhilarated then. The exhilaration was tinged with danger as he started to spin out a tale, not knowing what was coming until he said it.

  “I’m an only child. When my father died five years ago, my mother inherited a prosperous livery business. She mourned for a year, then married a man from Minnesota. He ran the business into the ground. He was a drunkard. What’s worse, he—infected her with a foul disease he had been carrying for years. For some reason the disease took its toll on my mother more quickly than it did on him. It affected her mind. My stepfather shut her away in an asylum for the insane, intending to let her die there while he spent the last of her money. When I tried to get her out of the asylum, he bribed the sheriff to trump up charges against me. I had to leave St. Louis at night, on a freight car—in a hurry.”

  She seemed close to weeping. “Oh, God, Mr. Kent, that’s a terrible story.”

  He thought so too, but not for the same reasons she did. He looked mournful. “Indeed it is. And it was a terrible choice—leaving my poor mother behind in order to save my own skin. But they’d have locked me up, maybe for years, and my stepfather had already ruined her. So I figured I’d make my fortune out west, then go back and settle with him. Provided the disease doesn’t get him first. I hope to God it doesn’t.”

  It was straight out of a Beadle novel. But the emotions of the widow Butts were so stirred, the absurdity eluded her. She shook her head and dabbed an eye. “It isn’t an easy world, is it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I lost my husband to influenza last winter. I miss his— comforting presence more than I can say. Since his passing, the hotel has deteriorated even further. He had no head for business, but I’m even more inadequate. Very lonely, too—”

  She was struggling for words that suddenly burst forth. “I’d be happy to fix you a meal if you’re hungry.”

  “That would be wonderful, ma’am. I’m starved.”

  Now, he thought, now. He’d told the tale for one reason—so he wouldn’t have to spend anything for a room in North Platte. All at once, he knew he was going to be successful.

  She said to him, “And if you—if you care to stay overnight, you can have any bed in the hotel.”

  She glanced past him to see whether anyone was watching from the street. Her sun-flecked eyes pierced him as she added in a whisper, “Including mine.”

  iv

  Despite her age, the widow Butts proved as frisky as a mare in heat. She nearly wore Carter out that night. Finally, around three-thirty, she fell asleep and snored.

  He lay beside her, exhausted but too jubilant to rest. The experience with the affection-starved woman had renewed his confidence, vindicated the rightness of his decision to leave the westbound train and restored his faith in the future. Olga Butts had accepted his lies. Of course he didn’t think of himself as a liar. Prompted by necessity, he’d merely used the one talent at his disposal.

  The more he thought about the events of the day, the more delighted he was. His talent would help him survive. His talent would take him anywhere he wanted to go.

  Out on the prairie, a locomotive hooted. Not a lonesome sound, but an exciting one, symbolic of the world that suddenly lay open to him.

  Closer at hand, Mrs. Butts let out a loud snore. He chuckled and snuggled down in the warm bed. The past no longer had any hold on him. And the future had never looked brighter.

  Book Two

  THE JOURNEY OF WILL KENT

  CHAPTER I

  UNHAPPY HOMECOMING

  i

  ON A DISMAL MORNING early in March 1886, the Cunard steamship Excalibur entered New York harbor.

  Cold wind whipped the water to white foam. Rain threatened to become sleet as tugboats guided the liner toward her berth on the North River. The passengers had withstood gale winds and mountainous waves on the late winter crossing, so the inclement weather didn’t prevent hundreds of them from rushing on deck to see the scaffolding and the great blocks of stone already in place on Bedloe’s Island. Among the observers, perhaps the most envious was Gideon Kent.

  He’d been abroad with Julia and Will most of the winter. They’d tou
red the museums of London and Paris, Rome and Madrid with Gideon’s brother Matthew—and Matt’s latest blond and blue-eyed mistress—as their guides and companions. But he’d kept in touch with business affairs by cable. Thus he knew work was once more going forward on the pedestal for Bartholdi’s great Statue of Liberty.

  Before the resumption of work, the project had languished for months. While the crated sections of the statue remained in storage, Congress had debated and ultimately decided against funding construction of the pedestal. Then Joe Pulitzer had jumped in. The New York World had lashed Congress for failing to do its duty, and for insulting the French people, whose donations had paid for the statue. A five-month campaign supported by articles and editorials had generated the necessary one hundred thousand dollars. School children had contributed their pennies, ordinary people their dollars, tycoons their thousands. It was an incredible outpouring that testified to the immense power of the press.

  Or was it merely testimony to the power of Pulitzer’s sensational brand of journalism? Gideon asked himself as he watched Bedloe’s Island glide past in the murk.

  Gideon knew Pulitzer, of course. He admired the publisher’s insistence that his paper never become the captive of any group or political party. “Indegoddamnpendent” was Pulitzer’s unique way of putting it. On the other hand, setting aside the worthiness of many of the causes Pulitzer embraced, Gideon didn’t like the way the publisher manipulated the public, and pandered to low tastes by packing the World with accounts of crime and Society scandal. Gideon refused to employ such tactics on the Union, even though the World’s circulation was climbing dramatically at the expense of every other daily—including his own.

  Standing at the rail with the sleet beginning to collect in his beard, he shivered and asked himself whether Pulitzer might one day drive him out of business.

  Almost at once, he scowled and shook his head. It was wrong for a man to blame anyone else for failure. If the Union was ever forced to suspend publication, it would be the result of his bad judgment. His mistakes.