The Americans

by John Jakes

  “You fucking ghoul,” Rafe said, taking one long step. He smashed the crowbar down on the intruder’s left shoulder, breaking it.

  The man yelled and staggered. He yanked a small pistol from his coat. He shoved the pistol against Rafe’s side and fired.

  Before the echo of the shot died, the thief was gone the way he’d come. Members of Rafe’s search party, two carrying lanterns, soon rushed up the front walk.

  “Who fired? Where are you, Martin?”

  Rafe hurt too much to answer. He was on his knees, arms crossed over his belly. He tried to keep from keeling over. He couldn’t. As lantern light filled the moldy-smelling kitchen, he fell forward into the mud.

  His last thought was of Eleanor.

  CHAPTER XVI

  “NOT KNOWN TO BE FOUND”

  i

  THAT SAME SATURDAY NIGHT, Gideon, Moultrie Calhoun, two reporters, a photographer, a sketch artist, and a pair of telegraphers were riding a special one-car train chartered by the Union for the trip to Johnstown. Gideon had been at the Fifth Avenue Hotel when he got word of the disaster. His first act had been to root frantically through the litter on his desk and locate Eleanor’s itinerary. He let out a long, loud sigh when he saw she and Leo had been playing Altoona on Friday.

  The one-car special was frequently sidetracked due to heavy traffic on the Pennsylvania’s main line. At several of these enforced stops, relief workers came aboard and begged Gideon to permit extra cars of food and medical supplies to be coupled on. Much as he hated the delay, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. Fortunately the paper was being supplied with copy by the Associated Press, whose representatives had been the first newsmen to reach the scene.

  Soon the special train consisted of eleven cars. At the unscheduled stops in various small towns, Gideon always stepped off to smoke a cigar and ask for whatever new details had come in on the local telegraph. All he heard were conflicting stories, and wildly varying estimates of the death toll. One man said six thousand were dead; another said it was eight. When Moultrie Calhoun wrote a dispatch datelined Rolling toward Johnstown aboard the Union Special, he used the figure twelve thousand in his opening paragraph. Gideon read it and slashed it out with a pen.

  “We’re supposed to report the truth, not merely sell papers, Moultrie. I appreciate that we’re dealing with the biggest story since Appomattox. But New York already has a full quota of irresponsible reporting.”

  He picked up two special flood extras published on Saturday, and flourished one. “The prestigious Times has Johnstown being wiped out by a waterspout. And this other rag—have you seen what’s on the front page?” He read from the second paper.

  “Johnstown’s foreign population, particularly a group of whiskey-maddened Slavs and Hungarians, is running amok dynamiting bank safes, looting private homes, and relieving pitiable corpses of jewelry and other valuables. These crazed Europeans do not understand our way of life, let alone the simplest rules of human decency. They have no right to enjoy the privileges of citizenship. They should be promptly deported, if they are not first lynched by outraged Americans.”

  He flung the paper across the car. “Neither newspaper as yet has a single representative in Johnstown, for God’s sake! And as far as I know, the A.P. isn’t transmitting any dispatches about crazed Slavs and Hungarians.”

  “You’re correct, sir. They are not.”

  “Then the paper simply invented the story. Make sure we don’t pick up any items like that and rewrite ’em just to fill space.”

  “I will, Mr. Kent.”

  “And watch that business about the body count. If you can’t print facts, don’t print rumors unless you clearly identify them as such.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Very well. I was only trying to do what every other newsman will be doing. The more bodies reported, the more papers sold. I thought you’d want—”

  “You thought incorrectly,” Gideon interrupted. “You don’t know me very well yet, Moultrie.”

  “I’m learning, sir. I’ll be happy to omit the figures. I too dislike compromising editorial standards for the sake of extra circulation—whether the advertising department approves or not.”

  He leaned forward to peer out the window. “What now? We’re slowing again.”

  “Good God. What town is it this time?” Gideon spied a depot sign in the spring sunshine. “Altoona!” He reached for the signal cord.

  Two sharp tugs brought the train to a standstill. Gideon easily located the Daly troupe. They’d announced a special Monday night performance to benefit the flood victims, and everyone in town knew where they were staying. But Gideon’s hope of finding Eleanor and Leo was shattered when he spoke with Regis Pemberton at the troupe’s downtown hotel.

  Pemberton explained why the Goldmans hadn’t taken the same eastbound train as the rest of the company, who had only straggled into Altoona aboard a work train after the passenger express had been delayed for hours up in the mountains.

  Gideon bolted out of the hotel and ran all the way back to the depot despite chest pain and shortness of breath that began before he’d gone a third of the distance.

  ii

  The train chugged on. Gideon sat brooding. Pemberton’s news had left him shaken and fearful. This was just another example of the way fate surprised a man at the very moment things seemed to be going well. Only Friday, a telegraph message had informed the Kents that Carter was safe and well on the Pacific Coast. Julia had enjoyed her first night of sound sleep in many months.

  As a consequence, so had he. But peace never seemed to last long anymore. His had lasted less than forty-eight hours.

  The train neared Johnstown late Sunday afternoon. East of the city, the Pennsylvania rails had been swept away for a distance of almost twenty miles. The special was forced to come to a halt behind six other trains lined up at the end of the track. Gideon’s men fanned out to search the countryside. One found a farmer who would take the Union contingent the rest of the way in his wagon. The farmer’s price was outrageous but Gideon paid it without so much as a question.

  The wagon jolted up and down precipitous mountain roads. By the time the Union men reached the devastated city, the sun had been down half an hour. Gideon left the affairs of the paper in Calhoun’s hands and immediately set out to look for his daughter and son-in-law.

  He tramped through the ruins for three hours, searching everywhere: soup kitchens; the aisles of an improvised tent hospital; marshaling stations at which homeless survivors were being assembled for transportation to emergency shelters in nearby villages. He even spent half an hour in a temporary morgue.

  He didn’t find the Goldmans anywhere.

  He asked questions again and again. It was impossible to get consistent answers. Most every version of the disaster was different. But one central fact was clear. Hundreds and hundreds of people had simply disappeared in the flood crest and its aftermath. He was increasingly fearful that Eleanor and her husband were among them.

  iii

  He finally gave up the search and trudged wearily back to the temporary headquarters members of the press had established in a half-destroyed firebrick plant. Inside a large kiln which had somehow been spared, reporters and artists worked by lantern light, writing and sketching on top of whatever they could improvise for desks— everything from planks to the backs of shovels and the lids of coffins. There were reporters from most of the New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh papers on the scene now, and correspondents on the way from more distant cities as well as from abroad. A new telegraph station was already clicking out copy from a hillside above the stone bridge.

  Gideon sank down on a keg and watched Calhoun pencil a headline.

  HORRENDOUS TOLL STILL UNKNOWN IN DEATH’S VALLEY.

  Casualties of the Fearsome Flood Said to be Ten Thousand or More.

  “ ‘Said to be,’ ” Gideon read, smiling without humor. “At least you’re being honest about your dishonesty.”

  Calhoun remained imperturb
able. “Do we have a reliable figure yet, sir?”

  “We do not. The best guess seems to be somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-three hundred, but I’ve no proof that’s correct. I’ve just heard it more often than some other estimates.”

  Calhoun’s pencil remained motionless above the sheet of foolscap. “Shall I change the headline?”

  An indifferent wave. “Don’t bother.”

  Calhoun frowned. Gideon’s answer told a good deal about his mental state. Softly, the editor asked, “Did you find them, sir?”

  “No. The damn town’s a madhouse. Militiamen everywhere. Relief workers stumbling over one another. Some of the townspeople are starting to set up relic booths.”

  Calhoun’s jaw dropped. “Relic booths, Mr. Kent?”

  “That’s right. Any unbroken plate, tarnished spoon, glass eye, or hank of hair has suddenly been transformed into a fabulous souvenir of the flood. The natives seem to perceive a sizable market, and they’re pricing the items accordingly.” He grimaced. “They’re probably smarter than we’d like to think. When people from the outside arrive in large numbers, I expect the souvenir trade will boom.”

  The editor nodded sad agreement. “I never cease to be astonished by the human appetite for the tasteless and the macabre.”

  He stood up, reached for his overcoat. The night air was growing chilly.

  “The other men are off hunting up material, Mr. Kent. I’ll go up and stand in line with this copy. It will undoubtedly take at least an hour to get it on the wire.”

  Shortly after Calhoun left the kiln, a handsome young man appeared at the entrance. Gideon recognized him at once. The other reporters were dressed conventionally at best and poorly at worst, but the new arrival wore an English lounge suit, a yellow ulster with green stripes, and swung a cane from one kid-gloved hand. It was a standing joke in the profession that Mr. Richard Harding Davis of the Philadelphia Press never removed those gloves to write his copy. Though only in his mid-twenties, Davis had already acquired a reputation as the most elegant newsman on the Eastern seaboard, perhaps in the whole country.

  “They’ll be putting up the first casualty lists in thirty minutes, boys,” Davis called to the others.

  “Where?” shouted a man from the World.

  “By the main tent. See you there.” With a jaunty wave, he left.

  Impatiently, Gideon waited for the half hour to pass. When it was nearly up, he hurried to the tent where long strips of crudely inked paper were being nailed to a board made of pine planks. A noisy crowd pushed and shoved in order to get a first look at the columns of names. Gideon was about to start working his way toward the front when he spied a grimy face he thought he recognized.

  He thrust a reporter out of the way, ignored the man’s scowl, looked again—

  “Eleanor!”

  Struggling and shoving, he fought toward her. He called her name a second time. She turned.

  What he saw on her face chilled him. There was a lackluster quality in her eyes—a dead look. Her cheeks were red, as if she’d been crying.

  “Eleanor—child—” Gideon felt tears in his own eye as he folded her against him. “Thank God you’re alive. I talked to Pemberton in Altoona. He told me you and Leo had stayed behind. I’ve been searching for you ever since I arrived four hours ago. Is Leo all right?”

  “No, Papa. Leo’s gone. I came to make sure they posted his name up there. I told them to be sure to include it. I told a military officer, I think. I don’t remember that part very clearly.”

  Gideon was numbed by what she said, and by the remote way she said it. He’d never seen his daughter so bedraggled, or acting so strangely. With the utmost gentleness, he asked, “What happened to Leo?”

  A bitter smile. “He met a man who never read your Independence Day editorials.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She came to life then. Anger stiffened her shoulders as she said, “You know, Papa—one of your editorials saying how splendid it is to be an American. It isn’t splendid if you have an accent or go to the wrong church. It isn’t splendid if you’re a darky or a Jew. You love to write about the opportunity in this country. I finally understand what you mean. The opportunity to be hated. The opportunity to be killed solely because of who you are.”

  “Eleanor, you still haven’t told me about—”

  “Leo drowned, Papa. A man pushed him in the water, and you know he couldn’t swim. The man didn’t like Jews, and—and—”

  She couldn’t sustain the anger. Her eyes grew dull again. Her shoulders sagged. “What does it matter? Leo’s gone. I’ve been searching for him all day. I searched yesterday, too. There’s no trace of him. Finally I told someone to put his name up there. Do you see what it says?”

  In the light of a windblown torch held aloft so the reporters and relatives could scan the list, Gideon read the heading scrawled above the columns of names:

  NOT KNOWN TO BE FOUND

  She laughed. “Isn’t that a fine turn of phrase? ‘Not known to be found.’ It’s like the pretty talcum the undertaker dusted on Mama’s cheeks after she died. Why don’t they say what they mean? Lost. Lost.” Then, weeping like a child, she slumped in his arms.

  He continued to hold her as a photographer set off flashlight powder with a whoosh of smoke and a dazzle of light. The man smiled, pleased at having recorded the scene for posterity.

  Spots danced in Gideon’s good eye. Finally his vision cleared. Staring over his daughter’s head, he hunted among the names beginning with G. At last he found Goldman, Leo. Put there by Eleanor herself—an act that made him fear for her well-being.

  He held her close and let her sob. He’d always worried about Eleanor and her husband encountering all-too-prevalent bigotry. But he’d never imagined bigotry could cost Leo his life. That it had only made his daughter’s future the more uncertain. For a moment, Gideon actually feared for her sanity.

  More torches were streaming around him. Nearby, a young man wept; had he lost a wife? A child cried in his mother’s arms; had he lost a father? The dead were not the only ones lost, Gideon thought, just as another charge of flashlight powder exploded. The photographer had set up his camera within three feet of the grief-stricken young man, taking his picture while he wept.

  When Gideon saw that, he left Eleanor, moved quickly through the crowd, picked up the photographer’s camera by the tripod and hurled it to the ground. He was too angry to wonder why the photographer didn’t attempt to stop him.

  He stamped on the wooden body of the camera and on the tripod, breaking all the legs. He twisted the lens ring, loosened the multiple disks of glass, and broke them under his heel. Finally, he made sure the plate was ruined. He flung it at the photographer’s feet.

  “For Christ’s sake let these people mourn in privacy!”

  “Mr. Kent”—nervously twisting a corner of his black camera drape, the incredulous man stammered out the words—“don’t—don’t you recognize me? I work for you.”

  Gideon saw it was true. “Not anymore,” he said. “Collect your wages from Calhoun.”

  v

  He walked back toward his daughter. Eleanor simply stood waiting, hands at her sides, dirt and blood all over her skirt, a blank look in her eyes. A profound despair filled Gideon as he put his arm around her shoulder.

  “We’ll start for home in the morning,” he said.

  It took great effort for her to rouse from whatever reverie had claimed her. Comprehension returned to her eyes only slowly. At last she said, “We must tell Leo’s father. I’m sure there’s some—ritual of their faith that ought to be carried out.”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll stop in New York before traveling on to Boston. I’ll personally find Efrem Goldman and tell him what happened. I know words are no good at a time like this, but I want you to hear this much, Eleanor. You must let Julia and me care for you in Boston during this terrible period. That way, perhaps it won’t be so long before the grief passes.”

 
; “It won’t pass, Papa.”

  “I know you feel that way now, but—”

  “It won’t,” she cut in, with a savagery that raised echoes of the past. “I never told him—”

  “Told him what?”

  After a long moment, she answered, “That I loved him.”

  Her voice was remote, and the words weren’t the ones she had intended to say, of that he was sure. A mask had dropped into place. She turned to stare at the columns of names.

  A half minute went by. Very softly, he said, “Eleanor?”

  She didn’t answer, or even give any indication that she’d heard.

  vi

  Flood relief committees were organized in almost every American city of any size. Gideon served on the Boston committee and, because of his business interests, on that in New York as well.

  On the New York committee he worked with men such as August Belmont, the financier, Daniel Frohman the theatrical producer, New York Central president Chauncey Depew, rival newspaperman Charles Dana, and former president Cleveland. Together the men directed the raising of funds and the purchase and shipment of supplies for the stricken town.

  There was also an old friend on the New York committee.

  “I got this at the meeting. Theodore brought it.”

  Disgust on his face, Gideon laid the souvenir spoon on a small rosewood table at Julia’s side. It was a sultry afternoon in late June. Sunlight cast bright patches on the carpet of the Fifth Avenue Hotel parlor, but sections of the large room lay in shadow.

  The spoon glowed in a sunbeam. Julia leaned over the left arm of her chair to study it. “How on earth did he get hold of such a thing?”