Miraculum

by Steph Post

  It had felt odd, walking up the steps of The Anchor and standing before the front desk on Hayden’s arm, as if they were any other couple. May-May had given Ruby the name and address of the hotel and promised her that it was a place where questions wouldn’t be asked. The Anchor’s proprietor, a sour-faced man with a stringy cat in one arm, had eyed her tattoos, but said nothing. Hayden checked them in under Mr. and Mrs. Jones and the sour man had only grunted, handed them a key and glanced upwards, indicating the second floor. Though it was shabby by most standards, Ruby had still been impressed with the room. There was a wide bed and an overstuffed wingback chair in the corner next to an oak dresser and mirror. An electric pendant light hung from the ceiling, instantly illuminating the room with just a quick pull on the drop cord. And there was a window with an upholstered seat. The electric lights of Atlanta were dimmer in this part of the city and at least she had been able to lean out the window and pick out a few stars.

  Ruby had been astonished, though, as they’d driven into the city and were accosted by a blaze of dazzling light from all directions. She’d been with the Star Light since before they had the generators to supply power, when pan lamps and torches were the only source of lighting on the midway. Even up until its last day, the use of electricity in the carnival was reserved for shows only. In the wagons, sleeping tents and cookhouse, oil lamps were still necessary. For many of the rubes, electricity was one of the most exciting marvels of the Star Light. The jeweled electric bulbs, strung from end to end down the midway, and the brilliant entrance arches, lit up like beacons, drew the townsfolk from miles around. Sometimes, if Ruby was working the bally and looking out into the midway crowd, she could see it in their faces, that wonderment at a brilliant new age. Many of the farmers and their families had spent their entire lives in the warm, dim glow of gas or oil light and were startled beyond words at the stark brilliance of the electric world. Ruby understood how they felt. When she had left for New Orleans, the Star Light had still been a show constructed around the power of flame. When she had returned, and the blaze of those electric arches had welcomed her back into the fold, she’d felt as if she had stepped into an alien world.

  It was not only the scintillating lights of Atlanta that overwhelmed Ruby, it was the skyscrapers, the streetcars and the people, flooding in every which direction like ants escaping from a drowned nest. Ruby angled herself against the window so she could better see Groton Avenue below. Merchants and shoppers were bustling about, some resembling the sleek actors and actresses that had filled the pages of January’s Photoplay magazines. A few of the women even had cropped hair, cut short at the neck, in the style that January had once wanted to do hers, but hadn’t the courage. January would have loved to see Atlanta now, with its lights and noise and energy and glamor. When Ruby thought of her friend, though, it felt as if she were choking. January would never make it to New York City. Never find her movie star husband and have a closet full of furs and send Ruby postcards with details of her big city life.

  Ruby gritted her teeth and pushed herself away from the window, forcing herself to pace up and down the length of the room. She’d spent her life walking away from places she had thought to call home. The mountains. The Village. And now the carnival. It didn’t matter that the Star Light was now nothing more than an expanse of ash. She had left it behind her. She would have to think like that or she would never get through it. When Hayden suddenly banged through the door, she was desperately relieved.

  He set a large paper bag down on the dresser and began to pull out bread and sliced meat, but Ruby ignored the food and snatched up the newspapers. She spread them out on the floorboards and scanned the headlines: murder, prohibition, the price of cotton. Hayden stretched out across the bed with a sandwich in his hand and looked over her shoulder.

  “How do you think you’re going to find him that way?”

  Ruby turned over a page and shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m looking for something showing he left his mark, something like…”

  “Like the fire?”

  Ruby chewed on her lip and flipped more pages. Advertisements for shoes and automobiles. Articles on the upcoming election. Film stars.

  “If he’s here, wouldn’t he have done something, I don’t know, noticeable?”

  She leaned back against the bed and looked over her shoulder at Hayden. He finished chewing and swallowed.

  “Daniel was with the Star Light for two weeks before he did anything. And, well, that was different.”

  Hayden stopped himself and quickly looked away from her. She turned and glowered down at the floor.

  “I know. I was there. And you’ve said it yourself. He was only there to kill me.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I know that.”

  She heard the bedsprings squeak as Hayden moved around and then slid down to the floor next to her. She raised her eyes to him.

  “Why else would he have done it?”

  Hayden shrugged.

  “I don’t know, because he’s a crazy mythical beast? Because he’s not human?”

  “He’s partly human. He looks human.”

  Hayden kicked his feet out over the newspapers.

  “So he looks human. We’ve worked with people who looked like monsters. Real, true monsters. That didn’t mean they were. You, of all people, should know that appearances mean nothing.”

  She cut her eyes at him.

  “So you’re calling me a monster?”

  Hayden groaned.

  “You are not a monster. I know you feel that somehow you and Daniel are alike. You’re pulled together by your tattoos. But you can’t believe that. You’re not like him. You’re his antithesis, if anything.”

  Hayden crinkled the edge of one of the newspapers.

  “And if you’re determined to do this thing with Daniel, I’d like us to go ahead and do it now so we can see whatever lies on the other side. Maybe have a shot at being together and, oh, I don’t know, maybe even being happy. Assuming I don’t somehow manage to screw it up again. And assuming we make it out of this alive, of course.”

  He grinned at her and she rolled her eyes.

  “You’re taking all of this well.”

  Hayden took off his hat and spun it around on his finger.

  “Ruby, you’re telling me you want to fight a god. Demon, trickster, whatever the hell Daniel is. Do you hear how that sounds? You might as well be saying, ‘Hayden, I’d like to go fight a dragon today.’ How else am I supposed to handle this?”

  “Fine.”

  She pushed away the newspapers and put her head in her hands, trying to think.

  “He’s got to be in the city. I just have no idea where to start looking.”

  Hayden stood up and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, if you want to know what everybody’s talking about on the street, it isn’t a tragedy.”

  Ruby looked up sharply.

  “What is it?”

  Hayden walked over to the window with his cigarette and looked out.

  “It’s this new radio station.”

  “Radio?”

  Ruby stood up and followed him. Hayden handed her the cigarette.

  “I guess Atlanta’s starting up its own radio station. Like they have up in Philadelphia. One that will have music and people announcing sports as they’re happening. Everything. You’ll be able to turn on a radio and dial up their frequency and get the weather report or the news, just like you would in the paper.”

  “Seriously?”

  Ruby had heard about radios, of course. She’d just never seen one. No one she knew had. Radios were used on ships and in the War, that was all she knew about them. To be able to work some machine and hear music and voices from far away? She couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was otherworldly.

  “It’s all anyone could talk about. First radio station in the South. It’s going to be owned by the Atlanta Journal, so I bet there’s something in the paper abou
t it.”

  Hayden pushed the newspapers around on the floor until he found the Journal. He brought it over to Ruby and they looked through the pages together. The write-up was at the bottom of the second page, an announcement that the Atlanta Journal was going to be operating the first Southern radio station, WSB. The inaugural broadcast was scheduled for the next day. Hayden took the cigarette back from Ruby and handed her the paper. He leaned against the wall next to the window.

  “It’ll be on the front page tomorrow, I’m sure.”

  Ruby read the article again and then looked up at Hayden, startled.

  “They’re going to have a ceremony outside the newspaper office tomorrow morning when they air the first broadcast.”

  Hayden nodded.

  “It’ll probably be a big whoop-de-do. These sorts of things always are. A crowd of people all standing around to hear a bunch of speeches beforehand. When I was in Houston one winter, it seemed like it never stopped. Every inch of progress was celebrated with a ribbon cutting and a fight among the local elect over who got to do the honors. A mess of showing off.”

  Ruby folded the paper in half.

  “He’ll be there.”

  Hayden turned back to the window and looked out at the street again. It was beginning to rain.

  “Daniel? Why would he be?”

  For an instant, Ruby’s mind flashed back to her walk with Daniel to The Rainbow Theater. His talk of cities and films, progress and the future. It could have all been lies, part of his act, but Ruby didn’t think so.

  “Trust me. He’ll be there. I don’t think he could resist it.”

  She watched Hayden’s back, waiting for him to respond. She wasn’t going to explain herself. She wasn’t even going to offer to. When he turned around, he only nodded.

  “Do you have an idea for how you’re going to find out?”

  “Not yet.”

  Hayden put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

  “Well, I do. We don’t have to rush this. You want to trick Daniel, you want to catch him off guard, right? Let’s at least make sure he’s in Atlanta first. I’ll go to the ceremony tomorrow and scout it out.”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “No way.”

  “Ruby. Be smart. You are smart, so act smart.”

  She turned away from him. Ruby didn’t want to be left behind, but she had to agree that Hayden had a point. She knew her limitations. She couldn’t blend in. Especially in a crowd of high society socialites. She had very little on her side going up against Daniel, and surprise was one of the few resources she possessed. Showing up at the ceremony would blow that all to pieces. She’d have to act right then and that wouldn’t work with the rest of her plan. Ruby turned back to Hayden.

  “All right. But be safe. And don’t let him see you.”

  Hayden crossed his arms and grinned at her.

  “I wasn’t planning on it. Come on, Ruby. If you get to slay the dragon, at least let me have a little piece of the glory.”

  Daniel stood amidst the gathered crowd on Forsyth Street and raised his gaze to the fifth floor of the Atlanta Journal building. Somewhere on that level there was a cramped little room filled with coils and tubes, batteries and generators, microphones, headsets, knobs and the almighty 100-watt transmitter. There were men haphazardly connecting exposed wires and laying out fruit jars filled with lead and zinc to produce enough voltage. There was sizzling, invisible energy just waiting to be harnessed and sent upwards to the antenna towering on the roof behind the Journal marquee and then back down to the awaiting receiver box on the stage. It was all about to happen and Daniel was there to witness it.

  A round of polite applause echoed from the crowd around him and Daniel glanced toward the wooden stage set up in front of the soot-stained brick building. The railyard was not far and even now the air was tinged with a thin black dust that settled on the hats and shoulders of the onlookers. He watched as a man with gray hair parted slickly down the middle and a yellow rose in the button hole of his white suit jacket ascended the stage and began his speech.

  “Today is a great day! Today is a monumental day that will go down in the history of Atlanta and the history of the South! Today is a day that makes me so proud to be your mayor!”

  Daniel ignored him and made his way to the end of the stage where the equipment was set up. He effortlessly pushed past prominent local businessmen and their blue-blooded families who had been waiting out in the blazing sun all morning, vying with each other for the closest, and most attractive, spot from which to view the speeches. They wanted to see Mayor Key and Hoke Smith, the owner of the Atlanta Journal and now a state senator, standing proudly together on the bunting-draped stage, and they wanted to be seen. By Key and Smith, but also by the society columnists prowling through the event and, most importantly, by each other. Even as Daniel glided past them, futures were being decided for budding debutants and alliances made and broken that would shape the fate of the coming election. Daniel could care less. Cruising like a shark in his sharp black suit, he parted through the sea of Atlanta’s elite and thought nothing of kicking mud onto their shoes.

  Hands began to clap around Daniel as the mayor stepped back and the imposing form of Senator Smith took his place. For a moment, Daniel glanced up toward the man, red-faced and sweating in his checkered tweed suit. Daniel had half a mind to make the man fall over, tumbling like a bowling pin off the stage and into the ocean of lace and linen below. But then he would never hear the radio, and that was all that Daniel cared about.

  “My dear Atlanta citizens! It is such an honor to be standing here before you and to have my very own newspaper, the Atlanta Journal, the flagship institution of modernity in the South, bringing you this immense accomplishment today. I hope that it will be forever remembered in history that we were the first. The Constitution receives its broadcasting license tomorrow, but ours has come through today. Hallelujah!”

  Daniel slipped past one more row of sweating spectators and came to the side of the stage where the radio receiver was displayed on a low table, just about at eye level with him. A large sign proclaiming DANGER had been tacked beneath it. Daniel stared with wonder at the receiving box, open so that the power amplifying tubes could be seen. A tangle of wires, probably more than was needed, but which created quite an effect, led to the dish of the reflector and the large, ominous horn of the loud speaker. Daniel had no idea how the thing worked, and being mystified delighted him. He had been expecting something a little more grandiose in size, as he thought back to the marvelous demonstration on electricity, magnetism and phosphoresce he had once seen Nikola Tesla give at the Royal Institute in London, but he supposed that for being in the middle of Georgia, this would have to suffice. Senator Smith droned on from the center of the stage, but Daniel kept his eyes on the wires, coils and dials as he waited to be impressed.

  “And so now, without further delay, and in the hopes that this great leap forward will always be remembered, I give you the first radio broadcast from a station in the South, our very own WSB, transmitting from inside this very building and received by this radio, right here on this stage. I say to you, as a beacon of what we will say to this great nation of ours, as our call letters ring out: Welcome to the South, Brother!”

  A pattering of cheers rose up from the crowd and then all eyes turned to the gangly man with his tie half loosened who was now kneeling down amidst the mess of radio equipment. Atlanta’s finest, panting in the heat, waited patiently while the awkward radio operator turned the dials on the receiver back and forth, trying to find the 620 AM frequency transmitting from the top of the building. Suddenly, a crackling leapt from the speaker and those close enough to hear it gasped. Daniel was staring intently at the horn, for once waiting with everyone else to see what would happen, and then a bolt of sound rang out. A man’s foggy voice echoed over the silent, breathless crowd.

  “…Afternoon. This is the Radiophone Broadcasting Station of the Atlanta Journal
. Per the meteorological society forecast from Washington, we should experience temperatures in the low nineties with little chance of precipitation. There is a slight possibility of afternoon thunderstorms tomorrow. This is WSB, I repeat, WSB, signing off to resume again in one hour on frequency channel 620. Welcome to the South, Brother.”

  The radio crackled a few moments more and then went silent. The crowd slowly began to look at one another, some awestruck and some bewildered. Senator Smith stepped forward again.

  “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The first broadcast of the South’s first radio station. WSB will be airing the weather reports every hour and will be open for any emergency broadcasts.”

  Seeing the confusion on many of the faces in the crowd, the senator held out his hands and grinned widely.

  “And don’t you worry, folks! WSB should have live news and entertainment programs airing in the next few months. Just think! New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. They won’t have nothing on us now. Not when they hear we have the Home Town Boys live in the studio!”