Port Hazard

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Thought you said he wouldn’t set much challenge,” Beecher said.

  I shushed him, strode to the auditorium door, and cracked it. It opened into a carpeted alcove with stairs to the right and left, which I guessed led to the curtained boxes where the gentry plied Owen Goodhue’s lost daughters with drink and pressed their affections in private. I hoped they’d be vacant that night. I drew the Deane-Adams and led the way upstairs. Voices buzzed in the orchestra. The place sounded like opening night for a revue from New York.

  “Sir, I’m afraid you’ve lost your way.”

  I recognized the deep silken voice before I saw its owner. Wheelock’s bodyguard stood in the center of the floral carpet that ran past the entrance to the boxes, his feet spread in patent-leather boots. Tonight he had on plum-colored plush, ruffled white linen, and black broadcloth, tailored to within a quarter-inch of his measurements. It made him look almost normal size until you realized that what appeared to be a ladies’ pocket pistol in his right hand was a full-size Colt Peacemaker, with the barrel shortened to accommodate a concealed holster. It was steadied against his hip.

  I said. “Nero, this isn’t your affair. I represent the law.”

  I might as well have been throwing pebbles at a statue. The fact that I had a revolver in my hand as well meant no more to him than the color of my eyes. We’d neither of us miss the mark at that distance.

  “Nero.”

  I twitched. Nero didn’t. I hadn’t realized Beecher wasn’t behind me until he stepped around the corner behind the bodyguard and called his name. He held the Le Mat straight out from his shoulder with the muzzle aimed at the back of the big man’s head. He’d climbed the other set of stairs and followed the carpeted walk all the way around the auditorium.

  “That’s Beecher,” I said. “You met him the other day in your boss’s reception room.”

  That bounced off him. He was a fixture. They’d built the Bella Union around him and he’d be the last thing to go come the next big fire. The Colt didn’t move. Judge Blackthorne’s deputies were trained in that situation to fire at their primary target, then if they were still standing, turn and try for the men behind them. In that moment I knew Nero had been taught the same thing. We were going to burn each other down, and God couldn’t stop it. He’d turned His back on Barbary. My finger tightened on the trigger of the Deane-Adams.

  “He won’t remember,” Beecher said. “We’re all the same to him, a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears. He’ll wag his tail and lick the face of whoever comes around to see his master. Ain’t that right, nigger-oh?”

  He licked his lips. “Nero.”

  I couldn’t fathom it. If Beecher had told me what he’d had in mind, I’d have refused to go along. You could see through it from a hundred yards, and the bodyguard wasn’t a fool. But Beecher had known something I hadn’t, something I never would. I relaxed my finger just a little.

  “That ain’t what I asked, you dumb coon. You must have cotton in your ears.”

  Nero didn’t move. A vein I hadn’t noticed before rose like a blister on his left temple. I saw it pulse.

  “Let’s us go,” Beecher said to me. “This boy’s got spitoons to empty out.”

  Nero twisted suddenly, bringing the Colt around with him. I made two long strides and swept the barrel of the five-shot across the bulge of his skull. His knees buckled. I reached past him, closing my hand over the Colt and jamming the base of my thumb between the hammer and the chamber. I sucked air when the hammer pinched flesh, but the cartridge didn’t fire and I twisted the weapon out of his grip as he fell.

  We gagged him with his cravat, used his belt and Beecher’s to bind his arms and legs, and dragged him through a door into one of the boxes overlooking the auditorium. I told Beecher to watch him.

  “What about you?”

  “I came to see the show.”

  29

  It was my first time in the Bella Union’s melodeon section, and if it weren’t for what had brought me there, I might have been entranced. Tombstone’s celebrated Birdcage and the candied theaters of St. Louis and Virginia City could boast of no features not in place in the Ancient. The curtained boxes where customers could sip brandy or sherry or Tennessee Thunder in comfort while watching the show, or draw the curtains and enjoy a show of their own with one of the danseuses from the saloon, were stacked three high all around the orchestra, whose seats were upholstered in green plush piped with gold braid. Gas globes were stacked like eggs atop corner fixtures, and the stage glowed between mahogany columns carved into towering shocks of wheat. Cabbage roses exploded on burgundy runners in the aisles. Laurels of gold leaf encircled a coffered ceiling with a Greek Bacchanal enshrined in stained glass in the center, lighted from above so that the chubby nymphs’ nipples and the blubbery lips of the bloated male gods and demigods glittered like rubies. It was as decadent as anything in that vicinity. A Christian soldier like Owen Goodhue would shinny up one of the wheat shocks to smash it bare-handed.

  There was a particularly lecherous glint in the eye of one deity, busy feeding pomegranate seeds from a cupped palm to a hefty nude sprawled across his lap: a round hole with yellow light glaring through. I was pretty sure it was a bullet hole, possibly a practice round fired by Samuel Tetlow, the Ancient’s absentee owner, before he shot his partner.

  The place dripped dissipation. Like most of its neighbors, it had burned several times during the tender years of the Gold Rush, and according to Pinholster it had reincarnated itself each time in a shape more lewd than the one before. There were old stains on the velvet seats and carpeting in the box I was in that I didn’t think were made by spilled liquor, or even blood, and there was a smell of disinfectant that no cologne, no matter how liberally sprayed about, could disguise completely. Just being there made me feel like a dirty little boy, and I was on U.S. business. I could only imagine what it was like in the company of a young creature with soft flesh and hard eyes while ballet girls performed splits onstage.

  A low groaning made me jump. It sounded as if whatever wounded animal had made it was in the box with me. I thought of checking on Beecher, who was in the next box, keeping an eye on Nero. Then came another groan, shorter and ending on a higher note. Someone was sawing at a cello.

  Carefully I drew aside one of the swagged curtains and peered around it down onto the stage. The musician, a scrawny old fellow with white hair parted in the center and extravagant handlebars, squatted in evening dress on a low stool with the cello between his knees, searching for the scales with his bow. At last he found them, and as he neared the middle register, a violinist standing next to him joined in with what sounded like the first strains of “Turkey in the Straw,” although it was more likely something by Bach or Vivaldi or some other wicked European whose music I couldn’t hum no matter how recently I’d heard it. A third musician slid a chair across the stage, perched on its edge, and started tuning a guitar. He spent a lot of time between strums twisting the frets or whatever they were called, and each time when he tried it he seemed to find the same note. I have no ear for music.

  A third of the seats in front of the stage were filled, with more visitors shuffling down the aisles. All were men. Some wore black swallowtails, others town suits and old overalls. A large number wore Confederate gray. The uniforms appeared tailored to fit, from far better material than the old shoddy, and were certainly in too good a condition to have gone through combat, or even hung in some cedar closet for eighteen years. There were chevrons and bars, some clusters, but no stars as yet. I had an idea the Sons of the Confederacy hadn’t room for more than one general; or two, if Blackthorne and Marshal Spilsbury were right about the rift in the ranks.

  The men in uniform were young, by and large; at the most, they looked to be in their late thirties, scarcely old enough to have exposed their regimentals to enemy fire. A few were barely out of their teens, with pimples on their foreheads and public first attempts at moustaches and imperials. Some of the officers wore
sabers, and from the way they clanked against their heels when they walked, it seemed obvious they wouldn’t know how to handle them when they were out of their scabbards either. If I were casting a play set at Gettysburg, I’d have called off the audition based on those who had responded.

  I began to wonder if this was the same organization that had tried twice to kill me and had committed some two dozen murders for the cause of Southern liberty. But then I’d been all wrong about Owen Goodhue, on the evidence of his ordinary-looking parlor; caught up in the fire of his faith, he was a guerrilla, cut from the same vengeful cloth as Bloody Bill and Clay Allison. They don’t always oblige you with horns and a forked tail.

  Applause burst, making me jump yet again. The trio onstage had stopped tuning their instruments and hurled themselves into a lilting, pastoral ballad, no great success when it was first played in public, but which events had made something else of altogether. The older men in the audience recognized it first, started singing on the third note, and caught up with the melody by the fourth bar. By that time, the younger men had begun to join in:

  O, I wish I was in the land of cotton;

  Old times there are not forgotten.

  Look away…

  As the second chorus started, the instruments got louder, the tempo increased, and the deep purple velvet curtain glided silently upward, revealing at last the Confederate Stars and Bars, twelve feet by eight, strung by its corners from rigging suspended from the flies far above the stage. The flag was made of paper-thin silk that rippled in the air currents stirred by clapping hands. The applause rose volcanically, pulling the men in the audience to their feet and tearing cheers from two hundred pairs of lungs; for the theater was crowded now, without a vacant seat in sight. I felt my own heart lifting, and I’d fought the bloody rag for four years, burying close friends slain in its shadow.

  That’s how it’s done. They snare you with bands and bright colors, and six months later you’re sleeping with lice in a muddy hole, half-starved and scared half out of your mind.

  The spell broke when a shrill cry rose above the cheering, high and thin and breaking at its peak, like a bullwhacker’s whip. It froze my spine. I hadn’t heard an authentic rebel yell since Petersburg, where Beauregard’s men hung their naked backsides over the top of the redoubt and dared us to storm it. A wild boar shrieks like that when it knows it’s beaten but won’t die without taking some of the hounds along for company. I’d hoped I’d never hear it again. It was an even worse omen than the seagull roosting on Nan Feeny’s roof.

  I leaned out to see who was responsible for it, but I had to hold back to avoid being spotted, so I couldn’t pick him out. The yell took me too far into the past to have belonged to someone who hadn’t seared his lungs with cannon smoke, or slipped in blood and spilled entrails, fighting bayonet to bayonet with his enemy’s sweat stinging his eyes. There was a real live big cat down there among the tin tigers. I had that feeling, like a falling sensation in a nightmare, that we would meet. Like attracts like.

  When they finished playing, the musicians rose. Hands were still pounding, and I thought they’d take a bow, or follow up with “I’m a Good Old Rebel” but they merely picked up their chairs and carried them and their instruments offstage. I credited them for maintaining perspective. A monkey with a tambourine would have gotten an ovation playing “Dixie” for that crowd.

  The stage was empty for a minute, perhaps longer; long enough anyway for the spectators to reseat themselves, begin to fidget, and crack a nervous cough or two. Just about the time they would have started murmuring, a lone figure emerged from the wings, walked to the center, limping a little despite the aid of a stick, and turned to face the seats, holding the stick across his thighs like an officer’s riding crop.

  Polite applause started, then died. The audience seemed eager to clear space for the man’s first words.

  Daniel Webster Wheelock had traded his fire captain’s uniform for the butternut tunic and military-striped trousers of a Confederate general. Knee-high riding boots engineered to draw attention from his club foot glistened like black satin and the tiny star on either side of his collar clasp winked golden in the footlights. Modestly, he’d chosen a simple uniform design and had resisted promoting himself higher than brigadier. Even in warrior dress he was a politician to the core.

  Another minute crawled past on its belly. Wheelock’s head turned slowly, as if to study each face in the orchestra. I withdrew deeper into the shadows, but he never raised his eyes toward the boxes. His head stopped turning.

  “Bull Run,” he said.

  Applause, nearly as loud as for the opening of “Dixie.”

  “Wilson’s Creek.”

  A louder burst still, accompanied by a shrill whistle.

  “Ball’s Bluff!”

  With the name of each Confederate victory, Wheelock’s voice rose, and with it the volume of approval from the audience. Cedar Mountain, less well-known, drew an uneven response, strongest from among those old enough to have read about it in the newspapers, been told about it by veterans, and in one case at least, experienced it at firsthand; that rebel howl managed to raise the hairs on my neck once again. Fredericksburg met unanimous appreciation, as did Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor, the last unequivocal success for the Old Dominion; Wheelock’s listeners rose as one, feet thundering on the floorboards, shaking Barbary’s oldest continuing house of pleasure to its foundation. A number of hats flew ceilingward and drifted back down. I hadn’t seen so many gray kepis in one place since Lee’s lost legions lined up to stack their long guns and swear an oath to the Union.

  On “Cold Harbor,” Wheelock had raised his stick above his head, striking a pose similar to Custer’s with his saber in a thousand lithographs, framed and hung behind the bars of saloons from Concord to Cripple Creek. His face was flushed, his gray eyes glittered. If I weren’t sure he prepared himself for these things in cold blood and absolute sobriety, I’d have thought he’d helped himself to a pull from the bottle that had begun to make the rounds of the men sitting in the first two rows. Who needs whiskey when you can draw fire from the blood of a couple of hundred fellow fanatics?

  When the swell subsided and everyone was back in his seat, Captain Dan lowered his stick to its former position. Now he spoke low, allowing the melodeon’s acoustics to carry his words to the back.

  “I have never owned a slave,” he said. “I daresay none of these presents have. Some of us are too young ever to have seen a Negro in chains. Fort Sumter was not fired upon in order to secure the fetters of a misguided past, but to ensure States’ Rights, that the fates of our farms and shops and hearths would not drift before the capricious current of Washington politics.” (Applause.) “The two hundred fifty thousand who died in the field at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and the Shenandoah Valley, among so many others, who succumbed to infection and fever in hospital tents at Mechanicsville and Pea Richmond, among so many others, did not give their lives to keep men in shackles, but to free them from tyranny.” (Applause and shouting.) “For nearly twenty years, we have eaten the lies of our conquerors in place of bread, drunk the vinegar of their insults in place of water, and for this bitter sustenance we have been expected to pull our forelocks and give thanks. The time has come for us to rise from our knees and smite them to theirs; if not in ranks, as at Bull Run and Fredericksburg, then one by one, all across North America.”

  Once again the house was on its feet. The great flag rippled fiercely as in a storm. I wondered if the Ancient could withstand the foot-stamping; all it had had to face before was fire and vigilantes.

  During this reception, Wheelock half turned and raised his stick, signaling toward the wings. The man who came out wearing the uniform of a sergeant and carrying a battered gray campaign hat looked familiar. He’d handed the hat to the alderman and struck a modest pose beside him, hands folded behind his back in parade rest, before I recognized Tom Tulip, the Hoodlum Beecher and I had robbed in order to arrange an audience with Ca
ptain Dan. I hoped he’d be given a chance to speak. I’d have paid admission to hear his cockney gibberish coming from a man fitted out as a volunteer with the 17th Mississippi.

  I was even more curious about that hat. The brim was tattered, the crown stained through with grease or old sweat, the band was missing. It looked as if it had seen more combat than all the spectators combined. It was a long way from delicate, and carrying it upside down with the crown cupped in two hands as if it were some fragile vessel filled with rubies and sapphires, seemed unnecessary. Wheelock handled it the same way, clamping his stick under one arm so he could engage both hands and waiting for the noise to die down.

  When it did and all were sitting, he continued in the same low tones as before. “I purchased this hat at no small expense from a dealer in curiosities in Richmond, Virginia, who had acquired it from a veteran who needed the money to support his family. The veteran picked it up from the ground where it had fallen when General James Elwell Brown Stuart was struck down at Yellow Tavern. This is Jeb Stuart’s hat.”

  Awed silence greeted this intelligence, broken momentarily by a hushed murmur. Owen Goodhue might have gotten the same reaction from his congregation by displaying a splinter from the True Cross. Finally, applause crackled gently, so as not to disturb the spirit of the head that had worn the hat.

  “I will ask Sergeant Tulip to place General Stuart’s hat in the hands of the first gentleman to my right seated in the front row. Without looking inside, that gentleman will remove one of the coins I have placed in the crown and pass the hat to the gentleman to his right, who will do the same. The hat will continue to pass among you until it is empty. It will then be returned to Sergeant Tulip. I ask that you do not look at the coin you have drawn, nor show it to anyone else, until I instruct you to do so. Although I state this as a request, you will consider it an order from your commanding officer. Sergeant Tulip?”

  Tulip accepted the hat from Wheelock and carried it into the wings. A moment later, he reappeared in the far left aisle and held out the hat, which was taken reverently by the man seated nearest him, who reached inside without lowering his head, rummaged about, and withdrew his closed fist. During the ten minutes it took for the hat to make the rounds, Wheelock entertained his listeners with an account of Jeb Stuart’s activities during the war that stirred even me, ending with the general’s own delirious refighting of all his old battles during his last moments and his one-sided conversation with his eldest daughter, who had died at the very moment he was deploying his troops on the Rappahannock.