Foley pretended his narrowing of gaze was owing to cigar-smoke. “Mighty Christian attitude,” he commented at last, in a tone as level as he could make it.
“Foley, I’m as impatient with religious talk as the next sinner. But what a burden it is to be told to love them, while knowing that they are the Antichrist itself, and that our only salvation is to deal with them as we ought.”
It did not help Foley’s present mood that he had awakened that morning from a recurring nightmare of the Civil War. The engagement was confined to an area no bigger than an athletic field, though uncountable thousands of men had somehow been concentrated there. All was brown, gray, smoky, dark. A lengthy exchange of artillery had begun, from emplacements far beyond the shadowy edges of the little field. He had felt oppressed by the imminence of doom, of some suicidal commitment of infantry which no one would escape. A pile of explosives nearby, a tall, rickety wood crib of shells and other ammunition began to smolder, about to catch fire and blow up at any moment, a clear target for the cannonballs of the other side, which continued to come in, humming terribly, without pause. . . .
“I didn’t have my war then,” Scarsdale had been saying. “Just as well. I was too young to appreciate what was at stake anyway. My civil war was yet to come. And here we are in it now, in the thick, no end in sight. The Invasion of Chicago, the battles of Homestead, the Coeur d’Alene, the San Juans. These communards speak a garble of foreign tongues, their armies are the damnable labor syndicates, their artillery is dynamite, they assassinate our great men and bomb our cities, and their aim is to despoil us of our hard-won goods, to divide and sub-divide among their hordes our lands and our houses, to pull us down, our lives, all we love, until they become as demeaned and soiled as their own. O Christ, Who hast told us to love them, what test of the spirit is this, what darkness hath been cast over our understanding, that we can no longer recognize the hand of the Evil One?
“I am so tired, Foley, I have struggled too long in these thankless waters, I am as an unconvoyed vessel alone in a tempest that will not, will never abate. The future belongs to the Asiatic masses, the pan-Slavic brutes, even, God help us, the black seething spawn of Africa interminable. We cannot hold. Before these tides we must go under. Where is our Christ, our Lamb? the Promise?”
Seeing his distress, Foley meant only to comfort. “In our prayers—”
“Foley, spare me that, what we need to do is start killing them in significant numbers, for nothing else has worked. All this pretending—‘equality,’ ‘negotiation’—it’s been such a cruel farce, cruel to both sides. When the Lord’s people are in danger, you know what he requires.”
“Smite.”
“Smite early and often.”
“Hope there’s nobody listening in on this.”
“God is listening. As to men, I have no shame about what must be done.” A queer tension had come into his features, as if he were trying to suppress a cry of delight. “But you, Foley, you seem kind of—almost—nervous.”
Foley considered briefly. “My nerves? Cast iron.” He relit his cigar, the matchflame unshaking. “Ready for anything.”
Aware of the Other Vibe’s growing reluctance to trust reports from out in the field, Foley, who usually was out there and thought he had a good grasp on things, at first resentful and after a while alarmed, had come to see little point these days in speaking up. The headquarters in Pearl Street seemed more and more like a moated castle and Scarsdale a ruler isolated in self-resonant fantasy, a light to his eyes these days that was not the same as that old, straightforward acquisitive gleam. The gleam was gone, as if Scarsdale had accumulated all the money he cared to and was now moving on in his biography to other matters, to action in the great world he thought he understood but—even Foley could see—was failing, maybe fatally, even to ask the right questions about anymore. Who could Foley go to with this?
Who indeed? He had at least brought himself to reckon up what the worst outcome might be, and it came out the same every time. It was nothing to recoil from, though it did take some getting used to—maybe not massacre on the reckless, blood-happy scale of Bulgarians or Chinese, more, say, in the moderate American tradition of Massachusetts Bay or Utah, of righteous men who believed it was God they heard whispering in the most bitter patches of the night, and God help anybody who suggested otherwise. His own voices, which had never pretended to be other than whose they were, reminded Foley of his mission, to restrain the alternate Foley, doing business as Scarsdale Vibe, from escaping into the freedom of bloodletting unrestrained, the dark promise revealed to Americans during the Civil War, obeying since then its own terrible inertia, as the Republican victors kept after Plains Indians, strikers, Red immigrants, any who were not likely docile material for the mills of the newly empowered order.
“It is a fine edge here,” the tycoon had hinted one day, “between killing just the one old Anarchist and taking out the whole cussèd family. I’m still not sure which I ought to do.”
“There’s thousands of em out there, and we’ve done away with our share,” Foley puzzled. “Why even bother singling any of em out?”
“This boy Christopher, for one thing. He’s different.”
Foley was no innocent. He’d been down to Cooper Square and the Tenderloin, passed an evening, maybe two, in the resorts where men danced with each other or dolled up like Nellie Noonan or Anna Held and sang for the crowds of “fairies,” as they called themselves, and it would have figured only as one more item of city depravity, except for the longing. Which wasn’t just real, it was too real to ignore. Foley had at least got that far, learned not to disrespect another man’s longing.
Surely bringing Kit back here from the hardrock misery of the San Juans had been an act of rescue, as much as bringing to the Christian faith the child of some murderous savage one had been obliged to slay. So reason, what was passing for it at Pearl Street, was brought into play, resulting eventually in a plan for the whole family. Mayva would receive a monthly stipend for herself and Lake. Frank would be offered a high-paying job when he graduated from the Colorado School of Mines. Reef—“Who, actually, hasn’t been seen for a while. . . . Another itinerant gambler—he’ll show up sooner or later and turn out to be cheapest of all, the sort who’s content with a modest jackpot he never expected to win.”
But a voice, unlike the others that spoke to Foley, had begun to speak and, once begun, persisted. “Some might call this corrupting youth. It wasn’t enough to pay to have an enemy murdered, but he must corrupt the victim’s children as well. You suffered through the Wilderness and at last, at Cold Harbor, lay between the lines three days, between the worlds, and this is what you were saved for? this mean, nervous, scheming servitude to an enfeebled conscience?”
On the train trip east, Dally kept pretty much to herself, there being nothing, as she quickly learned, quite like the rails these days for cowboy poets, who along with confidence men, R-girls, and purse-thieves, could be encountered on every train west of Chicago. They rode in the parlor cars marveling hour on hour at everything that passed, introducing themselves as “Raoul” or “Sebastian,” chatting up young prairie wives traveling to or from husbands whose names seldom got mentioned. In the velvet-trimmed observation and dining cars everywhere, private and public, rolling and still, these birds smothered appetites and curdled stomachs. Coffee grew ice cold in the cup. Badmen out for mischief flinched, turned, and strode away, sleep crept like an irresistible gas, and those Wild West poets just went raving on.
Seeing Chicago again—not that anyone was asking, but if they had, she couldn’t have described very clearly her feelings, and besides there wouldn’t be much time between trains to see much. Somewhere in her head, she’d had this notion that because the White City had once existed beside the Lake, in Jackson Park, it would have acted somehow like yeast in bread and caused the entire city to bloom into some kind of grace. Rolling through the city, in to Union Station, she found herself stunned by the immensity, the co
nglomeration of architectural styles, quickening, ascending, to the skyscrapers at the heart of it. Sort of reminding her of the Midway pavilions, that mixture of all the world’s peoples. She looked out the windows, hoping for some glimpse of her White City, but saw only the darkened daytime one, and understood that some reverse process had gone on, not leavening but condensing to this stone gravity.
IN NEW YORK AT LAST she stood out of the traffic, watching shadows of birds move across sunlit walls. Just around the corner, on the great Avenue, two-horse carriages curvaceous and sumptuary as the beds of courtesans in a romance moved along, the horses stepping carefully in mirror-symmetry. The sidewalks were crowded with men in black suits and stark white high collars, in the tangible glare of noontide that came pushing uptown, striking tall highlights from shiny top hats, projecting shadows that looked almost solid. . . . The women by contrast were rigged out in lighter colors, ruffles, contrasting lapels, hats of velvet or straw full of artificial flowers and feathers and ribbons, broad angled brims throwing faces into girlish penumbras as becoming as paint and powder. A visitor from quite far away might almost have imagined two separate species having little to do, one with the other . . .
When lunchtime rolled around, her first day in the City, Dally went into a restaurant to eat. It was a cheery place, with sparkling white tile nearly everywhere, and silver plate ringing against thick crockery. The unmistakable church-supper smell of American home cooking. Clean napkins were rolled and waiting in the water glasses. By each long table stood a tall post with an electric fan spinning up on top, and a little cluster of electric bulbs, each in its glass shade, just below what she guessed to be the motor casing. No cuspidors she could see, nor cigar smokers—no tablecloths either, though the marble tops of the tables were kept scrupulously clean by girls in belted white dresses and little black bow ties, and their hair neatly pinned up, who moved about clearing dishes and setting new places.
“Looking for a job, dear? Mrs. Dragsaw over there’s the one to see.”
“Well, just my lunch today.”
“You fetch your own, see that line yonder? You want me for anything, it’s Katie.”
“I’m Dahlia. You’re from south Ohio, I’d guess.”
“Why, Chillicothe. Not you, too?”
“No, but I’ve been through there a couple of times, pretty town, lot of duck hunters as I recall?”
“When it wasn’t ducks, it was grouse. My Pa used to take us out all the time. Mostly waiting and freezing, but how I miss it. Everybody in here’s a vegetarian, o’ course.”
“Oh, woe’s me, had my mouth set for a nice slab o’that bull meat.”
“The casseroles aren’t too bad usually. . . . ‘ve you got someplace to stay, Dahlia?”
“Managing, thanks.”
“Thin ice in this town, ‘s all I meant. One step to the next.”
“Katie!”
“Bug in her britches today. Well—you know where to find me.” She withdrew into the hygienic brilliancy of the establishment.
Dally found a modest hotel for young ladies whose rent would not eat up her grubstake too fast, and set about hoofing the pavement looking for work. One day up in the theatre district after a job as an organ tuner’s apprentice that didn’t pan out, owing, as far as she could determine, to her lack of a penis, she happened to see Katie coming out of an alleyway with just as glum of a look on her face. “One more turndown,” Katie muttered. “How do I get to be Maude Adams at this rate?”
“Oh I’m sorry. Same just happened to me.”
“It’s New York. Disrespect was invented here. But why do they have to go on about a girl’s age?”
“So . . . you’re an actress.”
“Working days clearing tables at Schultz’s Vegetarian Brauhaus, what else would I be?”
A couple days later, they were in a chop suey joint down on Pell Street, discussing the job situation.
“Artist’s model,” cried Dally, “really? that’s so romantic, Katie! Why didn’t you take it?”
“I know it’s work and I should’ve jumped at it, but I always had my heart set on the stage.” There were worse ways to make your living in this miserable town, worse than most folks could imagine, Katie assured her.
Apart from the chop suey, which was more of an uptown fad, the place smelled like serious cooking. Wood ceiling fans turned slowly, stirring the smoke from tobacco, peanut-oil and possibly opium, rippling the hanging strips of red paper which displayed the day’s menu in Chinese lettering. There was sawdust on the floor and mother-of-pearl inlaid in the ebony furniture. Lanterns, silk banners, gold dragons, and bat images all around the room. Regulars sat eating shark fin, sea worm, and perfumed ham, and drinking pear wine, surrounded by dozens of white folks in their good clothes all gobbling away at giant plates of chop suey and calling, often rudely, for more.
In glided a squad of young Chinese men, all in step, silent, sporting dark American suits and pomaded haircuts with short to nonexistent sideburns, heading for the back of the establishment while the uptowners continued unbroken their heedless chattering.
“Mock Duck’s boys,” Katie whispered. “The real article. Not like the playactors you’ll be dealing with.”
“If I get the job,” Dally reminded her. “Sure you don’t want it instead? Even if there is no stage?”
“Dear, you’re exactly what they’re looking for.”
“Wish that sounded more reassuring, Kate. What’d you tell them?”
“Oh . . . I sort of suggested you had acting experience?”
“Ha. Sheriffs and bill collectors, maybe.”
“Toughest house there is.”
As the crowd was beginning to thin out, “Matinee starts in a couple o’ minutes,” said Katie. “Come on, we’ll use the shortcut.” She took Dally’s arm and steered her toward the rear exit. Mock Duck’s boys had gone all invisible. Outside, the girls proceeded through narrow streets among a scurry of Chinese tradesfolk and daytime errand-runners, guided presently by the helpful screams from up ahead of what proved to be a presentable young American blonde en déshabillé, struggling with two local toughs, who apparently wished to drag her down into a manhole. “That’s Modestine. She has to take let’s say a short vacation, and you’d be replacing her.”
“But they’re—”
“They’re actors. White slavery as a real racket is recommended only for those who thrive on constant worry. Here. Say hello to Mr. Hop Fung.”
Hop Fung, done up all in black, glowered at them and started to fuss in Chinese. “That’s hello,” Katie whispered. The enterprising Celestial had begun his career as an ordinary lobbygow or tour guide, but Chinatown was too close to the Bowery to insulate him for long from the allures of show business, and soon he was dreaming up—literally, for his office in those days was an opium “joint” off Pell Street—short melodramas that showed a sure instinct for what would catch the fancy of the Occidental rubbernecker. “Chop suey stories!” he informed Dally and Katie. “We give them plenty! Hot and spicy! O.K.? Start tomorrow!”
“No audition?” Dally wondered, and found Katie tugging on her sleeve.
“Little tip,” she muttered, “if you’re serious about being in the business—”
“Red hair! Freckles! Audition enough O.K.!”
Which is how Dally found her way into the white-slave simulation industry and the tunnels of Chinatown, began to learn some of the all-but-impenetrable signs and codes, a region of life withheld, a secret life of cities that those gypsy years with Merle had always denied her. . . . Every morning she commuted down on the Third Avenue El, had coffee at a wagon parked under the tracks, and strolled on to Hop Fung’s office to review the schedule of comediettas, which tended to change from one day to the next, being careful near the corner of Mott and Canal to look up down and sideways, for here was the headquarters of Tom Lee’s tong, the On Leong—and trying to keep clear altogether of Doyers Street, which was a kind of no-man’s-land between the On Leong and thei
r deadly rival tong the Hip Sing, who were based at the corner of Doyers and Pell. The two organizations had been fighting in earnest since around 1900, when rogue gunman Mock Duck arrived in town and threw in with the Hip Sing, presently burning down the On Leong dormitory at 18 Mott and taking over Pell Street. There was no telling when armed unpleasantness might flare up, or where, though Doyers seemed the preferred battleground, the bend halfway along being known as “the bloody angle.”
By now she had moved in with Katie, who lived in a midtown Irish neighborhood between the Third and Sixth Avenue Els. Within a couple of weeks, she had uptown visitors gaping from their tour charabancs in amazement, ladies from out of town clutching their hats, as if pins might fail in the duty assigned them. Neighborhood pedestrians who might or might not be part of the show stood as in a tableau vivant, making no move to intervene. “O you fiends!” Dally cried, and “Spare me!” and “If your mothers but knew!” to all of which her abductors only grinned and cackled more hideously, dragging her toward the ineluctable iron hole in the street, making sure to pick up for later re-use any items of attire “torn” from her person, these being in fact lightly basted together before each performance, in order purposely to come away and add an element of “spice” to the show.
Word had gotten around. Show-business functionaries at all levels came down to observe Dally in performance, including restless impresario R. Wilshire Vibe, ever on the cruise for new talent, who had in fact been haunting Chinatown for weeks. Sometimes he showed up in disguise, his idea of a common workman involving spats and bespoke neckties from London, though presently he reverted to type, the not perhaps adequately subdued shine off his aquamarine morning-hat indeed causing Dally herself to fluff a line or two, not that anybody noticed. Afterward he introduced himself with an unaccustomed sheepishness while Chinese stagehands stood around impatiently waiting to set up for the next show.
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