by John Smolens
That night Mrs. McKinley took her dinner in her bedroom. The evening was cool but Dr. Rixey sat alone on the porch and smoked a cigar as the light faded in the western sky. He was distinctly aware of not being on the East Coast, where he had spent much of his life. The horizon in Ohio in some way reminded him of when he had been at sea, and how the sun would set on that hard blue edge of ocean.
A carriage pulled up in front of the house. As a man in a black wool overcoat got out and came up the front walk, Rixey went to the top of the steps. The man was slightly older, perhaps sixty, and his graying beard was trimmed into a pointed goatee. He removed his hat.
“Dr. Rixey, I’m Leonard Cousins, with the State Department. You may not recall, but we have met at several functions in Washington.”
“Yes, of course,” Rixey said. He didn’t remember the man. “Are you here to see Mrs. McKinley? Because I’m afraid she has retired for the evening.”
“No, Doctor, I came to discuss a matter with you, if you have the time?”
“Certainly.” Rixey indicated that they could sit at the far end of the porch. It was nearly dark and lamps from the living-room windows cast soft oblongs of light across the floor. Rixey took a chair with his back to the house so he could see Cousins’s face in the light. “Cigar, Mr. Cousins?”
“No, thank you, Doctor.”
“If you’d like, I can have someone prepare you something to drink.”
“No, really, I’m fine.” Cousins leaned forward slightly. “Doctor, I’ve been sent out to Illinois, and on the way it was requested that I stop and see you.”
“By whom?”
The question seemed to perturb Cousins. “Well, the government—people in the State Department. They—we understand how difficult all this has been for you, and, well, we want you to know that your efforts are not unappreciated.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cousins. You’re very kind to deliver such a sentiment in person.”
“The physicians who cared for the president will be compensated, of course,” Cousins said. “There is a plan to submit to Congress a bill that would allow appropriate remuneration for their services.”
“That is all well and good,” Rixey said. “Many of the other doctors traveled great distances to be in Buffalo, and certainly they had to cancel other appointments and obligations. But there’s no need for me to be a part of that—I already receive a sufficient stipend as personal physician to the McKinleys. So I really must insist—”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, your duties recently went well beyond any normal—”
“Well I do insist. I was only doing my duty.”
“Yes, we assumed that you would feel that way,” Cousins said. He tugged on the point of his beard. “So, Doctor, we were wondering if—well, I don’t quite know how to put this, really—but we were wondering if we might not provide you with a unique opportunity. As a means of showing our appreciation, that is.”
“It’s really not necessary, but thank you.”
Rixey almost expected Cousins to get up and make his departure. Instead, he leaned forward until he was on the edge of his seat. He glanced toward the house, as though to make sure no one might be near the windows listening. “Doctor, I’ve never had to convey such a thing to anyone before, and it’s rather delicate. I just hope that what I’m about to say is taken in the spirit that it’s offered.”
“Of course, Mr. Cousins.”
“In the morning I’m continuing by train on to Chicago, where I have some business to conduct, and then I will go down to Springfield, Illinois,” Cousins said. His voice now dropped to a whisper and it was quite formal, as though he were making a statement for the record. “I’m going there because next week the coffin of President Lincoln is going to be moved to what we anticipate to be his final resting place.” He paused as though to give Rixey the time to appreciate the significance of such an event. “At that time, the president’s casket will be opened briefly and the remains viewed by a select few. We would like to offer you the opportunity to be a member of that party, if you wish.”
Rixey took the cigar from his mouth and whispered, “My God.”
Cousins sat back in his chair. “We thought the only appropriate way to make such an offer was by doing so in person.”
“My God,” Rixey said again. Then he crushed out his cigar in the ashtray on the table next to his chair. “I had no idea that this …”
Out in the street the carriage horse shook its head, causing its harness to jingle.
Rixey got to his feet, and Cousins did also. “I …” Rixey wasn’t sure he could go on, but then he cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Cousins, I appreciate your stopping on your journey to speak with me personally, but I must decline.”
Cousins now seemed annoyed, even insulted. “We merely thought it was the rarest of opportunities. They asked me to come here on my way to Chicago.”
“Don’t you understand? I just buried one president, a man I deeply, deeply revered. To go off to look upon the face of—it’s unconscionable.”
“Well, then, I’ll be on my way. I’ll tell them that you were otherwise engaged—”
“Mr. Cousins, you can tell them it’s unconscionable.”
Cousins gazed at him a moment, then put on his hat, and with a nod of the head he walked down the porch to the stairs.
Rixey went to the railing and watched the man climb into his carriage, which then moved down the street, the horse’s hooves clopping loudly in the evening air. Suddenly it overcame him—as though the events of the past few weeks had finally reached him all at once. Leaning over, he placed both hands on the railing and sobbed uncontrollably, but as quietly as possible so as not to disturb anyone in the house.
HYDE spent a couple of days on the canal, asking if anyone had seen Klaus Bruener or his son, Josef. Most canawlers had heard about the police raid on the Glockenspiel and the man found killed with a marlin spike. But fear brings reticence. Nobody had much to say because they’d all heard what happened to that fake limey huckster. Quimby had been found hanging from a warehouse rafter, a one-way train ticket to Denver in his pocket, and the head of seagull stuffed in his mouth.
BY the angle of the sun, Norris figured that the milk wagon was headed east. On the third night when they stopped he heard the sound of chickens, a dog barking. Gimmel opened the wagon door and Norris could see across a barnyard to a clapboard farmhouse. A woman stood on the porch, with her teenage daughter and two small children, as a man in denim overalls and a straw hat walked toward the wagon. Gimmel and Bruener climbed out. They spoke with the man, while the chickens pecked at the dirt around them.
When Bruener came back to the wagon, he said to the milkman, “Okay, Tuck, put it in the barn.”
Norris was taken out and tied to a post in a horse stall. Feeney was placed in the next stall. One of the children, a boy with a blond cowlick, climbed up on the gate and looked down at Norris.
“Mister, why’re your hands tied up?”
“Why do you think?”
“You’re a criminal, wanted by the law.”
“I am the law,” Norris said.
The boy was unprepared for this, but then he announced, “My pa says the law is for rich men like J. P. Morgan and they all should be skinned alive for what they done to this country. He said you work for Teddy Roosevelt.”
“That’s true. He’s my cousin.” The boy was awestruck. “And that fellow there in the next stall? He’s Teddy’s nephew.”
The boy jumped off the gate and ran out of the barn. Within minutes Norris fell asleep to the sound of mourning doves cooing in the rafters.
It was dark when he was untied from the post and brought out of the stall. There was a plank laid across two barrels and they sat on hay bales while the woman and her daughter served them a chicken dinner with yams and peas. The women couldn’t have been much more than thirty but she’d already lost most of her teeth. The girl had long blond hair that hadn’t yet gone stringy, and Josef kept stealing
glances at her while she moved about the men.
Gimmel hardly ate and he kept a whiskey bottle in front of him, which he shared with Bruener and Tuck.
“How’d you come to being a Pinkerton?” Tuck had a handlebar mustache that he kept teasing out with his fingers, which were greasy from the chicken.
“My parents died when our house in Wisconsin burned down,” Norris said, “and I was sent out to live with an aunt and uncle who had a farm in Lone Tree, south of Iowa City. One day my uncle Lute comes back from a business trip to Omaha and says his train was robbed. He’d lost a lot of money and the family nearly lost the farm that year. I was about fifteen but I was already bigger’n you. I asked Lute who robbed the train, and he sort of laughs, and says, ‘Train robbers,’ like I’m some idiot. ‘They wear masks, you know, bandannas so you can’t see their faces, and they carry guns.’ Then I heard about these men called the Pinkertons in Chicago. There had been so many train robberies that the railroad hired these Pinkertons to ride on some trains—guns, horses, and all—and if robbers stopped the train, well, didn’t they get a surprise? So when I was eighteen I took a train to Chicago, found the office of these Pinkertons, and I talked them into letting me ride on those trains out west. I was a big strong farm boy and I was good with a gun.”
Tuck twisted the end of his mustache. “You’ve killed train robbers?”
“Killed me a bunch of people. But I started out with two train robbers. Shot both right smack in the center of the forehead. One kind of looked like he just went to sleep, and the other got this look of surprise in his eyes. Sort of like ‘I ain’t thought this whole enterprise through and now look at me!’”
All the other men laughed, except Gimmel.
SEVERAL times Czolgosz was brought to meet with his lawyers, Lewis and Titus, in Chief Bull’s office. Other than the fact that one’s beard was white and the other’s black, Czolgosz found them indistinguishable and he ignored their attempts to speak with him. It was clear that neither man wanted to take the case.
Saturday afternoon a man arrived and looked through the cell-door window. “Leon, my name is Dr. Carlos MacDonald.” The man’s face was broad, his blue eyes friendly and sincere. His white beard was flawlessly trimmed. “I am a professor of mental diseases and medical jurisprudence at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City.”
“You’re an alienist.” Czolgosz was sitting on his cot. “I’ve seen plenty of them.”
One of the guards opened the cell door. MacDonald stepped inside and sat on the stool, his knees almost touching the cot. The alienist was wearing cologne.
This doctor’s eyes suggested that he was capable of understanding things that the others didn’t want to hear about. “If we’re going to talk,” Czolgosz said, “I want to talk to you alone.”
MacDonald appeared gratified. “I think that would be fine, Leon.” He said to the guards, “We would like to be alone.” He waited until they moved down the corridor and sat at a table where they ate their meals. Then he turned back to Czolgosz and said, “That’s better.”
“You came all the way from New York City?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m interested in your case,” MacDonald said. “For some time I have been interested in the legal definition of insanity and how it influences cases such as yours. I’ve been involved with other assassins, Leon. Are you familiar with the name Guiteau?”
“I know he killed President Garfield.”
“Yes, twenty years ago. Guiteau was a lawyer of sorts, and he defended himself, with the help of his brother-in-law. In court the case got bogged down in absurd questions of protocol. The question of Guiteau’s sanity was raised.”
“I don’t have a brother-in-law to represent me.”
MacDonald smiled. “You have a sense of humor.”
“Does that mean I’m sane?”
“It might—I need to know more about you.” MacDonald placed his hands on his knees. “I’m told that you have a good appetite, though lately you’ve hardly eaten. You’re Catholic, but you’ve given up the faith. You like a cigar—”
“Will you give me a cigar?”
“I can’t—I don’t have any with me,” MacDonald said. “I understand that you smoke them daily, and that you drink, but only in moderation.” He paused and stared at Czolgosz. He would not look away—so many people did when they stared into Czolgosz’s eyes. Once someone told him that his eyes made them uncomfortable because they were too honest. But this alienist looked right back at him. He said, “Do you have intercourse with women?”
“Does that matter in a murder trial?”
“Everything matters, to me,” MacDonald said.
“I have had intercourse with women, yes.”
“Is there any one woman that you feel particularly attracted to?”
“What do you mean, sexually?”
“Are you in love with any woman?”
“In love?”
“There have been newspaper stories about a woman who jilted you.”
“Absolutely not true.”
“Some reporters say you married a woman in West Virginia.”
“Never even been there. Newspapermen make these things up. You know that.”
“Do you realize that you’re a hero to some people—miners, farmers, factory workers, folks like that?”
“They are workers. They understand what I did.”
“I believe that’s so,” the doctor said. “Do you masturbate or participate in any other unnatural practices?”
Czolgosz thought about this for a moment. “If a man does something, how can it be ‘unnatural’?”
“I suppose you could look at it that way. You can read and write, quite well, I understand, in English and in Polish.”
“True,” Czolgosz said. “That must mean I’m sane.”
MacDonald stroked his beard a moment. “To be sane, in my opinion, Leon, is more than knowing right from wrong—and this is where I differ with many of my colleagues. I believe that a sane person also has the ability to choose the right and avoid the wrong. Do you see the distinction?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you shoot the president?”
“Is it necessary for you to ask that question?”
MacDonald lowered his hand and rested it on his knee. His fingers were thick and he had very long, well-manicured nails. “I’d like to hear your reason.”
“I thought it would be clear to someone like you.”
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” MacDonald said. “I’d rather hear it straight from you.”
Czolgosz leaned forward on the cot and spoke very quietly. “McKinley was always talking about prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man.” He cleared his throat. “I am not afraid to die. We all have to die sometime.”
“Did you act alone?”
“Yes.” Czolgosz rested his back against the wall again.
“This is what I find interesting,” MacDonald said. “Your refusal to acknowledge your co-conspirators, other anarchists.”
“There aren’t any co-conspirators. There are plenty of anarchists.”
“I think you might be delusional—but it is a political delusion. Because if you are insane, then all anarchists are insane, and I don’t believe that. This is what makes you so interesting. You’re perfectly rational. People like you will be a great threat in the future.”
“You are right to be concerned about the future,” Czolgosz said. “You make the future that you get.”
For the first time MacDonald seemed baffled, and perhaps even slightly angry.
“I still don’t understand why you asked whether I’ve had intercourse with women.”
“It’s worth knowing.” MacDonald seemed to have come to a decision and he looked grim, determined. “Monday you go on trial—the authorities want to move very quickly. If you are convicted of first-degree murder, do you know what will happen to you?”
“I’ll get the chai
r. I’d rather hang. I don’t have a choice?”
“No.”
“John Wilkes Booth. They hung him.”
“That was almost forty years ago. A dozen years ago New York State began to use the chair, when they electrocuted William Kemmler.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“I was there.”
“Really? What did he do?”
“Killed the woman he lived with.”
“Do you suppose he had intercourse with her?”
“Seems she was a terrible nag. He used an ax.”
“Are you saying she deserved it?”
“I’m saying the man broke the law. Leon, I didn’t really come to talk about this—electrocution. We can talk about something else.”
“No. I find it interesting.”
“All right. They have improved the procedure since Kemmler.”
“How do you mean?”
“They should only have to do it once now—throw the switch.”
“How many times did they throw it for Kemmler?”
“Twice,” MacDonald said. “The facilities were very crude, very insufficient then. The equipment—there were no useful gauges, no ammeter or voltmeter.”
“They strapped him in a chair.”
“Yes, a special chair, and he was very obliging, making sure as much of his body was in contact with the chair as possible. Then they ran fifteen hundred volts of alternating current through him for ten seconds. And then—”
“What did he look like?”
“Well, his body went into spasm. Rigid spasm.” MacDonald tugged at an earlobe for a moment as he stared down at the floor. “He developed bruises on his face, and the skin on his fingers split open and bled. There were blisters. But his heart was still beating, so they threw the switch again.” He raised his head and there was a kindness in his eyes. “My colleague, Dr. Spitzka, was horrified. He argued that the state should use the guillotine for such situations, but I disagreed. There were certain defects of a minor character that needed to be eliminated. Significant improvements have been made.”