Land of a Thousand Dreams

by BJ Hoff

  The lad looked up, then immediately glanced, away. “At…home, sir. On the stairsteps, it was.”

  Evan studied the bowed head, the thatch of flaxen hair that seemed to grow in all different directions. It struck him that the boy was lying. But why?

  “Yes…well, then, I hope you weren’t hurt too b-badly.”

  “No, sir.” The reply was mumbled, the thin little shoulders still hunched as he stood, staring down at the floor.

  Evan felt an inexplicable twinge of protectiveness for the boy as he put his hand to the wheat-colored hair. “You b-be careful on the way home, Mr. Hogan. Take care.”

  He stood watching as the small figure cleared the stairs and ran out the door on a gust of cold air.

  Behind him, Alice Walsh cleared her throat, saying, “He’s such a little fellow for his age, isn’t he?”

  Evan turned, still troubled. “Yes, he certainly is. I hope he’s healthy enough. No d-doubt, things have been very hard for him and his family. They only came across recently, you know.”

  His new accompanist nodded as she proceeded to collect the music off the top of the piano. “They all make me wish I could take them home,” she said with a sigh, “and give them a good meal and a new set of clothes.” With the music in her arms, she turned to Evan. “I want to thank you again, Mr. Whittaker, for asking me to help with the boys. I’m enjoying it immensely.”

  Pleased by the woman’s undisguised enthusiasm, Evan smiled. “I’m the one who’s grateful, Mrs. Walsh. I can’t tell you how m-much you’ve helped.”

  At the door, she hesitated, “Mr. Whittaker?”

  Evan turned as he shrugged into his coat.

  “The little Hogan boy…” she said uncertainly. “Did you notice his face?”

  Evan nodded, tugging at the collar of his coat. “He said he’d fallen. On the steps at home.”

  Alice Walsh nodded uncertainly. “Yes, I heard.” She hesitated, then opened the door. “Well…I must go. I’ll be back next week.”

  As soon as she was gone, uneasiness again swept over Evan. He had recognized the doubt in Alice Walsh’s eyes, and it only served to heighten his own concern.

  What he was unable to identify was the root of that concern, the intuition that made him think the Hogan lad had lied.

  A weak, gray weeping of afternoon light came through the only above-ground window in the room, doing little more than to prevent total darkness.

  While Michael and Jess Dalton arranged chairs in a neat row, Sara stood near the door, appraising their surroundings with a critical eye and making mental notes of possible improvements. The bare wood floor was rough and splintered, and not overly clean. The room itself was damp, the walls smelling of mildew, stale beer, and tobacco smoke. But it was more than large enough for their purposes—a weekly Bible study—and, best of all, free of charge.

  She couldn’t imagine how Jess Dalton had convinced the surly owner of the dime museum to allow use of the room once a week, rent free. Something in Michael’s tight little smile when she had questioned the arrangement made her wonder if he hadn’t had a hand in the whole business.

  Pastor Dalton had made just one trip to this dime museum in the heart of the Bowery, accompanied by Michael, before declaring that an occasional visit would never do, that instead he would start up a weekly Bible study. “We need to take some light into that dreary place,” he announced the same day. “More to the point, we need to take the Light into that place.”

  Earlier today, when Sara commented on the speed with which he had gotten things done, the pastor had simply laughed and said, “From the looks of things, Sara, I may be needing a new pulpit in the near future. Who can tell? Perhaps this will be the start of my next congregation.”

  He had made the remark offhandedly, as if in jest. But Sara had felt an instant of dark foreshadowing at the thought that his words might prove prophetic. If men like Chester Pauling and Charles Street had their way, this dismal cellar room might turn out to be the only pulpit in the city left available to Jess Dalton.

  The thought enraged her, and at the same time made her want to weep. If it should come to that, she thought, if things could actually reach such a shameful pass, she was not at all certain she could ever again trust in any sort of human decency.

  Hearing voices at the top of the stairs behind her, she stepped farther into the room, waiting: Her stomach knotted with apprehension as she stared at the open doorway, and she was appalled to realize just how anxious she was about this meeting.

  Michael had spared no details in describing the deformities of the “museum’s” residents, determined that she not be caught unawares, once all his efforts to dissuade her had failed. Quick to reassure him that she wouldn’t be at all put off by these poor outcasts from society, Sara found herself wondering now if she mightn’t have been a touch too brash.

  True, she managed to deal with the atrocities and misery of five Points well enough these days, but it had taken months of grueling experience to do so. And unless Michael had exaggerated, there was nothing in Five Points to prepare her for the residents of the dime museum.

  Now, as she heard the strange slide-and-bounce sounds on the steps, followed by murmurings and one or two shrill laughs, she could only hope she wouldn’t do something awful and embarrass her long-suffering husband…and herself.

  Michael thought he had never loved the woman more than he did at this moment. Watching her with Bhima and his friends, seeing her natural wit and generosity of spirit win them over, he wondered that he had ever questioned her ability to handle the situation.

  From the night of the bazaar, when she’d first coaxed him into telling her about the unusual boy named Bhima and the other residents of the dime museum, nothing would do the indomitable Sara but to make a visit to the Bowery.

  Today, as the inhabitants of the museum shuffled into the room, Michael realized there was a great deal of skepticism and nervousness on their part. They entered slowly, with obvious reluctance: Bhima, the Tattooed Man, the tall, thin albino, the Strong Man with his arms like oak trees and neck like a giant bull. There were others as well—nonresidents of the museum, but outcasts, all the same: a man with no arms, a one-eyed sailor, his face horribly disfigured by burn scars, and, to Michael’s astonishment, the dwarf, Plug—Roscoe Brewster’s wee, fierce bodyguard.

  Jess Dalton was splendid with each one of them, of course, with his big, genial laugh, his hearty handshake, his unmistakable kindness. But it was Sara—his Sara—who created the magic right from the first, putting them at ease with her irresistible charm, her winsome smile, her quiet compassion. And it was Sara—the remarkable Sara—who managed to create a sense of belonging for these undesirables of society, giving them what might well have been their first real sense of welcome.

  Throughout the afternoon, he watched it happen, this amazing event that somehow worked to give these unwanted souls a measure of acceptance, even self-respect. They had come into the room a defeated, abandoned group of misfits, their eyes downcast, their bodies hunched as if to hide their differences from those within.

  But before they left, most were making eye contact—at least with Sara—and some even shook hands with Michael and the pastor.

  In Bhima, Michael saw the most moving effects of Sara’s gentle gifts of grace and caring. She drew him out of his shyness, out of himself, fielding questions, comparing their preferences in newspaper columnists—even teasing him a bit. Little by little, the boy’s reserve and uncertainty seemed to fall away in her presence.

  His smile was almost beatific when Sara took his hands and leaned forward to say goodbye. With Fred, the albino, waiting nearby with Bhima’s cart to help him upstairs, the boy looked from Sara to Michael. “Captain, I do thank you. We asked you for light—and you brought us the sun.”

  His heart aching with love for her, Michael studied his wife. “Aye,” he said softly, smiling at Sara. “It would seem so.”

  Heart pounding, Billy Hogan raced down Mulberry Street
toward home.

  He shouldn’t have stopped to shoot marbles with Tom Breen. Rehearsal had run over as it was, and then he’d gone and dawdled another hour away. He was late—again. It would soon be dark, and if he’d been at the drink, Uncle Sorley would be in a rage.

  Billy dreaded nothing else as he dreaded his uncle’s drunken fits of temper. Uncle Sorley was big, he was, and mean clear through when he’d had too much—so mean he thought nothing of throwing Billy against the wall. Yet, to try and dodge him or defy him might cause him to take out his spite on one of the wee wanes. So Billy suffered his thrashings without challenge.

  Uncle Sorley thought the singing a waste of time, the reading lessons raimeis—nonsense! “Like throwing shillings down a well!” he would snort if Billy forgot and talked to his mum in front of him.

  What Billy counted on was that, so long as he did his chores and sold his papers, Uncle Sorley would let the singing and the reading go, would forget them entirely.

  For in this foul swamp called the Five Points, in the airless, gray despair of his existence, the music and the books were like the first fresh winds of morning to Billy. At last, his life held more than the younger tykes crying, his uncle swearing, his mother sobbing. More than peddling his newspapers and taking out slops and struggling from one day to the next to stay alive.

  Now there was the profound and utter beauty of words riding his mind, dancing on his tongue like pearls in a silver stream. And there was the inexpressible joy of the music. It was like flying, flying free above the ugliness of tenement houses and garbage-strewn streets, out of reach of Uncle Sorley’s rages and his mother’s unhappiness.

  Some nights, after a particularly painful buffeting, Billy would lie next to Patrick, awake, on his straw-filled cot, listening to the drunken snoring of his uncle across the room and feeling almost overcome by the hopelessness of his life. But then a word would come to his mind, a musical word like Jerusalem…or bluebell. He would silently repeat it, over and over, like a promise. And it would comfort him.

  Sometimes a song would come, one of the songs Mr. Whittaker was teaching them, and he would sing it to himself, inside his head, like a lullaby, until the throbbing and stinging of his body ebbed enough that he drifted off to sleep.

  Reaching the sagging tenement where they lived, Billy ran inside, taking the steps two at a time. On the upstairs landing, the door to their rooms flew open in his face.

  Billy stopped short, the fire in his belly blazing high. Uncle Sorley, his face flushed and mottled, his shirt stained with the whiskey, towered above him. Swaying slightly, he jabbed a pudgy finger in Billy’s face. “Didn’t I warn ye about bein’ late for your supper again, boy? Didn’t I?”

  Attempting to sidestep him, Billy gulped out, “I’m sorry!” But Uncle Sorley yanked him inside by the neck, shoving him into the middle of the room.

  Billy twisted, struggling to shield his head. Instead, he only managed to put himself, square in the path of Uncle Sorley’s fist as it came crashing down on his shoulder with a blinding pain.

  After an early dinner, Sara went upstairs, admitting that their unusual day had exhausted her.

  Michael, too, found the idea of a quiet evening alone together appealing. But first, he made his usual quick inspection of the downstairs rooms to be sure the lamps were extinguished, doors locked, and windows securely fastened. He’d been too many years on the force, he thought with a sigh, to be anything less than cautious to the extreme.

  Entering the library, he stopped just over the threshold. The oil lamp on the desk flickered brightly. Sara’s grandmother, in her dressing gown, turned toward him.

  “Grandy? Is something wrong?”

  She smiled faintly. One hand gripped her cane, the other held a thin volume. “Actually, I’m feeling a bit restless tonight. I came looking for a book—” She indicated the one in her hand. “I decided on Mr. Poe.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow. “Not what I’d call relaxing reading for a lady.”

  She grinned at him. “Because he’s so gloomy?”

  “Demented,” offered Michael.

  “Unhappy, perhaps,” she said with a sigh. “Poor man. He’s had a rather tragic life, I think. Small wonder that he’d be morose.”

  “They say he’s more than a little fond of the drink. And his opium.”

  “Oh, bother ‘they’!” she retorted, waving the book in her hand. “He has a ghastly reputation, of course, and perhaps he deserves it all. But I happen to know a good deal about one or two of his more vicious critics, and I can tell you they’re far worse reprobates than Mr. Poe. In any case, I get dreadfully bored with some of our more ‘respectable’ authors; they tend to lecture or preach, and I’ve never felt that literature is the place for either. Mr. Poe is…refreshingly different.”

  Her eyes took on a glint of amusement. “Sara disapproves, you know. She finds his work morbid and disturbing.”

  “The little I’ve seen of it, I’d have to agree.”

  “Yes…well, Sara, bless her, wants everyone to be happy.”

  Michael grinned. “She does indeed. She was wonderful today,” he added, sobering. “You should have seen her with those people—Bhima and the others. They adored her.”

  Grandy nodded, her eyes warm. “Sara is very special.”

  Michael was aware of Grandy Clare’s good-natured scrutiny as they stood, saying nothing, for a moment. Sara’s grandmother often gave him the unsettling sensation that she could read his thoughts—and everybody else’s. Yet, she was so wholly generous about the foibles of others that no one ever seemed particularly bothered by her perception.

  “I’m so glad you changed your mind about taking Sara along to meet the people at the dime museum,” she said, tucking the book under her arm. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

  Rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, Michael gave a frown. “Well, I didn’t much like it, you can be sure. It’s an evil place entirely down there. There’s something so corrupt about it that it seems to hang in the air. You can almost feel it still clinging to your back when you leave.” A cold shudder swept through him and he added, “It’s not the sort of place a man wants to take his wife. But you know how she is, our Sara.”

  Grandy nodded. “It’s a fine thing to be protective of your wife, Michael. A woman like Sara ought to be cherished and safeguarded. But I’m glad you also have sense enough to realize you can’t protect her to the extent of interfering with God’s will for her life. That can be a very grave mistake, and one we often make in regard to our loved ones.”

  Michael studied her, still frowning.

  “My late husband—Sara’s grandfather,” she said with a sigh, “did everything but lock me up in a box during the early years of our marriage. At first it was rather flattering; I suppose I even reveled in it. It made me feel…treasured—and special. But after a time, I began to feel as if I were suffocating from lack of air. There were things I sensed God calling me to do, things I began to suspect might be a part of His plan for my life. But Samuel was so protective that, somehow, he just kept getting in God’s way.”

  She shook her head as if saddened by the memory. “We can do that, can’t we? In our desire to shield those we love from the ugliness or the pain or the danger of the world, we actually end up thwarting God’s better purpose for them, perhaps even keeping them from becoming all He intended them to be.”

  She looked up, met Michael’s eyes with an unwavering gaze. “I’m so relieved that you aren’t like that, Michael. Letting your son have his freedom as you did must have been very, very difficult for you. But it was probably the best thing for you and the boy, at least at this time in your lives.”

  Michael hoped the pain he felt at her reminder of Tierney was well hidden. For the truth was, he seldom thought of his angry, rebellious son without wanting to weep. As for giving him his freedom, he had no illusions about that: it had been more an act of desperation than anything else. In truth, there had seemed no other choice. He was te
mpted to voice the fear that was never far from his mind, the nagging dread that, by giving Tierney his freedom, he might have only hastened the boy’s undoing.

  “You’re wonderfully good for Sara, Michael.” Grandy’s quiet voice tugged his thoughts away from Tierney. “I’m so thankful she married a man who’s wise enough to give her all the room—the ‘air’—she needs, in order to grow into the person God intends her to be.”

  Looking away, Michael swallowed down his impulse to deny her affirming words. Surely she had seen his dogged determination to insulate Sara, to provide, as much as humanly possible, a fortress of his love and protection around her as a way of keeping her safe from all the ugliness and fearful things the world might inflict.

  “You do understand what I’m saying, Michael?”

  He met her gaze and found her regarding him with an odd little smile. Of course, she had seen! This was her inimitable way of telling him she had seen, and warning him, in love, of the possible consequences.

  For a moment Michael stared back. “Why, I expect I do, Lady Clare,” he finally said, meeting the faint twinkle in her eyes with a rueful smile of his own. “I believe I understand exactly what you’re saying.”

  33

  An Absence of Conscience

  The hands that fail to halt the knife

  Are stained with the same blood

  As those that hold the knife.

  ANONYMOUS

  Alice Walsh hadn’t realized she was so preoccupied with her own thoughts until Patrick observed to the children, “I do believe your mama isn’t feeling well this evening.” His eyebrows lifted as he glanced across the dinner table at her. “Another headache, dear?”

  While his words were solicitous, his tone was somewhat sharp. Hurt, Alice was tempted to point out that she seldom had headaches at all, and certainly not often enough for him to make such a remark. Just as quickly, she decided that she was the one being unfair. Obviously, her husband was just showing his concern.