Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  Aureka. He is reminded of the one and only time she ever addressed him as John. It was that same fateful afternoon. He was searching for his underclothes, fallen somewhere to the floor beneath her mother’s bed, dazed by what had happened and wondering, in the aftermath, whether he should apologize, though he sensed this would be a foolish and hurtful thing to do. That was the moment when she drew him back toward her. She sat cross-legged on the bed, the sheet pulled up to her breast, waves of hair falling over her naked shoulder. He still had his shirt on. From the other room, Jearum—who had no idea that John was in the house—was calling for her. He pointed in that direction, indicating that she should respond. She took no notice. On her face was a serene, contented look that unnerved him. One small hand tugged at his, bringing him close, until his shoulder pressed lightly against her breast. For some time, she inspected his hand, tracing it with a fingertip. It was a beautiful hand, a kind hand, she murmured. Then she slid the fingers of her other hand through his hair and placed her lips close to his ear. “I love you, John,” she whispered.

  He tiptoed out of the house a few minutes later like a thief, full of remorse. What had he done?

  Now, he waits alone in Mrs. Sage’s parlor, feeling unutterably strange, almost as though he is standing apart from himself. He lowers himself to a seat. The room is too warm. A gust of wind rattles the window. He closes his eyes. He sees himself floundering in the middle of a storm-tossed Lake, waves breaking over him, each line of spume representing one more debt. He is bankrupt and drowning and the shore is too far away to reach.

  A noise draws him out of this unpleasant reverie. He goes into the hall and finds the door to the kitchen ajar. Inside, young Stephen is visible. He is on his knees, crouched over a book, deep in concentration. A pencil is in his hand. He is drawing something. John had once dreamed of being not a painter, but a musician. How much more fulfilling a life that would have been. Equipped with art, he could have scorned the turbulence of economics and the need for profits. He leans over the boy. It is a strange drawing, more of an abstraction than a real picture. He admires the boy’s absorption in his task.

  * * *

  John finds Jearum reclining, propped up by cushions, on the serpentine-back sofa with a book stand set up in front of him. With help, he can now make that transition from bed to sofa. His drawings are pinned up on two large bulletin boards that flank the sofa. Beside him is his worktable, covered in papers and books and pencil stubs. The sofa is positioned so that he can look down to the Lake. The back garden is a mix of a chicken run, a line of recently planted poplars and a sorry-looking vegetable plot, thirsty leaves drooping (it occurs to John) like Mr. Sage’s mustache. Through the open door comes only the chatter of cicadas and the tap tap tap of a woodpecker. Chicago, with all its problems, could not seem farther away.

  “The Scientific American again?” says John cheerily, sitting down on one of the upright chairs. “It was always too technical for me.” He feels intimidated, as he always does, in Jearum’s presence. He is reminded not just of his own good fortune, but of something more troubling about himself, that relates to his character and achievements. Jearum is sprucely attired in a fresh white shirt and is wrapped, from the waist down, in a blue cloth. His ginger beard is now flecked with gray, and his gaze is intent and suspicious.

  “Again, Mr. Wright?” he says without warmth. He will insist on continuing to address him as Mr. Wright instead of John. “That makes it sound as though you were here only last week.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve been very busy.”

  “Yes, of course. I read the newspapers.”

  John smiles uncomfortably. He wonders how much he has read, and how much he knows. He can sense Jearum is waiting for him to say more, but now that the moment has come, he has a desire to put it off. “Anything interesting?” he asks, indicating the journal.

  Jearum looks as though he has neither listened to the question nor has any intention of answering. His stare remains direct, and disconcerting. “You are involved in real estate, Mr. Wright,” he says, in his flat nasal tone. “So you will know about the problems of building on Chicago’s subsoil. Nothing down there but mud, sand and clay. The article I have been reading poses a question. How does one construct a tall building that requires deep and solid foundations on a subsoil as fickle as this? The traditional method of sinking concrete piers is inadequate.”

  “And you have found a solution?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Wright.” He narrows his eyes. “Not yet.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will. But you know what else you should do? Invent something for the railroads.”

  Jearum’s eyes do not even flicker. “Tell me why you are … finally … here, Mr. Wright?”

  Before he can respond, there is a patter of little footsteps.

  John swings around and scoops up a wary Stephen. “My, how you’ve grown!” He sets him on his knees. “Is the drawing finished? Do you want to be a painter when you grow up?”

  He’s shy. Very different from Augustine at that age. “I want to be an inventor like Uncle Jearum,” the boy whispers.

  “An excellent idea. And there’s no reason why you can’t be. Now listen to me. You can be anything you want when you grow up, Stephen, as long as”—he adds with emphasis—“you want it enough.” He looks at Jearum. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Jearum does not reply. He addresses Stephen. “You have something to tell us?”

  “A wagon’s come, sir.”

  “Has it indeed?” says John. “And did you see what’s on the wagon?”

  “Furniture, sir.”

  “And not just any furniture.” John lowers his voice. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Stephen,” he says. “In the old days, when there was no city and Chicago was nothing more than a few houses, there were only two buildings that were beautiful and important. One of them was a fort. Oh, what a magnificent stockade it was. Fort Dearborn was as big as a castle, made from lengths of fine old seasoned oak, each one as thick as this.” He spreads his hands wide. “In those days, the Fort was full of soldiers.”

  “Why was it full of soldiers?”

  “To protect the village from enemies.”

  “Were they Indians?”

  “Some of them were, yes. Anyway, the Fort is not needed anymore.”

  “Because there are no more Indians?”

  “Because there are no more enemies.”

  “What happened to the Indians?”

  “They moved away.”

  “Why did they move away?”

  Stephen was now behaving more like Augustine. “Because they wanted to go somewhere else.” The boy does not look satisfied. “And the other important building was even more beautiful than the fort. It was the house built by the first man who ever lived here.”

  “What was his name?”

  John did know it once. “It’s not important, Stephen. Do you know what your Uncle Right did, when he heard the first house and the old fort were being taken down so they could build some new buildings in their place?”

  “Why do they need new buildings?”

  He chuckles. “In a city, three things are always needed. New buildings, more railroads and more people. And that, Stephen, is one of the most important lessons you can ever learn.”

  The boy looks puzzled. “Why?”

  “Because that is how you make a city, and one day very soon, because of its new buildings and its railroads and its people, Chicago will be as big as New York.”

  “Why does it need to be as big as New York?”

  He gives Jearum a knowing smile, which is not returned. “It’s our destiny, Stephen. Now listen. When your Uncle Right heard what was happening, he bought that special old timber.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  He is beginning to wish he had not started this. “Because it’s our history,” he says. “And I wanted the best carpenter in Chicago, a man called Mr. Joseph Meeker, to use the timber to build some marvelous furniture for my f
riends.”

  Stephen is wriggling. He lets him go. The boy goes to stand beside Jearum’s bed.

  He addresses Jearum. “Mr. Meeker has made you a reclining chair with wheels so that you can move yourself around, and a drawing board attached to a bracket that swings across when it is needed.”

  “Please, sir?” asks Stephen. “Can I go see it?”

  Jearum says he can.

  The boy runs toward the door but then stops. He looks at John, his head slightly on one side, squinting his eyes. “How will Uncle Jearum be safe on a piece of fort? There’ll be ghosts of Indians, won’t there, from the old battles?”

  “Don’t worry. His chair is made from the timber of the first house, not from the fort.”

  He runs off.

  Jearum tells him to take the reclining chair with wheels back to Chicago. “I don’t want it.”

  “But I’ve had it specially made. It’s a gift.”

  “One that I don’t wish to accept.”

  John stands up and goes toward the window. At first, he is genuinely puzzled. The timber is of a fine quality. All the furniture he has commissioned from Joseph Meeker is bespoke. On reflection, though, it strikes him how this might look to Jearum. “It’s not what you think,” he says. “I commissioned it months ago, before all this.” Before all this what?

  “Mr. Wright? I am waiting to hear you explain what has happened.”

  John can see a woodpecker, digging into one of the poplar trees. Its labor and determination seem admirable, especially in this heat. He fishes out a handkerchief and wipes his brow. “I expect things to get better soon,” he begins, “but…”

  * * *

  When he closes the door behind him, John stands for a moment in the cool of the hallway, leaning against the wall, hands over his ears. He closes his eyes. His head is hurting again, not in the sudden, violent way it did earlier but with a dull, prolonged ache. Jearum’s accusations keep running through his head. What hurts most is the charge about his trip to the East. Oh, I don’t doubt you went East, Mr. Wright, but for what purpose I don’t know except that it can have had nothing to do with the Automaton. Because if it was to set up branch offices for us, where are they? The fact is that you bought a lot of green wood in a hurry from Michigan, left a man without experience in charge of drying kilns that never worked, and spent three months in the East. And during those three months, not a word was heard from you.

  He was tempted to tell Jearum the truth, that he had been ill. But he did not want to invite any more questions about the trip. Even now, it pains him to think about what happened after he visited Eliza Chappell. The next three months, despite their intensity, are mostly lost to him now. He went straight to New York and spent his days ensconced in libraries. He was pursuing a new idea he had about slavery, a truly great idea, an idea that would solve the problem that was dividing the country once and for all. It was simple in concept, but fiendishly complicated in execution. He intended to prove, by citing the greatest religious and philosophical authorities in history, that slavery was not only a sin before God that condemned to Hell anyone who upheld it, but also indefensible in every branch of ethics, morality and justice. If he could provide such all-encompassing proof and lay it before the government in Washington, they would be obliged not only to ban slavery in the new Western states but also in every other state in the Union where it was currently being practiced. And this transformation would be achieved, not through abolitionist movements or partisan publications like The Liberator, but in that loftier sphere where the twin forces of religion and philosophy could be harnessed to provide a final, irrefutable verdict.

  For those three winter months, he read avidly. He made copious notes on the Bible, he consulted and dismissed the views of Aristotle and Plato, he devoured the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau before moving on to other lesser-known philosophers. In a quest of such magnitude no stone could be left unturned. He read on and on, his notebooks multiplied and his health deteriorated as he became ever more convinced that this great work, to be titled The Definitive Explanation: Why Slavery Is Immoral, Unlawful and Sinful, by John S. Wright, would change the course of history. Armed with this book, he would lobby Congress, the Senate and the President himself until slavery in America was banned. And he would inscribe in the flyleaf of the copy he sent to Eliza: “To Mistress Eliza Porter, with the author’s admiration for the example she set and his deepest gratitude for her encouragement in this venture.”

  That was when he had the first attacks. It felt, for the few moments they lasted, as though his brain was being scorched. He became so ill that he had to return to Chicago with only the first few pages of the book completed. By the time he had recovered, the Automaton crisis was at its height and, thanks to those invidious Eastern pens, fears of a recession were already beginning to blow through the boardrooms of Chicago. Later, when he looked back over all those notes he had made, he could make little sense of them.

  “Mr. Wright?” he hears Aureka ask. “Are you all right?”

  He follows her to the kitchen.

  It is a bright, cheerful room that smells of cake and coffee. Through the open window, sunlight spans the solid oak table where he takes a seat. He is vaguely aware of Aureka moving around, adding wood to the stove, taking things out of cupboards and giving instructions to her maid. He remembers how his mother would move around the kitchen while he sat there as a small boy, doing his homework. They only had an open fire in those days. Their clothes and hair and books always stank of smoke. A copper kettle and a large charred pot would hang suspended on an iron pivot, filled with soup or potatoes. He can see himself bent over his books at the end of the table, staring into its grooves and ink stains as he memorized verb conjugations and algebraic formulae.

  Aureka is at his shoulder. He watches an arc of steaming coffee, the same color as her hair, fall from the pot’s spout into the matching cup and saucer set she has placed in front of him. Her hand is steady. Not a drop is spilled. She moves away and puts the coffee back on the stove before returning with a sugar pot and another plate, on which sits a piece of cake, its pale sponge speckled with pieces of cherry.

  “My favorite kind of cake.”

  “Yes.” She turns toward the door. “If you need more coffee, please ring the bell.”

  “Mrs. Sage,” he says, his voice curiously hoarse. “Please stay.”

  She looks at him in a way that indicates it would be improper.

  “Just for a few moments,” he says, “while I drink the coffee.” He stirs in some sugar and takes three or four rapid sips before realizing that he has burned his tongue.

  She takes a seat at the far end of the table. It strikes him as a little unnecessary, this affectation of propriety. They are hardly taking coffee in the Tremont House Hotel.

  He does, though, feel the old urge to confide in her, in a way he would never think of doing with Kitty. “I was just thinking,” he said, “how differently my life has turned out, from the one my mother wanted for me. I used to do my homework at a table like this. She thought I was a child prodigy. She always said that, at three years old, I could already read Greek. But her true desire was that I should go into the Church.”

  “I am sure you would have been a good preacher,” she says. “And did your father want that for you too?”

  “My father never talked much, and not in that way. He wasn’t ambitious. He was a small merchant, and never a very successful one.”

  “Then he would have been proud of what you have achieved.”

  He gives a grim smile. “Not if he judged me on today’s results.” He takes more sips of coffee, and wonders what old Deacon Wright would really have thought. “He never approved of me much.”

  “Fathers often don’t,” she says.

  He looks at her, vaguely recalling something she once told him about her own father, or rather the lack of him. If he remembers right, she never even knew him.

  “And Steph
en,” he asks, “what do you want him to be?”

  She shrugs. “I think it’s too early to be thinking about that.”

  “And his father?”

  “Mr.… Mr. Sage?”

  “Yes. Does Mr. Sage want him to take over the store?”

  “I dare say that would make him happy, yes.”

  They lapse into silence. He eats the cake. She looks at her hands.

  “Is it very serious, Mr. Wright,” she asks, “for the Automaton?”

  “I have told Jearum that I shall have to close the factory.”

  There is a sharp intake of breath. “I see.”

  “I also told him to take the patent straight to Mr. McCormick.”

  She looks up in surprise.

  “I’ve never liked Mr. McCormick. He’s a bully and a cheat. But he’s been wanting to get his hands on that patent ever since we filed it.” He waves an arm. “Once McCormick starts manufacturing the Automaton, which I’m sure he will, this will all be quite safe.”

  He finishes the coffee in one gulp. His headache, he realizes, has gone. Aureka stands up and returns to the stove to refill his cup.

  She sits down again, watching him drink it.

  “And you, Mr. Wright?” she asks in a small voice. “Will you be all right?”

  He feels drowsy, and more than a little odd. He cannot shake off the feeling he has had all day, that the world is out of kilter and he is teetering on the edge of something, liable to lose his balance at any moment. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is not an unpleasant feeling. This warm, friendly kitchen is an island of sanity and peace compared to what awaits him on his return to Chicago. They say the Bank of Commerce is about to fold next. One by one, goes the rumor mill, all the banks will fail and the city will be back in the Dark Ages. Nobody has any cash, and nobody will give any credit. Not for anything, not to anyone.

  But why? Because of lies. From the perspective of this solid table, with its cherry cake and coffee, with Aureka seated opposite, what is happening in Chicago seems nothing but a bit of humbug. How did she put it earlier? If anyone can stop it, Mr. Wright, surely you can? She’s right. He will fight those charlatans in their own coin. He will write them into the dust. People will see reason, confidence will return and this nonsense will be put behind them.