That Night at the Palace

by Watson, L. D.

  That part was easy. Darnell had no intention of ever going back to the little one-horse town.

  That same year, he met her. Dianna Montgomery Bagwell. She was beautiful. What she saw in him - well, he knew exactly what she saw in him. Darnell was an “up and comer,” and Dianna liked the best of everything. They dined in the finest restaurants and danced and gambled in the best speak-easies. If there was something expensive to do in Chicago, Dianna wanted to be in on it. They socialized with Chicago’s finest and most notorious. On one occasion they dined just a table over from Al Capone himself at Coq d’Or in the Drake Hotel.

  Their wedding was a simple affair. Only a few close friends and Dianna’s family were invited. Though having a taste for the finer things, Dianna, it turned out, came from quite humble origins.

  The couple took the train up the lake and honeymooned up on Mackinac Island. It was July fourth, and the Exchange was closed for part of the week, so Darnell only missed two days of real work. A man only gets married once, so he reasoned that he could miss a couple of days.

  Those first few months were the best of his life. They were newlyweds, and Darnell had a very healthy income. Dianna found them an apartment right on Michigan Avenue. It was expensive, but she argued it would do nothing but go up in value, and of course, a man of his stature couldn’t live just anywhere. She would have been right if nothing ever changed, but as Darnell “Shakes” Blankenship eventually came to know, in time, everything will change.

  The first problem came when he got the bills for one of Dianna’s shopping trips. She had spent a thousand dollars on clothes. One pair of shoes cost two hundred American dollars! That was the beginning of a series of fights that culminated when Darnell came home from a trip to see the New York Exchange with the two partners. It had been rumored that the firm might open a New York branch, something it had shied away from over the years. But the partners were seriously considering it now that they had someone dependable and smart to run it. Darnell was full of excitement when he returned home, knowing that Dianna would love New York, and hoping the move would help them iron out the problems in their marriage.

  When he walked into the apartment the place was crowded with people, none of whom he had ever met. Dianna had been to the theater earlier in the evening and was hosting a party. That angered him enough, but upon searching the apartment, he couldn’t even find her. Finally, she turned up in the bedroom, drunk, half-dressed, and with another man.

  That night Darnell packed his belongings and moved into the Drake. The first thing the next morning he went to the bank to make sure Dianna didn’t get a chance to clean him out. He was too late. The way she spent money, she had probably emptied it out before he went to New York. He didn’t worry, though, because he only had a few thousand in there anyway. Darnell was a smart investor. He had money spread out all over the market. In fact, he had it so well spread out that her divorce attorneys would be hard-pressed to find out how much he had.

  The divorce was as smooth as glass. Sure enough, her attorneys had no clue how much he was worth, and the settlement was based on less than half of what was really invested. She would keep the apartment, which he would pay for, and she would receive a monthly stipend for the next twenty years or until she remarried. Of course, Darnell made a grand performance, pretending that the stipend was far more than he could afford. But then, as soon as he walked out of the judge’s chamber, he made arrangements for the stipend to be paid from the interest generated from just one stock. He actually laughed at the thought of how well he pulled that off.

  All things considered, getting rid of Dianna would cost a lot less than staying married to her. The settlement and all financial arrangements required to finalize it were signed and settled on October 23, 1929, twenty-four hours before what became known as “Black Thursday,” the day that millions of investors began to dump stocks.

  The effects of the crash were devastating. Darnell had less than a hundred dollars in cash. His stocks had added up to something in excess of eighty thousand dollars. Now he had nothing but useless paper. At least that’s how some people saw it. But Darnell knew the market as well as anyone. As he saw it, the market had bottomed out. This, he argued to his clients, was the time to buy, even if you had to borrow to do so. And that is exactly what he did. Then, five days later, came the big crash. October 29, 1929. That date would go down in history as the infamous Black Tuesday.

  Not only did the stocks drop even further, he had bought on margin, which meant that he had borrowed to get them. He wasn’t just broke - he was fifty thousand dollars in debt. Even if he could find someone to buy the stocks, he’d be lucky to come out with a thousand dollars for everything. Even that was a pipedream because anyone who had the money sure wasn’t going to spend it on stocks.

  The only thing he could do was sit on it. Of course, he moved out of the Drake right away. Then he arranged a meeting with Dianna and her attorneys. They would simply have to understand that there was no money. This, he was sure, was a temporary setback and in a few months the market would bounce back. In the meantime, she would have to sell the apartment and lower the stipend.

  Dianna and her attorneys didn’t understand. Dianna wasn’t about to let go of her apartment, and there was no altering the stipend. Well, that wasn’t completely true; it could be lowered, but it would be costly. It took nearly a month of negotiating during which Darnell was living in a south-side hotel where he shared a bath with five other people. He had long since fired his lawyers because there was no money to pay them. Actually, they had dropped him because they had seen his finances and knew full well what was about to happen. The stipend was cut, but to do so, he had to sign every stock he owned over to Dianna, and not just the stuff he had previously reported. They took everything, except the debt. Even when he turned everything over they weren’t convinced, so it was finally agreed that until the value of all of the stocks returned to what they were on the day the divorce settlement was agreed upon, one week prior to Black Tuesday, he would pay her fifty-five percent of his salary from Lockyer and Hornsby. They had him, and they all knew it. He had no option. It was difficult enough signing the new settlement, but to add salt to the wound, Dianna sat across the table with a smug expression while holding hands with her new boyfriend.

  With payment on Dianna’s apartment and the “stipend,” Darnell would have almost nothing to live on, and he still owed the fifty grand. Yet he reasoned that he could hold off his creditors and manage living in the south-side hotel until the market began to climb back. He would eventually start collecting commissions again, and with some luck get his life back. At least that was his hope.

  On New Year’s eve the partners called them all into a meeting where they announced that they were closing the firm, effective January first. They argued that there was no money to keep it up. There was some truth to that. Darnell hadn’t sold a single stock since October, but everyone was sure that it was just a matter of months or even weeks before things bounced back. Those two old crooks were simply covering their hindquarters. Unlike Darnell and most of their clients, Lockyer and Hornsby had invested heavily in real estate. It wasn’t the best of investments at the time, but they hadn’t lost everything from the Crash, and unlike almost everyone else in the country, they continued to collect revenue. Darnell, however, was out on the street.

  It was then that he began to realize just how bad this crash really was. Lockyer and Hornsby weren’t the only ones closing their doors. Most firms were closing. There wasn’t a firm in town with a job opening. That being the case, Darnell began to try relentlessly to get hired as an accountant, but no one needed an accountant if they weren’t making any money. By the spring of 1930 almost no one was making money. As mid-summer approached, Darnell Blankenship, the man who a few months earlier was on his way to owning Wall Street, was now five months behind on his payments to Dianna and living with a collection of out-of-work misfits in an alley behind a now
closed toy factory.

  Right after the crash, Darnell began drinking heavily. He hadn’t been much of a drinker prior to that day, though he would have a little gin whenever he and Dianna went to a speakeasy. Now he had a bottle in his pocket almost all the time. It wasn’t so much that he liked the taste of it. The cheap homemade stuff was strong and burned and had metallic aftertaste that lasted all day, but it calmed his nerves. He didn’t know if it was from stress or something really physically wrong with him, but his hands had begun to shake most of the time, as if he was cold. The booze helped him relax, and when relaxed he didn’t shake. So now he kept a bottle close by all the time. Whenever he got a job interview or some day-work, for that matter, he’d take a few drinks to settle him down.

  It was his shaking hands that earned him the nickname “Shakes.”

  Finally one morning, as he was standing in line for day-work at a construction site, a private investigator and two thugs working for Dianna’s lawyers found him. They dragged him into an alley and beat him so badly that he could hardly stand. Their message was a simple one: quit drinking and get a job.

  Darnell already knew that he couldn’t get a job because there weren’t any. What he didn’t know was that he couldn’t quit drinking.

  That night he hopped his first train, the first of many. Over the years he crisscrossed the mid-west a dozen times. Often he didn’t even know what state he was in. All he had were the clothes on his back and a blanket to sleep on. He carried two tin bottles, one for water and one for hooch. He carried a third tin that he used for cooking and eating. Aside from those necessities, the only possession he had was the fedora made specifically for him at Johnny Tyus’ shop on 79th Street and Racine Avenue back in Chicago. That hat was all he had left of his former life.

  He lived in the shantytowns, and his meals came from the soup kitchens or the few pennies he could make from day-work here or there. One day he got off a train and realized that he was in East Texas. He had grown up in Rusk, just a few miles away, so he decided to walk into town and see his sister. He really didn’t know what to expect. Their last conversation hadn’t gone well at all. He didn’t know where she lived, so he went to their father’s old hardware store on the square across from the county courthouse. Just as he got to the door, she and two little boys came walking out.

  When he said “hello” she stopped for a long minute and looked directly in his eyes. At first she had a look of surprise, but that quickly turned to disdain.

  The older of the two kids asked her, “Who is that man, mommy?”

  She turned her gaze to the child and answered, “That’s a stranger. We don’t talk to strangers.”

  She then led the kids away.

  He left Rusk for the last time and headed for Elza where there was a shantytown. Everyone on the rails knew where to find a place to sleep or get a meal or a day’s work. Elza didn’t offer much work, and there wasn’t a soup kitchen, but it offered a safe place to sleep without having to fear being run off. The shantytown, as it turned out, was on a bend in the track a little below New Birmingham. As a kid he and his friends had explored the old ghost town. So when he learned that the shantytown was just a little way from the old ruins, he decided to explore it again, this time with the idea of making himself a little home. In the back of the old hotel he found a room that no one would ever find without climbing over the debris, and that wasn’t likely because of the chance of getting hit in the head by falling rubble. Before long, Shakes had himself a nice little apartment. It was the perfect little home. There were plenty of farms where he could get a little work or steal a few vegetables, and down the tracks was a river with fresh water and fish. When he needed money he could hop a train into Houston or Dallas, where he’d find a few day jobs to keep his little home supplied with canned food and hooch. It wasn’t the apartment on Michigan Avenue, but it was a far cry better than shantytown.

  #

  After walking through wooded trails for more than half an hour, Jesse and Jewel had begun to feel that Cliff had led them on a snipe hunt. Basically it’s an East Texas version of a wild goose chase, except your friend runs off and leaves you in the woods looking for a mysterious “snipe” while he goes home and has an RC.

  “It ain’t gonna work, Clifford.”

  “I promise; it’s somewhere up ahead.”

  Jesse and Jewel stopped on the trail. Both knew better than to trust Cliff too far.

  Cliff noticed them and pleaded, “I swear, I’m not lyin’. It’s west of the river, north of the highway, and this side of the road. We’ve gotta be close.”

  Jesse and Jewel looked at one another and reluctantly began to follow.

  “Cliff Tidwell, if there’s not a town up here, I’m going to beat the snot out of you,” Jewel threatened.

  “Oh, like you could,” Cliff retorted confidently.

  Jewel stopped still, crossed her arms, and glared at him. “Do you want to try me?”

  The two boys stopped and looked at Jewel. Jesse began to laugh at the thought of the two fighting.

  “My money’s on her, Cliff.”

  Jewel and Cliff stared at one another.

  “It’s too hot to fight a girl. Besides, there’s a clearing up ahead,” Cliff said as he shrugged her off and headed on up the trail.

  “You’re just afraid to have a girl give you a black eye,” Jewel replied as Cliff headed away.

  Jesse followed the other two, laughing as the trail led to a clear stretch through the woods that had once been a road. The road was almost waist high with grass, but there were the remnants of wagon ruts.

  “This has got to be it,” Cliff said, now relieved that the story he’d been told was probably true.

  To their amazement, in the middle of the woods they walked into what was obviously a town. There was a main road lined with buildings and even some side streets with a few buildings and houses still standing. Most of the structures had been brick, but a few wooden buildings still stood as well. As they came to the main road, there was a sign.

  NEW BIRMINGHAM, TEXAS

  Pop. 1462

  “THE IRON QUEEN OF THE SOUTHWEST”

  Though the trees and brush had grown up, it was clear that there were once a lot of buildings and houses there. Most of the buildings had fallen down, but many had walls remaining. At the far end of the street was even a tall smokestack.

  “That must have been the furnaces,” Cliff pointed out.

  Jewel walked along, wide-eyed with amazement. “This place is unbelievable. All this time we lived right down the road and had no idea it existed.”

  At the center of the town they came to a large four-story building. On the front was painted “The Southern Hotel.” It was an enormous structure that was at least a city block long with a porch that extended the length of the front and a balcony on the second floor that did the same.

  “That was a hotel?” Jesse asked in amazement.

  “I’ve never seen a hotel that big before,” Jewel interjected.

  “I haven’t either,” Jesse added as he walked up the front steps toward the front door.

  He stepped carefully, knowing from seeing all the rotted wood that the porch could easily break beneath him.

  Jesse peered inside, but the roof had collapsed, and all four floors were now a pile of crumbled debris. Still, it was easy to tell that it had been a fine hotel at one time.

  Deep in the building, past the former lobby, Shakes Blankenship peered from a dark shadow at Jesse as he looked into the building. In the year that he’d been living there, this was the first time anyone had wandered into his little paradise, and he wasn’t at all happy about it. This tiny little crumbling boomtown was all Shakes had in the world. It was his refuge. It was a place where he could escape all the things that had gone wrong with his life.

  But only a few feet away stood three kids who could, with onl
y a few words, put an end to his private sanctuary.

  Shakes watched with anger as Jesse looked around the hotel and finally walked back out to his friends. All this kid had to do was mention to a cop or a sheriff that there was a bum living in the old hotel in New Birmingham and it would all be over. One word and Shakes would be back on the rails.

  When Jesse turned back to face the others, Cliff explained, “Pa said that this was once one of the fanciest hotels in Texas.”

  The three began to walk along the street in silence as they looked with amazement at what was once an enormous town, far larger than Elza and maybe even larger than Rusk or Jacksonville. Near the end of the street they came to an old mine. The building had burned down, but the smoke-stack from the smelter remained. There was also a mineshaft with a crumbling wooden framework around it. As they approached, Cliff picked up a pebble and tossed it into the shaft. The stone bounced and echoed, and finally they heard the splash of water. All three looked down into the deep shaft, making sure to maintain balance lest they fall in.

  “How deep do you suppose it is?” Jewel asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. All I see is black,” Jesse replied.

  Shakes watched the kids peering into the mine from only twenty feet away. He had gone out the back door of the hotel and followed them along, keeping to the side street, out of sight. It occurred to him that all he had to do is run across the street and give the three a little push and that would be it. If someone came looking for them, all they would find was that three kids had fallen into a really deep hole.

  All he had to do was run and give them a push.

  The kids walked back through the town and came out the rutted road that led them in. When they came to the trail they had followed in, Jesse turned down it, but Cliff stopped. “Let’s take this road. I think it’ll be shorter.”

  “Do you have any idea where it goes?” Jewel asked.