by Max McCoy
“Understood, Your Honor,” I said.
“And Miss Wylde,” he added, “out of respect for the court—find a dress.”
15
The opera house was so packed when I walked onto the stage that night, they were standing in the aisles. If the piece in the Times didn’t arouse their curiosity enough to part with eight bits to see me, then the rumor that I might really be Kate Bender closed the deal.
Even though I had done the routine many times before, from Baton Rouge to St. Louis to Louisville to Chicago, my stomach still turned to ice water just before I was to go onstage. I paced in the wings, thinking about all the things that could go wrong and what I would do if they did.
“It’s time,” Potete said.
“Let them wait a few minutes longer,” I said.
The hall sounded like feeding time at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Literally. One of the cowboys was screeching like an ape and another was crowing like a rooster, and there was an entire chorus of bird-calls.
“If we make them wait much longer, they’ll start tearing the place apart,” Potete said. He pulled a pint bottle of amber hooch from his jacket pocket and pulled the cork. He started to take a drink. Then he decided he’d better offer it to me first.
“I don’t imbibe before shows,” I said.
Potete shrugged.
“Oh, what the hell,” I said, and grabbed the bottle. I took three good swallows. My throat didn’t start to burn until after the third one. When it did, however, it was like I had swallowed lit kerosene—and I could feel it trickle all the way down to my stomach and start thawing that ice water.
“Good Lord,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand while passing the bottle back. “What is that?”
“Mezcal,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “I’m ready.”
With the curtain still down, I walked out behind it, onto the center of the stage, clasped my hands in front of me, and nodded. The curtain rose slowly, and as it did, the crowd grew quiet, all except for the rooster. Mostly, the audience was made of cowhands, mixed with a handful of soldiers and townsfolk. The only things they saw on the stage, besides myself, were a small desk, upon which a taper in a brass holder and a silver bell had been placed. The footlights were blazing, and I stood there for a full minute, staring out calmly above the heads of the crowd, not focusing on anybody in particular. But I could see Jack Calder leaning against the doorway of the opera house, arms folded, watching.
“Our session,” I said, walking over to the table, “will last only as long as this candle burns. To continue the magnetic demonstration beyond that time might fatally tax the health of the medium.”
I took a match from my pocket, lit the candle, and rang the bell three times. This was nonsense, but meant to establish a churchlike atmosphere. Then I turned back to the crowd.
“Brothers and sisters,” I began.
“Is you a brother or is you a sister?” somebody shouted.
“I am your sister in love,” I said.
“The two-dollar kind of love or the ten bucks for all night?” This from somebody else.
“Do you have a sister?” I shot back.
“Well . . . yeah.”
“And do you cherish her?”
The cowboy cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said weakly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
The rooster calls ceased.
“Yes.”
“Of course, you do,” I said. “Stand up, cowboy. What is your name?”
“Oh, no—”
The man behind him kicked his chair violently.
“The lady asked you to stand up, Red.”
“All right,” Red hissed, rising.
“Take off your hat,” another man said.
Red removed his hat and held it with both hands meekly over his belt buckle.
“What’s your name?” I asked pleasantly.
“My friends call me ‘Red.’”
“What does your sister call you?”
Even though I could not see the color in his face in the darkened theater, I could feel him blush.
“It’s all right, Red. You’re among friends. What does your sister call you?”
“My given name is Clarence,” he said, amid scattered laughter. “Clarence Hilburn. But when Suzie was learning to talk, she had a hard time saying ‘Clarence.’ All she could say was ‘Arence,’ and that stuck.”
“Where is she?”
“Back in Illinois,” he said.
“And you think fondly of her?”
“Why, I think Suzie is the light of the world,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in three years, though. I would give just about anything to spend an afternoon with her, she is so fine and good.”
“But you feel her love even at this great distance?”
“Yes,” he said.
“This is the kind of love that I speak of,” I said. “Thank you, Clarence, you may take your seat.”
I walked down, center stage, paused, and made a tent of my fingers and pressed them to my chin in thought.
“It is in the spirit of love—this mystical and holy bond that binds brother and sister, parent and child, husband and wife—that we have gathered together here tonight to explore. I cannot guarantee that we will be successful, but I promise to give it my all. Our success depends upon our combined mental and spiritual energies. Keep an open mind. Even a single negative thought could have disastrous consequences. But I have a good feeling about tonight and am optimistic about our chances.”
Merde! What a hypocrite I had become.
“Let us continue, then,” I said. “And remember—should strange visions appear before you on this stage, do not be afraid. And please refrain from pulling your pistols. Bullets have no effect on ghosts, and I am not yet ready to pass myself into spirit.”
“She’s talking about you, Bertrum!”
Laughter.
I put a finger to my lips.
“We need silence, please. Thank you.”
I took a moment, then cocked my head, as if listening to unseen counsel.
“The envelopes, then,” I said. “Slips of paper and pencils were passed amongst you earlier, and you were asked to write a question that you longed for the spirits to answer. Please seal the billets in the envelopes provided, and pass them forward.”
A few dozen envelopes were passed forward.
“Could someone collect them?”
An old man in front motioned for the others to pass the envelopes to him. He was about to hand the stack up to me on the stage when Timothy, my polite tramp, appeared a few yards away, waving an envelope. His clothes, including his red scarf, were now clean, but his face was still badly bruised. The old man waited until Timothy handed him his envelope, put it on top of the others, and then handed them all up to me.
I placed the envelopes on the desk.
When I reached over to take an envelope, it seemed to the crowd that I was taking the top one. Actually, I took the one from the bottom—a move similar to that used in cards.
I was about to open the envelope, when there were two sharp raps from the table.
“No?” I asked.
Another rap.
“All right,” I said. “The spirits say they can receive the question without opening the envelopes. This is unusual, but we will try it.”
I held the envelope high over my head.
“What is . . . No, when will . . .”
I dropped the envelope.
“This is just too hard,” I said, raising my face toward the rafters. “Please. No, I understand. All right, I’ll try just once.”
I clutched the envelope to my breast, closed my eyes, and swallowed hard. Then, in a clear voice, I said, “‘Where has my dear mother gone?’”
I opened the envelope and nodded in confirmation.
“Who wrote that? Raise your hand, please.”
Timothy timidly placed his hand in the air.
“Sir,” I said.
“The spirits have a message for you.”
He worked his way forward through the crowd, nearly to the edge of the stage. I approached the footlights and knelt, so that I would be at his eye level. I gave him my most beatific smile.
“Brother,” I said. “Your dearest mother, Mary Margaret, has been in Summerland these past three years since passing over. She wants you to know that she is safe, that pain is only a memory, and that she attends unseen to your welfare.”
Timothy’s face positively radiated joy.
“She urges you to live,” I said. “Live!”
He nodded, his eyes brimming with tears.
I gave him a wink. He had played his part well.
Then I stood, smoothed my vest, walked back to the table, and took the next envelope. I held it over my heart for a moment, while gazing out at the crowd. I spotted Judge Grout, hunched in a seat toward the back. His chin was cupped in his hand and he was listening as intently as if he were trying a case.
“‘When will Martha come back to me?’” I announced.
I opened the envelope and gave a knowing nod.
“Who asks the spirits this?”
No hands went up.
“Come now, someone asked this question.”
A man in a shopkeeper’s apron far in the back raised a pale hand. I pointed, and all heads swiveled to look at him.
“This is your question, sir?”
He nodded.
“Sir, I hesitate to give you the answer the spirits have imparted. Are you prepared to learn the truth?”
“Yes,” he said, almost a whisper.
“Your beloved Martha will return to you only when you quit your drinking,” I said. “The choice is yours. That is all the spirits have to say.”
The shopkeeper’s chin dropped to his chest.
“Oh, this is a fraud!” a cowboy, with a carefully tended chinstrap beard and auburn curls down to his shoulders, declared. He was sitting in the front row, slouched in the chair. His arms were crossed defiantly. “These two must be in on it.”
“How could they?” the old man who had collected the envelopes asked. “They were sealed and passed directly from our hands to hers. There was never the possibility of fraud.”
“It’s a trick,” the cowboy said.
“How?” the old man asked.
“I don’t know. . . .”
I smiled at the doubting cowboy.
“Believe, brother,” I said. “Just believe.”
I took the next envelope, and then I frowned.
“Who wants to know if he will regain the use of his right arm?”
A left hand went up in the balcony.
“I’m sorry, the spirits are silent. I advise you to find a doctor you trust, study the Good Book, and put your faith in Jesus Christ.”
I took up the next envelope, clasped it to my heart, and stared at Judge Grout. The table rapped sharply, three times. Pause. Then three more urgent raps.
“The spirits are signaling a particularly important question,” I said. “They tell me the individual who submits this question wishes to remain anonymous, so I will not ask him to hold up his hand or otherwise identify himself after the spirits have answered the question.”
“Then how will we know it’s a real question?” It was the doubting cowboy again.
“I guess you won’t,” I said. “Now, please, I need silence—and faith—in order to commune with the spirits.”
I swallowed hard.
“The question . . . ,” I said. “Oh, my. The question is from a father who wants to know if he is to blame for the death of his little boy.”
I opened the envelope.
“That’s all,” I said. “There are no names or other information on the slip of paper. But the spirits know.”
I stared at Judge Grout.
“The spirits say that this poor man has tortured himself for too long for the death of his son. Too long has this man, a respected and learned man, believed that he failed his precious eight-year-old son, Thomas, who contracted scarlet fever and passed over three winters ago.”
“She’s talking about Judge Grout,” someone whispered.
I shook my head and put a finger to my lips.
“This loving child was buried elsewhere, the spirits tell me. Ohio? Perhaps. Or Illinois? No matter. What is important, the spirits say, is that this loving father should know he was not to blame. It was all part of Providence’s plan that this angel of a boy would leave this earth so soon, and that Tommy sends happy greetings from the other side.”
I paused.
Judge Grout was slumped in his chair. A cowboy reached out and put a hand beneath his arm to keep him from going all the way to the floor.
“There is one other thing,” I said. “Tommy wants his father to know that there is no death—that father and mother and son will all be reunited one joyous day in Summerland.”
Tears rolled down the judge’s face.
Three cowboys offered bandanas.
Cheers and applause rocked the hall.
Jack Calder walked out.
I went on telepathically reading questions and giving miraculous answers from the other side. The doubting cowboy was right, of course; it was all a trick, an old con known as “the One Ahead.” There was no tampering of the questions. Only, Timothy had been my confederate, and the envelope he gave to the old man to pass up contained a slip of paper that said nothing.
With a practiced hand, I had drawn my first envelope from the bottom of the stack, which turned out to be from the shopkeeper about his errant wife. From then on, I was always one question ahead, but appeared to have known the contents of each before they were opened. I had made up the story (and the question) about the dead mother and Potete had instructed Timothy to respond enthusiastically to whatever I had to say. Then, when I opened the envelope to confirm the message, I was really reading the next question, the one about the bad right arm. And so forth, down through the stack of envelopes.
But how did I know that Martha had left the shopkeeper because of his drinking, which had not been hinted at in the question, or the answer to Judge Grout’s inquiry about his little boy? Because the working girls at the brothels had shared these bits of gossip. Of course, you didn’t get lucky every time, because there were bound to be questions of which you had no inside knowledge. In those cases, you just said something so vague that nobody could disprove it, or you said the spirits declined to answer. But what people remember are the hits, not the misses, and it takes only a few seemingly miraculous answers to win an audience—and build a reputation.
As for the spirit raps at the table, that was the easiest. That afternoon I had found a loose board on the stage, one that rocked and struck the bottom of the table legs when you stepped on it. And it took nearly imperceptible pressure from the toe of my shoe, or sometimes the heel, to produce the knocks, and all that from a good five feet away. Anyway, nobody was looking at my feet when that was happening. They were all looking at the table.
After an hour, I had worked through all of the envelopes.
I asked for some water—which I truly needed by that time—and Potete brought out a pitcher and a glass. Slowly and shakily, I drank down a glass, and then poured another. As I grasped the pitcher, I thought I saw Horrible Hank’s face in the water, laughing madly. I poured the water back in, scattering the image.
Then Potete brought out a pedestal and placed a bust of Pallas Athena atop it (in truth, it was just the wooden head of Lady Liberty, a cigar company promotion borrowed from the back bar at the Long Branch Saloon). Then Potete carried out a straight-backed wooden chair and placed it next to the table.
I thanked him, and he took the glass and the pitcher away.
“Now, if it please the assembly,” I said. “I’d like to share something of special literary significance, appropriate to our subject of study tonight.”
I sat in the chair, resting my arm on the table, and turned my face to the candle, which had burned more than half
way down. After establishing an appropriate mood of contemplation, I began.
“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,’” I intoned. “‘While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.’”
I somberly recited the next few stanzas of Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece, then—at the point in the poem where the scholar narrator goes to the window—I rose from the chair and went to stage left, as if to fling open a shutter. It was then, at the point where the “stately raven” makes its appearance, that Potete, waiting in the wings, opened the door of Eddie’s cage and the bird shot out over my shoulder, as if materializing from nowhere.
The crowd gasped.
Eddie flew out, far over the audience, pitching first this way and that, and finally circled around and came to lightly rest on the bust atop the pedestal behind me, swiveling his head in birdlike fashion.
“‘Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore,’” I said. “‘Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’”
A pause.
“‘Quoth the raven:’”
“‘Nevermore!’” croaked Eddie.
Then I went through the last few stanzas of the poem, each ending with the bird’s familiar refrain, each time delivered perfectly by Eddie. By the time I got to that final sorrowful “Nevermore,” you could hear a card drop.
Then the applause began, and grew, along with whistles—and the rooster call was back, but this time in approval.
“The soul of despair,” I said, “as rendered by our greatest poet.”
I was lying. I thought Whitman better.
Then I stepped forward and bowed, giving Eddie the sign to fly up and perch on my forearm. From my vest pocket, I took a bit of beef jerky, his favorite, and allowed him to tease it from my hand.
Potete brought out an empty quart-sized tin can and placed it on the stage. It had held peaches that had been served at the Beatty & Kelley Restaurant just a few hours before, but I had painted it royal blue with a yellow moon and many stars.
My ursine lawyer also brought a towel, which I used to mop my face and hair, and then tossed back to him as he left the stage.