Of Grave Concern

by Max McCoy

  “Now,” I asked, “who has a token of appreciation for my feathered apprentice? He likes silver dollars best, although half-dollars and dimes will also do. Come now, don’t be shy.”

  I saw somebody wave a coin in the second row.

  “Sir! Thank you,” I said. “Toss it lightly on the stage.”

  Even before the half-dollar had hit the stage, Eddie had spotted it. He hopped from my arm, scampered after the coin, all wings and claws, and caught it in his beak. Then he flew over to the can and dropped it in, and the coin jangled satisfactorily.

  Now the crowd was up on its feet, pressing forward with money in hand, and Eddie went among them, snatching up coins and the occasional greenback and depositing all of it in the can. For a silver dollar, Eddie would give them back a little golden sheet of paper with a Bible verse printed on it, from 1 Corinthians 12:8–10:

  For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of Spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.

  It was a rush job for the printer and his devil at the Dodge City Times to get these made in time for the show. Luckily, I had brought my own Bible with me from the hotel room to check the passage, as none could be found in the newspaper office.

  The offering of cash went on for ten minutes or so, and the rough men smiled like schoolboys as the clever raven took the money from their hands and deposited it noisily in the peaches can.

  Finally I walked Eddie over to the wings and returned him to his cage.

  Then I returned to the stage and struck a thoughtful pose, my arms crossed and my head high.

  “I am a Spiritualist, my friends,” I said. “No matter what you may have read in the newspapers about Spiritualism or mediums, I appeal for you to decide for yourself. Does the soul survive death? I submit that we have had proof here tonight.”

  I pursed my lips.

  “Spiritualism has three principles: the survival of the spirit after death, the ongoing concern of the deceased for the living, and the ability of those spirits to communicate with the living through a medium. But we also embrace the teachings of Christ and seek the light wherever we may find it.”

  Approving nods and scattered “amens.”

  “But the candle grows short,” I said. “Our time here is almost spent. In the few minutes we have left, I will endeavor to answer whatever final questions you may have.”

  “Can you ask the spirits to tell us what numbers are going to fall from the keno goose tomorrow night at the Sarasota?”

  Laughter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Spirit communication aimed at foretelling the future for personal gain is forbidden by the Book.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed.

  “But surely you have other questions,” I suggested. “In the past, I have established spirit communication with figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and even George Washington. Is there nothing you would ask of these sages?”

  A soldier of perhaps twenty put his hand in the air.

  “Yes, Corporal.”

  “Can you talk to General Custer?”

  George Armstrong Custer and more than two hundred men in his command had died in June the year before at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. His death had become a national obsession and had renewed fear of Indian attacks across the West.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What would you like to ask him?”

  “What it was like—you know—at the end? Nobody knows what happened.”

  Nobody but a couple thousand Indians, I thought.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Let us try.”

  I put my palms down, motioning for silence; then I crossed my arms. I closed my eyes and threw my head back. My head tilted from side to side as my eyelids fluttered. I had to decide what voice to use.

  Typically, a trance medium will pretend to speak through a spirit guide. For Victoria Woodhull, it was the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes. For many lesser mediums—including me—it had often been a Native American spirit, and mine was an Indian princess, Prairie Flower. This played well east of the Mississippi; but in the West, there was still such a fear of Indian attack that I thought better of using the Native American voice. Also, it seemed ludicrous for an Indian princess—or any Indian—to interrogate Custer.

  So I decided just to be myself.

  “George Armstrong Custer,” I said. “Are you there, General Custer?”

  A pause.

  “General Custer! It is The Reverend Professor Ophelia Wylde.”

  Another long pause.

  “Yes! Go on.”

  I struck a pose of listening intently.

  “General, I understand. Safe travels.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Corporal,” I said. “It has been less than a year since the general heroically crossed over. His spirit is not yet ready to communicate with the living. But he bids that you ask again in a year’s time.”

  The corporal nodded his thanks.

  “Anyone else?”

  The cowboy with the tidy beard and auburn curls raised his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Kate Bender?”

  The candle guttered and died.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Our time is spent.”

  16

  The take from the opera house, after expenses, was a little over one hundred dollars. Even after the split with Potete, I had more than fifty dollars in cash money. It wasn’t the best I’d ever done, but it was not bad. Most laborers worked a full month for a single twenty-dollar gold piece.

  But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t most people, and I didn’t work for laborer’s wages. I needed enough money to get Eddie and me to Colorado, and to see us through for a few months in a fashion that wouldn’t prove too distasteful.

  Before I saw the dead girl from the train, and was then kidnapped by Sutton, my plan had been to go by rail as far as Pueblo. Then I could either amble north to Denver, where there were friends and a reliable Blue Book to consult, or I could keep going west. I’d heard that San Francisco was wide open.

  There are precious few choices for a woman on her own, and I didn’t want to end up hustling drinks in the saloons or washing clothes behind the Dodge House or occupying a crib along South Front. I still carried the horror of those few weeks of poverty after I’d left Paschal in New Orleans, and they were weeks I did not want to relive.

  Now, I don’t want to give the impression that the performance wasn’t work. By the time I left the stage, I was exhausted, dripping with sweat, and in a kind of mental fog. I had taken another pull from Potete’s bottle of mezcal. Then I had taken Eddie directly back to our rooms at the Dodge House, where I fell into bed, still wearing half my clothes.

  I emerged from the Dodge House about noon on Friday, ate a meal of chipped beef at Beatty & Kelley’s, finding only a little sand in it, and then made my way down to the Saratoga Saloon.

  The Saratoga was owned by William Harris and Chalkley Beeson. Since Beeson was a member of the city council, I thought it was as good a place as any to rent a table. Beeson was a large man with good features and large eyes, which had sleepy lids. When you were talking to him, it seemed as if he were about to fall asleep, but he heard every word. After a short meeting, in which I did most of the talking, Beeson agreed to me keeping a table in the back, near the billiard tables, for ten dollars a day, as long as I kept my visitors drinking. I needed a public place to meet clients and schedule readings.

  Just days before, I would never have dreamed of doing the low con on average folks to get by. Bankers? Sure. Senators? Bingo. Millionaires? Of any stripe. I saw it as a kind of public service—revenge for all of the ordinary people they’d stepped on or stepped over to grab power and money. In Chicago, the target had been pompous Potter Palmer, owner of the Palmer House.
<
br />   The first Palmer House had burned during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, just thirteen days after its completion. However, before the fire reached the hotel, its architect carried the blueprints to the hotel basement, dug a pit, and covered them with two feet of sand and damp clay. Old Potter Palmer secured a $1.7 million loan on his signature—the largest private loan in history—to rebuild the hotel, using new clay tile building techniques, just across the street. Potter claimed it was the first “fireproof” hotel in history. He even challenged guests to start a fire in their hotel rooms to see if it would spread to other rooms; the catch was that if the fire failed to spread, the guest had to pay for the night—and the damages. Nobody had ever tried, but even if they had succeeded, old Potter could afford it. He owned more than a mile of State Street, both sides, and was one of the wealthiest men in the country. And he was a gambler, loving to bet on the horses. I’ve never met a hobby gambler who wasn’t a superstitious fool.

  How could I resist such a challenge?

  By and by, I left Cincinnati, where I had become bored after teasing a few thousand dollars out of a pork baron, who was foolishly obsessed with the spirit of Cleopatra. I had moved to Chicago, and my new address was the Palmer House. It was an easy matter to buy an introduction to Chicago society.

  Potter Palmer had just turned fifty when I met him, a grandfatherly man with a crop of white hair. He was married to a woman half his age. Bertha, the wife, was a blond beauty. He had given her the first hotel as a wedding present (some wedding—I’d like to have seen the cake). She had given him a couple of kids, so there was no family tragedy to exploit. But the way I saw it, he was just as married to that hotel, and the specter of fire must haunt him still.

  So I told him upon our second “chance” meeting that I had a curious message for him. During a séance for friends in my room at the Palmer, an unfamiliar spirit voice had begged for attention, I said. The spirit kept repeating a series of numbers that meant nothing to me—twenty-four, eighteen, two—but promised it would mean something to Potter Palmer.

  He said it meant nothing to him as well. What else did the spirit say?

  Nothing, I said. That was all.

  I heard nothing for three days. Then I received an expected note from Potter Palmer. The message meant Jeremiah, the twenty-fourth book of the Old Testament, Chapter 18, Verse 2: Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.

  Would it be possible for him to attend a séance in my room?

  And so I hosted a session for old Potter and his wife, Bertha, and began to spin the tale of Constance Cleary, an unfortunate who had burned to death in the first hotel. He protested that was impossible, as none of the three hundred who perished in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 died in the Palmer House.

  Ah, I said, that was what distressed the poor spirit so. No living soul knew her fate. Constance Cleary was a young and pregnant Irishwoman—just twenty-eight, the same age as his wife and me!—who had been at work as a charwoman some blocks down from the hotel the night of the fire. She had heard the alarm too late. The blaze had chased her from block to block; until finally, a few minutes after midnight, unable to run another step, she sought refuge in the fortress-like Palmer House.

  And there she perished. . . . Her body and that of her unborn child were incinerated by the fire.

  Potter Palmer had to know more, of course. Where was her family now? Had she other children? Had the husband remarried?

  He offered to pay for more sessions, but I would not hear of it. We were, after all, both interested in doing good. Of course, the spirit required certain things for communication. Constance was worried about me, for one, and asked that I be relocated to a comfortable cottage away from the city, where I could get proper rest.

  As time passed, the séances had to become more elaborate to keep up old Potter’s interest. A spirit cabinet was installed in a corner of my cottage, from which came floating trumpets and ghostly hands and mystical messages written on slates.

  More details of Constance’s demise emerged: taps from which no water came because the city waterworks had failed, towels stuffed under the door to keep out the smoke, hideous fingers of flame that raced across the walls and ceiling in the final desperate minutes.

  Finally there appeared from the spirit cabinet a luminous full-form apparition of Constance, complete with ghost child, courtesy of my friends at Sylvestre & Company. The ghost cried piteously. Old Potter was beside himself. He even climbed inside the cabinet to comfort her. What could he possibly do to ease the spirit’s suffering? he asked.

  A hundred thousand dollars to establish a home for fire orphans, Constance said. The money could be deposited with Ophelia Wylde, who would wisely administer the fund using her other powers.

  And it nearly worked, too.

  But the morning I was to receive the money, the Pinkertons came knocking on my cottage door. Perhaps I had become too friendly with old Potter inside the spirit cabinet and jealous Bertha Palmer had called the detectives to check me out. The agency already had a dossier on my activities in Cincinnati, where the pork baron had sworn a warrant out for my arrest and topped it off with a thousand-dollar reward. It seems he had no sense of humor—or of history. Had anybody who had ever fallen in love with Cleopatra lived happily ever after?

  I barely had time to grab my valise and Eddie’s cage as I fled out the back.

  17

  The cowboy with the jack of diamonds tucked into his hatband slunk into the Saratoga at about three o’clock on Friday afternoon. He was still in the red bib shirt and the red bandana that I had seen when I stepped over him at the railway platform, but he must have bathed and had his clothes washed since, because he nearly looked presentable. Also, he was only somewhat drunk.

  He spotted my table when he came in off the street, but it took him time to work his way back. First he passed out a handful of cigars, which, he said, were courtesy of Mike McGlue. Then he paused long enough at the bar to knock back a couple of shots before circumambulating on to my table.

  “Want a cigar?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  The cigar smelled expensive. The band said, Key West. I put it into my inside pocket for later.

  “I was at the opera house the other night. Remember me?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “I forget some things,” he confessed, throwing himself into a chair.

  “Do you think it might be your consumption of alcohol?”

  “I drink to forget. It works, for a spell.”

  “I first met you at the bottom of the steps at the railway depot,” I said. “You don’t remember that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why do this to yourself?”

  “Because I am deranged by melancholy.”

  He took a ragged newspaper clipping from his pocket and pushed it across the table. It was a wire story from the Kansas City Times, five months old, about the Ashtabula Horror. A Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway express was crossing the snow-laden Ashtabula River Bridge in Ohio when the iron trusses failed and plunged a locomotive and eleven cars down seventy feet to the frozen river below. The wooden cars piled on top of each other and became a funeral pyre ignited by kerosene heating stoves and lamps. Ninety-two people died, some of them burned beyond recognition; another sixty-four persons were badly injured.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “There,” the cowboy said, jabbing his finger at a name among the list of the dead. “That’s my sister, Kathryn Murdock. She was only twenty-three. They had to identify her by a favorite necklace she wore.”

  The cowboy dropped his face to his forearms, sobbing. “Oh, how she must have suffered!”

  “And you’ve been grieving these five months.”

  “I have been drunk these five months,” he said. “I learned of the horror when I was in Kansas City and have been drifting since, drifting from ranch to range, from city to town. My folks in Ohio don’t
even know where I’m at. Been in Dodge for the last couple of weeks.”

  “And they haven’t locked you up as a vagrant?”

  “They won’t, as long as I have drinking money.”

  I sighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Jim Murdock,” he said. “Folks call me ‘Diamond Jim.’”

  “What is it you want to do, Jim?”

  “I seen you talk to the dead at the opera house. I reckoned you could talk to Kate for me.” Now his voice grew to a whisper. “There are some things that I wanted to tell her that I didn’t have a chance. I would give anything to talk to her one last time.”

  Just about every ordinary person who has ever wanted me to contact the dearly departed for them has had a similar wish. We humans, sadly, are an arrogant lot and believe that we have all the time in the world to say the important things. Maybe we just can’t face the truth that any of us can be extinguished in the blink of an eye.

  “Jim, it’s not as simple as it looked the other night.”

  “I’ve got money,” he said, digging into his pocket. He dropped a handful of coins on the table. Silver dollars, mostly, but a twenty-dollar gold piece wheeled unsteadily toward the edge.

  I caught the double eagle before it rolled off.

  “All right, Jim,” I said, closing my hand around the gold coin. “But if I help you contact your sister, you have to promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “That you’ll wire your people in Ohio, straightaway.”

  “But they’ll want me to come home.”

  “You don’t have to go home,” I said. “But you can’t keep them in the dark, wondering if they’ve lost another child. You must have driven them crazy with worry.”

  “But I’m a ranger,” he said. “A rounder. A lone wolf from—”

  “You’re a kid from Ohio who is on his way to drinking himself to death.”

  “Sometimes I don’t remember the things I do when I’m drunk,” he said. “I get my dander up pretty damned quick, as Marshal Deger and Old Man Bassett can tell you. Sometimes I do things I’m not proud of.”