by John Jakes
“Tell me, how did you track me down?”
“It is a happy accident.” He explained.
“The barkeep told you straight, Bob Hopper was here. But that was ten minutes ago. I don’t know where he went.”
“I see. Then I suppose I had better go—”
“Here, wait. Since you’re an enthusiast of the photographic art, I can give you a very favorable price on a camera. Care to look around? By the way, the name’s Rooney. Wexford Rooney.”
“I remember.”
“What’s yours?”
“Paul Crown.”
“German.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“I’ll call you Dutch.”
There seemed to be nothing he could do to avoid that nickname.
“Let me show you around, Dutch.”
Wexford Rooney, whom Paul judged to be in his middle fifties, never stopped talking during the next half hour. He moved with a funny stooped walk, as though years of hunching under the black camera cloth had put a permanent curve in his spine.
He proudly exhibited a long display case holding cameras, lenses, other apparatus Paul didn’t recognize. Judging by the accumulated dust, no one had opened the case in some time. On the wall above hung a hand-lettered card.
Secure the shadow ere
The substance fade.
Let Science imitate
What Nature made.
At the center of the room stood a huge camera on a tall tripod, a black cloth draped over it. The barrel lens pointed toward a round velvet settee, an array of head clamps, three classical columns of varying height, a replica of a small footbridge. “I can offer you a wide choice of backgrounds if you’d care to have a portrait made,” Rooney said. “Permit me to demonstrate.” He shoved a stool near the back wall. Standing on it, he could just reach several ceiling rollers mounted parallel. He snatched at a ring and pulled one down. “Sylvan forest.” Pulled another. “Majestic mountains.” Another. “South Seas palm hut.” Another. “A fashionable conservatory.” The backdrops, painted on canvas, were crude and, Paul thought, uniformly bad.
Rooney hopped down, dry-washing his hands. “Very artistic, don’t you think?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He snapped a switch to light an electric bulb at the head of a narrow stair. “More space up there. I rent the whole building and sublet the second floor to a merchant who sells cheap novelties. A philistine. But he pays regularly, thank God. Third floor’s another studio. With a huge skylight. Part of the roof’s usable as an outdoor studio.”
“Very fine, sir. Very splendid.”
“Right,” Rooney said, and snapped off the light. “Now you might like to see some of the pictures I made during the late unpleasantness. Come into the back and sit down.”
Paul followed Rooney toward the rear. “I’m just having my supper. I know it’s early, but my last portrait appointment canceled.” Had there really been an appointment to cancel? It didn’t matter. Paul had taken a liking to the odd little man, so pale and molelike.
Rooney led him into a small kitchen and eating area with a linoleum floor. The electric light from the ceiling was dim. On the table lay Rooney’s meal: a bowl of tomato soup on which a skin had formed, two crackers, a cup of tea. Rooney reached around to snap off the electric light in the shop. “Saves a penny or two. Sit down, Dutch, please.”
Paul took one of the two chairs. “Want a cup of tea?” While Rooney put a kettle on a gas ring, lit it and turned up the flame, Paul had a chance to look around. A flimsy curtain on a wire partially hid a cot in an alcove. A half-open door gave a glimpse of rectangular metal trays and large brown glass bottles on a worktable.
On a homemade shelf attached to the wall he noticed a sepia-tinted photograph of a pretty child posed in an idealized way, head tilted to one side, hands clasped and tucked under a round little chin. The child was three or four, with wistful dark eyes, plump cheeks, hair hanging to the shoulder in curly ringlets. Because of the sailor collar and tie, Paul decided the child was a boy. The oval picture frame was cheap yellow metal, rust-pitted. Unlike most of Rooney’s possessions, it was free of dust.
Gravely, Rooney said, “It’s my son, Wexford Junior. An only child. He died when he was four. A terrible accident. I was to blame.”
“I am sorry, Mr. Rooney.”
“Thank you.” He gazed at the portrait. “Oh, I loved that little boy. How I looked forward to teaching him my profession.” Paul sat very still. Roo?ey gave a sniff, and a toss of his head, like a dog trying to shake water off its coat.
The teakettle whistled. Rooney honked into a handkerchief and vigorously wiped his nose. It seemed to restore his spirits. He poured hot water into a cracked mug, then swished a corroded silver tea-leaf holder through it. He put the mug in front of Paul.
“Where are you from, Dutch?”
“Chicago now. But I came by train and boat from Berlin.”
“Berlin, always heard it was a magnificent city. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. A lot of Irish settled on our southeast coast, did you know that? Would you guess I was a Southerner? Of course not. Lost my accent years ago. I’m not even positive I’m Irish. I was an orphan. I went north at an early age. I had no connections, I wanted to learn a trade.”
He rummaged in a cabinet, pulled out an album, brought it to the table. He opened it to a cardboard-mounted photograph, faded and brown, that showed him as a young boy. He was already thick-waisted. He was standing beside a closed wagon, shaking hands with an older man. The man was short and slightly built, neatly dressed in a cravat, duster, and straw hat. The man was in profile; he had a nose like a saber.
“That’s me with my mentor, Mr. M. B. Brady. A genuine Irishman. Maybe not the finest photographer in the short history of the profession, but I count him the smartest. I started as his apprentice, sweeping the floor of his studio on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. He taught me everything. How to frame portraiture. How to handle glass plates in the dark. How to coat them with the collodion emulsion. How to get where you wanted to go when the military officers said no. He taught me everything except how to turn a penny. A number of us worked for him, taking the war photographs, and we’re all forgotten except him. He allowed only one name on those pictures. Brady.”
A fly walked around the rim of his bowl of soup. Rooney saw only the past. “I’ll say this for Mr. Matthew. He had a vision. No, an obsession. He wanted to photograph what had never been photographed before. Battlefields. We went to the war zone in closed wagons like the one you see, equipped with everything—cameras, plates, drape cloths, chemicals. The soldiers couldn’t imagine the purpose of such a vehicle, they called it Brady’s What-Is-It Wagon. We worked with artillery shells bursting in the sky and dying men screaming in the hospital tents. Nobody had ever seen such pictures before. Here, look for yourself.”
He showed Paul a horrific photograph of dead bodies piled in a trench and flowing over the top.
“Took that at Petersburg.”
He showed the next, a startling, eerie image of gutted buildings, vacant windows, in a vista of rubble with no visible sign of human life. Black as obsidian gravestones, the buildings leaped out in contrast to a white sky.
“This is Richmond, after it burned and the Reb flags came down. You’re looking at history, Dutch. A moment of human history preserved—frozen—for eternity.” Paul’s spine prickled. It was magic, but the real world too. This was drawing and painting with a camera. This was what he wanted to do with his life.
Rooney turned the page. The new picture was that of a youthful officer, stiffly seated with his campaign hat in his lap. “Oh, I remember this boy. Wanted a portrait for his sweetheart. A sniper killed him at Brandy Station, one week before his twenty-first birthday. The boy never gave me his sweetheart’s address. I kept the plate, Brady didn’t want it.” He touched the innocent face. “He was a lovely brave young man—” He lifted his glasses and dashed something from his eyes.
He closed the album. �
��After the war, I went home afire with the power of photography. I settled on the coast below Charleston, little town of Beaufort. I married a young woman from there. Old family. Indigo, then rice, then cotton. Heavenly voice she had. Sang in the church choir. Wexford Junior was born. I opened a small studio. I loved the trade but there was no money in it. At least I couldn’t find any. Then the tragedy occurred. The drowning. Alice blamed me, and rightfully. Things deteriorated. A few months after our son’s funeral I knew we were finished. I packed a valise and told Alice I was leaving. She wept but she wasn’t really hurt, she was glad it was over. I don’t blame her. I paid too much attention to my trade, to light and composition, not enough to bankbooks. Or taking care of my little boy. I was and I remain an impractical man.” He peered sideways from behind his spectacles. “We all have our demons. You’re too young to know.”
He drank some tea. Once again his spirits improved noticeably. He spoke of photography revolutionizing society:
“Think of a courtroom trial. Evidence presented clearly, graphically, for the jurymen to see. Goodbye to the lying, perjuring witness whose falsehoods send some poor wretch to the gallows. Photography is honest. Oh, it can be made to lie. But it must not.”
He spoke of a journalist named Jacob Riis, in New York, who had published a book about slum conditions and illustrated it with his own flashlight pictures. “How the Other Half Lives, that’s the name of it. I’d like to show you my copy but regrettably I had to hock it. In New York they’re clearing slums, rewriting building codes, founding charitable societies because of Jacob Riis. Wasn’t his text that did it, it was those photographs of starved whipped people staring out of rooms with dirt walls where they lived four and five to a bed.” Paul could almost see the room.
“We talked about Edison and his moving pictures, didn’t we? Now if you want to speak of revolutionary—that’s revolutionary.”
“I want to learn to take photographs, good ones like yours.”
“Well, without false modesty I say you’re looking at the best teacher in Chicago. Come around any free hour, if I’m not here I’ll be back soon. I’ll teach you to load the film, work the shutter, handle the chemicals—everything. I’ll teach you the craft, and the art—why, I’d be delighted.”
With a brimming heart, Paul said, “I would like that very much.”
“Capital! I’ll expect you in the near future. The very near future.”
“Thank you. I have a job six days a week at my uncle’s brewery. But I will find the time somehow. Now I really should be going.”
“All right, but come back, Dutch. Please come back.”
With that odd stooped walk, Rooney escorted him through the littered studio and saw him into the street with a wave. Paul watched Rooney through the dirty window as he shuffled to the back and yanked a curtain on rings, pulling it across to hide the sad little kitchen, and himself.
Never mind the poor surroundings; he was thrilled by the prospect of learning all that Mr. Wexford Rooney could teach. He had to leave the brewery, that was certain now. He needn’t do it immediately, he could wait until he learned the fundamentals and Rooney said he was equipped to seek a job in the profession. Then he would break it to Uncle Joe as gently as possible. For the present, he’d share his exciting secret with Cousin Joe and Julie, but no one else.
Abruptly, he remembered why his uncle had sent him to Little Cheyenne. He couldn’t recover the tap handles tonight, but he could certainly borrow a ladder and take down the Canadian Gardens sign. He pivoted around to head for Clark Street—
Stopped.
Motionless under the pale white globe of the red light hotel were four ragged figures. They barred the sidewalk from wall to curb. Two of the loungers were Paul’s age; one was a mulatto with skin the color of a fancy yellow shoe, and the other an emaciated towhead. A third, he judged to be about twelve. The one nearest …
There wasn’t any mistake. It was the boy with the vulpine face.
Waiting for him.
The four spread across the sidewalk. Above, Paul heard a woman. “Gonna be a show, Gert. Come watch.” He saw two whores squeezed into a second-floor window.
The boy sidled toward him. “Not so cocky now, are you? Pretty fancy clothes you got there. Any money in the pockets?”
Paul’s heart thumped. He shot a look backward. Rooney’s was dark as a grave; no immediate help there.
Paul stepped off the curb into the gutter. The boy on the outside countered the move, blocking him again. Sewer water trickled around Paul’s shoes. He could hear the whores chatting up above.
“I did not come here to look for trouble.”
“Listen to him,” said the mulatto. “Another God damn greenhorn off the boat.”
“A Dutchman,” the towhead said, marching up to him. “My granddad taught me about Dutchmen. He fought with Stonewall. Granddad said the Dutchmen at Chancellorsville ran away. Flying Dutchmen, Granddad called them. Ain’t that funny?”
Paul tensed for a feint, intending to slam past them, knock down one or two if he could, and outrun the rest. The towhead’s face reddened.
“Hey, you fucker. I said, ain’t that funny?” He slapped Paul, then grabbed Paul’s left ear and twisted. Paul punched his stomach.
Towhead staggered. “Stand clear, Davey, I’ll take him,” the mulatto said, pulling something from under his shirt.
Paul lowered his head and set his feet to hit again. But the mulatto was faster. His yellow fist swung in a long hard arc. Paul saw the length of pipe only a second before it smashed his head.
He gave a cry and slumped to his knees in the gutter. Water soaked his shoes, his pants, his shirt cuffs as he tried to brace himself. He heard a grunt from the mulatto; a rush of air. The pipe struck the back of his skull, smashed his jaw into the gutter, made him bite his tongue savagely. He tasted the blood gushing in his mouth, and slid forward in the gutter, prone, one hand groping for a hold on the slimy curbstone. That was all he remembered.
45
Joe Junior
ABOUT HALF PAST EIGHT that night, someone knocked at the door of Joe’s room, startling him. He was lying down, still dressed, the room dark, watching the flicker and pulse of red light in the sky.
He went to the door. It was his mother. She seemed tense.
“So dark in here. That smoke is terrible. You should close the windows.”
“Too hot, Mama.”
“Your father wants to see you in the study.”
He went downstairs feeling like a condemned man suddenly yanked from his cell and told that his sentence wasn’t imprisonment after all, but immediate hanging. He was sweating when he knocked for permission to enter.
Only one lamp was on in the study, the desk lamp with its shade of green banker’s glass. The windows were closed, as if that would shut out the reality of rioting and burning.
His father’s face was drawn. Despite the heat he wore his vest and his detachable shirt cuffs too. He’d been late coming home; only Joe Junior, his mother, brother and sister had eaten together. Paul was missing for some reason.
“I have a serious question to ask you, Joseph. I expect and demand an honest answer. I could ask your cousin, but he isn’t here. More pertinently, however, I ask you because you are my son.”
Nervously: “Sure, Pop, ask.”
His father reached to the shadowy desk. Between thumb and middle finger he showed a folded square of brown kraft paper.
“Today someone at the brewery put an anonymous note in my office. I believe I recognize the writing as Emil Tagg’s. The note says Benno Strauss is carrying a pistol at Crown’s. Which is expressly against my orders. If I asked Benno, he would lie. Emil bears him a grudge because Benno attacked him, so Emil isn’t entirely reliable either. I am asking you. Have you seen any such weapon?”
Joe Junior’s head rang. The floor under him seemed to tilt back and forth. Here was a line clearly drawn, and he had to retreat from it, or step over.
“Joe, I am waiting
.”
Good soldier … can I count on you? His head hurt. His father’s posture changed, signaling his intention to stand.
“Young man, I order you to answer me.”
Yes, God damn you, you order me, you order everybody …
“No, sir. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Why are you sweating?”
“It’s hot as hades in here.”
Joe Crown stared at his son for what might have been as much as a half minute. Then, curtly, he said, “All right, thank you, you may go.”
In the entrance hall, Joe Junior grabbed the banister and rested his forehead on the cool smooth wood, eyes closed. His heart was hammering. He’d done it. Taken the step. Sworn his allegiance to the other side. He felt giddily proud of himself.
A half hour later, he heard the telephone bell downstairs. Someone answered on the second ring. Probably Manfred, who usually took all calls unless he was out of the house.
He went to the window and leaned on the sill, staring at the red sky. Had he done enough for Benno with his lie? Discharged his obligation? God, he hoped so. This was deep stuff; more dangerous than he’d ever dreamed.
Sounds from the stable caught his attention. He sat on the sill, holding the window frame with one hand while he leaned out. Stretching, he could just see the stable roof, and a portion of Nineteenth Street to the west. He watched the Crown landau wheel out of the stable, Nicky Speers on the box, popping his long whip. There was a flash of his father’s silver goatee at the window, then the carriage was out of sight.
He ran to the hall and started downstairs. The telephone bell jingled again. He bumped into Fritzi coming upstairs in her white cotton nightgown, a book under her arm.
“Why did Pop go out? Something wrong at the brewery?”
“I don’t know, but he was all excited. I heard him whispering to Mama, about Paul. I hope Paul isn’t hurt or anything …”