The Titans

by John Jakes

  Now he was one of those men. Or he soon would be. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he’d been foolish to object to Fisk’s bluntness. He could and would submerge his pride and self-esteem to make sure he did nothing to embarrass or irk Messrs. Drew, Fisk, and Gould.

  The reward would be well worth it.

  ii

  He donned a silk robe, dimmed the gas, and returned to the bedroom. Nedda Chetwynd wiped champagne from her chin, still smiling her fatuous smile.

  “May I call you Louis?”

  He shrugged. “If you wish.” He was growing impatient. Why had he even bothered with the robe?

  He knew. That damned painting. He forced himself to glance at it. As always, the pale blue eyes seemed to mock him.

  Fisk’s trollop helped herself to more champagne. Louis found himself continuing to stare at the porcelain face on the canvas. The picture generated feelings of humiliation and hatred. Why had he kept it?

  In a slurred voice, the blond girl asked, “Is that the lady to whom you were married?”

  “That is indeed.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “She was until she lost her mind.”

  Miss Chetwynd almost spilled her drink. “You mean she’s locked away?”

  “She should be. She got mixed up with that idiotic woman’s movement. She began complaining she was being used like a household object. That’s a woman’s primary function—to be used—”

  Louis sat down on the edge of the bed. He pushed the sheet away and fondled the girl’s nipple.

  “To give pleasure. In the kitchen, or here.”

  The stupid slut could only giggle.

  “The next thing I knew, Julia was equating herself with the niggers.”

  Astonishment: “With the—?”

  “You heard me. Niggers. She’s always despised them, but overnight they became her sublime symbol! If the niggers are free, she said, why should women be denied voting and property rights? That’s one argument Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Stone, Susan Anthony, and the rest of that deranged crowd use to justify their bizarre ideas. The moment my wife took up with those harridans, the result was inevitable.”

  Louis was talking quietly and for his own benefit. There was a certain relief in speaking aloud in an attempt to sort out the incomprehensibilities of the recent past.

  Not that he was having any luck. His troubled and vaguely baffled expression was genuine. Although he’d listened to dozens of Julia’s tirades before she’d departed in December of 1866, he still could not understand her reasoning—or what had changed her in a period of three or four years from a demanding child to an adult with a frightening degree of independence.

  As far as he could recollect, her complaints about being used dated all the way to ’61, shortly after the disastrous meeting at Kentland when Boyle, Rothman, and his mother’s mulatto mine supervisor from California, Israel Hope, had refused to endorse the formation of Federal Suppliers.

  Something had happened to Julia that spring. Exactly what, he couldn’t guess. Nor would she speak of it when he questioned her. Whatever it was, it had been the start of their difficulties.

  She’d begun mentioning the Irishman, to whom she’d never paid more than the most perfunctory attention before. Sometimes she was warm in her praise of Boyle’s stand about Federal Suppliers, or of his character generally. At other times—in a totally contradictory way—she spoke his name with what amounted to barely suppressed anger. Louis had tried to laugh off that particular paradox by telling himself she was being typically feminine. It didn’t work. “Typical” femininity was precisely what Julia was shedding in slow, inexplicable, and horrifying stages.

  Her complaints about being “used” dated from the spring of 1861 as well. So did her resistance of her husband’s intimate advances. She’d moderated her crusade briefly in ’62; that was when their only child, Carter, had been conceived. The calm was short-lived. Somehow Julia had heard gossip about Louis’ involvement with a salesgirl from a Manhattan shop. The war had resumed.

  By the time she left him, taking their four-year-old son—no loss: Carter was a vile brat who constantly wanted Louis’ attention—Julia had become a model of calm, rational determination. Terrifying!

  He’d commissioned her portrait for one of their earliest anniversaries. Many times since ’66, he’d come close to ordering the painting burned. Yet he hadn’t done it.

  Perhaps the picture served as a cautionary warning. He’d already taken a silent pledge that he’d never become entangled with another woman. A woman was like a bad investment: too many unpredictable and therefore unacceptable risks. He was willing to undertake risks of the kind to which he’d committed himself by sealing the pact with Fisk. At least that type of risk offered a chance of profit. With a woman, the best you could hope for was to maintain the status quo.

  No, he was through with anything other than casual relationships with members of the opposite sex. Perhaps he kept the painting to strengthen that resolve.

  Nedda Chetwynd was watching him in a puzzled, almost nervous way. He feigned a smile, plucked the goblet from her hand, and tossed it to one side without looking. The glass broke, tinkling.

  He stood up and removed his robe. For a moment he wasn’t the least self-conscious about standing naked in front of Julia’s portrait. He rather enjoyed it.

  He peeled the silk sheet away, disappointed in the smallness of the girl’s breasts. But her stomach was plump and pink.

  She simpered at the reaction in his loins. But she let out a cry when he pulled her out of bed.

  Belly to belly with her, Louis gave her a quick kiss. She was practiced. Her tongue licked languorously while she reached for him with a caressing hand.

  He pushed it away. “One more thing about my former wife, Miss Chetwynd—”

  “Oh, do call me Nedda!”

  He tried to hide his disgust. “Very well. Nedda. I should just like to observe that my wife’s, ah, problem was essentially a simple one—”

  Liar. To the hour he died, Julia’s notions would remain aberrations, and the reason for them a mystery.

  “She failed to understand where a woman belongs.”

  He took hold of Nedda’s shoulders. The pressure of his grip made her wince. All round eyes and red round mouth, she gazed at his hugeness, then at his face.

  Softly, he said, “Let’s find out whether you do, shall we?”

  Chapter IV

  The Man in the Burned Shawl

  i

  THE FEBRUARY TWILIGHT SOFTENED the raw look of the cottages along General Wayne Street in Jersey City. Gideon Kent stood by the parlor window, his good eye narrowed as he studied the black clouds billowing in from the northwest.

  Snowstorm coming. After nearly two years he could recognize the signs.

  Raised in Virginia’s temperate Shenandoah Valley, he still wasn’t accustomed to the Northern weather. Seldom in his boyhood had Lexington received more than an occasional powdering of winter white. Up here, bitter winds blew for days at a time, and snow piled into loaflike drifts that were slow to melt. Since autumn he’d already endured three such storms. Tonight there was obviously going to be another.

  The thought had only a marginal connection with his own safety. He seldom fretted about that any longer, although Margaret worried a good deal. The threatening sky reminded him vividly of Augustus Kolb. It had snowed the night after New Year’s, when an accident had destroyed Kolb’s life in a few seconds.

  The memory called up a second one. He thought of the man to whom he’d listened a couple of hours ago, down at the Diamond N Lager Palace.

  Because of the man’s reputation, the Diamond N proprietor forced him to convene his discussion group in the saloon storeroom. Even now Gideon could smell the sawdust and see the visitor’s lined, exhausted face. The weary yet somehow spirited eyes. The powerful-looking hands resting on threadbare knees as the Philadelphian leaned forward to exhort the nine switchmen from the Erie yards. They had
gathered to see what if anything they could do for Augie Kolb and his family.

  “You can do nothing,” the man told them, “unless you organize. That’s the only way we’ve made gains in the Iron Molders’ International.”

  “We ain’t mechanics, Sylvis,” a man named Cassidy complained. “We ain’t skilled like your journeymen.”

  The emaciated man plucked at the shawl he wore over his thin overcoat. The shawl was virtually in tatters, pierced by black-edged holes. Sylvis claimed that for every foundry or cluster of foundries he’d organized into a local, he could count a hole burned by molten iron. There were dozens of holes.

  “Makes no difference,” Bill Sylvis replied. “The principle’s the same. Single-handedly you can accomplish nothing of substance or permanence. United, there’s no power or wrong you can’t defy. I want you to think about that. And think of Kolb’s wife Gerda. She’s related to a man in our Philadelphia local. He asked me to take the train up here and talk with you.”

  Gideon was sitting cross-legged in a corner at the very back of the group. He’d only come because Kolb had been a friend. He had little interest in meeting a radical like Sylvis. So he was surprised when he found the man and his message commanding his attention. He was prompted to speak up.

  “I suppose it’s the same principle General Stuart taught us.”

  Sylvis craned his head. “What’s that? Who spoke?”

  “Reb Kent back there,” said one of the others, though not unkindly.

  Gideon raised his hand. “During the war I rode with Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. He taught us to stick together in the field. The more of us there were, he said, the safer we’d be—and the greater the chance we’d be able to execute our orders.”

  Bill Sylvis nodded in an emphatic way. “That’s it exactly. In Kolb’s case, an appeal by a few men will probably accomplish nothing. But if a number of men—all the men in the yards—join forces and strike, they can effect a change. We learned that in the Molders. It’s a lesson I travel ten thousand miles a year to promote.”

  A friend of Daphnis Miller uttered a glum chuckle. Miller had been pessimistic about the value of the conclave. He was out in the saloon proper, swilling beer. There was no question about the value of that.

  Said Miller’s friend, “We raise our heads out of the trench, we’ll bring change, all right. We’ll bring a flock of damn niggers or greenhorn immigrants to the yard. The bosses will replace us!”

  Rather than disagreeing, Sylvis nodded in a grave way. “That is the great weapon the employers hold over us. We must find such a weapon ourselves.”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Oh, yes, there is. It’s so obvious we overlook it. I did for many years, and even now I hesitate to express the idea publicly. It wouldn’t be popular. But it’s inescapable. If labor is ever to win a lasting victory, it must include everyone in its ranks. Everyone. The skilled will have to combine with the unskilled. I suppose that means women will have to be admitted to labor organizations. Black men too.”

  The quiet statement brought an uproar of protest. Sylvis raised a hand.

  “I didn’t come to that conclusion easily. I know laboring men think of unions as the purview of the skilled trades. And I once believed the nigras were a threat to every white fellow who sweated for a living. But I’ve begun to change my mind. The Negro is no longer a slave, but neither is he free.” The intense eyes shone as he scanned the troubled faces. “Neither are you free. We’re slaves together. We must put off our slavery together.”

  “It’s been tried!” objected a burly switchman named Rory Bannock. “Five years ago, twelve railroaders got together out in Detroit to start the Brotherhood of the Footboard. They wanted postmortem benefits for widows of men killed on the job. They had to meet in secret for fear they’d be fired. Whole business never amounted to anything.”

  “I expect it would have if they’d stuck with it,” Sylvis countered.

  “Don’t be too sure. Boys on the B & O wanted to approach one of the bosses with some complaint or other. They were discharged just for askin’ for an appointment!”

  Sylvis’ eyes had a melancholy cast. “I never said the struggle would be easy. It hasn’t been in the Molders. But when you organize—”

  “We organize ourselves out of a job!” Bannock exclaimed.

  Most agreed. Loudly.

  “I agree solidarity isn’t without its risks—” Sylvis began.

  Cassidy gestured “Let someone else take ’em. I got six kids.”

  Sylvis looked disappointed. So did the switchmen. They’d hoped Sylvis would recommend some quick and simple plan for securing financial assistance for Augie Kolb and his brood. Instead, he was speaking of abstract matters. Wage slavery. The union movement. A long-range strategy instead of a short-term panacea.

  Gideon sat frowning, barely aware of the racket from the saloon. The objections notwithstanding, he suspected the soft-spoken Philadelphian might be right. At the First Manassas, he’d learned the value of standing together. He’d taken a few men off on his own and damn near gotten shot to death by a dying Yankee.

  He wanted to help Augustus Kolb’s family. But Bill Sylvis poured bitter medicine. He was realistic about the possibility of firings if demands were made. He’d upset and disappointed the switchmen. His candor about eventual mingling of the races in the labor movement hadn’t helped either.

  Gideon Kent and every other man in the storeroom needed their jobs. That was the difficulty which brought the meeting to a swift and inconclusive end.

  ii

  All the way home, Gideon had been unable to get forty-year-old William Sylvis out of his thoughts. Now, at the window, the approaching snowstorm again reminded him of the chief officer of the strongest of the nation’s fledgling trade unions.

  Sylvis was well known among workingmen. He’d personally built the Molders into a network of over a hundred and thirty-five locals. He’d held sometimes reluctant iron workers off their jobs and won a major settlement with the foundry owners who’d staged the famous Albany Lockout of ’66. He constantly promoted the formation of worker-owned cooperative foundries as an alternative to the existing iron and steel establishment. And he was being mentioned as a potential president of the National Labor Union, a relatively new association of workers’ assemblies, union locals, reformers, and eight-hour leagues pushing for a shorter workday.

  Still, the price Bill Sylvis had paid for his achievements was quite apparent. He’d been shunted into the anonymity of a storeroom because even small businessmen considered him dangerous. His clothes were hardly better than rags. His health looked none too good, either. At the meeting he’d declined all refreshment, saying he had a persistent stomach condition. He’d worn himself out—and, Gideon had read, kept his family in poverty—for the trade union cause.

  In fact Sylvis had looked fragile and almost forlorn when he left the meeting and walked into the dark day with only his thin overcoat and that burned shawl to protect him. Gideon could still see the ends of the shawl fluttering like bullet-pierced flags.

  The image vanished as he chafed his hands to warm them. The cottage parlor was dingy and frigid. The ancient floral wallpaper had a sooty tinge. Wind whistled through gaps in the siding.

  The old walnut clock on a rickety table chimed half-past five. Gideon couldn’t wholeheartedly admit Sylvis was right. To do so would compel a man to think of taking the next logical step. Like the others gathered at the Lager Palace, he wasn’t prepared to do it. Times were too hard, work too scarce.

  From the kitchen came the sound of Margaret starting Eleanor’s bath. In the midst of the splashing, she called to him, “Gideon? Your supper’s ready.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  But he remained at the window, his gaze fixed on the ruts of frozen mud and the shabbily identical houses straggling toward the river. His next-door neighbor, Daphnis Miller, said the only way a man who enjoyed his beer could find his way to the right bed after imbibing was to count
cottages starting at the corner.

  Miller was a generous man. In less than half a year’s time, he’d also become a good friend. Last summer, after being discharged from three successive jobs because of his Southern background, Gideon had recalled meeting the trainman at Relay House. In desperation, he’d ridden the ferry to Jersey City.

  He’d expected Miller to be long gone or, if he were still employed, to have forgotten him. Certainly he’d have forgotten his casual invitation for Gideon to look him up if he ever needed employment.

  On all counts Gideon had been wrong.

  Miller had introduced him to the superintendent who hired switchmen. Gideon’s infirmity had produced a gale of disbelieving laughter.

  But the superintendent hadn’t turned him down flat. Despite depressed economic conditions and a scarcity of jobs in the industrial East, few men were hungry enough to risk themselves working for a line as disreputable as the Erie. Even so, Gideon had found it necessary to plead his case for almost fifteen minutes.

  He was strong. His tall frame and wide shoulders attested to it. He’d regained most of the weight he’d lost in prison.

  He was agile. He’d been a cavalryman during the war.

  He’d had to argue heatedly about his eye, though. He thumped the superintendent’s desk and informed him he could march into any Army recruiting office and sign up instantly for one of the new regiments of Plains cavalry. If one-eyed men were acceptable to General Hancock or young General Custer—a soldier Gideon tried not to hate for leading the Wolverine horsemen who’d killed Beauty Stuart—then damn it, they should be acceptable to the Erie Railroad! Coupling cars couldn’t be any more perilous than facing a band of rampaging Sioux Indians.