by J. G. Sandom
No one spoke. No one said anything.
“Now get the hell out of my bar.”
Chapter 16
June 23, 1904
New York City
Dustin and Goldstein went down the back stairs. My father and Louisa soon followed. Arvin was imprisoned behind the last door, at the end of a very long corridor. Goldstein pulled out his key chain. He selected a key. He unlocked the lock and stepped forward.
Dustin’s father was sitting near the rear of the cellar, his back to a beer barrel, trying to sleep. As soon as Arvin heard the door start to creak, he rolled to his feet. Goldstein hesitated. Dustin bounded within. He ran to his father. They collided, embraced. Arvin kissed Dustin full on the face.
“What happened?” said Arvin, finally catching his breath. “Are you here to free or to join me? Which is it?” And then as Goldstein drew near, “Which is it, Herr Goldstein? What do you plan to do with my son?”
“Set him free.”
“So I can take you home,” Dustin said. “Wherever that is.” He explained to his father what had happened.
Goldstein touched Arvin on the shoulder. “Arvin,” he said. “I know we’ve had our differences. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I also know that Ula would have wanted you to stay. To continue to work here, at the Rose. Are you sure you won’t reconsider? It just won’t be the same here without you.”
“Perhaps it will be better,” Arvin said. “Mine is an itinerant class, after all. I’ve already stayed far too long. If it hadn’t been for Ula . . . ”
“Yes,” Goldstein said. “If it hadn’t been for Ula.” Then he smiled and stepped back. “But where will you go? And for whom will you work?”
Arvin took Dustin by the hand. “We are used to the highway, aren’t we, Dustin? We’ve traveled before. Perhaps to Minn-e-so-ta. I hear they are looking for men. Don’t worry, Otto. I’ll leave you a bowl of my yeast.”
“Or Missouri,” said Dustin. “And we’re changing our name.”
“To what?” Goldstein asked him.
“Who knows?” Arvin said. “It will come to us. Arvin Brauer belongs to the people now. It’s no longer my name.” He paused. “I bequeath it to them.” Then he turned to face Goldstein. “Thank you for talking with Abelard. You did, didn’t you? You spoke with him about telling the truth. It must have been terribly difficult, knowing that he’d implicate Bingham. Your own son.”
“I’ve been accused of many things, Herr Brauer, as you know. But no one calls me a liar. A deal is a deal. That’s simply good business.”
“Ah, yes, good business,” Arvin said with a nod.
“It wasn’t Bingham who started that fire,” my father said, stepping forward. “It was bigotry, Arvin. Pure and simple. It was the hate in his heart.”
Goldstein laughed mirthlessly. “A son’s failings are a father’s greatest failure. Besides, didn’t you hear? Barnaby and Van Schaick. Even Lundberg, the inspector. They were all found guilty this morning.” He replaced the cellar key on his chain. He put it back in his pocket. Then he started up the stairs once again. “My son,” he added, over his shoulder. “My son was never on trial.”
Chapter 17
June 15, 1905
New York City
It’s been a year since the disaster. I float above the stone memorial, revolve around the statuary, appraising the assembled. I don’t know any of these faces. These people are strangers to me. It seems that all those closest to the tragedy have either moved away, or they’re already here. In here. With me. Or they’ve moved on. So many of the spirits whom I used to see in Middle Village, Queens, or in Manhattan, along the streets and avenues, above the parks and rooftops, most everywhere, are gone. But I remain. I don’t know how to leave. There doesn’t seem to be an exit from this place.
So much has happened. Kleindeutchland is no more. Only a few of the people I knew growing up there remain. Only the odd butcher and baker still linger. In the end, though no match was struck, and no fire burned on dry land, Van Schaick’s fears had been warranted: Kleindeutchland was the secondary blaze.
Despite Miss Hall’s confession at the inquest, and although eleven were found guilty – including Frank A. Barnaby and the other officers of the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, as well as Captain Van Schaick and Inspector Lundberg – only Captain Van Schaick was convicted. He’ll serve another eighteen months in prison before being pardoned by President Taft. Then he’ll live out his days in seclusion, morose, misanthropic, replaying that voyage again and again in his head. In contrast, the board of the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company escaped with a nominal fine. A few dollars. A slap on the wrist, in the end.
Kleindeutchland may be gone, but some good did come out of the pain. They say flowers grow best in volcanic ash. Following the inquest, dozens and dozens of new government regulations were enacted, allegedly ensuring that no such event would transpire again. Perhaps with less frequency, fewer dead, but it will. If not in New York, then New Delhi or Rio, Chittagong or Negombo. It will.
My family moved to Germantown in Columbus, Ohio, where my father reopened his clock shop. It looks practically identical to the one in Kleindeutchland. He’ll continue to fix clocks and watches until his eyes finally fail him, in seven more years. He’ll die close to fifty from cancer, calling my name out, shouting it, and I’ll be the only one there. My mother will never recover. Despite the support of my father and Helmuth, she will carry a piece of Nixie’s christening gown to the grave. Threadbare and soiled, it will sit in her pocket as they shovel the earth on her head. And Helmuth. Helmuth will surprise everyone. He’ll move to Los Angeles and become a pioneering director. He’ll retire at sixty from the motion-picture industry to manage his orange groves, surrounded by his seven children and fourteen grandchildren . . . all of whom would never have been born if he had turned right instead of left on the promenade deck.
The Golden Rose is long gone. The Goldsteins moved to Yorkville on the Upper East Side where Otto opened a new tavern called Henry’s. It’s not nearly as successful as The Golden Rose, but at least he survived the debacle. His son, Bingham, returned to visit family in Germany soon after the tragedy and will never come back to New York. He’ll be killed in a hole in Verdun, in 1916 – when his lungs fill with mustard gas.
And the Brauers (henceforth the Boschs) moved to Missouri. Louisa and Dustin Bosch were married. It was only one month ago. One month and four days and six hours, three minutes. August Bosch (AKA Arvin) will become incredibly wealthy, working as brewer, master brewer, and finally VP for a much larger brewery in St. Louis. Dustin also works at the brewery as an apprentice engineer. In a few years, he’ll come up with the concept of putting caps on beer bottles. He, too, will grow rich, and fatter and slower, and eventually start losing his hair. In two years, Louisa will give birth to a beautiful, seven-pound, twelve-ounce girl, with cornflower blue eyes, whom they’ll call Mallory – after her aunt.
I revel in their happiness. I can feel it, and it warms me.
The events of that day have started to fade. They had a moderate half-life in the memory collective. Due to Germany’s role in the Great War that followed, the Slocum disaster will soon be supplanted, pushed aside by other more appropriate tragedies. After all, most of who burned or who drowned were from Germany.
Only a few still remember. Like me. Only a few still remain unresolved.
Chapter 18
Years Later
Long Island, New York
The spirit does not grow old. There are no bones to age. But thoughts grow decrepit and feeble. They wear away like Nixie’s christening gown. How could they not? Once thought, perceived, ideas and feelings do not vanish. But they fade. Even mine. They crumble and crack over time. They grind. Like stones in the streambed of memory.
I am tired now. From time to time, I visit what was once my body. There is so little left. I have become a box of bones. From time to time, I visit Dustin and Louisa. I visit Mallory, my niece. But I grow bored of simpl
y being a witness, an insubstantial spy. And there are times I see things that I shouldn’t see.
I tell you this, but I do not seek your pity. When I think back upon my former self, I shudder at the things I let preoccupy me. I wasted so much energy. I squandered so much time. And cut short though my life was, since the Slocum, I’ve had the opportunity to live innumerable lives – to feel how others feel, think their thoughts, fear their fears, dream their dreams. I used to walk the earth bereft of understanding, bankrupt of insight, shallow and vain. I was a ghost, a specter. In the end, it was only because I lost my life that I lived it.
Now, I am ready. Only one thing remains. It’s my fate. My last duty.
* * *
Mrs. Barnaby frets. It’s Christmas and snow has been falling for a good seven hours. The roads on Long Island are slippery. The guests are beginning to show, mostly late. She attends them as they hand off their coats to the servants. She greets them and ushers them in.
The men are bedecked in tails and starched shirts, the women in gowns made of silk. There is champagne and oysters, water chestnuts in bacon, and caviar, smoked salmon, and shrimp. A fine stringed quartet plays Haydn with passion. There is dancing and light conversation. Then the guests take their seats in the grand banquet hall and prepare for their sumptuous supper.
I watch them as they eat. I watch them as they chat and laugh and flirt and pander. I watch them as they lie and brag and brazenly manipulate. I see them as they are.
Barnaby sits at the head of the table. He has grown cadaverously thin and quite gray. He blows at his bisque. He pokes at his sturgeon. He stabs at his goose. But he rarely eats any longer. Nothing tastes good. And his stomach is delicate, fickle.
As soon as the supper is finished, he stands and urges his male friends to join him for billiards. They follow him out. They file down the hall. The billiard room sits by the library. As the men grab their cue sticks, Barnaby moves to the library to fetch his cigars and his cutter.
He opens the doors. He steps swiftly within. The room is quite dark – lit only by a fire burning wanly in the hearth – but he knows it so intimately that he navigates through the furniture by rote. Past the club chairs, the ottoman, the dry bar and crystal. Past the hand-crafted screen from Siam. The humidor sits on the windowsill. He opens it deftly, removes some cigars. He stuffs them one by one in his coat.
The walls are covered with books, and he stares at them absently. He stares at their spines without thinking. He can hear the report of billiard balls striking, the crack, then the thud of rebounding on felt. He turns. He looks up. And he stops.
He can see me descending, through the ceiling, and down, past the books and the paintings. He grows pale. He grows cold as I circle. Crack, crack go the billiard balls. Crack. And somebody laughs.
Today, I am dressed in bright white. My hair is on fire, and smoke wraps about me like the wings of a swan. My eyes and my eyelids – they sparkle and blaze. My mouth is as black as the grave.
Barnaby waits as I slip in beside him, as I snuggle and wind myself round. He is cold. He is so very cold. He grows old.
I draw his face close, put his chin on my shoulder.
He staggers and screams. He runs from the library, banging his shin on the ottoman. He stands in the doorway, his face white as snow. He shivers and quakes. And the gentlemen gather. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” someone says. But they know. They’ve all heard the rumors. Mr. Barnaby’s slipping. Since the inquest. How sad. Mr. Barnaby’s sick, going mad.
Later that evening, after the guests have departed, as he lies in his bed with his wife, he turns from his book and confesses, “I saw her again, in the library. The same girl.”
Mrs. Barnaby wonders if she should pretend to be sleeping. Then she says, “Sure you did, dear. I believe you. Go to sleep now.” She gathers him close, puts his head on her shoulder, reaches over and turns out the light
But I am his lover now, and he’s mine. Dustin was just one kiss, long ago, on a floundering steamship. It’s Barnaby I come home to each night.
Epilogue
It took Barnaby seventeen winters to die. He was the last of the board members, the last of his kind. Though younger, Lundberg had perished already, from syphilis, and Van Schaick from a broken heart. Only Miss Hall still survives them. She sits there alone in her rooms late at night, and remembers.
It’s done. I can see that. It’s over, and I’ve told you my story. The truth. My confession. There once was a steamship named the General Slocum. She sank, and I died.
Will you lead me? Will you open the door, please?
I am finished. Will you let me come in?
THE END
About the Author
Born in Chicago, raised and educated throughout Europe, and a graduate of Amherst College (where he won the Academy of American Poets Prize), J.G. Sandom founded the nation’s first digital ad agency (Einstein and Sandom Interactive – EASI) in 1984, before launching an award-wining writing career. The author has written three young adult novels, including Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher and Kiss Me, I’m Dead, and six thrillers and mysteries, including THE WAVE – a John Decker Thriller, The God Machine, Gospel Truths, and The Wall Street Murder Club. He is currently working on a sequel to THE WAVE called THE PLAGUE. Visit the author at www.jgsandom.com.
If you enjoyed J.G. Sandom’s
KISS ME, I’M DEAD
you won’t want to miss his
CONFESSIONS OF A
TEENAGE BODY SNATCHER
Prologue
September, 1852
Virginia Waters
Surrey, England
It rained. It had been raining for a week, and the roads were choked with mud, black mats of fallen autumn leaves, with flinty stone and blebs of sod, soaked clots of black dismembered branches. The carriage charged along the slippery lane, careened and coursed, pulled by three geldings and a mare, dark as the night through which they ran. It was almost nine o’clock, and they were very, very late.
Wrapped in a tattered jet-black cloak, the ancient coachman scanned the sky. Bruised thunderheads rolled soundlessly aloft, heavy as breakers on the strand. He turned and stared into the darkened landau. Inside, his master, the corpulent Marquess of Stanton, was diddling his latest conquest. A young brunette with doelike eyes and skin as white as fog, her head reclined against the velvet seat, her throat exposed, her mouth half open and her raspberry-colored lips aquiver. The coachman leered. He watched as the Marquess pawed the girl. He strained to get a better look when, suddenly, the horses whinnied nervously. A bright white fork of lightning split the sky. A thunderclap barked back. The muddy lane revealed itself and, without warning, without a moment’s chance to turn or pull back on the reins, a boy appeared before him.
The coachman cursed. He yanked the tracers, tried to break. A Stygian darkness choked the lane. There was a muffled thud, a bump, a scream. The coachman felt the landau grind across the object in its path. There was another bump – then, nothingness. The horses slowed, declining to a trot.
“What the blazes!” the Marquess cried within.
The coachman reached out for a headlight as the horses finally stopped.
“You there,” the Marquess said. The coachman had been a member of his lordship’s staff for almost seven months, but the Marquess had yet to learn his name. “Coachman, what say you?”
The coachman turned and looked into the landau. “I fear we’ve struck someone, your lordship.”
The Marquess rolled his eyes.
The coachman slipped the headlight off its post and lifted it aloft. He could see nothing through the rain. He jumped down from the landau and looked about the undercarriage. Nothing. The horses pawed the ground. Shielding his eyes, the coachman checked their legs with care, one after the other. They appeared to be unscathed.
“Hurry up, man,” the Marquess said. “We’re late.”
The coachman sloshed around the carriage. In the dim glow of the headlight, he could just
make out a solitary boot. It was worn and small – the footwear of a child. He stooped and was about to pick it up when something caught his eye. A rust-red rivulet ran lazily along the lane. Blood! He straightened up. He stared into the night. Just then, another bolt of lightning creased the sky. There! Two dozen yards away, the frame of a young boy was curled up in a heap. The coachman groaned. He dashed across the lane, bent down upon one knee, and reached out with a wizened hand. The boy moaned softly as the coachman touched his neck. “He lives, your lordship. He lives!” Without waiting for an answer, the ancient coachman stripped the cloak from his broad shoulders and wrapped it round the broken frame. “There, there,” he said. “You’ll be all right, lad.” Then he lifted the boy and dashed back to the landau.
The Marquess of Stanton was staring out the window. He had a flat round face, a pair of tiny light gray eyes, set close together, and a short flat nose. “What do you think you’re doing, man?” he said.
The coachman was trying to open the side door. “He’s ’urt terrible, your lordship. We should lie him down inside, sir.”
“In here? Has the rain rinsed your wits, man? He’ll bleed all over the upholstery. Just leave him. Someone else will be along, I’ll warrant, soon enough.”
“Poor dear.” The lady with the raspberry-colored lips leaned forward, gazing down upon the shattered body in the coachman’s arms. “He’s just a boy,” she said. “We can’t just leave him, Percy.”
The Marquess looked indignant. “Pray tell, why not, Melissa? Look at what passes for his clothes. He’s obviously a vagabond.”
“But he’ll die,” she answered.
