by Daren Wang
He turned north on the wide boulevard.
The army had turned City Hall Park into a deployment station and uniformed men filed through its canvas corridors, tramping hard paths into the former green. Leander moved toward the Croton Fountain and its promise of water, keeping his eyes on the ground as he threaded his way among the soldiers.
He hadn’t been able to look at any face under a blue kepi since he’d heard the news about Ball’s Bluff.
He had still been living at the St. James Hotel then, though his money was almost all gone and he hadn’t paid rent on the room for a month.
The Tribune’s small gray print was almost illegible and there were many names on the list. He strained to make out Hans’s right above a big ink splotch that obscured several other dead men. He could not be sure, but thought one of them was Lafayette Glass. In another column, Vaness Weber was listed as missing.
He did not leave his room that day, drawing the curtains on his view of Central Park and sitting in the dark. He chased the chambermaid away when she came by in the afternoon and downed a bottle of brain tonic as the day wore on.
Images of the battle came to him then. He saw Hans lying there among strangers, cursing Leander for leading him to such a miserable death. Then he saw him leading a charge, the men around him rallying to the flash of his saber. But the image that settled in to stay was of his friend in pain, dying slowly and alone.
He wished he had been there. He wanted to hold his friend’s head in his lap to ease his way, and to tell him it would be alright, to lie to him and say that he could hear the flutter of angel wings overhead and that they were coming for him.
He was in a drunken stupor when the night clerk came to collect on the overdue bill. The raps on the door sounded like gunshots and his name sounded like a dirge as it filtered through the gauze of the drug. Leander wailed like a frightened lamb, fearing the reaper had come to collect a different debt altogether.
The clerk barged in, fearing some violent act was in progress. After Leander calmed down, he tried to make a joke of his fear, but he knew then that it should have been him dying in that ugly-named place. He should have left Hans back home to pull fat trout out of Cayuga Creek alongside Harry while he had gone to fight.
Hans came to him that night, a bloody and silent ghost, and had been with him ever since. He’d been removed from the hotel the next day, and the unheated shack on Ann Street had been the last in a long line of humiliating circumstances since then.
The Croton Fountain’s tepid water was strewn with the flotsam of the city, making him long for the cool, clear Cayuga and the smell of the leaf mold of his father’s forest.
He stripped off his ragged shirt and bent into the water, scrubbing. Isabel had never hesitated to point out when he smelled bad or did not look his best. He would do what he could not to give her reason to complain today.
The razor needed sharpening but he used the soap to lather his face and hacked away at his grizzled whiskers. He had no mirror, and nicked his face several times, sending little drips of blood down his chin and into the dirt.
He pulled off his cheap shoes and ragged trousers, and sat in his underclothes on the edge of the fountain, scrubbing his feet.
He did his best to clean the used brogans he’d bought on the street. His good shoes were long gone, filched one night while he lay in an opium daze at Mrs. Chiu’s.
Others came to the fountain to collect water. He nodded his farewell to a woman he’d seen before, but she paid him no mind. He would not miss washing in public once he was ensconced at Worth Square.
The mustiness of the suit made him sneeze. It was loose where it had once been tight, but as he ran his fingers through his wet hair and took in the morning sun, he began to feel like his old self. Like the world could be his again. He left the rags of his old clothes there at the fountain and walked through the encampment, smiling as he noticed the soldiers who had glared at him before now stepping out of his way.
The street was more crowded now. He crossed Chambers, looking up at the big painted sign proclaiming DELMONICO’S, THE PLACE TO BE.
He’d gone nearly every night during his first months in the city, buying drinks and gleaning tidbits of information he used the next day on the trading floor.
It was also the place he finally found Isabel.
He’d made good on a few small trades, and had almost won back the money he’d spent getting set up. With each small victory, he gained confidence and he knew that if he could find just the right tip, make just one big hit, he’d be able to return the money to the account back in Buffalo and no one would even know it had been gone. He’d have the profit to trade free and clear. On the street, they called it “playing with house money.”
That night, he was entertaining a stout man who claimed to be a Pittsburgh banker with many clients on Oil Creek. By the time he had polished off three bottles of French wine and two steaks, Leander had begun to doubt he had even the vaguest knowledge of the oil business.
He had gone to the lobby to walk off his frustration, and seen Isabel there, talking with a couple, glowing under the crystal lights. She threw her head back and laughed at something the woman said and he caught his breath at her beauty. She’d always been a striking woman, but she seemed to blossom in her native city.
He had not been able to get to her until then. He’d hand-delivered four letters to her door and Fuller had taken them, but Leander had become convinced that he had not delivered them. Leander had even offered him a bribe with the last one, but the block of a man insisted that the missives had in fact been delivered and closed the door in his face.
He tried to step up to her under the gaslights at Delmonico’s, but the brawny manservant was there again, and stood in his way.
“Isabel,” he had called. “I can’t believe I’ve finally found you.”
It seemed to take a moment for her to recognize him.
“Oh, Leander,” she said. “What a surprise.”
“Let me through,” Leander demanded, pushing up against Fuller, but there was not an inch of yield in the man.
“I’ve been trying to get to you for months, but this infernal man refuses to deliver my letters,” he said. “I’m here now, in New York, trading. When can I see you?”
“How tragic.” Isabel pouted theatrically. “I’m leaving in the morning, and will be touring for more than a year.”
“What? How can you?” Leander blurted.
She shrugged.
“Don’t you want company?” he asked. “Surely you’d like me to come with you?”
The woman with Isabel sniggered and Leander shot her a glance.
“How is your trading going?” Isabel asked.
“It’s hard to get things started,” he said. “I could use your help.”
“You must stay here and work until you get the knack of it,” she said. “When I come back, I expect you to be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Come see me then and we’ll have a gay time.”
“Can I come see you tonight after dinner?” he pleaded.
She pouted again.
“I have far too much to do,” she said. “But come see me when I’m back in town.”
She waved as the maître d’ led the party away to a private dining room.
He’d gone back to the banker distracted and upset. When the bill arrived, he barked at him in frustration, demanding some useful information to offset the outrageous tally. The fat man had leaned over and whispered the name of a company in his ear, then sat back with a smile.
Leander looked askance at him, but the man nodded, his jowls jiggling reassuringly.
The next morning, Leander placed a buy order for five thousand shares of the company. By the end of the following week, it had gone bankrupt.
He’d not had a good buy in the year since. The scraps of his last trade had paid the rent on the room on Ann Street the month before, but last week he’d read the notice in a discarded paper of Isabel’s return to the city on a ship.<
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A crowded trolley rolled past, and he considered hopping on. When there were so many on board, it was not hard to jump on and off without the fare. He decided not to risk it, though. There was no rush. Isabel had never been an early riser, and he didn’t want to knock on her door too early.
As he walked, he daydreamed of the exotic things she would have brought back from her tour, and it wasn’t until he stood at the battered red door at Mrs. Chiu’s that he realized he’d turned up Canal Street out of habit.
He did not dare open the door, but imagined he could smell opium smoke seeping through the jamb.
Smoke was the only thing that had helped him through the past year.
The brain tonic brought out the worst in Hans, so Leander had sought out other methods to calm the ghost. Wine and whiskey did not help, but the memory of slow days on Isabel’s couch had sent him searching for a den. In the dim light and the languid movement of the opium smokers, he could drowse through the night. When the opium was just right, he would see other scenes in the candlelight, visions of Hans and the others, not dead and lost, but running through the Maryland woods, stripping off the heavy Union-blue wool and plunging into a pond, free of the war, free to go home.
He would stay for days in the sweet, acrid smoke, watching the Chinese girls with their pots of tea, leaving only when Mrs. Chiu ushered him out after his roll of currency had been exhausted.
He’d given the Chinese woman forged notes just two days before, amazed that she’d been fooled by them. She’d surely discovered her mistake by now, and even as he stood at the door, he knew if he was spotted there, he risked a beating if not worse.
There were other dens. Better ones. Isabel would know where to get the best.
He turned back toward Broadway, stopping along the way to rest. His legs cramped from walking, and he was short of breath, and when he passed a bakery, the smell of fresh bread brought tears of hunger to his eyes. In the university district, he found a bench and sat for a while, watching the midmorning crush of buggies and walkers on the streets.
“Agenbite of Inwyt,” one of the bespectacled professors announced in a stentorian voice as he walked by. “That’s at the heart of the matter.”
Leander chuckled to himself at the man’s pompous tone, but the air of scholars reminded him of Mary, and visions of home flooded him. To think of his father, Katia, and the others brought him too much pain, but remembering simple things calmed him—the hand-hewn beams in the barn, the pattern that Katia pricked in the crust of her pies, and Mary’s apron hanging on a hook, its pockets weighted with all the useless things she accumulated there.
He had not gone three days without smoke in months, and his nerves were terrible as he walked the last few blocks to Worth Square.
He tried to imagine a way back into Mrs. Chiu’s. Maybe she would give him credit, just this once. He’d spent enough with her that he was entitled to at least that. Or maybe he could trade his suit. Suddenly, he regretted leaving his old clothes at the fountain.
The Fitch mansion, an entire block of shining windows three stories tall, dominated the green patch that was Worth Square park.
Leander stood in the street trying to calm himself. Even a belt of rum would help, but he didn’t even have pennies for a tavern.
When he had at last worked up the nerve, he knocked on the door only to have Fuller open the door with a white-gloved hand.
“I’m here to see Mrs. Fitch,” he said.
“Who may I say is calling?” Fuller asked, a smug look on his face.
“You know who, dammit. Lieutenant Leander Willis,” he replied, puffing out his chest with the lie.
“Wait here,” the butler said.
Leander stood for a long time, sweating as his back warmed in the morning sun.
“She is not available.” Fuller sneered upon returning.
“Let me in,” Leander demanded, shoving his brogan into the crack in the door.
The butler kicked his foot out of the way and slammed the door shut. Leander could hear the bolt of the lock fall into place.
“I will wait for her to become available,” Leander shouted at the door. “I will not leave the park until she sees me. Go tell her, or I’ll throttle you the next chance I get.”
He was shaking as he went to the park and found a bench under an elm. He took off his suit coat in the warm sun, but the breeze chilled his sweat and caused him to shiver. He became groggy and his hunger turned to a clenching pain in his stomach.
Old men played chess in the afternoon sun at the nearby tables. A pair of teenage boys came with gloves and tossed a baseball between them. He listened to the perfect rhythm of the ball striking the leather pocket of their gloves as they chattered about school, girls, and their team.
The shivers turned to spasms as he sat out the day in the shade of the tree.
Hans came to him then, but not the rotting corpse of his tonic nightmares or the ethereal vision of the opium, but as his friend from home. He had a mitt tucked under his arm and leaned on his bat the way he always had.
“Bases are loaded, Lelo,” he said. “We don’t need a home run. Just drop a bunt is all.”
“You watch, I’m going to put it over the fence,” Leander said through quivering lips.
“Not this time, Lelo,” Hans said, frowning back at him. “Man at third is coming home.”
“It has to be me,” Leander mumbled. “It has to be me.”
Isabel shook him awake.
“What is it you want, Leander?” she asked impatiently.
“Isabel,” he said, relieved to see her finally. “You’ve come.”
“I’m very busy,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I’m here to see you,” he said. “It’s been so long. I’ve come so we can be together.”
She stood straight and folded her arms.
“I have no time for this nonsense,” she said. “I need you to leave. I can’t have you lollygagging around my front door in this condition. This park is for children. You are frightening the neighbors.”
His hands quivered as he reached for hers, but she drew away and pursed her lips. He climbed to his feet, shaking.
“Leave?” he said. “You told me to come as soon as you returned. You told me you’d help me. I gave up everything to come here for you. I can’t just leave.”
She shifted on her feet.
“That was so long ago,” she said. “Certainly you don’t expect me to repeat our little trifle?”
“Trifle?” he said. “I love you.”
“Love?” she said. “For Christ’s sake, I hope not.”
His knees gave out and he slipped back onto the bench. She stood over him with folded arms as he buried his face in his hands.
“I have nothing,” he said. “It’s all gone.”
She reached out her hand and touched the back of his head gently.
“You are a fool,” she said, softly. “A handsome fool, but a fool like I’ve never known. I guess we must send you home then. Where is that place you are from? Where’s your little farm?”
He looked up at her, confused.
“But I can’t go back there. I can’t.”
“Town Line,” she said. “I remember now.”
She waved her hand and Fuller stepped into view.
“Take him to Pennsylvania Station and buy him a ticket to Town Line. It’s back near Buffalo somewhere,” she said, waving her hand vaguely west. Leander watched her dismissing the place as nothing, dismissing him as nothing.
He lunged at her, but she stepped away from his attack and instantly Fuller was there, punching him hard in the stomach.
He fell to his knees, seeing nothing but red.
“This is good-bye,” he heard her say.
His eyes focused again and he watched as she walked across the street and opened the door to her mansion.
“Buy him something to eat before you put him on the train,” she shouted over her shoulder. “He looks like death warmed over.
”
SUMMER
The men had come back different this year.
In some ways, it felt the same way it always had, even like the days before the war. On fine summer evenings, Mary and her father sat on the front porch and listened to the voices of the men gathered around the bonfire down by the barn. Field workers sitting together after dinner and a long day’s work. Sometimes there would be singing and music, sometimes there would just be the talk of bone-tired men content in their hard work.
But if she listened closely, she could hear the difference, a cadence to the voices unlike the usual talk of men. Sometimes there was the stilted staccato of a phrase, then the same phrase, again, quicker, and with relief and laughter.
They were teaching themselves to read.
When they had first come to the farm, there was a tentativeness, an uncertainty. Palmer took charge early, asking Mary each evening what they should work on the next day, then leading the men out to the fields, but it seemed like she had to tell him each detail, each little thing that she thought the field hands would already know.
And no matter what she did, there was always fear in the eyes of the men.
It had been during harvest the year before, the busiest time, when the news came. She read it to them that evening as they all sat down to dinner.
“And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.”
They stared at her blankly.
“What does it mean?”
“You’re free,” she’d said. “Or you will be on the first of January.”
“Are we in a designated state?” Malcolm had asked.
“No, but if they took you back to one, they couldn’t keep you.”
“That don’t sound like it’ll make a difference.”
