Castle Garden

by Bill Albert

  He didn’t say one word about selling me out to the Pinkertons. No questions about Meyer Liebermann or New York. It was as if none of it had happened.

  I signed that because he was a bad friend, had lied and betrayed me, that he had brought bad medicine on his own head. Now that is a whole lot of sign and although he was to learn sign pretty good by the time we got to Wallace, right then Benny didn’t understand what I was trying to tell him, which may have been for the best, what with me perched at the door of a moving boxcar and him sitting next to me brooding so bad on his black eye and lost savings.

  After everything that had happened I guess I should have been brooding as well, but I wasn’t. I was too caught up in the start of a new adventure, one which I’d read about in the Dimes and in proper books as well. You see, we were free and on our own. Like Jim and Huck going down the Mississippi, but different too. Benny and I were on the other side of the Big Muddy on a freight train going West. Going to seek our fortune in the Land of Opportunity. Nothing in our pockets, but running with the wind behind us and the setting sun and half of America in front of us. It was there for the taking. I knew that for sure.

  PART III

  1

  Two guards came to get me half an hour ago. They gave me lukewarm coffee, a chunk of bread, and a tin basin of cold water. They stood in the corridor while I ate and washed as best I could.

  It was bitter cold outside, the snow thicker than last night, covering the path, coming up over the tops of my boots and soaking my pants legs. Had to take big high steps to get through it. The sky was clear blue though, not one cloud, innocent of anything. The light off the snow was blinding. The pain of it made me feel alive after the endless night in the cramped dark. I decided on the way over that it’s time to give the Irishman what he wants. He wants a story, I’ll give him a story. When you see the cards are marked and stacked against you there’s nothing else to do. And Big Bill? Charlie Moyer? George Pettibone? Well, they’ll have to take care of themselves, that’s all. Just like me.

  The guards took me up to the infirmary where the doctor splinted my finger and told me I should be more careful in the future. That’s exactly what I am going to be. Like Benny December, I’m going to look after Number One as carefully as I can.

  “Heard you had a rough night, Herbert,” says the Irishman, looking at my hand. “They tell me a broken finger. I’m sorry about that. Young boy like you. Not very uplifting spending the night in solitary, is it?”

  We’re in the warden’s office. It’s high-ceilinged and filled with light from two big windows which look out over the entrance to the penitentiary. By the door is a roll-top desk, a dozen pigeon holes stuffed with papers, next to it an eight-foot-tall safe decorated in ornate gold tracings. The warden has four paintings of the prison on his walls, each one from a different perspective. On top of the desk is a small tombstone-shaped blackboard. In a half-circle around the top it reads “Number of Prisoners Today” and underneath someone has chalked in “147.” That’s me, Number 147.

  The warden isn’t there. Across a table, set in the middle of the room, sits the Irishman and another man. Younger, about forty, and gaunt faced with a thin black mustache. He gives me a steel-eyed look. I wince as the pain in my finger stabs at me.

  “Trouble with Montana Jim, I hear tell,” says the Irishman.

  The other man laughs without smiling.

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  I shake my head. Maybe he didn’t hear the whole story.

  “They’re real hard cases in this prison, the worst there are. Some of them have killed their wives, their fathers, their mothers or even their own innocent little children. Most have killed complete strangers. We got violators, bunko men, bank robbers, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, claim jumpers, train wreckers. You name the crime, we’ve got someone in here who’s done it. Waiting for the gallows and Godless to a man. Can’t see you being real comfortable with the likes of them. No, sir, can’t see it at all. Charlie?”

  Charlie tips back in his chair.

  “Yeah, meaner than sin,” he offers in a slow Texas drawl.

  “So,” says the Irishman. “You been thinking on what we talked about yesterday? About what happened in Caldwell? About Kelly the Bum and about getting saved? About Jesus?”

  He leans across and gives me an appraising stare.

  “Especially about Jesus.”

  He hadn’t been told. I nod.

  “We going to hear something from you today? Something we want to hear?”

  I take out my pencil, tear off a piece of paper from my wad and write that I’ll tell them anything they want as long as they don’t put me back in solitary or back in with Montana Jim. I ask about hanging.

  The Irishman takes off his glasses to read. He passes the scrap of paper to Charlie.

  “Writes a good hand, doesn’t he, Charlie? Like I told you, an educated boy for sure.”

  I hadn’t given him the Spencer, but then I hadn’t given him the chicken scratchings either.

  “Of course we’ll see you’re all right. The hotel accommodation, the hangman, all of that will get fixed up proper. Just depends on what you got for us, son. Smart boy like you can see that. We need the truth is all and all of that we need to the very last drop.”

  I ask him who they are and how I know they can deliver on what they promise, although I can see they’re not really promising anything but “maybes,” which means maybe nothing.

  “Who are we?” laughs the Irishman. “Now that’s a question for sure. We’re investigators, special investigators, working for the State of Idaho to catch those who murdered Governor Steunenberg. Course we know who murdered him, meaning we know who planted that bomb. We know that for sure, Her-bert.”

  He pauses and stares, letting my name hang in the air so we all can watch it.

  “Friend Harry told us all about it. What with the black powder, fishing line and plaster all over his hotel room there at the Saratoga wasn’t hard to figure. And you there with him in Caldwell. That wasn’t hard to figure either. No, what we want, like I told you before, we want those who set him and you on to it. The Inner Circle who planned it, paid you and Orchard to do it. We know that’s how it was. Know it like the time of day. But to start us off, Mr. Her-bert Brown, we want to know exactly who you are!”

  I give him an open-mouthed I-don’t-know-what-you-mean look.

  “Herbert Brown?”

  I see what’s coming.

  “Not the kind of a name I ever hear of for a Jewboy. Never have. You, Charlie?”

  Charlie snorts his agreement. The Irishman raps a finger hard on the table. My busted finger twitches in pain. He glares across at me.

  “And me talking to you about our Lord and Salvation and all the time you sitting there being a Jewboy and never saying anything about it.”

  What was I supposed to tell him? “Sorry, I can’t think about Jesus because I’m a Jew?” Shit no! I know better than to deny it now. He’d only make me take my pants off, maybe grab hold of me like Buffalo Bill did. I write that I didn’t mean anything by being a Jew and not telling him. Never got around to it was all. That just gets him madder. He stands up and points his old-man’s, straight-from-Heaven-damning finger at me.

  “You’re in no position to mock me, boy! Or to mock our Lord Jesus Christ! Won’t see you right in this world or in the next.”

  He sits down breathing heavily and strokes his mustache, no doubt thinking about the Crucifixion and my special part in it.

  “Who we are, is it? I’ll have you back in that cell in two fast minutes unless we get a straight answer. Back in a cell with worse than Montana Jim Naylor. What’s your real name? Quick, boy!”

  Hyman Budnitsky, I start to write, but stop myself. Never go back, never use the same name twice. It’s worse than walking under ladders, black cats, and spilled salt. Names carry stories alo
ng with them and if you don’t leave them behind both tied up tight, then sure as bird shit sticks to statues those stories will find you out. And Hyman Budnitsky’s got stories that I don’t want found out, especially by this Irishman. Abraham Levinsky I write, remembering the two men I ran into in Wallace.

  “Abraham Levinsky is it? Funny about that, your friend Harry said as how it was Hyman Budnitsky.”

  Good old Harry!

  That was only a name I used at one time, not my real name.

  “I see. Yes. Think he’s giving us another lie, Charlie?”

  “Can’t say, sir, but it’s a Jew name, the Levinsky part of it anyway.”

  “So, where are you from, Abraham Levinsky?” asks the Irishman as if he didn’t really care.

  I’m not fooled so easily.

  New York, I write. Too many miles, years, and names away for him to trace.

  “New York? That figures I guess. Jews by the tens of thousands in New York. So, Abraham Levinsky from New York, if that’s who you really are and where you’re really from.”

  Charlie lets his chair drop forward with a bang.

  “Whose statue sits at the bottom of Central Park?” he asks me sharply.

  That’s easy. I tell him. He nods at the Irishman.

  “Very good, Abraham. We’re getting somewhere. Slow but sure.”

  He goes to the warden’s desk and picks up a stack of writing paper, a pen and an ink pot. He sets it all out in front of me on the table.

  “Now, Abraham. I want you to tell us about you and Harry Orchard. From the beginning so we get the whole story, the true one about you and the Federation. I mean to say, it’s not you and Orchard that’s important, is it? Been used, that’s all. Badly used by those who are going to sit back and let you swing for it. They won’t lift a finger for you, boy, not a finger.”

  What about the lawyer they’re sending, I write? Sheriff in Caldwell said . . .

  “Sure they are. Of course. What did you expect? You and Orchard are a powerful deadly menace to them, boy. Can’t you see that? Their lawyer will come down here and he’ll tell you to stand pat, tell you it’s a sure thing he’ll get you off. And when the first court convicts you he’ll be here to show you how it’s certain that you’ll win on the appeal, that is as long as you keep buttoned up. After the higher court has affirmed the first decision he’ll tell you not to worry because the governor needs the Labor vote and will be sure to commute the sentence and even grant you a full pardon, especially as you’re so young. Right up until the time comes when you’re walking up those thirteen scaffold stairs, he’ll be whispering in your ear that things are going to work out, telling you to trust him. And finally when the black hood is dropped over your head so you can’t see, when the noose is fitted and you feel that thick knot sitting snug up behind your neck, then you’ll remember what I’m telling you. But it’ll be too late, Abraham. It’ll go so quiet you’ll only be able to hear the blood pounding in your head. A creak of wood as that big handle is pulled and the trap drops away from under you and . . .”

  Bang! He smacks the table with the flat of his hand. I almost fall off my chair.

  “That Federation lawyer will have done what he was paid for—protecting the Inner Circle, keeping you silent to the grave.”

  He pauses to let me hear my blood and think about the trap disappearing beneath me.

  “But, of course, none of that has to happen. It’s the Inner Circle, Abraham. It’s them we want. Those men who’ve been the cause of all the troubles, the cause of all your troubles. You be a witness for the State and we’ll do everything we can for you. See you don’t go back on death row or back in solitary, see you don’t hang. Might even be a reward in it for you when it’s over. Just like happened with Kelly the Bum. He got himself a thousand dollars. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. McParland, I . . .”

  The Irishman looks questioningly at the other man, who shrugs and gives up a Texas whisper of a smile.

  The old man turns his head slowly to look at me with new eyes, level and cobra cold. I know now for certain that I’d be a thousand times better off in that cold six-by-eight with Montana Jim than in here with him.

  “A detective, Herbert, is the meanest, lowest, most contemptible creature that creeps or crawls, something to loathe and despise. And the worst, most deadly union-hating, low-down dirty crawler ever was, ever will be is James McParland.”

  Big Bill Haywood, his two hundred and more pounds overflowing the tipped-back swivel chair, long legs ending in black boots propped on top of the desk. He was pointing his one working eye at me and telling stories about the Pinkerton labor spy who was three years in the Pennsylvania coalfields, making himself everybody’s friend and then turned up to give evidence at the trial which led to those nineteen Molly Maguire hangings. Twenty years later and now manager of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Denver, not more than a few blocks from Federation Headquarters. James McParland, paid by the mine owners to smash the Western Federation of Miners and hang Bill Haywood and the others. That’s to say nothing of the fact that the Pinkertons have been on my trail since ‘98, although I reckon McParland doesn’t know anything about that. Even if he did have the dope on Meyer Liebermann, McParland’s too famous to have had to worry about an eleven-year-old runaway thief disappeared for more than seven years. No, he’s got his bloodhound nose sniffing out more important people. He can hardly smell me at all for getting the scent of Big Bill.

  “Some of them scabs and labor finks do it for the money,” said Big Bill. “Not McParland. He does it for the pure hate. Makes him a whole lot more dangerous. That’s why they call him the Old Cobra.”

  And here we are, me and the Old Cobra. And he’s waiting. Waiting for me to help him hang Big Bill. I pick up the pen, dip it in the pitch-black ink and begin to tell McParland a story about Harry Orchard.

  2

  People set great store by loyalty. Sunset Buffalo Dreamer assumed that there was nothing else to be but loyal and Buffalo Bill said how that it was the single most important thing a man could have.

  “If you’re loyal, Newborn Buffalo,” he said, “then you can always hold your head up no matter what. One day you’ll have cause to remember what I’m telling you here.”

  Buffalo Bill also said that honesty was the single most important thing a man could have; courage too. Together loyalty, courage, and honesty were all the “single most important things,” them and dependability, decisiveness, clear thinking, modesty, respect, an education, love of the Republic, being a dead shot, treating your horse right. It all depended on what story he was telling.

  I hand McParland the first piece of paper. He reads it slowly.

  “Good, Abraham. Very good. You tell us all about your meeting up with Harry Orchard in Wallace up there in the Coeur d’Alenes in ‘99. That’s where this whole business with Governor Steunenberg started, didn’t it? You just write it out. I’ll call for some coffee and biscuits to keep us going.”

  The Coeur d’Alenes! I’ve been cornered and threatened over what happened there before now. In an army tent in Kellogg with Bartlett Sinclair, Steunenberg’s appointed executioner of the unions, suggesting all manner of things that would befall me if I didn’t tell him everything I knew.

  “Names, young man. I want you naming names or I’ll have you wishing you never were born. Names! Names!”

  Bartlett Sinclair knew the story and wanted the names to go with it. McParland knows all the names. He wants the story to fit around them.

  He gets up and walks slowly out of the room, leaving me with Hardcase Charlie. I put my head down, wet the nib of my pen. The longer I spin out the story the longer I stay here in the warm with coffee and biscuits. I can’t afford to think about loyalty, honesty, and bravery or any of Buffalo Bill’s most important things. Now the most important thing is for me to see tomorrow, and the next day and
the one after that with all of my parts still attached and working like they were meant to.

  The story I’m writing for the two detectives isn’t a whole lot different from the true story, at least not to begin with, although to keep them happy I’ve got to put Harry in straight off, whereas he didn’t really come into it until later, after I was in Wallace for a time, and even then he wasn’t in it all that much until right near the end.

  Like I said, it took us about three weeks to get to Wallace. The way Benny managed those freight trains it was like they were city trams running to a printed-up timetable. We’d ride in boxcars if we could find them. Sometimes we rode the blinds, although then we’d have to watch out for brakemen, the shacks, who seemed to live for nothing but the fun of ditching free-riding hobos, even young ones like us. A couple of times we did almost get ditched, but Benny knew just when to jump or climb up onto the deck. The few times a shack managed to catch us Benny told such an all-powerful hard-luck story that they’d let us ride. Then when we’d come into a big town or the end of a division, as soon as the train had begun to slow we’d jump down before it got into the yards.

  “The bulls, Mouse. They hangs around the yards waitin for the easy meat, for those that don’t know no better, meanin the likes of you.”

  Benny and I had no intention of being easy meat, not for the bulls, not for Missourians, not for anybody. We’d find a poor-looking house near the yards, one with paper or rags stuffed in the busted windows, and if it was morning we hung around until we saw the man leave. Then we’d move in to get fed, “scoffings” Benny called it. After the woman heard Benny’s story about father running off, mother dying of heartbreak and hard times, me being crippled—showing her my pushed-in throat—and us having to make our way to our only kin farther West, she would wrap up extra food or give us a nickel each and the name of someone in the yards who knew about the freights.