The Styx

by Jonathon King

  “Then I seen the results of a stick or two goin’ up in the loo of a tavern in Derry. Turned the bar into dust as well.”

  “Bloody anarchist, were ya?” Byrne said, turning on an accent for the first time and cracking a grin.

  “Motivation to leave the mother country,” Harris answered. “But these farmers don’t know nothin’ from dynamite if what it says there is true, and mind you I don’t for a minute believe a pinch of what newspapers say. But you can’t set it off with the whack of a spade.”

  “Electric,” Byrne said. “From a box.”

  Harris looked at Byrne for a moment. “You were closer to the Washington Avenue Bridge than you made out to be.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, just in case, I’ll want you up with the conductor and engineer. Keep those all-seein’ eyes of yours out front and let ’em know if you spot any thing that looks suspicious. I already told them to hold down the speed. We’re taking the threat seriously, especially when Mr. Flagler is aboard. These folks down here take their land being snaked away from them personally.”

  Byrne stood and looked into the eyes of his fellow Irishman: “Where don’t they take it personally?”

  Byrne had not yet ridden in the locomotive and found himself up front on an outrigger step, watching the rails spin out ahead, listening to the pound of engine cylinder and slide of metal, smelling hot grease and burning coal. The engineer and boiler man were rough dressed in canvas dungarees, their clothing stained in soot and coal dust, their brows speckled with sweat. Unlike in the passenger cars, Byrne felt at home, except for the landscape that unfolded one flat mile after the next.

  Mile upon mile of pine forests ran to the horizon on the west, with occasional open acres that were stripped of lumber and spread out in tall grasses. On closer inspection, the dark dot-like objects on the distant plain turned into cattle, which he’d never seen anywhere but in the stockyards where the beasts had been penned awaiting slaughter. Recalling the smell and blood of that place caused him to refocus on the tracks in time to pick out a new structure. He called out to the engineer to slow, but the response came as a sneer.

  “It’s just a siding, boy. For local ranchers and grove owners to use when they’re loading,” the engineer said. When they came close Byrne could see that the dock-like platform was bare. The weathered wood of the foundation was old work with newer lumber used on top. The new wood brought the ramps up to the level of the train car carriage.

  “Used to be a small gauge railroad here till Mr. Flagler bought up the old line and put down standard tracks,” the engineer said as Byrne stared at the siding.

  “Suppose someone hid underneath and jammed a pipe out into the wheel gear?” Byrne said.

  “Ha! She’d shear any piece of metal clean off,” said the boiler man. “This engine’s pushing two hundred pounds per square inch in a cylinder bigger’n two square feet with each stroke, son. Nobody’s goin’ to trip her like that.”

  Byrne nodded, not knowing what the hell the old man meant, but started looking for something more formidable that might be a danger to Mr. Flagler’s train. Eight miles east of the small town of Palatka, he found it.

  Near the end of a wide, yawning curve in the tracks Byrne again picked up a squared-off blemish in the sameness of the trees and scrub grass lining the way. In the distance he recognized an upcoming siding, but as they came close he could tell that this time there were a number of people on the platform. Closer still, he made them out to be not just field or farm hands, but also women and children. The engineer squinted at the sight himself, an unusual situation that made him pull back on the throttle, taking away the speed that he had already been ordered to cut back on. Less than a quarter mile away someone on the platform began waving a red flag. The engineer applied the brakes.

  “You’d best go fetch Mr. Harris,” he said to Byrne and then set his jaw. “This ain’t right.”

  Harris was working his way along the walkway alongside the fuel tender with a storm cloud forming in his face.

  “No goddamn unscheduled stops,” he shouted, but his eyes were looking out on the dozen or so people standing on and about the siding rather than at the train crew.

  “You want I should just run over the man and hack ’im into pieces,” the engineer said and pointed out through his observation window. In front of the locomotive an elderly man, perhaps in his late fifties, his hair as white as Mr. Flagler’s, was standing between the rails, feet spread wide, arms akimbo.

  “Christ on a cross!” Harris spat and then said to Byrne as he started down the iron stair, “You’re with me.”

  Byrne scanned the crowd on the platform, level with the train: four men, thin and of average height. The rest women in worn dresses with defiant looks on their faces but either holding protectively onto small children or standing next to boys whose eyes were wide and dancing over the enormity and close metallurgy of the locomotive.

  When Harris’ feet touched the ground and started moving out toward the man on the tracks, three of the men on the platform started down the platform stairs. Byrne felt the metal wand at his hip but did not touch it. He scanned the men’s clothing again, could detect no weapons and moved to a spot halfway between the crowd and where Harris was now confronting the flag bearer.

  “I demand to see Mr. Flagler,” the man was saying. “I know that his personal car is attached and since he and his railway company have ignored our continued entreaties to end his unfair and despicable takeover of our land and our access to market I demand to confront him in person.”

  The man was dressed in a worn gray suit, shirt buttoned to the neck despite the heat, and he set his newly shaved chin a few degrees at an upward cant.

  Harris folded his huge arms, gripping each elbow and widening his stance. Was he containing his anger, or just building steam to knock the man off the rail bed, Byrne wondered.

  “I’m sure you’re a fine country lawyer what with your command of the King’s English,” Harris finally said. “But Mr. Flagler does not meet with anyone without an appointment and he does not answer to demands.

  “That said, I’ll be pleased to ask you to move yer arse, sir, or I’ll have that train plow you under like a bushel of yer own tomatoes.”

  The lawyer, or farmer, or whoever he was, widened his own stance and crossed his own arms in defiance or in a mock imitation of Harris and the smell of confrontation blew into the crowd, causing all to begin down the platform steps. Byrne again assessed them. These were obviously farmers, the boots under their cuffs stained by the soil, their weathered faces creased by the sun and their forearms cabled with work-hardened muscle. Still, they were nothing like the vicious gang members or violent dock workers he’d dealt with in the city. Nevertheless, he found the handle of his wand with the tips of his fingers.

  “I surmised that you would be unconvinced,” the man said to Harris, his tone unchanged in the face of thousands of pounds of steel and a big Irish tough. “Behind me, sir, is a charge of explosive that upon my signal will be detonated to make these tracks impassible until Mr. Flagler answers to our grievances.”

  The words caused both Harris and Byrne to slide to the side and peer down the tracks with a more intense scrutiny. Some thirty yards down the line they could make out some form of package that appeared to be wedged beneath the west side rail.

  “We have men in control of a device, a plunger if you will, who will not hesitate to blow this train to kingdom come if you attempt to pass.”

  Byrne watched Harris’ back, could see the muscle in the big man’s neck start to bulge and the flush of his skin growing redder. Harris seemed to take a deep breath and looked down at the ground. After an anxious moment he turned and began walking back toward the train, his eyes scanning the group of farm families, who had now all gathered at the base of the platform.

  When he reached Byrne’s side, he winked. The look was not one of resignation or defeat and only made Byrne take a better grip on his baton. The three f
orward men in the crowd began nodding, muttering their victory, thinking perhaps that Harris was on his way to fetch Flagler. But Byrne had seen Irish like Harris before, men who would never in their lives be trumped on the street by any lawyer, dandy, pimp or bureaucrat.

  Turning as the sergeant passed, he watched as Harris shouldered between the three men and then with a quickness that belied his size, he shifted. His hand darted out and snatched the back collar of a boy who had been looking down as Harris walked by, as in deference to an embarrassed adult. Harris then whirled back toward Byrne with the gangly child of some eight years, who was now flailing like a rag doll plucked from a toy chest.

  Harris had taken three steps back before the crowd could even react, but with one of their own in peril the three front men began to move to block him. The first man reached out to grab the child but the whoosh and snap of hard thin metal on his forearm stopped all three in their tracks. The stunned man yelped, bent with the pain and folded over at the waist, his now useless arm cradled to his stomach. When Byrne spun the baton a second time, the vibrating sound of air, like the buzz of a giant insect, caused the others to stare at him, seeing the flash of metal for the first time. But with the boy screeching now as Harris dragged him toward the lawyer, one man gathered himself and took another step but was instantly caught by another stroke of Byrne’s weapon, this time across the back of the hamstring, which dropped him to his knee. Byrne stepped back, squared himself, let them all see the baton in his hand and spun it wide with a speed that made a few of them gasp.

  “You’d best stand where you are, folks. I believe it would be in your interest,” Byrne said, not knowing himself whether that was good advice.

  He saw that Harris had already pushed the lawyer aside and was heading down the track, dragging the boy behind him, the child’s toes tripping on every rail tie. He’d already covered half the distance and called back with a warning that the crowd was only now realizing: “You want to blow one of your children to that kingdom with us, counselor, you’d best get to it.”

  No one moved except Byrne, who began backing his way down the tracks. The crowd stood mesmerized until a woman, likely the boy’s mother, tried to break away but was restrained by the lawyer. On the streets and in the filthy tenements of New York, Byrne had witnessed a dozen acts of self-preservation and utter despair that led hopeless people to sacrifice their children. But these were not those kind of people.

  Byrne caught up to Harris’ side and looked ahead. Several sticks of dynamite were bound together and wedged under the western rail. A line of sheathed cord ran from the explosives down the embankment and off into a stand of saw palmetto.

  “Seen one of these before, lad?” Harris said. The boy he had by the scruff was still wriggling his skinny arms and legs like a pinched snake. But he stopped his squealing when the question was asked, perhaps thinking it had been directed to him, perhaps listening for the answer.

  “Yeah. It’s a charge that gets blown when whoever’s at the end of this cord sends an electric charge through the wire,” Byrne said, recalling what he’d seen during the bridge building next to his neighborhood.

  All three of them, including the boy, followed the offending cord into the bushes. Harris raised his voice: “And if they wish to blow this little tyke to pieces they can send that current now.”

  Byrne winced at the bravado. But Harris was right. If they were going to explode their makeshift bomb they’d have done it by now, or simply waited until Flagler’s car was directly over it and taken out the train, the track and a dozen passengers.

  “They’re only here to make a point,” Harris said softly. “Which doesn’t mean they won’t just blow it when we give the kid back.”

  The boy had been silent till then.

  “Maaaawww!” he cried out.

  “Couldn’ta said it better myself, boy,” Harris said. Then to Byrne: “Do you know how to disarm the damned thing?”

  Byrne looked down.

  “Best guess, I’d just yank the wire. No electric current, no trigger, like snappin’ off the firing pin on your pistol,” he said in a voice that made it sound more like a theory than an absolute.

  “Fuck then,” Harris said. “I’ll bring the boy over between you and the bushes and you yank the wire.”

  Without being able to tell what the men were doing, the farmers and families became restless and started to move up the tracks. Byrne got to his knees, found the charge into which the insulated wire was crammed and pulled it loose, digging the dynamite out from the rail and tucking it under his arm.

  “OK. Let’s go.” He took a step back toward the train. Harris stood still, looking from the explosive pinned next to Byrne’s ribs then up into his eyes.

  “It’s safe?”

  “I’ve seen ’em do it all the time at the bridge,” Byrne said.

  Harris hesitated for one more beat, then yanked at the boy and followed. When they approached the lawyer, his mouth was loose and hanging slightly open. Nothing came out. Those in the crowd were staring at the package under Byrne’s arm. When Byrne climbed up onto the engine rigging, the engineer and fireman aimed their eyes at the same thing and were equally quiet. Harris didn’t let go of the boy until he had one foot up on the iron stair and then he shoved the child to the ground toward his crying mother. He raised a thick finger and pointed at the lawyer: “Don’t make threats unless you’re willing to carry them out, counselor. This ain’t no war, sir. It’s business.”

  With that he signaled the engineer to continue forward. As the train began to crawl, Byrne saw two men emerging from the palmetto bushes, their faces up but defeated, their big hands at their sides.

  “No more stops,” Harris ordered. “We need to get to Palm Beach.”

  Byrne climbed back over the rigging of the coal car and into the traveling compartments, still a bit dazed by the entire episode. He was working his way toward the back of the train when he realized the sudden gasps of air from some of the passengers and their quick movements to get out of his path were based on the fact that he was still carrying a load of dynamite. When a young mother grabbed her two children and pulled them close, covering their heads with her arms, he looked down at the dark red sticks in his possession: “It won’t blow up unless you light it, ma’am.”

  Still, he took off his jacket and covered the offending package before entering the club car. There were already several men up against the bar, taking some comfort from short glasses of bourbon, and he determined to keep his face down and scuttle on through before anyone asked any questions. But when he looked up to eyeball the rear door he saw that Mr. Faustus was in a corner and was involved in an intense conversation with Mr. McAdams, who Byrne had not seen out of his own coach car since the beginning of the trip. It appeared an intense discussion because Byrne could see the muscles of the old man’s jaws flexing, grinding his teeth in some effort of restraint, and the skin of his scalp had turned a shade of red not unlike the color of the dynamite Byrne held in his arm.

  McAdams on the other hand was as cool as if he were at a summer social, raising his drink to his lips with profound grace and smoothness while whispering something to Faustus that had struck the older man silent.

  CHAPTER 8

  MARJORY McAdams left the Royal Poinciana and walked the distance back to the Breakers alone. The heat of midday reached only into the high seventies with the ocean breeze rising. She strode briskly. Those who nodded and smiled their greetings as they passed would have been instead turning their eyes away if they could see the visions she was conjuring in her head: the fire-seared trousers of a dead man, his shirt melted into his charred skin, his body lumped onto the crude lean-to floor like a roll of soft dough settling flaccid without the shape of formed muscle and air-filled lung, and the flame-scarred face with the obscenity of rolled bills protruding from the mouth and that one single eye that had turned a milky white as if the fluid inside had actually boiled. McAdams shivered in the heat, breathed deeply, and extended her str
ide. She tried again to reconstruct the face as it appeared when the man was alive. And what of the watch? Had Pearson or any of the others noticed that exquisite silver pocket watch the dead man was wearing on a chain attached to his vest? She had seen it. Certainly Pearson would not have missed it.

  She spoke only briefly to staff at the Breakers and made her way to her suite, which was oceanfront and on the third floor, which she preferred despite the stairs. The maid was finishing with the bed and was gathering linens. McAdams searched the young woman’s face as she had the other workers, looking for pain or some sign of loss.

  “Hello, Armie, are you all right?” McAdams said.

  “Ma’am?” the girl said.

  “I’m sorry, your name is Armie, yes?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you. Excuse me, were you, living in the Styx, Armie, and how did your family fare in the fire?”

  “Uh, yes ma’am, I was in the Styx, ma’am, but I ain’t got family with me, ma’am.”

  The girl was younger than McAdams but many of the locals and even women from other parts of the state and beyond followed the work that the trains and resorts had opened for them.

  “Do you have someplace to stay, Armie? Someone to stay with?”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. Mizz Fleury, she say she already found us a roomin’ house on the other side of the lake, ma’am. We gone stay in a big place over near the church on Mr. Flagler’s order hisself,” the girl said, her chin and voice rising with the use of the man’s name as if she was talking of a proud uncle. “Mizz Fleury say Mr. Flagler gone build us our own places in West Palm an ride us to the island ever day for work.”

  “How nice,” McAdams said, but the tone of her voice set the girl to lower her eyes and turn to gather the linens and leave. McAdams did not doubt the rumor. Flagler was noted for innumerable projects he had built along his burgeoning railway. But she had been around wealthy, powerful and paternal men enough to know that there was always a price for their philanthropy. When the girl offered to bring in fresh water for her basin McAdams declined and let her leave.