The Styx

by Jonathon King

  “The line will put a drag on her,” he said. “She’ll have to swim against it. All we can do is follow and hope she’s not strong enough to break it.” For the next hour the men worked the line and the boat, Faustus trying to anticipate the moves of the fish, Abbott following his called out direction.

  Byrne could already tell from the beads of sweat rolling off the old man’s face and the bend in his back and bow of his shoulders that he was tiring. The joy had diminished from his face, along with a certain degree of grit.

  “Damn, she’s strong,” he said in admiration. He took his eyes off the ocean for a second to look at Byrne, who could do nothing but wipe the old man’s face with a cloth dipped in fresh water. “She’ll run for awhile, but at some point she’s going to buck again, son. And truth be known, I don’t think I’m strong enough anymore to match her.”

  Byrne turned to look at the captain.

  “No. You son,” Faustus said. “First, get my holster out of the bin there.”

  Byrne was used to taking orders, and conceded that Faustus was the one in charge. He went directly to the bin and realized what the man had asked for. Holster? He glanced back at the old man, who was back to the business of horsing the fish.

  Byrne began pawing through the bin, searching for and finally finding a dark leather holster wrapped tightly and pressed into one corner. He pulled it out and stood with a .36 caliber Griswold revolver in his hands. What the hell was he planning to do, shoot the damn fish?

  “Strap it on, lad,” said Abbott without looking. “Loose like.”

  Byrne uncoiled the belt, buckled it around his waist and notched it so the old leather settled on his hips, the gun handle at his right side, all the while wondering what the hell.

  “OK,” he said.

  Faustus grinned at the gunslinger pose.

  “Get rid of the gun, young Pinkerton, though I do not doubt your proficiency with such a mechanism.

  “And slide the holster round to the front. Next time she gives us a lull, we’re going to stick the butt of the pole right into that pocket. That way you’ll be able to use that back of yours, son.”

  Byrne got the picture, pulled the gun and held it for a second in his hand, the familiar weight of it and the warm metal against his palm. He laid it in the bin and then twisted the holster so it was positioned between his legs and moved to Faustus’ side. On the old man’s command he grabbed the pole with both hands and they jammed the butt down into the holster. For the first time Byrne felt the power of the fish below.

  “Jaysus.”

  “You got that right, Irish,” he heard the captain say behind him.

  “Now, son. Visualize the line below. It’s working in a long curve. The beast pulling it this way and then changing course and pulling it the other,” Faustus waved his hand in a wide motion to describe the movement. “When you feel the pressure ease, you know she’s changed course and you’ve got to move the tip to make sure the line doesn’t snap when it catches up to the turn.”

  For the next hour Byrne felt and listened, watched the line, leaned back with the holster digging into his crotch but glad for the leverage it afforded him. His own young muscles began to ache and each long minute he gained respect for Faustus and the fish. While he worked, Faustus talked, giving him what knowledge he had. The old man also fed him fresh water so he wouldn’t have to take his hands off the pole. At one point Abbott removed his own captain’s hat, doused it in the drinking water and then without a word unceremoniously flopped it on top of Byrne’s head and left it there, the shaded coolness running down his face and neck.

  All three men could feel the fish slowly turning its easterly course more and more to the north to follow the current of the Gulf Stream.

  “Path of least resistance,” Faustus said. “Just like all living things when we tire.

  “But beware of the heart in this one, she’ll give it one last try to escape.”

  The Florida sun was now in the western sky. Byrne could feel the tightness on the skin of his neck like it had shrunk as it sizzled under the direct heat. They were into the third hour, but he had refused to ask how long this could go on. His back felt like one giant muscle, bunched and aching. At Faustus’ instructions he’d let his arms extend, giving up on flexing them except to reel a small amount of line when he felt the need. The wind continued to blow but mercifully did not increase. Their ride on the swells had become so rhythmic there was almost a music to it.

  Byrne was about to turn the rod again when the line went slack.

  “No pressure,” he said, alarm in his voice. He let the tip go down toward the water and looked at Faustus. “Did it break? Has she broken it?”

  “No!” Faustus reached out to push the rod back in high position. “She’s turning on us. Reel the line, son. Reel the line.”

  Byrne spun the handle. Abbott stalled the boat into the wind. All three stared out to the northwest, waiting.

  Sun glanced off the wave fronts and tossed deep blue shadows on the backsides. Each glimmer on the sea’s surface caught the men’s attention. Byrne’s knuckles were white on the sweat-stained wood of the rod, his fingers nearly numb as they worked the reel.

  The captain saw it first, his sea-trained eyes, despite their age, picked up the silver below the surface.

  “There!”

  A finger jutted out due north.

  Again came the rise of silver and the rip of water. The fish was closer this time, like she needed to see who had beaten her. The long body cleared the ocean but not nearly as high as the first times. The twist was not as violent. The buck was almost listless. But the shine of scaled flesh was even more spectacular in the glancing sun.

  After the splash no one said a word. Byrne felt the tension return to the line but it was decidedly feeble.

  “Keep reeling,” Faustus said.

  In another thirty minutes they pulled the fish up from the blue and alongside. Faustus leaned over and grabbed the line, twisting it once around his palm and drew the tarpon near. But when Byrne went to fetch the gaff the old man said, “No. Just hand me those pliers, son.”

  Abbott had left the tiller. “I was wrong, sir,” he said, looking over the gunwale. “It’s a hundert and fifty easy.”

  The mouth of the fish was huge and gasping, its boney structures stretching the tough skin.

  “Reach down and grab a gill,” he said to Byrne while he probed the inside of the fish’s mouth with the pliers to find the hook. In a second he twisted his wrist and Byrne heard the pop of gristle being torn. The hook was removed. When Byrne started to lift, Faustus again said no, traded handholds and grasped the gill himself and lowered the fish’s mouth back into the blueness. Then he let go and they watched six feet of silver float down behind them and with a mere twitch of the tail, turn and disappear.

  Faustus stood for a long minute, watching. His starched white shirt was soaked with sea water and sweat. A streak of fish blood tracked across the front. His polished shoes squished in the puddle of scum, guts, water and fish oil on the cockpit floor. His look was at once both humble and majestic.

  “Time to go home, captain,” Faustus said. Abbott pulled in a sheet line, called “Comin’ about” and the sail popped in the wind, heading southwest.

  Byrne said nothing, partly stunned, partly exhausted, partly understanding. He unlatched the holster and gave it to Faustus. He handed Abbott’s hat back to the captain, who shook it once and then pulled it tight over his grey head.

  “Might have been a record, sir,” Abbott said, yanking down the brim to shield whatever look there might have been in his eyes.

  “Aye,” said Faustus, who reached into the bin and took out the handgun, replaced it in the holster and rewound the belt. He looked up with that grin of his on a now tired face.

  “But would that have made it any more glorious?”

  Even Abbott smiled. No need to answer.

  “As for you, young Pinkerton, it was a job well done. A lesser man would have given in
. And an even lesser man would have screamed bloody murder at the thought of letting that one go.”

  Byrne remained quiet.

  “I do not think that I misjudged you, despite my inclinations from influences past,” Faustus said and now their eyes were locked.

  “Did you think that I was like my brother?” Byrne said, guessing what he now felt in his bones.

  “The family resemblance is unequivocal,” Faustus said.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes,” Faustus said. “I believe I do.”

  CHAPTER 13

  HE did not want to move from his bed the next morning, but the pounding on the door demanded it. Faustus had refused to elaborate on his comment that he might know where Danny was and would only say that he would make his inquiries and update him when he could. But Faustus was not the kind of man who came bashing at your door.

  Byrne rolled to one shoulder, first feeling the sting of crisp skin on his neck fairly scrapping across the pillowcase and second the ache of muscle in his back. He made it up onto one haunch, his ass the only place he didn’t feel pain.

  The fist on the door continued.

  “Rise and shine, lad. I know yer in there,” Harris’s voice boomed from the hallway. “Shake the hangover out of yer head, you’ve work to do.”

  Byrne got to his feet. The heat in the room went straight to his face. He ran his tongue over his lips and discovered the cracked layer of blister that had formed there.

  “Coming,” he said with a rasp, and even the inside of his throat felt sunburned. He crossed the room with his cotton boxers on and opened the door. Harris was at first taken aback at the sight and then let an infrequent smile show up on his big pie-shaped face.

  “Well, well, Michael. It wasn’t the devil of drink at all that struck you, lad. ’Twas your introduction to the great Florida sun, eh?”

  “I went fishing,” Byrne said, moving back to let Harris enter.

  “Indeed you did, lad. And caught more than you bargained for, eh?”

  Byrne thought of the tarpon in flight, the twisting, beautiful look of the thing.

  “Yes,” he said. “Much more.”

  “Well, you’re not the first nor the last white-skinned New Yorker turned crispy red and you won’t be the last. But that won’t excuse you from your duties.

  “Here’s another dole of spending money.” Harris peeled off bills from a wad that had materialized in his big fist. “You’ll have to go over to Buholtz’s on Banyan and buy yourself a proper suit. We’ve been asked to be present at Mrs. Flagler’s society ball this evening and we’ll both have to be in costume, like nobody’s going to recognize a couple of Irish mugs like us bumpin’ round in a mix of them.

  “Still, we’ll make an attempt to watch over the old man. Be at the grand ball room at six. I’ll be honest with you, it’s a first for me. We’ve never gone off and away from the train before so I’m not sure what they might be expecting. But someone’s nervous these days.”

  Byrne thought of the rumors that someone had been killed on the island during a fire in the servant’s quarters. Should he share this intelligence with Harris? He wasn’t sure he should but couldn’t say why. Did he not trust his own sergeant? That wouldn’t be a first considering the lessons learned doing his corruption work as a New York police officer. He’d be surprised of course if Harris wasn’t already aware of the rumor, but since he’d not mentioned it, Byrne decided to hold his own cards for now.

  Harris had tightened his Irish mug during his giving of orders, but couldn’t hold it when once again he looked at Byrne’s ruby red nose and cheeks.

  “Ask the desk clerk where you can find some aloe, lad,” he said with a look of empathy on his face. “It’s a plant they use here to give you some relief. You cut the leaf and squeeze out the gel inside and rub it on that sunburn. You’ll survive.”

  Byrne went to the mirror after Harris left. His eyes were swollen. His nose looked like one of the old regulars at McSorely’s, red and wrinkled, his cheekbones like they’d been rouged in one of the Tin Pan Alley follies. He’d of laughed if not for the pain. Harris was right, he’d live. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to shave until he had to.

  Byrne pulled a shirt over his burned shoulders and neck and gathered his dirty clothes in one of the hotel pillow cases. At the front desk he asked the clerk for both a laundry and where he might obtain some of Harris’s mysterious aloe plant. The answer to both queries was the same. On Banyan to the north was Joe Cheong’s laundry in the back of the Jones’ cigar factory.

  Byrne was able to locate Cheong’s, which was little more than a wooden lean-to with tubs of fresh water and an old steam press. Under the awning was a covey of small, bird-like women fluttering about. He was reminded of similar businesses in corners of the Lower East Side. The needs of men—and the commerce that went with it—had quickly been transplanted from the established streets of New York to the new Florida. After negotiating a price for the laundry, Byrne spent several moments of awkward pantomime and pidgin English asking for the aloe. The head woman, a diminutive Chinese with gray hair and an abrupt air, simply stared at his odd gestures and finally took up a sharp bladed knife from under the counter and signaled for him to follow her. She led him to a small private garden of sorts. Several plants he did not recognize had been hand-planted and carefully tended. The woman went directly to a dark green, crown-shaped bush that Byrne took for a cactus of some kind. The woman hacked off three of the stiff leaves with her knife and held them out to him. When he hesitated to take them, she singled one out, scored it across its three-inch width, snapped it in half and then with her fingers kneaded the middle of the leaf, milking out a yellowish gel. Without touching his face, she showed how Byrne should dab the gel onto the tips of his fingers and then smear it on his own skin.

  He followed her instructions and immediately felt relief. The woman accepted a dollar as payment. When she returned to the laundry, Byrne took off his shirt and applied the gel to his neck and shoulders, ears, and forehead. Whether the juice from the plant truly had any medicinal value was of no consequence to him. It diminished the pain of his sunburn and was thus well worth the money.

  With his spirits buoyed, Byrne made his way through the streets. The walking loosened the muscles in his back and legs. Near Narcissus he began to walk past the shop of Hawthorn & Dorsey, which had a small, almost toy-like red and white barber pole out front. He remembered the crowd he’d seen in front of the Royal Poinciana, their clothes and their fine ways, and he hesitated. He thought of the young Miss McAdams and did a U-turn, put his hands in his pockets and walked into the shop. It was impossible to be unobtrusive. One man, be it Hawthorn or Dorsey, was sitting in a high wooden chair reading a copy of The Gazetter. There was a single chest of drawers against the wall, scissors and razors, brushes and wash bowls on its top. A mirror was mounted behind.

  “Good morning, young sir,” the man said, hopping to his feet and folding the newspaper. “Shave and a haircut?”

  Byrne had never had anyone but his mother cut his hair and had never had a calm man come close to his throat with a razor.

  “The cost?” Byrne said.

  “Twenty cents,” the barber answered and added: “Each.”

  “Very well,” Byrne said, giving the barber a look that was meant to say “I know the bait and switch trick but will give you the business regardless.”

  The man smiled and reached out a hand: “D. H. Hawthorn. A pleasure to serve you, sir.”

  The barber helped Byrne remove his coat and set him on the stool. He snapped open a folded sheet with a flourish and wrapped it round Byrne’s neck.

  “New to these parts, sir?”

  “Yes,” Byrne said. “Just in.”

  “Nasty business the sun down here. I shall be extra careful of the sunburn.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Care for the newspaper while we work, sir? I’ll do the haircut first.”

  “Fine,” Byrne said, an
d Mr. Hawthorn not only unfolded the small paper and lay it across Byrne’s lap, but then proceeded to tell him everything that the journal had printed that day and then some. By the time the haircut was done Byrne knew all about the feud between the liberal newspaper editor and the sheriff, which had come to the point of the editor being arrested, that J. T. Berry and J. B. Thomas had killed a bear on the west side of Cedar Lake Tuesday morning, that a lighthouse at the preposterous cost of $90,000 had been recommended for the mouth of the Hillsboro River well south of the city, and that a young man such as himself would do well—if he had a mind and the means—to attend a land auction along the East Coast Railway tracks just up the line next week “which very few folks know about and could result in a fine and profitable acquisition if you get my meaning, sir.”

  When asked what kind of business he was in, Byrne answered only that he was in “security” and then tapped the heels of his brogans. From that point on the barber was quiet and seemed particularly careful with the razor when it came time for Byrne’s shave. Pleased with the clean look he saw in the mirror, Byrne tipped Mr. Hawthorn a dime and proceeded down the street to Buholtz’s.

  While the New York shopping districts, even along Bowery, had increasingly featured specialty shops with specific goods for specific needs, Buholtz’s was a general merchandise store that despite its small size overwhelmed with its variety of dry goods stacked and hung and pigeonholed into every conceivable place: hats and caps, boots and shoes, bolts of multicolored and multitextured cloth, racks of dishes and cutlery, cooking utensils and pots, stacks of baskets, blankets and ladies’ bloomers.

  Byrne stood, feeling as out of place as a young man could, until a salesman came up and asked if he could help. Byrne chose to state his predicament rather than try to hide his social ignorance.

  “I need a proper suit for one of Mrs. Flagler’s formal dinners at the Poinciana tonight,” he said.

  The salesman began to look him over, no doubt for size. But Byrne took it as an assessment.