The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

  30

  A few days later, another train rocked from side to side, sending up showers of sparks from the tracks, as it made its cacophonous way through the southern slums of Chicago. Men and women caked in filth and wrapped in rags leapt out of its way as it crashed through one ground level intersection after another, never slowing.

  The terrain was perfectly flat, marked only by an endless stretch of dirty, flimsy two-story wood cottages that had been hastily thrown up after the Great Fire.

  When the train left the congestion, the smoke, and the squalor of the city and emerged into a darker and muddier place, it was invaded by a smell like the den of an ancient and insane animal: rich, full, expansive. It seemed to have a texture; it was almost generous. And it only grew stronger as the train picked up speed.

  The whistle shrieked and the brakes howled as the train came to an unsteady halt. The doors opened and the few men aboard stepped down into the yards. The last one to disembark was the only man not holding a handkerchief to his face. His hair was combed and he was wearing an expensive suit, but there was nevertheless something careless about his appearance. As if he knew how he ought to dress but was only willing to go through the motions. A little stubble was on his cheeks and his cuffs were wrinkled and the bottoms of his trousers were muddy. Only his spectacles were perfectly clean.

  He made his way over the crisscrossing railroad tracks until he came to the gates of the Union Stock Yards. A crowd of men were gathered there, waiting to be called for work. They sat on the ground or crouched on their heels, blowing on their hands and pulling their collars up against the cold.

  “Hello, Mister Ross,” one of the guards said.

  Two of the other guards began to push open the gates. While he was waiting, Noah Ross spared a glance to the slum crouched between the walls of the stockyards and its dump. The vile, stained houses were built next to gutters filled with blood so thoroughly congealed that cats could scamper across them. Children ran and laughed in the gloam of the smoke and the rising sun.

  When the gates opened the smell redoubled and Noah’s ears were assaulted by the screaming of the pigs. Thousands of them were crammed in square pens divided by wooden walkways, packed so tight they stood in shit up to their knees and could scarcely turn around. All of them raised as much din as they could, as if they were sending an appeal up to heaven.

  Buyers and sellers paced the walkways and leaned over the railings to inspect the animals. More than one buyer raised his hat to Noah, who passed them all with a curt nod, on his way toward the huge, windowless pork plant.

  The plant manager, a man named Dennis Addy, was waiting outside the front door, dressed in a long faded coat that was stained with shit and blood. As they shook hands, Addy gestured to a group of workers in one of the pigpens. Whips cracked and the workers shouted, driving the pigs up the “Bridge of Sighs,” a chute that ran up the wall of the plant.

  “Come on in, Mister Ross,” Addy said. “I trust you’ll find everything to your specifications.”

  Inside the stench was so overpowering it was like having a foul rag pushed in your mouth. They had entered an enormous room where the floor was tacky with blood. Dirty men with heavy knives and cleavers waited at various tables. Addy ushered Noah to a staircase in the far corner that led up several flights to an observation deck.

  Noah Ross took out a small, leather-bound notebook from his pocket and handed it to Dennis along with a pen.

  “I’d be very obliged if you’d take some notes, Addy,” Noah said.

  “Certainly, sir,” he replied.

  Across from the observation deck was the catching pen where the Bridge of Sighs ended. As Noah watched it rapidly filled with pigs driven up from the yards. Five men waited next to a solid metal wheel with chains attached to its edge. The wheel was turning slowly.

  Noah removed a heavy silver watch from his pocket. At the click of a button it sprang open.

  Behind him, Addy raised his hand, and the five men in the catching pen leapt to work. Three of them drove the pigs toward the wheel by striking them with wooden sticks while two took turns grabbing the pigs and using the chains to attach them to the wheel.

  The pigs tried to scamper free and shook their legs to get loose but the wheel kept turning inexorably and they were lifted, one after another, squealing and kicking, into the air.

  Noah looked at his watch.

  “Ten seconds,” he said. “Seven seconds. Eight. Eight. Seven. Ten. Eight.”

  Addy wrote the numbers in the book.

  When the pigs reached the top of the wheel they were transferred to a metal rail that slid them down toward a tall, burly man bearing an enormous knife. He caught the first pig, and while it was still struggling and shrieking, jabbed his knife into its throat and then did his best to dodge the massive stream of blood that exploded from the wound.

  “Eleven seconds,” Noah said. “Thirteen seconds. Fourteen seconds. Thirteen. Twelve. Sixteen. Hmm. See how the blood is pooling in the gutters?”

  “Yes, Mister Ross.”

  “Make a note of that,” Noah said. “Does it often do so?”

  “Oh, yes sir.”

  “Make a note to hire someone to sweep those gutters,” Noah said. “A child perhaps. We could have a boy or girl for fifteen cents a day. There’s fifteen cents of blood hardening right there. I can see it.”

  Once the pigs had been mostly drained of blood, they slid farther down the rail and were dropped, in some cases still wriggling and bleating, into a huge vat of boiling water. A steam-driven rake dragged through the water and tumbled the pigs, pink and clean and scalded, onto another table where a group of workers attached a chain through each pig’s nose so it could be dragged through another machine.

  “Ten seconds. Ten seconds. Ten seconds. Good. The machine is very reliable.”

  When the pig emerged it had been shaved nearly bald. Two workers quickly removed any remaining hairs. Powerful butchers stepped forward and chopped at the pigs’ necks, almost severing their heads. Then they lifted the carcass back up and hitched it to the overhead rail, sending it to another butcher to be disemboweled and split in two, then whisked into the cold room for storage.

  After a few more observations, Dennis and Noah made their way through the chilling room. Big blocks of ice rested in front of fans, and the dripping hog carcasses dangled in row after row like stalactites in a cavern far below the earth.

  And then they ended the tour where they began, on the ground floor, in the chopping room, where the real magic took place. On broad tables surrounded by butchers, the hogs underwent a final transformation from something that was still recognizably the remnants of a living creature—something that had, after its fashion, thought and felt—into products. Items of practical utility and economic worth. The pig was transformed from a grunting, useless thing into a number of items that, collectively, were worth more than the whole had been.

  To Noah, it was like magic, this creation of monetary value, this alchemy, this conversion of dross into gold. It was the harnessing of a force greater than man. It was this force that had brought these men to this place and organized them in this fashion. The previous order, with its useless middlemen and wasted time and sinews, was dead. Though in one sense the Union Stock Yards was an innovation, in another it was a return to nature. Everything had been stripped away but the bare and fundamental laws of economics, as if some sort of undergod whose shackles had been loosened was shaping all before it in its own image, man and beast alike, with Noah Ross as its priest.

  He did not speak, he only bathed in the hum of activity around him.

  The hogs were transformed in thirty-five seconds from carcasses into various cuts of meat. Hams, ribs, pork chops were sent to be pickled, salted, smoked, and frozen.

  “I trust you find everything to your satisfaction?” Addy said.

  Noah smiled thinly. “Never.”

  Noah spent the ride back to Chicago performing calculations in his notebook, conducting a
mathematical search for bottlenecks, for things that were slowing them down. The trick was to remember that nothing truly lay outside the system; nothing was really separate from anything else. How many pigs could be produced within shipping distance of the plant? How could that distance be increased? How many pigs could be delivered to the plant in one day? How long did it take to process each pig? Which stage of the transformation could be shortened? How many carcasses could be sent out of the plant? How much time did they spend being rerouted in Chicago? How far could they go?

  There were a thousand such questions, and they hummed through Noah’s mind like a swarm of locusts.

  When he disembarked in Chicago, he spotted his personal secretary waving a telegram from Washington. Noah read it, then tucked it away in his pocket.

  “I need you to send two telegrams immediately,” he said. “One to Molly Shakespeare in the City of Kansas, and the other to General Philip Sheridan. I believe he is in town, but he may have left for the Dakota Territory.”

  “Yes sir,” the secretary said.

  There in the bustle, with passengers coming and going and pickpockets and porters shouting and shoving and the black smoke pouring down from the trains, Noah scrawled a fateful message in his notebook:

  POTUS CONSENTS TO TERMS FOR ELECTION ASSISTANCE FOR ALL BUT WINTER STOP HELPERS SHOULD PROCEED TO MICHIGAN AVENUE HOTEL IN CHICAGO WITH HASTE AND DISCRETION STOP CONTACT PULLMAN COMPANY TO ARRANGE PASSAGE STOP REPEAT WINTER NOT INCLUDED

  Noah tore the page out of his notebook, handed it over to the secretary, and said, “Alea iacta est.”

  “Sir?” the secretary said.

  “Julius Caesar said it,” Noah said. “It means the die has been cast. You can do all the preparation you like. In the end you always must take a chance.”

  31

  In the Dakota Territory, the sky was blue and distant against the fall colors of the trees. A carpet of leaves covered the rocky ground. It was warm for October, but Bill Bread still felt chilled under his coat. His flask of whiskey was drained, though it was not yet midmorning, and he had reacted with impatience when Jan Müller ordered a halt to their march so that he could wash the blood off his hands and face in the creek. But one look at Jan’s strained face and the glint in his eyes, like a panicked horse, told Bill that Jan had been pushed to the very edge by the massacre they had perpetrated in the hills. So Bill consented. It was while he, along with Dusty Kingsley, waited for Jan to get himself cleaned off that the little Indian boy sneezed. They looked up and saw him hiding in a tree.

  “Shit,” Bill said.

  “Hey there,” Dusty called up to the boy. “Come on down! We won’t hurt you.”

  Dusty took some dried meat out of a pouch on his hip. Surprisingly this was enough to entice the boy out of the tree. He took the meat like a thing half tamed and bit into it and then smiled.

  “There you are,” Dusty said. “Here, have another.”

  The boy took it and laughed: a free, high, relieved sound, like a baby’s laugh. It made Dusty laugh too. Not Bill, though. He leaned on his rifle and trembled a little and watched Dusty and the boy with his wise, bloodshot eyes.

  Jan came back from the creek. When he saw the boy he jerked as if he had been stung by a scorpion.

  “What are you doing?” Jan said, his German accent stronger with his emotion.

  Dusty looked at Jan as if he had just remembered his existence. His face fell.

  “Uh,” Dusty said. “Well, we found this boy hiding in a tree, Sarge. He’s hungry as get all.”

  Jan’s blue eyes narrowed in contempt. “He is hungry?”

  Dusty did not respond.

  “I see. What are you going to do with him after you feed him, I wonder?”

  “Well, maybe we could take him back to the fort and drop him off with someone,” Dusty said.

  “With someone?” Jan spoke like his breath was being taken away. “With someone? We should come back to the fort with an Indian boy? Hmm?”

  Dusty could not meet Jan’s gaze.

  Jan looked at Bill. The boy looked at Jan, then Bill. Bill sighed. Then Bill spoke to the boy, in Cheyenne.

  “Come here boy. Come here with me.”

  The boy walked over to Bill.

  No one watched.

  Bill knelt and smiled at the boy. He was not yet thirty, but he looked old. Still, the lines around his eyes were kind. Bill gave the boy some dried fruit. The boy ate it and laughed that baby’s laugh for one last time. Bill led him away in the woods.

  When they stopped, Bill put his hands on the boy’s shoulder. “Close your eyes, and I will give you some more.”

  The boy did as he was told and the shot rang out, rustling through the leaves like an animal burrowing for cover. When Bill returned, none of them looked at one another. They just started walking home.

  After an hour’s silent march they arrived at the wooden fort, which stood in the center of a waving ocean of golden grass. The hotel bar was crowded in the early evening with soldiers and travelers and Indians who had come to do their trading. Jan immediately went to his room, but Bill and Dusty went to the bar.

  “You Bill Bread?” the bartender asked.

  “What does that matter?” Bill asked.

  “Someone here already got your first round,” the bartender replied.

  “Who?” Bill said, turning to scan the crowd. A man sitting in the back corner tipped his hat. Bill’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Dusty said.

  “Get me a whiskey,” Bill said. “I’m going to go get the sergeant.”

  Bill returned a few minutes later with a visibly irritated Müller. When Bill brought Jan to the table in the back, Jan stopped short with shock.

  “You!” Jan said.

  “Me,” General Philip Sheridan said.

  The general wore civilian clothes, a dark suit, and held his hat in his hands.

  “Good work out there today, Müller,” Sheridan said, smiling. He had a receding hairline, a domed forehead, and a neat mustache. His easy manner was belied by the intensity about his eyes and his angular face, which gave him the air of a man of firm, even fanatical convictions.

  “I am surprised to see you here in person,” Jan said. “Now how will you say you don’t know who we are?”

  “It’s important. Won’t you sit down?”

  Bill and Jan sat down with Sheridan and Dusty. Bill poured himself a drink from the bottle sitting on the table.

  “I came to tell you about an opportunity for more work,” Sheridan said. “In Chicago.”

  “Chicago?”

  “Yes,” Sheridan replied. “As you may know, your former lieutenant, Quentin Ross, came from a good family in Chicago and he has a twin brother, name of Noah. Noah started out wealthy enough, of course, but he got even wealthier through speculation and some timely investments. He sits on the board of almost every major corporation in the city. He’s also high up in the Republican Party in Illinois, and I’ve just learned, by telegram, that he’s managed to convince the president to pardon his brother and his associates, including you, if you help out during the upcoming election.”

  “Full pardon?” Dusty said.

  “So they say.”

  “God damn it!” Dusty swore. “Full pardon! Ross came through for us after all!”

  “How are we supposed to help out?” Jan said.

  “I am simply a messenger,” Sheridan said.

  Dusty immediately lifted his glass in an enthusiastic toast. He had left a young wife behind when they had deserted, and the life of a fugitive had never agreed with him. Jan seemed almost dazed. The only one who did not react was Bill.

  “See,” Sheridan said. “I told you it was important. Give me a drink, Bill.”

  Bill passed the bottle. Sheridan refilled his glass.

  “Anyway, I know this is an important chance for you boys,” Sheridan said. “Still, I almost feel bad bringing it to you. I somehow don’t think you’ll profit by it in
the end. Noah Ross is a clever man, but he’s missed the mark this time. Quentin Ross can’t be trusted. There were always problems with him, all through the war and after, right up until that ghastly debacle in Mississippi.”

  “That wasn’t Quentin,” Jan said. “It was Augustus Winter.”

  “So the papers all say,” Sheridan said. “Sherman doesn’t believe it. He told me he knew it was Ross somehow. He said he couldn’t understand before why Quentin would throw so many opportunities away. How he could lie to us so blatantly. How he could be so cruel and stupid when he didn’t stand to gain anything by it. You know what Sherman thinks now? He thinks Quentin Ross is a madman. His methods are rational, but his aims are insane. He told me that it haunted him to have enabled a man like that for so long. To perhaps even have created him.”

  “That’s a good story!” Jan barked. “It’s fine for you to tell me not to trust my comrade in arms who so many times saved my life! Why should I trust you? You send us out in Georgia to burn it down and then you denied it. You sent us to fight the Klan and then you denied it. Today you sent us out to kill Indians and you deny it. Tomorrow you send us to rig an election. And you tell me it is Quentin I cannot trust?”

  “I was always straight with you, Jan,” Sheridan said. “You know we made peace with the Sioux in ’68, and I told you that if you got caught shooting those Indians I’d deny I sent you there. I can assure you I meant it.”

  Jan waved his hands in front of his face as if he were swatting a mosquito.

  “In Georgia!” Jan said. “In Georgia Sherman told Quentin his field orders were only for show. He told us to make Georgia howl. When we did? When we got to the sea? We were court-martialed. We had to go into hiding. My life was ruined!”

  Sheridan leaned back in his chair. An ironic smile was playing on his lips. “Well, there was the matter of that murderous slave you had with you.”

  “I could have convinced them on the slave,” Jan said. “If only …”

  “But, perhaps more to the point,” Sheridan said, “is that Sherman never told anyone that his field orders were just for show. They weren’t just for show. They were important to prevent the South from hating us, as far as possible. Quentin Ross lied to you.”