The Winter Family

by Clifford Jackman

  “What reason would he have to lie?” Jan said.

  Sheridan’s smile broadened. “What reason, indeed?”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Jan said, his voice tight with emotion. “The hypocrisy makes me sick. Generals make a war that kills thousands, but common soldiers must be hanged if a few houses are set on fire.”

  “Well,” Sheridan said, “ethics aren’t rational, they’re emotional. You kill a thousand Indians by depriving them of the buffalo, you’re a great leader. But if you shoot one little Indian boy, you’re a murderer.”

  Dusty found something interesting to look at on the floor.

  “Of course, you were quite right, from a strictly rational point of view,” Sheridan said. “But irrational feelings are rather powerful forces. I hope you, and your former lieutenant, keep that in mind. In Chicago.”

  32

  That very same evening, in the city of Chicago, the Democratic alderman Mickey Burns jogged up the stairs of the Store, a four-story brick gambling hall located within a stone’s throw of city hall. He climbed the steps two at a time, but he paused to warmly shake the hands of both guards, slipping each one a dollar.

  Burns was a handsome man, a little shorter than average, but broad across the chest, powerful, with dark, tightly curled hair and a sensual mouth. The pinstripe suit he wore fit him like a glove, though his tie was rather too short. A diamond pin the size of a grape sparkled on his lapel.

  Inside he weaved a practiced path through the card tables and the spinning roulette wheels, winking at the cigarette girls, until he came to another guarded door on the far side of the room. He shook the hands of those guards as well, was ushered inside, and was greeted by the sound of a hundred men shouting his name.

  A wide variety of kegs, casks, and bottles, calculated to cater to the diverse tastes of the men assembled there, were stacked on the card tables, along with sacks of oysters packed in ice. A thin fog of blue tobacco smoke hung in the air.

  Burns’s ears picked up at least half a dozen languages. English, of course, spoken with a distinctly Hibernian twang, but also German, Italian, Polish, Greek, Norwegian, and Bohemian. Each ethnic group clustered together, easily identifiable by their dress, their hair, the drinks in their hands. Half of the aldermen in the city were in the room, and virtually all the leaders of the vice trade. Newly appointed police officers were shucking oysters for union leaders. Everyone seemed to be getting on well enough.

  “Mickey!” Honest Jim Plunkett bellowed from across the room, waving his hands with their missing fingers. Honest Jim towered over every man around him, and his face was knotted and shiny with scars. “Mickey, come over here!”

  Burns made his way through the bristling hedge of glowing cigars and glasses of whiskey, slapping every man’s back along the way. He grabbed an oyster from one of the sacks, pried it open with his knife, and sucked it clean before he arrived at his destination.

  “Now isn’t this a lovely sight,” Burns said, grinning.

  “Fucking Mickey Burns,” Honest Jim said, “come to visit us at last. What kept you? Might I venture a guess? Making arrangements for a funeral?”

  “Indeed,” Burns said. “I am sorry to say. Another little angel sent to the Lord before his time.” Burns shook his head sadly, but soon enough he was smiling again. He said, “You really did it, Jimmy.”

  “Well, of course I did, didn’t I? Never doubted it for a second.”

  Honest Jim turned to the man standing on his left, portly and mustached, looking dissatisfied and holding a pewter stein. Clearly German.

  “Mickey didn’t think I’d get nobody but Irishmen here tonight,” Honest Jim said to the German.

  “Hello, Ollie,” Burns said.

  Ollie Reiman raised his mug and smiled.

  “And this one,” Honest Jim said, “is complaining about my man for mayor.”

  “What are you worried about?” Burns said. “This Harrison’s likely enough, isn’t he?”

  “Likely?” Honest Jim cried. “Likely? Likely doesn’t do it by half. Mickey, that man, he’s a visitation. That’s what he is. I never met a man like him. Can’t stop smiling to save his soul. Can’t hold a grudge if you paid him. Loves to give a speech.”

  “Yes,” Reiman said. “Yes, he does love to give a speech.”

  “Loves everyone in the city,” Honest Jim said. “Kisses every baby he sees. You can’t stop this man from kissing babies. I defy you to stop him. I defy you, sir. I tell you, I’ve never seen the like. I’ve got him marching with a Negro militia tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Reiman said. “He will say anything to anyone. How do we know he will stay our friend? Of course I trust you, Mister Plunkett. We all do. But Harrison does not seem to be principled!”

  “Principled!” Honest Jim said. “Well now, that depends on how you reckon your principles, I suppose. He’ll look out for his friends, I warrant. And ain’t that the most important principle of them all? Principled! Mister Reiman. Politics ain’t beanbag, after all. Harrison’s our boy, you’ll see. He’ll come through for us, and I’ll be damned if he don’t remember those who put him there.”

  Reiman shrugged and drank. Somewhat morosely, he said, “I suppose,” but Honest Jim was already turning to the crowd.

  “Gentlemen!” he shouted, waving his hands for attention. “Gentlemen, please! I just have a few short words for you all.”

  The Irish were whistling and stamping their feet, and the other ethnic groups were drunk enough to applaud warmly.

  “First of all,” Honest Jim bellowed, “I want to thank you all for being here today. I know I don’t always make it easy to like me.” Cries of “No, no” from the Irish and laughter from the rest.

  “I know, I know, I know. We’ve had our disagreements in the past. And that’s just how they’ve lorded it over us all this time. Playing us against one another like dogs in a pit while they sit in their mansions and cheat on their taxes. And we’ve all suffered, haven’t we? Whether they’re picking on the Irish or telling our Teutonic friends when they can and can’t have a glass of beer. They even blamed the Fire on the shacks our people live in!”

  An angry roar went up from the crowd.

  “Oh, and they’ve got their money and they’ve got their newspapers,” Honest Jim shouted, spitting out the last word as if it were a particularly vile epithet. “But what’s that to us? What’s that to us? This is still a democracy, after all. And there’s more of us than there is of them. Yes sir. We’ll show them. It don’t matter how many stories they put in their newspapers. It don’t matter how many Pinkerton provocateurs and spies and thugs they hire. Money ain’t nothing to the greatest currency of them all, gentlemen, the currency of votes.”

  Another cheer.

  “Now gentlemen, gentlemen,” Honest Jim said, “we’ve got our differences. Don’t we? Who’s to say we don’t? That’s why here in the Democratic Party, we say, Why, who am I to tell my neighbor what’s good for him? A Republican is a man who wants you to go to church every Sunday. A Democrat is a man who says you can have a drink if you want. That’s all. You don’t have to like me, you just have to know I’m an honest man. The newspapers might tell you different. But what’s their idea of honesty, I ask you? I say an honest man is one who does right to you when you do right to him. That’s me, gentlemen. That’s me to the bone. You just put your faith in old Honest Jim. I never forget a favor.”

  “Honest Jim!” an Irish voice cried out, and everyone lifted his glass and cheered.

  “Now gentlemen,” Honest Jim said, “you just see King Conor there about your money on your way out. You just see about it. He’s got your names in his little book, and if he don’t, why, you come and talk to me. You take what you need and don’t you worry, I won’t be asking you for no receipts as long as you get the votes out on Election Day. I won’t be asking for no accounting, as long as you do right by me.”

  Honest Jim gestured toward the door, where the owner of the Store, “King” Conor McDon
ald, stood with a leather-bound book and an enormous iron cashbox.

  “Just remember,” King Conor snarled. “If we lose, this is a fucking loan.”

  Laughter.

  “Votes, gentlemen!” Honest Jim cried. “A toast! To votes!”

  Everyone drank. Afterward, some took more drinks, some took oysters, and some returned to their conversations. But most lined up before King Conor for their money.

  Mickey Burns took Honest Jim by the shoulder and nodded to a far corner of the room where they could separate themselves from the crowd. Everyone knew not to approach them while they spoke.

  “I’ve got some news,” Burns said.

  “Do you now?”

  “Well, you know this fellow Noah Ross? The speculator? Professional investor?”

  “Oh yes, I know of him. Queer fish! Tough to tell whether he’s a friend or foe of the workingman.”

  Burns smiled and said, “He’s what our Mister Reiman might call a principled individual.”

  “Is he!” Honest Jim exclaimed. “Well, what about this Ross, then?”

  “Apparently he’s the brother of Quentin Ross, the Republican hatchet man who got himself into trouble a few months back in Mississippi.”

  “What trouble?”

  “You must have read about it. Talk about stories in the papers. All those horrible pictures of the women and children strung up by their heels? In that barn?”

  “Oh yes! What was that madman’s name? Autumn Winter?”

  “Close enough. Anyway, this man Winter was part of a little band led by Quentin Ross. They were all bummers in the War of the Rebellion. The whole lot of them were court-martialed at the end of the war for a long list of misdeeds, including sheltering a slave who’d killed his master. But it didn’t take long for them to find work fighting the Klan and the Red Shirts. Aiding with the Reconstruction, you see. All on the behalf of the Republicans, although they deny it. Especially after the massacre in Mississippi.”

  “And what have they got to do with us?” Honest Jim asked, but he looked as if he knew.

  “Well, the word is that Grant’s agreed to give Quentin Ross and his men pardons for their murders if they come to Chicago to help out in the election.”

  “Help out?” Honest Jim cried. “They’re going to use the same lackeys against us as they do against the rebels? They’re going to treat Chicago like a defeated secessionist city? Like we lost the war? Like we’d never given our blood for the Union?”

  “So they say,” Burns said.

  “Well fucking let ’em,” Honest Jim said, calming instantly. “Let ’em. I like my chances in a street fight. It’ll take more than a few soldiers of fortune to tip the balance in their favor. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, for sure, boss,” Burns said. “Just keeping you in the know.”

  “And for that, my dear Mister Burns,” Honest Jim said, “I’m much obliged.”

  33

  The next morning, Quentin Ross awoke in a soft bed. He blinked a few times and then, remembering where he was, grinned. He threw off the sheets and sank his feet into the thick carpet and flicked the switch on the wall. Electric light illuminated the green and gold wallpaper, the gilded mirrors, and the frescoed ceiling.

  He stood, steadying himself against the gentle rocking of the train, and pulled back the velvet curtains from the window. The sun had already risen and it was beaming down directly ahead of them, as the train chugged east, toward Chicago.

  First he washed his face in the bathroom, filling the pink marble sink with steaming hot water. Then he dressed himself (his suit had been vigorously brushed and his boots had been polished while he slept) and made his way into the dining car.

  A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, making a tinkling noise as it vibrated. The tables were covered with white cloths and laden with fine china and silverware. Quentin drank coffee and ate an omelet and read a copy of Harper’s Weekly magazine, enjoying as usual the engravings by Thomas Nast. Then he stood up, thanked the waiter, and apologized for his inability to offer a tip.

  “My dear friend, I must confess that despite all appearances I have rather been down on my luck as of late.”

  Turning from the dour waiter, he entered the smoking car, with its reclining chairs, its writing, card, and billiards tables, its stocked bar and cabinets loaded with cigars and cigarettes, and its little library. It was this latter feature that had attracted Quentin’s companion.

  “Improving your mind as always, I see.”

  Fred Johnson looked up. He was dressed roughly, except for his boots, which had been polished to a dull glow. He had no beard and his hair was cropped very short. A book was in his hand and a cigar smoldered in an ashtray next to him.

  “It does you credit,” Quentin said. “I don’t suppose I might be of any assistance?”

  Fred flipped back a few pages and offered his book to Quentin.

  Quentin took it and read:

  Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,

  And measure back the seas we cross’d before?

  The plague destroying whom the sword would spare,

  ’Tis time to save the few remains of war.

  But let some prophet, or some sacred sage,

  Explore the cause of great Apollo’s rage;

  Or learn the wasteful vengeance to remove

  By mystic dreams, for dreams descend from Jove.

  If broken vows this heavy curse have laid,

  Let altars smoke, and hecatombs be paid.

  So Heaven, atoned, shall dying Greece restore,

  And Phoebus dart his burning shafts no more.

  “Well now, this is ambitious,” Quentin said. “What’s the problem?”

  “What’s a hecatomb?” Fred asked.

  “A hecatomb, my dear Frederick,” Quentin said, “was, in ancient Greece, a sacrifice to the gods of a hundred cattle.”

  Fred held out his hand for the book.

  “But surely that isn’t your only question?” Quentin said, as he handed it back. “My good Fred! You’re the brightest pupil I’ve ever taught. Not, I suppose, that I have taught many other men. Perhaps I am simply an exceptional teacher. In any case, I’m not sure you ought to be wasting your time with Pope. That really is a dreadful translation.”

  Quentin took a cigar from one of the cedar cabinets behind the bar and walked out onto a balcony on the tail end of the train, where he could smoke and watch the terrain whip past.

  Eventually the pastoral scenery gave way to the urban expanse of Chicago and Quentin reentered the car and sat with Fred. The train came to a halt at around ten in the morning. “Chicago!” the porter shouted as he threw open the sliding door. Immediately a cloud of black smoke billowed into the railway car, followed by the din of a thousand machines and the cry of a million voices.

  “Fagh!” Quentin cried, waving his hand in front of his face. “What an abominable stench!”

  They stepped down and were immediately assaulted by an army of shouting touts, grimy men waving their hands looking around, in vain, for their luggage.

  “The Michigan Avenue Hotel,” Quentin said to a filthy man with his head sunk deeply between his shoulders, who nodded and beat the others away and led them to his carriage. Quentin and Johnson climbed into the back while their guide cracked his whip and got his vehicle moving.

  The Michigan Avenue Hotel was made of wood, not brick, with bright red and white awnings. The front door was locked and a sign in the window read CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS.

  Quentin knocked and waited for about sixty seconds until the door opened. A young bellhop led them through an empty lobby where their footsteps echoed on the stone floor. In the restaurant, they gorged themselves on carrot soup, beet salad, cold lobster casserole, potatoes, and then baked Alaska. Their waiter was a slender man around thirty with short hair and skin as black as midnight. He kept winking at them. Quentin winked right back.

  Afterward they reclined in their chairs and picked their teeth and drank coffee u
ntil Noah came into the room.

  “My dear, dear brother,” Quentin said, apparently overcome with emotion.

  “Quentin,” Noah said, taking his twin brother’s hand.

  The Ross brothers looked very similar and shared many little mannerisms and movements. Still, it was easy to tell them apart. Although Quentin’s clothes were shabby, they seemed to fit him more naturally than Noah’s clothes fit him. Quentin had a sharp, handsome, feral look about his face, while Noah had a more puritanical, almost snobbish air. Yet Noah was more entirely present than Quentin, really seeing what was in front of his face, whereas Quentin was always preoccupied with private amusements.

  The winking waiter quickly brought over a cup of tea for Noah.

  “Can I interest you in a cigar?” Quentin said.

  He produced two handfuls, stolen from the train.

  Johnson looked nervous. Noah noticed Johnson’s discomfort and smiled.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I would not have put my brother on that train if there was anything on it I didn’t want him to steal.”

  Quentin laughed heartily.

  Fred Johnson took a book out of his jacket.

  “I took this,” he said.

  Noah took it from his hand.

  “You’re reading this?”

  “Indeed,” Quentin said, between puffs of his cigar. “He’s come a long way. Putting the boots to all the theories of Negro intellectual inferiority.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Noah said. “It’s a dreadful translation.”

  “I told him so!” Quentin cried.

  “If you want to read the Iliad I’ll send you something better. I’ll send you all the books you want. You’ll have plenty of time to read, and plenty of quiet too. You’ll have the hotel entirely to yourself.”

  “You own this hotel?” Quentin said. “Remarkable place. How much did you pay for it?”

  Noah sipped his tea and said, “A thousand dollars.”