Magic Words

by Gerald Kolpan

  Alexander locked his case just as the deep whistle of the Balaclava sounded debarkation. He could hear sailors shouting that the time had come to go ashore.

  Julius grabbed his carpetbag and flew through the stateroom door. Alexander watched him disappear down the grimy hall, running hard until he encountered the ancient British steward who had seen to their needs during the long crossing. Julius stopped to smile and pump the old man’s hand. As he had throughout the voyage, the boy greeted him as a countryman, his accent a perfect reflection of the cockney’s own. He spoke in rhyming slang, referred to the old man as “ducks,” and finally departed down the corridor with a jaunty “t’ra.”

  Alexander glanced after Julius and then paused in the hall. When the steward reached him at the door, he cheerfully blocked the old man’s passage.

  “Thank you for your fine service,” he said. “I shall miss it when we leave the ship.”

  The steward bowed. “It was nothing, young gentleman.”

  “Ah, but even nothing deserves the proper something.”

  Alexander crossed his hands in the air, his fingers fluttering like the wings of a dove. Then he reached behind the steward’s ear, produced a silver dollar, and placed it in the old man’s palm.

  It was a journey of nearly two hours from the Balaclava dock to the City of Philadelphia. From the Lazaretto’s home village of Tinicum to the Belgian block streets over which their cart now jangled, the cousins had seen mostly marshland and grass, punctuated here and there by a shack or dilapidated barn. Buffeted by the hard roads, they were hungry and exhausted when at last the Walnut Street Theatre came into view.

  Julius was less than impressed.

  By European standards, the Walnut was hardly grand. It had been built in the old Philadelphia style—its face nearly unadorned but for six Doric columns and some ungenerous sprays of filigree—reflecting the philosophy of the old town in which it was built. The Quakers, founders of the city, had fought the commonwealth for years to ban the wickedness of public performance, relegating all such foolishness to the far side of South Street, the town’s original border. With such sentiments in mind, the architects had probably been right to choose austerity over splendor. The Walnut was, after all, not a dime museum or a tent circus but a palace of culture in which the likes of Forrest and Booth portrayed Hamlet the Dane and Othello the Black for the edification of a grateful public.

  The cart stopped at the corner of Ninth and Walnut. Alexander paid the driver, and the cousins jumped from the rough seat. The man handed down their trunk and bags, made a clicking sound to his two filthy bays, and left with neither good-bye nor thanks.

  Alexander straightened his jacket and began to pick up his trunk; it was then that he noticed the tall posters lined up against the Walnut’s columns.

  What he saw filled him with dread.

  FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 17, 1866. LAST PERFORMANCE BUT TWO!

  BENEFIT OF

  PROFESSOR CARL HERRMANN

  THE GREATEST MAGICIAN OF AMERICA!

  HE OF THE AMAZING VANISHING SPARROW,

  HOUSE OF BEWITCHED CARDS, ETC.

  NOW OFFERS THE PUBLIC HIS GREATEST ILLUSION! THE ONE

  AND ONLY ORIGINAL TO HIM AND SINGULAR

  BULLET CATCH!

  THE AMAZING TRICK, WHICH HAS CAUSED THE UNFORTUNATE

  DEATH OF OVER 50 FINE PRACTIONERS OF THE MYSTIC ARTS!

  FOR THIS

  ONE NIGHT ONLY

  THE GREAT HERRMANN WILL PERFORM THIS MOST

  DEATH DEFYING OF ACTS USING, UNLIKE IMITATORS,

  A GENUINE REVOLVER BULLET

  OF LEAD WHICH SHALL BE SUBJECT TO METICULOUS INSPECTION

  BY MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE AND

  QUALIFIED MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL CONSTABULARY!

  THIS SHALL BE CAUGHT IN THE TEETH OF THE ARTIST!

  Alex took hold of his cousin’s ear and, ignoring the astonished box office clerk, dragged Julius into the Walnut’s lobby. From the antechamber, he could hear his elder brother’s voice reverberate, screaming and swearing in two languages: English for the understanding of stagehands and assistants, German to articulate profanities for which only German would suffice.

  The cousins hurried into the auditorium. It was a large, sweeping arc with a double balcony and a proscenium more highly decorated than the Walnut’s austere face might indicate. Below the gilded seraphim and the two-faced god of the drama, the stage was cluttered with large cases and sundry machines. The equipment was painted in lurid shades of black and orange, and festooned with question marks and Chinese characters.

  At stage center stood a tall and slender man in shirtsleeves. His silver waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his black hair fell in rings over his forehead. In his left hand, he held a silver revolver, while his right gestured grandly toward the chandelier. At the sight of him, Julius gasped in recognition: the burning eyes, the pointed eyebrows and waxed mustaches above the long, pointed goatee. It was if Mephistopheles had left Hell for the day to entertain Philadelphia’s damned souls.

  The demon stared out into the rows of seats, finally fixing Alexander in his gaze.

  “Well, little Alex. I thought it was me who did the disappearing. You were supposed to be coming from Prussia, not Mars.”

  “Put the gun down, Compars,” Alex said. “We’ve spoken of this before. You can’t do the Catch with a live bullet.”

  The magician paused for a moment, stared at his brother and then, with a grin, fired three rounds into the upper flies. The chief stagehand ran out a back door. Julius was so quick to leap behind one of the orchestra seats that his hat met his foot on his way down.

  “I see,” Compars said, spitting on the stage. “Of all of mother’s sixteen children, you are the one God has sent to provide me with sage advice. And why not? You are only twenty-nine years my junior. Why wouldn’t I listen to such an experienced expert on what can and cannot be accomplished on a stage? Perhaps I should simply turn over this franchise to you now. You are after all, nearing twenty-one.”

  “Compars …”

  “I remind you we are in the United States!” the magician shouted in English. “You will refer to me at all times in public as Carl or Herr Docktor or perhaps, as you should, dear brother.”

  He fired another round into the ceiling, loosening a chunk of plaster the size of a hog’s head.

  “And now, since you appear to be in the mood to tell me things, pray tell me this: where is the brat you were sent to fetch for that fool, Max?”

  “Like everyone else here, ‘dear brother,’ he is in hiding for his life. I beg you. Put down the pistol and take away the posters. To carry out your plan, you need a confederate. None of your other aides knows how the mechanisms of this trick work. That leaves me alone to pull the trigger—and I refuse.”

  From his hiding place on the theatre’s floor, Julius peeked from between two seats at the figure onstage. As Compars turned red, he looked to the boy even more like the devil. The magician raised the pistol once more toward the ceiling but received only a hollow click for his efforts. He looked up at the silver gun and threw it to the stage. Compars kicked the weapon into a footlight, clenched his fists at his sides and stomped toward his dressing room.

  Alexander scurried toward the orchestra pit and leaped onto the stage. He picked up the revolver from the floor and put it in his overcoat pocket. Steadying himself against a huge papier-mâché playing card, he motioned for Julius to rise from his hiding place and called for the stage manager. Presently, a short, fat man emerged from the stage-right flies. He was pale and perspiring freely.

  “Sir,” Alexander said, “please allow me to apologize for my brother’s behavior. He is an artiste and, as you must know better than anyone, such men are sometimes given to temperament. I expect he shall be fine directly. In the meantime, I ask that you please have your men remove any and all posters that contain mention of this bullet catch. The Great Herrmann’s show will go on, I promise, but without that particular feature.”

>   The stage manager nodded and proceeded down the steps toward the lobby. Julius emerged from his sanctuary and walked down the aisle toward his cousin.

  “Now I see why you say he treats you like a slave,” Julius said. “It’s because you defy him.”

  Alexander brushed his hair from his eyes. “This isn’t the first time I have saved him from himself,” he said, his breath still short. “Two years ago in Chicago, he insisted on placing himself upside down in a tank of water with a large window at its front, padlocking it, and then trying to escape. We told him the trick wasn’t nearly ready, but he would have none of it. I had to take an axe to the window in front of a thousand people. For months afterward his reputation was as shattered as that glass. It has taken until now for him to regain his rightful place in the show business. Since I was your age, it has been my place to keep him from committing suicide for his art. He’s no good to the audience dead.”

  Julius picked up a black wooden wand that was lying on a box beside him. He waved it tauntingly in the air before a burly prop man grasped it from his hand and disappeared into the wings.

  “He is the Great Herrmann, Alex, not you. He is your older brother: old enough to be your father. My brother is a great man, too. He’s smarter than anyone. He is making lots of money in the West. When I get there I won’t be stupid, I’ll listen to him. I’ll do everything he says and be rich.”

  Alexander smiled slightly. “Well, while you’re getting rich, make sure you don’t let him kill himself, even if he asks you to. C’mon, let’s see if we can find the great sorcerer.”

  That evening, The Great Herrmann presented his act, the very same performance that had delighted the Walnut for the previous two weeks. There were, as the new posters proclaimed, “thrills for the gentlemen and refined amusements for the ladies.” Compars, suave and self-possessed in his black tailcoat, disappeared through a trapdoor onstage and materialized in the balcony; he burned Alexander alive and then conversed with his ghostly form as it hovered above his ashes; cards came to life in his hands; doves transformed from feathers to silk.

  For this performance and the two that would follow, a dozen Philadelphia police constables had been engaged. They were there to maintain order among those who had seen the posters promising the catching of a genuine revolver bullet in the mouth of the artist. As anticipated, there were members of the audience who objected loudly to not witnessing the feat for which they had bought their tickets. Confronted by such a ruckus, an officer would immediately escort the malcontent to the street, applying force commensurate to the degree of resistance. One polite man asked for and received his money back; another was given a season pass. The story ended somewhat worse for a Mr. Simon R. Tracey of Brewerytown. He had stood up in the second tier and hollered, “Coward! Where’s the Catch, then?” Tracey spent the weekend in Central Holding, where he was surrounded by inebriates and petty thieves and accosted by a procurer who insisted that the sodomite he represented was a real woman.

  It fell to Alex to pay the policemen: ten dollars each and an equal share in a case of good Irish: the going rate for security in The City of Brotherly Love. Yes, it was expensive, but his brother’s hard-earned reputation hung in the balance. Besides, Captain Riordan of the Third District (who was in for ten percent) assured him he was getting a bargain. It would have cost even more had his cops been off duty.

  Julius had watched as the officers received their money and smiled through their mustaches. America was just as his brother had described it: filled with small men looking for small money, hicks easy to outsmart and drunkards not paying attention. Perhaps when they spoke of “the land of opportunity” this is what they meant: a society of limitless marks waiting to be taken; where it wasn’t even necessary to cheat them to make their treasure your own.

  2

  IN 1866, OMAHA, NEBRASKA WAS A CITY NOT YET A CITY IN A state not yet a state.

  It was later said that if the place had gained any success, it was literally taken out of some poor animal’s hide. Bear, buffalo, muskrat and beaver were all abundant and there for the trapping, waiting to be cut into coats and stoles and blocked into hats. Early in the century, competition was so great among the fur trappers that they seemed only too glad to skin each other along with the varmints. Men were shot over a few pelts or had their goods stolen en route to market. Relative peace was established after the War of 1812, when, with the cooperation of the government, John Jacob Astor took control of the trade. With his monopoly forcing lower prices per pelt, anyone who now wanted to make a decent dollar left the wilderness and took a job with the approaching railroad or helped supply those who did. The men swinging the hammers would need flour and coffee in the daytime and whiskey and women after dark; and those who could provision them stood a good chance of leaving this life a good deal richer than they had entered it.

  Max Meyer had seen the need and brought tobacco to Omaha: first as a greenhorn fresh from Europe, a canvas bag lashed to his back, later as a merchant, greeting carloads of Virginia and Latakia leaf. When the business began, his mixtures filled crude pipes made of mud or clay; but before a year was out, Max would be displaying briers and meerschaums of cherry and fruitwood and blending his plants in secret concoctions rare and aromatic. He sold cigars and cigarettes and the papers in which to roll them. In time, he followed his smoking products with other luxuries: thick, black chew; newspapers and periodicals from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston; soap; hair tonic, and the kind of jewelry that a roughneck might buy in a town whose female population consisted chiefly of prostitutes.

  Max looked through his window at Farnam Street and watched his customers as they dug train beds for the railroad that would connect Des Moines to Omaha and Omaha to California. The men worked quickly, fighting the deadline the government had placed on the Cedar Rapids & Missouri and the cold that nature had laid upon their bare eyes and hands. There was more than enough work in Omaha, regardless of race, religion, or past criminalities. Despite the Civil War, the government had proceeded with the provisions of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, which vowed to unite the land by rail. With the unpleasantries concluded, it would probably be only a year or two until the locomotives (now stopped over a hundred miles away in Iowa) would begin to arrive in town, their cars laden with all the good things of Eastern industry. Max had already made the necessary deals with his suppliers for the items he would need in the amounts required. His small business had already made him comfortable; he looked forward to being rich.

  Max fixed his eyes on a giant Negro whose head was wrapped in a stained cloth. All morning long he had swung his sledge like a piston, not stopping for rest or water, perhaps afraid that even a moment’s pause would freeze him solid. As Max watched the huge man lift and strike, his reverie was interrupted by a voice he had come to dread ever since its small owner had first been allowed to walk abroad alone.

  “The Union forever!”

  On the boardwalk that fronted the Nickel & Dime Saloon, Lemuel Norcross began his daily adventure. He swung under a hitching rail, jumped to a horse trough, and skidded the length of its frozen surface. He twisted in the air, gave a strangled shout, and landed hard on the ground, his tiny boots cracking the surface of the frozen mud. He whirled once more, whinnied like a stallion, and stooped to pick up a dry, white branch unearthed by the rail gang.

  “Springfield Percussion rifle!”

  In the boy’s hands, the stick spat fire, single-handedly holding off the gray hordes of the Confederacy.

  “Liberty and union! Long live Mr. Lincoln!”

  Max frowned at the noise. He turned on his heel, hurried to the news rack at the rear of the store, and turned to face the door. If the boy were to enter his shop today, the large rack of dime novels would be his goal. He would skip in with a loud and cheery hello, run to the little paper-books, and pick up copy after copy in his grubby hands. He would ask Max a thousand questions—why wasn’t there a Mrs. Max; why did Mr. Max talk so funny; was Mr. Max sad about
the president? In his hoarse and chirping voice, the boy would announce each title aloud: The Romance of the Squatter Wife, The Shawnee Scout, The Disagreeable Death of Dangerous Dan. With the noon whistle about to blow, the rail workers would soon be crowding the shop in search of Weyman’s Long Cut or the latest Police Gazette. The fact that the boy could read at the age of seven might have made him a credit to his mother, but in the world of men, Lemuel Norcross was a marked deterrent to the vital transactions that took place amid conversation unfit for children.

  His eyes now fixed on the street, Max watched the little figure’s every move. Lemuel jumped from a rain barrel to an apple box, slid down in a drift of snow, and began to run in the direction of the store. Max braced himself for the boy’s onslaught of chatter when he saw the boy stop dead center in the street. Max abandoned the periodicals, walked back to the shop window, and looked east.

  With the winter sun at their backs, the riders appeared as thin silhouettes against a burst of yellow. At first, Max was blinded by the contrast, the black shapes persisting in his retinas and blocking his vision. But as the men rode into the shade, the glare in his eyes dissolved to reveal a quartet of warriors, hard in their expressions and Ponca by their dress. They were prepared for the cold as no newcomer could be, each man’s face encircled in stiff fur caps still bearing the heads of three raccoons. The headdress on the tallest rider was faceless and black, its texture like shag tobacco, huge horns springing from its temples. Thick buffalo robes tumbled to their boots. Two were colored a rough, soft brown; the others were as pale as a church girl’s flesh. At the edges of each garment could be seen an inch or two of the wooly hair that formed its lining—the exterior of the bison pressed to the outside of the man. As they rode closer, Max could see the stick-like paintings adorning the robes: a deer hunt in reds and blues; a war victory in purples and greens; and on all four robes, men. Some were posed horseback, pulling strong on their bows; others were foot soldiers, giving flight to arrows that would send their rivals to the unknowable.