Magic Words

by Gerald Kolpan

  The braves halted before the door of Max’s shop. With a single motion, the tall rider dismounted and tapped his pony’s nose to keep him still. As he paused to pull his robe tighter, he noticed Lemuel Norcross standing like a statue in the middle of the street. He raised his hand to the boy and smiled.

  Max stomped from the shop, a Chesterfield overcoat still hanging from his left shoulder. He patted the breast pocket of his suit coat. The short-barreled .45 was still there.

  “Nein,” he shouted at the tall man. “No. No. I tell you before. No Indian here. No Indian.”

  The tall brave turned away from Lemuel. Frowning, he plunged his hand into a small pouch at his belt and produced a newly minted territorial dollar. He held it up to Max like a mayor presenting the city’s keys.

  “Tobacco,” said the brave.

  Max’s face reddened as he buttoned the Chesterfield to the neck. “Nein. Tobacco you want? In the saloon there is tobacco. They only will let in an Indian. Not shopkeepers. Maybe you should grow tobacco. I tell again like I have told you from long. No Indian in the stores. No Indian. Go.”

  The brave looked down at Max and then at the dollar. It glinted in the winter light as he held it higher and scowled at the white man.

  “Tobacco,” he repeated, “for Standing Bear.”

  Max felt a chill from within, a coldness left over from the old country.

  These savages had been ordered here by a king; in Prussia he had seen the lengths to which kings would go to get what they wanted and the things that could happen to their underlings when those wants were thwarted: titles stripped, ranks reduced, lands taken. He knew that reasoning with the Indian was of no use. Besides, reason depended on language. The Indian spoke no German and Max no Ponca; and neither party’s English was equal to such delicate negotiations.

  Max cursed in Yiddish and looked at the brave. “You,” he said, motioning to the man. He pointed at the three other riders and shook his head back and forth. “Not them.” The tall brave signaled to his lieutenants, wrapped his robe tighter, and followed Max into the shop, shaking the snow from his boots.

  For the better part of an hour he inspected the various wares, picking things up, holding them to the light, sniffing them. At last, he pointed to a glass jar filled with light-colored burley and held up the dollar. Max weighed the correct amount and placed it in a cotton sack. He took the coin, and returned a silver ten-cent piece to the Indian.

  The tall brave bit into the dime, then took the package with a grunt. Turning toward the door, he noticed the small white boy from the street. He was standing at the magazine rack, looking up from the latest edition of Colonel Custis’ Weekly.

  The Indian walked slowly toward the boy and put his left hand on his shoulder. With his right, he plucked the book from the boy’s grasp. He began to page through it, grinning at the engravings depicting chapter six of Dick Lightheart Encounters Injun Joe, but frowning at the profusion of little black marks that only served to turn the paper gray.

  Lemuel Norcross watched as the Indian returned the dime novel to his hands. The brave strode back to the counter, retrieved the dime from his pocket and placed it carefully to the right of the cash box.

  “For boy,” he said, and walked through the door.

  Lemuel looked hard at the shopkeeper.

  “Is it mine, Mr. Max?” the boy asked.

  Max looked down at the dime. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Take and go. It’s soon lunch whistle. The men will need their tobacco. Go. Read. By me, you’ll not come back.”

  Lemuel paused for a moment and then ran from the store at top speed, stuffing the book into his coat.

  Max put the dime in the cash box and walked to the window again. The Indians had fallen into the shadows, the clacking of their horses’ hooves echoing across the ice. Lemuel Norcross raced after them, shouting and whooping like a red man born.

  “Hooray!” Lemuel Norcross called from the street. “Long live Chased By Owls!”

  Max Meyer shook his head. Perhaps once his younger brother arrived, he could begin to make sense of this land. What kind of country raises a little boy to cry out the name of a sworn enemy of his race? Surely, only in America could a savage receive such gratitude for the purchase of a lurid tale printed on cheap paper for the entertainment of children and fools.

  3

  AS JULIUS MEYER STEPPED FROM THE LAST TRAIN HEADING west, he squinted his eyes against the whiteness of Boone, Iowa’s world. All within his vision appeared solid; variations created by hillside or ravine turned into one endless sheet of paper. In the past hundred miles, the only contrast he had noted was the slate-gray ribbon of the Des Moines River, sad and frozen in place. Julius wiped his nose on his sleeve and pulled his cap low over his ears. All he wanted was a fire and a bowl of soup.

  Fifty feet from the face of the steaming locomotive, the railroad ended. Just as in Omaha, a mass of humanity in all sizes and colors was swinging sledges and clanging down sections of new track. The bosses hollered orders at the men and the workers translated the shouts into their native tongues as the town’s few merchants prepared for the noon rush.

  Picking up his bags, Julius heard a melody; a surprisingly jaunty tune more suited for summer sunshine then the prevailing chill. Coming closer to the tracks, the voices of the blacks cut like ice axes through the cold. The whites and even some of the Chinese joined in for the chorus:

  Take this hammer,

  Carry it to the captain.

  Take this hammer,

  Carry it to the captain.

  Take this hammer,

  Take it to the captain.

  Tell him gone, oh lord,

  Yes, I’m gone.

  Shivering, the boy turned from the singing and searched his coat pocket for the transfer providing passage to Omaha. Guessing that they might know where to go next, Julius followed a group of about a dozen passengers toward a large canvas tent. Beside it stood a wooden post topped by a worn sign:

  STAGE

  The scrawl held no meaning for Julius. His genius lay not in reading languages, but speaking them; still, the letters on the sign matched those on his transfer and he entered through a flap made ragged by the wind. Inside, a sickly-looking woman approached him.

  “Take a number,” she said and handed him a piece of worn cardboard.

  The tent’s interior was warm, the heat provided by an old Franklin stove and the bodies of the travelers. Each one held a card marked with their number, entitling the holder to a turn at remonstrating with an official seated at a low table. The man wore a cap in the style of a train conductor, the word “agent” inscribed in brass above the brim. As he drew closer, Julius could hear a strange, ringing splat and slivers of anguished conversation. Set before the agent’s fingers was a small sign with a name burned into its surface:

  MR. HARRIS T. BOGARDUS

  OVERLAND STAGE COMPANY

  BOONE, IOWA

  When his turn finally came, Julius handed the number and transfer to the man.

  “Well, what is it? Hurry up, boy,” Bogardus said.

  “Yes. When will the coach be leaving?

  Bogardus paused and spat a rich mixture of saliva and tobacco into a nearby spittoon. It rang like a dinner bell.

  “Not today, son. Pro’ly not tomorrow, either.”

  “But why, please?

  “Too cold. Temperature’s got to get to forty. Any less, freeze to death: driver, horse, and fare.”

  “Please. My brother is expecting me.”

  A wooden stamp came down on Julius’s transfer like the judgment of the Lord.

  “He’s expectin’ you not dead. Take this, turn left outside.”

  Bogardus returned the transfer to Julius, accompanied by a skeletonic key from which hung a large wooden tag reading No. #8. Julius made his way through the crowd and stopped to wrap his scarf twice around his head. Turning left as instructed, he could see what looked like tarpaper shacks set in three long rows, moaning in the wind. Some sang high, the
holes in their walls whistling like fifes; others intoned lower scales. Their bass and timpani was banging shutters.

  Number Eight was in the center of the first row. From behind its door, loud enough to be heard over the wind, Julius could hear snoring. He climbed the single step and jiggled the key into the lock.

  As the door rattled open, he was nearly knocked back outside by the force of an ungodly stench. It was a smell that carried within it all solids and fluids the human can produce. It seeped from overflowing chamber pots; wafted from a mess that was once a good night’s liquor and rose from two sleeping bodies laid out on straw long unreplaced. Fighting a wave of nausea, the boy raised his handkerchief to his nose and closed the door behind him. His head swam; but it wouldn’t do to faint now, considering what he might land in.

  “Hey, boy. That door ain’t shut all the way.”

  The voice came from the far left corner of the shack. At first, Julius couldn’t see to whom it belonged, but a second shout revealed a grizzled head, its hat still on, rising from beneath a soiled blanket.

  “I said, shut the fucking door, boy!”

  Julius turned toward the door and shoved it hard. With this last source of fresh air eliminated, Julius stumbled toward a half-filled bucket and gave in to his revulsion.

  “That’s all right, lad. Let it out. Ain’t one of us come into this hell hole without first we served it our dinner.”

  When he finally was able to lift his head, Julius could see that the man beneath the blanket was now sitting up. His hat was worn and stained with sweat, and his buckskins had seen their best days years ago. Although it was winter, the man’s complexion had the ruddy cast of a farmer. His beard was gray except at the mustache and the swath beneath the lower lip where some black fought to remain. Julius could feel his own cheeks turn from green to red at the sound of the man’s laughter.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of, boy. When I first come in here, four days ago, I think I gave up dirt I’d et as a child. And believe me—this is the goddamn Ritz compared to some burrows they got here. ’Course, it’s probably a little worse ’cause of old Jim Riley over there.”

  The man pointed to a series of lumps beneath two horse blankets. The covers had been pulled over the figure’s head so that only his boots were exposed. Julius realized that the snoring he had heard upon entering the shack was now silent.

  “Is he sick?” he asked the gray man.

  “He’s dead, buddy,” the gray man said, chuckling. “Dead three nights. I’ve been meaning to bring him outside, pack him in snow. But the wind whipped up last night so’s you couldn’t walk abroad and he ain’t begun to stink yet, so I went back to sleep and left it for today. Guess that little stove makes it warmer in here than I thought. That’s him in the air all right, so into the drifts he goes. They’ll keep him fresh ’til the ground’s soft enough to bury him. Probably April.”

  The boy looked on in horror as a broad, gapped grin spread across the gray man’s face.

  “You know,” he said. “Planting season.”

  The shack rang with laughter. The gray man slapped his thighs beneath the blanket and shook his head back and forth. When he was finished, he rose from beneath his bedding and approached Julius.

  “Well, what do you want? The head or the feet?”

  Julius didn’t answer but moved instinctively away from the face of the corpse. As they lifted him from the floor, the blanket fell away from Jim Riley’s shoulders. His eyes and mouth were open. They carried the body through the door and dropped it in a drift at the side of Number Eight. Wiping the snow from his hands, the gray man knelt down, shot his cuffs, and pulled the boots from the dead man’s feet.

  “Waste not, want not, my sainted mother always said.”

  The task completed, the two kicked up enough snow to cover Jim Riley and hurried back inside. Perhaps it had been the open door or the absence of a rotting man in their midst, but Julius found the air in Number Eight not quite so foul as before. The gray man reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out something that looked like a sliver of wood. He looked at it for a moment, then bit into it and began to chew. With a look of satisfaction, he held it up to Julius.

  “Jerky?”

  The boy held up his hand and murmured a polite decline. He might be getting used to the shack, but not so much that he could eat in it.

  “All right, boy, suit yourself. Better get some rest, though. My bones tell me we’ll be on our way day after tomorrow and you better hope it heats up enough to travel but not much more. Standing Bear—ol’ Ma-chu-na-zha—and his boys have been known to venture this far east this time of year, but with weather like this I think they’d just as soon sit warm in the wigwam, so to say.”

  “This Standing Bear is an Indian?”

  “An Indian? He’s the Indian, son.”

  The gray man sat down on the floor and removed his moccasins. He reached for Jim Riley’s boots and slipped them over his worn stockings. Satisfied that they fit, he slipped beneath the blanket again. Julius found a spot near the window seemingly unfouled by human liquids or dirty clothing.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Julius Meyer, sir.”

  “John Nathan McGarrigle, at your service. But my friends and enemies call me Prophet John.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julius said, “but I am European. In English this word can mean more than one thing. ‘Profit’ as in money, or ‘prophet’ as in one who sees the future. Which are you, please?”

  The gray man stared at Julius for a moment and burst once again into laughter. He pointed at the bewildered boy as if he were a zoo exhibit and coughed and choked until he could speak again.

  “You going to Omaha?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll find out,” he said, and collapsed into the straw, helpless.

  The next morning was colder than the last, and true to the gray man’s prediction, the required temperature wasn’t reached until the day following. This was determined by Mr. Harris T. Bogardus of the Overland Stage Company walking into the Lament, the shack that served as the village saloon, taking a shot of whiskey, walking outside for a few minutes, and walking back in. If Mr. Bogardus instructed the drivers to harness the horses, those bound for points west could proceed. If he ordered another shot, they would remain trapped in Boone until the weather deigned to cooperate.

  At the instant Bogardus set down his glass and called for his men, the travelers ran to their shacks, gathered their trunks and carpetbags, and piled into four waiting stagecoaches. Julius shared his with a married couple from Ohio, a laborer seeking railroad work, Prophet John McGarrigle, and a prostitute whose perfume helped to mask the aroma of the other passengers.

  When the coach arrived in Omaha some ten hours later, Julius’s brother greeted him with a cup of strong tea, a silent nod, and a brown paper voucher. It read:

  BRUNO’S NEAPOLITAN BARBER SHOP

  SIGNORE B. GAITA, PROP.

  THIS COUPON ENTITLES THE BEARER TO ONE (I) BATH

  INCLUDING HOT WATER, SOAP AND LAUNDERED TOWEL.

  REMITTED: 25 CENTS. 35 CENTS SATURDAYS.

  Max pointed toward the barber’s red and white pole and went back inside his shop. The boy, still carrying his suitcase, walked across Farnum Street, dodging piles of frozen horse manure and patches of black ice.

  As he walked into the shop, Julius saw four women waiting for their turn at the warm water and soap, the whore from the stagecoach first. Doing quick calculations in his head, the boy estimated that, with their ablutions and powder and dressing, his wait would be something close to an hour per woman.

  Leaving his suitcase to hold his place in line, Julius walked across the room to a dark man carefully stropping a razor on a long leather belt.

  “Buon Giorno, Signore,” he said.

  Ten minutes later, Julius was luxuriating in a copper tub. Following their short conversation, Signore Bruno had told the whore that, for his health, this young man must precede her. Escortin
g his charge through the bathroom door, the barber personally supervised the heating of Julius’s water and, with a flourish, threw in some special scented salts, usually five cents extra. He instructed his attendant that there would be no rushing of this bath; and that he was to accept no gratuity, as this young man was his ospite—his guest.

  Leaving the boy to undress, Signore Bruno returned to his strop. He would get to the bottom of this. It was simply impossible that this dark bambino could be German and even more impossible that he could be related in any way to such a man as Max Meyer, a sour and disagreeable sort and a Christ-killer to boot. No, this boy was Italiano: and by his speech, from very near his own village on the Costiera Amalfitana.

  4

  CONSIDERING ITS LOCATION IN THE WORLD AND THE TIME period it occupied in history, the food served at the Nickel & Dime should have been a lot worse. As it was, its cuisine had made the saloon the class of Omaha. This was entirely due to the fastidiousness of its cook, an enormous black man who called himself Doris.

  It was said in Omaha that he had run away from a plantation in Albemarle, North Carolina, bringing with him every secret of Southern cuisine. He produced biscuits as light as butterfly wings; fried chicken encrusted with bread and herbs; and ham and gravy that had once caused two fur trappers to fight it out over an evening’s last portion. The battle only ended when Doris himself emerged from the kitchen with two platters, having split the order in two and augmented it with some chicken-fried steak gratis. He cracked the plates down on the table, threw a dishtowel over his shoulder as if it was a feather boa, and barked at the two combatants:

  “Now you girls eat.”

  The fight probably would have continued, but the trappers weren’t willing to risk the chef’s wrath, which was as much a local legend as his victuals. They had both been present the night Packy Girard had complained that his steak was tough and had watched in amazement as Doris bum’s-rushed him into the street, where he landed under a horse that, at that very second, proceeded to relieve itself. With this image in their heads, they disentangled, rose from the floor, and tucked into their meals as ordered, neither of them wishing to live with the stigma of having had their behinds whupped by a sodomite. Such a fate had befallen Packy—forcing him to leave town for points east, no longer able to abide the new nickname his fellow rail workers had awarded him: “Pansy” Girard.