She would return seven days hence—no longer leaving the food outside the lean-to, but entering and spending a few moments with Julius as the prophet slept. Each time, she would spend a few minutes more—bringing him news and helping him to better speak her language. As the spring neared, they spoke longer and longer, some nights until the sun peeked through the cracks in the hut. At every greeting and every leaving, she would take his hands in hers and speak his name.
For all her eighteen years, the life of Lady-Jane Little Feather had been an exemplar of plains law. Here, a man was what he made of himself; a woman was what a man said she was.
If any fool required proof of this, he needed only to follow the progress of young Mr. Julius Meyer: Jew among animists, white among red, slave among warriors.
All through the winter, Lady-Jane had viewed him with disgust and fascination. She had seen him shiver in the cold and fight the dogs for scraps; she had watched as he and the gray man built the hovel of branches and leaves; she had even heard him sob like a child after being spat upon by a warrior who ordered that he pack his pipe and cook his food, the humiliating labor of a woman.
Her labor.
Still, the Jew boy managed to gain favor—not for how quickly he retrieved a meat knife or how long he could hold up the beam of a lodge—but for the sorcery of his ears and the glibness of his tongue.
Lady-Jane had been born to the Ponca and arrived at the village more than a month before him. Yet, with spring now nearly in sight, her imprecise pronunciation still brought ridicule from her “sisters” in the tribe. There had been no such derision for the Jew boy. At first, he dared not speak at all, accepting his orders as wordlessly as the horses he brushed or the curs he boiled.
But then as if by witchcraft, he began to talk.
All who heard were amazed. Full sentences poured from the boy’s mouth, accompanied by the fluid gestures that were as much a part of Ponca as its idioms and phrases. Yes, he still had to beg for his food, but now he did so with perfect grammatical structure. There was even a rumor that the egg eater had dared to tell a funny story to Chased By Owls himself; the gossips claimed that the tall brave practically pissed himself with laughter and rewarded the boy with a piece of jerky large enough to keep him alive for a week.
On the day Julius Meyer was elevated from outcast to adviser, the snows had piled nearly to the top of the lodges. That morning and afternoon had been like all others, filled with work; the hides the women had tanned in the fall now demanded transformation into goods. All day and evening, Lady-Jane sat on her small mat in the main lodge stitching a pair of moccasins. She nearly cried at the state of her hands. In a single winter they had mutated into horny claws nearly as hard as the bone needles they grasped to pierce the leather.
From her mat, Lady-Jane could see Standing Bear sitting motionless by the central fire, smoke curling about his head. He did not move when McGarrigle and his frightened young companion entered the lodge. With the wave of a finger, the chief bade them sit.
The gray man spoke first. His English was sprinkled with what she recognized as Ponca terms for “sky” or “god” or “buffalo,” but he needn’t have bothered. Though here only some ninety days, the boy beside him absorbed words with the speed of a mustang and translated it for the chief just as quickly.
“We ask again for freedom,” Julius said for the old man. “It’s been many days we’ve been held here. I’ve tried to be patient and I thank Standing Bear for the use of the woman and the ration of whiskey. But the spirits become angry when one of their conduits is mistreated. As one of them conduits, I ask that Standing Bear forgive me if I speak plain. Whatever befalls you and the Ponca now must be on your head. I regret to make such blunt threats.”
Standing Bear passed the pipe to Prophet John. There was sadness in his amber eyes.
“You speak of anger among the spirits. But, how much more angry can the spirits get with Bear? Bluecoats pursue me everywhere. The spit of land we now live on is to be given to the dog-birthed Sioux. They want to move us to a place I fear does not have enough water to brew a cup of tea. Every day, Chased By Owls becomes more restless and his followers more impatient for blood. You should thank your Man Nailed To A Tree that I can still imagine that God is capable of bringing more curses down on me or I would relieve at least one of my headaches by allowing my young men to use your penises as sheaths for their knives.”
Smoke and silence filled the room. The two men passed the pipe between them until Standing Bear broke the silence with a cough.
“It seems that two kinds of magic have come my way,” the chief said. “First, there is the gray one’s magic, of which I have seen little lately. Perhaps this is good: when he rolls about on the ground, the news is usually bad.
“But the egg eater’s magic—that I now hear every day. Never has anyone seen a white learn our language in less time than the cornstalk grows. This is truly something not to be taken lightly—medicine which may prove an antidote to what poisons this tribe.”
For the first time, the chief passed the pipe to Julius. The boy drew a few shallow puffs, wiped the stinging vapors from his eyes, and passed it back.
“So my decision is this. The gray one will intercede with the spirits and tell them that the Ponca are sick of moving and ask them to make the whites agree to let us stay in the Niobrara. When he has done this, he will be set free, providing he does not reveal our location to the bluecoats.”
Prophet John did all he could not to smile. “And the egg eater?” he asked.
Standing Bear again passed the pipe to Julius. Although his words seemed meant for McGarrigle, his eyes were fixed upon the boy.
“You have seen how Half Horse translates for me. His skills being what they are, I have often worried that someday I would find I had declared war when in fact, I had only remarked upon the fineness of the weather. In view of this, I have decided to keep the boy here. He shall have his own lodge. He will learn our ways—riding, war, and the tenets of our faith. No one will threaten him because he will be my son, and when the time comes to parlay with the whites, my speaker.”
The prophet nodded. “Will this be a permanent arrangement?”
Standing Bear continued to look straight at Julius.
“We all know that nothing but the earth is permanent. But if by this you ask if I am kidnapping this boy, no man can kidnap his own son. I only command that he stay here long enough to know my people and negotiate with your army. This will be a year, perhaps two. But even when he is gone, still shall I be his father, which will mean to the Indian everywhere that he is of Standing Bear. My allies will greet him with food and drink; and his enemies will be mine.”
Julius looked toward Prophet John for any sign of rescue; but the gray man had adopted his “red face,” the smooth and impassive mask of a chief.
“Well, it’s not perfect,” McGarrigle said, “but it’ll do compared to death.”
The chief stood. Standing Bear clasped hands with the prophet and then turned to Julius. The boy hesitated and then took the hard hand in his own.
As she watched the two whites leave the lodge, Lady-Jane seethed with fury. From this day forward the Jew boy would sit at the chief’s right hand, privy to the secrets of a body whose mission was chartered during the first days of creation. Skin had not mattered, nor birth, nor work, nor beauty, nor courage. In the end, Julius Meyer had only needed to be one thing—a man—for his world to change in an instant; while she remained a white man’s slut, destined to live what remained of her life in a bitter limbo between daughters and dogs.
13
EVER SINCE THE THIRD CURTAIN CALL, SEAMUS DOWIE HAD been praying to the Virgin.
So fierce had been the clomping of boots in the balconies that he had begun to fear for their structural integrity. Standing in the wings, he wrapped a rosary around his hands and tried bellowing the Lord’s Prayer directly into the audience. It was no use. Our Father might well be in heaven, he thought, but if he wants to qu
iet this crowd, he’ll have to come down here and bring Jesus, the fire brigade, and the cops.
Kissing the cross, Seamus jammed the beads into his vest pocket and walked behind the main flat toward a large oaken door. He plucked a candle from an array at its left, lighted it, and walked two hundred and two steps straight down. At the bottom of the stairs, he lighted the first of forty candles lining an enormous cellar and waited for his master.
On stage, Alexander made one final bow and, rising to his full height, pointed both fingers toward the audience as if firing pistols. Alternating hands, he began hurling playing cards through the air at an astounding rate of speed. Then, as the crowd cheered, he crossed the apron from right to left, propelling card after card into the house, two, three, four at a time. Some patrons caught them mid-air, others stooped to pluck them from the theatre’s floor. Struggles broke out, even between ladies, and whoops and hollers filled the auditorium, the victors holding their mementos aloft in triumph.
On its face, each card displayed a color drawing of Alexander as the Knave of Hearts, complete with crown and halberd. The obverse read:
THE GREAT HERMANN
Souvenir of his
ONE-THOUSANDTH and FINAL SOLD-OUT PERFORMANCE!
32 months! Most consecutive standing room
shows in world history!
ALL CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE OUR GUESTS!
December 21st 1871
THANK YOU, BELOVED BRITAIN!
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND GOODBYE.
The diversion created by the souvenirs allowed Alexander to make his escape. He walked swiftly beneath the stage left flies and down a cramped corridor bedecked with the flowers of well-wishers. Without a word, he entered his dressing room, throwing down his gloves and hat. His dresser, a white-haired man named Armbrister, helped strip him of his sweat-soaked clothing and handed him a simple shirt and trousers, the braces already attached. Alex put them on in seconds, grabbed a lighted candle, and hurried from the room. He crossed to the rear of the stage and, calling down to the Irishman, began descending the stairs.
Seamus Dowie had hoped that on his night of greatest triumph, Alex might relax for an evening; celebrate with a glass or two or give employment to a high-priced girl; but his entreaties hadn’t succeeded on the hundredth night, nor the two hundredth, nor the five hundredth. The thousandth night would be no different. For the boss, the performances had become a simple job of work, the cheers and applause a mere handshake for a job well done. Once his task was completed, Alexander would run to this rat-infested cavern to perfect the only thing about which he now seemed to care.
Seamus removed the dust cover from the latest configuration of the apparatus and awaited further instructions.
Alexander crossed his arms and stared at the trunk. He walked around it, banged on its lid and sighed. He lifted his eyes to heaven, lowered them to the floor, and murmured oaths in German and Yiddish.
In his mind, the trunk talked back.
Fill me with trap doors, festoon me with mirrors, use all your hard-learned wiles to misdirect the audience. Still I will defy you! Your silly trick depends on speed. Right now, your best escape has taken three minutes—but even if you cut that down to one, who will be amazed? If that big redheaded horse of yours gets out in forty seconds, so what? But by all means, continue! It will be a delight to laugh along with the audience as it whistles and boos and hollers, “fake!” Compars is right, Little Sasha! My secret is safe—at least from you—a boy ungrateful for an unmatched legacy.
“All right, Seamus, let’s try it again.”
For the next several hours the two men labored over different combinations. Dowie entered the bag first while Alexander stood atop the trunk: three minutes, five seconds. They reversed positions and loosened the trapdoor: two minutes, forty-two seconds. Alex examined the bag’s escape panel: still too hard to locate in darkness. The trunk might as well have been laughing aloud.
By three in the morning, the two men had attempted the escape over forty times. Their best reading was two minutes, thirty seconds.
Seamus Dowie picked up his coat from a bench and whisked his hands across its fabric; dust flew in his face.
“Ya can fire me if ya like, Mister Alex,” Seamus said, “but sacking or no, I’m all in. It’s bad enough we sail for Brooklyn in two day’s time without so much as a celebratory ale between us, but now there’ll be no sleep until the boat, unless ya fancy the other assistants forgettin’ half the equipment on Southampton dock.”
“You’re too big,” Alexander said.
“Mr. Alex?”
“You’re too big, Seamus. To give you the space we need to maneuver in the bag, we need to build a bigger trunk, which would clearly announce the whole thing as phony.”
“Well, you’ve got apprentices aplenty would be happy as clams to let themselves be trussed up however ya like,” Seamus said. “I t’ink both Billy Robinson and Jimmy Ring are sufficiently undernourished for the job.”
Alexander spat on the floor. “Neither of them has the brains God gave a goose. It’s all I can do now to keep them from spilling my secrets when in their cups. I’ll probably get rid of both of them when we get to New York. I swear, either of them breathes one word of my methods, I’ll turn them over to Ianucci and his boys for a lesson.”
Seamus circled the trunk and lit the last of his cigarettes.
“As much as it pains me to say it, sir, you’re gettin’ more like the Herr Docktor every day.”
Alexander’s eyes opened wide. He grabbed a hammer from a workbench and raised it above his head.
“Aye, strike me if ya must, or force me to break ya in two as ya know I can; but it’s true as a bride on her weddin’ day. This here Substitution Trunk is all ya can t’ink of even as a country is lyin’ at yer feet. Ya speak of Billy and Jimmy as if they’s yer enemies—two boys as would gladly walk through fire for ya. Ya talk of employin’ villainous eye-talians to torture ’em. Beware, sir. Much more of this and you’ll become the first Great Herrmann, not the second: as grand as Compars himself—and just as mad.”
The magician’s lips curled back from his teeth and he raised the hammer higher. Then he slumped, stumbling toward a broken and dirty chair. The hammer slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor, the sound echoing and re-echoing through the vast cellar. He wiped his eyes.
“You are right as usual, my good friend. The face in the mirror looks more and more like my brother: fascinated by nothing but the job, loving no one but the audience. I can’t sleep for thinking of this illusion. I forget my meals and am losing weight I can’t afford.”
Alexander rose from the chair. His blue trousers had become gray with coal ash and black with machine oil. He reached up to place a hand on his big assistant’s shoulder.
“I forget that my mania can drive sanity from the minds of others—but now I’ve been sufficiently told off. And so, bucko, we shall brave the hectic days between now and Southampton and then, no more work! On the ship, we’ll have oysters and champagne, count the dolphins as they glide through the sea, and, as the great Jehovah is my witness, I shall perform only such magic as might advance us with the ladies.”
Seamus smiled at his young master. Alex nodded and turned toward the mocking trunk.
“Then, once back home, we’ll break the secret. And the world will stare open-mouthed at our metamorphosis.”
Alexander ran his hands along the top of the trunk. The leather felt rough and the brasses were cold on his fingers.
“To turn a lock one needs a key. We haven’t found it because I’ve been looking in the wrong place. It’s not with us. No, it’s held by someone tiny and strong—small and agile enough to defeat our merciless stopwatch. We’ll find her, Seamus. Somewhere in America, she’s waiting.”
14
AS HIS WAGON APPROACHED M. MEYER & CO., ELI Gershonson felt good about all he had accomplished and optimistic that he might find his brother-in-law in an agreeable humor.
Ever since Julius
had disappeared, Max had conducted all of his Indian trade through Eli. The peddler was used to dealing with the tribes and, over time, he had come to consider them his friends. In the past year, his missions had been especially fruitful. With the last of the hostile tribes defeated and their hunting and farming grounds restricted, they were happy to barter their works for manufactured goods and some hard currency.
So, if he had to tolerate a bitter and unpleasant Max, so be it. He had been corresponding with a woman in lower Manhattan, hoping she might eventually join him in Omaha. The larger his nest egg, the better chance he had of winning her. Max’s sourness seemed a small tax to pay for a down payment on happiness.
Eli tied his mules to a hitching post and opened the wagon’s side panel. Drawing a sharp breath, he removed two huge canvas sacks from its interior and carried them through the front door of the shop. Inside the bag were buffalo-hide shirts inscribed with fine art, hand-tooled moccasins, and silver and bone jewelry. He stumbled inside and plunked the bags down on the floor.
“That looks heavy, Gershonson,” Max said in Yiddish. “When will you stop such narrishkeit and give up that farcockter wagon of yours?”
Eli smiled his salesman’s smile. “And hello to you, cousin. I missed you, too.”
“Never mind,” Max said, lifting one of the bags and looking inside. “My brother is gone a year. He’s never coming back. I need help that won’t rob me in the new store. Who else can I trust but family? You think that girl on Houston Street is going to wait forever for you to make a few shekels?”
Eli grinned wider. “Max, I think you have the kind of trouble everyone needs. Is it my fault that you are such a success? It looks to me like you’re fine without my help. I know you’re trying to be charitable to a relative, but if I took any more money from your pocket, I would feel even more guilty. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to sell settees or sofas or, gottenyu, a grand piano!”
Max’s face turned red with irritation. He had heard this “poor relation” speech before. But the truth was that Max was in dire need of Eli’s skills for his new furniture store further down on Farnum. Here, Omaha’s quickly growing middle class could purchase all that was needed to make a prairie home a haven of practicality and refinement. Business was good, but he knew that with the affable Gershonson serving his customers, the new shop could be twice as profitable.
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