by Paul Boor
Nicolas thought he’d won the boy over, convinced him to hide from Wilson. He’d promised another season on the ice, more pay, the best bunk in the bunkhouse. Was the boy already dead? Strangled, and at the bottom of a lake? Nicolas’s only hope was that he had fled before the murderous culprits came to collect the young scalawag from Old Jack’s relatives.
Nicolas rode like a madman to Boonville to speak with Old Jack’s granddaughter. The woman opened her front door no more than a crack, barely showing her weaselly face. “His uncle came for him and off they went—all good and proper,” the shrew told him. “And good riddance. Now I’ll thank you to get off my porch.”
The skeletal hands of the clock on the mantel in his study pointed accusingly to noon; its ticking was like distant cannon fire echoing in his head.
“Oh, Nic-oh-las . . .” Ruth’s voice drifted down the stairs like a siren’s call. “I’m due a treatment, Nicolas. It’s time. Are you in your study?”
His study: old leather couch, oak filing cabinet, Chippendale secretary that the years had darkened to a dense, grainless black. Nicolas stored his logbooks, contracts, and actuarial supplies here, but with the ice harvest finished there was little bookkeeping to do, and far too much time to experiment with the contents of the medicine chest that crouched like a mountain cat at the foot of the secretary.
“Nic-oh-las? It’s time.”
He climbed the stairs and measured Ruth’s morning dose of laudanum. He’d had trouble lately bringing the yellow liquid to the proper line etched in the glass; the tremor in his right hand seemed worse each morning. He’d been adjusting his nightly morphine, trying for the pleasant white dreams it had once brought, but lately, they eluded him and the tremor lasted longer into the day.
“There you are. I’ve taken care.”
He walked to the rocking chair in the corner, the chair Ruth had nursed their infant children in. The chair’s creaking and its easy motion seemed to calm the tremor. Ruth took her eyes from the dirt-streaked window and blinked as if she’d wakened from a dream. A tense grin crossed her face and she began to reminisce. “How that Schuyler loved to eat,” she said brightly. “More than anyone at the Van Horne table. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, I remember, Ruth.”
“Abigail, meanwhile—frail as a stick.” The smile faded from Ruth’s lips. She turned back to her window.
Melancholy. Every cure, all the latest from New York and Europe, and still her body withers. Soon she’ll be a skeleton. Where is the woman I once desired? The one who laughed at clouds of bats flitting over Town Lake?
“Schuyler was always the one who . . .”
Schuyler, her favorite. The second born, the healthy, sensitive son. Schuyler rebuffed her attempts to teach him to hunt, to fish . . . he spent his adolescence pounding on Thomas Chubb’s ivory keys. All the boy ever cared about was his own entertainment. The good life, the gaming life.
“Why must you spend all day in your study, Nicolas?”
“I . . . I have details to attend to.”
“All those letters? I’ve seen you at your writing station, you know. Letters are everywhere.”
Nicolas’s thoughts wandered to his study and his well-stocked medicine chest. Once, the careful use of morphine and a tincture of this or that gave his heart joy, his life color. Lately, no combination, no dosage, worked.
At night he tossed, dozing fitfully. He’d begun experimenting with a whiff of ether at bedtime as a remedy. A can of ether, uncapped; a bit of cotton dampened; the chill of the solvent. Ether’s sweet volatility, so pleasant at the end of the day. With an extra whiff, it induced a lasting sleep.
“Here, now, Ruth. Your chowder.” His hand trembled as she took the bowl. “You need to eat and build yourself up.”
Nicolas left Ruth holding her bowl of chowder and returned to his study. In the mantel mirror, he examined his face. Nicolas had always taken pride in the fact that unlike many successful men, he had never allowed excesses of food or drink to cloud his mind or lard his body. He knew his carriage to be graceful, his midriff trim, his limbs firm. He’d always felt ten or fifteen years younger than his years. But now, at forty-one, he’d gone soft. Since the last ice harvest, he caught himself slouching. He needed a shave. His duds were long overdue to the tailor for refurbishment. The skin about his eyes had taken on the color of liver, and there was this infernal tremor of his hand.
Later, in the dead of night, Nicolas pulled on his boots, buttoned his musty jacket, blew out the lamp, and slogged down the muddy streets. It was time to check with the postal mistress on Main Street. In the months since the final ice harvest, the arrival of the Adirondack Mail Express had become the pivotal point of his day.
“Train seems late,” he said to the postal mistress. “I thought I heard its whistle.”
“Mr. Van Horne? You know the timetable, sir. Train’s not due at the station for thirty minutes, and it takes another thirty to ride the mail bag over. Two trains a day, noon and midnight, Mr. Van Horne. Noon and midnight.”
“I’ll wait.”
“We’ll have the mail bag here by half past, weather permitting.”
A letter was found. Nicolas rushed up the hill to the house, kicked off his boots, and retired to his study. The precious posting. He reached for his silver-plated letter opener, wielding it like a sword as he cautiously slit the envelope.
It was four in the morning when Nicolas applied his signature and sealed his reply. Time no longer counted for much; he sat at his secretary for hours, reading, rereading her letters, writing with the passion of a man who knows no timetable.
Dawn was at the window. His head seemed to have cleared. He’d managed an entire night without morphine. Now, with his pent-up thoughts on paper, he needed a deep, rejuvenating sleep.
With his ear tuned for the distant keening of the Adirondack Mail Express’s noon arrival, he reached for the can of ether.
49
Letters: An Appeal
5 June 1889
Forestport
My dear Renée,
I cannot thank you enough for your letters. Their arrival brightens my mood & clears my clouded thinking.
I would tell you how our days grow longer & green things are blooming, but my mind has not been on the weather. As I’ve told you, recent discoveries have led me to suspect a dastardly abuse of children perpetrated here in the North Country. Of late, this has preyed on my mind and tortured my dreams, yet I get nowhere with my enquiries.
My first hope was that this is only a rare cruelty, however I now fear its scope may be larger. How to uncover the wrongdoers & expose them to the authorities remains the problem. I would so value your opinion in this matter, Renée. How I loathe the vast distance between us. I’ve always survived by my wits, but my wits fail me on this confounded issue, this puzzle that refuses to unfold.
Here is one bright idea that’s hounded me. Might I not visit you before my scheduled ice shipment in the new year? The icehouse is full & we already have a reasonable supply of ‘commodity’ for your uncle (12 to be exact). Things are at a standstill, business-wise. Most important, I would benefit from your clear thinking on this odious scheme I’ve uncovered. A single passage by train to Galveston, in midsummer—is this not an excellent idea?
I admit, my thoughts are with you often, Renée. Morning ’til night I am ravaged by torrents of emotion & my mind wanders from matters at hand to my sweet new friend & her faraway life. Do I confess too much?
Write me soon with your judgment on this plan to travel posthaste to Galveston, & do not fault me for these confessions.
Yours with deepest feelings,
Nick
50
Letters: A Warning
Dear Nick,
I have your recent letter in hand & how my heart races at your mention of an early return to Galveston. I so want to hear more of this cruel plot you’ve uncovered against children. I will gladly offer whatever help possible to end such a detestable business, a
nd I can only hope that I have not added to your confusion through some unthinking guile of my own during your earlier visit.
I confess, too, that the thought of my friend the ice merchant again setting foot on our sandbar is exhilarating. But alas, Nick, a journey south now would be ill advised. Consider it no further. The threat of yellow fever to the uninitiated, unexposed individual, a Northerner like yourself, is far too great. Your premature return would be a virtual death sentence. I worry too much for my good ice merchant’s well-being to encourage a move of such rashness . . .
*****
. . . I shall heed the warning of one so expert in the area of epidemics, etc. Nevertheless, dear Renée, I am despondent. An early arrival was such an exciting possibility, and would so help me to understand and perhaps solve my present predicament. The fact of the matter is, I wish to see you in the flesh, so to speak. But when?
Your letters bring me respite & warmth & yet, precious friend, I could use your advice, your intelligent assessment on this important matter that has me at wits’ end. If only I could see your haunting smile & hear your soothing voice.
*****
51
In Her Lab Quietly
She was confused, and Dr. Renée Keiller had rarely known confusion. Throughout her years of university studies, her stay at the Sorbonne laboratories, and her travels along the South American coast in search of Aedes aegypti for Uncle Francis, Renée had always maintained a demeanor and confidence to match any man’s. She thought and acted with crystal clarity. But now, ever since her gentleman friend from the North departed, she’d been distracted, and even confused.
In the quiet of her laboratory, especially late in the afternoon, she caught herself standing aimlessly at the laboratory window, thinking of Nick, the tall, strikingly handsome gentleman from New York. The trader in such lovely ice. She remembered how he entered a room, with every movement of his limbs purposeful and masculine, a man in command of his fate . . . though lately—in his letters—he seemed deeply concerned over this strange matter he’d uncovered. Hopefully, it had nothing to do with the wretched boy he’d delivered to her, for the cells. She yearned to help Nick, to see Nick.
Her feelings about Nick ran so deep, so visceral, she suspected they might be caused by a pathological fluctuation of the vagus nerve. When this emotional turmoil struck, it reminded her of the excitement of discovery in the laboratory. The same thready pulse, the same thump of the heart occurred when, entering her lab at the midnight hour, the electric lights flashed on the whitewashed walls and revealed the details of an experiment in progress. Those few instants when Nicolas had looked into her eyes caused a similar burst of energy, almost electrical in nature. Surprise, exhilaration, an acute release of excitatory chemicals into the bloodstream. Yes, this perfect gentleman had a powerful effect.
And Nicolas did indeed appear the perfect gentleman, though she’d been deceived by appearances before when it came to men. She judged these things poorly. There’d been the gentleman in Havana, a university professor, a researcher like herself, who’d spent the better part of the long rainy winter after her husband died trying to seduce her, unsuccessfully. She’d had European suitors, Spanish speakers with glib tongues. None amounted to much.
She needed to keep her head about her, to rethink this Mr. Nicolas Van Horne from New York. Perhaps she was wrong about him. Perhaps he was nothing more than a hardscrabble mountain man with a head for commerce. A well-traveled bon vivant, a connoisseur of younger women, an ice trader on the prowl for another meaningless dalliance.
No, that wasn’t right. Somehow, she trusted herself about this man. Their moments together had been honest moments. She told herself that the passage of time would dull these emotions, but her heart knew otherwise. She worried about his entanglement in this dangerous business of cadavers. She so wanted to hear more about this thing, this “abuse” being perpetrated in the North. To be near him, to help sort out his theory about children being forced into labor.
It was a struggle to keep from revealing all these concerns to those around her. She couldn’t help but blush at how loudly her heart pounded. Everyone must have heard its thrumming, especially when a new letter arrived.
Her mother certainly noticed. A woman of uncommon sensitivity, a medium, a clairvoyant scientifically proven to be capable of communicating with spirits, her mother was a lightning rod drawing unspoken energy from whoever came near. Just that morning her mother had told her, “I sense your feelings, Renée, and I understand. You’re not wrong to harbor such emotions, darling. But we’re living in the modern world, and above all, one must act like a lady.”
“I realize that,” she’d replied after a moment’s thought. “He has a life of his own, but can we not have a fine friendship, nonetheless?”
“Just remember, dear . . .”
Basil Prangoulis, that clever old devil, sensed it, too. Basil could hear it in Renée’s music, with each strum of her harp, the sadness, the longing. It wafted from the upstairs parlour after the supper hour; it was captured in the random little melodies she composed when she glanced away from her sheet music and her heart spoke through her fingers.
Her mother and Basil certainly must’ve noticed the letters. How could they miss them, stored carefully aligned in the slots of the secretary in the corner of her bedroom? Rows of letters worn nearly through with handling, read over and over by the light of the lamp at her bedside, a lamp Renée kept burning far longer than usual . . . The same lamp that lit the fan and the feathers, his parting presents to her.
“He writes you often,” Madame La Porte had said at breakfast, some weeks before.
“We agreed to correspond, Mother.”
“Is he forward?”
“Certainly not. He acts the complete gentleman.”
“Well, then, you must answer him promptly. It’s only polite.”
Lately, the letters came in a flurry. She learned more about him than seemed humanly possible from mere writing. His fears, his dismay at the heinous things he’d uncovered. His concern for the unfortunate children he thought in danger. His tortured feelings over . . . their time together in Galveston. Was she reading too much into his words? She sensed words behind the words, parsed a deeper meaning, as if she were seated next to him at his inkwell.
Uncle Francis commented on her odd demeanor, despite the pain his tuberculous spine gave him. Dear Uncle was beginning to realize she spent more hours with paper and ink than with her laboratory notebook.
“I . . . I must finish this quickly.” She whispered to herself, seated at her secretary, pen in hand. “A bit of rest and then . . . back to the laboratory.”
The pen scratched.
“‘I admit, Nick, that I share your desire.’ No, that won’t do. Not at all. Perhaps this—‘I, too, am thinking of you in a different way.’”
She thrust the pen back in the inkwell.
“‘A different way.’ This must stop. It must go no further.”
Another letter, half finished, torn and thrown to the floor. She paced by her bedside, kicking idly at the accumulated scraps of her smoothest vellum.
“I need to fight these feelings. Already patients are arriving at the hospital with fevers, and the anti-toxoid still eludes me. I must concentrate on my work, my calling.”
52
Letters: Epidemic
. . . I confess, dear Nick, I grow despondent about our progress in the laboratory. We are well into the hot season & cases of yellow fever fill the wards. Uncle Francis & I remain convinced of our theories, we are working day and night, but with death bearing down, a suitable anti-toxoid from the horses seems unlikely. At best we will implement the cure for next summer’s deadly assault.
And, yes, my dear Nick, I, too, think of you in a different way. But you must stay put. Our letters must do . . .
*****
. . . How I hate that you face such horrors, Renée. The death & suffering you describe is hard to fathom. I think of you & your colleagues o
ften & I hope & pray for your successful experimentation to find the anti-toxoid & effect the cure. How lofty your purpose, how greathearted you are to care for these doomed souls.
If I could assist your noble work in some way, I would dedicate all my resources to it, but I fear your science is beyond my meager understanding…
53
Return of the Wayward Son
It was Abigail’s voice in the distance, carrying over water from the far shore of the lake.
“Wake up . . . Father . . .”
Someone shook his arm. He stirred and found himself reclining in his study, as he’d been, he admitted, for most of the summer, the couch’s dark, rutted leather fragrant and dank with sleep. It was late July, yet he’d dreamt of ice. He fought his way out of a ghastly dream of dead boys piled on the lake’s frozen surface, a grisly heap of limbs forming unintelligible cyphers.
He squirmed and cracked an eye.
“Not again,” Abigail said, her hands on her hips. “Another whole night on the couch, eh?” She stared at the disorder of Van Horne’s study. The jumble of writing materials and stacks of letters. The drug paraphernalia. “You’ll get no proper rest sleeping in your clothes.”
Nicolas swung his legs onto the floor and rubbed his face awake.
“Sky’s back in town.”
“Sky’s here? Sky? Ah, good. I need to speak with the boy.”
“I heard he was at Stillman’s, so I went last night and heard him banging away on their piano. I told him he’d better come by the house, or else.”
“Oh, Schuyler, Schuyler, do I have plans for you, my boy.”
