by Paul Boor
Nicolas had been in the same room with his son only twice since New Year’s, and both times they’d ended up in a row over money. But Nicolas had thought hard on Schuyler’s waywardness since the night of his return from the South. He vowed to change his tack. At age twenty, it was time for Schuyler Van Horne to get serious about earning money the Van Horne way. But Nicolas would coerce and convince rather than rail at his son. He’d start with a reasonable but profitable proposition—one that involved Galveston.
“You see,” Abby continued, “his money’s run out. I confess, I lent him a bit after your last row, and even that’s gone.”
The morning July haze lifted, the sun shone, and deerflies swarmed in the warm pines. Nicolas threw open the kitchen windows and heated water. He prepared the steel tub for a bath in the spare room off the kitchen. He soaked a good hour, until the hot water had softened the dried, dark blotches that lined his arms. His attempts to decrease his morphine use hadn’t gone well.
By noon Nicolas had eaten some crusts of bread with jam and donned lighter, summer pants and a fresh shirt. The afternoons had been exceptionally warm the past few weeks. Raucous finches flitted outside the window. Nicolas sat on the couch in his study, rehearsing his measured approach until Schuyler’s resonant, deep profundo, perhaps a full tone lower than Nicolas’s voice, penetrated the study from the kitchen.
“I tell you, Sis, I must! Gawd! The mess I’m in. I’ll do whatever’s necessary.”
“You’d better, if you know what’s good for you.”
Nicolas sprang from the couch and rushed to the kitchen, where Abigail stood arm in arm with her older brother.
“Hello, hello, dear Father,” Schuyler sputtered, embracing Nicolas. “I’m happy to be home.” He backed away gingerly. “Truly, I am, Father.”
“As am I, Schuyler. Might I ask, dear son, where you’ve been these past months?”
“In New York City, of course. Didn’t I tell you? Ah, that greatest of metropolises,” Schuyler said, looking skyward with an actorly gesture of the hand. “Entertainment, Father. That’s what I’m all about. Playing my music in the public houses, the cabarets. Now they have me arranging shows. I hire only the finest of professional singers and dancers.”
Nicolas scowled, despite his promise to himself to remain calm. Singers and dancers, indeed. Trollops and streetwalkers, more likely.
“The big publishers are finally onto me,” Schuyler went on. “My songs jam the taverns, especially with the newcomers to the city.”
“I heard him,” Abigail interjected. “Last night at the inn—and I admit, he bangs ’em out. It drew quite a crowd.”
“That was nothing,” Schuyler said. “In New York, we run three, sometimes four shows a night. They arrive in droves, fresh off the boat. Irish, mostly.”
“But, Son,” Nicolas said, “it’s been months since we’ve seen you.”
“I’m sorry about that . . . you see, I have a little problem, Father.”
“A money problem, I’m sure.”
“No . . . well, yes, but this other . . . It’s a bit personal,” he mumbled, glancing at his sister. “It’s a case of the clap.”
Abigail groaned.
Nicolas put a hand to his forehead. “I should have guessed.”
“But I have myself a fine doc now, a master with the dilator.” Schuyler hesitated, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “I can pee again.”
“And what about your drinking?” Nicolas said with a grunt. “Does the booze help you pee?”
“I’m afraid I owe the doc quite a bit.”
“How much?”
“A little over fifty dollars, but I was hoping to get an even hundred to advance my ventures in the song-and-dance enterprise. Count it as an investment in my future, won’t you?”
“What in God’s name happened to all that I gave you at New Year’s?” Nicolas asked, trying to control the slow boil in his voice. He knew too well his son’s haunts and amusements, the fast horses, the games of chance. “And what became of the money Abigail advanced you?”
Abigail threw up her hands and turned away. “Oh, forget it. Just forget it.” She pushed her way out the screen door and stalked onto the porch, out of earshot.
“How about the funds from those promissory notes you so glibly wrote, Schuyler?”
“The money . . . well, the damn horse wouldn’t run.”
“You lost it all on a horse?”
“It wasn’t my fault! I was trying to capitalize on the funds . . . They were neck and neck!”
“And your horse lost.”
“By a nose,” Schuyler muttered, his head down.
Nicolas went silent, struggling again to compose himself. All on one horse. For Nicolas, who enjoyed playing the ponies as much as any man, a leisurely day at the races was a rare treat. For Schuyler, it was serious business.
He started again, slowly, in a firm, persuasive tone.
“Understand me, Son. You’ll never win at gambling. That New Jersey crowd at Monmouth is too rich for your blood. You know that.”
“You’re right, Father. I’ve had it with horses. Song and dance and music—entertainment—that’s where my talents lie, not the damned track. And now that the publishers are onto me . . . well . . . one needs to meet certain expenses, you see, to live in a certain style. It won’t be spent frivolously, I promise. And of course, my doc needs payment.”
The elder Van Horne wrapped an arm around his son’s meaty shoulders, linking them together, these two men of dissimilar stature, Nicolas the taller, his features more finely carved and his mustache and chestnut-brown hair shades darker than Schuyler’s sandy mop.
“Come sit a moment, Son.” They sat and faced each other across the kitchen table. “Before I fork over any more money, I have a proposition for your future.”
“I’ll not harvest ice, if that’s what you’re after.”
“It’s not about the harvest, Schuyler.”
“I told you, Father, it’s too damn cold. I can’t stand on that lake in winter. My feet freeze.”
“How about a warm climate, then? How about building an icehouse?”
“Building?”
“I want you to supervise the building of an icehouse in Galveston.” Schuyler gave a blank stare. “It’s in the state of Texas.”
Schuyler gasped. “Texas? With wild Indians and buffalo and—”
“Ha! None of that,” Nicolas chortled. “It’s quite civilized. First, you’ll go to Saint Louis to study our icehouse there. Come October, you’ll take the Saint Louis blueprints to Galveston and supervise construction of an icehouse on their harbor.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m thinking of an even larger icehouse, perhaps big enough to hold forty thousand tons. We’ll have to decide which is the best wharf to build on. We’ll cut out the go-betweens, Schuyler! It’ll boost our profits. The South’s a perfect market for ice, nearly untouched. It’s hot as Hades and ice is of great use for the fevers that plague them.”
Schuyler, still unconvinced, shook his head.
“It’s the family business, Son,” Nicolas said. “Try this once, won’t you? Wait until you see Saint Louis, boy. It’s a boomtown. The cabarets are famous.”
Schuyler’s face brightened and Nicolas pressed on.
“Once you’ve built the icehouse, you’ll be free to return to New York to this song-and-dance business of yours.”
Schuyler seemed about to give in and agree when the stairs from the second floor creaked, and Ruth stood shakily on the bottom step.
“Schuyler, my darling,” she said in a whisper. “I thought I heard your voice.”
The wayward son rushed to embrace her. “Mother, it’s wonderful to see you . . . but you’re still ill.”
“I’m never well, Son.”
“You’re so pale and . . .” Schuyler stepped back to study his mother. “You must come to the city,” he chided gently. “Really, Mother. We’ve such wonderful medical men. I myself have re
cently made the rounds of the surgical institutes.”
Abigail, meanwhile, stepped in from the porch with her arms full of potatoes and turnips. She skulked past Schuyler and their mother to the stove, where she stoked the embers remaining from the morning. She pulled a Dutch oven from the shelf and banged the pot onto the stove’s hot spot. “We’ll need something to eat,” she grumbled, unnoticed by the others. She broke the seal on a Mason jar of preserved venison and dumped the meat into the Dutch oven, where it gave a faint sizzle. She opened a bottle of beer, tested a sip, then poured it in.
Steam rose from the heavy pot. Schuyler said, “It’s getting too damned hot in here,” and led his mother out the screen door to the porch, leaving Abigail at the stove and Nicolas at the kitchen table.
Abigail worked the kitchen pump, and scrubbed and peeled the potatoes and turnips she’d retrieved from the root cellar.
“Have you heard any word about Knox?” she asked, eyeing a turnip.
“Nothing. Adam’s put the word out in town. Up north, too, as far as Saranac.”
“I’m terribly afraid for Knox,” Abby said. “That Mr. Wilson gave me the creeps.”
Nicolas, too, was unsettled by the thought of another dead boy. “I’ve no idea what else to do about Knox,” he said. “We may never know what became of the poor devil.”
Abigail set the top on the pot, pushed it to the back of the stove, and turned to her father. “It’s good to see Sky. He’s fatter than ever but he looks well, despite his little medical problem. Do you think he’ll take you seriously about Galveston?”
“I’ve been dreaming of this icehouse all summer. Think how good it’ll be for business, Abby. I’ll arrange funds for him, I’ll do it all tomorrow, but he’s got to get over his cantankerous ways. He’s got to.”
“He can hardly change what’s in his blood, Father.”
Nicolas gave her a stony look.
“I must give this another stir,” she said, turning to her stew.
54
Letters of Intention
18 July 1889
Galveston
Dearest Nick,
I shall travel north! Uncle’s colleagues at the university in Boston have devised new methodologies to obtain anti-toxoid from horses. I must travel to Boston to learn from them. The timing is uncertain, but the sooner, the better. I will depart within the next few weeks. Final commitments are being wired as I write. How my heart pounds at the prospect!
I shall travel near you, Nick. May I impose for a brief visit? Let me know your thoughts. A day’s rest in the coolness of the mountains would be welcome.
I fully understand the delicacy of your situation, but I so want to see your beloved North Country firsthand . . .
*****
. . . I can’t wait to see you, dear Renée, & it’s certainly no imposition. Indeed, it’s a summer’s long dream come true.
I would suggest, given the situation, as you say, that we settle on some mutually convenient venue for a meeting. Perhaps Saratoga. The racing in August is lovely fun, but you must make at least two days for it. I keenly await your response . . .
55
Upstate Arrival
For Nicolas, the noon departure of the Mohawk Valley Flyer was a quick ride to Albany. As the verdant hills rolled past his coach window, whole paragraphs of Renée’s letters ran through his head. He’d memorized every word, especially the parts where she bared her feelings for him, even told him of her “racing heart” and her thinking “in a different way.”
Nicolas was thinking differently, too. Schuyler had embarked for Saint Louis, set on the right path, and that progress emboldened him. Even the nagging problem of murdered children in his ice faded in his mind and seemed conquerable as the wood lots, fields, and valley towns whisked by, their chimneys busily belching the stuff of industry, their stations crowded with men of commerce. Perhaps, after all, Knox would be found alive. He had his best man, Adam Klock, searching the entire North Country.
As the train drew into the crowded outskirts of Albany, he imagined Renée in her coach, steaming east behind him, perhaps by only a few hours. His trip had been quick and comfortable, whereas Renée had endured four full days on the train in the August heat. She would be weary.
What a surprise, then, to see her step off the train at the central station, his dear friend the lady doctor, bright as morning. Glimpsed through the oncoming rush of debarking passengers, Renée’s wry, intelligent smile lit the capital city’s platform. Nicolas, not sure of what to expect, rushed to her, his heart ratcheting up in his chest. She came toward him, hands out.
“How well your youth serves you,” he said with a nervous laugh. He took her two hands firmly in his. “You truly are a remarkable woman.”
She leaned forward and delivered a peck to each cheek, very European. Nicolas caught a whiff of the soot and cinder-dust of long nights in a railroad coach—then, that lovely apple blossom scent, recalling in an instant his island visit months before.
“You cannot imagine,” she said, stepping back with a sigh, “how I’ve dreamt of this moment.” Nicolas felt heady, charmed by the familiar, sibilant ring of her voice. Here in Albany, though, had he caught a gentle, Southern cadence he’d not noticed on the island of Galveston?
“How is it possible you look so well rested?”
“To tell the truth, I’m in dire need of a powder room.”
“I’ve just the thing,” he said, leading her on his arm down the platform to the baggage car. “I’ve taken rooms for this evening at the Grand American—the best in Albany. As my honored guest you’ll have whatever you wish, and after some supper and a good night’s rest, we’ll be off to Saratoga to play the horses.”
A carriage waited. The lady’s Pullman case was loaded and within a few city blocks they stood in the airy atrium of the Grand American Hotel, where arrangements had been made, rooms prepared, the staff alerted. Nicolas accompanied Renée to her room on the third floor and watched her nervously from the hall while she walked about the elegant, modern accommodation.
“It’s lovely. You’ve done splendidly, Nick. Will you give me an hour?”
“I’ll await your arrival on the mezzanine.”
Nicolas stood over a whiskey, checking his watch and drumming his fingers on the marble of the mezzanine bar. The damned watch’s mechanism, though Swiss-made, seemed agonizingly slow. When the gold hand had inched itself beyond the full hour, a waiter appeared at his side with a silver bucket.
“Something special, sir.” The waiter swirled a dark bottle in chipped ice. “I’ve instructions from a certain lady, and a lovely one, I must say. You’re to join her on the balcony.”
Nicolas followed the waiter to a small second-floor balcony above a crowded veranda where guests were gathering to dine. Renée leaned over the iron rail, wrapped in a sleek, purple dress of Oriental silk, a matching velvet ribbon at her throat. She was watching the diners below and the activity in the town square. She turned and laid a hand on the bottle. “It’s French.”
“Champagne? All the way from Texas?”
“It’s a bit of a celebration, don’t you think?”
The waiter led them to a table for two set against the balcony’s ornate balustrade. He poured. Below them throngs strolled across the square and a crush of carriages rolled by in the gathering dusk. The waiter backed away. They were alone. Nicolas leaned across the table, his heart racing.
“I can’t seem to find words tonight. After your letters, seeing you seems so . . . exhilarating.”
She reached absentmindedly for her glass. “I’m anxious to hear of everything that’s befallen you, especially these troublesome developments you’ve uncovered, Nick. But first, there’s something we must discuss.” She sipped, set her glass down, and looked him in the eye. “Our arrangement. Our personal arrangement.”
He was sure his heart skipped a beat. What did he expect? Surely she would put him off. He was a married man. Any demand of such an exceptional young woman w
ould be absurd. “Whatever you wish, Renée.”
“Others will see us differently, you know, being together like this.”
“I understand.”
“And I confess my thoughts sometimes run wild along lines I’m not accustomed to.” A frown flitted across her brow. “Nonetheless, I propose that the friendship we forged in Galveston is of paramount importance. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” She reached across the table and grasped his arm in her two hands. “We must keep our heads about us, Mr. Nicolas Van Horne. Friendship above all. What do you say?” she said, giving a gentle tug. “Do you agree?”
“I . . . I should have said so myself.” So her letters meant nothing. Feelings put to paper are more fragile than the paper itself.
“You’re the perfect gentleman, Nick. That’s precisely why I’ve come to visit.” She settled back, glass again in hand. “Now, tell me what more you’ve learned about this strange plot you’ve uncovered.”
Nicolas recounted everything, starting from the moment he left Galveston in an agitated state over the occurrences there. He told her of his stopover in Buffalo, where he confronted Professor Flynt over the dead boys. He described his confusion over how murdered boys arrived in his ice. As he spoke, Nicolas was surprised at how easily these unnerving facts—facts he’d never spoken of to a single human being—seemed to tumble out. Indeed, the telling of it all somehow assured him he was on the right track.
“All the facts I’ve uncovered,” he said, “point to a coordinated gang of criminals who enslave orphaned, wayward youths.”
Renée listened with a thin, attentive smile. Her champagne went untouched. When Nicolas told of Abby’s discovery of the murdered woodsman dragged out of the ice cave and his later realization that the woodsman was one of the boys, grown to a criminal himself, Renée shook her head in dismay. “Your daughter’s a brave one,” she whispered. “The poor girl.”
Nicolas felt his chest and shoulders tighten when he told the story of Knox, the new boy working the ice harvest, a lost boy whom Abigail had unknowingly hired. When Nicolas described his recent confrontation with the so-called Mr. Wilson, Renée’s dark, green-speckled eyes widened in shock, telling him precisely how serious was the trouble he’d stumbled into.
