by Paul Boor
“They say there’s an awful number of new fellas, young ones, working them mines at North River,” Adam told them. “A whole new crew.”
“Must’ve struck a heavy load of gems,” Nicolas said.
“Yep, a new vein,” Adam agreed. “Our boy Knox just might be in the crew hauling it out.”
“Then go check it.”
When Abigail heard this, she volunteered to accompany Adam. “I know the route as well as anybody,” she said.
Nicolas, in a black mood, grumbled. “Adam’ll make better time alone.” He leaned on the pump and gazed out the kitchen window at a steady, cold drizzle.
“Well then,” Abigail retorted, “I’ll go to Gloversville. The tannery’s been hiring and Knox was supposed to go there—isn’t that what you said, Father?”
“I seem to remember something . . .”
Nicolas considered a moment. Gloversville was a long distance, and it wasn’t likely Knox would be there; the boy had hated the idea of the tanneries. Even in his muddled state Nicolas wanted to keep Abigail safe. And she was catching on to the danger these slave traders might pose, though he had shared none of the most gruesome details with her.
“A trip to Gloversville might be better, Abby.”
“Suits me, too,” Adam interjected. “This changeable weather’s playing hell with Gert’s consumption. I’ll be back quick if Knox is in them mines.”
“Good,” Nicolas said. “Adam’s off to North River. Abby, you ride to Gloversville.”
Nicolas’s stomach gave a turn at the thought of Gloversville. An acrid stench hung over that town, worse at night when the tanning vats were emptied into the Cayadutta Creek. With their latest expansion, the Gloversville tanneries ran their effluent through wide-bore sludge pipes, fouling the rippling crystal current into a brown slurry. The men who worked the tanneries had hands the color of the gloves they produced; their arms hung like leathery cudgels at their sides, their fingers twisted and stiffened with arthralgia. These were men eager to pickle their livers with whiskey the moment the bell rang to end their shift. Abigail wouldn’t linger long in the stinking town of Gloversville.
The next day, the weather continued dismal. A chilly, late-summer shower misted down on Adam and Abigail’s separate departures. Adam was off before dawn. Shortly after, Abigail made ready to saddle the spirited black stallion, her favorite horse in the Van Horne stable. The stallion was a yearling, barely more than a colt, but quick and agile, especially with a stick of a girl for a rider. Nicolas steadied the rambunctious steed while doling out last-minute cautions.
“Just watch for that Mr. Wilson. Gloversville’s not much. They’ll see you coming.”
“They won’t suspect a girl.”
“Schuyler’s the one who should be doing this.” Nicolas reflected on that for a moment. “I always thought you’d find someone, Abby. You know, find yourself—”
“A man?”
“A husband.”
“I thought you’d given up on that, Father.”
Nicolas couldn’t find words for what he’d always known, had sensed since the girl was herself a skittish colt.
“Dearest Father,” she said, the saddle in her hands, “you know me better than anyone.”
“Sure,” he admitted, smiling a father’s smile, a smile that held out hope.
“Then why must you be so bullheaded? I’m perfectly happy as I am. Hildegard and I keep our house quite fine, don’t you think?”
“One never knows. You just might—”
“Don’t.”
She swung the saddle up.
“You’re the perfect daughter, Abigail Van Horne.”
“Almost,” she said, cinching it tight, mounting.
Once Abigail and Adam were off hunting for Knox, Nicolas summoned the gumption to walk to the Antlers Inn for another talk with Thomas Chubb. He’d heard the undertaker was in town to hold a funeral for a town alderman. Despite the shakes that plagued Nicolas’s mornings, he put off the day’s first dose of morphine and instead poured himself a tumbler of whiskey before he walked out the door.
Nicolas found Thomas at the small table near the window. It was midafternoon and the barroom of the Antlers Inn was crowded. Nicolas called for a whiskey over a pack of drinkers at the bar. The barman, a humorless Irishman, gave a nod. Nicolas pulled an empty chair to Thomas’s table.
“We need to talk,” he said, leveling his eyes at the undertaker. “I’ve found out plenty about this secret business you’re involved in, Thomas. I know about the boys and the work crews.”
Concern passed across the undertaker’s face, a chink in his confidence, though evanescent. “Just what is it you know?”
“I know it’s a monstrous thing.”
“Oh, Nicolas,” Thomas said with a sigh. “You understand how a business operates. It’s all in the numbers, my man, the profits to be made.”
“Who’s behind this, Thomas? Where are these criminals?”
Thomas settled back in his chair and stared out the window, watching Nicolas from the corner of his eye. “I thought you said you knew all about it.”
Nicolas reached for his whiskey, the fine tremor in his hand obvious.
Thomas turned to him. “How goes the morphine?” he asked. “You still partake, I see.”
“Perhaps too much.”
“I guessed as much. The fact that you’re here suggests to me that the morphine’s damaged your perspective, Nicolas. Old man Wainwright keeps a fine supply, doesn’t he?” The undertaker put a note of sincerity in his voice. “Honestly, Van Horne, you need only look the other way on this. That’s what I do. It’s what you would’ve done before the morphine addled your brain.”
“Maybe, Thomas, maybe. But those dead boys in my ice, I’ve had too much of it.” Nicolas pitched forward, elbows on the table, his head in his hands. “It’s always a problem with boys in my life. It started with my own son.”
Thomas blanched and again the undertaker’s armor seemed to fall away. “Your son?”
“My son, you damned fool. Ethan, my first boy. The one I lost years ago. You remember.”
“Yes, yes.” Thomas gave a nod, his eyes averted. “I remember your son.”
“That was the start of it. Then, thanks to you, I discovered two boys in my ice had been murdered . . . and this boy Knox told me all about the work crews.”
Chubb arched a thin, delicate eyebrow. “Who’s Knox?”
“He’s one of the lost boys, an orphan. He worked the ice on the last harvest.”
“I see. Look, Nicolas, you needn’t take this so to heart. It’s only a few that come our way. I tell you, if you persist in this I’ll go back to sinking them in Lake Erie. It’s plenty deep, and you’ll be better off. Of course, you’ll miss out on the profit.”
Nicolas stood and leaned over his longtime accomplice, compulsively opening and closing his fists into balls. “You see how I’m at my wits’ end over this, don’t you? Don’t you, Thomas?”
“I see the morphine in you, that’s what I see.”
Nicolas took Thomas by the arm, his voice rising. “Tell me about them, damn it! You owe me this.”
The bar went quieter.
“You owe me, Thomas. Who are these men? Where are they?”
Chubb snatched Nicolas’s wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. He rocked back in his chair and pushed Nicolas’s hand away. “Ease off, Van Horne.”
Nicolas felt his bowels tighten. Something deep in him hardened, like a fist closing. He reached down with both hands and grabbed bunches of Thomas’s shirt and pulled him close. Chubb’s chair scraped across the plank floor. “I’m going to find Knox and, damn you, if harm comes to that boy . . .”
The place was deathly quiet now. Eyes shifted. The deadpan barman shuffled from behind the bar and cleared his throat. “Um . . . gents.”
Thomas, locked in a stalemate, hissed under his breath, “You have no idea of the danger for us. These are not gentlemen, Van Horne.”
“I don’t give a damn. I�
��ll get them one day.”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t even try. If you anger them in the least, we’ll be dead—both of us. Our throats’ll be cut, or worse. Remember that. They’ll do it in a blink.”
The barman was at their side, a hand on each of their shoulders. “Come now, gents,” he said. “Enough of this.”
Nicolas released his grip and without a word went for the door. But his step faltered. “I’ll do something,” he shot back over his shoulder. “I’ll straighten this out . . . I will.”
Thomas shouted back, “Face it, Van Horne. You can’t get yourself straight.”
Chubb turned away and stared out the window, drumming his fingers on the table. Nicolas, his back hunched, pushed his way out the door. The barroom came alive with whispers and murmurs.
“What was that about?”
“Hmm . . . and those two, old classmates . . .”
“Something about a boy?”
“Somebody’s son . . .”
63
At the Bottom of the Black River
It had once been so pleasant. Morphine—a distraction, a gentle, mellow addition to everyday life. But now it had dug in its claws, burrowed into his guts like a living thing demanding to be fed—and feed it he must. From early morning he thought of the needle. Such a talented thing, that finely drawn rapier. He was helpless in its path. It found its way to his heart’s blood as if homing in on the heat.
Morphine had him in its grip, and what was the outcome? Wayward boys had undoubtedly died. He knew so little, and all the tools that might’ve helped had been stolen by the morphine. Renée had charged him with finding the men behind the work crews. In her last letters—those he’d ignored—she’d had ideas, names of people in Buffalo, elsewhere, even an academic-sounding lecture on the mark he kept finding on boys and thought he saw on Wilson’s finger ring.
But Nicolas was no Pinkerton—a trained gunman able and eager to solve a crime, stop an uprising, or interdict a foul plot against his fellow men. Could he track villainous criminals into their haunts? Unlikely. Nicolas was a man of business—though he hardly did business anymore, thanks to morphine. Local demand for ice had dissipated with the cool, rainy days of September. Abigail kept the accounts. No, Nicolas couldn’t bring himself to deal with villains or numbers, except to measure the drams of morphine by the lines etched into his syringe.
Morphine, pure and simple. Since Saratoga, Nicolas had thoroughly explored the anatomy of those hardening cords beneath the skin—his veins—their course traced by flaking scabs and open sores, like lines of scales on a fish. He’d learned to rotate sites, avoid the spots that became red or throbbed, and to direct his pleasure instead to unexplored blood channels, wherever they might lie.
When he dared draw the syringe past its third mark, he was guaranteed a jolt that surprised like an electric current. Every part of him, his skin, his muscles, even his innards, seized tight as a drum. Damn that miserable Professor Smythe . . . If he followed Smythe’s advice and tapered his injections he’d be nothing but a cold, hollow shell. Morphine was brightness and the purest white light. Smythe, the charlatan, the quack, was dead wrong, though Nicolas had to admit Smythe was right about Ruth. She was doing better—she’d even gained a few pounds—and lately, she seemed to worry more about Nicolas than about herself.
Nicolas held the syringe to the late afternoon light at the windowpane. He checked the meniscus and slowly expelled the air. He’d take it to the fourth mark, perhaps the fifth. “A most excellent instrument,” he muttered. So well conceived, the tempered metal of Codman & Shurtleff, the calibrations etched on the glass cylinder. And how finely they drew these needles nowadays. Hardly a bruise to be seen as the proboscis found its way.
“Ouch! Oh!” This tingle in the face? This sinister weight on the chest? “Gad! What?”
His limbs trembled. He couldn’t move an arm, a leg . . . a finger. The morphine had wrecked his nerves. His power of speech, gone.
Nervous . . . exhaustion.
The afternoon turned to dusk, the dusk to night, while Nicolas lay immobile on his couch. Each breath was a labor. His eyes, half-shut, dried to a crust. Then, one by one, a nerve fired here . . . then there. He moved a finger, a hand, until raw, painful life flooded back into his limbs.
“Devil take these needles!” he cried, struggling to sit. There it was—the culprit had fallen from his hand to the floor beside him. “Much too thin.”
He wasn’t yet able to stand, but his head had cleared enough to know he could not go on, he could not live like this. The grim truth was that autumn would soon arrive, the ice harvest loomed, and morphine held him prisoner in his study. He was useless to Abigail, to Ruth, to himself. He could not go on living. Not like this.
Still trembling from the explosion of morphine inside his skull, he slipped off the couch, pulled on his jacket, and staggered against the doorjamb.
“I must not lose my nerve on this.”
It would be quick. The cool evening air would give him strength to do the job that needed doing. Head down, eyes fixed on the street, he strode with conviction down the hill, to the bridge. He flung himself on the iron rail. The somber reflection of a tortured, powerless man lay on the water’s black surface. Nicolas did not like what he saw. A murky life, obsession, untold secrets locked in a dark heart.
“I shall not lose my resolve . . . to go through with this.”
He slung a leg over the cold steel rail, steadying himself, full of resolve. He reached in his pocket . . .
And the finest works of the Boston craftsmen Messrs. Codman & Shurtleff came to rest among the small round stones of the Black River’s bottom.
64
The Arrival of Autumn
Nicolas was frantically working the kitchen pump when he saw Abigail ride up to the back door with Knox mounted behind her on her favorite black yearling. Knox peered into the kitchen with pale, forlorn eyes. He looked like a skeleton. His bony limbs added little to the stallion’s load. Nicolas kept at his tin cup, sucking down the cool well water to quell the fever he felt rising.
“Got ’im!” Abigail said as the two walked through the kitchen door.
Nicolas, leaning on the pump, reached to clap the boy on the back. “Glad to have you back in Forestport, son. Wanted out of that hole, did you?”
“Yep. Thanks for sending her.”
“You were right, Father,” Abigail said. “The entire crew was boys. I waited till dark when they came filing out of the tannery. Knox saw me and bolted.” Abigail fixed her father with a hard stare. “You look horrid,” she said. “I better fetch you something to eat, too.”
Nicolas, still draped over the pump, waved her off. “In a few days.”
Nicolas had been twenty-four hours without morphine. He’d been shivering since he tossed his works at the bridge, mostly with fear at what was to come.
“We need to keep you close, son,” Nicolas told Knox. “One of those Mr. Wilsons might come hunting for you.”
“Damn ’em all anyway,” the boy grumbled. “Liars. They were never gonna make me no foreman.”
“I’ll take him to Adam’s,” Abigail said. “Gertie won’t mind. They’ve got an empty bed now that their oldest boy signed on with the Beaver River Company.”
“Tell Adam that if Wilson shows, he should stash Knox at his cabin on Indian Lake.” Nicolas turned to Knox. “Want to work the ice again this winter, boy?”
“Sure. At least you eat sumthin’ good up there.”
Abigail told Nicolas she’d take Knox to her place for Hilda to feed him. “Sure you don’t want me to bring you something?” she asked.
“No, I’ve taken a bit of a grippe, that’s all,” Nicolas replied, struggling to calm the shaking. “Pay me no mind.”
Once Abby’s steed clip-clopped down the hill, Nicolas settled in his study, his arms wrapped around his middle holding tight to his guts, where the thing that had his teeth rattling seemed to originate.
October of the year 1889 c
ame wandering into the mountains like a stinking hermit wrapped in rags. The landscape was dull and brown and smelled of rot; the red-and-orange blaze of the maples had long ago been washed to the ground by torrential rains. The last apples were gathered, the last of the cider squeezed. An early, killing frost shimmered on unpicked hop flowers. Desiccated cornstalks pointed to a grey sky like a million withered fingers.
“It’s an ugly fall,” Ruth told her husband. “And it means a long, hard winter.”
But Nicolas heard nothing. He had retired with a “bad grippe” to his garret bedroom and was hardly seen. Wretched groans punctuated by the foul oaths of a wild beast drifted from the third floor.
Nicolas suffered through most of the dismal October. Abigail kept the stoves stoked below to warm the upper rooms. She cared for Ruth and was encouraged by her appearance.
“Look at you, Mums. It must be that new doctor’s medicine.”
When Abigail climbed the stairs to the third floor, however, she was shocked to see her father glistening with sweat and wracked by erratic, convulsive tremors. In a turnabout of family illness, she now feared for her father’s life.
It was three weeks before Nicolas came to. He bathed, found fresh clothes, and began to carry chowder to Ruth. At night, he found himself joining Ruth in her bed, not as a husband might join with his wife, but solely for the warmth he might offer her in the hour before he retired to his room. He sensed that the grimmer proclamations of the good doctor Smythe still rang in Ruth’s ears and sent a chill settling in her bones.
“Come closer, Nicolas. I’m dreadfully cold . . . and afraid.”
In the last week of October a warm southerly breeze pushed up from the valley. The sheets of frozen rain that lay on the village fell away like scales, and Forestport was abuzz with talk of an “Indian summer.” Ruth, the born Adirondacker, sensed that this was the sweetest of respites, a gift of the mountains granted specially for her. Indian summer brought with it a reprieve from her pain and time to think things over.
