Ollie's Cloud

by Gary Lindberg

  The crowd buzzes. Cries of hallelujah! merge unhappily with murmurs of scorn. Alice smiles. The reaction of people to this news is so predictable.

  “I can even tell you in which year you will witness this glorious event,” the Reverend says. “Do you want to know?”

  Yes, the crowd shouts.

  “Are you prepared to accept the responsibility of this knowledge?” Reverend Crenshaw is shouting now. Spit sprays from his lips and perspiration flies from his bald forehead.

  “This truth comes not from me, but from God’s own Word, the Holy Bible, in which this greatest of all mysteries has been kept veiled from humankind until now. So listen carefully to me, for I am about to reveal the time of Christ’s Second Coming, and after receiving this news you will have to decide what to do with your remaining time. Will you ignore this news, or believe it not? Will you repent and do good works? Will you continue in your profitless daily existence unchanged?”

  Reverend Crenshaw plucks a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his face. The audience nervously anticipates his next words.

  Alice detects something wrong. Her father has never paused at this point in his sermon. And now he is looking over his shoulder at her, pale and slick with sweat. The evening is humid, but not so much that…

  The Reverend’s knees buckle, but he catches himself. The audience seems not to notice as he slowly straightens himself and attempts to speak again.

  “The truth comes not from me, but from God’s own Word…” he says before pausing again.

  He has never repeated himself before. Alice leans forward. And then the Reverend clutches at his heart and sags to the floor, divine sparks scattering in the air. Alice, the local minister and two others rush forward to her father, who lies gasping on the ground. The Reverend takes Alice’s hand, and then sighs.

  “I’ll be all right,” he says, but of course Alice does not believe him. With a smile, he looks up at her and says, “I feel better lying down. Perhaps some of the men can move me to the back of the tent and you can continue the sermon. I would very much like to hear you.”

  “Me?” Alice says. “No, father, we should tell everyone to go home. They’ll understand. We need to get you to a doctor.”

  “Nonsense. I’m not going to die. I’m also not going to finish the sermon. That’s for you to do. I think my preaching days are over, my dear. Remember this—we have not yet delivered the news to these people. Don’t keep them waiting.”

  Alice kisses her father on the cheek. “promise you’ll be all right?”

  “As God is my witness. And tonight, in this tent, He surely is.”

  Alice watches as the men lift up the side of the tent and roll a small wagon over to her father. As they lift him onto it, Alice turns to the horrified congregation. The crowd quiets as she begins to speak.

  “As you could see,” she says, “my father has poured his life into this work. He has promised me that he will be all right, so please don’t worry. He also asked me to finish delivering his sermon. So let me ask you now—would you prefer to go home, or will you permit me to continue my father’s work?”

  Go on, they shout. Continue. Tell us the date.

  “I asked if you would permit me to continue my fathers work. I was thinking about my father, the Reverend, when I said that. But in truth, you have given me permission to finish my heavenly Father’s work as well. For that I thank you.”

  Alice clears her throat and watches the wagon, with her father in it, exit the far end of the tent.

  “My earthly father has promised to reveal the time of our Savior’s return in majesty and glory. And so he shall reveal this secret—through me. Some of you, however, may wonder at how we came to this astonishing truth. Through what clarifying lens did we look to see God’s secret timetable when no one else for thousands of years has been able to solve its mystery? The gentleman to whom we must give credit for this glorious discovery is William Miller. Before I announce the date of Christ’s return, let me share the irrefutable method by which this date was at last deciphered. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?”

  The question prompts an explosion of yeas and hallelujahs shouted above a deafening applause.

  “Let it be noted that God has revealed to his prophets these events in diverse figures and at different times. He has revealed these things to Daniel and Peter, to Isaiah and St. John the Divine. And these prophecies have been recorded in His infallible Holy Book in such detail that it makes me shudder when I consider the magnitude of such an announcement. Yet the details have been cloaked in mystical and symbolic language to keep them from discovery until these Final Days hallelujah!”

  That final shouted word echoes throughout the tent and is hollered back as a chorus of praise and astonishment. Alice is speaking with a preacher’s cadence and a voice grown suddenly husky and vigorous. The lilting soprano is gone, and the quaver in her voice sends chills through the audience.

  Reverend Crenshaw has never heard his daughter preach; always she has sung solos, and led the hymns, and counseled the repentants who came forward to receive Christ’s healing salvation. Where is this captivating voice coming from? Such authority, such power, such—holiness! It’s as if God were speaking through Alice with His Own Voice attuned ever so slightly by the woman’s frailer instrument of speech. She seems possessed by angels.

  “That we can now see the dates of God’s great plan, and comprehend what was previously incomprehensible, and divine the mysteries that He has chosen to keep locked from sight—these are the surest signs that we are in the Final Days. We know these things not because of our own intelligence or cleverness, but because God Almighty has unlocked the lofty gates guarding his master plan, and has chosen to reveal his secrets to us so that we may prepare for the greatest event ever to unfold on this earthly plane. Praise God!”

  Praise God! she hears a hundred times over. The people are standing, waving their arms, crying tears of joy. Some are kneeling and kissing the earth, raising their faces with divine sparks flying all around them.

  Alice wipes her face with a cotton handkerchief. It won’t be the last time this evening. She is soaring above the crowd, cradled in the hands of Jesus, speaking without conscious thought, vibrating in the breath of God.

  She loves it.

  Chapter 6

  Jonathon Fury closes the door to the small, windowless room which is lit by a solitary gas lantern. He stuffs the remnants of a tattered curtain into the half-inch opening beneath the door, sealing the room from any outside light. “The room must be as dark as possible,” he explains to his companion, Oliver Chadwick.

  “And if it isn’t?” Ollie asks.

  “Fogs the picture,” Jonathon replies curtly. “And after all the effort you put into coercing Mary to pose for this portrait, that would be a shame.

  Ollie is mystified by the array of chemicals and apparatus spread out on the narrow table in front of them. The making of a daguerreotype seems roughly equivalent to alchemy.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Jonathon warns. “Just watch.”

  Jonathon lifts a small glass vial from the table and moves it toward a cast iron fuming box that is suspended like an inverted pyramid above a glass alcohol burner. “The first step—pour a small amount of mercury into the fuming box.”

  Ollie watches the mercury dribble into the black box.

  “Now we light the burner and turn off the lantern,” Jonathon continues. Ignited, the glass burner hisses and glows. With a whoosh, the lantern goes out. The room is now much darker, illuminated only by the radiance of the burner.

  Jonathon centers the base of the fuming box over the burner and slides a thermometer into a side slot. “We heat the mercury to approximately 175 degrees Fahrenheit,” he explains. “Doesn’t take long.”

  From a wooden box, Jonathon removes the exposed daguerreotype plate, consults the thermometer, and adjusts the burner slightly. “There, just right,” he says. He places the plate face-down on top of the fuming bo
x. “The image will develop by exposure to the mercury fumes. It still amazes me. Usually takes two or three minutes.”

  From a dark jug Jonathon pours a smelly solution into a glass tray. “Hypo-sulfate,” he explains. “We’ll need this for the next step.”

  Except for the hissing of the alcohol burner, the room remains silent until Jonathon inspects the plate. “Just right!” he says proudly. “Experience has put a clock inside my head.” He immerses the plate face-up into the hypo-sulfate. “This removes all the remaining light-sensitive chemicals from the plate. Take a look at your picture!”

  Ollie lowers his head over the tray and gazes at the image that has magically appeared on the metal plate. There, beneath the rippling chemicals, a face stares up at him. “My God, it worked!” Ollie says. “It’s her! A perfect, miniature Mary Rogers.”

  “Of course it worked,” Jonathon says glumly. “I’m an expert. That’s why you hired me.” Jonathon moves the plate to another tray and pours a clear liquid over it. “Distilled water,” he explains, “to further remove any unwanted chemicals.”

  Jonathon moves the plate to a gilding stand, leveling it with thumb screws so it is suspended horizontally above a brass spirit lamp. “The final step… gold chloride.” He lights the spirit lamp and gently pours the gold chloride onto the developed image. “Heat bonds the gold to the silver of the image and makes the picture richer in tone.”

  Finally, Jonathon lights the lantern and the room once again glows brightly. Ollie can see the magnificent image clearly now. The face of Mary Rogers almost speaks to him. If Jonathon were not there, he would kiss that beautiful countenance, caress those tender cheeks, stroke that silky hair.

  “Is it acceptable?” Jonathon asks.

  “Quite.”

  Ollie can hardly wait to present it to the woman he dreams about.

  Chapter 7

  Could it be more perfect? The address—126 Nassau Street, on the east side between Beekman and Ann Streets—is well situated by accident or fate in the center of the publishing universe; the living accommodations are delightfully ordinary; and the landlady’s daughter is exceptionally captivating—in fact, Mary Rogers has caused Ollie to momentarily disregard the grim undertaking that has brought him to this New World.

  Except for a small placard on its front, the Rogers boardinghouse bears the familial look of its surrounding siblings. It is a featureless three-story red brick building with a flat roof, seemingly stenciled into place from a popular blueprint.

  Nassau Street is a graceful, winding road that stretches from Broad Street to Park Row, stopping just a block from City Hall Park and the tobacco shop. Along its gentle curves are a muddle of merchants, workshops, boardinghouses and private residences. Here the rich and very poor, the Poles and Italians and Swedes and English, the Negroes and Asians, all work and play next to each other; for all the violence and wickedness in this rich stew of a city, the evil of social segregation has not yet poisoned the neighborhood.

  To the south of Nassau Street and the Rogers boardinghouse is Wall Street, the center of commerce, and to the northwest—in back of City Hall—is the treacherous Five Points district, Manhattan’s notorious festering slum. Surrounding the boardinghouse are the city’s most lustrous landmarks: Trinity and St. Paul’s Church; Theatre Alley; and just two blocks distant, Broadway “shining like a track of fire,” as Mary Cecilia Rogers glowingly describes it.

  Coursing like a virulent fever throughout the city, however, are countless gamblers and seducers, criminals and confidence men, whores and street-corner preachers, operating their beguiling or guile-less crafts against a backdrop of shrill street-cries and pious hymns, black gutters and gilded carriages, broken wine bottles and polished communion cups.

  At sixty, twice-widowed Phebe Rogers and her daughter had come to this new Babylon as refugees from a hard Connecticut farm existence. Only last year frail Phebe had leased the building that is now her boardinghouse from Peter Aymar, a small-time real estate baron who a decade earlier had speculated his life savings on constructing a dozen of these Nassau Street structures. Happily, he had chosen his location wisely.

  Almost at once, young single men who had come to the city in search of work began to flock to the Rogers boardinghouse; the presence of beautiful Mary Rogers and the home-spun hospitality of Phebe proved to be a winning combination. Together with Alice, their servant girl, the mother and daughter team created a serviceable home away from home for tradesmen of modest means. Still, earning a living proved difficult and Mary quickly took up part-time work at Anderson’s to help make frayed ends meet.

  On this particular humid Sunday, Ollie is seated on a striped divan in the Rogers’ cozy sitting room. His heart thrums with anticipation. Soon he will leave this stuffy room with his love, Mary Rogers, and picnic on the shore.

  Opposite Ollie, half-sunken like a bobber into an ocean of over-stuffed chair, Arthur Crommelin reads the Tattler. With sandy hair, brown eyes and moustache, tan skin and expressionless brown eyes, 30-year-old Arthur looks to Ollie like a sepia-toned daguerreotype. Of a dead man.

  To Ollie’s left, seated at an upright piano on which a calloused forefinger awkwardly picks out a popular tune, is William Kiekuk, a swarthy sailor with unruly black hair and darting eyes that seem always to be surveying a sea’s vast horizon. Apparently Kiekuk is lodging here between voyages. No one is quite sure for how long.

  With a loud clatter the Tattler is smashed into an unkempt heap and Arthur Crommelin comes to life, staring now at Ollie. “Never been to London,” he says.

  “Is that right?” Ollie perfunctorily responds.

  “Never wanted to, actually. Old and dusty there, from what I hear. New York is the new world, the future, don’t you think?”

  “Much newer, to be sure. The future?—I don’t know. For whom?”

  “You, for example. A man from London. Certainly you came here to get away from something, or to find something. When your business if done, will you return to your homeland or stay on to make your fortune here? I’d wager that you’ll stay on.”

  Ollie stares at Crommelin. The man has no idea what he’s talking about, he thinks. Homeland? England is not Ollie’s native soil. Will he return to his true homeland? Ollie can’t imagine that. Stay on and make his fortune here? A loud snort—the result of stifling a chest-deep laugh—erupts from his throat. He has already made his fortune—the easy way. Inheritance. Ollie looks at Crommelin, the bobber waiting for a nibble to announce a fish on the hook.

  “My travels are for business. Newspapering. When I’m done here I’ll go home.”

  “So tell me, will you write about Phebe’s boardinghouse? About us? Will people read about us in the London papers?”

  With a straight face Ollie teasingly replies, “You never know. If I were you I’d be on my best behavior. You know that news writers prefer stories about scoundrels and scandals.”

  Crommelin doesn’t catch the mocking tone. He squints defensively.

  “Arthur, I’m joking,” Ollie finally explains.

  “Yes, of course,” Crommelin replies without the slightest upward curl of his lip. His dead, unseeing eyes begin to wander the room, focusing at last on Kiekuk. “Hey, sailor—I thought your sister lived in New York. Why give up a free bed with the family?”

  Kiekuk continues to approximate a familiar tune on the piano. Without turning he mumbles, “Same reason as you. The girl.”

  Crommelin stiffens and Ollie cocks his head. Did he hear that correctly?

  “That’s nonsense, and you know it,” Crommelin asserts somewhat self-righteously. “There was never anything between…”

  “Oh get off it!” Kiekuk shouts. “Everyone knows you wanted to get into her knickers.”

  “This is ridiculous.” Crommelin mutters.

  Ollie is shaken by this sharp turn in the conversation. They are talking about the woman he loves!

  “Ain’t no fantasy that Artie-boy here was pretty thick with Mary Cecilia,” the sailor
says. “Like a bull in heat. Until she put the ring through his nose. Wrapped him around her pretty little pinky, she did. And he still comes sniffin’ around, hopin’ for…”

  Crommelin suddenly bolts to his feet. Ollie fears that the man, now red-faced with clenched fists, is about to attack the piano player. “Fellows, please…” he implores.

  Crommelin does not move, but stares viciously at Kiekuk. When he finally speaks, he spits frothy comets of saliva into the air. “Who are you to degrade my love. You!—a seaman who knows only lust and sees only body parts.”

  The sailor smashes his fist on the keyboard. “Maybe I don’t care what’s on her mind,” he growls, “but I know it isn’t you. She’s done with you, Arthur. She has the corker now.” Kiekuk storms out of the room, out of the house.

  Ollie stares at Crommelin who stands frozen in place, obviously hurt and humiliated. He knows he should find words to dress the man’s wounds, but he is too riled himself to act rationally. Instead, he throws salt. “You were lovers, you and Mary?” he asks.

  Crommelin slumps into the billows of his chair. “She’s a maddening creature. A disease,” he says softly, defeated by his duel with the sailor. “Once she infects you, your knees weaken, your heart crumbles, your brain turns to…” He searches for an appropriate metaphor. Seeing the proper Englishman on the divan, he finally has it: “Your brain turns to Yorkshire pudding.”

  The tension eases. Ollie actually laughs, and Crommelin follows. And then Mary Rogers enters the room. Arthur Crommelin stands first, then Ollie.

  “Arthur, you’re still here,” Mary says with a disarming smile. “I thought you were going out this afternoon.” She crosses the room and gently kisses Crommelin’s cheek, a sister’s kiss, a friend’s. The formality of it—the lack of intimacy and passion—kills Arthur.