And in the flickering light of the candle, John Henry looked down and saw that his pillow was splattered with blood, dark red and drying where his head had been. Then he put his hand to his face, wiping his mouth. Tell me if there’s ever any blood, his Uncle John Holliday had told him once, and the hand that touched his mouth was streaked blood-red, too.
“I think maybe you’re real sick, John Henry,” Eula said, slowly backing away from him. “You want me to get Pa?”
But John Henry didn’t answer her. He was staring at the blood that stained his pillow and remembering how his mother had coughed up blood that stained her bed linens blood-red.
“No,” he said, “I’m not sick. I am not sick.”
“But you’re bleedin’,” Eula said. “I’ll go get Pa.”
“No!” he said, pulling himself up. “Get my horse, I’m leavin’ here!”
“Right now? But it’s hardly daybreak even.”
“Get my horse!” he said, the words rasping out, and Eula took the candle and hurried down the attic stair.
He was not weak. He would not be ill. Illness was weakness, and he was not weak. But there was blood all over his pillow, blood on his hand.
It was the sea voyage that had made him sick, he told himself, or the Yellow Fever that had quarantined Galveston, or the choking black smoke of the steam engine on the ride to Washington County. Anyone would get sick breathing in all that coal smoke. Or maybe it was the air in that stuffy little attic room, or vapors from the Brazos River. Vapors brought on the Yellow Fever, vapors could make a man cough up blood . . .
But when he tried to get up, he found that he was drained of all energy like he’d coughed up part of his life with that blood. He had no choice but to stay in bed in that airless little attic while Eula and Lotti brought him broth and tea and sponged his head with wet rags. And every time he closed his eyes to sleep, he had an awful fear that the train would come back again and take him with it, coughing and gasping his life away.
It was days before he was well enough to travel again, and by then he’d convinced himself that it was indeed the Yellow Fever that had caused the bloody coughing fit and he was lucky to be away from Galveston before the Fever killed him. And blaming his troubles on Galveston and the Fever, he decided to follow his Uncle John Holliday’s advice, after all, and take himself off to Dallas to ask for a position with Dr. Seegar. What other option did he have, anyhow? He couldn’t go back to quarantined Galveston, nor could he stay with his Uncle Jonathan McKey on that miserable remains of a cotton plantation. So once again, he was on the run, buying another train ticket north and heading on to Dallas.
Chapter Two
DALLAS, 1873
THE CITY HAD BIG PLANS FOR ITSELF, BUT A LONG WAYS TO GO STILL TO get there. Although a new red brick courthouse cast a substantial shadow, Dallas was mostly board-sided buildings lining prairie sod streets, with as many saloons as dry good stores and merchant shops in the one mile stretch between the train depot and the Trinity River—the liquor likely making up for the fact that there was no public water fit to drink. Yet there was a sense of excitement to the place that pleased John Henry, in spite of the herds of pigs and cows that crowded Main Street.
It was the coming of the railroads that had turned Dallas from farm town to cowtown, with the Houston & Texas Central building north from the coast and the Texas & Pacific Rail Line laying tracks west from Shreveport toward Fort Worth and on to California. In a few years, the whole of Texas would be crossed by rails, part of a great transcontinental railroad system—or so the plans went. For now, Dallas was end-of-the-line and the place where planters brought their cotton to ship and cattlemen brought their stock to market, making the dirt streets a noisy, smelly mess.
Dr. Seegar’s office was located in the middle of the busiest part of town, on Elm Street halfway between Market and Austin, in a second-floor suite above a druggist. And though he’d never heard of young Dr. John Henry Holliday before, other than the letter of recommendation he carried with him, the doctor had been cordial enough.
“So what brings you to Dallas, Dr. Holliday?” Dr. Seegar asked, looking up from the letter and studying him. “According to what your uncle writes, you had a good career ahead of yourself in Georgia.”
“Opportunity,” John Henry replied easily, having practiced the answer all the way up from Washington County, another smoky twelve-hour train ride that had left him coughing again. “I hear that Dallas is boomin’ and full of possibilities for a young man like myself.”
“Oh, it’s boomin’ all right,” Dr. Seegar said, and a moment later the board and plaster walls of the office began to shake and rattle as if to prove the point, and he raised his voice to go on. “There’s a new hotel goin’ up a block from here, so we get the blessin’ of the sound and the fury both.”
“Shakespeare,” John Henry said with a nod.
“Pardon me?”
“You were quotin’ Shakespeare. Macbeth: Fifth Act, I believe. I memorized a lot of the classics as a schoolboy.” Then he finished the quotation, as Professor Varnedoe had taught him to do back at the Valdosta Institute:
“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
He smiled at his own performance, but there was no appreciative applause from Dr. Seegar as there had always been from his classmates in school.
“Well, you won’t find much use for that kind of education around here,” Seegar said, “unless you aim for a career on the stage.”
The remark might have seemed like a criticism coming from someone else, but Dr. Seegar didn’t seem the type to criticize. He was a mild-mannered fellow, slight of build, with a balding patch in the middle of his thin brown hair, and a brown beard and mustache to match, giving him the impression of being done all in sepia tone.
“But if you enjoy the theater,” he went on, “we do get some good entertainment at the Opera House, though the show outside is often better than the show inside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s the trouble with the dressing rooms. The owner forgot to put any in, so the actors are obliged to climb out the back window and run down the street to the Grand Hotel to change their costumes. Sometimes, when the show’s a little dull, the audience goes outside to see the actors makin’ an exhibition of themselves. But that’s not nearly as entertainin’ as the show Belle Swink puts on.”
“Belle Swink?” John Henry asked. “Is she one of the actresses?”
“Certainly not. Belle’s a mule, one of the team that pulls the Dallas Street Railway car. She’s well behaved, as mules go, until the rains come and this prairie sod turns to mud. Then Belle gets stuck and the railcar comes off its tracks and the passengers have to climb out and right it again. The operator tried to rectify matters awhile back by layin’ down planks of Bois D’Arc wood from the banks of the Trinity, but they just sank down into the mud like everything else does. You may wonder why I am tellin’ you these colorful stories.”
“Yessir, I am.”
Dr. Seegar nodded toward the window with its view of Elm Street business buildings and cattle-filled roads. “Dallas is pretty rough around the edges still. I wouldn’t want you to settle here expectin’ the kind of life you had in Atlanta. But you are right about there bein’ plenty of opportunity for a man who’s willin’ to work. Of course, there are some personal conditions I would expect you to meet should we become partners.”
“Yessir?”
“As a family man, the moral climate of this community is of great concern to me. That’s why I’ve accepted the position of President of the Dallas Temperance League. I would expect that my partner be willin’ to hold with my stand against drinking. Would that be a problem for you?”
John Henry shifted uncomfortabl
y, feeling the weight of the whiskey flask in his coat pocket. He’d refilled it just before his interview, finding a liquor store conveniently close on the corner of Elm Street.
“No, Sir, that wouldn’t be any problem at all.”
“And I would naturally expect my partner to be a church-goin’ man, as well. My family and I attend the Baptist Church. I assume you have a chosen denomination?”
That answer came more easily, trained into him over long years by his mother. “Yessir, I was raised a Methodist-Episcopalian.”
Seegar smiled as though satisfied. “Well, if what your uncle writes of you is true, you come well qualified to join my practice—Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, associate of Dr. Arthur Ford in Atlanta, attendee of the Georgia Dental Society Convention. We seldom see such professional dental practitioners in this locale. Most of the other dentists in town are home-trained barber surgeons. But that is what has made my practice successful: professionalism. I have worked for ten years to build a quality name in this part of Texas. I would expect you to uphold that level of service to the community.”
John Henry glanced around the well-appointed office, knowing that it would be some time before he could afford such a space of his own, much less equip it adequately. He needed Dr. Seegar and his successful practice, whatever sacrifice he had to make—even if that meant keeping his drinking private and making a public show of being a temperance man. But hadn’t he come to Texas to make a fresh start for himself, after all?
“It would be an honor to work with you, Dr. Seegar,” he said. “And I look forward to walkin’ the paths of rectitude here in Dallas.”
He had some letters to write once he’d gotten himself settled in a boarding house room nearby to the dental office. His wrote to his Uncle John Holliday in Atlanta, thanking him for the recommendation and telling him of his new partnership with their old family friend. He wrote to his Uncle Tom McKey in Valdosta, asking him to send along the personal items he’d left behind in his hurried departure, most particularly the trunk full of dental tools and books that he would need in his new business. And he wrote to Mattie, telling her that he had chosen to establish himself in Dallas where he planned to make a fine career and prove himself the man she had always wanted him to be, and that he hoped she might someday be able to visit him there. To his father, he sent a short note saying that he had moved to Texas.
Dr. Seegar wore a frock coat to work, presenting a professional appearance as well as keeping his suit clothes clean from the spittle and drill filings that flew from the open mouths of his patients, and he expected his new partner to dress in similar fashion. So John Henry’s first purchase in Dallas, after paying a month’s rent in advance to the landlady at his boarding house, was a new black wool coat made by the Jewish merchant, Emmanuel Kahn.
It was Dr. Seegar’s suggestion that he visit E.M. Kahn’s Gent’s Furnishing Goods on Commerce Street, though that might not have been John Henry’s first choice for a clothier. To his knowledge, he had never before had any dealings with a Jew, only heard stories of them or seen them from a distance, like the long-bearded men he had watched walking to their Synagogue in Philadelphia. “Hebrews,” his mother would have called them, saying in hushed tones that they were not Christian and had crucified the Lord, though his Aunt Permelia had always had more generous views, commenting that the Jews were the best business people she had ever known, Christian or not. In fact, his Aunt had caused a minor scandal in Fayetteville, the year the War started, by traveling to Atlanta to buy silk from a Jewish merchant to be sewn into a battle flag for the Fayette Rifle Grays. The ladies of the town weren’t entirely sure if the Lord would bless their efforts in making the flag and, thereby, not bless the boys who carried it into battle, considering the source of the material. But silk was silk, his Aunt Permelia insisted, and the Jewish merchant’s price was the best to be found—as long as one didn’t mind a little haggling. In the end, the ladies sat demurely in Aunt Permelia’s parlor, stitching the flag together and embroidering its brave motto: We come back in honor, or come not again. The fact that the flag did come home again, and without a tear or tatter, seemed to show that the Lord had accepted it, after all.
So it was with a mix of his mother’s caution and his aunt’s practicality, along with his own curiosity, that John Henry stopped into Emmanuel Kahn’s store to be measured for his new wool frock coat—and found the man to be almost nothing like what he’d expected. Instead of a dour-dressed rabbi like the Jews he’d seen in Philadelphia, Emmanuel Kahn was a dapper young man with a fashionable French accent.
“I was born in the Alsace-Lorraine,” Kahn explained. “And the French, as you know, are gifted with a sense of style.”
“Seems like a long way from France to Texas,” John Henry commented. “And from what I can see, Dallas isn’t a city to appreciate style all that much.”
“Ah! But that is where the opportunity comes!” the merchant said with a smile. “As the first retailer of men’s clothing in this city, it is my style the men of Dallas will wear. And may I suggest that this black frock would look more finished if you carried a cane?”
“I’m sure it would, but as I’m plannin’ to wear the coat at work, I won’t have much use for a walkin’ stick.”
Emmanuel Kahn sighed as he rolled his measuring tape and slipped it into the pocket of his own coat. “A pity. I was hoping to interest you in one of my new shipment from Paris, a gold-headed cane fit for a Southern aristocrat.”
“And what makes you think I’m an aristocrat, anyhow?” John Henry asked with some amusement. Surely, the man was only speaking flattery to get him to buy that gold-headed cane—a needless bit of luxury.
“It is in your tone,” Kahn replied, “and in the way you carry yourself: neck proud and shoulders squared. Your bearing shows you to be a man of substance, satisfied with his place in the world. A clothier notices things like that.”
John Henry didn’t disagree, though he knew himself to be neither an aristocrat nor satisfied with his place in the world. The only aristocrat he had ever known was his Grandfather McKey, with his thousands of cotton acres at Indian Creek Plantation and his hundreds of slaves to work the place. That kind of aristocracy had disappeared after the War and John Henry would never know the equal of it.
“And what about yourself?” he asked, changing the subject. “You don’t seem all that Jewish, for a Jew. I mean, you don’t look like any Jews I ever knew.”
“Oh, I am thoroughly an Israelite, I assure you. I was, in fact, trained to be a cantor. My parents died when I was still a boy, and my relatives— well meaning, certainly—thought it best to train me for the synagogue. I served there for a year before a life of trade beckoned me. Some would say, however, that trade is a religion to the Jew. So tell me, a frock coat of this quality, of such fine material and exquisite tailoring, what would you like to offer me for it?”
John Henry had to hide a smile, remembering his Aunt Permelia’s story of the haggling silk merchant in Atlanta. “Whatever I offer will be far too little,” he said with mock cordiality, “and I’d hate to insult you with a price you couldn’t accept. Why don’t you just decide what price you’d like to be paid, and I’ll decide if I’d like to pay it.”
Emmanuel Kahn sighed heavily and shook his head. “That is the only trouble with doing business in Dallas,” he said with disappointment, “no one wants to barter the price. Just hang a tag on the merchandise and take in the money. What an impersonal way to do business! I might as well bring in a railcar loaded with ready-made suits and give up on the tailoring business entirely. Of course, then you’d never know the pleasure of wearing a frock coat custom made to your particular measurements, a style selected to suit your aristocratic joie de la vie.”
John Henry had to laugh at the man’s imaginative enterprise.
“All right, Mr. Kahn, you win. Tell me your price and I’ll tell you it’s too much. Then we can duel it out all night until one of us goes home with a frock coat. But
I’m not buyin’ that gold cane, so you can save your breath.”
“No, no, of course not,” Emmanuel Kahn replied. “It is far too expensive for you, being newly into business yourself. I wouldn’t dream of taking your money for something so frivolous, so modèle élève. The cane is entirely forgotten.”
He might not look like the Jews that John Henry had seen in Philadelphia, but Emmanuel Kahn knew how to haggle a sale.
The Jews had first arrived in Dallas twenty years before the railroads came, fleeing from revolutions in their European homelands, then planting their cemetery on the rolling prairie sod and gathering together in Congregation Emanu-El. They had hopes of building a Temple and bringing in a rabbi for regular services as their numbers grew, though they already had a bigger community than the Catholics whose scattering of Irish families were served by a traveling priest from the parish of St. Paul in Collin County, forty miles away. But as a Southern city, Dallas had more Protestants than any other denomination, with Disciples of Christ and Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians and the four-hundred members of the Methodist congregation the most numerous of all.
John Henry had told Dr. Seegar that he was raised a Methodist-Episcopalian, so that was the sect with which he chose to affiliate himself. But it wasn’t just for Dr. Seegar’s sake that he was trying to make a show of being a churchgoing man. It was for his own sake and salvation, as well, being haunted still by the horror of what had driven him from Georgia. He would never forget the face of the faceless boy and the blood on the Withlacoochee River, but he hoped that by attending to his worship, God might be willing, someday, to forget and forgive.
So he took his place on the log pews of the one-room chapel of the First Methodist Church, and offered his devotions along with the rest of the congregation. The minister preached the grace of God from a pulpit at one end of the cramped building, the pump organ played at the other, and between them the worshippers sang hymns and knelt for prayers. The Methodists had always been great hymn singers, likely one of the reasons John Henry’s musical mother had favored them, and the Sunday music brought back memories of his childhood in Georgia and of the need of a sinner like himself for a redeemer:
Dance with the Devil Page 3
