did not think my face or manner could scare a boy on his way to a Baptist picnic. But the car had been “egged” once already by die-hard secessionists, and Durant insisted I keep watch. This was his price for letting me stay in a corner of the tool car—dirty with pigeon droppings and grease. When I suggested he furnish me with a firearm, he replied fleeringly that my bugle would be enough to intimidate any mischief makers and, if I were overrun, to signal for help. So I met Landy for the first time with Jericho at the ready.
“I’m not partial to bugle music,” he said disarmingly when I had answered his knock on the old parlor car’s back door.
“What do you want?” I asked with as convincing a show of grit as I could muster. I couldn’t have been more surprised by the burly man’s abrupt appearance if he’d been a grampus heaved up on my doorstep by the night tide.
By now you know I was never brave—not as a boy, not as a man. I’m not saying I ran from trouble (at least not always), but I would feel something inside my nerves and gut giveway at trouble’s approach, making my gorge rise, as well as the little hairs on my neck. Antagonism did not come naturally to me, unless the other party to the conflict happened to be a smaller man. Landy must’ve seen my apprehension in the way I shuffled and fidgeted with Jericho, but he had tact enough not to belittle me.
“I’m a reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune ,” he said in a peaceable voice belied by his robust presence. “Mind if I take a look around?”
I didn’t see any reason to bar entrance to a gentleman of the press or to blow Jericho for reinforcements, so I opened the door wide and let him come in. Reading by the light of a single candle set on the table, I hadn’t noticed when the shadows engulfed the narrow car. I lit the wall sconces, and their reflected light bloomed suddenly, gilding each windowpane. Mr. Lincoln’s funeral coach still retained its opulence; the varnished wood of the coffered panels and carved furniture gleamed, the crystal shone, and the tapestried chairs and sofas caught glints of light in their shiny threads.
“People back east think it’s a shame the car that bore Abe Lincoln to his tomb ended up a pleasure coach for rich men,” he said, putting his hat on the table in a disdainful way that would prove his worth to these same men had they been there to see it. “Lincoln was a man of the people, and his parlor car rightfully belongs to the people. I was sent out here to write a piece about the car’s employment by a gang of plutocrats who don’t give a damn for sentiment or democracy.” He held his horses a moment, studying a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey, like an ornithologist beholding an exotic bird landed on a steaming pile of Barren Island “putrescibles.” Conscientiousness carried the day over liquidtemptation—imported, you would have thought, expressly for his ruin. “You’re an Irish lad, by the look of you.”
“I am,” I said.
“What does your mother call you?” he asked, shunting down a spur from the main track of his thought, like a locomotive when the points are changed.
“She called me Stephen. She’s dead.”
I was reclining on a horsehair sofa in order to prove my own equality and democratic pluck. Besides, I was not obliged to wait on newspapermen without an appointment.
“My condolences. A Dublin girl, was she, during her days in God’s second Eden? I’m not one of those traitors who call Ireland His most fantastic mistake. They were whelped by an angry god.”
“Dún Laoghaire.”
“I’m pleased to hear you call it by its given name instead of Kingstown. Goddamn the British Empire!” His gaze shifted again to the bottle in token of his patriotism, but he quickly broke its spellbinding thread with a shake of his heavy jowls, broken-veined by drink, as if to disabuse himself of a mirage. “What are you reading?”
“ Silas Marner .”
“There’s a tale of
“I’m not partial to bugle music,” he said disarmingly when I had answered his knock on the old parlor car’s back door.
“What do you want?” I asked with as convincing a show of grit as I could muster. I couldn’t have been more surprised by the burly man’s abrupt appearance if he’d been a grampus heaved up on my doorstep by the night tide.
By now you know I was never brave—not as a boy, not as a man. I’m not saying I ran from trouble (at least not always), but I would feel something inside my nerves and gut giveway at trouble’s approach, making my gorge rise, as well as the little hairs on my neck. Antagonism did not come naturally to me, unless the other party to the conflict happened to be a smaller man. Landy must’ve seen my apprehension in the way I shuffled and fidgeted with Jericho, but he had tact enough not to belittle me.
“I’m a reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune ,” he said in a peaceable voice belied by his robust presence. “Mind if I take a look around?”
I didn’t see any reason to bar entrance to a gentleman of the press or to blow Jericho for reinforcements, so I opened the door wide and let him come in. Reading by the light of a single candle set on the table, I hadn’t noticed when the shadows engulfed the narrow car. I lit the wall sconces, and their reflected light bloomed suddenly, gilding each windowpane. Mr. Lincoln’s funeral coach still retained its opulence; the varnished wood of the coffered panels and carved furniture gleamed, the crystal shone, and the tapestried chairs and sofas caught glints of light in their shiny threads.
“People back east think it’s a shame the car that bore Abe Lincoln to his tomb ended up a pleasure coach for rich men,” he said, putting his hat on the table in a disdainful way that would prove his worth to these same men had they been there to see it. “Lincoln was a man of the people, and his parlor car rightfully belongs to the people. I was sent out here to write a piece about the car’s employment by a gang of plutocrats who don’t give a damn for sentiment or democracy.” He held his horses a moment, studying a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey, like an ornithologist beholding an exotic bird landed on a steaming pile of Barren Island “putrescibles.” Conscientiousness carried the day over liquidtemptation—imported, you would have thought, expressly for his ruin. “You’re an Irish lad, by the look of you.”
“I am,” I said.
“What does your mother call you?” he asked, shunting down a spur from the main track of his thought, like a locomotive when the points are changed.
“She called me Stephen. She’s dead.”
I was reclining on a horsehair sofa in order to prove my own equality and democratic pluck. Besides, I was not obliged to wait on newspapermen without an appointment.
“My condolences. A Dublin girl, was she, during her days in God’s second Eden? I’m not one of those traitors who call Ireland His most fantastic mistake. They were whelped by an angry god.”
“Dún Laoghaire.”
“I’m pleased to hear you call it by its given name instead of Kingstown. Goddamn the British Empire!” His gaze shifted again to the bottle in token of his patriotism, but he quickly broke its spellbinding thread with a shake of his heavy jowls, broken-veined by drink, as if to disabuse himself of a mirage. “What are you reading?”
“ Silas Marner .”
“There’s a tale of
Similar Books
