The Styx (6 page)
At an information kiosk he was directed to the southbound Hudson River Railroad line below. In the bowels of the building the noise created by the massive steam engines and their giant wheels screeching along steel rails was an assault on the ears and caused Byrne to narrow his eyes in a grimace. Making his way in the directions given, he had to search through clouds of smoke and steam to find the numbered markers and letterings. He stopped a uniformed railway worker and shouted in his ear: “The Flagler departure?”
In response he got a finger wagged in a northerly direction, and of the response shouted back, the words “number ninety” was all he could make out. With his shoulders hunched as if to shield his chest from the onslaught, Byrne made his way down the platform, dodging the wheeled wooden carts of baggage handlers and the occasional geyser of steam spurting from the undercarriage of the train until his attention was snatched by a handsome forest-green railcar with the gold gilded lettering “90” expressed on its façade. He took a step back to take in the entire car. Above the row of windows the name Florida East Coast Railway flickered in the same gold lettering. It was Flagler’s private rail car. Since he couldn’t determine by sight which end of the train car held the back door he approached the most northern end, putting one foot onto the iron stair step. When he stood up, his nose met the knee caps of a large man balefully staring down into his face.
“My name is Shawn Harris,” the man said. “And you had best be one Michael Byrne, lad. Or your ass is mine.”
After he had assured the estimable Mr. Harris that he was indeed Michael Byrne, he was allowed to board the train “after you wipe the grime and shite from those company shoes, m’boy. We don’t allow that part of New York City to travel aboard Mr. Flagler’s railroad.”
Once his soles were passable, Byrne climbed up the wrought iron stair and joined Mr. Harris inside the car. The warmth was the first of several surprises Byrne encountered as the two men entered.
“This, lad, is number 90,” Harris said with a sweep of his giant paw. The grand movement instantly struck Byrne as out of place for a big Irish thug of a former cop. But he soon understood the man’s pride.
The interior walls of the Mr. Flagler’s private car were paneled in a light-colored satin wood and framed in hand-carved white mahogany that even without the aid of the electric lamps gave the place a feel of sunshine that was the polar opposite of the dark, polluted gray of the city Byrne had just walked through.
Passing through the sitting areas and a desk surrounded by shelves of gilt-bound books, Byrne was aware that he’d unconsciously pulled in his elbows and turned his hips as not to come even close to touching anything. The furniture was upholstered in decorative floral designs of greens and gold, as were the carpeting and curtains. Harris looked back with a raised eyebrow and warning tip of his chin to the gleaming bronze chandelier as he maneuvered his big head around its cut glass. Byrne looked up, even though he knew his own height did not in danger of touching the object, but he noticed when he did that even the Empire ceilings of the car were put him and decorated with gold leaf. His mouth must have been hanging open, for Harris cleared his throat and winked at the younger man’s show of amazement. As they passed through the dining area he saw the fireplace, flames dancing at a low level, which explained the warmth of the place. He’d barely had time to take in the opulence when Harris opened a door and they both stepped out onto the open balustrade at the opposite end of the car. The shot of cold in his nostrils caused Byrne’s eyes to water, and Harris let him take a second to adjust.
“That, my young detective, is Mr. Flagler’s sanctuary, and our number one duty is to keep out anyone that don’t belong inside.
“Mr. or Mrs. Flagler or his chief, Mr. McAdams, are consulted directly before any person is allowed to enter. You screw that assignment up, lad, and you’ll be off the train regardless of whether she’s stopped or still movin’, eh?”
“I understand, sir,” Byrne said, giving the sergeant his due respect even though he was still measuring the man.
“Good,” Harris said. “We run shifts on the fore and aft platforms when we’re stopped for loading or unloading and especially when we spend anytime overnight on a side track for any reason.
“Mr. Flagler considers number 90 to be his hotel room on the road so that’s the way we protect it and him.”
Byrne nodded, absorbing as he always did, and then working out a response if indeed a response was even called for.
“Protect from who?” he finally figured it best to ask.
“Ha!” Harris gave a snort, which Byrne was soon to realize was his standard guffaw at all things he understood and felt others didn’t. “From the same goddamn scalawags and supposed business moochers that you guard him from in the city, boy. ’Cept here they’re more brazen cause maybe they think since they’re on the same train as he is that he’s like their neighbor or something. Most of these wags wouldn’t dare walk up to the man’s house or office in the city but think they can come right through the train cars to his door and tap him for an audience.”
As a cop, Byrne had indeed once been ordered to provide “security” for the Flaglers’ mansion on Forty-second street, just a few blocks west of Grand Central on a night when a crowd of so-called protesters had gotten their courage up to march against the rich and powerful. After a minor scuffle with a knot of the more drunk and aggressive of them, it had been one of the more boring nights he’d spent on the police force. Yet he knew even now that the small legend of that night had somehow led to this very day.
“Then there’s the beggars and assorted nasties who try to push their way through when we’re at some common rail stop along the way down south,” Harris said. “But I don’t figure that’s going to be a problem for you, eh, Byrne.”
And there it was. Proof of what wouldn’t be said to him directly when his Pinkerton commander came and gave him this assignment.
Harris was giving him that wink and a grin that meant he wanted the story from the origin. Byrne pretended he didn’t understand and simply nodded.
“Oh, come on lad. At least show me this little piece of weaponry I’ve heard bragged on by men I’d have to admit aren’t easily impressed.”
Byrne had already anticipated the inevitability of the request, and in a motion like a magician’s flick of a satin scarf, the baton flashed up in his hand with a whisper and was instantly in front of his face, bringing Harris’ eyes up to meet his.
“I heard there were six men, big men mind you, lyin’ in the gutter outside Mr. Flagler’s house within less than a one minute round,” Harris said, focused on the short steel wand. “Boys said you never skinned a knuckle, never drew your gun.”
“There were only four,” Byrne said, and then with a snap of his forearm, the baton telescoped to three times its length with a sound like a switchblade being opened. “And they weren’t that big.”
The display did not make Harris jump, only his hand moved, tucking quickly into the thick breast flap of his coat.
“Aye,” he said, now measuring the piece of steel from its tip to Byrne’s fist and then looking back up to the younger man’s eyes. “Let’s get you back to the caboose, lad, where we’ll have some breakfast and I’ll fill you in on the rest of your duties before he himself gets here.”
Byrne jumped down from the steps onto the platform, landing lightly on his toes. He could feel the big Irishman’s eyes on the back of his shoulders and knew it was he who was now being measured. He retracted his baton and tucked it away in an inside pocket where it would be easily accessible.
I
T
was barely eight o’clock and the sun was already heating the back of Ida May Fluery’s indigo blouse. She could feel internal heat rise to the collar at her throat and spread up to the perspiration beading on her wide dark forehead. She was standing on the very same spot where she had so often stood—at the head of the cul de sac in the Styx, organizing if she needed to, greeting when she wanted to, and cajoling when she had to. But this morning there was no shade on the hard-packed sand in front of what had been her home. The tree cover was now blackened and bare, the sun streaked through still rising wisps of brown smoke. This morning Miss Ida was giving out prayers and consolation in whispers and small tight hugs to the residents of her community.
Ida had not slept. She’d remained up throughout the night, helplessly watching until the flames that consumed every dwelling in the Styx had finally eaten all they could and then settled down as coals glowing like lumps of living, satisfied evil.
Last night when word jumped across the railroad bridge to West Palm Beach that the Styx was burning, a handful of her neighbors made it across the lake before some official closed off access to the island, stating that only firefighters were allowed across. No one, of course, of any such capacity ever arrived at the site of the blaze. Ida was there. So too were a couple of the stable boys and three cooks who were on duty at the Royal Poinciana Hotel on the lakefront a mile or so away. The boys had made foolish attempts to run in close to the flames to rescue things they deemed valuable. The women simply stood and watched and wept. By sunup an assistant hotel manager, a southern white man of indeterminate age, had arrived and gently herded the onlookers back to the Breakers with the promise of food and clean uniforms and then with equally gentle words reminded them that they still had to report for work today.
When the manager stood in front of Ida May she seemed to look straight through him.
“Mizz Ida,” he said quietly, “ya’ll going to have to supervise your people back at the hotel, ma’am.”
Her eyes were not those of some unfortunate in shock, but of a woman who could envision her duties on some chalkboard slate only she could see.
“I will do my supervising from here, sir,” she said, tempering her manner as not to sound like she was giving the orders. “May I suggest sir, that when folks are finally allowed to cross back from West Palm, you could please have a few at a time come out to their houses. I will make sure they can see what they need to see, sir. Then I’ll get their work schedules right and send them back.
“Will that be acceptable, sir?”
The assistant manager seemed to focus on something slightly beyond the crown of her head while he considered how to explain it to his own superiors and make the plan his own.
“I’ll take these folks with me,” he said. “And send the next directly.”
When he walked away Ida took up her spot in front of the ashes of her house and supervised the comings and goings. She watched the disbelieving expressions of each new arrival as they approached the blackened cluster of charred timbers and ash. And when the faces broke with despair or with anger, she passed her whispers of strength or possibilities along.
“Gone be alright now, Mazzie. You safe, that’s all that matters. Right?”
“Careful now, Earl. You know the Lord don’t take anything ya’ll really need. You know that, Earl. Right?”
“It’s OK now, Corrine. Come here, give a hug, sweetheart. Your children are all safe, right? They with you and that’s everything, you know?”
After an hour or so that particular group would straggle back from their individual tragedies, their skin smeared with soot, the men carrying the head of some metal tool or heat-warped tin box, the women with a scrap of seared cloth, a blackened iron cook pot or an empty, charred picture frame.
Marjory McAdams was aboard the third wagonload to arrive. She had left the Styx while it was still dark and the sparks of the fire were just beginning to settle. She’d waited there with Ida May for hours after young Thorn Martin had left in the calash, promising he’d soon return with help.
“I cannot believe someone hasn’t responded,” she’d said in the middle of the night, looking expectantly back down the road to the hotel as if a fire brigade would surely come swinging round the corner at any second like it was midtown Manhattan. Ida May had ignored her comments, knowing the truth and thus the futility in the young woman’s expectations. Marjory had finally given up trying to talk Ida into returning to the hotel with her and had marched off on foot. When she returned now, she had not changed her clothing, which was still soot-stained. Her face had been hastily wiped clean but she had not even taken the time to change her shoes, which were dust-covered, as was the bottom eight inches of her skirt. In the light of day, the destruction before her had changed from the smoky blur of varying shades of gray and black to the stark outlines of broken angles and spires of charred wood pointing oddly up like giant corroded fingers. The rising wind from the ocean had just begun to sweep the browned wisps of smoke from the surrounding treetops. Marjory waited until the new arrivals passed Miss Ida’s consoling whispers and then watched them as they walked into the remains, their heads moving back and forth, taking in the alien sights and saying nothing. When they had all wandered off she approached the head housekeeper, softly cupped her shoulder and bent her cheek to the woman’s grayed and soot-stained head.
“I have heard that everyone has been accounted for, Mizz Ida. Everyone is alive. Thank the Lord that the fair drew most everyone across the lake. That in itself is a blessing.”
The old woman did not move her head, neither away from nor into the consoling hug of the young white girl. Her only reaction was a slight movement of her cheeks, which sucked in as if a small taste of bile had entered into her mouth.
“My father says Mr. Flagler is on his way from New York City this very day,” Marjory said. “You know he’ll take care of you all. He’s a good man. My father said there is no doubt that he will find quarters for you either at the hotel or across the lake so don’t you worry.”
Ida did not respond. She had been across the lake many times to the new city of West Palm Beach. The cheap, tossed together buildings did not bother her. And the few merchants there were just starting out so they were not yet profitable enough to turn away colored folks with money to spend. Ida had even gone to a service there at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, which was a simple wood plank structure built on pilings on a plot of scrub pines at the edge of the town. She recalled the preacher as young and full of a heartfelt passion. So the idea of moving yet again was not something she feared. Ida had made new starts before. This would be no different than her family’s move from Charlotte when the Abernathy family began buying up farm acreage to expand that city, or in Savannah years later when she’d been displaced by a new mercantile warehouse being built near the waterfront. As a woman whose family had always worked for others, Ida May Fluery knew the rules of the real world: when money comes to a place, those who are not owners are pushed aside.
