Giving Up the Ghost (11 page)

“Thought you said it didn't hurt,” McCarty said.

“Not on the outside,” Zeke said. “But it hurts on the inside. There have been these headaches since the beginning, so bad I nearly go blind, and sometimes I hear things. Voices. Reckon that makes me crazy, don't it, Doc?”

“Hearing voices doesn't necessarily make you crazy,” McCarty said. “Unless they're telling you to do crazy things. Do these voices tell you to hurt anyone?”

“No, never.”

“I hear voices, the voices of the dead,” I said. “Who do you hear?”

“The voice of that Flathead woman the Frenchman left me with,” Zeke said. “Her name was Madrigal Yellow Bird and we lived along the Powder River and soon she was in the family way. She died in childbirth during a winter so cold that the trunks of the trees burst, and she took the boy with her.”

“What does she say?” I asked.

“She talks about our life along the Powder,” he said. “Small things that happened, so long ago now. The morning I finished the cedar shingles on the roof of the cabin. When I played the jaw harp for her. The time she tried to teach me to play the Indian game with the stick and the hoops, and she laughed.”

He stopped and wiped a tear away with a rugged hand.

“And she has said nothing about the end of the world?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Don't you think Madrigal would have mentioned it? Go home to your niece, Zeke. Or turn and steer for the mountains. Find a spot that reminds you of the cabin along the Powder River, and listen to what Madrigal Yellow Bird has to say. But don't expect Judgment Day, at least not yet.”

He nodded.

“What's your name?”

“Ophelia,” I said.

“May you have shining times, Ophelia.”

Then he gently turned the mule in the opposite direction.

“There is one more voice I hear,” he said.

“Who does the voice belong to?” I asked.

“The bear, of course.”

Then he flicked the reins and urged the mule down the road to the west.

The town was a going concern of five thousand residents, and in addition to the Santa Fe depot, there was an associated hotel and dining room, a mill on the Cottonwood River, and a courthouse with a stone barricade around it to make it easier to defend, I was told, in the case of Indian attacks. The barricade had never been used, but the town was ready nonetheless.

We stopped beneath the back porch of the Clifton Hotel, and I asked McCarty how he was feeling.

“Weak,” he said.

“What do you think is the trouble?” Delaney asked.

“Something I ate, perhaps.”

“Now that you mention it,” Calder said, “I'm feeling a bit poorly myself. Headache. Some stomach discomfort.”

For Calder to admit he felt at all unwell meant that he felt downright rotten.

“How are you feeling, Ophie?” McCarty asked.

“Normal,” I said.

“What did we eat, Jack, that made us sick?” McCarty asked.

“The sandwiches,” Calder said.

“What was in those sandwiches?” McCarty asked.

“Just the usual, I suppose,” Delaney said. “Ham. Cheese.”

“The meat in the sandwiches could have turned,” McCarty said.

“Where did they come from?” Calder asked.

“A restaurant along the line,” he said. “They shouldn't have been bad. They were kept on the same ice as the general manager's oysters—”

Calder held up his hand.

“Please,” he said, fighting a gag reflex. “I don't want to hear about oysters right now.”

“Are you two going to be all right?” I asked.

“Of course,” McCarty said. “Just a touch of bad food.”

“What are your symptoms?”

“Headache, stomachache,” he said. “Thirst. Flux.”

“Should we summon a doctor?”

“Nothing to be done for a mild case of food poisoning except to allow it to pass,” McCarty said. “Let's continue, so we can find something else to occupy our minds.”

“No,” I said. “Both of you look like walking death.”

“You need us,” McCarty said. “We'll get a second wind once—”

“Don't argue with me,” I said. “We're going to get you a room and allow the both of you to rest for a few hours. I can start my inquiries, and if I find myself in dire need of you, I will send word.”

McCarty was too sick to fight, but Calder shook his head.

“I'm fine,” he said.

And then he dashed to the edge of the porch and vomited.

“Young Delaney,” I said. “Go find Engineer Skeen at whatever roundabout or siding he has placed the
Ginery Twitchell
and tell him about the problem with the sandwiches, and ask if he knows where they came from. Then, personally see to it that the sandwiches are disposed of, so nobody else will fall sick after eating them. I'll take care of getting these two some lodging.”

“The hotel is likely full, because of the stranded passengers,” he said, while reaching into his pocket and pulling out a card. “But there is a room on the third floor reserved exclusively for railway use. Please hand the clerk this and ask for room 312.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Where should I meet you after?”

“Come back to the hotel and check on these two,” I said. “If they appear to be recovering, come find me at the station.”

He nodded.

Although the Clifton Hotel was a sprawling white clapboard affair, looking something like an overgrown farmhouse, on the inside it was surprisingly civilized. Once I handed the clerk Delaney's card, he rang a bell and a porter appeared to help me get McCarty and Calder upstairs. Calder, of course, refused any help and insisted on climbing the stairs himself.

Room 312 was large, with two good-sized beds, and we placed McCarty on one of them while Calder sat on the other.

“Get in bed,” I said.

“Just let me rest for a few minutes,” Calder said.

“Shut up and take your gun and your boots off,” I said.

He did as instructed, finally, and he stretched out on the bed. He asked me to unbuckle the gun belt and hang it from the bedpost near his head, which I did. Then I took the washbasin down from the chest of drawers and placed it between the beds, so both could reach it and draw it near, if needed. Then I told them both I had better not see them upright until they were feeling better, and after closing the door I tipped the porter a dime for his help.

The hotel was full of passengers and their baggage, many of whom had apparently taken up residence in the entryway just inside the front door, because there were no rooms for them. Some, seeing a new face, asked if I had any news, and I truthfully shook my head.

I left the hotel by the front steps, walked past the two fountains in front, and followed the road—and the parallel railway tracks—to the station. My path was carpeted with freshly fallen leaves, and the low afternoon sun gave everything a golden cast, and I thought it perfect irony that on this beautiful fall day, I was on a desperate case with two sick friends in tow.

The depot was a wooden structure, much like the one at Dodge, except larger. In addition to the main track, there were many sidings, and the looping circular track that went to the hotel. I could see the
Ginery Twitchell
parked safely on the far lobe of this circular track, some hundred yards or so beyond the station; its boiler was apparently shut down, because no smoke came from the stack.

I stepped up on the platform and made my way through the forlorn people scattered about the wooden platform, some with children, who were waiting for some sign the railway would soon resume its scheduled runs. Their hollow eyes avoided mine as I approached, knowing that it was unlikely I had anything of interest to share.

When I tried the knob to the door of the passenger area, I found it locked.

I walked around to the window of the station office and tapped on the glass. The man inside the office was tilted back in his chair with his shoes on the desk, his arms crossed and his eyes closed. I knew he wasn't asleep because his face registered disdain. In the background, I could hear the telegraphic sounder tapping out strings of dits and dahs.

“Pardon me,” I called.

“We're closed,” he barked, eyes still closed. “That's why the door's locked.”

“Please, I am on business.”

“Come back when operations resume,” he said. “You'll be able to tell when that happens because the sign on the door will read OPEN and there will be these great loud things on the tracks.”

“Open your eyes a moment, please,” I said.

One eye came open.

I pressed the letter from Strong against the glass.

“This is from your general manager,” I said. “It says you are to accommodate any reasonable request I might have, to assist me in my work. My decidedly reasonable desire at this moment is that you open the blasted door so that we may talk without a closed window between us.”

The man motioned for me to come around to the employees' door to the office, unlocked it, and held it open while I stepped inside. He was about twenty-five, and his rumpled clothes and red eyes indicated he had not been to bed since the trouble started, and he was drunk with fatigue.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he said. “Had I known that you were working for the old man—I mean the general manager—I wouldn't have behaved so brusquely. But you have to understand, ma'am, that since the event, the passengers have been very difficult to control, and several times I feared they would rush the station and occupy the office.”

“Don't call me ‘ma'am,'” I said. “Miss Wylde, or Professor Wylde, will do.”

“Certainly, Professor.”

He offered me the swiveling wooden chair he had recently vacated, and he took a stool near the window. The wooden chair was disgustingly warm.

“You're calling it the ‘event'?”

I had to admit, it was a better description than
luminiferous aetheric rift
.

“Well, that's just what me and the boys started calling it,” he said.

“It'll do,” I said, and removed a pencil and my ledger from the satchel. “What's your name?”

“Cecil.”

“Last name?”

“Kennedy.”

“The wires are still occupied, Cecil?”

“Full of nothing but nonsense,” he said. “No blue flame, but maybe we just can't see it in the daylight. I reckon you'll want to know all about when it started. I was sitting here and the first thing I noticed—”

“Not now, but perhaps later,” I said. “Tell me about Hopkins.”

“Old Hapless?”

“I understand they also called him Lightning.”

“That was in the old days,” he said. “He got the nickname when he was quite young, long before I knew him. He was one of the first to decipher the code by sound.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in the old days, from the time Professor Morse received the message ‘What hath God wrought?' from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in Washington to Annapolis Junction, in 1844, it was all done by tape. It was a cumbersome thing, having a clockwork device that unwound the paper while a stylus made little pricks in it, which you deciphered by comparing the marks to a code book.”

“Where does Hopkins enter this?”

“In 1848, when Hopkins was hired as a messenger for the Morse Company. He went to work at the age of fourteen at the company's office in Frankfort, Kentucky, along with two other boys. Morse was expanding to nearly all points east of the Mississippi, the offices were busy, and juvenile males were so fascinated by the technology that the company could pay them next to nothing. I think they would have worked for free, just to be around the stuff. Well, the other two boys in the Frankfort office were Andrew Carnegie and Jimmie Leonard. You've heard of Carnegie, of course, but Leonard was the real genius. He began deciphering the code coming in by the sounds the relays and the stylus made as it pecked out the messages on the tape. He was the first sound-reader, something the Morse company discouraged, at least until Jimmie Leonard demonstrated that he could reliably sound-read the code faster than the tape could record it. Soon after that, the magnetic relays were affixed to boards, and put in a kind of box—a sounder—to make the clicks and clacks louder, as an aid to copying.”

“And Hopkins was one of these early sound-readers?”

“That's how he got the nickname ‘Lightning,' because he was so fast at it,” Cecil said. “Oh, we still use tape, for the automatic transmission of messages—stock quotes and some telegrams, for example—but the bulk of the traffic on the line is sent by hand and received by ear. No machine can equal the human brain for speed of comprehension.”

I doubted that any machine was capable of comprehension, but Cecil seemed comfortable with the idea that machines could think and understand.

“How do you know this history?”

“Every telegrapher knows the story of Jimmie Leonard,” Cecil said. “He's one of the heroes of the telegraph. As for Hopkins, well, he told the story often enough around the depot, of having worked with Leonard and Carnegie. We all got tired of hearing it, I'm afraid.”

“He would have been how old?” I asked. “In his forties?”

“An old man,” Cecil said. “Forty-five. He began losing his hearing a few years ago, but could still copy code by feeling the vibrations of the sounder. Some folks also began calling him ‘Hapless' because he was accident prone, always knocking over the inkwell on the desk, or spilling coffee and tripping over things.”

“But you didn't engage in such name-calling, did you, Cecil?”

“Oh, no, Professor.”

“Of course not.”

“Things got right bad at the end,” he said. “His sight began failing, and he was often sick. He was all right during the day, which is when his shift was, but in the last week or so he was nearly completely blind at night.”

“Tell me about his habits,” I said.

“His habits, Professor?”

“Yes,” I said. “Did he have friends? Where did he live? What did he do in his free time?”

“Not many friends, except for Mackie in Dodge,” he said. “That's why Mackie got the camelback key that was Hopkins's personal and favorite. He didn't have any pastimes that I am aware of. Lived by himself in a shack behind the post office. But he liked to eat in the dining room at the Clifton Hotel, and he was especially fond of vinegar pie.”

“I can't think of a less appetizing name for a pie.”

“Oh, it's not all vinegar,” Cecil said. “Some. It's really quite sweet, sort of like a custard. It's not on the regular menu, but one of Harvey's girls would make it up for him special. Sometimes, she would drop it by the depot for him, special. I think she felt sorry for him.”

“Is Harvey the cook?”

“No, Fred Harvey is the man that owns the dining hall,” he said. “Has one in Topeka, too. Have you ever had the usual food that's found near stations? Awful, ain't it? Well, Harvey has opened up these houses to give passengers—and train crews and railway employees—tasty food at honest prices. He took over the Clifton Hotel last year, and even brought a cook in from Chicago to supervise.”

“Were you here when Hopkins died?”

“Yep,” he said. “He hit the floor right about where you are sitting. Clutched his chest and keeled over. His heart failed him, is what they said.”

“The girl who was kind to Hopkins,” I said. “What's her name?”

“Molly,” he said. “Molly O'Grady.”