Usher's Passing (48 page)

She squeezed his hand and managed a brave smile. 'We're going to be fine, Ludlow. Stop that whimpering and squirming about, Righteous! You'll throw the coach over!"

Over the noise of confusion outside, they heard the crack of Keil's whip. "Go on, damn you!" he yelled. "Move out of the way!"

"We'll get there," Cynthia said, but uncertainty strained her voice. Something exploded perhaps a block or two away, and Ludlow gripped her hand so tightly the knuckles ground together.

The coach lurched ahead, stopped, and lurched violently again, moving amid a melee of other vehicles and struggling humanity. Where the streets intersected, crashed carriages were being hauled out of the way, people swarming frantically over the wreckage. Maddened horses bucked and kicked as cinders scorched their backs. The acrid, lung-burning smoke was getting thicker, and the fireballs roared overhead like cannon shots.

Finally breaking free of the crush, Keil Bodane turned the coach off Clybourne and onto Halsted Street, heading toward the waterfront. The Arabians responded with speed, their flanks singed by cinders. The streets were littered with burning debris. Bars had been broken into, and whiskey flowed in the gutters from staved-in barrels. Crazed people stopped to drink their fill until the whiskey caught fire and exploded in their faces. Other people ran at the coach, trying to grab hold, but Keil whipped the horses for more speed. A pistol was fired, the bullet shearing off a splinter of wood inches from Keil's knee.

And as Keil veered the coach around the corner of Halsted onto Grand Street, he was met by a wagon full of burning haybales, its team running wild and a charred corpse at the reins.

The Arabians hit the other horses with a force that snapped bones and threw Keil Bodane like a stone from a slingshot. The entire coach, still moving at breakneck speed, then crashed into both teams of horses and turned on its side, its gilded wheels shattering.

"God have mercy!" Righteous screamed—and then her face hit Ludlow's knee as the boy was wrenched from his seat. Cynthia was thrown violently to one side, her head crunching against the coach's intricate scrolled woodwork. As the coach slammed to the ground, it was dragged thirty more yards by the crippled Arabians. The burning haywagon careened onward, its team injured but still trying to escape the fire.

After the crash, as cinders pattered down on the cobblestones and the pall of smoke darkened, a few desperate men stole the three Arabians that could still stand. The fourth lay in the street, two legs broken. Near it was the body of Keil Bodane, whose skull had been crushed against a lamppost.

"Get out!" Cynthia ordered a sobbing Righteous Jordan. "Hurry! Climb up through the door!" Righteous, her front teeth knocked loose by Ludlow's knee and her face covered with blood, hauled herself through the coach door above her head, then leaned in again to help Cynthia up. Ludlow pulled himself out, a long gash across his forehead and his nose broken. His eyes were pewter pools of shock.

"Miz Usher! Miz Usher!" Righteous grasped the other woman's shoulders. The entire left side of Cynthia's face was turning purple and swelling rapidly. Blood leaked from both ears onto her
black velvet jacket.

"I'm . . . all right." Her voice was slurred. "We've . . . got to get to the lake. Help me . . . get Ludlow to the lake."

"Mr. Bodane!" Righteous called—and then she saw his body lying in the street. His head had cracked open like a clay jug.

"Righteous." Cynthia gripped her maid's thick wrist. Her bloodshot left eye, Righteous saw with horror, was beginning to bulge from her face. "You . . . take care . . . of Ludlow," she said with an effort. "Get him to the lake. Luther . . . will know . . . what to do. Luther won't . . . let him die."

Righteous knew she was babbling about Luther Bodane, Keil's son, who'd stayed behind, this trip, to watch over Usherland. "We're all gon' get to the water," she said firmly, and helped Cynthia to the ground. Ludlow clambered off the coach; he stood staring numbly at Keil's corpse as other people hurried past, some of them stepping on the body.

Righteous asked Cynthia if she could walk, and Cynthia nodded. The injured eye wouldn't focus, the flesh around it blackening. Cinders hissed down on them, and Righteous crushed them out with her fingers when they sparked in her mistress's hair. "We got to go!" she called to the boy. "Got to get to the lake!"

His forehead bleeding badly, Ludlow followed as Righteous Jordan began to help Cynthia down the middle of Grand Street.

They joined the throngs who hobbled, staggered, stumbled, and ran toward Lake Michigan. A thunderous roar shook the street beneath them, and windows shattered like shotgun blasts as buildings collapsed only a block behind. Red-and-purple fireballs shrieked overhead. The crowds had gone mad; people were breaking into stores, looting whatever they could carry, from topcoats to violins. A woman on fire was dancing a crazy jig on the curbside, caught under the weight of seven or eight mink coats she'd just stolen. Someone threw her into the gutter, where she fell into a stream of running whiskey and was instantly incinerated. A naked man yelled, "Destruction! God's wrath on Chicago!"

Righteous's flesh was blistering. She spat out two teeth and kept right on going, pushing through the crowd, taking Ludlow's hand so he wouldn't be swept away. Over the noise of screaming and shouting, there was a sound like a thousand locomotives with their boilers about to blow. As Righteous looked back, huge sheets of flame leapt into the sky, the glare almost blinding her. Rooftops lifted into the air, spinning away out of sight. The earth trembled under the impact of crashing tons of brick. Ludlow was transfixed, staring at the conflagration behind them, tears running down his cheeks. She jerked him back to his senses and kept moving.

Cynthia Usher slipped off Righteous's shoulder, almost falling before Righteous could catch her.

"Mother!" Ludlow wailed through blistered lips. He clutched her waist, trying to keep her from falling, as bodies roughly shoved past them.

Ludlow looked up into his mother's distorted, hideously swollen face. She was smiling at him.

"My angel," she whispered, and touched his hair.

And then blood exploded from her nostrils and around the staring orb of her left eye. Ludlow was splattered. Righteous almost swooned, but held herself steady; she'd felt the life leave Cynthia Usher in a single sigh. She eased the corpse to the ground, pushing away people who staggered too close. "She gone," Righteous told the boy. "We got to go on ourselves."

Ludlow screamed, "No!" and threw himself across the body. When Righteous tried to pull him away, he attacked her savagely. She reared back her right fist and struck him squarely in the jaw, then caught him in her arms as he fell.

Carrying the moaning boy, Righteous fought toward the lake. By the time they'd reached the shore, their clothes were little more than smoking rags. People by the hundreds were immersed in the oily water. Boats were darting here and there, picking up swimmers. Most of the yachts had already been stolen from their slips, and those that remained were afire. Righteous went into the lake up to her neck, then wet Ludlow's face and hair to keep the cinders from burning him.

It was almost an hour before she lifted the boy into the hands of soldiers aboard a ferryboat, then climbed up herself. Ludlow, his clothing tattered and his face puffed with burns, stood at the railing, watching Chicago's destruction. When Righteous touched his arm, he pulled quickly away.

Lord God! she thought. She had realized, as she would tell a reporter in another few hours, the truth of the matter: with both his mother and father gone, Ludlow Usher at thirteen was in control of everything—the estate, the family business, all the other businesses that had belonged to Mr. Cordweiler. He was, Righteous knew, the wealthiest thirteen-year-old boy in the world.

She watched him, waiting for him to cry, but he never did. He held his spine as stiff as an iron bar, his attention riveted to the fire on shore.

The soldiers were helping a man and woman aboard from a rowboat. Both were well dressed, the man in a dark suit with a diamond stickpin, the woman in the dirty remnants of a red ballroom gown. The man regarded Righteous and Ludlow and turned to one of the soldiers. "Sir," he inquired, "must we share this vessel with niggers and tramps?"

Rix came to the end of Righteous Jordan's story. He glanced over the other articles. Chicago had burned for twenty-four hours, and the fire had destroyed more than seventeen thousand buildings. One hundred thousand people were left homeless. The flames had been helped along by at least nine firebugs. The firemen had been slow to react that night because they were so tired; during the week before the Great Fire, they'd answered more than forty alarms.

He looked up at the portrait of the brooding Ludlow Usher. Thirteen years old and one foot in hell, Rix thought. How had he kept his sanity?

Rix had found the answer to Dunstan's question about the death of Cynthia Usher. Tomorrow he would take this newspaper to him. But the cane—how and when had Ludlow gotten the cane back from Randolph Tigré?

Printed in small type in several columns on the next page was a listing of businesses that had been destroyed. They were not in alphabetical order, and Rix had to read patiently before he found what he was looking for.

Uriah Hynd and Company, Grocers.

A
grocery
store? Rix thought. Hudson Usher was spending fifteen thousand dollars a whack on groceries from Chicago? Why didn't he simply buy his groceries in Asheville?

Rix carefully folded the paper and rose from his chair. For now, the questions would have to wait. He blew out all the candles except those in one candelabra, and used it to light his way upstairs.

And when he opened the door to his room, the golden light illuminated Puddin' Usher—lying languidly in his bed, waiting for him.

She smiled sleepily, yawned, and stretched. Her breasts peeked over the top of the sheet. "You been a long time," she said huskily. "Thought you'd never come to bed."

He closed the door, alarmed that someone might hear. "You'd better get out. Boone will—"

"Boone ain't here." Her eyes challenged him. "Ol' Boonie's long gone to his club. You ain't gonna turn me down this time, are you?"

"Puddin'," Rix said as he put the folded paper on his dresser, "I thought you understood what I told you. I can't—"

She sat up and let the sheet drop away. Her breasts were fully exposed, and she wet her lips with her tongue. "See how much I need you?" she asked. "Now don't tell me you don't want some of it."

The candlelight flattered her, made her look less harsh and more vulnerable. Rix's body was responding. She stretched like a cat. "You're not
afraid
of Boone, are you?" she asked teasingly.

He shook his head. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Boone says you can't keep a woman," she said. "He says you're a half-step short of bein' queer."

Rix set the candelabra down.

"Come on," she insisted. "Let's see what you can do."

He started to tell her to get out; he wanted to say it, but suddenly he couldn't make himself. A thin smile had begun to play around the edges of his mouth. Why not? he thought. It would be wrong, yes—but hadn't it been wrong for Boone to treat him like dirt all these years, to crow and caper and plot all kinds of nasty little tricks? This was the chance to pay him back that Rix had been waiting for. He brushed away the small voice inside him that urged him not to.

"Why not?" he said, and his voice sounded like that of someone he didn't know.

"Good." She kicked off the sheets, her body wantonly exposed to him. "Blow out them candles, then, and let's get to it."

BOONE WAS DRUNK ON CHIVAS REGAL, AND HE'D LOST SEVEN
thousand dollars in two fleeting hours at the country club poker table. It was dawning on him that his old buddies were conspiring to cheat him. As they laughed and clapped him on the back and lit his Dunhill cigars for him, Boone silently mulled over how he would destroy them.

He took his red Ferrari through the quiet streets of Foxton at almost ninety, whipping past an old battered pickup truck coming from the opposite direction. For spite, Boone rammed his hand down on the horn; it blared several notes of "Dixie." As the car roared out of Foxton, Boone sank his foot to the floor and the Ferrari leaped forward like a rocket.

He would buy the Asheville Heights Country Club, he'd decided. For whatever price. Maybe the board members would put up a statue of him in the foyer. The least they could do was to name the club after him. In a few days he was going to be one of the richest men in the world. Dad can't hold on much longer, he thought—but he had mixed emotions, because he loved the old man. Walen had taught him how to be tough; he'd taught him that no one could be trusted, that everybody was out to make a killing. They'd had long talks, when Boone was younger, about how money was what made a man a success. Money is power, Walen had told him many times; without it, the world will run over you like a steamroller. He'd pointed to Rix as an example of what Boone should avoid: Rix, Walen said, was a dreamy, unrealistic coward who would never amount to his weight in shit. It had pleased Walen for Boone to beat on his younger brother.