City of Light (28 page)

Finally everyone was seated. Glancing through the program, Elbert whispered, “I’m suspicious of anyone who uses three names, aren’t you? Horrible affectation.”

“You are never guilty of affectations,” I responded.

He beamed. “At least not
that
affectation.”

Bates entered the hall from backstage, accompanied by a small group of supporters. They seemed a dull, conservative lot, but among them was Susannah Riley, who stood out because she was much younger than the others. Bates held her arm, at one point gripping it hard for support as he grimaced in pain. Mostly likely he suffered from arthritis and was too proud to use a cane. He was thinner than I remembered, almost gaunt. His white beard and long hair were uncombed and wild; his eyes flashed.

“Ah,” said Elbert appreciatively, “I see he’s cultivating the Old Testament prophet look. A smart move, in this context.”

Susannah’s presence surprised me only in that it was so public, such a forthright statement of allegiance. She’d do well to be more cautious, I thought, or the men in my row would think twice before allowing their wives and daughters to indulge in art lessons taught by a woman they would consider a radical. Looking graceful tonight in a simple dark-blue silk dress, Susannah helped Bates to his chair beside the podium. He whispered to her for several seconds, and she nodded in agreement. The others in the group had already proceeded to their seats in the reserved front row, so she was alone with him, evidently a close confidante. Finally she took her seat.

Courtesy of the newspapers, I now knew more about Bates than I had when I saw him at the power station. He had become involved in the nature preservation movement after an outbreak of typhoid in Harrisburg, his hometown, was traced to the Susquehanna River’s polluted waters. He traveled the country crusading for nature-related causes. When he wasn’t crusading, he tended his rose garden and wrote books on roses.

Miss Elizabeth Letson, the director of the museum of the Society of Natural Sciences, gave the introduction. With her prim shirtwaist, severely pulled-back hair, and glasses perched at the end of her nose, she aggressively proclaimed herself to be one of us: one of our happy band of unmarried professional ladies who were considered past their prime before they reached their midtwenties, taking on a perpetual middle age that stretched from roughly twenty-five to fifty-five.

When Bates took the stage, grasping the lectern, he studied the crowd for a long moment before beginning in a strong yet measured tone. “What are we talking about, when we talk about Niagara?” He paused, looking from face to face. “It is this: transcendence. Sublimity. The divine. Yes, when we talk about Niagara, we talk about the Lord God. We talk about how the Lord God, millenniums ago, fashioned a great monument to himself. And that monument is the miracle of Niagara. As Ralph Waldo Emerson has rightly told us, nature is a manifestation of the divine. The contemplation of nature leads us to the divine. And so when we stare into the green waters of Niagara …”—once more he paused—“we are staring into the face of God.”

“Hogwash,” Elbert whispered.

“Now, what is it that the power company wishes to do with this manifestation of God?” Bates gazed around, waiting for an answer. Abruptly his intonation turned harsh: “The leaders of the power company intend to take God’s miracle and turn it into bits of steel and aluminum and electric light.” He spat out the words. “They tell us they’ll only take a teeny, weeny, insy, binsy bit of water,” he said like a child, pressing his fingers together to show the small amount, squinting to see it.

He pounded his fist on the podium, jolting me. “But we know them, don’t we? We know that their ‘tiny bit’ is anyone else’s ocean. We know they won’t be happy until not one drop of water flows across Niagara’s precipice. Has not their own prophet declared this policy? Their own ‘President of the International Niagara Commission,’ their prophet of darkness—Lord Kelvin.”

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was a renowned British physicist with an expertise in electricity.

“Listen to what ‘Lord’ Kelvin says: ‘I look forward to the time,’ he tells us, ‘when the whole body of water from Lake Erie will find its way to the lower level of Lake Ontario through machinery. I do not hope that our children’s children will ever see the Niagara cataract’! So speaks ‘Lord’ Kelvin,” Bates said derisively.

On and on he went. My mind began to wander. An image came to me, of how pleased my father would have been to see Niagara without water. To climb the Falls like any other rock face, simply to study what was there.

“People think me an impractical man,” Bates said, shifting tone and regaining my attention. “An unscientific man. An uncompromising man. And I admit it: I will not compromise my faith. But to you who would find it easy to dismiss me as a fool, know that I too have a practical side. I know what will happen—I see it happening already: The American Falls are shrinking, becoming narrower and narrower in their channel. Soon the American Falls will be nonexistent. Dry rock from the shore to Goat Island. Then the broad Horseshoe Falls will begin to shrink, narrower and narrower and so to nothing.

“Hear it now!” he cried. “As the power company in its greed takes more and more of our God-given heritage, Lake Erie itself will become unnavigable—this is fact, not faith. The water level will sink—even in the great harbor of Buffalo ships will run aground. This is fact, not faith. More than ten million gallons a minute, they’re taking now: Isn’t it enough? Over a foot off the depth, they’re taking now: Isn’t it enough?

“I have even heard it said”—here his voice dropped, letting us in on a secret—“that at night, when no one is watching, they take thirty-four thousand cubic feet per second to feed their foul industries! When will it be enough?”

“Do you think someone is paying Bates to do this?” Elbert whispered. “Do you think he really believes this nonsense?”

“I think he believes in himself.”

“Well said, Louisa. I should make that one of my homilies: He who believes in himself believes in whatever he says.”

“Quiet, Elbert.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Bates too turned quiet. “Ask yourself this, my friends: Who owns the Falls of Niagara? Is it the lovers of nature and God, or is it J. Pierpont Morgan?”

At the mention of his employer, Frederick Krakauer sat up suddenly, startled out of a quasi-nap, and looked around confusedly, wondering what he’d missed.

“Is it J. Pierpont Morgan and John Jacob Astor and Nicholas Biddle and your own Thomas Sinclair and John Albright”—Bates was raving now—“and George Urban, Jr.—”

His words were drowned out by the cheers of his supporters in the front row. Susannah stood to applaud. Everyone else was silent. Bates nodded at his followers in gratitude, then motioned for Susannah to sit.

“Oh yes, they will try to trick us,” he continued. “They will tell us that electricity is good for us.” He laughed disparagingly. “That it brings us wonderful things. But let’s be honest here. No one but the rich will ever have electric lights. Gaslight makes for glorious streetlamps, and horsepower has willingly pulled our trolleys for generations.”

“I wonder if he asked the horses about that,” Elbert said. I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling.

“For the common man, electricity has created nothing of value and never will! And so my friends, let us unite. Let us rise up together and take control of our God-given heritage.”

“You don’t think he’s a socialist, do you?” Elbert pondered.

“We—yes, we—have the ability to create the future. Will we create it in the image of God or the image of the devil?” He glanced around. “I know I am only a David, fighting a Goliath. But in this fight I shall never tire. I will fight to victory or to death. My troops are here before you.” He motioned to his followers in the front row. “I must warn you that soon the day may come when we will be forced to take matters into our own hands. When we will be forced to fight in every way necessary to fulfill God’s will. But we fear no jail. We know that for each of us who is silenced by prison bars, another will come to take his place to fight for the glory of Niagara. God is with us: This we know. Did not God himself pull the devil’s engineer Karl Speyer beneath the ice to drown? A big, tall, proud man—sucked helplessly into the holy water of God. Was not his death a sign of what God has in store for all who anger him?”

“Well, here’s an interesting new theory of Speyer’s death,” Elbert mused. “I wonder if Bates has shared his idea with the police. How exactly would you investigate such a theory? Would you begin in a church, do you think? But what denomination? Trinity Episcopal or Westminster Presbyterian? Or would you go right to the source and visit St. Anthony of Padua?” he asked, referring to the Roman Catholic church downtown. “Or even Temple Beth Zion!” Beth Zion was our primary Jewish congregation.

I didn’t respond. I had no humor regarding Karl Speyer. Again I envisioned his bulky form, bundled up in a fur hat and a heavy coat with a warm fur collar, heading out the door toward death.

Now Bates’s voice was a stage whisper, hissing. “I am a fair man, for God teaches both justice and mercy. So I will tell you: I have here a list”—he took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and held it up in his fist—“a list of New York State inspectors being bribed to look the other way while the power station steals God’s water. I will not humiliate the men on this list by reading it aloud. Not yet.”

Around me, the crowd murmured and mumbled—except for the board members in my row, who wore looks of studied boredom and indifference, revealing nothing. Franklin Fiske had referred to bribery when he visited me; I glanced sharply at him, but he too appeared determinedly indifferent. Where would Bates get such a list, I wondered, before remembering Tom’s concern about a spy.

“I am satisfied for now, that those involved should know that I possess this list. And that I will use it. When the time is propitious.”

“He’s got nothing,” Elbert said dismissively. “If he did, he would at least unfold the paper. Show us that there’s something written on it. It could be completely blank. Nonetheless,” he admitted, “it’s a convincing tactic. I could learn from this fellow.” Elbert made a note in his pocket diary.

“And so I invite all of you to join me in this holy fight—this crusade for Niagara. To you who are leaders of the project, I invite you too—even you—to repent your ways, to enter God’s forgiveness, to join us in our holy war to recapture the great cataract of Niagara in the name of the Lord!”

Appearing exhausted and vulnerable, and amidst the cheers of his followers, he collapsed into his chair beside the podium. He covered his face with one hand as if he were praying. His supporters rose in a standing ovation, but he kept his face covered. Clapping with a kind of fury, Susannah Riley turned to search the crowd. Tears glinted on her cheeks, and she did not wipe them away. She seemed in a religious ecstasy, swept up in the moment, her face shocking in the purity of its beauty. Francesca half-stood to acknowledge her, and Susannah’s sudden smile was like a brilliant jolt of love that made me avert my eyes, ashamed to have invaded their intimacy.

Elbert was saying appreciatively, “Yes, yes, he certainly has dramatic flair. He’d make a top-notch salesman. Just need to get him a better product. Maybe he could do a book for us. On roses.
Roycroft Roses
. He could barnstorm the country. Make a fortune.” Elbert made another note in his diary.

Miss Letson took the podium. Meanwhile Susannah hurried onto the stage to give Bates a quick hug of reassurance. As she turned to leave, she squeezed his hand between both of hers and then slipped away. “In the interest of free and open discussion,” Miss Letson said with flat objectivity, “we have asked Mr. James Fitzhugh, acting chief engineer of the Niagara Frontier Power Project, to give the rebuttal.” Surprisingly, Bates’s supporters in the front quickly calmed, returning to their seats.

Mr. Fitzhugh was in his early thirties, clean-shaven and pale. He had been Karl Speyer’s on-site assistant.

“Thank you, Mr. Bates, for sharing your opinions,” Fitzhugh said with a touch of nervousness. He arranged his papers on the podium and cleared his throat. “First, I wish to say—and here I speak for the entire staff and directors of the Niagara Frontier Power Project—that we share your concerns. The preservation of an adequate scenic effect at Niagara has always been foremost in our minds. The Falls at Niagara are a source of daily amazement and spiritual comfort to us all.”

This was greeted by hostile mumbling from the front row: The preservationists would consider Fitzhugh’s remarks hypocritical and disingenuous.

“Let me say too, that the notion of taking all the water from Niagara is irrational on its face. No one could possibly take all the water. The technology to do so does not exist.”

So Fitzhugh, like Krakauer, regarded “all” as a relative term.

“Furthermore, our charters from the state of New York would never permit us to take all the water. Water use is strictly controlled and we are subject to frequent inspections.”

“And who’s paying the inspectors’ salaries?” someone in the front shouted.

Fitzhugh ignored the question. As he began to read from his prepared statement, I knew he would not address or even acknowledge Bates’s threats and innuendoes; Fitzhugh would say only what he’d been told to say.

“The most important point to realize is that our work is in fact saving Niagara. As many of you know, the Falls suffers a natural recession of as much as four feet per annum or more, on average. In other words, the cataract is destroying itself. In the thousands of years since its creation, the cataract has cut a gorge some seven miles long, from the Queenston Bluff to its present location. By lessening the water’s incessant grinding at the limestone and shale of the escarpment—even by such small amounts, mere inches on the overall depth—we significantly slow this natural process of destruction.”

I saw my father diagraming the process for me, showing me how the soft rock broke down. A relentless retreat, he called it: five hundred feet per century. Someday Niagara would be gone. How I missed him. How I yearned to be held again within the aura of his affection. To be his child again. Forever. To feel his beard scratch against my face as he kissed my cheek.