Of Grave Concern (9 page)

But how did I know that Martha had left the shopkeeper because of his drinking, which had not been hinted at in the question, or the answer to Judge Grout's inquiry about his little boy? Because the working girls at the brothels had shared these bits of gossip. Of course, you didn't get lucky every time, because there were bound to be questions of which you had no inside knowledge. In those cases, you just said something so vague that nobody could disprove it, or you said the spirits declined to answer. But what people remember are the hits, not the misses, and it takes only a few seemingly miraculous answers to win an audience—and build a reputation.

As for the spirit raps at the table, that was the easiest. That afternoon I had found a loose board on the stage, one that rocked and struck the bottom of the table legs when you stepped on it. And it took nearly imperceptible pressure from the toe of my shoe, or sometimes the heel, to produce the knocks, and all that from a good five feet away. Anyway, nobody was looking at my feet when that was happening. They were all looking at the table.

After an hour, I had worked through all of the envelopes.

I asked for some water—which I truly needed by that time—and Potete brought out a pitcher and a glass. Slowly and shakily, I drank down a glass, and then poured another. As I grasped the pitcher, I thought I saw Horrible Hank's face in the water, laughing madly. I poured the water back in, scattering the image.

Then Potete brought out a pedestal and placed a bust of Pallas Athena atop it (in truth, it was just the wooden head of Lady Liberty, a cigar company promotion borrowed from the back bar at the Long Branch Saloon). Then Potete carried out a straight-backed wooden chair and placed it next to the table.

I thanked him, and he took the glass and the pitcher away.

“Now, if it please the assembly,” I said. “I'd like to share something of special literary significance, appropriate to our subject of study tonight.”

I sat in the chair, resting my arm on the table, and turned my face to the candle, which had burned more than halfway down. After establishing an appropriate mood of contemplation, I began.

“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,'” I intoned. “‘While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.'”

I somberly recited the next few stanzas of Edgar Allan Poe's masterpiece, then—at the point in the poem where the scholar narrator goes to the window—I rose from the chair and went to stage left, as if to fling open a shutter. It was then, at the point where the “stately raven” makes its appearance, that Potete, waiting in the wings, opened the door of Eddie's cage and the bird shot out over my shoulder, as if materializing from nowhere.

The crowd gasped.

Eddie flew out, far over the audience, pitching first this way and that, and finally circled around and came to lightly rest on the bust atop the pedestal behind me, swiveling his head in birdlike fashion.

“‘Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore,'” I said. “‘Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'”

A pause.

“‘Quoth the raven:'”

“‘Nevermore!'” croaked Eddie.

Then I went through the last few stanzas of the poem, each ending with the bird's familiar refrain, each time delivered perfectly by Eddie. By the time I got to that final sorrowful “Nevermore,” you could hear a card drop.

Then the applause began, and grew, along with whistles—and the rooster call was back, but this time in approval.

“The soul of despair,” I said, “as rendered by our greatest poet.”

I was lying. I thought Whitman better.

Then I stepped forward and bowed, giving Eddie the sign to fly up and perch on my forearm. From my vest pocket, I took a bit of beef jerky, his favorite, and allowed him to tease it from my hand.

Potete brought out an empty quart-sized tin can and placed it on the stage. It had held peaches that had been served at the Beatty & Kelley Restaurant just a few hours before, but I had painted it royal blue with a yellow moon and many stars.

My ursine lawyer also brought a towel, which I used to mop my face and hair, and then tossed back to him as he left the stage.

“Now,” I asked, “who has a token of appreciation for my feathered apprentice? He likes silver dollars best, although half-dollars and dimes will also do. Come now, don't be shy.”

I saw somebody wave a coin in the second row.

“Sir! Thank you,” I said. “Toss it lightly on the stage.”

Even before the half-dollar had hit the stage, Eddie had spotted it. He hopped from my arm, scampered after the coin, all wings and claws, and caught it in his beak. Then he flew over to the can and dropped it in, and the coin jangled satisfactorily.

Now the crowd was up on its feet, pressing forward with money in hand, and Eddie went among them, snatching up coins and the occasional greenback and depositing all of it in the can. For a silver dollar, Eddie would give them back a little golden sheet of paper with a Bible verse printed on it, from 1 Corinthians 12:8–10:

It was a rush job for the printer and his devil at the
Dodge City Times
to get these made in time for the show. Luckily, I had brought my own Bible with me from the hotel room to check the passage, as none could be found in the newspaper office.

The offering of cash went on for ten minutes or so, and the rough men smiled like schoolboys as the clever raven took the money from their hands and deposited it noisily in the peaches can.

Finally I walked Eddie over to the wings and returned him to his cage.

Then I returned to the stage and struck a thoughtful pose, my arms crossed and my head high.

“I am a Spiritualist, my friends,” I said. “No matter what you may have read in the newspapers about Spiritualism or mediums, I appeal for you to decide for yourself. Does the soul survive death? I submit that we have had proof here tonight.”

I pursed my lips.

“Spiritualism has three principles: the survival of the spirit after death, the ongoing concern of the deceased for the living, and the ability of those spirits to communicate with the living through a medium. But we also embrace the teachings of Christ and seek the light wherever we may find it.”

Approving nods and scattered “amens.”

“But the candle grows short,” I said. “Our time here is almost spent. In the few minutes we have left, I will endeavor to answer whatever final questions you may have.”

“Can you ask the spirits to tell us what numbers are going to fall from the keno goose tomorrow night at the Sarasota?”

Laughter.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Spirit communication aimed at foretelling the future for personal gain is forbidden by the Book.”

An uncomfortable silence followed.

“But surely you have other questions,” I suggested. “In the past, I have established spirit communication with figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and even George Washington. Is there nothing you would ask of these sages?”

A soldier of perhaps twenty put his hand in the air.

“Yes, Corporal.”

“Can you talk to General Custer?”

George Armstrong Custer and more than two hundred men in his command had died in June the year before at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. His death had become a national obsession and had renewed fear of Indian attacks across the West.

“I don't know,” I said. “What would you like to ask him?”

“What it was like—you know—at the end? Nobody knows what happened.”

Nobody but a couple thousand Indians,
I thought.

“All right, then,” I said. “Let us try.”

I put my palms down, motioning for silence; then I crossed my arms. I closed my eyes and threw my head back. My head tilted from side to side as my eyelids fluttered. I had to decide what voice to use.

Typically, a trance medium will pretend to speak through a spirit guide. For Victoria Woodhull, it was the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes. For many lesser mediums—including me—it had often been a Native American spirit, and mine was an Indian princess, Prairie Flower. This played well east of the Mississippi; but in the West, there was still such a fear of Indian attack that I thought better of using the Native American voice. Also, it seemed ludicrous for an Indian princess—or any Indian—to interrogate Custer.

So I decided just to be myself.

“George Armstrong Custer,” I said. “Are you there, General Custer?”

A pause.

“General Custer! It is The Reverend Professor Ophelia Wylde.”

Another long pause.

“Yes! Go on.”

I struck a pose of listening intently.

“General, I understand. Safe travels.”

I opened my eyes.

“I'm sorry, Corporal,” I said. “It has been less than a year since the general heroically crossed over. His spirit is not yet ready to communicate with the living. But he bids that you ask again in a year's time.”

The corporal nodded his thanks.

“Anyone else?”

The cowboy with the tidy beard and auburn curls raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“Are you Kate Bender?”

The candle guttered and died.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Our time is spent.”

16

The take from the opera house, after expenses, was a little over one hundred dollars. Even after the split with Potete, I had more than fifty dollars in cash money. It wasn't the best I'd ever done, but it was not bad. Most laborers worked a full month for a single twenty-dollar gold piece.

But it wasn't enough. I wasn't most people, and I didn't work for laborer's wages. I needed enough money to get Eddie and me to Colorado, and to see us through for a few months in a fashion that wouldn't prove too distasteful.

Before I saw the dead girl from the train, and was then kidnapped by Sutton, my plan had been to go by rail as far as Pueblo. Then I could either amble north to Denver, where there were friends and a reliable Blue Book to consult, or I could keep going west. I'd heard that San Francisco was wide open.

There are precious few choices for a woman on her own, and I didn't want to end up hustling drinks in the saloons or washing clothes behind the Dodge House or occupying a crib along South Front. I still carried the horror of those few weeks of poverty after I'd left Paschal in New Orleans, and they were weeks I did not want to relive.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that the performance wasn't work. By the time I left the stage, I was exhausted, dripping with sweat, and in a kind of mental fog. I had taken another pull from Potete's bottle of mezcal. Then I had taken Eddie directly back to our rooms at the Dodge House, where I fell into bed, still wearing half my clothes.

I emerged from the Dodge House about noon on Friday, ate a meal of chipped beef at Beatty & Kelley's, finding only a little sand in it, and then made my way down to the Saratoga Saloon.

The Saratoga was owned by William Harris and Chalkley Beeson. Since Beeson was a member of the city council, I thought it was as good a place as any to rent a table. Beeson was a large man with good features and large eyes, which had sleepy lids. When you were talking to him, it seemed as if he were about to fall asleep, but he heard every word. After a short meeting, in which I did most of the talking, Beeson agreed to me keeping a table in the back, near the billiard tables, for ten dollars a day, as long as I kept my visitors drinking. I needed a public place to meet clients and schedule readings.

Just days before, I would never have dreamed of doing the low con on average folks to get by. Bankers? Sure. Senators? Bingo. Millionaires? Of any stripe. I saw it as a kind of public service—revenge for all of the ordinary people they'd stepped on or stepped over to grab power and money. In Chicago, the target had been pompous Potter Palmer, owner of the Palmer House.

 

 

The first Palmer House had burned during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, just thirteen days after its completion. However, before the fire reached the hotel, its architect carried the blueprints to the hotel basement, dug a pit, and covered them with two feet of sand and damp clay. Old Potter Palmer secured a $1.7 million loan on his signature—the largest private loan in history—to rebuild the hotel, using new clay tile building techniques, just across the street. Potter claimed it was the first “fireproof” hotel in history. He even challenged guests to start a fire in their hotel rooms to see if it would spread to other rooms; the catch was that if the fire failed to spread, the guest had to pay for the night—and the damages. Nobody had ever tried, but even if they had succeeded, old Potter could afford it. He owned more than a mile of State Street, both sides, and was one of the wealthiest men in the country. And he was a gambler, loving to bet on the horses. I've never met a hobby gambler who wasn't a superstitious fool.

How could I resist such a challenge?

By and by, I left Cincinnati, where I had become bored after teasing a few thousand dollars out of a pork baron, who was foolishly obsessed with the spirit of Cleopatra. I had moved to Chicago, and my new address was the Palmer House. It was an easy matter to buy an introduction to Chicago society.

Potter Palmer had just turned fifty when I met him, a grandfatherly man with a crop of white hair. He was married to a woman half his age. Bertha, the wife, was a blond beauty. He had given her the first hotel as a wedding present (some wedding—I'd like to have seen the cake). She had given him a couple of kids, so there was no family tragedy to exploit. But the way I saw it, he was just as married to that hotel, and the specter of fire must haunt him still.

So I told him upon our second “chance” meeting that I had a curious message for him. During a séance for friends in my room at the Palmer, an unfamiliar spirit voice had begged for attention, I said. The spirit kept repeating a series of numbers that meant nothing to me—twenty-four, eighteen, two—but promised it would mean something to Potter Palmer.

He said it meant nothing to him as well. What else did the spirit say?

Nothing, I said. That was all.

I heard nothing for three days. Then I received an expected note from Potter Palmer. The message meant Jeremiah, the twenty-fourth book of the Old Testament, Chapter 18, Verse 2:
Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.

Would it be possible for him to attend a séance in my room?

And so I hosted a session for old Potter and his wife, Bertha, and began to spin the tale of Constance Cleary, an unfortunate who had burned to death in the first hotel. He protested that was impossible, as none of the three hundred who perished in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 died in the Palmer House.

Ah, I said, that was what distressed the poor spirit so. No living soul knew her fate. Constance Cleary was a young and pregnant Irishwoman—just twenty-eight, the same age as his wife and me!—who had been at work as a charwoman some blocks down from the hotel the night of the fire. She had heard the alarm too late. The blaze had chased her from block to block; until finally, a few minutes after midnight, unable to run another step, she sought refuge in the fortress-like Palmer House.

And there she perished. . . . Her body and that of her unborn child were incinerated by the fire.

Potter Palmer had to know more, of course. Where was her family now? Had she other children? Had the husband remarried?

He offered to pay for more sessions, but I would not hear of it. We were, after all, both interested in doing good. Of course, the spirit required certain things for communication. Constance was worried about me, for one, and asked that I be relocated to a comfortable cottage away from the city, where I could get proper rest.

As time passed, the séances had to become more elaborate to keep up old Potter's interest. A spirit cabinet was installed in a corner of my cottage, from which came floating trumpets and ghostly hands and mystical messages written on slates.

More details of Constance's demise emerged: taps from which no water came because the city waterworks had failed, towels stuffed under the door to keep out the smoke, hideous fingers of flame that raced across the walls and ceiling in the final desperate minutes.

Finally there appeared from the spirit cabinet a luminous full-form apparition of Constance, complete with ghost child, courtesy of my friends at Sylvestre & Company. The ghost cried piteously. Old Potter was beside himself. He even climbed inside the cabinet to comfort her. What could he possibly do to ease the spirit's suffering? he asked.

A hundred thousand dollars to establish a home for fire orphans, Constance said. The money could be deposited with Ophelia Wylde, who would wisely administer the fund using her other powers.

And it nearly worked, too.

But the morning I was to receive the money, the Pinkertons came knocking on my cottage door. Perhaps I had become too friendly with old Potter inside the spirit cabinet and jealous Bertha Palmer had called the detectives to check me out. The agency already had a dossier on my activities in Cincinnati, where the pork baron had sworn a warrant out for my arrest and topped it off with a thousand-dollar reward. It seems he had no sense of humor—or of history. Had anybody who had ever fallen in love with Cleopatra lived happily ever after?

I barely had time to grab my valise and Eddie's cage as I fled out the back.