Magic Words Read online

  6

  FIVE DAYS BEFORE HIS DEATH, ROBERT INGRAM CAME INTO Omaha on what he called “a refreshment run.” At the behest of General George Crook, he had been scouting the Indian territories all of May and June, trying to keep an eye on Standing Bear while avoiding the soldiers of Chased By Owls.

  With three months’ pay in his pocket, he hit the city like a redheaded cyclone. He ate and drank his fill of Doris’s chicken-fried steak and collards, gave up forty dollars to a cardsharp named Jameson, throttled him for cheating, and then spent the night with Lotus Chu, the Nickel & Dime’s “exotic” Chinese courtesan. Second only to Lady-Jane Little Feather in sheer expense, Lotus was renowned throughout the territory for her famous “hanging basket” mechanism and her oriental philosophy of providing value for money.

  Prophet John McGarrigle also visited the town that night, although hardly in such plush accommodations. It cost him twenty-five cents to stay at the Corner Pocket, a building little more than a large lean-to and the city’s cheapest brothel. The nightly tariff was normally fifty cents, but John had chosen Lil Wilson for his companion and so received a discount. Once a prime attraction of the Pocket, Lil was no longer allowed to provide complete carnal services to visitors, owing to an advanced case of gonorrhea. Made blind by the disease, the strong massage and the sweet embrace had replaced her former specialties. Such an arrangement was fine with John, his primary interest being the half of her bed she wasn’t using.

  The following morning, McGarrigle awoke, put a territorial quarter on Lil’s pillow, dressed, and walked out onto Farnam Street. Halfway up the block, he noticed young Julius Meyer placing black shag tobacco in the window of his brother’s shop. The gray man waved to him, and Julius returned the salute. In the aftermath of their winter adventure, the boy had gotten to know the prophet. He often came into the store for plug and was never without an anecdote or funny story. The boy enjoyed consulting John about atmospheric conditions, amazed by his accuracy and the detail of his forecasts. Not once had the prophet been wrong, even predicting to the hour when the first thunderstorm of June would turn to hail.

  “It’s a gift,” he would say, “until it’s a curse.”

  Julius smiled and waved back as the gray man walked through the Nickel & Dime’s double doors.

  A few minutes later, the first scream cut the air.

  The hair on the boy’s neck rose, each strand sending a chill down his back. The sound seemed at once low and high, its top almost womanly, its bottom froggy and strangled. This was as he always imagined a dybbuk might sound, howling as it emerged from hell to possess a human body. Alarmed, Julius locked the shop and ran across Farnum Street and into the Dime. The few men who were in the saloon at that hour had ducked beneath the gambling tables or hidden behind the bar. One even lay down on the stairs that led to the rooms of the girls, flattening his body against the steps as if to pass through them to safety.

  At the center of the room, John McGarrigle stood moaning like a soul denied heaven. His body, bent nearly double, shook and vibrated, different parts at different speeds. His beard stood away from his face and his eyes were rolled up in his head. Pale as a hanging prisoner, he raised his arms to shoulder height and pointed both index fingers at Robert Ingram.

  “Don’t leave here, Bob,” he thundered at the terrified scout. “Go back to Fort Kearney and you’ll be as dead as Lincoln!”

  The prophet screamed again. He shook the index fingers at Ingram like a disapproving schoolmaster. Julius looked down at the boots of the late Jim Riley and saw that they had begun to dance. John’s pupils returned to their sockets and were now huge and staring.

  “If you go back to Kearney, Bob, we’ll bury you hairless! Tell the brass to go to hell or that’s where you’ll be by next full moon! Don’t leave here, Bob. Don’t leave …”

  Prophet John strangled on the word. With a gurgle, he spun around once and hit the floorboards as if touched by the finger of God.

  No one in the saloon moved. It was as though McGarrigle’s performance had created a magic circle around him, an invisible barrier no patron dared cross. One of the prostitutes, a thick blond girl from Indianapolis called Polack Jenny, crossed herself with the expertise of a Mother Superior.

  Robert Ingram sat frozen, his face ashen and his breakfast untouched. After what seemed an hour, he rose from his chair and threw a dollar bill on the table. Without a word, he ran from the saloon and into the street. Julius could hear his horse’s hooves on the ground. The sound headed west and out of town.

  With no one coming to his aid, Julius stepped toward the fallen McGarrigle. Of course, Max would have said such knarishkeit was none of his business; that the crazy goyim should be left to their self-induced suffering. But was it not one of the six hundred thirteen mitzvos to offer aid to an afflicted friend?

  As the boy bent to examine the prophet, he felt someone clutch his shoulder. The grip was not hard, but he could feel the pressure of sharp nails through his coat. Julius reached up to release the hand and was amazed at its softness. Every hand he had shaken here had been rough and calloused with labor. The fingers of the railroad workers sometimes felt like the stones they had been breaking. Even the hands of the delicate Chinese women had been swollen into hardened gloves.

  The soft hand spun him gently around.

  “Leave him alone, Jew boy,” the woman said. “When he’s like this, it’s best to let him be. Wake him and it’s like stirring a sleepwalker. Only he’s armed—and you wouldn’t want your throat slit trying to do a good turn for a madman who won’t remember it later.”

  Julius had seen the dark woman before, walking in the streets and passing in and out of the Dime. Max had called her a kurva, Yiddish for whore. In his first days in Nebraska, such talk had shocked Julius, but soon, to hear a woman referred to as a “whore” became like hearing a man called a “miner” or a “cowboy.” In fact, most of Omaha’s female population had been involved in the trade at one time or another, owing to the huge majority of males to females and a singular lack of discernment on the part of the men.

  Lady-Jane Little Feather smiled into Julius’s eyes and let her hand drop gently from his shoulder. He felt a small ache where her hand had been.

  “I knew a boy in Europe who had such seizures,” Julius said. “We used to have to put a stick in his mouth and hold him until the doctor came.”

  Her smile broadened. “No doctor needed here, boy—which is good, since there’s not one for a hundred miles. No, this is just John’s little present from the Lord above. I reckon sometimes when He gives you one, he doesn’t wrap it up in ribbon and paper. Anyways, he’ll be up in an hour, we’ll buy him some rotgut, and he’ll be right as rain. Only don’t touch him now if you want to live.”

  The boy nodded. “That man he was pointing at. He seemed very frightened.”

  “As well he should be. He’s as good as dead, and he knows it.”

  Julius looked past her at the body on the floor. It had begun to twitch like a napping dog. She took his elbow and walked him to a table facing the door.

  “This only happens a few times a year,” she said, sitting the boy down. “But when it does, the subject of his advice better listen. Back last spring, Darryl Pangborn was supposed to put a roof on his house. Him and the prophet were shooting the breeze in front of Seaford’s store when the fit took John. He told him to stay close to ground until fall. Darryl didn’t listen and he fell ten feet off the roof and another twenty down a well. They brought him up in pieces.”

  Julius put his hand to his head and wiped a bead of sweat from his cheek. Lady-Jane held up two fingers to a passing waiter.

  “The year before it only happened once, but that was worse. General Charlie Hardy had come from Washington to inspect some troops and asked John to scout him to Kearney. John got a visit from God or the Devil or whoever this comes from and told him to stay put. Well, the General got to the fort, all right, just not the way he expected. Chased By Owls sent him and his guards
back to Kearney in twelve leather pouches—each one had their ashes inside plus their rank patches. Charlie’s bag had a little something extra. His mustache. They cut it off his face.”

  Lady-Jane produced a black ebony holder and a box of matches from her small beaded bag. She placed a cigarette in the holder, lighted it, and took a long pull.

  “You’d better scat, boy. If Max knew you were in here talking to me, he’d skin us both. And don’t worry about the prophet there. By tonight you’ll probably see his ass thrown out of here for fighting or cheating at cards or some other activity that proves he’s a healthy white man of the plains.”

  The waiter brought two double shots of whiskey to the table. Lady-Jane handed one to Julius and raised the other in a toast.

  “C’mon, boy,” she said, like a mother offering milk. “It’ll steady you up. And as far as I know, it’s kosher.”

  Close to midnight, Julius was awakened by a commotion in the street. Buzzing with fatigue, the boy rose from his bed and walked to the window.

  Below, he could see the lights of the Nickel & Dime and hear its laughter and music. Julius cocked his head and listened as if such gaiety could force the prophet’s fit from his mind. As he turned back toward his bed, a commotion arose in the saloon’s front window. Through it, he could see the figure of Mack Swain, the Dime’s nightside bartender. Larger even than Doris but far less affable, Swain was known for a short fuse easily lit and a limited tolerance for property damage. Only the week before, he had split the skull of a miner who had missed a spittoon and hit a damask tablecloth. It was said around town that Swain would rather see three of his girls busted up than one of his mirrors.

  A knot of men had formed around the saloon’s entrance, some encouraging the ruckus, others attempting to restore what passed for order at the Dime on a Saturday night. But both factions parted like the Red Sea when Swain’s big back burst through the door like a well-dressed block of granite. As the bartender twisted around to face the street, Julius could see that he was dragging a smaller man along with him; he was bearded and dressed in filthy buckskins.

  Red-faced and panting, Swain tossed the man into the air. At the apogee of his flight, he seemed to hang suspended, the fringes of the buckskins forming a series of arcs that fluttered like waving wheat. Lady-Jane had been right. Prophet John McGarrigle had recovered enough to get himself in trouble and now lay sprawled and smiling in the dirt.

  Julius took comfort at the sight.

  As for Robert Ingram, he ignored the prophet’s alarm. Ingram had never been superstitious; to give credence to a lunatic would have gone counter to the habits of a lifetime and sullied his reputation with his Army employers. In the event, his common sense earned him a hail of Indian arrows, the fatal ones piercing his left ear and right eye. By the time Chased By Owls was finished with Ingram and his party, all twenty of its members were dead and bald. The bodies were left half naked to the buzzards, the braves having stripped the soldiers of their uniform tunics and Robert Ingram of his brown buffalo coat. From then on, any white man seeing the warriors would know that their garments had been earned by the deaths of their enemies—and that all the power of the brave bluecoats now resided on their backs.

  7

  AFTER TWENTY YEARS IN THE SHOW BUSINESS, COMPARS Herrmann knew it took more than talent or the simple working of miracles to draw the attention of the press.

  He had tried minor bribery, but it couldn’t always be counted upon to work. A few tickets here and there might attract a reporter with children to entertain. A box of cigars (bearing his likeness) could arouse the interest of an editor too broke to buy his own. But the better-paid journalists would often refuse his largesse, lecturing him on the purity of the fourth estate; or even worse, accepting his gifts while writing nothing about his engagement.

  In the end, the solution proved as simple as human hunger.

  On an October evening in 1845, Compars asked one Billy Glenn, a reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, to join him for dinner. Glenn readily accepted and over the course of several hours tore through turtle soup, a sole filet, duck a la Rouennaise and a Princesse Bombe Glacée.’ He washed each course down with the appropriate wine and finished off the meal with most of a bottle of Benedictine. In between dishes, Compars managed to relate the amazing components of his latest engagement. When the evening was over, Glenn let fly with a belch like a bullfrog in season, thanked his host, and left the restaurant having made no promises of coverage.

  The next evening, the Enquirer carried a five-inch story with a headline that read:

  GREAT HERRMANN ASTONISHES CITY!

  Magician’s latest exhibition a milestone in the prestidigitational arts!

  The article couldn’t have been more laudatory or detailed if Compars had written it himself. It chronicled every trick, previewed every joke and witticism. The audience’s astonished reactions were described as if the reporter had actually attended; and the entire performance schedule was included so that no citizen of the great metropolis would be so unfortunate as to miss “this most spectacular of magical triumphs.”

  From that day forward, all of Compars’s engagements were preceded by an elaborate buffet for the local newspapermen. No matter how small the city or how large the press corps, no expense was spared to provide reporters with the sustenance necessary for them to defend a free society.

  Included might be clams on ice; hand-sliced beef roasts au jus; carrots glazed in butter and sugar; and a variety of cheeses accompanied by fresh-baked breads. Local actresses (or women who claimed to be) would circulate about the room serving petit fours and tiny sherbets; and of course, the bar would be as open as the heart of the great magician himself.

  It was just such a spread that now greeted the gentlemen of the press. The chef had outdone himself, producing a unique set of foodstuffs tempting to the palate and pleasing to the eye, even sculpting Compars’s head and shoulders in blue ice surrounded with fruit and roses.

  Once the newsmen had eaten and drunk their fill and the personalized cigars were distributed, Compars leapt up onto a small platform. He reached into the air with his right hand and produced a panatela of his own. In his left appeared a match, already lighted. He ignited the cigar and took a few amused puffs.

  “Gentlemen, I hope you have all enjoyed your luncheon. I believe I will not be contradicted when I say that Lovejoy’s is New York’s finest hotel and that Chef Denys is a magician in his own right!”

  The newsmen applauded and grunted various “hear hear’s” and “bravos,” punctuated by loud and appreciative burps.

  “As you are all my friends, you know that although I live in this greatest of all nations, I was not privileged to be born an American. Therefore, the countries where I made my reputation are constantly clamoring for my presence. I do not think I am immodest when I say that my European public has been too long deprived of my presence on the stage.”

  “Oh no, that’s not immodest!” cried out Murphy of the World.

  “Humble to a fault!” said Miller of the Post.

  Compars joined in the drunken laughter and took a long pull on his cigar.

  “But gentlemen, I must admit a problem. Every time I attempt to leave these shores, imitators rush in to fill the void left by the Great Herrmann! Shameless, they attempt ‘The Floating Boy,’ the ‘Bird’s Head Restoration,’ etcetera. These inferiors endeavor to re-create my unique artistry while taking the very bread from my mouth.”

  “I got a roll right here!” hollered Collins of the Mirror, holding up a seeded Kaiser.

  “Let ’em eat cake!” shouted Spalding of the Eagle.

  “So how then to satiate the hunger for my abilities across the sea while protecting my interests here at home? How to preserve the magical legacy I have taken decades to build while warding off these copycats and mountebanks?”

  “Monty Banks?” yelled Smith of the Sun. “Don’t he work for the Herald?”

  Compars once again joined in the mirth and th
en held up his hands for order.

  “Still, for the Great Herrmann every problem has a solution, gentlemen! Therefore, indulge me while I direct your attention to the cabinet now being wheeled onstage …”

  The laughter died down as a young assistant appeared. He was large and muscular with hair the color of a pumpkin, and was dressed in a black monk’s robe. He wheeled an immense lacquered box to the center of the platform and whirled it about twice. The cabinet was painted a deep mandarin and was covered with Chinese characters and question marks. The redhead positioned the box at center stage and opened its front door.

  “As you can see, my friends, an ordinary empty cabinet—nothing within her but thin air. And now, professor, if you please.”

  The magician gestured toward a pianist seated at a huge black grand. He struck up a lively waltz, causing some of the more inebriated newsmen to begin dancing with each other. Compars closed the cabinet and shot his cuffs, producing a huge black silk that he and the redhead proceeded to drape over the box. When it was completely obscured, the assistant pulled the hood of the monk’s robe over his head. Folding his arms, he turned his back to the audience.

  Compars reached into the air again and produced a small percussion pistol. He displayed it to his audience and shot once into the air. Then he quickly grabbed the black silk and pulled.

  Where the largest question mark had been there was now an exclamation point of equal size. The magician turned toward the astonished newsmen.

  “And now,” he said, “I shall introduce you to the personage who shall represent the legacy of Herrmann in this greatest of all republics. The only man who is fit to amaze and astound America in my great tradition. Gentlemen, I give you …”

  Compars leapt at the box and threw open the door to reveal a space as empty as before.

  At first the journalists were silent; but when the Great Herrmann turned toward them and shrugged sheepishly, cigars flew from mouths and men dribbled beer and whiskey on their vests. They laughed and applauded in mock appreciation until Compars raised his hands to quiet them once more.