Part 4 (2/2)

For twelve years, on the anniversary of Jonathan's death-May 13-I had held seances, desperately seeking contact with my true love and transmission of the coded message.

After the first failures, I blamed myself, thinking that my lack of belief was to blame. I strove to become a more devout Spiritualist, and eventually sought out Paschal B. Randolph, a New Orleans trance medium of mixed blood. He taught me many things-including, to my shame, how to use the s.e.xual act to cast spells-but never how to contact Jonathan.

Disenchantment spread like rust.

Like most Spiritualists, I was regularly conducting seances for others. Strange things did happen-raps and knocks that did seem to contain meaning, weirdly knowing messages scrawled when our fingers were lightly touching a planchette, odd lights and sounds in darkened rooms. I would accept love offerings from those who had been comforted with what appeared to be contact with lost loved ones. But when the table tipping or the planchette writing became more difficult, I began to help the spirits along-a little at first, then more later. It wasn't as if I were cheating, I told myself. After all, I'd had plenty of what I thought was evidence that the spirits were real. What harm could there be in giving the bereaved a bit of comfort?

Inevitably, it all became cheating.

As in any profession, there was a sort of fraternity among professional Spiritualists, and information was exchanged on how to give the best seances. One of the first tricks you learned was to visit the local cemeteries in a new city, to choose a few families represented by the best-looking tombstones, and memorize the names and dates. You also would want to visit the demimonde, because wh.o.r.es always had the best gossip. Husbands are compelled, it seems, to confide the most d.a.m.ning of family secrets when in the arms of even the cheapest of Cyprians. Then there were Blue Books for every major city, which was a listing of those families most receptive and (more important) most generous to mediums, along with details about the occupations and personalities of their recently deceased.

Then, if you had a little money, you could order the stage props for a bang-up seance from Sylvestre & Company of Chicago, which produces a privately circulated catalog that offers everything an ambitious medium would need-from self-rapping tables to spirit cabinets, with secret compartments, to fully formed apparitions of cheesecloth, with ghostly rubber faces.

I had their latest catalog in my valise.

We do not, for obvious reasons, mention the names of our clients and their work (they being kept in strict confidence, the same as a physician treats his patients), Sylvestre & Company promised, but you can trust that our effects are in use by all of the prominent mediums in the entire world. In addition, we can furnish you the explanation and, where necessary, the material for the production of any known public ”tests” or ”phenomena” not mentioned in this, our latest list. Custom orders and rush service available upon receipt of telegraphic communication from trusted customers.

I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of their magic slates.

Still, I was not without compa.s.sion.

I gave away sessions to those who had little or no means, but were seeking only a little solace, some small sign that their loved ones were happy in Summerland. What harm could there be in providing comfort? For the big money, I targeted those predators who seem particularly in need of a lesson in humility-speculators, politicians, preachers. All men, of course, and therefore easy marks for the humb.u.g.g.e.ry of free love.

Even though I had become a professional fraud, inside me still burned a foolish hope that my antics were some pale reflection of truth. Perhaps it was possible that love could survive death.

Even though I knew there was no bigger sucker than a grief-stricken spouse, I kept up the earnest and private seances every May 13. I would spend sunrise to sunset in prayerful reflection, asking G.o.d to forgive my corruption. Then I would surround myself with innocents and believers in a darkened room and plead for Jonathan to signal from the other side.

Of course, no message ever came through.

I publicly vowed to keep up the seances until the thirteenth anniversary of Jonathan's death, and then declare the experiment failed. Privately, I decided that if by midnight of the thirteenth year nothing had come through, I would no longer believe-in anything.

Now it was May of 1877.

The anniversary of Jonathan's death would fall on the coming Sunday, the thirteenth, four days hence. There would be one last seance-if I could get out of jail. Getting sprung required cash for bail, and I was as broke as the Ten Commandments.

Being acquitted of the charges altogether was even more unlikely.

If nothing else, I would be found guilty by a.s.sociation.

In the last decade, there are two women who have created the popular notion of Spiritualism for the American public. One is Kate Bender. The other is Victoria Woodhull. Both claimed contact with the dead, both advocated free love, and both were widely regarded as prost.i.tutes. One is a murderer and, presumably, a fugitive. The other ran for president on the women's rights ticket and was portrayed by the cartoonist Thomas Nast as the bride of Satan.

A jury of Kansas men would gladly hang me in their stead.

8.

As Eddie perched on my shoulder and teased my hair with his beak, I heard keys rattle in the heavy door to the bull pen. Tom the Jailer appeared once more.

He strode into the jail, dragging behind him the polite tramp I had seen earlier. The red silk scarf hung loosely around his neck, the derby was gone, and his coat was ripped beneath the arms. Blood dribbled from his nose and onto his once-white s.h.i.+rt.

”Tom!” I scolded.

”I didn't do it,” Tom said. ”It was the railway bulldogs, the private d.i.c.ks. They left him like this over on the south tracks.”

”What did he do?”

”You mean in addition to being a vagrant? They wanted his name and his hometown so they could put it in their report. He refused to answer, so they roughed him up.”

”And you're jailing him for being a.s.saulted?”

”No, I'm jailing him for his own protection,” Tom said. ”Otherwise, with the tramp hysteria being what it is, they just might kill him.”

The Panic of 1873 came the September after the Bender murders were discovered. Even now, the country still remained on its knees from the collapse of the investment banks on Wall Street. Thousands of men were out of work and hitching rides in, or under, or on top of, boxcars from town to town. But the newspapers chose to ignore the obvious (the papers were owned by wealthy men, after all) and called these unfortunates a great and threatening ”tramp army.” These were men, the editors said, who had learned to forage and bivouac as soldiers during the Civil War and who now chafed at the bonds of work, home, and family. It was all merde, as my Tante Marie would say.

”Is he badly hurt?”

”He's not too busted up,” Tom said, locking the door behind him. ”At least as far as I can tell, but he hasn't said a word to me. Stubborn, I guess. I reckon he'll be black-and-blue for a few days, but nothing worse.”

The tramp moaned.

”Is there nothing you can do for him?”

”I'll bring him dinner directly,” Tom said. ”Yours too.”

”Is it that late?”

”It's getting along to five,” Tom said. ”Have you been asleep?”

”In a manner of speaking,” I said.

Tom left and I stared at the poor tramp. He was curled on his side, knees drawn to his chest, his face turned to the wall.

The world is unfair, life is pain, but to retreat is a mistake.

”Take heart,” I said.

No response.

”Empty words, you're thinking, but I know what you're feeling right now. I have been beaten down, many times, both physically and emotionally, and the trick is to refuse to allow them to convince you that you're worthless. That's what they do best, getting us to defeat ourselves.”

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