“Do you like it?”
“Do I like it? Tie a bandanna on my hairdo and hand me a mop!”
They jabbered on. Maggie, in the kitchen, put down her butter knife and listened, cold and apprehensive.
“God, what I wouldn’t give for a place like this!” cried Bess Alderdice, stamping about the house. “Look at the hand-carved banister. Hey-soose; as the Spanish say; look at that crystal chandelier! Who’d you hit over the head, Bill?”
“We were lucky it was for sale,” said Bill, in the hall.
“I’ve had my eye on this place for years! And you, you lucky bun-of-a-sitch, you grab it out from under sweet Bess Alderdice’s grimy little claws.”
“Bring your grimy little claws out into the kitchen and have some lunch.”
“Lunch, hell, when do we work? I want a hand in this!”
Maggie appeared in the hall.
“Maggie!” Bess Alderdice in her tailored gabardines and flat-heeled shoes and wild black hair shouted at her. “How I envy you!”
“Hello, Bess.”
“Girl, you look tired, or something,” cried Bess. “Look, you sit down and I’ll help Bill. I’ve got muscles from eating Wheaties!”
“We’re not going to stay here,” said Bill quietly.
“You’re what?” Bess looked at him as if he was insane. “In again out again, what’s your name? Finnegan? Well, sell it to mama, mama wants it.”
“We’re going to try to find a small cottage somewhere,” said Bill, falsely hearty.
“You know what you can do with cottages,” said Bess, snorting. “Well, look here, since I’m going to buy this house out from under you, Bill, you can at least help me clean up my place! Give me a hand with these shades!” And she walked in to tear the moth-eaten shades off the parlor windows.
They worked all that afternoon, Bess and William. “You just go lie down, honey,” said Bess, patting Maggie. “I’m getting free help.”
The house thundered with echoes and scrapings. There were explosions of laughter. There were monster dust storms raging in the halls, and once Bess almost fell downstairs in her laughing. There was a banging and a creaking of nails drawn from walls, there was a musical tinkling of bumped chandeliers, there was the rip of old wallpaper coming off. “We’ll make this into a tea room, and this here, why, we’ll knock this wall out!” shouted Bess in the dust storms. “Right!” laughed William. “And I saw a reasonably priced set of antique chairs would just go in here!” said Bess. “Good idea!” said Bill. They gibbered and walked around, their hands on everything. He made blue chalk marks and threw useless furniture out windows, and banged the plumbing. “That’s my boy!” cried Bess. “How about having a rack of fine Bavarian plates around this wall, Bill?” “Great! Wonderful!”
Maggie was outside of it. First she went uselessly up to her bedroom, then she walked down and out into the sunlight. But she couldn’t escape the sound of Bill’s happiness. He was planning and pounding and laughing, and all with another woman. He had forgotten about selling the house. What would he do later, when he remembered that he had called the real estate agent? Stop laughing, of course.
Maggie tightened her hands together. What was it that this Bess Alderdice had? Certainly not her breastless, hard, clumsy body, nor the wild unshorn locks of hair or unplucked brows! Whatever it was it was an enthusiasm and freshness and power that she, Maggie, did not have. But might have? After all, what right did Bess have coming here? It wasn’t her house, was it? Not yet, anyway.
She heard Bess’s voice through an open window. “Do you realize what a history this house has? It was built in 1899 by that lawyer. This used to be the neighborhood. This house had and still has dignity. People were proud to live here. They can still be.”
Maggie stood in the hall. How did you make things right in the world? Things had been wrong until Bess walked in, righting them. How? Not with words. Words could not really make things one way or another. There was more than that. There were actions, continuous, going-on actions. Right now, Bill enjoyed Bess more than he would enjoy Maggie the rest of the day. Why? Because Bess did things with quick hands and an alive face, finished them, and went on to others.
Most of all, though, it was Bill. Had he ever worked in his life, nailed a nail, carried a carpet? No. Being a writer he had sat and sat and sat all his life until today. He was no more prepared for this House of Horror—step up, only a dime, one tenth of a dollar!—than she was. How then could he change suddenly overnight, fling himself on this house tooth and nail? The answer started with its simplicity. He loved Maggie. This would be her house. He’d have done the same if they stayed in an overnight cave. Anywhere was good, if Maggie was there.
Maggie closed her eyes. It all revolved around herself. She was the catalyst. Without her, he’d sit down, never work at all. And she’d been half gone all day. The secret lay not in Bess or William, but in love itself. Love was always the reason for work, for enthusiasm. And if William worked to make her happy, then couldn’t she do the same for him? Love has always been building something somewhere. Either that or it decays. All married life you build—build egos, build houses, build children. If one stops, the other keeps going from the momentum. But then it’s only a half structure. It roars down, finally, like a tower of cards.
Maggie looked at her hands. An apology now to Bill would be embarrassing, and superfluous. How to make things right, then? The same way you made them wrong. The same process, reversed. Things were wrong when you shattered a vase, ripped a drape, or left a book in the rain. You righted them by mending the vase, sewing the drape, buying a new book. These were done things. Her failure to this house was a history of things undone, the slow hand, the unwilling eyes, the lifeless voice.
She picked up a dust rag, climbed the stepladder, shined the chandelier; then she swept the halls with a great idea filling her. She saw the house, finished. Clean antiques, plush and warm color. New copper, shined woodwork, clean chandeliers, fresh-cut rose carpets, the upright piano rewaxed, the old oil lamps circuited with lights, the hand-carved banister re-stained, and the sun pouring though the high colored windows. It would be another age. Friends would dance in the wide ballroom on the third floor, under the eight huge chandeliers. There would be old music boxes, old wine, and a mellow warmth through the house like a fine sherry aroma. It would take time, they had little money, but in a year perhaps—
People would say, “It’s wonderful at Bill and Mag’s, like another age; so comfortable. You’d never guess from outside. I wish we could live on Bunker Hill in one of those wondrous old mansions!”
She ripped off great faded hunks of wallpaper. It was only then that Bill heard her and came to the hall door, surprised. “I thought I heard a noise. How long’ve you been working?”
“The last half hour.” This time her smile was whole.
THE JOHN WILKES BOOTH/WARNER BROTHERS/MGM/NBC FUNERAL TRAIN
2003
I WAS JUST SETTLING DOWN for a long afternoon nap when Marty Felber burst into my office.
“My God!” he cried. “You’ve gotta come see!”
I lay back, easily. “See what?” I said.
Marty looked as if he might tear out his hair. “Haven’t you heard? Down at the station, a special train is pulling in from Washington, DC. It’s a steam engine, dammit, that boils water to drive the wheels. We haven’t had a steam engine here for fifty years!”
“I’ve seen steam engines.”
“No, no, this is strange. All black and covered with crepe.”
“Covered with crepe? Let’s get the hell out.”
We got the hell out.
At the station we stared down the empty track. Far away we heard a melancholy wail, and above the horizon a cloud of steam rose to blow away in a sound of weeping.
The dark train glided from the twilight shadows in a drizzle of cold rain.
“Are there passengers?” I said.
“People crying. Hear?”
“My God, yes.
Stand back.”
The black train drifted like a dark cloud with the rain following and a ghostly steam clothing it.
The engine continued to exhale ghosts of smoke while it pulled a melancholy procession of cars, all burnt coal midnight black, with gardens of crepe papered along the roofs where the pale steam whispered and the weeping persisted from within the carriages.
On the side of one car was printed MGM.
On the second I read WARNER BROTHERS.
On the third and fourth, PARAMOUNT and RKO.
On the fifth, NBC.
A terrible cold filled my body. I stood, riven.
But finally, with Marty, I moved along the passing cars.
The black crepe rooftops stirred and the windows of each car seemed washed by rain.
The mournful cries from the engine sounded again and again as we moved swiftly, and the windows wept ceaselessly.
At last we arrived at the final, most melancholy car, where we stood staring through a great window dripping with rain.
Inside lay a long midnight coffin embedded in white flowers.
I stood as if struck by lightning, my heart gripped by a terrible fist. “Jesus!” I cried. “Nightmare! In my grandma’s big picture book there was a train like this, but no names on the sides like MGM or Paramount.” I stopped, for I could hardly breathe.
“Lord,” I gasped. “In that window, the coffin. He’s in there. Oh God, it’s him!”
I shut my eyes.
“This is Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train!”
From somewhere along the midnight train came another low cry. The black crepe fluttered.
Then a man came running and jolting down the platform, an old friend, Elmer Green, a studio press agent. He collided with me and yelled in my face.
“Hey, ain’t this a catch? I’ll give you the tour. Come on.”
But I stood with my shoes sunk in concrete.
“What’s wrong?” Green said.
“What’s it look like?”
“You’re not crying?” he said. “Cut that out. Let’s go.”
He backed off by the midnight cars, and Marty and I followed. I stumbled, my eyes blind with tears.
He stopped at last and said, “See that big red Pacific Electric trolley? Don’t fit in with the rest of the train, right? Look. Middle window.”
“Four guys in business suits, playing cards, smoking cigars. The plump guy, wait.”
“Who?”
“Louis B. Mayer, the MGM studio mogul. Louie the Lion! Why’s he here? He’s dead.”
“Not so you would notice. Okay. Back in 1930 Louis B. and his yes-men climbed on this big red trolley and pulled out of MGM Studios on its own track and trained to Glendale for surprise screenings. Then they piled back on this super Lionel electric train and roared home, shouting the good preview cards or letting them fly like confetti if they were bad.”
“So?” I said, bleakly.
“So, when you’ve got trains like that and someone comes along with trains like this, you listen. Now climb aboard and meet Louis B., the reborn Christian Jewish Arab in this big trapped butterfly time machine.”
I stared at my legs with half-blind eyes.
“Christ!” said Green. “Help me get him up.”
Marty grabbed one elbow and Green the other and they yanked me up on the train.
We staggered through smoke-filled cars where scores of men riffled cards.
“God!” I exclaimed. “Is that Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox’s chief? And there, Harry Cohn, the beast of Gower Street? How in hell did they get lost in this nightmare?”
“Like I said, trapped in a time retrieval Butterfly Net. The biggest damned net in history scooped them out of the grave, with an offer they couldn’t refuse: six feet of dirt, or a ticket on the John Wilkes Booth Forever Express.”
“My God!”
“No, Elmo Wills,” cried Green. “In an MGM Las Vegas basement, he jiggered some digital computers into conniption fits and nailed together a super-traveling catcher’s mitt.”
I stared along a smoke-filled gambling hall.
“Is that how you catch a train nowadays?”
“Yup,” said Green.
“There are names of studios on each car,” I said. “And inside, dead moguls, alive.”
“They all invested in the virtual Net and Elmo, who said, ‘What’s the greatest locomotive in history? The train that brought Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt home? What train toured the land, with everyone weeping, a century ago?’”
I felt the wetness on my cheek.
“A funeral train,” I said, quietly. “Abe Lincoln’s.”
“Give the man a cigar.”
The train jerked.
“Is it leaving?!” I cried. “I don’t want to be seen on this abomination.”
“Stay,” said Green. “Name your salary.”
I almost struck his smile.
“Damn you!”
“I already am.” Green laughed. “But I’ll recover.”
The train jerked again with grinding sounds.
My friend Marty dashed ahead and came running back.
“You gotta see! The next car is jammed full of lawyers.”
“Lawyers?” I turned to Green.
“They’re suing,” said Green. “Schedule problems. Which towns do we visit? Which broadcasts do we do? Which book contracts do we sign? Do we go with NBC or CNN? That sort.”
“That sort!” I cried and plunged ahead, with Marty in full pursuit.
We ran through mobs of lunatics who were all yelling, pointing, and cursing.
At the fourth car I flung the door wide upon a midnight meadow of firefly light; all dancing sparks of blind machines.
Everywhere I saw cosmic banks of fire and spectral shapes of digital illumination.
This dim cave was lit by what seemed a rocket ship control panel; a man, not quite a dwarf, spidered his fingers quickly in patterns over the board. It was, indeed, the inventor of the incredible, blasphemous Butterfly Harvester.
I raised my hands in fists and the dwarf exclaimed, “You must hit me, yes?”
“Hit, no. Kill. What have you done?”
“Done?” cried the man. “I’ve mouth-to-mouth-breathed history. I might hurl my Net to trap Ben Hur’s chariot or Cleopatra’s barge and cry havoc and let loose the dogs of time.”
He stared down and stroked his hands over the bright configurations, watching the lost years, talking half to himself.
“You know, I often thought if there’d been a fire at Ford’s Theatre earlier that night in 1865, this funeral train would have been lost and the history of America changed forever.”
“Say again?” I said.
“Fire,” Elmo repeated. “At Ford’s Theatre.”
“Fire,” I whispered, then thought: you never yell “fire” in a crowded theater. But what if you yell it on a crowded theater train?
Suddenly I was shrieking.
“Sons of bitches!”
I leaped to the back car door and flung it open wide.
“Bastards!”
Three dozen lawyers jumped at my steam-whistle shriek.
“Fire!” I screamed. “Ford’s Theatre is on fire! Fire!” I shrieked.
And everyone on the damned and terrible train heard.
Old-fashioned doors were flung wide. Old-fashioned windows flew up, jam-packed with yells.
“Hold on!” cried Green.
“No!” I shouted. “Fire, fire!”
I ran, yelling, through car after car and spread the blaze.
“Fire!”
And panic suctioned all and everyone off the train.
The platform swarmed with victims and crazed lawyers, scribbling names and babbling.
“Fire,” I whispered a final time, and the train was as empty as a dentist’s office on a bad noon.
Green staggered up to me, and this time his feet looked sunk in concrete. His face was ashen and he seemed unable to breathe.
“Turn the tra
in around,” I said.
“What?”
Marty led me through a litter of unlit Cuban cigars and playing cards.
“Around,” I wept. “Take the train back to Washington Station, 1865, April.”
“We can’t.”
“You just came from there. Back, oh dear God, back.”
“No return tickets. We can only go ahead.”
“Ahead? Does MGM still have a track switch not covered up by asphalt? Pull in there, like in 1932, drop Louis B. Mayer, tell him Thalberg’s alive on the fourth car back, Mayer will have a heart attack.”
“Louie B.?”
“Harry Cohn too,” I said.
“MGM’s not his studio.”
“He can call a cab or hitch a ride, but no one gets back on this stupid idiot bastard train.”
“No one?”
“Unless they want to be buried in Ford’s Theatre when I really strike a match and light the fire.”
The lawyer mob on the platform surged and bleated.
“They’re getting ready to sue,” said Green.
“I’ll sell them my life insurance. Reverse engine.”
The train shook like a great iron dog.
“Too late, I gotta go.”
“Oh God, yes. Look.”
All the victims and lawyers were scrambling to pile on, and the stupid fool who had shouted “fire” was forgotten.
The train jerked with a great rumbling rattle.
“So long,” whispered Green.
“Go,” I said, wearily. “But who’s next?”
“Next?”
“With your big damned awful Mortuary Warp. Who gets caught, gassed, and pinned?”
Green pulled out a crumpled paper.
“Some guy named Lafayette.”
“Some guy? You dumb, stupid sap! Don’t you know Lafayette saved our Revolution, age twenty-one, brought us guns, ships, uniforms, men!?”
“It doesn’t say that here.” Green stared at his notes.
“Lafayette was Washington’s adopted son. Went home and named his firstborn George Washington Lafayette.”
“They left that out,” said Green.
“Came back, age seventy, paraded eighty cities where people named streets, parks, and towns for him. Lafayette, Lafayette, Lafayette.”