An hour later, as he left her room, full of her laughter and empty of love, a grand young man swept by through the hall with all the airs of an earl at least. He grinned at John's lady, and the lady smiled back. "Good-night, Doctor," she said.
John watched the man go by and open a door well down the hall. "Doctor?" he asked his lady, cocking his eyebrow.
"You have a filthy mind," she said. Then she shrugged. "Well, somebody has to clean up, or we'd all be out of work in a few months, you know. And anyway, he is a real doctor, too. A specialist in women's ailments." She laughed. "I like to think of it, sometimes. In the same day he goes from examining a fat rich lady to cleaning up for us. There's some fun in that, isn't there?"
John grinned at her. Better than saying anything. He knew that to the whores such men were as useful as blacksmiths were to cavalry, but John could not be philosophical about abortionists. Not just because they were usually swinish men, but because they went about removing the inconvenience from corruption. John did not see anything hypocritical about this opinion. He knew that he was corrupt -- but he expected to bear the consequences of it, too. This abortionist had obviously never heard of consequences; he did not act as if he had ever heard of shame. That was America for you -- a man could be in every social class at once. No sense of where people belonged in the world.
"You'd like him," she said.
"Do you think so." He did not let his tone of voice encourage her.
"You're two of a kind." Perhaps she saw that this did not please him, for at once she corrected herself. "In some ways, I mean. He's got education, like you." She tweaked surreptitiously at John's thigh. "And he does a right fine hornpipe on his middle leg."
John kissed her again and left her quickly. He'd been out more than an hour now, and if Charlie was awake he'd wonder why he had been out so long in such cold weather. As for that, John wondered why he had come here himself. He wasn't starved for love -- Anna saw to that, the woman was not cold. Why then did he hunger so for a woman of this sort? Perhaps because with a whore he did not have to pretend to be a decent man. They throve on indecency, they lived off it, the world's decay was their aliment: here he was needed, not for what he should be, but for what he was. It was a little ache he had, and for a price they physicked him. That was it. He could couch himself in such ladies, let his burden down, leave his sins behind. Surely there was a hymn in that somewhere. I am a very holy man, he told himself as he opened the door to the room where Charlie's breaths were whispering. I am a holy, holy man. And he laughed himself so quietly to sleep.
Charlie went early to meet with Bennett; John Kirkham stayed behind to do some sketching. It was a good day for it, sunny and cold and the air crisp and still. John liked the way winter gloves on his hands distorted what his pencil did. It wasn't like nature -- but sometimes it seemed truer. He sketched a few legislators and they came out like newspaper cartoons. John wondered for a moment if that might be a place where he could sell some work. Then he thought of seeing his name in one of these miserable rags, attached to a jest base enough for these people to understand it, and he shuddered. There was a bottom limit, after all.
At suppertime John got hungry, and figured Charlie ought to pay for a meal about now. He went looking for an hour, and finally found his son at a dining table in the best hotel in town. Alone -- and so, as always, caught up in a book.
"I didn't know you were so flush," John said by way of greeting.
Charlie looked up, startled. "Oh! Yes! Did you get the note I left in the room?"
John shrugged. "Didn't see it when I left off my papers. Can we really eat here?"
Charlie was embarrassed. "Actually, we can't. I was invited here. And now he's late -- I think they're wondering if I plan to eat or just use their table as a study."
John sat down opposite his son. "Did you get much done today?"
"I took near forty letters for him." Charlie flexed his fingers. "The man has more words in him than I had ink -- had to buy another bottle halfway through."
"But your work is done?"
"He had a meeting with the secretary of something. State. Commerce. Army. I think Army. The one person in America he didn't write to, and so he had to meet with the man so he didn't feel slighted."
John laughed harder than the wit deserved, but the boy's humor was so rare that it sounded funnier than it ought when it finally came. He was laughing when a hand touched his shoulder.
"Are you still waiting for your meal, or have you already finished?"
Charlie looked up at the man. "General Bennett," he said.
John Kirkham turned in his chair, already smiling a greeting. He expected to meet a stranger. Instead he looked up into the face of the abortionist from the hotel corridor. For a moment he was afraid -- this man had seen him coming out of a whore's hotel room. But he calmed himself immediately. Bennett was vulnerable, too -- John Kirkham had nothing to fear from him. Of course he allowed none of this to show. John had lived in a part of London where it didn't do to let people know your feelings from your face -- there wasn't so much as a pause in his turn or a slackening of his smile. And Bennett was just as poised.
It was Bennett's poise that was so provoking. The man was not abashed at all. Even though he could not know that John Kirkham had heard he was an abortionist, Bennett should have been at least a little reticent about his supposed religious faith. Instead he sat down and immediately began to discourse fervently on theology. It was all about some idea he wanted to discuss with Joseph Smith when at last his work in Springfield was accomplished. John Kirkham watched in awe at the utter confidence of the man. Even without a conscience, surely he felt some fear of being discovered -- yet if he did, he showed no sign of it. John wondered whether Bennett believed in a God. No doubt he would claim he did, but John was pretty sure that Bennett was his own Creator, and his own Savior, too.
It was not possible, John learned, to remain detached for long. Bennett was too strong a man to be at table with you and merely be observed. Several times John found himself almost believing what Bennett said; more often, he genuinely liked the man. It only became too much for John when Bennett started praising the joys of married life; too much for him when he realized how Charlie was hanging on every word the hypocrite was saying. Not that John minded a lie. John Kirkham could stand and lie with the best of them. But he didn't try to pass himself off as a great divine. And so John was provoked.
"I just realized why you look so familiar," John said.
Bennett, interrupted in mid-sentence, looked at John in mild surprise. "I didn't know I did."
"Last night I saw you." John paused a moment, searching Bennett's face for some sign of fear. Ah well; it was too much to hope for. Enough to have stopped him from spouting pieties and making a fool of Charlie. "I was on my walk. We both had made some use of one of the most trafficked roads in Springfield."
Bennett smiled winningly. "Even the biggest streets of this town must be cow paths compared to those wide-open roads of London."
"London's roads," John said, "are only good for getting to the end of the journey. In Springfield, the road itself is worth the trip."
"You are an admirer of the beauties of America?"
At this, poor Charlie, who understood nothing but the bare surface of what was being said, intruded himself into the conversation. "I don't think my father has a very high opinion of anything American."
"It's a shame if you don't," Bennett said to John. "There's a lot around here to make a man stand right up." Then he turned the conversation to safer ground. "I hear you met our local secretary of state, Stephen Douglas. Clever little fellow, isn't he?"
"Didn't get a chance to know him very well," Charlie said.
"All we know is that he doesn't much like Honest Abe," John added.
"Abe Lincoln? Well, I wouldn't expect him to. Lincoln stole the little man's woman, took her right away. Mary Todd."
"What a choice for the lady," John said.
"Between
a stump and a beanpole. I reckon she's betting on size over vigor." Then Bennett grinned to show that all innuendoes were intentional. It was plain that Charlie didn't get it, but John did, and laughed aloud. He couldn't help it, Bennett simply could not be disliked. He was a criminal of the most contemptible kind, and yet John could only chuckle and watch the man in awe as he did whatever he wanted with Charlie -- and, for that matter, with John himself. Well, then, if Bennett could not be frightened and would not be antagonized, John might at least reach accommodation with him.
The conversation soon turned to Bennett's dream of Nauvoo. Here, at least, there could be little doubt that Bennett was sincere. He wanted Nauvoo to be the Boston of the West. "There are cities and cities," he said. "New York is a cesspool with aspirations of someday, with luck, becoming a sewer. But Boston -- it was founded by people of God, and they've never forgotten. Nauvoo can do that. It's not in a place where trade will corrupt it. I see a city of universities, of churches, of museums, of grace and beauty. Carriages on cobblestones."
"And all of it yours," John said.
Bennett grinned. "As much of it as possible, anyway. A man's a liar if he says he doesn't want to possess things. But I at least want to possess beautiful things, and if there aren't any, why. I'll build them. And find others who can help me. Like you, Charlie. If I had ten like you I could build another Paris. A hundred like you, and I could build another Rome."
Charlie went bashful for a moment, unsure what to do with his face while Bennett smiled at him so paternally. Looking on, John found himself getting angry. He didn't much like Charlie most of the time, but the boy was his son, and while that was a relationship that held little advantage for Charlie, it was better than letting the boy be under the influence of a bloody abortionist. "It's too bad," John said, "that Charlie's already taken."
"Oh?" Bennett asked.
"Well, he didn't come here on his own. Charlie's been helping Don Carlos Smith with the newspaper, and you recall that it was the Prophet who sent him."
"Oh, I hadn't forgotten. Brother Joseph asked me to have a look at him, to see if he was of any use. Joseph and I have the same dream, you see, and whoever helps me, helps him."
John wondered, fleetingly, if it was true -- if there really was no difference between Joseph Smith and this man. It raised questions, certainly. If Smith was a prophet, why didn't he know what Bennett really was? And if Smith was not a prophet, then Bennett could well be right -- he and the Prophet might have been cut from the same cloth.
"There are a thousand ways that Charlie can be a great man in a great city," John said quietly. "But you should count on this, Brother Bennett. Charlie won't belong to any man. He stands on his own."
Bennett lifted his glass; just before sipping, he said, "Like you?"
The blow struck home. John saw the absurdity of what he had been saying. He avoided looking at Charlie, out of shame at having played the father's part so ineptly. Instead he only raised his own glass, and offered his bargain. "I'm my own man, yes. What I am is what I made of myself. I'm only a painter, and if there's a public for my work, God knows I've never found it. But Charlie has his mother in him. And he will be great, by any measure."
"Well, Brother Kirkham, you don't have to worry about Charlie. He's proved his value already, and he won't go unnoticed. My guess is that once he gets well acquainted in Nauvoo he'll be too busy to fasten his pants after pissing."
They all laughed at that -- though, to John's amusement, Charlie was a little offended at the crudity. Be offended, my virgin son, my young Galahad, be offended but use this man for every advantage you can get from him.
"So you're a painter," Bennett said.
"After a fashion."
Charlie, who had been silent when the conversation was about him, spoke now. "I remember," he said, "that father painted woods and meadows that made you believe in heaven."
Startled, John looked at his son. "I didn't think you were old enough to remember."
Charlie was talking to Bennett, however. "And he put people in them that made you believe in hell. I remember a painting of a boy prodding a cow with a stick. I always thought the boy was trying to kill the poor animal, he had such hate in him."
"It sounds like you're a remarkable painter," Bennett said.
"Charlie last saw it when he was only four or five. Memory changes things." Still, though he denied it, John was deeply touched at this. Charlie remembered. Charlie, who had never really known his father, Charlie remembered a painting, and not just a pretty scene. He remembered it as a thing of power. To John's surprise, he realized that he just might love his son.
"Are you doing any painting in Nauvoo?" Bennett asked.
"They've had me doing carpentry. I'm a damned bad carpenter."
"Would you do my portrait?" Bennett asked.
You wouldn't like what I'd do to you, John said silently. I know too much about you. There would be casual murder in your face.
Bennett saw his hesitation. "Oh, don't worry about it now. I'll tell you what." He paused, leaned back, and gazed steadily into John's eyes. "Since it's plain you're a quiet man, and don't go about telling people all that you might tell them, I'll just have to do it for you." It was the bargain. He had understood what John Kirkham was asking, and he was going to do it. "I reckon by the time I get through talking you up, Brother Kirkham, you'll have a hundred people begging for your services as a painter. Can't build the city I dream of without artists, can I?"
"I'd be in your debt," John said. And so the bargain was sealed: John's silence about Bennett, in exchange for Bennett's help in establishing him as a painter. Not bad, for one night's work. Perhaps Providence even likes me, John speculated, letting me get a hold over Bennett.
The conversation went innocent again, without the hidden meanings; the food came, good coarse American food with far more bulk than flavor; and at last Bennett declared the supper over by getting to his feet, patting his waist, and then offering his hand to Charlie. "Would you come by my hotel in the morning on your way out of town? I'll have a letter or two for you to take to Brother Joseph."
"Of course," Charlie said.
"We'd better call it a night, then," Bennett said. "I have three more meetings tonight, and you'll need to get plenty of sleep for an early start tomorrow. ' Then Bennett cocked his head and smiled at John. "Of course, at your age you probably get to bed pretty early every night."
John laughed in recognition of Bennett's parting shot, and then he and Charlie got their coats and headed out into the night. The wind was sharp, and they hurried through the cold-hardened dirt streets.
They were near their cheap hotel when Charlie suddenly asked, "Do you really think I can stand alone, Father?"
"Mm," John said. "Do you really remember that painting?"
"I sometimes see it as clearly as when I was a child. I always see it very high, way out of my reach." Charlie laughed.
"Funny. I don't remember that one at all."
Charlie shrugged. "You've painted so many, I suppose." What he didn't say was, "So many that I never saw." That easily, and the moment of affection could have been turned into a reproach. a reminder of the years of abandonment. It meant more to John than he would have expected, the tact that Charlie stopped short of reminding him of his past sins.
Then they were inside, shedding scarves and coats. "What do you think might come of this, if Bennett recommends me?" Charlie asked.
"Perhaps they'll hire you to help Don Carlos."
Charlie laughed. "There's not much money in the newspaper."
"There's not much money anywhere." John said. "Except banks and rich men's pockets."
Charlie shook his head. "No, Father. That may be where the money ends up, but it comes from dreams and work. Nauvoo is all dreams right now. And the money will grow out of the ground in wheat, or come out of factories covered with laborers' sweat. But it's a circle. If we're going to build the dream of Nauvoo, we need money. And to get money, we have to make somethin
g. Make something exist that never existed before."
Then, because it was a night for frankness, John added, "It has to be something that other people want."
Charlie shook his head. "The only thing people want from me is clerking. I've always been just a clerk to them. I don't mind, though. I can't think of anything I'd rather do than be the Prophet's secretary. Write his letters, keep his journal, run his messages. That would be building Zion, too."
"What about working for Bennett?" John asked.
Charlie grimaced.
John was genuinely surprised. "I thought you liked him."
"Oh, I do. He's a great man.