He Came in Through the Bathroom Window: Scott Frank
On Little Terry Road: Tom Franklin
Someday, a Revolution: Jane Hamilton
Riverfront: Barry N. Malzberg
Silver at Lakeside: Warren Moore
Get Him: Micah Nathan
Baptism in Kansas: Sara Paretsky
A Matter of Options: Gary Phillips
Girl With an Ax: John Sandford
The Way we See The World: Lawrence Block
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Copyright
FROM SEA TO
STORMY SEA
17 STORIES INSPIRED BY
GREAT AMERICAN PAINTINGS
EDITED BY
LAWRENCE BLOCK
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON
Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD: BEFORE WE BEGIN . . .
Lawrence Block
THE PRAIRIE IS MY GARDEN
Patti Abbott
MOTHER OF PEARL
Charles Ardai
SUPERFICIAL INJURIES
Jan Burke
THE MAN FROM HARD ROCK MOUNTAIN
Jerome Charyn
ADRIFT OFF THE DIAMOND SHOALS
Brendan DuBois
YOU’RE A WALKING TIME BOMB
Janice Eidus
GARNETS
Christa Faust
HE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW
Scott Frank
ON LITTLE TERRY ROAD
Tom Franklin
SOMEDAY, A REVOLUTION
Jane Hamilton
RIVERFRONT
Barry N. Malzberg
SILVER AT LAKESIDE
Warren Moore
GET HIM
Micah Nathan
BAPTISM IN KANSAS
Sara Paretsky
A MATTER OF OPTIONS
Gary Phillips
GIRL WITH AN AX
John Sandford
THE WAY WE SEE THE WORLD
Lawrence Block
PERMISSIONS
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FOREWORD
BEFORE WE BEGIN . . .
It’s my pleasure to present From Sea to Stormy Sea, a collection of seventeen new stories by seventeen stellar authors who’ve been inspired by seventeen American paintings.
Does this ring a bell?
It very well might. A couple of years ago, I was struck by an idea, and it couldn’t have had more impact upon me had I been sitting under a tree, be it of the Newtonian apple or of the Siddharthan bodhi persuasion. (It was, I’ll concede, rather less consequential for the rest of the world. Never mind.)
“Stories inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings.” That was the thought, and it was followed in no time at all by a title: In Sunlight or in Shadow.
Bingo.
Now, I don’t get that many ideas, and when one comes along, I generally give it a little time to germinate. If it’s a good idea, it will profit from a few days’ or weeks’ or months’ attention from my unconscious mind. If it’s a bad idea, time will allow its lack of merit to make itself known to me.
And, however good or bad the idea may be, there’s a very good chance I’ll forget it altogether. That’s increasingly apt to happen as the date on my birth certificate edges ever further into the past, and I can’t tell you how much burdensome work it spares me.
In Sunlight or in Shadow. I didn’t give myself a chance to forget it or grow disenchanted with it. An hour after that comic-strip lightbulb had formed over my head, I was busy making up a list of potential contributors. By day’s end I’d drafted an invitation and begun sending it out, and I was delighted to discover what a high percentage of positive RSVPs I received.
I was no less delighted when the book filled up with outstanding stories and when Pegasus published it in a handsome volume that drew unanimously enthusiastic reviews and generated strong sales. (I could add that the icing on the cupcake came when my own contribution, “Autumn at the Automat,” received an Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America, but I’m far too modest to mention it.)
But how to follow such a success?
I couldn’t think of another artist who could carry an entire volume the way Hopper did. The capacity of his paintings not to tell a story but to suggest that there were stories waiting to be told—what individual’s work could match it?
So Alive in Shape and Color widened the focus. Each author was invited to choose a painting by a favorite artist, and the range was considerable, from the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux to the abstract expressionism of Clyfford Still, from Hokusai and Hieronymus Bosch to Magritte and Norman Rockwell.
Again the stories were quite brilliant. (That’s a natural consequence when you’re lucky enough to persuade brilliant authors to write them.) And again each story was very different from its fellows. A real danger with any themed anthology is that all the participants will write the same story, a result of the theme’s pointing everyone in the same direction. That didn’t happen in In Sunlight or in Shadow, nor did it happen in its sequel.
Alive in Shape and Color got a heartening reception. Reviewers liked it, and readers bought it.
So now what would we do for an encore?
More of the same, of course. Seventeen stories, inspired by paintings from seventeen different artists.
But one thing I’d learned from Alive in Shape and Color was that freedom of choice can engender problems of its own. With the entire art world there for the choosing, some writers had difficulty zeroing in on a selection.
A bit more specific a theme, it seemed to me, might better serve writers and readers alike. And a bit more editorial direction might be useful as well.
For starters, I decided to confine the volume to American artists. And then I chose thirty paintings, from which writers were invited to make their selections. (That part was especially gratifying, as I got to pick some of my own personal favorites.)
I made one more change—to the guest list. Most of the writers in In Sunlight or in Shadow wrote stories for Alive in Shape and Color, and they were every bit as excellent the second time around; the urge to invite them all again was a powerful one, but I forced myself to resist it.
For two reasons. First, I didn’t want to make too many trips to the well. The economics of the anthology game are such that one is asking a favor when one invites a writer into an anthology, and there’s a point when an invitation can become an imposition. Besides, I was eager to see what other writers might bring to the party. Once again I drew up a wish list and took a deep breath and sent out invitations, and once again I was blown away by the proportion of positive responses—and, as the stories came in, by their quality.
The title took some tweaking. I wanted to convey the essentially American nature of the artwork, and its reflection of the country in full. I thought of the song, “America the Beautiful,” and the line that suggested itself as a title was “From sea to shining sea.”
And that would have been fine, but too many authors and publishers have already slapped it on too many books. And wouldn’t it be useful to come up with a word to suggest the conflict and drama and intensity that found its way into both the stories and the paintings?
You know, a touch of alliteration wouldn’t hurt, either.
From sea to—what? Shimmering? Scintillating? Silvery?
Ah, of course. From Sea to Stormy Sea.
As I may have mentioned, I wrote a story for In Sunlight or in Shadow. And I tried mightily to write one for Alive in Shape and Color, one that started with Matthew Scudder and Mick Ballou and their wives standing in front of a Raphael Soyer painting at the Whitney Museum, and something about it reminds Mick of a story, and—well, I don’t know where it might have gone from there, because it never went anywhere. It fizzled out, and I resigned myself to the fact that it was not going to get written, and neither was anything else from me, and Alive in Shape and Color would have not seventeen stories but sixteen. I so informed Pegasus, and they reworked the cover accordingly.
And then Warren Moore, who’d contributed to both of the books, pointed out to me that my body of work already included a story that fit the book’s requirements. It was called “Looking for David,” and Michelangelo’s statue had indeed been its inspiration. While it was certainly not a new story, neither was it one that had been widely published. So we included it, and Pegasus adjusted the cover accordingly.
For From Sea to Stormy Sea, I didn’t even have the intention of contributing a story. I had seventeen superb writers to do all that heavy lifting for me.
And then one of them was unable to deliver.
This happens. Ordering a story from a writer is not like ordering a sandwich from the corner deli. You don’t always get what you asked for. (And, now that I think of it, that’s also occasionally true of the deli. Never mind.)
I tried to think who might step into the breach, and a little voice suggested that I write the requisite story myself. I’ve become quite adept over the years at tuning out that little voice or telling it to go to hell, but this time it was persuasive.
I sat down and started writing. I didn’t have a story consciously in mind, or characters with whom to people it, but one word led to another, and one sentence led to another, and I found myself wholly caught up in what I was writing, the happy result being “The Way We See the World.”
And the painting from which it took form? Office Girls, by Raphael Soyer. Yes, really. The very painting that didn’t work out as a story for Mick and Matt, which we used instead as a frontispiece for Alive in Shape and Color.
The world’s a strange place. But you probably already suspected as much.
And I could leave it at that, but after I’d written my story, another writer was forced to pull out late in the eleventh hour. As I said, these things happen, but time was short and finding a replacement likely to be challenging.
So I broke my own rule and turned to a writer who had in fact participated in both earlier books, and other anthologies of mine as well. He’s the aforementioned Warren Moore, and I was confident of two things—that if he took the job he’d be able to handle it in a timely fashion, and that I’d be more than happy with what he delivered.
And he was, and I am. He selected a painting and wrote a story for it, and the artist (whom I won’t name here, or anywhere else, ever) denied permission, deciding he didn’t want his painting in our book. And Warren realized there was another painting that fit the story he’d written quite perfectly, a painting by his late father that very much resonated with the theme of his story.
Sometimes it’s really nice the way things work out. . . .
—Lawrence Block
FROM SEA TO
STORMY SEA
Patti Abbott is the Edgar-, Anthony- and Macavity-nominated author of Concrete Angel, Shot in Detroit, I Bring Sorrow & Other Stories of Transgression, and the soon-to-be-reprinted Monkey Justice and Home Invasion, and she won the Derringer Award for “My Hero.” Her story’s title is from a poem by Darla Biel, included in Feminine Images, ekphrastic poetry inspired by Harvey Dunn’s images of women.
The Prairie is My Garden by Harvey Dunn
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THE PRAIRIE IS MY GARDEN
BY PATTI ABBOTT
1884. DE SMET, SOUTH DAKOTA.
Do you think this plat will do?” Knocking off his straw boater with his gesture, Martin took the opportunity to mop his forehead. Their eyes swept the expanse of land. The house was modest but solid, the outbuildings mostly sod. “I don’t know, Ellie. I’m away so much, and it’s a long ride into town. It’s so lonesome out here. Menacing, almost.”
“Is it that cow or the milkweed and hyssop you find threatening?” Smiling, she visored her eyes. “Will you look at those coneflowers.”
“I would if I knew which flower they were. So many flowers, so much grass, but so few trees.” He ran a hand through the waving grass. “I would want to take a scythe to this so we can see who’s sneaking up on us.”
“You sound like my father, finding fault with my prospective garden. That Lakota told me that though the tall grasses kill off budding plants, the summers are too dry for most trees anyway. It’s the tall grass that makes it a prairie, Martin.”
“What Lakota is this?”
“One of the guides in town. Akecheta. He came by with a wagon filled with jewelry and potions. His wife does beautiful work with beads.” She knelt down to examine what looked like a weed to her husband. “It’s a bluestem.”
“Your father would not approve of you and the children out here, Eleanor. Talking to primitives. Imagine. He reads the newspapers too. Jesse James, Sitting Bull. Gold Fever. These are not calming stories.”
“The Indian was in town and no more a primitive than me. And if he was out here, you could spot him coming for miles. It’s in town that men lay in wait.”
They both fell silent, remembering a recent night.
“Father has more respect for ‘potions’ than you might think. His pharmacy is filled with herbal concoctions.” She stood up. “Children, stop running before you are overheated. There’s no way to cool off. And leave that skipper alone. This is her land more than yours.”
“Robbie Olafson has a box full of them,” Harriet shouted back, her voice getting caught up in the wind. “I just need a net and—”
“There will be no nets,” Martin hollered back. He looked at his wife and, failing to see the irony, said, “I will leave you a shotgun just in case. You are eight miles from town or from a neighbor.”
“I hope that is distance enough,” she said.
“We are at cross-purposes, Eleanor. I want to fence you in, and you want to tear the fence down. Children, it’s time to go. Your legs will be aching tonight.”
1875. CHICAGO.
Eleanor Carpenter took a walk on her lunch hour every fine day, amazed at the speed with which new buildings arose from the ashes of the Fire. Chicago, built from lumber, was ripe for the flames incinerating the hodgepodge of rickety firetraps in hours.
The Palmer House, which used terra-cotta to rebuild, rose regally in front of her. It was said to have a barbershop with a floor made of silver dollars. She had ducked inside once to see, but the door she had pushed through led to the haberdashery. A plush emerald carpet, mahogany trimmings, and a row of wax heads modeling fashionable hats was all she saw.
Tired of city vistas, Eleanor vowed to find her way to a woods, a meadow or a riverbank before too long. But such a landscape was miles away, even by horsecar, and her father held her to the forty-five minutes he allowed his other clerks.
The odors of the pharmacy, with its liniments, camphor, cod-liver oil, ammonia, rubbing alcohol and various cosmetics extracted from an assortment of sources was difficult to tolerate ten hours a day. How could an establishment purporting to cure illness be so poisonous to the nose? Many of their patrons claimed the smell was curative, but to her it was harsh and suffocating.
“The university in Urbana is admitting women, Eleanor,” her father repeatedly reminded her. “You can study medicine downstate or pharmaceutical science right here in Chicago and be a bigger help.”
As she rounded the corner of Monroe, a young man, redheaded and wild-eyed, nearly knocked her down. Eyes fixed on the ground, he was mumbling in an agitated way. He offered no apology, did not even glance at her. Since the Fire, desperate people roamed the streets. The Tribune had recently listed the names of every person brought before the insane court, also publishing the basis for their appearance. Many had been driven mad by losses suffered in the Fire: lost family, lost homes, lost pets, lost businesses. Or just plain lost from the look in their eyes.
Seconds later, the redheaded man ran full-tilt into an elderly man turning away from a newsstand. This time the fellow had to stop because the victim of his carelessness was lying flattened on the sidewalk. Eleanor swooped in, and together they helped him to his feet. The young man was full of apologies as they led the man to a bench.
“Quite all right, no need for concern,” the old man said, brushing cinder from his forehead. “I was, no doubt, too much occupied with the headlines.”
“Don’t try to stand until you catch your breath,” Eleanor said, using her handkerchief to clean the dirt from his hands and face. She held it under his mouth, and obligingly he spat.
“I can’t apologize enough,” the young man said. “Should I look for a physician?” He looked to Eleanor for an answer, somehow assuming she possessed an ability to take charge.
“Takes more than a tumble to damage an old soldier like me.” The injured man rose despite their protestations. “Look, no harm done.” When he gave signs of breaking into a jig to prove his fitness, Eleanor grabbed his arm.
It seemed best to end their intercession then, as the man seemed embarrassed by the fuss. Nodding goodbye, all three went their separate ways, the young man turning back to mark the spot for future reference.
As fortuity would have it, two days later Eleanor came in contact with the redheaded man again. The Carpenter family was occupying their usual pew at the First Congregational Church of Chicago when Reverend Patton stepped up to the pulpit and told his congregants a guest speaker would deliver that day’s sermon.
“Mr. Martin Tyler, a graduating student at the Theological Seminary will be delivering his first sermon. His talk takes its inspiration from Henry Ward Beecher’s famous ‘Poverty and the Gospels’ sermon,” Reverend Patton said, his voice pitched high with excitement.
A growing buzz accompanied the student’s approach to the pulpit. It had been the congregation’s good fortune to hear Reverend Beecher speak only a year before. Reverend Beecher had been among the first abolitionists and was now a defender of the right of women to cast a ballot. Both causes were dear to the hearts of the Congregationalists.
Eleanor didn’t hear a word of Mr. Tyler’s sermon, although she would later learn it demonstrated neither a facility for public speaking nor a grasp of his topic. From Eleanor’s vantage, Martin Tyler stood poised before the church’s solitary stained-glass window—one composed of gold and blue panels—and his hair, the most vibrant red she had ever seen, seemed lit by the light flowing through the glass. Or perhaps illuminated by the beneficence of the Lord.
In either case, Eleanor was transfixed and failed to notice the hum that began to weave through the church. It was difficult to be certain amid his shaking voice, his fluttering hands, the rumble of his stomach, but it seemed probable that Martin Tyler had misunderstood Reverend Beecher’s words completely and was advocating a stoic acceptance of poverty and an acknowledgment that perhaps such a condition was part of God’s plan. This turned out to be a tragic miscomprehension of the tangle of words emanating from his mouth, but many would continue to believe it for days to come.
If the delivery of a modestly successful sermon was a test, Mr. Tyler had failed. But flush with a mistaken belief in a victory, albeit minor, he did not detect the disapproval. He was buoyed by relief that he had managed to complete his talk without fainting, vomiting or forgetting his place, all outcomes that had seemed likely a few hours earlier. Eleanor, in the first flush of love, noticed nothing beyond the vibrancy of his hair, the firmness of his chin, the deep timbre of his voice. Never before had Eleanor been so caught in the snare of pure physical desire. Until that very hour, she had never entertained the notion of marriage at all, preferring to imagine herself free to wander unimpeded through nature. The works of Henry David Thoreau and Caroline Kirkland were especially inspirational, and she carried scraps of paper penned with particularly stirring sentiments.
It had been planned that Mr. Tyler and Reverend Patton would join the Carpenter family for a celebratory Sunday dinner. The poor evaluation of Mr. Tyler’s performance had not made its way to him, so he enjoyed his chicken fricassee with rice, fresh spring peas, Parker House rolls, and a strawberry pie. Neither did he notice the conversation at the dinner table was muted and that all eyes avoided his. Mr. Carpenter and Reverend Patton talked about city politics; the Carpenter boys, home from school, spoke about the upcoming college football schedule; the girls and their mother reviewed the guest list for an impending party. Only Eleanor and Martin were quiet: she, to her shame, still occupied with his physical attributes; he feasting silently on the best meal he had been served since leaving Boston for the seminary three years before.
“I wonder if that elderly man is all right,” Eleanor said suddenly. She had been struggling for a topic of conversation, and this fairly fell from her mouth. It took Martin a second or two to realize her remark was directed at him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, quickly swallowing his bite of pie.
“That man you knocked down at the newsagent?”
He looked at her carefully. Without the hat she had worn on the street, her pretty face was more evident. And her hair, strawberry blond, although he wouldn’t have known the term, was worn up for almost the first time. She looked like a woman rather than the schoolgirl of a few days earlier.
“I went back to the newsstand, you know,” he said, suddenly feeling a need to win her approval. “The agent knew the fellow in question and directed me to his flat.”
“Did you find him well? Recovered from your . . . collision?”
He nodded. “Albert Jenkins is his name. Mrs. Jenkins made us a cup of tea, and we had a fine visit. In fact, I tried some of today’s sermon out on him.” Mr. Tyler bit his lip. “He didn’t seem to take in my key points though. Of course, he confessed to not being a churchgoing man. You don’t think—”
“Would you care for a short walk, Mr. Tyler?” Eleanor said, interrupting him. “We usually take one after a Sunday dinner. Isn’t that right, Father?” Her father avoided her eyes, pretending to be in a deep discussion of the installation of a new sacristy.
Rolling those eyes, Eleanor excused herself and, taking Martin’s arm, made her way to the street. No one showed the slightest interest in joining them. In the midday sunlight, Martin’s hair again caught Eleanor’s attention.
“Are you all redheads?” she asked. “Your family, that is.”
“Just my mother’s side. They came from County Cork, and most of them have a least some red in their hair. Orange, in some cases.” They walked in silence for a block or two, both of them at a loss for an appropriate subject for two strangers of the opposite sex. But despite the sporadic awkwardness, their walk concluded with a plan to meet again. Something had been decided almost from the start.
1876. CHICAGO–MINNEAPOLIS.
It was only repeated assurances from Reverend Patton that Martin was not the dolt he seemed that eventually won over Mr. Carpenter.
“The boy made a hash of his thoughts that Sunday,” Mr. Carpenter said. “He must have been in a panic. Maybe Eleanor can take him in hand before he steps up to the pulpit again. Elocution was one of her strong suits.”
“No minister excels at every aspect of the job,” Reverend Patton said. “I am all thumbs when it comes to counseling young couples.” They exchanged smiles.
The courtship was quick. A call had come from a Minneapolis church two weeks before Martin’s graduation. Caught in a bind, the Plymouth Congregational Church was willing to take him sight unseen, which hurried the usual process along.
“Why not a church in Chicago?” Mr. Carpenter asked.
“There’s no need for another Congregational minister here,” Martin said apologetically. “It would have been my first choice too. I dislike taking Eleanor away from her family.”
“Then travel east. Surely there are churches to serve there. I can write to Uncle Abner. He belongs to Kensington Church in Connecticut.”
“Father, you know Martin has to go where he is needed. How would it look if he tried to call in favors? Don’t you think such a tactic would put him on the wrong footing?”
This conversation had been coming on like a bad cold for several weeks. She had watched her father dogging Reverend Patton, trying to find out the seminary’s plans for Martin, writing letters to everyone he knew connected with the Congregational Church. It would be pure misery for George Carpenter to send his favorite daughter west, where life was bound to be more difficult and dangerous. And, most of all, she would be far from her family.
“They need help in Minneapolis. The city is growing by leaps and bounds with all the new mills,” Eleanor tried to explain.
“Nothing but flour and lumber from what I hear. How mundane.” Mr. Carpenter looked at Martin coldly. “You know they don’t even have trees on that prairie. It will be sweltering in the summer. Freezing in the winter.”
“Minneapolis isn’t really the prairie, you know.” Why wasn’t Martin saying anything? Eleanor wondered.
“All those little lakes instead of our grand one. Oh, I’ve heard tell about this great Minneapolis.” He caught Eleanor’s eye. “You will miss the musical evenings the Philharmonic Society brings in. Summer night concerts are going to be in the Exposition Building next year. And then there’s the Athenaeum and the Museum.”
In order to halt the floodgate of Chicago’s cultural achievements, Eleanor laughed. “And I am sure your family said much the same thing when you left Connecticut for Chicago. But you traveled to a place where a pharmacist was needed. Father, do you know Minneapolis is allowing women to both vote for and serve on the school board? Quite progressive, I’d say. And a new streetcar is in operation. We’d be arriving just as the city is making its mark.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “And what would you have Martin do here? Help out in the pharmacy? Make deliveries on a bicycle?”
“And you are to have your own church, Martin?” Mr. Carpenter continued, ignoring his daughter. “I have heard of men called and then made to do nothing more than serve as a janitor or choir master. Or a Sunday School teacher.”
“The Plymouth Congregational Church has a new building at Nicollet and Eighth, which is quite grand I am told,” Martin finally said.
Mr. Carpenter shrugged in defeat. “I guess there is nothing more to do than plan a wedding, then. It is going to be very difficult for your mother and me to visit, you know. We are too old to spend days on a train. And I will worry about you being out west with the scoundrels and scallywags I read about daily.”
“Chicago isn’t held in such high esteem,” Eleanor said. “Many fathers wouldn’t want their daughters coming here.”
“People say the Chicago Fire was divine retribution for what is a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah,” Mrs. Carpenter added, incurring a scornful look from her husband but a grateful one from her daughter. “Well, I heard that at the Ladies Auxiliary! Don’t look at me like that.”
But the Tylers’ future did not lie in Minneapolis. Martin’s gifts, as evidenced in Chicago, did not rest in preaching cerebral sermons, nor in interpreting the scripture. Nor did they revolve around raising money or providing financial leadership. His gift was in pastoring, in providing solace to the bereaved, to those ill or in care, to people needing counseling. He was ill-suited for Plymouth Congregational Church. The call had been based on that church’s belief that he was a man who could elevate their status, increase the size of their congregation, raise more funds. His undergraduate degree from Harvard and his study at the seminary in Chicago misled them. They just about accused him of misrepresentation. And the sort of formal sermon expected by the Minneapolis congregation was not in Martin’s makeup despite extensive tutoring from his wife.
“If I could just preach from my heart, I think I could win them over.”
With her own heart breaking, Eleanor said, “This isn’t the right place for us anyway, Martin. It is just a smaller Chicago. We’ll fit in better in another sort of town.”
This was true, she told herself. But the notion that Martin had chosen the wrong profession was beginning to haunt her. Perhaps schoolmastering would be his forte. Was it too late for a change in careers? She had recently learned of a group called the Charity Organization Society that might be a better fit for Martin. They helped people undergoing financial or personal troubles.
But being a minister in the Congregational Church was important to her husband, and he wouldn’t hear of leaving his collar behind. He had grown up in the church and never wavered from his desire to serve it. She listened to him practice his sermons, holding her breath. Even when the sermon was well planned and heartfelt, it tended to blow up in his face or wander off along uncharted paths. She dreaded the moment when the fidgeting in church began, when sighs of exasperation, if not consternation, escaped from the people around her. Perhaps a church in a more roughhewn place would make fewer demands on him as a public speaker, as an interpreter of the Bible. Perhaps Martin’s assets would be appreciated in a town populated not by lumber barons and flour magnates but by farmers, liverymen, mill hands, small shopkeepers.
Martin looked at her worriedly. Family indeed. She was due to deliver their first child in a few months. Surely the church in Minneapolis would give him time to find a new congregation. They would not be tossed on the street.
1880S. DE SMET AREA.
The baby had come early. It was a girl, and they named her Harriet. Within a few weeks, the Tylers took the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway to the De Smet area. Although all communications between Martin and his prospective church had been cordial and welcoming, a letter from a deacon had mentioned in a vague way that the Congregationalists would have to share the building with the Baptists and Presbyterians: “Your congregation meets the third Sunday of the month. You can gather in the schoolhouse the other weeks should you choose.”
A postscript added that he might be called upon to preach in neighboring towns. If so, his congregation could attend services with the Baptists and Presbyterians while he was absent. “I am sure it will all work out,” the deacon wrote. “Luckily there is no shortage of land. Just the money to construct buildings.”
“So I’m to be a circuit preacher,” he told Eleanor, flinging the letter down.
“I didn’t know such a practice existed.”
“Not since the War. At least that’s what we heard in Seminary.”
De Smet was laid out in the typical T of most railroad towns. The first week they stayed in the Exchange Hotel, which sat a scant twenty feet from the tracks. Most of the guests were businessmen there for only a night or two. They tramped back en masse from the saloons after midnight, stumbling and paying little heed to the noise they made. Several times, strange men turned up in their room, the door having failed to lock properly. And once, a man in a bowler hat had a dance hall girl perched on his lap, two feet from Harriet’s empty cot.
“I believe you have the wrong room,” Martin told them, and they left, laughing wildly.
Harriet did little to make their transition easier, screaming night after night until they feared they’d be asked to leave. The lulling train ride west had been their only period of extended peace for weeks. Martin used some of their wedding money to buy a secondhand buggy so they could push Harriet around town, a difficult feat with the mud, horse droppings, and ruts from wagons to contend with. And the ride was too bumpy to serve a therapeutic purpose. It often ended with the child convulsed by her screams.
Eleanor couldn’t help but think every building in De Smet looked like a box with windows, much like the dollhouses she had constructed from pharmacy delivery cartons in her childhood. Little thought had been paid to architecture. There were no parks, no green areas. She roamed the town, disheartened at the streets and backyards full of garbage. It seemed like life was too hectic in De Smet, too transitory to deal with such mundane matters. Most people stayed there only long enough to find a guide to take them to their claim and to stock up on provisions. The people setting up homes in the town itself were mostly shopkeepers, railroad employees and liverymen, although gradually a more professional class began to appear.
The only building of note was the courthouse, and even that was ordinary compared to those in Chicago and Minneapolis. Folks seemed to gather at the railroad depot, waiting for the next train to turn up. What looked like impressive buildings were often made grand by false fronts weighted down with advertising. Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound for feminine complaints adorned the top half of the pharmacy. Inside, the shops and businesses were tiny, dark places with muddy vestibules, grimy floors, and poorly stocked shelves. The two newspapers published mostly gossip and news that the railroad furnished them with. The young couple was disheartened by almost everything they saw around them. Since most of the incoming travelers were there to claim land, their spirits were buoyed by the new opportunity. The Tylers had no land to claim, and little they saw lifted their spirits.
Martin’s church had seemed striking at first . . . until they walked through the door, realizing in an instant that most of what impressed them was on the outside. And even there, the steeple was made of plaster. The bell rang only sporadically, mostly when the wind picked up.
“The congregation is saving for a real one,” he told Eleanor. “Of course, this building may not ultimately be ours. I think the Presbyterians have the numbers on their side.” The Congregationalist attendance changed from week to week but never exceeded forty. During a blizzard once, it was just the three of them.
There was no rectory, of course, and a home couldn’t be shared anyway. So after a few weeks of hotel life, they found a two-room flat over the hardware store. “Handy if we need a hammer, right?” Martin joked. The various odors of a hardware store, not all pleasant, scented their rooms.
Slowly, the Tylers settled into town life in De Smet. Martin preached at the church on his Sunday, traveling to Brookings, Manchester, and Silver Lake to preach the other weeks. Generally he spent a few days in each town, seeing to the folks who needed him, staying at a widow’s house in one town, in a miner’s bunkhouse in the other. It was a life that suited him in terms of his duties, but being separate from his family was a constant hardship. And he had a deluge of letters coming from Mr. Carpenter in Chicago, asking how he could keep Eleanor safe from miles away.
“We get the news here,” Mr. Carpenter wrote, “so we know the mischief that men out there are up to. Only misfits head west.” Martin didn’t bother to reply that he was one of those misfits, assuming that was the point.
Although the weather had been difficult in Chicago and Minneapolis, it was temperate compared to De Smet. Blizzards seem to gain speed and power over the flatlands, and there was snow on the ground from October to May. The makeshift housing was a poor match for a Dakota winter for many of their congregants, and Eleanor was put in charge of writing to various patrons and benevolent groups for blankets, warm clothing, whatever would see them through.
“Of course, I can only tap a mine so often,” she reminded Martin. “People back east only have the vaguest notion of what life is like out here. They assume since our temperatures are similar, so are our houses.”
It was not until May that they made their first journey to the prairie her father so reviled. Perhaps it was because the day was a perfect one. Or maybe because they had just discovered she was pregnant again. Or probably because they had borrowed a parishioner’s fetching carriage for the trip, but Eleanor was awestruck by what suddenly surrounded them. When she tried to describe it to her mother later in a letter, she could not find the right words. Every word she chose was far too prosaic and diminished what she had seen.
Never before had the sky seemed so vast nor half as blue; no vista had stretched so far, seemingly meeting the heavens in an undulating horizon. The land appeared both barren and abundant with life, depending on how closely you examined it. She fell to her knees. The plants were equally tender and sturdy. What looked colorless at first took on infinite hues as she inspected it. The insects buzzing overhead were unfamiliar but immediately dear to her. The absence of trees allowed her to take it all in with huge, thrilling gulps. Unlike the wind coming off Lake Michigan in Chicago, the blow rustling the grass was almost deafening. The prairie was where she wanted to be, where she belonged. It immediately became the landscape of her heart. Its emptiness, which was what one saw first, was its greatest strength. All the things that man had added to this world were superfluous, soulless. She was unprepared for this. Why had no one told her that such a place existed? Why had people described it as lonely or inhospitable?
“Pretty stark, isn’t it?” Martin said, breaking into her reverie, his tone dismissive. “I guess your father was right. Something about its size feels threatening. A storm or an Indian tribe or a blizzard could bear down on us in seconds. I guess I am a city boy. I wouldn’t feel right living out here. Nor in having you and the children in such a place.”
She had been about to tell him how she felt, how what lay in front of her had profoundly changed her, but then thought better of it. Martin would need to be won over. How that would happen eluded her though. It would come to her eventually. Solutions usually did, if she didn’t hurry them.
Eleanor returned often to that spot and others like it, but mostly without Martin. Harriet and eventually William played more naturally on the prairie than anywhere else. They intuited the happiness it gave her and shared it. There were a million things to investigate on every square inch of land. The three of them could lie in the grass for hours, merely studying the cloud formations overhead.
Martin was away more every week. The population in Brookings proved especially challenging and in need of constant pastoral attention.
“Influenza has taken its toll,” he said “And now there’s another village to serve: Fountain. The deacon sent me over there today. People are claiming land by the hour. One parcel has turned over three times in a month as the owners head farther west.”
Her husband’s voice was excited as he packed his bag. Providing solace and both spiritual and practical advice was clearly his calling. No one in these tiny outposts demanded fancy sermons or elaborate fund-raising endeavors. It was enough to have a protector, and that was how Martin served them. She appreciated his talent for it too, never resting more easily than when he was beside her. Unfortunately, too many nights were spent alone. The sounds of De Smet were not pleasant for her: raucous saloons open too late, horses trotting down the street at all hours, arguments between various parties spilling out of boardinghouses and hotels, wagons coming and going past midnight. It was a way station on the road west.
She became more proficient in repairing things, in making decisions on her own, in being the disciplinarian—not that she wasn’t always that anyway. Martin was too softhearted to deal with the misbehavior of small children. The streets stretched farther out now. The T became an H. Calumet Avenue, where they rented a small house after William came along, had a few trees shading the ground beneath them. None of this was planned. Sometimes she wondered if De Smet was not the worst of both worlds: neither a company town nor an autonomous one. The railroads simply allowed laissez-faire capitalism to shape things. They provided land, and the rest of it be damned. If her heart’s desire was to be in a growing community, it might have served her. But it lay elsewhere.
Soon the children would be attending school, and the poor quality of the local one worried her. Her education and, even more, Martin’s, had been superior to what her children would have here. It was little more than what farmhands were offered—a sixth-grade education at best. She was startled when the new teacher, sitting next to her in church, stumbled over several words in her hymnal. “It’s my poor eyesight,” she told Eleanor, embarrassed.
In December of their fourth year in De Smet, William came down with what at first seemed like croup. She constructed the usual tent and set a pot on the stove to make steam. But during the night, his fever shot up, his neck seemed to stiffen, and Eleanor feared something worse. Martin was in Manchester, well beyond her reach. She alerted a neighbor that the children would be alone and set off for the doctor’s office. It was past midnight, and the streets were as quiet as she’d seen them.
It was brutally cold. She could hear ice snapping the branches of the more delicate trees as she hurried through town. The snow was knee-deep on side streets where the makeshift plow hadn’t gone. As she pushed through the drifts, her coat brushing away the outer layer, she suddenly felt an insistent tap on her shoulder. Before she could turn to look or say a word, a man, she couldn’t make out his face, pushed her into a snowbank and fell down on top of her. She felt him prodding at her; it was if he was in possession of six wiry, probing hands. She knew she would have only the briefest of moments to call for help. Summoning all of the breath inside her, she let it out in a piercing scream, pushing him off at the same time. In nearly the same instant, she realized her attacker was not a man at all. It was the wire mannequin dressed like Santa Claus that had sat outside the De Smet General Store for the last two weeks. Mr. Olafson had removed the mannequin from his shop window and stationed it outside for the holiday, remarking on his clever invention to all who stopped to look. The ropes tethering it to the hitching post had obviously come loose in the blizzard, and it had wheeled or been pushed down First Street by the same wind propelling her. She thrust it aside, righting it, and the strange apparition continued its wobbly journey down the street, leaving only its top hat behind. Perhaps no one had heard her embarrassing scream. But no.
“What is going on out there? You are waking my children.” Then a pause. “Was that a woman, I heard?” It was a man’s voice, coming from a nearby house.
“Yes, yes, it’s me. The preacher’s wife,” Eleanor shouted back. “I’m all right. It’s just a . . .”
The mannequin was more than a block away now, the snow crunching loudly under the wheels, its red flannel coattails flapping behind it. A gust of wind propelled it around the corner and onto Joliet. And then it was gone.
“The preacher’s wife?” The man’s voice grew closer, and she heard feet skidding on the ice. “Mrs. Hancock?”
“Mrs. Tyler. Congregational.” She was sitting up now, her back against a snowdrift.
“Have you fallen?” A lamp held high lit her face. “Or were you attacked?”
She forced herself up farther and into the light. She could still hear wheels squeaking in the distance, along with branches being weeded from trees from the weight of the ice. The night was one of those where sound carried. She hoped her savior was more deaf than her.
“Attacked?” It was a question, but he didn’t hear it as that.
“Oh, my dear woman.”
She could make him out now. It was Mr. Armbruster. The glasses that usually sat on his face were missing, and his eyes seemed to bobble without them. He was in his nightshirt, a coat thrown carelessly over it. His feet were clumsy in unlaced boots. “Look, here is his hat. The scoundrel.” He swept the top hat off the ground. “Seems like he was celebrating . . .” He shook his head.
She couldn’t force herself to clear up the misunderstanding. Her brain was too busy finding a purpose for it.
“You had better come inside before one of these flying branches hit us. My wife will see to you.” He looked at her as carefully as he could, being half-blind. “Do you need to be seen to?” She shook her head. “I will head for the sheriff’s office. The reprobate may be looking for his next victim.” He helped her inside the house, where his wife was waiting anxiously. “Do you have any idea who it was?” Mr. Armbruster said, his hand on the door. “The sheriff is bound to ask that.
“None at all,” Eleanor said. “He was swaddled in dark wool.” This was true, at least. “But really I must continue on my errand. I was on my way to the doctor. My boy is very ill.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mrs. Armbruster said, grabbing her shawl. “The horrid man may be laying in wait.”
When she lay in bed later that night, Martin summoned but not yet arrived, her boy’s fever dropping, Harriet having slept through it all, she considered the danger of continuing on with the lie versus the perils of admitting the truth. Was she an evil woman for seeing how her supposed attack could win her a home on the prairie? Could win her the blue sky, the rustling grass, the endless sea of flowers.
“It’s not like this was the first time a woman has been accosted by the men exiting those saloons,” Eleanor said to Martin later, embellishing rather than diminishing her tale. “Those men are away from their families and use the opportunity to drink to excess, gamble their paychecks away, and look for women to warm their beds.”
“I am going to set up a watch for when I am away,” Martin said, his chin thrust out. “We can have a patrol arranged in a matter of hours.”
“Do we really want to live in a jail, Martin? I have a better idea.” This could not end with her imprisoned by the fears of men.
1884. DE SMET, SOUTH DAKOTA.
The house was theirs in weeks. She could stand outside with the children and spot someone coming for miles, not that she gave such an idea much thought. Sometimes Lakotas with their wagons of goods stopped by. She was especially fond of Talutah, Akecheta’s wife, who made such beautiful jewelry. Town men mostly stayed away after hearing about the De Smet confrontation. Martin was the one she usually spotted, coming home from Manchester or Fountain. His red hair was a dead giveaway. The sun lit it up like fire on a nice day. Even on a dull one it held light. It was a beacon. It was her heart.
Charles Ardai is the author of five novels, including the Shamus Award–winning Songs of Innocence, which the Washington Post called “an instant classic.” He has also received an Edgar Award for his short fiction and an Ellery Queen Award for his work as founder and editor of the pulp-revival imprint Hard Case Crime. He lives in New York City and walks through Times Square every day.
Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian
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MOTHER OF PEARL
BY CHARLES ARDAI
For a long time Harry Castle sold penknives, the sort with phony mother-of-pearl handles, out of a cardboard suitcase on Forty-Seventh Street, and when the police confiscated those, he tried his luck with neckties. In this, as in so much else, his luck was poor. Except for being labeled 4-F when the draft came, nothing much had ever gone right for him. But he wasn’t complaining. If you’re going to use up a lifetime’s worth of luck in one shot, keeping out of a war was the time for it. And if no one would ever have called him a success, that was true of most men who made their living on the streets of New York. With one thing and another, he’d at least never gone hungry, not two days running.