Usher's Passing

Usher's Passing Page 32

BY THE AMBER GLOW OF A FEW DOZEN CANDLES STUCK IN CANDELABRAS around the library, Rix was methodically going through the Usher documents. Books, letters, ledgers, and photo albums lay in stacks around the desk. He opened a mildewed volume under the light and saw that it was an account book, the figures and notations entered in strong, clear handwriting. It listed dates -  from 1851 and 1852 - and amounts of money paid to various creditors. The Brewston Gunpowder Works in Pittsburgh had received twelve thousand dollars. Uriah Hynd and Company of Chicago had been paid fifteen thousand dollars. The Hopewell Lead Casing Foundry had gotten ten thousand dollars of Hudson Usher's money. The closely spaced entries went on, page after page.

Rix felt off balance, his vision blurring. "Damn!" he said softly, and leaned against the desk with his head bowed until the dizziness passed. He was still weak from the attack, and had been in bed for most of the afternoon and evening. His outburst had been forgotten, or at least forgiven, by his mother: she'd had Cass serve him his dinner in bed.

But it wasn't only the lingering effects of the attack that gripped him with deep depression. It was what he'd found in Katt's Quiet Room, the object that was now hidden beneath his bed. Sick to death, he'd wanted to stay in his room during dinner to avoid looking into his sister's face.

What had happened to this family? Rix asked himself. What further depths of evil and self-destruction could there be? Boone's plans for an amusement park of freaks on Usher property had been repulsive enough, but somehow that was in character for Boone. What Katt was doing, though, was totally unexpected. Christ! Rix thought. Surely Walen didn't know about it! If he did find out, God help Katt!

Rix returned to his work. Searching through the remnants of past lives now seemed the only thing that could take his mind off the present. Rix followed the entries, noting which ones got most of the money. The gunpowder works was listed several times, for varying amounts. Not happy with Hopewell, Hudson had tried seven different lead-casing foundries. Even the servants' salaries were written down, right to the penny.

But Rix paused at the sixth notation for Uriah Hynd and Company. The amount listed was always fifteen thousand dollars -  quite a sum, and even more than Hudson was paying for gunpowder. What did the company sell to him? Rix wondered. There was no indication as to what sort of business Uriah Hynd and Company was.

He came to the end of the account book. During 1851 and 1852, Uriah Hynd and Company had been paid fifteen thousand dollars on a total of nine separate occasions. It was the only company listed so many times. Whatever it had sold to Hudson was lost in the past. Rix put the book aside and began to dig to the bottom of another box.

He uncovered a newspaper, old and brittle, falling to pieces even as he gently lifted it out. It was a copy of the St. Louis Journal, dated the tenth of October, 1871. The bold black headline blared, HUNDREDS DIE IN CHICAGO BLAZE, and below that, in smaller type: GREAT FIRE DECIMATES FRONTIER CITY: INTERVIEWS WITH SURVIVORS, PARTIAL LISTING OF DESTROYED BUILDINGS AND BUSINESSES.

Beneath the layers of headlines was an artist's rendering of the city in flames, as seen from the shore of Lake Michigan. The picture showed hundreds of people fleeing the conflagration. The Journal had compiled interviews with about twenty survivors found in a field hospital, and among them Rix recognized a familiar name: Righteous Jordan.

Rix spread the paper carefully out atop the desk, and sat down to read the woman's story. In an emotion-charged, often hysterical voice, Righteous Jordan told the writer what had happened on October 8, 1871. It was the same date, Rix remembered, as that on Cynthia Cordweiler Usher's tombstone.

As Rix read, several of the candles around him sparked and hissed. He could imagine the great city in flames, buildings exploding, whole rooftops lifting off in the hurricane of fire, the earth shuddering as tons of bricks slammed into the streets. Righteous Jordan was speaking from the dead, and as Rix listened he could hear the din of screams, cries to God, clatter of hooves on cobblestones, and alarm bells ringing. Chicago was burning. Righteous Jordan, along with Cynthia and thirteen-year-old Ludlow Usher, were fleeing before the flames in a careening coach driven by elderly Keil Bodane.

"Lord God!" Righteous shrieked. "We gon' turn over!"

"Hush!" Cynthia commanded. A gust of hot wind had hit the coach broadside, making it pitch crazily. Keil was using his whip to keep the Arabians from rearing. "Keil's a good driver. He'll get us out of this."

A bedlam of bells rang out. Clybourne Street was snarled with other coaches, carriages, and wagons of all sizes. People were running, dragging sacks filled with belongings from Clybourne Row mansions. Ashes and cinders spun thickly through the air. The night had brightened like an eerie orange noon to the west, where the fire had started. Fireballs as big as steam engines hurtled across the sky, smashing into buildings and spreading the blaze faster than a man could run. Sitting beside his mother, with Righteous Jordan filling the seat before him, young Ludlow flinched at the reverberating explosions. Their force shook the ground, as if the entire city were trembling in its death agonies.

They had left everything behind but the clothes they wore. As the flames had neared the Chicago River, Cynthia had ordered her servants to bury in the yard the jewels, silver, and fine art collected in the white mansion she'd inherited from Alexander Hamilton Cordweiler. When the fireballs had started jumping the river, setting ablaze everything they touched, Cynthia told the servants to take the other coaches, carry whatever they pleased, and run. It was all too clear that the fire would not be sated with the Irish shanties and cowbarns - it was reaching out to engulf Clybourne Row with equal greed.

"I saw that fire comin' through the winders!" Righteous said. "I knew it wasn't gon' be stopped! Little ol' river wouldn't stop a fire like that, no sir!"

"Keil will get us safely to the harbor." Cynthia planned on boarding her private steam yacht and sailing out on Lake Michigan until the danger was over. "As soon as we break free of this traffic, Keil should be able to find a faster route."

"We're more than a mile from the lake," Ludlow said quietly. He looked at neither of them, instead peering out the window at the approaching wall of flames. His face glowed bright orange with reflected light, but his eyes were dark. "It's moving quickly, Mother. The wind's blowing too hard."

She squeezed his hand and managed a brave smile. 'We're going to be fine, Ludlow. Stop that whimpering and squirming about, Righteous! You'll throw the coach over!"

Over the noise of confusion outside, they heard the crack of Keil's whip. "Go on, damn you!" he yelled. "Move out of the way!"

"We'll get there," Cynthia said, but uncertainty strained her voice. Something exploded perhaps a block or two away, and Ludlow gripped her hand so tightly the knuckles ground together.

The coach lurched ahead, stopped, and lurched violently again, moving amid a melee of other vehicles and struggling humanity. Where the streets intersected, crashed carriages were being hauled out of the way, people swarming frantically over the wreckage. Maddened horses bucked and kicked as cinders scorched their backs. The acrid, lung-burning smoke was getting thicker, and the fireballs roared overhead like cannon shots.

Finally breaking free of the crush, Keil Bodane turned the coach off Clybourne and onto Halsted Street, heading toward the waterfront. The Arabians responded with speed, their flanks singed by cinders. The streets were littered with burning debris. Bars had been broken into, and whiskey flowed in the gutters from staved-in barrels. Crazed people stopped to drink their fill until the whiskey caught fire and exploded in their faces. Other people ran at the coach, trying to grab hold, but Keil whipped the horses for more speed. A pistol was fired, the bullet shearing off a splinter of wood inches from Keil's knee.

And as Keil veered the coach around the corner of Halsted onto Grand Street, he was met by a wagon full of burning haybales, its team running wild and a charred corpse at the reins.

The Arabians hit the other horses with a force that snapped bones and threw Keil Bodane like a stone from a slingshot. The entire coach, still moving at breakneck speed, then crashed into both teams of horses and turned on its side, its gilded wheels shattering.

"God have mercy!" Righteous screamed - and then her face hit Ludlow's knee as the boy was wrenched from his seat. Cynthia was thrown violently to one side, her head crunching against the coach's intricate scrolled woodwork. As the coach slammed to the ground, it was dragged thirty more yards by the crippled Arabians. The burning haywagon careened onward, its team injured but still trying to escape the fire.

After the crash, as cinders pattered down on the cobblestones and the pall of smoke darkened, a few desperate men stole the three Arabians that could still stand. The fourth lay in the street, two legs broken. Near it was the body of Keil Bodane, whose skull had been crushed against a lamppost.

"Get out!" Cynthia ordered a sobbing Righteous Jordan. "Hurry! Climb up through the door!" Righteous, her front teeth knocked loose by Ludlow's knee and her face covered with blood, hauled herself through the coach door above her head, then leaned in again to help Cynthia up. Ludlow pulled himself out, a long gash across his forehead and his nose broken. His eyes were pewter pools of shock.

"Miz Usher! Miz Usher!" Righteous grasped the other woman's shoulders. The entire left side of Cynthia's face was turning purple and swelling rapidly. Blood leaked from both ears onto her black velvet jacket.

"I'm . . . all right." Her voice was slurred. "We've . . . got to get to the lake. Help me . . . get Ludlow to the lake."

"Mr. Bodane!" Righteous called - and then she saw his body lying in the street. His head had cracked open like a clay jug.

"Righteous." Cynthia gripped her maid's thick wrist. Her bloodshot left eye, Righteous saw with horror, was beginning to bulge from her face. "You . . . take care . . . of Ludlow," she said with an effort. "Get him to the lake. Luther . . . will know . . . what to do. Luther won't . . . let him die."

Righteous knew she was babbling about Luther Bodane, Keil's son, who'd stayed behind, this trip, to watch over Usherland. "We're all gon' get to the water," she said firmly, and helped Cynthia to the ground. Ludlow clambered off the coach; he stood staring numbly at Keil's corpse as other people hurried past, some of them stepping on the body.

Righteous asked Cynthia if she could walk, and Cynthia nodded. The injured eye wouldn't focus, the flesh around it blackening. Cinders hissed down on them, and Righteous crushed them out with her fingers when they sparked in her mistress's hair. "We got to go!" she called to the boy. "Got to get to the lake!"

His forehead bleeding badly, Ludlow followed as Righteous Jordan began to help Cynthia down the middle of Grand Street.

They joined the throngs who hobbled, staggered, stumbled, and ran toward Lake Michigan. A thunderous roar shook the street beneath them, and windows shattered like shotgun blasts as buildings collapsed only a block behind. Red-and-purple fireballs shrieked overhead. The crowds had gone mad; people were breaking into stores, looting whatever they could carry, from topcoats to violins. A woman on fire was dancing a crazy jig on the curbside, caught under the weight of seven or eight mink coats she'd just stolen. Someone threw her into the gutter, where she fell into a stream of running whiskey and was instantly incinerated. A naked man yelled, "Destruction! God's wrath on Chicago!"

Righteous's flesh was blistering. She spat out two teeth and kept right on going, pushing through the crowd, taking Ludlow's hand so he wouldn't be swept away. Over the noise of screaming and shouting, there was a sound like a thousand locomotives with their boilers about to blow. As Righteous looked back, huge sheets of flame leapt into the sky, the glare almost blinding her. Rooftops lifted into the air, spinning away out of sight. The earth trembled under the impact of crashing tons of brick. Ludlow was transfixed, staring at the conflagration behind them, tears running down his cheeks. She jerked him back to his senses and kept moving.

Cynthia Usher slipped off Righteous's shoulder, almost falling before Righteous could catch her.

"Mother!" Ludlow wailed through blistered lips. He clutched her waist, trying to keep her from falling, as bodies roughly shoved past them.

Ludlow looked up into his mother's distorted, hideously swollen face. She was smiling at him.

"My angel," she whispered, and touched his hair.

And then blood exploded from her nostrils and around the staring orb of her left eye. Ludlow was splattered. Righteous almost swooned, but held herself steady; she'd felt the life leave Cynthia Usher in a single sigh. She eased the corpse to the ground, pushing away people who staggered too close. "She gone," Righteous told the boy. "We got to go on ourselves."

Ludlow screamed, "No!" and threw himself across the body. When Righteous tried to pull him away, he attacked her savagely. She reared back her right fist and struck him squarely in the jaw, then caught him in her arms as he fell.

Carrying the moaning boy, Righteous fought toward the lake. By the time they'd reached the shore, their clothes were little more than smoking rags. People by the hundreds were immersed in the oily water. Boats were darting here and there, picking up swimmers. Most of the yachts had already been stolen from their slips, and those that remained were afire. Righteous went into the lake up to her neck, then wet Ludlow's face and hair to keep the cinders from burning him.

It was almost an hour before she lifted the boy into the hands of soldiers aboard a ferryboat, then climbed up herself. Ludlow, his clothing tattered and his face puffed with burns, stood at the railing, watching Chicago's destruction. When Righteous touched his arm, he pulled quickly away.

Lord God! she thought. She had realized, as she would tell a reporter in another few hours, the truth of the matter: with both his mother and father gone, Ludlow Usher at thirteen was in control of everything - the estate, the family business, all the other businesses that had belonged to Mr. Cordweiler. He was, Righteous knew, the wealthiest thirteen-year-old boy in the world.

She watched him, waiting for him to cry, but he never did. He held his spine as stiff as an iron bar, his attention riveted to the fire on shore.

The soldiers were helping a man and woman aboard from a rowboat. Both were well dressed, the man in a dark suit with a diamond stickpin, the woman in the dirty remnants of a red ballroom gown. The man regarded Righteous and Ludlow and turned to one of the soldiers. "Sir," he inquired, "must we share this vessel with niggers and tramps?"

Rix came to the end of Righteous Jordan's story. He glanced over the other articles. Chicago had burned for twenty-four hours, and the fire had destroyed more than seventeen thousand buildings. One hundred thousand people were left homeless. The flames had been helped along by at least nine firebugs. The firemen had been slow to react that night because they were so tired; during the week before the Great Fire, they'd answered more than forty alarms.

He looked up at the portrait of the brooding Ludlow Usher. Thirteen years old and one foot in hell, Rix thought. How had he kept his sanity?

Rix had found the answer to Dunstan's question about the death of Cynthia Usher. Tomorrow he would take this newspaper to him. But the cane - how and when had Ludlow gotten the cane back from Randolph Tigre?

Printed in small type in several columns on the next page was a listing of businesses that had been destroyed. They were not in alphabetical order, and Rix had to read patiently before he found what he was looking for.

Uriah Hynd and Company, Grocers.

A grocery store? Rix thought. Hudson Usher was spending fifteen thousand dollars a whack on groceries from Chicago? Why didn't he simply buy his groceries in Asheville?

Rix carefully folded the paper and rose from his chair. For now, the questions would have to wait. He blew out all the candles except those in one candelabra, and used it to light his way upstairs.

And when he opened the door to his room, the golden light illuminated Puddin' Usher - lying languidly in his bed, waiting for him.

She smiled sleepily, yawned, and stretched. Her breasts peeked over the top of the sheet. "You been a long time," she said huskily. "Thought you'd never come to bed."

He closed the door, alarmed that someone might hear. "You'd better get out. Boone will - "

"Boone ain't here." Her eyes challenged him. "Ol' Boonie's long gone to his club. You ain't gonna turn me down this time, are you?"

"Puddin'," Rix said as he put the folded paper on his dresser, "I thought you understood what I told you. I can't - "

She sat up and let the sheet drop away. Her breasts were fully exposed, and she wet her lips with her tongue. "See how much I need you?" she asked. "Now don't tell me you don't want some of it."

The candlelight flattered her, made her look less harsh and more vulnerable. Rix's body was responding. She stretched like a cat. "You're not afraid of Boone, are you?" she asked teasingly.

He shook his head. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Boone says you can't keep a woman," she said. "He says you're a half-step short of bein' queer."

Rix set the candelabra down.

"Come on," she insisted. "Let's see what you can do."

He started to tell her to get out; he wanted to say it, but suddenly he couldn't make himself. A thin smile had begun to play around the edges of his mouth. Why not? he thought. It would be wrong, yes - but hadn't it been wrong for Boone to treat him like dirt all these years, to crow and caper and plot all kinds of nasty little tricks? This was the chance to pay him back that Rix had been waiting for. He brushed away the small voice inside him that urged him not to.

"Why not?" he said, and his voice sounded like that of someone he didn't know.

"Good." She kicked off the sheets, her body wantonly exposed to him. "Blow out them candles, then, and let's get to it."