The Empire of Shadows Page 13

  “Mikey! Mikey! Daddy’s scaring Mommy!” Rebecca shrieked. “Help, help.” She pushed and pounded at Tom. Playing at beating off his attack. Mike stopped dead. His cheeks turned red and he feigned a cough, but Tom could see Mike grinning.

  “You get that bad Daddy, ’Becca!” Mary urged. “He really does scare me sometimes,” she said, laughing. Tom just groaned and hid his head under a pillow.

  After a minute Rebecca got tired of bouncing on Tom’s back while he played dead. She jumped off the bed and bounded to the light switch. She was fascinated with the electric lights. The idea that she could control the magic glass orbs in the ceiling was irresistible.

  She was far too young to light the gas lamps at home, but here all she need do was flick a little switch to plunge the room into darkness or bathe it in light. Her small hand grasped the switch and twisted. The light disappeared. The faintly glowing filaments in the bulbs faded fast behind. Another flick and the bulbs burned bright as little suns. Flick, again the room went black. Rebecca laughed each time. They all did.

  It was funny and Rebecca’s laugh was infectious. Aside from Tom, none of them had ever seen an electric light indoors before, though there were more and more replacing the gas lamps on the streets of New York City. To actually control the bulbs with a little switch from across the room was amazing, even for Tom and Mary.

  Rebecca didn’t seem to tire of it, not even when Mary, then Tom, and finally Mike stopped laughing at her antics. The bulbs continued to burn and die, burn and die.

  “That’s enough now, ’Becca,” Mary said. Rebecca continued as if she hadn’t heard her mother.

  “Make her stop, Tommy,” Mary said, elbowing him into doing something. Mary had started to worry. Electricity could be dangerous, so she’d heard. She wasn’t sure how, only that with each flick of the switch she became more apprehensive.

  “Tommy! Tell her to stop. That’s enough, ’Becca!” she said with a note in her voice that got Tom’s attention. The lights went out.

  “’Becca!” Tom said in his best stern voice. “Stop it now, before I—”

  The lights went on, but as they did a blue flash jumped from the switch. Rebecca shrieked. A bulb in the ceiling exploded in a shower of sparks and glass. The room was plunged into darkness.

  Lettie had waited far longer than she should have. She sat in the moonlight, her feet dangling from the dock. She’d stopped swinging those feet a half hour before. They just hung now, as limp as her spirits. She hadn’t noticed the light going on and off in their room. She only knew that he should have been here an hour ago, just as he had last night. He should have come to her in the crisp moonlight, striding down the lawn and into her arms, at least that’s how she’d pictured it.

  Lettie wanted more. Mike had promised last night to sneak out to her, once his sister and parents were asleep, and he had. They’d sat in the piazza then, rocking together in the cool of the night, laughing and telling each other the things they liked to hear. Lettie had found herself telling him things she had never intended to tell. There was risk in it, she knew.

  Still, it felt right to tell him things when he had told her so much. She had believed his tales of the city and his adventures with his gang. They were true, she was sure, and they seemed deliciously dangerous and daring. She’d believed him, too, when he told her he had no girl to call his own. She moved her rocker closer then.

  Now it seemed a lie. He was not here as he’d promised, and what they’d done last night had turned from a glow to a dull ache in the pit of her stomach. Even though he’d told her it might be late, since he was going to dine with the bigwigs, he was much more than late. She felt a fool, a feeling she didn’t care for. It had never been she who was left waiting. It had always been the over-eager boys, the river drivers, the lumberjacks or occasional tourists. She was the one waiting now, and for the first time she knew what a miserable thing it was.

  She kicked a foot at the smooth, black water. There were a series of small answering splashes as startled frogs dove out of sight. Mike was no frog, she told herself as she listened to the splashes fade. He kissed her and she kissed him back, and he had appeared a prince under the Adirondack moon.

  Kissing wasn’t all they’d done. She thought about that, alone with her feet swinging free. Remembering, she flushed and ached in turns. Though she’d sometimes done more with other boys, this one was the sweetest and the most painful. They’d left the piazza after a while and walked down to the lake, far from the halo cast by the hotel. There, under a small grove of ghostly white birch, they had kissed and lain on the grass. He had surprised her. He was no fumbling novice. Mike knew what to do.

  Lettie offered only token resistance, her best imitation of ladylike hesitation. He had seen through that. He had such wonderful hands. Breathless, all she’d managed to do was to rub him through his pants. He’d demanded no more, goddamn him!

  Lettie ached all day for the evening to come. She was supposed to be the one making him ache. After this night it would be him wanting more and she who would control when and how he got it. She knew how it ought to work.

  In her day-long daydream, as she changed sheets and swept carpets, she imagined him anxious and earnest, coming to her on the dock, sweeping her to their little bower. She’d do things, the naughty French things she knew men loved. She’d leave him breathless, straining.

  Lettie had planned like that all day long, but she’d never planned on his not coming. A short time later Lettie walked up the sloping lawn toward the glow of the hotel. Her heart felt as black as the night, her spirits lower than the bottom of the lake. He was going to pay. No matter what happened when she saw him again, she promised herself that she’d make him pay.

  Within twelve hours, Lettie Burman’s heart betrayed her head. It hadn’t been his fault, she found out in the morning. All the help was talking about the little girl and the accident with the electric lights. Right after breakfast Mike found her as she was changing sheets on the third floor. He’d had to search, she knew. And though she was still disappointed he hadn’t come to her the night before and wanted to make him pay at least a little, she knew as soon as she saw him standing in the guest room doorway that she couldn’t do any such thing.

  “I wanted so much to come last night, Lettie, but my little sister…,” he started to say, the words tumbling out in his hurry to explain. The worry in his eyes, the sweet regret on his tongue was all she needed. Any notion of being standoffish melted away.

  “I heard,” she said. “How is she? The poor little girl must have been scared half to death.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Scared hell out of all of us, ’specially my folks. Thought my mom was going to take a fit right then and there,” he said, coming close as Lettie held a pillowcase absently in one hand.

  She couldn’t recall exactly what else he said, only that his sister was going to be fine. All conversation ended as she let the pillowcase slip to the floor. Lettie put her arms around his neck. She pulled his hard body against hers. She hadn’t wanted to appear so bold, but couldn’t quite seem to control it. Mike didn’t object, especially once it was clear that explanations were unnecessary. All the tension went right out of him.

  A different kind of tension took over. Lettie felt it hardening against her middle. She pushed him away after a few delicious moments. The disappointment in his eyes was so sweet she wanted to close the door and take him right there on the cool, fresh sheets. Instead she whispered.

  “Meet me at one. We’ll go somewhere,” she said in a way that made “somewhere” seem a very delightful place to go. “We’ll have a little picnic,” she added with a sweet smile that put the lie to her inviting whisper.

  They met out of sight of the hotel, away from curious eyes, or so she thought. And now she was here on the blanket she’d brought, staring up through the green temple of the pines on the little peninsula on Eagle Lake, wishing Mike would do what he’d done before.

  But he was tentative now, may
be because she’d left a little too much doubt about what they’d be doing. He was gentle and loving, kissing her like a schoolboy and pressing himself against her on their piney mattress. It was achingly romantic she knew, and she should be enjoying his gentle coaxings with ladylike sighs, but she was no lady.

  She giggled at the thought, a sign Mike took for encouragement. In an instant she rolled him aside and was unbuttoning his pants, popping one in her haste.

  “You just lay back,” she told him with a hand on his chest, as it seemed he was about to voice some silly objection. It was his turn to groan as her hands pulled and stroked. Mike forgot any thoughts of objecting as Lettie did the things she told herself she wouldn’t do.

  Twelve

  In the woods, the mask that society compels one to wear is cast aside, and the restraints which the thousand eyes and reckless tongues about him fasten on the heart, are thrown off, and the soul rejoices in its liberty and again becomes a child in action.

  —JOEL T. HEADLEY

  It was the morning of the day before when Tupper found his way to Camp Pine Knot. He needed work, and from what he’d heard Durant was always on the lookout for good men.

  “I come down from Saranac looking for work,” Tupper told them. “Can lay stone, do most any kind of carpentry. You got that kind of work, I hear.”

  William West Durant had looked Tupper over as his foreman talked to him. Durant’s well-cut suit of gray wool in a light blue windowpane plaid set the man apart from everyone else at Pine Knot. The clothes were fine, but it wasn’t the suit that truly set the man apart. He had the look of a Royaneh, a chief. He stood above the rest, watching with knife eyes the goings-on below him. Durant didn’t need the ceremonial antlers of a chief, he simply clasped his hands behind his back and looked down his nose. Tupper felt weighed and judged at a glance.

  He’d heard about Durant of course, though he’d never seen the man. Everyone in the Adirondacks had heard of Durant. Even the rocks and the trees knew his name. It was a name that had come to him back in the Black Maria as it rumbled over the New York cobbles tones. That seemed ages ago, as if his troubles had occurred in another life or to someone else entirely. He’d known then that if he managed to get out of that police wagon it was here he’d come.

  He knew he’d need money, enough to disappear if he had to, or start a new life if he didn’t. He doubted the New York City cops could ever track him to this place, but if they somehow managed it, he’d need to be prepared.

  “You got tools? We don’t hire no carpenters without tools,” the foreman said, his skepticism building like a logjam.

  “Got stolen,” Tupper lied.

  The foreman hooked officious fingers behind his suspenders. “You’re Injun, right?” he said, rather than asked, looking at Tupper hard. “Didn’t sell ’em for whiskey, did ya? Got no use fer drunks on this job.”

  Tupper stiffened. For a fleeting instant he imagined the man with his new knife protruding from his chest. He pictured the eyes, the spasms in the limbs, and the spongy feel of the lungs as he wiggled the blade. The vision passed and, despite being called a liar and a drunk, he answered in a calm, low voice. “I don’t drink.”

  “Even so, ah—what was yer name agin, Littletree was it?” the foreman asked. “Whatever. Even so, I don’t figure we got work fer a carpenter with no—”

  “You’ll hire this man, Eugene,” Durant said behind Tupper in a voice as certain as ice in winter. “I judge him a solid fellow,” he said. His tone warned against debate. The foreman hesitated before answering, as if he hadn’t really understood. “I guess we got use for him on the road, sir,” he finally said with a shrug.

  “Good man. Get this fellow to work immediately,” Durant said as he turned toward the lake. He said nothing more, just walked away with his hands behind his back.

  After a growled warning from the foreman about making sure he pulled his weight, he was shown around Pine Knot by another worker. It wasn’t out of courtesy, but so he’d know where everything was. The compound sprawled over an untold number of acres, with twenty-seven buildings of various types scattered about.

  There was the main lodge and a number of cottages of varying sizes, mainly used by guests of the Durants, a dining hall, a boathouse, a laundry, a five-stall horse barn, two potato cellars, one ice house, and a variety of other structures, including a dog kennel and a dressing room for bathers. The more Tupper saw of it the more he was amazed.

  The scale of the place was impressive enough. But it wasn’t the size alone, because, individually none of the buildings, not even the main lodge, was all that big. It wasn’t their number either, Tupper realized—though he’d lost count of the buildings long before they were through—it was the design of the camp, the way the buildings blended into the trees so that only a few could be seen at any time.

  It was the way the natural materials were combined. Stone and bark, logs and twigs all were made to work together, as if these man-made buildings had somehow sprouted from the soil. Tupper felt a comfort here that he had felt nowhere else since he left home years before.

  He’d seen the great hotels of New York, had glimpsed the grand parlors of Fifth Avenue through parted curtains. For all their opulence, their crushed velour and fancy brocades, their polished brass and glowing mahogany, none of them spoke to him of home like Pine Knot. This was something new to Tupper, a vision of harmony with nature as different from a hotel like the Prospect House as ice is from water.

  Durant’s love for the woods showed in every detail of Pine Knot. He had made a conscious effort not to hold the wilderness at bay, but to welcome it home. The variations and textures of the forest were repeated in the stonework, in the ways the logs were joined and fitted, or made to form natural decorations in porch railings or in the eves of the roofs. Most of the buildings still wore bark on the outside, the better to fit with their surroundings.

  Inside they were polished, carved, shellacked, and refined. But even inside, natural materials prevailed, with chandeliers of intertwined antlers, walls covered in birch bark, and furnishings of silver birch, varnished to a mellow luster. A warmth was in them that Tupper had felt nowhere else. But it was all illusion, a sophisticated and expensive ruse.

  “This is all for one man?” Tupper asked.

  “Guess as it is,” his guide answered. “Mister Durant and his wife. They got the cousins o’ course. They come to visit some. His cousin Fred what owns the Prospect House, I mean. An’ there’s always guests, lots of guests. Hardly a week goes by they ain’t got folks visiting.”

  Tupper frowned as if he didn’t understand, or couldn’t grasp what one man could possibly need all this for. Seeing Tupper’s look, the fellow continued.

  “Mister Durant, he’s a dreamer,” he said, as if that summed the whole thing up. “Loves these woods. Wants people to love it like he does. Most times, he’s plannin’ some new thing or other, steamboats or hunting lodges or camps for the likes of some millionaire.”

  Tupper gave a low whistle, wondering at the riches a man like Durant had to command. There was money to be made from a man like this. Maybe he could stay a while. Some of that money would be sure to find its way to him.

  The barn and the buildings that housed the guides and the rest of the staff were ordinary, much like any other farm buildings. Rustic sophistry was not to be wasted on the help. It was a distinction not lost on Tupper when he was assigned a bunk in a bare room that housed five other men. It would be many hours later before he could fully appreciate that hard, narrow bunk. Once his tour was over, he spent the rest of the day with shovel and pick and ax, carving a road through the forest.

  In the morning the foreman told him he’d be going to Blue to pick up supplies after breakfast. Tupper figured the man just didn’t want him around. Maybe he hoped that if he humiliated him enough he’d force him to quit. Tupper tried not to dwell on it and ate his breakfast with the rest of the men in silence.

  A short time later he hitched a team to a ha
ndsome new wagon and set out for Blue, some fifteen miles away. He rode alone down the hard-packed dirt road, in no rush, for he knew the round trip would take most of the day. To be in the forest again, breathing fresh air and sweating under the sun like a real man ought to was like a tonic. He wondered why he’d ever left to try his luck in the city. It had been the lure of money.

  Now that he was back, money seemed like a damned stupid reason to subject himself to city life. He liked money well enough. But somehow out here it just didn’t seem as important. The blackness that had gripped him was fading. It had been part of the city, part of his loathing of the place. His sleep had been dreamless for the last two nights. A faint hope was beginning to take its place and he felt the foul grip of the city lessen. It would be some time yet before it would pass entirely.

  He’d have to have time to feel secure from the police, time to become comfortable again with where he was and what he was about; time to heal. He hoped his new boss the foreman wouldn’t turn everything bad.

  It was late morning, judging from the sun, when Tupper neared Blue. The dirt road was like a snaking canyon, hemmed in by high green walls on either side. Jim had seen deer, red-tailed hawks, ravens, and even an elusive fisher that morning. It had made him glad to see those things. He passed only two other wagons on the road in the four hours since he’d left Pine Knot. He had exchanged short greetings with the other drivers and even a few words with one man who seemed inclined to chat. Neither shunned him or made any comment about his being Indian.

  By the time the road took him close by the back of the Duryea camp he was getting hungry. He was told he could get something to eat at the Prospect House if he went around back and asked at the kitchen. Jim figured he’d wait on that till he got his freight settled. The things he was supposed to fetch were at the Prospect House, consisting of a number of crates and an assortment of individual items. He drove for the barn, pulling up in the yard in front of a large wooden, tin-lined trough. The horse was thirsty, as he’d suspected, and his nose was in the water before Tupper set the brake.