Chapter Seven

Nigel Pickford crawled out from his lean-to shelter behind the tobacco warehouse, retrieved his near-empty bottle, and stumbled down Marietta Street. The rain from the thunderstorm stopped several minutes ago. Now the heat and humidity caused water vapor to rise off everything in thin ethereal clouds. It looked to him like the rapture, spirits rising from the earth, leaving Nigel behind.

The leaky shelter caused his long greasy black hair, beard, and filthy clothing to be sopping wet. The grime covering his skin made it hard to tell a white man of forty lay beneath. Moreover, his drunkenness made him seem older. But he was not drunk enough—he almost fell asleep in the lean-to. The only way to avoid the dreams was to pass out, to fall into an oblivion from which he could never be quite sure he would emerge. No matter. Nothing seemed worse than the dreams.

He needed more whiskey. He stumbled down the dusky street to where a thin man with a long taper lit the gas streetlights. Nigel gravitated toward the light, but as he approached, the lamplighter shook his head.

“Stay away!” he shouted and swung the taper at Nigel’s head, “Or I’ll give ya what for!”

Nigel avoided the blow and continued on his way. At the intersection with Peachtree Street, there milled a fair number of evening shoppers. A small boy pointed at him lumbering down the avenue.

“Look, Momma,” said the boy, as he pulled on the woman’s dress with his other hand, “a bear!”

The woman took one look at Nigel and hoisted the child into her arms. “No, honey,” she said as she scurried away. Her shopping list fluttered to the wet brick walkway, forgotten.

Nigel bent to retrieve it. He glanced at the list of sundries then called to the woman as he held the scrap of paper before him. The lady did not turn around. Instead, she and the child ducked into a store a half-block away.

Those left on the corner stared at him with familiar expressions of curiosity, pity, or disgust. Nigel put the list and his now empty bottle on the bricks and held his cupped hands before him. “A veteran of the war,” he said. “A lieutenant under Jubal Early, Gordon and Lee.” This yielded a few coins tossed at his feet.

A heavy man with a gold chain across the front of his checkered vest sneered, “Go back to Virginia. We don’t want ya!”

Nigel nodded as he gathered the coins. “The very reason why I’m soliciting. Help me with the train fare, sir?” But the man already turned away, as had the others.

Nigel continued down Peachtree. Additional shoppers he encountered backed away with revulsion. Some threw a few coins his way out of what he assumed to be pity or the hope this would satisfy him and keep him from approaching further. Nigel soon collected enough for a second bottle and smiled. He need not worry about dreams tonight.

A few minutes later, new purchase in hand, he stumbled up Decatur Street and stopped now and then to sample the whiskey. The burning sensation felt like an antiseptic for his soul.

He found himself on a street crowded with carriages, some with their tops still up from the rain. A few coachmen dozed on the padded rear seats, others gathered in little groups, smoking and passing a flask or bottle of their own. Hearty laughter rose from one group, and Nigel turned to see if they were laughing at him. They weren’t.

Large brick homes butted up against each other and bordered both sides of the street. Nigel stopped before one featuring a round white column on either side of a green door.

Nigel saw another crumpled piece of paper at his feet and retrieved it. The fact he could read and write surprised most other vagrants he met. When they saw him looking at one of his scavenged newspapers, they invariably asked him to read aloud and sometimes write letters. As a result, they gladly shared what they had—beans, alcohol, or even mulligan stew—sometimes known to contain an unfortunate dog or cat. But in spite of this welcome, since the war, Nigel spent most of his time alone.

He opened the wadded paper and held it up to catch the lamplight. The handbill advertised a séance at this location. He’d been drawn here, as to so many similar gatherings. Perhaps this time? He speculated for a moment then shook his head with disgust. He knew better—experience taught him otherwise.

Nigel climbed the damp stone steps to the front door. The brass knob felt cold in his hand. Unlocked. He entered a wood-paneled foyer with many doors and a narrow staircase going up along one wall to the second floor. The help—two mulatto maids and a very dark butler—apparently hadn’t heard him come in. They seemed preoccupied, staring through a small opening in a set of double doors.

Nigel crept toward them until the butler turned his head and looked surprised. He reared up with self-importance. “Look, here,” he said to Nigel, “You get the hell out before I throw you out!”

A flash of light came through the opening in the door followed by a thunderclap from the room within. Nigel could hear a young girl cry. “Momma! Help me, Momma. It hurts!”

The maids held hands over their mouths and quaked as they peered in, then turned to see the filthy stranger standing behind them. One gave a frightened yelp and ran off. The other’s eyes went wide with real terror and backed into the door, closing it.

The butler grabbed Nigel’s arm, but Nigel threw him off, and the man flew backward to slide across the polished wooden floor and bang his head on a baseboard.

Screaming like a madman, Nigel charged straight at the door and the maid who blocked it. At the last moment, the woman jumped aside. He smashed into the double doors and shattered the latch. The doors burst open and Nigel stormed into the séance.

Once inside, he stopped short, weaved back and forth and belched. Nigel took a long drink from his whiskey bottle and snapped to attention. He squinted, got his bearings, then resumed his charge.

He plowed through the crowded room, knocking some of Atlanta’s wealthiest denizens from their chairs. As he charged, he screamed one word, “Nooo!”

Nigel bumped into the fat medium as he passed, and she toppled over onto the floor.

He shoved the spectral girl aside. The girl screamed and began to swing in an arc across the front of the room, arms waving, with a shocked look on her green face.

At the cupboard, Nigel thrust his right arm through the black scrim-covered opening and yanked out a skinny young man who held a green-lensed lantern. The young man stumbled toward the audience and dropped the lamp. The glass shattered.

Nigel tore down the backdrop. This revealed two more of the medium’s assistants, both men burly. A man with huge biceps and a prominent jaw held a black rope to keep the not-so-spectral girl aloft. The other had a round sweaty face but looked just as strong. He pumped bellows above a small stove, heating glycerin to create the fog.

Turning back toward the shocked audience, Nigel raised his whiskey bottle in triumph. With his other hand, he gestured at the hapless girl still suspended in the air.

“There’s your ghost!” he said. “They’re all frauds! Charlatans! Cheats!”

A few moments later, Nigel staggered out the rear door of the séance house and knocked over a metal trash can. It clattered across the cobblestone walkway and into a flowerbed, strewing garbage along the way. Nigel lurched down the walk and out into a dark alley, whose cobblestones were covered in slippery muck. The alley ran along the back of the tightly-packed brick houses. There were no lamps, and what light existed came from the door Nigel left open when exiting the house and from a few windows on the alley without the curtains drawn. Everything remained wet and steamy. Nigel put a hand on a damp brick wall to steady himself.

“There he is!” the skinny assistant shouted from the doorway.

The two burly assistants joined him. The one with a round face grinned, revealing black and brown teeth and several gaps where teeth once resided. “Let’s get ’im!” he shouted.

The skinny assistant broke out in front. As he neared him, Nigel whirled around and smashed his whiskey bottle over the young man’s head. The kid’s eyes rolled upward as if to see what hit him and then he crumpled into the mud.

Nigel brandished the broken bottle at the other two. He swung the jagged glass back and forth as the two attackers spread out to come at him from either side.