Chapter Eighteen

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1871

Dust clouded Nate’s steps as he sloughed through a southwest section of the burned district. He’d made a habit of touring it every day to mark its progress and keep tabs on any stories brewing there. Usually the hive of activity energized him. Today, however, he felt sluggish. Dull. In an hour he’d need to be sharp for the city aldermen’s meeting, where they would be discussing the controversial ordinance to make downtown Chicago fireproof. But right now, all he wanted was to sit.

A loaded wagon crossed the road in front of him, the horses pulling it glistening with sweat. Wheelbarrows passed, and more wagons. Hoofbeats, scraping shovels, and voices amplified in Nate’s ears, adding to the growing ache in his head. There must be something going around. When he’d called on Meg yesterday, Helene had turned him away, saying Meg and Sylvie were feeling poorly and didn’t want him to catch anything. If he wasn’t feeling better by the weekend, he’d skip visiting Edith and her family this Sunday rather than risk getting them sick.

Trudging to the western edge of the district, he made his way to a wooden chair set up as a shoeshine stand at the foot of the Randolph Street Bridge. He lowered himself into it, propping one shoe on the crate in front of him. The southern branch of the Chicago River flowed under the bridge, the sound of its movement echoing off the steel girders.

“Afternoon.” Martin Sullivan tugged his cap down, then set to work wiping the dust from Nate’s shoes. Grey hair puffed over the tops of his large ears, the lobes sagging against his silver-stubbled jaw. “The weather’s changing, it is. A chill in the air says winter’s hard on our heels. Don’t you think?” A trace of Irish accent lilted among his words.

Nate agreed but didn’t say much else. He didn’t need to, since Martin supplied a streaming monologue along with the polish. Nate didn’t mind. His thoughts veered back to Meg.

He’d told her she wasn’t a burden to him. More surprising, he’d meant it.

After all his resolutions not to get involved, not to care, not to tie himself to anything that might keep him from work, what was he doing? Endangering his job by doing the opposite.

Meg wasn’t a burden, or at least not one he resented. That was the thing about people, wasn’t it? If you were close enough to someone, if you were truly walking beside her, her yoke would fit over your shoulders too. Together, the weight would be borne, the load lightened.

This was different from the way it had been and how he’d felt with his stepsiblings.

Nate had had opportunities to back away from Meg. When she’d asked about long hours at work, he could have told her he didn’t have time for her. He could have refused to help her search for the will. That would have been the more logical choice. But he found he didn’t want to be released from whatever it was that tied them together. Friendship? Was that what they were calling it now?

Nate coughed into his handkerchief and turned his attention back to Martin, whose brown-spotted hands were thick and meaty yet, better suited to carriage-making than shoe-shining. Still, he rounded his back over his work to do an honest job.

“’Twill be a cold winter for many a folk this year,” he was saying. “The barracks give us a roof, that’s sure, but how warm we’ll be in that flimsy, rushed construction, I can’t say. We may have to huddle together like pups, which wouldn’t be hard, given the number of us crammed together.”

A raw wind from the northwest scraped Nate’s face. He hunched his shoulders toward his ears. “Do you know your neighbors? Are they folks you knew before the fire?”

Martin rubbed behind Nate’s heel. “Some yes, some no. But no matter. We’ll all know each other well enough before long, won’t we? You wouldn’t believe how fast the gossip flies.” His face pinching, he rocked off one hip, as though to relieve some discomfort.

Nate waited for Martin’s grimace to fade. “Do you happen to know the Schneider family? Otto is the husband and father. I believe they have at least one child, about eleven years old.” Nate didn’t know where the Schneiders lived before the fire, since the city directories had been burned. But with the fire so widespread, and the Schneiders being poor after the bankruptcy, it wasn’t such a leap to imagine they were one of the families who’d been burned out and who wouldn’t qualify for their own shanty house.

Martin switched to the other shoe. “I know of the family, sure. Otto is no prize, I can tell you that, but for some reason his wife has stuck with him. They’ve got three kids now, if we’re speaking of the same Otto Schneider. The oldest boy is eleven, then there’s a set of twin girls. Six years old, maybe?” He shrugged. “Haven’t seen Otto about the barracks, actually. But Martha and the kids, sure. They’re struggling to get by, I can tell you that. They didn’t have much before the fire. Now they have even less.”

Three kids. Otto Schneider, who Meg hoped to prove a murderer, had a faithful wife and three kids.

On the opposite side of the river, a train chugged by, belching grey smoke into the fading sky. Nate watched Martin Sullivan finish shining his shoes, and he regretted all over again the story he had written a dozen years ago that ruined Martin’s reputation and put him out of business. If he had slowed down, pursued all the leads, and questioned more people before drawing conclusions, Martin’s life wouldn’t have come off the rails.

Otto Schneider’s reputation was already a wreck, it seemed, and that of his own doing. But the charge of murder was another thing altogether. Nate knew Meg and Sylvie were hanging their hopes on Schneider’s guilt for the sake of their father. But as much as Nate wanted Stephen Townsend exonerated, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed another innocent man to take the blame for the crime instead.

All of this was assuming Schneider could even be found. Nate scanned the burned district to the east, noting how much emptier it was since martial law had ended yesterday, an action rooted in Thomas Grosvenor’s untimely death. If Otto Schneider was still at large, still in Chicago, and if he did want to rob Hiram’s house, he would know it was no longer protected.

That was a lot of ifs.

It was too late for Martin Sullivan. But perhaps this was a second chance for Nate to do things right. A chance to pursue the full truth instead of settling for halves.

Heaviness settled into his gut. His editor had told him not to get involved. He was not the police, he was not a detective. He was only a reporter—not even a famous one, at that—who wanted to see justice served.

Was that enough?

The polish complete, Martin snapped his blackened rag. “How do they look?”

Nate peered at his shining old shoes. “Perfect, as usual, Martin. Thank you.”

He paid the fee along with a tip. It wasn’t as much as he wanted to give, but it was all he had today. And Nate was the kind of man who gave all he had.

With a clang that woke Stephen from a nightmare, the metal slot at the bottom of the door opened, and a plate of food was shoved inside the cell, followed by a shallow dish of water. The slot closed and locked with a resounding click that reverberated through Stephen.

“Hey!” he shouted and lunged to bang on the door, a straitjacket pinning his arms. “Hey!” he shouted again, ramming his shoulder into the iron slab. “What day is it? You have to let me out of here!” Desperate to be heard, he slammed his body against the walls of the cell until he felt bruised.

No wonder they locked you up in here. That voice again. It was his conscience, his tormentor, his sole companion while in solitary confinement. You’re volatile. You won’t allow anyone near you without fighting, ever since the ice bath. They think you’ll hurt others, not to mention yourself. Can you blame them?

Stephen dropped to his knees, eating and drinking out of the dishes like a dog. Gruel smeared his cheek and chin, and water sloshed up his nose. He couldn’t wipe his face. He felt food congealing on his skin, and he could not clean himself.

Tears of humiliation clotted his throat until he released them with a guttural howl of anger and despair. They had done this to him. They had taken a man and made him an animal.

You are not an animal. You are made in the image of God.

He lowered his head to his knees and wept. “This is not a reflection of Almighty God. I am closer to beast than man.”

You are made in the image of God.

“The image of God,” he repeated to himself. “I am made in the image of God. Oh my God, my God, how did I come to this?” Sitting on his heels, he rocked back and forth and called on the only One who could save him from himself.

Wearying, he leaned back against the cold tiles and stretched out his legs. Water that had spilled from the bowl soaked through his pants and chilled his skin. He coughed until his ribs ached, then shouted with frustration. His constitution had been completely broken at Andersonville, his lungs forever weakened. What further damage would he sustain in this place?

Be still. Just be still.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he moaned. He still didn’t know if he had killed his friend, but it frightened him to think he might have. Whoever he was now, it wasn’t who he wanted to be. A small part of him recognized that was worth grieving, as one would grieve a good friend who died. But if he mourned anyone right now, it was Hiram.

Like Stephen, the older man wasn’t who he’d been a decade ago. Yet he’d always treated Stephen as though he were still the best version of himself. Hiram didn’t deserve what had happened to him. He ought to have passed in his sleep, warm in his bed, when his time came, and even then Stephen would have lamented the loss of his loyal friend.

But the loss of himself? He would shed no tears for that. Stephen was still here, at least in part. So many good men weren’t.

He opened his eyes. At last, he wasn’t alone. There was Peter, who had died at Andersonville. Stephen had buried him, but here he was, a hallucination conjured up by his fevered mind. Normally Stephen would pinch his skin and watch the false image fade away.

“But given the circumstances”—he chuckled—“I don’t mind keeping you around.”

Peter was in his uniform, sitting on an overturned hardtack crate, warming his hands at the fire. “Hullo, Steve!” Light flashed on his polished brass buttons.

“Hello, old friend.” Tears coursed through the stubble on Stephen’s cheeks. He was talking to a figment of his imagination. Worse, he was enjoying it. “It sure is nice to see you again.”

“You don’t look too good, you know that?” Peter said.

“Well, that makes sense. I’m doing poorly, Pete.”

Peter took off his foraging cap and buffed the emblems on the bill before resettling it on his head. “Spread that on the table for me. You made it out. You survived the war, that hell of prison camp, and returned to your family. You’re lucky.”

Stephen shook his head. “I’m not so sure. You—or the man you represent—are in heaven. You’re in paradise. I’m trapped all over again.” Even if he were free of the asylum, he’d be trapped within himself. “I’d be better off in your locale, and my family would be better off without me too.”

Someone else might call the conversation ridiculous. On a different day, Stephen would agree. But right now, this was all he had, and he needed it. This wasn’t a living picture of the men Stephen had killed in battle, or the comrades he’d had to dump into a pit outside Andersonville’s stockade. This vision was not the mark of sainthood, nor was it a ghost who had come to haunt him. It was evidence of the sickness of his mind, and he accepted that.

The hallucinated version of Peter frowned. “Careful, now. Are you saying that after everything you’ve been through, you’re ready to call it quits? You would take your own life? What about your family? What would the girls say?”

“Suicide is a dreadful sin, Pete. I have no plans at present for it. And as for my family, my wife has gone ahead to glory.”

“I see. But your daughters. Are they not worth living for?”

Stephen’s current state of existence could hardly be called living.

Peter tossed another log onto the imaginary fire, and Stephen’s memory filled in the smell of smoke. “If I had my druthers,” Peter said, “I’d watch my children grow up. I’d protect them until they were no longer mine to shepherd, and I would—”

“That’s enough, Pete, thank you.” Stephen had already missed his daughters’ growing-up years. He’d failed to protect them and their interests, and didn’t need to be reminded. “As I said, Meg and Sylvie are better off without me.”

Peter mopped his perspiring brow. “Well, I don’t know about that. It would seem a crying shame if you squandered the life you get to live, though, when so many of us boys are lyin’ in an unmarked grave in Dixieland. Don’t disappoint us by giving up.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like here.”

“Don’t I?” The hallucination laughed. After all, this Peter was born from Stephen’s mind.

“What I mean is, there’s not much I can do while locked in an asylum, is there? I’m drugged by injection, force-fed pills I don’t want, dunked into baths full of ice, bound up and shut away by myself. They’ve taken my clothes, my name, my dignity. I’m at their mercy, and they don’t have much. What on earth can I possibly do here?”

Peter stood, brushing ash and bits of dried leaves from his trousers. “You can try.”

“Try what?” Stephen asked almost frantically, for the hallucination was fading. He could see the other side of the cell through Peter’s body.

“Try to get better.”