The stage is the worst form of traveling you can possibly imagine, unfit for anyone to ride in. I have heard that invalids sometimes die on their way to the Adirondacks; now I know why.
—VERPLANCK COLVIN
A steam whistle shrieked against the vaulted glass ceiling of the Grand Central train shed. The tortured water writhed and sputtered as it screamed from the boiler of an idling engine. Tom Braddock watched as the cloud of steam drifted up toward the roof. Slowly it shifted and shrank, cut here and there by unseen currents of air eddying uneasily. Change was never easy, Braddock thought as he listened to the mournful echoes of the whistle. He glanced at Mike, aloof and slouching against a nearby railing. Not all change was for the better either.
Mary watched him from the corner of her eye. A cloud passed across her face. It was gone nearly as quickly as it appeared, but a crease in her brow seemed somehow deeper, a care line carved with a chisel of frowns. It wouldn’t smooth away any more, this last year had seen to that.
“Where is that porter?” she said, craning back in the direction of Forty-second Street. Tom shrugged.
“Got time.” He mumbled. Mike said nothing. Even Rebecca seemed to keep her distance, letting her brother be for once. The girl flitted about Mary’s feet, a bundle of gingham energy. She’d been talking about this trip for weeks, asking most every day how much longer it was till they’d leave. The questions had been unending.
“Where will we sleep on the train? Does the man who drives the train sleep, too? Will we see deers, do you think, Mommy? Can I go fishing with Daddy? How much longer till we leave, Mommy? I’d like to pet a deer, a baby deer. Do you think I could do that, pet a baby deer? I would like that so, so much. We won’t see any bears when we go there, will we? Bears are bad, except baby bears, they’re cute. I’m scared of bears. We won’t see them, right? When are we leaving, huh Mommy, when?” Rebecca had pestered and pouted, but it never bothered Mary. The girl was hers, a perfect jewel of a girl, all honey curls and wide-eyed enthusiasm.
She danced at Mary’s feet humming a tune of her own making. She skipped and swayed and twirled to the music in her head, all the while painting graceful little arcs and parabolas with her arms and hands, her fingers just so. She seemed to have been born with music in her. It filled her up so much it would spill out and be wasted if she didn’t dance it away. Where or when didn’t matter. It could be A. T. Stewart’s Department Store or on a crowded el. When the music called she would dance. Everyone said she’d be a dancer someday, but everyone was wrong. She was a dancer already.
Mary had always been grateful for Rebecca, but never more so than the last few months. She pushed back the darkness and the worry that Mike seemed to manufacture with grinding repetition as he grew older. Rebecca didn’t know that, didn’t see herself as some sort of angel, driving away her brother’s teenage demons. She was just being Rebecca and that was enough.
Even Mike, standing like a growling thunderhead, had to grin at his sister’s antics. The glimmer of a smile lifted the sullen corner of his mouth when he thought Tom wasn’t looking. He lowered his head, though, when Mary noticed, hiding behind the brim of his cap. It brought an exasperated sigh from Mary, and she was about to say something when Tom grunted, “There he is.”
The porter was finally coming. He pushed a cart piled high with their trunks, his head barely visible above. The cart and its load sailed across the terminal like an ocean liner, breasting the waves of people rushing about the station. A pug-nosed face peered over the trunks, its dull eyes looking straight ahead despite the crowd of people who seemed all on fire to dash across his path. A shock of red hair dangled from under a round brimmed cap, pushed back on his head at a jaunty angle.
“Found ye then, I did.” The porter lilted. “Such a boilin’ mess I never did see. Everybody rushin’ like ants whot got their hill stomped.”
Tom shrugged. He’d seen about every kind of crowd New York could muster. They rarely made an impression on him one way or another, unless it was a riot. “Not unusual for a Friday night in August, I guess,” he said, turning toward their train. “Well, let’s go then. C’mere, my little ginger snap,” he said, holding his arms out to Rebecca. She stopped her dancing and charged at Tom, jumping into his arms with a whoop.
“Chu, chu, chu, chu—whooo, whooo!” she cried, doing her best train imitation. Tom hoisted her up so she sat in the crook of his arm. “Wha’dya say we go on vacation, eh?”
“Yeah!” Rebecca yelled in his ear. Tom winced, grinning all the while. “Right!” he said, shaking his head. “Off we go!”
Later, after their trunks had been stowed in the baggage car and the porter had shuffled off in search of another tip, the four of them settled into their compartment. It was cramped but elegant, with over-sprung seats in claret velour. They were “bouncy,” Rebecca exclaimed with delight, springing up and down almost nonstop. Tom pulled his watch from his vest pocket and flipped open the case. “Best settle down, ’Becca. We’ll start moving soon,” he said. Just then a shadow darkened the door of their compartment.
“Uncle Chowder!” Rebecca shouted. With a running leap she jumped into his arms.
“Came to see ya off, especially you!” he said, giving Rebecca a big hug.
Everyone smiled except Tom. Though Chowder Kelly was as close a friend as Tom had, he knew him well enough to know that seeing them off on vacation was not why he’d come. Tom watched as Chowder made a fuss over Rebecca, kissed and squeezed his wife more lustily than was proper, and slapped Mike on the shoulder. A wary eye cast in Tom’s direction was all that was needed. Mary caught it and gave Tom a dark frown as he stood.
“I’ll just see Chowder to the platform. Back in two shakes.” When they were out of earshot, he scowled at Chowder and said, “So what’s so goddamn important, aside from groping my wife’s bum, you bastard.”
Chowder grinned. “And a lovely bum it is, too.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Tom said with something between a grin and a scowl. “What’s going on?”
“Murderer escaped from a Black Maria a couple hours ago. Busted a guard’s head. Got clean away.”
“What’d he do?”
“Stuck a knife in a construction foreman. Caught him last night.”
Tom started to question Chowder, asking what he knew about the man, where he came from, who he worked with, where he lived, whether he was married or had any other family in the city, where he drank, banked, and whored. He stopped himself after some minutes.
“What the…” he said, stopping himself in midsentence. “I’m on vacation, Chowder. You’re a big, grown-up lad. You handle this. You weren’t thinking I’d stay and help, were you? If you were, forget it!”
“Well, I was kinda…” Chowder started to say, then got serious as he watched the conductors swing their arms and pull up the steps to the cars.
“Listen, Tom, this is a big one. That foreman was a Tammany man, kept an eye on the construction trades for the big bosses at the Wigwam. The chief’s fumin’ an’ every damn captain in town’s got their boys on the jump. You goin’ off on a trip now, well it don’t look so good.”
The train jerked and bumped as the engine pulled up the slack in the couplings. It rumbled to life, wheels squealing.
“Byrnes ain’t looking for me, is he?”
“Not yet,” Chowder allowed.
“I’m leaving,” Tom said. He knew the truth of what Chowder was telling him, but he’d put off far too many trips already, given far too many late nights to the job instead of to Mary. A part of him hated to go, hated leaving in the middle of a crisis. For an instant he hesitated, letting the thrill of a good case lure him, but only for an instant. He could picture Mary’s face when he tried to explain.
“Have fun catching the bad guys,” he said with a tone that almost sounded like regret.
“O’ course, Tommy. ’Course. Just figured you’d want to know, is all,” Chowder said, seeing how things were. “Get your ideas, see if we’re thinking along the same lines. You know. Always a help to kick the ideas about.”
Tom grunted as Chowder stepped off onto the platform. “You’re gonna have to kick ’em about with someone else, pal. I’m off to the north woods, where the likes o’ you dare not tread. I’m gonna do my best to forget we ever had this little chat. Catch some fish, or whatever they do up there.” He gave Chowder a wave. “Good luck. See you in a couple o’ weeks.”
Mike lounged, his cap pulled down over his eyes in studied boredom when Tom got back to the compartment. Windows in the next train over started to slide by, sometimes showing brief frozen images of riders napping, porters stowing bags, a woman in a large pink hat, a child’s face pressing the glass. They began to dance away as their train picked up speed. Mary didn’t ask about Chowder. It was enough that Tom had come back and not run off on police business as he had so many times before.
They burst from the monstrous train shed into the early evening sun. The orange ball cast long yellow heat waves through the compartment. Mary struggled with a window, at last getting the catches to release. She threw up the sash, with Tom’s help, letting in a refreshing, warm blast of air into their little furnace.
The sun hovered over the roofs of the distant mansions on Fifth Avenue, setting mansard roofs, turrets, and cornices gleaming. To the east, the river glistened here and there through the canyons between the buildings. The city slid by, the grubby factories belching smoke, steaming breweries, rendering plants, row houses all trooped past their windows, growing more sparse and shabby the further they went. Uptown, the naked streets, many still unpaved, were laid out neat and square. Tall new brownstones stood like teeth in the barren jaws of the city.
Not far was desolation, treeless, shanty-littered no-man’s lands where squatters grubbed for what the city cast off. The park was a green mirage in the distance. Tom watched it all pass, amazed as always at the wealth and the squalor of the place.
Mike studied his feet. Rebecca’s nose bounced against the glass.
“It’s good to get away from this place at least once in a while,” Tom said as he watched ragged people picking through an uptown dump. That was particularly true in the summer months, when disease often swept through the tenements in merciless and arbitrary waves. In a real hot spell the only people left were those with nowhere else to go. Undertakers were plentiful in the summer though. It was their busy season.
“Place isn’t healthy,” he said to the window.
“Be good to get some fresh air,” Mary said. Though she stared out the windows, too, she didn’t seem to see.
“They have baby deer where we’re going,” Rebecca said to Tom. “There’s no deer here anymore. Mommy said. No deer for-ages and ages.” She shook her curls and pushed out her lower lip in mock mourning. “They all went to the Ron-dacks, I guess.”
Tom smiled. “Sort of like us, right, ’Becca? Just like us.”
The train rolled north through the evening. The orange sun kissed the tops of the trees before sinking into New Jersey. After a while, stops were made. As they got up into the Hudson Valley, the stations became veiled in night. They often didn’t know exactly what stop it was, only that it was not theirs. They were going to the end of the line.
Dinner was eaten to the rhythmic rumble and clack of the rails. Beds were unfolded. Sleep came on as the land passed by. Not everyone slept soundly. Albany arrived at 6:30 A.M. They transferred to the Delaware-and-Hudson line for the trip to Saratoga.
Mary wasn’t sure what time it was when the car rumbled to life. It was another two and a half hours till they had to switch trains again at Saratoga. Mary dozed on and off, not so much sleeping as doing a groggy imitation of it. Listening to Tom snore hadn’t done anything for her rest in the hot, cramped compartment. She looked at Mike’s sleeping form, thinking for the hundredth time that if this trip could help set things right there was no amount of sleep she wouldn’t forsake.
The transfer to the Adirondack line at Saratoga was weary and tedious. A handful of shuffling, sleepy passengers boarded the short train for the sixty-three-mile trip to North Creek, although some were probably bound for other stops in between. North Creek was the last stop. The mountainous cost of carving a rail line through the Adirondacks and the economic reverses of seventy-six had put an end to the line. Still, it shortened the trip from Saratoga to hours, where in the past it had taken days.
Beyond North Creek there was nothing but endless miles of forests, mountains, and bad roads. The closest thing to paving was the spots that were “corduroyed” with logs laid crossways in the wet patches. Mary was bleary-eyed and blinking in the early morning sun. Tom carried Rebecca. She hung limp and sweaty-faced in his arms, her damp forehead resting on his shoulder. No amount of prodding could wake her. Mike brought up the rear.
Nobody slept but Rebecca on the ride north from Saratoga. She had curled up in a corner of their seat, her head on the pillow that she had insisted Mary bring for her. Tom, who had a window seat, tried to doze but found his eyes drawn to the world outside. A cool breeze blew in through the window. It was cool enough so that Mary asked him to shut it for fear Rebecca would catch a chill. He left it open an inch, enjoying the fragrant air after the heat of the city.
In the distance, they could see the smoke from the mills at Glens Falls, where the growth of centuries was sawed, chipped, pulped, and otherwise shaped to fit the hand of man. The smells grew sweeter north of there, and the towns smaller. At a little place called Riverside, a narrow suspension bridge swung across the rolling waters, looking as out of place as a Bowery B’hoy at a Sunday sermon.
The Hudson swept close by the tracks, and when they stopped the river’s whispering voice could be heard. The water spoke its own language, laughing and roaring at stones in its way. When again they began to roll, the rumble and clack that had lulled them through the night seemed an annoyance as Tom strained to hear the voice of the Hudson.
At last, North Creek chugged into view. All Tom could see of it was maybe a dozen houses and stores strung along a dirt road close by the tracks. The station was small and ordinary, with a raised platform and a freight warehouse at the far end. A couple of porters pushed luggage carts forward as the train came to a smoking stop. They leaned on their handles, eyeing the passengers as they descended. One of the men said something to the other that made them both laugh. They slapped their thighs at their private joke.
“I think those men are laughing at us,” Rebecca said, frowning at them.
A slow hurricane of activity blew people and luggage about the platform. A couple of shays, a buckboard, and a plain, faded-red farm wagon took away the locals. The rest waited. The stage to the Prospect House wouldn’t be in for another two hours.
It was close to 1 P.M. when all the passengers were finally loaded. Mary and Rebecca managed to grab a cramped seat inside, but Tom and Mike, in deference to the other ladies of the group, had to scale their way up the side of the stage to the bench seats on the roof. There were nineteen passengers all told. Nine men and one woman perched on top.
“Everybody up?” the driver called as the horses stamped and chewed their bits. When all were safely seated, luggage stowed and tied in the separate baggage wagon behind, he clambered up and gripped the reins. He was joined by another, riding “shotgun.”
“Five miles to North River, folks. Stop there for lunch. Pretty good road hereabouts, so you can sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Breakfast was good, the road less so. About an hour later they were off again. The road from North River began to climb only about a mile outside of town, getting steeper and rockier as they went. Everyone on top clung to their seats as the tall stage lurched and bucked. In places the road was corduroyed. The big coach stuttered across these, setting teeth on edge and turning knuckles white on handrails. Mike hung on in silence.
After a time, the slope became so steep that the coach slowed to a crawl. The six horses strained, leaning forward, stomping the slope as harness leather creaked. Finally they came to a halt. The driver set his brake and turned to the passengers on top.
“Gotta lighten the load,” he said with a jerk of his head over the side. Tom and Mike got down with the other men.
“Great vacation,” Mike said, making sure it was loud enough for Tom to hear. They were the first words Mike had uttered in hours.
It was a long uphill climb following the coach. Even when the driver finally had to tell everyone to get off except Rebecca and two small boys, the stage went no faster than a slow walk. Tom, Mike, and especially Mary trudged and stumbled. Rebecca all the while kept up a game of peeking out the coach windows, calling to Mary or Tom when she thought they weren’t looking. Mary did her best to keep up her spirits. She stopped for a moment at last, turning to look back.
“Isn’t this gorgeous?” she said, waving a hand at the view of the mountains. “The river looks like a ribbon of silver from up here.” She brushed some loose strands of raven hair that had come loose about her flushed face. Tom gave her a secret grin, blessing her for trying to lighten the mood. He put his arm around her waist as he stood by her side, not caring if it wasn’t proper.
“Sure is pretty,” he said. He thought to say more, something about how wonderful she looked with her face flushed and her hair flying loose, or maybe about how he was glad he hadn’t let Chowder shanghai him into not coming, but the moment passed. They turned to follow the coach.
It wasn’t all that far to the top of the slope, a mile or so. Still, it took over an hour to make it. When the road leveled out, the women, and finally the men climbed back aboard. The driver passed a couple of canteens of cool water. Tom and Mike were rocked into a fitful doze, jolted now and again by boulders in their path.
Hours went by. After a time, they started to see signs of lumbering, with ugly tangles of cuttings scattered about and rutted tracks back into the woods. Some were old and weed-choked, others fairly new. “Comin’ to Indian Lake soon,” the driver threw over his shoulder. “Stop at the Arctic for a little refreshment. Old Jackson sets a pretty good table. Get you set up proper for the ride on ta Blue.”
“Sounds good,” one of the men behind said. “This seat’s got a lot harder the last hour.”
“How much more after that?” Tom asked.
“More? Ya mean miles or time? One’s pretty sure, t’other ain’t. Been wet up here. Rained up ta Blue last night. Roads get iffy.”
For a moment Tom considered this. He finally settled for “Uh-huh,” as if all was crystal clear.
“It would appear that time is a decidedly relative thing in this part of the world,” a dapper gentleman in a black top hat mumbled from the back seat. Tom folded his arms, letting his chin fall back on his chest. If this was a vacation, then by god he was determined to treat it like one.
The Arctic Hotel, or the Cedar River House as the place was called, depending on who was doing the talking, was about a mile on the other side of town, though “town” was a generous word for the scattering of houses and the couple of stores that comprised Indian lake. A dog, and two locals whose feet were propped on a porch railing, seemed to be the only inhabitants. The three of them watched the coach full of fancy-dress flatlanders pass as if it were a parade. Mike said something under his breath that Tom didn’t catch.
The coach was barged across the narrow Cedar River about a mile outside of town. “Just another coupla three hours ta Blue, folks. Got a bit o’ rough road here ‘n’ there but h’ain’t lost a fare yet.” A yell from the driver set the coach off again. Soon the rattle of the wheels and the jingle of harness lulled Tom back into a doze. Mike slumped in his seat, and in a few miles was leaning on Tom’s shoulder. Tom stole a look at him through a half-open eye. He let the boy get comfortable.
Tom woke with a start, disoriented by the sudden jolt to wakefulness. The forest clung close to the road. The trees overhung it in spots. They were passing under a towering white pine that stood sentinel by the road, a grand and powerful presence, its head in the clouds, roots gripping the earth in a gnarled embrace. Feathery-needled branches reached far out over the narrow dirt track. Tom could have reached up and touched them. But it wasn’t the tree that drew his attention.
His eyes were drawn to the forest. It was thick with fallen trees under a lush blanket of moss and fern. Spruce, too young for cutting, grew close under the overhanging shade of tall hemlocks. Silver birch struggled. It was cool, green, and fragrant. Tom saw the eyes first, but once he did the rest of the fox seemed to materialize as if pulled from a magician’s hat. It stared, unblinking, muzzle slightly open. Tom could see white points of teeth. The eyes held him, man and animal locked in recognition.
“Mike!” Tom said, elbowing the boy out of his doze.
“Wha?” Mike grunted.
“Look, a fox!”
“Huh?”
“There.” Tom pointed, but it was gone. Vanished. A single fern swayed. Mike craned but saw nothing, nor did anyone else on the coach. They were all set to looking and pointing. Mike grumbled, annoyed at the interruption but even more so at his father making a fool of himself.
“Probably a stump,” Mike mumbled.
“Fox ain’t easy ta spot,” the driver said over his shoulder. “That was a pretty one.”
“Might get a touch wet,” the coachman observed a while later with a nod toward the west. They’d cleared the forest near a large marsh that the driver had called “Thirty-four Flow.” With an unobstructed view they could see a mountain of cloud was rolling down on them. “Off a ways ta Raquette. Mayhaps ten mile or so,” he added with an appraising squint. “Comin’ on fast. Might jest make it dry-shod.” He flicked the reins hard, calling, “Get-up now!” to the team, setting them into a rolling canter. Everyone held on as the coach stuttered from gully to rock as they raced the storm. The horses sensed the coming weather. With widened eyes and flared nostrils they pulled together. Distant thunder rumbled.
The first drops were falling as the coach stopped before the Prospect House. Guests on the veranda watched with curiosity and amusement as the coach emptied, the passengers dashing for cover. Coachmen and porters unloaded bags and steamer trunks, hurrying them up the stairs to the porch. In minutes the coach was emptied, leaving only the steaming horses, heads held low and muscles twitching in the growing downpour.
The Prospect House was nothing short of magnificent. It stood poised at the edge of the lake, tall and commanding. The forest around the hotel had been cut back into broad, undulating lawns that surrounded it like a great moat keeping the wilderness at bay. The thunderheads had piled up behind, casting the world in a weird half-light, as if seen from under water. The lake was choppy. Whitecaps danced to the gusting breath of the storm.
The Prospect House glowed in the odd light, its tiered verandas standing out in delicate relief. It was as though it had been transplanted here intact, uprooted whole from Saratoga or Newport and levitated to this spot fifty miles within the forest. Like some marvelous confection, a wedding cake or a marzipan castle, it seemed to exist in sparkling suspension, awaiting the time when the patient forest would reclaim its own.
“That was fun!” Rebecca cried, dancing from one foot to the other in the shelter of the wide veranda.
“Yup. Just made it, ’Becca,” Tom agreed, stomping a bit of mud off his boot. “So, what do you think?” he asked her, waving a hand at the hotel.
“Oh, it’s a very big house, Daddy. Is it all mine? Can I play in it?” she asked, hopping more than ever.
“Sure it’s yours, but just for a couple of weeks, okay?” he said as they marched into the lobby.
They were registered quickly by a polite, liveried clerk behind the long, polished walnut front desk. Tom signed in and the clerk fetched his keys, handing him a folded telegram as well.
“This came for you earlier this morning, Mister Braddock,” he said. Tom looked at it as if it might bite. Though he had known that there was telegraph service to the hotel, he had hoped never to actually get a telegram. A telegram on vacation was like a rabid dog, best avoided till you were out of the neighborhood. Tom opened it and read quickly.
“What is it?” Mary asked. She was familiar with inconvenient telegrams. Tom heaved a sigh and frowned. “Note from the chief,” Tom said with a downcast look. He let Mary wait while he read it all. “Oh no! Says I should…” Tom hesitated, “…forget about the job and concentrate on my family, especially you, my beautiful wife,” he said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Mary grabbed his arm and pinched it for all she was worth.
“Ow!”
“Serves you right for fooling me,” Mary said as she straightened her skirts. “I hate when you do that. For once I agree with the old walrus, though.” Tom put his arm around Mary’s waist as they started to follow a bellman to their rooms.
He hadn’t told her everything that was in the telegram. What would be the point? Byrnes’s rumblings about important cases and new police investigations were nothing for Mary to be concerned with. Tom knew how huge a rationalization that was. He also knew where his priorities lay, or should lie at least. There had been no orders in the chief’s words, nothing more than concern, and Tom wasn’t about to alter his plans for that.
“Now, is that any way to speak about the chief of the New York Detective Bureau, one of the most respected men of law enforcement in the nation?” Tom asked with mock seriousness.
He knew very well how hard Byrnes had been leaning on him and the pressure it had put on the entire family. Though, as a precinct captain Tom no longer reported directly to Byrnes, he still worked closely with the legendary chief detective.
They had developed a strong bond working on the East River Bridge conspiracy a few years before. The deft way Braddock had managed to handle his troubles with the corrupt Captain Coffin had earned Byrnes’s respect. But with that respect came expectation. Tom knew he was ignoring Byrnes’s concerns at his peril. He put it out of his mind as best he could though, determined to be on vacation, no matter the cost.
“Byrnes will tell you what he wants when it suits him,” Mary said. Tom nodded. It was almost as if she’d read the telegram herself.
In short order they were settled into their rooms, with Mike and Rebecca sharing one and Tom and Mary the other. They had a door between them and shared a spacious porch one floor above the main veranda. The rain was hammering the glass of their windows like nails falling from a molten steel sky. The far side of the lake was a gray-green mass of forested mountain, all detail sponged away by the slanting rain.
“We want to go exploring,” Rebecca said before the bellman had even closed the door behind him. It was clear that Mike was a reluctant part of that “we,” but he seemed willing enough, if it got him away from his parents. They left with Mary’s warning to Mike to look out for his sister.
“Hmm,” Tom muttered after Rebecca slammed the door. “How long you figure they’ll take?”
Mary picked up on his tone. “Oh, an hour at least, I’d imagine. It’s a very big hotel,” she said with a raised eyebrow. A tug at her hair, letting it cascade over her shoulders was all the invitation Tom needed.
“And I thought you might be too tired,” he said playfully as he took her in his arms, feeling the answering press from thigh and breast and hips.
“I’m exhausted,” she sighed, nuzzling his neck. “Hardly a wink on the train and seven hours on that horrible stage. If I don’t lie down I’m going to fall down.” Tom bent, sweeping her up in his arms, though he was every bit as tired. “Let me help you, Missus Braddock.”
The bed was a cloud, the sheets crisp, cool, and billowing. In a few languid minutes their naked flesh was streaked with liquid light from the rain-running windows. The storm, unnoticed, grumbled and flashed and drove at the glass. In a short time, though, it was spent and passed on rumbling gray feet off into the east. Slashes of blue slowly rent the reluctant clouds, sending brush strokes of light to color lake and forest. The world outside their windows emerged sparkling and renewed. Tom and Mary drifted off to sleep.
It was more than an hour later when a slamming door jolted Tom out of his nap. Mary didn’t stir, not even when a rhythmic thumping announced that Rebecca was jumping on her bed in the next room. She giggled and laughed and Tom could hear Mike’s deeper voice laughing with her. It was good to hear him laugh. Tom couldn’t remember when he’d heard it last. He lay there listening, soaking up the sounds of play while Mary snored lightly beside him.
Pleasant images of laughter past started to flicker against Tom’s closed eyelids, Rebecca in her bath, Mike and him flying kites in Prospect Park four or five years ago, the surf at Coney Island and the face Rebecca had made when she got her first mouthful of salt water. The images blended and flowed, merging into a dream when ’Becca bounded into the room.
“They have magic lamps, Daddy! Magic! They go on when you turn the secret switch!” she cried as she took a running leap onto the bed. Then, in a conspiratorial whisper she said, “I know how.”
The Prospect House was unique in a lot of ways, but first among those was that it had electric lights in every room. It was the first hotel in the world to boast of it. Thomas Edison designed the system and the generator, a contraption that was dubbed “Long-waisted Maryann,” because of its unusual design featuring two long poles a bit more than four feet high, tightly wrapped with wire.
Its boiler, which produced the steam to power the generator, would burn about a quarter of a cord of wood each evening to produce light for the hotel. It cost only six or seven cents a night to light the place. In New York or Boston it would have been a marvel, here in the wilderness it was magic.
“That’s amazing!” Tom said to Rebecca with hug. “Can you show me how?” Tom knew about the lights. It was one of the things that had attracted him to the place. Rebecca was on the move before the words were out of his mouth.
“This is how, Daddy,” she said, running to the ceramic, insulated switch on the wall. “You turn it like this.” Her small hand grasped the black switch, twisting it with a loud click. Tom and Mary looked at the ceiling fixture, expecting the little glass bulb to glow, but nothing happened. Rebecca and Mike started laughing and ’Becca finally managed to say “Fooled ya! It’s not turned on yet, not till supper time.”
“Okay, you win,” Tom said, throwing his hands up. “Now, out of here while your mother and me get dressed. I want a full tour before supper. I expect you two to know the place up, down, and sideways by now.”
“Oh, we do, Daddy. Do you know they have a two-story outhouse and a bowling alley and a pharmacy and steam heat and—”
“And a billiard room,” Mike broke in, “a shooting gallery and a boathouse, all sorts of things.”
“All right. All right. Get going you two. We’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.” Mike and Rebecca closed the adjoining door behind them while Mary said, “This might just be worth the trip after all.”