On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch (2 page)

“Yes, Mamma.” Tory reached for Joseph’s valises, but Joseph kept him from lifting the larger one by laying his hand on top of his. Another tremor traipsed along Tory’s arm.

“Please, let me get that,” Joseph said. Their faces were close enough Tory could smell the mint on his breath.

Tory slid his hand from under Joseph’s. With the smaller valise clasped in his shaky hand, he followed his mother and the newcomer upstairs.

T
HE
supper table vibrated with chatter. After three days without a fourth boarder, everyone appreciated the fresh energy. The usual boarders (Miss Clair Schuster, a young woman about Tory’s age from Wisconsin; Mr. Anthony Dunlop, a standoffish and painfully bashful thirty-five-year-old engineer from Scotland; and Mr. Abner T. Raincliff, a middle-aged banker from Indiana) sat in their proper seats around the table, riveted on the newcomer. His wealth and standing had not eluded them. Mr. Dunlop seemed even shyer in his presence, and Mr. Raincliff harbored a cutting envy in his blue eyes.

Yet Clair Schuster’s ogling upset Tory the most. She had begun flirting with him the moment they’d met in the parlor. He’d been embarrassed for Clair when she’d asked about Joseph’s marital status. With a slight flush, Joseph had replied to her naïve question that, even at twenty-six, he was still searching for “the right person.”

Joseph seemed to take little notice of Clair Schuster’s coquettish head-tilting and impish giggles. Tory wanted to fling a spoonful of his mashed potatoes at her. She had lodged with them for five weeks, waiting for a vacancy at one of the women’s hotels. She worked as an assembler at an agricultural implements factory downtown. Tory wanted her gone once and for all.

“I’ve never been to New York City,” she said in her infuriating crooning manner. “Is it as big as they say? Bigger than Chicago?”

“Yes, it is a bit bigger,” Joseph said with a paternal air. “But the buildings seem taller here. I have a feeling once this new steel frame construction takes off back east, New York, perhaps even Boston, will catch up in no time.”

“The building where I work on Polk Street is eleven stories,” Mr. Raincliff said boastfully. “If you go to the top floor you can almost see clear down to the stockyards.”

“Nothing that big in Sweden,” Tory’s father said from the head of the table, where he was already working on his second helping of roast beef. His duties in the bakery were yet unfinished, but he had told Tory and his mother he wanted to dine with their latest guest. Joseph van Werckhoven was the most distinguished boarder to stay under their roof, and he refused to forego a meal with him his first night.

He appeared as charmed by Mr. van Werckhoven’s presence as everyone else, which meant a lot to Tory. His father, often unfairly judgmental, could cause Tory embarrassment with his abrupt manner. “Of course,” he went on, “Mrs. Pilkvist and me haven’t returned to Sweden since we left over twenty years ago. But the Swedes swarming into Chicago today say little has changed there.”

“I read in the papers about the famine a few years ago,” Joseph said, his mouth downturned with genuine empathy. “Hit Finland too, I believe.”

“Ja,” Mrs. Pilkvist said, shaking her head. “That’s why so many come here. From Finland, Norway… all over Scandinavia.”

“It’s good they have a place like America to come to,” Mr. Raincliff said in his gruff yet jovial voice.

“We are fortunate,” Mr. Pilkvist said.

“That reminds me.” Joseph raised his glass of merlot. The crystal glinted in the candlelit chandelier above the table. “I vowed earlier to toast all of our prosperities.” He raised his glass higher. “To Chicago and the United States.” He peered at Tory. “And to new friends.”

“Hear, hear,” the diners said in unison and clinked their glasses.

Only the Scottish man, Mr. Dunlop, remained quiet. He had barely raised his wine glass. He rarely partook in the conversations at the supper table unless directly addressed, and even then he responded with one or two words. As an engineer working for one of the larger architectural firms in town, Tory thought he should have much to share about the new construction projects taking place, a frequent subject at the supper table. But he almost never communicated his thoughts.

In the company of a man like Joseph van Werckhoven, broad-shouldered and confident, Tory understood why the man from Scotland might find his words all the more restricted. Even his father seemed smitten by the New Yorker’s charm.

“Maybe Miss Schuster show you the city,” Mr. Pilkvist said, biting into a biscuit. “She’s here in Chicago long enough to know her way about. Ja, Miss Schuster?”

“I would love to show Mr. van Werckhoven around.” Clair’s gray eyes shone as brightly as the new electrical streetlights downtown.

“A nice young lady for an escort would be first-rate,” Mr. Pilkvist highlighted.

Torsten’s face burned. He resented his parents forcing Clair onto the newcomer. She acted as simpleminded as a small-town girl could get. About the most intelligent sentence he’d ever heard the girl from Kenosha utter was speculation about how long it would be before every house in the United States got a telephone. A gentleman with the breeding of Joseph required a proper guide, one who knew the city as well as only a local could. Besides, Joseph himself had mentioned he wanted a native’s view.

“You can go tomorrow,” Tory’s father said. “It would be good to go Saturday, before you have to focus so much on your work. Ja, Mr. van Werckhoven?”

“That would be fine,” Joseph said, nodding toward Clair politely. But the tightness around Joseph’s curly mustache betrayed his true thoughts, Tory believed. Or was Tory staking too much on implausible dreams? He was certain Joseph’s expression lacked sincerity.

Clair’s gray eyes fell to her roast beef and potatoes. “Tomorrow? But I have to work tomorrow,” she mumbled toward her plate. “Mr. Deering makes us work Saturdays, sometimes even for a full day.” Subsequently she brightened and flashed Joseph a smile. “I can show you around Sunday. Not even Mr. Deering expects anyone to work Sundays.”

Despite the shyness he felt in Joseph’s presence, Tory realized he had but one chance to cut Clair off. “I can show you around tomorrow,” he said, his voice high. He cleared his throat and spoke deeper. “That is, if you prefer to see the sights on a Saturday, when most things will be open, rather than Sunday, when everything will be closed.”

“Well?” Joseph flushed. “I suppose… hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe you’re right. Saturday might be best. I mean, if you think there’ll be more things to do.”

Mrs. Pilkvist dabbed the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin. “Maybe Saturday better for seeing things,” she said, nodding reflectively. “More places open.”

“Are you sure?” Mr. Pilkvist inserted. “Sunday people aren’t so pushy and you can take time strolling the avenues without getting trampled.”

Mrs. Pilkvist giggled. “Young folks don’t mind a little hustle and bustle, Gustaf.”

“I suppose it might be nicer for you to see the city tomorrow rather than on Sunday,” Clair said into her lap.

Tory smiled. “Then it’s settled?”

Joseph stared directly into Tory’s eyes from across the table. They held each other’s gaze for what seemed an eternity. “It’s settled,” he said with a wide grin. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

“I’ll look forward to it, then,” Joseph said.

Tory barely heard the rest of the suppertime conversation. His mind cleaved to one thought: he and Joseph van Werckhoven, strolling together along the streets of Chicago.

U
PSTAIRS
lying in his bed after everyone had taken coffee and cake in the parlor, Tory continued to daydream about the newcomer. What would spending Saturday with Joseph be like? What should they do? Where should they go? And what about those stares he had given Tory at the supper table and later in the parlor? What had they meant? Could it be possible that Joseph was like him?

Tory had come across clandestine mentions of same-sex love while studying literature and the ancient Greeks at school. Men like Plato, Herodotus, and Walt Whitman wrote about their attractions to other men. Reading between the lines, he had instinctively known that they were referring to him. Some new type of doctors had even said it was a natural occurrence in nature, including in humans. They’d said that some American Indian tribes practiced it as part of their culture. Was it something Joseph van Werckhoven practiced too?

Tory had had encounters with boarders in the past. His first foray with a man had occurred with a boarder a month after Tory had turned sixteen. A twenty-five-year-old Michigan man settling in Chicago had asked Tory to help run his bath. Eventually he suggested Tory strip and get into the tub with him. Overcome with physical yearning, Tory had obliged him, although nothing had occurred between them afterward. The man had moved on five days later as if nothing had ever happened.

Nearly a year later, Tory had another one-time encounter with a boarder who had played footsy with him under the supper table. That night when Tory had carried tea to his room, as the man had requested, the thirty-year-old businessman from Ohio had commanded him, point blank like a bank robber, to shut the door and lock it.

And there were two times at the cabaret on 35th Street where men like him went searching for affection. Each a one-time affair, amounting to nothing more than two men seeking physical pleasure. Tory had always hungered for more.

Walt Whitman, his favorite poet, best delineated Tory’s romantic notions. He had read the venerable poet’s work so often he could recite many passages word for word. They flowed through his veins as easily as his blood.

When his father had found his edition of
Leaves of Grass
in his bedroom two springs ago, he had called it “Amerikanskt skräp”—American trash—and confiscated it. Luckily for Tory, his father had wasted no time incinerating it. If he had thumbed through it, he might have noticed the dog-eared pages where Tory had read the more erotic passages over and over.

He recalled one such passage now.

Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men;

Who oft as he sauntered the streets curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

Might Saturday be that way with Joseph? Strolling the streets of Chicago, arm in arm?

He’d never had a special friend like the one described by Whitman. Now that he was burgeoning into a full-grown man (nineteen years old as of February), he yearned to stand on his own two feet and search for true love. His two elder sisters had found love. Why couldn’t he?

Rolling to his side, he pictured Joseph in the room down the hall. He wondered what he might be thinking at that moment, what he might be doing. He dozed, giddy with anticipation for tomorrow.

Chapter 2

T
ULIPS
lined the median of the sun-soaked street. Passing cable cars rang their strident warning bells as they streamed down the tracks alongside stagecoaches and horsemen. Steam engines that powered the never-ending building spree screamed. Vendors shouted, policemen whistled, strollers laughed, pushed, grunted. Life coursed through Chicago’s streets like the frothy rapids of mountainous rivers Tory had read about in dime novels.

The temperature was cool, a typical late March in Chicago. But the sun on Tory’s grinning face warmed him. The dusting of snow from last week had already melted into a faraway memory. An expanding contentment nudged the residual anxiety from Tory. He felt alive, more a part of the city than he’d ever experienced. Walking alongside the dashing Joseph van Werckhoven pumped new life into him.

That morning, Tory had dressed with the utmost care. He’d washed his face and neck, not forgetting the backs of his ears. He’d waxed his hair with pomade and sponged limewater from his scent box on his chest and underarms before buttoning his shirt. When he’d come downstairs, his mother had commented that he looked and smelled more fit for a church service than a Saturday tour of the city. Joseph looked equally dapper. His mustache, freshly waxed, curled over his upper lip like a fancy scroll; his burgundy ascot anchored his oval face. Tory expected nothing less from the elegant man from New York City.

“There are many tall buildings, aren’t there?” Joseph said as they meandered side by side down State Street. He peered at the recent construction. “Where will they find room to fit them all? I can’t imagine them getting any taller.”

“There’s talk of adding land along the shore of Lake Michigan,” Tory said. “I’m not quite sure how they’d go about doing it.”

“In New York City,” Joseph said, “they’ve built artificial islands.”

“Are you from New York originally?”

“My family’s lived there since before the Republic was formed.”

“That’s a long time. My parents have only been in America since the 1860s.”

“Your family appears to be doing quite well for itself.”