Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [6]
That evening White went to the opening night of Mamzelle Champagne at the roof garden at Madison Square. This was early in the month of June and by the end of the month a serious heat wave had begun to kill infants all over the slums. The tenements glowed like furnaces and the tenants had no water to drink. The sink at the bottom of the stairs was dry. Fathers raced through the streets looking for ice. Tammany Hall had been destroyed by reformers but the hustlers on the ward still cornered the ice supply and sold little chips of it at exorbitant prices. Pillows were placed on the sidewalks. Families slept on stoops and in doorways. Horses collapsed and died in the streets. The Department of Sanitation sent drays around the city to drag away horses that had died. But it was not an efficient service. Horses exploded in the heat. Their exposed intestines heaved with rats. And up through the slum alleys, through the gray clothes hanging listlessly on lines strung across air shafts, rose the smell of fried fish.
4
In the killing summer heat politicians up for reelection invited their followers to outings in the country. Toward the end of July one candidate led a parade through the streets of the Fourth Ward. He wore a gardenia in his lapel. A band played a Sousa march. The members of the candidate’s Benevolent Association followed the band and the entire procession made its way to the river where everyone boarded the steamer Grand Republic, which then set a course up the Long Island Sound to Rye, New York, just beyond New Rochelle. The steamer, overloaded with perhaps five thousand men, listed badly to starboard. The sun was hot. The passengers jammed the decks and crowded the railing for a breath of air. The water was like glass. At Rye everyone disembarked for another parade to the Pavilion, where at picnic tables the traditional fish chowder was served by a small army of waiters in white full-length aprons. After the luncheon speeches were made from a band shell. The band shell was decorated with patriotic bunting. This had been provided by Father’s firm. There were also banners with the candidate’s name spelled in gold and small American flags on gold sticks that were given as favors at each table. The men of the Benevolent Association spent the afternoon consuming beer from kegs on tap, playing baseball and throwing horseshoes. The meadows of Rye were dotted with men dozing on the grass under their derbies. In the evening another meal was served and a military band played a concert, and then came the culmination of the entertainment: a display of fireworks. Mother’s Younger Brother had come here to supervise personally this aspect of the event. He liked to design fireworks. They were the only part of the business that really interested him. Rockets went up booming in the close electric evening air. Heat lightning flashed over the Sound. A great wheel of spinning fire seemed to roll over the water. A woman’s profile, like a new constellation, embossed the night sky. Showers of light, red and white and blue, fell like stars and burst again, like bombs, over the old steamer down at the water. Everyone cheered. When the fireworks were concluded torches were lit to mark the way to the dock. On the trip home the old steamer listed to port. Among her passengers was Mother’s Younger Brother, who had leapt lightly aboard at the last possible moment. He stepped over men lying asleep on the deck. He stood at the rail up at the prow and lifted his head to the breeze coming up over the black water. He turned his intense eyes on the black night and thought of Evelyn.
Now at this time Evelyn Nesbit was daily rehearsing the testimony she would give in her husband’s forthcoming trial for the murder of Stanford