Back Bay (50 page)

“No. My father needs me.”

“He’s doin’ fine. Let’s get somethin’ to eat.”

“No.”

Jackie didn’t want to go exploring through the house alone. “Your old man said we should fill our bellies. He’ll be pissed if we don’t.” Jackie grabbed Billy by the elbow and backed him out of the music room.

They moved across the foyer into the dining room. Billy felt traitorous, but Jackie kept telling him that the diningroom table would be covered with roast beef and ham and slices of whipped-cream cake. No one stopped them as they bolted to the table. Even the servants were watching the confrontation. But there was nothing on the table worth eating.

The mounds of caviar sat in glass dishes atop ice-filled silver tureens. The garnishes—lemon, sliced onion, hardboiled egg, and
small squares of toast—were arranged like the petals of a flower around each tureen.

“What the fuck is this?” spat Jackie.

“It ain’t roast beef and cake,” said Billy.

“Onions and eggs. I eat better ’n this at home.” He grabbed a glass of champagne from a tray and drank it down. “Want one?”

“No.” Billy Rulick was looking around the corner into the ballroom.

“What the hell are these little black things?” said Jackie. “They look like buckshot.”

Billy was paying no attention.

Jackie picked up some of the buckshot and stuffed it in his mouth, just long enough to taste it and spit it out all over the linen table cloth. “That tastes like the balls off a dead carp.”

“That’s caviar.”

Jackie looked up at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Most little boys don’t like it, but I think we might have something for you two down in the kitchen.” Katherine Pratt Carrington offered one hand to Jackie, the other to Billy Rulick. “Come along.”

Jackie didn’t move. He was afraid that if he touched her, she might disappear. Billy wanted nothing to do with her.

“Come along. I won’t hurt you.” The voice was soft and soothing. She smiled and Jack melted. He hadn’t held anyone’s hand since he was six years old.

“What about your friend?” she asked.

Peter Rulick’s voice boomed from the music room. Billy could see that his father was now facing two men, two Artemus Pratts. He ran back through the foyer.

“I’ll give you two pieces of cake. You can save one for your friend,” said Katherine to Jackie.

“Yes’m.”

Katherine led Jackie down to the kitchen. Three cooks, unaware of the events upstairs, were putting the final touches on the Veal Orloff before it went into the ovens. They stopped and stared when Katherine entered with a street urchin at her heels.

“We’ll stay out of your way,” said Katherine softly. “Go back to work.”

She told Jackie to sit at a small table in the corner. She poured him a glass of milk and pushed the pastry cart over to him. It was layered with tarts, Napoleons, and petits fours as beautiful as the woman serving them. Jack decided right then that he would always be a good Catholic, because heaven was probably like this. He studied the pastries carefully and chose a Napoleon—rich, creamy, and thick as his fist. He was about to lose himself in it when he heard the siren. It was like his mother’s voice waking him from a dream. He had to go. His mother would kill him if he got himself arrested.

“Thanks, ma’am. See you again sometime.” He turned to the back door, then realized that he shouldn’t leave his friend. He ran back upstairs.

The police had arrived with five paddy wagons. Their heavy shoes shook the ballroom floor as they closed off the entrance and surrounded the union men. Women in long gowns screamed and fell back toward the music stand; their husbands jumped in front of them.

Peter Rulick told Billy to run.

“No. I’ll stay and go to jail with you.”

“One Rulick in jail is enough. Go home and be the man of the house. I command you.”

Billy Rulick embraced his father, then ran past the police into the foyer. Jackie called to him from the dining room, and Billy followed. A policeman noticed them and gave chase.

Artemus Pratt IV pointed at Peter Rulick. “Be sure you get that one. He’s the leader.”

“Do not resist,” shouted Rulick to the others.

The police grabbed Rulick by the arms.

Jackie led Billy down the narrow stairwell to the kitchen, with the policeman close on their heels. As they flew through the kitchen, Jackie spun a pan of Veal Orloff onto the floor. The policeman hit it at full speed and landed on his tail.

The two boys shot out into the service alley, and Jackie stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Hundreds of champagne bottles were growing like weeds out of the snowbanks. The policeman wasn’t behind him, so Jack put two bottles in his outer pockets, and four more in the pockets his mother had sewn into
his jacket. Then he raced down the alley, with Billy Rulick already two blocks ahead of him.

“Son of a bitch nearly broke my jaw,” said the younger Artemus Pratt.

“And spoiled a damn good party in the process,” added Taylor.

“It frightens me to think that we’re being infiltrated by men like that,” said their father, swirling brandy in a snifter.

“The unions are coming, Artemus. There’s nothing we can do about it,” advised James Pratt, Artemus Pratt’s brother and a member of the Pratt Corporation board of directors.

“But we shan’t be bullied,” said Henry Hannaford, cousin and stockholder.

The men sat in the oak-paneled office on the first floor and discussed the evening’s confrontation. The ball had ended quickly after the police had left the house. Now, it was brandy, cigars, and strategy.

“Indeed, and we won’t knuckle under to a group of Bolsheviks and racketeers. That Rulick is a first-class rabble rouser.” Artemus III decided his brandy was sufficiently warmed. He brought the snifter to his lips.

“From what I know,” said Henry Carrington, “he was approached by the national and asked to help start a local.”

“And he’s been causing trouble ever since,” snapped Artemus IV. “Father’s right. In this day and age, the last thing we need is an army of recalcitrant employees telling us how to run our operation.”

“So what shall we do?” asked Taylor.

“We see to it that Peter Rulick causes no more trouble. We throw the book at him. Breaking and entering, criminal trespass, unlawful assembly, assault and battery.” Artemus IV rubbed his chin. “And whatever else we can nail him on. I’d like you to put someone on it right away, Henry.”

“You’ll still have to contend with the unions,” said Carrington. “People want their unions. You can’t escape that.”

Artemus Pratt the younger agreed. “We’ll have a union, but we’ll select the people who organize it ourselves. We won’t have
Communist outsiders telling us how to run our plants. We could fire every man at Pratt Rubber tonight and fill every position tomorrow with some poor sucker who’s been out of work since the crash.”

Artemus Pratt III nodded. He liked to see his son take control.

Without knocking, Katherine Pratt Carrington entered the room. The conversation stopped. “I do not, as a rule, interrupt the gentlemen in the midst of important conversation. But I have been eavesdropping on this discussion, and I must speak my mind. None of you seem to realize that you’re dealing with more than laborers who want longer coffee breaks. This evening, I met one of the urchins who came with the strikers. He was ravenous.” She paused and looked around. “Hungry children, gentlemen. Hungry men and women. We must help those people, or the Pratts and everyone like them will face a grave crisis.”

“What do you propose to do?” asked Artemus IV sarcastically.

“At least help to feed them.”

“How?” asked Taylor.

“With charity.”

“We give too much as it is,” said the senior Pratt.

“If my reading of family legend is correct, one of our ancestors left us some sort of treasure to be used when we faced a crisis,” said Katherine. “I think we’re facing an enormous crisis right now. Our whole society may come apart if we stand by and do nothing.”

“Are you talking about that crazy old loon Abigail Pratt Bentley?” Artemus Pratt III began to laugh, and the other men, except for Henry Carrington, joined in. “If you can find that treasure, that tea set, whatever the hell it is, you can give it away to anyone you want. You can even have my quotation from
Paradise Lost
. When I was in college, I had it printed on all my bookmarks. Now if your cousins and uncles will give you their quotations, you’ll have a start.”

“I have one in a safety-deposit box somewhere,” said Hannaford. “I’m not averse to letting Katherine indulge her philanthropic impulses.”

“Thank you,” said Katherine, masking her annoyance. “What about the rest of you?”

Artemus IV slammed his hands on the arms of his chair. “Dammit, Kate, we’re involved in important business here. Those bastards invaded our house, attacked me, and caused general bedlam. We’re going to do our damnedest to keep them all in jail, and the hell with charity.”

She pretended to ignore her cousin. “If any of the rest of you care to help, you know where you can find me.” She closed the door behind her.

“Sorry to be barking like that, Henry,” said young Artemus, “but I get madder every time I think of that Rulick bastard catching me with a sucker punch. I want you to make sure he stays in jail.”

“Whatever the law provides,” said Carrington.

Over the next two days, Katherine Pratt Carrington visited relatives and told them that she was trying to find the old family treasure, the proceeds of which she intended to donate to the South End Community Club. She collected four sets of lines, most of them kept in envelopes and safety-deposit boxes since the reading of Abigail Pratt Bentley’s will.

Her cousin William Pratt, grandson of Jason Pratt, the Civil War surgeon, kept his quotation framed on the wall behind his desk at the Massachusetts General Hospital. It read, in Old English script, “Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,/Godlike erect, with native honor clad/In naked Majesty seem’d Lords of all,/And worthy seem’d, for in their looks Divine/The image of their glorious Maker shone,/Truth, Wisdom, Sanctitude severe and pure…”

“I like the sentiment. Milton’s talking there about Adam and Eve. He’s talking about all of us. We all have a chance to be something great. We’re all born naked into this world with the same gifts. That’s what I always tell my patients.”

“You know, of course, that I’m trying to find a treasure that legend says this quotation and several others will lead us to.”

Like most of the others, William Pratt laughed softly, patronizingly. “I’ve heard that it’s a Revere tea set.”

“That’s the legend.”

“If you find it, dear, sell it to someone filthy rich and make good use of his money. Then he’ll donate it to the Museum of Fine Arts and the world will be able to enjoy it.”

After two days of phone calls and visits, Katherine began to realize that not all her relatives were so willing to help.

“Father believes there’s nothing to this story,” said Artemus IV. “I don’t see why I should encourage you to waste your time. Besides, if you do find this mythical teapot, you intend to throw it away on an army of street urchins, socialists, and drunks. No thank you.”

Responses like that disappointed Katherine. When she learned that the California branch of the family had disintegrated because of bad investments and divorce, she became discouraged. When she learned that a separate envelope containing Abigail Pratt Bentley’s directions had disappeared somewhere between the first Artemus and Artemus III, she despaired of ever finding the treasure.

After two days in the holding tank at the Charles Street Jail, Peter Rulick, Irish Red, and their supporters were officially charged with everything Henry Carrington could think of. The judge released the supporters on their own recognizance, but he held Rulick and Irish Red at a thousand dollars’ bail. Peter Rulick was also charged with contempt of court when he announced that the judge was a tool of the Pratts.

Both men went back to their cells while the union tried to raise bail.

On his third day at the Charles Street Jail, Peter Rulick was stabbed twenty-five times while taking a shower.

The knife was discovered in a drain, and, although no fingerprints or witnesses could be found, evidence pointed to a man named Harry Kilcoyne, a small-time gambler and sometime hit man awaiting trial for rape. When asked why he did it, he said, “I just don’t like radicals and Reds tryin’ to screw up this country.”

A few days later, Katherine Pratt Carrington filled her car, a 1928 Buick, with groceries, and told her chauffeur to drive to 31 Decatur Street. Jackie Ferguson was sitting on his stoop across the street when he saw his Back Bay vision emerge from her car and go into Rulick’s apartment. He ran across the street and followed her up the stairs.

Katherine Carrington introduced herself through a crack in the
door and Anna Rulick let her into her house. The chauffeur and Jackie Ferguson followed.

It was dark and cold in the apartment. The shades were drawn tight and a single lamp illuminated the parlor, where Anna and her four boys sat.

Katherine Carrington told her chauffeur to put the bundles on the table in the kitchen and bring up the rest. She removed her gloves and held them nervously. She sensed the grief, the gloom, the poverty that enveloped the room. She felt ostentatious, even in the tweed overcoat and gray dress that her husband had said made her look like a schoolteacher. She offered her condolences.

Anna Rulick nodded, although she did not seem to hear.

In a soft, wavering voice, Katherine told Anna that she had brought food and blankets and would continue to send food through the winter.

“We don’t want it.” The voice sounded like the growl of an angry cat. “We don’t want charity. My father did not want charity. We will do for ourselves.”

Katherine looked at the little boy sitting by the radiator. She recognized him from the Winter Ball. “The food and blankets are not charity. They are assistance from your father’s employers. We are very sorry about what happened.”

Mrs. Rulick put up her hand, as if to ward off a blow. “I can no take these things. My boy, he’s right. We no want your gifts when you take away our… our…” The words didn’t come. She shuddered, sobbed, and began to cry without tears.