Grant: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

cigar and a yellow-tip phosphorus match. “Well, I can see that now.” He lit the match with a single practiced snap of his thumbnail. “Ever since Lincoln, half the Congress thinks they need a personal guard from Pinkerton’s. The vanity of U.S. Senators needs to be measured in some special grandiose unit. A ‘Jumbo’ maybe, like Barnum’s elephant. Or a boxcar, or a Goliath. Now your Senator Cameron I would estimate at twenty ‘Jumbos’ worth of vanity, minimum, which puts him about average for the Senate.” Cadwallader leaned forward through a wreath of smoke. “Journalist?” he guessed.
    “Yes.”
    “Got the noble fraternal look,” Cadwallader explained. “Who do you work for?”
    “A couple of foreign magazines, French.” Nicholas Trist wiped his face again, then put away the handkerchief and took out a packet of medicinal powder and opened it with his teeth. His voice, Cadwallader thought, had a fine malarial rasp. Pity about the missing arm, but then that was about as common as a cold these days too. “The main one’s called
L’Illustration
, from Paris. I came over to write about the campaign.”
    Cadwallader handed him the bottle to wash the powder down. Then out of habit he held out his business card with the two quill pens crossed like swords and the plain Times Roman type that said “Sylvanus Cadwallader. Special Correspondent, Chicago
Times
, New York
Herald
.” “Skedaddled to France after the war, I suppose,” Cadwallader said. “Lots of you boys did.”
    “Land of opportunity.”
    Cadwallader chuckled and recorked the bottle. “Well,” he said, starting to saunter away, “you let me know if I can be of any help to our good French friends. The old-timer always knows where the bodies are buried, and that’s a true thought.”
    A ND ANOTHER TRUE THOUGHT—NEXT TO THE BUSY TEN-CHAIR hotel barber shop Cadwallader stopped to relight his cigar and stare at the lobby turned to bedlam in front of him. Another true thought was that a bigger,
noisier
crowd had never invaded the poor old Palmer House Hotel in its poor old life.
    He skirted around a small hecatomb of undelivered luggage and trunks and took up a position beside a potted palm, under an enormous floating banner—the whole ceiling was one unbroken series of flags and banners—that said “VICKSBURG——GRANT——1863.” Everywhere he looked, every nook and corner of the lobby was jammed with middle-aged, gray-haired men. He watched three Republican Congressmen sweep by arm-in-arm. He recognized regimental flags from the Army of the Potomac, the Cumberland, the Tennessee. Clearly, nobody in the country could stay away. Over by the famous State Street revolving doors they were pouring into the building like Hittites.
    Worse yet, Cadwallader thought, more and more of them were showing up in their old blue army uniforms, newly enlarged and refitted paunchwards. (He complacently smoothed the flat-bellied black-and-white houndstooth coat he wore morning and night.)They had their cigars in one hand, their drinks in the other. The spittoons at their feet were an overflowing god-awful brown mess.
    He moved strategically around the potted palm to dodge a shouting bellboy. A brass band was playing patriotic songs. Wives and daughters were making endless circling promenades around the grand staircase and its three tiers of balconies. He pulled back a curtain. Outside, in a black stinging rain, the streets were likewise jammed with people. There hadn’t been so many people on the streets of Chicago since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow had tried to burn the city down, only these people were all waiting—they had been waiting since dawn—just to catch a glimpse of Ulysses S. Grant when he came out to review the parade, even though that wouldn’t start until the rain was over.
    Well, it was Grant’s party. Cadwallader smiled at his pun. Upstairs he found a relatively quiet alcove furnished with a leather chair and table and sat down to rest his