Five-Carat Soul
James McBride
ALSO BY JAMES MCBRIDE
The Color of Water
Miracle at St. Anna
Song Yet Sung
The Good Lord Bird
Kill ’Em and Leave
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by James McBride
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McBride, James, author.
Title: Five-carat soul / James McBride.
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017007480 (print) | LCCN 2017013199 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735216716 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735216693 (hardcover)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Short Stories (single author). | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / African American / General.
Classification: LCC PS3613.C28 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.C28 A6 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007480
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To Sonny Rollins, who showed me the Big Picture
CONTENTS
Also by James McBride
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set
—
THE FIVE-CARAT SOUL BOTTOM BONE BAND
1. Buck Boy
2. Ray-Ray’s Picture Box
3. Blub
4. Goat
—
Father Abe
The Moaning Bench
The Christmas Dance
The Fish Man Angel
Mr. P & the Wind
Chapter 1: The 24th Hour
Chapter 2: Higher Orders
Chapter 3: The Wind
Chapter 4: Rubs Gets Out
Chapter 5: War
Author’s Note
About the Author
THE UNDER GRAHAM RAILROAD BOX CAR SET
I sell vintage toys. All kinds of toys. I sell sheep that belch popcorn, dolls that whisper secrets, papier-mâché Santa Clauses, Halloween masks, Little Bo Peeps, and puppets. I sell toy parrots that say “Here comes a nigger,” 1823 fire engines that say “toot!” and windup clocks from 1834 that say “Time’s up, Gramps!” I sell tricycles from the Depression, toy coffee grinders from World War II France, and two types of the original 1964 Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, including one that looks like Peter O’Toole and another that looks like Sammy Davis, Jr. I sell tin soldiers, steel trains, wooden cars, cardboard airplanes, ceramic piggy banks, and pinball machines. If it’s a vintage toy, I sell it.
I am a sole proprietor. I buy toys on commission from collectors. They love me. When I call on a prospective client, often an ancient widow selling off her husband’s collection or an ailing toy collector who made a killing on Wall Street and now is about to go kaplooey, I look the part. I’m not like my competitors from Sotheby’s and Christie’s who arrive wearing crisp pinstripe suits over starchly pressed shirts, the women with their hair carefully coifed, the men clean shaven, with their nails just so. Instead I play an antiques professor, a man of letters. I arrive ten minutes late. I knock on the door wearing a bow tie, a button-down shirt, and penny loafers, adjusting my glasses and scratching my beard. I fumble my way from the living room to the kitchen, dropping my pen, saying “Excuse me” to walls that I bumble into. I am a lost professor, a toy savant, expounding on the attributes of the dollhouses built by the great toymaker D. U. Edwards of 1851 Germany while losing my spoon in the bowl of chicken soup that I accept with the humblest of thanks from my generous host. I preach the gospel of the precision pinball creations of the Frenchman J. D. Gourhand, circa 1834 Paris. I crow with tears in my eyes about the wondrous, glorious, dazzling tin rooster creations of T. J. McConnell of Belfast, killed in the Irish Uprising.
Toy collectors love enthusiastic, absentminded professors. Absentminded professors are goofy, forgetful, and cute: They give sellers the misguided notion that they’re getting the best price. That’s why they love me.
I’ve done pretty well over the last thirty years. Not bad for a Jew from Queens who started out as an actor trained in Shakespeare and then toiled unappreciated in the small towns of upstate New York where I plied my trade in summer theater, best described as continually shouting “Blow thou winter wind!” to retired New York garment workers who wouldn’t know iambic pentameter from a pair of pliers. I slaved that way for more years than I have fingers. Thankfully, my audiences these days are far more sophisticated.
Still, no toy collector from Amsterdam to Anaheim can resist my charms. No weeping widow holding her late husband’s valuable train collection of Herman Beavers Specialty Trains can resist me. No millionaire CEO teetering on the brink of ruin or the edge of life, clinging to his valuable collection of series 922 Henry Ford Toy Racers, gathered over a lifetime of savvy negotiation from Spain to Selma, can say no to me. Entire toy divisions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s shudder at the sound of my name: Leo Banskoff.
Toy collecting is a small world, and in that world I am Pete Rose, Henry Aaron, and the Babe, all rolled into one. My batting record over the last twenty years is close to 1.000. I have never lost a client. No one can resist my blend of knowledge, perception, and most of all, profit. No one can resist my charms.
No one, that is, except one.
I first heard of the Reverend Spurgeon Hart by way of an old friend, Milton Schneider, a New York tax attorney and investor who handles estates and divorces with a degree of skillful discretion that has earned him considerable sums over the years. Milton is a clever, joyful fellow and from time to time, while trawling through the shattered portfolios and economic wreckage of his wealthy clients laid bare by divorce, he has occasionally uncovered a pot of gold in the toy arena that he sloughs off to me. Young millionaire ex-wives don’t care about toys, especially those rising from the wreckage of a marital disaster, most having served as the third or fourth notch on the marriage totem pole of the aforesaid wealthy client’s love life. Milton sniffs these out with ease, and if he gets a whiff of toy gold, sends them to me. I do the dirty work, query the prey, find the mark, make the initial visit, talk down the sale price, sell off the toys, take my commission, and fork over a small remuneration to Milton for his trouble. Everyone is happy. It’s a win-win.
Such seemed to be the promise of the Spurgeon Hart case, which arrived at my place last fall via an overnight package from Milton wrapped in a brown paper envelope bearing a note that said, “This is a long shot. But no harm no foul.” I was suspicious, for Milton had previously struck out three times straight, and I’d recently informed him that he’d have to lighten his wallet in my direction should this lead prove to be another bust, for the last had cost me no small amount of time and dignity, as I’d been shown out of the home of an elderly Upper East Side widow posthaste by her new boyfriend and personal trainer, an African-American fellow
about the size of Milwaukee. He was offended by my opinion of a rare toy in her collection, a doll replica of a famous boxer named Joe Frazier. The doll wore boxing trunks and the headdress of an Indian chief, with a towel draped over his shoulders that read “Thrilla from Manila with the Gorilla.” When you pulled the towel his tongue came out. It was a delightful piece—not vintage, but a rarity. There were only fourteen made in the world before the manufacturer was stopped by a lawsuit. But after six weeks of research and extensive discussions with the manufacturer, I determined that the doll was a fake made in Taiwan. That roiled this widow’s paramour—he was a big fan of Smokin’ Joe—and after several hot comments about my Jewish background, race, motive, and bearing, I was forced to leave the home with explicit instructions not to return, as well as candid descriptions as to what would happen to various parts of my anatomy should I venture to that cause in the future.
But I’d made a fair amount of money with Milton over the years, so when this brown paper package arrived I opened it immediately. Wrapped inside was a dusty vinyl portfolio containing the stock holdings of one Rev. Spurgeon Thelonius Hart, of Springfield Gardens, Queens, whose holdings had been discovered in a circular file by one of Milton’s young law clerks. I sat down and thumbed through it. Apparently, the good Reverend’s mother had worked as a domestic for the Von Klees family, one of the wealthy families of 1920s New York City and its cousin, the Hamptons. The stock holdings, along with a few family heirlooms, were gifts for her years of service, before the family died off.
Apparently, the Von Kleeses’ wealth died off with them, because there seemed to be nothing of worth inside the portfolio: a wandering bond or two, a couple of mutual funds, some old securities that predated 1927 and were stamped “Prerequisite,” which meant they were probably worthless. I was about to toss the portfolio back in its envelope and return the whole business to Milton when I noticed, attached to the rear inside cover of the portfolio, a faded black and white photograph.
I almost fell out of my chair when I saw what it was.
It was a toy train. But not just any train. An 1859 Smith-Deckert 2350 Blue-Tone, Single Engine, Steam Powered, Piper-Coal Locomotive. And a set of four box cars. Also known as the Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set. In immaculate condition.
Let me explain to you about the worth—and value—of antique toys. I have an art collector friend named Muriel, and we occasionally debate which of our respective trades is more lucrative and important to world history—an argument Muriel almost always wins. But one evening during one of these talks, after consuming a considerable amount of bourbon (which I’d generously supplied), I said: “Muriel, name me one piece of art in the world that is almost beyond wealth in terms of its worth, a piece that captures history’s impact on the present. Name me one.”
Muriel sat back thoughtfully, smoking a Gauloise with one hand and holding her glass in the other. “I can think of several,” she said. “The Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo’s David. Various Impressionists. Monet. Van Gogh. Those are priceless. They all import some kind of history to the present.”
“But do they have some kind of intrinsic value? One that you can assign money to?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” she said.
“Aha!” I said, pouncing on her weakness. “Therein lies the difference. Antique toys don’t work that way. Toys are priced based on emotion. The ones in the best condition have the saddest stories. The sadder the story, the more valuable the toy. That is a human element and it’s one that no painting has. The specific history of sorrow or joy in a child’s life, when determining the price, means the sky’s the limit. Because there is no limit to sadness at a child’s suffering, or the happiness a parent feels at a child’s wonder. Thus the emotion contained within the product, when determining the worth of a child’s life, is tied to a child’s innocence, which gives that product infinite value.”
“I’m not finished,” she said. “There are other factors. Say you found a sketch by Jesus himself. Or discovered the Ark of the Covenant. Or a cloth napkin used by Mohammad the Prophet upon which he’d sketched with his own hand. Those would be beyond value. Those things are not merely art. They are human history. They would then be worth, say, all of Argentina. Throw in Spain and Portugal. You’re not talking millions then. You’re talking hundreds of millions. Perhaps even a billion. Can you think of any equivalent in your field?”
I could think of only one, one that bears both the stamp of crucial world history and the infinite value of a child’s innocence. And I was staring at a picture of it.
The Under Graham Railroad Box Car.
That set is unlike any box car set ever made. Most toy trains, even rare ones, are made in sets. For example, the Chestnut Rozinki Locomotives set made in Brussels. It’s one of four sets, one of which was owned by Winston Churchill. Or the Budskin Promethian by the great Flemish toymaker Noel Tobias Eisenhauser, one of four sets owned by George IV. Or the extraordinary Cuddinsky Router Chugger, a set of eight trains created by noted French toymaker Jean Pierre DuBlanc Rudan, of which there are only two left in the world, one of which is reputed to be owned by the King of Saudi Arabia.
The Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set, however, is unlike any of those. It is one of one. There is no number two. And it is a special one. To put it simply, it is perhaps the most valuable toy in the world.
Its value is tied to history, naturally, and complicated by time, war, and the unreasonableness and the emotions of a child’s joy and sorrow.
It was a gift from General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army to his five-year-old son, Graham, who died before he could play with it. But it is not just the toy itself, nor the tragic death of Graham, that gives the toy its special value. There are other factors. For one, Lee actually commissioned the toy in 1859, just before America’s Civil War, for the unheard-of sum of $3,100 from the weapons maker Horace Smith, he of Smith & Wesson fame and who himself was an amateur toy collector and was considered the Fabergé of Toymakers.
The future commander of the Army of Northern Virginia knew that war was coming. He was also aware that Horace Smith, whose designs were later borrowed by the German gunmaker Franz Wilthgaard to create the weapons that powered the German war machine during World War I, was considered a weapons-making genius.
Smith turned out a masterpiece. The train consisted of five cars, an engine with coarse rubber wheels, three coaches, and a larger-than-usual coal car equipped with a tiny coal burner and a tiny compressor the size of a man’s thumb that fed water via a metal tube to a tiny steam box. The train was powered by steam, and was said to be able to run on a specially made looped track at a top speed of twenty-five miles an hour for four hours on a full tank of water and a single lump of coal—faster than any horse and carriage could sustain at any length in those years. It was an extraordinary miracle of engineering.
But fate or providence got in the way. The train arrived at the Lee family home two days before war was declared, much to the delight of Lee’s young son Graham. Two days later, war descended upon the nation, and Lee was called immediately from his Arlington, Virginia, home to organize Confederate forces along the Georgia and South Carolina seaboard. Two weeks later, while in South Carolina, he received a telegram from home bearing devastating news: His beloved son Graham had suddenly taken sick and died of consumption. Furthermore, the beloved boy’s new train and the female slave who tended to him—both valuable items, as slaves held considerable monetary value in those days—had both disappeared, the woman having escaped to freedom in the North. A double loss for the general. Triple, if you consider that the woman who had tended the child apparently had been a trusted family member and much loved by the poor departed boy—and had now absconded with his toy.
The great general was outraged. He vowed to find the thief, and spent a great deal of money both during the war and after toward her capture, but with no success. He came close in 1863 when a hired detectiv
e discovered that the thief had made her way north via the Underground Railroad and had landed for a time in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City. But the trail ended there. The war ended two years later and the general died in 1870 not knowing what had become of his beloved son’s lost toy.
The specific facts of the thief’s life were never fully ascertained thereafter. But there is no doubt that the train actually existed. A painting of the train was known to be in the general’s home in the ensuing years after his death, and design sketches for it still exist. Those sketches were discovered among the papers of several prominent weapons makers in Germany and France—its basic design was used by artillery designers in Germany’s war department during World War I and was referred to in the letters of the general himself.
Which leads to the second reason for the intrinsic value and importance of this tiny mechanical device. For within its tiny loops and doll-like cranks and widgets lay a weapon of war. What other mechanical device, powered by a tiny piece of coal and a small amount of water, allowing a tiny engine to propel it twenty-five miles per hour for four hours, faster than any horse and carriage could sustain, existed during those years?
As the war progressed, the general realized that if the train’s technology was made available to the engineers of the South, the fate of the rebellion could turn. A full-sized steam engine using that same technology could toss cannonballs for miles, pull armed Southern troops by the thousands, cart supplies, horses, and ammunition for miles without refueling—not to mention be further developed to create newer, more efficient cannons and guns that would wreak havoc on Northern troops. Indeed the possibilities of the technology were so great that during the war, the general convinced Confederate president Jefferson Davis to send spies to Connecticut to kidnap Horace Smith, the train’s creator, with the goal of forcing him to reproduce the train as a weapon of war. The foray was unsuccessful and further complicated by the fact that once the war began, Smith, now realizing the true purpose behind the general’s commission, suffered a burst of guilt and wrote a letter to the general denouncing the South and declaring that he was an abolitionist. Furthermore, he demanded that the train be returned to him at once since the general’s son was dead and no longer had any use for it, and insisted that the cost to develop the train had actually far exceeded the $3,100 commission since the train was, after all, one of a kind.
