The Styx Read Free Page A

Side.
    The Styx was, by comparison, quaint, she had justified. The shacks of the workers were made of discarded wood from the Poinciana’s construction and slats from furniture crates and shipping cartons. Some were roofed in simple thatch made with indigenous palm fronds, others in sturdier tin. Miss Fluery had told her that two winters ago, one of Flagler’s railcars had jumped the small-gauge tracks to Palm Beach Island and collapsed into splinters as it rolled down the embankment to the lake. Given permission, the black workers had scavenged the debris, and the car’s tin roof ended up covering six new homes in the Styx.
    On this night the thatch roofs had become little more than cinders floating up on hot currents into the air. The tin ones were warped and crumpled by the heat like soggy playing cards. As the women and driver watched, the Boston House rooming home fell in on itself, sending up a shower of glowing embers and a billow of dark smoke.
    Ida May had not loosened her grip on the driver’s iron seat handle and had not turned her face away even as the heat scorched her old cheeks. Marjory put her hand on the woman’s arm.
    “Mr. Martin said everyone has gone across the lake to the fair, Miss Ida. Surely no one was at home. Surely they’re all safe.”
    Fluery looked into the flames of her home, which had stood at the prominent crown of the makeshift cul de sac and listened to the sound of clay bowls shattering in the heat and ceramic keepsakes exploding into hot dust. She did not acknowledge the girl’s words. Marjory was a young white lady from the North. She could not discern the smell of linen and Bible parchment burning any more than she could recognize the odor of charred flesh. But Ida May Fluery knew that smell. The news of death was already in the air.
    No, they surely are not all safe, Ida thought. And just as surely, she thought, whoever it is, someone has murdered them.

    The rest of Ida May’s neighbors would hear the news by word of mouth, and it was as rapid and frightening and as unpredictable as the flames themselves.
    Mr. Martin rattled back through the woods at an axle-breaking speed to the hotel as much to report the fire as to pull someone of more importance into the situation. He left Miss McAdams and the old house woman at the edge of the burning shantytown. They had refused to budge when he begged them to come back with him, for there was nothing they could do before daylight. The place was destroyed, the fire had already swallowed everything it wanted and had not made the jump from the clearing to the trees. The old woman had acted as if she hadn’t heard him and just stood there with those damned spooky eyes of hers glowing. Miss McAdams couldn’t convince the old lady either. Finally, in frustration, Martin snatched a kerosene lantern off the left side of the carriage and held it out to her.
    “At least take this, ma’am,” he said.
    Instinctively, Miss McAdams reached out for the lantern but stopped herself when her eyes lighted on the glow of the flame inside. It was a look, not of fear—Martin doubted that this young woman feared anything—but some deeper angst. The driver himself balked at the look and began to withdraw the offer. Finally it was the old woman who stepped forward and grabbed the lantern from Martin’s hand and then turned without a word.
    Christ, he thought. What was a man supposed to do, and he yanked at the reins, turned the carriage round, and then whipped the horse violently into a gallop.
    When Martin scrambled off the driver’s seat at the front steps of The Breakers, the head liveryman was already up with his arms crossed and a stern look fixed on his face.
    “Jesus glory, Tommy. Hold on, boy. You’re going to shake that rig to pieces.”
    Martin pulled his hat off in deference to the livery man, who was considered a superior to all the valets and housemen and some say had been given the job by Flagler himself after serving the railway baron