Author's note:
Due to the mystery/suspense plot, the individual parts of this novel are unlikely to make sense as stand-alone reads. Please see note at the beginning of Part 1 for more information.
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Chapter 6. FULTON FORDYCE
Thursday after clinic, Anders returned to the boardinghouse to find a hand-delivered message for him on the entry hall table. As Mrs. Sullivan did not have a telephone, such messages --- delivered by various messenger boy services in the city --- were his usual means for communicating with acquaintances. The message was from his longtime friend Fulton Fordyce --- the sloppy handwriting read:
Hey Norski ---
No damned studying next Friday night. Planning a scorcher of a night for your birthday.
--- F.
He grinned and made a note on the wall calendar, surprised that Fulton even remembered his birthday. As he emptied his knapsack onto the desk, rays from the setting sun illuminated the row of crystals on the windowsill. In an array of colors --- clear, yellow, pink, purple, green, blue, red, orange --- all were crystals he had grown from various chemical solutions --- his hobby of choice throughout childhood and college.
He gazed at the blue crystal, recalling a birthday celebration many years ago.
*****
1886 - 1897
After the long voyage from Norway, Anders and his father arrived in New York City. From there, they took a train west to the city of Rochester, New York, where his father had secured a position as a chemist in the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company.
They found a small cottage to lease, located on the rearmost corner of an enormous mansion's grounds. The cottage had apparently been the gardener's residence when the wealthy family's estate in a previous generation had encompassed significantly more acres. With two tiny bedrooms and a common room for the parlour and kitchen, the cottage was admirably suited to the Røkkes' needs.
That summer, while his father daily reported to the Eastman laboratory, nine-year-old Anders was left with strict instructions to continue his English studies. Eager to assimilate into his new surroundings, he did not shirk the assignment --- reading, translating, and walking every few days to the library to borrow more books. But after exhausting his capacity for studying, he occupied the long summer days with other activities.
He explored the bustling city of Rochester on foot, following the waterways --- the Genesee River and the Erie Canal. Rows of brick buildings populated the banks, and from the advertising signs painted on their sides, he became cognizant of the profusion of factories and mills that supported the city's economy. Further afield were numerous seed and flower nurseries, and beyond that, the expanse of Lake Ontario.
In particular wonder did he observe the engineering miracles of the Erie Canal. There were elevated aqueducts in which boats traveled. There was a bridge over the canal for people and carriages that lifted and lowered to permit water traffic to pass. There was a lock that filled with or drained water to raise and lower boats between the different levels of the channel.
At the same time, Anders also found diversions within his immediate environs: exploring the toolshed behind the cottage, playing in a nearby creek, and climbing trees on the estate grounds. One day, when he found on the street a squirrel that had recently met its demise, he carried it to the shed where he carefully cut open the pale belly to inspect the organs therein, burying it afterwards.
From the front porch of the cottage, he could see across a groomed expanse of lawn and flowerbeds to the back of the stately brick mansion where a wide veranda was decorated with potted plants and scrolled metal furniture. When he walked around to the front of the estate, he realized the house was only one in a row of similarly grand mansions along East Avenue. His father had informed him that their landlords, the Fordyce family, lived in the mansion and owned one of the big factories in the city.
Over the summer, Anders observed in the yard the various inhabitants of the mansion and quickly appreciated the difference in garb between servants and family members. The family included four Fordyce children, all with curly black hair. There were two boys, one near his age and one a couple years older. Of the two daughters, one was old enough to be wearing long skirts and the other looked to be about eight.
With wistful interest he observed their activities, marking several novel luxuries he had never seen or had only read about: lawn tennis, croquet, roller skating, and shooting at targets with bows and arrows.
Predictably, nearly every game would devolve into a fight between the two Fordyce boys, with the younger one punching the older or attempting to strike him with a croquet mallet or racket while screaming, "You bastard! I hate you! I hate you!" The scuffle would shortly be terminated by the appearance of their governess.
Anders sensed the children from the mansion had noted his presence as well, although they never spoke to him. When he started school in the fall, he discovered the younger Fordyce boy, Fulton, to be in his class. Fulton Fordyce had an established, select circle of friends in the classroom, all apparently from wealthy families. If Fulton recognized him as a tenant on his family's estate, he acknowledged it neither by word nor action. Indeed, he didn't speak to Anders at all.
What a relief it was when the Christmas break finally arrived! He had made it through his first semester of school in America! His father and he had been invited to spend Christmas Day proper with a Norwegian family in a nearby town, but in the days preceding the holiday, Anders busied himself building a sledding hill next to the cottage. With the first snowfall, he had instinctually scooped up a mitten full of snow and tasted it --- it did not taste as good as the snow in Norway, he thought.
One day when he trekked through the snow to the stable by the big house to ask to borrow a pail, the coachman good-naturedly informed him there was ice skating on the frozen barge canal --- he could lend him a pair of skates if he was interested.
Anders' face lit up. "Ya, I haves," he announced.
His sledding hill at once forgotten, he hastened to the cottage and searched through the small collection of objects that had made the transatlantic voyage with them. Under his bed, wrapped in wool rags, he found his skates. He took them to the shed and sharpened them as he had been taught, re-wrapping them in the rags and slinging them over his shoulder in a burlap bag as he set out for the canal. Following the coachman's directions, he found a set of stone stairs that allowed entry onto the ice. Bundled-up people sat on nearby benches donning or removing their skates.
Anders doffed his mittens to fit the wooden footstock of his skates to the sole of his boots and fasten the leather straps. He surveyed the frozen canal as he walked carefully to the top of the stairs. Some two dozen skaters were on the ice south of the lift bridge, most of them tentative in their motions. He turned to a couple on a nearby bench --- the man kneeling to assist the woman in fastening her skates.
"Pardon, sir," Anders said. "Where skate safe?"
The man looked over his shoulder. "What was that, son?"
"Can I skate anywhere there?" He waved his arm at the canal. "Is safe?"
A burst of snorting laughter interrupted them. Looking up, Anders beheld Fulton Fordyce and his friends trooping towards the canal in their expensive skates with the blades affixed permanently to the boots. "Vere skate safe?" one mimicked his accent in a singsong voice.
"Ya, ya! I skate dere?" rejoined another.
"Servants and dead-beats skate on the scum pond by the brewery," Fulton Fordyce said.
The man fastening his companion's skates frowned slightly, shaking his head as he met Anders' bewildered eyes.
