It Is Not Enough to Want You Destroyed

By: Emma Henderson

“Look what I found on the way in,” Marion said as she threw the door open with a huff, face red from both the autumn chill and the headline she had read that morning. She slammed the newspaper down onto Harvey’s desk, and Harvey, completely unperturbed by the intrusion, pushed a paper covered in his messy scribbling to the side and leaned back in his chair. He kicked his legs up on top of the desk, crossed them, and lit a cigarette, putting it between his lips and taking a long drag before fanning open the newspaper like he had all the time in the world.

“Millionaire Everett Sparrow purchases the Ohio Valley Railroad Company,” he read out loud, and shoved the paper to the side of his desk. He stared into the space above Marion’s head, an absent but pensive look gracing over his face. “Good for him. He’s finally making a place for himself in the industry.”

“That’s not all, though,” Marion said, pushing the paper back to him. “Look at what they’re saying about you!”

Harvey’s eyes scanned the page, as predatorial as a shark’s, landing on a small piece of printed text beneath the headline. “I don’t care,” he finally declared.

“What do you mean, you don’t care? You aren’t stupid; you know what this means for you— for us.”

“Look at who the article was written by,” Harvey said nonchalantly, sliding the paper back to Marion like a stack of poker chips. “He’s one of Sparrow’s. I met him once; for the right price, he’ll say just about anything. Everyone who matters knows that. It  doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Marion picked the newspaper up, holding it close to her face. “Felix Floyd,” she said, and plopped down into the chair across from Harvey, pink skirts fanning out around her. “I see.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing to worry about,” Harvey started to reiterate, but he was interrupted by a thick, cream-colored envelope sliding out of the pages of the newspaper and hitting the wooden desk with a dull thunk. Harvey and Marion looked at the envelope, then at one another, then back at the envelope. In a mad scramble, they both reached for it at the same time, but Harvey emerged victorious. He looked at the handwriting on the front, spelling out Jack M. Harvey in light cursive. She recognized it immediately from years of correspondence. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a letter opener. He then proceeded to open it as if he was imagining it was Sparrow’s throat. Despite his unconcerned air, Marion knew just how deeply his hatred for Sparrow ran.

Sparrow was old-money. His company (his father’s company, and his father’s father’s company before that) was almost as old as the country itself. As the patron, he had taken it into his hands to try to get a stake in almost every kind of industry at the time—everything from textiles to transportation, even journalism. Sparrow was everything that Harvey wasn’t, and as successful as Harvey was, Marion knew that he was everything Harvey wanted to be.

Harvey was young and savvy, but he was also an immigrant. He was a self-made man, arriving in a foreign country speaking in a tongue it seemed only he knew. He had built everything from next to nothing and sure, marrying into Marion’s family had helped, but he had established a name for himself before then. His empire was strong, fortified from the ground up, and even though it was made through some admittedly shady practices, money was money in New York City, and those who didn’t have it weren’t in the position to question it. It was 1892, after all, and they were on top of the world.

Or so, they seemed to be until Marion saw Harvey’s face fall for just a fraction of a second. It was so quick a movement, she only would have caught it if she had been looking for it.

“What is it?” Marion asked, jumping a  bit as Harvey leaned over his desk, slamming his feet against the floor. She held her hand out as if to ask to read the letter.

“Nothing but empty threats,” he said through gritted teeth. Still, he held it increasingly closer to his face as he read it once more, and then once more after that. Finally, he sat it back down on the table and snuffed out his cigarette before putting his head in his hands and rubbing his temples. Marion picked it up, seeing that it was, in fact, from Sparrow.

It began with a useless preamble, but closer to the bottom, the ink had darkened. “This is only the beginning,” he had written. “Sleep with one eye open. Before you know it, all of New York City will know about the Chicago business. After that, the Seidel Railroad Company has at most months, and then that’ll be mine, too. It’s only a matter of time, and that’s if you’re smart enough to do something about it.”

“‘Nothing but empty threats’? Jack, he was talking  to both of us! As much as I love you, he knows about the...the business...and he’s threatening my father’s company. We need to write him back, we need to...”

“We don’t need to do anything.”

“You’re being stubborn,” Marion stated plainly. She was confident in Harvey’s abilities, but Sparrow had never resorted to threatening her family before.

Harvey peered at her from between his fingers and slowly dragged them down his face in exasperation. He lit another cigarette, and Marion went to open the window.

The sounds of New York City filtered into the room. People shouted on the street, and the perpetual cloud of smoke hung low over the rooftops. Everything continued on outside, but it felt like Marion and Harvey had reached a turning point.

When Marion returned to her seat, she laid her head down on the table. They sat quietly for a few minutes, just listening to the white noise.

“I’ve heard rumors,” Harvey finally offered, voice muddled from the cigarette caught between his lips, “of some things Sparrow has been up to. The mayoral candidate, Virgil, and the senators. If you trace it back…” His voice trailed off as he became lost in thought again.

Harvey had always been cutthroat, especially when it came to defending his name, but recently, things had gotten worse. Between the tension building among him and Sparrow, as well as the ever-looming influences of other captains of industry, he didn’t hardly seem like the man she had first met anymore.

“Will you write a letter for me?” he asked. Marion took a piece of paper from the corner of his desk and his pen, and wrote in careful cursive as he detailed a summons to Floyd, the journalist from the article, asking if he would be interested in writing for Harvey. The words on the paper were less of a summons, though, and more of a threat, she saw as she read it back to him.

Once he was satisfied, he told Marion to go home, and that he would probably be late getting back that night. After an afterthought of an “I love you” as she grabbed her hat and put on her coat, Harvey asked, “I hate to ask this of you, but on the way back, can you get me a train ticket to Chicago? As soon as possible, please.”

“Of course, Jack,” she said, unable to hide the hint of sadness in her voice as she wrapped her scarf around her neck. In the doorway, though, she turned slowly to him and added, “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“I don’t believe in regret,” he said, already scribbling on his paper again. “I believe in revenge.”