3stalwarts (120 page)

He entered the street, right foot first for luck. His lean face grinned.

It seemed to him that he had never seen so many people, so many horses and wagons, or heard such a noise in his life before. People kept coming out of stores, and entering them, and even inside the dusky interiors he heard the hum of their voices. A light dust that littered the street, unlike country dust, rose at every puff of wind; and even in calm moments he could see it creeping in the cracks between the cobbles. It had a dry choking smell that made him wonder how the myriad sparrows could get down in it and sort its particles.

A tavern stood on the corner, with windows on three sides facing the river and street. Through the wide glass panes he saw a couple of sloop hands at the bar, and the barmaid, with a broad red Dutch face, resting her hands on her hips and tilting her chin to laugh.

Jerry’s mouth drew down in distaste, and instinctively he turned his face back to the docks. He saw no more of the redemption girl than her bright hair, but his memory drew her frightened eyes as clearly as if they looked to him.

He swore under his breath and continued his walk. He couldn’t act like a fool the first day he was his own man. He must get on.

Across the street an old woman, sitting in a narrow shop door under a sign which read Mrs. Macharg, Threadneedle Store, noted his bright flush and waved to him. The tips of her fingers shone like ivory above the black knitted mitt. Jerry waved back, and she ducked her thinly haired old head and her face puckered smilingly.

For a block he stepped out resolutely, his eyes watching the eddy and flow in the street. Another Pennsylvania wagon turned in from State Street, its high drill hood topping all other vehicles. Its pointed front rose over the wheel team’s rumps like the bow of a boat. Six bells above the wheelers’ names beat lazily to their long strides. The teamster, who walked beside them with the dust of miles and miles stiffening his boots and trousers, paid no heed to anything but his horses. He carried his fifteen-foot whip coiled round his right wrist, and now and then his hard mouth opened stiffly to speak a gentle word at his beasts.

A carriage spun past behind a light pair of matched bays, and Jerry caught a glimpse of two ladies in straw bonnets with silk muffs on their knees.

As the freight wagon drew up-wind the smell of raw wheat was blown to him. His step quickened. Some day one of these wagons would be drawing his wheat into Albany— a two-hundred-mile haul. He saw himself in the spring, helping the teamster load the wagon— perhaps on the floor of his log barn; and when it was loaded he would take the teamster into his house and call for a glass of whiskey to send him off. And suddenly, instead of the teamster, his eyes made a picture of the girl he had seen on the sloop, barelegged, her work dress open at the throat, green sunlight on her breast.

For a while he walked mechanically, not seeing, not hearing, conscious only of his heartbeats. But he would have to square off his farm and raise his house and burn black salts to buy oxen with. He had just money enough for the land and his first winter’s food. He shook his head to clear his eyes.

But his stride slackened, and he began to loiter.

A thin man, like a clerk, with heavy spectacles over his eyes, sat in a little stall against the blank wall of a building. Through the rubble of street sounds his nasal voice was monotonously lifted. Prints; penny ballads; new ballad sheets; Fratricide, or the Evil Case of John Tuhi, by Drink, Damnation, and Hanging, in the Town of Whitestown; the Harbeck-Tragedy, en-graved in copper, in eighteen verses; Highland Mary; the Emigrant’s Guide to the New West; the Mechanic’s Handbook; parsing books, grammars, and scholars’ arithmetics; novels, fashionable and religious; notes on the Gospels… . His voice made a drone in the mutter of passing feet. And Jerry stood still on the footwalk while the people eddied round him. Carts rumbled from the docks, loaded with stove wood. A Yankee farmer’s wagon drew up before him. A woman with a thin face held the reins and cradled a bundle. Jerry could see nothing of the baby’s head; the bundle made no movement; but all at once the woman bent her face and he saw in an opening the baby’s starlike hand.

Through all the noise he heard the woman humming,—

“There was a frog lived in a spring, Singsong paddy woncha ky-me-o . . /*

The man behind Jerry said in a drawling nasal voice, “Emigrant’s Guide.”

“Two-and-six.”

The woman’s eyes lifted. There was an aspect of pain that made the corners dim. She spoke to the horses. They stirred reluctantly. The man followed, grasping the cow’s tail in his left hand, while with his right he held an open book before his eyes. One of the wagon’s wheels needed greasing. Jerry wondered if there were something the matter with the baby.

The clerk-like vendor continued to intone his wares. Prints; penny ballads; Arson in the Jail, or Elisha Green Cremated… .

Jerry hesitated, took a step past the booth, turned, and walked up to the old man. He was reading a book— Waverley it said on the back; but his lips continued their meaningless expositon of the human mind. Universal-ism, Explained, Argued, and Condemned; Cookery of Wild Herbs; Gazetteer to the Western Counties; Natural History of the Far West; Brad-white’s Medicinal Herbs, Their Habits and Approximate Situation… .

“What’s the price generally asked for a redemptioner, mister?”

“Eh, eh? Redemption of Sally Neal, six pennies.”

He peered up through his glasses, his eyes bulging pale blue spots in a sea of swimming water.

“What did you say, sir?”

“What’s the price of a redemption girl?”

“Oh? Eh? I’m hard of hearing, mister. Kind of hard of hearing. Just you write it down.”

He handed out a tablet and pen.

Jerry slowly wrote his question. The vendor read it, holding the sheet close to his nose.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve heard forty dollars. But I’m not sure. You’d better ask. I wouldn’t say, sir.”

He dipped back into his book, his hands shaking as if he had been seriously disturbed. Jerry turned away.

Forty dollars was a lot of money. Forty dollars was the best part of his farm. His first day as his own man he couldn’t make a fool of himself.

That was it, he was his own man.

“I don’t owe a thing to nobody,” he said aloud.

A messenger carrying a bag jostled his shoulder, and a hand at the edge of the roadway steadied him.

“Careful, my boy. This ain’t a village. Wagons roll fast in Albany.”

A carriage with flashing green spokes went spanking down the cobbles. A gentleman inside sat with his hands resting on a stick, his beaver hat immaculately set on his white forehead.

“There goes Martin Van Buren. Wonder how things are going in the Senate?”

“Thanks,” said Jerry.

All at once he found himself retracing his steps. He would take another look, he said to himself, and if the girl were gone, that would settle it. He felt like a fool, but he was his own man to do as he liked.

He turned down a by-street to the docks along a row of shops with here and there a carriage waiting at a door. Inside he caught glimpses of the shop people measuring cloth or serving customers. A butcher with a fresh red face whistled through his teeth as he steeled his knife. The strokes made a shivery sound. A tailor’s prentice, sitting cross-legged in a window, winked at him and adjusted his black horn thimble. Strange foreign smells mingled with the city dust, herbs and spices, calico bales, smoked fish and outland leather. The footwalk was shadowed; but ahead the sun beat down on the spars of sloops and transformed their rigging into shimmering threads like wire.

Turning down the docks, Jerry threaded his way between the wheels of carts and under the noses of dozing horses. Dock hands grunted against the heft of bales and hauled on tackle ropes. A long row of barrels gave forth a strong sickly sweet smell of wine. A shipment of Jamaica chickens kept up an amazed chattering. Men shouted above the turmoil. A flock of pigeons with fluttering wings flipped out of the roadway, dipped over the roofs in a solid phalanx, circled, and by ones and twos came fluttering back.

An old crone shuffled out of a snuff shop, fumbling with her trembling fingers in a little bag, and rubbed the brown dust across her shrunken gums. She watched Jerry striding past and turned to follow his progress, niddering to herself. Her weak eyes peered with an almost malignant curiosity.

A hundred yards down the quay a sea captain took off his varnished hat and confronted a little group of townspeople. The old woman watched Jerry walk into the group and stand still. His thin face had to her worn eyes an untouched look; he was eager, he was alive, he was reckless. She tasted the snuff. He was looking for something; she peered close; a girl, she saw, with a coppery glint in her hair. The old woman’s hand snatched out a wisp of her own hair and stuffed it back under the shrunk knot. The wind drew across the people, swept the dock, and flapped the crone’s skills about her bare ankles.

A hawk, that had been cutting high circles over the Capitol, stooped like a bolt for the riverside. With wings snapping like taut silk, the pigeons exploded from the wagonway and whistled into the open windows of a rope loft; and the hawk towered, screaming, unheard above the city noise. But the tip of his wing cut across the sun and caught Jerry’s eye. His tilted eager face watched the bird soaring. When he looked down again, Captain Fearon was saying, “… gave me no trouble. A first-rate lot. Them as reach agreement will meet me here and sign papers.”

He stepped to one side, turning his back, and stroking his sandy beard. He had the detached air of a farmer offering poultry at a fair.

Jerry crowded onto the sloop with the other prospective buyers. Only a couple of ladies under French parasols remained on the dock. One of them spoke to a green-liveried negro manservant, pointing out a girl or two, while her companion fished in her reticule for an almond.

Jerry walked over to the outside rail of the sloop to give himself a last moment of reflection. Then he faced about. The girl was standing just to his left; and she was looking at him. As they exchanged a silent glance, the negro in green livery stepped up to her.

“You engaged?” he asked in a husky voice.

His brown eyes with flecked yellow whites went over her slowly and arrogantly. Even standing still he seemed to strut. But the girl appeared not to heed him. Her grey eyes did not shift from Jerry’s; she had a wide low forehead; her skin was creamy white, unburned by the sea glare, a faint suggestion of freckles giving it warmth. She had drawn herself up and, with the wind touching her, she gave Jerry an impression of freshness and strength.

“You engaged, you guhl?” demanded the negro sharply.

Jerry’s heart began to race— he paid no heed to the negro, but took a step forward to cut off his talk.

“Hey, you!”

As the negro shouldered him, he wheeled suddenly. His thin face was tight and keen, and his brown eyes narrowed.

“Get out!”

The negro’s breath spread his broad nostrils. For a moment he hesitated, pomposity swelling every seam of his elegant livery; then, meeting Jerry’s eyes, his pursed liver-colored lips lost their assurance.

“Yassuh.”

Jerry turned back to the girl. His hands were shaking. He said, “I’m go-ing to buy your papers.”

For answer, with a curiously passive gesture, she swung up the two bundles at her feet and lowered her eyes.

“Do you know what your price is?”

“Forty dollars.”

“That’s a good deal,” he thought; but he thought also, “I’ll have to hire out a winter and make it up.”

The color had flooded her cheeks. It seemed to come and go with her breathing. She had lost her erectness. Her shoulders drooped submissively. And Jerry felt himself suddenly go cold.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary Goodhill.”

Her voice was tentative, pitched very low.

“All right. Come along.”

He walked to the dock with set face, as if he were conscious of the curious stare of the sloop hands. The captain eyed him noncommittally. This was plain business to him: dollars and cents.

“Agreed, mister?”

“Yes,” said Jerry.

He set down his bundle on the crate that served the captain for a desk and undid the corners. Inside a rolled flannel shirt he found a piece of oilcloth from which he took a sheaf of bills. Forty dollars he counted out.

The captain lifted his sandy brows and made a small noise in his whiskers.

“Just a minute, my boy.” He drew a notebook from his jacket pocket and riffled the pages. “Mary Goodhill?” he asked the girl. She drew up slowly beside Jerry and nodded. “There’s a mistake then. This girl’s valued at eighty dollars.”

Jerry swung a questioning glance at the girl. Her eyes were enlarged as she stared at the captain. He noticed that her mouth was white and trembling. His jaw set.

“You said forty dollars,” he said to the captain.

“My book’s eighty. You can see it yourself.”

He held out the notebook. Jerry ignored it.

“Eighty dollars ain’t a fair price, for one.”

He spoke quietly, his lips stiffly framing the words.

“Oh, I see,” said the captain. “Just a mistake. She didn’t say her mother died in passage?”

The girl shook her head.

“What’s that got to do with it?” Jerry demanded.

The captain smiled guilelessly.

“It’s business, young man. The old lady died in sight of Sandy Hook. As near a complete passage as a plain mortal can make of it. And it’s fair this girl should reimburse me. I don’t want you to lose, though. The eighty dollars stands for two years. It’s on the papers. Sorry if you can’t make it. But there’s a couple of others. There’s a nice little dark girl. Welsh. Welsh are thrifty. Think it over.”

Jerry looked at Mary Goodhill. She was standing listlessly, as if all hope had been drained out of her. Then he saw over her shoulder the waiting face of the black man.

“It don’t seem right for her,” he said.

The captain shrugged. He started to turn away, then thought better.

“I’ll make it seventy,” he said suddenly. “And I’ll surprise you in the papers. That’s a cut price if I ever made one. She’s strong. She looks honest and a hard worker. And she’s nice-looking. It’s an offer.”