3stalwarts (121 page)

Jerry flushed. The bills in his hands fluttered. He had not meant to bargain, but he felt the girl’s eyes on him. Without a word he counted out thirty more dollars. It left him a pitifully flimsy sheaf.

“You’ve made a bargain, young man.”

The captain was bent over the papers, sorting them. He selected a duplicate pair and weighted down the others with a copper spike. Then, taking out a quill pen from a pocket, he dipped it into an inkhorn fastened to his belt and drew a line through a phrase. He wrote there, “Two and a half years.” “… from the above date,” finished the sentence.

“Sign here,” he said.

Without speaking, Jerry bent over the papers and twice slowly and carefully signed his name.

“Can you write?” the captain asked the girl.

She shook her head.

“All right, I’ll write your name for you and you can make X’s.”

While she bent over the crate, Jerry looked away. There was a sick empty feeling in his insides. His first day on his own, and he had spent practically all his money. “I mind my first trip westward on my own. There ain’t nothing like it in the world.” His eyes roved. He saw the Greenbush Ferry crossing east, almost at the far side of the river, the horses patiently treading in their channels. The steamboat lay quiescent at her wharf, no trace of smoke from her empty furnaces, only the watchman aboard and he with his heels hanging over the lower deck while he fished the river. His glance passed on, over the city, tracing the white line of State Street mounting westward to the Capitol, and just behind the massive building a tufted white cloud. The sun was a little past noon and edges of shadow marked the eastern eaves.

A man with flour dust on his trousers was leading another man off the sloop. The air was bright on their faces.

The girl bent up from the crate stiffly. She regarded Jerry quietly a moment. The captain handed over the papers. He blew a drip of ink from the point of the quill and wiped it on his trousers, gave Jerry a brief grin, turned to the baker.

“Agreed, mister?”

Jerry tied up the papers in his bundle.

“Come on,” he said to the girl.

For the second time that morning, Jerry Fowler turned into South Mar-ket Street. The wind still blew on his shoulders, and the sunlight filled the street; but his attention was not on the people or the roadway.

He eyed the girl at his side, walking slowly with her head bent down. She had grown unaccountably white; she moved listlessly; her shoulders bowed to the heavy bundles. He stopped for a moment.

“Here, you take my bundle,— it’s light,— and let me have yours.”

For an instant she seemed reluctant, but he took the bundles away roughly, and then she meekly accepted his.

“We’ll go up to the park,” he said. “I want to talk to you, but I can’t here.”

He shouldered her two bundles and led the way forward, wondering at what he had done and what he was to do. He held his face turned resolutely from her, but all the time something kept singing in his head-that he had set her free, but that if he chose to keep her, legally she was his.

He became aware after a moment that she was no longer beside him, and, looking back, he saw her following a few feet in his wake. He halted for her to catch up. She walked painfully slowly. A greenish tinge had touched her forehead, and beads of sweat formed over her eyebrows. He said nothing, but when they went on he matched his pace to hers.

They turned the corner into State Street and began laboriously to mount the grade. Here the high buildings shouldered off the wind and the sun beat on them fiercely. The Dutch aspect of the city was giving way to more modern buildings. Ahead, beyond the little park, loomed the brown front of the Capitol.

The noon hour blanketed the city with a kind of hush. The wagons in view were for the most part motionless beside the curb. In a parallel street, the rattle of wheels made an uncanny uproar. Only the sparrows, taking advantage of the stillness, bustled here and there among the cobbles.

As they climbed, Jerry and the girl passed through occasional zones of air laden with the sound of voices and crockery and the smell of cooking. The doors were open on the street, and through them he caught glimpses of their smoke-filled Dutch interiors, with city men sitting at the tables, their beer mugs between them. Their voices rolled forth into the street in a dim, meaningless uproar.

In one of these streams of talk and cookery, Jerry halted to ask the girl if she were hungry.

She shook her head. Though she seemed glad of the stop, she moved away from the door into the thin strip of shadow beside the eating-house wall. She held his bundle in front of her knees and wearily straightened her back. He saw that she was breathing in deep breaths, that her lips were tight closed and her eyes dull.

“Do you feel sick?” he asked kindly.

Her lips moved stiffly.

“A little.”

“Catch your wind, then. Wait here and I’ll get something for us to eat. It’ll make you feel better.”

Without waiting for her denial, he dropped the bundles at her feet and entered the eating house. Two gentlemen in black coats sitting at a window table eyed him momentarily under raised brows before resuming their con-troversy. Jerry felt nervous and out of place. Some serving men kept com-ing and going through the tobacco smoke, breaking it into waves with the speed of their passage. Gouts of foam flipped from the tankards they carried and slapped on the broad board floors. Somewhere in the dim interior sounded a continual rattle of dishes, and at minute intervals voices bawled unintelligible countersigns. The din was terrific in Jerry’s country-bred ears; yet the men at the tables talked in lowered voices, easily.

“Three beef, eight.”

And the echo, nasal and shrill, “Three beef”

“Still sitting?” a neighboring diner asked his companion.

“Yes, sir.”

“One plum tart, two”

“One plum,” came the echo.

“It’s all straight through the Assembly. But the Senate is holding its horses.”

“A good thing, too. It would be better for us if they threw the whole damned bill out.”

“They won’t. Clinton’s got the back country pretty solid behind him. They’re scared.”

“The southern tier’s solid.”

“Tammany!”

“What of it?”

“They want their finger in the pie. They don’t see it’s the only thing to save New York. Population dropping there, and lands falling off in price. They’ve voted solid against the bill at every ballot. That’s what’s got our backs up, and it’s what will pass the bill.”

“Not in the Senate.”

“Even Van Buren’s for it.”

“Three beer! One lobo pale sherry, all fourteen”

“It will be a great thing for Albany.”

“Surely will. Eight million dollars is a great thing. It’s worth twice that, money being so tight. People are scared.”

“They ought to be. Land speculation, and they never stopped to consider how to develop their investments. They sink a hundred dollars at a cast and sit back and expect a fortune!”

“Well, the canal ought to mean dollars in my pocket,” said a dapper little man, leaning over. “I’ve got a hundred yards of river frontage right where the basin’s going to be.”

“If they dig it, mister, if they dig it.”

Jerry dove desperately for a passing waiter.

“Yes, sir.”

He halted, recklessly tilting his tray over his shoulder.

“Can you get me a loaf of white bread, a quarter wedge of cheese?”

“Table, sir?”

“Table.”

“Number of your table?” The waiter had wide-open eyes.

“Oh,” said Jerry. “I want to take it with me.”

“This here’s a coffeehouse, young man. Try the cheap store round the corner in South Pearl.”

He darted off. Jerry flushed and turned back to the door. The girl was still standing where he had left her. There was something pathetic to Jerry in her passive indifference. He felt protective towards her.

“Do you like buttermilk?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

A row of shops extended along Pearl Street, showing their signs above the walk.

Flour and Feed Store

Mrs. Widget’s Cake and Bakery

Leather and Finding

J. Tromper, Uncurrent Notes Bought

A little shop with a single window bore in plain lettering:—

Cheap Store

Jerry turned in. It was no more than a stall, smelling pleasantly of butter and cream. A yellow kitten uncurled itself on a table top, opened its blue eyes, and yawned at him.

While he waited he scratched its chin, and it squinted up at him lazily and purred. Then a fat old woman came through a narrow door in the rear.

“Yes, mister?”

“I want a loaf of bread… .”

“White or black? Coarse or fine?”

“White— a penny loaf. And a half pound of cheese. And have you any buttermilk?”

“Yes. Got a jug?”

“No.”

“Two cents for a quart jug.”

“All right.”

The girl was still where he had left her. As he came round the corner, she stooped for their three bundles. She seemed better for her rest, but her underlids were reddened as if she had been crying. He handed her the jug and food and took all their bundles, and side by side they continued their ascent to the park.

The grounds looked new and neat, with small trees set out in an orderly fashion, and shrubs staked up. They found a bench under a somewhat larger maple whose small leaves filtered the sunlight. There were no people in the park, though the gates stood open; and they opened their bread and cheese with a comforting sense of privacy.

“We’ve got nothing to drink with,” said Jerry. “I didn’t think of that.”

For answer the girl bent over one of her bundles and fished in it with her hand. She drew out a small earthenware mug with a picture in red on its side of a castle amid trees, and in the foreground a man sleeping while his dog watched two small sheep.

Jerry examined the picture.

“It’s pretty. Where is it? Don’t you know?” as she shook her head. “It’s a queer-looking house.”

She took the mug from his hand and tilted up the bottom. Under the glaze her name was written, and a date, “14 June 1798.”

“It’s your name cup?”

She nodded. He thought, “1798 from 1817: nineteen years.” And he looked at her more closely. She had seemed older than that.

“Do you feel like drinking a little? It’s cool.”

“Yes.”

Her voice was stronger. It had an appealing husky note that was saved from harshness by instinctive modulation.

“Here.”

While she held the mug he poured out the white drink with its swimming golden flecks.

“No, you first.” He watched her while she sipped, and then cut the bread and passed her a piece of cheese between two thick slices. She nibbled at it tentatively. But as the food entered her she gained confidence. Her color rose quickly, and after a few moments she ate as heartily as he. The bread was fresh, with a clean rich wheaty taste and a hard brown crust. They ate in silence.

When they had finished and shaken the crumbs off for the sparrows, Jerry thriftily bound the remnant of cheese and bread in his bundle and, holding it on his knees, leaned back contentedly. All of Albany was spread out under his eyes: the grey roofs going down to the river in steps; the hills southward broken by the steep ravines; the blue belt of water, with the sparkling masts; a white sail carrying forward a sloop; and the sun shining like fire on the glass dome of the Albany Bank at the bottom of State Street. The breeze reached the two in the park and made them cool; and at its touch on his cheeks Jerry put out of his mind the thought that he had done a foolish thing. He turned suddenly to find the girl’s eyes examining his face.

Her eyes had lost their look of worry; the dark grey had deepened still further, almost with a tinge of blue. They were tender to Jerry and full of a meaning that he could not read. But he felt more and more acutely the coolness of the breeze and the fire in the sunlight; and he became aware of his hands, the stiffness of the palms and the thickness of the finger joints. They were slow in following his will; they shook as he reached them into his pocket; and they fumbled the papers awkwardly. And all the time he felt the wind blowing.

“Here are your papers,” he said. “You’re free now.”

He saw a question coming into her eyes.

“You can go anywhere you want to, now.”

A puzzled crease came down between the girl’s brows. He had turned away from her. He was speaking softly; as if he listened for something over his own voice. Her eyes wandered over his old clothes, noting the dust on his boots thickening the oil, and the fact that a button would need tightening, and that if she wove homespun in with a needle on the knee of the trousers within a day or two, she could ward off a hole. She glanced at his face— he was looking away at the river— and she thought that he had small flat ears, and that, though his nose was large, it was well shaped. And then she looked away, resting her chin on her hands, and drew a deep breath, for these things she had been thinking were none of her business. She tried to answer him; but she found no answer. And as they sat, both staring at the river, the wind, blowing across them, kept them aware of each other.

After a while, Jerry asked, “Didn’t you have any plans?”

She shook her head.

“Didn’t your mother know anybody in this country?”

“She never told me that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

She had a slightly foreign twist to her way of speaking that broadened the vowels.

“I can’t take you with me.”

She glanced at his bent head. And he looked up to meet her eyes, and for a moment he thought that she was secretly amused, and he flushed.

“I can’t keep you.”

She made no comment.

“I haven’t got but twenty dollars and a few cents. I know a trade, but I don’t know where I’ll find work. Mr. Faggis gave me a recommend as millwright and carpenter after I worked a winter for him.”

The sloop on the river had passed Albany. As it ran against the waterside meadows of the Rensselaer land, he saw that it was pointing for Bath.