Alexander C. Irvine (21 page)

The
bew
hiskered
prop
rietor
of the dry-goods store hadn’t batted an eye when Archie walked in wearing only his sodden johnny and a horse blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and he was immediately solicitous when Archie showed him a handful of Barnum’s money and inquired about a suit of clothes for traveling.

“Looks like you done a fair bit of traveling already,” was the clerk’s only comment as he led Archie to the rear of the store and brought out armloads of trousers and shirts.

After making his clothing purchases, Archie bought a sheath for Helen’s knife. “Never sold a sheath for a kitchen knife before,” the clerk said, shaking his head. “Sure you don’t want a good steel Bowie instead?”

“Call me superstitious,” Archie said with a wry smile. “This one’s got me this far.”

Fully dressed again, with a new hat and coat and good boots to replace his ruined shoes, Archie had gone down to the Allegheny docks wondering if people wandered half-naked out of the wilderness every day in Pittsburgh. He wore the knife on his hip at first, but became uncomfortable with it in view and shifted it around so it rested in the small of his back. It was a bit awkward there, but he felt better having it concealed.

Pittsburgh was nothing like New York, Archie realized as he made his way along the waterfront. It hunched like a sooty dwarf over the confluence of its three rivers, Allegheny and Susquehanna coming together to begin the winding Ohio, which would take Archie to Louisville—and Jane. Thinking of her, he felt a useless guilty urge to bring her some sort of gift, but could think of nothing that would be worth carrying along. Finally he noticed a confectioner’s and bought nearly a pound of hard candy, mostly peppermints. Helen had loved peppermints.

Where are you, daughter?
Archie wondered as he followed the sloping streets down to the cluster of docks like unfinished bridges pointing at the rivers’ western shores. The headwaters of the Ohio were jammed with boats of every description, majestic paddle-wheelers standing out among a motley array of flatboats, rafts, keelboats, and even canoes. Smaller than the seagoing vessels that clotted New York Harbor, these agile craft skittered like waterbugs on the swift river currents, their captains bawling curses as they fought for space at the docks. It looked to Archie like all the business of the world was being conducted in Pittsburgh, contracts signed and broken under the pall of smoke from the smelters that grimed the city’s brick buildings and billowed over the river valleys. Soot settled quickly into Archie’s clothes, and he could feel it on his face.

“Ahoy, traveler.” Someone poked Archie in the shoulder, and he turned to face a squat, bearded riverman chewing the stump of a cigar and grinning like a long-lost friend. “Delbert Gatty,” the man introduced himself, “merchant captain on the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, and every trickle in between. Is it New Orleans you’re headed for? Or St. Louis?”

“Louisville,” Archie replied. Why had this Gatty singled him out from the crowd?

“Done some riverin’ before, Mr.—?”

“Prescott. Archie.”

“Archie it is. Yer bulb there marks you a bit among all these Eastern dandies,” Gatty said, gesturing at the stub of Archie’s left ear. “A man who’s seen a scrap, that’s what I like, and I’m one man short. One of my niggers caught the complaint and shit out his life down Cairo. Pay’s a dollar a day, with three drams and all the bread’n bacon you can choke down.”

Gatty stuck out a hand whose last two fingers were a joint short. “Come aboard?”

Archie started to say no, but the thought occurred to him that the anonymity of working passage might not be a bad idea. He’d planned on traveling under a pseudonym the rest of the way, but for all he knew the chacmool could recognize his handwriting. It certainly hadn’t had any trouble finding him so far. The talisman must act as some sort of beacon, and if Tamanend was correct, Archie had to be on water to make it work both ways.

“Where are you going?” he asked Gatty.

“Dixieland. New Orleans and octoroon whores for us, and you too.”

“Going straight there?”

“River’s never straight, friend, but we’ll get there fast as anyone. Shake.”

Archie did. Working passage it was, then. The more he blended in with the stream of river traffic, the less obvious he’d be to the chacmool and Riley Steen. Or so he hoped.

“Welcome
aboard
Maudie
Gatty cried as they approached a small, boxy single-wheeled steamer.
Maudie
measured perhaps sixty feet in length and thirty across her beam, with a small cabin on the starboard side toward the stern, just behind the boiler. A slanted lean-to roof descended from the base of the rusted stack to the cabin’s eaves, sheltering a small group of Negroes asleep on the deck. The center of the boat was taken up by the boiler and several cords of firewood along the port rail, between the boiler and the wheel. Nearly every square foot of deck space was taken up with cargo stacked neck-high under fraying canvas tarpaulins.

Maudie
looked tired, Archie thought. Strips of white paint peeled from her hull, and the roof of the cabin was blackened and sagging. At her stern was a manual rudder that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Roman trireme; seeing Archie notice it, Gatty shrugged and said, “Wheel’s broke. She’s a working boat. Hope you don’t mind her paddle’s on the left; some men won’t sail with me on account of that.”

“I’m—not a superstitious man,” Archie said, but he remembered what he’d told the dry-goods proprietor about his knife.

“Then I guess old
Maudie’s
name won’t bother you, will it, Gator?” Gatty guffawed and slapped Archie on the shoulder.

Unsure how to respond, Archie gave what he hoped was a hearty laugh.

“Rufus!” Gatty shouted as he stepped onto the deck. Archie followed, looking for a place to stow the valise while the crew was otherwise distracted. “Rufus, roust the niggers and let’s move!”

The cabin door opened, and a narrow squinting face topped by spiky gray hair peered around it. Rufus came out onto the deck and scratched at his patchy beard, squinting at the late-morning sun. Standing erect, he was a good deal taller than the cabin door, but he appeared to have some difficulty maintaining an upright posture. A brown clay jug dangled from one bony hand; Archie judged it was nearly empty from the way he swung it in small circles. He tipped the jug up and drained it, then flung it into the water.

“Morning, darkies!” he sang, making his unsteady way to the sleeping blacks and prodding each in turn with the toe of his boot. “Time to move along!”

Gatty joined him near the boiler. “Rufus, Archie. He’s signed on for this trip.” Rufus looked surprised, then shook his head and muttered something about being too far upriver. Gatty laughed and elbowed Archie. “Old Rufus was expecting you to be a nigger, Archie. He done forgot we ain’t in Dixie no more.

“Keep your nose clear of the mash until you show Archie around a bit,” Gatty said to Rufus. “We got to make time today. MacGruder’s cabinets are late, and he ain’t a patient man.”

As the three blacks stood and stretched, Archie saw that each was shackled about the ankles, forcing them to shuffle as they moved to their stations. They were dressed only in shirtsleeves despite the weather, and holes gaped at the knees of their trousers. Archie had the uncomfortable feeling that when he stepped aboard the
Maudie,
he’d crossed a border of some sort, one that he hadn’t really known existed.

Two of the slaves began loading wood into the boiler and shoving it away from the open door with a long poker. At least that should keep them warm, Archie thought. That poor fellow taking hold of the rudder there must have been glad they spent the winter in the South.

Rufus climbed onto the cabin roof, taking care to stay near the edges. “You, Archie, pole from the bow. Keep us clear of the damned rowboats,” he called as Gatty settled into the captain’s chair, at the front of the boiler behind the useless wheel. Gatty opened the throttle and
Maudie’s
paddle began to churn up the muddied dockside waters, moving the boat slowly out into the current.

Archie hurried to take up the long pole leaning against the bow railing. He dropped the valise between his feet and set the pole against the dock, keeping
Maudie
clear until the dock was too far away to reach. Gatty opened the throttle further, shouting for more steam, and
Maudie
pushed through a gap in the traffic. The rudderman leaned hard to his right, and the boat swung southward into the main channel, picking up speed as pressure mounted in the boiler. Archie kept his pole at the ready, looking out for other craft that might veer too close.

He was weary suddenly. He still hadn’t eaten since the packet boat had been loaded onto flatcars in Hollidaysburg, and he’d ridden all night with Maskansisil. When did rivermen sleep? On the Cabin roof, Rufus appeared to have fallen into a stupor, but the other four members of
Maudie
’
s
crew were still watchful. Archie had always read of rivermen as a lazy, shiftless lot of drunken brawlers, but that had mostly been in the
Herald.
The reality, at least thus far, seemed to be very different.

And that was true not just of river tales. Whatever Archie’s basic sympathies toward abolitionists like the earnest pastor bleeding, and yolk-smeared on Nassau Street, seeing real living slaves shook him to his soul. Until that moment he had only seen the free blacks who clustered in the Five Points and the Fourth Ward slums, and he had thought of slavery as somehow another, Southern, version of their poverty. A problem, certainly, but just that. Another problem.

Even that perspective put Archie in a minority among his circle of acquaintances. Bennett, like most of New York’s newspapermen, tirelessly wrote proslavery editorials excoriating “niggerist” attitudes, and had even gone so far as to brawl with a rival who held the oposite opinion. And Archie’s friends, including Udo and poor Mike Dunn, had been adamant in their belief that the “peculiar institution” benefited not only the Southern economy but the slaves themselves.

Thay never saw shackles on a man who hasn’t committed a crime, though, Archie thought. That was real in a way that pennysheet columns and
biergarten
conversations weren’t. Gatty’s three slaves were barefoot in March, for God’s sake.

Archie raised the pole as a heavily laden flatboat hove near
Maudie
on the port side. “Get your damned raft clear, Hoosier!” Garry howled from his captain’s chair. “Or I’ll run you down!”

“Run this down!” cried a man in the rear of the flatboat. He dropped his trousers and slapped his hairy buttocks as
Maudie
drove by. A burst of laughter rose up from the flatboat’s crew, and Archie could see the two stokers exchanging glances and suppressing smiles as they shoveled wood into the boiler.

Archie’s own surreptitious grin faded as Gatty charged to the port rail in front of the stacked firewood. “Show me your ass again, Hoosier, and I’ll shoot it off!” he screamed, veins bulging in his forehead. Then he drew a revolver and emptied it in the direction of the receding flatboat.

A chunk of the flatboat’s rudder burst into splinters, and the laughter of its crew turned to surprised shouts as they dove behind their cargo, leaving their boat to drift in the current. Gatty’s antagonist tripped over his trousers and scrambled quickly out of view.

Archie stood dumbfounded, nearly dropping his pole into the river. He didn’t think anyone on the flatboat had been hit, but that wasn’t really the point; only a madman would react in such a way to an insult he himself had provoked. For a moment he considered jumping into the river and swimming for the nearest bank; enough madness plagued him without the addition of berserk riverboat captains.

But the shore was too distant here, at the confluence of the Three Rivers, and Archie had barely learned to swim as a boy. Being on a boat with a lunatic, as bad as it might be, was certainly better than drowning. There’s Jane to think of, he told himself. Remember you’re a father still, and do what it takes to avoid antagonizing Gatty.

“Lord, are we attacked by Indians?” Rufus was sitting up, bleary-eyed and confused.

“Rufus, you drunk, we’re in Ohio,” Gatty snapped. “There’s no Indians for two hundred miles.” He reloaded his pistol and took his seat in the captain’s chair. Suddenly he roared with laughter.

“God Almighty, Rufus, but you missed a funny sight, that nancy Hoosier tripping over his britches!” Gatty slapped his knee. “Ha! He pissed himself for sure.”

He lifted a jug from under his chair and took a deep drink. “Archie,” he said. “You ever see any such thing?”

Archie shook his head and tried to smile. “Guess not,” he said.

” ‘Course not! That’s because I’m the only man on the river with balls big enough to give a Hoosier what he deserves. Any son of a bitch who’ll show his ass deserves a bullet in it.” Gatty waved the jug at Archie. “Stroll back here,” he said, “and let’s welcome you aboard. How’s the water, Rufus?”

“Clear enough.”

“Ha!” Gatty roared. “I’ll wager it is. Well, let’s have us a dram, then, boys. In honor of Hoosiers who can’t sit down.”

They are
coming.

“What?” Stephen rolled over, thinking that Charlotte had inumbled something in her sleep.

“Hmm?” she murmured, feeling sleepily behind her until she cought Stephen’s hand and drew it to her breast. He nestled into herr, feeling her heart beat, inhaling the warm bed-scent at the back of her neck. Then she was asleep again, her breath settling slow and deep.

The breath of a sleeping woman is one of the things love is made of,
Stephen thought.
If I
was a poet I’d write that down.

Moonlight spilled through the window, glazing Charlotte’s skin with a drowsy sweetness. To sleep in this bed, to love this woman—that was all a man could do. Stephen slipped back toward sleep.

T
hey are coming.

He blinked and raised his head, and the moonlight was the color of bones turning to dust.

They are coming, and you must prepare.

Stephen squeezed Charlotte’s hand and sat up, brushing the balls of his feet on the cold wooden floor. He stepped into his trousers and found his shoes.
Macehuales imacpal iyoloco,
he whispered, and Charlotte made small and frightened noises in her sleep.