Curiosity (3 page)

It was all over, all right, but not for me. Everyone thought that, in my eagerness to win, I'd made a fatal blunder. But they'd forgotten about my rook, which had sat patiently in its home row all this time, waiting for its chance. When I slid it across the board to checkmate the White king, there were gasps of surprise; then the observers burst into applause.

Mulhouse shook my hand again. “Well played, my young friend.” He fished in his pocket and came up with a silver dollar. “Now you may buy yourself another chess set.”

“I've got more important things to spend it on,” I said, and hurried from the Club. As always happens when I'm caught up in a chess match, I'd lost all sense of time. The afternoon was almost gone. But if I paid the keeper at the prison right away, my father might have a bed and a good meal before the day was out.

I didn't get far before I heard someone call my name. I turned to see Mulhouse striding after me. “Do you have a moment, Rufus?”

“Not really,” I said. “I have to get to the prison.”

“I'll be brief, then. I think I may have a . . . what is the word you Americans use? A
job
for you.”

I blinked at him, baffled. “I was to work for you if I
lost
, not if I won.”

“This has nothing to do with our wager. I thought you could use the money.”

“I could. What kind of job? As I said, I'm not very strong.”

“It will take some time to explain—more time than you have just now.” He handed me a calling card. “Will you meet me tomorrow morning around nine o'clock, at this address?”

I glanced at the card. It read:

“But you said your name was—”

“Never mind that, now. Can I count on you to be there?”

“I'll be there.” Not only did I need money, I wanted to know more about this Maelzel and his Automata, Dioramas, and Curiosities.

“Ah,
bon, bon
.” He shook my hand once more. “Go, now.”

I headed for the Arch Street prison as fast as my puny legs could carry me. I could hear the coins clinking in my pocket—a sound that cheered me no end. Suddenly my prospects were looking up. Not only could I help my father out a little right away, in time I might even earn enough money for his release, if the job Mulhouse had mentioned actually materialized.

I had no idea what it might involve, or what the wage might be. But whatever sort of work it was, and however much it paid, it was bound to be better than my current miserable situation.

Or so I thought.

T
HOUGH THE MAIN STREETS OF THE CITY
were wide, the brick sidewalks were narrow. I often had to step off the curb or flatten myself against a building to avoid being run down by self-important businessmen anxious to get home to their comfortable town houses and their decanters of whiskey and their suppers of roast beef and pickled oysters.

But I was weary from all the walking, not to mention the chess playing, and I didn't always dodge fast enough. When I was nearly to the prison, a well-fed merchant, bent on catching an omnibus, knocked into me and sent me spinning. I don't believe he even noticed.

As I picked myself up, I spotted an object lying on the bricks next to me. It was an ornate gold pocket watch, with a short length of chain attached. I suppose that, when we collided, it was yanked somehow from the merchant's vest pocket and the chain snapped. “Oh, Lud!” I said (an expression I'd picked up from novels, and one my father disapproved of). Snatching up the watch, I turned toward the omnibus the man had boarded. But it was already pulling away from the curb and, in my dazed and exhausted state, I couldn't dream of catching it.

And then I saw the policeman. It gives you some sense of how bad my luck was at the time; with only twenty-four constables spread out over the whole of Philadelphia, what are the chances that one would happen to walk past at the very moment when I was holding another fellow's ridiculously expensive watch in my hand?

The constable must have had a bad day, too, for he had no patience with me. He wouldn't listen to a word I said in my defense. He seized the watch, then my ear, and dragged me bodily before the nearest magistrate—the very same God-fearing fellow who had sentenced my father. When the magistrate learned my identity, he nodded grimly, as if this were exactly what you could expect from the son of a heretic, and muttered, “The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.”

A few years earlier, being arrested for theft would have gotten me three or four months in prison—perhaps the same one that held my father. But the Society of Friends—the Quakers, you know—had recently established the House of Refuge. Its purpose was to reform what they called “juvenile delinquents.” Throw a young offender in with adult criminals, they said, and he will learn nothing except how to be a criminal. At the House of Refuge he would be educated and trained, and eventually might become a regular apprentice. At least that was the theory.

I couldn't wait for eventually.
My father needed my help now. I tried to tell the magistrate that I was no thief; I said that I'd been offered a job and that, if they put me away, I'd miss my chance at it. He paid me no more mind than if I had been a small stray dog, yapping at him.

He assumed that the coins in my pocket were stolen, too, and confiscated them. Then he had me put in a holding cell with three other so-called delinquents: a pair of scrawny sisters who were younger than me, and a boastful older boy named Ezra, who claimed that he'd broken out of the House of Refuge three times and would do so again. “My last name's Dunaway,” he said. “But the other boys call me Runaway.” His latest attempt had involved cramming himself into a shipping crate that he had addressed to a fictional person in Baltimore.

Curious as always, I asked, “Why Baltimore?”

Ezra shrugged. “We read about it in our lessons. It sounds like an interesting place.”

“Did you get there?”

“Nah. When they were loading the box onto the freight wagon, they dropped it.” He rubbed his shoulder. “Nearly broke my arm. 'Tis just as well. If they hadn't, I probably would have suffocated. Next time I'll remember to cut air holes in the box.”

“Why do you want to escape so badly?”

He gave me a scornful look, as if I'd asked the stupidest of questions. “You'll see,” he said.

After dark, we were loaded into a police van and treated to a bone-rattling ride that ended in a suburb known as The Vineyard. I saw no vineyards, nor much of anything else. When we emerged from the van, we found ourselves in a large courtyard dimly lighted by oil lamps. “Welcome to the House of
Ref
use,” said Ezra sarcastically. There was nothing house-like about the building that stood before us. In fact, it more nearly resembled a prison—a bleak, three-story structure of rough stone surrounded by a twenty-foot wall with a tower at each corner.

A plainly dressed woman appeared and led the two sisters, whose names I never learned, to the girls' dormitory. Ezra sighed. “I'm too tired to escape tonight. Come on.” He shouldered his small sack of belongings, approached a thick oak door, and pounded on it. A bony, grizzled man opened the door; he raised his lantern to get a look at our faces, and gave a mostly toothless smile. “Well, if 'tisn't Brother Runaway. Had a good holiday, did thee?”

“Not bad. A bit shorter than I planned.”

“Who's thy friend?”

“Oh.” Ezra turned to me. “Thee never—
you
never told me your name.”

“Rufus Goodspeed.”

“Welcome to the House of Refuge, Brother Goodspeed. I'm Brother Bunsen. Brother Dunaway, one of the big boys took thy room. We'll have to put thee in this one.” Calling it a room was being far too kind; it was more in the nature of a cell, perhaps four feet by eight, with a single bed and a narrow window, and nothing else. Well, I thought, it's more than my father has.

“Good job I took my belongings with me,” grumbled Ezra, “or somebody'd have had them, too.” He dropped his bundle and, sitting on the mattress, bounced up and down a few times. “Not much stuffing. I been here longer, so I get to choose, and I'll take the outside.”

My side of the bed was right up against the rough wooden wall. As we had no nightshirts, we just removed our shoes and stretched out in our street clothing. We slept head to foot. Ezra's feet were not quite as bad as those of the boy who'd kicked me earlier, but if cleanliness is next to Godliness, as my father always claimed, I'd have say they were ungodly filthy. It had been a trying day and I was ready for it to end but, as I was drifting off, Ezra said, “Does it hurt?”

“What?” I said, drowsily.

“Your back.” He had made no mention of my infirmity until now; I had fooled myself into thinking that perhaps he hadn't noticed.

“Yes,” I said.

“You never let on.”

“My father says that, whatever our fate is, we should accept it with good grace.”

Ezra grunted dubiously. “And what was
his
fate?”

“Right now, he's in prison.”

“Mine, too. What's yours in for?”

“Debt. And yours?”

“Murder,” he said matter-of-factly. “What about your mother?”

“She died when I was born. Yours?”

“The consumption got her.” There was a silence, then he said, “Rufus?”

“Umm?”

“You ain't got head lice, have you?”

“No.”

“Good. If you do, they shave off all your hair. Even your eyebrows.”

“Umm.” I dozed off for a few moments, and then I heard Ezra's voice again. “Time to get up, Rufus,” he said.

“Very funny,” I murmured.

“No, really. The five-o'clock bell just rung.”

I sat up and peered at the window; there was no trace of daylight. “Five o'clock? Who gets up at five o'clock?”

“Juvenile delinquents,” he said.

Like the words “apartment” and “room” and “house,” the term “refuge” is misleading. It suggests a place of safety, a retreat from the cares and woes of the world. The Parsonage had been a real refuge. This place was merely a compressed, claustrophobic version of the larger world, with all the same troubles and tiresome tasks but without the comfort of family and familiar surroundings.

The only thing my new life had in common with the old one was the emphasis on prayer and religious services. The first order of the day was morning worship in the chapel. This was followed by an hour or two of studies; our textbook was something called
Moral Recreations in Prose and Verse
. Dickens, it was not, or even Catherine Sedgwick. I still recall one bit of doggerel that we committed to memory:

Whatever your diversions are

Pursue them all with proper care

And never till your task is done

To any play attempt to run.

It was accompanied by a woodcut of two boys. I remember it clearly because one of the boys had a bit of a stoop, and at first I thought, Well, there's another fellow like me; I'm not the only one. Then I realized the reason for his hunched posture: The two were playing leapfrog, and the other boy was about to vault over him.

At seven we finally broke our fast with porridge and butter bread, then worked at our appointed jobs until dinner. Some of the boys did bookbinding, some made brass nails or umbrellas or furniture; I was fit only to wind weaving yarn onto bobbins. It was such a repetitive task, I had plenty of time to think.

I thought about my missed meeting with Mulhouse; whatever he had in mind for me, it must be better than winding bobbins. Certainly the money would be better, for here we received no pay at all. I thought about my father, who told me how much he looked forward to my visits; I could not visit him now, nor could I provide him with a bed or food. And I thought about chess. I had played it every day of my life from the age of four, and I keenly felt the loss, the way a drunk must feel when deprived of the bottle.

After dinner there were more lessons, then four more hours of work, then supper, then even more lessons, followed by evening prayers. Oh, I nearly forgot: Before the evening classes, we were given a full half hour for recreation.

Naturally, the older boys' favorite recreation was to torment the younger ones. They reserved their meanest pranks for the colored boys. The place held perhaps a hundred lads of all ages, from six to twenty. Only a dozen or so were black, and most of those were quite young; I believe it was usual to treat Negroes above the age of thirteen or fourteen as adults and send them to prison, no matter how minor their crime.

On my third day there—or it may have been my fourth; I lost all track of time—while the other boys played noisily at catch and tag and torment-the-coloreds, I sat alone in a corner of the courtyard, playing chess. Since I had no board or pieces, and no means of making any, I was reduced to conducting matches in my mind. This isn't as difficult as it sounds. Remember, I'd played blindfolded many times at the Chess Club, sometimes against three or four men simultaneously. A single unseen game was no great effort, especially when my opponent was myself.

I must have been unconsciously moving the invisible pieces with my hands, for I heard a brash voice say, almost in my ear, “Look, the hunchback is spastic, too!” Several other voices broke into loud guffaws.

So sheltered was my childhood, I hadn't encountered much outright taunting or teasing, only stares and whispers. I wasn't sure how to deal with these rowdies; I thought my best bet was to pay no attention to them. I simply sat there, unmoving, my eyes still closed.

My tactic didn't work. “Let's see if he walks funny!” said the brash voice. A rough hand grabbed hold of my collar and dragged me to my feet. I opened my eyes to see four of the big boys crowded close around me, laughing and poking at me as though I were some curiosity, like one of the “nondescripts” touted by Phineas Barnum:
Looks like a boy, acts like a monkey!
“Come on, hunchback,” said the ringleader, who I had heard the other boys call Duff. “Show us your spastic walk.” He gave me a shove; when I fell to my hands and knees, he booted me in the rump. “Get up, little man!”

Before I could respond, I heard a new, less raucous voice say, “Duff! Let him be, all right?”