Paradise Alley (27 page)

He preferred to go out, to where he could at least talk to someone. Looking for the stills, up in the wilderness of brush and old trees just
to the north of Seneca Village—even though he knew he was taking a great risk, with all the slavecatchers who loitered constantly around the outskirts of the village. He had seen them from a distance—lean, restless men. They prowled around with manacles and whips on their belts, would steal a black man right off the road in broad daylight if they could get away with it.

The men who ran the stills were dangerous enough. Billy sought them out by the smell of the wood, the burning sugar. Making sure to move slowly and loudly into whatever thicket they were holed up in. There would always be two of them, standing over the pot. One of them stirring it slowly, the other standing by him, sure enough, with his hand on a rifle. Watching Billy balefully as he walked into the clearing, already holding out a coin in his hand.

They would take it, all right—still without a word—and hand him a battered tin cup of whatever they were brewing. Billy would drink it there, slowly taking swallows from the sweet, new, warm liquor. Squatting in the clearing, talking quietly with the other men, black and white, around the still. Exchanging hard-luck stories of how they couldn't find work. Repeating his own plans, when he got drunk enough, to go out West, maybe even to San Francisco, where it would surely be easier for a man to get real work—to do something besides wipe the noses and the arses of abandoned children.

But he had never gone anywhere save for back toward his cabin. Aware of his diminished capacities, and how vulnerable he was. Trying to walk as quietly, as lightly as possible. Looking out for anyone who could be trailing him—a blackbirder, or just a cutpurse, following him from the still.

This whole City, a place of hunting and evasion.

He loped back down the stairs from the cupola, passing the long lines of orphans moving past him, up to their dormitory rooms. They had been instructed by Miss Shotwell to go up and pick out one thing they might want to take with them.
What a useless thing to do, when they had to run for their lives—
but he couldn't blame them. It mattered all the more to them to take something when they had so little.

“I have instructed the children to be prepared to leave.”

Miss Shotwell and Miss Murray stood at the foot of the stairs, erect as ever, but the fear in their eyes undisguised now. Yolanda and Old Bert behind them, their faces grim.

“They will assemble back down here, then we will see whether it is necessary to leave the asylum.”

“
If
we can, Misses,” Billy said, as gently as possible. “
If
we can.”

Even from where they stood, inside the building, they could hear the rising noise of the crowd, somewhere to the east. He went around with Yolanda and Old Bert, making sure that all the doors were bolted and the windows were shuttered, until they were dripping with sweat inside the airless, sweltering building.
For all the good it would do against a mob—

The children filed dutifully back down to the first floor. The older ones guiding the very young, holding them by the hand. Lining up again in the dining hall, as the Yankee ladies indicated. Dressed in their bulky traveling jackets and knee pants; the girls in their long, fanned skirts. Alert for their next instruction, each of them clutching the one small possession they valued the most.

Not more than one in three was literally an orphan, Billy knew. They were the children of workingmen and women who had died from the cholera, or the consumption, or who had simply fallen over one day from exhaustion. But they were, as well, the children of whores, and of pickpockets and vagrants, their mothers now in the workhouse on Blackwell's Island. The sons and daughters of maids, and the young masters of their houses. Children who had been found abandoned on the streets, or whose parents simply no longer had the means to feed them. There were even a few who had made it up from the South on their own. Running with some larger group from a plantation—splitting up when the adults had been killed or recaptured, but still going on. Miraculously washing up, half-starved and spooked and silent, in this City.

These were likely to be their best years. He knew that, too. It was almost cruel, he thought, how they were being educated now—taught their manners, and how to read and write, and to figure. Trained in some useful skill or another before they were returned to their parents after a few years, or were apprenticed out to work as domestic servants and farmhands—most of them—once they turned twelve years of age.

But there were precious few homes in the City now, even among Republicans, that would hire black servants. Even fewer farms in upper Manhattan, or Long Island, that would take on a colored hand. Those that did were usually looking for someone they could pay next
to nothing, and treat as they liked. They were unlikely ever to have something like this again, a place where they would be assured of enough to eat and a warm room to sleep in, and people who cared about what happened to them.

And my children?
Billy tried to picture them here, moving up and down the stairs in accordance with the asylum bells. Walking silent and solemn, sitting where they were told. Until they were pushed back out into the City—

Especially the boy, Milton.
He would be bored here, seeing how well he read and thought already—much as he would like helping with the younger children, taking on some responsibility.

He was something fine—Billy knew it, though that only made him go harder on the boy. Trying anything he could to toughen him up, make him a man as soon as he could. This was a City that hated fine things, it liked to grind them down and break them to pieces, the finer and darker they were, the better—

The children waited, sweating in the dining hall, for their instructions. Billy waiting with them, trying to ease their minds as much as he could while the Yankee ladies talked over what they should do, where they should run to.

“We're just taking a little trip, a little walk up to the woods—”

He tried to make it sound as if they were only going on a picnic up to the new park, or one of the other rare excursions they got to take. But he knew he wasn't fooling any of them. They gazed back at him, as serious and quiet as deacons. Listening to the sounds of the mob, growing steadily closer now—

“But where
can
we go? Which way is safe?” he could hear Miss Murray whispering too loudly behind him.

There was the sound of fire bells, and what seemed like cheers, very close.

“Mr. Dove—please—see what that is,” Miss Shotwell asked him, but he was already moving down the hall to the front, and folding back one of the window shutters.

There was precious little he could see from there, looking out on the Fifth Avenue. A few white men running, the shouting louder than ever. Soon, though, he could smell something through the heavy summer air.

Fire.
They had already set it going—

A soldier came stumbling down the Fifth Avenue. Then another, and another. A few of them dragging their muskets by the barrel, the rest empty-handed. An officer futilely waving a sword about. Some of them staggering, bleeding from the head, helped along by their comrades. All of them moving as fast they could down the avenue, glancing fearfully behind them.

So—the soldiers were routed already. And now the mob would be coming. Looking out for something else to wreck, someone else to chase.

He went back to tell the Yankee ladies what he had seen, whispering the news to them. They took it with a show of calm before the children, but he could see the desperation on their faces. What
were
they to do now? They should head south, he supposed, toward lower Manhattan, but that would only be walking them right into whole wards full of drunken Paddy workingmen—

There was a loud rapping at the front door. Billy and the Yankee ladies looked at each other—all of them plainly wondering if this was it, if they could be here already. Slowly, Billy started down the hall again.

“That's all right, Mr. Dove. I'll go,” Miss Shotwell said hurriedly, starting after him—but he would not let her.

“No, Miss. That's all right.” He paused, trying to find the right words. “Now, you know enough to
move
with those children, if you don't see me come back. Go south, and west, I guess—as fast as you can!”

He hastened on down the hall, not waiting for an answer. Figuring that at least the bolt on the door would delay them. There would be time enough for him to get back to the ladies and the children, start them out through the backyard.
And then?

The rapping at the front door persisted. He sidled up toward the window shutter he had opened, trying to stay out of sight. Thinking he could at least see whoever it was before they could see him.

A face popped up before him, so close and sudden he jumped back. It was low to the ground, where he didn't expect to see it—a terrible sort of goblin face, wide and grinning and smeared with blood and soot. The face of
—a boy,
he saw now. A young white boy, tapping just as insistently at the window as he had at the door. Before Billy had really thought about it, he had the door open, letting the child in,
assuming he must be in some sort of trouble himself. But the boy had only stood there, still grinning at him.

“They're comin' to burn ya out,” he said. “They done burned down the draft office, an' broke the wheel. Now they're comin' to burn ya out here.”

“When?” Billy asked, squatting down.

The boy just standing there, at his ease, like some terrible messenger bird.
And where had he gotten that blood on his face? And the ashes?

“Anytime, I figure. Soon's they finish burnin' the block. They're already talkin' about it, sayin' let's go over an' burn the nigger orphans.”

“How will they come? Do you know? Down the Fifth Avenue?”

“Sure. An' the Fourth Avenue—any way they can, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.”

That decided it. They would have to leave now, head south and just hope they could outrun the mob.

“I know a way past 'em,” the boy said, matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“Over to the Twentieth Precinct house. I can take youse there.”

Billy looked at the child closely, wondering if he could be part of some trap. But he seemed completely at his ease—and besides, they would not need a trap.

“The Twentieth is uptown,” Billy quizzed him. “How do we get up
there?
Past the mob?”

“Through the back lots,” the boy told him. “It's easy—if you know how.”

The back lots. Anything that might keep them off the streets, as out of sight as possible. That way, even if they were found out, the children would have a chance to run for it, hide themselves away in cellars and coal chutes and outhouses—

He stood up then, listening. He could hear what sounded like drunken singing—still a few blocks away, but moving unmistakably closer.

“All right,” Billy said, putting his arm around the boy's shoulders and leading him back down the hall. “All right, we'll try it your way.”

They started out the back door of the Orphans' Asylum, once again in perfect formation. Two lines, girls in one, boys in the other. The older children carrying the smallest ones on their backs.

The Yankee ladies, Yolanda, and Old Bert each carried one of the younger children themselves—Yolanda puffing and fretting peevishly as she moved—“
That mob's comin' from uptown, I don't see why we're
goin'
uptown.
” The Misses all but silent with fear, but insistent on bringing up the end, checking for any stragglers.

Billy himself carried two little girls, one in each arm. Walking at the head of the column, to keep up with the white boy who was guiding them. Still unsure of whether to trust or believe him at all, but wanting to at least be in a position to warn the others, if it was a trap.

Also so that he could kill the boy with his bare hands, so help him God he would, if it was a trap—

They moved quickly and quietly through the backyard. One child—a beautiful little Martiniquean girl named Anik—starting to break loudly into a hymn, used to the singing they did whenever they marched anywhere.

Then sings my soul

My savior God to me—

“Stop that now! Stop that noise!”

The other children shushing her before he could. They were fully aware of what was going on, he realized. The sound of the crowd just outside in the Fifth Avenue now—chanting something of their own.

“This way.”

The boy grinned up at him, proud to show off his secrets. He unlatched the back, latticed gate, and they marched calmly on out of the back courtyard. As the last child passed through, Billy could hear the mob on the other side of the building, gathering outside the iron gate.

“Wait! Wait! I forgot it!”

At that moment a tiny boy they called Tad broke out of line, bursting back through the gate and into the asylum before Billy could stop him. He had no choice but to hand the two girls off to Old Bert. Yolanda cursed a blue streak at him, but he told them to go on and he would catch up to them—racing back into the house after Tad, swearing under his breath the whole way.

Billy followed the boy up the stairs, toward the dormitory. There he found him, by his bed, pawing through an old cigar box until he found what he was looking for.
A horse.
The tiny, tin figure of a horse.
A small ring attached to its back, part of a key chain once—maybe something that had once belonged to his father or mother. He held it up triumphantly—but Billy was already on him, swinging him up from the floor.

“Is that it? Is that what you want?”

Might as well be sure now.

“Yes,” Tad breathed, and Billy scooped him into his arms, rushing him back toward the stairs.