Stand the Storm (5 page)

On their circuit, Annie noticed establishments that belched much music, much singing. There was piano-playing, mouth organ, and fiddles, and there was much laughing gaiety from these places. There seemed to be a policy of wink-and-blink among strolling law officers as highly dressed-out white women promenaded the thoroughfares at dusk.

“ ’Tis a free and dirty place, this town,” Annie said in a partly questioning tone that called for Gabriel to answer. “ ’Tis a bit whorish with so many menfolk,” she continued. She further mused that a consequence of this custom was a big call for laundry work and female doctoring.

“Nanny, . . . I,” Gabriel stammered, greatly embarrassed by her inquiries yet determined to show himself an adult with his mam.

“Best to keep small around the lawmen in this town and around certain women running bawdy houses. Some free colored women and unattached white women are pressed to work the thoroughfare because they have asked the wrong person for bread and milk, Nanny. An equal number of unfortunate women are daily pushed into jail at the suggestion that they were abroad as a whore,” he said with some bristling.

“Aye ’tis a town for a man’s accommodation then,” she answered.

“Aye, Nanny, a white man,” he replied.

“A ripe place for laundry,” she said, as if making up a plan.

At Sewing Annie’s appeal, Aaron Ridley wrote to his uncle for permission to order four large casks to be made for the laundry operation. The new barrels rolled up Bridge Street from the cooper’s workshop upon completion as if on parade, with each one handled by a man driving it on its side and pushing it. On their arrival in the backyard, Annie stood aside and insisted that each barrel be filled and tested for fitness, and they were. Additionally, Annie cajoled for a roof above the back doorway to the yard to create shelter from the weather. Aaron Ridley had suffered rebuke from his uncle when he balked at providing the barrels to Annie, and so he went along with all of the woman’s ideas.

“Set me some rinsing water, Brother Gabriel,” Annie charged her son as soon as he’d put down his supper. The old shoulder-to-shoulder working familiarity had returned. The young master had gone to supper and there was laundry to finish, and though Gabriel had worked the long day, for love she wrung more from him.

“Yes, Nanny,” Gabriel said.

Some months after the sale of the tailoring business to Jonathan Ridley, Abraham Pearl sent a letter to Reverend Higgins that was meant for Gabriel. An important conduit for the exchange of information in the community of colored in Washington, Higgins received many letters at the church. Broadsides also passed through his hands linking colored in the town with others in the countryside.

Pearl knew that Gabriel could read and write, as he had assisted the young man in his pursuit of learning. But he was cautious. He would not risk addressing a letter directly to the young man. There was a penalty for such helping. Pearl trusted Higgins to take care and deliver the letter to Gabriel. Pearl’s letter, which arrived at the tailor shop tucked with laundry in Annie’s basket, began with pleasantries and included descriptions of his journey from Washington to St. Louis. Pearl eloquently described his amazement at the passing show and assured Gabriel early on that he was happy with his decision to leave for the West.

Abraham Pearl continued his narrative for six long pages to discourage one who might pry into the letter. He guessed that if he’d sent a short, cryptic message, more attention might be paid to its content. A rambling travelogue would certainly bore a nosy soul like Aaron Ridley long before he’d gotten to the meat of the message. The information contained on the sixth and seventh pages was for Gabriel’s eyes only.

Pearl revealed that a chest filled with army uniform buttons had been stored securely beneath the eaves of the shop’s roof in an area that could be reached only through the garret occupied by Gabriel himself.

They were military buttons—army buttons! The chest held several hundred bright, unused regulation buttons. Pearl departed from the florid style of the first pages of his letter—full as they were with descriptions of flowers, trees, rivers, streams, and various animals—to explain simply that he had won the cache at cards with an army supply clerk. As a tailor with a view to future value, Abraham Pearl had taken the chest with contents in trade and had had the presence of mind to secrete them. Pearl claimed in his letter to Gabriel that he had simply forgotten the chest’s existence when he’d taken off for points west. Anticipation of adventures had occupied his mind and he had not remembered to stow the buttons.

Pearl suggested that an industrious tailor might get a contract to sew uniforms and that these buttons might come in handy. Perhaps they would enable a clever tailor to make a smart profit on the work. Abraham Pearl finished his letter with advice to Gabriel to be careful who knew about the buttons and to consider the treasure to be a boon to his freedom plans.

Gabriel wanted to jump and whoop it up when he pulled the chest out of its hiding. The contents were as Abraham Pearl had said: shining brass army uniform buttons. There were several sizes mixed together, buttons for cuffs as well as buttons for coat fronts. They were each stamped with eagles and stars and they gleamed brightly.

Gabriel bowed his head over the chest and implored God to look after Abraham Pearl. He vowed always to include in his list of petitions a plea for his safety and happiness.

Annie cautioned her son. She was made nervous by the army buttons and she sought to take away Gabriel’s excitement or temper it. She peppered him with questions. How would they explain having them? Despite Abraham Pearl’s tale, could this be the boodle of a crook and they now a party to crime? Whom could they trust? The only thing was to return them to hiding.

Gabriel came around to agreement with his mother. The two satisfied themselves with counting them up and admiring them before tucking them back in their nest in the eaves.

Four

D
ANIEL JOSHUA CLAPPED
eyes on Annie across the way—from back in the doorway on Bridge Street. “This partridge is got a nest some’eres,” he muttered. A woman with so soft-looking a derriere must have a place to set it.

He saw she was a grown woman with arms fully muscled from her shoulders down to her wrists. He judged her arms for their strength because they would be to his purpose or against it. He saw her form despite her shawl and knew right away that she was a woman who toted water and wrung out wet clothes. A figurer, a ruminator, and a people-watcher, Daniel Joshua placed Annie as a free woman or a bondwoman with leave to come and go. He figured he’d have to chance that she would take care of the girl till he was sure he’d led the slave pinchers away. He didn’t doubt he’d be able to find this laundrywoman again. He knew where this one and that one and the other one of his own people were likely to be.

The “pinchers” following Daniel and the girl had no direct knowledge of them. They had simply been lurking around the docks looking for whatever might be going on or coming off the barges. They were independent agents set to snatch their quarry as the opportunity arose. Every day brought some fugitive to tumble off a vessel and land on the dock bewildered. Mostly these were taken up by such pinchers. And they had spotted Daniel—him carrying a sack off a vessel. Daniel Joshua cursed himself for so carelessly arousing their curiosity.

Daniel made the quick decision to separate from the girl. It was the best chance for her survival—and his own. He supported her so she looked like she stood on her own legs. He moved swiftly to Annie’s side and grasped the arm that had her market basket swinging on it. He transferred the dead weight of the wounded fugitive girl to Annie and spoke in her ear with great urgency. “Put your arm around her and hold her up! Say she’s your gal. Say she’s deaf and dumb. Say she’s sick and can’t stand up! Say it if they ask you.”

Daniel’s hot and fragrant breath blasted Annie’s left ear. The man grasped her elbow and brought himself close—as close as he could get without standing on top of her feet. “Wrap your shawl ’round her! She needs you to help her,” he continued. “It all depends on you now!” His voice was rough and direct, but not loud. He spoke, then left quickly with Annie’s own basket on his forearm. Compelled by the man’s words, Annie came to herself.

In her gut Annie knew better than to turn to face the man. It could be a life-or-death matter. His breath had been comforting on her ear, like it was a ladle of gravy on a fluffy biscuit. She was compelled.

The girl—the one he’d said was deaf and dumb—fell into Annie’s arms. If Annie had moved or failed to grasp her, she would have fallen clear to the ground.

As it was, the girl fell onto her protector like a sack of potatoes. She didn’t move. She was practically dead weight. Annie sank to her haunches and cradled the young woman.

“Come on up, girl. Get on up now. Come on up, girl,” Annie pleaded. She was slight, but not a child. She was thin. Her eyes were firmly closed and crusted. When Annie dared turn to look after the hot-breathed speaker, he had completely vanished. Annie turned her head very carefully, slowly, to look about for him, not wanting to arouse suspicion by seeming to be hunting anyone or to be confused.

“What’s the trouble here?” A constable came up behind Annie and startled her. “What all you doing in the street here, Auntie? What’s this gal doing here?” he said.

Annie was grateful the cop asked more than one question. This interlude gave her a chance to think. What had the mysterious man said? He had pressed her to grab the girl and to lie about her. What was the trouble here?

“She got dropsy. She don’t talk,” Annie said dully, as if she’d said this a thousand times. “I takin’ her home. We ain’t no trouble, suh,” she said, without ever having brought her eyes level with the constable’s face. She watched the buttons on his uniform and held herself still, praying that he would become too bored to ask more questions.

But what was Annie going to do with the gal? She thought the girl must have the dropsy or be some kind of sick that kept her from standing upright. Her lower parts were dressed in a torn burlap bag and she smelled high. Lord, have mercy! Was she nigh to death?

Annie brought her lips to the girl’s temple and cooed and whispered and hoped to bring her around enough to get her away from the middle of the street and from the eyes of the constable. There was no response from the girl, so Annie called on the Lord God, put her arms underneath the girl’s rib cage and knees, and lifted her. She was surprised at the lightness of the pitiful thing’s body. “Not more than a half a’ load a’ wet socks and under alls. She is a slight bit,” Annie intoned, as if putting a benediction on the enterprise.

Why in the world had the man picked her out to take care of this odd gal? She appeared to be on her last leg. Annie struggled down four good blocks with her. She carried her high in her arms for some portion of the way, halted to rest beside a post, then continued. Who was the man who’d had the heavy warm breath that smelled like a bit of mint? Had he drunk a toddy or cup of tea before he spoke to her? This voice had a rich man’s breath perhaps? But a poor man’s stink had been upon him, too.

At the corner of Bridge Street and Jefferson, Annie slumped down to catch some air. The wet laundry came to life. The bewildered girl opened her eyes and looked at her protector seated upon a post catching her wind. The girl raised no question and, with great effort, tried to walk. Annie supported her the rest of the way to the back door of the tailoring shop.

“Keep shut and still—here,” Annie commanded the young woman, and propped her on the handle of the backyard water pump. She repeated urgently for her to stay quiet and keep her heels down at this spot and wait until Annie returned.

Annie approached the front door of the tailor shop from the angle that afforded her a clear view. She well knew not to enter there.

Aaron Ridley sat yawning behind a newspaper with his coat off and his shirt collar eased open to make himself more comfortable. He thought it entirely hilarious that his uncle Jonathan had set him up as the manager of a custom tailoring business. Aaron disliked his uncle. He felt a slight, dull ache of displeasure in the man’s presence and in his purview. Aaron’s mother did not like her brother-in-law either, but she had not ever had the energy to make other provision for their livelihood. The two remained dependent and sulking under the roof of their benefactor and had always been forced to accede to his wishes and those of his wife.

The one aspect of the tailoring business that appealed to Aaron Ridley was the wearing of fine clothes. He delighted in dressing in well-made suits and did not mind demonstrating the quality of Gabriel’s work. A fashionable suit emphasized Master Aaron Ridley’s physique. Like his uncle, he was vain of his athletic form.

Annie stood outside the shop with her body turned on a diagonal from the front window so as not to appear to onlookers as too inquisitive or too bold. She saw the soles of Aaron Ridley’s shoes propped up on the shop’s counter. Master Jonathan wouldn’t like it at all. He’d surely thump this boy on the head if he were to catch him at this. Annie studied the young man for a short while, deciding how to proceed. Aaron wasn’t too wily, so she needn’t be.

Annie was shot through suddenly with cold-fear sickness.

“Aye, God, the market basket!” Where was her market basket? She’d had a basket over her arm when she’d encountered the man with the hot whispered message and the girl who’d collapsed in her arms. Where had she left it? She was sick to think her several turnips and their lush greens had been lost in the street.

There was between Gabriel and his mother a secret “talk” that nobody had a handle on but the two of them and Sis Ellen. From the first Annie had taught Gabriel and Ellen a series of agreed-upon signals that allowed them to talk around the white folks. Gabriel knew the moment his mam entered a room, depending on how her apron or head scarf was tied, what the lay of the land was. And over a distance—like from the outhouse to the porch—the way Nanny sucked the back of her throat and made a clacking sound could tell Gabriel to come or go.