The Amalgamation Polka (18 page)

Once, after an absence
of some three days, Liberty returned home with a blackened eye and a cut across his chin. He refused to admit where he had been or to explain how he had received his injuries. He went up to his room while the family sat in the parlor, discussing their wayward son.

“I told you,” declared Aunt Aroline. “I’ve told the both of you for years and no one paid any heed. I said the boy lacks discipline, he wants the correcting hand, but no one listened, no one minded what poor old Aroline had to say.”

“That’s not true,” argued Thatcher. “Your contributions to this household are received with gratitude and respect and I will not have you going on like this.”

“All I’ve ever asked,” said Aroline, “is that I be shown the scantiest hint of appreciation for what I do to help hold this fragile house together. God knows we’ve had enough strife in this family and I simply don’t know if I can endure watching this precious branch of it falling into splinters.” She extracted a flowery handkerchief from her apron pocket and held it firmly clenched in her fist as she gazed dolefully around the room, daring the others to just try to make her cry.

“Honestly,” said Roxana, impatience harshening her voice, “you act as if the issue before us today is you. The issue is not you, Aroline, and I would take it kindly if you did not always carry on as though it were.”

“I have as much right to an opinion as anyone else in this room.”

“Certainly you do,” said Thatcher, “but we seem to be straying from the topic at hand.”

“I was not the one who strayed,” said Aroline firmly.

“I never suggested you did,” said Thatcher.

“She appears to have difficulty hearing clearly what anyone says,” offered Roxana.

“I heard that clear enough,” snapped Aroline, “and I don’t like it.”

“That’s quite all right. Is it absolutely necessary that you personally approve every word spoken under this roof?”

“If we could get back to the question of Liberty,” interjected Thatcher.

From the refuge of the sofa where he had been half-reclining with his brandy and his cigar and listening with detached amusement to this charming family colloquy, Uncle Potter cleared his throat, waited until he had gained everyone’s attention and said, “Give the boy over to me for a few days. I can show him what he wants.”

“Nonsense,” said Aroline.

“Thinking of taking a jaunt down to the big city,” Potter continued. “Boy’s got the wanderlust, same as his old uncle. He might enjoy the sights, get his eyes filled up good.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to walk that child into the next room,” Aroline announced.

“He’s no longer exactly a child,” Thatcher reminded her.

“Child or no, any soul delivered to the custody of this reprobate is certain to be placed in jeopardy.”

Thatcher eyed his wife, who had remained strangely silent. “What do you think, dear?”

“I trust Potter,” said Roxana. “I’d prefer he accompany him than run about the countryside alone.”

“Capital,” said Potter, taking a huge gulp directly from the bottle. “We depart on the morrow.”

“Please, Potter,” asked Roxana, “keep a close eye on him. I wouldn’t want—”

“Tut-tut,” declared Potter, waving his cigar dismissively. “I’ll cleave him to me as if he were my very own.”

“God help us,” commented Aroline.

Mother and Father exchanged a look, and though she managed to produce a smile it was an expression that seemed to have been laboriously constructed from the flimsiest of materials. Roxana had always known a day like this would eventually come, but not so soon. Nevertheless, she had promised herself long ago that she would be strong, she would not protest, she would not cry. She was determined that the circumstances of her own traumatic departure from home would not be repeated in any family of her own. She couldn’t bear to think that her own child might feel imprisoned within the walls of his natural home. So however much the decision pained her, she believed that allowing Liberty the freedom to go when he wished might assure that he would also come back when he wished.

New York. A fanciful realm where all the noise and heat and general untidiness of desire unfettered was allowed full and natural exhibit in a daily frenzy of banknotes. People were different here, Potter had instructed his young nephew, money was as an elixir to them, their health, their mental harmony dependent upon a vigorous regimen of the stuff. So should you happen to spy a nearby chap suddenly erupt into a sweat, eyeballs a-dancing, limbs a-twitching, quickly stand aside ’cause likely you’ve come unknowingly between the slathering habitué and his dose of corrective tender. And never look a stranger in the eye, as he will believe you might be preparing to rub him down with a knuckle towel. Don’t talk to anyone, Jack or Jill, for they ever seek to pick your heart’s pocket. Keep your own coin in your boot, along with a well-whetted sticker. These metropolitans were a cagey lot.

As the packet from Albany approached the unimaginably crowded docks, ships from all nations moored nearly hull to hull into the receding distance, an excited Liberty strained to catch a glimpse of the notorious city through the intervening leafless forest of masts, spars and rigging, and his initial impression was this: bricks and people in equally astonishing numbers and though the masonry was more or less uniform in size and color, the circulating citizens were not. Here seemed to be contained every shape and hue the human animal was capable of attaining and, apparently, dressed in every costume the human brain was capable of devising.

A brief rainstorm had moved off shortly before they disembarked, leaving the gutters running with a thick black gruel of garbage and bodily waste, and the odor was, as Potter grimly remarked, “absolutely tremendous.” Gulls cried, dogs barked, goats bleated, herds of insolent pigs rooted boldly through the congested streets. The rattle of wagon and carriage wheels, the clopping of hooves, the tramping of uncountable feet was near deafening. Liberty felt thrillingly disoriented. A scarlet and yellow omnibus clattered dangerously by, heads poking animatedly from every window, passengers hanging precariously from the sides. A small girl in layers of calico rags, pushing a steaming cart before her, chanted in high singsong, “Hot corn! Hot corn here!” A gang of filthy urchins dashed deliriously through the crowds, bumping aggressively into startled pedestrians. Around the corner a fat man in a stained butcher’s smock and brandishing a long carving knife chased another man into a saloon. Impudent women, young and old, in various states of dishabille, lounged in doorways and windows, calling out to passing gentlemen, one even addressing Potter by name. “Not today, Pearl,” replied his uncle good-naturedly, “I’ve got my nephew with me.” The woman looked Liberty over in a manner he had never known before. “Bring him up, too,” she said. “He looks plenty old enough to me.” Potter laughed and they walked on.

“So, Liberty,” inquired Potter, “what think you of our fair city here?”

“It caps the climax,” he replied, eyes glittering.

Potter squeezed the boy in a suffocating hug, then led him on through the tumult that was New York to a mammoth building on lower Broadway with architecture so fantastic, columns and gargoyles, towers and turrets and domes, even gilt-framed portraits, it resembled the most elaborate wedding cake Liberty had ever seen. Streams of people were entering, streams of people were exiting. A huge sign the length of the front façade announced that this establishment was the famous P. T. Barnum Museum and Hall of Wonders and Oddities from around the world.

Potter, who announced proudly that he had visited this grand edifice several times before, bought tickets from a woman in a caged booth at the entrance. She was wearing a turban on her head and jeweled rings on her fingers and she barely glanced at either of them, ignoring Potter’s comment about the natural loveliness of her face.

Inside, wide hallways stretched in every direction, leading to room after room stuffed to the rafters with bizarre exhibits. Liberty and his uncle spent three hours wandering the corridors, gazing in admiration and awe at two-headed chickens, three-legged ducks, monstrous human fetuses with webbed feet and clawed hands and twisted features, a bearded lady who replied sharply to all hecklers, a man who caught hot pennies in his mouth, strolling magicians who pulled crisp banknotes from the air, a dwarf with his head on backward and so much more that Liberty would still be recollecting the pageant days afterward.

But what fascinated him most was the exhibit displaying a deformed black man in the apparently spontaneous process of turning white. His arms and legs had already made the transition into a sort of ashen pallor while the rest of his body, including his glum face, manifested an arresting mottled appearance, as if the black skin were being progressively invaded by patches of dim white flesh. The strident barker in a bowler hat, gesticulating with a malacca cane, explained that herein lay the solution to the troubled nation’s political problems, Liberty came back twice to stare at this poor soul who lay on a straw pallet, a rag covering his loins, barely stirring, not speaking, refusing to respond even to a direct question, the huge, somber eyes occasionally fixing on one of the more vociferous spectators and reducing him to silence, too. As he stared, along with the others, Liberty experienced a confusion of emotion he found unpleasant but fascinating and difficult to understand.

For Potter one glance was sufficient. “Lead oxide,” he pronounced emphatically. “Seen a whole troupe of banjo players over in Buffalo once, all painted up like that.”

Liberty was dubious. To him the skin appeared genuine, unretouched.

“Lead oxide,” repeated Potter, nodding knowingly and leading his nephew into the next room, where he proceeded to “explain” all the mysteries housed there. It was, in fact, Potter’s delight to debunk every single exhibit in the museum, and with Liberty as captive audience his enthusiasm reached a level that began to draw a modest crowd. All, in his view, could be easily duplicated by the skillful application of theatrical costume and cosmetics. Nonfunctional extra limbs, tails or heads had been merely sewn on the animals. Several of his auditors began to challenge his opinions and then his physical person, and Potter grew perilously heated. A policeman was summoned, whereupon Potter and Liberty were escorted from the premises with a stern warning never to return.

“People like to be fooled,” declared Potter out on the street. “It is the national pastime.”

“I think they like to argue, too,” offered Liberty.

“Ah, no doubt, my boy, no doubt of that at all.” He stood on the sidewalk looking quickly in every direction, then suddenly strode off through the crowd, Liberty struggling to keep up. As they went, Potter dispensed more advice for survival in the urban wilderness. “Let none see your money, ever. Miscreants abound. Saw a huckleberry in a checked suit flash his roll one night in Mother Polly’s doggery and before he got it back in his pocket a gang of b’hoys at the next table left him dirked and bleeding on the sawdust right there in the middle of the floor. Seen it happen other times, too, but that one there was some pumpkins.”

“Can we go to Mother Polly’s?” asked Liberty.

“Up for it already, are you, boy? Well, we shall see, we shall see. Let us first procure ourselves lodging for the night. Don’t want to have to sleep out here on the stones with the pigs.”

The name of the hotel, situated on a back street off Broadway, was Ye Old Oaken Home, walls and foundation of rusty brick, floors of unvarnished pine and roof of crumbling slate. The rooms themselves were the size of a jail cell and stifling hot. An aged black attendant with white hair whom the sallow, sunken-cheeked woman at the desk addressed brusquely as Ned shuffled into the room and with much show of physical labor and heavy grunting attempted to open the window, then turned to face them. “Can’t do nothing about that,” he said, and departed. Later, in the middle of the night, sweating and cursing, Potter would get out of bed and break the window with the butt of his pistol, though even then no air would stir within these oppressive quarters.

They ate supper at a loud, smoky saloon filled mostly with men and scantily dressed women who strolled from table to table, draping themselves over the men’s shoulders and whispering in their ears until the men laughed and then rose to accompany these fascinating women into small boxlike compartments lining the far wall. A woman sauntered over to their table but Potter told her to go away. “I know of a much better place for that than here,” he said meaningfully to Liberty, who nodded silently as if he knew more of what his uncle was talking about than he actually did. They drank some beer and ate two plates of oysters each, which Potter emphatically declared “the best in the city, the best on the whole eastern shore.”

At the distant end of the room was a raised stage and, as Potter and Liberty were finishing their meal, the tattered red curtain parted to reveal a line of chorus girls arrayed in bits of clothing that concealed only their secret parts. To the ragged accompaniment of a five-piece band seated below and to the left of the stage, the girls kicked into a graceless but enthusiastic dance. The audience hooted and hollered and clapped and offered verbal suggestions for the next dance and the faster the girls bounced and the higher went their legs, the louder and rowdier the men became. Potter climbed onto his chair for a better view and so did Liberty. There was a wild feeling in the room of something tremendous either happening right now or about to happen momentarily. Then, abruptly, the music ceased, the dancing stopped and the curtain closed. The disappointed audience began shouting even louder, banging their mugs against the tables, but the curtain remained closed and gradually the noise in the saloon subsided to its normal shrieking roar.

“What do you think?” asked Potter.

“Do they come back with their clothes off?” asked Liberty, at which Potter erupted into laughter and clapped his nephew on the back. “I like you, Liberty,” he yelled, “I always have.”

Then, with a tinny fanfare from the band, the curtain parted again, disclosing the stage now set with a row of empty wooden chairs in front of which posed a tall, lean man in a black frock coat, blue satin vest and black pantaloons. Tacked to the rear stage wall was an enormous banner announcing Professor Winslow McGurk’s Laughing Gas Exhibition. The tall man stepped to the edge of the stage and raised his hands for quiet.