by Tom Piazza
That encounter broke something final inside me, as if a cyst had burst and the last store of boyish hope, and fear—the best in me, perhaps, and perhaps also the worst—began to dissipate. If I had not, until then, finished with being a boy, now I surrendered my papers. I pulled myself together and got a job working in, then managing, a lumber warehouse. I gradually returned to a more stable financial footing, recovered an aptitude for lists and receipts. I counted and stacked and counted again.
Yet as I left that island of boyish illusion behind, I found myself wondering more and more often what had happened to Henry. Had he managed to find a place where he could settle? Had he managed to stay free? I had never wholly known him, and yet he had meant something much more to me even than I had realized at the time, more as the months and years went by. The freedom he had claimed for himself, in spite of enslavement. I wondered if he had found a place of safety. I never would have an answer to that question.
Then, one evening, borne on some rogue breeze, I found myself in front of the New Walnut Theater, with its placard outside, a stream of people lining up for tickets and entering, and I decided to join the crowd, enter and see the show. It was a new troupe, one that made a specialty of “original Darky minstrelsy.” Enough time had gone by that the original five-man troupes were again something of a novelty, though they drew an audience half the size ours had been at Barton’s. The names on the showbill were unfamiliar to me.
I went in, took my seat, and waited, as if in two places at once—in front of, and also behind, the proscenium. I could imagine them getting ready in the dressing room, imagine them settling in the chairs behind the curtain, making final adjustments. At length, the master of ceremonies appeared and made his announcement, and then the curtain rose to the tambourine’s whack and a voice declaiming, “Good ebening, everybody!” The audience leapt up around me, shouting and clapping, and I remained seated and heard the line sail into “Lucy Long,” and the song did make me smile, and when the audience had gotten seated again, and clapped along, I watched in bittersweet pleasure. I still loved the beautiful illusion, even as I saw through it. How could I not? If someone were to promise that it was possible to dance in the teeth of oppression and affliction, to cast away the frailty of age, the attrition of illness, the weight of every mistake one had made in life, possible to be absolved from every wrong you had done and witness your accusers singing your praises . . . Well, pilgrims would arrive from every point on the globe to be told this, though they knew it to be a lie. The show went on, and the show went on, and I was there, and I was not there. I knew too much about it all, and the illusion was gone from me. Yet still I rejoiced, and still I wept.
PART
IV
12
There is nothing better than a macaroon. Unless it is a cherry tart from Leininger’s. If I spill a crumb or two, Addie keeps at me until I clean it up myself. At those times I offer protest by calling her by her given name, Frances, and she pretends not to notice. Or perhaps she does not, in fact, notice. I remind her that I am a senator, that my time is in demand, that I will soon leave Auburn again and travel back to Washington and she will miss me, and in reply she hands me a list of items that need attending around the property, a few names of our latest petitioners, pet social causes to which she would like me to lend my support.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I say.
“I thought my name was Frances,” she says, walking away.
Who can explain love? All our children are gone, now, except for darling Fanny. If I had any illusions about spending more time alone with Addie, they have been subverted by the very energies that drew me to her in the beginning. She is on fire with the abolitionist fever, with which I am in complete sympathy, although other considerations demand a degree of moderation and perspective from myself, as I look toward a time in which I may be called to be President of the entire republic. Still, her single-mindedness in aiding fugitives, and even, upon occasion, hiding them for a brief spell in our basement, is to be admired and supported, and I do.
At any rate we have little enough time together, so I must have expressed some inadvertent displeasure, or at least reservation, when she informed me that there would be another “guest” taking up residence below our house for some unspecified amount of time.
“Ah,” I said. “Good.”
“You needn’t bristle, Bill. I doubt that he will be here long.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Is there any reason of which I’m unaware that we shouldn’t offer shelter to him?”
“Not at all.”
“There was a time when you would have expressed no reservations at all about aiding anyone who had suffered under the lash.”
“I am in complete agreement that we should help this one as well,” I said.
She regarded me severely for a long moment. “You would drive a sensible person to morphine.” She turned and started away.
“When will he arrive, dear?” I offered.
“Tomorrow,” she said, shutting my office door with no excess of decorum.
The fact is that I was in complete agreement, here. I merely had . . . reservations. Yet when I would bring up my desire to spend more time alone with her, Addie would say, “Then why do you always run to Washington? Or Albany? Or Philadelphia?”
“My work takes me there,” I say.
“Then don’t begrudge me mine.”
She would have made a good attorney, God save us all.
I was always bedeviled by strange fancies. You can’t know what it is to present yourself constantly to the world as a figurehead of state, while inside you have as much imagination as any man. More! So while I greeted visitors, made speeches, drafted resolutions, plotted strategy, I also had visions of unexplainable things—sometimes they were merely whimsical: talking spiders, goats dancing. Colors often looked odd to me, as if they had distinct personalities. I thought of fires blanketing the horizon, bodies of the dead walking through smoke on a field. Songs played on strangely shaped instruments. There was a time, about which no one knows except Addie, when I had to take to bed for a week, overcome as I was with it all. These visions did not disappear, exactly, but rather I would say they retreated into place; I learned how to cohabit with them, and when they saw that I would make room for them they became less urgent, less threatening and shrill.
Often I would seek out one or another of our servants at such times. I found that a visit while they were doing a job they understood had a calming effect on me, as if it represented an unarguable degree of reality. I had always enjoyed visiting with my father’s kitchen help, and I enjoyed visiting with Ella when she prepared dinner. Nicholas and I never seemed quite to engender a rapport—he was a church man—but I enjoyed hearing Ella’s thoughts on politics and town gossip.
It was and is my firm conviction that the degree of civilization in a culture—practical, ethical, spiritual—is measured not by the grandeur of its edifices nor the extent of its land holdings but by the way in which those who hold and administer power treat those over whom they may exercise that power, whether it is a jailer with a captive, a parent with a child, or a lender with a debtor. If one has the upper hand in a situation, and uses it to exploit another to that other’s detriment, one cannot call oneself civilized. By that measure, perhaps, none of us can call himself fully civilized. Yet one may strive for that ideal, at least. Otherwise one’s career as a decent human being is at an end.
The young man was delivered to us just after nightfall, during dinner, on a very cold evening toward the end of November. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal the name of the Friend who had arranged for this and delivered him, but this Friend had indicated that the young man was quite unusual and articulate, had just run off from a Maryland plantation, and was reticent about going to Canada but had accepted aid in that direction after some convincing. He would put up in the basement room that we had fitted out for that purpose. I would imagine that we had harbored some two dozen fug
itives there over the space of three or four years.
Before dinner, I asked Addie if our Friend had confirmed the passenger’s arrival that evening.
“Yes,” Addie replied. “He has a banjar and not much else.”
“A banjar!” I said. “We will have music, then.”
“Take this out back,” she said, handing me a slop bucket.
I loved the smell of woodsmoke in the biting cold. That sense of winter coming on, the quickening attention—I missed it all in Washington, with its moderate Southern climate. I disposed of the slops in their appointed place. On my way back to the house I saw a bright-red maple leaf on the walkway, almost perfect—remarkable, as the autumn colors had quite retired for the year—and I brought it inside as a late addition for Fanny’s leaf collection, which she kept in a large scrapbook I had purchased for her.
That evening, as we were having dessert, we heard a knocking at our rear door in a deliberate and familiar pattern. Addie glanced across the table at me and then excused herself.
“Well, Fanny,” I said. “We will have a new guest for a day or two. What do you think of that?”
“It makes me sad,” she said.
“Why ever does it make you sad, Fanny?”
“They have no home.”
My darling was not just sensitive but she was intelligent, and she had instincts for what was morally correct. I love her so. I did not know how to address this concern of hers. I also knew that my protracted absences weighed on her, as they did on Addie.
“Did you place the leaf in your album?”
She nodded. Ella brought in more coffee.
“All is going well?” I asked.
“They’re getting him settled,” she replied.
“You’ll bring supper to him?”
“Once they get him settled I will.”
“Why can’t he eat with us?” Fanny said.
“Darling,” I said, “he will be tired from his travels.” But the runaways never ate with us, even when they stayed for two or three days. This was Addie’s policy—something of an inconsistency, I thought, as she was such an ardent abolitionist. Yet I had learned over the years to let her manage her end of things without questioning.
At length, Addie reappeared and settled herself at her end of the dinner table, and Ella brought her some fresh coffee.
“All is well?” I said.
She nodded thoughtfully, and took a long sip of the hot coffee.
“What is wrong?” I said.
“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “You might go down and greet him yourself.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I was waiting for you to finish getting him situated.”
“He is situated,” she said. “There is something unusual about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see for yourself,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”
“What is his name?”
“He is called William.”
“Well,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll go downstairs and welcome him.”
“Yes, that would be a good idea,” she said. “Fanny, didn’t you like your tart?”
I excused myself and quit the dining room and nearly ran into Ella coming up from the basement. She looked as if she had just had a good laugh.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, just fine.”
I found him downstairs, in the room we used for our “passengers,” as they were sometimes called—it was in fact our old kitchen. He stood up as soon as he saw me. One could tell immediately that there was something different about him, as Addie had indicated. A kind of quickness about the eyes, perhaps—green eyes, with something almost feminine about them. Most of these guests had a deferential air and were not quick to meet one’s eyes. This William was not afraid to meet one’s gaze with a gaze of his own. I do not mean to say that it gave offense, only that one was unaccustomed to meeting such an expression in a Negro. He was rather short of stature, and he wore a plaid flannel shirt buttoned to his neck, braces, and a straw hat which he remembered to remove only after several seconds had passed.
“Welcome,” I said. “I see you have supper; I won’t keep you. Your travels were satisfactory?”
“Yes,” he said. “Where am I?”
I could not suppress a brief chuckle at the ingenuousness of the question. “You are in Auburn, New York. Our friend didn’t tell you where you were going?”
“He told me we were in Auburn, but I didn’t know where it was. Are we close to Canada?”
“Fairly close,” I said. “You are anxious to get there, of course.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to go to Canada.”
I could see now what Addie meant. The usual air of submission was absent.
“Well, then, where are you hoping to go?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. We stood regarding one another for a few moments, and then he said, “They said you’re a senator.”
“Yes,” I said. “They said you play the banjar.”
He laughed at this—at the nature of the exchange, it seemed, rather than the substance. “I do.”
“Well, I hope that before you leave here you will play some music for us.”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“Or not,” I said. “If you do not wish to.”
“No,” he said, “I will.”
“Good, then,” I said. “Well. Please don’t let your supper get cold. And I should rejoin my family. Perhaps after dinner, a bit later? If you are so inclined.”
He nodded; the expression on his face was odd indeed, a simultaneous frown and smile. I took my leave and went back upstairs.
“I see what you mean about our guest,” I said. “I asked him to play on the banjar for us after dinner.”
“The boy has just arrived, Bill. Let him catch his breath.”
I saw that Fanny had instantly brightened at the idea, though, and her pleasure was ours, always.
After the table was cleared and we had had our coffee, I went downstairs and found our guest sitting in the small rocking chair, looking at loose ends, an expression of sadness on his face. Across the narrow mattress at the far end of the room was a banjar. I had the odd sensation that there were two people in the room, the fellow and the instrument.
“You know,” I said, “we are both named William.”
“What?” he said. He seemed slightly confused by this information. “Should I call you William?”
I was taken aback at this, and quickly reminded myself that the majority of slaves had not had extensive instruction in etiquette, and to be patient. “Why don’t you call me Senator,” I said, trying to be reassuring. “You may call Mrs. Seward ‘Mrs. Seward,’ and our daughter Fanny is Miss Seward.”
“I’m sorry!” he said.
“No, no. Nothing to be sorry for. Will you come and play for us?”
He stood, crossed the room, and picked up his instrument. I had a pang, then, watching him, as I had so many, trying to comprehend the degree of dislocation, the sheer strangeness of being in a strange house, among strangers, no matter how well-intentioned, in a strange town set into a strange countryside. I thought that Addie might have been right, and that I was forcing the boy to do something he was not ready to do. But I love music so, and Fanny does, as well.
“You do not need to play for us,” I said. “This evening, or ever. I hope I am not . . .”
“No,” he said, “I’m happy to play. Some don’t like it.”
“Well,” I said, “anyone who does not welcome music into his home has some terminal deficiency of spirit.”
He smiled, nodded, and we walked up the stairs.
Addie and Fanny had taken their places in our parlor. I saw William looking around as we walked through the dining room; our house is well stocked with paintings and various artifacts that I have managed to gather on my travels across the country and around the world, and the young man took it in as if he were
a pilgrim at the Sistine Chapel. I thought that I would give him a more detailed tour if he showed interest, perhaps the next morning.
“Don’t put him on that little stool, Bill,” Addie said.
“But his arms will need room if he’s to play the banjar,” I offered.
Addressing the young man, she said, “Come here and sit in this good chair.”
“You have met my wife, Mrs. Seward.”
“We’ve already met, Bill,” Addie said, installing him in an armchair where she often crocheted of an evening.
“And this,” I said, “is my daughter Fanny.”
I saw the young man regard her with a look of tenderness and even mutual understanding. “Hello, Miss Seward,” he said.
Fanny beamed and said, “My name is Fanny!”
William looked at me, and with a shrug I tried to indicate that my world was ruled by women, and that he should submit to the same law.
He sat in the proffered chair.
“Would you like anything to refresh yourself, William?” Addie said to our guest.
“No, thank you,” he said.
We all arranged ourselves—Addie and Fanny on our divan, and myself in my own chair. Nicholas had gotten a good fire underway. The young man set to tuning his banjar with an extraordinary concentration, and we all three watched him until he had got the strings pitched to his satisfaction.
“Is there anything you would like to hear?” He addressed this to the room, but his gaze alighted on Fanny, and his eyebrows went up and she blushed.
“Can you play ‘Angelina Baker’?” she asked.
I saw Addie’s face tighten a bit, and then she said, “Fanny, perhaps another song,” and she sent me a stern look. I happened to be quite fond of the song, but Addie disliked it because of its plantation theme. Of course I sympathized, and played it, badly, on the pianoforte only when she was not around. It was a favorite of Fanny’s, and I think Addie blamed me for instilling a fondness for the “Darky” songs in our daughter.
William looked across the room at me, and I spoke up. “At your pleasure, William.”
