The next day, instead of sitting outside next to Leo, I took my sewing up to the dining room, where it was cooler, and sat near a window that overlooked the bank and the little town of—what was its name? Although I had been there only that morning with my posters and my tickets, I couldn’t remember it. We had been to so many towns in such a short span of time that they were beginning to all seem alike with their flat-fronted warehouses and boatyards, their horse carts waiting on the dusty road near the pier. Even the difference between north and south felt negligible. The fact that some people had been thrown down on one side of the river or on the other seemed arbitrary, and they could cross to the other side with no change of purpose. They might condone slavery or they might not, but for the most part, I was finding, they would live with the matter. Only horrid people like Mrs. Howard were bullies enough to try to effect any change. And she was a bully, no mistaking that. Was every good change made in the world the result of successful bullying? I wondered. It certainly seemed that everything bad happened that way.
I finished the last spider web design on Liddy’s costume and spread the bodice out with my fingers on the clean tabletop to look at it, thinking that in a moment I would go down to iron it, although I didn’t particularly want to, since it was so hot. Just then Hugo poked his head into the dining room door, saw me, and walked in. He looked into the galley asking, “What’s soup today?” and I heard Cook tell him corn fritters and hash.
“Lovely,” Hugo said. Then he came over to me. “Well, well,” he said, looking down at the decorated costume splayed on the tabletop. “All finished, is it?”
He leaned over to look more closely at the small embroidered designs. “I like how these turned out. You were right to leave the blue dot out of them.” I was surprised he remembered that suggestion. He stepped back and rubbed his hands together, and I noticed they were gray and dusty: he’d probably just come from filling the firewood bins in each of the staterooms. That meant he’d been to my room, and I suddenly wondered where I’d left Mrs. Howard’s letter, which a little boy had delivered this morning with ten dollars enclosed. Money to pay Thaddeus to help me cross the river. I reminded myself I had to be careful now about what I left about.
“Have you seen Liddy?” Hugo asked me.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I said irritably.
“Oh, now, May, don’t take offense. It’s hard when we think well of a person, a man like that, educated, a doctor, only to find . . . and especially someone, in Liddy’s case, well, her beau. We have to make some concessions. You two are friends.”
“She’s the one not speaking to me,” I pointed out.
“That won’t last,” Hugo told me, but how could he know? I thought how easy it would be to iron into Liddy’s costume a small prick of a feather shaft, as I used to with Comfort’s costumes when she vexed me. But I didn’t want to do that. I touched her costume, flattening the collar with my fingertips. My mother used to say, “My brain is in my fingers,” because she touched what she was sewing so often. But she had a sharp mind at all times, and a clear sense of right and wrong. I remember how horrified she was when a man came to town, claiming to be a land agent, to sell lots in Missouri that weren’t his to sell. No one bought any, thank goodness, but a sheriff rode in looking for him the day after he left, and that’s how we found out.
“Why would someone set himself against another person like that?” my mother asked my father. “A stranger, someone’s who’s done him no harm?”
“It’s the money,” my father replied. “Quick money.”
“Well, he’ll soon be in jail for it,” my mother said, though we never found out if her prediction came true.
Quick money—that’s what Dr. Early wanted, too. Did the fact that he could do so and stay within the law make it right? The question made my head hurt.
“Don’t you think it’s wrong, too,” I asked Hugo, “what Dr. Early is doing?”
“Deplorable.” He unclasped his hands. “It’s deplorable. But what can I do? And besides that, I have a business to run.”
My irritation mushroomed again, and I turned my good ear away from him. “That’s exactly what everyone says.” I gathered up the costume, determined now to go downstairs to iron it no matter how hot the day was.
16
I think there were a few things that excited Thaddeus about the whole enterprise right from the start. One was the furtiveness associated with it, and the thrill of having a secret. Also the idea of acting out a role in real life seemed to appeal to him, like Hugo with his blanket coat and boatman language. Both Hugo and Thaddeus—maybe all actors—warmed to an activity that might combine theater and real life, if that was possible. They could not resist playing a role. I don’t think Thaddeus ever much considered the plight of the babies.
“When do you go out again?” he asked in a low voice, leaning forward on the rail. We were on the top deck, so that I could see anyone underneath us. There was still mist on the river but the early-morning chill was wearing off. Leo had finished tying us up at the new landing only about an hour ago, and most of the company was still at breakfast. I caught Thaddeus as he was coming out of his stateroom.
We stood together at the rail looking out toward the steady stream of flatboats and steamboats passing by. Thaddeus held one of Mrs. Howard’s coins in his hand, rubbing it every so often with his thumb.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t find out until the last moment.”
“How do you find out?”
“The last time a woman stayed back after our show. She told me.”
“Someone in the audience?”
“I suppose they could find some other way next time.”
“You’d think they’d give you more warning than a couple of hours,” Thaddeus said, looking out at a snag boat engaged in clearing deadwood from the river. A white captain with a blue government cap directed a team of Negroes, some of whom were using long hooks to direct the sodden river logs, while others pulled the logs up onto the boat. The captain had his hands clasped behind his back, while the darker men did the heavy work. I wondered if I was beginning to see everything in black and white.
“They’re just-born babies,” I told Thaddeus. “There’s little warning for something like that.”
Thaddeus took his foot off the bottom rail. His blond curls looked almost white in the sun, and there were fine wrinkles around his eyes. I had a sudden vision of him as an old man.
“What happens if we’re caught?”
I thought of the broadside concerning the abolitionist thief. “Jail, or worse. A fine, certainly.”
“I’ve never been in jail,” Thaddeus told me. But he said this as if it was an exciting thought rather than a fearful one. The snag boat was now chugging around the bend up ahead. The river looked marginally cleaner, but not much.
“There’s a compass in the green room,” Thaddeus mused. “A prop, but it could be useful. If it still works.”
Just then Liddy came out of the dining room, saw me, hesitated, and then walked up the guard toward us. I saw her push her chest out as she approached, as if she were entering a room. Thaddeus carefully pushed the coin he was holding into his trouser pocket.
“I want you to know, May,” Liddy began in a tight voice, “that I’ve broken off my friendship with Dr. Early. So you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“You broke it off?” She was wearing her oldest dress, and her hair was unbrushed. I was relieved she was talking to me again, but she did not look well. “Because of the slave hunting?”
“Yes, because of that. I can’t be with someone who chases down men and women.”
“And children,” I said without thinking.
“Don’t you lecture me!” she snapped, turning her head.
“I didn’t mean . . . no, I know . . . Liddy—” I broke off. It was important that I say the right thing, but I didn’t know what the right thing was. I tried to think of what I’d heard other people sa
y at an argument’s close, if that was what this was; I hoped it was. “I was a fool,” I’ve heard Comfort say, but that didn’t seem relevant, and in any case I don’t think she ever meant it. I was wrong. I misunderstood. I hope you’ll forgive me.
I just wanted Liddy’s friendship again. “I’m sorry,” I said, but that wasn’t right, either.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I wish I had never found those broadsides.” I meant this with all my heart.
Her face relaxed a degree. “I know. Oh, May! Well, it all comes to the same thing. I would have found out, I suppose. I mean, of course I would have.”
I thought about what Hugo said. “A man like that, and your beau . . . It was just surprising.”
Liddy agreed. Her pretty, downward mouth drooped even more. She was wholesome and honest and open—that was her character, why it was easy for her to play the ingénue. I felt she was not a girl who should wrestle with anything difficult. No one likes the story of the ingénue breaking.
“Are we friends again?” I watched her face anxiously.
She started to give me her hand and then stopped. “I know you don’t like shaking hands. But let’s pretend we just did.”
Thaddeus was watching us with his thumbs hooked into his trouser pockets and an amused expression on his face, as though we were on a stage, part of a play put on for his entertainment.
“I can imagine that Pinky writes a beautiful letter,” I suggested to Liddy, and she blushed.
“Ha-ha-ha!” Thaddeus laughed callously. “And now onto the next.”
“So speaks the roué,” Liddy shot back, and I thought that was a good sign. She wasn’t broken; she was merely growing up. Who here on earth is able to avoid trouble? I reminded myself. Comfort clung to her ingénue roles long past the time they suited her, and it did not do her any good—rather, the opposite. There was a lesson in there somewhere for me, I sensed, but at the time I could not quite grasp it.
• • •
Two nights later I received my next message. This time I was taking money at the ticket window, and wrapped inside a one-dollar bill was a note:
Tonight. Signal at quarter past midnight.
I stared at it for a moment, not understanding the wording. Was I supposed to send a signal, or receive one? I looked up, but whoever had given it to me—a man; I couldn’t remember more than that—had already left without receiving his change. When Celia came to relieve me at the ticket window, I was so flustered that I began to walk off with the stack of tickets still in my hand. But once I sat down at the piano, my hands did the work they were used to, and the show went off remarkably well. In fact, the audience clapped and stomped so much at the end that Liddy and Thaddeus came out to sing an impromptu song:
When love gets you fast in her clutches,
And you sigh for your sweetheart away,
Old Time cannot move without crutches,
Alack! how he hobbles, well-a-day!
It was an old ballad, and one that I never liked. How could time be on crutches? Time was time. But the audience loved it. While he sang, Thaddeus looked down at Liddy as though she embodied all the joy he knew of in the world, and she looked up at him in the same spirit. I marveled at how they could pretend so convincingly. The song was very slow, and I tried to pick up the pace to move them along to the end. Hugo was standing in the wings on the other side, and he frowned and thrust out his chin at me at me as if to say, What are you doing there? Don’t run up the beat! But I wanted the show to be over.
I let Thaddeus know about the note when he came to give me his costume, which I pressed for him every night. He brightened up so much that I worried someone would ask him what good news he’d had that day. Pinky in fact did say something to that effect when he came in a minute later with his own costume in hand.
“What is it, old chum? You see one of your sweethearts in the audience?”
“There’s always a sweetheart in the audience,” Thaddeus replied. “Come and have a drink with me: I bought a pint of Jamaican rum off an Irishman today. Said he always travels with a couple of cases to pay for his meals.”
“Smart man,” Pinky said. “Rum’s better than currency to a dime.”
I hoped Thaddeus would not drink too much or stay with Pinky too long. But when I went to his stateroom a little before eleven, he was sitting on his cot looking perfectly sober and waiting for me. He wore a cape and a dark hat somewhat flattened on the crown, and he held his boots in one hand. In his other hand he was holding the compass from the green room. His face was shining with a child’s excitement.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said in a low voice as we went down the stage plank. “Is this the real reason you wanted a job on this boat? May Bedloe, Secret Abolitionist?”
“Hush,” I said.
Since we were not docked at a pier this time but just tied up to a bunch of trees, the rowboat was pushed up on the bank. It was not tethered as securely as it had been before, and I found the knot easy to loosen. But the real surprise came when we were in the water and I found a paper bag underneath the forward thwart with an apple and a ham sandwich inside. I smiled, pleased with the gesture. Leo, I thought, but how did he know I was going out tonight?
Thaddeus threw his elbows out from underneath his dark cape and began rowing backwards. The sound of cicadas faded as we left the shore, and water hit the rowboat softly in regular intervals. I had a small brown vial of morphine in my pocket that I’d purchased several days before, in case I needed it for the baby. When we were far enough from the bank I lit the lantern I was holding in my lap. My stomach was a tight ball, the same as my heart, but the river seemed empty except for us. Still, I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Early, and others like him, watching for an opportunity to make quick money. No one returned my signal.
After a minute Thaddeus said, “I’ll row us to the bank. We can wait there.”
“We’re supposed to wait here until we get a signal.”
“I don’t want to keep rowing just to hold our position.”
He consulted the compass, tapping the glass case to get the needle moving, and then began rowing south again. As we approached the Kentucky bank he began testing the depth of the water with one oar, and when he hit bottom he said, “Got it.”
He pulled in the oars and then prepared the two jugs that Leo used as anchors: filling them with river water, stoppering them up, and then dropping them by their lines over the side. As we rocked a little on these moorings, Thaddeus took from his inside pocket a jar of beer, untwisted the lid, and offered it to me. I took a long sip and handed it back, then I tore the sandwich in two to share with him.
Taking a bite, he said, “Now tell me truly, May. Is this the reason you were so eager to get a job with Captain Hugo? So you could float up and down the river ferrying slaves?”
“Certainly not,” I said. “I was blackmailed.”
“Blackmailed!” Thaddeus laughed and then whistled. “Why, May, you and I are more alike than I thought.”
“Why? Are you being blackmailed?”
“No, no. I just did not take you for a woman of principle, and indeed you are not.”
“I have principles,” I told him.
“To be sure, to be sure.” He took another sip of beer.
“I don’t lie,” I reminded him.
“That’s not a principle, that’s a condition. Would you have thought of doing it yourself? That’s my question.”
I didn’t have an answer. The weak moonlight glittered unevenly over the water like a shroud. Still there was no signal, and no sound except night sounds. The last time everything had happened very fast. After a while Thaddeus took up a line and began practicing knots.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve rowed a boat at night,” he said.
That reminded me of something. “Thaddeus, tell me, was your father really a boatbuilder?” I asked him.
He laughed. “No. Why?”
I reminded him about how he had helped Hu
go with the boat when we first came on board. “You said your father was a boatbuilder. I’ve also heard you say your father was a playwright.”
“My father has been many things in my telling, but in fact he was only a farmer,” Thaddeus said. “Oats mostly. He fished a little, too, and sometimes I went out with him on the Chesapeake. Lord, did I hate it. By the time I was ten I’d set my sights on the finer arts.”
I could perfectly picture him sitting behind a barn with paper and a stub of a pencil. “Writing poems, no doubt,” I said.
Thaddeus shrugged. “Turns out I’m better at speaking another man’s lines than producing my own. My father was quick enough to tell me I would never succeed as a poet. Course, he didn’t like the theater profession any better. You know, I think I enjoyed telling him I wanted to be an actor. He couldn’t be more disappointed in me, he said. To which I said, ‘Let me see if I can’t help you with that.’ ”
“You wouldn’t speak to your father like that.”
“Oh, yes! If you saw us, you wouldn’t believe we were related. He had the longest nose you ever saw. When my mother died, my sisters raised me—four of them, and they doted on me, but he didn’t. A constant disappointment, he said about me.”
But he spoke lightly, as if he couldn’t be bothered with anything at all troublesome. Then he drank the last of the beer and wiped his lips with his cape. The cicadas were loud again now that we’d reached a shoreline, and our little rowboat rose and fell on the water. The tide was a bit rougher than when we had first set out. I looked up. Clouds were moving in from the east.
“There’s the light,” Thaddeus said. I turned my head to see a small flicker of lantern light shining briefly before it went out.
We decided that Thaddeus would stay with the boat while I went to fetch the baby. Just like before, a white man dressed in farmhand’s clothing—but not the same man; this one was thicker and taller—stepped out from among the trees carrying a basket. And, like before, the infant was sleeping. But when I held my lantern up to look, the baby’s face did not seem so waterlogged as the last one.
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