The Underground River

by Martha Conway

  Thaddeus stepped aside to let me go into the dining room first. A gentleman. I could see his face now, which was pale and expressionless. “That would be helpful,” he said.

  • • •

  It may sound strange, but after this encounter with Thaddeus my anxiety, although not exactly lessening, shifted a little. Even as I went into the dining room, taking care to sit at a different table from the one he chose, I felt something alter inside of me. It was as though my fears had been suddenly repacked in my body, like the contents of Helena’s trunks, moved and fitted into a corner somewhere to make room for other, more necessary considerations. I could not afford to be anxious; maybe that was it. Just like that day on the deck of the Moselle when I found the scissors in my hand and proceeded to cut away Giulia’s dress and my own so our clothes wouldn’t drown us, all my attention went into the task of survival.

  Certain facts ordered themselves in my mind: we were in the South. There were no bridges across this river, although there was constant talk of building one. Safety for Lula meant finding a passage north, and since there were no bridges, that meant going either by boat or by ferry.

  The next day the Floating Theatre was landing in Paducah, another town in the South. But after that we might go back to Indiana. I resolved to ask Hugo. If the next landing was in the North, that would mean only one more day of hiding her. The question of where she would go in the North was still open. I would take her myself, if necessary. I would go all the way to Canada with her if I had to. Part of this resolve was fear and part of it was anger. At Mrs. Howard, at Thaddeus, at Dr. Early, even at Hugo. At everyone who wasn’t helping me. It was not logical to be angry with Hugo, but I was. I was angry at the world, for making such laws.

  On the other hand, why wait for Hugo to move the boat? I could row her to the North myself that night in the little rowboat. At dinner I pushed the limp stewed greens around on my plate and cut up my chicken without taking a bite, trying to work out what to do. Pinky sat next to me. He was feeling worse, I could tell. He spoke very little, saving his voice, which was fine with me. Cook was railing against someone who had stolen a couple of chicken legs (me) and I dared not look at him, fearing it would show in my face. Meanwhile, Mrs. Niffen was telling everyone what she thought they should do tomorrow in preparation for opening night—rest, a lemon gargle, followed by a short walk in fresh air—and everyone but Mr. Niffen made a show of listening to her. Thaddeus sat at a table across the dining room near the windows, eating heartily.

  After dinner, as I was unlocking the door to my room, Hugo came walking up the guard.

  “May, a word?” he asked.

  I assumed he wanted to give me some instructions for tomorrow, and I followed him into his stateroom. He pulled his desk chair over to the window and took a white towel from a hook.

  “I wonder if you would do me a favor. Helena used to cut my hair for me, but now, well, you can see I haven’t managed it myself, and tomorrow being opening night . . . do you think you could give me a trim? The back is getting long. I meant today to go to a barber.”

  He handed me a pair of scissors. I lay the open blades against my thumb; there were small specks of rust along the bottoms, and in one spot the metal was so worn down, it looked as if it had been nibbled on by an impossibly small rabbit. They probably hadn’t been sharpened all summer. “Let me get mine,” I said.

  Back in my stateroom I looked at Lula and put my finger to my lips. I pointed to the wall, and she nodded. We had already gotten used to not speaking to each other when we heard Hugo in his room, since the wall between us was about the width of a pancake.

  “These will do the job,” I said to Hugo, returning with my own scissors.

  He sat on the high-backed wooden chair with his back to the window, giving me the light. The summer sun made the evening feel like afternoon, although our show would begin in an hour or two. Outside I could see other boats tied up for the night, and no one was left on the pier rolling barrels or bargaining sales—only Dr. Early. He was sitting on one of Hugo’s canvas chairs, looking out at the water. I wondered why he had not eaten dinner with us. Keeping vigilant watch for the slave Jackson, no doubt.

  Hugo’s hair was very soft and dark. I combed it out and began taking small snips at the ends, using my fingers to measure straight lines.

  “Pinky tells me you went to the apothecary for him today. Is that right?” Hugo asked.

  “Don’t move your head,” I told him.

  “That was very well done, May. Thank you for thinking of it. But that’s not what I wanted to speak to you about.”

  “I thought you wanted me to cut your hair?”

  “Yes, yes, quite right,” Hugo said. He blew out some air, maybe a laugh.

  “Don’t move your head,” I said again.

  “Sorry.” He stiffened his shoulders as though to make a sturdier base. “Right, then. Besides cutting my hair, I did want to speak to you, to take this opportunity to tell you something I’ve been thinking about. Now. May. It occurs to me that you are beginning to feel at home on this boat of mine. Am I right? You know our ways now, more or less, and you can anticipate our needs, Pinky’s gargle, for instance, and you take it upon yourself to help out even if it’s not sewing. That’s new for you. I had the impression when you first started that you only cared about sewing. The costumes and so forth. You felt that was your job. Whereas I felt your job included a number of things, really anything that might need to be done. And I can tell you now that I was a little worried for a while that you might not be quite capable. Well, we both were, weren’t we? But you are capable, and more, and I want to thank you for that. I know Pinky is grateful for the gargle.”

  “I was going to the apothecary’s anyway,” I said, and then I stopped because I hadn’t meant to tell him that. But Hugo did not ask me why else I would go. Instead he said:

  “Well, I hope with the medicine and a good night’s sleep Pinky will be just fine. However. There’s something else I noticed, and that is . . . well, I’m sorry if I’m trespassing into your personal life here, but I’ve noticed, being in the next room over, I’ve noticed that you sometimes call out in your sleep. Last night, for instance. I heard you.”

  I stopped and brought the scissors toward me, away from his head. I looked at the blades and then at my hand. Hugo seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

  “I have nightmares sometimes,” I told him.

  “Yes, nightmares. That’s what I thought. Any idea why?”

  “I . . . well, you know . . . the Moselle.”

  “Mm. Yes, of course, indeed. But I mean to say, May, that your fears may be more than just about the Moselle. It’s occurred to me that your fears may also have to do with your situation at present. Your life now. You know what I’m getting at?”

  I pulled away again. Now I really was shaking. I started to say, How did you find out?

  But Hugo kept talking. “You probably think that, after the summer is over, your employment will end. You’re not an actor; you can’t move onto a stage theater in some town or another. You’re part seamstress, part stage manager, and part advance man, but most of the actors in towns see to their own costumes, and most stage managers are men. And of course an established theater doesn’t need an advance man to advertise its shows. So I want to tell you that I’ve made a decision. If you’d like, you can come with me to Pittsburgh after the summer and work in the theater there. I can get you a job with me. Mostly sewing, probably, but maybe other tasks as well; I’m not sure. My point is, you don’t have to worry about how you’ll get your bread and butter after the Floating Theatre closes. I don’t want you to worry about that. I don’t want you to have nightmares over it. Life can be hard for a single woman, I know that.”

  “Oh,” I said. The back of his head was very still, and the late-afternoon light, past its gloaming, cast a weak shine on his hair, making it look like something metallic, a helmet. I tried and failed to think about my future. Pittsburgh, he had sa
id. At the moment my imagination could go only as far as the northern bank of the Ohio River. He wanted to help me, but he was thinking too far in advance.

  “You’ve done very well here,” he told me. There was a pause. I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked at the scissors, which were open above his head, and I carefully pulled the blades together. Through the window I could see that Dr. Early was still sitting in the canvas chair, smoking a cigar. I suddenly realized that he could be there all night. That meant no chance to sneak out with Lula in the rowboat.

  “Are you finished?” Hugo asked. It took me a moment to realize that he meant his hair. I pulled my fingers through it. It was as fine as a child’s. I could smell the soap he used on his face and hands before dinner. I was glad I could not see his eyes and that he could not see mine. I didn’t know what I might look like to him.

  I glanced out the window again. Dr. Early, of course, hadn’t moved. I said to Hugo’s back, “Where are we going after Paducah?”

  “Joppa, Illinois,” he told me. “Is that all right, then? What I offered? Do you think you can rest easier now?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “I’ll try.”

  He stood up and looked in the mirror. “It seems the right side is a tad longer than the left,” he said gently, and I realized that I had neglected to cut the right side at all. He smiled at me, amused, and in spite of my worries I smiled back.

  But before he could sit down again, someone spoke from the other side of the wall. “What is this?”

  It was Mrs. Niffen, and her voice was coming from inside my room. I ran to the guard, feeling in my pocket for my key as I did so. It wasn’t there.

  When I threw open my door, I found Mrs. Niffen standing in the middle of my room holding a dinner plate.

  “What are you doing in here?” I demanded. My voice was shaking from fear but it might have sounded like anger. From the corner of my eye I could see, partially hidden by the open door, Lula’s trunk. It was closed, and Lula was nowhere in sight. Her discarded stockings, though, had not made it inside the trunk with her. I stepped back and pushed at them with my foot, at the same time thinking I could claim them as my own.

  Hugo was behind me. “Margaret, who gave you leave to go into May’s room?” he asked Mrs. Niffen.

  “I thought I heard something, a scurrying sound like vermin. And look at this.” She showed him the plate with two gnawed-at chicken bones. “Cook’s chicken legs. It was you who took them.”

  “Now, Margaret,” Hugo said.

  “This whole room reeks of chicken.”

  “Margaret, it’s all right.”

  “All right? Now, Captain, you know it isn’t all right. I don’t want to scatter rat poison all over the boat. It’s bad for Celia to breathe that in—she’s a growing girl—and what if Oliver got hold of something? He’d be dead in a thrice and it would be your fault.” She turned to me. Her eyes were red and her white hair seemed very shiny, as though righteousness gave her an angelic glow.

  “We are not permitted to eat in our rooms,” she told me, holding the plate out as proof.

  I spotted my room key on the bed next to my sewing box. Where I’d left it after I fetched my scissors. Again I looked around for signs of Lula, but her extra dress and her boots were still where I’d stashed them, under my bed.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m guilty. I brought food into my room.”

  Mrs. Niffen kept staring at me with her little red eyes. “That’s it? No apology?”

  I wasn’t going to apologize to her, but I did turn to Hugo and said I was sorry.

  “Margaret should not have come in here, but she’s right about the rats,” Hugo told me. “River rats are the worst. They’re the size of baby cows and will eat through a brick wall to get to a chicken bone.”

  Baby cows? “You mean calves,” I said before I could stop myself. I was not being sarcastic. My father was a dairy farmer, after all.

  Mrs. Niffen said, “Cheek!”

  But Hugo’s eyes crinkled into a smile, though his mouth didn’t follow suit. I had the thought that, just as I had learned the ways of the boat, maybe he had learned the ways of me.

  “Calves. Of course.” He waited for me to say something more, but I did not. “Will you promise not to bring food in here again?” he asked me after a moment. Mrs. Niffen harrumphed, as if this was too little a penalty for my serious crime.

  I didn’t need my Greek. I was getting quite skilled at this. “I promise,” I lied.

  19

  As I suspected, Dr. Early stayed out on the pier all night.

  At breakfast the next morning, when this was discovered and discussed, Liddy told us, “He writes poetry. He looks for inspiration in nature.”

  “What?” Hugo asked with some amusement. “A doctor and a poet, too?”

  “What a fine man, my dear,” Mrs. Niffen said to her.

  From across the table Thaddeus mouthed to me, “Jackson.” The runaway slave. But of course I had already guessed what Dr. Early had been doing all night.

  “He’s sleeping in the office now,” Hugo said. “He came on board when I woke up to move the boat. Pretty good hand at the sweep.”

  “Let’s bring him a plate of pancakes,” Mrs. Niffen suggested. “He shouldn’t have to stay at an inn tonight, all that expense. Don’t you think, Captain? Since he’s doing so much for the show. I’m sure he’ll fetch such a crowd today as never before.” This with a significant look toward me.

  But before she could fetch him a plate, Dr. Early came into the dining room looking as fresh as ever. With all the attention on him, no one noticed the slices of ham I slipped into my pocket. All my clothes had begun to smell like past meals.

  Back in my stateroom, I gave Lula her breakfast. Today she was keeping herself closed into the trunk except for a crack, understandably nervous after yesterday’s scare. I had given her the steamboat pincushion to look at as a curiosity, and it was still in her lap.

  “I think I could make something like this,” she said, turning it over in her hands. “If I had the right material and real good scissors.”

  I locked my door from the inside and came over to look. Crouching down, I saw where she had pulled back the steamboat’s little cloth side wheel to see how it had been sewn in. “See?” she said. “You just need to cut out lots of parts and stuff them, then sew them together.”

  “You’d need very good eyes.”

  She nodded. “And a long nail or something to push in the wool. But not sharp.”

  “Maybe a tapestry needle,” I said. “That has a flat head.”

  I gave her a basin of water and a clean cloth. Then I turned around so she could wash herself with some privacy.

  “I received a note this morning,” I told her. “They’re coming for you tonight.”

  The note had been brought by a young boy who had eyes more for the boat than for me; I spotted him walking around the lower deck, looking into all the windows and running his hand idly along the painted wood beneath them. The message was written in Mrs. Howard’s large scrawl: I’ve made everything ready. Our friend will wait for you on the road above the pier; meet him with the package just after the show begins, and he will take care of things from there. By “things” I assumed she meant Lula.

  “Will they take me to my baby?” Lula whispered. “To William?”

  “I don’t know what they’ll do,” I said truthfully. “But it seems as though they’ve made a plan at last.”

  “Like the man said, they do like their plans.” I was sitting on the bed with my back toward her, but I could hear the bitterness in her voice.

  “Would you rather cut and run?” I asked. “Take your chances?”

  “That’s what I did do,” Lula reminded me.

  There was a small nightstand between the bed and the window, and on a sudden hunch I picked up the book of verses there. It was the book Liddy had lent me, into which I’d tucked Comfort’s itinerary. The book was small and beautifully bound in dark br
own leather, the title etched in gold: Crossing the River at Night and Other Poems by Dr. Martin Early.

  I pushed the pinned curtains aside to look out. There he was, walking toward a group of rousters. A moment later I saw that Thaddeus was following him. Thaddeus must have called out, because Dr. Early stopped, turned around, and then waited. My hands felt suddenly sweaty, and I nearly dropped the curtain.

  “What is it?” Lula asked me. She seemed to be able to know what I was feeling by reading my back.

  “Nothing, really,” I said. I was watching Thaddeus and Dr. Early talk to each other. Thaddeus was standing very still, his legs apart, like someone keeping a fine balance. “It’s nothing. I just wish it was tonight already.”

  I heard someone walking along the guard. When the footsteps stopped at my door, Lula’s face went stiff and scared, and we looked at each other for half a second before she folded herself into the trunk and quietly closed it. I glanced around the room for signs of her and picked up the basin of water from the floor. As I carried it back to the washstand I saw by the jittery water that my hands were shaking.

  “Who is it?” I called out.

  “Hugo and Pinky. Can we come in?”

  I took the key from my pocket. Hugo was frowning when I opened the door.

  “What’s this, you’re locking your door from the inside now? Is this because of the chicken?”

  “I’ve had things disappear from my room,” I said.

  Mrs. Niffen must have been out on the guard, or maybe the door to her own room was open, because she called out, “Only things that belonged to me!”

  Hugo’s face contorted a moment, trying not to laugh. He said, “You should be able to guard your things while you’re here, though, don’t you think? Or are they all taken by force?”

  “I’ve never taken anything!” Mrs. Niffen called out again, belying her previous statement.