by John Jakes
Brown smiled. His head was long, his features regular but unmemorable. His smile, however, seemed to re-sort those features into a shining amber composition that was immensely attractive and winning. “Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. ‘Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.’” He drank more tea. “I just hope we don’t have to wait until the last trump, which is a part of the verse I left out.”
George said, “I grant that your race has suffered enormous tribulation. But wouldn’t you say that- you personally have been fortunate? You grew up free, and you’ve lived that way all your life.”
Unexpectedly, Brown showed anger. “Do you honestly think that makes any difference, Major Hazard? Every colored person in this country is enslaved to the fears of whites and to the way those fears influence white behavior. You’re fooled because my chains don’t show. But I still have them. I am a black man. The struggle is my struggle. Every cross is my cross—in Alabama or Chicago or right here.”
Bristling slightly, George said, “If you consider this country so wicked, what’s kept you from leaving?”
“I thought I told you. Hope of change. My studies have taught me that change is one of the world’s few constants. America’s hypocritical picture of the freedom it offers has been destined to change since the Declaration was signed, because the institution of slavery is evil and never was anything else. I hope the war will hasten abolition. Once I was foolish enough to think the law would accomplish the task, but Dred Scott showed that even the Supreme Court’s tainted. The last resort and shelter of despotism.”
George refused to surrender. “I’ll grant much of what you say, Brown. But not that remark about American freedom being hypocritical. I think you overstate the case.”
“I disagree. But if so”—the smile warmed away any antagonism—“consider it one of the few privileges of my color.”
“So it’s hope of change that keeps you here—” Constance began.
“That and my responsibilities. It’s mostly the children who keep me here.”
“Ah, you’re married.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then whose—?”
A call from Kate Chase interrupted. Dr. Delany had consented to speak briefly. The secretary’s attractive daughter wanted the guests to refill their cups and plates and find places.
At the serving table, where a young black girl in a domestic’s apron gave Brown an admiring glance, George said, “I’d like to hear more of your views. We live at Willard’s Hotel—”
“I know.”
The statement astonished Constance, though it seemed to pass right by her husband.
“Will you dine with us there some night?”
“Thank you, Major, but I doubt the management would like that. The Willard brothers are decent men, but I’m still one of their employees.”
“You’re what?”
“I am a porter at Willard’s Hotel. It’s the best job I could find here. I won’t work for the army. The army’s running its own peculiar institution these days: hiring my people to cook and chop wood and fetch and carry for a pittance. We’re good enough to dig sinks but not good enough to fight. That’s why I’m a porter instead.”
“Willard’s,” George muttered. “I’m dumbfounded. Have we ever passed one another in the lobby or the hallways?”
Brown led them toward chairs. “Certainly. Dozens of times. You may look at me, but you never see me. It’s another privilege of color. Mrs. Hazard, will you be seated?”
Later, realizing Brown was right, George started to apologize, but the lanky Negro brushed it away with a smile and a shrug. They had no further opportunity to talk. But Constance remained curious about his reference to children. Next afternoon at the hotel, she searched until she found him removing trash and discarded cigar butts from sand urns. Ignoring stares from people in the lobby, she asked Brown to explain what he meant.
“The children are runaways, what that cross-eyed general Butler calls contrabands. There’s a black river flowing out of the South these days. Sometimes children escape with their parents, then the parents get lost. Sometimes the children don’t belong to anyone, just tag along after the adults making the dash. Would you like to see some of the children, Mrs. Hazard?”
His eyes fastened on hers, testing. “Where?” she countered.
“Out where I live, on north Tenth Street.”
“Negro Hill?” The soft intake of breath before the question gave her away. He didn’t react angrily.
“There’s nothing to fear just because it’s a black community. We have only our fair share of undesirables, same as down here—I take it back, you have more.” He grinned. “You also have the politicians. Truly, you’ll be perfectly safe if you’d care to come. I don’t work Tuesdays. We could go during the day.”
“All right,” Constance said, hoping George would agree to it.
Surprisingly, he did. “If anyone could protect a woman anywhere, I have a feeling it’s that young chap. Go visit his community of waifs. I’ll be fascinated to know what it’s like.”
George paid a livery to bring a carriage to Willard’s front door on Tuesday. The lout delivering it glowered when he saw Brown and Constance sit side by side on the driver’s seat. The Negro was a companion, not a servant. The lout muttered something nasty, but one glance from Brown cut it short.
“When did you come to Washington?” Constance asked as Brown drove them away from the hotel into the perennial congestion of omnibuses, military wagons, horses, and pedestrians.
“Last fall, after Old Abe won.”
“Why then?”
“Didn’t I explain at the reception? The resettlement plan is in abeyance because of the war, and I thought this might be the cockpit of change. I hoped some useful work might find me, and it has. You’ll see—Hah!” He bounced the reins over the team.
Soon they were rattling through the autumn heat to the overgrown empty lots far out on Tenth. Negro Hill was a depressing enclave of tiny homes, most unpainted, and hovels built of poles, canvas, and pieces of old crates. She saw chicken pens, vegetable patches, flowerpots. The small touches could do little to relieve the air of festering poverty.
The Negroes they passed gave them curious, occasionally suspicious looks. Presently Brown turned left into a rutted lane. At the end stood a cottage of new yellow pine bright as sunflower petals.
“The whole community helped build this,” he said. “It’s already too small. We can feed and house only twelve. But it’s a start, and all we could afford.”
The shining little house smelled deliciously of raw wood and hearth smoke and, inside, of soap. The interior, brightened by large windows, consisted of two rooms. In the nearer one, a stout black woman sat on a stool, Bible in hand, with twelve poorly dressed waifs of all shades from ebony to tan encircling her feet; the youngest child was four or five, the oldest ten or eleven. Through the doorway arch, Constance saw pallets laid in precise rows.
One beautiful coppery girl of six or seven ran to the tall man. “Uncle Scipio, Uncle Scipio!”
“Rosalie.” He swept her up and hugged her. After he put her down, he walked Constance a short distance away and said, “Rosalie escaped from North Carolina along with her mother, stepfather, and her aunt. Near Petersburg a white farmer with a rifle caught them in his haymow. He killed the mother and stepfather, but Rosalie and her aunt got away.”
“Where’s the aunt now?”
“In the city, hunting for work. I haven’t seen her for three weeks.”
More children came clamoring around his legs. He patted heads, faces, shoulders, offering just the right encouragement or question to each as he worked his way to the old iron stove where a soup pot simmered; mostly broth and bones, Constance observed.
She ate with Brown and the lost children and the black woman, Agatha, who tended them while Bro
wn was away at his job. Most of the youngsters laughed and wiggled and poked each other in a childlike way, but there were two, sad and grave, who didn’t speak at all, merely sat spooning up broth in the slow, exhausted manner of the elderly. She had to turn away to keep from crying.
In spite of that, the place and the youngsters fascinated her. She hated to see the visit end. On the way back to Willard’s, she asked, “What’s your plan for those children?”
“First, I must feed and shelter them so they don’t starve. The politicians will do nothing for them; I know that.”
“You do have strong feelings about politicians, Mr. Brown.”
“Why not Scipio? I’d like us to be friends. And, yes, I do despise the breed. Politicians helped put the shackles on black people and, what’s worse, they have kept them there.”
The carriage bumped on for a minute. Then she said, “Beyond helping the children survive, do you have anything else in mind for them?”
“From the necessary we move to the ideal. If I could locate another suitable place for the twelve you saw—a place to house and teach them till I can find homes for them—I could take in twelve more. But I can’t afford to do it on what they pay me to empty the spit from brass pots.” Eyes on the yellow and red leaves over the street, he added, “It would be possible only with the help of a patron.”
“Is that why you brought me to Negro Hill?”
“Because I had hopes?” He smiled at her. “Of course.”
“And of course you knew I’d say yes—though I’m not sure how we’ll work out the details.”
“Don’t do it just to ease your white guilt.”
“Damn your impertinence, Brown—I’ll do it for whatever reason I please. I lost my heart to those waifs.”
“Good,” he said.
They drove another block, past the first white residence. Two children were petting a pony on the side lawn. Constance cleared her throat. “Please excuse my language a moment ago. Occasionally my temper shows. I’m Irish.”
He grinned. “I guessed.”
Constance didn’t know how George would react to her desire to help Brown. To her delight, he went far beyond mere consent. “If he needs a place for the children, why don’t we provide it? And food, clothing, books—furnishing everything would hardly make a nick in our income, and the work sounds eminently worthwhile. God knows little black children shouldn’t be made to suffer for past and present stupidities of their white elders.”
Lighting his cigar, he squinted through the smoke in a way that lent him a familiar piratical air, made even stronger by his new mustache. That look effectively hid a sentimental streak Constance had discovered years ago and loved ever since. With his thumbnail George shot the match straight into the hearth. “Yes, I definitely believe you should invite Brown to set up his facility back home.”
“Where exactly?”
“What about the shed above Hazard’s? The site of the old fugitive depot?”
“The location’s good, but the building is small.”
“We’ll expand it. Add a couple of dormitories, a classroom, a dining room—The company carpenters can do the work.”
Reality intruded on enthusiasm when she said, “Will they?”
“They work for me—they damn well better.” He reflected a moment, then frowned. “I don’t understand why you even asked the question.”
“The children are black, George.”
His reply was ingenuous. “Do you think that would matter?”
“To many, maybe most, of the citizens of Lehigh Station, yes, I think it would. Very much so.”
“Mmm. Never occurred to me.” He paced to the mantel, turning his cigar in his fingers as he often did when working on a problem. “Still—that’s no excuse for rejecting the idea. It’s a good one. We’ll do it.”
She clapped her hands, delighted. “Perhaps Mr. Brown and I could travel home for a few days to get things started. We might even take a child or two.”
“I can arrange a short leave and go with you.”
She started to say that would be splendid but caught herself. Vivid as a railway warning lantern in the night, there was a name: Virgilia.
“That’s generous, but you’re busy. I’m sure Mr. Brown and I can survey the property.”
“Fine.” His words and his shrug relieved her. “I’ll write Christopher a letter to authorize whatever work you want done. Speaking of letters, have you seen this?” From the mantel he took a soiled, badly crumpled missive sealed shut with wax.
“It’s from Father,” she exclaimed when she saw the handwriting. She tore it open, sank to the sofa, read a few lines with a strained expression. “He’s reached Houston—wearing his revolver constantly, he says, and constantly biting his tongue because of the hot rebel sentiments expressed everywhere. Oh, I hope he makes the rest of the journey safely.”
George walked to her side, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. We are all on a journey now. God knows who among us will come through it safely. He stood patting her and smoking his cigar while she finished reading.
Constance and Brown left Washington a few days later. Brown had chosen three children to go with them: Leander, a sturdy eleven-year-old with a belligerent manner; Margaret, a shy, coal-black child; and Rosalie, the pretty little one whose merriment filled the silences of the others.
The fear she had expressed to George was not without substance, she discovered. A conductor at the Washington depot insisted that Brown and the children ride in the second-class car reserved for colored. Brown’s eyes revealed his anger, but he didn’t provoke a scene. Leading the youngsters up the aisle, he said, “I’ll see you farther up the line, Mrs. Hazard.”
When they had left the car, the conductor said, “ ’S that nigger your servant, ma’am?”
“That man is my friend.”
The conductor walked off shaking his head.
After changing at Baltimore, they journeyed on toward Philadelphia through golden autumn landscapes. Men around Constance thumped their newspapers and crowed over the superiority of Yankee soldiers. At a place called Cheat Mountain in rugged western Virginia, the enemy general once considered America’s best soldier had taken a drubbing.
“It says down in Richmond folks call him Evacuating Lee. There’s one reb star that’s sinking mighty fast.”
The Lehigh valley, fired with the reds and yellows of fall, seemed refreshingly peaceful to the tired adult travelers. On the station platform, the children gaped at the homes rising in terraced levels, the looming ironworks with its smoke and noise, and the great scene-drop of mountains and evening sky. Little Rosalie whispered, “Lordy.”
Constance had telegraphed ahead. A groom was there with a carriage. She didn’t miss the brief change in his expression when he realized Brown and the children were her companions.
The rig rattled up the inclined street. The two little girls squealed and hugged Brown as the wind ruffled their hair and clothes. Pinckney Herbert waved from the door of his store, but the faces of some other citizens, notably a discharged Hazard’s employee named Lute Fessenden, showed hostility. Giving the youngsters a murderous stare, Fessenden whispered to a companion as the carriage passed.
Western light poured over the mansion at the summit. Brett was waiting on the veranda, together with a woman Constance didn’t recognize until they were in the driveway. The carriage stopped; Constance alighted and ran up the steps. “Virgilia? How lovely you look! I can’t believe my eyes.”
“It’s the handiwork of our sister-in-law,” Virgilia said, nodding toward Brett. She spoke as if the change were unimportant, but a vivacity in her expression gave her away.
Constance marveled. Virgilia’s dress of rust-colored silk with lace cuffs flattered her figure, which loss of a great deal of weight had reshaped into voluptuous, billowy curves. Her hair, neatly bunned at the back of her head, gleamed with a cleanliness Constance had never seen before. There was color in Virgilia’s cheeks, but rouge and powder had been
applied subtly and expertly; they rendered her old scars nearly invisible. Virgilia would never qualify as a pretty woman, but she had become a handsome one.
“I’m neglecting my duties,” Constance said. She performed introductions, and in a few sentences explained why she had brought Scipio Brown and the children to Belvedere.
Brett was polite to Brown, but cool; nor had he missed her accent. Constance watched Virgilia’s eye draw a languorous line from Brown’s face to his chest. He quickly busied himself with the children, kneeling and fussing over them. Seeing Brown embarrassed was a new experience for Constance. Recalling Virgilia’s fondness for Negro men, she realized George’s sister had not changed in certain fundamental respects.
The visitors were taken into the house, fed, and settled for the night. Next morning, while Virgilia looked after the children and vainly tried to draw Leander into conversation, Constance and Brown drove to the main gate of Hazard’s and up to the remote site of the shed that had functioned for a time as a stop on the underground railroad to Canada.
Brown poked around inside, then came out. “With some fixing, it will be perfect.” They discussed specifics while they drove back down to the gate. Workers respectfully stepped out of the way of the carriage, but most registered silent disapproval of a black man appearing in public with the owner’s wife.
By noon they had spoken with Wotherspoon, and he had dispatched men to knock out one wall of the shed and patch and whitewash the other three. Late in the day, Constance and Brown went to check on progress. The head of the painting crew, a middle-aged fellow named Abraham Fouts, had worked for Hazard’s fifteen years. Always friendly, this afternoon he merely gave Constance a nod and no greeting. That night, while the adults and children ate supper, someone threw a stone through the front window.
Leander spun toward the noise, tense as a cat whose whiskers touched something threatening in the dark. Virgilia rose in wrath. To the surprise of George’s wife, it was Brown who sounded a note of tolerance.
“Some of that’s to be expected when a man like me comes into a house like this—and through the front door.”
