*
“Wait here, please.”
I heard voices inside from where I stood on the porch, my cap in my hand. I’d wondered what George’s wife was like. Pretty and pleasant, I discovered. Imagine, I thought, what she’d be like if it wasn’t six-thirty in the morning and there wasn’t a stranger knocking on her front door. It was the same house George had grown up in, but with a large addition built onto the back and with a whole other floor added on top.
George came to the door and shook my hand, but without inviting me inside. No one shows up at your doorstep at six-thirty in the morning with good news, particularly after not having seen you in twenty years. George closed the front door.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I need your help.”
“I assumed that. What do you need my help with?”
It was like two decades had been two days. There was more of him—a lot more of him—but other than that, he was still George and I was still David. I told him enough of what had happened and what needed to happen for him to understand.
“I swear to you, it was them or me,” I said. “I didn’t have any other choice.”
George nodded at Tom, who was standing beside the wagon I’d parked alongside George’s house. “I know you didn’t,” George said. “I wouldn’t help you if I thought you did.”
I kept my eyes on the porch floor.
“Drive around to the back of the factory,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”
*
On our return to Chatham, I offered Tom half of all that was left of Burwell, the five-hundred-dollar billfold. Which, it turned out, was nothing more than a Missouri bankroll, an impressive stack of counterfeit money stuck between five real twenty-dollar bills on top and another five real twenties on the bottom. You had to give the man credit: even dead, Burwell was still cheating his way to a better deal.
“Wouldn’t feel right taking money for what I done,” Tom said, riding up front with me this time. “I did what I did because it needed doing.”
“I understand that. I’d feel better, though, if I could do something for you.”
It turned out Tom had come upon Ferguson and me while cutting across Sophia’s back lot on his way to an all-night shift at the sugar plant, a job he despised. “Man can’t hear himself think in a place like that,” he’d said. And now, after not showing up for work, he didn’t even have that.
“It seems to me,” he said, “the business you in, you might be able to use a man at the door to make sure the wrong sorts of people don’t bother you or your customers.”
“Sort of like a watchdog,” I said.
“Seems to me you don’t have no worries in that particular area.”
I smiled; Tom, too. Double homicide tends to bring people together.
“Are you sure you’d want to stand around all night just waiting for trouble?”
“I expect I’d be sitting,” Tom said. “Nothing fancy, a stool maybe, if you could manage it. And I expect the idea is to make sure trouble don’t happen before it does.”
“That’s exactly the idea.”
It was a lovely fall morning, sunny and cool all at once. The wind was mild, southwesterly, and you could smell the smoke coming from the potash factory.
Every time I learned that George had moved up another rung in the company, I’d wonder what they actually did there—what, for example, they were always burning in their big furnace. And that morning, after finally meeting George’s wife, I’d gotten my answer, had found out first-hand not only what they burned all day but how, if you wanted to burn up something else, there’d be nothing left of it once you had, nothing at all except maybe a few grey clouds of smoke.
*
One more fatality-free dynamiting a couple of months later—this time to the home of Israel Evans, another Scott Act inspector—finally led to the arrest of one Mr. Jason Macy of Port Huron, Michigan, a convicted American felon whose room at the Royal Tavern was discovered to contain a Ranger No. 2 revolver and three fulminating caps and a fuse. Although the county Crown attorney failed to gain an admission from the accused of his part in a conspiracy by local hotel-keepers to blow the Scott Act off the face of Kent County, Macy was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years in Kingston Penitentiary, the judge declaring at the sentencing that “You came to this country to commit one of the most diabolical crimes known in this land. It is proper and right to make an example of you. The laws of the land must be maintained and justice vindicated. Such as you must learn that law is supreme.”
Until I learned of Macy’s conviction, I was never sure that one of Burwell’s supposed secret witnesses wouldn’t come forth and claim that it was the Negro named David King who was responsible for the dynamitings, the one who ran the illegal saloon people called Sophia’s. But I should have known better. Even if Burwell hadn’t been bluffing and did have three bought-off accusers lined up and ready to lie, his sudden and permanent disappearance rendered more than just myself free. Dead men can’t collect on promissory notes.
Once I read news of the conviction in the Planet, I wrote George a letter asking him if he would care to visit me in Chatham sometime. When he wrote back suggesting the following Saturday, I answered that that would be fine and closed Sophia’s for the first time since I’d opened for business.
I hadn’t known Loretta for very long, but when I told her not only how I hadn’t seen my oldest friend except for once in over twenty years but how I owed him a debt so large it was impossible ever to repay, she prepared us enough strudel, coffee cake, and marzipan to make George fat if he hadn’t been already.
After he’d obliged me by eating a little bit of everything, I asked him if he’d like a cup of coffee or tea.
“You don’t have any whiskey?” he said.
“You don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh, so you mean there might be things about me you don’t know. I can’t imagine the same thing about you.”
George laughed and rubbed his belly and I took a bottle and two glasses down from the cupboard.
We haven’t missed a first Saturday of every other month for the last eight years.
20
Loretta’s excited: there’s a blind man on the undertaker’s table.
“What’s the difference?” I say. “The dead can’t see.”
Loretta is applying the finishing fidgeting to her camera set-up. “This is something you believe you need to tell me?”
Artists. I cross my legs and keep my mouth shut and am thankful for a chair in which to pass the time. Ordinarily, Loretta likes an empty room when she works, but today she said she’d like some company. How often does someone have a chance to watch a beautiful woman take a picture of a blind dead man?
“Are you sure I’m all right here?” I say. The chair Loretta has pushed against the wall is directly behind the table covered with her subject.
“You are where you should be.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to interfere with your picture. I can easily move.”
“You are where you should be. Now please do not be restless. It distracts me, yes?”
The blind man looks blind, even with eyes that wouldn’t be seeing anything anyway. It’s the pupils, the way they look used up, callused, like he’d been straining unsuccessfully to see his entire life, long after he knew he couldn’t.
“So,” Loretta says. “I have given you sufficient time to consider our journey to Germany, yes?”
“Our journey? It sounds like you’ve already decided for me.”
“Of course not. This is a journey no other can decide to take for you. But I have decided I am to go at the end of this June. I have begun to make the necessary inquiries.”
Loretta is behind her camera now, clicking and adjusting things I don’t even know the names of. That I’m surprised she’s settled on going, with or without me, surprises me. I’ve known she was planning on returning to Germany for months now. I stare at the body on the table.
Sometimes, as children, George and I would take turns pretending that one of us was blind while the other was his guide. Being the blind man was by far the better role. There was always the worry you’d trip in a pothole or bang your head on a tree branch if your seeing guide got lazy or distracted, but that was what made it so much fun—not knowing what was going to happen next. You weren’t going to fall down or hurt your head being the guide, but the entire time you couldn’t wait until it was your turn to be the blind man again.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” I say.
“This depends. If you accompany me, not so long—perhaps one month—but if you do not, perhaps longer. Perhaps then I will visit France as well.”
France. Montaigne, Voltaire, Rousseau. France sounds like a place in a book, even more than Germany. Not having been there, I suppose that’s what it is. Unless I went.
“Understand, I recognize the appeal,” I say.
Loretta is focusing on the dead man through her camera.
“Like I said before, though, there are a lot of loose ends I’d need to tie up first.”
“Yes, you have said.”
“I’d have to free up some money as well. I don’t even know how much money.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t travellers . . . don’t they need something to show someone when they go somewhere?”
“A passport.”
“A passport, right. I don’t have a passport.”
And then Loretta is done, is taking apart her equipment. “Yes, you would need to get a passport.”
I feel embarrassed. I feel eight, not forty-eight. I wish Loretta’s face was still busy behind her camera so she couldn’t see mine. “Passports need pictures, don’t they? I don’t even have a picture of myself.”
Laying away her camera in its black, felt-lined storage case, “You do now,” she says.
It takes me a moment to realize that I was the blind dead man whose photo she was taking. “You fooled me,” I say.
“Of course,” Loretta says.
*
“I’m the man you want to talk to. I can get you anything you need—peaches, pears, beets, corn, yams—and every can just as fresh as a daisy.”
“I do appreciate the generosity of your offer, but Mrs. Meyers does all of our fruit and vegetable shopping at the farmers’ market.”
“You see,” Franklin says, setting down his glass on the bar, “right there, that’s where you’re going wrong. A pear in a can is a clean pear, one hundred percent guaranteed, no questions asked. You can’t get that kind of freshness from a pear off a tree, you just can’t. My God, you’re a man of science, Meyers, you of all people should understand that.”
Meyers pushes his glasses up his nose. “You might have a point there,” he says, taking out his snuff box.
“You’re darn right I do.”
I wouldn’t miss this. Listening to Franklin lecture Meyers on modern science is like horseradish on an empty stomach.
“I’m thinking of the children,” Meyers says. “Mrs. Meyers and I want only what’s best for them.” Meyers takes a snort of snuff up each nostril.
“That’s what I’m saying. You want to put your children’s health and happiness first. Which is why you want to eat clean food. Canned food.”
“I say, I do see your point.”
“You’re a man of science, I knew you would.”
I would not miss this.
*
“Good evening, David.”
“Thompson.”
Thompson sits and settles at his usual table while I pour him out his usual drink, both of us committed to pretending that the other night didn’t happen, that Thompson hadn’t come about as close as anyone can to killing himself while still being around to feel ashamed about it the next morning. It’s difficult to make friends—real friends—after adolescence; having things in common to lie about helps.
“Well, it’s finally starting to feel like spring,” Thompson says as I set down his glass.
“It’s about time.”
“Feels as if it’s going to rain again, though.”
“That’s spring.”
“That it is.”
I take care of a couple of other customers at the bar, Meyers included, before stepping into the back. Henry, lying on his side, wags his tail without opening his eyes, an aging dog’s entitlement. I get the package I brought with me to work and bring it out front to the bar. Henry wags goodbye as I close the door.
I unwrap the book from the cloth bag I carried it in and take it with me to Thompson’s table. “I believe this is yours,” I say, but Thompson looks at it like he’s never seen it before, only heard about such an antiquarian wonder in bibliographic lore.
“It was mine,” he finally says, taking it from me without opening it, holding it open-palmed in both hands.
“Do you want it back?”
Still admiring the book, the dark green cover with the words Leaves of Grass splashed in gilt across the front, “I believe my days of owning first editions are over,” he says. “But I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding an interested buyer. Copies of Whitman’s own self-published first pressing are very, very rare.” Thompson is still holding the book like it’s a cushion with the rarest of emeralds resting on top.
“How about a trade?” I say.
Thompson searches my face—hard—for even the most nominal hint of pity. Not finding any, “What do I have that you could possibly want?”
“I’m going away for a while. I’m not sure for how long—a month, at least—and I need someone to look after Henry for me.”
“Your dog?”
“It’s the only Henry I know.”
Seeing I’m serious, Thompson carefully rests the book on his knee, holding on to it with one hand, taking a sustained drink of whiskey with the other. To himself as much as to me, “I’m afraid I don’t know much about the care of animals,” he says. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know the first thing about looking after a dog.”
“There’s not much to know. You feed them and walk them and make sure they’ve got water. Believe me, Henry’s easy to get along with. If you can’t get along with Henry, you can’t get along with anyone.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure, it’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Just that this is a very valuable book.”
“And Henry is a very valuable dog. So much so, if when I come back he’s just the same as when I left him, you can have the rest of your library back. I haven’t got room for all my books anyway, let alone yours.” I pick up Thompson’s empty glass. “You think about it. And if you decide to do it, I left you some advice inside the book.”
I leave Thompson alone with Leaves of Grass and the page I bookmarked, the one with the poem “Animals.”
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
A few minutes later, I return to Thompson’s table with a fresh drink.
“You’ve got a deal,” he says.
*
Tomorrow is set: Chatham, to New York, to Liverpool, to somewhere else over there—over the ocean—until, somehow, to Germany. I don’t know the details, but I don’t have to, Loretta does. For the next six weeks I plan to depend on Loretta’s dependability.
Tomorrow isn’t the problem, though; it’s tonight I’m having trouble with. Sleeping, specifically. Not that there’s anything to worry about. But then, that rarely has anything to do with it.
/>
Sophia’s is shut tight and locked up until I return, and Tom is going to look in on things anyway just to make sure, as well as keep an eye on Franklin. It’s time Tom had a holiday too. I gave him fifty dollars when I handed over the keys and told him to buy himself something he didn’t need. Tom gave it some thought. “I don’t suppose I’m in the market for any of that,” he said. I know Sophia’s will be here when I get back.
Thompson has his instructions as well: what and how much to feed Henry; where and how long to walk him; where and whom to seek help from if he takes sick or is injured. But I know Henry will be fine, if a little confused and lonely at first. Henry was a stray, just like Waldo, but he’s been with me long enough that there’ll have to be a period of adjustment. But he’ll adjust. That’s one of the things that us strays do best.
And since Thompson will be staying at my home while I’m gone, looking after the house as well as Henry, he has another responsibility to attend to. Thompson has to take care of my rose bush. I seem to have become a gardener by accident.
One of the Reverend King’s conditions of residence on the Settlement was a picket fence with a garden out front that had to include flowers. By the time I was living in Chatham, I swore that the first home I owned—the first home I could legitimately call my own—was going to be wilfully barren. Besides, although my body had never had to rise before sunrise with the master’s bell to begin a long day’s enforced labour in the fields, my brain had heard enough stories about what it was like to suffer thirteen hours under the unyielding Southern sun picking, ginning, and pressing cotton to feel an uncomfortable ache of empathy whenever I passed a farmer’s field, or even a large vegetable garden. This was one Negro whose hands were never going to get dirty—at least not with dirt.
True to my word, even the half-acre upon which my house was built is untilled and unembellished, a stone fence enclosing the entire property the only improvement I can be held responsible for. But somehow a rose has appeared. A pink rose. I didn’t put it there, but there it is anyway.
Stacking a delivery of firewood behind the house—it’s never too early to ready fall’s first cords—I noticed what I assumed to be a larger than normal weed that needed plucking. Except for a single large maple tree, the backyard is bereft of anything alive, simple soil the majority of the time, mud whenever it rains. What I’d thought was just a weed, though, wasn’t. A small rose bush had taken root; how, I don’t know. My instinct was to yank it out of the ground—it was young and delicate enough, it wouldn’t have been difficult—but I left it where it was, decided to let nature takes its course and do the job for me.
David Page 26
