Forever

by Pete Hamill

  She pulled her hand away and folded her arms across her breasts.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I think you just wanted to be up in me quim, and have your fun, and be done with it. I think you see me as some low, common trollop. You with your fancy accent from some fecking school somewhere, and your books, and your fecking poetry spoutin’. I think you look at me and think, She’s just another feckin’ slave. And one that can’t read or write and has only one thing to offer, and that’s between her legs.”

  “Not true, Mary,” he said in a soothing way, pulling her close. “Not true.”

  Her arms dropped, and he could feel her soften. She pressed her hard breasts against his chest. He wanted to take her down to the river edge. And then he heard a voice. The door cracking open. Sarah.

  “Mary? Are you out there, Mary? Come in at once, the tables are filthy with plates!”

  Mary kissed him and touched him and then hurried back into Hughson’s, where Africa drummed steadily on gourds and tabletops.

  The weather turned. He saw his first October in New York: the harbor sparkling, the air crisp and bright. He met Mary Burton one Monday evening and they made love on the slopes above the Collect. That night he told her his true name. She was not surprised. Early one Sunday morning two weeks later, when the sky was just brightening in Brooklyn, they met at the Battery and held hands while seated on a large stone and she talked about how she’d like to go to a right school and learn to read, even if it meant putting up with the preachers at Trinity.

  “Tell me I can do it,” she said, as the breeze shook leaves from the trees above them and a four-masted ship turned in the harbor, bound for the East River quays.

  “Of course you can do it, Mary,” he said. “I’ll loan you a book for starting. Just march into Trinity and say, ‘I want to read this book.’ Just don’t say ‘feck’ when you ask.”

  “Feck off,” she said, then turned her head and laughed at herself.

  Cormac was working with Mr. Partridge one Saturday noon on fifty large copies of legal advisories when he glanced out the windows. Mary Burton was standing in a doorway, staring into the shop. The light was so hard and bright (Cormac thought) that she must have been unable to see through the glass. She waited, as people teemed around her. Then a horse-drawn wagon came by, loaded with crates of dry goods, and when it passed, she was gone. She was trying to send him a message. He was sure of that. But she could not write a simple note. That night, he went back to Hughson’s on Stone Street.

  The bar was packed, every table filled, and Mary Burton was moving around in the blue tobacco fog, taking orders, grim. She didn’t see him come in. The fiddler was fatter and playing more joyfully. Sarah came to Cormac.

  “Are you here with the ten shillin’s?” she said.

  “I can leave now if you like, Mrs. Hughson.”

  “No, we’ll take your money one way or another.”

  He eased past her, trying to move among three large Africans who were joking at the bar. The sound of singing and clomping feet grew louder. Suddenly Mary Burton grabbed his hand.

  “I must talk wit’ you,” she said. “Tuesday night, on the north end of the Common.”

  She turned away, gathering empty glasses, forcing passage to the bar. John Hughson started filling the glasses. He didn’t notice Cormac. Against the far wall, British soldiers were on their feet, arms on shoulders, loudly singing a marching song, as if challenging the Irish to fight. Mary threw them an ugly look, then grabbed a half-dozen full glasses and whirled back into the stomping crowd. John Hughson saw Cormac now. His face was different, more furrowed with care and seriousness.

  “You’re back,” he said.

  “Aye—in want of a glass of porter.”

  “But it’s not the porter, is it? It’s not the porter that’s pulled you back at all.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He leaned forward.

  “It’s a priest you’re after, isn’t it, lad?”

  Cormac laughed.

  “A priest?”

  “An R.C.,” he said.

  “You mean a Catholic priest?”

  “Aye.”

  He was so serious that Cormac didn’t want to disappoint him. He shrugged. Although he was curious about the presence of a secret Catholic priest. After all, if such a person did exist, and the British found him, he’d be hanged.

  “No, I’m not looking for a priest, Mister Hughson. I’m not really what people would call a religious man.”

  Hughson looked unconvinced.

  “It’s all right to tell me, lad. If I’ve guessed correctly.”

  “You’ve guessed wrong, Mister Hughson. With all due respect, sir. All I want is a glass of porter.”

  Hughson filled a fresh glass and placed it before him. Cormac laid a piece of eight on the bar.

  “Well,” Hughson said, smiling, “if you do remember what you came for, let me know.”

  Cormac gave Hughson his back, sipping his porter while watching the hollering and dancing, the drunken British soldiers, the Africans pouring sweat and shouting secret words in their own languages, while Mary Burton moved among them all. Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed. Her hips seemed to churn beneath her muslin skirt. Her eyes flirted. She has something to tell me, he thought; when will she tell?

  Then he heard the back door open and turned to see the new arrivals.

  There stood Kongo.

  51.

  Behind him were two other Africans, both larger than Kongo, but it was clear that he was in charge. He was wearing a high-collared blue jacket, a coarse pale-blue workshirt, clean baggy trousers, and scuffed boots. It was the first time Cormac had seen him without manacles. Without being obvious, his eyes took in the entire room, the black faces and white, the fiddler, the smoke and food, Hughson and Sarah and Mary Burton. And, of course, Cormac O’Connor.

  In his glance he told Cormac that he knew him, all right, but he didn’t know whether Cormac wanted that known. His nod was almost imperceptible. There was a still, frozen moment, everyone in the room sensing the possibility of danger. The Africans froze. The soldiers froze. The music paused and the only sound was an icy breathing. It was as if they expected constables or redcoats to barge in behind Kongo and his men. Then Kongo stepped forward, the sense of danger eased, and he moved to the bar, next to where Cormac was sipping his porter. The music resumed with a relieved burst, along with the stomping of the dancers.

  “Cor-mac,” he whispered.

  “Kon-go.”

  He tapped a balled fist to his heart and then to Cormac’s chest. His friends nodded. Other blacks watched. The whites tried to look casual. Cormac laid some pieces of eight on the bar.

  “No,” Kongo said, his voice insistent. “No.”

  He pointed subtly at an African seated against the wall. Quaco. He came over. They talked softly, heads against ears. Quaco then spoke to Cormac in English, his voice very low.

  “Kongo says you gave him drink when he thirsted,” Quaco said. “Now he must give you water in return.”

  “All right.”

  Hughson looked annoyed because Kongo asked for water.

  “How can I get rich if he drinks water—and you join him?”

  “He’ll probably pay you for it.”

  “Aye, and then tell all these other buggers what a cheap bastard I am.”

  He drew three porters and filled two glasses from a water jug. Kongo took one glass, Cormac the other. The African lifted his glass as if in a toast, then drained it. Cormac did the same. Kongo said a word. Cormac repeated it, without knowing its meaning. He could feel Hughson watching them, and others too. Kongo handed mugs of porter to Quaco and his men, one of whom now seemed familiar to Cormac from the dark hold of the ship. They sipped. Kongo gazed around the room again.

  “Where do you know him from?” Hughson said. “You serve in Parliament together?”

  “No,” Cormac said. “We shipped together.”

  Then a
nother black man came over and bowed his head to Kongo, who squeezed his hand. Then another, and still one more. They all said words that Kongo accepted as if they were gifts. Quaco saw Cormac watching.

  “They know he has come for them,” he said. “They have wait a long time.”

  “They waited for him? How could they know he was on the Fury?”

  “They just know he is to come. It is foretold.”

  “Who is he?”

  Quaco sipped his porter.

  “Babalawo.”

  A word Cormac didn’t know. An African word.

  Babalawo.

  52.

  That Tuesday, Cormac waited for Mary Burton on a bench at the north end of the Common. She was more than an hour late, her eyes jittery, the ends of her hair unkempt and loose. She was carrying an Old Testament.

  “Can you read me some of these words?” she said abruptly. “I’m stuck with this ‘begat.’ And someone begat someone who begat someone else, all of these begatters.”

  “Who gave you this?”

  “Nobody,” she said. “I stole it from one of the preachers. He was lyin’ on the ground, shakin’ and rollin’, looking like a mad dog, his eyes up in his head. So I lifted it and watched him rollin’ for a while, figuring he was more in want of a doctor than a book, and then I went off with it. The next day I took it to Trinity, and they didn’t want me, certain they were that I was a papist, but I said no, I was no papist, I was a fine Protestant from the Church of Ireland and wanted to worship God and the King of England, but I couldn’t do it ’less I learnt to read. So the preacher, fella name of Wrightson, he starts to read it, and that’s when I start hearing ‘begat’ until it was coming out of his arse.”

  Cormac laughed. “Did you say ‘feck’ to him?”

  “No, but I came close.”

  “And he let you into the classes.”

  “Aye, after paying a visit to the Hughsons, and shamin’ both of them. I get an hour each mornin’ now. I learnt the letters first, and then on to the fecking begatters….”

  “It gets better,” Cormac said, holding the book, riffling its pages. “You’ll love the story of Joseph and his brothers and the coat of many colors.”

  “Will you read it to me?” she said, taking the book back into her hands.

  “No, I want you to read it to me.”

  She was quiet then for a long while as they watched passing couples, and occasional teams of redcoats, and carriages carrying rich people to the houses down beyond Wall Street. She held the book in her hands as if it were made of gold.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said.

  He waited, suddenly afraid that she would inform him that she was going to beget their child.

  “There’s something going on at Hughson’s,” she said. “The Africans and the Irish together. They’re talkin’ about a risin’. About strikin’ at the English. About killing people…”

  She stared at the ground. A cool wind blew in from the North River.

  “Stay away from them,” she said. “Stay away from Hughson’s. They’re all a-headin’ for the gallows.”

  She turned to the hill above the Common, where dead leaves were swirling in the fresh river wind.

  “Stay away,” she said. “Stay away.”

  Kongo was working in the Fly Market, a few blocks south of the Slave Market. He was the property of a housepainter named Wilson. But Cormac was so busy that autumn that he didn’t see much of the man Quaco had called a babalawo. He was just pleased to know that Kongo was alive. He stayed away from Hughson’s and the rumors of revolt, hoping that Kongo was not involved but knowing that no rising could go forward without him. He did run into Kongo in the streets as the African carried a stepladder and paint jars to a job, wearing a canvas girdle round his waist, from which hung his brushes. If Wilson, his owner, was with him (thin, solemn, red-faced, lonesome), they exchanged only nods. If Kongo was alone, they embraced and talked, for Kongo was adding new English words every day.

  “Don’t go Hughson’s,” he whispered during one chance encounter. “Danger thar.”

  The warning didn’t surprise Cormac. Once a week now, he met Mary Burton in the fields and woods to the north of the Common, to listen to her faltering attempts to read (each week they were better), to make love in a desperate way among the leaves and the grass, until it grew too cold and they could be too easily observed among the skeletal black trees. Then they would simply talk, flattened against a tree, warming each other against winter, and sometimes she talked about what she wanted more than anything else.

  “I want to walk out the door,” she said. “At any hour of the day or night, and without making up a lie or askin’ permission from no one, and just walk around the town. Without sayin’ I’m a-runnin’ an errand. Just free. Free. To be free to live with a free man, maybe you. To have him come in the door and put the rod to me, ’cause he loves me, and loves me juicy quim. No sneakin’ around. Just close the door and have it, on the floor, on a table, in a bed.” She turned her wounded eyes to him. “Do you see, Cormac? Do you see why I can’t do six more years at Hughson’s as a slave? I don’t want to have Sarah making me scrub sheets all sticky with spend or boarders’ drawers stained with shite. I don’t want to end up like poor Peggy, taking the Africans’ money to give them two minutes up me cunt.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  She looked at him for a long moment.

  “I want to have us in a bath again,” she said.

  “As do I.”

  “But not at Hughson’s,” she said in a cold voice. “They’re talking a lot of fecking trouble.”

  53.

  At home in the shop on Cortlandt Street, Cormac’s mind was jittery with warnings about the coming trouble. Something was surely in the air, some kind of trouble, as ominous as the warning of Mary Morrigan, and those issued long ago to the Hebrews, and Mr. Partridge began providing the American context. He was talking almost without cease about a new war and how it was wrecking the economy of New York. Britain was fighting Spain again, this time over Jenkins’s ear. Who was Jenkins? And why (Cormac asked) should anyone care about his ear? The story was splendid. The Spaniards had stopped a British ship in Spanish waters, one of those royal ships whose sole business was hijacking Spanish gold from the Americas. One of the English officers gave the Spanish captain some lip and they cut off his ear. War!

  “But it’s hurting New York, lad!” he said. “You can see it everywhere around us!”

  He reminded Cormac that the fort was emptying, the redcoats marching to the ships each day, bound for the West Indies and Florida to do battle with the Spaniards. That was why the waterfront was such a lonesome place these past weeks. Mr. Partridge insisted that the war wasn’t about poor Jenkins’s ear at all; it was about sugar, tobacco, and Florida.

  “The English have Jamaica, and they want Cuba and Hispaniola and Florida so they can bring in another two hundred thousand slaves to make themselves even richer!” he shouted. “They can’t imagine the Spanish will come this far north. They are idiots!”

  But as Mr. Partridge ranted, Cormac understood the warnings. The soldiers were going. Now was the time for revolt.

  In the following days, the outrage of Mr. Partridge was mixed with a kind of joy. He sizzled with happiness. Together, they worked all one night making broadsides at their own expense, headlined “We will win!” All sorts of patriotic nonsense (as Mr. Partridge described it), expressing immense anger over the fate of Mr. Jenkins’s ear, using a medical engraving of an ear repeated fifty times as a border. He attacked the Spanish affront to justice and the law, and urged all the King’s loyal subjects to support the noble British war, wherever it might go. Mr. Partridge was merry as he set type. But he had motives other than patriotism.

  “We’ll put the Partridge name here at the bottom,” he said, “and the address, and no matter what happens in bloody Barbados, or on the streets of Kingston, we shall win, lad.”

  He was swiftly proven right. Corma
c slapped the broadsides up on the blank walls of the town as soon as the ink was dry. By noon the next day, the name Partridge was clearly synonymous with patriot. And printing jobs flowed into the shop: wedding announcements and rallies for the troops, advertising for shoes and jewelry, special rates for travel to England and news of the arrival of a shipment of wool. The money flowed in too. Mr. Partridge put all the profits into the shop, buying supplies of paper and ink, adding cabinets and type racks. They were so busy, Cormac didn’t notice the winds howling from the northwest.

  Only at night, when he was alone, did he imagine the revolt, did he add together the odd look from black man to black man, and from the Irish to the Irish. He heard again the warnings from Kongo and from Mary Burton. Only at night did he imagine what would happen if they all rose together.

  In the frigid winter nights, when Stone Street seemed an immense distance from Cortlandt Street and it was impossible to meet Mary Burton out of doors, Cormac began to draw again. He used the reverse side of overinked proofs, odd scraps of board, diluted printer’s ink, and reed pens. He made drawings of Mr. Partridge, of people he saw in the streets, of soldiers in uniform, of the fort, of certain houses, and of Mary Burton: all from memory. Mr. Partridge was delighted.

  “You’ve a gift, lad,” he said one night, examining a drawing of his own marvelous head. “You captured something there, the mouth, a kind of sadness. Very good. Very good.”

  He tacked the drawing to a beam. Others would follow, although Cormac kept his drawing of Mary Burton in a private folio fashioned from thick brown board and tied with cord. Cormac was now so deep into the world of the print shop that other things receded. The images of bloody revolt were threaded in a minor way through his days, but for all the whispered warnings, nothing, after all, had happened. Perhaps it was the drink talking in the smoke of Hughson’s. He also brooded in a confused way about Mary Burton. What was it he truly felt for her? Was it simply lust? Or was it something more like that immense word love? That word issued from many people’s lips, from preachers to whores, and he read it in even more books. But what did it mean, really? He wanted Mary Burton to be happy, but that wasn’t love as described in the poems, some rapture that carried you into realms of bliss. And was he leading her somewhere that she could not go? Into reading and trying to find the education that had eluded her in Ireland and in her American servitude? He hoped she was not imagining a future with him. For he had no true vision of that future, or whether he would live long enough to have one.