by Jon Clinch
Call them souls, then, for souls they are, and together they are bound in the belly of this ship, bound not only by manacles and chains but by strange, complex, and looping encrustations made from cashboxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, and heavy purses wrought in steel. He can hear them as the ship tosses and their weight shifts like the weight of snakes, coil upon coil. His ears are filled with their brutal grinding.
No one calls out. No one speaks. No one dares breathe, for the air in this place is death.
He knows these souls. He knows Madeline the whore and he knows McCullough the murderer and he knows poor ancient Stitch who burned the Mariel for nothing. He knows a hundred others whom he has wronged directly in this world or the world prior. He knows a thousand more—slaves and children of slaves—whom he has wronged at great remove. He knows Fan. Here in this stinking hold, they are bound and they are bound.
Only one is missing. Balfour.
Perhaps his absence is a sign of hope. If there is mercy in the world, Captain Harry Balfour of the West Africa Squadron will spy this ship tossing upon whatever sea she sails and board her, set her captives free, right every wrong. It is not too much to ask. It is far too much to ask. It is not.
END
Acknowledgments
Few projects are as solitary as the making of a book. Yet there are always those, thank God, who help along the way—sometimes by helping to make the writing better, sometimes by helping to make the writer better. Marley, then, would not be the same without…
Marly “Without-an-E” Rusoff, who understood what I was up to from the get-go, and moved heaven and earth to see that it all came to fruition. It wasn’t easy. She just made it look that way.
Peter Borland, Libby McGuire, Sean deLone, and James Iacobelli at Atria, who made my work better than I knew how to make it myself, dressed it up in a killer outfit, and sent it out properly into the great big world.
Bob Hill, David Lindgren, and Steve Kendra, early readers, of course, but mainly true friends and counselors and companions who have been with me from childhood and will be there when Marley is a memory.
Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Tasha Alexander, Danielle Younge-Ullman, Keith Cronin, Jessica Keener, Darcie Chan, Renee Rosen, Sachin Waikar, and Karen Dionne, members all of a secret society that both grounds me and lifts me up.
Charles Dickens, who left enough strategic holes in A Christmas Carol that I was able to cook up an entire novel out of the missing bits.
Emily and John and Sam and Ivy Bryk, who give me so much delight that nothing else really matters.
And Wendy, who for some reason always believes.
About the Author
JON CLINCH is the author of the acclaimed novels Finn—the secret history of Huckleberry Finn’s father—and Kings of the Earth. A native of upstate New York, he lives with his wife in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
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ALSO BY JON CLINCH
Finn
Kings of the Earth
The Thief of Auschwitz
Belzoni Dreams of Egypt
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Jon Clinch
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Author photograph by Christine Glade
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-9821-2970-5
ISBN 978-1-9821-2972-9 (ebook)
