by Wayne Grady
“A lot more people are moving west from the South,” said Moody. “People up here already got as much free land as they can use, and it ain’t drying up and blowing away like it is down there.”
“The Compromise also says the North will have to send all fugitives back where they came from,” said Parker. “It’ll make it against the law to interfere with a catcher coming into Indiana to catch a fugitive. In fact, we’ll have to help him or go to jail ourselves.”
“It’s legalized kidnapping,” said Moody.
“How’s that different from what happened in New Harmony?” Lucas asked.
“What happened in New Harmony wasn’t legal,” Moody said. “With the Compromise in place, those catchers will be able to get the militia to help them. But Taylor won’t sign.”
“People change, Virgil,” said Parker. “Anything can happen.”
“I guess it’s not a good time to be a runaway,” said Leason.
“When is?” said Moody. “But you aren’t a runaway. And we’ve paid your bond and you’ve proved you can keep the peace. You and your family have as much right to be here as I have.”
Leason looked unconvinced. Moody signed the Crawford contract, and they left the office and headed for the hardware store, where Leason wanted to buy a keg of nails with a view to repairing and expanding Stokes’s woodshed for him. On the way, he said next week was Sarah’s birthday. He wanted to buy her something, but he didn’t know what.
“What’s she fancy?” Moody asked.
“She likes lacy things. I don’t even know where to get ’em.”
“Here’s the ladies’ shop,” Moody said. “How about some fancy lace handkerchiefs?”
“Maybe,” Leason said.
The shop was owned by Etta Pickering, the sheriff’s wife, a woman Moody knew to be a tight-mouthed termagant who looked like a heron that had just spotted a frog. Her husband, Melvin “Pudge” Pickering, was a damn nuisance. In an ideal world, a sheriff wouldn’t have anything to do. The world being something short of ideal, Pickering spent long hours in his office thinking of ways to justify his stipend by making everyone’s life miserable. Pudge and Etta were a well-matched pair. Etta once hired Moody to bring her a china cupboard from the freight depot in Indianapolis, and when he got it to Spencer she expected him to haul it up from the ferry dock to her house. He had to hire a horse and wagon and wrap the thing in blankets so it wouldn’t get scratched and none of the glass doors would crack. After he had it in place in her dining room she thanked him and gave him a dollar. “I surely didn’t expect you to do the work yourself,” she’d said. “Ain’t you got you a boy to help?”
She greeted Moody when they entered her shop, no doubt wondering what she had in there that would interest him. He told her they wanted to see some silk handkerchiefs.
“Really?” she said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but evidently thought better of it. She went to the back and brought out a box of handkerchiefs, and spread them on the counter.
“What do you think, Leason?” Moody said. “Would Sarah like these?”
“I suppose,” Leason said. “She likes pink. What do you think?”
“Sarah?” said Etta Pickering. “Sarah Lewis? She was in here just the other day. Seeking employment. I told her we hadn’t any vacancies.”
“Then what’s that sign in the window for?” asked Moody. He hadn’t told Leason about Sarah applying for the job, but Leason didn’t look very surprised. If anything, he looked as though he’d just had some bad news confirmed.
“I hired a new girl last week,” Etta said stiffly. “I just forgot to remove the sign.”
“Well,” Moody said. “You keep Sarah in mind if the new girl doesn’t work out.”
“I need someone who lives in town,” said Etta. “Someone I can count on to be here on time. Someone reliable.”
“Well, that’s all right,” said Leason, “because Sarah and I are planning on moving into Spencer. Didn’t she tell you that?”
“Sarah and you?” said Etta Pickering. “Whatever do you mean by that?”
“Sarah and me,” said Leason. “Sarah’s my wife.”
Etta Pickering’s hand went to the top button of her blouse. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes. She did mention she was married. That’s another reason I didn’t hire her.”
“We hear there’s a house for sale right next to yours. Would that be close enough to make Sarah reliable, do you think?”
Etta Pickering glared at Leason but said nothing. Moody smiled at her as Leason paid for the handkerchiefs. Her mouth looked more like an unhealed knife wound than ever, and Moody wondered if she were a secret drinker. She wrapped the handkerchiefs in tissue and tied them into a package, which Leason put in his jacket pocket.
“I hope your wife enjoys them, Mr. Lewis,” she said.
When they were outside, Leason said, “How do you enjoy a handkerchief?”
“I expect they’re softer on the nose than oak leaves,” Moody said, giving a troubled laugh. “I didn’t know you were thinking of moving into town,” he said as they walked toward the general store.
“We’re not,” said Leason. “I just said that to give that old vulture something to chew on.”
“That old vulture runs this town,” Moody said uneasily. “Best not to wave dead meat in front of her.”
23.
Moody was on his dock in Freedom, transferring a hundred bags of Cecil Fountain’s hog feed from his wagon into the Pelican’s hold and contemplating the irony of stuffing pelican meat into a boat called the Pelican, when he heard footsteps on the dock behind him. It was a warm sunny day, late June, but the creek, which he called the “bayou,” was in deep shade and he couldn’t at first see who it was. Leason and Sarah were in Indianapolis for a couple of days—Kästchen was taking Sarah to a doctor he knew. Tamsey, Granville and Sabetha had gone back with Cecil to look at some pelican chicks. Moody had been thinking about himself and Tamsey. He hadn’t slept on the Pelican for a week, he’d been sleeping in his old bed with Tamsey, a development that hadn’t surprised either of them. He’d been getting up early and coming down to the boat before Granville and Sabetha woke up, but this morning they’d tarried a bit and Granville had come out of his room earlier than usual and found them eating toast, Tamsey still in her nightclothes. Granville hadn’t seemed too surprised, either. He’d come over to the table and sat with them, taking a piece of toast and pouring himself some coffee. Tamsey sat as still as if she were waiting for an explosion, Moody could see the toast shaking in her hand, but the morning had gone on without incident. Before Tamsey left for Cecil’s, she’d come down to the dock and they’d spent some undisturbed time in the Pelican’s cabin. Moody hadn’t felt so good since he’d taken Annie to New Orleans.
When his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he saw the outline of a man standing just where the dock joined the creek bank. Large hat, rotund middle, spindly legs that splayed out from the knees down. He had to move to one side to see who it was for sure, but he already knew it was Pudge Pickering.
“Morning, Sheriff,” he said. “What brings you this far from your padded chair?”
Pickering always reminded Moody of one of Buzz Crawford’s hogs. His small black eyes peered out from their caves of flesh, his chins stayed in place when he turned his head, his clothes were as tight on his arms and legs as sausage skins, and he had small hands and feet. Moody straightened. There was still enough guilt in him, especially after this morning, to make him cautious.
“You taking that hog feed down to Buzz Crawford, are you?” Pickering said.
“Yep, this and forty bags of salt. You got something you want me to bring him?”
“Oh no, no, just askin’.” Pickering looked around as if for something else to ask about. Moody waited him out, watching the sweat run down the side of the sheriff’s face and over a bulge of chewing tobacco, which he dislodged from time to time to relieve the sting and then tucked into a different corner. “I knocked up at the cabin,
weren’t nobody home.”
“How’d you know that? You go in?”
“No, no. Just looked through the winder. Went next door to Stokes’s place, and nobody there, either.”
“Randolph’s getting hard of hearing. You have to knock hard.”
Pickering nodded, or at least his jaw disappeared into his throat a couple of times. “Sarah Lewis,” he said. “She living in there with that boy of yours, Leason?”
Moody took off his gloves and set them on the Pelican’s rail and pushed his hat back off his forehead. In Texas, his action would have been taken as a sign of aggression. It would have been saying, I didn’t quite catch that, you mind saying it again so I can hit you? He put his hands on his hips, too, which, if he’d had a pistol tucked in his belt, would have been unmistakable.
“Leason ain’t my boy,” he said evenly. “And what do you want with Sarah?”
“He works for you, don’t he?”
“I pay him, yes.”
“What about his mamma? You pay her, too?”
Moody worked hard at keeping his eyes level.
“What’s this about, Pickering?”
“I’m just checkin’ up on a few things is all. There’s been complaints.”
“Complaints about what?”
Pudge Pickering turned his head but kept his eyes on Moody, as though trying to figure out how much he could say.
“You know it ain’t legal for a white woman and a nigger to…to be together,” he said.
“How do you mean, ‘be together’?”
“You know, to live together, like man and wife.”
“Tamsey and I are not living together,” he said. “She and her family live up at the cabin, and I stay down here on my boat, when I’m here, which ain’t often.”
“I ain’t talkin’ about you, so much. Least not this time. I mean Leason and Sarah.”
“Leason and Sarah are man and wife.”
“They ain’t if one of ’em’s white.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Like I said, there’s been reports.”
“You said ‘complaints.’ ”
“Same thing. Complaints have been made.”
“About what?”
“About them two, Leason and Sarah. Immoral conduct.” Pickering grinned. “Fornicatin’.”
“Leason and Sarah are married. Just like you and Etta.”
“Well, there you go,” Pickering said. “Except I ain’t black.”
“What?”
“And Leason is.”
“So what?”
“And Sarah ain’t.”
“Who says so?”
“She says so. She said so when she applied for that job at Etta’s dress shop, wrote it down in plain English, I seen it myself: United States citizen. Etta always asks that. Blacks can’t be citizens, so Sarah and Leason can’t be man and wife, can they? And if they’re living together without being married, then they’re breaking the law, and I got to arrest ’em for fornicatin’. So where they at?”
Moody’s heart was pounding but he walked calmly to the cabin and reached inside the door for the 12-gauge. There was just birdshot in it, but at close range birdshot could do almost as much damage as buckshot. Pickering’s skin was so taut Moody figured it would split if even a pin pricked it. He hadn’t felt so strong an urge to do damage to a man since the war in Mexico, not when Millican sold Benah, or even after the encounter with the Judds. He felt virtuous. He raised the shotgun to his hip and aimed it in the general direction of Pickering’s massive stomach. Pickering spit his tobacco into the bayou, but otherwise remained where he is.
“You get on your horse and ride on out of here, Pudge,” Moody said, “or you’re going to find yourself floating down the river after your chaw.”
“Threatening an officer of the law,” Pickering said cheerfully. “That there’s an offense worse ’n fornicatin’. I got half a mind to bring you in, too.”
“You only got half a mind at the best of times,” Moody said. “If you don’t have a warrant you’re trespassing, and I can’t hardly see you in these shadows. I might think you’re a fat thief come to steal Cecil’s hog feed for your dinner.”
“I’ll find ’em,” Pickering said, backing off the dock. “Don’t you worry about that. We maybe can’t keep your coon cargo out of Indiana, but we can damn well keep it out of Spencer.”
When Pickering left, Moody hurried to Stokes’s cabin and told Stokes about Pickering’s visit, and the two of them sat on the porch in a state of suspended animation, waiting for Tamsey and the others to come back from Cecil Fountain’s. They told each other that anyone looking at Sarah and seeing a white woman was delusional, but on the other hand, anyone that delusional wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded. Etta Pickering knew Sarah wasn’t white, Stokes said, so what in tarnation was this all about?
But Moody knew what it was about. He’d known what it was about since the day he let Lucas sell himself. Nothing was forgiven. Some things were forgotten, but damn few, and only for a time. But nothing is ever forgiven.
PART FOUR
JUNE–OCTOBER 1850
Where the little river
Meet the great big ’un,
The ole man waits;
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
1.
Leason and Sarah were arrested in Spencer, as they stepped down from the coach that brought them back from Indianapolis. They were taken to the courthouse by Pudge Pickering, with Etta watching from the door of her shop, and placed in separate cells in the courthouse basement. Moody and Tamsey heard about the arrest from Cecil Fountain, and visited the couple the next day, after a long talk with Cliff Parker. They walked up the courthouse steps, entered the lobby through the broad double doors, which now seemed like the heavy gates of a fortress, and down the basement staircase without being challenged. At the bottom, however, a deputy poked through the bag of food Tamsey had brought before letting them in to see the prisoners.
“Guess you didn’t find the musket I put in that pork pie,” Tamsey said.
“Fifteen minutes,” said the deputy.
Leason was clearly frightened. He sat on his cot in the feeble light that seeped through two high, ground-level windows, his arms folded and his head bowed, as though trying to keep himself warm. Moody had seen soldiers sit like that on the eve of a battle they didn’t expect to win. Sarah was indignant, no real surprise to Moody, striding back and forth in her cell, impatient for someone to set her world right again. She wanted to know how long they were going to be kept there, “a woman in my condition.”
“What the doctor in Indianapolis say, dear?” Tamsey asked soothingly.
“He said I’m fine, a bit high-strung is all. He wanted to let my blood but I told him I was just excited about the baby.”
Tamsey told them what each item was as she took it out of the sack. “Catfish from Muddy, potatoes and carrots from Stokes, corn bread and a cooked ham from me.” Leason said he couldn’t eat, and Sarah said she’d be sick if she even smelled food.
“Lawyer Parker say the bail hearing a week away,” Tamsey told them. “Trial in the fall—September, most likely.”
“A week!” Sarah cried. “They can’t keep us in here for a week! Can they?”
Leason looked at Moody. “What’ll happen if they find us guilty?” he asked.
“It’s a misdemeanor, according to Parker,” Moody said. “A fine, maybe some jail time. But don’t worry about that, you won’t be found guilty,” he added, looking at Sarah. “The thing’s absurd.”
“But a whole week in here?” said Sarah. “What if something happens to the baby?”
“I’ll talk to Sheriff Pickering,” Moody said, trying to make talking to Pudge Pickering sound like a reasonable thing to do. He remembered using the same voice to tell Lucas he would talk to Endicot Millican.
“Where’ll we get money for bail?” Leason asked.
“We’ll get it,” Moody said. “I’ll put it u
p and take it out of your hide when you get free.”
“If I have any hide left by then.”
Moody didn’t tell them what Lawyer Parker had actually said, that the penalty would most likely be a thousand dollars each, a year in jail and their marriage annulled. If they didn’t pay the fine, Leason could be sold into slavery. Nor did he tell them about an article he’d read in the Sentinel that morning, about an Indianapolis couple who were charged with fornication, a white woman and a colored man. A week before the case even went to trial, a mob broke into the couple’s house, tarred and feathered the woman and rode her naked down the street on a rail, and ran the man out of town with some of his parts missing. Yesterday a member of the Indiana legislature had stood up in the House and defended the mob: “I say it in all sincerity, without any hard feelings toward niggers, that it would be better to kill them all off at once, if there is no better way to get rid of them.” He hadn’t told Tamsey about that, either.
All he said now was that he and Tamsey and Parker were doing everything they could. Which was what he’d said to Lucas.
2.
Before Moody went in to see Pudge Pickering, he and Tamsey sat for a moment on a bench under one of the oaks outside the courthouse. People walked past without looking at them, but he could no longer tell Tamsey they weren’t seeing her. News of the arrest had spread, and if people weren’t looking at them as they passed, it was because they had taken a good look at them from a distance. And seen another white man and a black woman sitting together on a bench. He felt as though they were going into the courthouse to file a complaint. Who would look after Granville and Sabetha when he and Tamsey were in jail, sharing cells with Leason and Sarah?
“I won’t be long,” he said, standing up. “Will you be all right here? You can always go over to Cliff Parker’s office.”
“I want to stay close,” Tamsey said. She meant close to Leason, he thought, but she might have meant close to him, too.
Pickering was at his desk, scowling at a sheet of paper as though whatever was on it had been written in some indecipherable foreign language he didn’t think should exist. He looked up at Moody as if Moody had written it.
