When he let go of it, Roy said, “From the calluses on your hand, Caleb, I’d say you were a working man.”
“I was,” said Caleb, “but no more. Thanks for your help.”
“Don’t mention it,” Roy said. “I be here most days. If you need any more advice or maybe you’re looking for a small poker game, just find me here. Roy knows where things are in the city.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Caleb said and walked in the direction Roy had indicated.
After Caleb saw the sixth black face in a single block, he asked for the Rosemont Arms and found that it was right across the street. It was a squat, dirty brick building that had once been a family home. Only a tiny sign indicated what it was now. When he got a look at Caleb, Elmore the desk clerk, a short, chunky man with the squint that Roy had described, tried to charge him five dollars a night, offered to keep Caleb’s money in the hotel safe, and told him that his cousin Verena had a thing about country boys. Caleb pointed out that Roy had a different view of the room prices, declined the kindly offer to hold his money, and said he’d let Elmore know about Verena. At this, Elmore adopted a businesslike manner, took a week’s rent, gave him a key, and told him that the bath was at the end of the hall. Plenty of hot water this time of day.
“Enjoy your stay,” he said.
“Oh, I will,” Caleb said as he walked up the stairs.
The room was small and dark and could have been cleaner, but Elmore was right about the hot water, and Caleb soaked luxuriously until someone started banging on the door. Then he shaved, got dressed in the best clothes he had, and went back downstairs with most of his money still in his belt and Jardine’s pistol in his coat pocket.
“Tell me, Elmore,” he asked, “where could a man get a decent meal without goin’ broke?”
Elmore considered him admiringly. “Are you sure you’re the same man who went upstairs a little while ago?”
“I think so.”
Elmore told him where to get a good, cheap meal and then added, “I would not like to criticize your dress, but allow me to point out that that six-shooter in your right-side pocket is not doing a thing for the fit of your jacket. If you’re going to carry it, may I suggest a belt holster? I can get you one. Cheap.”
“You do that, Elmore,” Caleb said. “See you later.”
After a good meal in a tiny, smoky, but fairly clean restaurant, Caleb settled back with his second cup of coffee to think about the possibilities. If he were careful, he would have enough money to live for more than six months, but he had no intention of watching his capital dwindle to nothing. After resting up a bit and exploring the big city, Caleb would have to line up some sort of a job and get a regular life. He thought about Drusilla at Three Rivers doing his job and trying to train that fool Caesar. He even thought about Missy, wherever the hell she was. He wouldn’t mind finding a job like he had at Three Rivers and a woman like Missy. Not at all.
For the next couple of weeks, Caleb stayed up until all hours, slept late, and learned a little about the black man’s life in New York City. There were no visible fences, but Caleb found that whenever he strayed too far from the area around the Rosemont Arms, he met a wall of hard looks and closed faces. He also invariably attracted the attention of a policeman, who would ask, “Are you looking for something?” and just as invariably point him back the direction he had come. It seemed to Caleb that although they didn’t have packs of hounds up here in the North, they were just as good at keeping their blacks where they wanted them.
When Caleb became a bit bored, Roy steered him to a poker game over a cigar store, but it took only two hands to convince Caleb that he was out of his league. The first hand was promising, and Caleb dragged in a nice little pot as if this were nature’s way. The second hand started out good, too. Caleb watched with admiration as he was dealt three beautiful kings. On the draw, he got two jacks. This did not displease him, either. With a high full house, Caleb was settling in happily to go with the betting, which had suddenly accelerated, when he caught a glance between the dealer and the man on his left, who’d introduced himself as a stranger just in from Philadelphia. There was something about that glance that Caleb didn’t like, and when the Philadelphian bumped the bet up to two hundred dollars, Caleb folded his hand and said, “No thanks.” He threw in that full house like a man abandoning his only son.
“What!” exclaimed the dealer. “You throwing—” but caught himself before he could reveal that he knew what he had dealt Caleb. Caleb’s hand stayed among the discards. On the very next bet, the Philadelphian also lost confidence in his hand and folded, and the hand was won by a pair of tens, queen high on the dealer’s right. When the next deal began, Caleb stood up and said, “I’m cashing in.”
The dealer stood up, too, and glowered at Caleb. “Are you suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting nothing,” Caleb said, pulling the right side of his coat back to reveal his revolver in the little holster that Elmore had sold him. “I’m just cashing in.”
“Don’t come back,” growled the dealer as Caleb left the room.
“No danger of that,” said Caleb, closing the door. He walked carefully down the stairs, occasionally glancing back.
The next day, Roy asked Caleb how he’d enjoyed the game.
“Oh, very much,” Caleb said. “It reminded me of something they do down where I just came from.”
“What’s that?” asked Roy.
“Well, when they want to catch an alligator, they go out in a boat, dragging a live chicken on a line behind. When the gator rises to grab the chicken, they shoot the gator.”
“You’ve lost me, cousin,” said Roy.
“Well,” said Caleb, “last night I felt a whole lot like that chicken. It made me nervous.”
“But I heard you won a little,” said Roy.
“That’s only because for a little while I outswam those gators,” Caleb said. “I don’t believe I would want to make a career of it.”
“I hope you don’t think that I—” Roy began.
“Of course, not, Roy. Of course not,” said Caleb soothingly.
After two weeks of celibacy, Caleb finally took Elmore up on his suggestion to visit Verena up on the top floor. She turned out to be a slim mulatto girl with no great family resemblance to Elmore, but a great deal of gaiety and a nice little body. Her room was much like Caleb’s, but it was lit by a whole lot of candles, and the walls were draped with cheap but colorful scarves. There was a musky smell in the air that Caleb reckoned had to be incense. He had a good time and happily paid the agreed sum. But he resisted booking a return visit and turned down her offer to go on a shopping trip the next day to look at some lovely bracelets.
“Well?” Elmore asked when Caleb next came by the desk. “Did I lie?”
“Oh, no,” Caleb said. “You have every reason to be proud of little Verena. Except for that disease she has.”
“Disease?” Elmore said indignantly. “I don’t know of any—”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, your cousin has one of the worst cases of the gotta haves I’ve ever seen.”
“Go on, man,” said Elmore. “You’re pulling my leg. That girl mighty keen on you.”
“And I feel likewise,” Caleb said.
After local inquiries for employment turned up only jobs giving out handbills or sweeping the streets, Caleb visited an employment agency on a nearby street. When he told the elderly white proprietor about his experience in Boston and at Three Rivers, the man gave Caleb a card to go see a Mrs. Holroyd over on Park Avenue at Thirty-Third Street, an area he’d never before visited.
Mrs. Holroyd’s house was a mansion on a corner. A little brass plaque pointed down a narrow alley to the servants’ entrance.
Caleb didn’t actually see Mrs. Holroyd. Miss Jenkins, the housekeeper, was called down to interview him in the kitchen. A slim white w
oman with her hair tightly pulled back from her forehead, she sat at the kitchen table, looking at Caleb with bright, all-seeing eyes.
“Did you have an accident?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“That scar on your face. It’s most—”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Caleb said. “An overseer down in Virginia mistook my face for the back end of a horse and hit it with his whip.”
“You must have done something.” The mental picture that Caleb presented did not please her.
“Well, at that particular moment, ma’am, I fell down and expressed a certain amount of pain.”
“No. I mean you must have done something before he hit you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I failed to get out of his way fast enough. The overseer was suffering from a hangover at the time.”
“Are you being facetious?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I hope not. Tell me about your experience as a household servant.”
Caleb told her the same thing he’d told the man at the employment agency.
Miss Jenkins showed no sign that she’d heard anything Caleb said. “Well,” she said, “we’re looking for a boy who can do the heavy work in this household. You look strong. Are you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You would have to be.” She described a job that started at four in the morning, ended at ten in the evening, and seemed to involve endless humping of heavy objects up and down the stairs of the four-story house.
She concluded, “Your pay will be twenty-five dollars a month, and you will have every Sunday afternoon and two evenings a month off. Other than that, you would be expected to be on call. Do you understand what I have said?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Would you like to see your room?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Jenkins’s tight little mouth formed a perfect O of surprise.
“I wouldn’t want to waste your time,” Caleb said. “Or mine. To tell you the truth, Miss Jenkins, I recently made considerable personal effort to break out of slavery, and I am not in a hurry to get back into it. The position you offer does not suit me. But thank you for your time, all the same.”
“You do realize, don’t you,” Miss Jenkins asked, “that we are just entering upon a war to free your people?”
“So I understand, ma’am. And if I were still a slave, I’d be very grateful. But since I freed myself, I have to consider your efforts a little bit late.”
“You are most ungrateful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Jenkins reached over and pushed a button on the wall. There was a jangling overhead and a few moments later the sound of feet on the stairs. A slim brown man with carefully combed hair came through the door. He was wearing an apron over a white shirt and a neat dark tie. His sleeves were rolled up. He looked at Caleb with apprehension.
“Mr. Purvis,” Miss Jenkins said severely, “this boy has been rude and impudent. I want you to thrash him.” The apprehension on Purvis’s face edged toward alarm.
“Madam?”
“You heard me. We cannot allow these people to come up here, rely upon our good nature and generosity, and then abuse us.”
“May I suggest, Mr. Purvis,” Caleb said, “that you might want to thrash me outside, rather than risk damage to this very nice kitchen?”
“Don’t make it worse on yourself, boy,” said Miss Jenkins.
“I won’t, ma’am,” Caleb said. “Thank you for your time.”
“That’ll be enough out of you,” said Purvis, taking heart. “Let’s go!”
“Yes, sir,” said Caleb submissively. As they were walking out the back door to a little courtyard totally surrounded by brick walls, Miss Jenkins disappeared upstairs.
“I hope you appreciate my position, son,” Purvis said.
“Oh, I do,” Caleb said. “Do you think I made a mistake not taking the job Miss Jenkins so kindly offered?”
“Can you do anything else?” Purvis asked in a whisper.
“I think so.”
“Then do it.”
The two stood just inside the gate leading to the alley to Fifth Avenue. “Well, Mr. Purvis,” Caleb said, “I guess you’d better get on with the thrashing. Are you a classic thrasher or sort of creative?”
“Son, strangely enough, that question has never come up before,” said Purvis.
“Okay,” said Caleb. “Let’s do her quick and easy.” He shrieked, “Oh, please, sir! Don’t! Don’t!” Then, with his open hand, he delivered several noisy but harmless blows to his own shoulder and upper arm. “Please!”
Caleb lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t you be saying something, Mr. Purvis?”
“Oh, yes,” said Purvis. “Thank you.” Raising his voice to a rather reedy tremolo, he exclaimed, “Let that be a lesson to you, and don’t you ever come back here again.”
Caleb opened the gate and closed it again loudly. “Well thrashed, sir,” he said to Purvis and held out his hand.
“My pleasure,” said Purvis, shaking it.
“One last thing, Mr. Purvis,” said Caleb before going through the gate, “I think you should show some signs of having delivered a severe thrashing. Excuse me.” He reached out and mussed Purvis’s carefully combed hair and pulled his discreet tie out over the front of his apron. “Now you look the perfect thrasher. Do I look thrashed?”
“Not that much, to be honest,” said Purvis.
“Oh well. I’ll slink away quickly so Miss Jerkins doesn’t see me. Good luck, Mr. Purvis.”
“You too, son.”
46
After leaving Caleb at the train station, Jardine bought the same newspaper that Caleb did and checked into a hotel. He asked to be woken up at seven that evening, took a bath, and immediately went to bed. Lying there in comfort, Jardine tried to quell his racing mind, and finally fatigue overtook him.
“What!” Jardine, snatched from a bottomless pit of sleep, shouted at the loud knocking on the door.
“It’s just gone seven o’clock, sir,” came a muffled voice.
“Thanks,” said Jardine, getting out of bed regretfully. Within half an hour, he had discovered that there was a train south at nine that night and checked out of the hotel. In another hour and a half, he had eaten the biggest steak he could find in Manhattan, bought some sandwiches and bottles of beer, and was waiting on the platform for the Dixie Special to start his journey home. He wondered what Caleb was doing and whether he’d seen the paper. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about him on the return trip.
Jardine felt restless on the first leg of his journey home. At every stop, he bought a newspaper, and the seriousness of the situation became ever more evident. The action at Fort Sumter clearly would slide into war between the slave states and the North. As the train rolled through Pennsylvania headed for Philadelphia, Jardine looked up from his paper to find a couple of soldiers in new uniforms staring meaningfully at him from across the aisle. He let his eyes flick across them and went back to reading. But his concentration was soon disturbed by muttering, and Jardine looked across the aisle to find them still staring at him. He lowered his newspaper.
“Can I help you gentlemen in any way?” he inquired softly.
“Huh? Whatcha mean?” asked the larger of the two.
“You seemed to be paying such a lot of attention to me,” Jardine said. “I thought perhaps you had something to say. Do you?”
“No!” said the larger one. “Why should we?”
“No reason,” said Jardine, fixing his eyes on the other one. “How about you?”
“N-no,” the other soldier said. “I—”
“Then I suggest that we all mind our own business, and we’ll get along just fine.” Jardine again raised his newspaper, and the soldiers got off in Philadelphia
with no more than ritual grumbling.
As Jardine headed southward, the newspapers presented a different view on the events at Fort Sumter. As the accents softened and deepened, an almost partylike atmosphere prevailed on the trains, and strangers shared their perceptions and analysis of the current situation. The duration of the war was a constant topic. A couple of Yankee commercial travelers trapped on the last train Jardine took huddled nervously until several flasks were produced and declarations of lack of personal enmity were made.
At Great Falls, while waiting for the boat home, Jardine met up with several friends who gave him the local angle on the situation. One said that there had been a small uprising on a remote plantation on Little Lynches River. A few of the boys had put it down without much trouble and with no loss of white life. Jardine also learned that Rafe Bentley was raising a squadron of Kershaw County dragoons and had been asking when he was going to get back.
When Jardine pulled off the turnpike onto the track leading to Three Rivers late the next afternoon, nothing seemed to have changed. He hallooed a work gang in the cotton field, and they hallooed him back. He spotted Big Mose’s distinctive tall black hat among them. As Jardine drove up to the house, Drusilla, Caesar, and the house girls were waiting to meet him. Rose held Little Boyd up for his inspection, and Jardine was convinced that the boy had grown. William took the wagon and horses to the barn, and Jardine followed Drusilla up to the porch, where a small table was laid with whiskey, water, and chunks of ice in a covered bowl.
Sitting down, Jardine took a deep drink and listened as Drusilla gave him a short report of happenings at Three Rivers in his absence. Jardine wished he could ask her to sit down, as he used to ask Caleb to do. Drusilla said that Rafe Bentley had been over twice while he was away.
“Thank you, Drusilla,” Jardine said. “I suppose there’s some hot water?”
“Yes, Massa.”
“Well, good. I think I will use a whole lot of it,” Jardine said. “I’ll have dinner at about the usual time. Why don’t you let Caesar wait on me this evening so I can see how he’s coming along?”
Caleb Page 21
