Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  Master Edward was right pleased with himself and walked around River Bend with a smile all that day, fanning the bills against his hand.

  A week later I asked him again if I could take Lily to town to purchase new spectacles, and this time he agreed. But I wasn’t going just for that. Not now. Because after we found out that Marybelle had been cut open still warm, I’d had myself what Papa used to call a Mantis-dream. That very night. In it, I saw what had to be done and why everyone had to come with me.

  XLI

  Just Like Mamma and Papa

  I still didn’t know how I was going to do what I was going to do, and who I might ask to help me. Maybe I’d still have done nothing at all, but the next evening on the piazza, Weaver sat with me.

  “What dey done to Marybelle was pow’ful wrong, Morri girl.”

  “It sure was, Weaver.”

  We fell into silence after that, both of us pondering justice, I reckon. I’ve always felt comfortable with Weaver, like he’s an uncle. He patted my thigh and said, “You know, girl, if I had me a pistol in my hand right now, I’d use it. I swear to heaven ’bove, I’d use it good.”

  “I can see you would, Weaver.”

  “First I’d put Cousin Edward under the ground. Fifty feet under. Second, I’d walk right to Charleston and put balls in all dem doctors. I’d tell ’em, ‘Dis here is a gift from Marybelle.’ I could do it too. Yaw papa’d tell you dat if he was here. He knew how good I could shoot. One ball is all I’d need for each of’em.”

  “I believe you, Weaver.”

  I didn’t add anything to that, because he looked like he was making himself feverish. He must have thought I was nettled by his angry talk, because he stood up then and said, “I’m right sorry to put dis on ya, Morri girl. I needed to talk to someone and you’s always been easy for me to talk to. Jes’ f’get what I told ya, girl.”

  I tugged him back down. I explained that what bothered me wasn’t what he said, it was knowing that I wanted to kill them all as much as he did and that we’d be mighty justified. I also said he was looking tired to me and if he wanted I’d make him some special tea. His tears started then, like they’d been held back for months, though it was more likely years. I’d never seen Weaver cry. No one had. I knew he’d been sweet on Marybelle, but I didn’t know how much.

  “She was a good and brave girl,” I told him. “And real strong.”

  That only made him shake. He was a broad-shouldered man, but I managed to put my arms around most of him. That big strength of his had melted into despair.

  “I’s right sorry,” he whispered, wiping his eyes.

  “No need. We’re family. You cry if you want to. You cry on me.”

  “No, it’s enough.” After he’d wiped his eyes again, he made a fist and said, “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it dis time.”

  “Weaver, I dreamed the other night that a big flood was coming. Everything at River Bend was going to get covered with water.”

  “Even de Big House?” he asked.

  “Even that. Now, what would you say if I could get us some guns? And maybe swords. You reckon we could fight our way to Charleston and get aboard a ship? One from the North. Or from England. You reckon you could teach some of us how to load and aim a gun?”

  Weaver looked at me, biting his lip, considering hard. Then he nodded. And that’s when we started planning for real.

  *

  One thing I knew right away: If we were going to fight our way to Charleston and make it out to sea, it had to be with the help of an old friend named Beaufort. For three reasons: He worked at a dockside warehouse in the city and got to know ship crewmen and even captains; he was a free-born mulatto and could come and go more easily than any Negro; and he was fatherly fond of me. I’d known him practically all my life, because part of what Papa and I always used to do on our marketing trips was collect new plants and supplies stored in the warehouse Beaufort guarded.

  Beaufort once taught me something important too. One day, when he was bouncing me up and down on his knee, he sighed real long and said, “Morri, it’s a right shame you’s a slave girl, ’cause you’s a clever little thing and could make somethin’ of yousself.”

  I wasn’t more than six years old, but what he said stopped my heart for a beat. Because I hadn’t known I was a slave girl before that. I knew my parents were slaves, but I hadn’t yet thought of myself that way. I was Morri, and I was a slave, just like Mamma and Papa.

  I suppose I felt I could trust him because, unlike most of the rest of the mulattos in Charleston, he didn’t consider himself just about white. He always said that a whipping he’d got as a boy from his own white papa had taught him that being almost white was an impossibility – pretty much like black folks in Maryland saying they were living nearly in the North. Lily heard that once when she went to Baltimore with Big Master Henry, and it always used to make us laugh.

  So it happened that I took Lily to town for her to pick out some spectacles, but mostly for me to talk to Beaufort. The coachman, Wiggie, didn’t have to come, since it was his day off, but he agreed to take us. Weaver too, since I told Master Edward that he needed to buy some things for the hens. Edward would never normally let us all go, but he was nothing but calm breezes of late because of getting his money back for Marybelle and fooling my papa.

  The first stop for the four of us in Charleston was the eye doctor. It looked like it was going to take a while because there were two black men already sitting in the colored waiting room, so I gave Wiggie the five silver dollars that Master Edward had entrusted to me and asked him to stay with Lily. Then Weaver and I walked to Beaufort’s warehouse.

  Charleston used to make me right muddleheaded, there being so much commotion everywhere you looked. But as we walked through those shimmering streets that day, my thoughts were clear. It wasn’t hard at all imagining what all those fine mansions would look like as charred wood, crumbled brick, and ash.

  Weaver leaned down and put his mouth up to my ear. “So where’s all de white folks at?”

  “Which white folks you referring to, Weaver?”

  All of dem, he mouthed. “We’s more dan dey is,” he said, raising his shoulders like it was strange.

  “Weaver, keep moving,” I said, grabbing his arm and leading him off. “And listen up: Now, every house you can see for half a mile around has got a handful of slaves cooking and cleaning and everything else. Some got twenty, thirty, or more. Must be ten or fifteen thousand Negroes in Charleston. I tell you this, the white folks are swimming in one big dark sea.”

  He was quiet for a while, thinking that over. Then he said, “Morri, dey must know dey doin’ wrong. Even dem men who killed Marybelle must know it.”

  “Well, if you think that, Weaver, then you need spectacles more than Lily ever will.”

  *

  We found Beaufort sitting at the front of his warehouse, behind an old wooden secretary. His hair was mostly gray now, and he had on a fine pearl-white waistcoat and scarlet cravat. He gave me a big smile of welcome and held out his arms. I introduced him and Weaver to each other, then asked if any of my plants or seeds had come in, which was Beaufort’s chance to lead us to the back windows.

  Now, before I tell you what I said to Beaufort, I got to explain one last thing. I’d asked him months earlier if he could find out if there was any British sea captain who might take kindly to a Negro girl hiding on his ship. And to get me the date of when he’d next be calling in to port.

  Two weeks before, he’d given me the name of such a captain – Timothy Ott. He usually sailed out of Liverpool, bringing fabric from the British mills to America and taking giant bales of cotton back across the sea. Beaufort had asked a few sly questions and had come to learn the Englishman’s views on slavery, which were mighty critical. In fact, he called Charleston an abomination, especially since he had to keep his black crewmen aboard his ships, because the city had a special law that said they’d have to stay in prison if they came ashore.

&
nbsp; My heart was beating loud inside my ears as I whispered, “Any news from Liverpool on when the cotton prices might rise again?”

  Beaufort looked skeptically at Weaver.

  “He’s family,” I said.

  “I ain’t heard nothin’ yet, Morri. I’ll get word to you one way or another, don’t you worry. You seem a bit jumpy t’day. You not sick?”

  “It’s because I got something else to ask you, Beaufort. Something bigger.”

  “You go ahead, Morri, I ain’t gonna bite you.”

  “It’s this,” I said real soft. “Beaufort, you must meet a fair number of freed black folks down here – who have shipments coming in. You think that any of them might be sympathetic to me?” When he gave me a puzzled look, I added, “You know, about cotton prices in Liverpool. And maybe about sending some other things there too – other plants.”

  I hoped he understood my meaning without my having to talk any plainer. But he said, “What you mean, other things?”

  He cast another dubious glance over at Weaver, so that he was the one who answered: “We’re talkin’ ’bout sending more dan jes’ one.”

  Beaufort stood up real straight in shock. I told him, “All I’m asking is the name of a freed black man in Charleston who might help us send some plants up North or to England.” My legs seemed to buckle and I thought I might pee on myself right then and there. I reached out to Weaver to steady myself. “Beaufort, you’re the only one who can help me. You know I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.”

  He was biting his lip and looking down at his feet. He was one pretty obvious conspirator, I’ll tell you that. My heart was racing worse than ever, and that’s how I knew everything was going wrong even before it had started going right.

  “I don’t know, Morri. We have to see ’bout that.”

  He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Weaver put his hand on my back. “Come on, girl, let’s get goin’.”

  At the door, Beaufort gave me a quick kiss on my forehead. “Rollins – Henry Stansfield Rollins. He lives on Bull Street,” he whispered.

  “Beaufort,” I whispered back, “I don’t know Charleston real well. Where’s – ”

  “Morri, Mr. Rollins might help you send your things off to England. But if he don’t, I can’t help you with your other plants,” he snapped. “I’ll tell you ’bout cotton prices in Liverpool, sure enough, but that’s all I’m gonna do.”

  *

  I didn’t want to stop to talk to any Negroes on the street to ask for directions to Bull Street in case anyone was keeping watch on us. So I decided to ask at Apothecaries Hall. One of its owners, Dr. LaRosa, had been a friend of my father’s. After my papa found out that he was Jewish – this is back around 1814 or so – he used to go there to learn what he could about the local herbs he could give folks for scarlet fever, worms, and everything else that cast us down. They used to sit together in Dr. LaRosa’s office and talk about Torah stories too. And once my papa even got invited for Sabbath supper on Friday night, though he couldn’t go because Big Master Henry wouldn’t allow him out after sundown – and especially not with some know-it-all meddling Jew, as he put it.

  Most of the Jews in Charleston – including Dr. LaRosa – had ancestors from Portugal. Some even came right from the city of Porto, where Papa had lived. That always made him feel that coming to South Carolina wasn’t so odd at all. Not that some of the apothecary’s customers didn’t complain about Papa being allowed into his office. One man even told him once that no niggers ought to set foot in a white establishment, “even if they could quote Genesis front to back.”

  Unfortunately, Dr. LaRosa wasn’t in when Weaver and I stopped by. But a young clerk treated us kind and gave us directions while pointing out landmarks on a map of the city hanging on the wall. Bull Street wasn’t all that close, and I was getting worried by now that we’d be gone too long from Lily and Wiggie.

  “I tell you what,” said Weaver, once we’d reached the street, laying his big old hand on my shoulder. “You head on back to be wid Lily while I go talk to Mr. Rollins. You get de carriage and meet me dere, den we’ll all go home.”

  I argued awhile, but in the end I did what he said. I ought not to have worried so much about Wiggie and Lily, because they were still waiting to get her spectacles when I arrived.

  At the time, I didn’t consider that Weaver might have any hidden reason for wanting to see Mr. Rollins alone, but now I wonder if he wasn’t trying to keep some of the risk just for himself. He likely thought he owed it to Papa to keep watch over me. I’ll never know about that. Unless we can get the dead to speak, of course.

  XLII

  We reached Charleston on the morning of Tuesday, the Twenty-Sixth of August, after three days at sea. Having heard in New York that it was a handsome city cherished by its residents, I was surprised that the neighborhood close by the harbor was filthy with refuse and patrolled by packs of mongrels.

  When I stopped a well-to-do man near the port to ask about these things, he told me that its impoverished appearance was due to the decline in prices paid for both cotton and rice on the Liverpool Exchange.

  In the hope that Midnight had been able to find work dispensing medications in Charleston or somewhere nearby, or was still practicing this profession even today, I decided to first ask after him at apothecary shops.

  I was as jittery as could be by now. I believed I might spot him at any moment – driving the carriage turning the corner, buying trousers at the clothing shop I was passing …

  What stunned and pleased me most as I rushed toward King Street and the central shopping district was to discover that Charleston was an African city. Blacks performed every task around me that required physical strain and sturdiness – from the hauling away of refuse in carts to the ringing of church bells. For every person of English or Continental extraction I saw, I’d have estimated three Negroes. More than a few wore fine clothing and jewelry, having plainly achieved their freedom. The majority, however, were dressed either in soiled livery uniforms or in the rough wool and cotton called Negro cloth. Many were barefoot.

  Once, I spotted two elderly white men riding horses and armed with both pistols and swords, which greatly surprised me; I didn’t yet know that I was hunting for Midnight in a city under siege.

  *

  That first morning I showed nearly a dozen clerks my sketch of the Bushman, and though three of them were only too happy to comment disfavorably on his so-called rascality once again, they all assured me that there were no Negroes handing out medicines in their city. “Only a Northern fool wanting to meet his maker would ever accept a powder or syrup mixed by a nigger,” one guffawed.

  By the time the noon bells had rung, my confidence in eliciting any helpful information from any of the white residents was all but vanished. I decided to take Moon Mary’s advice once again and hail black tradesmen and merchants on the street. To do so, I approached them on the Negro side of the walkways.

  Though my Scottish accent proved a difficulty, the first blacks I asked for help were able to follow me if I spoke slowly, but none could help me. Then I approached a handsome gentleman in a gold waistcoat and black trousers, perhaps forty years of age. After showing him my sketch, he informed me in the best King’s English that he had never seen Midnight, but he added, “You will find a Negro apothecary named Mobley on Queen Street, sir. Caeser Mobley is his name. He is not the proprietor, but he is indeed employed there.” After giving me directions, he then astonished me by adding, “If I may be perfectly frank with you, sir, it is plain you are a stranger here. I wish only to give you one small piece of advice: It is a trifle insulting for you to walk on the Negro side of the sidewalk, as you are only too plainly of the white race.”

  *

  Mr. Mobley was so thin that he looked as though he were made of wire. Begging his patience, I explained my purpose, adding that there was a fifty-dollar reward for any assistance that might lead me to Midnight.

  Sadly, my interview ended abruptly, as
he was certain he had neither seen nor heard of him. It never occurred to me that he might be lying. Nor did it enter my mind that from his point of view, I – a white stranger altering his voice to sound more Southern and tracking a black man – must have appeared a threat. Indeed, no one who might have been loyal to Midnight would have trusted me; I might have been a slave-trader or legal authority out to hurt him in some way.

  *

  It was five o’clock when, sweating like a soldier in a losing campaign, I made my way back to my hotel. Despite my determination to remain resolute, my heart sank to new depths when I passed a Negro youth loading heavy crates into the back of a wagon. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, but his nose and one of his eyes were so afflicted with oozing sores that flies were feeding mercilessly at him. I spotted lice not only in his hair but also in his eyebrows. Our glances met for a moment, and I saw in his despair that he knew he was dying.

  Rushing ahead, I found a churchyard where I could rest for a while. Sitting among those headstones, I could not understand how any of us had a right to live while abominations such as I had just witnessed were allowed to happen.

  I took off Daniel’s talisman and read it aloud to myself: Divine Son of the Virgin Mary, who was born in Bethlehem, a Nazarene, and who was crucified so that we might live, I beseech thee, O Lord, that the body of me be not caught, nor put to death by the hands of destiny …

  Closing my eyes, I then spoke one of two protective prayers Benjamin had taught me, imagining myself reflected in the silver eyes of Moses. My old friend had told me that we were – all of us – his pupils, and therefore also silver in our essence.