Hunting Midnight

by Richard Zimler

  Then I repeated – ten times, slowly – the other prayer that he’d given me. And I whispered a verse I’d recently read in Ezekiel: I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt … and I shall fling you into the wilderness.

  I ended with two Hebrew words: Hesed, love, and Din, judgment.

  I could not say what the purpose of any of this was, but it was all I had to help me in these dark moments. None of what I spoke or did calmed me much or cheered me. Cold sweat was cascading down my brow, and I felt that I was being emptied of all that made me who I was.

  But I did not believe that an immediate lessening of my anguish was the point. For that, once I could stand, I took my disheveled self to a tavern, where I downed several ounces of a reasonable whiskey and smoked greedily at a pipe that I pulled from its hook on the wall. After shuffling back to my hotel, I washed my face, collapsed facedown in bed, and pretended I was a boy in Porto, with Fanny by my side. Breathing together, my arm around her belly, we drifted off to sleep.

  XLIII

  I awoke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, but I dared not open my window to allow the sea breeze to sweep inside lest the mosquitoes follow suit. I lay naked on my bed, imagining Midnight as he must have arrived in Alexandria and then Charleston. Manacled and beaten, he was shouting my name. He could not have been prepared for the otherness of this world, where they knew nothing of the First People nor of the hunters that rose into the sky as stars. Hyena had taken Charleston and made it his own.

  Here in America, he must have clung to silence as a shipwrecked man to his island. I recalled how, in confiding his stories to me, he had prevailed upon me to keep several of them secret. This had been owing to his belief that his own health, as well as that of his people, would be put in grave peril if such tales fell into the hands of evil-minded people.

  Silence must have become his only hope and power. He had made himself mute.

  *

  The next morning, I made up my mind to question every apothecary in Charleston and nearby towns in the hopes that Midnight had at some time been permitted by his master to pay one or more of them a visit. Though none of the first people I spoke to could help me, several clerks advised me to stop by at Apothecaries Hall, the most well-known dispensary in the city. I could not miss it, they said, because it had a large mortar and pestle painted on its facade.

  I reached there near noon and waited for over an hour to speak to the proprietor, an elderly man with a kind face and voice named Jacob LaRosa, who questioned me at length. To my solemn disappointment, he told me that he had never met such a man. Hearing a catch in his voice that I took for a sign of mixed emotions, I begged him to be truthful with me, as this was the most important mission of my life. He assured me he had never met the Negro whose drawing I’d shown him. I did not believe him, but I could do nothing.

  *

  On my third day in the city, Mrs. Robichaux, who owned the boardinghouse where I was staying, questioned me about my Portuguese heritage over breakfast.

  “Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had kin in Charleston, sir!” she exclaimed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Some of the Jews of Charleston are able to speak Portuguese. I have been told that they come from that country.”

  She explained that there were hundreds of Jews in Charleston and that their church, as she called it, was on Hassell Street.

  I ran most of the way there and found the Beth Elohim Synagogue to be an impressive structure in the Georgian style, surrounded by a metal fence of upraised pikes with a high ironwork gate.

  The gate was open when I arrived, and a wizened old man wearing a large dark hat and a prayer shawl answered the door. His name was Hartwig Rosenberg and he was the hazan, responsible for singing the liturgy. He was suspicious of my motives until I mentioned that I, too, was a Jew.

  Handing me a wide-brimmed hat, he led me into the synagogue proper. The shafts of light, spangled dust, and echoing of our footsteps afforded me the first moments of peace I’d experienced since arriving in Charleston. I did not feel alone at all; there were people here who’d understand me – and sympathize with Midnight’s plight.

  To my questions, Mr. Rosenberg explained that there was no one by the name of Zarco in Charleston, but there were at least two hundred Jews of Portuguese descent. When he told me what the most common names were, I learned there was even one Pereira, which had been Grandmother Rosa’s maiden name. The family here spelled it Perrera.

  What wonderful luck, I thought, as though entering through a gate of fellowship long locked to me. Yet when I explained my mission to the hazan, I was disheartened to learn that there were many slaveholders among the congregation. The community’s elders – in keeping with the laws and traditions of the Christian majority – saw nothing wrong with the practice, as long as the Negroes were treated with respect. As to what might constitute respect, I asked if it might be the removal of only four toes from a rascal and not all five. To which Mr. Rosenberg glared and replied, “I need no lessons in morality from the likes of you, sir. For the Jews of Charleston, it is a question of survival. Standing apart would be a tremendous risk.”

  His harsh and condescending manner left me furious. “So you not only wish to betray the spirit of Exodus, sir, but also to become honorary Christians? Is that what you are telling me?”

  “Very clever, Mr. Stewart, except that you do not live here and therefore do not know the pressures we are under. If you’ll permit me, you might read the Torah again. If you do, you’ll see that the survival of our people is its most important theme. While I serve our community, we shall not betray it.”

  Though I would have dearly liked to continue this quarrel, I said nothing more about my feelings, since I needed his help. I could fairly hear Mama saying, John, winning this argument means nothing; finding Midnight is everything.

  I even apologized for my rashness, though I admit I regretted doing so as soon as I had spoken.

  The hazan, pacified now, promised me he would ask the congregation this Friday night if anyone had seen or heard of my friend. “Perhaps,” he said, smiling to ease the awkwardness between us, “one of them even owns him. Wouldn’t that be good fortune?”

  “Aye, good fortune, indeed,” I replied, unable to disguise my disgust.

  I left Beth Elohim armed with Mr. Perrera’s home address and place of daily business. He apparently owned a clothing shop on Meeting Street, not two blocks away, and lived just outside the city. He, too, was a slave-owner.

  *

  On leaving the synagogue, I knew now that Midnight would not even have been able to appeal to the Jews for help. Charleston must have seemed to him a desert of the spirit. If he was still alive, where could he have found a place in this world to be himself?

  When I reached Isaac Perrera’s clothing shop, I was led to an office at the back, where an olive-complexioned, dark-haired man of perhaps thirty years of age was working over a ledger book. Placing his pen in its holder, he looked up at me and smiled.

  “How may I be of assistance to you, sir?” he asked.

  “I shall come right to my subject, sir, as I would not wish to take up your valuable time. I’m Portuguese and half-Jewish. I am alone in Charleston and in great need of a trustworthy person who might help me with a problem.”

  In awkward Portuguese, he replied, “And where are you from?”

  “I was born in Porto, though my father is Scottish. My grandmother’s name is Pereira. She still lives in Porto, though most of my family is in London now.”

  “Yes, I have been told that there are many Pereiras in Portugal,” he replied.

  In his chilly gaze, I could see he wished to discount any common ancestry we might share. In his own way, he was telling me that I had no right to expect his assistance. To confirm this intuition, I said, “Indeed there are, sir – thousands. And it was presumptuous of me to come here to see you based on a similarity of family names.”

  “But understandable, sir,” he ack
nowledged.

  “I beg your pardon for the interruption. I shall leave you to your work.” I paused to give him time to protest. As he simply nodded, I added, “Thank you for seeing me. It was most kind.”

  Humiliation obliged me to proffer a small stiff bow.

  It was Thursday, August the Twenty-Eighth, and with every new day in America it was becoming ever more obvious that I was never meant to be a hunter.

  XLIV

  We Were on Our Own

  Mr. Rollins told Weaver that he knew of a man who might get us our muskets and pistols. I’ll call him Mr. Trevor, since he’s still in Charleston by all accounts. It was another six weeks before I got permission to go to town to do our marketing and try calling on him. Master Edward refused to make do without Weaver that day, but I knew how to handle the horses well enough and went alone.

  Mr. Trevor’s wife welcomed me into their small home and sat me down in a study filled with more books than I’d ever seen. She told me her husband would be with me right away.

  Mr. Trevor always scared me, to tell you the truth. He was light-skinned and tall, and his eyes were always burning with awareness, as if he could see straight through you to your thoughts. His profession, which I’m not going to reveal, required a whole lot of learning.

  That first day, I told him about the dreams I’d had of a city where it was always snowing. I told him about Papa having his heel-strings cut. I told him about Marybelle being dissected still warm.

  “What makes you think a frail and uneducated girl like you is going to be able to succeed in this rebellion?” he said in a skeptical voice. “Because make no mistake, young lady, a slave rebellion is what we are discussing here, even if it’s only a few individuals.”

  I do not know what gave me the ornery strength to say what I said: “It’s you who ought to make no mistake, Mr. Trevor, because I’m getting out of River Bend one way or another. And I’m taking my friends with me. I swear that on my mamma’s grave. You can help me if you like or not. But I am getting out!”

  I don’t think I made any impression on him at all. He looked at me with amused eyes. “Little moths usually fly straight into candle flames,” he told me. “They think they’re flying toward some eternal light, but they just burn up to nothing.”

  *

  If Weaver hadn’t come to our next meeting with Mr. Trevor, I’m sure we’d have been given no help at all. But getting him permission to go to Charleston proved an uphill battle and the only way I could get it was by convincing Mistress Anne that she was in need of a chicken coop for her town house.

  It took me three whole months of nagging to wear her resistance down. So it wasn’t until June of 1822 that I could get Weaver into town to build her coop and meet with Mr. Trevor in secret. He told us not to come into his study this time, so we sat in the parlor, studying the framed pictures on the walls, which were all of Negro heroes. He even had one of a black man crucified on a desert hilltop. Mrs. Trevor told me it was Christ.

  “Was Jesus a Negro?” I asked. “I thought he was Jewish.”

  “He was one of us in spirit,” she replied, which made me want to laugh at first, but then later I felt something tingly in my fingers and toes while thinking about it – almost like my papa had said it.

  Looking at that painting, I knew that if the white militia from the Citadel ever raided this place, they’d burn it and everything else in here to ash regardless of anybody’s spirit. They’d never let a black Christ be crucified in Charleston. No, sir.

  Mr. Trevor must have been persuaded by something Weaver said, because he told him that he could get us some of the arms and ammunition that had been stored by Denmark Vesey and his friends before they were arrested and hanged for trying to make an uprising.

  Weaver and I weren’t sure how we would smuggle everything up to River Bend. That put some cold worry in our hearts. And worse, it had never occurred to us before that we had to pay for the muskets and pistols, but Mr. Trevor told us, “Guns don’t come free to any man.” Then, laughing, he winked at me and said, “Or girl.”

  *

  All that summer, while Master Edward’s family lived over at their town house in Cordesville, I took advantage of their absence to steal everything silver I could wrap my little fingers around. Throughout the fall and winter too. Every two months or so, I made my way to town with what I’d robbed, all those trinkets and pieces of silverware shrieking at me from inside my pockets and my bag. Throughout those first months of 1823, robbery, guns, and waiting to get out were all I was thinking about.

  It sure does take ages for a ripple to reach the shores of slavery in the rice country of South Carolina, and by May, after a full year of me robbing my hands raw, Mr. Trevor said we still had given him only enough silver to pay for five muskets, two pistols, and three swords. Though he would also add an extra musket and sword with his own money.

  I figured that wasn’t going to be nearly enough for the twenty or more slaves I was hoping to take with me. We were planning to give everyone at River Bend a choice of coming or staying the week before we left. Weaver would train a few of the men at using a musket or pistol. We reckoned we’d make our escape on a Sunday night, since that was the only evening when Weaver’s wife, Martha, and their children could get a pass to come to River Bend, and we’d get on our way in July, August, or early September, because it was then, during the sickly season, that the countryside would be nearly empty of white folks and patrols.

  We were planning on leaving from Petrie’s Landing, a little-used wharf along the Cooper River for folks living in the town of Belmont. Beaufort had been braver than I ever could have hoped and had gone to speak to Captain Ott. The Englishman had not only agreed to help me, Weaver, and anyone else who could reach his ship, but he would have his crewmen take three rowboats to Petrie’s Landing a day or two before the night of our departure. We would take the boats and meet his ship in the harbor. He would be captaining the Landmark and flying the Union Jack and a small blue flag. He told Beaufort he’d shine a great big lantern on that flag of freedom all night if need be.

  Captain Ott told Beaufort he’d be returning during late August or the first half of September, most likely. As soon as he docked, Beaufort would hire a carriage out to River Bend. He would tie a red ribbon around a plank of the front gate and also leave a plant of some kind just inside the fence. If anyone saw it, I was to say it was a present for my garden from a friend in Charleston. But it was our signal to get moving toward Petrie’s Landing that Sunday.

  Sometimes I was so frightened things wouldn’t work out that I’d need to run down to the river and sit with my legs in that ice-cold water just to keep my heart from exploding.

  I said nothing to Beaufort about our guns. The less he knew the safer he’d be. Weaver and I promised him that if we were taken prisoner we would never name him. But I worried that if they were to cut off some of my fingers or put burning coals on my eyes, I’d name everybody I ever knew and even a few I ain’t never met, black Jesus included. I prayed they would just hang me. Yes, sir, I rightly hoped they’d send me off quick as a cotton worm’s sting.

  *

  On Saturday, the Fourteenth of June, we learned that we could go get the guns and swords we’d paid for. Mr. Trevor had left them under a blanket in a cove hidden by rushes, one mile south of Petrie’s Landing, at a place called Farmer’s Rock. We were told to never visit him again or try to contact him. Under no circumstances were we even to stroll by his house. So from that moment on, we were on our own.

  *

  Wiggie took ill at much the same time with some stomach pains that kept him out of his carriages for nearly two months. If I were to say that I caused his problems with some teas I worked up with a bit of jimsonweed greens, claiming it was for his rheumatism, would you think me evil?

  Maybe it was a bad thing to do, but I had to get permission to drive myself to Charleston every fortnight, because I was sure Wiggie would never agree to carry guns. Keeping him attached to the p
rivy much of the time was the only way I could think of.

  Weaver and I stored the weapons in a space under the piazza – all but one, that is. I sneaked a loaded pistol into my room and kept it under my bed. Ever since Big Master Henry had stuck his snake up inside me, I’d been waiting for Edward the Cockerel to try the same. This time, I was going to be ready.

  Our overseer, Mr. Johnson, was our only sticky problem, but we always waited till he was away from the Big House with the field hands before taking the weapons out of the carriage. Likely Crow or one of the other house slaves guessed after a while that something peculiar was going on, but none of them was about to betray us.

  Then, near the end of August, something happened to give us a scare: A white man with a strange accent started asking nearly everyone in Charleston about my father. I found that out from Caeser Mobley, a Negro apothecary Papa used to visit from time to time. He told me what happened in a note he sent to me with a Negro coachman. Though he couldn’t write so well, I got the gist of it. The curious stranger was tall and wild-looking. Caeser guessed he was a slave-trader trying to trick Papa out of hiding. Or maybe some policeman trying to track him down and get himself a fat reward from Master Edward. The man had done a pretty fair imitation of a Low Country accent, but he must have been from up North. Mr. Mobley denied ever knowing my papa.

  Whoever he was, he sure as hell was looking into things that weren’t any of his business, and at the worst possible moment. So I was praying it was the last we’d ever hear of him.

  But that wasn’t what happened, don’t you know. No, sir. Because the very next day, near about time for the noonday bell, who comes riding up to the Big House, with a fancy black woman driving him, but the nosy stranger. I couldn’t know then that it was the same man who’d been asking after Papa, of course. But later, after the Negro woman left, he saw me, and his eyes popped so wide open with recognition that I knew it must be him.