A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles)

by Laing, Annette

Janet looked deflated, but the other girls laughed.

  Mina said, “Ach, you’re both right. Hannah, you need to save your pennies for Sunday clothes instead of buying pies with yon Irish lassie, and we need higher wages, and parks where we’re welcome. We’ll have to fight old Sutherland for the wages, but I heard that he supports us having a park. And I hear the council is to open a park at the old army barracks in Dudhope, just for us.”

  Betty, Jessie’s youngest daughter, piped up, “What about the Balgay Hill? That could be a park, too.”

  “Aye, true enough,” said Mina, “and soon enough… You know, maybe it’s no such a bad thing that Hannah swore out old Sutherland.”

  “It isn’t?” Hannah asked in surprise.

  “Nooo… It keeps the millowners on their toes if they’re that wee bit afraid of us. Makes them worry about libraries, and lectures, and parks for the workers. If we canna get them to gie us decent wages and places to live, we can at least get them to spend the money they take from our labor the way we want, eh? Maybe we need more folk like Hannah to remind the bosses how the rest of us live.” Her eyes twinkled.

  “That’s not respectable talk, Mina Gordon,” Janet sniffed.

  “Isn’t it?” Mina asked with a sly smile, as she put down her book, and gave Hannah a wink as she rose to her feet. “I think Hannah might have the makings of a fine political agitator.”

  Hannah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew she was being complimented. Adults didn’t usually compliment her for speaking her mind. It made a nice change to be appreciated.

  ****

  Mr. Thornhill lived alone. Except, that is, for his maids, butler, driver, cook, and their children, all of whom, except the Irish maid, were slaves.

  Jupe considered himself lucky: As Alex’s manservant, he could sleep in his master’s comfortable room, while other slaves lived in the cramped space of the carriage house, above the stables. The downside was that his situation put distance between him and the other slaves, some of whom grumbled that Jupe clearly wasn’t a house servant, and didn’t have any domestic skills. One afternoon, when Mr. Thornhill rang the bell for tea, the cook sent Jupe with the tea tray. While he was trying to open the parlor door, he dropped the tray with a huge crash, denting the silver teapot and destroying the expensive teacups. Angry, Mr. Thornhill rang for Ezekiel and told him to punish Jupe. Later, when Alex tried to find out what had happened, Jupe wouldn’t tell him.

  It was a grand house. Four bedrooms upstairs, and even an indoor bathroom, supplied with rainwater collected in barrels. Ezekiel the butler said that the bathroom made the house the talk of the city. But Alex noticed that the barrels were full of mosquito larvae, and reported this to Mr. Thornhill at breakfast.

  “Oh, mosquitoes, they’re a nuisance,” Mr. Thornhill said, helping himself to more scrambled eggs from a silver dish that Ezekiel held out to him. “Don’t worry. The servants dispose of the eggs and hatchlings eventually.”

  “But aren’t you scared of malaria or yellow fever?” Alex blurted out. He remembered reading in one of his nature books that mosquitoes were the carriers of illnesses that had killed thousands of nineteenth-century Southerners.

  “What have mosquitoes to do with malaria or yellow fever?” Mr. Thornhill said with a laugh. “Everyone knows that the fevers are caused by miasma. That’s why the city is cleaning up the streets, to lessen the impurities released into the air.”

  Something in this explanation didn’t sound right to Alex, but he let it go. That morning, Alex and Jupe accompanied Mr. Thornhill to his office. It was only a few blocks away, but they travelled by coach and horses. Alex soon figured out why they didn’t walk: The sandy roads had absorbed a heavy rainstorm in the early hours of the morning, and they were now quagmires. Pedestrians struggled through the boggy sand as though they had ten pound weights strapped to their ankles.

  Before reaching the office, Mr. Thornhill stopped the coach at a large store that sold gentlemen’s clothing. Jupe and the coach driver remained outside, while Mr. Thornhill took Alex to be fitted for new made-to-measure clothes. He also bought him some outfits that were ready to wear. Alex was delighted by his expensive new clothes. He was happy to think, as they settled back in the carriage, that Mr. Thornhill clearly intended to keep him around for a while. As though reading his mind, Mr. Thornhill said, “You had better prove your worth as a clerk, young Day, now that I have invested so heavily in you.” Alex gave a wan smile.

  Soon, the coach and horses pulled up on Bay Street, and Mr. Thornhill and the two boys got out. On foot, they crossed over a gully on a cast-iron bridge that led to Factors’ Walk, a squat row of brick and green-painted buildings. Alex, having visited Factors’ Walk in the twenty-first century, knew that there was more to this strange row of offices and shops than first appeared: It was built directly onto a cliff-face, so that if you walked on the other side, along the docks of the Savannah River, you could see that the Factors’ Walk buildings each had five floors, several of which warehoused cotton that awaited shipment to the North and across the Atlantic Ocean.

  On the Bay Street side, Mr. Thornhill led the boys into an office that appeared to be on the first floor, but was actually on the fourth. When he walked in, the clerk, a tall and portly man with white hair and red cheeks, was taken by surprise. He jumped up from a chair next to the fireplace, where he had been warming himself.

  “Good morning, Baird,” said Mr. Thornhill, tossing his tall hat onto a stand. “I see that you’re working hard. I have brought this lad with me, by the name of Alexander Day. I’ve taken him on as a clerk of sorts. Teach him the accounts, would you, and he will accompany me in your place to take stock on the estate tomorrow, if that would suit you.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Baird, who had a Scottish accent. “Yes, that would certainly suit me, Mr.Thornhill. I have no desire to go trachling out to the ends of the earth at my age.”

  Thornhill replied with a sly smile, “Well, I’m sure young Day would be glad to ‘trachle’ in your place. Wouldn’t you, Day?”

  “I would if I knew what that meant, sir,” said Alex.

  “Oh, it’s another of Mr. Baird’s curious Scottish expressions. Add ‘trachling’ to your curriculum for Day, would you, Baird?” said Mr. Thornhill, his eyes twinkling, as he opened the door to his office.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Baird. “But before you go, would you mind telling me what’s to be done with this nigger lad?” He waved a finger toward Jupe.

  Thornhill paused in the doorway. “Oh, that’s young Day’s manservant. His name is Jupe. Not terribly accomplished yet, are you, Jupe?”

  “No, sir,” Jupe said quickly. It was always best to agree with white gentlemen.

  Mr. Thornhill continued. “You can send him over to MacGregor’s offices with these final deeds of sale once you have them drawn up, and send Day with him.”

  Alex pored over the impossibly huge books of handwritten accounts, and although he was at first tickled to realize that this was surely where the expression “book-keeping” came from, he soon got bored and tired. For whatever reason, both he and Mr. Baird worked standing up at tall desks. When he asked for a stool, Mr. Baird just chuckled.

  Alex found himself wishing that he had some modern technology. The ink pen he used was hard to write with, and he had to repeatedly dip it into the inkwell on the desk. Then he overfilled it, and made a huge blot on the paper. Mr. Baird tutted and slapped his hand as he gave him blotting paper to clean up the mess.

  A computer would come in really handy right now, Alex thought… which was when he remembered the Professor’s calculator, tucked into the pocket of his clean new trousers.

  As Mr. Baird worked at the other desk copying out letters by hand, Alex furtively totted up the numbers on the calculator. Suddenly, Mr. Thornhill’s door opened. Alex tried to slide the calculator back into his pocket, but he wasn’t used to his new trousers, and he fumbled a moment too long.

  “What’s that you have there?” said Mr
. Thornhill sharply, furrowing his brow and pausing in his office doorway.

  “Nothing,” said Alex, and immediately regretted it, because it was so obviously a lie. He corrected himself. “Nothing much. Just a little gizmo I have with me, not really interesting…”

  Mr. Thornhill stepped forward, grabbed Alex’s wrist and pried the calculator from his fingers. “What the devil is this?” he muttered, and he punched the numbers and symbols. Peering at the tiny screen, he exclaimed, “Good God…” He turned the calculator over and over in his hands, and even tried to open the battery compartment.

  Alex was alarmed. “Um, sir, please don’t do that, because it might break.”

  “What is this?” Mr. Thornhill asked him in bafflement.

  “It’s a calculator. It does math,” Alex said cautiously. He held out his hand for the calculator, but Mr. Thornhill didn’t take the hint, and continued to inspect it.

  “Where did you get it?” he asked.

  “I found it,” Alex said truthfully.

  “By God, there’s money in this. I wish to know how it operates,” said Mr. Thornhill. “Day, may I borrow your calculating machine for a day or two?”

  Alex was reluctant, not least because he would now have to go back to doing the accounts without it, but he agreed. What else could he do?

  That same afternoon, Mr. Baird sent Alex and Jupe to Mr. MacGregor’s office to deliver a bundle of documents. He gave them directions to Johnson Square, which was only a couple of blocks away. Alex was quite looking forward to a walk through 1851 Savannah. On the carriage ride to the office, he had noticed how rough the squares appeared, compared with the beautiful gardens of the twenty-first century city. Flower beds were few, most trees were young, and the squares lacked the sidewalks and grand monuments they would later acquire. Alex smiled to himself, as he thought of the upside: There weren’t any noisy tour buses, either. But when he and Jupe arrived at Johnson Square, they were both dismayed to see Mr. MacGregor’s place of business. A large sign proclaimed, J. MacGregor, Slave Auction and Sales.

  Alex decided to take the documents in by himself, and Jupe seemed relieved to be left outside. Alex couldn’t blame him.

  A bell rang when he walked in, and the clerk glanced up. “I’ll attend to you presently,” he said to Alex, “soon as I’m done with this fella here. Take a seat there.” He pointed with his pen to an upright wooden chair in the corner. As Alex sat down, he could hear voices seeping up from the basement beneath the floor boards. With shock, he recognized one of them: It was the voice of the storytelling slave whom he and Jupe had met on their way into Savannah. Now he was recounting his sad tale for a new audience. What were they doing in the basement?

  Alex also recognized the man speaking with the clerk as the Irish slave trader whom he and Jupe had met on the road. The Irishman was arguing with the clerk, saying heatedly, “I told MacGregor that I needed him to auction off this gang today, because I need the cash, and I’m headed back to Atlanta tomorrow.”

  But the clerk was shaking his head. “I realize that, sir, but Mr. MacGregor says it’s too short notice… His most generous offer is to buy the slaves from you outright.”

  The Irishman snorted. “Yes, at a fraction of their market value. What does the man take me for now, a fool?”

  Mr. MacGregor emerged suddenly from his office, where he had evidently been listening to the conversation. “I took you, Riley, for a sensible fellow,” he said in a charming yet sinister voice. “Now we don’t need a fuss, so you just let Smithson here write out a bill of sale, and you can be on your way to Terminus, or Atlanta, or whatever that little place calls itself now.”

  Riley seemed thrown off guard by Mr. MacGregor’s appearance. The differences between them were considerable: Mr. MacGregor was tall, while Riley was short; Mr. MacGregor was clean-shaven and dressed in an expensive, finely-cut suit, while Riley was bearded and wore torn trousers and a filthy shirt. Riley was out of place in the elegantly-furnished office, and he knew it. Mr. MacGregor took a slow puff from his cigar, never averting his gaze from Riley.

  But Riley tried once more. “You promised, sir, that you would hold an auction soon as I arrived with the merchandise…”

  “Circumstances changed since we exchanged letters,” said Mr. MacGregor, flicking ash from his cigar. “And judging from the condition of some of those negroes in my slave pen downstairs, you’re lucky I’m willing to take them off your hands.”

  There was a silence, and then Mr. MacGregor said quietly and firmly to the clerk, “Draw up the bill of sale.”

  The clerk scurried to comply, while Riley stood by angrily, shifting from foot to foot. It was then that Mr. MacGregor spotted Alex, and invited him into his office, a summons that Alex didn’t dare refuse.

  Mr. MacGregor closed the door behind them, and motioned for Alex to take a seat before sitting down behind his desk. “Now then, how do you find Mr. Thornhill’s employ?”

  Alex said guardedly that he was happy to work for Mr. Thornhill.

  “And your negro, what is his name?”

  Without thinking, Alex told him.

  Mr. MacGregor sat back in his chair. “Jupe, is that? Short for Jupiter? And you say you borrowed him from your uncle. What was his name, now?”

  But Alex had decided that he had to stand up to Mr. MacGregor. Looking him in the eye, he said, “Nothing personal, sir, but is that your business?”

  Mr. MacGregor’s eyes flashed in anger, but still he smiled that sly smile. “Your insolence does you no credit, boy. You brought papers for me? Just hand them to Smithson on your way out the door.”

  As Alex made to leave, MacGregor said chillingly, “I’ve got my eye on you, boy, and on that young buck Jupiter. And you had better be telling me the damn truth.”

  When Alex left the building, Jupe was talking to two black men, who hurriedly left when they saw Alex. “Who were those guys?” Alex asked.

  “Those men, Massa Alex, they’re carpenters, and they invite me to the First African Baptist Church.” Then, very quietly, he added, “Massa Alex, that Mr. MacGregor? He’s not an honest gentleman, that’s what those men say. They said they done some work for that Mr. MacGregor in the slave pen, and he never paid them.”

  “But why would he pay slaves?” Alex asked.

  “No, sir, they’re free men. Anyways, they heard Mr. MacGregor takes negroes no questions asked…. And the slaves down in the basement? They said that some of them were stolen, and that Mr. Riley forged the papers.”

  “Wow,” said Alex. “That explains a lot. I’ll tell you something else about Mr. MacGregor, Jupe: He scares me.”

  Alex’s upstairs room at Mr. Thornhill’s was light and airy, and sun poured into it through large windows. Jupe made his bed on the floor of Alex’s room, while Alex climbed up a wooden step-stool into his elaborate four-poster bed with silk canopy. Alex had offered to share the bed, but Jupe refused, and Alex was beginning to tire of trying to find ways to treat him as an equal.

  What Alex could not know was that Jupe feared being accused of not knowing his place, even though the floor was hard and cold and the bed looked warm and inviting. What Jupe could not know that Alex genuinely wanted to be his friend.

  In the darkness, Alex explained to Jupe that he did not believe in slavery, and did not want to think of him as property. As he spoke, he could hear Jupe’s breath catch in his throat, but in the anonymity of the dark, he felt braver about being honest. “Look, nothing personal, but I have no idea why you’re here with me,” he whispered. “I can’t do anything for you, and I’m worried because Mr. McGregor knows you don’t belong to me. I don’t need a servant, anyway. Why can’t you just go home?”

  There was a very long silence. And then, in a forthright voice, Jupe said, “Because I’m running away.”

  In those few words, Jupe shed his fearful, cautious shell, and showed his true self. Alex was stunned, but Jupe was relieved to have told him the truth. “My dad said to stick with you if I could, and head
north to my aunt’s if I couldn’t. But you seem like good folks, Massa Alex, and I want to stay with you if I can. Mostly, I just want to be free. I trust you to keep this secret, and I ain’t never trusted a white man before. My daddy would call me crazy, and maybe I am… But will you help me?”

  Jupe’s honesty made Alex afraid. It was the first time that Jupe had spoken to him as an equal. It was as though he had spent all this time in the company of an actor, and only now was seeing his real personality.

  Alex now realized what a huge responsibility he had. His head swam. He desperately tried to remember if the Underground Railroad existed in 1851: Even if it did, how would he make contact with it? Perhaps he could simply leave Mr. Thornhill, and take Jupe north with him, but that might rouse suspicion, and put the slave patrol on their tails… Alex wanted so badly for the

  Professor to show up and explain what should happen next.

  What he said was, “Jupe, I’ll help you any way I can. But we gotta think about what we’re gonna do. Let’s hang out here until we decide what’s best.” “We decide, Massa Alex?”

  “We. Not just me. You, too. And don’t call me Massa, or at least not when we’re alone. You know what, Jupe, I have a secret, too. I’m not from here, either. I’m from the future, from more than a hundred and fifty years from now. I don’t know how or why, but I’ve traveled in time. I’m not crazy. I’m just out of my own time.”

  Jupe, who believed in the ghosts that haunted buildings and the spirits of the woods, as well as in the certainty that he would go to a Christian heaven when he died, didn’t find this so hard to believe. And, after all, it made sense out of Alex’s behavior. Alex’s confession encouraged him to make another of his own. He cleared his throat.

  “After I broke the teacups, you asked me what happened. Well, I’ll tell you now. Massa Thornhill meant for Ezekiel to whip me, but Ezekiel just pretend to do it, and tell Massa Thornhill that he punished me. Ezekiel’s a good man.”

  Alex agreed with Jupe that Ezekiel was a good man. But what did it say about Mr. Thornhill that he wanted Jupe whipped for a mere accident? Alex felt uneasy, and not for the first time.