“That doesn’t affect the weather, does it?”
“It’s messing with everything,” said Maggie. “We’re in for it. Mr. Augustin say no, but to me everything’s just different.”
“I’m sure we’ll be all right,” said Helen. “You have a shopping list?”
“You ain’t going out now, are you? That rain will be the devil on that nice dress.”
Lightning flickered outside. Helen counted, “One … two … three … four—” The thunder stopped her. “I saw the edge of the storm. It will end soon, I think.”
Maggie dug deep in the pocket of her dress and pulled out a carefully lettered list. As Helen held it, Maggie came up behind her.
“You read my writing?”
“It’s perfect,” said the younger woman.
Maggie pointed to one item. “Mr. Augustin said for me to tell you to find Mr. Horace down by Bagg’s Hotel for that there.” She leaned in. “He don’t eat no fish but Mr. Horace’s fish.”
“Very well. Oh, by the way, the shed door is open,” said Helen. “I’m afraid rain’s getting in there.”
“Now the shed’s broke? As if I ain’t busy enough.” Maggie began stretching the sheet over the bed. “I swear, this whole place gonna fall apart ’cause a that comet.”
“I’ll check on the door before I go,” said Helen quickly. “Is there a shopping basket?”
“Kitchen,” said Maggie, nodding toward the back. She returned to the sheets.
Helen went down the tight servants’ stairs into the warm kitchen and lingered at the back window, peering at the shed. All seemed perfectly normal now, door closed, nothing wrong. No reason to bother Augustin with this. He and the doctor seemed to be settling into drinking brandy this morning. She supposed that despite his denial, he must be in pain. Now was not the time to trouble him with something she could see to herself. And to ask McCooke? No. No. She wanted to make sure to have little to do with him. Besides, management of the house now fell to her.
Lightning flickered. She counted one … two … three … four … five … six … thunder. The clatter of rain on the roof slowed as if God had simply moved his water jug to some other spot. The storm was moving off.
She took a deep breath before plunging into the backyard. Light rain landed on her face as she marched to the shed. The iron handle was in place, but still she swung the door wide and stepped inside.
A woman’s voice cried out from the dark. A metal bowl crashed to the ground and Helen heard scrambling as if she had startled a sleeping fox. Out of the gloom, a skinny black boy leaped before her, a hayfork in his hands. Helen gasped and backed up to the frame of the door, her muscles twitching in fear.
“Stop, Joe,” came a sharp female voice from the floor. The boy neither dropped the long wooden fork nor backed away. “Sorry, miss,” said the voice.
“Keep away from me,” cried Helen, stepping back.
“Joe, I told you,” said the voice sternly. “Get back here.” The boy lowered the weapon, but did not withdraw. “Sit down,” the voice commanded.
He kept his eyes on Helen. As he kneeled he revealed a woman sitting on the dirt floor, her legs straight out in front of her. She leaned against a sturdy built-in cabinet, a very large pregnant belly resting between her legs.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Helen, thinking that she should run and get … who? Her husband? No. He had a broken leg. The doctor? Heavens, not him. Maggie. She would get the cook out here—
“We sorry, miss. Just getting outta the rain,” said the woman, talking very quickly. “Just getting outta the storm. Don’t worry. Joe here got surprised, is all.”
“You can’t be here,” said Helen, calming a little, stepping back into the shed. Looking at the woman more closely, she noticed that her tan blouse drooped with dampness. Her skin, the color of newspaper left too long in the sun, was heavily freckled and her face was as round as a casserole dish. Her hair disappeared under a dirty gray cap. A shawl was pulled tight across her shoulders as if she were freezing. Suddenly the woman clutched her stomach and groaned.
“Momma,” the boy cried.
“Is the baby coming? Now?” said Helen, her voice strangled with new fear.
The last time she had been around a woman this close to lying-in was during her mother’s labor. Poor Momma had screamed and ranted when the baby had tried to come out too early. She had pulled off her own britches and groped at a tiny foot dangling between her thighs. The ordeal had all ended finally, but the time spent waiting for her father to get a doctor had been full of blood and panic, leaving Helen helpless and her mother and her new brother quite dead. All the doctor had done was hold a mirror to her mother’s mouth and declare that she was at peace.
“I’m getting a doctor,” Helen said, looking back at the house.
“No, no,” cried the woman. “Don’t. The baby ain’t coming. Don’t bring no one else out here.”
“You can’t have a baby here. I’m getting someone.”
“No, no, no,” the woman pleaded in a loud desperate voice, her hands skyward, fingers knotted together as if in prayer.
The boy jumped to his feet again and grabbed Helen’s arm.
“Let me go!” she yelled, and jerked backward.
“No. Please. Don’t be scared. He just a boy,” begged the woman. With her next breath she began to sing the first few trembling words of a lullaby. “Dear baba, ah yaw, ah yaw, who momma is right here …”
Helen froze, stunned by the thin reedy voice as it followed the simple course of a slow rhythmic melody.
“Nice dry straw, ah yaw, ah yaw, lay you down so near, ah yaw …”
Something inside Helen shifted. She stared back at the woman, who drew her hands around her pregnant belly, hugging the unborn babe. The tune, so plain and soothing, pierced Helen to her very marrow. For a moment, she had a vision of her mother, alive and young, her face close. She too was singing.
The woman’s voice cracked as tears coursed down her face. “Now you go to dream, ah yaw, sleep the night away …”
Helen felt tears gathering in her own eyes.
“Momma near, all is clear, ah yaw. Baba in the hay, ah yaw, ah yaw, baba sleep away.”
All was silent. Together, as if on cue, all three released a breathy sigh.
Helen wiped at her eyes and closed the shed door. She pulled an overturned bucket to the center of the entranceway and sat quietly for a moment. “Who are you?”
“Imari, miss. My son, Joe.”
The room darkened and brightened as clouds streaked across the sky.
“I believe you need a doctor,” Helen said calmly.
“The baby ain’t coming,” said Imari. “I just need to rest awhile. Please, don’t bring no doctor or no one else out here. You so very nice. I don’t mean to trouble you.” She took a few quick breaths as if to calm the pain. “Sorry, miss. What can I call you?”
“Helen—I mean Mrs. Galway.”
“Yes, Mrs. Galway, ma’am.” Imari closed her eyes as she gathered herself, pulling her shawl around her shoulders again. “Sorry we scared you. But you be doing a kindness to just let me sit a spell, Mrs. Galway. We gonna get through it. This ain’t the baby’s first fit.” Imari tried to relax. Nothing was going to come right unless she was still. That’s how it had worked with her other pregnancies and she prayed that it would work that way again. She moved her hands over her belly, making tiny circles with her fingers. If she could settle, the baby might settle too. She looked up at the woman. Gotta be a way to stay, she thought. Can’t be sent back outside in wet clothing to spend hours in the open. The monster, Hickox, might be searching the town right now. They had to stay out of sight. She glanced at her son. He hugged his knees, his body absolutely still, watching the white woman. Her boy had almost gone crazy trying to protect her. The loss of Elymas had changed him and now he seemed like an oar bobbing away. Why had she been so stupid as to bypass the place she was supposed to have gone? Risky and foolish. She studied the
white woman’s face. Mrs. Galway. At least this was the right place.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t stay,” said Helen.
“See, me and Joe just walking along on the creek back there when that wind start blowing,” Imari said. “Them clouds roll across the sky and rain got to falling and I know we gotta find shelter, missus. And the baby, he putting up some kinda fuss, kicking and twisting. He scared a getting killed by that lightning. So, I don’t want to disturb nobody. I seen that don’t nobody come in here. Figure we stay till this storm be over. Just a few hours a rest is all, missus. Please. We supposed to meet a man. He gonna take care a us.”
Helen’s mouth hung open, shock apparent on her face. She looked around as if something unimaginable had befallen her. “I don’t know,” she finally managed to say.
“Joe, my boy,” Imari said, putting her hand on his arm, “he cold. He soaked through.” She turned back to Helen. “He scared.”
“Him? Scared of me?” asked Helen. “I didn’t do anything.”
“And you don’t gotta do nothing, missus.” Imari took her time, trying to talk calmly, the way one might speak to a wild creature. “Just close that there door and we be quiet as mice.”
Helen drew back and glanced toward the door. She looked again at Imari, who nodded.
“We be quiet, missus,” Imari whispered. “A few hours, then we be gone.”
Helen looked again at the door. “Very well.” After a quick glance back at the other two, she stood and left, closing the door behind her.
Imari patted her son’s shoulder. “We gonna be all right,” she said, and tried to make herself believe it.
CHAPTER THREE
HELEN LOITERED ON THE EDGE of Utica’s Bagg’s Square, her uneasy mind focused on the people in the shed. If they were still there next time she checked, she should order them to leave. But the woman was with child and Helen could not imagine herself being that cruel. The easiest thing was to do nothing, just as Imari had urged. Later they’d be gone as promised.
A young black boy passed hauling a stack of kindling on his back. How awful to be born a Negro, she thought. But they were a sturdy people. The stack of wood this boy carried looked quite heavy and yet he managed. Then again, the boy in the shed had been too skinny. Where had the pair come from? Vagrants, no doubt. They were so poorly dressed for October’s unpredictable weather. She didn’t believe for a moment that there was some man who would solve whatever their problem was.
Genesee Street bustled. Passengers loaded themselves onto a westbound stagecoach. An open carriage breezed by carrying several giggling ladies enjoying the respite from the rain. One woman protected her shining peach face with a tall leghorn hat that had a high shell-like brim and a large rose fashioned out of ribbons. What would it be like to be so carefree?
Helen shook her head and studied the shopping list. It was time to start, so she moved toward Williams & Hollister Grocers. A man in long pants with suspenders stretching over his corpulent form set to rights bushels of produce in front of the establishment. While Helen took in a deep calming breath, she noticed a tall, twig-thin man removing a handbill that had been nailed on the doorframe.
“Alvan Stewart’s at it again,” called the thin one to the thick. In bold black letters the notice read, Come to New York Anti-Slavery Society’s Founding Convention. “Them abolitionists gonna tear this city apart. Heck, they’s ready to burn up the whole nation.”
“I told you—leave it alone,” said the heavy one. “Meetings and conventions? That’s too heady for the likes of us.”
“Oh? You’re for Stewart bringing them traitors into our city?”
“You’re impossible,” said the first man as he shifted his generous weight onto his right heel and swung into the store. The thin man’s gaze followed his partner and he seemed about to prolong the argument when he noticed Helen fanning herself with a piece of paper.
“Is that meeting today?” she asked, alarmed.
The grocer lit up with attentiveness. “No it ain’t, pretty miss. Say, you ain’t gonna faint, is you? You fashionable gals always looking for a place to keel over.”
The list quivered in her gloved hand. “I’m shopping,” Helen said, squaring her shoulders, “for Mr. Galway.” She poked the paper in his direction.
“So, Galway finally broke down and got him a housekeep,” he said. “Good. He got laid low real bad when Mrs. Galway passed.”
“I’m Mrs. Galway,” she said firmly, surprising herself.
The man opened his mouth as if he wanted to add an additional comment, but had the good sense to refrain. He took the list and began reading Maggie’s careful handwriting, gathering eggs, apples, autumn lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, acorn squash, and cabbage, and methodically packed Helen’s basket.
“Excuse me, miss … I mean, ma’am, it don’t say what color beans.” He held up his hands, right fist filled with yellow beans, the left with green.
Helen froze. Which was correct? She looked from right to left and back again. That Augustin had a preference, she had no doubt. He had a preference about everything. Why had Maggie not written it down? She thought back but could remember no instance of seeing him eat beans while they had honeymooned. She liked her green beans snapped short, blanched, and swimming in melted butter, but that might be the wrong choice. She should never have allowed herself to be instructed by him to go shopping. Wasn’t that what a cook was for?
The grocer dropped his left hand and the green beans fell back into their bushel.
“Maggie usually gets the yellow,” he said. “I’ll just pack them.”
When she left the store, her basket overflowed with the groceries. Her last errand required her to find the fishmonger, “Mr. Horace.”
On the street, she watched as children darted between horses and oxcarts. It had all seemed quite easy before the wedding. Her days at school had been structured with classes, piano practice, needlework, reading, and drawing. She knew where to sit in church and which of the dormitory beds was hers. She thought she understood Utica’s streets from her outings to the lending library at Mechanics Hall, but now everything seemed different.
Just a few feet away, two men tied their horses to a post in front of City Hall. One, his clothing dusty and stained, was thick with muscles. His face had a beaten look; nose flattened and ears rippled with strange lumps. The other, a sinewy man in his fifties, had a bullwhip hanging from his belt. Dangling from his saddle, iron chains clinked as the beast shifted. She heard someone mutter, “Slave catchers,” and noticed shackles the size of wrists and necks dangling at the ends of the chains. How horrible, she thought.
As she turned, she saw a black woman and young boy hurrying through the intersection. With a jolt, she realized that the two people in the shed might be escaped slaves. A shiver went through her.
Miss Manahan had explained during her lectures on the “evidences of Christianity” that slavery had been common in the Bible. She said that only the worst types of men tried to escape their Christian duty and run away from their rightful, God-given masters. It could be compared to running away from one’s own father. Perhaps a strict father, Miss Manahan allowed, but strictness was often called for when trying to civilize the Negroes. But, to Helen, these two men didn’t seem to be the type to be on God’s business. Helen supposed that the roughest lawmen would be the ones to chase down escaped slaves.
She dismissed the slave idea about the two in the shed. Here, in Utica? How ridiculous. But it was strange that the pair appeared on the same day as these slave catchers. If they were really runaways she supposed that turning them in was the right and lawful thing to do and would perhaps even earn Mr. Galway’s approval. But then she remembered how desperate Imari had been—and how far gone with child. When Helen looked up, the older slave catcher met her gaze. Dirt had collected in the wrinkles around his blue eyes. He winked. She bristled. Good men didn’t take such liberties. Quick as a breath, she decided that she would not turn the Negroes over
to these men. With determination, she turned away and plunged into the bustle of the square. The situation is impossible, she thought. I can’t decide the fate of another human being. She wished fervently that she had never opened that shed door. Well, they will be gone by the time I get back. I did what I was asked. Nothing more I can do. Still, she worried about them. It might be that they had already been discovered and that she might be in trouble. At least if she were home she would know one way or the other.
Once in front of Bagg’s Hotel, she began looking urgently for Mr. Horace. The sharp smell of fish, hours out of their natural element, drew her attention to the northeast corner of John and Main Streets. There stood a fish cart, but seemingly attended only by a scruffy Negro in a floppy hat talking to another black man wearing spectacles and a suit. The scruffy one wore his pants rolled up at the bottoms, as if they had initially belonged to someone taller. He had dark skin and a smooth face. She watched as he caught sight of the two slave catchers walking into City Hall and signaled to the fellow in the suit. The man in the suit handed the scruffy one a newspaper and hurried away.
Approaching the cart, Helen opened her mouth to speak. The man leaned toward her. Her lips swiftly closed.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked. “Got all kinda fish here.”
“Please,” Helen swallowed, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Horace?”
“I’m Horace, miss.” He smiled and bowed with a flourish. “Horace Wilberforce, at your service.”
“Oh.” Maggie should have mentioned that she’d be looking for a black fellow. Flustered and anxious to be back at Augustin’s … or, she supposed, her own home, she tried to ignore the darkness of the man and the stench of the cart, instead concentrating on her final task—picking out the right fish for her husband’s supper.
“Is that a good type of fish?” she finally asked, after staring into the eyes of a spiny twitching specimen. She watched Horace’s brown hand wave off flies.
“That’s a popular fish, miss,” he said. “Many folks swear by the sweet meat of the bullhead. And he a smart kinda fish, living off what others too proud to eat. You gotta watch that spine right there when you gut him, miss. That’ll cut you quick, if he wriggles.” Horace reached under the cart and produced a recent edition of the Oneida Whig newspaper. With a high degree of showmanship, he chose a fat bullhead and placed it in the center of the paper. “I tell you what. I can clean him right out. Save you the trouble.”
The Third Mrs. Galway Page 2
