Last night, the doctor had been staring into Chancellor Square Park, his valise at one side and his medical bag on the other, considering the best spot to rest a bit. He knew that his proximity to Post Street and the Negro neighborhood promised a bed at a house of ill repute, where he could slumber between the legs of some striking Negress. His body had warmed thinking about one specimen in particular. Exotic. A lynx in need of taming. If only he had money. He had picked up his bags and started into the park, the dreams of warmth and eroticism receding like a vapor when he heard a strangled cry. Some damnable simpleton in trouble, no doubt. I’ve got troubles aplenty, the doctor had thought, I do not need fresh ones. In the flickering light of a streetlamp, he noticed a horse with no rider. It stood in the park chewing grass. At its feet lay a lump. McCooke exhaled through his nose. If it be a man with a horse, he might be able to offer help and earn enough for that whore and her bed.
He recognized the unconscious man lying flat on his back as Augustin Galway, legs and arms wide, but still gripping the nag’s reins. The doctor kneeled and shook Galway’s shoulder. Drunk, that’s what. Augustin pushed McCooke’s hand away and tried to curl up on the ground, but when he moved his legs, he woke with a start and cried out. Dr. McCooke sighed in relief. This time, the fates had seen fit to look upon him favorably. Money, he thought, flies from men like Galway the way seeds blow off a dandelion. One just had to be close enough to catch it.
After several rough hours spent getting the man to his home and setting the bone, McCooke’s circumstances had changed. Now he anticipated six weeks in the guest room and three meals a day from Galway’s kitchen, as well as access to an unlimited supply of alcohol without the shadow of Clarke’s brand of temperance looming over him. Why, this situation might go on indefinitely if he cured Galway. He might even become the man’s personal physician.
Now he stood at the window and peered up at the sky. A black cloud rose above the houses, tree limbs whipped in the wind, and red and golden leaves skittered across the yard.
Augustin turned in his overstuffed reading chair to reach for his pipe and tobacco. His right leg, bound in two splints and wrapped in bandages, slipped from its position on the ottoman and thudded to the rug. He cried out.
McCooke set his drink on the casement and rushed to Augustin’s side. “You started with a simple fractured fibula, but if you keep moving you’ll graduate to a compound.” The doctor inspected the bandages and looked directly into his patient’s eyes. “If you’re too big a mule not to follow my orders to stay in bed, then at least sit still.”
“How long am I expected to live like this? If I don’t attend to my business—”
“Sir, you may have just purchased yourself another week’s healing.” McCooke supported Augustin’s lower leg and, with exacting care, moved it back onto the ottoman. “Where is that little wife of yours, eh?” He returned to his drink and refocused his gaze out the window. “Why, if I wasn’t here, you’d be helpless as a mewing kitten.”
“And you’d be dry as Clarke,” said Augustin with irritation.
McCooke spotted Helen scurrying across Bleecker Street toward Third.
“Your honeymoon, eh?” said McCooke, turning to Augustin. “Did your bride prove ready?”
“That girl,” Augustin responded. “It’s like trying to train a pup to run with the pack. Now, Mrs. Galway would have found a way to have all of New York at her command.”
“There really can’t be any comparison,” said McCooke, lowering his voice, “in some areas.” He raised a well-shaped eyebrow. Augustin’s eyes narrowed. McCooke turned back to the window. “You must now hire some help, even if it’s only temporary. Such a fine young wife can’t be equal to running a house, nursing you properly, and maintaining your social position.”
“I would not be in my position if I threw money away, lining the pockets of some scheming man or light-fingered girl. One plump cook is enough of a drain on this house.”
McCooke watched Galway’s new wife running in the wind like a schoolgirl, her hair in knots. She looks like she needs rescuing—from the storm and, he thought, perhaps from the boredom of an old husband. He trotted to the entrance hall and swung open the door. Leaves and rain flew in with her. He closed the door, pressing against it with his shoulder.
“Are you unharmed, Mrs. Galway?” he asked, his eyes sympathetic. He moved to relieve her of the basket, but let his knuckles linger momentarily against her wet bosom. She twisted away, knocking several eggs to the wood floor, but did not cry out.
He set the basket down, brought his index finger to his lips in a shushing motion, and winked. He departed with a grateful smile on his lips. Fate was suddenly very kind.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHY NOT GET HORACE TO DELIVER me the fish, missus?” asked Maggie as she inspected the basket. She was thick and strong from almost five decades of working for the Galway family. Although she tasted each dish to make certain nothing left her kitchen that was not up to her own standards—and Mr. Galway’s—she never went to flab. Her face was wide and open with an indent between her eyes, as if a lifetime of worry had made its mark. In 1827, when slavery in New York State was abolished and freedom had finally come, she’d stayed put in the kitchen where her mother had lived out her life and where she herself had been brought as a child to help snap the yellow beans. She had been a slave for forty-three years and a free woman for eight, but her feet still pounded the same floorboards and her hands continued to prepare the Galways’ food.
“That’s Horace’s usual way.” She peeled the sodden Whig off of the trout in strips. “Always coming by to drop off fish and grab a bite outta Mr. Augustin’s kitchen. He’s no end a trouble, that boy. Oughta get hisself a wife, that’s what I say.”
Helen stood in the kitchen window, watching the storm lash the backyard. Sudden flashes of lightning brightened the area behind the house. Were the two still in the shed? It looked like the wind might just blow the small building away. Maybe Imari was at this moment giving birth.
“It ain’t fit for nobody to be outside,” said Maggie. “You best move away from that window. Never can tell what might happen.”
Helen couldn’t move. She felt miserable. If the boy and his mother had left, they were getting soaked. If they had stayed, the shed might just collapse on top of them. Perhaps she should confess to Maggie and let her handle them.
“At least,” Maggie continued, “Horace give you a decent fish. Oh, yes. She’ll do fine. Mr. Augustin likes his fish done just so. I saved some buttermilk. A bit of flour and meal is all you need. But you gotta have the oil right. Too cool and you got no brown, no crunch. Too hot and it ain’t cooked through. You gotta make that water dance on the oil before you put her in. Take a look here, missus.”
Helen turned, the word shed on her lips. Maggie put the fish on the wooden block and flicked some water into the black fry pan on the iron cookstove. It sizzled and snapped, gliding across the hot oil like a mayfly on the surface of a pond. “You seen how that water dances, missus?” She looked up at Helen, smiling.
Helen withered. If Imari was in distress, she thought, she would have showed herself by now. “Yes, I see.” She could not yet get out to the shed, so without betraying their trust, she tried to put them out of her mind. “Did you teach your daughters to cook?” she asked. Maggie was silent. “I mean, if you had any daughters. I don’t even know if you have children.”
The cook focused intently on dropping cornmeal batter into the oil.
“Do you have any children?”
“That’s a hard question, missus,” said Maggie. “Real hard.” She watched the corn cakes sizzle. Her lips tightened into a straight line.
Helen wished she had never asked. She drew in a breath to apologize.
“Now,” the black woman said, stopping Helen from saying more. She moved balls of cornmeal around in the sizzling oil. “Last year, when Mr. Augustin got me this here stove? You shoulda seen them other neighborhood cooks here clucking an
d fussing. ‘Why a fireplace not good enough for you?’ and, ‘That iron cookstove gonna blow up and kill you.’ They was just jealous, that’s all. They seen he treats me right. None a them hens would know what to do with this here stove. That’s why you gotta learn. I ain’t gonna last forever, and Mr. Augustin, he ain’t likely to hire nobody strange to cook for him. Somebody’s gotta take care a that man. He sure ain’t doing it.”
Helen looked again out the window. The rain had eased. After a deep breath, she decided that the woman and the boy were fine. The shed was still standing. If she just stayed patient, the problem would fix itself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m quite tired.”
“A course, missus. We got plenty a time. You go lay down. I’ll call you and make sure you don’t miss no supper.”
* * *
Maggie was still thinking about who would cook for Mr. Augustin after she passed when the call bell jingled in a high corner of the kitchen and bounced on its springy coil of tin. Each bell on the panel had a brass plaque under it indicating which room the call had come from, but even without the identification, the summons could only be from the library, where Mr. Augustin was convalescing. What’s he got in his head now? she wondered. Couldn’t be more liquor, unless that dirty doctor had drunk it all up. She pulled the cornmeal balls out of the oil and threw a tea towel over them. At the dry sink, she poured a bit of water over her batter-covered hands. She wiped her fingers on her apron, massaged her sore lower back, and decided that if Mr. Augustin was going to ask her to do one extra task—more than the cooking, and the cleaning, and the clothes washing, and the ironing, and the sweeping, and the meal planning, and the bed making, and the mending, and the larder stocking, and the water toting, and the fire starting, and the ash hauling, and the chamber pot cleaning, and the keeping his whole house from sinking into Ballou Creek—she would fight him. Since the day Mrs. Galway died, she had done everything but feed him like a baby. He got a new wife now, he gotta get himself new help too.
At the library, she knocked and entered. Augustin sat on his chair, his curly hair lying flat and pasted to his forehead. The doctor gazed into the street, his back to the room.
“Mr. Augustin?” said Maggie as she approached. She studied his face for a moment. It was pale and dotted with sweat. He look tired, she thought. Must be trying to keep up with a girl too young—that either make a man puff up or drain him.
“Dr. McCooke may need the horse,” said Augustin. “Can you see to it?”
Maggie narrowed her eyes at the thought of being at the doctor’s command. She steered her gaze around to a gilt mirror at the side of the door and leaned toward it.
“What are you doing?” asked Augustin.
“I’m looking to see when I turned into a stable boy,” Maggie replied, turning back to him. The doctor’s head swung sharply around. Augustin remained placid. “I don’t never tell you your business,” she added.
“Certainly not,” he said, his mouth rising at the corners.
Maggie focused on him. “I gotta run this house. I gotta keep you fed. Now, I gotta slop out the horse? You better be ready to go on one meal a day and no cakes.”
“Careful,” said Augustin.
McCooke looked on with undisguised outrage.
“Mr. Augustin,” continued Maggie, more softly now, “all you gotta do is put up your little pinkie and some smart boy gonna come running. We find one who’s gonna take care a that horse for a few pieces a bread and a bit a bacon, you’ll see. Horace musta gotta have a nephew somewhere, dying to work. I’ll ask him. I’m gonna take care a everything.” She turned to leave.
“Is that all?” asked Augustin.
Maggie snorted and swept toward the door.
“I see some visitors arriving,” said McCooke. “Do you answer the door? Or is that too much to ask?”
Maggie flicked her eyes to the doctor and strode out of the room.
McCooke put his hands behind his back. “There is competition for mistress of this house.”
“You be careful too,” said Galway, the amusement dropping from his face.
A door slammed and Maggie reentered the room. “It’s that slave-catching devil, Hickox,” she murmured. “You don’t gotta see him. I can say you’re laid up.”
“Hickox?” Augustin said, glancing toward McCooke. “Unfortunately, I have to. Send him in.”
“Why you have to? I’ll go get the musket and you ain’t have to do nothing. Why don’t he give up coming here?” Maggie asked.
“Please just send him in,” said Augustin firmly.
“You don’t owe him. And you keep him away from me.” Maggie turned on her heel, moved to the front door, opened it, and walked away.
Two men stepped into the foyer.
The tall, thin slave catcher entered the library first. Rainwater dripped off his wide-brimmed felt hat and onto the Oriental rug. Under his black leather vest, his shirt was darkened halfway down his body.
“Mr. Hickox,” said Augustin.
“Mr. Galway,” replied Hickox, removing his hat. His companion entered, his boots leaving a damp trail. “This gentleman is my new partner, Sam Swift.”
“You and Mr. Colby have dissolved your arrangement?” asked Augustin tersely.
“I’m afraid Mr. Colby has departed this world,” said Hickox. “Suddenly, and during the execution of his duties. Too soon. Too soon. May his lot be better in the next.”
The muscles on the side of Swift’s jaw twitched.
“Mr. Swift here is a good Southern boy. Got mixed up in pugilist circles.” Hickox turned to Swift. “You could punch him in the head all night long and he’d never fall. Betrayed by a weakness in his stomach. Sometimes a man has to accept abject failure before he finds his true calling.”
“I doubt you came all the way to Utica and to our quiet corner of town—in a punishing storm, no less—to talk about Mr. Swift,” said Augustin, trying to shift in his chair. Pain crossed his face. “Forgive me for being short. As you can see, I am indisposed. State your business, sir.”
“We have, once again, been charged with the highest duty,” said Hickox, “to find some valuable property. I hope you’ll assist us in spreading the word among your considerable contacts.” He leaned in and passed Augustin a handbill.
$150 Reward. Escaped from the Barnwell Plantation, Virginia, July of this year, 1835, a Yellow Wench, 30 years old, bright, named Suzy. With her is a Negro Boy of 10 years named Joey. She is 8 months with child. They may be receiving help. Suzy is of light complexion, freckled, WELL-SPOKEN, CAN READ, and may be trying to work as a seamstress. DANGEROUS. The boy is of dark complexion, bushy red hair, skinny limbed. Originally ran with a Mulatto Man called Elymas, aged 30, since recaptured. From the best information, Suzy and Joey are in the neighborhood of Frankfort, New Hartford, Utica, or Whitesboro. Any intelligence about the pair should be directed to Abel Hickox care of the National Hotel at Utica on Genesee Street north of the Canal.
Augustin blanched as he read. He looked up and saw Hickox studying him. He crumpled the handbill and tossed it to his side table.
McCooke picked it up, read it, and whistled. “One hundred and fifty, that’s substantial, isn’t it? How much you get out of a deal like that?”
Smirking, Hickox kept his eyes on Augustin. “Doctor, the risk is all mine. I bought these two after we recovered the man and returned him to Arnold Barnwell. The capture was so costly that Mr. Barnwell no longer had the stomach for it.” He turned his steady gaze to the doctor. “If they slip away again, as they have over these last five hundred miles, then I get nothing and I lose my whole investment. If I catch them, and I will catch them, I can sell each separately. That’s three for the price of two.”
“Three?” said McCooke.
“The wench, the boy—and the babe. That’s three by my mathematics.”
“You are a day too late for my assistance, sir,” said Augustin, scowling. “With this injury, the doctor here has advised that I remain immobile. I have frien
ds, but I don’t expect them to appear on my doorstep. Doctor, show the gentlemen out.” He looked at Hickox. “You will forgive me. My pain grows.”
“I understand,” said Hickox. “We shall not trouble you further, but may we call again, just to check on your healing?”
Augustin nodded curtly.
McCooke followed Hickox and Swift into the hallway. Augustin heard Hickox say, “Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Augustin snorted. The impudence of the dog, he thought, to sniff here for his prey. In a moment of pique, he shifted sharply, setting off waves of pain.
“Slave catching?” remarked the doctor. “You called it ‘the highest duty.’ Sounds like unpleasant business.”
“That is an understatement, sir. But someone must right the wrong. These niggers are ruthless,” said Hickox. “If you find you have information for me, do contact us at the hotel.”
“Doctor,” Augustin called, “get back in here and give me something for this pain.”
Helen stood at the top of the stairs peering down at the slavers. Her mind spun. They must know that there were two Negroes in the shed, she thought. When they find them I can say I had nothing to do with it. She rushed out of the hallway, through her sitting room, and to her bedroom window. Her heart thumped. She dared to draw the lace curtains open a bit and stare into the yard. Nothing looked disturbed.
She waited a quarter of an hour. Nothing stirred. Nobody searched the shed. Nobody dragged Imari and Joe out of their hiding place in chains. She relaxed. Those poor people must be gone, she thought, calming herself.
She kneeled by the bed, her hands clasped. “God,” she prayed, “let their journey be easy. I don’t say what You should do with them but keep the babe and the child safe. God, even if she really is a slave and wicked for running away from her master, children need their mother.”
The Third Mrs. Galway Page 4
