“Do you think this is about tomorrow?” asked Pryce.
“Could be,” said Tappan. “Your convention has been national news. There are many who would see us all hang for it.”
“I’ll try to determine the cause,” said Pryce, moving away.
Tappan grabbed his arm. “Use caution,” he said. He bent his head toward the group of rough out-of-town men. “I recognize some fellows from the Sixth Ward. They have been imported from the New York City riots.”
Again, the wind shifted and the blistering heat changed direction. The mass of people parted for a moment. Standing back from the blaze was Hickox, his face calm. Swift stood with him, the red of the fire in his eyes.
A shudder of fear raged through Pryce. Until that point, the danger had been more theoretical, like a frontier story in the newspapers. He now understood that the stakes of tomorrow’s convention had just been raised.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AS THEY STOOD in the hallway of Clarke’s Temperance House, Elymas looked at the Utica directory over the shoulder of Mr. Ruggles.
“What do it say?” he asked.
“There’s no Thomas Galway listed,” said Ruggles.
“Gotta be something there,” said Elymas, frustration tightening his voice. Ruggles and Higgins and Mr. Tappan had helped him get this far, but they cared more about tomorrow’s big meeting than finding his family. Imari and Joe had to be somewhere. Since Ruggles had sent her this way, Elymas could not believe that he didn’t know exactly where she’d be. He knew these folks had their secrets, but not when it was so important. And not after he had fought so hard to get here. The man had to know something. “Look again,” he said, tapping the page impatiently.
“There’s an Augustin Galway listed,” said Ruggles.
“That gotta be it,” said Elymas.
“Not necessarily,” said Ruggles, looking at him. “It could be nothing.”
“It be something and I need something. Show me how to get there.”
As they studied the city map, several men ran by.
“What’s happening?” asked Ruggles.
“Fire at Bagg’s Hotel!” shouted one man as he passed.
“That’s it,” said Elymas. “I’m going.”
“It’s better if we’re not involved,” said Ruggles.
“I ain’t going nowhere near no fire,” said Elymas angrily. “I gotta find my family and folks ain’t gonna be looking my way when there’s burning to put down.”
“Very well,” said Ruggles. “Remember the whole town is in an up roar. A well-dressed Negro will draw unwanted attention. Things can get dangerous very quickly.”
Elymas nodded, calming himself. “I thank you for your help. But this here be as close to finding out something about my people as a hammer be to a piece a hot iron. Just a few more swings and I got my answers.”
Ruggles took his hand. “Good luck to you. Please remember me to your wife and boy,” he said, looking into Elymas’s eyes, his face pinched with concern. “If you find them. Don’t take chances. If you are in need, come find me.”
At the door Elymas turned back. “We gonna send you words once we get to Canada. After I get some work, I be sending you back this here suit.”
“No need,” said Ruggles. “Keep it and be warm.” He looked over the top of his spectacles at Elymas. “You’ll soon find out what winter really means.” The two men laughed.
In front of Clarke’s, Elymas saw men hurrying toward the fire. He took in a fortifying chestful of air, tasted the smoke, shook it off, and proceeded calmly up Genesee Street and crossed the canal. After all the miles and hardships and setbacks, he absolutely would not be denied any chance to find the mysterious man who had sold him as an infant. Imari and Joe might be harder to locate, but since he and Imari had planned to go to this house on their way to Canada, it was the only place he knew to look.
At Genesee Street, he turned left to walk across Bleecker toward Third. Almost immediately, he noticed a handsome white church whose tall windows stretched up to the second story, their pointed tops like a reverent acknowledgment of heaven above. The steeple pierced the night sky. For miles around, all would be able to find the church in times of trouble and celebration. He noticed a few black men minding their business. Maybe he and Joe could set up their blacksmith shop right here and get customers of all races.
Imari and Joe had to still be in Utica. The paddyroller Hickox had thrown their every plan into the dirt. But Mr. Ruggles himself had mentioned Imari’s unwavering determination to get to this city. And if Elymas truly knew his wife, she would sit in one place, like a mule, waiting for him. That was, if she had made it this far. Before Ruggles put her on a steamship up the Hudson River, he wrote to his contact in Albany about her need to go her own way. Smiling, Elymas pictured the intensity of her request, unwavering enough to cause the abolitionist to write such a letter.
At the corner of Third and Bleecker, he stood in the street before the Galway house. When he had understood that tall Abby was not his natural mother and that he had not been born on the plantation, he thought of himself as a bit better than the other slaves. He loved Abby, but as a boy he had fancied that maybe he was more a captive African prince than a slave born of a slave. And he had finally proven that he was different. After all, he was no longer sweating in the plantation’s blacksmith shop making slave collars. No. He was a free man in a free state.
Imari had brought it out in him. It was as if her soul lived at the top of a tree and could watch their lives unfold from a distance. She constantly thought far into their future. Because she worked in the house, some of the women who toiled in the fields didn’t take to her. He was hated by some of the men because of his job. It meant that he and she had fit together. They had a reunion every Saturday and a parting every Monday. That pattern seemed to give her a demanding sense of time passing. She lived with urgency. And though it was often inconvenient and occasionally made him angry, he tried to as well.
A sudden shiver of fear rattled him. What if she wasn’t there? What if she and Joe, knowing that he’d been captured, had moved on? It wasn’t impossible. They would have been crazy to believe that he would come. All the time that he was alone, he had pictured them here at a fine house, somehow keeping hidden. But what if they weren’t? For a moment he almost didn’t want to know. If they left or had been captured, what would he do?
During the minutes that Elymas stood in the street in front of the Galway house collecting his courage, not one living soul passed. He couldn’t just stand, he had to find out one way or another, so he leaned forward and approached a window. He peered into a lit room where a man lay in a small bed and a young woman removed a bell from his hand before mixing him a drink.
They seemed to be having some kind of intense discussion. Elymas found himself caught up in the drama. Was this the man who had sold him into slavery? He looked old and weak, nothing like the person who had haunted him since Imari had found the name Thomas Galway.
Suddenly, a pained cry pierced the air. He shivered. It was Imari. As he ran toward the sound, he could feel his heart pounding in his ears. The voice rang out again and he followed it around to the back. On the ground floor, lamps were lit behind curtains. He heard one woman, not his wife, talking in a calm and even way. After a few moments, the voice he had been waiting for came again. It was her. He was ready to wager his life on it.
He steeled himself and approached the porch. The second woman said, “Joe, bring me that hot water.”
“Joe,” he whispered, tapping on the door. “Joe, boy, open up.” The footsteps in the room stopped. The curtain parted. Light from inside bathed his face. His own boy looked out at him, shaved bald as an apple—just like his daddy.
The door swung wide. Joe opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Elymas pulled him into an embrace. A hand from the house grabbed his arm. “Quickly, now, get inside.” It was the young white woman from the other room.
Elymas picked up his boy and carr
ied him into the kitchen.
“Poppa,” said Joe, looking up, his voice breaking. He hugged Elymas tightly, head pressed against his stomach. “You was dead.”
“You believe that?” asked Elymas. Joe nodded gravely. He pulled his son closer. “You stayed in my head. I came back to life for you.”
“Who’s there?” demanded a voice from the inner room.
Joe wriggled out of Elymas’s embrace and ran to the door. “My poppa.”
“Elymas?” called Imari.
He went to the doorway. She hung off the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, legs bent, elbows supporting her. Her bedclothes were pushed up above her knees and stained with sweat. Small welts peppered her left side. The skin of her neck and face shone bright red with strain. Their eyes met. She tried to catch her breath, but instead she erupted in sobs. A wave of pain and urgency seemed to swim over her body. She started to crumple. Elymas staggered back against one of the windows and then found his feet and rushed to her as her body tensed. Memories of her crowded his head. She was young and giving birth to her first, poor Jimmy. He’d had to swallow some pride to love another man’s boy—only to lose him to the slave market. Then there were the babies that came too soon. They had mourned over them, but nothing felt right until Joe was born, his own boy. Now the time had come again. Though they never talked about it, he understood that this new child might not be his blood. No matter who was the father, he would die before allowing another baby to be sold as a slave as he had been.
Kneeling in front of his wife was an older black woman. She looked at him with tight-lipped curiosity. An uneasiness tightened his chest. Imari groaned again.
“Push,” said the older woman, turning back to her.
He grabbed his wife’s hand, kissed it, and then stood up uncertainly.
“Stay right here and help,” said the older woman.
Imari nodded, so Elymas climbed on the bed behind her, lifting her and supporting her. He wrapped his knees and arms around her. She leaned into him. He felt her body mold to his. Her arms reached up and circled his neck. To be holding her again, to feel her alive and hot in his arms—the joy almost choked him. He felt a new labor pain build, radiating from her core and consuming her.
“I love you,” he said into her ear, and covered her neck with kisses as she rocked and writhed and sweat in his embrace. “Let that baby go. I got you. Don’t hold back no more. Be slippery, like they say.”
She moaned again, a cry of effort that filled his soul with hope.
As the next pain approached she pushed with her whole being, straining to her limit.
“It’s coming,” said the older woman. “I see it.”
“You there, Miss Slippery,” said Elymas, “you let go a that baby.”
Imari screamed and again put her whole self into the push.
“I got the head,” the older woman said, a hand supporting the baby. “You’re mostly there. One more push.”
Imari braced herself against Elymas. He absorbed her power, leaning into her, eyes glued to the emerging baby, a reddish brown, like rich cherrywood, and covered with blood and birth fluid. The infant slid into the woman’s hands. He and Imari fell back in a shudder of relief. He pushed her up and they leaned forward to look at it. The baby girl flinched in the cool air and began to cry. The two new parents embraced. The white woman stood transfixed in the doorway, tears streaming down her face. Joe, who Elymas knew had seen animals give birth, slid down the wall until he rested on the ground, stunned.
“She’s a beauty. Brown as her daddy,” said the woman, smiling as she wrapped the baby in a cloth. “Elymas, ain’t it?” She placed the baby on her mother’s belly. “I can’t barely believe it.” She turned. “Now Joe, get up, boy. Didn’t I tell you I need water?”
Dr. McCooke had followed the well-dressed Negro to the back, around the Galway house. The man apparently had been admitted. If that was not an outrageous violation, a reason to get to the truth, he didn’t know what was. Not only that, perhaps there was a bounty on this fellow’s head too.
The doctor grabbed a large stone from the garden and intended to heave it through the cook’s window. That would flush them all out. At the very least it would scare the cow who had gotten him ejected from the house without even a coin in his pocket. She had laid a tissue of lies before Galway. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing unusual about most of the examination he’d performed on Mrs. Galway. Yes, he conceded, his measures to restrain her may have been misinterpreted. If anything, they were too cautious. And it was unfortunate that he had performed the assessment of her condition in his own bedroom, but time mattered in a case such as hers and Galway had demanded she be saved. He pulled a small silver flask out of his breast pocket and took a drink, tipping the container almost vertical to shake out the last drop.
He heard a woman’s groan. Someone fell against the window. The curtain opened just a bit. The doctor bent low and scooted over, listening to the unmistakable sounds of labor. Slowly, he brought his blue eye up to the parting of the muslin. There, in all her glory, was the female fugitive. She was a thin specimen, long of leg, strong-armed, and in the last moments of life’s most difficult battle. The cook acted as midwife and seemed to have the situation under control. When the baby appeared, the doctor took in a sharp breath. He always marveled at the act of giving birth. It was almost a shame to turn this family over to Mr. Hickox. But how was any of this his fault? He didn’t tell the slaves to run. He didn’t tell the cook to hide them. He would only be following the law, and for that he knew he could expect a generous reward.
Still, he couldn’t deny that even Negroes seemed to appreciate the wondrousness of birth. If that bitch cook had only kept quiet. She reminded him of Billy, that bastard overseer who must have tricked Mother into handing the responsibility for the plantation into his grimy black hands. Every time I wrote to her for money she had some excuse, always on the word of Billy. Billy said the tobacco prices dropped. Billy said the harvest had not come in. Billy said that there was no money. When it came time to pay for his final school year, there wasn’t even money for that without selling the land, equipment, and slaves—including dear old Billy. Niggers were supposed to make one rich. They were responsible for his difficult pecuniary position from beginning to end. Really, the truth was that he had been on the verge of getting full access to Galway’s accounts before that miserable cook stepped in.
Given his circumstances, it was impossible to pass up this gift from Providence. He might have been generous with that family and their newborn, oh yes, he might have let them continue on their way. But there was no way now. He’d been wronged and intended to set things right.
He lowered the rock, leaving it by the side of the house. What he had to do was locate the slave catchers. The capture—no, the reclamation—would be best if it happened fast, before the parents developed too strong an attachment to the babe. As of morning, they would be headed to their rightful place, their lawful place. His hands were tied. After all, if he did not get the reward money, someone else would.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SYLVANUS THREW ONE of the final buckets of water on the fire that had eaten through Horace’s home. The little shack was now no more than a pile of blackened cinders and wet ash. The blaze had been beaten and no other building had been damaged. He looked around and saw Horace trudging down the street like a man in a dream.
“I’m sorry, Brother Horace.” Sylvanus caught up to him a little out of breath. “Didst thou save anything?”
“Everything I got you see right here,” said Horace, raising his empty hands.
“How about thy fish cart? Did it survive?”
“They’s just gonna burn that up too,” said Horace.
Sylvanus put his arm across the man’s shoulders. “Dost thou know who committed the act?”
“I say it’s that slaver.”
“Thou art in danger of further violence.” Sylvanus thought for a moment. “Brother Stewart left
these coins.” He put them into Horace’s palm. “Thou art burned. Come and stay with me. I will butter thy injuries.”
“I’m staying right here,” said Horace, turning back.
“Stay with me, at least until the convention is concluded.”
Horace looked at him, surprised. He tried to speak, but his voice cracked and he began to cough.
Sylvanus patted his back. “Come, come. At least let me feed thee breakfast. I’m told my bread has restorative properties.” He led Horace to the bakery.
After Sylvanus wrapped Horace’s hands in bandages and fed him, he left to make his early morning deliveries. Horace stretched out on the cot near the still-warm oven, but found it hard to sleep. Whereas his shack had been filled with odds and ends, this place had only a few necessities—the domed oven, a nearby stack of wood, worktables, a set of drawers, a few pots and dishes, and the pegs for the baker’s clothing. There was almost nothing at which to look.
All his thoughts were on the ashes of his home and his dashed dreams of securing a lift in life. The cart remained, but for how long? Even if he had known Hickox’s plans, how could he defend his property? The slavers had guns. All he had were fishing poles—at least he used to have fishing poles. A man couldn’t even keep himself alive without poles, and salt to preserve what he caught. Everybody needed a place to be warm and to secure food from thieves and dogs. That damn slaver still believed Horace knew something and could get around Maggie. Certainly she would rather die than let them capture someone under her protection. But sometimes she shut the door—even to him. And having runaways in the house? Well, she’d be extra cautious. And that yellow-haired doctor, hadn’t he really brought the trouble to Maggie’s kitchen? He treated her no better than a slave. Why should he benefit from the $150? The doctor’s obvious disgust for Maggie made him want to see the man in the gutter, or his grave.
The Third Mrs. Galway Page 27
