Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River (5 page)

A woman darted through the levee crowds, a flash of cheap bright calicos between stacks of orange pumpkins and dusty cotton bales, skirts gathered up in her hands. On the deck of the Belle Dame Fourchet's new butler pushed his way between the laden porters to the gangway, to seize the woman's hands, to kiss her with a fervent desperation that told its own tale. She was a tall woman, plump and awkward in her ill-fitting simple dress, and as they clung to one another her face bent down to his.

“You be like that old Greek fella,” Shaw said, “that was supposed to change the sail of his boat from black to white if'n the news he brung was good. You tie a different bandanna to that oak tree every day, just in the order I said 'em. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, black, an' white, white bein' for Sunday so's you can remember.”

“Don't tell me you've convinced riverboat pilots to remember the order as well.” Anger twisted again in January's heart as he watched the couple on the gangway. There was nothing he could do about their pain; Shaw's calm arrangements and placid voice grated at him. “I never met a pilot who could take his mind off the river long enough to remember what color necktie he has on.”

“Pilots, hell,” said Shaw. “They just told me the tree was there. I paid off the stokers on the Lancaster, that makes the Baton Rouge run, and the Missourian and the New Brunswick, that'll be bound on back from St. Louis a week or ten days from now, and cabin stewards on the Vermillion, the Boonslick, and the Belle Dame, to come here and tell me what color the bandanna is and what day they seen it. It ain't much, Maestro,” he added apologetically. “But at least it'll let me know yore still there.”

January felt sudden shame at his anger; Shaw was doing what he could to keep him safe. In last night's dreams of childhood he'd been hiding in the barn at Bellefleur, and a monster was after him: a monster that shouted in a hoarse drunken voice, a reeling shadow with a whip in his hand. Come out, you little bastard. Come out or I'll sell you down the river.

He'd waked in freezing sweat, as similar dreams had waked him, many nights across the years.

On the gangway the butler and the woman clung together, not speaking. It was the threat every master held over the head of every slave, up and down the eastern coast of the American states and in the new cotton lands of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia. I'll sell you down the river. To the cane plantations of Louisiana.
To Hell.

It occurred to him as he crossed the square toward the bandanna woman that his mother had sold him down the river by the act of giving him birth.

To hell with Fourchet, he thought. To hell with Olympe, and Mother, and these god-rotted colored kerchiefs and wondering if I'm going to be found as a spy and beaten to death by the other slaves, or poisoned, or kidnapped and sold-or just break the hands that are my livelihood and my joy.

His fingers trembled with anger as he counted out fourteen cents into the woman's palm. Stowed seven bright squares of cloth in his jacket pockets.

Let Fourchet die and rot, Olympe had said to him last night, as he and she had walked from the market back to their mother's house, to tell her of his change of mind. You're doing this to save every man and woman on the place who didn't try to kill him.

So he crossed the square to the arcade again, to the thin lanky figure awaiting him in the shadows. Though it was probably impossible over the competing din of the waffle man, the fruit vendors, the stevedores singing a chant as they loaded up the clay jars of olive oil that plantations bought in such quantities, and a German sailor having a shouting match with a woman in blue hair-ribbons, January imagined he could still hear Fourchet's voice, like a carrion-bird's as he rasped out instructions on the hurricane deck to the redcoated, hard-faced master of the Belle Dame.

Rose was right about one thing, January thought. With Fourchet's money he would find somewhere else to live. Then he would never be in a position like this again.

Who am I fooling? As long as I'm her son she'll feel she has the right to ask of me what she will.

"A captain bold in Halifax,

Who dwelt in country quarters,

Seduced a maid who hanged herself

One Monday in her garters . . . "

January winced at the light, hoarse voice scraping over the English ballad, slurred and stammering and yet perfectly true.

Shaw muttered, “Oh, Lordy.”

Hannibal Sefton was making his way along the arcade in front of the Cabildo to its doors. He did this with great care, caroming off the square brick pillars, one hand outstretched to catch himself against the building's plastered wall, then retrieving his balance only to loop away toward the pillars again. The portmanteau he carried-his violin case strapped to its side-nearly overbalanced him. One of the chained prisoners engaged in cleaning out the gutter caught the fiddler by the arm and rescued the luggage moments before it went into the brimming muck. Hannibal bowed profoundly.

“Bene facis, famulo probo.”
The fiddler removed his hat and placed it over his heart, then spoiled the effect by coughing desperately. The prisoner supported him, apparently not much put out at the thin ragged form of the white man clinging to his filthy sleeve. “Medio tutissimus ibis.” Hannibal gestured grandly back at the arcade, took one step in the direction of Shaw and January standing in the doorway, then collapsed in a laudanum-smelling heap.

Across the Place d'Armes the Belle Dame's whistle brayed. Above the square, the cathedral's clock spoke its ten slow chimes.

“Good luck,” said Shaw, without irony, and shook January's hand.

January glanced from the unconscious Hannibal across to Fourchet, bellowing down at his new butler, and his stomach tightened. He shoved the last folded bandanna into his pocket, pulled on his gloves, and went to hoist Hannibal bodily to one shoulder, as if he were a sack of meal. Bending his knees he picked up the portmanteau-his own, in fact, for whatever luggage the consumptive Hannibal had once possessed had been sold years ago to purchase opium or medicine-and, thus burdened, crossed the square to the gangplank. A number of the gentlemen on the canopied hurricane-deck pointed at January and laughed, assuming not unreasonably that this was his assigned job in life: to carry his master's luggage and, when necessary, his master. But glancing up he saw Fourchet gazing down at him with contempt in his eyes.

It was long past dark when they reached Mon Triomphe, and January would have given much-if not quite everything he possessed-to go back to yesterday afternoon and refuse to undertake the journey. Last night's dream returned to him again and again: the staggering shadow that stank of liquor, the sweat of terror at the sound of the whip. Always before he'd waked from this dream to reassure himself, It can't happen to me now. I'm free.

He'd installed Hannibal in his bunk in the men's cabin, drawn the curtain, and gone out in quest of the galley, praying that when the fiddler came to he'd be in possession of enough of his senses to recall the story they'd concocted the night before.

The Belle Dame, like many of the newer boats on the river, was long and narrow. The galley, situated between the men's cabin and the women's, was barely more than a hall. The saloon up front, which doubled as a dining room, was like the lobby of a modest hotel: worn Turkey carpets on the floor, tables of dark oak, men playing short whist or vingt-et-un. By the murmuring voices, January gathered there were few Americans on board. Thank God for small favors, anyway, he thought. The last thing he needed in his current frame of mind was to have his fellow passengers bidding on him all afternoon.

“Will you need help with him?” Fourchet's new butler was already in the galley, fitting out a tray to take around to one of the vessel's two minuscule staterooms. His neatly gloved hands trembled as he arranged the simple china cup and saucer, the small coffeepot and dish of sugar lumps, the napkin and spoon and the plate of buttered pastries; the flesh around his eyes was swollen with tears. Where had she gone, that tall plump woman in her bright dress, after the boat was poled and pushed from the wharf? How would she get through the remainder of her day?

“Thank you, sir, no.” January remembered to slur his words and drop the endings, like the field hands did, a mode of speech that had been thrashed out of him by his teachers when he was eight. He had a clear mental picture of the man he was supposed to be, a field hand taken from the quarters and put in charge of the feckless scion of a wealthy family, simply because he was big and loyal and not terribly bright. The kind of slave it would be natural to offer to one's host to help with the harvest, and the kind of man who would accept the change of status without fuss.

“Least I knows where his medicine is,” he added, and accepted the coffeepot, the cup and saucer, the horn spoon that the Belle Dame's cook gave him, and set them on the tray carelessly, any old how, as he'd seen scullery maids do in the big Paris households where he'd played at balls or taught piano to children.

And like the upper cooks in those Parisian kitchens, the butler Baptiste corrected and tidied the layout, though unlike the French cooks he asked politely, “May I?” and then, “This your regular job, sir?”

January threw a note of helplessness into his voice. “No, sir. Abraham-that's Michie Georges's cook-does trays and such mostly.” And let's remember, he told himself grimly, that Michie Georges is Hannibal's imaginary wealthy father-in-law and Abraham's the cook, next time you have to produce names of the household you come from.

“Line up the spoon with the side of the tray like this.” The round, neat little hands made their adjustments without impatience or condescension. “Bowl goes down, not up, so everyone can see the monogram if there is one. Cup right in the center, pot here. They like things to look nice.”

“They blessed well better look nice for Michie Fourchet.” The doorway darkened with the tall slim form of Fourchet's valet. The man's livery was foppishly neat, dark cravat tied in a severe little bow and thin black curls pomaded smooth. The valet ran a critical eye over both trays and nodded, just a tiny motion, to himself, as if sorry there was nothing to correct. “Any little thing sets him off forks and knives not aligned, one curtain shut an inch more than the other. Anything. He beat your predecessor unconscious once for having dirty sleeves, when he'd told him himself to dust the ledgers in his office. So keep your buttons polished and your linen spotless.”

He glanced at January, sizing him up with that dark sardonic eye: his size, his clothing, the way he'd spoken, the way he held himself-awkward and a little shy, as if fully conscious of the superiority of the two house-servants and even the steamboat's slovenly cook. Then he turned back to Baptiste. “You'd better get that up to him.”

“I will do that, M'sieu Cornwallis.” The valet walked away.

“Thank you, sir,” said January, as Baptiste picked up his tray.

The butler took a deep breath, nodded, and went out to do his first service for his master.

The cook, looking through the door after Cornwallis's erect figure, said, “Damn Protestant Kaintuck nigger,” and went back to the preparation of lunch.

Carrying his own tray back to the men's cabin-a journey that involved sidestepping crated dry goods, barrels of blankets and calico, boxes of spermaceti candles, decanters packed in straw, a small pile of pigs of lead, and a dozen trunks stacked on the deck January reflected on the fact that the cook, whom the valet obviously scorned for being of almost certainly pure African descent and menial employment, should look down on the valet for his Virginia accent and the religious preferences that accent implied.

During January's childhood, Fourchet had never bothered to convert his slaves. Even the house-servants had only the thinnest veneer of Christianity. St.-Denis Janvier had seen to his religious instruction as well as his education, and January remembered clearly being cautioned about the evils and ignorance of Protestants, a rarity in those days. Since his return he'd been conscious of how many American slaves were coming into New Orleans now from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and of how the French-speaking Catholic slaves-even the ones who followed up Mass by attendance at the voodoo dances in Congo Square-tended to shun them.

And vice versa, of course.

Even before he knocked on the door of the men's cabin he heard Hannibal's voice inside. “Of course I'm drunk,” the fiddler was saying. “But I'm not stupid, and I assure you I've imbibed enough opium in the course of a misspent life that I've learned to manage quite nicely. Benjamin, amicus meus . . . ” He propped himself a little on the pillows as January entered, and Fourchet stood back a half pace from the bunk. “Tell this gentleman about the time I drove Monsieur Marigny's carriage down Rue Bourbon after having quaffed a good four fingers of the finest Kendal Black Drop.”

“Drink your coffee.” January set the tray on Hannibal's knees, which were so thin they barely lifted above the level of the bunk's meager mattress. “Sir.”

He glanced around the men's cabin, confirming his original observation that they were alone. To Fourchet he said, “As someone who's known Monsieur Sefton for two years, I can assure you he's usually less inebriated than he seems. I don't think we need fear his giving away any secrets.”

Unless, he thought, he gets really neck-shot---something Hannibal did seldom, but did with fiendish timing for those few occasions on which it was most important that he be sober.

Fourchet regarded him with an arctic eye. “I don't imagine you would have been stupid enough to propose an alliance with someone you believed to be as untrustworthy as most drunkards are,” he said. “But considering the pains we've taken to arrange a story, as you termed it last night, I'm at a loss to think of a convincing reason for me to offer the shelter of my roof to a sodden reprobate. No matter how desperately he counterfeits sickness.”

Hannibal coughed, with a violence and a gluey, glottal note to it that, January thought uneasily, were no counterfeit. The wasting effects of his consumption seemed to have abated with the cooler weather, but with his shirt open and his long hair trailing loose from its ribbon over his shoulders, he still looked like a ghost just back from a night on the tiles. When he regained his breath he said, “Easy. I will have done you a great service, which you feel obliged to repay by taking me in when I'm stricken ill.”