Finn (14 page)

“She’s something,” says the captain.

“How much?”

“Not for sale.” Gripping his glass. “Not for sale, I’m afraid.”

“How about a loan?”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Between friends.” Raising his glass.

Rather than answering, Parkinson waves for the bottle and pours, taking some for himself to replenish what little he’s had.

“You owe me.”

From the kitchen door past the end of the bar comes a compact and whiteclad black man in a languid sort of hurry, a towel hung over one arm and a laden tray balanced on his upturned palm. His suit looks made for someone else and he looks made for other work entirely and he makes eye contact with the girl as he goes. Finn notices and turns his inquiring eye toward Parkinson.

“The father.”

“Ain’t that nice.”

The captain drinks. “He has aspirations.”

“I do love a nigger with ideas.” Tapping his glass for more whiskey, thinking on the father and the daughter. “No wonder you won’t part with her.”

“I can’t do it.”

“There was a pretty little nigger girl just the match of this one used to walk past my house when I was her age.”

The girl pricks up her ears and Finn can see her do it.

“This would have been in Adams County,” says the captain, filling space with remembered detail.

“That’s right. My pap said they was all just filthy beasts and we had to keep our distance or we’d be in for disease and eternal damnation and what all, but like I said she was a pretty one and I couldn’t see no harm in it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I reckon we done it eight or ten times before we was through, and I’ll never forget it. A man don’t, no matter what they say.”

“No matter what.”

“And the only harm come of it was my pap made me sleep with the hogs for a month.”

“That can’t have been pleasant.”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve done it since, the weather gets cold enough and you’re out in it.”

“What became of the girl?”

“She passed on.”

“I see.” He pulls down the corners of his mouth, taps the rim of his glass with one finger. “And you? No eternal damnation?”

“Not yet.”

“Let that be a lesson.”

“Amen,” says Finn, raising his glass.

F
INN GOES TO SLEEP
in a secluded place on the main deck trusting that someone will wake him at the next scheduled stop, the farther upriver the better because the less chance there will be of anyone’s ever identifying the skiff that he will most certainly steal and bring home to replace his ruined one. His clothes are dry now and he is warm and deeply contented and thanks to the high quality of the
Santo Domingo
’s expensive whiskey he is free of the most severe and colorful consequences of his habit: He has neither vomited nor seen beasts that are visible only to him, and he folds his hands upon his chest like a dead man and closes his eyes with an easy and luxurious grace.

“I tell you, we can go no farther than Fort Granger.” The captain’s voice, hushed. “We require provisions. We require coal.”

“We’ve got sufficient.” A voice unknown to Finn, deep and resonant and with a touch of gravel.

“You’re mistaken.”

“Make it stretch.”

“Impossible. Besides, when the sun comes up and the passengers learn that we’ve passed Lasseter.”

“Explain it.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“You’ll think of something.”

Unwillingly surfacing through a miasma of alcohol and sleep Finn hears these voices in the dark as if the speakers had taken up positions at his very elbow, and when he slits his eyes open just the least bit he discovers that they have. Rather than lie still and listen to their curious talk and risk being discovered he kicks out one leg with a spasmodic twitch and coughs theatrically and heaves over on his stomach with his cheek mashed into the deck. The speakers start and move away but not far. He sees as they go that there are three of them, the captain and the black man from the dining room and his daughter.

“I mean to get to Iowa,” says the man, drawing forth from the breast of his formal white jacket a bowie knife of considerable scale.

The captain must have seen this object previously, for he is unmoved by its sudden appearance. “Illinois is just as good.”

“Not by me.”

“We’ve been steaming past it all night long.” He thrusts out an indicative hand, which startles the man and the girl both but they recover their composure and maintain their positions without incident.

“I don’t want Illinois.”

“Trust me.”

“I do.” Studying the starry gleam of the knifeblade in the darkness.

“I’ve made no attempt.”

“I know.”

“I’ve told no one.”

“I know it. Myself, I’ve told half the coloreds on your goddamn boat.” Whether or not he should be parting with this information is a strategic question unanswerable, but it seems to do him no immediate harm.

“Are they armed too?”

“Some.” For he is not dishonest.

“Iowa, I see, is in for quite a celebration.”

“Yes it is.”

“And your mistress is in for quite a surprise.”

“She never should have taken this boat. I told her it wasn’t safe.”

“How on earth will she ever get by without you?” Parkinson clucks and asks the question as mildly as if he were merely musing to himself here alone on the deck, and to judge by his lack of answer the black man with the bowie knife seems to consider the question beneath notice.

Finn, who has no interest in riding this steamboat as far as Iowa, yawns and stretches and rises wearily to his feet. To the rail he steps with an exaggerated little stumble and from there he leans out over the water putting a finger to each nostril in turn and blowing out like a steam engine. He is wiping his hand on the leg of his trousers when he takes obvious note of the three standing nearby or at least of the captain.

“Parkinson!” he says with a kind of mingled astonishment and delight. “You’re up late.”

“Mr. Finn.”

“These two giving you trouble?” With a wink at the girl which includes her father also and in the process subdues them both.

“Trouble? I should say not.”

“That’s one beautiful child you got there.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ve been told.” He has hidden away the knife behind his back and he permits his gaze to swivel toward Parkinson as he wonders what secrets other than this the captain has been sharing abroad.

“Mr. Finn is a guest of the
Santo Domingo,
” says Parkinson. “In our northward haste, we ran afoul of his boat and had to bring him aboard.”

The father looks at Finn as if there could be no creature in all the world more to be pitied than the victim of a shipwreck.

“That’s right,” says Finn, his attention shifting back to the captain. “When you reckon we’ll hit Fort Granger, us running behind and all.”

“That would be hard to say.”

“Can’t be long now.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t think so.”
He hawks and spits into the dark water. “Tell me who’s running this boat.” With a smile indicating that he knows the captain would be wise not to give an accurate answer.

“It’s a complicated world, Mr. Finn.”

“I know it.”

“Some things are beyond our control. Rivers like this one, for example. They’re full of surprises.”

“Wake me up at Fort Granger then,” Finn concedes, and with two arms he shoves off from the rail. “Much obliged.” He puts out a hand as if to shake but instead of taking Parkinson’s hand he slides past the startled captain and reaches into the deep single front pocket of the girl’s apron where her hands have been conspicuously hiding since he first set eyes upon her. There he finds the pistol and by the combined powers of brute force and startlement he makes it his own. He does not remove it from its hiding place but turns it instead and holds its barrel square against her belly. In his fury he nearly lifts her up against the rail. She gasps and casts a helpless eye upon her helpless father.

Finn’s voice is tight with rage and effort. “Drop that pigsticker of yours, boy.”

The black man lets his knife clatter to the deck.

“Now ain’t you just the cleverest son of a bitch. Kick it over before I blow this pretty little girl a brand-new hole.” Prodding at her belly with the urgent barrel.

The man does as he has been told, and the knife slices into the water without a sound.

“Now bend over.”

He keeps the man on his knees until Parkinson can return with some rope.

“There are others,” says the captain.

“There won’t be,” says Finn.

They strip the man of the white suit that is not his and they tie him naked to a stanchion where his crime and his disgrace will be public come daylight.

“How can we repay you?” says the captain.

“I might have an idea,” says Finn.

“Y
OU SHALL GET
a whipping when we return to Vicksburg,” says an elegant old white-haired woman no bigger than a child but as ferocious as some avenging angel, approaching the bound black man with baleful speed.

“Don’t count on it,” Finn puts in from a nearby deck chair, where he reclines with the pistol jammed ostentatiously into his pants. The girl is on a stool alongside him.

“You child,” cries the woman, wringing her hands and hurrying toward her on tiny tapping feet, ignoring Finn as if any individual of his wretched appearance must surely be beneath her notice.

“That boy ain’t seeing Vicksburg again, whipping or no.”

The woman assesses him quickly and dismisses him for an ignoramus and a bloodthirsty one at that and turns again to the girl.

“I reckon you might bring him home in a box if you’ve got a mind to, but myself I never took much pleasure in whipping a dead nigger.”

Captain Parkinson arrives and declares himself at the old woman’s service and explains to her that Mr. Finn here is correct, that her man can look forward to enduring some extremely sharp punishment for his barely averted attempt to commandeer this rivergoing vessel and kidnap its many innocent passengers. A whipping would be insufficient punishment for such a crime were the perpetrator white or black, slave or free, and most likely the man will be hanged by the neck until dead after a rapid and businesslike trial in the federal courts at which the captain himself will be honored to testify. If she has any words to say on the man’s behalf she might consider them directly and plan to make an appearance in court, although the captain does not imagine that anything she might possibly have to say will do this criminal the least good or prolong his life by any more time than it will take for her to make her futile statement.

As the dining room fills for breakfast a wary assortment of blacks both free and slave files past the stanchion, each one indicating by the angle of his head and the set of his jaw precisely where he stands in the delicate shading of responses to the roped man’s predicament. Finn is correct that whatever uprising may have been under way has been quelled, and he celebrates by ordering one of the porters to bring him a rasher of bacon and a stack of pancakes and a bottle of good whiskey to wash it all down. The girl volunteers to go on his behalf but he does not permit her.

“You stay put now.”

“Yes sir.” Eyeing the pistol.

“Your father made a mistake.”

“I know.”

“I could have shot the both of you and nobody would have given a good goddamn.”

“It’s our lot.”

“You have me to thank.”

The girl will not cast her eye upon Finn and she cannot cast her eye upon her father and so she looks instead at the river and the steadily unreeling promised land of northern Illinois which in the end is not Iowa but still.

“I hope you appreciate my generosity.”

“I do.”

Which Finn knows is untrue or at best premature, and yet because he is of a hopeful nature in such matters he raises his whiskey glass to her with a wink and takes her compliant duplicity for a good sign.

In the end the captain writes a check on the steamboat line for the price of the girl because Finn is going to take her one way or another and the elegant old woman deserves fair value. The mismatched pair of them disembark at Fort Granger with the girl’s baggage, which is grand enough and sufficiently well stocked to have been the entire equipage of the old woman herself.