Good Man Friday (24 page)

Mede didn't answer for a time.
An answer in itself
, January reflected. Though the morning was warming, the young man walked with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets, like an Israelite longing for the fleshpots of Egypt where at least he'd had the illusion of safety.

‘When a man's being blackmailed,' asked Mede at last, ‘does he get letters written in numbers instead of letters?'

‘Numbers instead of letters?'

‘I saw one on his desk, clear last spring, when I came into his room unexpected. He locked it up quick and I never saw it again. But it was just lines of numbers, right across the paper like you'd write a letter or like the printing in a book.'

‘Did you notice the paper?'

‘It was that yellow tablet-paper, which everybody uses in the government offices. I never spoke of it. Dacey talks like birds in a tree and Lodie – that's Mrs Bray's maid – carries tales to Mrs Bray. And it wasn't my business to be noticing what Marse Luke has on his desk. But blackmail is about secret writing, isn't it?'

‘It could be,' answered January slowly. ‘If I were blackmailing someone I'd be damn careful about what I put into writing. Last spring?'

‘Yes, sir. Long before he could have seen those number squares from Mr Singletary's notebook … and I still can't figure how he got hold of them.'

‘Unless he knew them before. Did Luke ever write in code to anyone?'

Mede laughed softly. ‘Mr J, Marse Luke doesn't even write to people in regular handwriting. He hates writing, and figuring, and numbers. It's why this job he has at the Navy Yard is like a chain on him. He's said to me he'd rather chop cotton than copy documents—'

‘There speaks a man who's never chopped cotton.'

‘Well, true.' Mede grinned again, as briefly as before. ‘Not that I've ever done field work, 'cept once when his daddy got mad at me when I was ten, for covering up when Marse Luke rode out to meet a girl his daddy didn't like. Marse Charles put me out in the tobacco fields for a day and a half, 'cause I wouldn't tell.' He shook his head, then let the memory go: the hot stink of dirt, the thirst and the ache in back and arms and hands … January knew them well.

And remembered the pride and love in Luke Bray's voice:
It's worth it seein' you standin' up there like an oak tree
…

‘
Does
he have a mistress?'

Mede shook his head. ‘Not regular, no. There's houses down near the Capitol, on Maine and Missouri Avenues, close enough to the Navy Yard that him and his friends will stop there early of an evening, after an oyster supper. But I don't recall him ever speaking more of one girl than another, and he never could keep their names straight. And he never went in for the nasty stuff, or the strange stuff, like some of the Congress gentlemen do. Sure, nothing he'd pay somebody two or three hundred dollars a month not to talk about.'

‘You know this?'

‘Like I know myself, sir. I hear the girls downtown like him. Back home there was four of the girls on our place that he'd screw regular, but he wasn't ever mean. And he'd give 'em presents, and not just for puttin' out for him. At other times, just to be nice. I don't think I ever heard of him forcin' somebody who didn't want to go, like a lot of men do.'

Given the malicious hell a planter's son could make for any bondswoman who didn't ‘consent', this wasn't saying much, but on an isolated plantation, January was aware that even this token forbearance qualified Luke Bray as a Galahad.

And yet
… reflected January.
And yet
.

People sometimes found surprising things about themselves, once they reached a city and learned what was available.

And since he'd been employed at the Navy Yard, Luke Bray had, for the first time in his life, not been under Mede's observation for the greater part of the day.

Again his hand sought in his pocket the folded sheet of magic squares, the link between Luke Bray and a shy, odd, fussy gentleman whom he had supposedly met only once in his life.

There was definitely something odd going on.

I
n New Orleans, Easter was the start of the starving season for musicians.

Planters and their families would be returning to their plantations, to make sure the cane was in the ground – if it was going in that year – or to supervise the planting of the cotton, before the summer's onflowing heat drove them to the little towns of Milneburg and Mandeville on the lakeside. January reflected upon the hundred and fifty dollars he'd left in Rose's hands, and the forty or so that he'd accumulated here in Washington playing at balls and sent on to her, and was comforted.

May Eph Norcum catch fever and die
.

The direction written on Bill the sweeper's note was that of the King's Head on C Street, in the insalubrious district between Pennsylvania Avenue and the canal. Guised as a laborer – and keeping a very sharp eye on his back – January made his way thence on Easter Monday afternoon and loafed around the neighborhood, scraping acquaintance with a slave named Pancake, who was sweeping the board sidewalk in front of a cheap grocery across the street from the tavern, and helping the slaves at the livery stable next door for a dime. He said his name was Lou Grima and that he was in Washington looking for work.

‘None around, unless you likes waitin' on white men,' returned Boston, one of the stablemen. ‘Even then, 'bout half the hotels buys fancy niggers to work their dinin' rooms, rather'n hire free men.'

‘I heard there was work on that new Treasury buildin',' protested January in a pained voice.

‘They's all Irish. They better not even catch you askin' is there work.'

‘Animals,' opined Jerry, the other raker of soiled straw. ‘Don't even hardly speak no English. Papists, too.'

January spotted Wylie Pease almost at once and recognized him as the bald ferret-nosed man from Mrs Kelsey's funeral. He emerged hatless and blinking from the King's Head – the sign above the door was of a royally robed figure with nothing above its ermine-clad shoulders but a bleeding stump – in what looked like a nightshirt tucked into grimy trousers, looked around him at the street, spat, and went in again.

The livery was so situated that from its gate, January could see both the front door of the tavern and the mouth of the alley beside it. Like many Washington alleys, this one was built up with tiny houses, converted sheds, and the occasional garden-patch or cow house attached to the dwellings on the nearby streets, and swarmed with the children of the poor. He made no comment until he'd finished his shoveling and raking, and had helped haul water and hay for all fifteen animals, but in that time he observed the clientele of the tavern: carters, cabmen, tough-looking Irish b'hoys. He thought he recognized the sullen-faced youth from the cemetery, also in déshabillé. A lodging house on the premises, then.

Even in an ordinary boarding house, there was always someone around. A tavern would, however, guarantee where most of its denizens would be for most of the evening … and increase the chances that they would be in an unobservant condition.

‘They're not taking any work across the way?' He nodded at the grimy frontage of unpainted boards. ‘Place sure looks like it could use a little sprucin' up.'

‘You don't want to go inside any tavern in this neighborhood,' said Boston firmly. ‘Nor around their back doors neither. That feller over there?'

January followed his nod and recognized the slave-stealer Kyle Fowler as the tall man stopped to trade words with one of the Irish draymen emerging from the nearby grocery.

‘He got three–four men workin' this neighborhood regular. You want some liquor, you go over to one of the groceries on K Street, or Bissell's on Madison Alley, or Singer's on Naylor's Alley. They's safe, and run by freemen.'

‘'Sides—' Jerry waved toward the tavern as Pease appeared in the doorway again, wearing a waistcoat this time and smoking a cigar, and carrying a bucket that slopped a brown horror of mucus and spat tobacco over his shoes that could be smelled across the street. ‘—Miz Drail got herself a boyfriend there regular who does all the sprucin' she can stand.' Pease tossed the contents of the bucket into gutter, went back inside. ‘Nasty piece of work.'

Boston laughed and inquired in a voice squeaky with mock wonderment, ‘Now, what
would
a modest lady like Miz Drail see in him?' By the way Jerry laughed, January guessed everything he needed to know about the saloon's owner even before that lady put in an appearance, diminutive, brass-haired and cursing as she shoved a youthful Irishman out into the muck of the street with a bloody nose.

January finished helping with the chores, collected his ten cents, bade the men goodby and went on his way with wishes for good luck and a great deal of the same advice that Trigg had given him about not drinking with friendly strangers. He remained in the neighborhood long enough to walk the streets all around the King's Head, taking note of alleys, shops, and open lots. In childhood he'd scouted every foot of Bellefleur Plantation for hiding places and escape routes, for those occasions on which his master had had a few too many whiskies, and knew what to look for.

He was back on K Street well before the mild spring twilight drew on.

‘Is it like this farther North?' he asked his hostess after dinner as Minou and Clarice Perkins herded the younger children into the parlor for lessons and Frank Preston turned up the lamps. ‘Always looking over your shoulder?'

‘Depends on how far north you get,' said Mrs Trigg.

‘It used not to be,' Preston amplified. ‘But even in Boston or Providence, it's getting harder for a black man to find work. If an Irishman or a German wants a place in one of the new factories … Well, one of these days he'll get citizenship, and vote. So the local Democrat ward-bosses help him apply. Then they'll go to the factory owners and shop masters, and tell them, “I have a friend who needs work.” A black man is never going to be able to vote, so he's of no use to the bosses. And now they've got the railroads through from Baltimore and Washington to pretty much anyplace in the North you can name, we get “special deputies” coming around, looking for runaways.'

‘Or anybody who looks like he might be a runaway.'

‘That's it, I'm afraid.' Preston tilted his head a little, to listen to the women's voices through the door: Thèrése's teasing laughter as she twitted one of her beaux, Dominique's bright chatter of pomade and the price of coffee that broke off to praise Charmian when the child located a hidden letter-block.

Octavia Trigg started to gather up the silverware. ‘You thought it'd be different in the North, Mr J?'

‘Not really.' January stood also and collected the few plates that remained on the table: Ritchie and Mandie had already made their first sweep and could be heard in the kitchen in a way that reminded him achingly of his own kitchen, of Gabriel and Zizi-Marie …

‘I've been to Mexico, and I lived in France. Both places where slavery doesn't exist, and it still all comes down to money, and power, and what color your skin is.'

The landlady's coal-dark eyes rested on him for a moment, as if reading in his words things that he wouldn't say. ‘Why'd you come back?'

‘My family is here,' said January simply. ‘When my wife died – the wife I married in France – I was willing to live with things as they are in Louisiana, so that I could be with my kin.'
Like Mede
, he realized suddenly,
drawn back toward slavery by love of his brother
…

‘You don't know how alone you are,' he went on, ‘until something like that happens. I had friends in Paris – good friends. But it wasn't the same.'

‘No.' Mrs Trigg took the dishes from his hands. She had a face like black rock, except for the kindness in her eyes. ‘No, there is nuthin' the same as that.' And she moved past him through the kitchen door.

January gathered up his coffee cup and made to follow Preston into the parlor, where new newspapers had been brought in that morning and were being shared around by the boarders as Minou read to Olive and Charmian, Kizzy and tiny Jesse. But a thought took him, and he set down the cup and moved instead through the right-hand door into the hallway – softly gloomy with its single lamp – and to the half-open doorway of the opposite parlor, likewise glowing with muted amber light. Through the opening he could see the room's sole occupant, slouched in a chair, a whisky bottle on the table before him, full and corked. An empty glass.

Poe's head was sunk on one hand, like a man for the moment unable to go on.

January tapped at the door.

‘Come.' The poet straightened and beckoned him to the other chair. ‘How goes the Problem of the Missing Mathematician?' He sounded sardonic and infinitely tired, but his eyes brightened when January dropped Bill the sweeper's note on the marble tabletop.

‘Desperate deeds are in order.'

‘Ah.' Poe shoved bottle and glass aside. ‘So you've come to the most desperate man in Washington?' The tone jested; his eyes didn't.

‘Well,' said January in an apologetic tone, ‘I thought of having Mr Viellard back my play at gunpoint when I go after grave robbers in their nest, but somehow I don't think Madame Viellard would approve.'

‘Lord, what I'd give to see Madame Viellard do it, though!' Poe gave a crack of genuine laughter. ‘Dress her as a boy, put up her hair under a cap …'

‘Mr Viellard really would kill me, if harm came to her. My sister also, I suspect.'

‘True.' He picked up the note, studied it with the lamplight gleaming in his dark eyes. ‘And I would hesitate to run afoul of the beautiful Dominique. You're really going to flush the grave robbers in their nest?'