Wash (40 page)

Richardson hopes William will make it back in time to join them, mainly because he’s bringing news of the recent sale of Memphis lots, but there’s no sign of him yet and it has started to snow. Cassius has taken William’s seat next to their father and grows sullen as Richardson’s attention catches on even the smallest movement outside the window.

The conversation becomes heated as it often does whenever their abolitionist neighbors join them. Anson Carpenter has become staunchly antislavery in his old age. Round, blond and firmly convinced of man’s potential goodness, he has founded a chapter of the Manumission Society to help those who want to start freeing their negroes. Richardson founded his own chapter of the Colonization Society just as fast, working to send these recently freed negroes back to Africa as soon as possible, then writing a law requiring any stragglers to leave the state within the year.

He and Carpenter can joke about their differences, with Richardson saying, “All right, Anson, if you insist on freeing yours to clean your slate, then I’ll have to get them gone. The more freedmen running around, the harder you make it on the rest of us. I’m sure this Liberia is just as nice a place as your backyard or mine. And there’s no such thing as a truly free negro. Not yet and you know it. Mine are much safer owned and they will stay that way.”

Both men have decided not to shield their children from this debate but today their banter feels more pointed because a traveling journalist named Dexter sits with them, listening a little too closely. He’s from New York and has been riding around the South, gathering opinions for a piece he’s writing on the slavery question. Mary invited him for a two week stay, wanting to serve as a good example and making sure he met the minister. Richardson distrusted Dexter’s earnestness from the start and doesn’t want to turn up in any book he’s writing. The fact that Diana and Caroline have fallen for the young man’s ginger curls doesn’t help.

Dexter has already worn out his welcome and tonight he seems determined to push Richardson and Carpenter further than they intended to go.

“I hear Atkinson lost his temper and beat one of his men so badly that he died the next day for lack of proper treatment.”

Richardson has a ready answer. “That case led us to legislate a twenty four hour waiting period before inflicting punishment. Gives everybody time to cool down.”

“But how do you enforce it?”

Before Richardson can answer, Carpenter leans in with a different story for Dexter. “It’s the situation at Hargrove’s that haunts me. His old man Moses died of natural causes, so it wasn’t the death. And it wasn’t Hargrove’s wanting to bury his Moses in the family cemetery, right beside his own plot. It was his insisting on doing it by himself and then getting so drunk that he lost all sense of proportion.”

Dexter interrupts, having heard parts of this story already. He savors these details because he knows they will make good copy.

“From what I heard, he dug the grave too shallow and too short both. Ended up climbing on top of Moses then jumping and stomping, trying to make him fit.”

“Hargrove’s not much for doing his own work,” Carpenter says. “But the worst part is that Moses’s two boys saw the whole thing. Lying belly down under the magnolias. Said Hargrove was muttering nonstop, crying then yelling. Cursing Moses too, but they knew better than to try to stop him. Hargrove carries a pistol with him always and he was well past drunk enough to use it that night.”

Cassius cuts in, more irritated than sympathetic. “But Hargrove’s gun didn’t stop Moses’s boys from carrying their story straight down the road to the next batch and the next until we’ve had a rash of nightwalking, cut up cows and broken tools.”

“They are trying to make you rein Hargrove in and doing a hell of a job of it too,” Carpenter says, almost proudly.

Cassius looks to his father, expecting him to step in. Puzzled by Richardson’s surprising reticence, Cassius tries to speak for him. “A fine does need to be imposed on Hargrove, but we can’t let it seem like the negroes have forced our hand.”

Richardson is determined not to give Dexter any help in fleshing out this story so he doesn’t tell them that Moses’s eldest boy came to him, asking for help. Richardson has already been to see Hargrove, who was embarrassed enough to let him negotiate Moses’s reburial as quietly and quickly as possible.

All he says is, “These negroes will take a hell of a lot without flinching, but when it comes to the burying of their dead, any misstep serves as a match to tinder.”

“That’s the beauty of your cooling off period,” Cassius says. “Letting our neighbors get carried away only makes matters worse for the rest of us since we are all bound together whether we like it or not.”

Richardson hears his second son sounding more sure than he himself has ever felt. He thinks about William riding from Memphis, still believing he can spread abolition as easily as grass seed. His two eldest sons are utterly opposed. One wants into the system and one wants out. But from where Richardson sits, both viewpoints seem a luxury. Cassius has no idea what he’s in for and William would hardly be the mayor, managing his own store, unless Richardson had made sure he was well set up. It would be a different story if either one had to start from scratch.

On William’s last visit home, Richardson had come down the stairs into a fight between his two eldest boys, with Cassius lecturing William on the dangers of abolition and Miss Isobel Bryce while William let his mother’s bland smile play across his lips, saying all he’d done was lend Miss Bryce his reputation. Cassius had raged at William then, insisting it wasn’t his to lend. Both sons fell quiet as soon as they saw their father but Richardson has heard the gossip. People in Memphis have started to question William’s stability and competency. Whether it’s the alcohol or the abolitionism, it almost doesn’t matter.

Tonight Richardson watches Lucius look from Cassius to Carpenter and back, with those dark brows hovering high under his widow’s peak. He’s glad to see Lucius show some interest in his own family now that he’s finally quit shadowing Wash and Emmaline. But it’s hard to watch the boy trying to decide which side to take when Richardson suspects there’s not any real choice. Not yet.

Lucius idolizes his eldest brother and it didn’t help that Emmaline pumped him full of talk about William being her hero. The boy has even started to ask about going to live out in Memphis with William and Celeste. He’s still too young but that excuse won’t last much longer.

Voices rise and fall then rise again as opinions begin to shoulder each other roughly aside across the long dinner table littered with now empty plates and serving bowls. Only the wine glasses are still in use. Richardson snaps at Emmaline each time she tries to clear.

“Just leave it. We’ll ring for you.”

Mary sits opposite her husband, growing first anxious then annoyed, both with Dexter for his lack of manners and with her husband for letting it go this far. She uses the side of her hand to groom the crumbs from her end of the tablecloth into her opposite palm then drops the small pile onto the edge of her plate.

When Dexter starts trying to get Cassius to open up about whether or not he or his friends ever go to the quarters, Richardson snaps. He sets his wine glass down carefully and then, quick and fierce as a squall, his hand slams down, rattling the china.

“Now wait just a damn minute.”

A sudden clear quiet catches Dexter midsentence.

“I have had enough. I’ve worked for over two full weeks to put up with you. Anson and I are lifelong friends, yet you think you can set us against each other, as if you were at your own personal cockfight, and then sit back to watch so you can write it up, thinking you have discovered something important.

“Let me tell you something. You know nothing of us. Nothing. Whatever you’ve seen that you think so awful is merely a dim shadow of what truly lives here. Not everything can be put into words.”

Dexter’s open mouth gradually closes of its own accord.

“It’s a wonder how you traveling writers survive, carrying as little common sense as you do. The cities you come from must be easy, sterile places indeed, where a man’s true nature never shows itself.

“I prefer this place, even with its chaos and confusion. Terrible things happen here. And many of us respond from our baser selves. But unlike you, we do not suffer from the illusion that we are not human, not subject to pitfalls and glories in equal measure. We are susceptible, fallible, far from perfect. The difference between you and us is that we live a life which forces us to accept this central fact about ourselves.

“I would always choose this situation of mine over the aimless, stateless life you lead. Wandering this land, thinking you are seeing it, when all you are doing is forever misunderstanding it by comparing it to some figment you carry in your mind of your own home. Whatever image you carry of a place where men stand only in their higher good, never bending to put their foot on another man’s neck, that place is merely a dream because it does not exist.”

Mary can endure it no longer. She stands to start clearing the table herself, if for no other reason than to escape the room, but her husband’s voice freezes her hand as it reaches for Livia’s plate.

“I’m not finished.”

She sits back down, drawing her hands into her lap and scanning the room, looking for what needs fixing. Listing tasks helps her quell the old panic that rises whenever chaos threatens. She makes a note to herself to take the curtains outside to clean them as Richardson turns back to Dexter.

“What you refuse to understand is that we are not the same. Different stories walking hand in hand with different times have shaped us each differently. You cannot see me clearly from where you stand. It is circumstance which will bring out the deepest part lying hidden within you. Until you are prepared to accept that, I’m afraid there’s no longer a place for you at my table.

“Excuse me for my candor, but I feel it is the least I owe you. I have some paperwork to attend to now. Emmaline will see to your needs as she has for the past fifteen evenings. I trust you will sleep well and thereby be rested for your next adventure. I will let Ben know to have your horse fed, groomed and saddled so you can get an early start.”

Richardson pushes back his chair and stands. Everyone else sits perched like birds on their nests, looking across at one another with quick sharp glances, until Livia falls into her wide open laugh, full of the pleasure that rises in her whenever the truth gets told. She is joined by everybody at the table except for Dexter who remains perfectly quiet for once.

In the hush that falls over the table, they hear William stomping the snow off his boots on the porch. As soon as he’s inside the door, they are up and hugging him. But Livia lingers in the empty dining room, leaning across the table to smile down at Dexter, still sitting at his place.

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I guess you didn’t see his bottom line until you’d already ridden right across it.”

She turns away, still laughing a little and looking very much like her father. Dexter stands beside his chair, watching the Richardson family gather around William in the front hall without realizing he’s blocking Emmaline. She stands behind him with her arms full of dishes, waiting for him to move so she can get past him to the kitchen.

Before William even makes his way out of the front hall, Richardson is onto him for news about the sale of Memphis lots. Energized from having said his piece, or some small part of it at least, he feels potent, full of life. He’s certain they’ve made money, especially considering all the whiskey he sent out there to stimulate the bidding after they lost the county seat.

“So, tell me. How did it go?”

William smiles and holds his hand up to say wait a minute because he’s still greeting everybody. He has to extract himself from Lucius’s bear hug before he can pour himself first one drink then another. Richardson works to be patient while everyone talks to William at once. He paces the hall, unable to stand still, giving only a nod to Carpenter, who hovers in the doorway leaving.

After a few times up and down the hall, Richardson realizes that William avoiding his eye must mean he has bad news. He picks up his son’s knapsack, knowing the letters from his Memphis customers lie bundled in the outside pocket.

“Even today?” Mary calls after him but her words are drowned out by his feet on the stairs.

Sure enough, the letters bring only complaints and requests. Just as Richardson feared, the drunken boatmen and rowdy squatters already well settled in Chickasaw Bluffs have scared off most new settlers. Brawling and eye gouging remain much more common than prospective buyers would ever guess from the ads he and his main partner Sullivan ran. Word must have gotten out about the roughnecks and the county seat both.

But you would think more men would have recognized the potential. Even the Indians knew the bluffs were the only logical place to cross the river for a hundred miles in either direction. Why are the whites so blind to this fact? Yes, there is uncertainty, with the river continually changing course and disease in the swampy areas, but how can they not see that the future is headed right this way?

William lingers downstairs. He dreads having to describe the failed sale to his father. Too much cheap liquor served too early, the broadsheets torn and crumpled into the mud, the silence stretching long and empty whenever that fancy auctioneer from Cincinnati paused for breath. Pockets of quiet so deep the man talked himself into laryngitis and few serious bids.