by Jeff Dawson
‘I suppose,’ said Finch, ‘you should call me Travers… No, Collins.’
The man chuckled again.
‘Sounds like you got a story to tell.’
Chapter 19
‘Listen, do you mind if I change?’ asked Finch.
He indicated his bundle of clothes.
‘Go right on ahead.’
Finch pulled off his shoes and wriggled out of his muddy tuxedo.
‘You ain’t from round these parts,’ Moses mused.
‘I’m from England.’
‘Boston?’
‘Not New England – Old England.’
Moses exhaled a whistle.
‘This story gettin’ bigger and bigger.’
Finch laughed, the first time in a while. In all that had happened to him, Moses seemed about the most sane person he had run into.
‘Moses, I think I need to get to Columbus… to go back east.’
‘The railroad?’
Finch nodded.
‘From what I hear, the Pennsy’ll take you all the way. New York?’
‘No, Washington… DC.’
Moses pulled a face as if to say that this destination came with certain implications.
‘Happy to take you to Dayton. You can make your way from there.’
He hesitated.
‘You got money? ’Cause that’s somethin’ I can’t stretch to.’
Finch patted his tuxedo, the wallet was still there. He transferred it to his new outfit. His passport too, which he tucked into the lining of the corduroy jacket, keeping it separate.
‘Don’t worry.’
The borrowed clothes were damp but fitted well enough for a passable imitation of a farmhand, what with the two-day beard growth, unkempt hair and the bruises and dirt from his scrapes.
‘Moses,’ said Finch. ‘Thank you.’
Moses gave a tilt of the head in appreciation.
‘You took a chance on me,’ Finch added. ‘You know nothing about me. I mean, for all you know, I could be some crazed killer on the run.’
I am a crazed killer on the run.
Moses grinned.
‘You don’t look the type. And one thing’s for sure, I never much cared for the folks that run that place anyhow. And when someone appears out of the blue dressed up like a penguin…?’
Finch laughed again. He rooted for his cigarettes.
‘I’m not a criminal… Not in the traditional sense.’
‘So, you’re an unconventional criminal?’
‘Let’s just say I’m being chased by people who are. Criminals, I mean. Traditional ones.’
He offered Moses a cigarette, took one for himself, and lit them both.
He couldn’t go into too much detail but felt obliged to offer some kind of explanation.
‘The thrust of it goes like this,’ he began. ‘I’m a British citizen; I’m in the US on some quite important business. Unfortunately there are some people out there who’d rather I didn’t complete that business. And somehow, due to an unforeseen sequence of events – circumstances – I find myself out here in the Midwest, bumping along a prairie trail in the company of your good self.’
‘I see… Say, this a British smoke?’
Moses examined the cigarette between his fingers.
‘Yes.’
‘Not bad.’
He exhaled a lungful.
‘Course when you grow up workin’ the tobacco fields, you only appreciate the strong stuff.’
The land went on endlessly – dark ploughed earth, but with some fields of winter crops and some patches of long prairie grass in the fallow areas. And there were tall wooden towers dotted about the landscape, grain silos. But, above all, the landscape was flat – so flat the straight dirt road continued all the way to the horizon, the telegraph poles strung along it, with their sagging cables, almost boring in their uniformity.
‘I’m sorry… You say you worked the tobacco fields?’
‘In Kentucky. Yessir. Soon as I could walk and wield me a knife, I was out there a-cuttin’.’
For someone from the compact confines of the British Isles, the vast endless space, and the silence, felt perversely oppressive; the sky with its sheet of low grey clouds, weighing heavily. The only variation in sound came in the occasional crunch of the gears as Moses navigated his way round a rut or pothole.
‘Seriously?’ asked Finch. ‘You started that young?’
‘Yessir, me an’ my kinfolk.’
He pulled up his left sleeve. The inside of his forearm bore a scar, like a large welt, an old injury of some sort. No… it was a burn, with its raised pink ridges of seared flesh, even on his dark skin.
And then Finch realized… Not a scar… a brand. Moses had been a slave.
‘Freed when I was 14. Just as the War a-startin’. The Underground Railroad. You know, not like a regular railroad, like the kind you be takin’. A metaphorical railroad – trails and safe houses. Network o’ good Samaritans spiritin’ black folks from the South to the Free States. And a good many beyond that too, up to Canada.’
Finch simply didn’t know how to react. He sat stunned for a moment before mumbling a platitude about ‘being sorry’ when the truth was he had never heard anything so shocking. For all that he had witnessed in South Africa, the fact that holding humans in bondage had occurred within living memory in a modern industrialized country like the United States, and that it was mentioned so casually…
‘My Pappy, he long been sold,’ Moses continued. ‘Never see him again. But Mama? She determined. Got us across the river into Ohio. Folks from the underground sent over a raft. Hauled us back on a rope. Me, my little brother… It was winter. That water perishin’ cold…’
He paused, wistful.
‘He with the Lord now.’
The truck had a wing mirror. Something in it caught Moses’s eye.
‘Shee-it.’
He threw a thumb over his shoulder. Finch turned. In the distance was a cloud of dust.
‘Are those our farmer friends?’
‘No, sir,’ said Moses. ‘Worse.’
The dust cloud appeared to be gaining on them.
‘He hope to catch us before we hit the state line.’
‘How far?’
‘’Bout another three miles. Hate to say it, but this ol’ girl…’
He patted the dashboard.
‘…don’t think she got the legs.’
Within a couple of minutes the dust cloud had made considerable distance on them. It was close enough now for Finch to see that it was being kicked up by a motorcycle, a shiny black motorcycle – an incredibly noisy one at that. Soon it had pulled right behind. It was being driven by a policeman. He had a leather jacket over his uniform, but with the starred badge of authority upon his chest, and wore a peaked cap rather than a domed helmet.
‘You might want to lose that,’ said Moses and pointed to the bundled-up dinner suit. Finch stuffed it under the seat.
The policeman was waving an arm, indicating for Moses to pull over, but he pretended not to see. Next thing the bike was alongside, the rider repeating the gesture more emphatically.
They could determine the big green sign up ahead with the white lettering upon it, vaguely making out the word – ‘Ohio’.
But the cop knew their game and pulled in front. There was no way round him and he slowed them down to a stop. He wagged a finger, meaning for Moses to pull the handbrake lever and turn the engine off. Moses obliged, though, noted Finch, he didn’t kill the motor completely but set it to a low idle.
The cop parked his bike on its stand – it had a double-barrelled name, ‘Harley-Davidson’, saw Finch – and he made considerable theatre out of dismounting, then removing his goggles and long leather gauntlets.
He sauntered over, chest puffed. He wore khaki jodhpur trousers, like riding breeches, flared at the thigh.
‘I told you to kill the engine.’
‘Please, sir,’ said Moses. ‘You stop this motor now,
it take for ever to crank the thing back up again. Maybe never.’
The cop thought about it.
‘This your vehicle, sir?’
It took Finch a second to realize that the man was speaking to him, not Moses.
‘No, officer.’
‘This your vehicle?’ he repeated to Moses, dropping the ‘sir’ this time.
Moses shook his head.
‘You stole it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then whose vehicle is it?’
‘My boss’s, sir.’
He looked at Finch again.
‘You his boss?’
‘No.’
Any humour, decided Finch, had been beaten out of the man in childhood.
‘Who’s your boss?’
‘Mr Downey,’ said Moses. ‘You know Downey’s chicken farm over on West Grove?’
Finch noticed how Moses had changed his accent and demeanour, like he was playing a part – that of a supplicant – like he had been in this spot many times in his life.
‘You live over there?’
‘Yessir. Mr Downey. He a good man. There’s a shack on the farm. He let me stay there. I take care his chickens for him, yessir, I do.’
The policeman got a notebook out and took his time writing this all down.
Moses whispered to Finch.
‘You want me to break for the border? Once we’re past that sign, he can’t touch us.’
‘What happens when you try to come back?’ hissed Finch. ‘Don’t put yourself in harm’s way. He knows where you live, for God’s sake.’
‘Then steal his motorbike and be on your way. I’ll create a diversion.’
‘I don’t how to ride one.’
The cop looked up.
‘Step out of the vehicle.’
Finch gave a reluctant shrug.
‘I said, step out of the vehicle. Now!’
They complied, climbing down, wearily engaging their feet with the earth. Moses had bandy legs and something of a stoop, Finch noticed, and moved with the pace of someone broken by a life of manual labour.
The cop made them stand apart, their backs to him.
‘Hands on your heads.’
‘Is that absolutely necessary?’ asked Finch.
‘Just do it!’
They could hear him pacing behind them.
‘What’s your name, son?’ he asked.
There was patronizing contempt in the way he addressed Moses. The cop was at least 20 years his junior.
‘Moses.’
‘Moses what?’
‘Clotilda. C-L-O-T-I-L-D-A.’
‘What the hell kind of name’s that?’
His pencil scraped on the paper.
‘My adopted name, sir. I was named after a ship.’
‘A ship?’
‘Yessir.’
‘What kind of ship?’
‘Kind that’s lying on the seabed in Mobile harbour, way down in Alabammy.’
Silence.
‘And you?’
‘Me?’ asked Finch.
‘Your name.’
He improvised on the spot.
‘Whitehall… Melville Whitehall.’
Finch hoped that the name would crop up on any arrest lists MO3 might be scrutinizing, alerting them to his ongoing existence. Moses raised his eyebrows in amusement.
‘Funny, Whitehall. I’ve just come from a farm back on the main road. They said there’d been a thief. Stole some things from their property. His accomplice was a negro driving a Ford truck with a whole load of junk in the back. Am I ringing any bells here?’
They said nothing.
‘Said the white man was about six feet tall, dark brown hair. Had stolen some britches, a shirt and a work coat – pretty much described as exactly the kind you’re wearing right now. Guessing for all the crap you got back there it wasn’t the first property you’d turned over, either.’
It was no good, the game was up.
‘Look, officer, I can explain,’ urged Finch. ‘And the first thing I want to tell you is, Mr Clotilda, he’s entirely innocent in all this. I was on the farm, yes, and I took some clothes. It was a matter of survival. I will happily reimburse…’
‘You’ll shut your mouth.’
‘Please… Mr Clotilda, I didn’t even know his name till a second ago. All he’s guilty of is stopping to give a stranger a lift out of the kindness of his Christian heart. Please, let him go.’
‘Okay, hands behind your backs, both of you…’
There was the clink of handcuffs being readied.
Finch thought fast. On a motorbike, the cop couldn’t take them in. He had no means of calling for assistance, unless he knew some was already on its way. If he was reliant on a passing vehicle stopping, they hadn’t seen anyone else the whole time – he could be waiting for hours. And he certainly wouldn’t leave them alone in any interim as they were close enough to walk to Ohio, unless he chained them to a pole.
The fact that he consented to allow the motor to keep idling suggested he was going to put them in the back and drive them in to the police station himself.
The engine noise gave them cover.
‘I’m gonna get us to Ohio,’ whispered Moses. ‘You disable the cop.’
‘Disable?’
‘Push his goddamn bike over. Time he’s righted it and restarted it, we’ll be clear.’
‘No, Moses…’
The cop yelled at them again.
‘Be quiet.’
‘He’s got no backup,’ said Moses.
‘He’s got a gun.’
‘You dodged plenty of bullets this morning. Figure it’s your lucky day. On the count of three…’
‘Fuck. No, Moses… Please…’
‘One…’
‘Quiet!’
‘Two…’
‘Put your wrists together.’
‘Three…’
In an arthritic flash, Moses was climbing up to the cab. The cop dropped the cuffs and reached for the holster on his thigh. As he did so, Finch lunged at the motorbike and heaved it over, giving it a hard enough shove to leave a clear path ahead. The cop spun, taking the heat off Moses.
The shock of his shiny new steed now lying in the Indiana dirt threw him. Moses was already easing the truck forward and Finch ran to the blind side.
‘C’mon!’ Moses yelled and upped the engine hard into the next gear.
Finch glanced back. The cop had drawn his revolver and was pointing it his way in what seemed an over-exaggerated training academy stance. The chickens clucked like crazy.
Finch tried to leap up but it was beyond him. The truck was at a sprinter’s pace now.
‘Here!’
Moses extended a forearm and Finch clamped his own on to it. He yanked Finch aboard as the first shot whistled past.
‘See… You’re lucky!’
Finch scrambled in as the second clanged into the door. They were up to a full 30mph and hurtling towards the big green sign.
The motorbike revved. Finch ducked, turned and saw the cop stamp down on the pedal.
‘Moses. What the hell? Why did you do this? They know where you live!’
He gave a great gurgle of a laugh.
‘You think I’m gonna give the police my real address… And hell, that name I gave ain’t no more real than yours. I live in Dayton with my wife and three kids. Why, you think I look like the kind of man who lives on charity in some ol’ chicken shack?’
‘I don’t know, Moses,’ Finch deadpanned. ‘You played it pretty convincingly.’
Moses howled with delight.
‘Moses is my Christian name, by the way. It’s the other…’
‘Clotilda?’
‘Yessir. Name of the last slave ship that ever entered the United States. Little history lesson for our big-mouth lawman should he ever get the gumption to look it up. My little contribution to the well-roundedness o’ his education.’
The bike was screaming towards them again but they had vital se
conds to spare. They crossed the invisible state line that divided Indiana cabbages from Ohio ones. The bike revved down and stopped like it had run up against some magical barrier.
It was another idiosyncrasy of the United States, thought Finch. That each state functioned as its own entity, like a country – legal jurisdictions ending according to surveyors’ lines of latitude and longitude or the courses of rivers. It was why, he had already surmised, that Federal institutions – like the NBI – deemed agencies of the capital’s over-arching authority, were so mistrusted at state level. America was not a nation as such but rather a concept – a voluntary union of sovereign territories whose individual goodwill could be withheld. It explained a lot about the Civil War.
They rattled on into Ohio, the ‘Buckeye State’ as it had styled itself on the sign, Moses pointing out the occasional tree which looked, to Finch, just like a horse chestnut, and apparently yielded a poisonous nut, shiny reddish-brown, that fitted the exact same description of a conker. He told Finch too about the flying machines that had been spotted gliding hereabouts courtesy of the local Wright Brothers, and Finch thought back to where else he’d heard their names previously – in the company of a crazy American ‘kinematographer’, a man who made ‘moving pictures’, on a long painful train journey across the South African Karoo.
As he and Moses proceeded, they passed the odd farm wagon and one oncoming car, the only thing of note about it being the stand-off as they headed towards one other, each vehicle unclear as to whether it should pass on the left or right, things not being so regimented as the traffic of New York.
Eventually the road split, one fork heading south to Cincinnati, while they continued along the branch with the signs now showing ‘Dayton’ and ‘Columbus’. Eventually there was a line of further buckeyes to break the monotony of the landscape, suggestive of a riverbank. Indeed, there was a slight hump in the road ahead as it crossed over a bridge.
But it was too late… Two police Model Cs had been angled in a shallow ‘V’ to block their passage. They’d been clever, knew Finch. They’d positioned themselves on the far side of the rise so that they weren’t visible until one was upon them. He had a curious flashback to history lessons, the Duke of Wellington and his similar deployment of troops in battle.
In any case, word was out. Either the Indiana police had telephoned ahead to their Ohio counterparts, or there was a general manhunt on anyway.