The Undertaker's Assistant

by Amanda Skenandore

  Chuckles burst from the crowd.

  “Here she goes again,” someone muttered.

  The club president rose and shepherded Mrs. Carrière away from the podium. “I . . . ah . . . once we get some of these more pressing matters off the docket, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Mrs. Carrière’s lips pulled together and her eyes hardened, but she said no more. Her head remained high as she strode to her seat, dauntless and dignified despite being silenced.

  “Women voting?” a man seated behind Effie said. “Where’s the sense in that?”

  “Now, if that’s all the committee reports we have this—”

  Effie stood and spoke over the president. “There are one hundred colored women of voting age in this city for every sixty-five men.” Those seated in front of her swiveled around to look at her. She was used to stares, but never had so many eyes fixed on her at once. She snaked a hand into her skirt pocket and clasped the brass button she’d stowed there this morning. Her thumb worked the raised outline of a star as she gathered her courage to continue. “It seems only logical that enfranchising such a group would suit your aims more than it would hinder them. What could be more pressing than that?”

  “Where’d you get them numbers?” a man near the front asked.

  “Sound made up to me,” another said.

  “The 1875 Metropolitan Census Report. It ran in the Picayune just last month. Surely men such as yourselves have read it.”

  She’d not meant to seem—what had Adeline called her?—haughty, but judging from the grumbling rising around her, she had.

  Samson stood and cleared his throat. “I, for one, favor the Republican over the Picayune.” Several people laughed. The tension strangling the room slackened. “Your point is well taken, Miss Jones, but you mustn’t put too much faith in a Democratic rag like that.”

  Effie remained standing even after everyone had turned back around and the president continued with his closing remarks. Samson’s gaze had once again stirred mutiny among her emotions. How kind his voice had been. How warm his eyes. She jogged her head and sat. Kind and warm, yes, but also how wrong in his assessment. The Picayune hadn’t commissioned the census, only reported on its findings. Likely the other papers had as well. Surely he knew that. Yet he’d discredited her before the group anyway.

  The tin can at last reached her. She withdrew her hand from her pocket and dropped in her dime. A dull clank sounded as it struck the other coins. Rust and metal drowned out the other smells in the room. She could almost taste them on her tongue. She passed the can and returned her hand to the comfort of her button. In a matter of moments, she’d gone from feeling overjoyed at his notice of her—he’d once again proven he knew her name, after all—to feeling wounded by his casual rebuke. Was this what love was like? A tizzy of feelings as disjointed as they were intense?

  She noticed then that those around her had stood. Men were donning their caps and derby hats, women their shawls. Effie hurried to her feet and grabbed her coat. The better part of her itched for the door, but she couldn’t let things rest where they’d fallen. Either Samson believed her a fool or a trifle. She aimed to disabuse him of both notions.

  Mrs. Carrière intercepted her before she’d taken but a few steps. “Merci, Miss Jones. It’s good to have another suffragist in the group.”

  “I’m not really—”

  “Lordy, Marie, why’d you go and bring up that voting nonsense again?” the club president said, coming up beside them with Tom.

  “It’s not nonsense and you know it.”

  Tom wagged his head, though a smile played on his lips. “And now you got Miss Effie here raisin’ sand too.”

  “I only meant to point out the demographic advantage women might bring to the ballot box,” Effie said. She glanced over Mrs. Carrière’s shoulder toward the front of the room. Samson was still there talking with the mulatto who’d been booted from the Academy of Music. He clapped the man on the back and then shook his hand. The man walked away, and Samson was alone.

  Effie tried to shimmy around Tom and the president to get to Samson before he left, but Mrs. Carrière hooked Effie’s arm into the crook of her elbow. “The vote for women is just as important as the vote for Negroes.”

  The president laughed. “You’re forgetting white women will be voting too, then.”

  “For shame!” Mrs. Carrière said.

  “You ain’t never been a slave. Them missuses could be just as nasty as their husbands,” Tom said. “More so when the mood struck ’em. Ain’t that right, Miss Jones?”

  Effie released Sampson from her sights and cocked her head in Tom’s direction. His dark eyes regarded her evenly, as if he’d long ago seen beneath her skin and examined her heart. “Am I wrong?”

  She thought of the white woman who’d yanked her from the steps, scattering the newly shelled beans from her bowl. “No.”

  She held Tom’s gaze a moment longer before remembering Samson. He’d gathered up his hat and gloves and strode toward the back of the hall. Before Effie could extricate her arm from Mrs. Carrière’s and follow, a group of men grabbed him and drew him into their conversation circle. At least he hadn’t made it to the door. One of the men said something that made the others laugh. Samson smiled widely, bearing his handsome teeth and pink gums. The skin about his eyes crinkled and his nostrils flared. She wished she stood close enough to absorb the sound of his laughter.

  A tug on her arm drew her attention back. Her head turned first, her eyes following only when they could strain no further in their sockets. The club president had wandered off, but both Tom and Mrs. Carrière stared expectantly at her.

  “Ah . . . sorry . . . did you say something?”

  Mrs. Carrière glanced at Samson and frowned. “What will you be bringing to the baking sale?”

  The baking sale . . . ? Oh, yes. Next month at the baseball game. “I don’t cook.”

  “Like you don’t sew?”

  “I’m sure whatever you bake will taste mighty fine,” Tom said. “How about somethin’ you learned up North?”

  Effie started to say she hadn’t learned to bake anything, but that wasn’t entirely true. Mrs. Kinyon had labored for years to teach her to cook. Anytime Effie was not off with the captain seeing to the dead or out in the barn mixing chemicals, Mrs. Kinyon dragged her into the kitchen to help with supper. It took no great skill to peel potatoes or churn butter or sift flour. But Effie struggled with the imprecision of baking and cooking. How much was a pinch of salt? Her pinch would measure different than Mrs. Kinyon’s, whose would differ from Mrs. Harris’s down the road. And which cup did she use to measure out flour or sugar? The tin cup she drank from at supper? The porcelain teacup Mrs. Kinyon kept high up in the cupboard? The small glass cup the captain hid in the study alongside his whiskey? Once, when Mrs. Kinyon had asked her to add half a pound of butter to the cake batter, Effie ran to the barn to fetch her scale. When Mrs. Kinyon saw her weighing out the butter she about swooned.

  “What in the Good Lord’s name are you doing, Euphemia? You use that filthy thing on the dead.”

  “No, ma’am. We use it to weigh the arsenic and mercury for our preserving fluid.”

  Mrs. Kinyon huffed, removed the slab of butter from the scale, and cut off a chunk. “This is a half-pound. It’s not something you measure, it’s something you just know. Take mind for next time.”

  But when Mrs. Kinyon turned her back to see to the stove, Effie snuck the chunk onto the scale. Three-eighths a pound, not half.

  It hadn’t mattered, though, for there weren’t many “next times” after that. Mrs. Kinyon relegated her to peeling and churning and sifting. An arrangement that had suited them both.

  Across the room, Samson tipped his hat to the men and backed free of their circle, snapping Effie’s attention back into focus. “Will Mr. Greene be playing?”

  Mrs. Carrière pursed her lips. “I believe he’s on the team. Isn’t he, Tom?”

  Tom let the tip of
his cane fall to the floor and cast his eyes downward before nodding.

  “I suppose I can think of something,” Effie said, her gaze returning to Samson. “Will you excuse me?”

  After a faint sigh, Mrs. Carrière released her.

  A few quick steps and Effie was at Samson’s side. He smelled again of bitter orange and rosemary. His collar was clean but not newly pressed, evidence he hadn’t a wife. “Mr. Greene, a word if you’ve a moment.”

  “Miss Jones.” He bowed from the shoulders and pulled off his hat. “We missed you at our last meeting. I feared our little adventure at Mardi Gras might have proved too much for you.”

  His charm and the knowledge that he too had noticed her absence momentarily stupefied her. With some trouble, she continued. “I’ve a stronger constitution than you think.”

  “Indeed.” He smiled, and she had to look away lest he further waylay her intentions.

  “About the census. I think you’ll find it was—” She stopped. A drumming sounded from outside on the street, its measured rhythm immediately familiar.

  “Company halt,” a voice called. The drumming stopped.

  “Company about-face. Company present arms.”

  “What the devil?” Samson said, stomping toward the nearest window. Effie followed. At least a dozen club members remained in the hall, but all had fallen silent.

  Through the dirty glass, Effie saw a group of about twenty-five white men arranged in two lines out on the street. They stood at attention facing the clubhouse, rifles in their arms. Most of the men looked to be in their early twenties, too young to have fought in the War. A few, though, including the commander, were older and wore their Rebel grays.

  “Company shoulder arms,” one of the older men acting as drill commander said. Each man in the group dropped his arms to his side, one hand cupping the butt of his gun.

  Though Samson stood beside her gaping out the window, Effie could no longer smell his shaving soap. Instead the memory of cook fires, gun smoke, and putrefying flesh awakened in her nose. She heard the drill commander’s words in her mind even before he said them.

  “Company load in ten times. Load!”

  At the next command, handle cartridge, the men reached into the cartridge boxes slung about their waists, but didn’t withdraw any ammunition.

  Samson turned from the window. “Damn White Leaguers!” He stomped to an upturned crate, where a newly extinguished oil lamp sat, smoke still drifting up the glass chimney.

  The drill continued.

  “Tear cartridge!”

  Samson kicked the crate with such force it cartwheeled across the room, the lamp shattering on the ground.

  Effie startled at the sound. Kerosene mixed with the phantom war smells choking her throat while the din outside continued.

  “Charge cartridge!”

  “It’s okay, everyone,” Tom said, lurching away from a nearby window with his cane. “It’s just a drill.”

  His words did little to ease the panic inside the hall. Mrs. Carrière held Jonah fast to her side, as if she might shield him with her skirts. The group of men Samson had been speaking to before Effie stood still as scarecrows on a windless night.

  “Draw rammer!”

  Tom walked over to Samson, the thud of his peg and cane atop the floorboards the only sounds from within.

  “Ram cartridge!”

  He whispered something lost to Effie beneath the outside noise.

  “Return rammer!”

  “We can’t let them intimidate us like this,” Samson replied. “We have to—”

  “Cast about!”

  He moved toward the door, but Tom put out a hand and stepped in front of him. More whispers.

  “Prime!”

  Samson dragged a hand over his hair and nodded.

  “Shoulder arms!”

  “All right, everyone, let’s exit through the back,” Tom said, his voice calm and steady. “I’m sure they don’t mean any trouble, but best not give them opportunity.”

  “Company ready!”

  Effie turned back to the window.

  “Aim.”

  The distant glow of lamplight cast strange shadows on the men’s faces. A narrowed eye, a snarled lip—their obscured expressions formed a patchwork of focus and aggression. She knew they hadn’t actually loaded their rifles. Even so, she flinched at the command to fire, her heart floundering and muscles knotting in anticipation of a spray of bullets. In the blink of silence that followed, her hands snaked across her stomach, up her sternum, and to the hollow of her neck. No holes or seeping blood. Foolish to think there would be, yet she trembled with relief.

  One man among the ranks, whose beard had not quite the fullness of a man’s, seemed to stare right at her. His trousers hung several inches too short for his lanky frame, exposing frayed bootlaces and slouched socks. Mismatched fabric patched the elbows of his jacket. Likely he was a common laborer. A dockhand, perhaps, or a grocer’s assistant.

  What could he see of her through the unwashed window, backlit as she was in the feeble light of the remaining lanterns? What but the outline of her stout shoulders and bonnet-capped head? She could be anyone to him. Had he focused on her silhouette when aiming, or off to the side so that his imaginary bullet would splinter the wooden window casement instead of her skull?

  She shuddered and turned away. Samson hadn’t moved from where he stood amid the shattered glass and spilled kerosene while Tom shepherded the others toward the back of the hall. Effie bent down and gathered up the shards.

  “Miss Jones, please,” Samson said, his voice heavy with fatigue. “I, we . . . we’ll worry about that another day.”

  She didn’t look up, but plucked more glass from the floor, depositing it in a pouch she’d formed from the fabric of her skirt. Then she stood and marched to the front door. Anger coursed alongside her fear. She opened the door and stepped onto the small landing.

  “Recover arms,” the drill commander said, but her sudden appearance snagged the attention of many of the men. They stood gaping, their rigid posture going slack.

  She met the eye of the young man with the ill-fitting trousers. Here, without the grimy window to obscure her, his gaze was skittish. She flapped her skirt, sending a spray of glass tinkling to the ground. A few of the men jerked at the sound. Had their guns truly been at the ready, they might well have shot. As it was, their expressions darkened. Her bravado faltered. Another flap of her skirt and she turned around, retreating into the clubhouse.

  “What the deuce, Miss Jones!” Samson said, pulling her away from the doorway as soon as she reentered and jamming the door shut behind her. “You can’t go out there.”

  He’d woken from whatever stupor he’d been in just moments before, his eyes once again alert, his voice urgent, his grip about her upper arm so tight it might well leave a mark.

  “Just because they’re only drilling don’t mean they’re harmless,” he said.

  “The glass. I couldn’t well leave it in a mess on the floor.” It sounded less rational than it had felt at the time.

  He hurried her to the far end of the room, through a door, and down a short dark hallway to the back exit. “This ain’t the North. They whip niggers here. Beat them. Knife them. Shoot them. Rape—”

  “I am not a nigger.”

  Samson stopped. He rattled his head. “No, I’m sorry.”

  They were outside on a narrow side street now, the cool, humid air prickling her skin.

  “Indeed you’re not.” He regarded her with that nonplussed expression she so often met, as if she had a third nostril or insect antennae sprouting from her head. “Confounding, that’s for sure, but there’s something to you. . . .”

  She tried to free her arm from his grasp. The weight of the night’s events finally struck her, and she hadn’t the strength for such scrutiny.

  His grip held, tightened even for a moment, before loosening just enough to allow blood flow to her hand. His gaze changed too. Sharpened. No longer curiou
s but hungry in its intensity.

  The surrounding brick buildings seemed to pull in around them, the dark sky a twinkling canvas above their heads. The White Leaguers had resumed their marching, but the clap of their boots and bang of their drum was all but drowned out by the whoosh of her pulse.

  “I’m sorry if my comment about the Picayune and that census report offended you,” he said, stepping closer.

  Effie held his stare, determined not to let him derail her thoughts. “You can’t discount the report as biased when—”

  His lips silenced her. His delicious scent blotted out the stench of the street. He paused, his flaring nostrils drinking in all the air between them, leaving Effie dizzy as he kissed her again. Who knew asphyxiation brought with it such bliss?

  Abruptly, he pulled away and released her arm. The night’s chill shocked her senses. The sour smell of rotten food and urine stung her nose. She winced at the sudden cacophony in her ears—the drilling White Leaguers, the screeching crickets, the scampering rats on the tile rooftops above. And something else. The thud of wood and footfalls atop the uneven pavers. Tom.

  “I saw Mrs. Carrière off along with—” He stopped and glanced between her and Samson.

  Effie shuffled back a step and tried for a placid expression, steadying her breath and locking her eyes forward.

  “Miss Jones tarried to pick up the glass from the lantern I so carelessly knocked over,” Samson said, his smooth voice betraying nothing. “She’s had quite a fright from these buckras tonight. Can you see her home, Tom?”

  Her gaze broke free and flickered to Samson. The cool comportment she so struggled to achieve sat easily upon his face.

  “I needn’t an escort,” she managed, despite the sudden dryness of her tongue.

  “Please, Miss Jones. It would be my pleasure.” Tom offered her his arm.

  She hesitated, hoping Samson would change his mind and insist he be the man to walk beside her.

  He did not.

  “Thank you, Mr. Button,” she said at last.

  “Tom.”

  “Tom.” She accepted his arm and they started off. The smoothness of his gait surprised her. So too did his speed and the surety of his muscles. Were it not for the slight rock of his body and knock of his peg and cane against the stone, she’d not know he’d lost a leg.