A Free State

by Tom Piazza

  “I imagine that I am quite sure.”

  “Oh, all right. I was just checking. You looked like you might not have been too sure. This fellow’s light-skinned, green eyes, plays the banjo. His owner says he’s smart and thinks he’s as good as a white man. Somebody taught him to read. His name was Joseph, but he probably changed it.”

  It took all my will to keep my face a blank.

  “No?” he said, again, looking at me as if reading fine print. “Well, if you talk to anybody who does, or if you hear anything, you can get a message to me here.” He gave me a card with a handwritten address of a rooming house on Eighth Street.

  “Certainly,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said, “I heard you have the best nigger show in town. I’m going to see it before I leave.”

  I tried to locate an appropriate response. “That is fine,” I said. Then, I asked, “When do you leave?”

  “That’s still kind of up in the air,” he said. “It depends on how quickly I find the boy.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He nodded, still looking at me, with a slight squint, then he left.

  I shut the stage door and walked to the dressing room.

  Once there, I sat down, nearly overcome. For a few moments I was certain that I would be sick to my stomach, and I lay my head on the dressing table.

  I had no way of getting word to Henry; I would not see him until the next evening’s performance. Why had he not proceeded to Canada if he was in such jeopardy? Wouldn’t it have been natural to assume that his owner would send someone to find him? I was stunned by the recklessness of his deception. And he had lied to me.

  Later that evening, Thursday, I began my preparations, amongst my colleagues, for the show, but my mind was on fire. As they joked and gossiped, I spread the cork across my forehead and down my cheeks, smoothing it, evening out the opaque coat.

  I was born neither blind nor stupid. I knew that the Negroes we depicted so fancifully were, in real life, subject to harsh treatment and compulsory labor. And worse. I knew it, yet the images of Negroes that we summoned represented such a release from oppressive fact that they had become a necessity, for ourselves and for our audience. I had let myself be deceived, though I should have known better. And now, from behind that beautiful, pernicious illusion, reality had come snarling.

  It was one thing to dare convention by presenting a Negro in disguise. It was another to harbor a fugitive and to conceal him from his owner’s agent. Such an act had legal ramifications that far surpassed those implicit in simply presenting a Negro. He had put not only himself at risk, but all of us. What, exactly, did I owe him now—this brilliant illusionist and vital presence, this reckless liar and manipulator, who had used me and placed our troupe at risk?

  And, yes, whom I had used, and manipulated, as well.

  Sitting at the dressing table, besieged by these questions, I caught my reflection in the mirror, staring back at me from behind its black mask. What did I owe, and to whom?

  9

  Rooming house off Sansom on Eighth Street. Dust motes in the stale air. The wash basin, chipped porcelain, the pitcher inside. The green chenille bedspread on the single bed, bowed down in the middle, and a framed print of a cat on the wall. The faded hooked rug a small island on the worn wood floor.

  He hated cities. He had been in Philadelphia for most of a week and had turned up nothing. It had been four days’ riding to get there. He had spent the last night before his arrival at the Warfield farm, ten miles out of town to the west. From Warfield’s city directory, he made a list of furniture makers and dealers, as well as music stores. He had included theaters as well; a boy interested in music might get a cleanup job in one of them, just to be around it. The riverfront saloons were likely places if the boy were playing on the street. The main police station was in the City Hall, at Chestnut and Fifth, although police were, in his experience, useless. What they called Darktown was in the south part of the city, around Lombard and Sixth, seeping out westward. That would be his final stop, only if nothing else panned out.

  Slaves, he liked to say, thought in fragments. They had no idea of the big patterns. They saw things in flashes. They had no conception of the future. What future did they have to plan for? It was given to the white man to see the larger picture. He had formed an image of this Joseph as a spoiled boy who liked attention, who thought anything was possible because Master was his daddy. Tull’s specialty was foreclosing possibility.

  His first stop, four days earlier, had been the police headquarters, a large, barely furnished room in City Hall, sun pouring in through high windows and across the varnished wood floor, a single desk on the left side and one on the right, facing each other. At the nearer of the two, a man with sandy hair and sideburns, eating an apple. Opposite, a black-haired fellow with a low forehead, clean-shaven, every few seconds tossing a cherry pit across the room at the other. On a bench at the far end, a plump man, wearing a squat black hat with a narrow, shiny brim—a ridiculous-looking hat—speaking to the room at large, while its occupants ignored him.

  “You could put a ferry boat farther south on the Delaware. My cousin was a ferry boat man, made good money doing it. They have a beef brisket now at Dodge’s, but you have to buy a pint. Beef brisket causes goiter, but I’d take the chance. The gravy runs out of it; I saw one of those turnbottoms lick it off the side of the dish. Right off the side of the dish . . .”

  Tull stood inside the doorway, waiting for someone to acknowledge him. The man on the bench did not break stride in his commentary, but shifted his attention to Tull.

  “Now there’s a man looks exactly like my cousin Alfred. Alfred had a perfectly good job at a countinghouse, but he couldn’t find a wife. Now there is a hat. That’s leather. A milliner on Twelfth Street will make a hat out of any material whatever . . .”

  The sandy-haired man finished his apple and, still impassive, tossed the core at his tormentor across the room. It struck the wall behind the other man. Finally, he addressed Tull without looking at him.

  “What do you need?”

  “Are you an officer of the law?” Tull said.

  The man looked at him flatly. “I am.”

  Tull offered a disingenuous smile, his lip curling up slightly on the left side. “Sorry, officer. It was a little hard to tell.” He stated the reason for his visit, gave the boy’s name.

  “Most of them don’t keep their names,” the sandy-haired officer said. “You took out ads, I suppose?”

  “His owner did. This one plays the banjar.”

  “Lot of them out there.” To the black-haired man at the desk across the room, he said, “Didn’t you say you saw one the other day?”

  The cherry thrower said, “It was a fiddler.” To Tull, he said, “You want a fiddler?”

  Tull felt contempt starting up in himself, like a muscle cramp.

  The man with the ridiculous hat, who had kept up his commentary during these exchanges, said, “There’s a jig plays banjo and dances in the square. I can show you.”

  The sandy-haired man said, “They’ll play in the parks, or down by the docks. Outside the saloons. Niggertown is down on Lombard Street.”

  Tull asked if there were police available to help should he need it.

  Sandy hair shrugged and said, “It’d have to go before a magistrate.” He looked Tull up and down. “We’ve got our own responsibilities.”

  The cherry thrower chimed in, “He’s the captain. What he says goes. If you want to find the Schuylkill Rangers, we’ll put up a nice headstone for you.” Laughed like a schoolboy.

  “I believe it’s the law,” Tull said, “that any citizen is compelled to help capture a runaway slave. Even a policeman.”

  The captain regarded Tull. “Is that the law? Thank you. We don’t have problems with the Colored here, as long as they don’t cause trouble.”

  “It’s the Irish,” the cherry thrower said. “And the rest of the Papal refugees.”

  “You c
an hire out Trogdon,” the captain said. “He’s available at a reasonable hourly rate.”

  Tull looked at the doughy man, who brightened instantly.

  “Don’t forget your hat,” the cherry thrower said.

  They walked through the sun and dappled shade, a beautiful day for most people.

  “They make fun of me wearing the hat, but one day we’ll have uniforms. Hizzoner says so. Where do you come from? Do they get the police up well there? I’m interested to know. I wasn’t born in Philadelphia, but I say if I’m here I’ll do my best. Are you planning on staying in town?”

  On and on it went, as they approached the square. He had offered this Trogdon a dollar to come with him, and another two if it was the right man and they took him. Now he was sorry. The boy wouldn’t perform so near the police headquarters. Trogdon was going on about a show he had seen somewhere, the minstrels this and that . . .

  “I love a nigger show,” the half-wit was saying. “The best is at Barton’s. They have a new fellow plays the banjo kneeling down. I saw it the other night. Best in town.” He began singing: “De boatman dance, de boatman sing . . .”

  “Be quiet,” Tull said.

  “He’s over there,” his companion said, now, pointing across the square to a small group of people watching a Negro dance. Even from across the square, Tull knew that this was not the boy he was looking for. Face blue-black, and thirty years old, easily.

  “Is that your man?” Trogdon asked.

  “No,” Tull said. “This is the only one?”

  “Well . . .” the fool looked around anxiously. “There are plenty. But whyn’t we get him anyway?”

  Tull reached into his pocket and withdrew some coins. “Here,” he said.

  The police put out his hand and took the coins, spreading them on his palm to count. Tull started away.

  “Here,” the police said. “I can find more.”

  “I know where you are if I need you,” Tull said, walking off.

  The sun cast deep shade under the street awnings, the hanging signs clamoring for attention, like beggars asking for handouts. It pressed down upon the construction, the wooden board fences along the building sites, bleached the posters and flyers for theatrical presentations. Impersonators, actors, illusionists, runaways, fly-by-nights. The city was full of trap doors and tunnels, and pedestrians clogged the street. The cart horses had made plenty of mess, and the smell was powerful. Even shit smelled worse in the city than it did in the country.

  Two blocks north of Market, a showroom. Tull asked a young man with thinning hair and a long beard if he hired people to do piecework.

  The shop man shook his head and said, “No, friend. We have no need for any aid along those lines. The docks are your best chance, I’d say.”

  “I didn’t mean for me,” Tull said. “I’m looking for someone who might have done some woodwork part-time. Any of the makers around here hire people like that sometimes?”

  “No,” the man said. “Generally we train people and keep them around. A good turner you don’t let go, you know. You might try the dealers down on South Street. They hire part-timers, delivery men.”

  Near Callowhill on Second Street, a banjo in the window of a chair maker’s shop.

  A cluttered but orderly space that smelled heavily of varnish and sawed wood. A red-haired man in middle age, using a rasp on a chair leg, set the rasp down, asked if he could help him.

  “I saw that banjar you got in your window,” Tull said. “You selling that?”

  “The one in the window, no. That was one I made for a lark. You play the banjo, you’re welcome to play it. I wouldn’t sell it.”

  “You ever get folks asking about it?”

  “Oh, once in a while, you know. Especially with the river men—they sometimes play a banjar. I had a Colored fellow came in and played it once. People were surprised I let him come in and play it. I said he had as much right to play it as anyone.”

  “What did he look like?”

  The man frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m looking for a Colored fellow who plays banjo. Light-skinned, about so tall. Green eyes.”

  The furniture man found a spot of interest on the arm of a nearby chair, and ran his hand over it twice. Without looking up, he said, “You’re hunting contraband?”

  “I’ve been hired to retrieve property.”

  The furniture man nodded but said nothing, brushed off the chair one more time.

  “You can leave now,” he said.

  “Well, just a minute, there, friend . . .”

  The man’s face mottled red. “You’re nobody’s friend. Get out.”

  Tull made a note of the address before walking off down the street.

  The barkeep at Dwyer’s Saloon set out cheese and crackers. Across the street, Boone Wharf sat cracking in the sun.

  “We got in some nice oysters, out of Baltimore,” he said. “This is about the last of them until October.”

  “I’m fine with the cheese, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Hey, any jig musicians around? I was told there were some good ones down around here. One plays the banjo.”

  “They come and they go. Out hunting, are you?”

  That was pretty quick, Tull thought. “I enjoy music,” he said.

  The bartender kept wiping glasses, unsmiling.

  “There’s more fiddle players than banjo,” he said. “One banjo player down by the Black Horse now and then.”

  “He a good one?”

  “I don’t pay much attention to it,” the barkeep said, putting up the glasses. “He always has a crowd, though.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  The bartender shrugged.

  “Real dark nigger?” Tull said.

  The bartender gave him a quick, hard look. “I didn’t get close to him. Dark? No—not so dark. The little I saw, he could have been a Mexican. You want another cider?”

  Tull felt a percolation commence in his chest.

  “Where’s the Black Horse?”

  The bartender removed the glass from in front of Tull and drew more cider from a small barrel at the end of the bar. He came back, set the glass down, and said, “That’s two cents. Two blocks up. You’ll see it. There’s a monkey painted on the side.”

  Tull placed a coin on the bar and walked out the front door.

  Two blocks away he saw the sign advertising Bigelow’s Bitters, customers entering and leaving the Black Horse. It was getting on toward lunchtime. Tull walked in. The interior was dark after the street, but light trickled in from the front windows, which were bayed out under a sidewalk canopy. Five or six men at the bar, another half dozen at tables. Tull moved through the room and found an opening halfway down. When the bartender approached, he ordered a phosphate and asked when the jig banjo player showed up.

  “Hasn’t been around for a couple weeks,” the bartender said. “I wish he’d come back. He was good for business.”

  “Doesn’t look like you’re suffering,” Tull said, all fellowship.

  “This is nothing,” the bartender said. “You’d have people outside like it was the circus. Made them thirsty. That’s a penny.”

  Tull set a coin down on the bar. “I heard about him. Kind of light-complected, like a Mexican?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Is his name Joseph?” Tull said.

  “I don’t know what his name is.” The bartender looked at Tull for a moment. “Where are you from?”

  “St. Louis,” Tull said, smiling.

  The bartender took the coin and walked away.

  Tull sipped from his glass. Across the bar, behind the risers of bottles, he gazed back at himself from the mirror. He liked knowing things that other people did not know. He smiled raffishly at his reflection. He summoned a menacing look, squinted. He raised one eyebrow, turned his head slightly to one side, held his own gaze. He let his features slump into a vacant, idiotic expression. He laughed out loud. The bar
tender looked down the bar at him. He sipped from the glass. It was not good, however, that the boy hadn’t been seen for weeks. Maybe he had gone on to Canada, the way they liked them to. If the boy was gone, he was gone; not much he could do about that. He stared at himself in the glass, finished the last of his beverage, and called the barkeep over. He took one of his cards—a simple white slip on which he had penciled the address of the rooming house—and slid it to the bartender, with a ten-cent piece.

  “I’m staying here,” Tull said. “If that banjo player shows up send a messenger to me as quick as you can, and it will be five dollars for you.”

  The barkeep looked down at the card without touching it, then he slid the coin off and put it in his pocket and placed the card next to the coin box behind him and moved down the bar to another customer.

  Tull stood at the top of Market Street, looking out toward the river. He turned from the river and looked down Market into Philadelphia, with its jabbering sidewalks and stalls, its parks and columned buildings, and the great, blind, presiding eye of the City Hall tower. The wagons, the blistering sun, the awning shade, the signs. He exhaled slowly, making a hissing sound with his tongue against his front teeth. “Come here, Joseph,” he thought. “Come to me.”

  He visited a dozen furniture makers, and at least as many saloons, a handful of music stores and six theaters, and by Thursday afternoon he knew nothing more than that a Mexican-looking banjo player had worked outside the Black Horse and had not been seen for several weeks. No messages had come to the rooming house. None of the furniture makers had employed the boy, or they wouldn’t admit to it if they had. None of the music stores knew about him, none of the theaters knew about him. The boy, he admitted, might very well have left town. If he had ever been there in the first place.

  He had saved Lombard Street for last. Word of a white man looking for someone would spread around Darktown faster than you could sneeze. And Tull did not like being outnumbered by free blacks, hostile to his mission and accountable to no one. Lombard was a last resort.

  Against his inclination, he had returned to police headquarters after a Thursday morning round of theaters, to ask for a competent deputy, or two, who could accompany him. He arrived to find the same trio of officers occupying the same positions in which he had found them four days previous.