Hugo looked around and spotted Lula’s trunk behind the door.
“There it is, Pinky.”
Pinky walked over to the trunk and laid his hands on it. “Ugh,” he said in a very rough voice as he tried to tilt it back. “What’s in here?”
For a moment I couldn’t move. Pinky’s grip slipped and the trunk knocked back down to the floor—only a couple of inches, but I could imagine the terrified Lula inside. Out on the pier a dog started up a string of short, loud barks.
“What are you doing?” I said. “Don’t!”
“We need it for the show tonight,” Hugo told me.
“Lend us a hand, will you?” Pinky growled. His voice had gotten worse, not better.
I stepped between Hugo and the trunk. “Wait—no—I have things in there . . . Helena’s things, and some of my own . . . since, you know, this room is very small. I needed the storage. For some of my things. Some of my private things.”
I was babbling, and I stopped to take a breath. “Just let me empty it first.”
Pinky stepped away and he and Hugo both looked at me, waiting for me to empty the trunk so they could take it downstairs.
“I’ll call for you when it’s ready,” I said.
“How long can it take?” Hugo asked.
“I’ll call for you,” I said again.
“Well, all right.” But instead of leaving he walked to the window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. “That Thaddeus has become very interested in Liddy’s doctor,” he said.
I wanted to look down at the pier, too, but at the same time I was afraid to move too far from Lula’s trunk.
“Thick as thieves,” Pinky said hoarsely.
Hugo looked back. “That’s the other thing, May. Pinky’s voice is going. We may need you to stand in for him tonight.”
“What?”
“You’ve been to enough rehearsals. You must know the lines by now, and if necessary I can prompt you from the wings. There aren’t many.”
“But I’m a woman!”
Hugo grinned. “It’s a woman’s role, as you might recall.”
“What about Leo? You don’t want to miss the joke of a man dressed up as a woman. That’s a good joke.”
“Not playing in the South. Not with his color,” Hugo said. “More’s the shame and pity. But I know you can do it, May. Remember our talk last night? You’ve proved yourself very able, very able indeed.”
Too able, I thought. There was no chance that I was going to step foot on the stage. All those people looking at me. The lights of the lanterns glaring up into my eyes. As if reading my thoughts, Hugo reminded me that I was on the stage every night playing the piano.
“That’s different,” I said.
“Not by much,” Hugo argued good-naturedly. Pinky was looking at me. When my eyes met his, he grimaced in sympathy.
“I’m going to fix you another gargle,” I told him.
“I just had one before breakfast.”
“Well, I’m going to fix you another. We’ve got to get you in shape for the show.”
• • •
To say that as the day wore on the excitement on the boat became ever more palpable would be like saying as the sun went down, the daylight faded. Although what I really wanted to do was wrap a flannel around my neck and claim a bad throat like Pinky, keeping to my room all day and watching over Lula, I was far too busy to do that. The last-minute costume alterations, the inspection of each small lantern that lined the edge of the stage, running lines with Liddy, helping Cook make sandwiches, since everyone was too busy to sit down to a meal—all this and more fell to me. Meanwhile, I brought Pinky so many gargles and cups of hot tea with lemon that I thought he would need three extra chamber pots in his room.
Luckily, as planned, Dr. Early went to town instead of me to promote the show. I supplied him with complimentary tickets and posters, and he slid the pieces of paper from my outstretched fingers with a slight smile and a thank-you that could have meant anything.
What had Thaddeus told him out on the pier? The night before, I’d given Thaddeus ten dollars more and he took the money graciously, as graciously as Dr. Early received the complimentary tickets today. But I could trust neither one of them. Scenario after scenario rose up in my mind: Lula caught, Lula shot, Lula with manacles locked to her wrists. If this is imagination, I thought, then it is a painful part of the human condition.
As I was watching Dr. Early’s figure disappear on the road to town, Thaddeus came up next to me and leaned against the rail and watched him, too. We were standing on the lower deck near the office, and I could feel a slight breeze coming in off the water. I looked quickly around; there was no one on the deck now but us.
“Did you tell Dr. Early about Lula?” I asked him in a low voice.
“Of course not,” Thaddeus replied. “But, May, listen. We should think about this. I believe we could get eighty dollars if we released her. That’s forty dollars each.”
“Released her,” I thought. As though we were talking about freeing a bird. He looked at me earnestly, and I noticed again how he was aging. He ate too much; in a few years he’d be good only for portly characters—mayors and city bankers.
“When we started, you were sympathetic,” I reminded him.
“May, May. Listen to me. It’s not that I’m unsympathetic, but we’re on the wrong side of the law here. Surely you can appreciate that.”
I did. And I didn’t like being on the wrong side of the law. I thought of the whipping posts I’d seen in every river town, and the corner jails without windows. Also the threats on the broadsides—Old Judge Lynch. For a moment I felt something cold coil up my spine. It was difficult for me to break a rule so deliberately. I wish I could explain how it felt, like a twist in my body that cried out for straightening.
But “I’m abiding by my choices,” I told Thaddeus.
“You don’t have to. That’s my point. You can come around to the right side of the law. You’re a practical person, May. We both are. We’re alike in that way. We’ll just tell the authorities we were tricked by the abolitionists. The rabble-rousers. But now we see the error of our ways, and we want to rectify that.”
I looked at his puffy, bland face. Back in Pittsburgh Comfort sometimes called him Fatuous Mason. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta. “I understand,” I said.
“You’re reciting Greek to yourself,” Thaddeus said sharply. “I can tell.”
“All right, all right. But what would you have me do?”
“Don’t do anything. I’ll handle it. Whatever happens, we’ll split it fifty-fifty.”
“If I get caught and hung, you’ll split that with me fifty-fifty?”
“We’ll be on the right side of the law,” Thaddeus repeated. “You don’t need to worry about hanging.”
Voices floated down from the upper deck, and Hugo and Liddy appeared at the top of the stairs. “What are you two whispering about?” Hugo called down to us.
“The sleeves of my costume,” Thaddeus said.
He could lie, I noticed, without any hesitation at all.
“Well, I have some bad news, May,” Hugo said coming down. “Pinky’s lost his voice entirely.”
I felt the hard shell of a walnut again in my side. I took a breath but could not seem to exhale afterward. “Cook?” I suggested weakly.
“Cook’s been drinking since lunch; all the excitement has got to him. I’m afraid it’ll have to be you. But it’s only one scene. And I’ll be right next to the stage feeding you lines if you need them.”
“Don’t worry, May,” Liddy told me. And Thaddeus said, with a smile that seemed to convey worlds, “You’ll be fine.”
• • •
The walnut being now permanently lodged on the left side of my stomach, I went up to my room to sit on my bed. I felt nauseous and a little bit cold. It wasn’t just the play, of course. I had never before kept a secret, or at least something I was consciously protecting from being exposed, and the long wait for help
was wearing on me. Not to mention the threat of Dr. Early, and now Thaddeus. I felt like I was back to being a small child when more was expected of me than I could possibly give. Lula sat halfway inside the trunk, as she had yesterday, watching me. I had my arms wrapped around my middle.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “You sick?”
“Hugo wants me to act on the stage tonight. Captain Cushing, I mean.”
Next to me, on the bed, lay Pinky’s “sides”—his part in the play—on a thin roll of foolscap. Lula could see I was upset, I guess, because she got out of the trunk and sat next to me on the bed.
“Have you ever seen a play?” I asked her.
“Not a real one. Just back home, you know, a couple o’ the men used to act out the family sometimes. Pretend to be the three sons, the young masters. If no one could see.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do when you get free?” Talking to her made me feel marginally better.
“I’m going to learn how to read.”
“I meant for money.”
“Oh. Cooking or cleaning for someone? Same as I did before, I expect, only for wages. Though I’m not much at cooking. Peeling potatoes and cutting ’em up, I can do that.”
“How about sewing?”
“What, like making new dresses?”
“And alterations. Maybe a hotel would hire you. Some of the big ones like to have girls on hand to help with such things.”
The sun was slanting in under my curtains on its way down. In a couple of hours it would be time for the show and I hadn’t even looked at my costume. I had Pinky’s wig—the nightcap with gray hair—and the old nightdress of Mrs. Niffen’s. But I was beyond caring if either one fit.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Lula,” I said, “Listen. Something’s come up.” I decided to tell her about Thaddeus. Maybe she could help me think of a plan. She was smart—that was obvious. She got herself here, didn’t she? And she got her baby away to freedom. Lula listened with a worried frown. After I finished, she said, “I thought there were something about him.”
“I’m supposed to take you outside to meet your connection while everyone is watching the play, but now that’s impossible. I’ll be on the stage.”
“You’ll just have to get me to them before it starts.”
“I’ve thought of that. But so many things could get in my way. It won’t be completely dark, for one thing. And what if they’re not there yet? You can’t wait by yourself. Or can you?” As much as we stopped at these little southern towns, I still didn’t always understand what slaves could do alone and what would stand out.
“If I seemed to be doing some chore or piece of work . . .” Lula said. We looked at each other. What would that be? A girl couldn’t be a rouster or a boat hand.
“If we can’t meet them before the show starts,” I said, “I’ll be on the stage and I won’t be able to protect you.”
“You think the doctor and Thaddeus will come looking for me while you on the stage?”
“They could come up here even now. Thaddeus knows you’re in my room. The only thing saving us is that Dr. Early is caught up in looking for another runaway.”
But even that was changing. I didn’t know it then, but Dr. Early had finally discovered the runaway Jackson hiding behind a boiler in one of the steamboats tied up at the pier. One of the rousters had turned Jackson in.
Released him.
I looked at Lula, at her dark eyes with their thick curly lashes, her two short braids, her wide cheekbones and pointy chin. I did not want Thaddeus to get her, it was that plain and simple. Lula looked back at me, both of us waiting for the other one to come up with an idea. I tried to think.
• • •
An hour later I was up on the stage with Leo, when Hugo, Liddy, and Thaddeus walked in.
“There you are,” Hugo said to me. “I was looking for you.”
“I asked Leo to bring down my trunk. Here it is.”
Leo had placed the trunk in the exact middle of the stage floor. For some reason this symmetry pleased me. Hugo jumped up onto the stage and walked over to it. “This trunk?” he asked. “You brought this trunk down? But this isn’t the trunk we wanted!”
I’d brought down the smaller, black trunk instead of Lula’s big one.
“I just couldn’t get everything into one trunk,” I said, “unless it was the bigger one.”
“Then make a pile under your bed! It’s only for a night or two; I’ll get another when I can. Thaddeus is too big fit in this trunk! Remember, we have to carry him onto the stage in it!”
“I can’t empty the other one,” I insisted.
Liddy and Thaddeus were standing together in front of the benches. Thaddeus looked at me steadily but didn’t say a word. He’d probably guessed why I didn’t want to move my large trunk. I felt my pocket for the key to my room and I saw Thaddeus’s eyes follow the movement. However, his face, as usual, revealed nothing.
Liddy said, “Oh, my goodness, we can use my trunk. It’s bigger than Helena’s anyway.”
She went up to her room to make it ready. To her credit, she did not look put out. Hugo said irritably to Leo, “Might as well put that one in the green room. It’s no use to me.”
Leo said, “All right, then, let me just go help Miss Liddy first.”
When Leo was gone, Hugo looked at me for a long moment, and then he seemed to take a breath and tell himself something.
“All right. All right, then. No harm done. Liddy’s trunk will serve us fine.” He patted his trouser pocket, pulled out his pipe, put it back in. “You have a case of nerves, May, that’s understandable.” I could see he was trying to make allowances for my stubbornness. “I know we’re asking a lot of you tonight. Now, listen, though, I don’t want you to worry. You can look at me anytime and I’ll feed you the line. The audience, they won’t care. By the time you make your entrance, they’ll be engrossed in the play. That’s Thaddeus and Mr. Niffen’s job. They do that job very well, very well indeed. You’re jittery, of course you are. That’s to be expected. But remember what I always say: Nerves are good. Nerves make us better actors. If we feel bored, the audience will feel bored. Nerves invigorate us.”
He was right: I was nervous, very nervous, only not for the reasons he thought.
“I don’t want to be a better actor,” I said in spite of myself.
Hugo smiled. He pulled out his pipe again and felt for his tobacco. “You always speak your mind,” he said. “I like that.”
“One of her most charming traits,” Thaddeus put in. Was he being sarcastic? His face was smooth and blank. “Oh, and by the way, Captain,” he went on, but he was looking at me. “Good news: Dr. Early will be able to make the show tonight. He managed to catch that poem that’s been dogging him.”
“Catch a poem?” Hugo asked. He put his tobacco back into his pocket without filling his pipe, and I realized he was as nervous as I was for opening night.
“Pin it down, so to speak,” Thaddeus said, still with his eyes on me. He was staring at me with such significance that I asked, “Do you mean the runaway slave? Is that what you mean by ‘poem’?” At that instant I honestly forgot it was a secret. But Liddy wasn’t there in any case. Only Hugo looked surprised.
“He’s still at that game?” he asked.
Thaddeus looked annoyed and then he shrugged it off. “Early’s got the town’s justice of the peace coming to the show with him,” he told me. “Now’s our chance to meet him, May.”
“Why on earth would May want to meet the justice of the peace?” Hugo said dismissively. “Now, go on, both of you, into your costumes. The good people of Paducah are on their way. Cook’s agreed to work the ticket window. Let’s just hope to God he can add and subtract.”
• • •
The good people of Paducah were a notch above our last few audiences, at least if you took their clothes and manners into account. After I changed into my costume—Pinky’s nightdress—I put on a large cape wi
th epaulettes and three brass clasps down the front to cover it while I played the piano. My plan now was to sneak outside as soon as I could, find whoever was waiting for Lula, and let him know when to look for us. I figured I could slip her out right after intermission; there were a few moments when all of the actors except me would be on the stage. As I finished playing the first song and started the next, I looked for Mrs. Howard, although I wasn’t sure she was planning to come; her note had been cryptic. But, sure enough, in she walked with her old commanding style, with Comfort beside her. When she saw me, Mrs. Howard lifted her chin and nodded. The plan is in place, the nod said. Everything is fine. But it was not.
I must have been banging the keys rather hard, for Hugo said, “A little lighter, if you please, May. The ladies and gents want to hear themselves talk while they find their seats.” My piano playing was indicative of my state of mind, which was entirely disassociated with my body. I hit the keys with all my might, and then, following Hugo’s instruction, a little less than all my might, half hoping I could just play forever. But all too soon Hugo signaled an end to it. Men and women had squeezed into every spot on the benches, and, this being the South, whites sat up in the risers instead of free blacks. Dr. Early was sitting dead center in the front row with the justice of the peace on his right and on his left a rough-looking sort of man who could have passed as a whip master or, just as easily, the offender being whipped.
I had seen the justice of the peace enter. I’d been watching for him just as I’d been watching for Mrs. Howard, wondering if I would be able to pick him out from among the farmers and tradesmen who were ducking through the doorway, removing their hats and looking around with the expression of blank dislocation that I’d seen on almost every man stepping into our theater. But the justice of the peace, it turned out, was easy to spot, since his expression walking in was not one of dislocation but of ownership, never mind that as far as I knew he had never once been on the Floating Theatre before. He was not an overly tall man, nor an overly rugged man, nor particularly handsome, but he swept into the room with a dusting of energy around him like a cloak, as though he carried his own world with him wherever he went and imposed it on others as a matter of course. He wore a dark, well-tailored coat and his face was sun-creased and craggy, dominated by a pair of bushy eyebrows. When I saw him, my heart seemed to change its rhythm for a moment, as though my blood decided to turn around and go back where it came from. I retain the impression that he came in alone, and that there was a space before and after him, as though others preferred to give him a wide berth.
The Underground River Page 31