The General's Cook

by Ramin Ganeshram

  Hercules poured cornmeal into the mixture in his bowl, then took up his spoon and began to stir the whole thing in smooth, even strokes.

  “Now, girl, I need you to grease that crock,” he said, nodding at the mold she had brought him earlier. She brought a small piece of lard from the larder.

  Hercules scooped up the ham bits he had scraped from the bone, added them to his pudding, then sprinkled in some dried thyme he had plucked from the string of herbs hanging on the wall behind him. When Margaret finished greasing the pudding pan, he poured the corn mixture inside it, covered it snugly, then set it in a large footed Dutch oven he half filled with water. He squatted to nestle the heavy cast iron pot in the embers of the fire and then stood, brushing ashes from his apron.

  Oney stood too, hoisting the cast iron pan with the shawl in both hands and heading out toward the laundry building.

  The kitchen settled back into a comfortable silence with everyone doing their own tasks. Hercules went into the cellar and came back with a small barrel that he set down on the worktable with a heavy thump.

  “Mr. Julien, should Mr. Fraunces come down, please tell him that I’ve brought up the Madeira he asked for.”

  The Frenchman nodded from the hearth, where he now squatted turning the spits of the four tin roasting ovens lined up there, each holding two or three squab he had dressed and stuffed earlier in the day. Between turning the spits, he carefully fried the potato cakes he had made from the leftover scalded milk and Nate’s potatoes.

  Hercules untied his apron and placed it neatly over a chair near the door, then gave Richmond a quick rat-a-tat on the head as he passed him into the garden. He did not offer where he might be going, nor did anyone dare ask.

  Outside, the waning sun cast a deep orange glow over the street. The red brick of the roads and the buildings that dotted Sixth Street glowed like irons in the fire, belying the chill wind that whipped down the avenue. Beyond Sixth the city opened up to wider country. The cold air raced over the flatlands and quickly cooled Hercules’s skin, still sweat-soaked from the heat of the kitchen, but he didn’t mind. Being away from the house was worth any discomfort of weather.

  He walked past the State House and Congress Hall at the corner of Walnut, with the prison yard just across the street to the south. The crowd had gathered maybe a block and a half beyond the far end of the prison yard, barely moving as the ramshackle old blacksmith shop inched along on its rollers toward Reverend Allen’s property at the furthest end of the street. A team of ten massive horses patiently walked a few steps then halted, led by Oronoko Dexter, who stood in front of them and coaxed them along. He held his hand aloft as he walked backward, a warning to the other coachmen who walked alongside the team at regular paces, whips in hand, ready to force them along.

  Eyeing the crowd, Hercules wished he had had the time to grab his fine coat from the attic quarters he shared with Richmond and Nate—not for the warmth but for the appearance of the thing. It was a fine cutaway coat as good as—nay, better—than any worn by the free black men here. But there was no call for him to be in the upper quarters in the shank of the day; it was too risky to even attempt it. Better to slip out of the kitchen here and there and return quickly, even in his shirtsleeves. There was time enough of an evening to set out for the city’s pleasures once every last morsel was plated and brought into the dining room by the footmen. Blacks and whites gathered to watch the spectacle. Some young gentleman jeered from the second-floor window of a fine house along the route, trying to spook the horses. Hercules spied Bess, the pickpocket, taking advantage of the chaos, weaving in and out of the crowd like a confused old woman. She’d earn a good take today.

  Hercules passed close to the wall and nearly stepped on a pile of stench-filled rags. The rags shuffled and groaned near his foot. Old Ben lifted his head as if he were looking around even though there were just holes in his eye sockets.

  “Alms? Alms?” he lisped automatically, running his tongue around his toothless gums and holding out his hand.

  Hercules reached into his purse and pulled out a coin to press into the old man’s hand. He knew his story. Blinded by his master for trying to run away, and when he couldn’t see to work, the man had pulled every tooth in Old Ben’s head to sell to the dentist who made dentures for rich white folk.

  Old Ben still tried to escape, once, twice, but blind as he was, he never got far, and each time the beatings crippled him worse. In the end, the master used him for stud on the slave women he owned, to increase their numbers and his profit. When Ben had gotten too old for that, he’d turned him into the street.

  Hercules supposed that made the man now free—at least according to the abolition law—but what good was freedom when all he could do was beg and hope not to be robbed or abused for the amusement of drunks pouring out of the taverns that choked every block?

  “Why have you left your corner, Ben?” Hercules asked. Normally the old man sheltered in the garden wall where the Reverend Allen lived.

  “Is that the General’s cook?” said Ben, putting his head back and sniffing the air.

  “None other,” said Hercules. “But, tell me, why have you moved?”

  “Thought I smelled that bay rum off you,” Ben chuckled. “Mighty fancy you are …”

  “Ben, do you want me to take you back?”

  “Heh? No, son, I came here hoping the crowds will be generous.” He groped under his mass of rags and brought out a little tin cup and shook it. “Not too much yet, though …” His voice trailed off.

  “Can you get back on your own?”

  Now Old Ben lowered his head. “Get back …” he mumbled. “Miss Ollie done said the babe was stillborn but I reckon maybe massa already eat him by the time I got back …” Old Ben was gone into some mad recess of his mind. Hercules straightened and pushed down the fury that rose in his gullet, seeing the Bens of the world. If he gave voice or form to his anger he’d be raging every minute of his life, there were that many like the old man in the streets of Philadelphia, battered and used until they were nothing more than a husk.

  As bad off as they were, Hercules was sure there those who’d had their share of worse because that’s how the whites were—they’d get all they could from you until there was no more. If there was a market for your very blood, bones, and skin after you were gone, they’d take that too, he thought grimly. Since there wasn’t, you’d just as likely become like Old Ben, a pile of rags waiting to die and be flung in some unmarked pit in the Negro Burial Ground.

  His clamped his jaw down tight so his mouth was a hard line as he moved away from Ben and walked ahead toward the front of the crowd, where the Reverend Allen stood to one side of the team. He was talking to someone Hercules presumed was a free woman. He spent enough time at the tailor’s for his own clothes to know fashion, and this lady’s clothes were plain but well made in the English style and very clean. She wore a dark blue silk bonnet, rather than a head kerchief, and matching slippers. Both the bonnet and the slippers were embroidered with silver thread in a simple design. The five-button kid gloves and the lace ruffles at her elbows and on her petticoat were not numerous, but were enough to tell him she was a person of at least comfortable means.

  She stopped mid-sentence as Hercules walked up and smiled politely. Reverend Allen, his head inclined to hear what the lady was saying, also looked over to him and a smile broke across his face.

  “Ah, Master Hercules!” he said, extending his hand.

  “Reverend,” Hercules said warmly, taking the hand into his own.

  “And may I introduce you to Mrs. Harris?” Allen said, turning slightly to indicate the lady. “Mrs. Harris, this is General Washington’s cook—Master Hercules.”

  Mrs. Harris offered her hand and Hercules bent over it politely.

  “What brings you out today?” inquired Reverend Allen. The rest of his question was left unsaid. Allen, like everyone, knew that a black person in Washington’s house was an enslaved person who was not strictly
free to come and go except upon the General’s business.

  “Why, this!” Hercules said, choosing to ignore their unspoken question and instead sweeping his arm expansively across the scene beside them.

  “It is quite something, is it not, Master Hercules?” Mrs. Harris said, smiling. “I myself have been drawn away from my work to come and look.”

  “Your work, madam?” Hercules asked. She was probably a milliner or a seamstress, which would explain the clothes.

  “I am a school teacher,” she said.

  “Mrs. Harris has a school in Cherry Street,” Reverend Allen explained, answering the question in Hercules’s raised eyebrows. “She teaches our brothers and sisters their letters and arithmetics.”

  “Other things too,” said Mrs. Harris, her eyes shining. “History and Latin. Natural sciences, even. Of course, I leave the religious education to you, Mr. Allen.”

  The minister smiled. “The Lord’s army needs many soldiers, Mrs. Harris. God wants us all to teach the good word.”

  “Whom do you teach, Mrs. Harris?” asked Hercules, who had never met a black schoolteacher, much less a woman. Shopkeepers, mariners, artists even—but a schoolteacher? There had been the white Quaker, Anthony Benezet, who taught slaves and free people of color, but he died back in ’87. There was the Association for Free Instruction that held meetings Sunday afternoons, but those were run by whites also.

  “Anyone who cares to learn, sir,” she said. “Young, old, free, or …” She paused a moment and looked at him carefully. “Or not.”

  “Whoa! Steady!” Oronoko Dexter called out toward the rear flank of the team. One of the horses had gotten spooked and tried to rear up after a man in a window dropped a white kerchief so that it fluttered before the animal’s eyes. Dexter gestured to a younger man walking alongside the third horse to come up to the front and put his hand on the bridle of the blue roan he had been leading, before he himself walked toward the back to soothe the nervous horse. Reverend Allen excused himself and headed toward the commotion.

  “We hold classes every day, just as they do in the white schools,” Mrs. Harris continued, drawing Hercules’s attention back from the scene.

  “Quite an undertaking, I imagine, madam,” he said.

  “I would call it more of a mission,” she said, meeting his eyes.

  Hercules smiled at the prim lady and bowed slightly. “And no doubt one at which you excel,” he said. There was something disturbing in the way she eyed him, like a fresh joint of meat. “If I may beg your leave, Mrs. Harris—I must, ah—I must get back. Will you please give the Reverend my apologies for running off?”

  Mrs. Harris inclined her head. “Certainly, Master Hercules,” she said.

  As he turned away to head down the street he heard the teacher call behind him, “Do come to Cherry Street some time! Look for the gray clapboard building in the alley.”

  The General’s cook slipped down the narrow alley behind the stables at the rear of the presidential mansion. The orange that had set the streets aglow less than an hour before had faded into a pale indigo that bathed the white bricks of the stables a gentle lavender. From within the stables he could hear a series of snorts followed by the murmurs of Austin, the coachman. Just as he walked through the gate and around the corner, the large white head of the president’s favorite horse, Prescott, poked his head over a stall door. He tossed his head toward the breeze and his black nostrils flared as he caught the scent of Hercules. The blue twilight turned his white coat silvery-gray.

  Hercules stepped toward the horse and put his hand on its nose. “There boy,” he said in his deep, buttery voice. “I don’t have anything for you now.” Inside the stall, Austin was brushing down the animal.

  “He up there?” Hercules asked, nodding to the president’s study on the second floor.

  “Yep, none too happy neither,” said Austin without turning from his work. “Met Mr. Adams as he was riding in and was obliged to see him upstairs.”

  Prescott nudged Hercules’s hand, now lying still on his nose. More catlike than horse, he was. He absentmindedly began to rub the horse’s nose again, his thoughts dwelling on the odd Mrs. Harris before they settled on the General. If he was in with company he might have sent to the kitchen for refreshment. He hoped that Mr. Julien or even Nate had been free to see to it without calling attention to his absence.

  “Oney told me about the Reverend Allen’s church. You been over to see it?” said Austin, standing straight now to brush Prescott’s mane. Lighter skinned than even his sister Oney, Austin cut a fine figure decked out in his livery in the coachman’s seat or standing on the running board of the presidential coach. Where Oney could be sharp and sassy, Austin was always quiet and pleasant.

  “Yep, they’re moving slow. Won’t make it before sundown but they’ll make it,” Hercules said, giving the horse a final pat on the nose.

  “Black Sam were looking for you,” said Austin, bending forward again to brush out Prescott’s rear flank. “Near kicked a fuss when he found you weren’t in the scullery.”

  “Did he now?” Hercules said. He met Austin’s eyes calmly but his heart pounded a bit. Samuel Fraunces was no ally. Light-skinned and free, it was like he sometimes forgot that he wasn’t actually white and that he certainly wasn’t a Washington.

  “Right then,” said Hercules giving Prescott a final pat between the ears. “Evening, Austin.”

  “Evening, Hercules,” said Austin going back to currying the horse.

  Hercules stepped through the kitchen door and tied on his apron, relieved that Fraunces hadn’t caught him walking in. He opened the Dutch oven and removed the crock with the corn pudding. It was golden and even. Later, after unmolding it, he would sprinkle some fine orange peel over it.

  Samuel Fraunces came into the kitchen carrying a tray of used tea things and a small plate with one or two Shrewsbury biscuits just as Hercules returned to his worktable.

  “… knows better than to stop in on a Friday evening.” Fraunces was muttering to himself and shaking his head. “Ate near a dozen biscuits too.”

  He set the tray down on the table. “Where were you?” he snapped.

  “Evening to you too, Black Sam,” Hercules answered. Nothing would make Fraunces angrier than the nickname that reminded him of his race. Fraunces glared at him before stepping outside to the cellar door and calling down.

  “You there, Margaret, come and wash these things.”

  Hercules looked at him as he returned. Small and slight, the steward was always impeccably dressed. From the fashionably styled silver wig to the buckles on his shoes, not a thread was ever out of place. It was the only thing that Hercules appreciated about him.

  “I’ve sent Nate to the docks to see if the ship from Alexandria might have arrived,” Fraunces said curtly. “Richmond is helping arrange the dining room for the party.”

  Hercules didn’t respond. He hoped that, for once, his son did his work well and didn’t give Fraunces reason to call him out. Richmond’s place here was far from secure—a fact that worried him daily because he knew the boy could be maddeningly inept. With these thoughts on his mind, he went into the larder and began bringing out platter after platter. There was the ham he had sliced so thinly and stuffed eggs they had prepared that morning. Between trips he grabbed one of the last biscuits from the plate. The crumbly shortbread melted easily in his mouth, leaving behind the pleasant tinge of caraway that flavored them.

  “Those are not for you,” said Fraunces sharply.

  Hercules paused midway to the larder and turned to face Fraunces. He popped the remains of the biscuit in his mouth and chewed slowly. When he was done he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—a rough gesture he would normally never affect—so Fraunces would know that he meant it as a challenge.

  Hercules was well aware that the General favored him—that had become clear to all when Fraunces wanted to bring his own cook into the President’s House. He narrowed his eyes as he remembered the day
. The General had actually come down to the kitchen to see how he was settling in, which had irked Fraunces something awful. After the steward had bowed deeply, he had asked the president for a word.

  “Sir—I don’t believe he will do,” Fraunces had said in a low voice, as if to make sure that Hercules, who was busy pretending to examine the cookware, would not hear.

  Washington had only raised his eyebrows in his customary way, waiting for Fraunces to go on.

  “He is not versed in the French ways …”

  “Then teach him,” Washington had answered curtly.

  “I am not at all sure he can be made to learn,” Fraunces had answered, straightening proudly. “I’ve worked with the best trained cooks in the country and—”

  “And I’ve eaten in more houses and taverns in the country than I ever cared to—no one yet has answered as well as my cook,” said the president. “No one.” With the last he’d given Fraunces the withering look he gave anyone who contradicted him.

  “You will make do with Hercules,” said Washington, walking around the steward, who inclined his head and bowed—not so deeply this time.

  “You traveled well from Virginia?” Washington had asked, approaching Hercules.

  “Yes, General, thank you, sir,” he’d answered, politely, but without any hint of the deference he knew Fraunces wanted him to show.

  “Good, good,” Washington had said. “I’ve been missing your hoecakes. I’d like them for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “My pleasure, sir,” said Hercules. Fraunces stood to the side and fumed, the thoughts plain on his face.

  The rest of the kitchen staff, the scullions and the day workers, stood by agape. Washington hadn’t even acknowledged they were there.

  “Good man,” said Washington, smiling in his tight-lipped way. “Fraunces,” he said, the smile vanishing as he acknowledged the steward and left the kitchen.

  Later, when the General left, Fraunces had sidled up Hercules’s side and hissed at him about who did Hercules think he was conversing with the General as if they were two gentlemen in a parlor instead of him just a nigra slave? Why didn’t Hercules have the sense to duck his head or look at the floor?