Mede fell silent, picking at a splinter on the box with his thumbnail.
Remembering the times when Luke would haul him along to practice, would make him throw thousands of ‘good’ tosses that he and his friends could swing at?
Or thinking of that ravaged face by the lamplight, the big hands – duplicates of Mede’s own – lying empty on the coverlet, swathed in bandages to the wrists?
‘Even this trouble between him and Mrs Bray,’ he continued hesitantly. ‘Her turning cold on him, locking him out of her room … He’d no more harm himself over that than he’d … than he’d become a monk, sir! I know him! I did know him …’
Hoots and curses yanked January back to the present. Red Vassall – one of the Centurions who’d been loaned to them as a ‘sure-fire’ striker – had taken a swing at the Frenchman’s pitch and missed, putting the team out. On the way out to the field the kidding was good-naturedly fierce: ‘You swattin’ flies there, Red?’
‘Whoa, he saw Miss Prissy standin’ in the crowd—’ Miss Prissy was Vassall’s sweetheart of the moment.
‘No, he’s tryin’ to impress his mother …’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ January gripped Mede’s shoulder reassuringly. ‘Mr Bray’s fine. He’ll sleep through the day and won’t know anything about this. You know he wants you to win. That’s all you need to know right now. The rest is for tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Mede softly, and walked to the striker’s position, straightening his shoulders in the silvery light.
And within moments January saw that his worry over the young man was totally needless. Mede threw like a demon: changeable, tempting, tantalizing, and devastating. Gonesse, Baldini, and a young man named Djemal from the Turkish embassy managed to hit every ball Mede threw, and scored a respectable number of tallies, but the rest of the foreign team was at his mercy. They swung at deceptive slow-balls. They lashed and swatted at fast sidearm flings. A dozen arguments ensued among the three Referees about whether the striker could have hit the ball instead of simply standing there and letting it go past, in order for the fourth throw to count as a knock, and the game became one of gnawing attrition. The Invaders went out earlier, and more often. The Stalwarts got a slim lead, held it, widened it. When they reached fifty tallies, to the enemies’ thirty-five, even the Southerners in the audience started cheering.
Tomorrow, thought January. When the game was over, and the ‘honor of America’ saved or lost … Did Luke Bray really think his Good Man Friday was going to come back to him?
Did Mede really think the young planter capable of being friends with a black man who had formerly been his slave?
From his waistcoat pocket he unfolded the small sheets he’d taken from Bray’s watch, studied the five little diagrams. The notepaper itself was clean, the creases fresh-looking in the waning evening light.
And what about this?
He took out the red-backed notebook that never left him. Page after page of magic squares, including these five. Why copy these?
And from where? There had never been a time, so far as January could tell, when Bray had had access to Singletary’s notes.
If Mede goes back tomorrow, can I go with him and ask Bray where he found these?
And if I did, would he tell me the truth?
The Invaders rallied when Trigg took Mede out into the field for a time, to let his arm rest, but they never managed to close the lead. When, at seventy points to forty-five, Mede walked back to the throwing mark, the shouts and whoops were deafening.
By that time the sky was nearly dark, and fog was beginning to rise. The distant houses back in the direction of K Street were speckled with light. Mede put out the first French striker without effort, and after the French regained the offensive by plugging the Reverend Perkins on his run from third base to fourth, put them out again on his first throw.
At that point the referees called the team captains together, and Gonesse conceded that there was no way the Invaders could recover the lead.
The game was declared for the Stalwarts.
Shouts, shrieks, howls of triumph. Gnashing of teeth, too, thought January, if people really had bet a thousand dollars, that whites – even Frenchmen – were better players than blacks. A phaeton – led by a groom at the team’s head – worked its way toward them through the crowd, and January was astonished to see Luke Bray sitting up in its high seat, chalk-white and clinging to the polished brass rails for support. As it came near Mede cried, ‘Marse Luke!’ and shoved his way forward, reached the vehicle even as Luke – with the assistance of the disapproving Jem – climbed down, his face aglow with his smile.
‘You did it, Friday!’
The two men embraced, Mede’s strength holding his former master on his feet.
‘You shouldn’t have come!’
‘I don’t need you nursemaidin’ me, Mede.’ There was deep love in his voice. ‘It’s worth it seein’ you standin’ up there like an oak-tree puttin’ them French pussies in their place. Worth it seein’ those polecats from over at the Treasury coughin’ up money they didn’t have any better sense than to bet—’ He swayed on his feet.
Both January and Royall Stockard sprang forward out of the press to support him. Stockard scrambled up into the phaeton, said, ‘Pass him up to me, boy,’ and January and Mede lifted him to the high seat. ‘Dumb idiot,’ Stockard added affectionately, and hugged Bray around his shoulders. ‘You didn’t have to come down here – good Lord, Dickerson said you’d had a fall from your horse but he didn’t say you’d half killed yourself! You didn’t have to come down here to know even our niggers could whip a bunch of Frenchies!’
‘Knew they could,’ gasped Bray, still grinning from ear to ear. ‘By God, I wanted to see it … Wanted to see my boy.’
From the other side of the phaeton, Mr Noyes raised his sharp New England voice. ‘Even your niggers, Mr Stockard? I seem to recall it was those same Frenchies whipped you.’
Stockard turned his head. The other Warriors who had gathered around the phaeton grew silent, and the silence spread like blood in water.
The young Congressman climbed down, stood four-square before the abolitionist, the other Warriors of Democracy grouped behind. ‘What are you sayin’, sir?’ he inquired in a soft and deadly voice.
‘I’m saying … sir –’ Noyes’ pale eyes sparkled with a holy warrior’s gleam – ‘is that if the sons of Africa have proven themselves better men than the white sons of France, isn’t it time that you – and these other honorable sons of Virginia, and South Carolina, and the other states of this Union whom you disgrace before the eyes of the world with the blight of slavery – admit that these men who have, in your own words, “saved the honor of America”, are men? Men like yourselves?’
Someone in the crowd shouted, ‘You know fuck-all about it, Yankee!’
And the abolitionists who had quietly assembled behind Noyes shouted back, ‘You can’t have it both ways!’
‘They are men, sir,’ Stockard replied. ‘But if you weren’t a fucking fool pur-blind on abolitionist drivel, you’d see by lookin’ at ’em they aren’t men like ourselves. They are niggers.’
‘Then give us a chance to see what kind of men you are,’ returned Noyes, in a voice pitched to carry over the whole of the crowd. ‘Mr Trigg, will your men be ready, in two weeks’ time, on this spot, to let the sons of Virginia, the sons of South Carolina, the sons of Maryland test their honorable manhood against you in an honest game?’
‘I will, sir.’ Darius Trigg stepped forward out of the crowd, and the Stalwarts moved in around him: weedy Reverend Perkins, Frank Preston, Handsome Dan. January stepped back from the side of the phaeton and stood behind the flute player. ‘Two weeks from this evening we’ll be here on this field waiting for you to defeat us, Mr Stockard, sir.’
He spoke humbly: three years ago whites had rampaged through Washington burning black men’s businesses and every black school in the city. But the challenge was there. Before Stock
ard could retort, a loud-voiced Indiana Senator bellowed, ‘I got a hundred dollars says the Warriors’ll take ’em!’
‘I’ll see that—’ somebody yelled, and a pandemonium of betting swept the crowd.
Mede started to walk toward his teammates, and Luke Bray held his whip down from his seat on the phaeton, blocking Mede’s path with its whalebone shaft. For a long minute their eyes met.
Don’t you fucken dare …
Gently, Mede slid his shoulder past the whip and walked over to stand beside January.
Bray fumbled for the reins, then sagged back with a gasp. Stockard, his face like stone, leaped back up to the high seat, snatched the whip and the reins, and without a glance at Jem – who had stood all this time at the horses’ heads – lashed the team with a crack like lightning. The startled horses sprang straight at the Stalwarts, who leaped aside, and the whole crowd, black and white, had to scramble out of the way.
January looked around him, as if only then he became conscious of the shoving, shouting men. Yells of, ‘Six to one … Three to one … Dammit, they can beat them …’ hammered him from all sides. He felt slightly short of breath, aware he’d seen something unprecedented, unheard-of. Though carefully phrased in the humblest of language, black men had challenged white ones to combat.
It was as if poor Gun, back in New Orleans, had risen from his bench and broken Eph Norcum’s well-deserving nose.
‘No fucken way white men gonna play against niggers …’
‘You think they can’t win?’
‘I think it ain’t right …’
‘I got ten dollars says they can’t win …’
He looked around, glimpsed Frank Preston hurrying Dominique, Thèrése, and Mrs Perkins – who was shouting imprecations back over her shoulder – away in the direction of Connecticut Avenue. To Mede he said, ‘We’d better get out of here.’
It was only a matter of time before some outraged soul ran to call the constables …
If the constables weren’t there already.
Or some enthusiastic Democrat came to the conclusion that the way to avoid the whole issue was to beat the living crap out of the Stalwarts …
A hand touched his elbow; a voice said, ‘Ben.’
He turned and found himself looking at Bill, the sweeper-up in the offices of the surgeon Charles Date.
Bill held out his hand. ‘I found your grave robber for you. Feller name of Wylie Pease.’
EIGHTEEN
Easter morning. There were Masses at Holy Trinity in Georgetown at noon and two as well as in the morning; January knew in his bones that Mede shouldn’t visit Luke Bray alone.
‘Might I beg you to wait a few minutes?’ When she came into the kitchen to meet them, Rowena Bray didn’t look as if she’d slept much last night. By the activity around the work table – the cook working pastry, and a girl in a housemaid’s calico dress pressed into service cutting up fruit – there would be company for dinner that afternoon, despite the illness of the master of the house … Or perhaps as a means of showing Washington society that he was not so very ill? ‘I fear Dr Gurry is a Southerner, and these Americans …’
She hesitated, seeking tactful words, and January gave a wry smile. ‘You mean he’d walk out in a pet if he thought someone had called in a black surgeon to look at his patient? M’am, compared to what went on at the ball game yesterday afternoon, that strikes me with about the force of a bread pellet.’
She ducked her head and made a tremulous sound almost like a laugh.
‘Thank you for understanding, Mr January.’ In a gentler voice, she added, ‘I shall tell Luke you’re here also, Mede. Though I warn you, he was … I have never seen him as he was, when Mr Stockard brought him home yesterday evening.’
‘I expect he’s angry at me.’
‘I don’t even know how to describe it.’ She passed her hand over her brow, with a wince of dread. ‘That blackness of spirits, that look that haunts his eyes … I thought after yesterday’s excursion he must sleep through the night like a … I would say like a baby – that’s the expression, isn’t it? Only babies never do sleep through the night! He was exhausted when Mr Stockard brought him in, but his sleep was tormented, all night, by nightmares. Please do come in—’
She shook her head, as if to clear away nightmares of her own, and led them toward the door at the other side of the kitchen. ‘Curses upon these Americans for not putting servants’ halls in their houses – and I will not make you wait in the kitchen! Would you much mind sitting in my office? I shall have Dacey bring you coffee—’
The tiny office contained no more than a desk, a chair, and another straight-backed chair for the tradesmen for whose visits the chamber was designed. The household account-books ranged on a shelf: butcher, grocer, dealers in coal and wood and hay. Another green-bound book logged the daily running-expenses of the house; yet another concerned the expenses of the slaves. Folders held the receipts, tied up with tape: the meticulous track of every penny, into the household and out again. A clean-washed slate occupied a corner of the desk, chalks neatly set in a tray beside the ink pot, standish, and pens. Rose hated doing the bills almost as much as she hated sewing, but a lifetime of near poverty had trained her in the skill. She and January took turns at the chore, as they traded off washing the dishes, scouring the chamber pots, and sweeping the hearths.
January couldn’t imagine trying to run a household that included a man who’d bet a thousand dollars on a hand of cards. Planters lived from crop to crop: Luke Bray must have grown up in the systole and diastole of debt and credit. And in fact Rowena Bray had been quite right when she’d repeated Luke’s argument that a gentleman must bet. It was a way of demonstrating that one was a gentleman, generous and not clutch-fisted. The worst one gentleman could say about another was that he was stingy.
Newspapers lay on the desk: the National Intelligencer, the New York Times. Beside them, a stack of small notes, crumpled and straightened again. Blotted, January saw, with the brown stains of blood.
As if someone bleeding from both wrists had pawed through them in drunken delirium, hoping the sums on them didn’t really add up to all that much.
When the housemaid brought in the coffee, Mede followed her back into the kitchen to ask news of his friends, so January also rose, and looked at the top note of the pile:
Stockard. $50
The cost of food for a month, for himself, Rose, Baby John, Zizi-Marie and Gabriel.
The price of a lady’s silk shawl. A laboring man’s wage for a month and a half; the purchase of a horse, or that horse’s upkeep for three months.
The cost of the body of a dead man, to a surgeon desperate to increase his skills.
He fingered Bill’s note in his pocket.
Now, THERE’S a fit occupation for the feast of the Resurrection.
Voices in the hall. January cursed the curiosity that made him pry like a nosy child into the affairs of a woman who treated him as a human being in this land of slavery and prejudice, and sat down again. ‘A most serious malady, Mrs Bray.’ Through the door that led to the main hall, he saw a tall gray-haired man in a physician’s frock coat and top hat descend the stair with Mrs Bray. ‘Assuredly, the Poet knew whereof he spoke when he penned the words, Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy. You did well to summon my aid.’ A light voice and a mellow South Carolina accent. ‘With care and proper treatment – I am myself a strong proponent of the water-treatment for vexations of the mind – the tenor of your poor husband’s thoughts can be restored. He must have complete care by responsible experts.’
‘Of course, Dr Gurry. But his position in the Navy Department—’
‘One must never permit the mere prejudices of one’s neighbors to bar the golden road to mental health, Madame. Your husband is in a very serious case, very serious.’ Dr Gurry pulled on his expensive kid gloves. ‘The violence of his discourse, and his oscillation from the agitation we observed to the depression which you have described, indicate to me a most gr
ave condition. Moreover, even the brief examination of his skull which I was able to accomplish made it clear to me that his organs of melancholia, combatativeness, and destructiveness are dangerously overdeveloped, while the areas of hope and equanimity are so attenuated as to be almost non-existent.’ He adjusted his pince-nez and regarded Mrs Bray with fatherly severity.
‘You do him no favor, by allowing your wifely concern for mere reputation to override all the signs of a condition which may well result in disaster. You – ah!’ He paused as a knock on the front door was answered by the maid who slipped past them to open it. ‘Mr Spunge.’ He bowed to the trim little gentleman in the flowered waistcoat who entered the hall.
Mrs Bray offered the newcomer two fingers in the English fashion. ‘Mr Spunge, I presume you are acquainted with Dr Gurry—’
There was a general murmuring among all present at how pleased they were to encounter one another in Mrs Bray’s front hall. Mrs Bray saw Dr Gurry out the front door, then hastened to escort Mr Spunge – January recognized his name from the list of surgeons Henri and Chloë had visited – up the stairs.
Dacey had left the door open between the parlor and the kitchen, and through it he heard Mede’s account of the town ball game, and the cook’s tale of their master’s determination to see that game despite his wife’s orders to Jem not to take the phaeton out. ‘No, he’s pretty much his old self,’ said Dacey the maid. ‘That gruel your Mr January had us make for him yesterday, he took an’ flung it, bowl an’ all, at Peter’s head … The cursin’ he done when M’am brought up that Dr Gurry to see him this mornin’ was mighty fine. I ain’t heard such cursin’ since I worked for Marse Stackpole in Charleston …’
‘He does try to keep up the appearance of good spirits before the servants,’ said Mrs Bray, when she came into the office from seeing Spunge out the door. ‘It’s one of the most unnerving things about this melancholia that comes over him. It’s like watching him turn into another person, when he thinks no one can see him. This morning I passed his door and heard him weeping like a child—’ She turned her head, as Mede came quietly in from the kitchen, and closed the door behind him.
Good Man Friday Page 17