‘My mother would have had it that a man with true strength of character would be willing to set aside his foolishness for the sake of his family.’ The old diplomat regarded him with bright, pale eyes. ‘But having set aside foolishness in my time, I can’t say my life has been the happier.’
‘Happy or not,’ replied Poe quietly, ‘I’ve come to realize that it is … almost immaterial. It’s like those magic squares of Mr Singletary’s: whichever way I add up the numbers, the reply is the same. I must be as I am. I must write. It’s not that I must take that road – it’s that all roads turn out to be that road. And whether it leads to my salvation or to my destruction I do not know. Nor does it matter.’
Adams said, ‘Hmph,’ and Chloë squeezed Poe’s hand.
‘Bonne chance, M’sieu.’
‘Et vous aussi, Madame. They are,’ Poe added, looking at the dimming sky, ‘leaving it rather late—’
Voices rose in anger at the fringes of the crowd. Noyes and his abolitionists looked as if they might go seek the cause of the trouble, but the shouting died away almost at once as someone – who probably had money on the game – broke up the fight.
Close-by, someone said Mede Tyler’s name – ‘He gonna show up, or ain’t he?’
‘They’ll be in a heap of trouble if he does …’
‘You think he’s hiding out?’
‘Got to be. O’Hanlon and his boys …’
It’s a goddam game …
Is it all, January wondered, a goddam game?
He thought of Mede Tyler, asleep in his unmarked grave.
Of Rowena Bray, buried yesterday in the Christ Church cemetery not far from where January had lain in wait for Wylie Pease.
He looked up at Chloë, in the carriage above him. It would be good beyond computation to be back in New Orleans, with Rose and Baby John, Gabriel and Zizi-Marie, his real family, instead of this strange artificial family, assumed out of regard for the conventions of ‘good society’, which would not let women travel alone nor white men legitimize their love for women of color. Muggy heat would be settling in on New Orleans by the time they returned, but Chloë, no doubt, would go with her elderly guest to one of the Viellard plantations along the river while Henri retired to his cottage at Mandeville, to live with Dominique for the summer.
Chloë lifted her head, and January thought, for a moment, that those enormous blue eyes rested upon his sister and Henri over the heads of the crowd. Jealous? Wistful? Irked at the way he held her hands, in front of half the clerks and junior Congressmen in Washington? Or merely scientifically curious about the foolishness to which humankind subjected itself, when it loved?
I am not capable of making him happy, she had said once …
Shouting again, elsewhere in the mob; serious, this time. January scanned the fringes of the crowd, calculating the quickest way to get the women and children away, if real trouble started. Far off, the bells of the Presbyterian Church on I Street struck six. The light was fading.
Already, some of the women were leaving, children in tow. Henri flicked the reins of his team, turned the chaise. As they passed Musette, the fat man leaned down to lift his daughter up to sit between them. A few minutes later, Adams observed that the oncoming evening chill was not doing either of his passengers any good and turned his own team back towards Connecticut Avenue.
Across the deep grass, straggling groups of men were walking back toward town. January saw Poe stride away, carpet bag in hand, a dilapidated raven in the twilight. He thought he saw Wylie Pease and skinny brass-haired Miss Drail emerge from the crowd and stroll back toward the new-twinkling lights, hand in hand.
From the edges of the crowd, curses were beginning to drift on the damp air.
The Stalwarts hurled the ball to one another to practice striking, or trotted between the pegs, warming up their bodies, waiting for the Warriors to arrive.
Darkness fell, the Warriors disdaining to accept the challenge of lesser men.
With darkness came curfew, the time for all good niggers to be indoors.
Among the last of the groups to leave, January walked back through evening stillness and deep grass, to pack.
Good Man Friday Page 30