Ruth’s Journey

by Donald McCaig

  “Hire a penguin if you must. I will have my circular staircase.”

  Mr. Jameson shook his head gloomily. “Madam, I don’t know if Jehu Glen can be persuaded—”

  “Ask him. Sir, employ your considerable charm.”

  Mr. Jameson, who had long abandoned any claim to that virtue, was taken aback.

  Solange contained her impatience. “You can but try.”

  “Although Glen’s a master mechanic,” Jameson persisted, “he is said to be . . . difficult.”

  “Um.”

  Mr. Jameson allowed that, yes, Pink House construction could start in the spring.

  Despite Jameson’s concerns, a dry foundation was laid and stringers spanned the English basement. Double courses were laid to bear the attic cistern, and workmen appeared without fuss as their special skills were required. Seemingly despite its builder, the Pink House and the carriage house (presently the builder’s shop) were under roof by August.

  If the Pink House was ready, the Evanses would host a Christmas ball.

  Solange urged Mr. Jameson to engage plasterers, cabinetmakers, glaziers, and had he summoned the Charleston stair builder and bought mahogany for the rails?

  Despite Mr. Jameson’s custom that finish workers never started until the mortar had cured for sixty days, three days after the gutters were hung, a small army of workers arrived in the carriage house with plaster molds, try planes, chisels, and shellacs.

  On a fine September afternoon when the roses were poignant and frail, Ruth brought Pauline to the site. The workmen’s busyness and jocularity fascinated her. Irishmen, free colored, and hired slaves “on the town” worked cheerfully side by side.

  Inside the gaping frame where carriage doors would one day hang, Ruth perched Pauline on a sawbuck. “You see, little one. Men’s doin’ they work. See that man. Goodness I never seen no saw so puny. Lookin’ like a doll’s saw! You see men steamin’ strips?”

  A coffee-colored workman was adjusting wooden frames.

  “You!” an Irishman shouted. “Keep your black hands off my template!”

  Many workmen had outsize hands, but the coffee-colored man’s hands were fine and smooth as a Master’s. Ignoring the Irishman, he continued.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What are you at?”

  “This ain’t gonna do, McQueen,” the colored man replied. “This got to be tangent. You angle way too steep.”

  The blond, mottle-faced man set thick hands on his hips. “Who the hell are you to be correcting my work?”

  The coffee-colored man straightened as if the question deserved answering. “I been apprentice twelve years with Jacob Bellows, stair builder of Mulberry Park, Robinson House, and Blakely House ballroom. I be Master Stair Builder here. You got do as I say or get gone.”

  “Well now! Well now! Mr. Jameson! Mr. Jameson, sir, you’re required here!”

  Sawing stopped and men quietly laid down tools as the builder picked through and around stalled projects. Meantime, the coffee-colored man bent to the workbench, set his protractor, and scribed an arc on a board.

  Jameson ran a hand through his hair. “What’s this? What’s this? Can’t we work without disputation?”

  “Mr. Jameson, sir. This nigger is telling me what to do. This impertinent nigger.”

  Indifferently, as if in another room, the coffee-colored man scribed a second arc. Ruth heard his pencil scritch on the wood.

  A workman farted, and his fellow punched his arm.

  Jameson’s smile wasn’t quite sure of itself. “Mr. Glen?”

  “Sir?” He laid his pencil beside his instrument before turning.

  “McQueen, here—”

  “‘The workman is worthy of his hire,’ Mr. Jameson. Be he not? McQueen won’t do what I tells him do. McQueen more bother than he worth.”

  “Jehu—”

  “Mr. Jameson, Savannah got plenty mens needs work. I need men to do what I say ’thout back talkin’.”

  “This nigger—”

  Jameson opened his purse to count coins. “Your wages.”

  “You’d let a white man—”

  “Mr. McQueen, I have need of a stair builder. Jehu Glen is English trained: the best in the Low Country.”

  “Well, I’ll be. I’ll be a . . . a son of a whore!”

  McQueen may have instigated mayhem as he passed behind the stair builder bent to his work, but others had his arms and McQueen contented himself with spitting into the sawdust. Jehu didn’t look up.

  Ruth whispered, “You seed that, Baby Pauline? Does you believes what we seed?”

  The stair builder inclined his ear to Jameson’s quiet admonishments but didn’t stop what he was doing. Jameson perhaps wanted to say more but turned to the others. “Is today the Sabbath? If not, perhaps you will continue your work.”

  Walking home, Ruth hummed a tune she had heard somewhere a very long time ago. Next morning in Reynolds Square, Mammy Cerise heard her and frowned. “Don’t you be hummin’ Rebellion song,” she said.

  “Rebellion song?” Ruth asked.

  “Don’t you be hummin’ that!”

  Ruth frowned.

  Mammy Cerise whispered, “Don’t you know you hummin’ Haiti uprisin’ song? White masters plumb hates hear that song.”

  That afternoon, shaded by a parasol, Pauline napped outside the carriage house.

  Jehu Glen was the most beautiful creature Ruth had ever seen. Where had the man been born, what had shaped him? His movements were economical and swift. Sunbeams touched his arms gold as his wood plane made curls. When he shaved his arm hair to test a chisel’s edge, Ruth wanted to cry, “Watch out! Don’t go cuttin’ youself!” She wondered if Jehu’s dramatic test of each razor-sharp blade meant he was as aware of her as she was of him.

  She came back the next day and the day after. One time, when Jehu was in the house, she touched a plane blade and sliced her thumb, which she popped into her mouth, sucking hot, sweet blood.

  Another time she slipped a curl of cherrywood into her apron, and its faint cherrywood tanginess scented her pallet that night.

  Other Mammies brought their charges to the grand house a-building. Older children made scrap lumber forts and fleets.

  Mammy Cerise had heard about the free-colored stair builder. “He daddy, he white man. He buy heself a pretty servant girl and not long afore one thing lead to ’nother. When baby growed, Glen set him free and ’prentice him to an Englishman what build all them big Charleston town houses. When Englishman die, that Jehu boy set up on he own. He think high of heself.”

  Ruth smiled. “He do.”

  “That boy so cheap he make a half cent beg for mercy. Sleep on bench in the carriage house ’cause he too cheap to rent heself a room.”

  “He practical. He savin’ to get married.”

  “Girl, don’t you go slippin’ down carriage house after dark.”

  “I ain’t never said nothin’ to the man, Mammy Cerise. Nary word.”

  * * *

  Solange thought Wesley was working too hard, too long hours, and one October evening over supper she said so. She also thought he was drinking too much but didn’t mention that.

  Wesley ran his hand over his eyes. “All these fresh-minted factors and buyers, naturally they all need to ‘see me’ or ‘buy me a whiskey’ or ‘sit down to (ha, ha) pick my brain’—learning a business I understand and they do not. The Up-country planters are swamped with novice factors offering prices that don’t allow anyone to profit.”

  “Perhaps you should do a little less. Delegate more of your ­duties.”

  “In this boom, anyone worth hiring is in business for themselves.”

  She changed the subject. “Our little Mammy is smitten with your stair builder.”

  He relaxed. “He�
��s not mine, dear. I wouldn’t know the man if I saw him on the street. He’s Jameson’s perhaps, or, since you are in charge, I suppose he’s yours.”

  “Jehu is free colored and very much his own man.”

  He shrugged. “Ruth is how old? Fifteen or so? Old enough to jump the broomstick if she wishes.”

  “It’s not gone so far as that. She’s mooning over the man, that’s all.”

  “Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He raised his glass. “Two more years of good times, and I’ll have a competence for you and Pauline.”

  “Only Pauline?”

  He frowned. “What . . .”

  “You are to be a father again, my dear. If you don’t work yourself to death first.”

  He offered his arm. “Dear, dear Solange. Let us go upstairs and celebrate.”

  * * *

  Ruth and Pauline began taking supper at the carriage house, where plasterers were preparing molds and Jehu Glen assembled sections of his curved staircase.

  One afternoon, when all the others were busy in the house, Ruth tiptoed so close she could smell his sweat.

  The stair builder didn’t look up from the rail he was sanding. “Inferior mechanic got no business takin’ pay. That man no better than thief.”

  “Oh.” Ruth backed away.

  Another day, Ruth offered Jehu their dinner basket. “Eat some,” she urged. “We gots plenty.”

  Expressionless, Jehu picked through the basket she’d carefully assembled, taking a chunk of jack cheese and an apple, which he munched as he passed into the house, grumbling at plasterers whose scaffold was in his way.

  For three days Jehu accepted Ruth’s food without thanks and without quitting work. The fourth day, a slow Saturday, he returned her basket. “Who you, girl?”

  Ruth said.

  “You one of them French Negroes?”

  “I was a baby in Saint-Domingue.”

  “Huh.”

  Next Monday, dust motes floated in the sunlight of the carriage house and Pauline was napping with her mouth open. Jehu tightened clamps and laid glued pieces on the workbench. “Tell me, girl,” he said. “Jameson pays me a dollar a day. What I worth to that man?”

  “Jehu . . .”

  “Is I worth more or less than a dollar?”

  “Worth a dollar, I ’spect.”

  His smile barely lighted his face. “Workman figure if he pay a dollar, he worth a dollar. Why in tarnation would Jameson hire man weren’t worth no more’n he was payin’ him? Jameson got to get more for my work than he payin’ me, else why not do it heself? That extra money go into he Capital.”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “Course you didn’t. Course not. You don’t worry ’bout no money. Servants don’t got worry ’bout money. Free men gots to worry ’bout it. ’Deed they do.”

  Jehu spoke about “Capital” like “Le Bon Dieu” or “United States of America.” Jehu described “Capital” like Masters describe a beautiful lady or a fast horse. Jehu had four hundred and seventy-one dollars Capital. He owned chisels and planes and try squares and plumb bobs and the walnut toolbox he’d made himself. He slid open velvet-lined drawers like each drawer had a name. That toolbox had pride of place on his workbench, and every evening he dusted it, last thing. Touching a perfect dovetail, Jehu informed Ruth, “Before you a ‘Master’ you got to make a Masterpiece.”

  Jehu’s Capital was in Mr. Haversham’s safe, where nobody could steal it, and one day soon, he’d use his Capital to set himself up as a builder, just like Mr. Jameson. He’d hire coloreds “on the town” ’count they’d work for less and wouldn’t sass like free coloreds or Irish. With lower costs he could charge less for his work, and whites would naturally have to hire him.

  Jehu pursed his lips. “Preacher Vesey say my notion ain’t gonna work. Vesey say white man ain’t never let no black man get up. They’s afeared. Tell me, girl, you think white folks afeared of us?”

  “Sure they is.” Ruth’s blurt surprised herself and she covered her mouth.

  He dismissed that. “Well, they ain’t. Ain’t no Negro got no army, nor navy, nor no big guns. Ain’t no black man own no white man, that for sure.”

  After work and on Sunday afternoons, free coloreds and Irish drank in sailors’ taverns on the docks, but Jehu never went with them. “Man can’t hang on to his Capital never gonna amount to nothin’,” he told Ruth.

  Ruth was Jehu’s only friend in Savannah, and he named only Vesey in Charleston. Denmark Vesey was “just a rough carpenter, don’t you know? Ain’t no master mechanic. He fine preacher, though, breathing with tongues of fire, yes, he do. When he preach, you can feel Hell heat!”

  For the first time in her life, Ruth dreamed about living with someone besides Solange. But she couldn’t. Solange was expecting another baby, and Ruth would be Mammy Ruth to both children. That’s how things were.

  Ruth wondered what she’d earn if she were paid to be Mammy. Would Solange want a Mammy if she had to pay, or would she care for her babies herself?

  Jehu’s dreams were as beautiful as the man himself. Charleston was rich as Pharaoh, and a man like Jehu . . . why, a man like Jehu could set up his own shop just like his friend Denmark.

  Although Mr. Jameson fretted prodigiously and kept his workmen at it from “can (see) to can’t,” by the second week of December the Pink House wasn’t ready and the furniture Solange had ordered from New York City hadn’t arrived at the docks. Wesley seemed almost relieved. “A Christmas ball would have been a very great expense.”

  “Expense?” Solange frowned. “Wesley . . .”

  “I, for one, am grateful we shan’t be bothering.”

  “This year.”

  “Of course, dear: ‘This year’ . . .”

  * * *

  For two decades, Savannah dames had thrust eligible daughters against Philippe Robillard’s bachelorhood. Some of the repulsed declared that any male who could resist such beautiful, gracious, suitable girls must be a little unusual, and much was implied by that bland description.

  Without prior announcement and to general consternation, the wealthy Philippe suddenly married a Muscogee Creek woman said to be a princess of that savage people. Dames whose daughters had been spurned thought she’d damn well better be a princess.

  No gentry attended the wedding, to which only Cousin Pierre and several Muscogee kinsmen had been invited. After the ceremony, the wedding party repaired to Pierre’s home for sherry, with which the Muscogee were apparently unaccustomed. One was spotted spewing into Pierre’s rosebushes as Nehemiah helped others into Philippe’s carriage for return to their camp.

  The next day Pierre made an incautious jest about “fearing the loss of what hair I have,” which was elaborated upon—with extravagant miming—in Savannah’s best withdrawing rooms. Antonia Sevier insisted that prior to Mr. and Mrs. Philippe Robillard’s Christian nuptials an altogether pagan ritual had been performed at the Muscogee encampment.

  Curiosity about the Muscogee princess was intense, and though calling cards accumulated in Mrs. Robillard’s hall salver, she was never “at home.”

  Pierre Robillard claimed his cousin’s bride was a woman of considerable charm, but, despite rather unsubtle prompting, he never elaborated on that. “Cousin Philippe is a happy man. Finally, my dear kinsman is ‘in his element.’”

  After its decade-long absence, the Robillard Christmas ball had become a legend; an icon of “Old Savannah,” when every lady was gracious and every gentleman blazed. Savannahians weren’t disappointed when the Evanses’ invitation failed to materialize and the Robillards’ did. Invitations were signed by Philippe and Pierre, and underneath the cousins’ signatures was a squiggle which might have been a Muscogee bird though nobody knew which bird exactly.

  * * *

  None of
Savannah’s leading citizens had been in Philippe’s mansion since his mother’s funeral feast twenty years ago, and everyone was eager to see what the Muscogee princess had made of her new home. Sentimentalists hoped it had been restored to the grandeur it enjoyed during the Revolution, when it had served as General Howe’s headquarters.

  In happy anticipation, gentlefolk had their carriages revarnished, glittering jewelry emerged from strongboxes, and Savannah’s seamstresses worked their fingers sore creating ball gowns from the latest Paris patterns. Curiosity met Speculation in every withdrawing room; neither was sated, both invigorated.

  Solange handed their invitation to her husband. “She may be a Princess, but her penmanship is deplorable. Any child could do better.”

  “What does Dr. Michaels say? Should you be attending balls in your delicate condition?”

  Solange pouted. “He says I will deliver a healthy happy baby. He urges more exercise. This isn’t the dark ages, you know.”

  Did Wesley hear? He was so distant these days. “It’s a busy time for the firm. Planters . . .”

  “Darling Wesley!” She took his face between her palms. “It’s Christmas!”

  “Afterward it’ll be the Washington’s Birthday Ball and all those damnable patriotic toasts, and then—”

  “Can we not enjoy one another?”

  He surrendered. “My dear, of course we can . . .”

  * * *

  Philippe Robillard’s wood-frame house stood at the north corner of Broughton and Abercorn Streets. Two hurricanes and a citywide fire had destroyed most of Savannah’s frame houses, but battered, gray, and askew, this house had endured. Fashion had deserted the neighborhood, and when Philippe’s mother passed, even her staunchest friends expected Philippe to find a better address.

  Carriages began arriving at eight. Flaring torches illuminated servants directing these conveyances and assisting elderly guests up Philippe’s steep yellow stone steps. The double doors were so brightly lit from the hallway behind, Nehemiah’s familiar features couldn’t be made out as he greeted newcomers and forwarded them to Philippe’s surly Muscogee coachman, who snatched their wraps. “Evenin’, Miss Solange, Master Wesley,” Nehemiah said. “We doin’ our best. ’Deed we is.”