Prelude to Glory, Vol. 9

by Ron Carter

  Hickman reflected for a moment. “May I ask where they are?”

  Pierre hesitated for a moment. “Barataria. South of here.”

  Hickman maintained his casual appearance while his heart leaped. Barataria! The stronghold! The legend! The place where respectable corsairs and unrespectable buccaneers and some of the blackest cutthroat pirates in the world freely did millions of dollars in business with the Lafitte brothers. The name itself derived from the French word barraterie and translated into English implied theft and murder for plunder! The place he had come more than thirteen hundred miles to see!

  Hickman smothered any reaction to the invitation, and said casually, “Would it be possible to bring them here?”

  Hickman caught the flash of surprise in Jean, but did not look directly at him nor did he change expression as he waited.

  Pierre answered, “It would be better if you went there. You can select the twelve you want.”

  Hickman cleared his throat. “What price?”

  Pierre responded, “Four hundred each.”

  Hickman said, “I was told three hundred. I came prepared to pay three hundred.”

  Ingersol hastened to explain to Pierre, “I told him—that was the price seven weeks ago when there were slaves available in New Orleans.”

  Pierre’s eyes narrowed at Hickman. “Markets and prices change. It is four hundred now.”

  Hickman countered, “And four weeks from now?”

  Pierre smiled and shrugged. “Who knows? Supply and demand.”

  From the side, Jean inquired casually, “You have money with you?”

  “No. Not here.”

  “In New Orleans?”

  “Yes. In a safe place.”

  Pierre grinned. “In the little metal box?”

  The question caught Hickman by surprise. “You know about that?”

  Pierre chuckled. “It is common knowledge. The jaw was badly broken.”

  The four men laughed, and the tension eased for a moment. Hickman went on. “Do you accept credit?”

  Jean replied. “Sadly, we cannot. Cash or gold.” His face was casual; his eyes were not.

  “I see. Then I cannot buy twelve slaves. I will have to get consent from my company. It will take at least four weeks for me to return to Boston and get the consent and the money.”

  Pierre tossed a hand in the air. “No matter. We can have them in four weeks.” He started to rise, as though their business was done. Hickman raised a hand and Pierre settled.

  “I will need to know where the slaves come from. It would be awkward if I were to deliver slaves to one of our clients only to find out they were stolen from him.”

  Pierre quickly responded, “We cannot tell you where they are from. We can only guarantee they were never owned by your client.”

  Hickman considered before he went on. “If I am to get authorization to pay four hundred dollars, I will have to report to my company that I have seen slaves of that quality. I will need to go to Barataria.”

  Silence held for a full five seconds before Pierre responded. “Mister Ingersol, are you available for the next two days?”

  “I am.”

  “Then we will leave tomorrow morning at six o’clock. Is that agreeable?”

  It was.

  By six o’clock am the top half of the sun had cleared the eastern rim of the world to cast long shadows westward when Jean Lafitte, Ingersol, and Hickman, dressed in loose white shirts and carrying their coats, stepped from a New Orleans dock into a large, flat-bottomed longboat and took their seats. Four silent black men with thick shoulders and muscled arms, stripped to the waist, sat in twos on either side of the boat with oars shipped, waiting. A fifth sat at the rear, arm resting on the tiller, a covered wooden box at his feet. On Lafitte’s signal, the men sunk their oars into the muddy water and heaved into them to drive the boat away from the dock, out into the great Mississippi River. They felt the irresistible suck of the current swing the boat south, and with the oarsmen working in steady rhythm to keep the boat moving faster than the current, the man on the tiller brought her around, angling toward the center of the broad river, then due south, running strong. Within twenty minutes they had left the teeming docks of New Orleans behind and were moving downstream steadily, much faster than Hickman had imagined possible. He was much surprised that the shore had flattened to a gigantic, wet, level plain, with marsh grasses three feet higher than a man’s head.

  They passed bayous filled with what appeared to be stagnant water, and tiny lakes and small streams that emptied into the river. At noon Lafitte opened the wooden box and each man ate a lunch of bread and cooked shrimp and oranges. Small islands were everywhere. Palm and date trees stood high, and banana trees proliferated. Dangling from massive trees, webs of Spanish moss moved in the breeze. Water birds were everywhere—cranes with curled necks and matchstick legs, pelicans with their pouches on their chests, terns, seagulls, and flocks of macaws with plumage to challenge the rainbow. Insects buzzed and hummed as they rose in clouds with the passage of the boat. Crocodiles and caimans lay in the swamp grasses, unmoving, nearly invisible. Hickman studied the shores, suddenly realizing that he could not tell where land blended into marsh, and marsh into bayou. There was no clear demarcation to any of it. Lagoons and streams crossed and crisscrossed, turning, twisting back upon themselves, sometimes ending in blind cul-de-sacs that had swallowed up untold numbers of lost and unwary travelers. It came to Hickman why, and how, this place had been called “the trembling prairie.” The blend of earth and water left almost nothing stable. The grasses and the trees could tremble in the wind and the storms and hurricanes that swept up regularly from the Gulf of Mexico.

  Unpretentious two-room cottages began to appear in small clearings, half hidden among the cypress and palm and banana trees and the high swamp grass. There was no glass in the windows, only heavy batten blinds or shutters that could be closed against the pounding of rain and storms. Women were in the yards with children, pausing in their work to watch the boat pass. Some recognized Lafitte and raised a hand, and Lafitte waved back.

  Hickman turned to Ingersol. “They live out here?”

  “Yes. Been here for generations. Raise families who stay to raise their families. Fishermen, trappers, some smugglers, some outright pirates. They prefer it here. Total freedom. Responsible to no one for anything. They know these swamps and bayous like I know the streets of New Orleans. There are a hundred places they can hide within five minutes of their homes. They bring their hides or their shrimp or their stolen plunder up to New Orleans three, four times a year, buy what they need, and come back here.”

  By midafternoon the scent of salt sea became stronger and suddenly in the distance Hickman could see the green-blue of the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The coast broadened, and the islands grew larger, and the man on the tiller focused. Carefully he picked his way between the islands, following channels known only to a few, until he swung sharply to the west, into a large harbor, and before them was a cluster of small thatch-roofed cottages, gathered about one larger building that dominated. The longboat nudged into a low pier, where men of every blood and description came to tie it and stand waiting for their leader.

  With every nerve alive to what he was seeing and hearing, Hickman followed Lafitte and Ingersol from the longboat onto the dock where the sweating men greeted Lafitte, and he slapped some of them on the back and returned the greetings before they all stepped back to let the small column of visitors file through to the big building. With its shutters open to facilitate a breeze, the dimly lighted, dirt-floored, single large room provided a welcome though slight respite from the unrelenting heat and humidity. There was one large, sturdy, scarred table close to one wall, with battered chairs surrounding it, a large desk in one corner, nine bunks in tiers of three against one wall, and a large wooden box in one corner. The strong odor of rum was everywhere, and Lafitte gestured and they all sat while he brought a large crockery jug of rum and three pewter mugs
from the box. He poured two mugs full; Hickman declined.

  For a few moments they sat quietly, Lafitte and Ingersol working on their rum, while they stopped perspiring and let their thoughts settle.

  Then Lafitte stood. “I will return soon,” he said and disappeared out into the dazzle of the late afternoon sunlight. In less than five minutes he returned to his chair and his half-empty mug of rum. He turned to Hickman.

  “Soon my men will bring the Negroes for your inspection.”

  Within minutes Hickman heard the sound of men marching and the clank of metal on metal, and then a large, grizzled, bearded man appeared in the doorway. Lafitte led the others out into the yard where twelve tall, barefooted, well-muscled black men stood dressed only in frayed trousers that reached just below their knees. On the right ankle of each of them was an iron shackle, and a chain with heavy links bound all twelve of them together in a line. They stood silent, their defiant eyes shifting from Lafitte to Ingersol to Hickman.

  Twelve men. Chained like animals. Bought like animals, and being inspected like animals to be sold like animals. Hickman bit down hard on the hot outrage that surged in his breast, and his hands trembled for a moment as he struggled to maintain an even expression on his face. He walked to the first man and looked into his face, then slowly walked down the line, then back, peering at each one, head to toe, front and back, looking for deformities that would limit the man’s ability to work or diseases that could spread. He could see none. The men were all built strong—capable of the fourteen-hour days of backbreaking toil that would shorten their lives by twenty years.

  Lafitte waited until Hickman finished his inspection, then asked, “They are suitable?”

  Hickman shrugged indifferently. “They’re acceptable.”

  Lafitte said, “You wish to have twelve such in four weeks, four hundred dollars American each? Delivered here?”

  Hickman shook his head. “I must have consent of my company first. And we will need to take delivery in New Orleans.”

  Lafitte answered, “Then we will wait. If your company wishes to accept our terms, send a letter to Mister Ingersol. We will make delivery in New Orleans on the day you select. Agreed?”

  Hickman reflected for a moment. “Agreed, provided the twelve have not previously been owned by any of our clients.”

  “That is guaranteed. These and fifty others come from the West Indies where they were born and raised for servitude. They have had but one owner. We know the man.”

  “Will you give me your written statement of that? Your word is good.”

  “I will.”

  “Done.”

  Lafitte bobbed his head and led the way back into the relative cool of the large building where the three of them sat back down at the table. Lafitte poured more rum, drank long, then went to the desk. Two minutes later he handed Hickman a written document.

  “There is my statement of ownership of the slaves.”

  Hickman read the neat, scrolled handwriting and slipped it inside his shirt. “Thank you. May I inquire when we will begin the journey back to New Orleans?”

  Lafitte smiled. “About four o’clock tomorrow morning the tides will come in, and we will ride them many miles back up the Mississippi. But tonight, we dine. My people have prepared a roast pig and sweet potatoes and some mangoes and papaya.”

  Dusk had settled when Lafitte led the way through the grasses and trees to a sandy clearing where twenty barefooted men had gathered around a fire pit. Firelight played off their faces and cast shadows into the gathering darkness. A small man with a huge beard and a deformed back slowly turned a spit on which a whole, wild pig had been skewered. Fat dripped from the blackened hulk to pop and sizzle in the fire. At Lafitte’s arrival the men began digging into an earthen mound, removing steaming sweet potatoes they had buried over hot rocks at dawn, while others carried out a keg of rum and wooden cups and wooden plates, and still others brought out woven reed baskets filled with bananas and mangoes and papaya. The men used their belt knives to strip the hams and loins from the carcass, then the shoulders, and they sat cross-legged in the warm sand to eat it with their fingers with grease running into their beards and onto their bare chests. They broke open the steaming sweet potatoes and singed their lips and tongues eating the sweet flesh, and they dipped generous draughts of rum from the barrel.

  When the eating and drinking finally slowed, the talk began, rough, raucous, between men who had seen and done the worst life can offer, and Hickman was surprised to see Lafitte talking, laughing, gesturing with his men, apparently carefree, as though he were one of them. Hickman sensed that among this gathering there was none who would yield his freedom, his independence, his fierce pride, to any other than Lafitte. It suddenly broke clear in Hickman’s mind that if he had appeared here at Barataria alone, without the presence and the protection of Jean Lafitte, he would never have left alive. He remained silent, watching, listening, gauging, calculating, with the question foremost in his mind: How has this man—less than thirty years of age—built this enterprise—and how has he taken command of such men as I see here? He could only guess at the answer.

  The moon had risen when the merriment dwindled, and it was approaching midnight when Lafitte and Ingersol and Hickman laid their heads on the pillows in their bunks inside the big house and drifted into sleep, stomachs full, weary from the long day.

  Hickman awoke with the soft yellow light of a lantern casting misshapen shadows in the big room and Lafitte moving silently in his bare feet on the sandy floor. Hickman drew his watch from his trousers and turned the face to the light. It was half past three o’clock. Ingersol awakened with a start, and the three of them silently ate cold pork strips and mango, drank some tepid water, and with Lafitte leading, lantern held high, walked out into the black world of a moon already set and an overcast covering the vast expanse of stars. There was a fresh, light wind from the south, and Hickman smelled the coming storm. The oarsmen and the tiller were waiting in the boat, and the three men stepped off the dock into the longboat, rocking softly on the incoming tides. Hickman took his seat next to Ingersol in the midsection of the boat while Lafitte sat in the bow with the lantern. Between them the crew had mounted a mast with a furled sail. On Lafitte’s signal, the oarsmen dug the oar-blades into the black water and the boat drifted away from the dock. The tiller brought it around on a course due north, and two of the oarsmen shipped their oars long enough to unfurl the sail. It caught the south wind, popped and filled, and the boat sped north, pushed by the tides and the wind and the oarsmen.

  The wind held and increased, and by five o’clock the rim of the world to their right, east, was separated from the dark heavens. By six o’clock the eastern horizon was a dull gray overcast, and due south, behind the boat, the deep purple of a storm coming in from the gulf was rising. Lafitte held his position in the bow, turning every few minutes, judging when the storm from behind would catch them. By ten o’clock the longboat was running before strong winds. The oarsmen had shipped their oars, unable to add to the speed. Every man on board was silently calculating how much time before they would have to beach the boat and wait out the storm. By eleven o’clock they saw the curtain of rain two miles behind, and forty minutes later the first huge drops came spattering. At noon, in a heavy downpour, Lafitte pointed, and the tiller leaned against the heavy oak handle, and the bow of the boat nosed to the right, toward shore and a small, abandoned cottage with the remains of a tiny dock on the river. With the boat tied to the rickety dock, the dripping men carried their wooden box inside the cottage and shared a lunch of cheese, oysters, steamed giant prawns, tough brown bread, and bananas, and waited. By one o’clock the overhead sun was a bright ball in the dwindling storm, and by half past one the wet, steaming world was sparkling under blue sky and a blazing sun.

  The sun had set when they saw the harbor of New Orleans, and the lights of the city were beginning to wink on when they tied the longboat to a pier. The tired men stepped from the boat onto th
e old, worn planking, and Hickman turned to Lafitte.

  “I thank you for your efforts and hospitality. I will write to Mister Ingersol as soon as my company has made a decision.”

  Lafitte smiled and bowed graciously. “I will be waiting.”

  They said their goodbyes and separated—Lafitte and his crew to his home, Ingersol to his, and Hickman back to Absinthe House. He took his supper alone and went to his bed to sleep the dreamless sleep of an exhausted man.

  Morning found Hickman boarding a flatboat traveling north up the Mississippi, counting the days until he boarded a second flatboat moving northeast up the Ohio River, then on to the Delaware River, to Philadelphia. It was there he boarded a three-masted merchantman for the voyage down the Delaware to the Chesapeake Bay, out into the Atlantic, and north to Boston harbor. At noon, on the thirteenth day since leaving New Orleans, the big merchantman tied up to the Boston docks, and Markus E. Hickman walked down the gangplank with one suitcase in each hand into the familiar muddle of men and freight on the docks. He pushed his way through to the waterfront office with the sign on the door that read DUNSON & WEEMS, where he set one suitcase down long enough to open the door, picked it up, and walked into the office with the counter facing the door, and the six familiar desks behind, and the charts and maps on the walls.

  Matthew Dunson and Billy Weems both raised their heads from the ledgers they were studying at their desks.

  “Caleb! You’re back!” Matthew exclaimed, rising to walk to the counter. “We were beginning to worry.”

  Caleb Dunson dropped the suitcases thumping on the floor as the two men reached him. “I was starting to worry a little myself.”

  Billy Weems, grinning, relief showing, asked, “How was it? Did you get what you went after? Anyone recognize you?”

  Caleb nodded. “I think I got what Madison wants. I don’t think anyone guessed I wasn’t Markus E. Hickman.”

  “Lafitte? Barataria?”

  “I was there. With Lafitte. Saw most of what was to be seen.”