Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  The crowd of players shouted him down. Particularly large players positioned themselves on either side of his chair, blocking any easy exit. The Gambler stayed put.

  The players threw down money and picked red George with gleeful rapacity. Fistfights nearly broke out as men jostled to be the next to step into the box. Every player, it seemed, was winning back what he had lost earlier in the evening. Even the sorry, unshaven rogue who had been keeping company with the Actress stepped up to the table and won fifty dollars. I saw that she had explained the scheme to him, and upon his return to her porcelain breast, they split the winnings.

  The Gambler’s face was the color of day-old ash. The great stack of his winnings dwindled toward the bare table surface. His crisp white shirt collar had gone limp with sweat. The crowd of players was cheering unrestrainedly.

  Even the Gambler’s slave showed signs of increased animation. She had taken a step away from the wall, and she appeared to be following the tempest closely. No doubt she feared she herself would be played into the pot before long.

  General Washington looked on severely from the far wall as if rehashing his lectures to the troops about the evils of gambling.

  “I insist,” the Gambler shouted at last, when only a few coins and tattered bills remained in front of him. “I’ve had enough.” He struggled to his feet, his fists clenched, prepared to fight his way out of the room if necessary.

  “Not until you play me for two thousand dollars,” shouted a patrician voice from behind me. The room filled with gasps.

  “You haven’t got it,” barked the Gambler, trying to regain his bravado.

  Wordlessly, the planter Jones tossed his bulging purse toward the Gambler’s table, where it landed with a crash. With apprehension leaking out the corners of his eyes, the Gambler sat back down in his chair, untied the drawstring, and began counting out the purse’s contents.

  I grabbed Jones’s arm and pulled him back. “You cannot be serious,” I whispered urgently. “You promised you wouldn’t wager what you couldn’t afford to lose. It’s folly.”

  “It’s certainty,” he hissed. “It’s freedom. You know it as well as I.”

  “At the least, start with a one-hundred-dollar bet,” I insisted. “Try out the stratagem before you risk it all.”

  The young planter shook his head. “He’ll flee for sure after the next throw,” he said. His breath was coming rapidly. “It’s all or nothing. This is my only chance.”

  “You’ve got it, all right,” the Gambler said dejectedly from the other side of the table. “But I haven’t. Despite what you may think, I’m an honest man.” The crowd jeered. “I cannot play for what I do not have. So I bid you a good night, sir.” He rose to his feet again.

  “Wait!” shouted Jones. Desperation was starting to come into his features. “Let me see that watch of yours.” He pointed to the gold chain at the Gambler’s waist.

  The Gambler carefully drew the watch out of his pocket, unlatched the chain from the button securing it, and handed it to the planter, saying as he did, “I could never play for that. My wife, may she rest in peace, gave it to me on the day we wed. It’d been passed down in her family for generations. There’s no price you could put on it.”

  The planter looked over the watch carefully. “What’s this engraving mark?” he asked, pointing to an etching on the obverse side and showing it to me. “‘Geo. Wash.’” He added, his voice rising with excitement, “Do you mean to say this belonged to the general himself?”

  The Gambler said glumly, “I told you I could never play for it. Give it back.” He held out his hand.

  “It would fetch three thousand at least from the dealers in the French Market in New Orleans,” Jones whispered over his shoulder at me, his eyes aflame with greed. “This is even better than I could have hoped.”

  I looked at Jones and back at the Gambler. The slump of his shoulders was almost too pronounced. Something was amiss.

  “I beg you to reconsider,” I pleaded with Jones. “Think of your family. They’re counting on your good judgment.”

  “There’s no glory for cowards,” he shot back. To the Gambler he said loudly, “I consent to play you for it. That against my purse. I come out the loser, even if I win, but it’ll have to do.” When he saw the Gambler wavering, he added, in a domineering voice he surely used to command the slaves on his father’s plantation, “I insist you play me. Otherwise, I shall spread word all along the river that you are the lowest, vilest type of gambler, one who refuses to meet his manly obligations.”

  The Gambler looked around frantically, seeking some last means of escape, but sat down with a weary nod. He took up his formerly trustworthy companions and, halfheartedly displaying them to the planter, gave them their shuffle.

  The Gambler spread the three cards out on the table. The eagle on the far right had the extra talon in his claw. Yelling out, “Red!” Jones leapt to claim it with an exultant index finger.

  Giving a long hopeless sigh, the Gambler turned the card. I knew it before I saw it.

  Black George stared up at the room.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jones shrieked. The Gambler turned the center card, whose eagle featured the regular number of talons, and revealed red George’s resting place. Jones collapsed to the floor, shaking violently and taking wild, anguished breaths, his head clutched in his hands. The crowd around him went silent.

  The Gambler picked up his watch from the table and methodically reattached it to his vest. Then he swept the contents of the planter’s purse toward him and carefully counted out his winnings, an inscrutable scowl on his face.

  My heart was pounding. I gave thanks that my own purse had been comparatively bare when I came aboard the ship. I wanted to think that, even in the heat of the moment, I would have shown the sobriety Jones lacked, but how could I be certain? For the second time this evening, I considered that but for the grace of God, I might have been him, and he might have been me.

  It was left to the Fool to bend down beside Jones and put a comforting arm on his shoulder. “Better get back to your cabin,” the Fool said soothingly. “We’ll be stopping in Alton, Illinois, soon after daybreak. I think you’d do best to get off there, before the purser comes looking for the rest of your passage.” The planter nodded weakly. His face was streaked with tears.

  His arm around the young planter, the Fool walked him slowly toward the door. As they left the room, I heard the Fool saying, “An accomplished young man like yourself, your good fortunes will soon revert. I’m certain of it.”

  The Gambler was still bent over counting his winnings, his face obscured by his hat, as the Fool and the planter departed. When the door slammed shut behind them, the Gambler looked up and took in the room. For an instant, a gleaming smile flashed onto his face. Then it was gone, replaced by his scowl, gone so fast that if you had happened to blink during the moment, you’d be prepared to swear on the grave of your grandmother it had never existed.

  Meanwhile, the Actress in brilliant red had finally broken free of her benefactor. I hoped to have a word with her before the evening got too late. I had taken several steps in her direction when I felt a large, heavy hand fall upon my shoulder.

  I looked up at the largest mountain of a man I had ever seen, his head coming near to scraping the ceiling of the salon, the width of his shoulders seemingly the width of the chamber. He had the slick, dark hair and olive skin of a Spaniard, and his cheeks were crisscrossed with knife scars. The man-mountain was wearing the drab navy peacoat and white trousers of a sailor, though it was clear at once he was no ordinary deckhand.

  “Come,” he said in an accented voice so deep it defied the normal human register. “Captain Pound want to talk.”

  “Captain Pound can wait a minute,” I said, surveying the room for the brilliant red dress.

  “The captain wait for no one,” the man-mountain returned. He twisted a large swath of my frockcoat in his hand and jerked me toward the door. “Not even you, Mr. Speed.
”

  The Spanish giant led me along the gusty hurricane promenade and into the deserted barber’s shop in the waist of the ship. Before I could protest that I had no need for a trim, he pushed a blank section of the wall behind the chair and a concealed door swung open. He propelled me into a room hidden between the barbery and the salon.

  “Sit,” he commanded, pointing to one of two low chairs arranged in front of a huge desk of carved mahogany. I did not argue.

  The owner of the desk sat on the other side in a much taller chair. He was bent over and examining, with the aid of a large brass magnifying glass, several pages filled with columns of numbers. He did not acknowledge my presence, and in turn I did nothing to acknowledge his, choosing instead to contemplate the wax drippings made by two tall candlesticks standing like sentries on either flank of the desk. I could hear the Spaniard breathing through his mouth behind me.

  As the seconds ticked away, I began to squirm with impatience. I needed to finish my work on the river in time to meet up with my friend Lincoln in Alton. I wondered how he’d been bearing the rigors of his first ride on the circuit.

  After a full minute of silence, the captain murmured, his face still buried in his figures, “So you’re Judge Speed’s son.”

  I did not answer but waited until, at last, he looked up to meet my gaze. “I am,” I said.

  He looked down and resumed his study, his right eye and nose pressed up tight against the rim of the magnifying glass. Then he said, “You were late.”

  I shrugged.

  “Tell your father,” he added, still not looking at me, “the next messenger he sends better arrive at the appointed time. I won’t delay my steaming again.”

  “I’m not his messenger,” I said, gripping the armrests of my chair to maintain my poise, “and the Speeds will visit you whenever it suits us. You are, after all, in our employ.”

  Captain Richard Pound lay down the glass, looked up, and smiled. I understood at once why my father, ever the precise judge of character, had labeled him a “thoroughly odious man” (his emphasis) in the letter asking that I undertake this visit. Pound looked like a potbellied toad who’d spent too much time in the sun. Great jowls hung from either side of his face and fleshy, discolored half-moons accented his eyes. Three of his teeth on the top row were made of gold, his skin was red and blistered, his hair receding and swept back, his weak chin disappearing into the folds of his neck. When he shifted in his chair, his massive belly beneath his undone captain’s frockcoat with its two vertical columns of brass buttons quivered like gelatin. He laid both hands on his belly now, and I saw that all five of the thick fingers of his right hand bore rings of gold.

  “You can leave us, Hector,” he said, looking over my shoulder and giving a little wave of those fingers. The door shut unquietly behind the man-mountain. I did not feel safer in his absence.

  “Found him passed out on the levee in New Orleans four years ago,” Pound said. There was a distinctive, gravelly whine to his voice. “Tripped right over him. His mates had sailed back to Cádiz without him. He was trying to drink himself to death. I thought he might be of use.” Pound stared at me for a second before adding: “I was right. As I usually am.”

  “I will admit,” I said, trying to keep my distaste for the man out of my voice, “that your choice of gambler is inspired.”

  Pound nodded. “I’ve steamed with Devol many times. He’s one of the best. I picked up him and his partner—goes by ‘Willie’ these days—at the dock at Cape Girardeau. Same place I received your father’s letter saying you’d be coming aboard.”

  He gestured to a creased sheet of writing paper on his desk, and I recognized at once my father’s script. I stared at the familiar ink lines, which seemed less assured and more fluttery than I recalled.

  “You should have seen the way Devol ran the monte,” I said, turning back to Pound. “It was flawless. To the great detriment and ruin of a young planter, I’m afraid.”

  “I did see.” Pound jerked his head back.

  There was a painting of Washington on the wall behind the great mahogany desk, and I went up and examined it. Washington’s eyes in this portrait were curiously blank, and at close range I realized why: they were actually a secret window into the salon, aligning with the Washington portrait hung there. As I looked through those eyes now, I saw the gambler Devol distributing payments to the various players in his play, including the Barkeep and the Actress. The fool, Willie, received the largest share.

  I returned to my chair thinking perhaps we had underestimated Captain Pound. As if privy to my thoughts, Pound said, “Nothing occurs on my ship that I do not see.”

  “In that case, I look forward to your explanation.”

  “Of what?” Pound asked after an almost imperceptible pause.

  “You’re short. Very short. You have been every month this season.”

  Pound shifted his great body slightly, and his belly gently rocked back and forth before coming to a new position of stasis. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said, his tone at once confused and aggrieved. “I’ve done nothing but work hard every single day of the year for the benefit of your family.”

  I waved my hand impatiently. “I’m sure it’s right in your figures. Three thousand a month—that’s what you owe us in exchange for the concession to operate this boat. You know full well the drafts you’ve sent the past few months haven’t come close.”

  Pound cleared his throat. “My expenses—” he began, but just then there was a loud rap on the door, followed by three quick taps. Looking up with evident relief, he called out, “Enter.”

  I glanced behind me and saw the gambler Devol walk through the hidden door. Wordlessly, he handed Pound a bulging envelope and waited as the captain counted out its contents.

  “You might have given him a chance to withdraw,” I said.

  Devol looked over with surprise. “I didn’t realize you were in the captain’s company, sir,” he said. “I thank you for your assistance. I’m not certain that foolish boy would have played decisively without the counsel of a peer.”

  “I hope that’s not true. I told him not to risk it all.”

  “He’ll thank me someday for what I taught him tonight,” Devol replied with a satisfied smile. “That’s my trade, looked at from the proper angle. The dispensing of lessons on how to live wisely. Expensive ones, if I’ve done my job right.”

  “You have for today,” said Pound. The envelope and its contents had disappeared inside the great desk. “Leave us.” He gave a dismissive wave of his thick, ringed fingers, and Devol withdrew.

  “The Inspector of the Port in St. Louis,” Pound continued, once the door had closed behind the gambler. “He requires attention, in order that we may continue to operate as we desire. Attention for his inattention. Inattention is not an inexpensive ware on the river.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “No,” replied Pound, his eyes suddenly sharp and focused on mine, “it’s our problem.”

  As I returned his stare, I thought to myself that it was, in the first instance, my father’s problem. I had been distressed to learn in his recent letter that he had borrowed heavily from the banks of Louisville against the promised income stream from the War Eagle. With the nationwide bank Panic radiating rapidly outward from New York City, those banks were liable to call in their loans any week. If my father proved unable to repay the funds, the banks would doubtless look to his other assets. While my father had not said so explicitly in his letter, I could only assume Farmington itself was at risk.

  In younger, more headstrong days, I would have gladly walked out of Captain Pound’s office with nothing more than a terse report for my father, leaving him to deal with the consequences of his own sharp dealings. I had, as I said before, left home without a backward glance. But I worried the great Judge John Speed was no longer the man whom I had known growing up—known with that peculiar admixture of fear, resentment, and love only the sons of great men can know. Readin
g between the lines of the letters I had lately received from my mother and my elder brother, James, I feared an irreversible mental decline had begun to set in.

  “There must be some way to put the authorities off the scent,” I said.

  Captain Pound shifted his girth again and frowned. “The Inspector demands a fixed percentage of our receipts. And his auditor’s sharper than you’d think. He used to work for the Government, in Washington, before the Inspector hired him away at thrice the pay.”

  “How can he possibly know your receipts here on the waters?”

  “He is said to have spies everywhere. I would take you for one, were you not the very spit of your father.”

  “Why don’t you tell him someone’s been stealing from you?” I said. “You can’t be expected to share what you don’t have.”

  Captain Pound looked at me with surprise and nodded. “I’ve thought about that,” he said. “But he’d demand I hand the scoundrel over. So he could hold him upside down and see what fell out of his pockets.” He paused. “Every member of my crew has served me long and well. They’re loyal to me and me to them. There’s no one I’m willing to sacrifice.”

  I stared at the dripping candles and tried to think of another way to protect my family’s plantation from the consequences of my father’s machinations. Farmington was home not only to my parents but also to seven of my siblings, as well as to the sixty slaves who helped my father grow his hemp crop. All these lives would be thrown into unimaginable turmoil were the plantation lost.

  “A few more nights like tonight and our receipts will rebound,” Pound said, his tone suddenly lighter. “Three thousand a month, with a depression going around—it’s an unrealistic number. But if we agreed on twenty-two fifty, with half the difference to be made up during the next year’s season . . . well, that may be feasible.”

  “If you can’t meet our original terms, we’ll find another captain who will.”

  “Not in the midst of this Panic you won’t.”

  I scrutinized the captain and wondered whether he was trying to run us like Devol had run Jones. Probably he was. Yet I suspected he also was right about the impossibility of finding a replacement who would satisfy our price. At a minimum, finding a new captain would take time my father did not have.