Perish from the Earth

by Jonathan F. Putnam

  “This is going to take a while,” I said.

  Gentry grunted in agreement. He pried a slat loose from the top of the cask beneath him, thrust in a dipper he pulled from his pocket, and swallowed its contents in a gulp. He gathered another portion and handed it to me. I drank eagerly.

  “I think it’s only fair,” I said, “seeing how much work I just saved you, that you answer a few more questions about Jones’s death.”

  Gentry thrust his dipper into the cask again.

  “When Hector removed Jones from the salon the night of the monte, he was carrying on about exposing ‘the truth.’ Do you have any idea what he could have been talking about?”

  “I haven’t a guess,” Gentry replied, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

  A canoe passed down the river in front of us, with eight natives crowded together. Their frail bark machine looked like a delicate eggshell bobbing on the great inland waterway, yet the Indians appeared fearless. As they passed, they seemed to be laughing at us—and for good reason, as their eggshell skimmed down the river while our great floating castle remained mired in the bar.

  “If I wanted a game of cards on board,” I continued, “where would I find it?”

  “Why, in the salon, of course.”

  “I mean a private game, one among gentlemen. Where could I find one of those?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the barkeep, taking another sip.

  I thought for a minute, then asked, “Was there anything unusual about that run? Anything at all, whether or not it had to do with Jones or Bingham?”

  Gentry’s gaze remained off on the distant shore, but his breathing had become shallower. “What do you know?” I demanded.

  “The capt’n’s been good to me,” he said at last. “I was a few weeks from drinking myself to death when he grasped my hand, sobered me up, and offered me this posting. Would’ve never seen my fair Maisie again if it weren’t for him.” I waited, expecting him to continue, but he did not.

  “The life of an innocent man may be at stake.”

  “If Bingham’s been arrested for Jones’s murder, then I’m sure he’s the one who did it. I’ve nothing more to say.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no but,” said Gentry as he pushed himself off the cask and landed on the sandy bank. He headed toward a cluster of his mates at the river’s edge without a backward glance.

  An hour later, I was still trying to figure out what Gentry could be hiding when my sister materialized at my side. Her fine sateen slippers were splattered with sand and mud.

  “How much longer do you suppose the unloading will take, Mr. Speed?” she asked, leaning casually against the barrels next to me.

  I looked over at the gangway. The slave driver from St. Louis was herding his chattel down the plank at that moment. He hadn’t even had the sense to unchain them for the transfer. So the six Negroes remained bound to one another by leg irons, and they were forced to shuffle down the narrow walkway with extreme care, lest anyone slip and plunge the whole lot into the river below. It was a pitiable sight, made worse by the harsh cries of the driver—backed up by his whip, which he held poised above his head—for them to stop wasting his time.

  “I wish I knew,” I said. “I’m surprised Avocat Daumier released you from his clutches.”

  “I do enjoy practicing my French with him, but if I’m to be honest, he’s a bore.” Martha sighed dramatically. “Anyway, I saw you talking with the barkeep. What did he tell you?”

  While the shoreline around us was a hive of activity, with precarious stacks of goods sprouting up in every direction and several hastily erected pens filling with cows and horses and other animals, most persons seemed occupied with securing their own affairs. I decided Martha and I could risk a conversation, and I told her what I had learned. “What about you?” I added when I had finished.

  “I’ve talked to a few of the cabin attendants. And the laundress. Seems the arguments between our Mr. Bingham and Jones were legendary on that voyage. Every girl I spoke to recalled seeing the two of them come close to blows on one occasion or another.”

  “Pound probably told them they had to say that,” I said. “He’s commandeered the views of his crew thoroughly.”

  “I don’t think so,” Martha replied. “He might have warned them about you, but they don’t have any idea who I am. And I was chatting with them casually, while they were cleaning my cabin or the like. They had no reason to be on guard.”

  A tall, light-skinned Negro woman with a brown headband in her hair walked along the bar past us at that moment. She nodded shyly at Martha and continued toward a group of crewmen gathered near the beached ship. The woman looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “One of the girls I talked with,” Martha said. “Her name is Sary. She’s a chambermaid on the ship. And she did some extra washing for me when I needed it. A freedwoman, I believe.”

  Before I could respond, we saw Avocat Daumier making a beeline for us from across the sand. “Ah, Mademoiselle Bell,” he said as he approached. “I wondered what had happened to you. I turned around and you’d vanished. Monsieur Speed,” he added with a cold nod toward me.

  “I’ll let you two discuss your business affairs,” Martha said lightly. “I need to make sure my Aunt Nanny has settled herself comfortably.”

  “A maiden such as her would make for quite a good mistress,” Daumier said as we watched Martha stride away purposefully down the beach.

  I fought back my impulse to throttle the man. Instead, I said, “She just got finished telling me she’s spoken for. And that she’s got two older brothers with quite a collection of shotguns.”

  “C’est la vie,” said Daumier with a sigh. “So tell me, Monsieur Speed, have you uncovered one shred of evidence proving Bingham’s innocence?”

  “Plenty—but none I plan on sharing with you.”

  “If you had truly uncovered something, I think you would be falling upside down to tell me about it,” Daumier said serenely. “But do not be too hard on yourself. You cannot find what does not exist.” He paused. “Do you want to know what I’ve learned?”

  “I can’t imagine you’ve been any more successful.”

  “Then your imagination fails you, my friend. For example, you see the giant Spaniard over there?” He pointed across the sand to where Hector was talking with a group of crewmen that included Gentry and the Negro chambermaid Sary. “We have become very good friends. Señor Hector has given me very conclusive evidence of Bingham’s guilt.”

  “I doubt he understands a word you say, Daumier.”

  “You are wrong. We understand each other well. Despite appearances, we are very much alike, he and I. Two Europeans stuck in the middle of a vast and savage new world. He will make a very good witness for the prosecution. No one would believe him to have the capacity for guile.”

  Several hours later, with the sun starting to get low on the horizon, the ship was finally unloaded. Two dozen crewmen ringed the War Eagle, some up to their chests in water, and with their bare hands and crude shovels, they dug away at the bar. A call for additional volunteers went out and, unlacing my boots and laying aside my frockcoat, I joined the effort.

  As I waded carefully into the chilly, swirling waters, I spied an open space at the base of the hull next to Hector.

  “The Eagle want to soar,” the man-mountain said in his deep rumble when I joined him. “We must give her back her wings.”

  “And if her wings cannot be fixed? What then?”

  Hector grunted in reply.

  We scraped away at the sand as the sun went down. Together with the rest of the laborers, we managed to make a moat three or four feet deep around the hull. The swirling waters reached to my chest. And still the Eagle showed no inclination to take flight.

  At twilight, the steamer’s pilot, who was supervising the rescue effort, called for a rest before one final
push. Hector and I climbed up the bank we’d created and flopped on our backs on the bar, breathing deeply. I was soaking wet from head to toe and chilled to the bone.

  “I did not think a gentleman would work this hard,” Hector said. The old knife scars checkering his cheeks were glowing a cool red.

  “I assure you, I want to get off the bar just as badly as you.”

  “Because of the painter?” he asked after a moment’s pause.

  “Yes, because of the painter. Bingham. The constable, Daumier, told me you’d given him evidence of Bingham’s guilt in Jones’s death. Is that so?”

  In spite of his exhaustion, Hector loosed a deep growl of laughter. “I would not speak the truth to Monsieur le French if he was last man on earth.”

  “I didn’t think so,” I said, feeling relieved. I looked over at the Spaniard, lying on his back on the sand like the ridge of a mountain. “That night, after you took Jones back to his cabin, what happened?”

  Hector gazed up at the darkening skies. There was an intensity, an intelligence, in his eyes that I’d missed previously. “The river, she judges all men. She judged Señor Jones.” He raised his pulpy hands and let them fall onto his chest. “There is no cause for you to disrupt her judgment.”

  “My cause—Lincoln’s cause—is Bingham. The river may have judged Jones, but Bingham shouldn’t suffer from that same judgment.”

  “I think the river has judged Bingham too,” Hector said after a moment. “If he does not hold his courtship of the señorita over Jones’s head, if he does not revel in his victory and Jones’s defeat, then he is not put in jail for the killing.”

  “I think you know Bingham’s innocent,” I said. “What really happened to Jones?”

  For a moment, there was no sound except for our breathing. Then he said, “If you keep asking questions, you may learn something you wish not to know. Trust me, Mr. Speed. Do not disturb the judgment of the waters.”

  “What do you know, Hector?” I insisted.

  “I know my God,” said the giant. “I know my captain. I know the river. This is all I know.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The pilot shouted for everyone to return to his station. I picked myself up and started to trudge toward the hull. Just then, the nighttime sky was lit by a flash of lightning and then a great crack of thunder. Rainwater started coming down in torrents.

  “I thought things couldn’t get any worse,” I muttered.

  “No, no, is good,” said Hector excitedly.

  He was right. On the pilot’s count, shouted at the top of his lungs against the crashing elements, all of us ringing the boat pushed in unison. And the ship . . . sort of . . . sighed. It eased. The War Eagle didn’t find its wings, but it didn’t remain motionless either. There was hope, and it was obvious the rain was raising the river level just enough to loosen the ship.

  A cheer went up, and those of us standing by the hull frantically motioned for the other male passengers—who had taken shelter from the storm with the women under the tree canopy—to come join the effort. Nearly all the other men stripped off their outer coats and hurried across the sand toward us, ignoring the pelting rain.

  Once our numbers had been multiplied threefold, the pilot shouted out his signal again and we pushed. A collective groan of effort arose. “Keep pushing,” the pilot screamed into the storm. And—finally—the boat slid off the bar and found its bottom.

  The next morning, we undertook the very treacherous reloading. The pilot had insisted that the ship drop its anchor in the center channel of the river in order to avoid renewed foundering, so all the cargo had to be rowed out to the ship on makeshift ferries. In the process, several of the merchants lost hogsheads of corn and molasses to the river, and two cows plunged overboard and were carried away by the current. But finally, the process was complete, and by late afternoon, we had resumed navigation.

  The following day, I encountered Captain Pound as he was leaving the barbery. Without a word, he turned around and led me back through the hidden door to his office.

  “I told you there was nothing to find in the accounts,” he said as the door swung shut behind us. “And I trust you’ll tell your father who’s responsible for this week’s losses.”

  “What about the payments you recorded to the Inspector?” I said, a note of triumph in my voice. “I thought you’d just gotten done telling me there was no such person. How do you explain those?”

  Pound let loose a short, obnoxious laugh. “Bookkeeping entries to make the sums match,” he said. “Every ship’s log on the river contains the same. When the outflows don’t match the inflows, it’s a way of squaring the two. I told you it was the term we river captains use for the unexplainable.”

  I glared at Pound wordlessly. He was hiding something—most likely payments to someone. But whom?

  “Perhaps to a relative,” Martha suggested after supper that evening in the salon, when we found another moment to talk. “Maybe he’s sending Daddy’s money to someone on land. Is he married?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said. “I just want our money. But if Pound’s not going to admit why it’s missing, I’ll have to figure it out another way.”

  A crewman walked through the salon announcing that the ship would dock at Memphis the following afternoon. “We’ll be leaving the ship there,” I told Martha. “Have you had a chance to talk with the, er, actress who’s in here sometimes?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t think she’d know anything of interest.”

  “Why don’t you go to her cabin now and see if you can get her to talk. I’ll bet you anything she made the acquaintance of at least one of the men, Jones or Bingham. Come find me once you find out.”

  Two hours later, Martha hurried up to me on the deserted forecastle. The sky was brilliantly clear and sparkling with stars.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. Her teeth were chattering against the cold, and I slipped my jacket around her shoulders.

  “It’s a big ship. I’ve been waiting for you here—figured we’d find some privacy at this hour. Did you talk to that woman?”

  “Her name is Pearl, and you were right—she knew both men on that voyage. She’s only a few years older than me, but she’s seen enough for two lifetimes. Maybe more. I can hardly comprehend it.”

  Another cabin passenger appeared on the deck, and Martha broke off. We exchanged pleasant remarks about the night sky and tried not to act impatient. Finally, the passenger yawned and bade us a good-night.

  “She grew up in Nashville, not far from the Cumberland River,” Martha continued as soon as we were alone again. “When she was fifteen, her mother betrothed her to an old widower with nine children. Can you imagine?” She shuddered. “Rather than accept him, she ran away from home and stowed aboard a packet steamer. She found herself aboard smaller and smaller ships until she was completely out of hope, wandering the levee in St. Louis and begging for pennies. The captain, Pound, approached her there one day, and she’d thrown herself at him, hoping to earn enough to eat for the day. Instead, he made a place for her on his ship. It was like being born again, she told me. A new chance at life.”

  “So she’s just like the rest of them—loyal to Pound to the last, I imagine. What did she tell you about Jones and Bingham?”

  “She said Jones was a pig. Accustomed to taking what he wanted, with no consideration for others. She was glad, unapologetically, to see him broken by the monte. Said it was his just desert.”

  “And Bingham?”

  “Bingham only wanted to sketch her. She told him the price for her company was the same however he chose to use it. He didn’t argue. He paid and he drew.”

  I laughed in disbelief. “Perhaps he truly is in love with Tessie.”

  “It’s very romantic, isn’t it?” Martha replied with a sigh.

  “Did she have any idea what happened to Jones?”

  “She guessed he took his own life. Said that with how much insufferable p
ride he carried himself, she couldn’t imagine how he’d have faced his family after having been tricked out of his fortune. And theirs.”

  I was still considering this possibility the next day as I again stood on the forecastle, saddlebags in hand, and watched Memphis come into view on a high, level bluff on the eastern side of the river. If we could show Jones took his own life, it would, of course, exonerate Bingham. But how to prove it? Daumier had said Jones died from a blow to the back of the head. That didn’t sound like suicide. And then there was the question of how the body had ended up weighted down in a canvas sack. But perhaps if Jones had killed himself accidentally, in some sort of fit, and then someone else had come along and decided to dispose of his body . . . I shook my head—we needed to find out more before coming to any definite conclusions.

  “Still looking for answers, Mr. Speed?” said a gravelly voice. I looked up to find Nanny Mae scrutinizing me. She, too, had a travel bag at her side. Not for the first time, I found myself unnerved by the old woman.

  “I wasn’t talking out loud, was I?” I said. “No, of course I wasn’t. I was merely reflecting on the size of the city.” I gestured toward the buildings on the bluff ahead of us. “I expected it to be larger. You’re disembarking too?”

  The old woman nodded. “Martha told me the two of you were getting off in Memphis, which suits me fine. My daughter lives not too far from here. I wonder how I’ll be treated by that blasted Quaker when I knock on their door.”

  “I imagine he has more to worry about than do you,” I returned. Nanny Mae’s lips gathered into a tight smile.

  The river just above the town was checkered by sandbars and islands covered by stands of cottonwood, and the War Eagle was running on low steam as we approached, threading carefully in and out of the obstructions. Pound stood near us on the forecastle, periodically shouting instructions to the pilot house above to ensure the ship steered the proper course.