“Careful,” said James as I stumbled on a top hat and nearly fell into manure. “It’s becoming a mob.”
Indeed, it was a mob that arrived at the prison, shouting, Tilly! Tilly!
I tried to press through the tidal throng, making out grins and sneers as well as tragic eyes, fluttering hands, raised fists, but to no avail. When our girl was brought forth, I could not get near.
There stood Eugene’s lawyer—that chinless inconsequent, consulting the jailer, who did not look displeased at the results. “I will come for you, Tilly!” I shouted. “Do not fear!”
But fear emanated from her like steam off a skillet.
Grasped by her jailer and the accompanying roustabouts who dragged her to a boat heading south, Tilly threw back her head and wailed. I have never before or since heard such a sound. The crowd fell into stunned silence as what was happening dawned on us all. Whatever I had envisioned—rescuing her from Orpheus Farms, reuniting her with her father, setting it all to right—I knew from her wailing that it was not to be, for it wasn’t back to Orpheus Farms that Eugene was sending her, but onto a barge bound for Natchez, deep in the South, where she would be beyond our grasp, gone forever, prodded by hands not our own.
Chapter 21
1838
When Hatsepha showed up unannounced, I cleared off a chair that I feared was inadequate to the task of supporting either Hatsepha or her billowing skirts. “You are not yourself,” said Hatsepha, putting down her tea.
“And how would you have me be, sister?” said I, pushing a stack of papers to the floor. In less than a year, I had lost my husband, and now Tilly.
“You are even thinner.”
Indeed, my clothes hung on my frame, but I had neither will nor means to alter them.
“And what has happened to your hair?”
Truly, it was lanky and ill-tended. Having considered chopping it off, I opted instead for a hasty bun or, as today, no style at all. If I walked out on the street, I would be pegged as a harlot with such hair, and though I was tempted to do so, I often yielded instead to convention and tucked the whole mess into a lace-edged cap tied securely below my chin.
Hatsepha clicked her tongue. “Not that mine is much better. My German girl may have a hand with a braid, but she is fierce with a pin.”
“Your hair looks lovely,” I said, though, for the first time, I noticed strands of gray.
She regarded me keenly. “You look stricken, Olivia. I don’t think living alone suits you. I hear you’re wandering about the streets and that you keep company with bones.”
In point of fact, I had gone occasionally to the landing, but not so often as to deserve this comment. The river flowed toward the west, bucking over the falls in Louisville and turning south at Cairo, where it would spill into the Mississippi. I would stare at the water, remembering Tilly’s little superstitions, how she had tossed in this or that: a lock of hair from a client, a glove that had no partner, a broken comb, an apple, a candle, a spool of thread. Votive offerings and trifles—things she would have cast off anyway. I consoled myself that everything that begins in one place ends up in another. Voyages could be endured. But if truth were told, I would have thrown myself in the river if I thought it would help.
“Well,” said Hatsepha, rising and gathering up her reticule, “I shall tell James I tried, but you are as incorrigible as Erasmus. Why such insistence to live in squalor I shall never know. You came here for a better life, and what have you to show for it?” Her face seemed to wrestle with dimples competing with chins and a quivering lip. “It could be so lovely, you know. Having you live with us. You never minded living with Julia, but don’t forget that I, too, am your sister.”
* * *
Though each day was a misery, I refused to move into my brother’s house. Fortunately, I was given a reprieve, this time by Salmon Chase. It was nearly a month after the trial. The light gone so early in the afternoon, I had lit a candle that I might distract myself with reading, for I had taken to examining my husband’s notes, and with no small interest, so that when the bell rang, I was annoyed, certain it was a vendor or a vagrant hoping for some food.
“Madame?” said Chase when I threw open the door. He removed his tall hat—to ill effect, given his forehead. Looking as though he was bracing for a scolding, he said, “May I come in?”
Tucking my hair into my cap, I said, “I was reading about the gout.”
“May we all be spared.” Adjusting to the dimness, he peered at the notes on the table. I waited. He seemed to be struggling—rare in a man so laden with words.
Unnerved by his reticence, I offered tea. He held up his hand so that I might not interrupt his worthy thoughts. Clearing his throat as if we’d been discussing the matter of the trial all day, he said, “You may fault me for pleading a technicality of the law, but no one cares about the humanitarian aspect. It didn’t work for Wilberforce. It wouldn’t work now.”
“You think I ‘fault’ you?”
He pressed on. “Your passion on the subject is unusual. Northerners seem more squeamish with Negroes. I have rarely seen a friendship.” He played with his cravat, fiddled with the bow of his shirt. For a moment, I feared he might disrobe, but it was typical of Chase to fiddle so, especially when cornered. “This case was a purely vindictive move on Orpheus’s part,” he said. “How was it he has come to have issue with you?”
“I fear it began with my husband.”
“A rivalry, was it?”
“More of a test of wills.”
“And the girl?”
“Oh, the girl was noticed,” I said, “just as her mother had been noticed. Pretty girls always are, don’t you think? It was a kindness that Silas finally fetched her back, though not so much a kindness to me at the time, for it forestalled our reclaiming his bit of fortune from Eugene.”
“Which is why I’m here,” he said, sounding relieved at finally having a subject with which to make traction. “It’s the money.”
Seeing my look of distaste, Chase went on. “You have a case, you see. The debt is still not settled. As his widow, you are entitled to Silas’s inheritance.” His fiddling became more feverish. “Now that the girl is sold, Eugene has the means to pay you.”
Through the window, two chickens grubbing in the street pecked at each other and flew up in a dervish of wings.
“So I will profit on his sale of Tilly?” A cart rolled by, scattering the chickens.
“Think of it this way. You, at least, will have your independence.”
* * *
In the end, I took the money, justifying it on the grounds that Silas would want me to claim it. One thousand dollars was quite a sum, and here I was, a childless woman who had come into a windfall. That winter, the river hardened, and the children of Cincinnati took to their skates. I sent a letter to Erasmus—several, in fact—but heard nothing back. This I explained away since mail in the best of weather was uneven and often dropped in a ditch, so when the thaw came and the river was cleared of snags, I purchased a berth to Ripley on the newly launched steamship Moselle that was notorious for its speed. I would have been rowed just as happily or ridden by carriage had the trace not been so muddy, but I shall not forget that boat, for the captain was overly warm to me as an unaccompanied woman perched on one of the better seats.
Erasmus lived about two miles to the west of Ripley along a rocky edge of the forest. Here and there was a stately house, but mostly there were cabins—dark, squat, clinging to a plot of tree trunks and unkempt barnyards, a fishing rod propped up on the porch, a tendril of smoke, a line of strung-up hides and unpatched britches, a sorry patch of tilling, of hammering and hope.
“Oh, dear Lord,” I said upon arrival. The place was deserted but for a billy goat munching on some grass.
The carriage driver, who had carted me west from Ripley, took in this bleak destination on so wild a river and said, “Someone meeting you here?”
“Surely,” I answered, though in truth I had no idea. Tak
ing in the scene as the driver trotted away—that junk heap of a cabin; the half-built chapel; the barren orchard next to a barn—I wondered if my undertaking wasn’t futile. But on closer look, the place did look better, as if an effort had been made. The last time I had found myself in this squalid Eden—nine months earlier—the porch had sagged and the doorjamb was askew. Clearly, there had been an attempt not only to shore up the place, but to embellish it as well. Sun-bleached antlers crowned the doorway. Rocks of every size girded the porch. A collection of something—was it stove legs?—crowned the eaves in improvised crenellation. As for the chapel, the windows were still unglazed, but the building now had a roof.
Seeing no one about, I sat down on my trunk that was packed mostly with books. The day was warm. A breeze drifted across the water, and I must have nodded off, for when a barking startled me, the sun was low, and the temperature had dropped. I squinted toward the river to make out a rowboat holding two individuals and a dog. Wanting to avoid being mistaken for some intruder and suffering a shotgun discharged in my direction, I rose up and called out, “’Tis I! ’Tis Olivia!”
“Hail, sister!” cried Erasmus, waving madly back. “Grab the line, Willy-boy!”
The boy scrambled up onto the tiny pier along with the dog, fixed the line to a wooden cleat, and rushed to embrace me. The last time he’d seen me was when I’d arrived with Handsome, after which he had rowed me to a steamship while I peppered him with questions. It was all I could do not to correct his constant “ain’ts” and “warn’ts” and other linguistic abominations that caused me to shudder.
“You must wonder why I’ve returned,” I shouted above the dog’s ecstatic barking, my hand screening against the glare.
“I got your letters,” said Erasmus, climbing out of the boat and roughly tousling the boy’s head.
And lovely of you to answer, I thought.
“Hush,” Erasmus said to the dog, a mean-looking mutt of questionable heritage.
“You brought books?” said William, opening my trunk without asking, revealing uncut volumes by Hawthorne, Robert Montgomery Bird, and several installments by Dickens.
“Aye, Willy,” said I. “We have much to read.”
The billy goat had ambled up to the trunk, nosing the books for edibility. I clutched my shawl, wanting to ask about the fate of Handsome—whether he’d been ushered on or turned back as Erasmus had once before turned him back, sentencing the man to the loss of his wife and son. But before I could ask, Erasmus put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You must be famished, sister, after your journey. Rejoice, for we have caught a fish.”
* * *
That evening, we sat by the hearth on rickety chairs as I told them of what had transpired with Tilly. Erasmus pulled on his pipe, his blue eyes fierce as embers. “’Tis a sad thing, and wrong that it should be so,” said he as I described Tilly’s wails as she was wrenched away to the departing boat. “For the day will come when God will sit in judgment upon the oppressor and find him undeserving of the pity of which he himself was lacking.”
“And are ye preaching again?” I asked, for I hadn’t recalled such flourishes the last time we spoke.
“I have once more found my voice.”
He seemed sober enough, though I wondered how long it would last. The boy, I noticed, was staring at his feet.
“And what do you think of this, Willy?” said I. “Having your father preach?”
Knowing his father’s eyes were upon him, William picked his words. “’Tis a comfort to some, I s’pose. Ain’t many that cross who reckoned for a sermon.”
Erasmus threw back his head and laughed. It was true, he said. He had become known as the River Preacher. “I may have no pulpit,” he said, “but I have my raft.”
A raft, I was to learn, that stayed mostly at the dock.
“You say you’ve come into some money?” Erasmus clicked his tongue after I told him that the money came via Eugene thanks to the efforts of Salmon Chase after the sale of Tilly. “These are ill-gotten gains, Livvie. But look around you. We could finish the chapel. Build a better road up to the trace. Maybe some lodging? Why, we could fix up this house!”
“I did not come to put your house in order.”
“So why have you come, Olivia?”
It was a reasonable question. “We were under some duress when we last met,” I said.
“Aye. Indeed.”
“And since you would not write me, I’ve often wondered what happened to the man Handsome.”
“You came all this way for that?”
“He was Tilly’s father,” I said. “I have some stake in this.”
“Was he?”
“Was he what?”
“Her father.”
I did not care for the direction of this conversation. I knew enough from having stayed at Orpheus Farms that slave breeders were not above espousing the principles of animal husbandry when it came to human chattel, and that blood merged more freely than we in the North might countenance. Besides, I had heard from Silas that Bethany could no longer abide Tilly, and what other explanation for that?
“Meaning there was more than dress-buttoning expected from the mother, Delilah,” said Erasmus. “You know who Tilly looks like. She has Orpheus looks, and that’s indisputable.” Jerking his head at the boy, who had said nothing, Erasmus went on. “Now me—I’m clearly the father of this boy.” He pointed at the boy’s face. “Just look at his eyes.”
True, the boy’s eyes were blue, but they were calmer eyes, more intelligent.
“Got his mother’s hair, though,” said Erasmus. “Strange how that works.”
“So where is he?” I said after Erasmus told me that many of the improvements had been achieved with the help of the runaway slave. “Handsome?”
Erasmus poked the fire. Sparks flew up like fireflies. The air was confounded with smoke, and I found it hard to breathe. In truth, I hadn’t come back because of Handsome; I had come back for the boy. I told myself I was doing it for Julia or for Hatsepha and James. But I missed the boy with whom I’d traversed the woods, searching for stones and specimens. I coveted him as James had coveted him—as the promise of our future, as the assurance of our place.
“You told me you ‘knew’ someone,” I said. “Someone who could help with Handsome.”
“Aye,” said Erasmus. “The Rankins. Stuck-up, the lot of them. Full of opinions. Of little help they were.”
I had begun to fear he had returned the slave to the Orpheuses after all—or worse, taken a bigger profit by offering him to the traders. It wasn’t beyond Erasmus to seize an opportunity, for in his own way, he was as entrepreneurial as our older brother, though lacking in discipline or drive.
“You sold him, didn’t you? And after he’d already suffered once at your hands?”
Erasmus looked affronted. “To the contrary, I did exactly what Handsome himself requested.”
Chapter 22
1838
It was a house of stick furniture and meager bedding, the one mattress assigned to me while Erasmus and William slept on a floor made prickly by straw. There was little crockery, and most of it chipped, a few misshapen pots fished out of the water along with the tub in which once a week we bathed. For all of our poverty, we did not lack for firewood or a diet of cow or goat milk and fish. We regarded the pig with an eye toward a late-summer slaughter that would yield ham and bacon, but in order to do so, we needed salt.
I was anxious to return to Ripley, especially once Erasmus told me what had transpired with Handsome, who was safe, if not entirely so. According to Erasmus, the Rankins had refused to shelter or move him, fearing they might be exposed as abettors, which rumor had they were.
A compromise to be sure, said Erasmus. And yet I think it serves him.
That Erasmus managed to shelter the man for several months was no small feat, for even on remote parts of the river such as this, patrollers checked the banks, especially in winter when the ice made a crossing possible. At first,
he had kept him in a close-by cave, moving him into the barn when the weather grew cold. By February, Erasmus had found sanctuary for Handsome just north of Ripley in the Gist settlement. Established as a refuge for manumitted slaves, the settlement was funded by the estate of an Englishman named Gist who owned land in Virgina, and who, upon his death, had freed his slaves, bestowing upon them property and means for their education. Like a tree into the forest, Handsome had melted into the free-black populace that, though frequently harassed by slave catchers in spite of their status, offered solidarity and more than sufficient cover for the occasional runaway.
For now anyway, said Erasmus.
That had been two months before my most recent arrival, and since then we had contended with a rising river that had nearly scooped up our cabin. One moment the flow could be as slow and calm as a conversation with an old friend, only to spike into a rage, unleashing water and debris. On those nights when thunder rattled the rafters and frightened the mule, the deluge came mightily.
“We need to go to market, Erasmus,” I said one morning in June after our tilled field had drowned and the cow was looking sickly. “We are going to starve.”
I still had money to buy dry goods and clothes for the boy. We hitched the carriage to the mule, riding most of the morning until, like a revelation, the town of Ripley appeared. After two months of living in the hinterland, I felt I was arriving in Carthage as I viewed the boat works, the mill, the tanneries and packing yard, the brick houses lining Front Street, the chestnuts flanking Main.
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