The Eulogist

by Ms. Terry Gamble

  * * *

  What have I done? I thought as I jostled along in the carriage. Still, it was a job for which I was well suited, and the thought of having my own income gave me no little satisfaction. I had lived with James and Hatsepha long enough.

  Stopping at my hotel, I told the proprietor that I had secured the position and wanted to send a note to Mrs. Orpheus. I scribbled off a missive to Bethany about visiting at a later date and that I’d be residing at the school. Having done my best to brush her off, I rode in a cab to the river to catch the ferry to Aberdeen.

  Not forty minutes later, I was back on the free soil of Ohio and climbing into another hack to carry me down to Ripley. It had been years since I’d been there, and then under the unhappiest of circumstances that had resulted in my poor eyesight. But now I had a different purpose and, knowing of the sympathies of Mrs. Beasley, was headed once again to her store. I calmed my breath before entering, but as soon as I was inside, I could see that not much had changed except the colors of the bolts of fabrics and a display of ladies’ gloves alongside buckshot and bins of barley.

  Mrs. Beasley, more hunched than I remembered, retained the visage of a cactus in James’s conservatory.

  “Mrs. Beasley? It is I, Olivia Givens.”

  “Ah,” she said, squinting at me. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  * * *

  I spent the night in her extra bedroom. When she showed me to the room, she said, “You look exhausted,” in response to which, and to my horror, I began to cry.

  “We know all about your brother,” said Mrs. Beasley.

  “Then why in heavens aren’t you helping him?”

  “We will help him if we can,” said she, “but there are Negro hunters everywhere trying to glean abettors. Do you think it would be in your brother’s interest to be supported openly by abolitionists when there is at least some doubt about his guilt?”

  The next morning, one of the Rankins’ sons was the first to arrive in response to Mrs. Beasley’s summons. He was introduced to me as Lowry.

  “I have heard of you, sir,” said I.

  “And I of you,” said Lowry Rankin with some admiration that did not altogether displease me.

  By that afternoon, ten or more people had come into the store. Mrs. Beasley locked up and pulled down the shades. There was John Collins, who made coffins, and the freed slave John Parker, who was an ironsmith, McCoy from up by Eagle Creek, and Wilsey and Makepeace and Huggins, and one or two others, including a minister named Shands.

  Said Lowry Rankin, “Your brother’s case is good. But he needs to keep his mouth shut except to protest his innocence.”

  “He needs to lie low,” added John Collins, whose coffins were used to hide runaways. “Is there anybody you know who might visit him and not draw attention?”

  I said I knew of one.

  Together, we designed a letter to Erasmus so opaque and yet so clear that if one was searching for meaning, one would comprehend that, even if he was convicted, Erasmus’s debt would be settled. In any case he should retain an uncharacteristically humble posture and be frequently seen in prayer.

  “You say you’ve been offered a position?” said Mrs. Beasley.

  When I said that it was at the Limestone Academy to work for Mrs. Winslow, a glance passed among them, and Mrs. Beasley turned to me. “I think you’ll find yourself perfectly situated.”

  * * *

  One day later, I was back in Maysville. It took few queries to locate Bella Mason at her humble house off Main Street. She was swinging on a porch swing and drinking lemonade, one leg dangling just enough to rock herself while she shouted at a towheaded child, dirty with snot, that may have been hers or the neighbor’s. When she saw me stride up her walk, she cocked her head as if she couldn’t place me. Then her dull gaze narrowed to eyes of cunning. “You come to buy the hat?”

  I told her that I’d come to ask for a favor and that I hadn’t been altogether truthful.

  “You don’t remember me, Bella, but we met once before. Oh, not the other day. It was back in ’32 when Silas Orpheus and I ran into you in Cincinnati.”

  I recounted how we had met on the street, and how Silas had asked about her father, who had been the Orpheuses’ overseer until he was fired. Bella had told us about Bethany Orpheus’s “anemic pregnancy” about which Silas had been unaware.

  “I don’t remember any of that,” said Bella, pushing the porch swing harder. “You say you’re an Orpheus?”

  “By marriage. But now I am a widow.” Still, I told her, I had sympathy for how badly her father had been used. “Something about a slave named Handsome?”

  “They was always blaming my father.”

  “And who do you suppose was responsible for retrieving Handsome when he ran off from the chain gang?” She stared at me dumbly. I threw up my hands. “Why, the very man, Erasmus Givens, who sold you the hat and who now sits in jail for abetting slaves.”

  Bella scrunched up her face as if solving a riddle. “Then why doesn’t he just tell them he’s no abolitionist seeing’s as he returned a slave to the Orpheuses?” Studying me, she chewed her lower lip violently. Then: “I seen you staring at the jailhouse. Don’t think I haven’t. What’s your interest in the hatter?”

  I swallowed. I was taking an enormous risk that Bella could be trusted. “The hatter,” I said, “is my brother.”

  * * *

  The next day was an agony of waiting. I paced the parlor at the hotel, trying to read a book, casting it down, picking up knitting, looking at the clock. At last I spotted Bella through the casements strolling up the street. I rushed to the porch.

  She walked up the steps and plunked herself down in a rocking chair. “Law, but your brother is pretty.”

  “Bella, did you pass him the letter?”

  “He read it. He says he has a lousy lawyer, and was hoping to get Henry Clay. ‘My, my,’ I said. ‘Henry Clay!’”

  “But you gave him the message?”

  “Oh, I told him. And he gave me an earful about your fancy brother having to disavow him. I told him sure as soot that if I had a fancy brother, I’d let the whole world know.” Giving the rocker a violent push, she almost toppled over.

  The following day, I wrote James and Hatsepha telling them our friend was doing well, all things considering. He appreciated our support and understood our reluctance to claim kinship. In the meantime, I had secured myself a position and would be staying for the time in Maysville.

  * * *

  Theodora Winslow took me in as a sister. My charges were the daughters of the prominent Kentucky families of Maysville, Washington, and Augusta—young women of curiosity and accomplishment, some with an intellectual streak. Wary of being seen as urging them to progressive views, I nevertheless smiled at every sign of intelligence such as questioning a large family or confessing a passion for novels.

  “Jane Eyre,” said one of the girls, a redhead named Polly. “Have you read it, ma’am?”

  “I have not,” I said. “Who wrote it?”

  “Why, the sister of Emily Brontë!” exclaimed another girl, sending her compatriots into lascivious giggles about Heathcliff.

  Evenings I spent with Theodora, reviewing the day, discussing the girls, sharing our favorite passages of Shelley or Keats. We sipped tea and sometimes sherry, and she soon confided that, though she was a Kentuckian by birth and with slaveholding parents, she had changed her views about human bondage. As a child, she had watched from her window as a boy rushed back and forth to the well to fill her bath, and it occurred to her that this boy would never have any choice but to do what he was told. “I was only twelve and already unhappy about anyone telling me anything, so I could only imagine how he felt.”

  One evening, after two glasses of sherry, she led me to the drawing room in her quarters. From here, the windows commanded even better views of the river. On the opposite was a tall bookcase. Theodora removed several tragedies by Shakespeare, exposing a knob that she grasp
ed firmly and yanked, swinging the bookcase open to reveal a narrow, circular staircase. I followed her up, our steps lit by a candle. At the top was a garret holding five narrow cots as well as a table and chairs. I didn’t have to ask her to explain.

  Because of our common friendship with Mrs. Beasley in Ripley, I confessed my true reason for coming to Maysville. I told Theodora that Erasmus Givens was my brother, and that we had conspired to abet slaves across the river. I told her about Handsome and even about the girls we had hidden in the barn. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about what had happened afterward with the patrollers.

  “You have many secrets, Olivia,” said Theodora with her lovely gaze that now I claimed solely as my own. “It seems we are to be the best of friends.”

  * * *

  Each morning, we scanned the local paper for details. Unlike me, Theodora had indulged in a lorgnette that, when not in use, dangled fetchingly in a golden case from her bodice.

  “It says here that the trial is proceeding,” said Theodora, holding the glasses to her eyes. She leaned toward me. “I have never known the word of a slave to be given any weight against the word of a white man.” She returned to the print, and then startled me with a gasp, stabbing the paper with her finger. “Listen to this!”

  Bethany Orpheus, née Boothe, whose father bred some of the finest racehorses in Kentucky, has succumbed to pleurisy brought on by a cold she contracted last Christmas. She is survived by her husband, Eugene Orpheus of Orpheus Farms, and has been buried in the Orpheus family plot. According to her husband, there was no service.

  I was stunned that Bethany could go so quickly, in spite of her obvious infirmity. Downstairs, one of the girls was practicing piano, and badly, too.

  “You’re shaking, Olivia.”

  “May I see the article, please?”

  She handed me the paper. Twice I scanned the text.

  “What is it?” she said.

  I took off my spectacles, feeling suffocated as if by a miasma on the river. “The article,” I said, “does not mention a daughter.”

  * * *

  By June, school was nearing a conclusion, as was Erasmus’s trial. I continued to stay away from the courtroom and the jail, using as my scout Bella Mason, who was caught up in the ruse and quite enthusiastic about spending time with my brother. Crowds had gathered for the closing arguments. If he was convicted, Bella would pass along James’s money to satisfy his fine.

  But on the week before the judge was due to hand down the verdict, word came out that Tuesday’s slave sale was not to be the ordinary auction of field hands and their offspring. It was to feature Orpheus slaves—the “best-bred slaves in Mason County.”

  Strollers passed by the slave pen for days, peering through the slitted windows, asking to see this one or that so they could give it a poke. That one of these persons might be Grady, the boy I’d seen take such a whipping from Bethany over ten years earlier, sparked my curiosity, but I was not going to indulge in such prurience. Indeed, I hesitated to go into town.

  The evening before the closing argument, Bella called on Erasmus at the jail. I waited on her porch, ignoring the prying eyes of the dim-looking child who prowled around the corner like a cat.

  When Bella got back, she sat down in the rocker next to me and crossed her arms. “Well, you won’t believe it.”

  By then, I was used to just about anything coming out of Bella’s mouth. She had given me specific details about Erasmus’s lice problem, and where he was sorely afflicted. So, too, had she described the judge as “a breeched son of a bitch who musta kicked his way out of a mule’s ass.”

  She smiled in a way that scared me.

  “I seen your brother, and you know what? He ain’t the only prisoner of interest in that ol’ jail. Maybe the only criminal, currently speaking, but he has company.”

  “Speak English.”

  “We-ell, he being a kind man and a purveyor of hats, had to inquire, the wretch was wailing so pathetically. Beat by her husband, you’d think. Or a whore got too drunk and picked a fight. When he sees her in the opposite cage, he asked her to hold her candle up and beholds not just any creature, but a chit jes’ as ‘lovely as the day is long.’ And passably white, he says, but when I think about it, we could’ve all said the same, ever since we seen Mrs. Bethany parading her about at church. So now the rooster’s come home. Thing was, pretty much everyone knew Mr. Eugene couldn’t have children, him kicked by the horse and all.” Bella started rocking. “Why, they say she can even read!”

  * * *

  When the day came to hear the verdict on Erasmus Givens, who had been accused of abetting slaves on the soil of Kentucky, it was to the auction platform, not the courthouse, that the crowds flocked, including Theodora and me. I had veiled my face for fear I should encounter Eugene Orpheus ensuring his chattel received the highest price.

  Bella pushed into the throng and came up beside me, her hair twisted into a braid on the top of her head. She was wearing her best frock for the spectacle, though the fabric was poorly printed and frayed.

  “You need to go to the courthouse, Bella,” I said, and severely, too. “Come and get me when the verdict is read.”

  Clearly disappointed to miss the sale, she strode away with a head toss. Had I not paid her one hundred dollars, I doubt she would have complied.

  I had nearly two thousand dollars from James in my reticule at the ready to pay off Erasmus’s fine. Standing next to Theodora, I craned to see each sorry soul as he or she was paraded upon the platform, the first being a boy and his sister who were crying for their mother. The auctioneer—a beady-eyed, thick-necked, scraggly-haired Frenchman, twisted the girl’s arm and said, “This one’s young and can still be taught. And the boy? See the back of him? Clean. No marks. Healthy children ready to be groomed.”

  Many of the people in the crowd were local and more interested in gloating over how low the Orpheuses had fallen than in buying slaves, but a number of people had come from out of town—bidders and agents from Lexington who represented plantation owners and collectors from the South. I remembered the man who’d bought Tilly, and wondered again at her fate.

  “Four hundred,” bid a man old enough to be Methuselah.

  “Each,” said the auctioneer. “You mean four hundred each?”

  In the end, the two children went for a total of nine hundred dollars and were hauled off, gripped by a man who told the agent he was going to split them up.

  After that, a mangy-looking field hand and two women missing teeth were auctioned for a fair price. The field hand was marred, said the auctioneer, marking him as uppity. But that was when he was a boy, and by now the fight was out of him. Indeed, there was no spirit in this creature. I started to turn away, then glanced back for a second look, wondering if this could be Grady, now grown and beaten. And where was Sticks?

  Next to me, Theodora sighed.

  One after another was auctioned off—twenty or so altogether—to settle Eugene’s debts. If Eugene was in the vicinity, he wasn’t showing himself.

  “And now,” said the auctioneer, “what you’ve all come to see.”

  I hadn’t laid eyes on Elizabeth since she was a fat-cheeked girl with curly hair. The petite young woman standing on the platform, her dark hair pulled tight, her eyes squeezed shut, looked little like the child I’d known back in 1837.

  “This fine thing can pass as white,” said the auctioneer. “Indeed, she is only one-thirty-second Negro, and would be une belle mistress for any man.”

  People had started to mutter among themselves—little tremors of shock that this was the very girl who’d come to their teas.

  “Open your eyes, girl. Let them see your face.”

  “Let us see your legs,” called out one man in a pigtail.

  Whispers gave way to the clicking of tongues and the shaking of heads, but no one stepped up to intervene. Elizabeth slowly lifted her eyes. I strained to spot Eugene, who’d raised this girl to call him Daddy. But the lo
ok on Elizabeth’s face betrayed no hope of rescue.

  “Eight hundred,” called one of the agents from Lexington.

  “Eight hundred?” said the auctioneer in a mocking tone. “C’est un objet d’art, celle-là.”

  Indeed, she was beautiful. And I had little doubt as to why. The cheekbones of her mother—not Bethany’s, but Tilly’s. It was obvious. Tilly, who was half out of her mind when Silas had retrieved her, substituting her for the money owed him. They have taken her child, Silas told me, trying to convey her anguish. Tell me about Missus Bethany’s girl, Tilly had asked when I returned from Maysville. How pretty? Tilly herself, who had been dressed up as a doll and taken to the big house. Even Handsome said it was cruel when they snatched her. Drove her mother crazy.

  And those Orpheus eyes. In all likelihood, Tilly was herself an Orpheus from the wrong side of the blanket and not the child of Handsome. It was ridiculous to think of Tilly as Silas’s half sister, but if the stories about his father and Delilah were true, the case could be made for Elizabeth to have claim upon the farm had there been anything left to claim, and if she weren’t part African.

  “One thousand,” said another voice from the back. I tried to make out the bidder, but the crowd seemed to convulse like one mighty organism at the sight of the girl upon the block.

  “Do I hear eleven hundred?” said the Frenchman. Silence. Who had made the offer? I remembered Tilly screaming as she was carried toward the river.

  “Eleven hundred!” said I.

  Theodora gripped my arm.

  “We hear eleven hundred. Eleven hundred. Ees nothing for this beauty. Look at her!” The auctioneer grabbed Elizabeth’s chin and turned her face from side to side.

  Theodora moved away. From beneath my veil, I could see her whispering to a minister who was standing near us in the crowd. I recognized him as the man named Shands whom I’d met at Mrs. Beasley’s.

  “Look at her magnificent shoulders!” said the auctioneer as he tore her blouse away from her neck. A gasp went up from the crowd.

  The vein in my neck pounded, and for a moment, I felt as though I should faint. Then Theodora was beside me. “It is arranged. But you must not bid again.”