“Jan,” Dossie called quietly.
“It’s for both of us together. It can’ be no other way. I can’ let you out of my sight no more. I promised Uncle.” Jan had been so frightened when his head cleared from drink, and he realized that he’d left Dossie alone with the ragpickers.
The triumph of the evening before had come when Black Bob Simpson, owner of the saloon for colored and any who cared to join them at Lispenard Street, negotiated a deal for Jan to dance in his bar. Worm had touted his dancing and said that he was fresh from the highlands and knew the traditional turns and steps. When he took the raised platform that all comers showed their stuff on, he did the freshest, the most athletic, the most graceful turns in his repertoire. Bob hired him on the spot and offered the room on the second floor for him and his woman.
In the part of town that Jan now led Dossie to—whereabouts was their flop—there were lots of dark black gals on the arms of white boys or jumble boys as light as white. And there were, as well, white gals with their arms linked into colored men of all of the shades. Dossie started to countenance the palaver of the ragpickers and got scared of losing Jan to some other gal. His eyes were alight. Even though he did not truly belong to her, she knew they must stay together. Their hitch was beyond that a man and woman feel for each other.
To reach the room at the back of Black Bob’s tavern, a big, dirty barn of a building, Jan and Dossie threaded through groups of women gathered in the hallway and in doorways. There were some smells of cooking and some sounds of small children crying.
Inside a large room on the first floor, women moved around a piano singly and paired up with men. Threading through was a fright, for the passages in the building were narrow and the walls and the floor wet feeling. When they reached their place at the very back of a passage, stepping over a foul lake of water in the corridor, struggling to keep their parcels dry, Dossie’s heart was thumping like the tail of an excited dog.
They were safe—tucked up off to themselves—but it was wet and dark and stinking. They relaxed a notch behind the closed door, but the trapped atmosphere was stifling. They heard a great lot of caterwauling and crying and threatening voices beyond their own walls, and the thick air got thicker when Jan lit up a kerosene lamp so they could take stock.
The noise and the putrid smells assaulted Dossie. Her loins ached, but she was set on not letting Jan know it. She didn’t want any curiosity or intimacy yet. No matter that they’d made a plan. Everything… everything had changed. Dossie and Jan sat on two small milking stools that were all of the unbroken furniture in the room except a stove. Dossie put her head on Jan’s chest, reaching for a place of comfort and contentment. She clung to him like a plaster all through the first night. Things crawled about the room and splashed in pockets of foul water. Dossie hung on Jan and refused to acknowledge the pests in the dark. There were cries of women and loud laughter, factory whistles and squealing animals. At each blast of some unknown noise, Dossie pressed closer to Jan and squeezed her eyelids until only the sound of their two hearts and the scurrying of insects and rodents could be heard.
“Don’t let any harm come to him because he loves you,” Hat had said. My goodness! How would she manage to do that in New York? Some sliver of light shown through their window. Dossie batted away bugs that settled on Jan’s clothes and thought about him while he slept. Hat had begged her to be careful with him.
Is this a woman’s test then? Must she be careful and be the custodian of the future? It was the responsibility that she craved. Let the ancestors know it! Dossie fussed and fumed at the pests in their flop. They seemed much smaller in the light of day, and she wondered why she hadn’t lit up some of her fragrant candles to drive them off. She girded herself and went to find a water spigot to clean up, to drive off the smell of blood and sick that clung to her.
After two more nights alone in the fearful place clinging to each other for fear of the crawling things and the boisterous people, he made love to her and she welcomed it. It was not at all like the plan for the baby. He did but knock on the door. He knocked gently. He seemed scared and she kissed his fingers to encourage him. He was not bold and swaggering. Dossie had counted on him being cavalier and joking and teasing the way through it all. The first time he’d talked of it for the plan, Jan had bragged on his endowment and made Dossie blush and giggle to cut the tension. Now he was solemn and methodical, touching her intimacies slowly, lightly. He put his lips to every lobe, every nipple, and every fold of skin on her.
The new entanglement with Jan burst like a sunup! The doings with him ought to be a shame. Dossie Smoot was a married woman whether her husband was here or not. But it was not a wrong that she felt in any part of her body but her head. Her intimacies were convinced! Dossie wanted to cry in the light of day knowing what she’d done to Duncan in the dark.
Still, how could they be blamed? They needed each other. Comfort and pleasure were vindicated because seeking them brought them and they were palliative. Dossie sang birdcalls and brought her lips to brush Jan’s ear. How could they be blamed for succumbing to this passion?
“I crossed him, Dossie. I love him, but I love you more. I love him, but I love you more,” Jan babbled when he was done, but still trembling and clinging and not entirely spent.
“Hush your mouth!” Dossie countered sternly, showing impatience with his surrender. Here he was saying out loud what she had whispered onto his shoulder!
Jan Smoot was the beautiful cock of the walk in Black Bob’s cellar. Jan and his dancing quickly became part of the excitement the folk were there for. His exertions were the same as at home in the highlands, but the onlookers were hungrier. They took in Jan’s spirited jigs with much enthusiasm, and he rose to their expectations every time he stepped on the threshold.
Women of all shades crowded into Black Bob’s on days off from a charwoman’s stint or factory work and they giggled at Jan’s flourishes and called for more. The cellar was filled with jauntily attired men of all colors, too. Roving clutches of sharply dressed dandies and cocks created a sartorial contest on the streets of New York City. And the taverns were galleries and porches and proof against the cold and the stink, and they were well peopled in the thronging Five Points. And though much depended on the precinct, colored folk did promenade unmolested in many streets.
On her first night in Black Bob’s, Dossie would have been a mouse in the corner peeping out of her hole if Jan hadn’t pulled her into the center of the activity. Because of all that had happened in Paterson, Dossie was scared of the drinking gawkers and “hi-de-hos” that filled up the tavern, though they were friendly seeming and of a range of colors like that found in the Knob.
Jan sat Dossie at a table close by the raised area for dancing and put down a glass of ale for him and one for her. He gave himself a pull from a flask and told her to take one good swallow from it, too. He said, tapping the end of her nose with his finger like Duncan might have done, that a gal should only have a little whiskey lest she be sitting at a table with her legs spread wide and her skirts hitched up. Jan nodded toward some women in Bob’s cellar who were sitting that way and slumped forward with their heads down on the table. Then he left Dossie’s side to break into his combinations.
When a dark, thick man came and sat next to Dossie and said he’d give her as much whiskey as she could drink if she let him paw on her, Jan jumped off the stage and flicked his knife open near the man’s ear.
“Git up, boy, before I cut you!” Jan said and Dossie felt the air get thick around them. She knew Jan Smoot was not as soft as this man and the others supposed. He could give back one jot better than he was given in any fight on any day. But the man wanted no fighting, and he got up and tipped his cap at Dossie and Jan with respect. Jan then looked around at the room, and one or two of the men looked back at him. They gave him a silent token of respect, and Jan touched Dossie under the chin in a way that said, Here is mine.
Dossie was relieved of the man’s bother, but tho
ught this was the same way she’d seen Jan touch his horse. It was a native gesture—pointing out what he claimed or wanted so others would know. Dossie shrunk a little bit in her seat. Had she passed from Duncan’s pocket into Jan’s then? It was a hazard to become the pocket floss of one man or another.
“Watch me, girl.” Jan touched Dossie’s face again to cause her to smile and he gave her another sip of whiskey before returning to dancing. Oh, she would use up the last of her eyesight watchin’ Jan Smoot dance! It had always been like loosing a jar of fireflies and seeing their lights flash.
“A satin-black gal like you could earn a better living if you wanted.” The woman surprised Dossie, and she nearly dropped the pail she carried. “You mightn’t know it, but there’s sports that would pay to touch your altogethers. Some men favor a black gal just as there’s some that want a white one.” Shulamith Cleary had never before spoken to Dossie, though they had several times passed each other in the narrow, serpentine hallway. She now faced Dossie with her sparsely covered breasts held high, and the sight of them was compelling. Dossie fought to look at Cleary’s feet.
Shulamith Cleary ran the bawdy house at the front of Black Bob’s building and paid a premium to have the large room with the window on the front. Cleary’s women, known to cater to all comers, lolled about displaying themselves in the window in the front parlor.
“Naw, ma’am, that is not for me,” Dossie replied with caution and a tick of courtesy.
“Your jumble boy won’t stay trussed up for long, lamp black. You’ll have to eat when he moves on.” Cleary guffawed and sprayed spittle in the close confines. Dossie turned away quickly and walked off. Better risk a cuffing for disrespect than encounter the pox breathing the air from this woman.
When President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was rung in on the first day of the New Year, all of the colored folk in New York City were ecstatic in celebration, albeit some were solemn and tearful, too. They dressed and promenaded in their precincts. The colored swells and leaders and the white folk working for the cause of abolition held a great convocation on the day to read out and hail the edict. The Cooper Hall was full of them. The first day of the year—the first true day of freedom! Jan and Dossie, clutching each other’s hands, circulated in the crowd. The proud, staunch men speaking up about joining the Union army and fighting Jeff Davis made them both think of Duncan and the folk at home in Russell’s Knob. How were they faring? Were they going to be drawn into the fray? Sobering thoughts countered their giddy love and their silly excitement about the Proclamation.
It had all come at once. The freedom from bondage and the loving Jan.
On a stone-cold afternoon following three days of celebration of President Lincoln’s edict, the police clamped down on public revelry. To quell emancipation festivity and quash it in the name of public safety in neighborhoods like the Five Points, the police swooped down in raids even on the paid-up establishments that considered themselves immune.
Dossie emerged from the front of the flop as a herd of constables rushed in and rousted the women in Shulamith Cleary’s bordello. The entire building was put into a pother. Shrieks and curses went up. Dossie recognized it at once, the keening and howling she’d heard in other streets, the sound that had puzzled her until now. Now she knew why the women cried out in this way.
The cops pulled out all of the women sitting or working in the building. They charged up and down the hallways of Black Bob’s tenement, and every grown woman who could walk out of the place was put in a wagon and taken to the jail. Mothers were forced to leave all their children but the infants they could carry in the care of an old grandmother and submit to the cops.
The noises in the police wagon when they were taken off was clangorous. Pushed in tightly, some of the women were loudly, drunkenly abusing the police and held their fists aloft. Some of the women moaned and called out for their children. Some comforted one another, clinging together so hard they appeared to be strangling each other.
“Calm down, boy!” Worm demanded. “Look to you face! They’ll have you down for panderin’ and lock you up at de very leas’. They’ll say she is workin’ for you and both of y’all go down a hole,” Worm roared, hoping to bring Jan to the sense of the situation. They must keep their heads, or Dossie could have a stay in jail.
Worm was influential in the Five Points on account of his longevity there. At the jail he arranged that Dossie be separated from the professional gals, and when she came before a judge, Worm stood and spoke on her behalf.
“She ain’t no prostitutin’ gal, suh. She ain’t got the assets for it.” Worm guffawed and leaned toward the judge as if speaking confidentially, though his voice was very loud. “Huh, don’t nobody want no lamp black like her, suh. She ain’t on no game.” Worm roared and capered and elicited a round of laughter in the courtroom. He pointed to Dossie and hoped she had the sense to keep her glance oblique and her eyes wide. “She just a quiet kind of country gal that could get pulled into somethin’ bad. The good Lord knows I knows somebody that’ll take her in and give her a decent job, Your Honorable,” Worm testified. “If we kin keep this pitiful one from goin’ on the game, I pledge to try it, suh! I’m gonna keep this child of God off them damn—uh, beg your pardon, suh—dem turrible streets.” Worm carried on his declaration to the judge, until the man banged down on his gavel. The judge declared he was reluctant to put a simple-minded colored gal in the slam when white women needed maids and scullery hands. So he released Dossie into the custody of Miss Abigail Cheltham to work as a maid, as Worm had arranged.
“Is the onliest way, boy,” Worm told Jan. “If you all wants to keep her outta the jailhouse, you better let her work a decent job. Miss Cheltham’ll treat her good and pay her a sum. And she kin come home an’ visit ya from time to time. You won’t lose your jewel.” Worm, who knew the swell neighborhoods and knew where servants were needed, had, of course, already accepted a fee from Miss Cheltham for his facilitation and to cover the “costs” of his defense of Dossie.
Jan wanted to smash Worm’s jaw, though he was so grateful to the man he could have kissed his pulpy, ugly face. He’d saved Dossie from going to jail. But what now? Outside of the courthouse Jan grasped Dossie’s wrist and pulled her into his arms. He smooched her hard on the lips in defiance of all the lookers. “You’re a brave girl, Dossie. You remember all what you’ve done? Don’t lose your water now.” Jan pressed his forehead against hers. Dossie smelled stale but amatory, and Jan wanted to use his tongue on her. He wanted to have something from her before letting her go—something like a taste in the mouth. Instead he pecked her lips again, pinched her nose, and said, “Tighten your leathers, girl!”
“Come and see me when you can,” she said as if she doubted he would be allowed to.
They had come to town to escape trouble, and now she was in a swirl of it. And he was separated from her. What would Uncle think? Jan remembered that he’d told Dossie this when he swiped at her butt and kissed her neck. “Uncle can’t see what we doin’ and he can’t punish us from so far,” he had said, hoping to get Dossie to change the whole of how she felt in the world.
No, Duncan couldn’t help them. They ought to cut and run and go on back a mountain now. There was a brief moment when Jan could have grabbed Dossie’s hand and pulled her away, back to the ferries, back across the North River, and back to their home. But truth was Jan wanted to stay. He wanted to have this bawdy excitement even with the danger and the turmoil.
Jan’s guts were in a roil because of the war, too. There was the plan for conscription of white men, and some white men were chafing at fighting for the slaves. Hell! It was more than chafing. They were kicking about it. New York City was a far more dangerous, tumultuous place than Paterson had been, even with all of the Europes there fighting over crusts of bread tossed from the elegant tables of their masters—the great masters of Paterson’s turbines.
The idea of fighting did appeal to Jan, though. He liked a good fuss. Maybe th
ere was an adventure to be had in marching off for a brief bit to fix what needed fixing. But was this his war to fight?
The People had a measure of freedom because they stayed on the outsides of things, keeping to themselves in their own small place. Jan knew that was how they thrived. That was the only way. Venturing forth from Russell’s Knob had always been chancy.
New York City was full of enemy elements of its very own—uniquely its own. But the same cacophony of funny-talking foreigners that was loud and ubiquitous in Paterson was abroad in New York City—only more so. And just like in Paterson there were pockets for each group. And in each group a great many malingerers lay about drinking on the pittances their youngsters earned. They clung together in their knots from this place or that county and had regular fusses betwixt and between themselves and with the native-born whites. And though treated little better than the colored, they angled themselves up a notch or two with putting their feet on the neck of the colored. How you going to get them to want to fight for the colored? There were angry knots on nearly every corner in New York discussing the draft of white men that Lincoln had ordered to get his army. Swells with the money for it were paying poor slobs to go in their place because of the exemption. And the poor Irish figured they were getting the worst of it because they couldn’t afford to pay off nobody else. And there were black men, enslaved and free, who were spoiling for the fight. And there were free colored waiting and hoping for guns and government uniforms and the right to fight and die. Ezra Oliver was eager and earnest and determined to go. Ezra Oliver had said a free colored man like Jan had something to fight for.
Well, Jan wanted to fight for Dossie. He wanted to do what Uncle had sent him to New York City to do—to keep her safe until it was safe to come home.
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