“Go home and look after the homestead,” Duncan barked at Pet. “Put your mama and Noelle in your pocket and keep them safe. Tell the People to fortify. I’ma stay in town until my precious comes,” Duncan said.
The Irish and other groups in Paterson were working themselves up, too. There was liable to be fighting in town. These hard-pressed, poor whites were pissed at the swells that didn’t have to bother with the war. And there were plenty of rich bastards in Paterson who paid a pittance to their workers and stood on the necks of the poor slobs. There was plenty of discontent around. And Duncan knew what any other colored in Paterson knew: when the pale poor get mad and fortified with liquid courage, they decide it’s the “niggers’ ” fault.
“Come. Come back home right now and be safe!” Duncan prayed his letter’s contents again and again. Dossie listened to birds, so Duncan confided to every little winged beast he saw in the hope it might take up his words and carry them to her.
13
THE NIGHT OF JULY 13, 1863, was a bad night to be a black in New York City. Homes and businesses and hangouts and flops and alleys and hovels and shacks of colored or the people who defended them were aflame. Even the Colored Orphans’ Home got sacked and burnt up by a well-oiled, vicious mob. Ah, a price is paid for forgetting your place and circumstance when the white men and their women are in a roil and boil and are pledged to run colored out of New York City.
The draft was called and implementation begun, and these rioters were firmly committed to resist it. Some later said the sin attached to murder and thievery was waived these nights, for the mob had sworn itself to righteous rebellion on account of the draft—the call-up—the conscription. It was said their clerics took their side, and their women took up banner and truncheon and murderous cries.
The mobs set fires that ate up shanties and nice edifices alike if they were associated with colored. Wise folk abandoned their belongings and took themselves off over back fences to safety. Colored flooded onto ferries and sought shelter in police stations and the army barracks.
It was reckless of Jan and Dossie to ignore these soundings. Their own lives had them pitching and reeling, and they hadn’t paid the proper mind to the temper of the streets.
They came to their plan. Jan agreed to leave and go home with Dossie. They would face Duncan together, and now that Jan had made his pledge he was content—no, excited—to go back to Russell’s Knob.
The bawdy joke of Black Bob’s beginnings was that his father had made sons on all sides of the blanket. Bob’s tenements were considered a safe refuge for colored on account that Bob was himself half an Irishman. Jan moved through the city to get to Dossie and bring her to safety at Black Bob’s. He didn’t want her to risk going through the streets by herself. Colored women were being dragged off into alleys. Neither young nor old were safe.
“Miss Cheltham took her carriage and went off to escape the crowd,” Tilly cried and ran about like a chicken for the pot, gathering things she figured she’d not be stripped of on the street. Her agitation had her twisting on her hair and chewing at her lips. “She won’t let herself be caught. And she ain’t comin’ back for nobody. Run! You must run. You cannot let ’em catch you an’ kill your baby. You gotta think of the nipper and run off as fast as you can.” Dossie laughed to see that Tilly had stuffed her pantaloons with so many of Miss Cheltham’s clothes that she looked like a woman eight months along herself. But she quaked to see Tilly flying out of the back of the town house at top speed, hoisting her stomach and hightailing over Miss Cheltham’s back fence.
Jan came up to Miss Cheltham’s back door then and Dossie’s heart took wing to see him. She wanted to latch on to him and not be loosed come what may. Her sense of safety returned despite the menacing, noisy crowds on the streets. Jan would have a plan.
Jan decided they would fly through the streets—would run—to get to their place. They had to get around the mob. They must not be overtaken uptown. They must get downtown. Their passage was arranged at the waterfront. All they must do is gather up and go home to Russell’s Knob.
Dossie shrieked when Jan grabbed up a handful of soot and smeared her white uniform, tore at the collar, and ripped the sleeves to her elbows.
“Them bog whores, them bitches, will pull the clothes off you. You got on more undies than they’ve ever seen on their sorries. They’ll rob ’em off you. Colored women are being attacked, Dossie!” Jan cried. “You got to get down to Bob’s quick as you can. You got to be quick and brave and save yourself and your baby.”
He heard himself saying the words. He was separating them both. She didn’t fully understand that he meant they must go separately. They were to be pulled apart then. These two who had held to each other like a plaster to skin had to separate now. Jan convinced Dossie that their chances were best if they ran off down different streets. She was to skulk, to hide in doorways, to go aground if she saw a safe hole. Get back downtown to Black Bob’s for refuge. The only way back to Russell’s Knob was through Black Bob’s. Go there! Get there!
A mob has got little brain and no heart, but numerous, countless, numberless hands and feet. The great flood of people that formed it was fed at every tributary and side street until all of the avenues were filled with enraged people. Events quickly assumed an alarming pitch in the western part of the city. Men assembled in groups as if according to arrangements. They moved along all the avenues northward. Men knocked off work in the various factories and workshops to join the crowd. The separate groups swelled and came together in lots near Central Park. All of the streets and avenues uptown became blackened with white people.
“I’ll run off different,” Jan said, his words sounding to himself as if coming from away far off. “I’ll go down a different street. We can meet up at the flop. Nobody will dare come down in there—in Black Bob’s place,” Jan assured Dossie.
If he sent her off under cover, he could distract any followers for a bit to let her start off. There were knots of angry whites at nearly every corner. Dossie might be lucky and escape the marauders. God might protect her. She was good. She had been wronged and she was still good and had been brave and was bringing a baby. “Help her, Grandmother,” Jan prayed.
Could he pull the threat from her? Could he distract her pursuers—giving them a tastier target? They were bent on causing mayhem. Colored women had been grabbed on the thoroughfares and fondled, and drunkards had wagged their jaspers at them or spit on them. Some colored women had been dragged into alleys and raped.
The sight of Dossie’s back darting from side to side like a crab crawling was alarming. Her clothes were still too white, too crisp! Jan wished for once that she was a less visible treat. But what would that matter now? A mob has no thoughts, only eyes, and hands and feet and threats. Jan’s last coherent thought was about Dossie and her safety and their baby’s life. He danced. He slap tapped his booted feet. He pounded and whirled and cavorted on the pavement with bluster and mockery, and the mob of scowlers turned onto him and did not see Dossie, and when Jan started to run from them, they followed, and all his thoughts and plans outraced him.
Jan tried to keep his feet. His feet did, in fact, leave the ground as punches and kicks and gouges kept his body off the pavement. They threw him down and stomped him. They left Jan nearly lifeless and ran on when they saw another colored man, but Jan had no time to check his wounds or crawl away. More of the mob came up, and he took off his boots, thinking that he could run faster without them. Indeed he could. He threw the boots as bombs and hit one boy beside his head.
Jan Smoot ran as he had never before done in life. Duncan! Duncan had said not to run—he and Pet were not to run off from bullies! They must stand and fight. Hell! Now was time to run, though, to live another day if he could. Duncan would agree that now was the time to run. “Oh, God, just one more day to know that Dossie is safe and to kiss her—even if the next day must be my last. Please, God!”
The streets and alleys went by. The encroaching mob cha
sed Jan westward until he was uncertain that he was heading to the beloved flop that he was trying to reach at Black Bob’s. His heart nearly burst, but he held to the hope that Dossie had been luckier than him. Maybe she’d been able to reach the flop.
Dossie! She’d saved him from Emil Branch at some forfeit of her soul’s innocence, no doubt. If he could save her and the child. If only she could take the baby back up to Duncan’s heaven. It was the heaven she believed in.
Jan kept running. He surveyed the street before him. He thought he might reach some hideout near the riverside under the docks. When the crowd behind him swelled still more and trained on him and yelled to rouse their confederates and brandished bats and swore to take him and to hang him, Jan jumped into the river. He jumped in to chance being able to swim or to float to a safe place, or even to cross the river if possible.
He was pulled from the water and pounced upon. They trounced him and kicked him, and Jan latched on to the toe of one assailant. He bit it free. They beat him senseless and then hoisted his body to a street pole. A swaggerer came forth from the back of the mob and scalped a lock from Jan Smoot’s head and tucked it into his belt.
The indomitable Worm came upon the end of the scene and was so shocked at the sight that he watered himself. Johnny Dancer? Jan Smoot hung on a lamppost? Worm lashed at the menacing whites with a scythe and nicked all that did not flee. The ugly crowd would have beat and burnt him, too, for intervening to pull Jan’s body away, except that their interest was diverted to another victim, and they ran off at a call that another black was sighted.
Worm then saw an arrogant creature retreating who turned and stepped like he was doing a cakewalk. A prize hung from his belt. A stolen patch of scalp from Jan Smoot’s head. Worm stood and looked good and long at the haughty, swaggering alley rat whose face was spread with dirt and red freckles. The one who’d taken the scalp turned and he trembled for one brief moment, when he registered that Worm was studying him. The hair swung at his belt and dripped blood.
“Mark that boy! Mark that one!” Worm roared.
Some while later, a few hours only, Worm sneaked up on the tough who’d taken Jan’s hair and caught his neck in the crook of his elbow on Sullivan Street. He pulled his pigsticker and showed it to the boy, which caused him to freeze and drop his hands. Worm grabbed him by the belt at his waist and tore Jan’s scalp off it before sticking him in the gut, lest the boy’s blood fall on his friend’s nephew’s hair. The boy’s blood did gush and run unstaunched over the cobblestones from the hole Worm tore in him.
Because he must not leave Duncan Smoot’s nephew hung and scalped on the streets of New York City, Worm brought Jan’s body to Bessie Cronin, an unofficial undertaker in the Five Points. Though licensed only as a laundress, she dressed poor and colored people for burial, was in the employ of certain medical students who were in the market for cadavers, and had contacts for chemicals. She prepared Jan to travel home.
Worm made up his mind that night, in that alley where he gutted Jan’s killer, to go and die somewhere other than New York. Now, after days of seeing colored folk’s heads cracked and bodies burnt and women suffering more violation than can be redressed, he was considering the gate. Jan’s mutilated body was the finish. This boy had done naught but dance, stepping high and smiling at the girls and shaking out his pretty curls for the delight of the drunkards. Worm’s patience with New York had run out. And perhaps his courage, too, had gone. He’d likely used up all of what he’d been allotted for luck and guts in paying out the nasty little bastard that killed Jan Smoot. He had better go. Yes, Worm had better be good and gone before the bulldogs on the police force tied him to the eviscerated body in the alley on Catherine Street. When Worm left off Jan’s body at Black Bob’s, he boarded the ferry at Peck Slip and put his back to New York forever.
Dossie saw the place on Jan’s head where the hair came away, and there was the horrific, naked plug out of his flesh. She did not faint. She did not fall. She was frozen still at the sight and her senses left her. There was a hole above his right eye! The eye was there—the blessed, precious, beloved eye was in his head though the animation, the light, and the changeable beauty of it and its partner were gone.
“Way back a ways they pummeled my son an’ kilt him. They strung up his dead body and rained blows on me when I cut him down. I like to lost my ear. ’Twas a long while ago and the worse of it has wore off,” said an unfamiliar woman who’d taken refuge behind the barricades of Black Bob’s tenement.
If there is any one thing that will bring the body back to animation, it is the smell of coffee and the call of birds. When the thick-bodied, copper-colored woman that Dossie could not remember knowing brought her a cup of coffee, her body revived. Dossie was certain then that she heard the little Kingfisher Woman calling but thought it must be geese following the river. It was a rally, a call to go home at once. And she gathered up.
When the ferry left the west bank of the North River, all of the colored aboard it were shaking quietly. The only sound from them was their rattling bones. Many other colored took themselves in the other direction. Their bones, too, rattled inside them like dried beans. They crossed town to escape to the outlying areas to the east into Brooklyn.
Dossie took up the arrangement that Jan had made for their departure and put his body aboard the ferryboat. The boatman was not happy to take a coffin box on his packet, but Dossie convinced him by showing him who it was in the box. It was Johnny Dancer, the boy he’d made the passage with! The boatman became tearful. “Beat and strung up?” he exclaimed. “Ach! The toughs have gone mad to string up Johnny Dancer here.” The boatman said that Johnny Dancer had spoken of his home, and he vowed to see Dossie and the coffin all the way to Paterson. He installed her comfortably and kept a protective eye on her as she sat alongside the coffin. He brought her biscuits and coffee and told her about the time he’d had a mug of porter and watched Johnny dance.
When he was given the news, Duncan walked out of Minnie’s in a daze and wound through the streets of Paterson, then went back to Minnie’s and drank whiskey that he did not feel or taste. Colored folk were spreading news. Eyewitnesses were grilled. It was worse than ’34 when he had run from New York. Jan had been killed! Her telegram had said “killed.”
“Son!” Duncan cried out several times. Had Cissy called Jan to her on the other side? “Why you so selfish, Cissy? Cissy!” he cried angrily. It was always this way. The vindictive dead ancestors were ever after pulling loved ones to their side. He’d held on to Jan this side as long as he could, but the boy’s mother had won him at last. Ach! Cissy might argue with Duncan’s picture of things he knew. He had often been harsh with her boy.
“You take care of my Dossie now! Cissy, you bring her back good and safe,” he whispered an entreaty to his sister. He put his head onto the table before him in complete surrender to the grief and the whiskey.
Folk fleeing the lynching and burning in New York City carried horrible tales to every crossroads and meeting place along the roads. Hat threatened to dash herself off a boulder at the back of the house when word of Jan’s murder reached her. Duncan and Pet held her and allowed her to thrash at them in her grievous fury. Hat might not have cried so much if her own leg had been taken off. Noelle was stricken with pain radiating along her arms when she was told of Jan’s death. She lay down on a pallet facing westward and refused to speak to Duncan, Hat, or Pet.
Duncan, Hat, and Pet went to the landing at Paterson to meet Dossie and to take Jan’s coffin from the barge. Dossie revived at the sight of them, when she knew she had accomplished her duty. She had brought Jan home. Now she had leave to let go of herself and fall down in her grief.
Duncan saw her at the landing when she stood at the rail of the boat and thought she was changed though recognizable. Her body was different. He saw it instantly. He was swept with the wholly inappropriate idea to remove her clothes and remove his own and press their bodies together—their skins touching. It seemed the on
ly right way to know what changes there had been. He felt ashamed of this feeling and ashamed of crediting these thoughts in the face of his grief. He knew the circumstances had changed somehow. She had written it. She was bringing Jan home dead. But skin to skin was how he longed to renew his acquaintance with Dossie Bird.
Duncan’s house—Dossie’s home—was familiar but shabby in some measure. Dossie saw that the curtains were dirty and hanging east and west. The house had not fared so well without her, she thought. On crossing the threshold she pushed back her cuffs and took up the broom. She collected dirt in circular swirls and brushed it out of the front door to thwart ill will. Duncan busied himself with bringing in water and warming up the stove. He moved slowly. Perhaps it was the drag of grief. Had he changed so much? Was it only sadness and shock? Did she seem to him to be changed? Did he notice a change in her? Had he noticed that she carried a baby?
Dossie stopped her sweeping and stood across the room from Duncan.
“I am three months along and it is Jan Smoot’s child and I will not lie about it to you,” Dossie said plainly, facing him. He better know right away in case he did not want her to stay in the house even for one night. She’d seen his eyes on her. She knew he had questions.
“Ah, the citified woman is bold!” Duncan said ruefully. “I thank you for being straight, Dossie girl,” he continued. “You and your baby are at home.”
Duncan wanted to rush up and entangle her in his arms with soft affection, to touch and hold her and assure her. But Dossie did not invite him.
“Not a girl anymore,” she said kindly to keep Duncan from going back and getting honey names and thinking all was the same.
“Aw… no, no. I know it. I wan’ to call you by a sweet name because you been in so much trouble. Dossie. I can call you that, missus?”
She smiled at him. “A cup of coffee, sir?” Dossie put the broom to rest in a corner and took a seat at the table.
Angels Make Their Hope Here Page 22