by John Coyne
The soul driver who had Sarah was a pinelander, he saw, poor white trash from Georgia. He was a small man with a yellow-mud complexion, straight features, and the simple dumb look of one baffled by his life. He appeared as if his head had been kicked by a mule. The pinelander would be no trouble, he thought with satisfaction, already feeling the flesh of the beautiful black woman naked in his arms. He moved off the porch and made his way across the crowded wharf to where the pinelander stood with his private bounty.
He’d buy her off the man for the stated reward money and save the man the trip to Calhoun County, if the pinelander questioned him, he’d simply say he was headed south to visit the major. But the soul driver wouldn’t protest, he knew. Not with a hundred greenbacks in his pocket.
He’d have the soul driver deliver the woman to his cabin and chain her there to the furnishings. No one would be the wiser, nor would he be seen with the girl. His mouth watered, thinking of having her, and he picked up his gait, suddenly in a rush to buy his prize.
He waited until the steamer was underway before going down to his cabin, and then when he opened the door to his rooms, he did not see her. His heart quickened, thinking the pinelander might have tricked him, gone off with his money and the slave, but then he saw that she was chained to the bedpost and was sitting in the dark corner of the small room.
The candlelight from the passageway caught only the gleam of her brown eyes. He closed the door behind him and locked them both in the darkness of the cabin.
“Hello, Sarah,” he said to calm her. “You are all right, girl. I won’t beat you.” He did not soften his words. He never treated slaves with kindness, for he had learned they always misunderstood intentions and later thought they had some claim on his affections. He treated all slaves the same, whether he had slept with them or not. “I will unshackle you from the bed, Sarah, and I want you to strip out of those filthy rags of yours, then use the bowl and water on the counter and wash yourself, especially your privates.”
He spoke calmly, not allowing her to notice his excitement. It was best with slave women that they not understand the desire he had for them.
The girl was trembling, but he did not try to soothe her fear. She knew well enough what he wanted, and it did not matter to him how she felt.
In the darkness of the tiny cabin, he lit another corona and watched the girl. She went to the washbasin and splashed the cold water onto her face, washed her hands.
“Take off those rags,” he ordered when she didn’t rush to do so.
She pulled the thin cotton dress over her shoulders, doing it so as not to look at him.
“All of it,” he added when she did not immediately slip out of her thin petticoat.
As she pushed off her petticoat, she began to cry.
“Stop it!” he told her, and in one quick motion, he sprang off the bunk bed and slapped her face.
Sarah slid to the floor, clutching his leg, still crying. He kicked out, but her arms were clutched around his leg, and he stumbled against the wall of the cabin.
Now he swore and, reaching down, seized her shoulders and lifted her to his face.
She weighed nothing. His massive hands held her easily off the floor. Her face was inches from his. He could smell her frightened breath, smell her flesh. Her kinky hair smelled of smoke, her body of the river musk, of her own animal sweat. He loved the smell of black women, even more than he loved their flesh.
He kissed her, forcing his mouth over hers, digging his tongue into her gasping mouth. She tried to struggle, and he quickly slipped his arms about her, pinning her naked body to him.
She cried out, but her small voice was muffled by the heavy beating of the paddleboat, the noise of the river.
“Scream,” he told her, laughing, enjoying her helplessness. No one would hear her. Then he pushed Sarah away and studied her face.
She was almost as beautiful as a white woman, he thought, with the same thin features, the small mouth of an English woman, and wide, bright, chocolate brown eyes. Her skin was copper colored and smooth. There was white blood in this bitch, he thought next, and he felt her small breasts.
She gasped, and he laughed again, clinching the tiny corona in his teeth.
“You like that, huh?” he asked. “And this?” He grabbed her sex with his right hand and hoisted her up.
She screamed and went to hit him, but he struck first, knocking her across the small cabin.
“Get up, bitch!” he ordered, “and over here.”
He turned to the small bed and took off his coat, then sat down and told her, “Pull these boots off, girl.” He reached down and pulled his small pistol from the top of his right boot and tossed it on the soft bed covers. “Hurry, you!”
Wordless, she crept over to him, still crying from the beating, took hold of his right boot, and jerked it off. “There,” he said, “that’s better.”
He raised his left leg, and she pulled off the boot. She was still on the wood floor of the steamer cabin, and she carefully placed the boots together at the foot of the small bunk bed, then slowly, still in pain, she pulled herself up. She was so small and thin that her whole body did not take up any space in the tight room. He towered in it. He crowded her.
“Forget about your Major Smythe, Sarah. I have no plans to put you back in those cotton fields. I have better plans for you. Plans of my own, girl, if you have the right temperament. How would you like to visit New Orleans?”
He was pulling off his ruffled shirt, placing the pearl buttons on a tray, and then she suddenly reached, like a hungry child seizing food, and he saw she had grabbed the derringer.
“Bitch!” he shouted, reaching for her arm.
She fired at once, not looking, screaming and terrified. The single shot would have been wild, but he stumbled forward and was hit in his left eye. The bullet smashed the socket and drove up into his brain, and the blood splattered her naked body, and then the walls and ceiling of the tiny cabin as he turned and stumbled to his death, crashing against the washstand, spilling the water and breaking the large porcelain pitcher.
No one heard the shot. No one heard her cry out in fright, and she wasn’t sure whether she was really crying or whether the rage and horror were only in her head. She sat for a while, trembling in the corner, watching him across the cabin. He no longer moved, and the blood spread like sewage around his body and across the floor, seeping into the wood.
Toward morning, the first song of the slaves rose from deep in the river steamer, and she awoke. The voices called to her, came to her through the vastness of the boat. It was a funeral song. Some slave had died in the hold of the steamer.
Oh, graveyard, oh, graveyard,
I’m walking through the graveyard,
Lay this body down.
Your soul and my soul
Will meet on that day,
Lay this body down.
Sarah stood and, moving so that she wouldn’t see or come too close to the sprawling dead man, she retrieved her dress and petticoat and then dressed with her back to the man she had killed. She only looked at him once to be positive in her own mind that she didn’t know him, and then she opened the cabin door, slipped out into the empty passageway.
On the deck she went at once to the back of the steamer, knowing that at any moment she would be seen, shouted at by the white men. But it was still early and quiet on the river. Sarah could see the green shores and the calm river. It would be a lovely day, she thought, reaching the paddlewheel.
Someone shouted, and she glanced around and saw a black man, one that had helped load the cargo of slaves. He was waving, motioning her away from the spinning wheel, and getting up off the deck to come to her. Sarah smiled, thinking that she was a free woman now, and that she loved her God in heaven, and that she was glad she had killed the white man before he violated her. Then she jumped—as any young girl might, full of life and energy—into the twisting of the giant paddlewheel and disappeared down into the foamy white and deadly-churn
ing paddlewheel water.
CHAPTER NINE
“I THINK I KILLED them,” Jennifer told Tom, holding the teacup in both trembling hands. The cup was warm and comforting. She sipped the tea slowly, letting it warm her whole body. She was in Tom’s apartment, sitting in the corner of his leather couch. She had telephoned him to meet her at once at his place.
Tom was in a chair on the other side of a glass coffee table. He listened patiently as she described what had happened in the foundation bathroom. He kept interrupting with questions, and he scribbled notes on a legal pad while she talked, as if she were his client instead of his lover.
“Don’t,” she told him.
“Don’t what?” He kept writing, using the gold Cross pen she had given him.
“Don’t take notes. It makes me feel like a criminal.”
“You’re not a criminal unless you’re convicted.” He finished a note, then sat back in the soft, light brown leather chair and watched her for a moment. She knew what was coming. He was framing his statement, trying to make it sound less threatening, but before he could speak, she stood and walked to the windows of the apartment, staring out across the Hudson River at the bleak industrial shores of New Jersey. The day had cleared. It had stopped snowing, and a hard-edged blue sky had reappeared. “We’re going to have to talk to the police,” he said behind her, trying to sound casual.
“No!” She felt a wedge of panic and reached out to touch the windowpane with the palm of her hand, as if to let the cold glass calm her. “No,” she whispered.
“We’re looking at justifiable homicide,” he went on, speaking in the same soft, measured tones.
She had first met him on a grand jury trial, and she remembered how she had been captivated by the way he cross-examined witnesses. He was like a bird of prey, a dark handsome falcon hovering, circling, closing in. Slowly, softly, without raising his voice or seeming to intrude, he had backed each poor witness into a corner, and then stripped him bare, exposing the lies.
“No!” Jennifer shouted, turning. “I won’t.”
“Honey. Jennifer, please,” Tom said. “You just told me. There are two, maybe three people dead. We’ve got to get on top of this situation. What happened to you has got to be drug related—the Colombians are on to you. If it isn’t, if we’ve got a simple mugging, you’re still okay. I mean, you’ll be viewed as a female Bernhard Goetz. No one is going to send you to jail. Look. We go to the police. We start a public relations campaign. No jury—”
“But I’m not Goetz!”
“Jennifer, you’ve admitted to me that you killed a person. And you may have just killed two others.” He nodded toward uptown. “I’m an officer of the court, for God’s sake. I can’t—”
“Please! Please!” She went toward where she had dropped her coat on the chair. “I’m sorry I came to you. I’m sorry I compromised your goddamn position.” She was crying as she grabbed for her coat.
Tom leapt to his feet, swearing, and seized her arm.
“You’re going to sit down here, Jennifer, and we’re going to prepare a defense. You’re a wanted woman. I’m not going to let you damage your life and career.” He pulled her away from the door, but she jerked loose from him.
“Leave me alone, Tom. I’ll work this out myself.”
“Jennifer, sweetie, you’re not being rational.” He moved toward her with his arms out, as if to embrace her.
She backed away. “Don’t touch me.”
The tone of her voice stopped him. She saw the sudden fear and apprehension in his eyes, and that pleased her.
“Please, Jennifer, you need help,” he offered, but kept his distance.
Jennifer realized she was no longer in control of her own body. Her heart was pounding, and she felt a surge of strength in her limbs. My God, she thought. I am a monster.
She looked up, into the mirror behind Tom’s couch, and stared at herself. Her own brown eyes looked frightened, not enraged. Her face was ashen, and what makeup she had put on that morning had worn off. Her hair needed to be combed. It frightened her to see how unkempt she looked, but her face wasn’t disfigured. She didn’t look like a monster. She took a deep breath.
“Jennifer, are you okay?” Tom whispered, alarmed at the expression on her face.
“I don’t know,” she confessed.
“What happened just then?”
“I don’t know. I get angry, enraged, and then
” She started to cry, deep sobs, but this time Tom came over and wrapped his arms around her. She collapsed in his embrace and let herself be comforted.
“I’ve got to get you to bed,” he finally said, after her sobs had abated. He leaned over and easily picked her up. After settling her into his bed, he pulled a heavy quilt up over her. “Are you warm enough?” he asked, arranging the quilt over her shoulders.
Jennifer nodded and pulled her legs up. She cuddled against his pillow and seized his hand in her fingers. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.
“I won’t,” he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed.
She kissed his fingers, then laid her cheek against the warmth of his palm and fell asleep still holding on to her lover’s hand.
When Jennifer woke, the room was dark and silent. She came awake slowly as if she were swimming to the surface of her life. Then she recognized her surroundings, realized she was in Tom’s apartment, and immediately grew apprehensive. She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed.
She heard voices. Or at least one voice. Without her shoes, she moved quickly and quietly to the closed bedroom door and pressed her head against it to listen. Silence. Carefully, she opened the door. The empty living room was glowing like a Vermeer, with the clean yellow light of the winter sunset.
She noticed that Tom was in his office beyond the living room. She saw his shadow as he paced in the small room. He was probably on the phone. He always paced while talking on the telephone. She crossed the room, her feet silent on the hardwood parquet floor. At the office door, she paused and looked inside.
He was standing at his desk, looking out the window at the Hudson River. The sunset froze him in profile, softened the edges of his dark features. He was listening to someone, then whispering his replies. When he turned to pace back across the office, she stepped to one side of the door and stood in shadow. Her heart was in her throat.
He came to the threshold and stood looking across the long, darkening room to the doorway of his bedroom.
“No,” he said to someone, “she is still asleep. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m letting her rest.” He stepped away from the open doorway. She heard the leather of his chair stretch as he sat down, and when she chanced a glimpse inside, she saw that he had swung his legs up over the edge of his desk and was leaning back in the chair, running his fingers through his hair. It was one nervous habit that always annoyed her. It left his hair standing up.
She moved stealthily from the dark corner to the other side of the living room, forcing herself to be calm. After picking up her fur coat and purse from the chair, she grabbed her boots from where she had left them by the front door. She moved quickly across the living room, through the swinging door, and into the dark kitchen.
She knew there was a service door off the kitchen, and behind it the back stairs and an elevator. She had used the exit before to do laundry in the basement.
Jennifer slipped off the chain lock and stepped into the lighted back stairwell. Her heart was racing. With trembling hands, she slowly pulled the door closed behind her. She kept imagining she heard Tom running after her, grabbing her before she could escape. She pressed the elevator button and then, too frightened to stand and wait for it, took off down the back stairs, her stockinged feet slipping on the concrete steps.
She reached the lobby level and stopped in the stairwell to slip on her coat and shoes. Then she opened the heavy steel door and looked out at the empty lobby. She saw the doorman outside under the entrance awning, helping a woman out of a taxi. Jennifer
stepped far enough into the lobby to see that the front elevators were closed. Tom had not yet discovered that she was gone. Running to the entrance, she grabbed the now empty taxi and, brushing past the old woman and the doorman, slid into the backseat and slammed the door. “Uptown!” she shouted.
“Where, lady?” He picked up his clipboard to note the address.
“Uptown. Hurry, please.” She glanced at the entrance of the building, half expecting Tom to come barreling out after her.
“West Side or East, lady?” the driver asked, still waiting and watching her in the mirror.
“Uptown! The East Side.” Jennifer was trembling. “Hurry!” She glanced around again. The doorman and the old woman were moving slowly toward the glass door. She didn’t see Tom.
The taxi finally moved. The driver steered with one hand as he put aside the clipboard.
“You got to tell me, lady. The East Side is a big place.”
He laughed, trying to make a joke of her indecision. The car bounced out of the apartment building’s cul-de-sac and turned onto the side street.
Jennifer sank into the seat, exhausted by her fear. She was thankful that she had gotten away from Tom, but she didn’t know what to tell the taxi driver. Where in New York City would “a wanted woman” be safe?
She opened her purse to take out a tissue and wipe her eyes, and there, stuffed into the cluttered purse, she saw the newspaper clipping she had meant to give Eileen, the one about Phoebe Fisher, the channeler. She pulled it from her purse and scanned it, looking for an address, then leaned forward and spoke to the driver.
“I’ve changed my mind. Take me up to the West Side.” Now she knew where to go and who might help her.
CHAPTER TEN
AT SEVENTY-NINTH AND Broadway Jennifer got out of the cab and called information for Dr. Fisher’s telephone number. Then, standing at the pay phone, with the wind from the river blowing across the avenue, she called her. As the wind sliced into her, cutting between muscle and bone, she stamped her feet on the packed snow, trying to keep them warm.