“How much do you want, Miss Ellen?”
The old woman said nothing.
“What number should I say to get right with you?” asked Maggie.
“I’ll let you decide what to say . . . but don’t insult me.”
Maggie rose slowly and walked over to Miss Ellen. The old woman’s bodyguards rushed into the room. Miss Ellen raised her hand, and put the men at ease.
Maggie knelt and rested her head in the old woman’s lap. She smelled like lavender and old linen, a perfumed corpse prepped for burial. “Thank you for everything.” She inhaled the old woman’s scent. “You have done so much for me. You are a part of me. Half of me belongs to you.” Maggie wiped away a tear. “Including the shipping line.” She felt Miss Ellen touch her head and run her fingers through her hair; the strength of her grip was undeniable.
“I forgive you. What’s past is past. Miss Ellen is just grateful to see one of her children grow up to be so generous.”
67
They drifted for weeks; they did not know for how long. Archer had lost a lot of blood, but Jupiter had stopped the bleeding with a compress of cloth and seaweed. The cut wasn’t that deep. The bleeding had stopped, but since the wound wasn’t properly tended to it had become infected.
“When you make it back to San Francisco, I want you to look up Elizabeth and her son, and I want you to tell them what happened to me. Tell them everything. Why I was in San Francisco. Why I did it. And you be honest with them. From your end of things you be honest too. I want them to see the whole picture. Especially the boy. You make sure the boy understands.”
Jupiter smiled. It hurt to do so. They were starved and baking under the sun, and the nights were cold. “What the hell makes you think I’m gonna live? Can’t you see we’re in the same boat?”
Archer laughed, and it hurt his throat. “No, you’ll live. You’re a survivor. As someone who’s tried to kill you, I know firsthand.”
“If I survive, then you’ll survive.”
• • •
When he saw the blue ridge of mountains, he knew he was close. It wouldn’t be too far now. Jupiter knew these mountains far too well. As intimate and familiar to him as the insides of his pockets. He had tucked away so many memories in these woods. He wasn’t too far away now from a place he’d once called home. As he got closer, things were not as pristine as he’d left them, as unsoiled as they remained in his mind. Those unsullied hollows and creeks, the holes and hiding places, were now charred earth left in the wake of Sherman’s army. Still the stray resilient tree or the obstinate house led him onward.
The Smith plantation still loomed over the charred earth like a wounded and resentful giant. An impossible fantasy came upon him all at once, and he half expected to see his family run up to him; the child, still in his mother’s belly when he’d left. He envisioned a strong boy running up to meet the father he had never met, followed by a woman who longed for him and stayed true in his absence. There was no running. Just smoke coming from the carcasses of old manors, circling the air, mixing with the closed.
All had changed. He approached the large white columns stained with blood and soot and hacked saber marks for God knows what reasons. Yes, everything had changed.
He grabbed the handle and entered through the door—the front door, not the servants’ entrance—of Colonel Smith’s big house. Yes, a lot had changed.
But inside, it was as orderly as he had kept it in his mind. He knew this place well too: in the large white marble fireplace he had tucked away the amount of steps a private must learn to drill. On each step of the large, spiraling staircase he had placed elements of the privates’ training manual for battle. On the chaise lounge were seated rules of engagement, battle hymns, psalms from the Bible. Nothing had changed.
However, he did not remember the silence—that was different. Not the silence of the absence of life, but the kind of silence that is paradoxically loud, created by someone or something trying to remain undetected and unheard.
Yes, it was all the same. Even the enormous oil portraits on the equally large walls had miraculously survived the ravenous horde of Sherman’s army. The portrait of Colonel Smith’s maternal grandmother was still there, as was that of his uncle, and of his father, the first Colonel Smith. He remembered everything about it—the epaulets, the white beard, the saber held just so, but he did not remember the eyes that followed him with every step.
Yes, those eyes did move—quickly—and so did Jupiter. His hand slid down the strap of his canteen and to his waist, unsheathing his blade.
“Come on out and show yourself,” Jupiter said to the dancing eyes of the portrait.
“Who goes there? State your name!” came a muffled reply from behind the portrait. The eyes continued to dance, never settling on Jupiter.
“The name’s Jupiter, but don’t bother introducing yourself unless you intend to do it face-to-face. Now come on out here.”
“Jupiter?” the portrait asked. “Yes, yes, I do know a Jupiter. One of my slaves. Fine boy, he was, but he ran off with the Yankees. Fine lad, but no, no, no you can’t be him. Jupiter’s a ghost, so Jupiter is dead. There’s no way Jupiter survived that hell of a war. No, sir, you lie to me. You are a demon cloaked in the seemingly innocuous visage of a darkie. I will come forth, but I promise that your demon work will have no effect on me, for I am a good Christian man.”
By now, Jupiter had recognized the voice. “No demon work here.” There was loud banging and then a groan that echoed in the chimney. Dust and soot fell into the hearth. More groans, more soot, and then a bare foot, and the other wore a sock with holes that allowed all five toes to breathe as well as the heel. The mantel and hearth moved as one, opening as if hinged to a door, to reveal the ghostly visage of Colonel Smith.
He wore a dressing gown and smoking jacket, all covered in soot. His shock-white hair was streaked black with soot.
“So, you black devil, you’ve come back to kill me.”
Jupiter thought about that for a moment. Had he? His skin tingled at the thought of it. There was a startling truth to it that he had not anticipated. “No, sir. I didn’t come back to kill you. I came back for Clara, the young one.”
The Colonel threw up a hand in disgust. “Bah! You confound me with your riddles, demon. I know not the gods you speak of from your heathen religion. I spit on your pagan rituals.” The Colonel breathed in deep, unleashed a rattle from his chest, and spewed a web of sputum onto the floor beside his bare foot.
Jupiter looked at its green and yellow sickness. He looked closer at the Colonel’s eyes—bloodshot. Closer still, sores about the scalp and arms. It was obvious that he was gripped by madness and suffering from something of the venereal variety. The Colonel’s many dalliances with the flesh had resulted in a punishment of the flesh. “Do with me what you will, heathen. Shrink my head. Cannibalize my entrails. But know thee this: With every ravenous bite you take you are ingesting a child of God. The light of Christ will sear you from the inside out.” With that, the Colonel slumped to the floor and began mumbling to himself in some dead and forgotten language or the language of madness.
“Do with me what you will,” said the Colonel. Jupiter recognized the irony of that statement immediately. That the Colonel should say these words to him who was considered property just months ago—the Colonel’s property at that. How many times had the motto of Do with me what you will been acted out on the other slaves on the plantation, as he did with them as he willed? Now here he was, asking for the same power to be expended on him as he had done to others. There was a sadness to it, yes, but definitely a twisted madness.
The Colonel’s leg twitched, and then the mad mumbling stopped. The Colonel looked at Jupiter for the first time with recognition. “Jupiter,” he said, eyes opening wide.
“Yes, Fath—” Jupiter stopped himself. “Yes, Colonel. It’s me.”
�
��Oh, you’re a soldier now.” The eyes grew weary. “I beg of you, man. Do with me what you will. Put me out of my misery. Have mercy on me.”
Jupiter could see the Colonel’s eyes begging for help. He went over to him, patted him on the shoulder, and leaned him against the wall, being careful not to touch his syphilitic sores.
“I sure did miss you,” the Colonel said. “I took what was yours and I am sorry. I took it. Took it . . .” Jupiter removed the strap from his canteen, wrapped it around the Colonel’s neck like a torch, tighter and tighter, until the Colonel stopped babbling, stopped grabbing at Jupiter’s hands, and then stopped doing anything at all.
• • •
Archer was impeccably dressed in his gray uniform, broad-brimmed hat, gilded saber sheathed at his hip and nestled in the tossing but decadent carriage; he looked not like a man on the losing end of a war but a victorious soldier returning home to bask in his glory—but in reality this was not the case.
He passed the scorched earth of battle. The corpses left in the wake of destruction did not startle him for they all seemed more familiar to him than home. His carriage passed former soldiers—the wounded and amputees, both Yankee and Confederate, hobbling alongside the road together. “Never thought I’d see it,” said the man next to him. Archer could not remember his name, but his rank was captain. Archer ground his teeth and his eyes welled up. “I’m now inclined to believe I could see anything.” He relaxed his jaw, but sweat formed on his brow, and his eyelid began to twitch incessantly. He longed for opium.
The manor was in utter decay. He expected that. However, upon entering he could sense something was wrong—those instincts that saved his life so many times during the war told him that something was not right. He cracked the door. The smell hit him first. His stomach muscles clenched with their own assault as Archer wrestled with the urge to vomit. He looked around in a panicked search for an answer. Someone? No one. Nothing. Even though the horrific smell of death covered everything both living and tangible, he knew that the source of the smell was his father, Colonel Smith.
• • •
Heavy, heavy rain. Archer dug at the base of the gravestone until he reached his mother’s exposed coffin. He worked for hours, deep into the night, with Clara holding a lantern above him. The casket, prodded open, revealed the time-ravaged bones of his mother. He pushed them aside, surprised at how light they were, and applied pressure to the coffin’s bottom, revealing a deeper space—filled not with the morbid contents provided on the higher level, but with his mother’s jewelry, the family heirlooms that she’d vowed to take with her, lest the Colonel lavish his slave wenches with them.
Archer stuffed his pockets with the valuables like a pirate. They would fund the search for his father’s murderer—his former slave and brother. Of course he would get himself killed when I need him most. Archer climbed out and kicked the Colonel’s body into the muddy grave.
• • •
Birds circled their tiny craft. Archer’s wound began to smell, even above the briny ocean.
“Do me one more favor,” said Archer, now almost green in color.
“What’s that?” asked Jupiter, starving, barely sounding the words.
“Make sure you never give up on finding Sonya.”
Strange that he said that. Jupiter had given up. He had searched for her for so many years, only to have impediments and obstacles between them become more elaborate, more challenging, and more dangerous. Obviously, the world was trying to tell him something. From the way things looked, he wouldn’t have to worry about it much longer.
Hallucinations. Mermaids. The ghost of sailors Jupiter had crimped rose from the sea. The Colonel. He sat right there in the boat with Jupiter and Archer. He held Archer’s head in his lap, stroking his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, but Archer couldn’t hear him. Most vivid of all was that large ship off in the distance.
68
Somewhere in the Pacific
The Cressida Pacific: Captain’s log. Picked up a Negro and a white man. Castaways. The white man had already died of starvation and possible complications of syphilis. The Negro was very weak. Took days to recuperate . . .
• • •
“I finally get a job that gets me away from that city, and I run into you in the middle of the ocean. I promised myself, the next time I saw you I’d kill you.”
Jupiter was too weak to move.
“You took everything from me. Least that’s how I felt. When Sonya left with Jacob, it tore me apart. Soon as you came back, she pushed me away.”
Jacob.
“But eventually I came to see it was the right thing for us to be apart. I was holding on to a dream that I wanted to be true. Everything that I could remember about the plantation—between me and Sonya—seemed like it was making its way to being real. We had a family, and the whole time you was tearing us apart. You were always there, even before you caught up with us. . . . There never was no us . . . was there?”
Jupiter turned away from Titus. His son’s name echoed in his head.
“Damn, boy, by the looks of you, you been through hell. You don’t have to talk. It’s fine if you just listen. Did you find her?”
Jupiter managed to shake his head.
“So here’s what’s gonna happen now. We gonna get you better.”
Jupiter swallowed. His throat felt scorched. His eyes welled.
“You seem like you was ready to give up, like you been through enough. No, you can’t give up now. I can’t imagine what you been through to be with them, but I can tell you that they are worth it. You all deserve to be together.”
69
Liberia
Sebastian brought her to Mary’s home. She and Sonya stared at each other for a long time, waiting for the reunion to register as real. Maybe she had asked the universe for too much—a sister, a friend, a husband for her, a father for her son. When they finally embraced, Sonya thought for a moment that this change of fortune might be enough for her.
• • •
Mary had a large plantation-style home. She had married a wealthy merchant whose father was Dutch and mother a native African.
“Do you know that I kept that first letter you sent me?” said Sonya. “And I only lost it recently on the voyage over.”
“Oh, really?” said Mary. “It’s for the best, I suppose. Most of it was propaganda for the ACS.”
“You didn’t write it?” asked Sonya.
“Heavens no. I could barely spell my own name at the time. I didn’t receive proper instruction until I met my husband, Robert.”
Sonya found it difficult to hide her disappointment. “Oh, I see . . .”
Mary leaned over and grabbed Sonya’s hand. “Sonya, I meant every word of it at the time, but I was just a girl excited and thrilled by the adventure. It wasn’t until later that I learned of the snakes and insects, the lack of food, the belligerent natives, the malaria, the death. When I could write for myself, I put all of this in a letter, but the ACS censored it. They were worried that no Negroes would come if they knew of Liberia’s hardships. And I’m glad they did, Sonya, for you wouldn’t be here with me now had the letter been sent. It wasn’t true then, but it’s true now. Look around you, Sonya. I worked as a maid for Robert’s parents in this very house.”
Liberia was a strange land inhabited by familiar faces. Already, she could tell that it was not the paradise that some thought it to be. This was not a place free of conflict, free of prejudice. Tribes were tribes, no matter what part of the globe. This place was no exception. The American Negroes had already begun to see themselves as superior to the native Africans. She hadn’t before, but she suddenly felt uncomfortable in this Southern plantation–style mansion, here on free soil. Maybe it did not demand the same uses, but those intentions were there, those same grandiose yearnings.
“Of course, it’s a
ll so amazing. I understand, Mary, truly I do. I know how hard and unforgiving this world can be. Maybe I was feigning innocence for my own sake.”
Mary smiled. “You were always the one full of romance and optimism—no matter how horrible your life really was.”
“Yes, no matter how horrible.” She had not thought of optimism as an insult, but it felt like one. Sonya realized she had not told Mary about Jupiter, and she didn’t feel comfortable doing so.
• • •
Sonya realized that the only fantasy in Liberia is the country itself. Everything else was a raw kind of reality. She had begun to accept that she would never see Jupiter again. She’d had to chase the fantasy in order to let it go.
Mary offered Sonya one of her many rooms. Having no other options, she reluctantly accepted. Sebastian asked permission to speak to her alone.
“So what do you think of my latest trick?” Sebastian smiled. “I think it is by far my best.”
“Once again I am in your debt.” Sonya did not smile. “What do you expect as repayment?”
“I have already told you what I want from you. The question is what do you want from me?”
“It’s not what I want for me, but what I want for Jacob. Now look,” she said, “if you’re going to be in my boy’s life, then you’ll have to be in it. If you are going to stay, then you’ll have to mean it. I can’t have you running in and out of his life when you see fit. I know you’ve come all this way, and maybe things aren’t what you expected them to be, but I can’t let you hurt him. I can’t let you hurt me.”
The Abduction of Smith and Smith Page 24