The Abduction of Smith and Smith

by Rashad Harrison

  Singleton said nothing.

  “Oh, I see,” said Jupiter. “I’m not the only one.”

  “Advances have been made to others. Clinkscales knows how to hedge his bets.”

  “What happens when I cross paths with one of these other fellows looking for Barrett, and they are not so keen in giving up the bounty?”

  Singleton shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Smith. You have proven to be a resourceful fellow. I’m sure you will think of something. Clinkscales hedges his bets, but I’d place my mark on you. You’re the one with the family at stake.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Clinkscales knows the location of your wife and boy. They are living in a small village in Liberia. Find Barrett, and Clinkscales will provide you with passage and you will be reunited with your family.”

  Jupiter sighed. “Since we are being honest with each other, I know your story isn’t worth an ounce of pig shit. Clinkscales has no use for Barrett, but he also has no use for you. I know the signs of a man all alone. Clinkscales has taken away his influence. With that face and without his name, you’re finding it difficult to get what you want. You think if you serve Barrett on a plate, Clinkscales will be satisfied, but men like him are never satisfied. I know Barrett is out there and I intend to find him—but not for the reasons you think. I need to know that I can live my life without killing him. I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him, but my actions will be my own.”

  • • •

  Spanish soldiers patrolled the harbor, inspecting the cargo of the ships at port. There were five ships docked, as far as Jupiter could tell. Which held the weapons? Which had secreted Barrett there right under the nose of Spain? Crews unloaded shipments of cotton, foodstuffs, and rum, sugar, and tobacco. Items that had their trade suffer due to the revolution. Jupiter noticed a ship with a very high waterline. There was something heavy in its hold.

  Jupiter walked up the gangplank and tried to board the ship.

  A tall man—presumably the first mate—with two of the crew behind him stopped Jupiter just as his foot hit the deck. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Is this the Liverpool?”

  “Aye, it is.”

  “Then I am coming aboard.”

  The man laughed. “The hell you are. Now get your black ass off this ship before I rig your hide to the sail.”

  “Barrett isn’t coming.” It was a guess, a gamble. They looked the rough sort with which Barrett would have associated.

  The man drew his pistol.

  Jupiter raised his hands.

  The man grabbed him and placed the barrel under his chin. “The hell you mean Barrett’s not coming?” he whispered in Jupiter’s ear.

  “He’s not coming. He’s in the jungle out there. The insurgents didn’t like the idea of Barrett selling weapons to the other insurgents.”

  The man spat. “Fucking mambi.”

  “They wanted all the guns. Barrett wouldn’t sell them.”

  The man pressed the barrel harder into Jupiter’s chin. “How do I know you weren’t a part of it? Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Jupiter.”

  He lowered the gun. “Bloody hell. Barrett’s black bastard son. I think I see the resemblance. He spent many a night talking about you. He said he lost you during a squall when you took the boat out to retrieve a man fallen overboard.”

  Jupiter almost laughed, almost grabbed the man’s gun and shot him, almost screamed He is not my father. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Old Barrett knew you’d turn up in Cuba. Didn’t he, lads?” The man turned to his crew. They gave ayes in agreement. “He said, ‘My boy’s not the sailor I am, but he’s a survivor. He understands the nature of things. I’ll see him soon enough.’ And here you are. I guess the old man taught you more than he realized, eh?”

  “Yes. He’s taught me a great deal.”

  “Well, we will have to cross the Atlantic with more weapons than intended. Not much rum and tobacco to trade. The trip can still be profitable. Hopefully, there are enough Africans in dire need of guns.”

  72

  San Francisco

  Maggie’s eyes drifted around the room. The late Preston Dalmore had had impeccable taste. Her exotic pieces seemed out of place and like gaudy trinkets within his old world refinement. She was out of place. Although she was not far from her former place of business, Nob Hill was a world away from the Barbary Coast.

  She stepped out onto the balcony, into the night air, and it was . . . quiet. It was quiet even though at that moment the docks and saloons of the Embarcadero were raucous and quaking. A part of her could still feel it—the part of her that was still whole, the part of her that had survived a journey across an ocean and a continent, the part that didn’t allow her to dawdle in the slums too long, and that quickly discovered with whom to align herself. Once, she had compared San Francisco to Sodom and Gomorrah, but that city would never suffer the same fate as the biblical one.

  The late Mr. O’Connell, like her, had started with nothing. He parlayed a dockworkers’ strike in ’49 into an import and export concern that thrived—and then went bust. The only way O’Connell could save it was to marry the daughter of a wealthy financier. He did so, but Maggie by that time was already in his heart, his mind, his bed. While alive, he did his best to take care of her, but upon his death, there was nothing to give her except his name—he adopted Maggie posthumously. All the money belonged to his wife. The other Mrs. O’Connell was astonishingly wealthy, she hobnobbed with royalty—or so went the story that Maggie used to torture herself.

  She wasn’t really Mrs. O’Connell, was she? With O’Connell, she had been a glorified concubine. If she was honest with herself, Preston Dalmore was truly her first husband. In a sense, the Dalmore Shipping Company was something that they had built together, and there were people that wanted to take it away. She chose Clinkscales over Miss Ellen and the Chinese Tom West. Clinkscales could reach around the world—and he was alluring in a strange way. She explained the problem of Ellen and Tom, that they were of the type that failed to see reason, that they did not understand the true meaning of a partnership, and that they should be eliminated. Ellen and Tom were rats scurrying through the city’s dark alleys, swift work for Clinkscales’s men. She expected word that she was rid of them—

  The hand came over her mouth. Whose could it be? She had so many enemies. His hand was rough. He could have easily worked on a ship. She could feel his calluses as she struggled. Don’t look back and everything will be all right. Why would she tell herself such a thing? She couldn’t breathe, a flash of metal, and then her throat opened—blood and air. As her lips parted, she tasted salt on the hand and thought of Lot’s wife.

  73

  Somewhere in the Atlantic

  He was taught to give the experience details, adorn it with the most lurid and vivid ornamentation; build a place in his mind to house the images, where they could live forever. The truth housed in a dream: this is memory. By itself, memory isn’t strong enough to live on its own. Desire, fear, imagination, they comprise the fertile soil—without them memory dies. Memory is when the dream meets truth. He thinks of the plantation, and he sees not the faces and details, but stark silhouettes against a sky that’s blue and golden-red, and he watches a female figure hold that of a young boy, and the cotton fields are clouds and stars, and he hears that woman tell the boy the truth about his father, how that doesn’t have to be his destiny, and the boy nods his head. Jupiter watches all of this from the window of the house floating in his mind; does that make it any less true?

  Jupiter entered his memory palace. It had been a long time since he had to search for something within it. He passed a room filled with facts—arcane and trivial—dusty from neglect and disuse. Another room housed all of his sexual conquests and victories in physical conflicts. A teenage versi
on of Jupiter watched the contents with lust and desire.

  He passed a room that appeared empty, yet when he entered he saw himself as a little boy sitting alone. Jupiter sat next to the little boy and saw the room from the child’s perspective. Large, menacing, beastlike things loomed over him. The room housed all of the moments when he felt humiliated and powerless.

  He left that room and went upstairs to the attic. He worried about how he would feel when he saw her again. He searched the attic of his memory to remember how to feel the same. He found what he was looking for: Sonya on the day he first saw her, the day he fell in love with her.

  Something doglike and feral watched her from a dark corner. As Jupiter approached, it moved aside and revealed a box. He opened it, releasing a conversation between the Colonel and Archer that Jupiter had once overheard.

  The time is coming when you’ll want to be with a woman. Don’t be afraid to visit one of the slave girls at night. You’re master of this house. She won’t embarrass you . . .

  Under that memory and in the same box, Jupiter saw all the other house slaves. They had different mothers but they all looked like Jupiter.

  Another memory was under that as well . . .

  • • •

  Jupiter entered the Colonel’s study. He was hunched over his desk and held a reading glass over a book.

  “Colonel?”

  The Colonel lingered over the text, then looked at him. “Jupiter, have you read all of the exciting advances in the steam engine? Fascinating.”

  “No, Colonel, I have not.”

  “Oh, you should familiarize yourself with it. It’s all quite revolutionary.”

  “Yes, sir. I will keep that in mind.”

  The Colonel put down the reading glass and leaned back in his chair. “Don’t ever miss any opportunity to expand your mind. Haven’t I always taught you that?”

  “Yes, sir. You have.”

  “Good. So what is it that you want, Jupiter?”

  He straightened his posture. “Sir, it is about Sonya.”

  “What about her?”

  “I intend to marry her.”

  “I see. And I suppose that this love affair came about after I allowed you to teach her to read?”

  “Yes, sir, it did.”

  “Did you come here seeking my blessing? Why are you wasting my time with this?”

  “Out of respect, sir.”

  “Don’t insult me, Jupiter. If you want to get married, you will do so in your own way. Don’t think that I am unaware of those secret heathen unions that go on in the woods. I know it’s not my permission, so what is it that you really want?”

  The Colonel stared at Jupiter. Jupiter felt it was a look that dared him to ignore decorum, dared him to scream, You can’t touch her, Colonel. If you ever lay a hand on her I will know, and I will kill you for it.

  There were screams outside the window of the Colonel’s study. Jupiter looked out and saw people running toward the source.

  “Leave it,” said the Colonel. “Stay where you are.”

  Jupiter heard the crack of the whip and more screams. “Who is that?”

  “I do not know,” said the Colonel, “and I am grateful for it.”

  “You don’t want to know why a whipping is being given?”

  “I know nothing of whippings, Jupiter. That’s the overseer’s business.”

  Jupiter looked out of the window again. A young girl named Molly was at the painful end of the whip. “It’s Molly, Colonel.”

  The Colonel raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I see. I understand she is with child again. This causes a problem for me. This plantation is profitable only by a hair’s-breadth. To add another belly to the ledger might be catastrophic for us. Yet she did not hesitate to become with child—or to seek out other . . . alternatives. Despite the family atmosphere I have built, this place is a business.”

  There were more cracks of the whip. Jupiter headed for the door.

  “Jupiter, don’t,” said the Colonel. “War, my father’s plantation: they made me sensitive to atrocities, Jupiter. I do not care to see them again. That doesn’t make me a monster—that makes me a victim. Maybe the girl would not be in this situation if she had practiced some restraint, or at the very least wasn’t so tempting.”

  Jupiter thought of Sonya.

  “But enough of that. I believe we were discussing marriage.”

  “Never mind, sir.”

  “Everything on this plantation costs money. You want something of mine to claim as your own. I believe I paid eight hundred dollars for Sonya. If you want my permission to play make-believe like a child, then you have it,” said the Colonel.

  “Thank you, sir.” He turned to leave.

  “One more thing, Jupiter. Please do get acquainted with these steam engines. I need someone to discuss them with . . .”

  • • •

  The box seemed endless, and Jupiter found a memory that he thought he had placed somewhere else. He was back at the moment of the Colonel’s death, convincing himself it was the right thing to do.

  74

  Liberia

  “Sonya Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am an employee of the ACS. I have a letter for you.”

  “For me?”

  The envelope was stiff and warped. She unfolded the letter.

  Dear Sonya . . .

  Her heart surged. Some anonymous child outside let out a gleeful scream.

  They told me that you are alive and well in Liberia. I pray to God that it is true. I have so many things to tell you. I am sorry for all that you may have endured in my absence. I feel foolish and selfish for asking you to do this once again, but wait for me, Sonya. Wait for me. I will be with you soon.

  With Undying Love, Jupiter

  With a strange formality, she closed the letter. She pressed it against her neck; stiff and rough, her skin told her it was real. She opened the letter again and repeated the ritual. She should have been happy—and she knew that she would be at some point—but at that moment, she was back on the plantation. She thought about the way Colonel Smith put his arms around her that night. The way she looked at him and saw so much of Jupiter in his face, saw what Jupiter had inherited—all that brashness, arrogance, and strength.

  A voice brought her back to the present.

  “Mamma, why are you crying?”

  Jacob

  He had strange dreams during the fever. He was haunted by his mother’s ghost stories. A child’s dreams are not always harmless and innocent: adult fears seep in and haunt the outskirts of the dreamscape without becoming full-fledged nightmares.

  That is what concerned Jacob while he fought for his life. His memory palaces, the ones that he had spent so much time constructing, breathing life into them through the details, all those things were beginning to erode. All he could think of was what would happen to his mother if he were to die. Although he knew the story of their harrowing journey from the South to the West, and he had seen evidence of her determination, how formidable she could be once she set her mind to something, how she would do anything to protect him, despite all of that, he still sensed her fragility. He couldn’t die, for her sake. What would she become?

  He awoke when the fever passed. The relief gave way to guilt. He had put her through so much, and now his illness had put her through so much more. He looked around at the half-corpses shrouded in netting to keep the insects at bay—all of this because of him. She had lost so much already, and yet now he threatened her with more loss. He did not like the idea of being a burden, and though his mind was still foggy, he set out to restore his skills of memory. He saw that as the best way to display his value.

  Before all of this, in order to hone his memory skills, he would read his mother’s letters. It was good practice, and it allowed him insight into a woman
who was so closed off emotionally. The secrets in those letters, things she would have never told him and he would not have learned otherwise. They were gifts to him. He liked knowing her, even though he did not fully comprehend what it all meant. He liked having a secret—he knew her better than she thought he did. Despite her best efforts to hide the ugly parts of herself, the parts that shamed her, the parts that caused her fear, he knew those things and loved her even more for it.

  Yet on the way to Liberia, those letters were lost. She did not have the ability to build a fortress around the things that were dear to her like he did; she had to write them down. The only thing that was left for her was the feeling associated with the letters, the ache felt in their absence.

  At one point, he had remembered all of them, but the illness had chipped away at some of them. He found a piece of paper and began to write.

  We had a child. A daughter. She passed three months after you went away. She is buried under the tree just outside the Smith family cemetery. I named her Tess, after your mother.

  Soon after she passed, I became with child again. I shall not relive the details. They do not matter.

  Jupiter, you have a son. Yes, in my heart and mind he is yours. I see you in him. And if after reading this letter, you wish to set eyes on him, you will see the same.

  It was a cryptic letter. It began and ended abruptly. However, he always could sense the letter’s importance.

  • • •

  She could not remember much of what had happened. The Colonel stood over her—bloody scratches on his neck and chest—and fastened his britches. She lay on the floor, the wetness under her buttocks getting colder. She could feel the strange stirring inside her. She knew she would soon be with child.

  75

  Liberia

  A clerk at the ACS office told him where to find her. When he learned that she was staying with someone named Mary, he wondered if it was the same Mary that left for Liberia so many years ago.