The Amalgamation Polka

by Stephen Wright

  “That’s Grandfather for you, ever the sly divinator. Listen, I think we could fashion a fairly sturdy rope out of these remaining sheets and slide out the window in relative safety.”

  The girl regarded him with a detached stare. “Why?” she asked flatly.

  “Why? Why, to escape, of course.”

  “Escape where?”

  “Anywhere you please. The days of whips and chains are over.”

  “Master says the whole world’s a slave ship on its passage out, bound for the fiery fields of Satan’s plantation.”

  “Yes, he certainly would know. Tell me, how long have you been locked up like this?”

  “Since before the war come.”

  “Well, Tempie, I’m here to inform you that the house of bondage is thoroughly ablaze from cellar to ridgepole. The old haunted manse is coming down at last.” He caught her glancing anxiously upward, scanning the ceiling for tendrils of flame. “No, no,” he tried to explain, “not this house. The one I was referring to is more of a verbal representation really, a sort of mental picture made up of words, which aren’t real but which stand for something that is real, in this case the entire institution of slavery which, of course, is not exactly a house, either, but”—this rather clumsy and long-winded descent into the maze of metaphor thankfully interrupted by a wild clatter of hooves up the lane and into the yard where, as Liberty watched from his second-story vantage, the riders, perhaps a dozen of them, hatted, cloaked and armed, milled about in confused excitement, everyone speaking loudly, incoherently, and at once, Grandfather suddenly appearing in their midst, his great white head glowing eerily in the humid darkness. There was a minute or two of frenzied conference, then the horsemen swiveled around and went galloping away, one intelligible word still ringing magically in Liberty’s ears: “Yankees!”

  “The war,” he declared to Tempie, who continued to sit, almost demurely, on the edge of the bed, firmly moored to some durable sense of inner constancy utterly indifferent to, and totally immune from, public event, “come in the true flesh to free you from this damn room.”

  Hardly had the words left Liberty’s mouth than the bolt was drawn and in charged Maury, looking grimmer than ever, the navy revolver strapped imposingly to his waist. “Still got your clothes on, I see,” he observed contemptuously.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Federal patrol. Just crossed the county line with, I reckon, all hell and damnation fast behind. Here to fetch you, eh?” he asked tartly, though Liberty remained diplomatically silent. “Well,” he went on, “we sure ain’t waiting around to sound the welcoming horn. We’re clearing out tonight.” He tossed a wadded-up shift in Tempie’s general direction and ordered her brusquely to get dressed. “You,” he said to Liberty, “I want to help me get Ida down to the wagon.”

  Grandmother, however, from behind her fortress of quilts and blankets would not be moved. She appeared, in fact, not to have budged an inch. Hands folded like molded curios across her abdomen, she listened without comment to her husband’s persuasive assessment of the situation and his strongly considered judgement that all should now hastily flee the property in prudent advance of the approaching Union tide.

  “No,” she responded bluntly.

  “Ida,” he pleaded.

  “You heard me, so don’t ask again.”

  “But you always claimed you’d rather die first before witnessing a single Yankee set foot in this house.”

  “One already has,” she replied, refusing to grant Liberty so much as a glance. “Now, bring me my pistols. I should be able to manage quite well by myself. I came into this forsaken world alone, and I do believe I’m more than capable of passing out of it equally unencumbered.”

  “If you think for one instant that I would even consider abandoning my own wife to the foul depredations of—”

  “Oh, Asa, please. Just stop.”

  “Monday’s preparing a bed in the wagon I trust will be comfortable. The road is good, the journey brief, and I’ll tolerate no further objections, do you understand?”

  “Bring me my pistols.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Ida.”

  “Nor I with you.” She held out her hand. “The pistols.”

  “You try me, Ida, you try me terribly.” Maury stepped to the bureau and from the top drawer removed a polished red mahogany box he carried dutifully over to the bed. Opening the box, his wife removed one of the pair of small silver pistols encased within and brandished it about, remarking to no one in particular, “My father killed a man in a duel with these. Pretty, aren’t they?” She arranged the pistols on the blanket, one on either side of her, within easy reach. “No damn abolitionist would dare to lay a finger on a sick old woman like me.” Then, noting the uncommon look of momentary distress passing over her husband’s face, she allowed her own expression to soften slightly. “I’m sorry, Asa, I simply cannot go with you, but I’m tired, so very tired. What a precious blessing it will be to arrive finally in the place where ‘the wicked cease from troubling and the weary be at rest.’”

  “You don’t weigh any more than a child. I could pick you up and carry you bodily from this room.”

  “Don’t.” A fluttering hand strayed to touch one of the pistols. “Please don’t.”

  “I’m through contending with you, woman. Fifty years of ache and fret and strife repudiated on a ridiculous whim.”

  “Blackberry jam,” she muttered. “I could sure use a taste of sweet blackberry jam.”

  “Enough!” Maury cried, then curtly addressing Liberty: “Say good-bye to your grandmother. I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Come,” she beckoned, raising up her withered arms. “Come closer.” Bending over, Liberty was abruptly seized in a grip of unexpected ferocity which drew him insistently downward toward her ancient, creased face. At such intimate proximity she smelled of camphor and powder and carious teeth. She breathed then into his waiting ear, “I always loved Roxana best,” and kissed him delicately on the cheek.

  “Good-bye, Grandmother,” he returned, hugging the dry bones of her body. “You know, we Yankees are not the lecherous, baby-eating fiends we’re reputed to be.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, I’ll be fine,” she asserted, “but you watch out for Asa. He’s not as young as he thinks he is.”

  The last view he had of her was of a disembodied, pillowed head, her dark eyes furiously alight, as if consumed forever in infernal flames of black fire.

  Down in the yard the wagon stood ready, Monday, an elderly gentleman of questionable competence but iron loyalty, or so Maury claimed, perched anxiously up on the seat, reins in hand, Tempie crouched on a straw mattress in back like a feral cat amid a chaos of trunks, bags, boxes, loose stacks of books, skulls, wire cages and dozens of thick manuscripts wrapped in protective linen. Mounted on a large, handsome bay, Maury gripped the halter of a second, decidedly less handsome animal. “Last able-bodied mare in the county,” he bragged. “Kept her hidden out in the swamp for just such an eventuality.”

  “I think I should stay,” insisted Liberty. “Watch over Grandmother until the boys arrive, maybe have the surgeon take a look at her.”

  “Out of the question, lad. You know as well as I do she’s practically impervious to harm, no cause for concern there. But you I need. Our project remains woefully incomplete. You’re now a crucial wheel in the on-rolling advance of science, and, frankly, as I well know, any knowledge worth possessing requires a certain degree of sacrifice. Get on the horse.”

  “I reckon I’ll stay.”

  Reluctantly, Maury pulled the revolver from his holster and leveled it in his grandson’s face. “Get on the horse.”

  “Everyone in this family seems awfully handy with a gun,” remarked Liberty dryly, stepping up into the saddle.

  “Self-protection,” answered Maury, with a rare snicker of amusement. “From each other.”

  “Where exactly are we going?”

  “Where a man’s rights are still res
pected and the people understand that the God-ordained, necessary and sacred institution of human bondage is not to be trampled upon.”

  “And where would this blessed paradise be?”

  “Brazil,” Grandfather replied, swinging the bay roughly about and leading wagon and rider down the lane and into the cumbrous night.

  The tide was high, the sky low, the wind a mere whisper, when Asa Maury and his sullen party—not a word exchanged among them during the whole spine-rattling journey—arrived flushed and exhausted before the strangely derelict geometry of the Charleston docks. “Runner’s weather,” noted Maury approvingly, eying the silent, oil-dark water, the dim, turbid clouds.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” countered Liberty, eager for any quarrel he could muster. “Even without a moon, what vessel, no matter how skillfully piloted, would dare the blockading squadron at this late date? The harbor’s been corked tight as French grape since the fall of Morris Island.”

  “Quite correct,” replied Maury with a wry smile. “I see you northern lads, in addition to your marvelous attainments in art and industry, also possess the ability to absorb a newspaper or two. But hear me: ‘impossible’ is the credo of the multitude. I am interested in the ‘one,’ because there is always a singular ‘one,’ one who says no to no, one for whom the great, giddy game of hares and hounds with the Federal fleet is far from concluded. That is the one I seek and the one I shall find. There, look there, conjured out of my very thought!” He pointed a bony finger toward a wharf some several hundred feet distant, where shifting glints of lantern light revealed the long, low lines of a narrow knifelike steamer and a shadowy bustling about the mooring uncommon at this hour. “The signs magnify and bear fruit. What says the skeptic in you now, young whelp? Fathom how Providence ever eases my way. This silvery head of mine is a crown anointed. Come, let us search out the captain.”

  Leaving their mounts and plunder in Monday’s charge, Maury led his grandson and his grandson’s presumptive bride down to the ship, the CSS Cavalier according to the ornately carved plaque on her bow, every deck inch already piled high with three-hundred-pound bales of crop cotton, and brazenly past the glum, sweating crew of half-naked slaves wrestling even more bales up the creaking gangway but pausing in their labor to behold the curious spectacle of a queer old white man escorting aboard a surly white youth and a sorrowful black girl with all the imperious assurance of a company owner conducting a surprise inspection.

  Directed by a churlish mate with one eye and one tooth who, the strangers no sooner departed, leaned over, deliberately spat upon the very place where Maury had stood and then proceeded to rub the warm spittle into the wood, they found the captain, one Wilbur Wallace, alone in the pilothouse, chewing on an unlit cigar and reading a month-old edition of the London Times. “Looking dire for our side, gentlemen,” he announced brightly, folding the paper and tossing it carelessly onto the chart table. “In fact, we probably surrendered last week.” His laughter was like an explosion of champagne bottles. There was, in the infectious sound of it, the promise of merriment everlasting.

  After a perfunctory round of introductions and handshakes, Wallace’s sharp gaze lingering briefly on the shy Tempie, whose attention remained fixed, as ever, on her bare feet, Maury got promptly down to business. “I require, sir, immediate passage for four to whatever port of call you happen to be bound.”

  “That so?” Wallace’s eyebrows, like the rest of his extraordinarily mobile features, seemed to have been fabricated to produce the most theatrical effects possible, sliding abruptly upward, then down again with an almost audible click.

  “I am willing to pay, and pay dearly, for the privilege. I have money. Greenbacks. Carpetbags full of them.”

  “As do I, Mr. Maury, as do I.”

  “Who doesn’t need more?”

  “Mr. Maury, please allow me to make one crucial fact perfectly comprehensible. This scruffy little spat of yours between the states has been for me, as well as for a distressingly sized host of the unscrupulous, what your bluenoses like to call a ‘High Daddy.’ Ministering to privation has made me a wealthy man many times over. I have no need of your greenbacks, and no need, I’m afraid, of you.” He turned his attention to the young people. “Motley company you’ve assembled here. This your son?”

  “My grandson.”

  “Remarkable. These two might even be brother and sister if it weren’t for the obvious difference in, um, skin color, of course.”

  “Name your fee.”

  “The Cavalier, Mr. Maury, as I would expect you have already noted, is decidedly not a pleasure boat. In a matter of hours we lay our head for Nassau, under the most deplorable conditions imaginable, with probably the last lading of the long staple to depart this wretched city. Why is this poor girl trembling so?”

  “She’s of a fretful nature. Look, Captain Wallace, if space is indeed the issue, I will be delighted to pay whatever amount you think fair to occupy even a few feet of open deck, but it is imperative that I and my party leave Charleston as soon as possible.”

  Wallace’s glance, bold and intense, even as he addressed Maury, flitted about the room like a trapped bird, apparently unable to locate any more suitable resting place than Tempie’s thinly clad person, which object it explored in all its fine particulars. Sensing the girl’s discomfort, Liberty stepped forward, shielding her with his body. The spell broken, Wallace once again took up Maury’s request. “Imperatives, these days,” he replied, “are about as abundant as palmettos in the marsh. And about as useful. But as it happens, there does remain available a single stateroom which, I regret to say, had been reserved for a certain young lady. Only a lunatic or a lover would try these heavily patrolled waters, and I fear I partake much of both qualities. It was she who beckoned, she who drew me in under the guns. And a close shave we had of it, too. Lucky shot from a Yankee cruiser carried off the supercargo and five barrels of coffin nails, of which our embattled Confederacy is, at the present moment, I am led to understand, in desperate need.” He seemed to be winking perpetually, even when he wasn’t.

  “What might ‘supercargo’ be?” asked Liberty.

  “Not a ‘what,’ a ‘who.’ Mr. Perkins was Fraser, Trenholm’s man, company representative on board. Fussy, pedantic sort, though there was no questioning his bravery. He’d survived a dozen runs, including two sinkings and a capture which culminated in a brief but pleasant sojourn within the confines of the Ludlow Street Jail up New York way. Still, I never could warm up to him much. A thoroughly sour gent from the rind to the pulp. Disapproved of the ladies, too. Couldn’t see any profit there. We nearly came to blows over this trip, I tell you. But perhaps he sensed his doom, caught a premonition or some such. We veteran webfeet are quite prone to divine messages, angelic visitations, prophetic dreams and the like.”

  “Soldiers, too,” interjected Liberty.

  “Aye, soldiers, too. Stand upon the precipice long enough and even a blind man will be granted a few squints into that far horizon. Maybe Perky glimpsed from a bed in Liverpool the ball coming for him. I don’t know. Bad business, very bad. Frightful losses all around. At least my Ellen still tarries among the living, though not, I admit, in my latitudes.”

  “Captain, if I may,” broke in Maury impatiently. “My majordomo awaits, and the docks are not safe at this hour.”

  “Have you a single good ear, my man? I’ve promised you the berth, but interrupt me once more and you may find yourself dogpaddling to the Bahamas. I am relating a tale of considerable gravity upon the subject of love and its sweet conundrums. As I was explaining, in the course of my frequent and lengthy absences, my dear Ellen met and lost her affections to another whose own absences, while numerous, were neither as frequent nor as lengthy as my own. A young captain of the cavalry, she informs me, who even now buzzes about the flanks of Grant’s army at Petersburg in the manner, I suppose, of a gnat pestering the ass of an elephant. I am no longer of any use to her. She awaits the return of her hero.”

&n
bsp; “Yes, yes, the heart’s inconstancy,” proclaimed Maury in his grandest style. “Theme of the ages, yes, yes. The cheap mania of every scribbler who’s ever been given the mitten.”

  “I should prefer, I think, to compose odes in tranquillity upon the topic than suffer its singular enjoyments in the actual harrowed flesh. But enough of my complaints,” Wallace added brusquely, waving an irritated hand before his face as if to shoo away that selfsame gnat. “Mine is a dreary old story being reenacted even as we speak, no doubt, by different players in different homes all across this splintered continent. A regrettable denouement for me is, however, an unexpected boon for you gentlemen, and lady”—bowing deeply in Tempie’s direction. “I detect a destiny at work in this encounter. Perhaps you all have been directed here to instruct me in some matter of which I am blithely unaware. Or perhaps you bring luck, a blessing of good fortune to this voyage. But at the least we shall have the pleasure of your company, and that may be luck enough. Interesting issues we shall have ample opportunity to investigate further. For now, we embark within the hour. I want you and your goods securely stowed away by then. Flynn!” he called out, prompting the instant appearance in the doorway of a remarkably young, remarkably clean-cut sailor but for the crude tattoo of an upside-down anchor inscribed upon his left cheek. “Mister Flynn here will assist with your baggage and show you to your quarters. You will find our accommodations tight but tolerable. Welcome aboard the Cavalier,” he said briskly, shaking the hand of each man in turn before pausing to grant Tempie yet another elaborate bow. Then, taking her small, slender hand in his own, he gently, politely, offered her a delicate kiss.

  At the appointed hour, having turned loose the horses, Maury lifting his arms in mad benediction as the frightened animals went clattering away over the dark stones and crying out, “Let them find service in the Cause, wherever the Cause may find them,” and, having hauled Maury’s assorted books, boxes, cages and equipment onto the ship, down along narrow passageways made even narrower by the bales of cotton stacked against the bulkheads and into a modest compartment whose cramped oppressiveness was further heightened by a conveniently wrapped stateroom-sized bale occupying most of the available floor space, the frazzled travelers found themselves seated in utter darkness under strict injunction by Captain Wallace to neither speak nor move about until sent for. The hatches had been covered in tarp, the lanterns and candles extinguished, when the Cavalier slipped quietly away from the pier, the only sounds the deep dull throb of the engines, the soft rhythmic plop of the paddles, the sense of motion conveyed through their bodies in a steady series of vibratory waves. It was as if they were a set of rare figurines encased in a block of darkness and being discreetly transported from one secret location to another. The heat was stifling, the tension near unendurable. It was Maury who broke first.