Transgressions, Volume 4

by Ed McBain

  The fetching little cook noticed him—he took care that this should be so, but he was patient in his courting of her, for he had more on his mind than a tumble on a corn shuck mattress. For many weeks he was as gentlemanly as a prince in a fairy story, taking no more liberties than pressing her hand in farewell as they left the church service. Finally when the look in her eyes told him that she thought he’d hung the moon, he talked marriage. He could not live without her, he said. He wanted no more of freedom than the right to grow old at her side.

  Presently the determined Rachel ushered him into the presence of her mistress, the old woman who kept her servants as pets, and he set out to charm her with all the assurance of golden youth, condescending to old age. The gambit would not work forever, but this time it did, and he received the mistress’s blessing to wed the pretty young cook. The mistress would buy him, she said, and he could join the household, as butler and coachman—or whatever could be done by an assiduous young man with strength and wit.

  The joining took place in a proper white frame church, presided over by a stately clergyman as dignified and elegant as any white minister in Charleston. No broom jumping for the likes of them. And the mistress herself even came to the wedding, sat there in the pew with two of her lady friends and wept happy tears into a lace handkerchief.

  Then the newlyweds went back to their room behind the kitchen that would be their home for the next dozen years. Being a town servant was easy, not like dock work. The spinster lady didn’t really need a coachman and butler, not more than a few hours a week, so she let him hire out to the inn to work as a porter there, and she even let him keep half of what he earned there. He could have saved up the coins, should have perhaps. One of the cooks there at the inn had been salting away his pay to purchase his freedom, but he didn’t see much point in that. As it was, he and Rachel lived in a fine house, ate the same good food as the old lady, and never had to worry about food or clothes or medicine. The free folks might give themselves airs, but they lived in shacks and worked harder than anybody, and he couldn’t see the sense of that. Maybe someday they’d think about a change, but no use to deprive himself of fine clothes and a drink or two against that day, for after all, the old missus might free them in her will, and then all those years of scrimping would have been for naught.

  All this was before the train ride …

  DR. GEORGE NEWTON—1852

  Just as Lewis Ford and I were setting out from the college on Telfair Street, one of the local students, young Mr. Thomas, happened along in his buggy and insisted upon driving us over the river to the depot at Hamburg so that we could catch the train to Charleston. When Thomas heard our destination, he began to wax poetic about the beauties of that elegant city, but I cut short his rhapsody. “We are only going on business, Dr. Ford and I,” I told him. “We shall acquire a servant for the college and come straight back tomorrow.”

  The young man left us off the depot, wishing us godspeed, but I could see by his expression that he was puzzled, and that only his good manners prevented his questioning us further. Going to Charleston for a slave? he was thinking. Whatever for? Why not just walk down to sale at the Lower Market on Broad Street here in Augusta?

  Well, we could hardly do that, but I was not at liberty to explain the nature of our journey to a disinterested party. We told people that we had gone to secure a porter to perform custodial services for the medical college, and so we were, but we wanted no one with any ties to the local community. Charleston was just about far enough away, we decided.

  For all that the railroad has been here twenty years, Lewis claims he will never become accustomed to jolting along at more than thirty miles per hour, but he allows that it does make light of a journey that would have taken more than a day by carriage. I brought a book along, though Lewis professes astonishment that I am able to read at such a speed. He contented himself with watching the pine trees give way to cow pastures and cotton fields and back again.

  After an hour he spoke up. “I suppose this expense is necessary, Newton.”

  “Yes, I think so,” I said, still gazing out the window. “We have all discussed it, and agreed that it must be done.”

  “Yes, I suppose it must. Clegg charges too much for his services, and he really is a most unsatisfactory person. He has taken to drink, you know.”

  “Can you wonder at it?”

  “No. I only hope he manages to chase away the horrors with it. Still, we cannot do business with him any longer, and we have to teach the fellows somehow.”

  “Exactly. We have no choice.”

  He cleared his throat. “Charleston. I quite understand the need for acquiring a man with no ties to Augusta, but Charleston is a singular place. They have had their troubles there, you know.”

  I nodded. Thirty years ago the French Caribbean slave Denmark Vesey led an uprising in Charleston, for which they hanged him. All had been quiet there since, but Dr. Ford is one of nature’s worriers. “You may interview the men before the auction if it will ease your mind. You will be one-seventh owner,” I reminded him. We had all agreed on that point: All faculty members to own a share in the servant, to be bought out should said faculty member leave the employ of the college.

  He nodded. “I shall leave the choosing to you, though, Newton, since you are the dean.”

  “Very well,” I said. Dr. Ford had been my predecessor—the first dean of the medical college—but after all it was he who had engaged the services of the unsatisfactory Clegg, so I thought it best to rely upon my judgment this time.

  “Seven hundred dollars, then,” said Ford. “One hundred from each man. That sum should be sufficient, don’t you think?”

  “For a porter, certainly,” I said. “But since this fellow will also be replacing Clegg, thus saving us the money we were paying out to him, the price will be a bargain.”

  “It will be if the new man has diligence and ingenuity. And if he can master the task, of which we are by no means certain,” said Ford.

  “He will have to. Only a slave can perform the task with impunity.”

  We said little else for the duration of the journey, but I was hoping for a good dinner in Charleston. After my undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania, I went abroad to study medicine in Paris. There I acquired a taste for the fine food and wines that Charleston offers in abundance. It is the French influence—all those refugees from then French Caribbean improved the cuisine immeasurably.

  When we had disembarked and made our way to the inn to wash off the dust of the journey, there were yet a few hours of daylight before dinner, and after I noted down the costs of our train fares and lodging for the college expense record, I decided that it would be prudent to visit the market in preparation for the next day’s sale. Slaves who are to be auctioned are housed overnight in quarters near the market, and one may go and view them, so as to be better prepared to bid when the time came.

  It was a warm afternoon, and I was mindful of the mix of city smells and sea air as I made my way toward the old market. I presented myself at the building quartering those who were to be sold the next day, and a scowling young man ushered me inside. No doubt the keeping of this establishment made for unpleasant work, for some of its inhabitants were loudly lamenting their fate, while others called out for water or a clean slop bucket, and above it all were the wails of various infants and snatches of song from those who had ceased to struggle against their lot.

  It was a human zoo with but one species exhibited, but there was variation enough among them, save for their present unhappiness. I wanted to tell them that this was the worst of it—at least I hoped it was.

  I made my way into the dimly lit barracks, determined to do my duty despite the discomfort I felt. Slave … We never use that word. My servant, we say, or my cook, or the folks down on my farm … my people … Why, he’s part of the family, we say … We call the elderly family retainers by the courtesy title of Uncle or Aunt … Later, when we have come to know and tru
st them and to presume that they are happy in our care, it is all too easy to forget by what means they are obtained. From such a place as this.

  In truth, though, it hardly matters that I am venturing into slave quarters, for I am not much at ease anywhere in the company of my fellow creatures. Even at the orphan asylum supported by my uncle, my palms sweat and I shrink into my clothes whenever I must visit there, feeling the children’s eyes upon me with every step I take. I find myself supposing that every whisper is a mockery of me, and that all eyes upon me are judging me and finding me wanting. It is a childish fear, I suppose, and I would view it as such in anyone other than myself, but logic will not lay the specter of ridicule that dogs my steps, and so I tread carefully, hearing sniggers and seeing scorn whether there be any or not.

  Perhaps that is why I never married, and why, after obtaining my medical degree, I chose the role of college administrator to that of practicing physician—I hope to slip through life unnoticed. But I hope I do my duty, despite my personal predilections, and that evening my duty was to enter this fetid human stable and to find a suitable man for the college. I steeled myself to the sullen stares of the captives and to the cries of their frightened children. The foul smell did not oppress me, for the laboratories of the college are much the same, and the odor permeates the halls and even my very office. No, it was the eyes I minded. The cold gaze of those who fear had turned to rage. I forced myself to walk slowly, and to look into the face of each one, nodding coolly, so that they would not know how I shrank from them.

  “Good evening, sir.” The voice was deep and calm, as if its owner were an acquaintance, encountering me upon some boulevard and offering a greeting in passing.

  I turned, expecting to see a watchman, but instead I met with a coffee-colored face, gently smiling: an aquiline nose, pointed beard, and sharp brown eyes that took in everything and gave out nothing. The man looked only a few years younger than myself—perhaps thirty-five—and he wore the elegant clothes of a dandy, so that he stood out from the rest like a peacock among crows.

  The smile was so guileless and open that I abandoned my resolve of solemnity and smiled back. “How do you do?” I said. “Dreadful place, this. Are you here upon the same errand as I?” Charleston has a goodly number of half castes, a tropical mixture of Martinique slaves and their French masters. They even have schools here to educate them, which I think a good thing, although it is illegal to do so in Georgia. There are a good many freedmen in every city who have prospered and have taken it in turn to own slaves themselves, and I supposed that this light-colored gentleman must be such a free man in need of a workman.

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then the smile shone forth again. “Almost the same,” he said. “Are you here in search of a servant? I am in need of a new situation.”

  In momentary confusion I stared at his polished shoes, and the white shirt that shone in the dimness. “Are you—”

  He nodded, and spoke more softly as he explained his position. For most of his adult life he had been the principal manservant of a spinster lady in Charleston, and he had also been permitted in his free time to hire out to a hotel in the city, hence his mannered speech and the clothes of a dandy.

  “But—you are to be sold?”

  He nodded. “The mistress is ailing, don’t you know. Doesn’t need as much help as before, and needs cash money more. The bank was after her. So I had to go. Made me no never mind. I’ll fetch a lot. I just hope for a good place, that’s all. I’m no field hand.”

  I nodded, noting how carefully he pronounced his words, and how severely clean and well-groomed his person. Here was a man whose life’s course would be decided in seconds tomorrow, and he had done all he could to see that it went well.

  “And the mistress, you know, she cried and carried on to see me go. And she swore that she would never part with my wife.”

  I nodded. It is regrettable that such things happen. Money is the tyrant that rules us all. I said, “I am the dean of a medical college in Augusta. In Georgia. Do you know where that is?”

  “A good ways off, sir.”

  “Half a day’s journey south by train. Over the Savannah River and into the state of Georgia.”

  “A college. That sounds like a fine situation indeed, sir. What kind of place is it?”

  “We teach young men to be doctors and surgeons.”

  “No, sir,” He smiled again. “The place. The position you’ve come here wanting to fill.”

  “Oh, that.” I hesitated. “Well—Porter, I suppose you’d say. General factotum about the college. And something else, for which, if the man were able to do it, we should pay.” I did not elaborate, but I thought he could read expressions much better than I, for he looked thoughtful for a few moments, and then he nodded.

  “You’d pay … Enough for train fare?”

  “If the work is satisfactory. Perhaps enough, if carefully saved, to make a larger purchase than that. But the extra duty … it is not pleasant work.”

  He smiled. “If it was pleasant, you wouldn’t pay.”

  And so it was done. It was not the sordid business of buying a life, I told myself, but more of a bargain struck between two men of the world. True, he would have to leave his wife behind in Charleston, but at least we were saving him from worse possible fates. From cane fields farther south, or from someone who might mistreat him. He could do worse, I told myself. And at least I saved him from one ordeal—that of standing upon the block not knowing what would become of him. I thought the man bright enough and sufficiently ambitious for the requirements of our institution. It may seem odd that I consulted him beforehand as if he had a choice in his fate, but for our purposes we needed a willing worker, not a captive. We needed someone dependable, and I felt that if this man believed it worth his while to join us, we would be able to trust him.

  They must have thought him wonderfully brave the next day. On the block, before upturned white faces like frog spawn, peering up at him, he stood there smiling like a missionary with four aces. It was over in the space of a minute, only a stepping stone from one life to the next, crossed in the blink of an eye.

  Seven hundred dollars bid and accepted in the span of ten heartbeats, and then the auctioneer moved on to the next lot, and we went out. As we counted out the gold pieces for the cashier, and signed the account book, Lewis Ford was looking a little askance at the whole procedure.

  “So you’re certain of this fellow, Newton?”

  “Well, as much as one can be, I suppose,” I said. “I talked at length with him last evening. Of course I did not explain the particulars of the work to him. That would have been most imprudent.”

  Lewis Ford grunted. “Well, he has the back for it, I grant you that. And, as you say, perhaps the temperament as well. But has he the stomach for it? After our experience with Clegg, that’s what I wonder.”

  “Well, I would, Dr. Ford. If my choice in life was the work we have in store for this fellow or a short, hard life in the cane fields further south, by God, I would have the stomach for it.”

  “Indeed. Well, I defer to your judgment. I don’t suppose what we’re asking of him is much worse than what we do for a living, after all.”

  “We’ll be serving the same master, anyhow,” I said. “The college, you know, and the greater good of medicine.”

  “What is the fellow’s name, do you know?”

  I nodded. “He told me. It is Grandison. Grandison Harris.”

  “Odd name. I mean they have odd names, of course. Xerxes and Thessalonians, and all that sort of thing. People will give slaves and horses the most absurd appellations, but I wouldn’t have taken Grandison for a slave name, would you?”

  I shrugged. “Called after the family name of his original owner, I should think. And judging by the lightness of his skin, there’s some might say he’s entitled to it.”

  Grandison Harris had never been on a train before, and his interest in this new experience seemed to diminish what regrets he
might have about leaving his home in Charleston. When the train pulled out of the depot, he leaned out the window of the car and half stood until he could see between the houses and over the people all the way to the bay—a stand of water as big as all creation, it looked from here. Water that flowed into the sky itself where the other shore ought to be. The glare of the afternoon sun on the water was fierce, but he kept on twisting his head and looking at the diminishing city and the expanse of blue.

  “You’ll hurt your eyes staring out at the sun like that,” I said.

  He half turned and smiled. “Well, sir, Doctor,” he said, “I mean to set this place in my memory like dye in new-wove cloth. My eyes may water a little, but I reckon that’s all right, for dyes are sot in salt. Tears will fix the memories to my mind to where they’ll never come out.”

  After that we were each left alone with our thoughts for many miles, to watch the unfamiliar landscapes slide past the railway carriage, or to doze in relief that, although the future might be terrible, at least this day was over.

  Instead of the sea, the town of Augusta had the big Savannah River running along beside it, garlanded in willows, dividing South Carolina from the state of Georgia. From the depot in Hamburg they took a carriage over the river into town, but it was dark by then, and he couldn’t see much of the new place except for the twinkling lights in the buildings. Wasn’t as big as Charleston, though. They boarded him for the night with a freed woman who took in lodgers, saying that they would come to fetch him in the morning for work.

  For a moment in the lamplight of the parlor, he had taken her for a white woman, this haughty lady with hair the brown of new leather and green eyes that met everybody’s gaze without a speck of deference. Dr. Newton took off his hat to her when they went in, and he shook her hand and made a little bow when he took his leave.

  When he was alone with this strange landlady, he stared at her in the lamplight and said, “Madame, you are a red bone, not?”