Mad Boy

by Nick Arvin

  “I’ll ride in front,” he says.

  “No, you won’t,” she says, seizing Henry’s hand and pulling him up behind.

  They ride for Alexandria, and Henry cannot muster a dispute about his position—Libro’s every step makes his mind wobble like a table with a short leg. A warmth radiates from the place where Morley struck him. He tilts his face and watches the treetops and clouds, because it helps to even out the jolting of the road, until a flock of crows wheels overhead, making him dizzy. When he shuts his eyes against the feeling, he seems to go out of himself.

  Washington still smells of char. Mary stares at the blackened buildings, but doesn’t slow. They pay the Potomac ferry from the coins, cross over, ride on.

  Judging they are near Alexandria, Henry says, “We need to hide the coins.”

  “Why?” Mary asks.

  “We can’t go into Suthers’s office with the coins in hand. He’ll simply take them.”

  “He’s still my father.”

  “You know he takes what he wants,” Henry says.

  Mary watches him scrape a hollow amid a stand of dogwood, drop the bags in, and shove a section of half-rotten log over to mark the spot.

  At an inn they pay for feed and board for Libro. Henry leads Mary through the streets toward the waterfront. Approaching the tall brick warehouse, Henry slows. “It’d be best to watch for a time,” he says.

  “Watch for what?”

  He has no answer, but he feels uneasy. He leads the way to a little burn-scarred house with nothing but weeds before it. They sit on a charred timber where they are hidden by the weeds.

  The afternoon proceeds slowly. A dog snuffles around them. A couple of men enter Suthers’s office, leave again.

  “We’re dithering,” Mary says. “We don’t have time.”

  “Just a few minutes more,” Henry says. But he wonders if he is afraid. Usually, if he notices that he is afraid of a thing, it makes him angry, and he will run right toward it. Now—thinking of Suthers turns something inside him, winding his guts like a winch. But he isn’t certain if this feeling is fear, or something else.

  Whatever it is, the way he is thinking about it starts to make him angry, and he is about to stand out of the hiding place when a tall rawboned figure appears in the street, limping, his face so terribly damaged that for a moment Henry stares unrecognizing.

  Henry had assumed that Lodowicke died after he was thrown from Suthers’s wagon. But here he is. On the side of his face where the redcoats’ bullet struck there’s a large red hole of scarred flesh, and the eye above this hole is lifeless and rolled, the eye-white turned the yellow-orange of a harvest moon. He swings one leg like a board.

  He goes into Suthers’s office.

  “Let’s go,” Mary says. Henry says no, not until Lodowicke leaves. “We waited until he arrived,” Mary says, “and now you want to wait until he leaves?”

  Lodowicke comes out only a moment later. When he’s vanished down the street, Henry stands. “Let’s not dally forever,” he says.

  Mary snorts.

  Henry crosses the street rubbing his head with a sense of furious trepedation, kicking the dust as he goes.

  Light penetrates into Suthers’s office through a single window to show a few shelves of books and papers and an enormous polished oak desk. Suthers stares across its expanse. Henry feels he has seen more hospitality in the face of a copperhead snake.

  “Mary,” Suthers says. “Henry. How interesting.”

  Henry explains that they wish to purchase the slaves, Charles and Hollis.

  “Those two are not currently in my possession, as I think you are aware.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Henry says. “We’ll pay for them.”

  Suthers gazes flat at them. “You know where they are, I suppose. Why do you want them?”

  “We have our own reasons,” Mary says.

  “And where did you find such money?”

  “There have been opportunities,” Henry says. He shifts his feet. “A war is like a rich man dancing with a hole in his pocket . . . ”

  The door behind him opens. Lodowicke steps through. He’s as tall as the door in his hand. He closes it and stands scanning Henry and Mary with his good eye, saying nothing.

  Suthers says, “Henry.”

  Henry turns to him reluctantly.

  “My coins?” Suthers says.

  Henry says nothing. He looks at the floor.

  Suthers laughs. “My coins,” he says. “You’ve somehow gotten your hands on my coins. And Hollis and Charles are involved, too. You wish to buy my slaves from me with funds that you have stolen from me.”

  Henry straightens. “It’s no matter to you where the money comes from.”

  “You’re a considerable little devil,” Suthers says. Henry isn’t sure if the narrow of Suthers’s eyes is anger or humor. “Do you know, Henry, that I sat for a day and a half in that road where you left me? And why do you need to buy the slaves?”

  “We think that men ought not to own other men as property,” Henry says. “We’ll free them.”

  “A matter of principle.”

  Henry nods.

  Suthers, smiling, shakes his head. “You’re a bad liar, Henry.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Papa,” Mary says. “Any more than it matters where the money comes from. We’re asking if you’ll sell the slaves.”

  “It is uncommon strange,” Suthers says, “to be offered money that is my own for things that I do not have. I expect I’d be a fool not to sell.” He tilts his head. “As a man of business, I’m not known to be a fool, am I, Mr. Lodowicke?” he says, not looking at Lodowicke.

  “No, sir.”

  Henry proposes a price of one thousand dollars for the two slaves, which is at least twice their value.

  Suthers shakes his head. “There are eighty-nine pieces of gold and three hundred fourteen pieces of silver. You will return them all to me.”

  “They’re not worth half the silver!” Henry cries, dancing with vexation.

  Suthers shrugs. “Go to the slave market. Buy some others.”

  Mary touches Henry’s shoulder. “Henry,” she says.

  Henry squeaks, “It’s too much!”

  “We have to pay this,” she says.

  Henry’s head hurts. Mary and Suthers look at him, and the silence in the room presses him. He cannot hear Mother. His own thoughts seem to dart out of sight. He turns to escape Suthers’s gaze and finds himself looking into the hole in Lodowicke’s face.

  Mary says, “We have no choice.”

  “Really,” Suthers says, “if I let you spend a single silver coin on Phipps—that’s what you want to do, isn’t it?—I would feel I had entirely failed you. We are agreed?”

  Henry whispers, “All right.”

  Suthers opens a drawer in the desk, flourishes vellum and quill, writes a contract, signs it, shows it. “You hand me the funds: I hand this to you.”

  Mary says, “We’ll bring the coins to the common at five o’clock.”

  Suthers shrugs, nods. Lodowicke steps aside from the door.

  As Henry and Mary move into the street, Henry fills with despair.

  “Mother?” he says.

  Mary looks closely at him.

  He ignores her. “Mother? We’ll find another way.”

  Mother is silent. The place where Morley struck him on the head hurts. He feels abject and lonesome. “Mother?”

  He looks around with dark apprehension, as on occasions in the deep woods when he could neither see nor hear anything unusual, but some unnamed sense made him sure that a panther was stalking him.

  As they go about retrieving the coins from under the rotten log, Henry watches to see if they are followed. Mary is grim. They walk quickly. The absence of Mother’s voice feels like a heat in Henry’s
head.

  Suthers and Lodowicke already stand at the center of the common. Mary’s hurt leg scuffs in the grass. The day is fine: a few other people are about, taking the air. A man sits reading a book. A little boy runs past, rolling a barrel hoop.

  Suthers and Lodowicke bend to each other, talking quietly. They glance up only as Henry and Mary come near.

  Henry throws the two bags down with a feeling of vexation, but then considers that this throwing down may not have been the best approach, so he puts a foot on top of a bag. Mary says, “The contract, please, Papa.”

  Suthers says, “Good day to you, children.”

  Henry kicks the bag. “Here,” he says.

  “There’s no great rush, is there?” Suthers asks. “Between us, as men and children of commercial enterprise?”

  The silence in Henry’s head generates mounting heat. He feels sure that things have already gone wrong, somehow. “The contract!” he cries.

  “I tore it up the moment you left my office.”

  The silence in Henry’s head is like a flame.

  Suthers points a thumb over one shoulder. “You see the man with the delightful Corsican hat with the feather.”

  They see the man.

  He gestures over the other shoulder. “And the man with the silver-handled ebony cane.” He points past Henry. “And the man with the impressive white mustache.” He points past Mary. “The seated gentleman with the red leather-bound book.”

  Lodowicke stumps around to stand close behind Henry and Mary.

  “Those’re my men, and I’ve only pointed out half of them. This is my city. You want to cheat me, you’d best do so somewhere other than Alexandria. You believe that standing here on the common gives you any power over me? You’re wrong. You have nothing. You’ll give the coins to me, then you’ll lead me to my grandson, and then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

  Henry looks round at the men Suthers pointed out. They all watch him. He has been a stupendous fool. Why did he suppose they could trust Suthers after an agreement was struck?

  With a cry of rage, Mary starts forward—but Lodowicke reaches with a long arm and knocks her to the ground. She howls, pushes herself up, and Lodowicke kicks her in the side.

  She lies clutching herself. Suthers says nothing. He looks at Henry. Henry’s head feels like it is in an inferno of silence, and his fury strains in him—his feet twitch, his teeth ache; he wants to hurtle forward. But he will only be struck down. By an immense effort, he remains where he stands.

  “Now,” Suthers says, “you’ll explain to me why you want to buy those slaves.”

  Henry resorts to truth. He tells Suthers that Hollis and Charles helped him find the coins, and they are holding the baby against his return.

  Suthers’s lip curls. “And all this is because you would free Phipps? My boy, there are times and reasons to bear certain risks, but this? For Phipps? No. Even if you were to succeed, Phipps would drink and gamble himself back into prison before the new corn is out of the ground.”

  Henry can scarcely hear him through the pain of heat in his head. Mother has gone forever. He has lost his chance to free Father. His nephew will be trapped with this man.

  “I’ll take the coins,” Suthers says, “and you’ll tell me how to locate Hollis and Charles, and I’ll have them whipped until they are dead, and I’ll reclaim my grandson to myself.”

  Henry wavers on his feet. Mother, he thinks. Mother? But she’s not there, and he’s alone; there’s only him.

  And he sees what he can do.

  “Me,” he says. The heat in his mind is already dying. “You have a son.”

  Suthers shakes his head. “I have thought of it. You have spirit. But you’ll simply run off. I should have taken you away long ago, but your mother said no, and I deferred. It’s too late now.”

  “I speak like you,” Henry says. “I’m sized like you.”

  Suthers hesitates.

  “What?” Mary interrupts. She has stood up. “Wait.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lodowicke says. Suthers tightens his lips, but Lodowicke goes on. “He’ll betray you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘You have a son?’” Mary says.

  Suthers gestures silence. “I’ll talk with the boy,” he says. “Wait over there. Take her.”

  Lodowicke scowls, twitches, seizes Mary by the shoulder, drags her off. “Henry!” she cries. “You should’ve told me.”

  “Your proposal is: you work for me, and meanwhile I’m to lose my slaves,” Suthers says, “and I’m to be paid in coin stolen from me for the privilege? It’s out of the question. You must have a means to signal or contact them. That’s all we need. A trap can be set. We’ll recover my property and my grandson that way.”

  “I won’t tell you how to find them. I gave my word.”

  “You’ve given me no reason to think you trustworthy,” Suthers scoffs, “or anything except a thief. I’m also doubtful that you like me in the least.”

  “I want to learn to seize chances as you do.”

  “I don’t know.” Suthers shakes his head. “Look at how you stumble from thing to thing on instinct.”

  “Yet I got the coins.”

  Suthers laughs. “Yes, yet you’re a fool. You were a fool to come here. By the way, if such a situation were ever to arise again, you should engage a lawyer to convey your messages. I cannot abide lawyers, but they do have certain uses.”

  It makes Henry angry. “I’m a fool, but you want the baby?” he cries. “Have you seen the baby? He’s helpless and hairless and useless as a slick kitten, and he’ll be that way for years! You’ll grow old waiting for that baby to become something useful. And who knows what you’ll have then? He may have the falling sickness. He may be a caitiff or simpleminded. The baby cannot help it if he grows into any of those things. Neither can you.”

  “So I should take you in hand?”

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t know if you can unlearn Phipps’s habits.”

  Henry asks sullenly, “What habits?”

  “An aversion to difficult work. Always reaching for the easy chance.”

  “I’ll work, if that’s what you want,” Henry says. “I’m tired of ill luck.”

  Suthers studies Henry, and Henry looks back at him. “I like you,” Suthers says, “and it’s true that I don’t know what kind of man the baby will turn out to be.” He gazes away a moment. “My own father was a plague on me. To be a son ought not to be a slave. Let’s say that in exchange for Hollis and Charles, you owe the coins and a further debt to me that you must work off. Let’s say that the term of your debt to me is six years. After that time you’ll be your own man, and if you don’t feel that I am father to you, then you may do as you like. If you don’t care for our business, you may leave it.”

  Six years sounds like a long time to Henry. But he doesn’t think of saying no. “All right,” he says.

  “I’ll grant you even Phipps’s debts,” Suthers says, “then send him away, because otherwise his plight will be in your mind. You’ll see him freed this once, and then you’ll be done with him, and your days will be with me. You’ll learn my business. You’ll learn how I think. Phipps will dwindle behind you. You’ll look back and see him as a small, ludicrous figure on the horizon. As for the business—I’ve seen how your mind turns. I think you’ll find it to your liking.”

  Henry understands: it’s a trap. One that he has already entered. Suthers let him come in by his own way.

  Henry says, “You’ll also get my brother out of his trouble with the army.”

  Suthers shrugs. “We’ll send them all away, all the Phippses, and now the negotiation is complete. You’ll promise me six years.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then,” Suthers says, “you can choose who your father is. I’ll tell you now, there’s a question under the
question of the father you choose, and that question is: what kind of man do you want to be?”

  Franklin has contrived a rope sling to enclose the barrel, and he has weighted it with a stone the size of a pony’s head.

  They ride in a borrowed rowboat. A wind drives choppy waves, making them plunge down and up. Franklin grips his seat with his hand. His injury has left him pale and thin, although at this moment his pallor is tinting green. Henry sits with his feet on the barrel, to keep it from rolling. Phipps works the oars. Henry has noted—an internal observation of his own instincts—that the name in his mind now is not Father but Phipps.

  In the distance, on the beach, waiting, are Mary and the baby. Franklin has been granted his army discharge and one hundred sixty acres in the new state of Ohio. He plans to take Mary, the baby, and Phipps.

  Also on the beach are many bottles of whiskey and a troupe of drunks that Phipps brought with him from the tavern. Henry does not know how he paid for the whiskey. They had gathered around Mother’s barrel and one man, a purported reverend who only looked like another drunk to Henry, had stood with his hands out, eyes rolled, mumbling. “I’m a resurrection, and life; he that believe in meat, even dead, will live: Live and believe and, uh, don’t die.”

  Phipps announces that they’ve gone far enough. To roll the barrel and the stone out of the boat requires the full strength of the three of them. Phipps, in the vigor of his efforts, somehow gets a hand entangled in the rope sling—the barrel goes over, and Phipps is pulled after, making a small yelp, looking surprised. Then stone, barrel, and man vanish as the water closes.

  Henry and Franklin gape as a few bubbles appear.

  “It might,” Franklin says finally, “be honorable if he stayed down with her.”

  “Give me your knife,” Henry says.

  Franklin gives him the knife; Henry sets it in his teeth—he has seen crabbers go after tangled lines this way—and dives.

  He nearly collides head-on with Phipps.

  Phipps climbs into the boat laughing. He pulls Henry back in. “She didn’t want to go alone!” he says. “But Franklin, you’ll never make a seaman. Those knots are loose as an old hinge. I slipped one in an instant.”