The Spirit Photographer

by Jon Michael Varese

  At Westborough, Joseph had picked a simple lock, and they had stolen a second horse from the stables at the inn. They would follow some of the horse trails, or even the train tracks where they could, taking care at all times to remain in the shadows. For Joseph the flight from Concord signaled another kind of journey—a journey that forced him to reevaluate everything he had ever believed in. He had spent years putting aside memories of the roots of the movement—the beginnings of the struggle that had torn the country apart. Now, being drawn back, he remembered how Senator Garrett had become the stuff of legend, and how the “Rape of Kansas” speech had placed Garrett at the center of the movement. That controversial path had continued, uninterrupted, through the first days of the war, when Garrett’s advocacy of enlisting colored troops had made him unpopular. After the war ended, he had continued to press forward, inspiring leaders like Frederick Douglass to praise him as “one of our people’s oldest and truest friends.”

  Yet here was Joseph’s hero—the man whose very words had encouraged him to join the Union army—on a crazed path, trying to destroy him.

  How could this be? Joseph still couldn’t reconcile it—how a man of Garrett’s significance could stoop to the level of a common criminal. Could Joseph and so many thousands of others have been wrong about him all these years? Could the unimpeachable Senator James B. Garrett be someone who had cloaked an eviler spirit in the gallant rhetoric of equality?

  No—it could not be. To think of Senator Garrett as an imposter was to admit the bleakest defeat.

  And yet, all signs pointed undeniably toward the senator’s guilt. From the instant that Joseph had observed Garrett’s reaction to the photograph, Joseph knew that there was much more to Garrett than his public image disclosed. Garrett was a man who was terrified of something—terrified of what the image of Isabelle represented to him. And so for Joseph the question around Garrett immediately became, what would the truth about Garrett’s relationship with Isabelle reveal? Joseph wondered what could be at the heart of Garrett’s fear … what secrets the senator must have had, what he needed to protect. But Joseph also held an intimate understanding of the nature of secrets, and so it was not very long before he had drawn his own conclusions.

  These thoughts consumed Joseph as he and Moody sped through Connecticut, inching closer toward New Haven, where, outside the reach of the Boston Police, they would leave the horses behind and board a train. But there was yet another problem, and that problem was Edward Moody, who would expect nothing less than a full explanation. Joseph had been rash to reveal himself so soon after their flight, but he could not risk Moody disappearing. Joseph needed Moody as much as Moody needed him, and Joseph’s love for Isabelle—unlike Moody’s—did not blind him to that reality.

  The train from New Haven pulled out of the station, its wheels beginning to churn with taunting irregularity. Joseph and Moody had secured a private compartment, which for the time being would provide them some safety.

  Moody spoke in a low voice, his anger quite palpable.

  “You will explain yourself.”

  “Yes …” Joseph said. “It is only fair that I do. Forgive me, Edward. I am not the man I said I was.”

  Moody’s face displayed no surprise, for his mind had been turning too. He was the old suspicious Moody now, not the partner whom Joseph had saved from arrest. Joseph would need to tread carefully upon this ground. He would need to seduce Edward Moody all over again.

  “You knew Isabelle—my Isabelle,” Moody said. “I knew there was something ugly about this from the beginning.”

  Joseph raised a hand.

  “It’s true that I have been dishonest,” he said. “But I see that you are a friend to me now. I did not know that when we met. I had marked you as my enemy, and I was determined to—”

  He paused, for he would finally tell Moody the truth.

  “I was determined to expose you.”

  But there were forces at work against them now … the same forces that had harmed Isabelle. Joseph and Moody needed to remain united against them; Moody needed to understand that.

  “We must work together,” Joseph said.

  “Together!” Moody fumed. “What had she ever to do with a scoundrel like you?”

  “I have been a scoundrel—yes. I have been a scoundrel with you. But I swear—Isabelle meant as much to me as she ever meant to you. The very idea of her kept me alive when I thought I might not go on.”

  Moody frowned, his face twisting with disgust. He would not sympathize with Joseph’s truth … at least not yet.

  “Listen to me,” Joseph said. “This is no time to succumb to petty jealousies.”

  Moody glared at him.

  “How dare you?” he said. “I could have you thrown out of this car.”

  “And I could have you thrown in jail,” Joseph said.

  There was silence, and Moody turned to look out the window. Was he turning over thoughts about how Joseph had been fooling him, from the start? The silliness of this partnership—a partnership between two confidence men! How could he have let himself believe that such a thing could ever work?

  And what about the negative? What did Moody really believe about the negative?

  The train had reached its full speed now, its great iron wheels grinding with a heavy steadiness beneath them. As they passed beyond New Haven, heading southwest toward Manhattan, a blanket of morning mists lifted itself from the procession of moving trees.

  “Where are we going?” Moody finally said.

  Joseph’s voice was quiet.

  “From New York we can board the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati line. Then we’ll go on to St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis!” Moody exclaimed.

  “The Cincinnati line provides a less conspicuous route to our destination.”

  “I did not know we had one,” Moody said.

  Moody would never be able to trust Joseph again, and none of this had been part of Joseph’s plan. But there was still a chance. Joseph could still secure Moody’s faith—if Edward Moody had any faith left.

  “The man who tried to kill us …” Joseph said. “I knew him too.”

  “You …” Moody staggered. “You knew him?”

  And then:

  “To the devil with you.”

  “Listen to me, Edward—just listen. Yes, I did know him. But to him I was just another fugitive he could return for profit. I was running for my life, and that man was hunting me. Others hunted me too, but his drive was something … different. His name is Wilcox—or at least that’s the name he went by then. He once sliced off the ear of a free negro. We all knew him.”

  Moody leaned forward.

  “You knew this … this …”

  “Demon,” Joseph said. “He came very near to finding me once, when I was in hiding at Mrs. Lovejoy’s.”

  And so Joseph began to recount the story of his escape: about his journey from New Orleans to St. Louis by steamboat, and eventually on to Boston, as a stowaway on a train.

  “There were many who helped me along the way … a young priest in New Orleans … the conductors in St. Louis. But Boston was a mistake—my route was never supposed to take me there.”

  Joseph spoke of that night when his conductors had hidden him in the back of a wagon. They were transporting him to a safe house—farther north, outside St. Louis—but upon nearing the train depot, they had been forced to stop.

  “The sheriff and some others had set up a blockade,” Joseph said. “They were tearing apart the wagons in search of another family.”

  Joseph’s conductors could not communicate with him; to do so would have meant instant discovery. So Joseph slipped out of the wagon. And then—

  “At the very moment I crept from the wagon, another cart was rounding the bend. The driver was racing to meet one of the departing trains, and did not see the blockade in time to stop. He was transporting sugar, and when he veered from the road, the weight of the barrels caused the wagon to overturn. Some of the barrels crack
ed, and sugar spilled into the road. In the commotion that followed, I was able to crawl away.”

  It had been a miracle. Something one could only attribute to angels.

  Joseph found safety in a nearby freight car that had been packed to capacity with cotton bales. Moments after Joseph had leapt through the open door, someone slid the door closed, and the train began to move.

  “A day or two passed. The train slowed and sped up many times, and then finally came to a stop. When the doors opened I realized that it had reached its destination, but I did not move from my hiding place.”

  Eventually, Joseph jumped from the car and crawled beneath the train. There he remained hidden until he saw the second miracle … a white woman, finely dressed in silks and gloves, supervising the loading of a covered wagon. She oversaw two men who were carrying oblong, wooden boxes, and as the men stacked the boxes, the lady looked about. Hers were not movements that anyone would notice, but once the phantoms appeared, Joseph understood. There, in the darkness, the forms of two others just like him floated from one of the freight cars and into the woman’s wagon.

  Could this woman have been a friend to him? Joseph knew that she would be. And so he crawled along the train tracks until he had arrived near her feet. He whispered to her, and she gestured with her hand—a signal for him to stay. The two men continued loading the wagon with boxes, but soon the woman motioned again. It was the call, and Joseph leapt. She secured the drape once he was in.

  During the ride to Mrs. Lovejoy’s, Joseph stared at the other passengers. They gazed back at him too, through the spaces between the boxes. The man and the woman were a bit older than he was—not yet thirty perhaps—with immovable faces. All three of them remained still as the wagon moved through Boston, each of them protecting their own fate with their silence.

  At Washington Street, the wagon pulled up alongside Mrs. Lovejoy’s, and the woman herself stepped down from the driver’s seat. She supervised the operation again, this time in reverse, as her men emptied the wagon of all but one of the wooden boxes. The runaways now had a full view of one another—all three of them exchanging glances, no one daring to speak.

  Then one of the men returned with a large iron crow, and pried off the lid of the single box that remained.

  What Joseph saw at that point was a vision of sheer wonder.

  The child sat up, wearily rising from its forced slumber. The child had been locked inside the box for nearly two days.

  How the whispers of a destitute mother must have fed that helpless child … for only a mother’s words of comfort could have kept such a captive quiet.

  The mother rushed over to the child, and scooped the child into her arms, nearly swallowing the small body with her embrace. The child vanished into the mother’s bosom as the mother’s body shivered—her face the fixed expression of her heavy, silent cries.

  Then a hand grabbed Joseph’s arm. It was the hand of Mrs. Lovejoy.

  “Come away, my son,” she said. “You must follow me this very moment.”

  She placed a large satchel in his arms, to give him the appearance of a worker. He followed her into the store, and the wagon—with its secreted cargo—drove away.

  FOR THREE DAYS Joseph remained inside the wall at Mrs. Lovejoy’s—pacing the interior staircase by night, and doing his best to stay in place by day.

  “It was then that I first saw you,” he admitted to Moody. “That’s when I first saw you with her.”

  There had been a small crack in the wall plaster of one of the developing rooms, and from here Joseph had been able to observe Moody and Isabelle when they were alone. He had seen Moody teaching Isabelle how to coat glass and mix chemicals. He had seen the tenderness between them when they handled the negatives. But Joseph had also seen other things.

  “I was convinced that you were trying to ruin her,” Joseph said. “And so later—much later—when I learned that she had left Boston, I knew in my heart that you must have been to blame.”

  Moody sat back in his seat. So—Joseph was aware of what had gone on … how Moody and Isabelle had touched each other in the dark. Joseph had seen Isabelle kiss Edward Moody. He had seen her hand run up the inside of Moody’s sleeve.

  “You watched,” Moody breathed. “You watched us.”

  Joseph looked down into his lap.

  “I did,” he replied. “Can you blame me for what I felt?”

  Joseph worried that Moody would despise him for invading his memories. The way she looked at him, breathed upon him, caressed his cheeks and hands. Moody had taken her into the dark room and shut out the light. And now Moody would believe that Joseph had come back to steal from him.

  It was disgusting. Edward Moody would think him disgusting. No words moved between them. The trees outside were a blur.

  “I would have done anything for her,” Moody finally said.

  There was nothing in his voice—no anger, no passion. Just deadness. Was it possible to lose so much, and then lose even more?

  Some moments passed before Joseph continued with his story, for he had been robbed too, and understood the shame that comes with robbery. For three days Mrs. Lovejoy had tended to him inside that wall. She had treated him with dignity, and her kindness had been almost too much.

  On Joseph’s third day in hiding, the man named Wilcox entered the store.

  “There was a nigger came into this store carrying a sack a few days ago,” he said. “Where is he? He work for you?”

  “A hired hand from the train depot,” Mrs. Lovejoy replied. “I hire a lot of them—they’re cheaper than the Irish.”

  Wilcox spat on the floor. The smell of wet tobacco polluted the room.

  “If you please, sir!”

  “Now you wouldn’t be lyin’ to me—would you?”

  Mrs. Lovejoy said nothing.

  “Supposin’ you tell me how it is that a nigger come through that door one day, and never come back out?”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m harboring fugitives?” Mrs. Lovejoy said.

  “I ain’t suggesting nothin’—just asking you a question you ain’t answered.”

  “I will see you to the back door of this establishment, sir. And I will kindly ask you to leave by that door, as your kind should.”

  A twitch of the cheek showed that Wilcox hadn’t liked that, but for the moment, he bore the insult without reply. And as Mrs. Lovejoy escorted the intruder through her aisles, Wilcox stopped and sniffed along the walls. He tapped one of the panels, but the panel was solid, and Mrs. Lovejoy moved him along.

  “The spirits were with me,” Joseph said. “It is the only explanation.”

  And all of it had been happening right beneath Moody’s nose. That would be the hardest part for a man like Moody to absorb.

  “Of course she was working for the railroad,” Moody said. “If only I had known. I may have been able to—”

  “It wouldn’t have been any different,” Joseph interrupted. “She kept her secrets to protect you.”

  To Joseph, Isabelle had been, in a word—feisty. But this was not something that Joseph was about to add to his story. Moody’s vision, Joseph knew, had been frozen in time—and the spirit photographer had taken great care in stylizing it. No, no … Edward Moody would not want to hear of the wild, tempestuous Isabelle, the Isabelle who had come to claim Joseph from Mrs. Lovejoy’s. And besides, even if Edward Moody were willing to listen, there was that part of Isabelle that Joseph was determined to keep for himself.

  “It is no longer safe for you to be here,” she had said to him. “You must follow me. We are going to take you to the other side of the hill.”

  She had been radiant—a vision. He had never seen another woman like her. Yes, he had had his share of does on the plantations, but Isabelle was another creature entirely. Her eyes possessed a depth and power that captivated him immediately. Her skin glowed, no matter whether the light was dull or bright.

  She provided no name, no introduction, no pleasantry. But the sound o
f her voice still worked over him like a spell.

  They moved him, and for six days she cared for him: brought him food and water, fresh clothes and blankets, emptied his bucket. She told him that very soon, he would be back on the road to freedom. Of course the new laws had forced all of those roads to lead to Canada. She would put him on that road, she told him. This was the promise she would fulfill.

  And that’s when he had fallen in love with her. This living saint, this heroine … this angel. Two days before his departure, before either of them knew where or when he would be moved, he told her that he wanted to marry her, and demanded that she come with him.

  She stared him straight in the face, as if he had insulted her. She had never even told this runaway her name.

  “What is your name? Won’t you tell me?” he had said to her.

  “It’s better if you don’t know,” she replied.

  He insisted that he meant what he had said, and that in Canada they could be married. In Canada he could work to give her a good life. In Canada they could both be free.

  Again she stared back at him, half in pity, half in fury. It was not the first time a stupid man had professed his love to her.

  “Every year,” she said, “a hundred thousand newborn babes are brought upon the auction blocks of Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. Every year, tens of thousands of lives are sacrificed to the lash in the South.”

  Her eyes were burning into him. She was turning into fire.

  “These sights should send a thrill of horror through the nerves of every citizen, and impel the heart of humanity to do good. And so they might, if men had not found out the fearful alchemy by which they can turn this blood into gold. Instead of listening to the cries of agony, they only listen to the ring of dollars!”

  She was ferocious, angry. His proposal, it had been—

  “And you ask me to leave here?” she went on. “To abandon my work and come with you to Canada? You, who understand so little? There is no freedom for me there while even one of my brothers or sisters remains in chains. You would do well to remember that once you are lucky enough to reach freedom.”