The Third Mrs. Galway

by Deirdre Sinnott

  The old man grabbed his candle and crossed the room to a hanging cabinet with crammed shelves. He picked up a heavy bound book and seemed interested in it until he suddenly slammed it closed. He crossed to a black wooden desk whose upper doors were thrown open and bursting with rolled papers and disorderly stacks of books. He turned, his fingers to his lips, and met Joe’s eyes through the window.

  He straightened and rushed to the door. Joe ran. He heard the man open the front door and call to him, but the words “Boy, get back here!” faded as his feet carried him far from the shed and his mother.

  Out of breath, he kneeled in the shadow of a large building. He heard the birds far to the east beginning to chirp. The noise of their morning song moved toward him, tree by tree. The first blush of rose appeared in the sky. He should be getting back, but he feared the old man might be watching for him and he still hadn’t found their contact. A series of whistles came from down the road and he emerged from his hiding place to take a look.

  Ahead of him a wooden bridge arched over the canal. As he got closer, on the other side down near the water, he saw two mules. One was being ridden by a white boy, bigger than himself, holding a lantern that threw its light onto the towpath. A cable stretched behind them to the bow of a long, low freighter coming from the west. It was loaded with barrels. The mules went under the bridge and Joe ran to the eastern side and saw them emerge, still plodding along, in no particular hurry. The lad on the mule straightened on his perch. A second set of mules came from the east, they too pulling a vessel. By rights the ship traveling closest to the towpath had the right of way. The boat coming from the west was supposed to slow, allowing the other mule team to step over the towline and pull its boat over the sinking cord. But the boy driving the freighter showed no signs of slowing. Canal men on the second boat began whistling to alert him. Still he moved on, even goosing the mules to speed up. Shouts and curses flew from the second boat, urging him to stop and let them pass. He did not yield.

  By this time, Joe was leaning over the short rail of the bridge and hanging above the canal. He laughed at the battle of nerves between the two drivers. The boy from the second boat leaped off his mount and ran toward the oncoming mules. He made a grab for the harness of the team, but the original boy slashed his whip at his opponent. Stung, the second boy had no choice but to run back and stop his mules and lift his towline, thereby allowing the interloper to pass under. The men aboard the first boat jeered as the two ships crossed.

  Joe hooted and clapped with delight, when suddenly he was grabbed from behind.

  “Got you!” shouted a man.

  For a moment, Joe thought it was the bear from his dream, but he turned and saw the slave catcher Hickox who had been chasing them for all those miles.

  “Swift, get over here!” yelled the slaver.

  Joe squirmed in terror, kicking his legs wildly as Hickox dangled him in the air. Just as Swift arrived, Joe’s left foot found its target. Hickox buckled in pain and released him. Without a second of thought, Joe hurtled himself over the bridge and into the chilly canal, hitting the surface flat and hard. The bow of the second boat struck him and dragged him below the water. The air was knocked out of him. The canal water, thick with end-of-season sludge, flowed past his head. His shoulder scraped against the rough concrete bottom. If he didn’t work his way higher, he knew he would be crushed. His fingers found purchase between the boat’s planks and he wrenched himself free. Gripping the tiny spaces between the wood, he held on for the few seconds it took for the ship to pass below the bridge. His lungs burned and his heart pounded in his chest. He propelled himself to the surface and floated, inhaling deeply.

  Joe opened his eyes and saw the looming darkness of a second bridge. Right at its center, he let go of the boat and swam hard toward the far side of the canal. He paused, hand on the canal’s wall, sucking in breath. Across the water, footfalls hurried along the towpath.

  “Joey, come on out, boy! We won’t hurt ya!”

  Joe ducked beneath the surface, still hearing the slave catchers’ muffled calls. A third boat passed between himself and the towpath. He pushed off from the wall and met it a few yards from the canal’s side. Again, he allowed himself to be pulled along, this time back in the direction he’d come and far from the sharp eyes of Hickox. When he saw the original bridge he had been on, he kept himself low. Just then he noticed a new current entering the canal. It smelled a bit of stale beer. It had to be the same creek that ran behind the shed. Shoving off from the third boat, he swam upstream and found himself in the colder water of the creek. After fighting against the flow, he crawled on shore. Just before he collapsed, he noticed a tiny window with a candle that, though almost down to its nub, still burned.

  A few minutes later, a man in a white apron picked up the exhausted, soaking-wet boy and brought him inside his shop, placing him on a cot near a great domed brick oven common to his trade.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IMARI TOO HAD BEEN DREAMING. She was back in Virginia, and Elymas was coming to her on a Saturday night. Her worry drained away as she looked into her husband’s light-brown eyes, warm with anticipation. His soft lips pressed against hers. Her palm brushed the tightly curled hair that trailed down the back of his neck toward his muscled shoulders. His bulky body pressed against her. But she noticed a flicker of pain from her stomach. Elymas rose, sliding through her hands, slowly easing beyond the reach of her fingertips. He floated through the roof of the cabin and into the darkness of the night sky. Just as she was about to cry out, to try to follow him, the shed door swung open. From behind the screen of baskets, she saw the silhouette of a man, and for a moment she believed that Elymas had finally caught up. But as the stranger leaned into the building, she strangled the impulse to call his name.

  “Anybody in here?” he asked.

  Imari held her breath as a tear, heavy with disappointment, eased down her cheek. Whoever the man was, he might be able to feel the warmth of sleep lingering in the air. She held completely still—all the time wanting to reach over and touch Joe.

  With a sharp shake of his head, the man withdrew and snapped the door closed. She let warm air rush out of her nostrils. The man’s footsteps retreated. He hummed as he moved about in the next building. Joe’s spot was empty and cold. A man prowling around and Joe gone? Stupid boy. If he couldn’t understand the danger, a good switching would straighten him out.

  She moved to rise. A pain stabbed her—back to groin. She needed Elymas. He could run after their son and bring him back, or better yet, have had the strength to keep him hidden. But, she thought, trying to push away panic, Joe could hide better than a beat dog. He would come back, he had better. But Elymas?

  Time was, her husband hadn’t had much desire to run. He said he was grateful that God had seen fit to keep the three of them together after Master James died. Blacksmithing suited him fine. Even when he was only making hooks for the slaves to hang their clothing on, he liked the satisfaction of having something to show for his sweat. And running was dangerous.

  After Master James’s death, the slaves had been divided between his three children. Still dressed in their mourning finery, they’d taken turns drawing each slave’s name from a battered box. While Elymas, Imari, and Joe had all been chosen by Master Arnold, many families had been split apart. One couple, Sammy and Lizzie, about the same age as Imari and Elymas, had been separated when Master Paul, the youngest son, took all his slaves over thirty miles away to his wife’s family plantation.

  Sammy, a tall thin fellow whose work as a carpenter was rarely judged faulty, asked repeatedly for a weeklong pass to visit his wife. Master Arnold said, “Soon. Not while we’re planting.” Then, “Soon. Not while we’re weeding.” And once, “Wait until Christmas, then we shall see.” Several months passed and Sammy told Elymas that he was missing his Lizzie and planned to take off one Saturday night to walk the thirty miles and be back before the Monday morning’s work call.

  Sunday’s dawn came and t
he slave patrol arrived at the Barnwell Plantation with Sammy, his long skinny arms pinned by iron restraints, his ankles cuffed and chained, and a rope around his neck. Bloody bruises marbled his face and shoulders. A stony, straight-backed man high on a horse held the other end of the rope, his frosty blue eyes sharp. The slaves gathered around.

  Master Arnold came out of the house seeming to be surprised that Sammy had left the farm. “Why did you do this to me?” said the master.

  “My wife, she be sick when she got took away, Master,” said Sammy.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to write to Master Paul and inquire?”

  “You do that for me, Master?”

  Master Arnold looked up at the patroller holding the rope. “Mr. Hickox?”

  “Sir,” said Hickox.

  Nervousness grew as the Barnwell blacks, intent on reading what the master would do, began to fidget and sweat and wipe their mouths.

  “You love your wife?” asked Master Arnold.

  “Yes sir. More than anything,” said Sammy.

  “Take him to the market,” Master Arnold said to Hickox.

  A cry of shock went through the gathered slaves.

  Sammy fell to his knees, chains clanking. “If you sells me, I’ll never see her, Master. Please don’t. I won’t go again. I’ll wait for Christmas to come, like you say, Master.”

  “Now, Mr. Hickox.”

  The slave catcher tugged on the rope.

  Elymas turned his back to the scene, his body rigid. Sammy’s appeals mixed with sobs from the other slaves who must have allowed themselves to remember their own splintered families. Imari, choked by dread, watched Hickox drag Sammy away. Master Arnold surveyed the assembled slaves. “All of you remember this!” he shouted. “I am not my daddy. There is no disobedience here now. No slacking off. You want to stay with your families? Well, act like it.” He strode quickly back to the house as Sammy disappeared down the road.

  One night at the beginning of July when Imari and Elymas lay in bed together, her on her side, him curling around her, one hand on her belly, she mentioned the dangerous business of running.

  “But them harvest tools ain’t fixed up yet,” he said. “I can’t leave all them folks to work with busted tools, can I?”

  “Master Arnold, he say he gonna sell somebody. Might be you or me. Or Joe.”

  “Why he gonna sell me? I ain’t run nowhere,” Elymas snapped. “And who gonna do the fixing?” He softened. “And his momma, Missus Bea? That old woman need you, don’t she? Plus, you gonna have that baby. He knows that. Master Arnold do what he got to. He ain’t gonna sell Joe. He knows I be teaching him how to smith.” Elymas pinched Imari’s cheek. “Don’t go thinking too much.” He moved to kiss her neck.

  “What we think don’t matter for nothing,” she responded, turning to face him. “He ain’t no smart man.”

  “You miss his daddy or something?” said Elymas, up on one elbow. She could feel his annoyance in the dark.

  “No,” she said tartly. “He don’t run things good, not like Master James.”

  “Master James,” Elymas shot back, “I don’t never wanna hear his name again.”

  “But Master Arnold, he said someone gotta get sold.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You don’t know everything,” said Elymas, quietly. He pulled her into his arms. “Anyways, we can’t run now.” He kissed her cheek. “Not till that baby be born.” He slipped his hand over her belly and between her thighs.

  She let the matter drop, but a shroud of worry began to weigh down her days. She knew that God takes care of the birds of the air and, she’d been told, might be depended upon to take care of the humans on the ground, but so far as she could tell, He had a downright blindness when it came to watching out for the slave.

  Daylight began to warm the gloomy shed. Imari sat up. She meant to count her blessings, but instead could only see her losses. Jimmy, she thought, tapping her heart three times, my firstborn—sold off. Momma, dead before her time. And Elymas captured, like he’d never even existed. He must still be alive. She directed her mind to what she knew about her husband, rebuilding him the way a person might reconstruct a cabin after a fire.

  Thirty years ago, when Elymas had arrived from the slave market only a week old and with a fresh injury on his foot—one that earned the Barnwells a discount—he joined the other infants in the slave nursery. Since he didn’t have a natural mother like the others, he was fed by Abby, who’d recently birthed a stillborn. Elymas and Imari and the other infant slaves had been swaddled and weaned together by pregnant slaves who were too close to their lying-in time for heavy work.

  At eight years old, they both graduated to the garbage gang that moved around the plantation picking up refuse. The trash was separated. Food scraps and such went into a pile near the kitchen garden to rot and be used the following year to enrich the soil. Some items from the master’s house, like pieces of material, old clothing, or chipped crockery, were taken by the slaves and reused. The rest was burned.

  As they grew, Imari singled out Elymas for special attention. One sulky-hot afternoon when they were both about ten years old, he ran by her carrying a freshly filled water bucket that was intended to soothe the parched throats of the field hands. She poked out her thin ankle and sent him sprawling. The water arched in the air like a clear rainbow before splashing to the dirt, raising its own mini dust storm.

  Elymas pulled himself off the ground, wheezing and angry. “Why you go and do that?”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” she responded.

  “You sure did,” he said, outraged. Unsure of what to do, he raised his hand to slap her. Their eyes locked. He stopped midswing. He took a breath and made an attempt to reengage his hand, but the gesture had lost its force. “You just a girl,” he said, then spat on the ground. “Ain’t even worth hitting.”

  For a while, whenever he crossed her path, he squinted at her, lips pressed tightly together, his normally smooth brow a lumpy field. She knew he no longer considered her as unimportant as some sow bug. If it seemed like he had taken her for granted, her shin found a way to remind him. He never hit her, instead resorting to pinching her warm springy skin and, with a look of glee, twisting it until she yelped in pain and surprise. If there was a bruise on her, no matter what the source, he claimed to have caused it.

  One Sunday, when they were thirteen and were excused from their morning duties, he from the blacksmith shop and she from attending to Missus Bea’s demands, they strolled together down the steep, leafy path between the master’s house and the river to hear one of the elder slaves, known to all as the Reverend, preach. They moved in and out of fleeting columns of smoky light as the sun shone through the early morning fog. As they neared the shore, the trees thinned and Imari was surrounded by brightness. Elymas noticed a long, dark, purple slash that wrapped halfway around her upper arm.

  “I seen I got you real good,” he said. He caught up with her and lightly rubbed his thumb over her welt.

  “Ouch,” she said, pulling away. She stopped in sight of the river and the circle of slaves who had come out to the service. “You must be one dumb nigger to want to own every lick I get,” she whispered.

  “You got switched?” he said, now seriously looking her over for other signs of a beating.

  “Well, that ain’t from no pinch a yours.”

  His spine shifted, each vertebra stacking itself into a perfect, board-straight line. “Who done it?”

  “You can’t do nothing about it, so I ain’t even gonna say.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” he said.

  “I ain’t gonna be the one to get you killed,” she hissed.

  He rubbed his index finger along his upper lip, touching the few curled hairs that had recently sprouted. “That there don’t look like a willow switch done it. And it ain’t no cane mark, too thin.” He poked his finger into the spot on her back where a longer weapon, like a bullwhip, would have caused further damage. She yelpe
d and twisted away.

  “Keep your hands off a me,” she said. “I ain’t yours to touch anytime you like.”

  “I know who done it,” he whispered.

  “It ain’t none a your business,” she said, looking over her shoulder toward the gathered slaves. Folks took their seats on tree trunks that had been arranged in rows. Her mother waved and nodded to an empty space.

  “Why the overseer done it?” asked Elymas. “He know you Missus Bea’s girl. He ain’t got no business with nobody in the house.”

  Imari’s face grew hard. She knotted her hands into fists and started toward her mother. Elymas stepped in her way.

  “Why you running from me?” he asked.

  “You mind what you gotta mind,” she said through her teeth.

  “He after you?”

  Imari pivoted and stalked up the hill.

  Elymas ran and caught her by the arm. She winced. “He after you?” he shouted.

  Her eyes flicked to the service. The Reverend was telling everyone to quiet down. Children who had been dancing around the circle were captured and seated on laps.

  Imari looked at Elymas. “Don’t do nothing,” she said. But down deep in her belly she felt a tingle of excitement.

  A month later, Imari woke to the urgent clanging of a bell and the smell of smoke. She heard shouts and staggered out of her mother’s cabin. Slaves were being roused from their beds by Master Paul’s shouts of “Fire!” He held a flaming torch that lit the open yard between the slave cabins and threw wild shadows on the surrounding trees. “Grab your buckets! We need water!”

  Imari unhooked her bucket from the outside wall of the cabin and rushed to the shore. The moon, low and fat in the eastern sky, cast a jittery reflection on the Potomac. She waded into the cold river. As she turned to bring the water toward the fire, she saw Elymas. He quickly averted his eyes.