Into the Bright Unknown

  “I might ask you the same thing, Miss Westfall.”

  “I’m checking on the welfare of a friend.”

  “That’s very gentlewomanly of you. I’m upholding the laws of the land by paying professionals with a specific set of skills to locate and apprehend a runaway slave. I’ll arrange for his transportation back to Arkansas and collect a hefty fee. The law and profit go hand in hand.”

  “He’s no runaway, and you know it. You were there when he showed us his freedom papers.”

  “These papers?” says Frank Dilley. He waves the envelope he just took from Hampton, lifts it toward the glowing end of his cigar.

  I whip up my rifle and aim it at his head. Dilley’s free hand reaches for the gun at his holster.

  “I don’t miss,” I tell him. “Especially not at this range, which you well know. You want to bet your life that you can draw faster than I can pull a trigger, you just go ahead.”

  Dilley’s face goes white, but he doesn’t draw.

  “Do you want us to take care of this?” Bearcoat offers, tapping Hardwick on the arm. The other two roughnecks look like they’re itching for a fight as well.

  “There’s no need for violence,” Hardwick tells them. “You’ve been paid. The Apollo saloon is just across the street. I suggest you repair to that location, acquire something refreshing, and enjoy the show.”

  Bearskin shrugs, and the three men peel off to the saloon. They join the crowd of drinkers who have come outside to watch the commotion.

  “It’s wrong to make a show out of someone’s freedom,” I say. “You still there, Jefferson?”

  “Yeah,” he says behind me. His voice is quiet and very controlled.

  “Would you please walk over to Mr. Dilley and take that letter from him? And make sure it’s Hampton’s letter.”

  “Glad to,” he says.

  “Frank?”

  Frank glares. His gun hand twitches at his side.

  “You hold that letter way out to your side—the other side. Away from everybody else. I want to see your gun hand the whole time. Jeff?”

  “Lee?”

  “Best stay well out of my line of fire. I don’t want anything coming between this rifle and that varmint.”

  Jefferson closes the distance like a man approaching a nest of angry hornets. Hardwick whispers something to Miss Russell, and she moves behind him. I get the impression he’s protecting her, using his own body as a shield. What makes a man like him do something so selfless?

  Jefferson snatches the envelope from Dilley’s outstretched hand and pauses just long enough to glance inside. “This is it.”

  “Good. Get back behind me.”

  He returns a whole lot faster than he went, keeping his eye on Dilley the whole way.

  “Mr. Hardwick,” I say, enunciating carefully. “Release Hampton.”

  “Can’t do that. It would be breaking the law. But someone going through the proper channels could arrange to purchase his bounty from me before I sell it to the owner in Arkansas. Arkansas is an awful distance.”

  “This letter proves he’s a free man.”

  “And I have a bounty that proves he’s a runaway. Who is the law going to believe? A runaway Negro and a runaway girl? Or an upstanding man of industry?”

  I think I might hate Hardwick. “Release him anyway.”

  “Ah, no,” Hardwick says, smiling. “You’ll have to take that up with the sheriff, since the runaway has been remanded to the authority of the jail.”

  “So, let’s talk to the sheriff.”

  Hardwick just grins.

  “Let me guess—the sheriff isn’t here right now.”

  “He’s a man with many duties.”

  Part of me wants to storm over and free Hampton by force. But there’s just me and Jefferson with two unloaded guns between us. “This isn’t over,” I say fiercely.

  Hardwick’s smile widens. “I would be disappointed if it was.”

  I back away slowly without lowering the gun. Before I’ve taken a dozen steps, Hardwick puts his arms around Dilley and Helena Russell, herding them toward the Apollo saloon. The last thing I hear him say is, “A round of drinks for everyone, on me.”

  I lower the rifle. My arms are shaking.

  “Let’s go,” Jefferson says. “Before they change their minds.”

  We hurry around the corner and trudge up the hill, toward Portsmouth Square. The first block passes in silence. Partway up the second block, he says, “You know that rifle isn’t loaded, right?”

  “Frank didn’t know that,” I say.

  “What were you going to do if he called your bluff and drew on you?”

  “My plan didn’t account for him making that choice.”

  “Lee!”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes you need a better plan.”

  “But Hampton’s letter was as stake! What if Dilley burned it or threw it into the bay before we could get it back?”

  “I don’t know if the letter mattered one whit. Like Hardwick said, who’s the law going to side with? The white man, of course.”

  I’m silent a long while. We’ve reached the square before I can admit it. “You have a point.”

  “Thank you. I don’t mind going along with whatever you want to do, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t put me in the line of fire without a better way of backing me up. And running off half-cocked isn’t the kind of thing that hurts you and me; it’s usually the people we’re trying to help who get themselves killed. We learned that at your uncle’s mine.”

  “I’m sorry. It was the heat of the moment.” He’s right. It’s always the most vulnerable who suffer most. I’m lucky Hardwick didn’t take it out on Hampton. Yet.

  “Well, give me a warning if there’s more heat coming.”

  “I . . . I’ll be more careful.”

  Jefferson leans over and plants a kiss on the top of my head.

  When we get back to the wagon, Becky, Henry, and Jim are waiting for us. Jim sits on the bench, looking shaken but much better than he did before I ran off. Henry tends to Jim’s wound, wiping the blood from his face. Becky paces on the boardwalk. When she sees me and Jefferson, she demands, “Where’s Hampton? Is he safe?”

  “For the moment, but maybe not for long,” I say. I offer a quick accounting of what happened, leaving out the bit about me threatening to shoot Frank Dilley with an empty gun. “At least we got his freedom papers back before Frank burned them.”

  “Let me see those,” Jim says, hopping down from the wagon.

  Jefferson hands them over, and Jim opens the envelope, checks the letter, then folds it right back up. He slips it into the pocket of his trousers.

  “Maybe we should give the freedom papers to Tom?” Becky says. “He’s a lawyer, and he—”

  “We have more than a hundred years’ experience with this sort of thing,” Jim says. “But Tom is welcome to take a gander at them anytime.”

  “We have to get Hampton back,” Henry asks. “And we have to do it soon. There’s not a prison in the world that keeps a man hale.”

  “We’ll find the sheriff and pay Hampton’s bounty,” Jefferson says.

  “I’ve got some money—” I begin.

  “Hold on to it,” Jim says.

  “Why?”

  “You’re acting like this is the first time a free Negro has been kidnapped and locked up until he pays a fine,” Jim says. “When the law can’t take our freedom, it takes all our money instead. Takes both when it gets the chance.”

  “We can’t leave Hampton in jail,” Becky says.

  “We won’t. But it’s important for us to solve this, because it affects all of us.”

  “We are trying to solve it,” I say.

  “Don’t get me wrong; we can definitely use your help. But freeing Hampton is taking the easy way out. We can do that part just fine ourselves. And when I say us, I mean free Negroes. This is our problem. It was our problem before Hampton got arrested. It’s gonna be our problem long aft
er he gets free again.”

  My heart aches. The fire that was burning inside me just a little while ago has about gone out, leaving me cold.

  “What do you want us to do?” I say.

  “We want to help,” Becky adds.

  “Hampton is our friend,” Henry insists.

  Jefferson stands beside Jim. He doesn’t say a thing, but he doesn’t need to.

  “You can’t barge in and try to fix Hampton’s situation like it’s something unusual, like it’s a one-of-a-kind circumstance,” Jim says. “That’s what white people do. They fix one tiny thing and think they’re heroes.”

  He stares right at me as he says it, and my gut churns in response. When I met Jim in Independence, I mouthed off to the store clerk for treating Jim poorly. I thought I was doing the right thing then, but maybe I was just making things worse.

  “What happened to Hampton happens to free men all the time, all over this country,” he continues. “We will take care of him, but then you gotta take care of Hardwick. It ain’t enough to rescue a man in trouble, if you don’t stop the man who put him there. Hardwick’ll just do it again to someone else.”

  Life isn’t fair.

  Then it’s our job to make it fairer.

  Oh, I realize. This is what that means.

  “Jim’s right,” I say. “My uncle took everything from me. Then . . . remember how Dilley treated the Indians we met crossing the continent? Hardwick funded my uncle’s mine, and we know what happened to the Indians and the Chinese there.”

  Henry adds, “Then Hardwick took all the money we raised in Glory and promised us a town charter, only now he’s holding the charter ransom for even more money.”

  I nod. “He’s stealing Becky’s house, and he’s going to sell it to somebody else. Now he’s stealing Hampton’s freedom. Over the last year, we’ve been treating all these things like separate problems, but they’re not. They’re all one problem.”

  “What’s the one problem?” Jefferson asks. “Hardwick’s an evil cur?”

  “No, there are lots of bad men. I mean, yes, he is, but the real problem is the way he’s got the law all tied up with money. He uses the law to rob people. Then he uses his money to change the laws and to buy lawmakers so he can rob even more people. It’s a vicious circle, and it won’t stop until he’s not able to do whatever he wants to anyone.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Becky asks.

  “We’re going to stop him.”

  Jefferson steps forward, puts his hands on my shoulders, and looks at me dead-on. “You know I’m with you, right, Lee? Always, no matter what. But this time, we need a plan. No more going off half-cocked.”

  “A plan,” Becky agrees.

  “Something foolproof,” Henry adds.

  “Easy,” I say. “Right?”

  Chapter Eight

  Two mornings later, we take leave of the City Hotel, long before our full week is up—paid in advance, both rooms, all four cots—and form a small parade with all our possessions to walk down to the docks.

  The Major has the baby tucked in one arm and holds Andy’s hand with the other. I’m afraid he’s going to topple over on his wooden leg, but he stomps along like a man who’s been doing it his whole life and not just a few months.

  Olive flits like a hummingbird. She runs ahead half a dozen steps, notices something new, and then immediately dashes back to tell us about it. “Ma, the sign on that big house says it’s an oh-per-uh. Ma, what’s an oh-per-uh?”

  “An opera is a form of musical entertainment—”

  “Jasper, is that man sick? He’s sitting against the wall and his skin is blanched. You said that when a man’s skin is—”

  “Hush, dear,” says Becky. “It’s not polite to point out such things.”

  The three bachelors walk together. It’s the first time they’ve all seen each other in days, because Jasper has been volunteering at doctors’ offices throughout the city.

  “I’m trying to find someone I can learn from,” Jasper tells his friends, “but when a man with a crushed hand needed two fingers amputated, I was the one teaching the doctor how to do it instead of him teaching me.”

  “That’s still better than my search,” Tom says. “Plenty of law offices, but none willing to give me a job unless I bring in my own clients. If I had my own clients, I could afford rent, and I wouldn’t need a job.”

  Henry rubs his eyes. I suspect he was up all night again. I don’t think he gambles as much as he says, else he’d be broke by now, but he sure loves dressing fine and being sociable.

  Jefferson and I bring up the rear, leading the wagon, which is loaded with our bags, and Peony and Sorry, who seem relieved to be let out of the stable. It’s our first private moment together since the walk back to Portsmouth Square the other day.

  “I think Becky’s forgotten about the wedding dress,” I tell him. Softly, so there’s no chance of Becky overhearing.

  “Not a chance,” he says.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Well, this is Becky we’re talking about.”

  “Good point.”

  “Also, she asked Henry if he’d be willing to help me find a proper suit.”

  “Really?”

  “I tried to dissuade him, but without luck. He knows just the place. And he’s certain he knows just the color for me.”

  “What color is that?”

  “I’m pretty sure he said plum.”

  “Plum?”

  “Plum. Which, until that moment, I could have sworn was a fruit.”

  I want to ask if any other colors were mentioned, but it’s a very short parade route and we have arrived at our destination, which is the Charlotte. I don’t see Melancthon anywhere about the deck, so I bang on the side.

  “Whaddyawant?” comes from somewhere inside the cabin.

  I hammer the side of the ship again. “Prepare to be boarded!”

  His rat’s nest of hair bobs to the surface of the ship, and Melancthon Jones squints over the side at us. “Oh, it’s you,” he says, frowning. “I already told you, the house we loaded in Panama isn’t here anymore. You’ll have to go up to the customs office in Portsmouth Square.”

  “We’ve been and gone,” I say. “That situation isn’t resolving as quickly as we would prefer. In the meantime, we’ve bought this ship.”

  Major Craven reaches into my saddlebags, which are a lot lighter than they were a couple days ago, much to Peony’s delight. And much to mine. Carrying around all that gold was worrisome.

  The Major holds up a deed for the ship and the land underneath, and waves it at the sailor.

  Melancthon straightens like a man called to attention. After a moment’s pause, he hurries to the side of the ship and drops the gangplank.

  “Come aboard,” he says, but he eyes us with mistrust. As far as he knows, we’ve just bought his house out from under him.

  The children are the first to rush aboard. Andrew jumps up and down, cheering. “We have a ship! We have a ship!”

  “A land ship,” Olive clarifies.

  The Major pauses at the top of the gangplank and allows Melancthon to inspect the bill of sale.

  “This is unexpected,” Melancthon says, combing his hair with his fingers, once again with no noticeable effect. “I didn’t plan to vacate until next Tuesday, but it’ll only be a few minutes’ work to gather my things.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” I tell him. “You said you were a carpenter?”

  “That’s correct, ma’am. Started out as a carpenter’s mate nigh on twenty years ago. Been ship’s carpenter for seven years, the last three aboard the Charlotte.”

  I like the way he squares his shoulders when he speaks, like a man who takes pride in his work.

  “I need a carpenter,” I tell him. “Are you familiar with the Apollo saloon?”

  “Formerly the Apollo? Now sadly run aground, down on Battery Street. I may have had a nip or two there on occasion.”

  “I noticed the
y added a door at street level, along with an awning, and a second story above the deck.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And they’ve got a very nice saloon inside—a long bar running the length of the lower deck, with booths and tables beside. Do you mean to turn the Charlotte into a saloon, ma’am?”

  “Would that be a problem?” I ask.

  “It’s just you don’t look . . . old enough to be the proprietor of a saloon. No offense intended.”

  “None taken,” I assure him. “What can you tell me about this ship?”

  “She’s one hundred fifteen feet in length, with a beam of twenty-eight, and a depth of sixteen—”

  “I meant, more generally, what can you tell me about the ship?”

  “We were a whaler, came sailing around Cape Horn, where we put in at Paita in Peru. The captain received an urgent letter from the American consulate there, enjoining him to pick up passengers and cargo at Panama and bring them to San Francisco. We sold off or unloaded all our stores right there, and converted the ship as well as we might en route to Panama. Once we got here, the captain decided to run the ship aground at high tide. . . .”

  Again, not exactly what I need to know. “Maybe it would just be better to take us on a tour.”

  “I can do that,” he says.

  “Olive! Andrew!” calls out Becky. “Gather around. We’re going to take a tour of the ship.”

  Our group, which had been wandering and inspecting independently, converges at the center of the deck. Melancthon points to the front of the ship. “That’s the foaksul . . .”

  “Pardon me, the what?” asks Tom. “Could you spell that please?”

  “F-O-R-E-C-A-S-T-L-E.”

  “Ah,” says Tom, as if this makes perfect sense.

  “Forecastle?” I ask.

  “That’s what I said!” Melancthon points in the other direction. “And that’s the quarter deck, and there in the rear, that’s the poop deck.”

  Olive turns to her mother. “Ma, did he just say poop deck?”

  “I’m certain you misheard,” Becky says.

  “It’s from la poupe, the French word for the stern of the ship,” Henry explains. “Which, in turn, is derived from the Latin word puppis.”

  “La poop, la poop, la poop,” Andrew says. His mother turns scarlet.