Through the taut working wood Lloyd could feel the thrum and clunk of the engine, chugging at reduced speed now at night-and he imagined that he could also feel the vibrations of the other passengers, tossing in their sleep or making love, fending off creditors in dreams, savage beasts or Indian war parties that awaited them in the wilderness beyond. He had visions of stepping down into some iron cage to be trapped, and yet he did as his strange guide directed and was relieved beyond measure when she followed him, the bare skin of her hands brushing against him when they were settled in the inky confinement just below. Shades of the false-bottomed graveyard, Lloyd thought.
They crouched on the floor, facing each other in total darkness, and he heard the plank slid back into place. A moment later, the mysterious girl lit a small storm lantern that sat between them. The light flared up as if inside a cave.
“Smuggler’s hold,” the girl muttered. “Doan nobody know we’re here, so talk low.”
There was something about her voice or, rather, her way of speaking that perplexed Lloyd. He let his eyes suck in the surroundings, which were so near there was not much to see. A rough bedroll and a sack of food that smelled like cold mutton and boiled potato-their refuge was no more than a large mouse hole. Then the girl pulled off her cap and he let out a stifled sigh.
She was a Negro with milk-coffee skin and eyes that shone like the color of honeycomb in the lantern reflection. Her hair was not kinky, puffed, or nappy like that of other dark girls he had seen but straight and tinged a rich cinnamon shade, clipped as though she had taken a pair of pinking shears to her head without a mirror. She smelled a little-or perhaps it was the mutton-but her teeth were clean and white, her nose sleek and narrow. He guessed her age to be about twelve, although it was hard to tell. Thirteen, maybe. He knew that she was taller than he, but there was a womanly cast to her face despite the hardened scowl she affected and the boyish clothes she wore-a rough cotton tow shirt under a mussel-blue fisherman’s jacket and loose britches that looked as if they were stitched out of some old curtain. The garments smelled of smoke and sweat, and the moist, greasy air of the boat. Her feet were bare, the soles as pale as butter.
“Why you gwain jump?” she demanded, and then cleared her throat.
Lloyd tried to think, but all he could do was stare at her.
“You crazy or you in trouble?”
The way she said this was different. Her speech seemed to shift between dialects.
“You can talk. I heard you. Whatchyou lookin’ at?”
Lloyd had never felt so lost for words.
“What’s your name?”
This question was delivered with a steeled self-assurance.
“Are you scared?”
She sounded almost solicitous now, with the tone of fine breeding. He could imagine a wealthy white girl fondling the family cat, yet inches away from him was a Negro filly in sooty boy’s garb with grown-up eyes and a soft, full mouth. He tried to look away but could not bring himself to do it.
“Worried ’bout bein’ with a nigger?” she challenged, and her whole bearing seemed to change again.
“Who… are… you?” Lloyd managed at last, and felt reassured to be able to speak.
“Wailll…” she smirked. “Dey calls me Shoofly.” She flashed her white teeth in a mocking way and then, in sharp finishing-school diction, added, “But I call myself Hattie. As in Henrietta LaCroix. That’s my proper name.”
Her posture and tone had shifted again, becoming haughty and cool, educated even. He could not control his gaze. The brassy glint of her high cheekbones, the buttermilk soles of her feet-everything confused him, and the thought of leaping into the river was as lost as something he had thrown overboard.
“That’s… a fine… name,” he gurgled, realizing to his mortification that he was becoming aroused between his legs.
The girl gave a slight snort and rolled her filbert-shaped eyes. “I don’t need the likes of you to tell me that,” she said, as her hands whisked out faster than he could move and zipped the skullcap from his head.
His hair was dirty and matted and, as good as it always felt to take off the cap, he felt naked now and was all the more embarrassed about his incipient erection. What made matters worse was that he had the sudden impression that the girl was drawing some disdainful conclusion about him. He had sensed this attitude from Negroes and mulattoes a few times before, and now the way she regarded him he could almost look back through her eyes, like a reversible lens, to each of those incidents, silent little moments of conspiratorial reckoning-sometimes condescending, other times rudely compassionate, and always happening at the speed of a glance. In her weird honeycomb eyes, he knew that he looked like trash.
“You’re beautiful,” he choked at last, and was instantly sorry he had said it.
The girl made a mute pucker with her lips and her face flared like copper under a flame, but she did not move.
“Like niggers, huh?” She squinted, putting on her poor, shiftless voice again.
Lloyd could feel some violence coiling up inside her. She might have pulled a water moccasin out of her breast-or a blade-but he made no move to protect himself.
“Rub my feet,” she commanded.
“W-what?” he stammered.
“Rub my feet, boy,” she repeated, with a face like a fist, and in one fluid motion she brought her legs up over the lantern and into his lap, so that if she had extended her toes they would have pressed against his straining hardness.
Lloyd gulped and took the right foot in his fingers-and, without being able to take his eyes from hers, he began to stroke and caress the arch and ball, feeling the coarse skin soften with the oil of his palm. The girl blew out the lantern.
His parents did not know where he was. No one on board knew where he was. He did not know whom he was with. She might have been mad, for all he knew-and must have been mad in some way to be hiding down there in that hole, stalking the boat alone late at night, with no family or traveling companions. A girl her age. And a Negro-or half Negro. Yet, plunked down now in complete darkness with her, massaging the calloused flesh of her foot, he was flooded with an unknown calmness. He kept his hands at their task, trying not to breathe.
What seemed like a very long time passed, and at last the girl said, “It’s different in the dark. Some folks is afraid of it. I ain’t-I’m not. Are you?”
“Sometimes,” Lloyd managed. “But not… now…”
“Call me Hattie. What I call you?”
“L-loyd.”
“All right, then. Lloyd. Were you really going to jump?”
Lloyd could no longer picture her firmly in his mind. Just her eyes. He felt as if he were caressing the darkness itself. Her tone was sultry and soothing, but the words were young and white. Southern. Mixed up. Like someone in a dream.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Someone’s affer you,” Hattie said, again sounding black.
“How do you know that?”
“I can feel it. I can smell it.”
“I thought that was mutton.”
The girl gave a light grunt.
“Well, you don’t have to tell me about it, if’n you don’t want to. Got troubles enough of my own.”
“Are you… running away?”
“Yep,” she answered. “I surely am. Folks affer me for sure.”