“I suppose that’s why he took me on this trip, to force me to accept his proposal. I’ve been holding him at bay, really I have, Rutherford, for weeks. He hates animals, you know, even though he maintains a few as bodyguards and personal friends. He says I’ll have to get rid of my cats. Well, I told him I couldn’t let them go, not out into the cold, before I’d knitted sweaters for each of them, and I’ve been doing that every day for two months, stalling him, I mean, because at night I undo them.” She wanted something to dry her eyes; I offered the tail of my shirt. After blowing her nose loudly she said, “It was working until last month when Santos, that blot on the species, stopped by my room to deliver a present from Papa and saw me unraveling booties I’d made for one of the puppies. You remember Poopsie, don’t you?” I nodded, the memory of dog fur on my clothing unpleasant, but I made myself smile, which prompted Isadora to lean into me so firmly I felt our bodies had been fitted at the factory.
“Rutherford, what am I supposed to do?”
I asked her to stay in her cabin for the next hour. After making sure she’d locked her door, I bade Captain Quackenbush direct me to Papa’s quarters. Then I shook his hand, and turned to Squibb, who waited by the rail with Ebenezer Falcon’s logbook.
“This is what yuh wanted, right?”
“Thank you, Josiah.”
“And yuh’re goin’ in there with them swabs by yuhself, mate?”
“Aye, but I’d appreciate your staying close by and keeping a bright lookout.”
With his good arm, Squibb gave a mock salute. “Whatever yuh say, Cap’n,” which belied the fact that if any gob could be counted on during a storm it was he. And believe me, a storm was brewing. Poor Isadora! Papa now had her by the short hairs. Served her right, I thought, for bringing him into our lives in the first place. I knew I could not leave her in such a fix, that I had to confront him, much as David, his pitiful sling and shepherd’s stick at his side, squared off with the giant of the Philistines. Whether Papa fit the image of Goliath best or Santos, I cannot say. Yet of one thing I was sure. I was not, nor could I ever be, his match. For some blacks back home, those who did not know the full extent of his crimes, Papa was, if not a hero, then a Race Man to be admired. His holdings were diverse (including a controlling share in the Juno, according to Isadora), and he carefully watched political changes in the country, even the smallest shifts in local government, so he could profit from them, sink a little cash into land here, a house there, which in twenty years would return his investment tenfold. Once he bought a business, he never — absolutely never — sold it back to white men, because he feared if it left black hands it might never return. Aye, for many he was a patron of the race, a man who lent money to other blacks, and sometimes backed stage plays written by Negro playwrights in New Orleans. Could evil such as his actually produce good? Could money earned from murder, lies, and slave trading be used for civic service? These questions coursed through me as I paused before his cabin, and I saw how a man such as Papa might hunger for an heir, particularly a son raised by a woman as refined as Isadora — a teacher, indeed, a nursery-governess by trade. As the boy matured, he might feel a twinge of shame at his father’s bloody fortune, but he would toast his old man’s portrait some nights, for those crimes had carried their family from the fields to the Big House, from the quarters to the centers of finance. Oh, Papa’s heir might occasionally complain like Peter Cringle (surely Papa would nudge him toward politics) but, like those blacks in awe of the giant Philistine, he would feel that freedom was property. Power was property. Love of race and kin was property, and if the capital in question was the lives of other colored men. . well, mightn’t a few have to perish, in the progress of the race, for the good of the many?
Before I could rap on the door it sprang open. Santos had been eavesdropping at the porthole. He kept a distance of twelve feet between us as I entered; his eyes never left me when he slammed the door, turned the key in its latch, and retired to a corner opposite Papa, who was seated at a table with carved cabriole legs bolted to the floor. It came as no surprise that these accommodations contained all the comforts Papa enjoyed on shore. He did not travel without enough packages — dozens of shoes, two changes of clothing a day — to fill the hold of a merchantman, and these were cast about on ornate furniture, thrown over tripod tables, across a heavily cushioned sofa, and on his heavily draped bed, heaped into piles awaiting Santos, who would wash, press, and sort them the way my brother had served Reverend Chandler. Surprisingly, Papa apologized for this disorder, and then he took a cigar from a tortoise-shell box on the table and offered me one.
“Calhoun”—he leaned forward in his fruitwood chair to give me a light—“I won’t ask how you got on that ship if you don’t ask why I’m interested in its cargo.”
“The slaves, you mean?”
He straightened, as if I’d poked his spine. “It was a slaver? They’re illegal, aren’t they?” He pondered this, thumbing one of the straps to his suspenders. “How many slaves would you say it was carryin’ before that storm off the coast of Guadeloupe?”
“Fifteen,” I said. “Before the storm and after the mutiny.”
“Mutiny? By who — sailors or slaves?”
“Both, or I should say the ship’s crew was planning to set their captain adrift before the slaves broke free.”
“I see.” Papa ritched back in his chair, his mind racing ahead of me, judging by the evidence in his eyes, as chess masters leap two moves ahead of your own. “Then it was his fault, wasn’t it? Your captain? If there was — uh, an inquiry into all this, if Mr. Quackenbush was to file a report on the shipwreck from which you was saved, thank heaven, would you be prepared to, uh, testify before a maritime court that your captain, being mad, lost control of his vessel, and was maybe even unfit before the voyage began, that he, a barrator, added African slaves to a simple expedition intended only for the transport of butter, bullocks, and rice? Could you say that, Calhoun, if someone — a nameless benefactor, say — was to come up with the currency to reward you for such a tirin’ public speech?” While he talked I opened the logbook you presently hold in your hands. The smell of the sea came off these pages so strongly I had to blink away images of the ship’s sails and mainmast. Papa’s fingertips nervously drummed the edge of his table. “What’re you playin’ with there, boy?”
“Oh, dates,” I said. “Nothing important, just the ship’s manifest, with names for each Allmuseri slave on board, payment rates for the ship’s principal investors, including your whack, Papa.”
“Naw, I can’t be in that book.” He frowned and bent closer, trying to look, and swallowed. “Can I?”
I tilted the book so he could see. “Naval authorities will find this document very interesting. Captain Falcon’s logbook, I’m thinking, would be Exhibit A for any investigation into the loss of the Republic. On the other hand, it would be tragic, don’t you think, if it fell into the hands of William Lloyd Garrison. Or maybe the runaway slaves living among Indians, up in the mountains, who periodically raid plantations and, dear me, kill slave owners.”
“Santos,” barked Papa, “take that book from him!”
As with pain, so too did thought travel slow as slugs in winter through the inner wiring behind Santos’s brow. You may have noticed that he could not think and move at the same time. So he stood perfectly still, like statuary in the corner, and thought furiously, and finally brought out, “Papa, is he sayin’ you was dealin’ in slaves?” Big as he was, the man was preparing his face to cry over this betrayal. “What was that name you used, Calhoun? All — museri? My grand-daddy use to call hisself that.” He thumped a step toward Papa, his tread shaking the floor, then realized it was too hard to talk, think, and perambulate all at once, and stopped alongside me, his voice cracking and hands flat at his sides. “My people on my grandpa’s side is from that tribe.” He wanted to think again, thus was silent for two minutes as we patiently waited. “Calhoun, why would Papa do something like that.”