A Free State Read online

  “Would you like an apple?” the captain said.

  Trogdon, wearing his shiny-brimmed hat, was speaking to the black-haired officer, who had leaned back against the wall in his chair, with his eyes closed.

  “I wouldn’t eat the stuff,” Trogdon was saying. “Beets give you gas, and they say it gives a dog the distemper. I wouldn’t want to find out. They say you need to drink water, but if you drink it out of a public tap you get maggots.”

  “Especially if you’re a dog,” the black-haired man said.

  “I need two deputies,” Tull said.

  “I wouldn’t know about a dog,” Trogdon said. “I’ve never seen a dog with the maggots. Hullo—have you found the nigger?”

  “You’ll need a warrant,” the captain said.

  “A warrant?” Tull said. He stared at the captain. “This is a niggertown search. What do I need a warrant for?”

  The captain shrugged. “That’s the law. The magistrate is on the second floor. Shouldn’t take more than an hour, maybe two.”

  To Trogdon, Tull said, “You want to make five dollars?”

  “I have a friend could help us,” Trogdon said, outside on the sidewalk. “You said deputies—I heard that. He would not mind making a dollar. He lives nearby.”

  “Where?”

  “Just the other side of Cherry Street,” Trogdon said, already out of breath trying to keep up with Tull. “In the Excelsior.”

  Cherry was four blocks in the wrong direction.

  “You’re sure he’s there?”

  “Oh, he’s always there,” Trogdon said, breathing hard as they walked. “He’s a good man, if you need one. He’s done every kind of work except for beekeeping. He has never kept bees, never would. Hates them. I do, as well. Most insects are an annoyance. They make maggots . . .”

  At the corner of Cherry Street, Trogdon looked around, apparently puzzled, and after a moment said, “Oh, two more blocks.”

  The Excelsior was a flophouse on the other side of Vine Street. The hallway smelled of mold and urine.

  “This one here,” Trogdon said, boldly leading the way.

  The door was open into a room where a man lay on a bed, reclining, smoking a pipe.

  “Hallo, Vic!” Trogdon said. The man looked up at him. “Where’s the parrot?” To Tull, he said, “Vic has a parrot with the most extraordinary . . .”

  “Shut up,” Tull said. To the reclining man, he said, “Can you stand up?”

  “I can,” the man said.

  “I’ll give you three dollars if you’ll come with us for a couple hours.”

  “Well . . . what . . .” the man began.

  “Police business!” Trogdon said.

  “Can you keep your mouth shut and walk around?”

  “Well,” the man said, frowning, “I . . . yes.” He slid himself forward on the bed and stood up, leaned over and began emptying his pipe to refill it. Concentrating on the pipe, the man said, “That is quite an interesting hat.”

  Tull grabbed him by the shoulder. A thin trickle of drool made its way through the man’s stubble.

  “Leave your pipe.”

  The trio walked the ten blocks to Lombard Street through the hot afternoon, across the tracks. The neighborhood changed like a change of weather, turned shabbier, except for a huge stone church at the corner, a block away. Isolated brick houses sat amid rough wooden shacks and sheds. The people on the street, almost all of them black, walked along, seemingly without any destination. Blacks in proper jackets, blacks in rags, young blacks, old blacks. Tull felt disgust at the disorder of it all. At Fourth Street, a Negro with a patch of discolored skin on his forehead sat on a wooden crate, holding a violin.

  “There!” Trogdon cried. “Why not collar him?”

  “He’s looking for a banjo player,” his friend said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  A couple of Negroes walked past, looked at them.

  Tull approached the old man. He might, Tull thought, know a banjo player if there were money behind the question. Trogdon started to say something, but his friend slapped his arm lightly to quiet him.

  “Uncle,” Tull said to the man, “play me a song.”

  “You my nephew?” the man said. There was something wrong with him, Tull saw now. Something in the eyes.

  “Figure of speech,” Tull said. “Play me a song and I’ll give you a nickel.”

  “You play me a song and I’ll give you a dime.”

  Tull nodded, started to move away. His instincts were off.

  “Next time bring a dollar,” the Negro called after him.

  Two more blocks and they paused again. Tull looked up and down the street. Absently, he said, “Do either of you spend time down here?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Trogdon said.

  “Where would you stay if you were a nigger just came to town?”

  Trogdon’s friend, Vic, said, “There’s a place on the other side of Seventh Street.”

  Tull had avoided looking closely at this Vic, but now he did. The man wore a graying blond mustache on a lip nudged forward by too-prominent upper teeth; a bead of moisture hung, glistening, at the tip of his nose.

  “What kind of place?” Tull said.

  “It’s sort of a rooming house, or a warren.”

  “How do you know about this place?”

  “Ha!” Trogdon said. “Vic’s a ladies’ man!”

  “Oh shut up, would you please?” Vic said. “All he ever does is talk, have you noticed?”

  Tull looked the man in the eyes.

  “It’s like a chicken coop,” Vic said. “Or . . . a kennel! A kennel for humans!”

  “Show me,” Tull said.

  Just past Seventh, on the south side of Lombard, a walkway between two modest wood-frame houses. Down the street two colored girls were playing skip-rope, one of them singing, “Last night, the night before, twenty-four robbers at my door . . .”

  “It’s through there,” Trogdon’s friend said. “I don’t know that I want to go in.”

  “Then go stand across the street,” Tull said.

  “Can I sit on those steps?” he said.

  “I don’t care what you do. Stay there, and if you see anybody carrying a banjo, come inside and get me.”

  The man looked around nervously.

  “You scared of a few niggers?”

  “I didn’t say that. I did not say I was afraid.”

  “You want your three dollars?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Tull started across the street. To Trogdon, he said, “You come with me.”

  Trogdon’s head was shaking as if he had the palsy.

  “I’m glad of that,” Trogdon said, as they walked back across the street. “I wouldn’t much like sitting out here by myself. I had an uncle wrestled a nigger one time at a lumber camp and the nigger turned into a panther. This was before he met his wife. She was no good at all. Goats used to graze all up by Germantown . . .”

  “All you need to do is wear your hat and sit still,” Tull said. “You’ll get two dollars if you can do that much.”

  “Two?” Trogdon said. “I thought it was five.”

  “You’ll get five if we find him and take him.”

  Tull and Trogdon made their way down the narrow passage to a courtyard where something was cooking in a large pot suspended over a fire. A lone Negro sat on a bench, looking as if he had just come off of a prodigious drunk. Red eyes, and his shoulders in a slouch. Nobody else around as far as Tull could make out. The courtyard was open to the sky, where it was still early afternoon among the sparse clouds.

  “How are you today?” Tull said.

  Barely looking up, the man said, “Still a nigger.”

  Tull chuckled appreciatively. “I got two dollars for somebody’ll tell me where I can find a fellow plays the banjo.”

  Looking up now at Tull and squinting, as if to focus, the Negro said, “We got a banjo player here. Good banjo player. He not in now, though.”

  “Browns
kin?”

  The red-eyed man frowned slightly. “Light-complected.”

  “Green eyes?”

  “I never got that close to him. Eyes like a girl. Where the money?”

  “Get up,” Tull said. The man stood. To Trogdon, Tull said, “Sit down there.” Trogdon did so, looking nervously around the courtyard.

  “People coming in here giving orders,” the red-eyed man said.

  A woman’s voice yelled out, “Jerome, get in your room.” The woman attached to the voice appeared out of one of several little hallways that led into the courtyard. “Get in your God damn room,” she repeated. Then, to Tull: “Who are you?”

  “Stay where you are,” Tull said to Jerome. Then, “Just a friend of music, ma’am,” all politeness. He saw the woman look at his hat and frown. “He said you have a banjo player living here?”

  “Who you coming around here asking questions?”

  “Well,” he said, “I got five dollars here if I can get some help finding this fellow, kind of light-complected, just like he said, plays the banjar . . .” He saw her eyes widen briefly, and this told him all he needed to know. He had raised the price somewhat in honor of her apparent rank. “You know anybody like that?”

  “Why you want to pay five dollars? That’s a lot of money for white trash like you.”

  He started toward her.

  “You keep coming at me and I’ll cut you into ribbons, man,” the woman said. She had whipped out a long straight razor from somewhere. Tull stopped. “I’ll cut out that white eye of yours. You like that?”

  Trogdon sat on the bench watching, his head trembling, and did not move. Tull forced a smile. “You have that boy here, we will get him and we will take you in along with him. For protecting a fugitive. Maybe you sell a little cooch on the side, too? You’ll be lucky if they don’t chop off those tired-out titties of yours.”

  She laughed in his face. “I don’t know who you’re talking about plays the banjo. I like to see them try come here and pick up somebody. I’d like to see that.”

  “The law says you’re going to be arrested and locked up. You like to see that?” he said. Watching her closely, he added, “I’ll give you ten dollars.”

  “Don’t talk to me about the law. Them police about the sorriest white men I ever saw. Like your friend there. I take care of them, anyway. No police come around here. Go on get out of here before I blow my whistle and they put you on the cooling board.”

  To the red-eyed man, Tull said, “Where does the banjo player stay?”

  “Down the hall there,” the man said. “Door with the yellow on it.”

  “I don’t want to hear that either of you moved or said a word,” Tull said.

  “Here—” Trogdon began.

  “Shoot them if they move,” Tull said.

  Tull drew his pistol and walked toward the nearest of the three passageways that led out of the courtyard. It was very dark and narrow, the only light that which struggled in from the courtyard, behind him. It smelled dank and vegetal. He walked slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the rapidly thickening gloom. A doorway, on his right, painted blue. The outlines of another doorway took shape, on his left. Squinting, Tull made out a faint yellowish tint amid the gray gradations of the remaining light. The door, a plank on rude hinges, was secured from outside with a hook and eyelet. The occupant, whoever it was, could not be inside. Tull unhooked the latch.

  A small room, perhaps ten feet square, dim light filtering in through a shuttered window. Tull made out that it was lined with wood, like a ship’s cabin. Drawers, shelves, cubbyholes. A pallet on a low platform took up half the space; a pair of very fine hunting boots sat on the floor. On the pallet were some folded clothes—a shirt, some breeches. And a banjo.

  He sat down on the pallet and picked up the instrument. It was identical to the one he had seen in the wood shop at The Tides, right down to the carving at the top. There was nothing to do, now, until the boy got back. But the situation was a puzzle. The boy could be warned off easily. If they posted themselves on the street they would attract attention, and if they remained inside someone could warn the boy away before they ever saw him. He was too close, now, to make any misstep. He lay the instrument back on the pallet and quit the room, latching the door.

  Outside, on Lombard Street, Vic sat on the steps of a building, leaning against the stair casing, his eyes half shut, staring straight ahead while two children stood a ways off, eyeing him and giggling. Tull approached.

  “This is tedious,” Vic said.

  “You said you’ve been here before, right?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Are there other ways in and out?”

  “Pardon me?” Vic said, archly.

  “Entrances.”

  “I imagine,” Vic said. “The place is full of little tunnels. It’s like an anthill.”

  Tull looked down Lombard Street, trying to sift through the human traffic as it walked, multiplied by shadows that were just beginning their slide toward evening. The fellow was useless sitting out there, but he was not particularly conspicuous. Still, someone might take notice. But Tull did not want him inside, chattering with his friend.

  “How long must we stay here?” Vic said.

  Tull started across the street. “I’ll be back,” he said.

  He walked west on Lombard past three identical two-story brick houses to the corner of Eighth Street, then turned left. Past a series of three low wooden buildings, barely more than lean-tos, separated by narrow passageways. On the sidewalks along the way, Negroes sat on barrels, stood arguing by the curb. Three of them had set up a board on a crate and were playing dominoes. A one-story brick house with stairs leading down into a basement passage. No one appeared to take any notice of him. At the end of the block he turned left on South Street and made his way alongside a wall of wooden planking that stretched for a third of the block, set onto some kind of masonry footing, finally giving out at the edge of a series of sheds. Then a small brick stable that went to the corner of Seventh, where Tull turned left again and made his way back to Lombard. The fool was right about that much, at least. The place was a sieve. No way to monitor every entrance.

  Three hours passed. Shadows seeped across the courtyard, like ink across a blotter. Trogdon sat on the bench, talking to the red-eyed man, who was asleep, or pretending to be asleep. There was no sign of the woman. The pot of cooking food had disappeared.

  Tull could not escape the feeling that the moment was slipping through his hands and he was helpless to stop it. If he walked outside, he was conspicuous. If he stayed inside, he was at the mercy of anyone outside who could warn the boy. On Lombard, long shadows on the pavement. Trogdon’s friend was asleep the third time Tull went out.

  “How long must we stay here?” the man, Vic, asked.

  “Till he comes back,” Tull said, looking up and down the street.

  “Let me at least come inside with the two of you.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to go in.”

  “Now I do.”

  Two young women entered the courtyard, regarded Tull and his companions with questioning eyes, seemed to come to a quick decision, disappeared down two different hallways. A man with a withered arm walked in, looked at the trio of strangers, and went off down a hallway. A large man in work clothes appeared, looked at them unafraid, and sat down on a bench opposite the red-eyed man, to whom he made an inquiry with a subtle facial expression. The red-eyed man shook his head, barely noticeably. The bigger man pulled a small peach out of his pocket and ate it. When he had finished, he threw the pit onto the remains of the fire in the middle of the courtyard and walked back outside.

  Night coming on, and Tull ran through his options. This was the city, he thought. Gangs of menacing Negroes, countless hiding places for criminals, ineffectual law enforcement, men who would not last ten minutes if they had to survive in the country. The courtyard was ominously quiet. Even Trogdon had shut up. The situation could turn bad very easily,
and Tull knew it. The woman with whom he had had his encounter had not returned.

  Tull went back down the passageway and examined the boy’s door and latch. Not surprisingly, the fit was inexact. He stepped inside, shut the door, took out his knife and, sliding the blade between the door’s edge and the jamb, lifted the hook with the tip of the knife. It took three tries, but he was able to drop the hook into the eyelet on the jamb, and then unhook it again, from inside. Someone could stay inside and the boy would return and think that no one was there. The boy had to come back sometime. The three of them could stay in the room, and wait.

  But the odds were overwhelming that the boy had already been warned off. And, if he hadn’t, he would be. Niggertown was a spiderweb; touch it in one place and the whole thing vibrated. It had been a mistake to leave that fool outside, even across the street, looking like a frightened animal. A mistake to leave the jabbering fool in the courtyard. A mistake to bring them to begin with. Now he knew the boy was in the city. They had found his nest, and the idea that he might have slipped away infuriated Tull.

  In the courtyard, he got Trogdon and his friend together and quietly offered them three dollars apiece if they would remain there with him, overnight if necessary, until the boy arrived. Tull knew it was pointless, and he didn’t want to do it, and he knew they wouldn’t, but he wanted to hear them say it.

  “I don’t value my life at such a bargain,” Vic said.

  “They perch like vultures,” Trogdon said. “Have you seen a vulture pull the entrails out of a squirrel? They put one of their claws on the neck and they pull at the entrails. They pull, as if you had snagged something with a fishing line. That’s a thing to avoid. I had a cousin crippled that way, trying to boat a submerged cannon . . .”

  Tull looked up at the sky above the courtyard, sugared and smeared with pinks and purples, banked-up clouds backlit by the last of the lurid sun. The voluptuous beauty mocked him. Spending the night there, alone, dark passageways teeming with unbroken city Negroes . . . There were too many places to hide in the city, too many ways of covering your tracks, too many do-gooders to help, to keep an eye out, to warn the boy off. It disgusted him. He wanted to hit something. He turned away and left the courtyard abruptly, headed down the passageway to Lombard Street.