A Free State Read online

  “Wait!” Trogdon called. The two men hurried after him.

  Tull was on the sidewalk just outside the passageway in the darkening evening. He would keep the advance, as agreed upon, and return without the boy. He had bought a ticket for the minstrels on Arch Street the next evening, Friday. He would spend one more day of Stephens’s expense money, see if anyone got a message to him at the rooming house, take in the show, then get out on Saturday morning. He could get that much out of the trip to this sewer, at least.

  “Where should we go now?” Trogdon said.

  “You can go and stick your hat up your ass and set it on fire for all I care,” Tull said.

  He drew a money pouch out of his jacket pocket, opened it, and felt the men press close, greedy.

  “This was quite a fiasco,” Vic said.

  “Here,” Tull said, ignoring him, looking down at the transaction. To Trogdon, he gave the agreed-upon two dollars.

  “I should think we might get more, given how long we spent,” Trogdon said, counting the coins, his head shaking.

  Ignoring him as well, Tull put two dollars in the other’s hand. Vic counted the coins.

  “I thought we had agreed on three dollars as my fee,” he said.

  Tull looked at the man, now, standing in front of him with his hand still out, the coins on his palm, looking at Tull with a mixture of fear, indignation, and irony. A weak man with a vein of effrontery in him. He probably enjoyed taking punishment, Tull thought.

  “You fell asleep,” Tull said.

  “I don’t wonder,” the man said. “I had nothing to do but sit there.”

  “Then you’re lucky to get that.”

  The man looked at the coins in his hand.

  Trogdon was watching Tull. “Come on, Vic,” he said. “I’m satisfied.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Vic said.

  “You’d better be,” Tull said. “Get out of here now.”

  The man assumed a wounded expression. “You needn’t speak crossly to me,” he said.

  Tull pulled his pistol out of his jacket. The man looked at Tull as if this might be a joke. Tull rapped the man’s hand with the barrel and sent the coins tumbling to the sidewalk.

  “The niggers can have the money if you don’t want it,” Tull said.

  “That was unnecessary,” Vic said, crouching down to get the coins.

  “Was it?” Tull said. He cuffed the back of the figure’s head with the gun barrel, and Vic fell forward on one knee and put up his left hand to fend off any other blows.

  “Stop it,” he said. “Vicious bastard.”

  Tull laughed out loud at this. It was funny, as if a mouse had addressed him in a booming voice. He slammed the side of the man’s head and sent him pitching forward onto the sidewalk. The man rolled to his back and looked up at Tull, panicked. This was correct, Tull thought. Now we were getting somewhere. He pointed the gun at the man’s face and knelt with one knee upon his chest.

  “Don’t move, Vic,” he said, smiling.

  “Help!” the man called out. “Help!”

  Now Tull laughed again, and he used the butt of the gun to break the man’s front teeth off into his mouth. A spatter of blood appeared on Tull’s knee. The man was crying.

  “You got my pants dirty,” Tull said.

  “Here,” Trogdon said. “Here—”

  Tull had forgotten about him. “Stand away,” he said. Trogdon backed up. Tull looked down into the weeping man’s face. Tull stared at a spot on his temple, and imagined bringing the gun down upon it and cracking his skull like a pecan shell. But the man was no longer resisting him. Tull wiped some blood off the gun butt onto the man’s pants, from which the stench of fresh shit was now rising. He stood up. Two Negroes who had been watching from across the street quickly turned and continued down the sidewalk. It was very nearly dark.

  Trogdon was speechless, for once.

  “Get your friend home,” Tull said. “Thanks for your help.”

  He crossed Lombard toward Seventh Street without looking back, then disappeared around the corner. He had had it with Philadelphia.

  10

  They tell you Freedom is coming. They say Cross the river to Canaan’s land. By which they mean Somewhere Else. Mr. Still said, “The Bondsman is not running away from slavery, but running toward freedom.” Poor fool is always running somewhere. Where is it? What’s he going to do when he gets there?

  If I had a needle and thread,

  Fine as I could sew,

  I’d sew my good gal to my side,

  And down the road I’d go.

  And go where? Free to do what? Nobody asks that question. When you get there, will you have to go somewhere else?

  They say the plantation is Paradise for master and Hell for the slave. But if you read Scripture, nothing happens in either place. Nothing changes; it’s always now. I would have bit the apple, too. But if you get free, then you have to start running. As soon as then and later come in, it’s time to go.

  White people make up stories in their head about you and then they put you in the story and make you stay there. But as soon as you’re in their story, you might as well be dead. If it doesn’t have an end, it isn’t a story. Never was a book yet ended on the word “and.” If I ever wrote a book, that’s how it would end. Maybe that would be the only word in the book. And.

  The bird in a cage, he sings a song,

  But the bird who’s free flies all day long.

  Where does he fly? And why?

  If somebody opens the door to a cage and says, “Get in; I’ll feed you,” it’s still a cage. Where’s freedom? If you choose to be in a cage is that freedom? Why would you let somebody be your master? She volunteered to be a slave. Somebody ought to write a book about that.

  Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Some people die to be free, but some people rather die than be free. Go away someplace with your freedom. They say, Free to do what? I’m happy here. Maybe they are right. As long as you’re alive there’s a chance of figuring it out, but I have a bad feeling maybe there’s nothing to figure out. I have a bad feeling it’s just questions all the way down.

  But you won’t see me crying. They won’t catch me. I’ll go straight up in the air like the Travelin’ Man. Make a pair of shoes like Lost John:

  Heels in the front, and heels behind,

  Now nobody knows where Lost John gwine.

  Here’s a riddle:

  My old mistress had a hen,

  Black as any crow.

  Laid three eggs every day,

  Sunday she laid four.

  That’s all you get, and now I’m gone.

  11

  I managed to get through Thursday night’s performance, barely. Mulligan took me aside afterward and asked if I were all right, and I told him I was. He looked at me from under his prodigious eyebrows, and I repeated that I was all right. But of course I was very disturbed, shaken by the appearance of the bounty hunter and the news he brought.

  On Friday afternoon I arrived at the theater before the others, as usual. I had sent several messages to fellow minstrels who might be able to replace Henry, but I’d received no reply. I had no way of knowing if Henry would show up, nor of what the evening might bring. It was perhaps a quarter hour before six o’clock when I heard footsteps outside the dressing room. It was still early for any of the fellows to arrive, but when I went to the door I found myself face-to-face with Eagan, flushed, uncharacteristically minus cravat, and clearly upset about something.

  “Michael,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Well,” he said, “what are you going to do about this fellow now?”

  “Which fellow?” I said.

  “Come on, you know damn well who I’m talking about. You know damn well.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Damn well or otherwise.”

  “Your Colored protégé,” he said. “Your black Don Juan.”

  “What do you mean, Eagan?” I said. “Consider befo
re you say another word.”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to ‘consider,’ Douglass. He came to Rose’s apartments last evening. Followed her home in secret, and asked her to come away with him.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said. “Not for a minute.”

  “Don’t you!” he said. “Turned up, begged her to let him stay with her overnight, and then when she denied him told her that she did not love me, and said she should come with him and sleep on the ground somewhere. In some nigger sty.”

  “Rose told you this?” I said.

  “No, James—the man in the moon told me. What are you going to do about this? He said he was being hunted. He’s a runaway, Douglass. Contraband. I’ll turn him in myself if you do not.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” I said. “I don’t believe any of this. You’ll keep a lid on yourself until I’ve spoken with both of them.”

  “The devil I will.”

  “You will,” I said, “or you’ll find another troupe to perform with.”

  “That won’t be difficult, Douglass.”

  “Won’t it?” I said, nearly beside myself. I was about to cross a line into some untenable escalation with him, and one hour before curtain was no time for this. So I swallowed my anger and said, “Michael, please let us get on with the show, and we will sort things out afterward.” Burke had arrived, and he caught my eye with a quizzical glance. I motioned him away.

  “I will not appear onstage with that coon,” Eagan said.

  “You will not need to. Go prepare, and let me handle this.”

  So Henry knew he was being hunted. Perhaps he had already been caught. He might have left the city. Anything at all could have been true. Each scenario and its opposite seemed equally plausible. I had heard nothing back from Richards, nor from the two others to whom I had sent last-minute notes. So I sketched out a revised order for the second half, using the template of one of our weeknight shows, which did not feature Henry. I could not believe the story about showing up at Rose’s. I was torn between pity for him and anger, at him and at myself. The damage he caused was mounting up.

  Powell and Mulligan arrived in their turn. By half past six o’clock Henry had not shown up. I announced to the troupe that Henry was not going to appear, and I forestalled commentary by saying I would offer a full explanation afterward. I gave Eagan a significant look, which contained a command to keep his own counsel until I had straightened things out.

  Mulligan took me by the arm. “James, I need to ask you something privately,” he said, steering me out the dressing room door.

  “What is going on, James?” he said when we were out of earshot. “You seem haunted. Is everything all right?”

  I looked at him, then, my associate of years, and I saw genuine concern in his eyes. “Let’s get through the evening, John,” I said.

  “Is Henry all right?”

  I told him, quickly and in brief, what I knew, and what Eagan had said. His expression conveyed so much more of sorrow than any other emotion that I wondered if he had guessed the truth long before I had.

  “The poor fellow,” he said, when I had finished.

  “There’s nothing to be done now,” I said.

  The hour approached and we made our way to the stage, took our places. Gilman informed us that the house was nearly full. There would be disappointment, sharply expressed, when Demosthenes Jones failed to show, but we would carry on. We sat in our line, facing the curtain. At seven o’clock Gilman made his introductory announcement, and then I stomped my foot four times and the theater and its contents were once again severed from their moorings and we floated away.

  The evening was warm, and the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk. He disliked crowds, and especially city crowds, and he waited outside until the performance was about to begin, savoring the last of the day’s light as it drained from the sky and turned the buildings blue and gray. He wore a heavy jacket, inside of which he kept his pistol, a weighted folding knife, and a small wad of banknotes. The warm evening and slight breeze licked around the edges of his mood. All the Romes that rise and fall. The city one big stage set. The pure land that once was there. Across the darkening street was a tavern, and he let himself think that he might stop in afterward and uncouple himself from the week’s preoccupations. But drink was poison to him, and he had lived with discipline for a long time. He liked it in the country, where people had their mind on fundamental things. Rain, crops, blood.

  The inside of the theater was very busy, and Tull made his way to a seat through the pressing bodies, the tentative, groping others. Those who stood, absently, in place, taking up room and delaying his progress. He found a spot toward the back on the left, in a less-populated patch where he could have an unoccupied seat on either side. He did not enjoy the sustained proximity of other bodies, rowdy and unwashed. There was a small balcony overhead, but one never knew what one would find in the balcony. This theater was about the size of the Columbia in Richmond, which he had attended twice.

  He removed his hat and kept it on the seat next to him to discourage company. It had been a long time since he had had a drink. There had been a period when he was a walking sponge, soaked and dripping whiskey all over the floor. He had wrung himself out, finally, hung himself in the sun to cure. The only time he ever felt the want of a drink was at times like these, in a city. The seats were filling. Someone standing in the center aisle was pointing to the seat next to him, inquiring if it was free. Tull waved him off.

  He looked at the program. At the top of the second half were printed the words DEMOSTHENES JONES WILL APPEAR, with no further amplification. The curtains were closed. The house lights dimmed. A pair of men settled themselves in the seats immediately to Tull’s left, and proceeded to bring out a flask.

  A master of ceremonies strode out onto the stage and quieted the crowd, or tried to; he made an elaborate announcement, and then the curtain rose on the so-called Virginia Harmonists, five men seated in the standard minstrel line. Behind them, an elaborate painted backdrop of a plantation scene: two figures in knee breeches and long-tailed jackets, and three women in bright-colored hoop skirts, watching two smiling Darkies dance. A carriage with a smiling driver. Tull, unlike most of the people in the theater, was fully conscious of the distorted nature of the scene. The lie subscribed to by master and citizen alike, to preserve the myth of their own virtue. They hired the likes of him to do the rough work, behind the curtain. The frustrations of the week collected around this thought, and he reminded himself that he would be leaving the next day. He would try to enjoy the performance.

  The fiddler was very good. The banjo player—they called him “Bullfrog Johnson,” according to the program—was excellent. Tull was able to appreciate some of the finer points. He had seen minstrel shows in Richmond and, once, in Baltimore. He had learned some basic strokes on the banjo, which provided his sole purchase on beauty. There was a slave on the LaFontaine plantation near Appomattox, named Crito, who played both fiddle and banjo. He was a trustee, and came and went from LaFontaine more or less as he pleased. Every few weeks Crito would make the four-mile ride to Tull’s cabin on a Sunday and they would sit on Tull’s porch and play a few songs. Crito was a necessary figure for Tull, proof that the rest of his dark race was lazy and ignorant and dissolute by choice, not by the fact of their enslavement. They could be better if they wanted to.

  The show went on. The two gallants on his left had prepared for their evening with a fair amount of whiskey, and they engaged in a dialogue about the presentation onstage, taking regular drinks from the flask and shouting at the performers.

  “Dance, niggers!”

  “Your trousers are too short!”

  “Play that fiddle, Sam!”

  Tull felt his irritation rising. Their remarks impinged upon his enjoyment of the presentation. Two useless characters who had probably never raised a callus from work.

  “Have a drink?” The one next to him was offering him the flask. “Have a little fun w
hy don’t you?” Tull turned his head to regard him, unsmiling, and saw the fellow note his turned eye. The one nearest him wore a velvet tie and had a scar on his chin. Longish hair in back. The other had a full beard and wore a waistcoat and had his shirt buttoned to his neck. Tull stared at them without speaking.

  The one next to Tull, still holding out the flask, returned Tull’s stare and said, “Unfriendly. Did your husband turn you out for the night?”

  Tull felt himself warming with a familiar pleasure. The speaker’s companion on the other side saw Tull smile, and he tugged at his friend’s arm and said, “Come on, let’s move.”

  “Why?” said the one next to Tull. “He can move if he doesn’t like our company.”

  With his left hand Tull grabbed the speaker’s hair from behind, twisted the man’s head, yanking it backward then pushing it down quickly between the man’s knees and leaning his weight on him. With his other hand Tull withdrew the knife from his jacket pocket and with a flick of the wrist opened it so that it locked into place.

  “Here, what’s this?” someone said in the row behind.

  “Mind the show,” Tull said to the voice. Tull looked across his captive at the man’s friend and raised his eyebrows.

  “We’ll go,” the friend said. Onstage, the minstrels were singing about some pretty dark-skinned girl they all loved.

  Tull tightened his grip on his neighbor’s hair and heard him say, “We’ll go.”

  “You’re sure of that, right?” Tull said, leaning down.

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  “All right.” To the other, Tull said, “Go on out in the aisle. Don’t say anything.”

  The friend moved to the aisle, and Tull, keeping his grip on his neighbor’s hair, turned him and shoved him; the man fell to the floor between the seats, recovered himself, and joined his friend in the aisle. They departed.