“Never with fifty-eight head on board.”
“Fifty-seven, Virgil.”
“Fifty-eight, sir, counting that cracked egg of yours.”
He tut-tutted with a finger. “Don’t fret on Trist’s account, Kansas. Parson will be on this run, remember. Has a way with dilettantes, as you may know. He takes the stuffing out of them.”
I made a face. “Who’ll take the stuffing out of Parson?”
“Parson thinks very highly of you, Virgil. Very.” He touched his finger solemnly to his nose. “You might say he’s your biggest backer, just now, in our little circle.”
For no reason I could name, Barker came to mind again. He and the Redeemer were of a piece, somehow. Some invisible thread connected them.
“I met a curious sort of Pinkerton on the boat,” I said, as offhandedly as I could. “Made a production out of being a bounty-hunter. Practically wore it on his hat.”
The Redeemer made no answer for a spell. “Name?” he said finally.
“Gave his name as Barker.”
“Barker,” the Redeemer said. Bar—ker,” he repeated, as though the name were Flemish, or possibly Japanese.
“A student of the black arts, apparently.”
“Morris P. Barker is familiar to me, thank you,” the Redeemer said curtly. “A known quantity.” His tongue clacked three times against his palate. When next he spoke, the words came out regular as playing-cards—:
“Morris P. Barker Is No Student Of The Black Arts.”
Just then the sound of rowing reached us, cautious and hollow-seeming in the dark, and a pirogue slid into view. A figure was standing in the bow like the prophet Elijah, his hands clasped fervently together—; the set of oars behind him looked for all the world to be managing themselves.
The Redeemer was still looking at me closely. “Have a chat with Parson, Virgil, the next time you’re feeling mystical. Mind the company you keep.”
“Shall I ask Parson about Barker, sir?”
“You’ll do no such thing,” the Redeemer hissed, seizing me by my collar. “You’ll leave Parson to watch over those fifty-seven niggers, Kansas, and you’ll see this run through—; then you’ll come straight back to me.” He let go of my collar disdainfully and turned away from me, struggling to catch his breath. I’d never seen him so distressed. “You’ll do no such thing as talk to Parson about Barker,” he said again, more evenly. “No such thing, Virgil. Do you hear?”
The Redeemer was afraid of this Barker—; that much was plain. An idea — perhaps even, without my intending it, a plan — was beginning to take shape within me. “And Trist, sir?” I asked. “What am I to do with him?”
“I don’t give one cat’s diddle what happens to that sport of nature,” the Redeemer muttered. It was as near to a curse-word as I’d ever heard him use.
The pirogue pulled in soon after. Two shirtless niggers stood behind Parson in the bow. “Hey the boat!” the Redeemer sang out, stepping past me with evident relief.
Parson didn’t answer until he had firm land underneath him. “Fifty-seven souls?” he said, gathering up his skirts. His eyes were like two stones from the bottom of the river.
“Fifty-eight,” the Redeemer answered, giving me a wink. “Ziba Goss will be coming on this run.”
I breathed a quiet sigh of gratitude. Goss was one of our mulatto strikers, a sturdy sort, the first I’d ever shipped with—; with him along there was a chance, however slight, that we’d actually complete the run.
Parson only nodded. The two rowers turned the skiff about and glided off into the gloaming, stiff as undertaker’s dummies. Their manner didn’t surprise me terribly—: I felt much the same in Parson’s presence.
“Ziba Goss,” said Parson, furrowing his downy brow. He turned and started up the path, drawing the Redeemer in his wake. “I’ve heard old Ziba’s getting notions.”
I groaned aloud at this.
“Ah! Is it Virgil?” Parson said, squinting back over his shoulder.
“I made a run with Ziba two weeks ago, Parson. There’s no trouble with him at all.” I fixed my eyes on the Redeemer. “I need Ziba on this run.”
“Oh! There’s no trouble with Ziba, Virgil,” the Redeemer said. “You’re perfectly right. There’s no trouble with him, as such, but neither is there—”
“You’ll give me Ziba Goss, sir, or the run to Memphis can get buggered.”
The both of them regarded me silently for a time, their eyes identically narrowed. But I neither begged their pardons, nor averted my eyes, nor amended my declaration in the slightest—: I was determined to hold my ground at any cost. In doing so, I have no doubt that I confirmed their worst suspicions, and thereby sealed and ratified my fate. My fate was sealed already, of course—; but I didn’t know it then.
“Ziba might not be three-quarters dead, sir, like the niggers Parson scares up from God knows where to paddle his funeral barges—”
“Here’s our Asa!” the Redeemer said brightly, looking up the hill.
The figure in question was already half-way down the bluff, his limbs a blur of antic jerks and twitches. I’d met him only once before— in the whist room, at the Trade’s first meeting — and remembered him as little more than a brittle, anxious voice and a shock of coal-black hair. Clearly his condition, whatever it was, had worsened. His lips fluttered pauselessly, sometimes in accompaniment to a smile, sometimes an indignant tossing of the head—; his right hand clutched a hat-box, his left a parasol. He was less than six paces off before he noticed us. Never have I seen a man look more like the wretch that gossip and calumny would have him be.
“Mr. Ball!” he squeaked, stepping past the Redeemer and Parson and taking my arm eagerly in his. “I understand you’re my passage to the City of the Sun.”
“I’m bound for Memphis, as per our Redeemer’s orders,” I said, freeing myself from his grip.
But Trist took no notice of my manner. Turning back to the others, he exclaimed—:
“One sees the Jew in him, it’s true. There’s a sallowness to the skin, a richness—; a biblicality, in short. I’d die for the least scrap—?”
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Ball himself, Asa,” the Redeemer said, looking as though he’d bit into a peach-pit. Parson watched the two of us contentedly.
“Ideally, I’d take a cutting from the praeputium,” Trist continued. “However, in this case—”
“The which, Mr. Trist?” I asked, taking a step backwards.
Trist gave me a beatific smile. “The praeputium, Mr. Ball. The foreskin.”
“Quod ergo Deus coniunxit, homo non separet,”1 Parson intoned, holding up a finger.
WITH THAT I WAS LEFT to the readying of the boat. Ziba Goss appeared not long after, and we stretched ourselves out on the lee deck, passing a tin of tobacco back and forth. Goss had always been my favorite striker, largely on account of his extraordinary greed, which kept him sober and level-headed at all hours. Knowing exactly what he liked and how to get it made him a personable companion, rarely out of temper—; what’s more, he was possessed of common sense, an almost unheard-of quality among river-men. I asked him, after a time, what he thought about the run—; he simply shook his head and grinned.
“I don’t think nothing about it, Mr. Virgil. Not a thing.”
“You’re happy, I expect. There’ll be a fine cup of gravy on fiftyseven head.”
His answer took me by surprise. “Oh! I ain’t thinking about that,” he murmured. He beamed out sleepily at the river.