Ziba had a secret, and I guessed it soon enough—: chaw always quickened my wits. “You’re set to leave the Trade, aren’t you.”
His eyes fell closed. “Got me a new address, Mr. Virgil.” He began to grin. “A beef-steak-chewing woman, now! A full-on roly-poly.”
“There’s a term for men like you, Ziba,” I said, spitting over the rail. “A sacrificial lamb.”
Ziba laughed. “You won’t tell?”
I shook my head, yawned, and looked up toward the Panama House. To my surprise, Trist was already half-way down the path, waving his arms as though the boat might steam away without him—; Parson followed just behind. Both were traveling with all the speed their respective dignities would allow. Not surprisingly, Trist reached the landing first.
“Do you have any difficulty with leeches, Mr. Ball?” he called out in place of a greeting, clutching his battered hat-box to his chest.
I stared at him a moment, weighing all possible answers to this latest piece of poetry. Parson kindly answered for me.
“He wouldn’t be ferrying you to Memphis, Asa, if he did!”
Being a Brief History of T. Merryl & His Trade
by Frank S. Kennedy.
IT WERE THAT COZY BASTARD G. Harvey thought it up, Kennedy says.
I were hunched back there slopping the evening’s cups, passing the time of the day with T.M., when be darmed but that fat cherry-popper comes waltzing in, a yaller silk jacket on him fit for the privy-master to the royal house of Brunswick.
It’s His Grace, Goodie Harvey, says I to T.M.
So it is, says he. I’d thought it was a banana.
Good-day to you both, says Harvey, lisping as he done. A pint of thith or that, Mithter Kennedy, if you would.
You’ll get as much as can fit in your eye till you pay debits outstanding, says I.
You’re not square with me either, Goodman, T.M. puts in.
The very aim of my vithit! Harvey chirps. Firthtly! Kennedy—: your two dollarth fifty.
And bedam but he pulls five chits out from his pocket and lays them on the counter.
I must of look like a monkey’s butler cause T.M. lets out a laugh and slaps me on the back. There’s an easy enough answer for it, Stuts, says he. I just heard the angel Gabriel sound his trumpet.
Thimpler than that, even, Harvey says. Gentlemen—: I have found me an eathy mark.
They are all of them easy to a snit of your caliber, Goodie, says T.M.
Christ, but that little rounder blushes. Thank you, thir. But thith one I can’t take no credit for. Thith nut ith cracked wide open. He leans forward on his hands. I thuppoth you have both heard tell of the Tritht thugar empire.
T.M. looks him hard in the face. You haven’t got hold of Sam Trist’s idiot son, says he.
Harvey says nothing, twiddling his mug.
Mister Harvey, says T.M. You aren’t come in here jabbering and japing to take the vow of silence on us now. Give out.
Harvey digs at the corner of his gob with his tongue. I’m blue moldy for the want of a drink, says he.
T.M. grins. Give the man his due, Kennedy.
I could always tell it when something were cooking with T.M. Harvey takes up his mug and sucks it and the story comes out of him like piss from a horse’s croppers.
It happened thith way, says he. Tritht the father is getting on, and our dear boy ith hith one and only. Deedth him three old family parcelth to keep in running order, for to learn the rigging of it. Thee? And young Atha barely out of thort panth, and crazy ath a beaver into the bargain.
He stops a bit.
Lets hear it, Harvey, you dithered little shite, says I.
All right, says he. What do you reckon our nutter planth on doing firtht?
Enlighten us, says T.M.
He meanth to let em go, Harvey yells, slapping both hams on the counter.
Who? says I.
HITH NIGGERTH!
What, to liberate em? says T.M., frowning.
Harvey hops and titters. You heard rightly! Every ounth of plucked cotton up the old River Jordan. Fare thee well, ye thport of thpring and nature. .
You must be off your parsnips, Goodie boy, says I.
True ath I live and breathe. Thomething about puckerth in their thkin. Harvey rubs his face. Thinkth blackneth ith an ailment. Or the cure for one. Taketh cuttingth from ’em.
He what? says T.M.
Harvey nods. Cuttingth, he says again. He did all manner of fiddling, and now he’th decided to let ’em go. But not out of brotherly good-feeling, mind—: he’th afeared of them. He told me.
So he’s no liberationist, then, says I.
Elbow-litionist, Stuts, T.M. says. He goes quiet for a bit. Well, Mr. Harvey—; I would recommend—
I reckon we could thell ’em, Harvey whispers. The lot. Up in Memphith, maybe. Or Natchez.
I look down at the cups in front of me. Seven wet cups in a row.
That’s D’Ancourt’s godson, says I. The old Colonel who drinks down at Cheney’s. He’ll not be very keen.
He’ll be keen ath a cricket, says Harvey. I know him.
T.M. tips his head back and lets out a cluck. Harvey! says he. You’re forgetting Trist senior. You think old Sam Trist can’t keep count of his niggers?
If he can’t, there’s plenty on his payroll knows better, says I. There’s no way we could peddle those niggers and live.
Tritht would put a bounty on em, that’th all, Harvey says. We thell ’em here and there, one or two niggerth at a time. Around Memphith. In the townth.
Or take them back to Daddy Trist and collect the bounty on them ourselves, a voice says from the corner booth.
Goodman, I believe you know our Parson, says T.M.
Harvey suckles on his beer for a time. I know him, says he.
T.M. has his head cocked toward the booth. Would it work?
But the old bogey is done for talking. T.M. turns it over for a spell.
Mister Harvey, says he. Run along to your nutter and ask him when he’d like to loose his niggers on the world.
A Sacrifice
THE RUN TO MEMPHIS ENDED IN A BUTCHERY, Virgil says. It cured me of airs and fancy clothes forever.
We weren’t three hours out of 37 when a commotion started up in the front hold. It was pitch-dark already—: aside from Trist, asleep beside me on the pilot’s bench, I was entirely alone. I called for Ziba Goss and Parson, listened a moment, then called out again. Neither answered. The noise from the hold carried up in swells, now harsh and cutting, now strangely musical and mild—; within a quarter-hour I was desperate to know its cause. I resisted my curiosity as best I could, knowing the danger of giving the wheel over to Trist. It was not uncommon, after all, for the niggers to sing or pray together on a run. But this was neither the sound of singing nor of prayer—: it was a small noise, solitary and beseeching, that rose every so often into a chorus, then quickly fell away to nothing. At times it was so unearthly, so melancholy, that I questioned whether it was made by human tongues at all.
Soon I could no longer bear not knowing. Shaking Trist awake, I propped him up behind the wheel, ordered him to keep us hard into the current, and left him to the questionable charity of the river.
That was the first of my mistakes that night. I was fated, within the hour, to make two more.
I stepped out onto the star-lit deck and listened. No sound could be heard but the hissing and stuttering of the boiler. I felt my way along the rail to the front hold, listened another moment, then pressed my ear against its cast-iron shutters. For the space of a breath I heard nothing but the churning of the current—: then the current seemed to hush, the sound from the hold came up terrible and clear, and I was running back to the pilot-house as fast as my legs would carry me.