then, as if he’s felt my eyes upon him, for some unknown reason, suddenly ceases his approval.
The men’s exhaustion soon cedes to their enjoyment of cool ale and the salve of Louise’s kind words as they greedily devour the food.
One man with the deportment of a rabid fox and lacking the possession of a hat, stands out from the motley assembly. As he tucks his food wrapper beneath his coat the way a gentleman replaces his kerchief, he appears as ingeniously attired as the rest, all donning filthy mismatched articles as if styled by a drunken clothier. All else aside, what commands the eye is a black stain running the entire length of his right side, from the shoulder of his coat to the shin of his breeches.
Blood. I debate whether the troubling spill is his or a friend’s, but as I study his steps—crisp and urgent with no noticeable impairment—I trust the blood isn’t his. Now we do know who these men are, if there was any question before.
Grateful for the kindnesses given, the men quietly stumble on, hugging the riverbank toward the Upper Ferry.
James adjusts the cart’s brake and leaves it by the roadside as Louise walks to the back of our house, no doubt in search of Mina.
James comes down the bank. “I bear good news.”
“What good shall it bring to you?” Grandfather says. “Keep passing letters the way you do, and you and Carlton will be sharing a rope.”
James stiffens. Henry Carlton is fond of patronizing the more liberally vocal haunts of Philadelphia, and given his wealth and status is granted attendance to backrooms in which few are offered a seat. Whatever was on the menu of rebellion at the City Tavern this night past now smells of Louise’s food and is heading for the Upper Ferry. This isn’t the first time James has been enlisted to pass coded intelligence, and despite Grandfather’s warning, I surmise it will not be the last.
“They are too close now,” Grandfather says. “Many eyes watch, many ears listen.”
James employs a sheepish grin. “We was giving alms is all.”
“To say nothing of furthering Carlton’s intrigues.”
“Can I refuse him? And why ever would I when I agree?”
Grandfather prickles.
James continues on, ignorant of Grandfather’s air. “Hear it yesterday? Sounded like earth broke open and all hell come out.”
“It was bad, that it was.”
“Verily, but there’s always tomorrow, next week, and if need be, next year.” James leans his rear on the edge of the rock slab Grandfather has placed his drink upon. He cranes over to have a peek at the contents of Grandfather’s tankard, takes a whiff, and grimaces. “Don’t know what kind of witchery you got here, huh, no good news in any of that, God’s truth, but you’ll be happy to hear what else I come to say,” says James, issuing a repugnant look in the direction of Grandfather’s mysterious brew.
“What be it?” I call to James, to which he politely smiles at my impropriety, for he was not speaking to me.
“Jacob Elmer was by this very morn,” he says, referring to the ne’er-do-well huckster who comes up our way from time to time selling his crockery and tin pans with the secret warranty of turning food to green. “He was peddling an almanac, a pamphlet what advertises the future of the natural world.”
“How much did he take you for this time?” asks Grandfather as he loops and stitches, his tongue now pinched pensively between his last three remaining front teeth.
“Not a farthing. My specie is scarce, and at risk of my good health is but already marked by Louise.”
If it weren’t for Louise wielding a powerful guilt for not having been afforded the same privileges as James, or Carlton picking his pocket for his “small fee” for allowing James to hire himself out when his labors weren’t required at the farm, why, he would be a free man by now. Louise has her reasons, womanly ones I expect, but Carlton makes off with the most of James’s earnings and has never once even lent the respect of batting his eyelashes to do it. What benevolent larcenies self-righteous gentry commit. Indeed, the high-minded liberal favor of bribing slaves with a few empty promises and worthless coins, best from other’s pockets, all in the unspoken name of keeping potential revolt trained against the chosen enemy.
I won’t be that sort of gentleman. No. Never.
“It wouldn’t be much use to me,” says James, “as my reading is not too good yet as to take in such a thing. Though Jacob went on and read some off to me, just enough to interest me, I suppose. But I won out, he got not a coin from me, and I got us some news. It is I who took him this time.”
“I commend your skill,” Grandfather says with a wry smile.
“That almanac of his said the shad goin’a run full come spring. Think on that.”
“Eh, I do not need white man’s prophecies, only my net and my memory.”
“Good memory ’tis, Katu, but we not gone have to travel next time like you thought is what I come to say. Them fish’ll be plentiful, and they comin’ back here. The good Lord don’t starve the same men two years in a row.”
“Your God had nothing to do with it,” Grandfather pointed out. “The pale eyes don’t catch the down-runners that have already spawned. They want the roe. No roe, no shad left to run the next spring.”
James has been fishing with Grandfather every spring for as long as I can recall. After the necessary salting, a barrel of catch is given over to Carlton for allowing James to work for Father—who has nothing to do with the endeavor whatsoever—a barrel is kept by our house and the remainder is then carted to the city market at Second and Pine and sold to the monger. Grandfather splits the proceeds with James, and, never at a loss, I am always spared a small sum from Grandfather’s take, each year increasing seemingly with my size. I stand to earn a good purse come spring.
“Jacob Elmer said it never once been wrong,” says James with a mocking confidence.
Grandfather looks up and considers James but a moment before resuming his knitting. “Eh, well, if Jacob Elmer says it so, then we shall work the river for weeks.”
“Does nothing make you happy, old man?”
Grandfather indignantly lifts his chin, his eyes still focused on his mending.
James shakes his head. “I pray my prayers best as anyone. I know you don’t pray like the rest, but I pray enough for the both of us, and there is not a thing wrong with thinking my words is heard. What a blessing it would be, what with a new one on the way. Another child is what she need to fill up that hole in her heart little Moses left,” says James, giving a gander upstream and saying nothing of the hole in his own. This is the first he has mentioned his son since he died of the fever more than a year ago. “She thinking on a new cradle, a good pine piece she seen in town when she was out with our Missus. She says everything has to be new, everything from cotton to cradle.” James’s gaze is still trained upstream. Curious, I look too.
“Much snow is coming; the birds tell it,” Grandfather says. “They are leaving in great numbers, loud and calling for others to follow.”
James and I turn at the sound of Grandfather’s words only to follow his crooked pointing finger toward the buxom gray above as a distant flock honks, drifting by like buckshot on the wind.
“See your Louise has extra food, mmm, and come spring this net will be strong enough to haul up old Jacob Elmer hisself.”
James laughs at Grandfather’s words, but his expression fails to join in.
Grandfather ties off a knot amid tassels of finely fraying hemp quivering in the autumn breeze like dandelion fluff about to blow away. He handles the old net with a gentleness I have never before observed of a man. It is duplicitously a lightness of touch, like a stroke along a babe’s cheek, enticing it to sleep, and the talented prod of a physician attempting to forestall any further pain to the wounded.
“There is another thing,” James asserts. “Elmer’s almanac said this winter is to be a difficult one, just as you said. Some kind of omen in such testament.”
Grandfather shrugs.
“I don’t l
ike it. Not at all,” says James.
“When has it ever mattered what we like or do not like?”
“Jacob Elmer said this winter is to decide freedom’s fate.”
“What makes you think it is not decided already?”
James pulls back. “How do you mean?”
Grandfather again shrugs.
“If nothing else, you got you a great talent for making people run with a chill.”
Grandfather grunts and waves his hand in dismissal of James’s superstitions, even though he has no short supply of his own. Fears he refuses to share are simply the imaginings of a dolt.
“I got me a child coming, and God, oh God, I pray it live. If it do, this time I’m gone to give this one something, make ’im want to stay. I got me no riches yet, and maybe I won’t ever, but I will see to giving ’im reading and writing and number figuring, and no matter what I am to do, I will give ’im freedom.”
“Freedom? Eh, that is if winter does not first steal it away.”
James’s nostrils flare as he glares at Grandfather. “You can be mighty hateful at times.”
Grandfather shrugs. “There is nothing hateful about truth. It is not good or bad; it doesn’t love or hate. It is just—truth.”
“Truth as you see it through them half-blind eyes.” James moves from the rock where he has been leaning and turns for the embankment with considerable speed.
Grandfather calls after him, “Winter is death. It takes with it who and what it wants, and this time it will take