Angels Make Their Hope Here Page 14

  “A gentleman don’t do that, Petrus,” he stammered and struggled with the chaise. “Petrus, a gentleman don’t bribe a whore to tell him what another man is doing. What you doing here, Petrus?” he demanded. Pet was brought up short momentarily by his father’s chastising tone, but his equanimity, such as it was, returned when he saw Papa’s discomfort.

  “What you doing here, Papa?” Pet answered.

  Ernst Wilhelm got to his feet finally, though the chaise was deep and plush and tried to hold him. “Don’t trade words with me, boy!” he yelled. “I ask you what you’re doing in here!”

  “I’m grown, Papa. I come in here to get some pussy. I saw this pretty girl at the market the other day and I thought, since I ain’t got a wife at home, I can use a regular whore,” Pet said, though he ought to have been afraid to taunt his father. But Pet felt fearless now and inured to any pain his father might inflict.

  “Go on home and snitch to your mama then. See if she cares,” Ernst Wilhelm said. He was shocked at his own words. It was a show for the girl. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Petrus’s feelings—to attack his manliness. But he didn’t have the courage to take an affront before the girl.

  And it was unfair because Pet was not a tattler. “Keep your mouth shut, boy!” Ernst Wilhelm had often said, and Pet had always done that. Pet had never told his mother anything.

  The young fawn-colored girl was called Arminty, Pet knew. He’d heard her fellow doxies call her in the market. She was as desirable as a cup of sunshine, and she watched the contretemps with some interest, tightening the belt of her robe and waiting.

  The ride home was quiet. All three had got sober. Did August Vander seem to be smirking? Pet’s head swelled and throbbed with wondering about this day. Jan and Pet headed to the Wilhelms’ house to sleep in Pet’s bed because Hat and Dossie were at Noelle’s house making jams and pies. Pet knew his breath and his complexion would give him away to his mother. She would know he was as untrustworthy as his father. It was as if a band had been put around his head and tightened.

  “You know my papa had a girl in there?” Pet demanded in a fierce whisper and jabbed Jan in his side. “Did you know my papa had a cozy and a whore in that place?”

  “No. How I’m going to know your papa’s business if you don’t? August knew it for sure. He knew what you’d be walking into. He’s a kind of mean little bastard,” Jan said lowering his voice. “But you been shunnin’ me. I got to have a buddy for drinkin’.”

  “You’re both swine,” Pet said resignedly. “And Papa and Duncan and me, too. Jan, boy, I wanted to fuck her. Papa was sitting down on the divan with a robe round him. He was so comfortable. She looked at me with her little eyes, and I figured she’d go for it. It was the pretty little minx we saw at the market, Jan. How’s a fat bastard like Papa attract a pretty girl like that, Jan?”

  “He’s got money and she’s a whore. She may not look so good in the light of day,” Jan said.

  “I told you I saw her in the market, and you did, too. She’s pretty. She ain’t much older than us. And then I was standing there, and I wondered. This being the kind of place it was. I wonder did this girl have the right to leave if she wanted? Papa was fussing at me and I was thinking about taking this girl for a drink so I could pull on her and kiss her. Then I came awake to wonder was she a slave—this girl? You think she’s a slave of my papa’s like Mama was? That was when I left. ’Cause I got to thinkin’ that if she was his slave girl I could fuck her if Papa said so. That made me kinda’ sick and sober. I didn’t want to think about that part of it. What you think, Jan? Is she a slave?”

  “Damn, Pet. It ain’t no slavery up here anymore. I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, but some are still owned and folk get drug off south and sol’ and some runaways are followed and drug back south. And gals get rounded up and forced, Jan”—Pet’s voice began to sound plaintive—“like my mama.”

  “That gal is your papa’s arrangement, boy. It ain’t got nothin’ to do with you… or An’ Hat.”

  “I just don’t want him keepin’ no slave gal. He ain’t got a right to do that.”

  “Ah, we live in a white man’s world.” Jan laughed. “Go on back down there and take your papa’s girl if that’s what you want. Set her free.”

  “Up here in Russell’s Knob everybody is free. I’m gonna stay here and not go nowhere else,” Pet said sleepily. He rubbed up and down on his right side with his left hand in a gesture that had recently become a habit.

  “Not me. I’m going down to the city. With Uncle married, I ain’t even got no place to live. I’m a vagabond already.”

  “In Paterson town? You got a new girl there?”

  “Naw. I’m going down to New York City.”

  “Naw, naw, stay here. But you better watch yourself round Dossie or he’ll know you got a burn for her,” Pet said with self-satisfaction.

  “He knows already. It’s why he taunts me. It ain’t right for her to be with Uncle, Pet. I’m goin’, boy. I ain’t gonna stay here all my life. An’ she ain’t neither.”

  “You gonna kidnap her—drag her off? Goddamn fool, I say.”

  It was far easier to capture women for bounty than men, for they offered less resistance, were more easily frightened by guns, and could be flushed out of hiding by grabbing up their young’uns. Conveniently, they were often found in whorehouses.

  Two men rode into Paterson and looked up the local lawmen for a palaver. They had a warrant with a description of a young escaped slave gal said to be working in the area at the Alta Club. Their papers stated the young woman was a runaway with a reward for her capture. She was said to have run from the South. The sheriffs had a description of a pretty brown girl with a sassy, intelligent demeanor. They had word she’d been seen working in a high-toned bordello in Paterson. They said they’d traveled from Maryland and claimed to have received a warrant from a man from Tennessee who said that a part of his inheritance was the value of this one slave girl who’d run off.

  Sheriff Emil Branch suspected the story was a lie but considered that one less whore in the town was a good thing. Many times these “escape” stories covered a blatant plan to kidnap a likely looking colored gal and have a bounty. But if there is slavery farther south, what does it matter to him?

  “Don’t try to snatch off no extras,” Branch growled at the men. “This is a free town.”

  The stable boy from the Alta Club came up to Dossie’s wagon at the market. He winked and waggled his fingers in agitation. Dossie was some bit frightened, though she recognized him. She’d seen him with Philomena Johnson, the boss of the Alta Club. The Alta Club’s cook was always happy to get large, fresh mountain eggs, and Philomena Johnson herself enjoyed an outing to market. Dossie knew the woman’s business because Duncan had explained it to her. In fact, he had cited the Alta Club as her warning. Be good, be careful, or you might end up like one of these women.

  Careful Jackson spoke as plainly as his snaggleteeth allowed. “Ma’am. Ma’am. Tell Mr. Ernst they tooked her,” he said. “Tell Mr. Ernst that they takin’ his gal back to slavery. They got her in the jail.” Dossie looked at the youngster with her eyebrows disappearing into the top of her head. He was smaller than her, but upon close observation he appeared to be an old man. Dossie heard his words. But why was he talking to her? Why tell her Mr. Ernst’s business?

  “Please, ma’am, take word to Mr. Ernst Wilhelm that a sheriff come and give money to Miz Philomena and tooked Arminty. She gone down in the jail. Tell him ’cause she his tuck-up,” the boy insisted. “She his girl.” Careful Jackson squeezed Dossie’s hand to press her to action and released it when she nodded.

  “I give him this word soon’s I can,” she promised.

  Philomena Johnson had no compunction about taking money from the bounty hunters. In her view the girl was neglected. During Pet’s convalescence Ernst Wilhelm was inattentive, and Arminty had had to make do with her little savings and was teased by the other girls who said her fat old
bastard had dumped her. After the ruckus with Pet, he’d stopped coming with regularity. And then her stomach began.

  Sheriff Emil Branch was too lazy to pursue thwarting the bounty hunters, but he offered them no real help either.

  “Now, Mr. Wilhelm,” he said when confronted by Ernst Wilhelm at the jail. “Just because you want your comfort here don’t mean you can take some other man’s legal rights away.” Branch’s own feelings about white men who consorted with the colored were complex.

  “That paper don’t mean anything!” Wilhelm growled back at the men. “That gal don’t belong to no man in Tennessee!” he shouted.

  “Now you don’t know that, Mr. Wilhelm. This paper says she’s the property of Mr. Sanford Crawford of Tennessee,” Branch answered.

  “Legally the coming child’s his, too,” one of the men said with a cracker sneer. “By the look of her we’uns’ll be back home just before it come—back to Mr. Crawford. He’ll thank you for the boon, sir.”

  The nasty, unnecessary words made Ernst Wilhelm grunt. He was stunned. He hadn’t laid eyes on the girl in a month. Surely it was only one month. Had it been longer? Perhaps it had been longer and he’d forgotten. He had neglected her. How long had she been in the jail?

  When he was allowed to see her, Arminty begged him to kill her himself so that she would not be taken back south. She pleaded for him to use his hands to strangle her. Ernst Wilhelm’s complete panic caused bile to rise into his mouth. He left the jail with one hand over his mouth and one on his gut.

  Ernst Wilhelm put it together in his own mind while he chucked up his last meal that he would shoot the man who had spoken in the sheriff’s office—if he did not gut him with a knife. His own guts calmed when he thought of buttermilk and fixing a plan with Duncan and the boys.

  “Counter them. Use the paper, man. Now is the time. Show them that paper and say she is your slave,” Hat said, entering her kitchen, seeing Wilhelm and Pet hunched over, whispering. She knew about the scene in the sheriff’s office because Mattie Ricks had hired a dogcart and a boy and had come quickly and stealthily to bring her the news for a bonus fee.

  “Hattie,” Ernst Wilhelm sputtered. “How…? Is Pet been tellin’ on me?”

  “Hush, man. Pet don’t tattle. I know what you do. You the kind of man a wife has to keep her eye on. Take the paper and make the case. You may get her away without having to shoot anybody.”

  “No, Hattie.”

  “Take the paper, Wilhelm. I give you your freedom and you give me mine. It’s a bargain.” Hat handed him the bill of sale.

  “Mama… what?” Pet began.

  Hat raised her hand and stopped him from speaking. It was only since she’d nursed Pet back from the brink that she felt like she was in the right place with him. Before they seemed to her to be children both together—Mr. Wilhelm’s children. She’d always felt like Mr. Wilhelm’s child wife instead of a grown-up woman because he’d always had the power to make her small and tearful. She felt a break and realized she wanted him to go and had a way to be rid of him.

  “Listen, boy, but don’t interfere. This is between your father and me,” Hat said.

  I know about it all, Pet wanted to say to keep her from confessing more. Hat looked at him and quieted him with her placid demeanor.

  “Ernst, I’ve honored you as my husband because you kept me from a worse situation. I thank you for helping me and bringing me back to my home. And I thank you for my son. We are both free of our bond.”

  The paper Hat handed Ernst Wilhelm was more a receipt than a bill. It was a very small piece of paper to have had such moment. All those years ago he had laid it on the table carelessly. She looked at it. He’d not known then that she could read. Naturally he had assumed that she could not. Anna Beth could not. But Harriet Smoot could read. She read the state of herself as represented on the paper. It said that he, Mr. Ernst Wilhelm of Bergen County, New Jersey, had the authority to take her up and keep her unfree. Whether the market had been legal or not, Hat had been bought.

  “Hattie. What are you saying?” The shock of it all was just hitting him. To rescue Arminty would mean that he’d lose his home and Hattie and Petrus and Russell’s Knob whether he used the paper or not. He would have to take Arminty away. He’d have to see her to safety. A wave of indignation washed over him. Hattie was forcing him out! In all his gallant plans for the girl’s rescue he hadn’t thought about what would come after. Now he stood to lose all.

  “Did you think you’d be able to have your cake and eat it?” In the circumstance, there was little satisfaction in seeing Ernst squirm. Hat felt a real sympathy for the girl caught up in jail. “I s’pose it’s why I kept it. It is proof that I had no choice. It always pissed me and besmirched my feelings for you. It is at least an insult to be sold and bought. It leaves a bad taste. Gwan an’ take the paper. It may free her.”

  “Hattie,” Ernst Wilhelm managed to say. He reached for her hand, but she retreated from him.

  Ernst Wilhelm might have let the man ride off. But when he saw the way Arminty was shackled and the state of her nakedness, he shot the man in the back of his head, kicked his body over, and took the keys from his belt. When he imagined what humiliation the bastard had served up to Arminty in the jail, he wished he’d beaten him to death.

  The others were surprised and dropped open their mouths. Pet gasped, “Papa!”

  “I had to do it. Look at her!”

  “You’ve lef’ us some trouble, Wilhelm,” Duncan declared.

  “Shut up!” Ernst Wilhelm exploded. He took off the shackles that bound the insensible woman. Arminty did not speak, did not scream or cry. She did not make any sound. Lost in a laudanum faint, she lay nakedly exposed to the air on a bed of feed sacks in the hunter’s rig.

  Wilhelm covered her, and Duncan tied his own horse to the wagon, got in it, and drove to Noelle’s home as smoothly as possible.

  Noelle felt Arminty’s stomach and said her baby was safe for the time being. Noelle said the girl needed a good, long rest in the bed to build her up. She said they’d given her laudanum to keep her quiet and to keep her from crying herself into ill health. Noelle rubbed Arminty all over with her fingers and bathed her head.

  “Hat, Hattie, Hat, Hattie,” Ernst Wilhelm said again and again—calling her and hoping that some words would follow. Was there even a way to explain himself? He had great difficulty actually saying anything to Hat. How to say in words what he felt—what he felt he was obliged to do? Finally Hat herself restated the case and drew out a plan. Ernst Wilhelm would take the girl who was bearing his child to safety in Canada. There was nothing else to do. He ought stay with them and care for them because he was, all would acknowledge, completely responsible for them. He was an outlaw himself now. He must sign over his business interests in this country to Petrus. This she said coolly, and Ernst paused to consider it. All of his property in this country would come to his first son. He would take the cash money that was on hand with him, and Petrus would send more when he could safely do so.

  Hat’s lack of passion alarmed Ernst somewhat. She was a Smoot. She was cunning.

  “I worry that I am leaving so much responsibility on Petrus’s shoulders,” Ernst said with some attempt to soften the parting.

  “Ah, he can do anything you can and he is younger and stronger, and he will have me to help him,” Hat said with a harsh self-assertion that stung Ernst Wilhelm.

  “Yes, you are right. He can take the reins,” Ernst conceded. “I will worry about him though… and about you.”

  “Save your worry for yourself,” Hat said sincerely. “We will cover it for you. We won’t put a lawman on your tail.”

  Harriet Smoot was certain that hers was the only heart that had never been softened to love and entanglement as women’s hearts were expected to be. Her first and only love had been her brother. He’d been a merry, playful boy once. She hadn’t known the man who took her off in marriage. Some contract had been made with her papa. And though Ernst
Wilhelm rescued her from a horrible circumstance farther south, she had never known a choice in the matter. It was Wilhelm and his money that had chosen her. And none of the subsequent days spent as husband and wife and as parents had changed the ugliness of their beginning. He had been voracious in wanting her, and she never had wanted him. And everyone—including Duncan—had colluded in her acceptance of this as marriage. He had her blessing to go.

  Hat assembled belongings for Wilhelm as if he were going on a trip and would return in a day or so. She collected his shaving cup, razor, stockings, and chemise for sleeping. She added a box of bayberry candles for the sake of sentiment and lay down, closed her eyes, and let sunrise come on as it would.

  Petrus and his father sat together talking throughout the night after Ernst Wilhelm had signed papers and passed them to his son. Several times Petrus had wanted to lay his head on Papa’s knee and have his hair tousled. But they were no longer in this relation—father and child. The son was grown now and taking the reins from his papa.

  They struck a bargain that made the young man fortunate. The last thought Pet had before he let himself slumber—head on the table—was that his papa was such an enviable adventurer. He would never have Papa’s boldness of character. He’d never have the gumption to leave a world across the ocean in Dresden and come here and live so long in these mountains and then go off again into a new country. Damn! Pet knew for certain that he’d never have that kind of spunk or wanderlust. He was his mother’s child.

  When the sun came up, Ernst Wilhelm went to speak to Hat once more. She awoke, startled. Her hair was disheveled. He looked at her and thought that she was as pretty as a biscuit still—even with dried matter about her eyes. Had she cried because he was leaving?

  “We must go, Hattie.”

  “ ‘We,’ Ernst? You taking my son with you?”

  “Petrus and Jan are riding with us to the border. They will not cross. They’ll come back. It’s best if you go up to stay with Duncan and Dossie. Some lawmen may come looking for me and the boys.”