David (24 page)

“Every count you bring me is always correct. Every dollar is always accounted for.”

“That's the idea, isn't it?”

“From where I stand. Someone else might say, not from where you're standing.”

“You sound disappointed I'm honest.”

“You misunderstand me, lad—I didn't say you were honest. You just haven't stolen from me.”

The rain was dripping off the tip of my nose now as much as it was the brim of my hat. I just wanted my money and to go home and be warm and dry. Priorities are remarkably easy to unearth when you're cold and wet and fatigued and tired of spending time with the recently deceased.

“And I'm not going to,” I said.

“You haven't forgotten where you came from,” Burwell said.

“Believe me,” I said, “I've tried. Now can I have my pay?”

“Certainly, lad.” The stack of bills I'd handed him was still in his left hand. Once again, left to right, then back, “Five, ten, fifteen. Fifteen, ten, five.” He held out the money with a smile that said as soon as I reached for it, he'd pull it back.

“You're short,” I said.

Ferguson, who up to now had seemed content to stare at the rain, turned his head. He still had the whip in his hand.

“Oh?” Burwell said. He squinted at the bills as if they'd deceived him. He began to count again. “Five, ten—”

“Cut this shit out, Burwell, and just give me my money. You know as well as I do, you owe me seventeen dollars, so just give it to me so we can both go home.”

Now Ferguson was staring at me with the same bored annoyance he had at the rain. The rain that had managed to make it past their canopy dripped from the ends of his moustache like the liquid remains of a pail of dead fish he'd just consumed in two easy swallows.

Burwell smiled at me again, this time like a parent who can't help but be amused by a badly behaved child. “Seventeen. Of course. I must have miscalculated. Forgive me, lad.” He shuffled the bills and offered over the revised amount.

I took the money and climbed in my wagon and shook the reins. On the way home, I stopped myself—twice—from taking out what he'd handed me and counting it. If he wanted it to be fifteen, it was going to be fifteen.

I'm going to have to keep an eye on that sonofabitch, I thought. Because he sure as hell is keeping one on me.

*

We're getting ready for bed and Loretta wants another log on the fire. I say it's fine—it's oranging warm and all the heat we'll need until morning. Besides, the fire in the library will burn all night.

“Heat rises,” I say.

“For heat to rise, first there must be heat.”

I step out of my clothes and I'm ready for sleep, my long underwear my second skin for at least another month. Loretta has to get undressed in order to get dressed all over again, this time for the night. Winter is just another thing that's more difficult for women.

Loretta unbuttons and pulls down and peels off until she's standing naked with her backside to the fire.

“If you're so cold, get ready and get into bed,” I say. I'm already under the blankets. Not that I object to the view.

“I am warming my centre.”

“What you're going to do is set your ass on fire.”

Just for that, she pushes her rear end a little closer to the heat.

“I'll tell you what I'll do,” I say. “Get in here and I'll let you read to me for a while.” A naked woman, a few pages of Goethe, a cold night and a warm bed: what more does a man really need?

“This is how you try to succeed in getting a woman into your bed?”

“I'm not too concerned about getting her into bed. It's what she does once she's here that I'm thinking about.”

This at least elicits a smile. Loretta's arms are covering her breasts, but only for warmth, not out of modesty. Never out of modesty.

“Let me tell you what I will do,” she says. “I will read to you if you let me take your photograph.”

I punch a burrow in my pillow and slip my head inside. “I don't need a photograph. I already know what I look like.”

“This answer of yours, it is no longer amusing.”

“Maybe, but it's not any less true.”

“What about others? Myself, for instance? What if I want a photograph of you?”

“You know what I look like too. Even more than me, actually. You see me all the time.”

“If you die before me, what then? I have nothing. This is not acceptable.”

“That's what we have memories for.”

“People can forget. These memories, sometimes they do not work.”

“Then I suppose they weren't worth remembering, then.”

Loretta silently pulls on her long wool socks, the night's outfitting beginning. I know I won't be hearing any German tonight.

*

Pride, arrogance, conceit—call it whatever you want, only never underestimate the supposedly sinful as a reliable indicator of healthily sprouting self-worth. Grave-robber solvent for the first time in my adult life, I tended to body first, instinctively knowing that soul would somehow follow. No ancient Greek sage may have said it, but if you're feeling blue, buy a brand new pair of shoes.

Which I did—an imported pair of Randall, two-piece, russet riding boots from Detroit, the leather soaked in oil and jacked to expertly soften, then stretched over a crimping block to create just the correct turn—as well as a closetful of clean white shirts and perfectly tailored pants along with two dressing-table drawers neatly stacked with warm cotton underwear and socks and even abundant handkerchiefs, a different colour for every day of the week. Just clothes, just soon-to-be rotting rags fulfilling their final worldly function
swathing their equally rotting owner on his final, six-feetbeneath sleep; but if clothes don't make the man, they can certainly make the man feel better about what kind of man he's stuck with being. I may have raised the dead for a living, but my shoes always shone and my pants were never without a sharp crease.

Fearing that I might be growing just a little bit smug—sitting about so smartly attired in my bigger, better rooming-house room (more room for more and more books; a window overlooking more than the wall of the house next door; my own small kitchen), a book of Latin verse resting on my knee, while sipping, not gulping, good whiskey—I took solace in remembering something I'd read a long time ago, so long ago I couldn't remember where: “How can a man expect to gain another man's respect if he doesn't first respect himself?”

Quickly realizing that I'd never read any such thing—had, instead, heard the Reverend King say it, say it over and over—I then took solace in knowing that, although he taught me to know it, it was me and me alone who'd made it possible for me to live it.

Creatio ex nihilo
. I should get
that
tattooed on my other arm, I thought.

The only trouble with limbs covered in personally significant Latin inscriptions, however, was that virtually no one you met knew what they meant. It wasn't everyone, after all, who read Horace and Virgil in their difficult dead tongue. Like me.

Because the Reverend King had taught me.

*

Ostensibly to stretch my legs and rest my eyes, I stroll to the front window to see what the world outside is up to. As usual, not much. Waning winter's first thaw, fresh garbage in full
bloom: empty whiskey and medicine bottles, rusty cans and rotting vegetables, a single, laceless black boot. White snow then dirty snow then yellow slush then this. Nature tries its best to make the world nicer but always returns it naked. I return to my chair and my book.

Moments made mellow like this, I can almost imagine myself accompanying Loretta abroad, black and white parading together in public not quite the colour clash it is over here. Reading all day atop the sunny deck of some luxurious steamer; quietly dining every evening with Loretta at our own private table; toasting the full moon and the foaming sea and our shared good fortune at starry midnight. Our actual time in Europe is a little less lucid, but would certainly include plenty of actual places where actual great men were born and lived and died, as well as, after docking at our first stop, as many first-rate London bookstores as I could talk Loretta into visiting. I've never been inside a proper bookstore before.

But too much leisure feels dirty. Even today's half day of rest will, I know, by the time the sun begins to sink, sour, the pleasant indolence of afternoon curdling into sinful sloth by evening's first dimming. “‘For Satan finds some mischief still/For idle hands to do,'” the Reverend King would remind us from the pulpit. My mind knows it's illogical—foolish, Loretta would say—to feel guilty for enjoying oneself, but my soul knows it's a sin.
Soul
, that's right. Did you think a soldier who loses a limb ever really believes it's gone?

Besides, I can't run the risk of being bored. Because being bored isn't possible—isn't permissible. I might have remained a slave if the Reverend King hadn't bought my freedom for me and brought my mother and me north, let us be thankful. I call no man sir and own my own home and have a woman I love and a friend I trust, let us give thanks. I stand free and rich and beloved high atop the shattered bones and extinguished hopes of every Negro who never knew any of these
things, so how could I possibly be complacent or ungrateful or bored? To be bored would be an insult. To be bored would be immoral.

I mark my place in my book and remove my spectacles.

“Come on, Henry,” I say, “let's bring in some wood,” and Henry is up from his spot in front of the library's fire before I've even finished my sentence. When Henry's eyes are closed, he's not wondering whether or not they should be open. When Henry sleeps, he sleeps; when Henry's awake, he's awake. Too bad I'm not a Hindoo—maybe next time I could come back as a dog. But I'm not a Hindoo or a Buddhist or a Moslem or even the thing I was born to be. I'm . . .

“Let's go, Henry,” I say, slapping my thigh. “We've got things to do.”

One day Burwell informed me that not only did he require four bodies and not the usual one or two, but he also needed me to pack them in ice. I wasn't to worry, though: the ice and the wooden crates that the bodies were to be stowed in would be supplied to me as soon as I gave notice I was in possession of all four samples.
Samples
was what we called bodies, just in case someone not so . . . scientifically advanced as us somehow overheard what we were saying.

“There's nothing wrong with my samples,” I said. A first-rate tailor prides himself on the cut of his suits, an expensive defence lawyer on his high acquittal rate, a successful grave robber on the quality of the corpses he delivers. A professional is a professional.

“Easy, lad,” Burwell said. “No one said there was. These samples need to travel a little farther than usual, that's all. And it won't take you any more time, if that's what you're thinking. Will likely take you less time, if I know you. Once they're packed, your job is done, Ferguson will take over from there.”

“Ferguson's never met our man in London.”

“Don't concern yourself, they're not going to London.”

“Where are they going, then?”

Burwell smiled, studied the spring air, deciding, I could tell, whether or not to let me know the truth. Ferguson, sitting beside him in the driver's-side seat of the wagon, stared straight ahead as usual at the horse's behind. A significant portion of Ferguson's life, it seemed, was spent studying Burwell's horse's ass-end.

“A good bit south of here,” Burwell said. “Hence the need for the ice.”

“How much south of here?”

“Kentucky.”

Climbing on my horse, “No,” I said.

As was our meeting-place custom, it was just after twilight and nowhere at all; technically, near the Bloomfield road, but just bush and untilled fields for as far as could be seen. I'd gotten there first and was sitting on a rotting tree trunk waiting for them to arrive. I was always waiting for them to arrive.

Burwell allowed a closed-mouth smirk, like I was a naughty child he didn't want to encourage but simply couldn't help being amused by. “It's not as if
you
have to travel to Kentucky, lad. Your job remains essentially the same. As I said, you'll hand off the samples to Ferguson and he'll take care of the rest. Simple as simple could be.”

Which was another reason I didn't want the job: I'd yet to be alone with Ferguson and his three hundred pounds of silence, and I intended to keep it that way. But it wasn't the main reason. Before the Civil War, slavery had given Southern medical schools a significant advantage in procuring bodies, because masters could sell the corpses of deceased slaves, and Southern schools rarely failed to use this as a recruiting tool. The Medical College of Louisiana, for example, promised incoming students that “subjects for dissection will be provided in any number free of charge.” I knew because a professional knows his profession. And this particular professional wasn't about to send a single Canadian body—regardless
of the colour of its dead flesh—south of the forty-ninth parallel. Let Dixie dig up its own dead.

“I said no, Burwell.” I said no, but I remained where I was, on my horse, the reins loose in my hands.

Burwell rubbed his bare chin as if contemplating some great mystery. “I don't see it,” he said.

“What? You don't see what?”

“How I can allow you to refuse.”

“How you can allow me to refuse?” I'd intended it to sound like I thought what he said was amusing, but all that happened was I repeated him.

Burwell finally released his chin from his hand and shook his head, the matter apparently settled. “No, I just can't see it, lad. This is a transaction upon which much potential future business depends, a potential new market that could prove extremely lucrative for all of us. You're the only one besides me who knows of our dealings, and I simply couldn't take the risk of even one more individual saying something he shouldn't say.”