Jacob's Ladder (10 page)

Samuel's guests, who'd only come to wish their own servants a Happy Christmas, stirred uneasily. Andrew Seig called, “Samuel, if you were to broach their cask, we could return to the comforts of your parlor.”

Master Gatewood's raised hand commanded silence. “And this is Jesse's woman, Maggie.”

“Master . . .” Jack the Driver warned.

“Duncan, you are acquainted with Maggie.”

Maggie broke into a luminous, tremulous smile as she took a step forward.

With his finger, Master Gatewood turned Maggie's face, one profile, then the other. She had the features of a pharaoh's queen. “Servants like Jesse and Maggie are the firm foundation of Stratford Plantation. That's right, isn't it, Jack?”

“Master, there's folks waitin' on that cask. Old George's banjo anxious in his hand.”

“Your child, Maggie—what do you call the boy?”

She whispered, “Jacob. I call him Jacob because Jacob got to see the gates of heaven.”

“Duncan, take the infant.”

“Sir . . . I cannot.”

“Maggie doesn't object, do you, Maggie?”

Silently, Maggie extended the infant toward the young white master.

Maggie's eyes cast Duncan adrift. His body felt light as down. The baby stirred and put his tiny fists to his innocent eyes. Baby Jacob was just as white as he was.

“It is not unknown for a young man to succumb to temptation,” Samuel droned on. “We pray that error, repented, may be converted into useful knowledge: the master's assumption of his duties. Son, take this child who will one day be your servant: a field hand perhaps, a woods worker like Rufus or a house nigger like Pompey . . .”

Duncan jerked his fist into the air and (Elmo Hevener said, afterward) his father flinched. But instead of striking a blow, Duncan pressed his hand to his mouth and bit down, his teeth sinking into the heel of his hand, and a fine spatter of blood sprayed Maggie and the infant and the boy growled the way a bulldog growls when it's taken hold. Still growling, hunched over his hand, Samuel Gatewood's son lurched up the lane toward the house. Frightened, the infant began to wail.

In a strangled voice, Gatewood said, “Jack . . . Jack, you may broach the cask.”

Maggie's eyes flooded with tears. “Master, why are you doing this to us?”

Samuel wiped his face with his linen handkerchief. He said, “You are unaccustomed to strong drink. Use a little sense, will you?”

“Yes, Master,” Rufus called in the deadest voice imaginable. “We use all the sense we got.”

“Pray put away your wraps,” Catesby Byrd urged Samuel's guests. “I'm certain the Gatewoods intend you to stay for the dancing. They will rejoin us directly.” He spoke confidentially. “Please. It will demonstrate respect for the family.”

Reluctantly, Andrew Sieg unbuckled his fiddle case. An oblong leather case another opened contained a harmonium, and Leona Byrd seated herself, with a childlike air, at the pianoforte.

Sister Kate dozed in a wing chair.

With Pauline against her knees, Cousin Molly read from Mr. Dickens's “A Christmas Carol.”

Having done his duty by fire hazards and extinguished every candle on the tree, Pompey was sitting upright in the corner, feet stuck straight out, fast asleep. Though she usually retired when dancing began, Grandmother Gatewood perched on a straightback chair, hands folded patiently in her lap, eyes glittering.

When Leona Byrd struck the first chords of the somber. “Lorena,” her husband cried, “Come, dear, this is Christmas.
Tempo vivace
if you please!”

Elmo Hevener proposed to call figures and urged the gents to select their partners. Uther Botkin and Sallie were first on the floor.

Though at first the music was ragged, it soon hit its stride and was at a racehorse clip when Abigail returned and motioned Catesby into the dining room. The house servants had hurried to the celebrations in the Quarters and hadn't cleaned up. Ruined cakes slumped on the sideboard, platters were yellowed in congealed grease.

“Dear Abigail . . .”

“Oh, Catesby. I can do nothing with my husband or son. They are in Duncan's room, Duncan crumpled on his bed, Samuel pacing! Samuel will have the filial obedience that is his due, and Duncan, poor Duncan, has taken leave of his senses. He begs him to rear that negro infant as his in the house.”

“Duncan is young, too imaginative, he . . .”

“He is confounded, Catesby. Entirely confounded. Duncan freely acknowledges his transgressions but will not see his plain duty. Catesby, both of them trust you, won't you . . .”

The tune “Leatherbritches” jangled from the parlor, and the floor vibrated from dancing.

“Abigail, I cannot interpose myself between father and son.”

“Catesby, Duncan dares to speak of matrimony!”

Catesby had a headache behind his eyes and knew he had drunk too much. The road home would be snow-dusted and vacant, the harshest sound the jingaling of harness bells. “Dearest Abigail, may I find you a restorative?”

She clutched him so close he could smell sweat under her perfume. “Catesby, I never have seen Samuel in such a state. The day his father was buried, Samuel went into the Quarters, accompanied by Omohundru the slave speculator, and banished—nay, sold—every one of his father's concubines. The poor souls wailed and begged, but what else could Samuel do? Samuel despised his father's lusts. He loves Duncan but would see him dead before he assented to any further improprieties.”

A cry, a blow, an outraged shout, and Catesby Byrd jerked the hall door open as young Gatewood reeled downstairs, while his father bellowed from the landing above him, “Hell, boy, you might as well breed with that mare of yours!”

Duncan bore the unmistakable mark of his father's blow on his cheek. Samuel Gatewood cried, “That impudent slut has soiled my honor . . . your honor! She is your dependent! Your chattel!”

Grandmother Gatewood peeped from the parlor, but Catesby shut the door firmly in her face.

Snow blew across the lintel where Duncan had left Stratford's door open wide, and Gypsy's hoofbeats fled into the night. Samuel Gatewood descended clumsily, stupefied. No music came from the parlor. Samuel licked his lips. He said, “Wife, our son has returned to the Institute. Now I must be rid of his slut.”

“Dear Samuel . . .”

“Abigail, you would oblige me if you troubled me no more this night. I am a damnable fool. Perhaps you can reassure our guests.”

Abigail took a deep breath and disappeared into the parlor, and moments later the two men heard Leona Byrd's tinkling rendition of “Dixie.”

Samuel inspected his puffy right hand as if it did not belong to him. He said, “My friend, I will thank you to fetch my driver, Jack, to my study. I have an ugly duty to perform.”

Older guests murmured their goodbyes to Abigail—“We'd love to stay longer but ours is such an arduous journey . . .”—but younger spirits determined to see the evening out. Their midnight gaiety was feverish and promised headaches on the morrow. Gentlemen danced flamboyantly and visited the punch bowl as if they were thirsty. On the next day, some ladies were ashamed to recall their extravagances.

Only Grandmother Gatewood was refreshed, her smile a bright gash.

Two hours later when Catesby Byrd came back into the parlor, Leona lifted her hands from the piano keys and let go the pedal, which twanged.

“Samuel Gatewood offers you his sincerest apologies, but believes it would be best if you were to repair to your homes. Uther, Jesse cannot take you home tonight. Rufus will drive in his stead.”

“Jesse? Where is Jesse?”

“Sir, I needn't remind you that Jesse Burns is no longer your servant.”

“Of course, of course. I must speak to Samuel. Samuel has always been a friend to us . . .”

“As a precaution, Jesse has been placed under restraint. Samuel cannot allow Jesse to protest this . . . disagreeable business. Rufus will take you home.”

“I will speak to Samuel Gatewood. I will.”

“Master Gatewood is no longer at Stratford House, sir. He's gone to fetch Omohundru.”

THE FEEJEE MERMAID

N
EAR
S
UN
R
ISE
, V
IRGINIA
M
ARCH
10, 1961

Veritas odium parit.

—Ausonius

A WIFE'S SILENCE
can ring louder than the clapper of a bell. Alexander Kirkpatrick's wife hunched herself into the corner farthest from the fire and clamored soundlessly. The fire popped and a barrage of sparks exploded onto the new floor of the first house Alexander Kirkpatrick had ever owned, and he wondered if they might set it afire. The planks at the hearthstone's edge were pockmarked with black scars where other embers had flared and died while Alexander considered them. He wondered what flooring wood Samuel Gatewood had installed. On the single occasion Alexander visited the cabin during construction (it went up in two weeks in November), Gatewood wasn't present. Jack the Driver was directing the gang, and Jack was patient with Alexander's questions; oh yes, he was.

Sallie said Gatewood was settling a moral debt: when Gatewood needed Jesse, Uther sold him; when Uther's daughter and new son-in-law needed a place of their own, Samuel Gatewood had it built.

Alexander shifted in the rocker—the cabin's only chair—and turned the page he hadn't read. From the stillness of her corner, Sallie made it too noisy to read.

How long must he bear this contemptuous silence? Two days after she lost his baby, in retaliation for one idle remark, Alexander's wife lost her tongue. He wondered when she'd recover it. Daily, she toted kindling from the stack Gatewood had provided. In the morning she cooked oatmeal, in the evening ham and beans or beans without ham. She washed their plates. She drew water and scrubbed their clothes. Sometimes when she was busy, he was able to read his Juvenal, sometimes he could daydream his way back to Juvenal's sordid, bitter ancient city, Roma Aeterna—but usually Sallie was too noisy.

How much better it would have been had she brought the baby to term. A new Alexander, a second chance! Alexander had hoped for the best! He had! Assuredly he would have been a better father than his own. Was he a drunkard? Did he beat his wife—even when she provoked him terribly?

How his mother had cosseted him, sharing bright daydreams whenever his father was out of the house. His mother was educated—youngest daughter of a Boston clergyman. In poetic revery, Alexander imagined her as a fragile china cup which by ill fortune found itself in some low waterfront saloon. Alexander did not know how his father had been employed, only that his work was sporadic and never provided for clothes or enough food for their table. When his father came home, reeking of spirits, and removed his belt, Alexander made himself invisible. Children can do that. While his mother cried for mercy, Alexander was under the table playing with his hands. His busy fingers were warriors or the chariots Mother told stories about; Roman soldiers' chariots, colliding, upsetting, wrecking one another.

Alexander preferred a life of dreams, not this: a one-room cabin in a rude country whose roads—mere traces really—positively deterred visitors. It had been two weeks since Sallie's nattering father paid a call. Oh, Sallie talked then. So long as Uther was in their house, Sallie pretended all was well, conversing even with Alexander. As they stood on the porch waving Uther goodbye, Alexander said, “That was pleasant. I do enjoy a chance to exchange ideas with an educated man, even though he does not possess a first-rate mind.” Why hadn't Sallie understood his nervousness, how he had to say something even though it might not have been precisely the right thing to say?

Sallie hadn't answered him. Had not answered his subsequent query—some minor domestic detail—had instead resumed her thoroughgoing noisy silence.

Mrs. Gatewood had come during the February thaw—a woman come to mourn another's baby. That day, Alexander took a long walk. When one doesn't know how to act, the wise man makes his excuses. Of course he had wanted the baby! And when it was dead, he couldn't think what to do or say. One had to make the best of things.

Here, miles from any civilized establishment, enclosed by giant snowy mountains, in the depth of winter's frozen silence, Alexander's dumb spouse made so much racket he might as well have been back in Manhattan's hurly-burly. Indeed, peace had been easier to find on Broadway than here. For the first time in his life, Alexander Kirkpatrick was unable to remove himself from the world, to find his way into his still and private safety.

The fire snapped. No, that was some creature outside, some wild beast slaying smaller creatures by starlight.

Alas, it was too early to go to bed. When he retired to the pile of quilts his wife would usurp this chair. The rocker squeaked. All night long he would hear it squeaking.

It wasn't his fault she had lost the baby! He had wanted it as badly as she. Young Alexander! Through that tiny, helpless life, the father might have lived anew, might finally have comprehended. For isn't it said that a little child shall lead them?

How he envied simpleminded fellows: their ease, their intuition of emotions he'd studied in detail and shammed as best he could. Alexander wasn't arrogant because he felt superior to other men, he was arrogant because he must not be found out. During his brief sojourn at Yale College, Alexander learned one valuable lesson: arrogance kills questions. The humble man invites conviviality: that jostling Alexander dreaded.

Alexander's smiles were smiles he'd seen on the faces of others, his pretensions those he'd observed in senior faculty, men assured of gravity and power. Seducing Sallie had been, for Alexander, an act of bravery. He had never been with a woman he hadn't paid, and Sallie's vigorous aptitude for love terrified him. She wanted so much! True, sometimes he lashed out at her, but couldn't she surmise how frightened he was?

He leaned forward to set another stick on the fire. Of course he complained about the cabin, but surely she could have guessed that this new, bare log house was finer than the cramped rooms in shabby boardinghouses where he had previously resided. In this place, with her, Alexander had dared to hope—dared to imagine himself as husband, father, a man not unlike other men.

When Sallie regained her senses he would tell her these things, avail himself of that intimacy husband and wife are meant to share. Perhaps one day he would tell about the mermaid. No doubt Sallie would be amused at the fright it had given him.

“Did you hear a sound?” Alexander asked. “I thought I heard something. Oh, ha, ha. I suppose it is some wolf come down from the mountain to devour us. I am certain I heard a sound.”

When he threw the door open, he saw nothing, no swift shadow on the hard snow. The moon had not risen and the mountains were dark jagged silhouettes. There was nothing out there for miles in every direction, and nothing inside but a woman who hated him. How had she learned to hate him so thoroughly?

Alexander had been so careful to keep from her all that was discreditable: his failures, his weaknesses, his inability to comprehend. If Sallie once learned how lost he was, she would flee.

Alexander was six when his mother died, and his father readily relinquished the boy to his elderly uncle. The afternoon they buried her, Alexander, wearing the clothes he'd worn to her graveside, accompanied his uncle onto the Hoboken Ferry for the first stage of their journey to New Haven, Connecticut, where his uncle had his ministry. Alexander's bachelor uncle was vaguely good-hearted, unaccustomed to children, and had no notion how to divert the boy from recent sad events. At the ferry slip, a hawker sold pamphlets of a curiosity even the unworldly minister had heard about, so he bought one for the boy.

The Feejee Mermaid had woman's torso and fish's tail. The pamphleteer rhapsodized about this scientific marvel, its capture by Japanese fishermen and subsequent embalming by a Hindoo of scientific bent. The remains had been obtained by a sea captain (at considerable expense to himself) and delivered to the United States, where enthusiastic scientists were to study this link between man and sea creature.

It was a brilliant August afternoon and waves sparkled and seagulls squabbled in the ferry's wake and the Hudson was cluttered with ballooning white sails. Sailors dotted a brigantine's rigging and seine fishermen hauled nets and the ferry chuffed through it all like a pug-ugly. His uncle was enraptured, but the boy, who had never been on the water before, kept his eyes affixed to the flat black words, the engravings of mermaids and Japanese fishermen and a bare-breasted wonderful sea creature who bore an unmistakable resemblance to his mother. If it was true there were mermaids, life might be all right. If it was true—if a boy's yearnings had any authority—then unloved, baffled Alexander's dreams might come true. The boy prayed that anything was possible.

His uncle had engaged a room at the Astor Hotel, but for economy they supped in a small café down the street. After their meal, man and boy climbed to the fifth floor, and after recovering his breath the minister prayed for his new ward and the repose of his sister's soul, removed his teeth, climbed into bed, and soon was snoring. The boy crept to the window, dazzled. From Barnum's American Museum, kittycorner across Broadway, a brilliant white light glared, lighting the bustling street for blocks north and south. Flags of every Christian nation lined the rooftop. Vivid paintings of elephants, kangaroos, and cobras plastered the facade.

Although a living panorama of nightlife passed along the street below—Manhattan's whores, loafers, hackmen, pickpockets, coppers, and swells—the boy saw nothing but the museum and its amazing promises.

His uncle had allowed some time for sightseeing, and being assured by Astor's desk clerk that Mr. Barnum's cabinet of curiosities was improving and not unsuitable for young minds, he acceded to Alexander's plea. First they breakfasted at the modest café, though the boy ate little. He kept the pamphlet in his lap; it reassured him. Already down the street a crowd was gathering.

Alexander towed his slow uncle toward the exhibition. Close up, the wild animal paintings were awe-inspiring: elephants, tigers, bears!

Anything might be inside this storehouse of wonders, perhaps even a creature that looked much like his mother, alive again and swimming happily through the sweet blue sea.

They paid the small admission, and though his uncle was entranced by the curiosities assembled in the cavernous three-story hallway—the eagle skins, the panoramas, the models, exact in miniature detail, of Dublin, Paris, and Jerusalem, the boy was impatient.

Up the stairs they proceeded, through rooms crammed with scientific exhibits: a stuffed buffalo, a towering brown bear, a live anaconda in one cage, live crocodile in another; passing at last into a vestibule where a floor-to-ceiling flag depicted the mermaid in nature's colors, a golden-haired creature rising through gentle waves.

The crowd pressed through into the room beyond, and Alexander Kirkpatrick gripped his uncle's hand tightly as they approached the open casket.

Inside was a wizened, hairy, blackened creature no more than three feet long. It had a fish tail. It had small furry dugs with hard black nipples. Its gums were drawn back over its sharp teeth in a plea for mercy. Thin arms, long-fingered hands had defended the creature's face in its final urgent moment. The Feejee Mermaid had died in agony.

The boy screamed and screamed, and though he would have run he had nowhere on earth to run to.

Years later in his wilderness cabin, Alexander Kirkpatrick said to his wife, “I told you I heard something outside. Listen, there is some animal scratching at our door.”

Obeying their own mysterious law, great changes always come swiftly and without warning.