World Made by Hand (20 page)

Joseph and I proceeded down to the waterworks, leaving the others behind with Bracklaw to keep down any news of our doings. It was a five-minute walk. The great waterwheel itself was a marvel of construction. It groaned on its axle as it turned in the sluiceway. Beside the big brick cube that housed the pump machinery, stood a gallows, a place of execution, a symbol of order and terror meant to reinforce the basis of Dan Curry's administrative authority. Just up the bank from that loomed a building designed to be formal and dignified, but in a crude approximation of Greco-Roman construction: Dan Curry's headquarters. It sat on a high sturdy brick foundation, above the hundred-year flood level, which required an imposing flight of stairs to reach the portico, where four squared-off columns of rough-sawn boards held up a pediment. The columns had neither bases or capitals. The windows were salvage, and not identical in either size or the number of lights within each sash. The whole thing was unpainted, as though it had only recently been finished, and you could even smell the sawn wood at some distance. It made up for its roughness by its impressive mass, and altogether the place radiated an aspiration to be dignified within the limited means of our hard times. It possessed a kind of swaggering charm, of something new, alive, and breathing in a time when most things were shrinking or expiring. This was reinforced by the numbers of people, mostly men, hanging around the portico, which was a good fifty feet wide by twenty feet deep-a spacious outdoor room in its own right, well supplied with chairs. They were gathered in groups and knots, some dressed in clean summer linens like businessmen, and others the kind of roughnecks who might have worked the wharves and flocked to Slavin's taproom at night. I assumed they were all, in some way or another, dependent on Curry's favor. They hardly glanced at us as we stepped up and made for the entrance.

Inside, at an old steel school desk, a guard or clerk sat vetting visitors. He had two boys, about twelve, seated at either side of the desk like bookends. They were runners, evidently, used to dispatch messages to the different offices throughout the building. To the left side of his desk was a double row of splint chairs where those who had checked in to do business with Curry waited their turns.

We were told to write out our business on a slip of paper, supplied to us with a lead pencil, and take a seat-and be sure to return the pencil, the guard said. Our note said: Seek information about the crew ofthe trading boat Elizabeth out of Union Grove missing several weeks, and gave their names. We were called within ten minutes. One of the messenger boys led us up another flight of stairs in the center of the hall to the floor above.

Curry sat at his ornate wooden desk eating lunch off a tray. For a moment I thought we had been taken to the wrong office, because the man behind the desk was so young. He couldn't have been over thirty years old. But even seated, he gave the impression of being physically imposing, like his building. He had a full head of curly dark hair, a trimmed beard to match, and wore a clean white cotton shirt with puffy sleeves under a fawn-colored linen vestwith a napkin tucked in at his throat. He gestured at us to sit down, while taking a mouthful of rare-cooked meat there on his plate, along with a savory pudding and fresh peas. A tall glass of milk and a smaller plate of corn bread sat on the tray too. It made me hungry. To Curry's right, a well-dressed woman with silvery hair worked writing letters at a desk along the wall of the large room. She was old enough to be his mother. To his left at a desk doglegged off Curry's was a slight, hollow-chested man working at ledgers. Apparently both were secretaries. Behind Curry, a big arched window, a wonderful piece of old salvage composed of many panes pieced artfully together, framed a picturesque view looking down the river: blue sky, white clouds, and a few buff sails on darker blue water.

"I was wondering when someone would send for these boys," Curry said in a booming voice when he finished chewing.

"Where are they?" I said.

"Why, cooling their heels in my custody," he said.

"For what reason?"

"For the reason that they couldn't come up with bail among them."

"For what?"

"Charges, of course."

"What charges?"

"How should I know. Birkenhaus here would know. What charges," Curry said to the drudge at his left.

"Willful avoidance of excise tax. Lack of insurance documents. Battery upon a chippie. Oh, and resisting arrest."

"What's this excise tax?" Joseph said.

"You come into this port, you have to get the proper stamps and clearances," Curry said. "You can't just move cargoes as you please. We don't stand for smuggling."

"Since when are you taxing cargoes?" I asked.

"When did we come up with that?" Curry asked Birkenhaus.

"March," Birkenhaus said.

"Why'd we do it?" Curry said.

"We needed the money," Birkenhaus said. "The waterworks and all."

"Oh?" Curry said, spearing more meat. "There you have it."

"Perhaps they didn't know about it," Joseph said.

"Know about what?"

"This new tax of yours."

"Ignorance of the law is no defense," Curry said. "Well, if you've come here to get them, let's talk turkey, shall we? Actually, I'd like a little turkey. All they give me around here is beefsteak. Every damned day. A fellow gets sick of it."

"Maybe they think you're still a growing boy," Joseph said.

"That's a smart remark," Curry said, giving his napkin a tuck while he cranked his head. "What are we looking at in terms of bail, penalties, and all?"

"Hundred thousand each," Birkenhaus said. "U.S. paper dollars, that is."

"That's a lot," I said. "Even by today's standards."

"And another hundred thou for storing the boat," Birkenhaus said.

"I hardly remember when paper money was worth more than a curse," Curry said. "You fellows would, though. I hear you could buy a shoat for twenty bucks in the old days."

"That's so," Joseph said. "How do we know these men are alive?"

"You want to see them? They're down below, in stir."

"I'd like to talk about these charges with them," Joseph said. "Hear their side of the story."

"Be my guest. But in the end you'll have to pay. We both know that. Jojo," he said to the messenger boy who now occupied a chair near the door. "Bring these fellows down to Mr. Adcock. And take this corn bread. I'm getting fat as pig." He turned his attention back to us. "You weren't far off about how they feed me around here. Price of success, I guess. Nothing I courted, you understand. This is just a time when nobody seems to know how to do anything, to get things done. A fellow makes a few things happen, and the world falls at his feet. You come back before four o'clock today if you want to spring these boys. We don't conduct business after that hour. I'd like to discharge these fellows as much as you'd like to bring them home. It costs me to feed them, you know, and new ones come in all the time. It adds up. Whenever you're ready to settle, you come back. They'll show you right up, I'm sure. Oh, and if you don't come get them in twenty-four hours, I'll have to hang them. They're cluttering up my jail."

"What did you make of that?" I said to Joseph as we followed the boy downstairs.

"I make that he's a fantastic rogue for such a young buck, and probably not bluffing," Joseph said.

"He's holding them for ransom, all right. Just plain extortion."

"Yes he is. And if we don't pay it, I believe he'll kill them."

"How can we pay him?"

"Oh, we can pay him," Joseph said. "We're prepared."

"Are you going to offer him silver? I imagine he'd lower that figure for hard currency."

"We have several ways of paying him."

The basement of the building contained what can be described only as a dungeon, a dim, dank, raw masonry chamber fitted with wrought-iron cagework. Light came through in a shaft from a single slit of a window up near the ceiling, barred both inside and out. The basement stank fiercely of human excretions, mold, and filth. Within the cage, about twelve men sat inertly on benches or lay on triple-decker wooden shelves along the wall, apparently bunks on which they had to rotate in shifts, because there weren't enough for all the men to sleep at any one time. The boy delivered us to Adcock, the jailer, a tall, skeletal, pallid figure who looked like he had stepped out of a medieval engraving of the apocalypse. Adcock bent down to listen to whispered instructions from the boy.

"You men of Union Grove," Adcock called into the cage, "your saviors have come." The crewmen of the Elizabeth leaped from their places in the dimness to the wall of their cage.

"Robert!" It was Tom Soukey, the one I knew best, whom I used to play softball with on summer evenings in the old days. "Oh thank God, thank God!" he said, almost blubbering.

"Is it true?" Skip Tarbay said. "You getting us out of this hellhole?"

"Yes," I said. "Bullock sent us down to find you."

"Thank God..."

They didn't look healthy. They were scrawny and filthy.

"It's all trumped up crap!" Jacob Silberman said.

"I know, I know. But we're here to get you out, don't worry."

"I can't believe it," Tom said. His sobs racked him and he shuddered, despite the heat-and it was very close down in that hole.

"Pull yourself together, Tom, for Chrissake," Jake said. "We're not out yet."

"Aaron's not doing so well," Skip said, and canted his head at the bunks.

"Is he hurt?"

"Sick."

"What with."

"I've no idea. Shitting blood."

"Who's he?"Jake said, pointing to Brother Joseph. I explained who he and his people were, and how it happened the five of us were sent down to get them.

"We will get you out of here," Joseph said. "Today. I promise."

"They want money," Jake said. "It's all about grift-this nonsense about excise taxes and tariffs and all that. There never was such a thing before in the years we've been trading down here."

"I know," I said.

"Are they going to let us free now?" Skip said.

"We came down here to verify that you're actually alive," Joseph said. "We have some arrangements to make now for your release. We'll come back later for you."

"Please! Don't go," Tom said. "They keep saying they're going to hang us."

"Don't worry," I said. "You'll be out of this shithole and homeward bound before the day is over."

"How you talk," Adcock the jailer said, overhearing. He clucked at us. "Don't let Mr. Curry hear you talking like that. He don't like to be insulted. He'll hang 'em just for spite, he gets wind."

"We'll be back," I said again.

"Okay," Jake and Skip said.

Just then, two other men, strangers, rushed up to the wall of the cage like bugs to a lighted screen. They were young, no older than twenty.

"Wait, please! Can you get a message to our father, Mr. Dennis Marsden of Greenport."

"I don't know how I could," I said.

"I beg you, mister," one said. Both were in tears.

"Greenport's pretty far south of here," I said. "We're headed north today. I'm sorry."

Adcock showed us to the stairs and shut the door behind us.

The stairs took us back to the ground floor. I asked the clerk at the front desk what time it was. He pointed to a big case clock over the door. One thirty.

"This is just plain gang rule is all it is," I said to Joseph as we came back out into the sunshine. "It's like a bunch of pickers have taken over the city, or what's left of it."

"Of course it is," he said. "This Curry's no better than a petty warlord. I know the type."

"Look, I have an idea," I said. "Maybe it's a waste of time, but I want to make a side trip to the state capitol building to find out if there's any government left in this state, any authority besides this Curry."

"Everything I've seen tells me he's running the show here," Joseph said.

"Give me an hour," I said. "It's just up the hill."

"All right," Joseph said. "An hour. Meet up right back here. After that, we'll do things my way."

"Are you actually prepared to pay this guy?"

"Don't you worry," Joseph said. "I'm ready right now to pay him in full."