Angels Make Their Hope Here (22 page)

The idea of fighting did appeal to Jan, though. He liked a good fuss. Maybe there was an adventure to be had in marching off for a brief bit to fix what needed fixing. But was this his war to fight?

The People had a measure of freedom because they stayed on the outsides of things, keeping to themselves in their own small place. Jan knew that was how they thrived. That was the only way. Venturing forth from Russell’s Knob had always been chancy.

New York City was full of enemy elements of its very own—uniquely its own. But the same cacophony of funny-talking foreigners that was loud and ubiquitous in Paterson was abroad in New York City—only more so. And just like in Paterson there were pockets for each group. And in each group a great many malingerers lay about drinking on the pittances their youngsters earned. They clung together in their knots from this place or that county and had regular fusses betwixt and between themselves and with the native-born whites. And though treated little better than the colored, they angled themselves up a notch or two with putting their feet on the neck of the colored. How you going to get them to want to fight for the
colored? There were angry knots on nearly every corner in New York discussing the draft of white men that Lincoln had ordered to get his army. Swells with the money for it were paying poor slobs to go in their place because of the exemption. And the poor Irish figured they were getting the worst of it because they couldn’t afford to pay off nobody else. And there were black men, enslaved and free, who were spoiling for the fight. And there were free colored waiting and hoping for guns and government uniforms and the right to fight and die. Ezra Oliver was eager and earnest and determined to go. Ezra Oliver had said a free colored man like Jan had something to fight for.

Well, Jan wanted to fight for Dossie. He wanted to do what Uncle had sent him to New York City to do—to keep her safe until it was safe to come home.

Hadn’t Jan and Pet been running headlong in the streets of Paterson to escape a beating by some Irish and had to grab up a crippled Irish boy to use as a shield? Hadn’t they been forced to twist his arms until he squealed to escape a band of his confederates bent on bashing them with stones? Hadn’t Duncan sent them and some other boys from Russell’s Knob back to Paterson with pigstickers and swagger to show the Irish boys that they would fight for a place on the streets of town? Ah, once a day Jan thought it: he could use Pet here. He sorely missed his cousin.

Dossie Smoot, a married woman, knew well how to serve a whim so that working as a maid was not particularly onerous. Not schooled in the terms and protocols of the position, however, she needed spur and reprimand from Miss Cheltham and all of the other servants. Dossie’s employer, Miss Abigail Cheltham, was a well-read woman of middle years who lived on
inherited income in an opulent town house on Lexington Avenue. A staunch supporter of temperance, women’s uplift, and the abolition of slavery, she was also self-indulgent and fond of rich foods.

The requisite uniform for Miss Cheltham’s service was one of two dresses—one for day and one for the evening. Both were pretty gowns and tight to the form, as Miss Cheltham wished. “If you gain an ounce by eating or by playing with your man, I will sack you!” she lectured Dossie when she arrived. She’d noticed the fancy boy her new maid had hung upon and wept for. “I will throw you out of my employ! Do not test me. There are a great many girls for service in this city,” she declared at high volume. Her loud voice belied the delicacy of her visage and the essential quietness of her nature. She was no bully, only headstrong and full of opinion. She was tiny and shaped exactly like an hourglass herself. She believed it to be the height of style that her staff was as well turned as she. Here in the bon ton there was a stiff, rich style that included the ladies’ maids.

“If she think you bringin’ a baby, she’ll throw you out to starve. Don’t doubt it.” Tilly, another maid, assured Dossie emphatically that Miss Cheltham was very serious in her warning. She reported that the girl before Dossie in the position of ladies’ maid had got in trouble, her uniform swelled, and she lost her job with Miss Cheltham. The girl’s lover then lost interest in her when her few dollars for his drinking fund were gone. “He dumped her though she was big with his baby,” Tilly fumed.

Dossie smiled broadly, showing herself in her maid uniform to Jan when he came uptown for a visit. She whirled around in the alley behind the town house, and he saw that she liked her own appearance. Jan was taken aback and got in a pique. He
said she was almost unrecognizable and that her clothes were too white. He tried to breach the clothing with his plundering fingers and got irritable at the challenge. Drunk enough to make Dossie fretful, he said that Duncan would be in a rage if he knew what she was doing.

“Oh,” she answered, “it is rich to stop now to consider what Duncan would think, what Duncan would do!” Suddenly Jan’s face was like Duncan’s had been when he’d been angry enough to slap her.

But, yes, it was late in the day to consider Duncan’s feelings. Duncan Smoot would feel betrayed by them both.

Jan could hardly stand being without her, though. He ran uptown whenever he could recover from drinking, and he hung about the alley until Dossie sneaked out to see him. It was more than an itch in the leathers. It was needing to know how she fared. Without her he drank more, ate less, and fretted a good deal. Dossie noticed he was becoming thin when she rubbed her hands over him.

“Come home. Quit from here and come home,” Jan pleaded. “Come home.”

“You know I can’t,” she whispered repeatedly.

And what was their home? Were they at home in their flop at Black Bob’s? Perhaps it was too cruel to consider home. Were things too far gone to ever return to Russell’s Knob—to Duncan? Duncan was their home. It was to Duncan they must return… or not.

D
OSSIE WAS NO SMALL
bit annoyed to find Jan well oiled when, given a leave from Miss Cheltham’s, she had ditched her maid’s uniform and run downtown to get to the flop.

Winter had left the city and had taken away the chill winds they stuffed up the chinks in their flop against. It left behind a sullen springtime of dense, stuffy air that gave over into a thick, noxious summer soup. They did not light candles to illumine their dinner. There was so little air from their small window that they did not even hang upon each other kissing.

“I’ve got a baby, Jan.” Dossie told him the news in a sudden swoop and waited for his reaction. Jan sat straighter at the words and turned toward Dossie smiling, looking up with an uninhibited grin.

“Ah, girl! I’m as happy as a little monkey! How long have you known it?” He stood up and grabbed her at the waist and swirled her about the floor in a small dizzying circle. He would have broken into a full-out dance—a reel or a breakdown. But Dossie’s body did not fly and dance with him.

“I learned from a doctor today,” she said in a flat voice. Jan was puzzled. Dossie spoke as if she was announcing an old shoe
caught in a fishing net. Now she had what she’d been wishing for.

“Are you not joyful?” Jan asked. “At last he’s coming!”

“I am joyful. I am happy from my toes clear up to my ears, good boy. But what will we do? I want to go back home for my baby’s sake. What will my husband say? What will your uncle say?”

Jan’s stomach dropped. Now after all these turns and twists, here comes the child! The Grandmothers take their time. The sour truth in the midst of this joy—this excitement—is that they had sealed their fate. They could not now ever go home.

“We’ll stay here. I can keep you and the child. I can bring in enough coin. You won’t suffer.”

“You promised Hat and Noelle to bring your babies back to the mountains, boy,” Dossie said to him teasingly.

“We’re a long way from home.”

“Just so. We ought to go home. It’s time to go.”

“You want to go back to Duncan?” Jan growled angrily. “You got the baby you was looking for—your boon to Duncan. Now you want to go home to give it to him. You’re a whore, Dossie Smoot,” he spat out. “You’re on the game as same as the others. You trade your cunt for what you want!” Jan grabbed up his hat and ran down the hall. He made the hidden turn in the corridor and suffered the momentary fear of the black dark hole. He came out the back of their warren to Prince Street, slapped at his own leg, and fumed and swore at the tangle. He wanted Dossie! He wanted the baby! He wanted to stay in the city! He wanted to dance! He wanted to go back to the mountains. He could not go back to the mountains.

“Well, let her go home!” Jan snorted furiously. Let her go and take her stomach back to Duncan without him! Could he survive in the city without Dossie? Dossie was his sticking post—his one tether. How would he be lighthearted enough to dance a jig if Dossie went back to the mountains?

And his uncle? Duncan would take her back in a flash. Did Duncan expect her to return to him chaste and unchanged? The ancestors were contrary to send a child now. There was no straight course in this life. There were only the twists and turns. In the midst of a fuss folk look for a straight, even path with a gentle slope toward the hereafter. But that is the chimera—the myth—the dream. The straight, gentle way does not ever come.

Duncan had kept the truth of himself from Dossie so it was not a fair marriage. But no one saw it that way, least of all her. And Jan knew his uncle would not accept losing his wife to his nephew in a love match. He might choose to be dignified about it, but he could as easily kill them in a rage and be seen by his neighbors as righteously vindicated.

“You are going back to Duncan then?” Jan said accusingly when he returned. His voice was dull and dark and his speech slurred. Dossie smelled his breath. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her down on the bed.

“You’re taking my baby back to him? The old man couldn’t do it so you’re giving him my baby?” Jan yelled.

“Jan,” Dossie said quietly—whisperingly because of the shock. “You promised. When a gal gets a baby, she must think of something besides her tuck-up. Me and this child cannot thrive in this town, boy, you know it. Me and this baby belong with Duncan.”

Sobering quickly, Jan said, “It’s three of us, Dossie. Me and you and the baby. We three will be together.”

“Suppose we cannot stay together?”

“At the first trouble you run back to Duncan!” Jan shouted. “You think I’m not man enough to keep you in New York, is’t? You want to return to ‘Uncle’ then?” Jan said with a blistering sneer. “You still love him, Dossie?”

“Yes, o’ course I do. I’ve always got to love him ’cause I wouldn’t have myself in freedom without him. Without Duncan you would have been raised by the man that killed your mama. We’ve both been saved by Duncan.”

“Remember when you thought he was God?” Jan asked quietly.

“I remember when you did, too. I have thought it over and over. I’m not gonna fuck him no more. But I’m going home to Russell’s Knob to face him and tell him we got to be together. Maybe we got to go away from home after that.”

“Just remember you taking my baby to the mountains,” Jan said.

“We mus’ sen’ word to Duncan,” Dossie continued, framing a resolve. “We mus’ tell him that things are changed and we’re coming home to stand up to it.”

“You mean to tell your husband you carrying another man’s child? How you gonna say it?”

“We wait till we get there to tell it all,” Dossie said. “I will just write that things are changed, that there is worry, that we must come home.

“What we going to tell him, Dossie, that he won’t want to hurt you? I’ll kill him if he raise a hand to you!”

“You gonna kill Duncan?”

“Yes, if he try to hit you. I ain’t going let him do that especially with my son inside,” Jan vowed.

“I will tell him that I love him, but I love you more. I’ll beg him to love me enough to open his hand and let me and my baby out of it. I don’t wan’ to be a small, sweet thing in anybody’s palm.” Dossie spoke resolutely. “We go on home and see if he wan’ us to stay. Then we leave an’ come back here if… if it trouble him too much. Long as we can be together and our baby is safe.”

Then they hugged and held each other.

“S’pose this is a gal in here?” Dossie asked him.

“I ’on’t know. What you s’pose?” Jan asked her.

What had Jan done to Duncan though? He’d hit Duncan in his one only sore place and it was justifiable only by the measure that he loved Dossie and that it could not be helped. Dossie was right to want to go home. But Dossie was wrong to think it would be so simple as asking to be forgiven. A woman may do this easily enough. She may confess her sins and accept chastisement and wipe her soul clean. Jan couldn’t do anything now but go off to the war and not come back to Uncle’s hearth. Not all of his virtues, nor half of his sins, would change this one treachery. He had lost his home.

Since Minnie Stewart’s establishment was a spot for colored folk to gather in Paterson, the telegraph man and the postman most often sent what they had for colored people to Minnie’s place. She was careful, circumspect, and employed a network of helpers to find people and give them their news. Because of her close personal association with the bachelor postmaster, Minnie
also received abolitionist newspapers and tracts, “French” periodicals, peacock ticklers, and other confidential postings without hindrance.

When a letter came at Minnie Stewart’s hub for colored people’s information, a reliable boy was dispatched to find Mr. Duncan Smoot.

She sent word they were coming home! Duncan’s heart was silly with glee. He was exhilarated at seeing a paper Dossie had touched—feeling the writing and knowing her lovely fingers had made the letters. He wanted more news. But, of course, this more would come from her lips.

“Yes, come!” Duncan shouted and alarmed the dog and flushed some small birds roosting on a bush. Oh, yes! He wanted them where he could touch them no matter what had happened. There seemed to be no more danger of hangings and burnings. Duncan laughed to hear the birds chirping and rocked back and forth on the porch step hugging his knees like a small boy. “Come and bring Jan back and tell me about it all!” he cried out, hoping the small chickadees on the wing would take the answer to her right away. He got his mount and rode off into town to send back the word. “Come!”

This letter from Dossie was not the first news Duncan had of
them. Dossie had written several bulletins of their doings in her sweet, careful script. Duncan became more regular at Minnie’s after Dossie and Jan left so that he could receive them. He did not write back to them. He had others to spy and send him news. His first most reliable informant had been his friend Ezra Oliver.

Checking in at Minnie’s—hoping and yearning—gave Duncan’s days a shape and substance. Pet came to Minnie’s, too, to wait and hope that news of Jan and Dossie would come. Pet looked for news from his papa and Arminty as well. That Papa’s child had been a girl he knew. Pet wanted to know how Papa was faring in Canada even if his mother did not. He waited for a letter from Jan. He’d taken it upon himself to keep his eye on Uncle, to bring Jan and Dossie back, to put them all back together in their soup.

Several days after Duncan had posted his answer to Dossie’s letter, he received Jan’s.

By the time July was full upon them, the news from New York City was volatile. Newspapers in Paterson and the environs had, for weeks, been full of the discontent with the war conscription. Battle news and draft unrest elicited partisan excitement in the larger environs, and the patrons of Minnie’s were alternately fearful or exultant. They talked about the war long and loud. Some even sympathized with the carping foreigners who thought it was not any of their affair to fight for Negroes. The bold and free black men in Minnie’s thought it was fairer to give them the guns and the uniforms. They consecrated the floorboards with ale libation and pledged their passion and their grit to fight the rebels.

If he’d not been preoccupied with thinking about Dossie and Jan, Duncan might have thought about the pros and cons of the war. He might have chosen to take up arms. Hadn’t he and the others he worked with long been the skirmishers in
this conflict over freedom? He was not afraid to fight, but until Dossie was home, he could not think of anything else. He did fear for Pet, though. Could he keep Pet out of the fray for Hat’s sake?

Back at the first of the year on the first day of Negro freedom when the document the president had signed took effect, Duncan had mused on the many folk he had helped along to their freedom. They could rest easily now, could relax vigilance. Their tormentors were on the run. Truthfully, it was only Dossie’s freedom that Duncan cared about anymore. Was she now free to never be taken from him? He had long ago decided to feed himself to any lawman who came looking for the killer of Emil Branch. So it seemed that she was free of any threat.

The back and forth of haranguing viewpoints, circulating information, and the fear of uncertainty was a canker that grew daily in Paterson and was spreading to all of the outlying towns.

Then on a morning in July, word came that black folk were fleeing New York City on account of mobs of Irish and their burning.

“Go home and look after the homestead,” Duncan barked at Pet. “Put your mama and Noelle in your pocket and keep them safe. Tell the People to fortify. I’ma stay in town until my precious comes,” Duncan said.