In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (40 page)

I pay her no mind and keep swirling my hand around and…Ha! I feel something slimy. I grab it and pull it out triumphantly for all to see—a foot-and-a-half piece of gray-green seaweed.

“And now I suppose you’ll eat that awful thing, won’t you, and disgust us further?” asks Clarissa.

“No, Clarissa, sweet sister of my soul,” I say with satisfaction. “Not a treat for me, just another little something for the boys…a little something from the[_ Marie Celestine.”_]

Later, after checking on the progress with the fuse and joining in on the dancing for a while, just to show ‘em how it’s[_ really_] done, I go up and join Katy, up on starboard-side forward watch.

“Hello, Kate, what’s happenin’ out there?” I say by way of greeting. I sit down, lean back, and pat my belly in contentment. We had some fine, fine Bordeaux wine with our noon feast today, and it went down real easy. We’re emptying four bottles a day now, enjoying their contents, and then filling them back up with water, recorking, and putting them back in the Powder Hole.

“Nothin’ much, Jacky,” she replies. “Just that the crew’s gettin’ real jumpy—lookin’ around all scared and shifty-eyed. A little while ago one of ‘em dropped a bucket behind another man and he ‘bout jumped out of his skin. It almost come to a fight.”

“Good,” I say, and we fall silent, content to just sit together and watch the doin’s on deck and the clouds scudding by.

After a while, though, she takes a deep breath and sits up straight and says, “Gotta tell you sumthin’...sumthin’ about me, Jacky.” She is grimly silent for a while, but I don’t rush her.

“‘Fore I come to Boston, I lived out on our little farm on the banks of the Allegheny, Armstrong County, way out on the frontier. ‘Twas Father and Mama and me, and it was a hard life we had, but we was all right. We had enough to eat and there was some other homesteads about, so we had church on Sundays and sometimes there was barn raisings and play-parties for the kids. Father was strict, but he never laid a hand on me in anger. Mama was a churchwoman, through and through. We said a blessing before every meal and prayers at night. She loved God, but I know she loved me, too.”

She stops to tuck a strand of her long, straight brown hair behind her ear. After looking out across the water for another few moments, she continues.

“Late last summer when the corn was ready to be brought in, my uncle came by to help with it. He didn’t have no land and he wasn’t married and so he worked as a hired hand on the farms thereabouts.”

Another pause. I can tell this is hard for her.

“They was bringin’ the last of it into the corn crib when it started to rain, but Father didn’t want to stop till it was all done and so he got all wet and then caught a chill and then a fever. Three days later he was dead, and people come from the farms around to his funeral. Ever’one said it was Divine Providence that my uncle was there to watch out for Mama and me.”

She does not look me in the eye once during this whole thing. Her expression does not change.

“Warn’t three days after they put Father in the ground that Uncle come at me and he took me ‘round the back of the shed and he threw me to the ground and did me. I cried out but he still did me. Yes, he did, and he did me every day after that.”

I feel like I have been punched in the stomach. “Your mother?” I ask, as soft as I can.

“She knew he was dirtying me, and it kilt her, it did. What with Father dyin’ and what Uncle was doin’ to me, she lost all her faith. She stopped believin’ and then she stopped eatin’. She ate nothing, even refused to drink any water—not even a drop. Lord knows I tried to get her to eat or drink something. I begged her and begged her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just stopped wanting to live and she died—just like that. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks…”

“How old were you?”

“By my best reckonin’ I was ‘bout thirteen.”

“What happened then?”

“Two days after Ma was put down and everybody left, he come at me again, but this time I was ready for him and I swung ‘round and smashed him in the face, smashed him with a shovel as hard as I could hit him and then lit out. Left him there, on his hands and knees, groanin’.”

“Then?”

“Took to the road. Kep’ goin’ on it. Eatin’ berries and roots and plants I knew. Some rabbits I kilt. Just went east, ‘cause I knew there was nothin’ out to the west. Ended up in Boston. Went from big house to big house axin’ for work. Didn’t find none. Couldn’t talk right for ‘em. Looked at me funny and closed the doors. Hadn’t et for a week when I went to the door of the school and axed for work. Think I passed out on the doorstep from bein’ hungry. Peg pulled me in and gave me work.”

If it had been anyone else, I would have gathered her to me for comfort and patted her back and said, “There, there,” but not Kate. She is too solitary, too alone, and I fear she will ever be. There is a[_ very_] long silence now and I let it hang in the air.

Another deep breath and…

“So you see, when we get where we’re goin’, they’re gonna look me over and they’re gonna find me wantin, ‘cause I bled all over that day he first took me, and they’re gonna sell me to one of those places…I don’t even know the names of ‘em.”

“They’re called brothels…whorehouses.”

“Maybe. When the preacher come around, he used to point at us and say things like, ‘Dens of Iniquity; and ‘Houses of Shame; and we didn’t know what he was talkin’

about. And it all seemed so far away then. Don’t seem so far away now, though.”

More silence, which gives me time to take this whole story in…Poor[_ Katy, poor girl…_] Then she speaks again and this time it is with firmness and this time she turns to look me square in the eye.

“I’m tellin’ you all this so’s you’ll know—I ain’t goin’ to one of those places to let them dirty on me. Ain’t gonna let no man dirty on me ag’in. No, I’ve been handled rough enough. I’m gonna die in this place, and it’s all right. I don’t care. Truth be known, I’ve been as happy here as I been anywhere since Mama died.”

Her eyes narrow and she goes on.

“And my girls have decided to do the same.”

“Your girls?”

“You all call ‘em the Dianas. Don’t know why. Ain’t none of ‘em named Diana. It’s Chrissy and Minnie and Hermione and Rose.”

I sigh and explain. “It was back in the old countries—Greece and Rome and Egypt—the places where things got started up in the old days. They had men gods and boy gods and dwarf gods and such, and they even had girl gods, too, and one of ‘em was Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, and she was Goddess of some other things, too, like chastity and the moon, but she was always pictured as havin’ a bow and arrow with her. So that’s why the girls call you the Dianas,” I conclude. “It’s a compliment, really.”

“They had girl gods?”

“Yes, they did, Katy, and they were fierce ones, too. The Goddess Athena went around hurling lightning bolts and making life hell for men who failed to pay her due respect,

and the Goddess Juno was making volcanos spew out, and changing those who had dared cross her into piggies, and the girl-god Ceres was making the crops grow each year but raining death and destruction down on any farmer who dared to be ungrateful, and so on and so forth. It went on like that till some guys got together and came up with the one-god thing—him being God, the[_ Father,_] and male and all that—and things went downhill for girls ever after that, far as I can figure. It was always, ‘Get in your dress, girl, your smock, your shift or your burnoose or your veil, but whatever it is, girl, put it on and shut the hell up: is how I see it.”

“Huh!”

“But back to modern times, Katy. Maybe it won’t turn out that you have to die here. Maybe things will turn out better for you someday. Now here is the plan and your part in it. Tell me what you think.”

I lay it out for her, and she considers it and nods.

“Well, if it don’t work out the way you say, at least we’ll take a lot of ‘em with us.”

“Yes, we will. And if it comes to that, I’ll be with you all the way to the end. Maybe you don’t know it, but I’ve got a tattoo right here on my hip. That will make me worthless to them awfully picky sultans, too. So I ain’t goin, neither.”

She again nods and something like a smile comes over her face and she lifts her clenched fist. I lift mine and we knock them together, and that’s as close as you get to Katy Deere in this life, I suspect.

My talk with Katy reminds me of my duty, and the one duty in particular that I had not yet gotten to in the press of events, the one concerning that nightmare of nightmares I had not so long ago. I go back down to the fuse-makers and find Ruth and Dorothea hard at work. Ruth stitches and when she has a section done, Dorothea pours in the powder through a funnel she has made of paper rolled into a cone. The section is pinched off at six inches, Ruth sews it tight, and the next link is started. The fuse is laid out across the deck under the Stage, looking like a length of red linked sausages. There are now about fifty of them—halfway there.[_ Good._]

“Pray, Sisters, cease your labors on this for a short while and make two short, four-second fuses. When you are finished making them, take the top two bags of powder from the Powder Hole, puncture both bags and jam a fuse into each one, then sew the bag up tight around it. Then put the bags back into the Powder Hole.” They look mystified. “It’s important…for emergencies, like. You’ll see.”

And they do it.

This night, when Connie does her reading, she announces that it will be John 13:1 to John 13:12. That’s the bit where Jesus, at His Last Supper, gets up, takes off His robe, throws it over a chair, wraps a towel around His waist, and gets down and washes His disciples’ feet, which I had always thought was pretty humble and downright nice of Him. I thought that, I did, but then, there was always the naggin’ suspicion in my head that maybe some of the disciples’ feet might have been sendin’ something heavenward that wasn’t all that sweet-smellin’ and maybe Jesus thought He’d have to put an end to it if He was to enjoy His last dinner on this earth. And we all do like to enjoy our dinners, don’t we?

After the reading, which was well received by all, we had a lively discussion concerning the meaning of the passage, and the wiser ones settled on cleanliness from sin in the presence of Jesus being the main point, as opposed to simple foot odor. I didn’t press the point, and then the flaps came slamming down, ending the debate.

We had Giovannelli’s[_ Jubilate Deo_] in Chorus and we shook the very timbers of the[_ Bloodhound_] with it, and then it was time for me to go on with my Cheapside tale.

On hearing the news of our Polly bein’ snatched, Charlie tore out of the kip, with Hughie right on his heels. Us girls all picked up rocks and followed them out at a dead run up Water Street to Broad, across Ludgate, and then on to Paternoster and Pigger O’Toole’s and the Shanky Boys’ kip.

It was a perfect pigsty, the kind of place what gives slums a bad name. Filth and garbage piled up outside, cheeky rats goin’ through it all and not carin’ who knew it. The door was closed.

“Give ‘em one, Nancy,” says Charlie. His flushed face is just about as red as his hair.

“Right-o, Chuckie,” says Nancy, and pegs one of her rocks at one of the lower windows and it smashes through with a satisfying crash.

That gets their attention. Faces appear at the other windows and the door flies open and angry Shankies pour out to face us. There’s about twenty of them to the five of us. They know we got rocks and they see Charlie’s shiv in his hand and they see that he’s mad enough to kill, and so hang back.

Then their ranks part and Pigger O’Toole himself comes out, holding our Polly by the hand. Seeing us, she tries to jerk her hand out of his grimy paw and come join us, but he just tightens his grip. Polly puts the thumb of her other hand in her mouth and says nothing, just looks down at the ground.

“That warn’t nice, Charlie, bustin’ our winder like that,” says Pigger, calmly. He runs a finger in his ear, twists it around, and then takes it out to examine what it might have found there. Pigger O’Toole could be the ugliest, most unpleasant cove I’ve ever seen in this world, and I’ve seen a lot of them that could give him a run for his money in that regard, but, no, I gotta say Pigger was the champ. His close-chopped greasy black hair ran down his low, sloping forehead to about an inch above his horribly pitted nose. He’s got a stubble of beard that surrounds the gap-toothed hole of his mouth, and that stubble goes all the way up to his little pig eyes. He’s squat and stooped and way beyond filthy. He’s probably about twenty-five and it’s a real pity he ain’t been hanged long ago.

“This ain’t right, Pigger! Give ‘er back!” yells Charlie, choking with rage. “It’s against the Code!”

“To ‘ell with the Code and to ‘ell wi’ you! This girl come here of ‘er own free will, she did. Didn’t you, darlin’?” Pigger looks down at Polly while scratching the huge belly that hangs over his pants. “Didn’t want to live no more wi’ the likes of that nasty Rooster Charlie and his big dummy and that dirty bunch o’ snot-nosed girls that run with ‘im.”

“I’m warnin’ you for the last time, Pigger, hand ‘er over!”

“Aye, the little angel come walkin’ right up to me and the boys, askin’ to be took in, and as we needed to fill out our beggin’ ranks, we decided like good Christians to take the poor thing in and give her our love and affection. Just look at ‘er little face—don’t it just make y’want to give her a penny?”

Pigger liked to hear himself talk, but I can talk, too. “Let her go, Pigger!” I shouts. “We saved your boys Scut Jetter and Flick Coontz from the peelers last week, and if we hadn’t, they’d both be hangin’ in gibbets right now with the birds pickin’ out their eyes, instead of standin’ there next to you droolin’ like the morons they are. So you owe us! Let her go!”

Pigger brings his little piggy eyes to rest on me. “Ah, Mary Faber, the little bint what can read but what’s got such a wise mouth,” he says, smiling a gap-toothed grin. “I’m thinkin’ maybe you’ll be next to join our family. We’ll work on that mouth thing for you. Fix that right up.”

“In a pig’s eye, Pigger, or[_ your_] filthy eye if a clean and honest pig can’t be found,” says I in return. “Hughie, up.”