The Banished Children of Eve (66 page)

He would make an odd sight, a man without a hat walking along a road beneath the summer sun, the kind of peculiarity someone might take note of and recall later for the police. There was no going back to the Hoboken ferry. He thought of waiting for dark, pushing a log into the river, and trying to paddle his way to the Manhattan shore, but the current would probably carry him out into the middle of the harbor. He lay down in the high grass but was too restless to sleep or even sit still. Toward dusk, he started walking again. When a wagon came by, as happened twice, he hid. He steered clear of the two ferry slips that he passed. He headed for the ferry below Fort Lee, in the shadow of the Palisades. It docked, he thought, at the village of Manhattanville. From there he could take the Hudson River Railroad back to the city. Money wasn't a problem. He reached for the billfolder in his breast pocket, then remembered his coat, a balled-up clump of cloth hurtling through the air, making a slight splash in the river water, the current catching it, unfolding it, pulling it toward the bay, the cravat shoved into one sleeve and in the breast pocket the billfolder. He rummaged the pockets of his trousers. They were empty.

He kept walking. It grew dark.
The road veered up a hill, away from the river. Bedford left the road and followed a narrow path along the river. Somewhere on the shore must be a fisherman's skiff that he could employ for his own use. He walked through a hodgepodge terrain of dry earth, mud, and tidal ponds filled with high grass. He found no boat. He thought he heard a noise behind him, and turned. At a distance of several yards was a lantern, a ghostly light that swayed in the darkness but exposed neither hand nor face of whoever held it. Bedford walked fast. The light was following him. He started to run. Ahead, from the direction of the river, another light appeared. Bedford pitched forward into a watery hole. He couldn't touch bottom. He started to swim. The prow of a small boat crashed through the high grass and almost smashed into him. A lantern on a pole was extended from the boat over his head.

“Over here, Sam,” a voice cried out, “I got the cuss right here.”

The other lantern approached quickly. Bedford treaded water. “Give me a hand, please, I'm drowning,” he said. He could make out a figure standing in the boat. An iron spear with a sharp hook set beneath the end almost touched the tip of his nose.

“Serves ya right, you damn Yorker,” the voice said.

The other lantern came alongside. “Pull him in, Hiram, and let's have a look. If we don't like what we see, we can always toss him back.”

The two voices laughed together. The side of the first boat swung toward Bedford. He reached out to grab it but pulled back his hand. Hung on lines that trailed in the water were the plump, furry bodies of scores of rats, pink palms and soles shining in the lantern light, muzzles opened to expose teeth with points like pins.

Bedford screamed. The voices laughed louder. The back of the boat came round so that Bedford could grab it. The man in the boat, Hiram, reached down and helped pull Bedford in. Bedford sat in the back. He trembled. Hiram sat across from him, spear in one hand, the pole with the lantern in the other. There were more rats lying on the floor of the boat. A few were still twitching.

“Suppose you tell me
what ya were up to,” Hiram said. His thin face was covered with a poorly trimmed beard. His shirt almost reached his knees. His pant legs were rolled up over his calves.

“I—I was seeking passage back to New York. I came over in a friend's boat this afternoon, a day's outing, and we became separated, and he, it appears, returned to the other shore without me.”

The two boatmen laughed loudly. Hiram banged the end of his spear on the planks beneath his feet. “Ain't it always the way! Never been a Yorker born yet didn't have a pocketful of lies. The most brazen people on God's earth.”

“And the rottenest,” the man in the other boat, Sam, said. His lantern hung over the side. Bedford couldn't make out Sam's face but imagined it wasn't all that different from Hiram's.

“Ain't it the truth, Sam, they'd scalp a dead man, then charge his widow the price of a trim.”

“I'm telling the truth,” Bedford said.

Sam said, “Hiram, let's stop a-wastin' our good time. Throw him over and let's get back to work.”

“Listen to me, please,” Bedford implored.

“Let's listen,” Hiram said to his unseen friend. “It's one of life's delights a-hearing a Yorker spin a ball of lies. No one on earth is as good at it. Now, go ahead, tell us how you got stranded all innocent-like and wasn't intent on poaching our muskies.”

“Your what?”

Hiram poked one of the rats with the end of the pole. “Our muskrats, best there is, not like them poor starved, skinny handful you've got left on the other shore, your own fault, treatin' them the way Yorkers treat everythin', destroying all in your path, be it bird or beast.”

A rat scraped the floor
furiously with one paw. Bedford's teeth began to chatter. “I'm not a poacher. I've no interest in your muskrats or their fur. I'm lost and must get home. I've a wife and children who must think I'm dead. They'll be frantic with worry. If you've no pity on me, at least pity them!”

From the other boat, Sam's voice said, “Fur? This is July, the fur these muskies got on 'em now ain't worth the hair on a cat's ass. It's the meat that makes 'em worth the huntin', fetches a good price. The city folk can't get enough of it, even if they don't know it's muskies they're getting. ‘Stew meat' is what the butchers call it.”

“Sam,” Hiram said, “if this Yorker thinks we're huntin' for fur, maybe he ain't lyin', maybe he's telling the truth.”

“Maybe he's just stupid, Hiram. That's the case with plenty of Yorkers. They're dishonest, for sure, but they're also plain dumb.”

“For God's sake,” Bedford said. “I'm telling the truth. Please, I have no interest in muskies, none, all I want is to be taken to the other shore, to go home.”

“Can ya pay?”

“Sure I can pay,” Bedford blurted out, then remembered his coat swirling in the river's current. “I've lost my coat, it seems, and my money, but I will take your names and have payment sent to you as soon as I reach home.”

The boatmen's laughter rang out across the water. Sam said, “Ain't they somethin', these Yorkers. They think no one this side of the river got a brain.”

Hiram pointed at Bedford's shoes. “Tell ya what, friend, I'll take ya over, but the price will be those walkers you got on.”

“My shoes?”

“Yep.”

“But they're wet.”

“Wet things got a habit of dryin'.”

“I need them to get home.”

“We ain't got all
night. You can keep your walkers and swim home for all I care.”

Bedford unlaced his shoes. As soon as he had the right one off, Hiram took it and put his foot in. “Fits perfect!” he said. Bedford removed the other. The rat scraped helplessly at the floor. Bedford brought his feet up onto the seat. “Do you wish the stockings, too?” Bedford said.

“Nope.”

Bedford rolled the waterlogged stockings from his feet and tossed them overboard.

“Wait here, Sam,” Hiram said to his companion. “I'll be back in but a shake.” He put down his spear and lantern and picked up his oars. He rowed with steady, powerful strokes, and the boat moved quickly through the water. A few yards from the Manhattan shore, he said, “Out ya go.”

“Can't you put me ashore?” Bedford said.

Hiram kept one oar in the water and brought the boat around. “This is as close to New York as I care to come. I'm a-headed home,” he said. “Either ya get out or come back with me.” Bedford swung his legs overboard and lowered himself into the water until his feet touched the slimy bottom. The water reached his chest. He swam toward shore. When it became too shallow to swim, he ran across the muck to where there was grass. He was somewhere above the city, how far he wasn't sure. He climbed through reeds and more mud, up an embankment to the railroad tracks. A hundred yards away was a cluster of shanties, a bonfire, raucous voices, the sound of fiddles. Saturday night in Paddytown, one of the countless collections of squatters' shacks that he had fleetingly seen in the days when he rode the train to Spuyten Duyvil and his meetings with Stark, glimpses of small children with burlap sacks for dresses, women smoking pipes, men with faces burned red from the sun. He walked south along the river side of the tracks. He heard the rumble of an approaching train, saw the headlight in the distance. He stood aside. He was ready to run alongside and grab on if it should slow, but it was a freight train that rattled and clanged as it rushed by. Fifteen minutes later, he heard another locomotive. This was a passenger train, only three cars, and it began to brake only a short distance away, slowing down without stopping completely. Two laborers hopped off the rear platform. The conductor waved to them.

“Good night,
Pat,” they yelled.

“Good night, boys,” the conductor replied. He hung off the rear and waved a green lantern. The train gave a shrill whistle and started to pick up speed. The conductor went inside the car. Bedford ran alongside, grabbed the iron railing, and pulled himself up. At Manhattanville, he jumped off and ran into the bushes. Two or three people got off. The conductor waved his green lantern. As soon as he went back inside, Bedford climbed aboard again. At Thirtieth Street the train stopped, the steam engine was detached, and a team of horses was hitched in its place, ensuring that the train would move slowly as it traveled down the West Side to Chambers Street. The crew worked at a leisurely pace. Bedford hopped off the rear platform. In the middle of June, Bedford had received a secret missive from the clerk in Commodore Vanderbilt's whom he had been paying for tidbits of inside information over the last several years. The clerk had risen to a position of prominence in the Commodore's corporation, and was privy to important schemes. “I have news of breathtaking magnitude,” he wrote Bedford. “The Commodore is planning an assault on the Hudson River Railroad, acquiring control through the accumulation of a majority interest in the capital stock. In the privacy of his office, the Commodore waxes about what he will do when he gets control. He talks of merging the New York Central with the Hudson, constructing a grand terminal in the midst of the city, and bridging the Hudson River at Rensselaer, which will bring our trains into the city of Albany. Now is the time to buy stock in the Hudson River Railroad. This will be the greatest killing since Theseus slew the Minotaur.” Bedford had thrown the letter aside. He had been too busy with the short-term prospects for gold to bother pursuing such a tip. Morrissey on his back. His account books rife with fraud. Capshaw threatening him with blackmail. Bedford started to walk across the wet cobblestones. His bare feet felt cold and exposed. He took small, cautious steps.

“Hey, buddy, you just off
that train?” A squat man in a vest and bowler hat was walking toward him. “Let's see your ticket.” The man extended his hand. In his other hand he held a long locust stick that he tapped against his leg.

Bedford ran. The soles of his feet made loud slapping sounds on the paving stones. He charged into a street with saloons on both sides, men sitting outside to escape the heat. He stopped and thought for an instant of going back, but his pursuer was lumbering after him, the stick raised, a finger pointed directly at Bedford: “Stop that man!”

From both sides of the street men came out of the saloons. They were yelling. Bedford was sure one of them would try to tackle him, but they jumped out of his way as soon as he came near. He ran faster. He realized that the yelling was for him, a chorus of cheering, as if he were a runner in a race. He heard the shattering of glass. He turned. A barrage of bottles and mugs were crashing around his pursuer. The man had dropped his stick. He was covering his head with his hands.

“Hang the railroad scab!” somebody yelled.

The man turned in his tracks and headed back toward the river. A group of men set out after him, throwing more bottles as they went.

Bedford ran until his legs ached. He went through streets where despite the late hour the stoops and sidewalks were filled with people too hot to sleep. Thousands and thousands of Paddies. He sat on a curb. His white shirt had turned almost tan with dirt and sweat. His bare feet were bloody with cuts and lacerations, but he felt no pain, just a hot tingling. A workingman passed by, looking slightly tipsy. He threw some pennies at Bedford's feet. “Get yourself a whiskey,” he said. “You look like you need it.”

Bedford walked the rest of the way. He kept an eye out for the police. The wealthier the neighborhoods became, the quieter and more deserted the streets. He waited at the bottom of his stoop. All the lights were out, the bottom windows shut and locked. He had no idea where he had lost his keys. They were probably in his coat at the bottom of the Hudson. He considered trying to force a window but decided he had no choice but to ring the bell. He crouched in the dark of the doorway. He rang several times before he heard someone coming down the stairs.

As soon as the maid
opened the door a crack, he pushed his way in. She looked startled and afraid. “Sacred Heart of Jesus!” she cried.

“Don't be alarmed,” he said. He took her by the arm. He saw himself fleetingly in the mirror in the hallstand, the image of a man who had just escaped a burning, sinking ship.

“There was a terrible boating accident,” he said. “A steam engine blew up.” He steered her toward the stairs. “Fortunately, no one was killed.” They walked up the stairs together. At the landing she pulled loose from his grasp.

“O my God, Mr. Bedford,” she said, “look!” She pointed at the pale carpeting. He had left behind a trail of bloody footprints.

“You can clean it in the morning, Margaret. Now go ahead and draw my bath. Do it immediately.”