The Meq

let her take my arm and she wiped the last traces of blood off my skin with the leaves. “Is that girl, Geaxi, like you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “and a lot older. I’ve got to find out some of what she knows. My mama said to find Sailor and I’ve got to do it. I don’t know how yet, but I’ve got to do it.”

I looked into Carolina’s eyes. They were a gray-blue with little flecks of gold reflecting sunlight. She took my hand in hers.

“I’d go with you,” she said, “if Georgia wasn’t so happy here.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’m going anywhere yet.”

We started walking toward home, kicking leaves again.

“You’ll go,” she said.

She was right. Not six weeks later Mrs. Bennings and a lady friend of hers, who introduced herself only as Natalie, came home late one night accompanied by two men. I should say that although Mrs. Bennings was running a successful and respectable boardinghouse at the time, she was becoming more and more drawn to a life after dark, a life of saloons and whiskey and men. Georgia was troubled by this and always stayed up late, waiting for her, ready to brush her hair and help her to bed. Carolina and I were up with her that night, sitting by candlelight at the long kitchen table when the foursome arrived, loud and drunk.

Mrs. Bennings led the way, almost crashing through the door, arm in arm with a skinny man I’d seen before, but couldn’t place. Behind them and laughing like hyenas were Natalie and a shortish, red-faced man with a full beard and wearing a tam-o’-shanter tilted at an angle.

“Hush now, darlin’s, we’ll wake the boarders,” Mrs. Bennings said to the others. She was trying to put her finger in front of her mouth, but she was swaying too much to find it.

“Let the buggers wake up and piss themselves!” the skinny man yelled.

I recognized that voice. I looked closer at the man’s face. I remembered the slicked-back hair and the gaunt, sunken cheeks. I was sure of it — he was Corsair Bogy, the promoter who had brought Geaxi to St. Louis only to be booed and humiliated when Geaxi disappeared.

Mrs. Bennings said, “Shhh! I’ll not be hearin’ that kind of talk. I’ll have you know, we don’t—” But she never finished her sentence. Instead, she stumbled into the kitchen table and suddenly saw the three of us. “Children!” she said.

Corsair Bogy was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked at us. He smiled at the girls. then he noticed me. Suddenly all his features narrowed into a look of fierce rage.

“Why, you little son of a bitch,” he snarled, “I don’t believe you got the nerve to come back around here.”

The other man and Natalie stopped laughing. Mrs. Bennings looked at Corsair Bogy, completely baffled. I stared straight into his bloodshot eyes. He went on. “Well, Spider Boy, I think you owe me about five hundred dollars.” He turned to the other man and said, “Ain’t that right, Mr. Woodget?”

I glanced at the other man. He was looking hard at me, but said nothing. I unconsciously moved my hand up and grabbed hold of the Stones, which I now wore all the time, around my neck and under my shirt, just like Geaxi.

“Or maybe I’ll just take it out in pleasure,” he said, taking a step toward me and smashing the whiskey bottle on the edge of the table.

Mrs. Bennings tried to cut him off, but she tripped and fell on the floor between us. Georgia and Natalie both rushed over to her. She looked up and said, “No, no, he ain’t no Spider Boy. He’s Zianno.”

Corsair Bogy held the neck of the broken whiskey bottle in one hand and with the other he took hold of Mrs. Bennings’s arm and tried to jerk her out of the way.

“I’ll decide who’s who,” he said. “Now, out of my way!”

I glanced quickly at Carolina. Her eyes were wide open and scared. I held the Stones tighter. “Stop right there,” I said. “You will leave this place now and you will harm no one.”

My voice was steady and firm. Corsair Bogy looked at me as if he were looking at a blank wall; no more, no less. He gently placed the broken bottle on the table and stared at it, as though he had no idea why he’d picked it up in the first place, then turned and walked out of the door, paying no attention whatsoever to anyone else in the room.

After the door shut behind him, there was nothing but silence, then Natalie said, “Why, Mrs. Bennings has passed out.” She looked at Georgia and said, “Help me take her to her room, will you, missy?” They got her to her feet and she murmured something, then they half dragged, half walked her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The room was empty except for Carolina, me, and the other man, Mr. Woodget.

I looked over at him. He was still red-faced and his eyes were bloodshot, but they were staring directly at me, steady and focused. I wondered what he thought about what he’d seen. It was the first time I had knowingly used the Stones.

Then, still without saying a word, he bent down and started picking up pieces of broken glass, stacking them neatly in a pile on the table. He pushed the pile to one side and sat down slowly, deliberately.

“That was a close call, eh, boy?” he said, pulling out a long-stemmed pipe and lighting it. He glanced up at me.

“Yes, it was,” I said.

I watched him. Carolina watched him. He took two long pulls on his pipe and exhaled. He was in no hurry.

“The name’s Woodget, Caleb Woodget,” he said, “and in twenty-five years at sea, I have only seen what I just saw twice, both in the last year. And both times, the parties involved that did what they did were children, children that looked so much alike they could be twins. Now why do you suppose that is? Eh?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Woodget.” I tried not to show concern or give away anything. “But could you tell me the name of that other child? Was it Sailor?”

“No, no, it wasn’t. I never got the name,” he said, “but Bogy called him the Spider Boy. Only thing was, he was no boy. He was as female as that one there,” he said, pointing toward Carolina with his pipe.

I looked at Carolina. She was twirling a strand of hair between her fingers.

“Why was she with you?” I asked.

He tapped his pipe on the table, refilled it with tobacco, and lit a match.

“I smuggled her into the country for Bogy. Picked her up in Port-au-Prince and slipped her in through Biloxi,” he said. “Easy job, good money, but it was in the harbor at Havana that I saw her do something I have never seen before or since. Until tonight. You want to tell me what it is, boy?”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Woodget. Why don’t you tell me what she did.”

He sat back in his chair and looked at me. I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to go on or not. He took several long pulls on his pipe.

Finally, he said, “I am captain of a fine and fast clipper ship, the Clover. Twelve years I have been her skipper now. A smuggler I am and proud of it, but that day we were taking on a legal load; cane sugar, it was. Next to us in the harbor was a ragged old ship I had never seen nor heard of before called the Pisces. I was busy with the load-in and not paying much attention, but on board the Pisces there was a mean and sinful thing taking place: a flogging. If you have ever seen one, you will never want to see one again. The unfortunate man receiving the lash was stripped to the waist and bound to the rigging, hands tied above his head, legs spread apart, and ankles secured. The boatswain’s mate wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails. I could hear the dull whacks followed by the poor fellow’s low moans.

“I should have done something, maybe called out the captain or stopped it myself, but I did nothing. Flogging has been outlawed since the sixties and I knew it, but still, in my business, you often lend a mute conscience as well as a deaf ear and a blind eye.

“But to the point. That Spider Boy, who I soon found out was a girl by the sound of her voice, had somehow sneaked up my own mizzenmast and was dangling there in the rigging, looking down on the Pisces and the flogging. No one saw her but me and I don’t think anyone else heard her issue instructions to the boatswain to put down that cat-o’-nine-tails and walk away, even though he was a good sixty feet away and had no way of hearing her. She said it nice and steady, just like you, and in a low voice that was more a chant than anything else. But put it down he did, and walk away he did also, knowing, I suppose, that his