For a moment he looked into the slave’s yellowed eyes. Then Bass wagged his head. “I don’t wanna be tied down by him.”
“He’ll bring you a fine profit,” Kingsbury reminded.
“I ain’t sellin’ him,” Titus snapped. “Gonna have someone up to Louisville write me a paper to sign and give to Hezekiah, sayin’ to all what read it that the man been give his freedom.”
“Him were mine, I’d sell him,” Ovatt declared. “Good slave like him, bring top dollar this far north—”
“But he ain’t yours,” Bass interrupted. “An’ he ain’t mine no more. We get to Louisville tomorrow, I’ll give him his freedom papers like I said I would.”
“You’re a man good on your word,” Kingsbury added.
“Man ain’t good on his word,” Titus said, remembering a virtue taught him by his father, “man ain’t good on nothing.”
The following day when they reached the girdled trees that marked the outlying areas of a growing Louisville slowly extending into the forest, Titus Bass, true to his vow, searched out a local justice of the peace.
“You’re certain this is what you want to do?” asked the red-faced shop owner with neck jowls pouring over the top of his buttoned collar as he measured the tall Negro. He reminded Titus of an old turkey cock with so much neck-wattle recently scraped red with a shaving razor.
“Yes, sir. I do intend to do this.”
“Don’t know as I can do it, son,” the justice clucked.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Like you said, you ain’t got you no paper giving you rightful ownership of this here Negra. Gives a man pause, it does—maybeso this Negra belongs to your daddy.”
“My pap never owned a slave in his life!”
His eyes narrowing in contemplation, the justice said, “Now, I don’t suppose we could talk with your daddy about this matter, could we?”
Feeling the first itch of anger growing in his breast, Titus answered, “My pap lives back in Boone County. But I don’t live there no more.”
“Maybe you run off to Louisville with your family’s Negra?”
“No!”
With a condescending smile the fat-necked justice wagged his head, saying, “But you got no way to prove the slave is yours to free.”
Burning with sudden anger, Bass whirled on Hezekiah and asked in a voice cracking with emotion, “Are you my slave?”
Hezekiah nodded glumly. “I’m your slave.”
“Makes you my property, right?”
“Yes, you my master.”
Whirling back on the justice, Bass said, “There it is. What more you need from us? This man knows who his master is—and his master gonna free him for all time. You don’t do it, I’ll find someone else who will.”
His scraped and scalded face turning crimson at the youngster’s rebuke, the justice rose from behind his cherrywood desk and slammed a hand down with a resounding thud that echoed in the small office to the side of his store. “That’s just what you’re gonna have to do then, sonny. I ain’t gonna have it on my conscience that I let a young boy like you go off an’ do something foolish: turning your Negra into a freedman! I’ll declare! Where you ever took a notion like that?”
Bass watched the fat-jowled man walk off, removing his sleeveless robe, returning to his shop next door. He stopped once, turned back on the two of them, and waved them out of his clapboard office. Bass turned to go, finding the boatmen pressing their noses against the murky panes of window glass, watching it all.
“So you get it done proper?” Root inquired when Titus and Hezekiah stepped out the door onto the board walk.
A gust of wind closed the door behind them. On the street again. In the cold. Bass looked up at the faces expectant of his answer. “Any of you got a idea where I can get me a paper says Hezekiah here is a freedman?”
Kingsbury rocked back on his heels, saying, “This be the only man what can do it right for you.”
“No matter now. I stay with you, Titus Bass,” Hezekiah replied. “Till we find right man to do it.”
Beulah wagged her head. “That old frog. Shame on him.”
“Ain’t no other but him,” Kingsbury argued.
“Sometimes, I declare, Hames—you’re so addleminded,” Beulah said, then turned to Titus to say quietly, “We just have to find us someone what can write.”
Turning to stare at the woman, Titus found himself dumbfounded by the simplicity of what she was suggesting. “You saying we get someone to write up a paper for us?”
Beulah’s eyes glanced at the boatmen before coming back to rest on Titus’s. “And we have ’em sign that old frog’s name to it.”
“That’s gotta be about as close to stepping outside the law as anything I ever heard!” Kingsbury complained.
“You get found out,” Ovatt squealed, “there’ll be stripes to pay on your back, Titus! Not just this here Negra’s.”
Beulah poked a finger into Kingsbury’s chest, saying, “And you’re telling me you ain’t ever done all sorts of foul things at the edge of the law?”
“I ain’t never used a goddamned man’s name to do anything wrong!”
“It ain’t wrong,” Beulah protested. “I figure it’s about as right as right can be.”
In that moment Titus felt as proud as he could be for her, the way she gave the three boatmen pause, struck them dumb, unable to convince her.
Kingsbury’s eyes blinked, as if he were working on something hard and fast behind them. “Right, or wrong— we get caught, this here is more serious’n causing a ruckus on a gunboat—”
“More serious’n killing a man—or a whore, Hames?”
“They was … she was fixing to kill us.”
“So it was the right thing to do,” Beulah said. “Just like this is the right thing for Titus here.” With the three boatmen silenced, each of them standing there gape-mouthed, she turned to the youngster. “Now, you remember what that justice man’s name was?”
Twisting his neck this way and that to search for some writing on the door or the window, Titus squinted, making sense of the letters and their placement. “Lu … ther L. P-pond.”
Seemingly of a changed mind, Kingsbury slapped an arm around Bass’s shoulder, his eyes darting up the street, then down. “Just get your paper writ up so we can get us over to Mathilda’s place.”
“Mathilda’s place?” Titus repeated.
“Don’t tell me you forgot awready,” Ovatt said.
Root snorted, “Hell, I’d a’figured Mincemeat made Titus here a real comeback customer of hers.”
“Hold on there, Hames Kingsbury! You ain’t taking me to no such a place!” Beulah scolded. “Never been in one before, an’ I don’t intend to start now.”
His palms coming up apologetically, Kingsbury started to explain, “Just a place where we can get us a square meal and a stout drink—”
“An’ half-dressed women all hanging off you too!” Beulah snapped. “Wanting to dip their hands in your purse.”
“But we got us old friends there,” Kingsbury protested.
“Not no more, you don’t.” And she crossed her arms, turning from him huffily.
The pilot stepped around to face her, but again she whirled from him. “Beulah?”
“You fixing on marrying me like you said, your whoring days is done, Hames Kingsbury.”
“M-marrying?” Root stammered. “That right—”
Kingsbury gestured for silence from them all as he took hold of Beulah’s shoulders. “Course I’m gonna marry you—”
“You won’t never again need no whore, Mr. Kingsbury,” the woman told him. “I’m going downriver with you every trip.”
