might have believed him innocent. He might even have comforted Mistress Kitty in her grief.
LVI
Puzzling over the article and the events at River Bend with Morri did wonders for my sense of having some choices in life — and of having the strength to plan for my future.
Violeta’s downturned glances in my presence gave me to understand, however, that she feared my newfound vigor. That she, too, might have preferred our relationship to take a friendlier and more honest course — that she was at the mercy of emotions she did not well understand — never occurred to me.
Despite the evidence from my previous visit, I failed completely to understand that Violeta simply did not speak her mind. If I’d reflected carefully on our days together as children, I’d have seen this as consistent with her character. Likely, the desire to unburden herself to others had been beaten out of her, first at her home in Porto, and later in England.
The need to secure productive labor for the River Bend refugees soon eclipsed my personal concerns. To be of help to them, I gathered my courage to leave my room for more than a few hours at a time at the beginning of our fourth week of freedom. It immediately became plain to me that most of them were in need of a routine. Parker in particular had taken to drink and often came home cursing. Morri took me aside on my first day downstairs and told me how once, after an evening at a raucous tavern, he’d clouted Christmas-Eve right across her face, blackening his wife’s eye. I realized that I had to act swiftly and that to help them find work it would be necessary to show my empty coat-sleeve in public. That Morri and the others had — in some vague but determined way — been waiting for me to come down and offer my help from the very start became only too obvious to me. I gained considerable respect for their patience and tact with me.
I passed the next days taking our River Bend guests around to shops and warehouses, endeavoring to find them steady work. Nearly always we received the same false smiles and swift refusals. I remember in particular the owner of a dry-goods store on Wall Street whom I tried to convince to offer work to Hopper-Anne, whose English was exceedingly good and clear. Not only did he stare at my missing arm, but he also had the cheek to say, “My customers do not expect to be waited on by a Negress, no matter how fair her skin might be or how nearly white she can talk.”
For better or for worse, losing an arm had diminished none of my Highland temper, and I roundly lambasted him for his hypocrisy.
After a time, it became only too apparent to me that my finding all the former slaves honest work was going to prove impossible. Fortunately, they understood this sooner than I did and took matters into their own hands.
Through the friendships that Hopper-Anne, Lucy, and Christmas-Eve made at St. Philip’s Protestant Episcopal Church, they were soon able to find work for Parker, Randolph, and Backbend, as stevedores for Harkness & Co., a private shipping concern on South Street. Hopper-Anne was contracted soon afterward at a black-owned bakery on Chambers Street, and Christmas-Eve and Lucy started as scullery maids at Spear Tavern on Broadway.
Violeta offered invaluable assistance to the rest. She sat at her desk in her sitting room and composed a moving letter soliciting advice from Francis Lemoyne, the eldest son of the old man she had cared for. Though he harbored a lingering resentment over her inheritance of the house we were encamped in at present, he nevertheless contacted some Quaker farmers he knew and succeeded in obtaining offers of work for all the former slaves of River Bend who wished for a life in a rural setting.
In the end, all but Morri and Randolph seized this opportunity. Randolph decided to remain as a stevedore in New York with his children, and we were soon able to find them a suitable flat on Bowling Green.
“No way I’m ever going back to a life of field work,” Morri told me. “You know, John, life doesn’t get much better than getting away with saying no.”
Several days later, Morri came home singing and panting at the same time. She was so electric that she went hopping around the sitting room. While I puffed on my pipe, she told me that on one of her walks through the city she’d met the headmaster of the Church Street School for Negro Children, a former runaway named William Arthur. “He told me I could start giving reading and writing lessons right away! He doesn’t mind that I don’t speak so perfectly. Or that I’m not much older than the children. He doesn’t mind one drop!”
After we’d drunk a wee glass of port wine to her success, she sat on the arm of my chair and squeezed my hand hard. Her face was scrunched up tight, as though she had a big secret to tell me.
“What?” I asked.
“I’d like for you to adopt me, John, but only on the condition that if my father returns, he can adopt me back.”
I received the first of my mother’s replies to my letters during our seventh week in New York.
A few days later, while I was still pondering how to write of my injury to my mother, Backbend, Lucy, Hopper-Anne, Scooper, Parker, Christmas-Eve, Frederick, Sarah, Taylor, and Martha boarded carriages in front of Violeta’s house for the journey sixty miles north to two Quaker farms located near the town of Southeast. They would earn good steady wages and their children would be able to attend a local schoolhouse. The Quakers — who by now seemed to represent to me the possibility for goodness in our world — had generously agreed to help them build cottages as well.
As their carriages departed, I heard Morri humming “Barbara Allen” to herself. I joined her for a verse. Thankfully, this was to set me thinking seriously again about how to find Midnight.
LVII
In all my weeks of anguish I had hardly forgotten Midnight, but rereading his letter in New York had convinced me that he must have had a vision of his own end — a Mantis-dream.
I see now that — even more than the loss of my arm or Violeta’s distance — this passive acceptance of his death had made my weeks of solitude so grim. I have discovered that my times of greatest misery have always been related to a feeling of defeat, and I have nearly always found my way back to health by beginning a new campaign.
So, with Mother’s gold coins and what was left of my savings, I decided to publish a request for Midnight — or anyone knowing of his fate — to write to me. I would place these advertisements in newspapers all over the United States, from New York to the western territories, every week for as long as it took to receive a reply. Of course, even if he was still alive, I could not be sure that he was in the habit of reading news of any sort, but there was every likelihood that he knew someone who was.
Morri was eager to help write our announcement, which we finalized as follows:
Seeking Midnight, Samuel, or Tsamma. We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.
Anyone with information, please write to the Gemsbok care of Senhora Violeta, 73 John Street, New York.
I have found a beautiful feather that you thought was lost to you forever and have it safe with me. Go slow.
