“You go ahead, Morri, I ain’t gonna bite you.”
“It’s this,” I said real soft. “Beaufort, you must meet a fair number of freed black folks down here — who have shipments coming in. You think that any of them might be sympathetic to me?” When he gave me a puzzled look, I added, “You know, about cotton prices in Liverpool. And maybe about sending some other things there too — other plants.”
I hoped he understood my meaning without my having to talk any plainer. But he said, “What you mean,
He cast another dubious glance over at Weaver, so that he was the one who answered: “We’re talkin’ ’bout sending more dan jes’ one.”
Beaufort stood up real straight in shock. I told him, “All I’m asking is the name of a freed black man in Charleston who might help us send some plants up North or to England.” My legs seemed to buckle and I thought I might pee on myself right then and there. I reached out to Weaver to steady myself. “Beaufort, you’re the only one who can help me. You know I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.”
He was biting his lip and looking down at his feet. He was one pretty obvious conspirator, I’ll tell you that. My heart was racing worse than ever, and that’s how I knew everything was going wrong even before it had started going right.
“I don’t know, Morri. We have to see ’bout that.”
He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Weaver put his hand on my back. “Come on, girl, let’s get goin’.”
At the door, Beaufort gave me a quick kiss on my forehead. “Rollins — Henry Stansfield Rollins. He lives on Bull Street,” he whispered.
“Beaufort,” I whispered back, “I don’t know Charleston real well. Where’s — ”
“Morri, Mr. Rollins might help you send your things off to England. But if he don’t, I can’t help you with your other plants,” he snapped. “I’ll tell you ’bout cotton prices in Liverpool, sure enough, but that’s all I’m gonna do.”
I didn’t want to stop to talk to any Negroes on the street to ask for directions to Bull Street in case anyone was keeping watch on us. So I decided to ask at Apothecaries Hall. One of its owners, Dr. LaRosa, had been a friend of my father’s. After my papa found out that he was Jewish — this is back around 1814 or so — he used to go there to learn what he could about the local herbs he could give folks for scarlet fever, worms, and everything else that cast us down. They used to sit together in Dr. LaRosa’s office and talk about Torah stories too. And once my papa even got invited for Sabbath supper on Friday night, though he couldn’t go because Big Master Henry wouldn’t allow him out after sundown — and especially not with some know-it-all meddling Jew, as he put it.
Most of the Jews in Charleston — including Dr. LaRosa — had ancestors from Portugal. Some even came right from the city of Porto, where Papa had lived. That always made him feel that coming to South Carolina wasn’t so odd at all. Not that some of the apothecary’s customers didn’t complain about Papa being allowed into his office. One man even told him once that no niggers ought to set foot in a white establishment, “even if they could quote Genesis front to back.”
Unfortunately, Dr. LaRosa wasn’t in when Weaver and I stopped by. But a young clerk treated us kind and gave us directions while pointing out landmarks on a map of the city hanging on the wall. Bull Street wasn’t all that close, and I was getting worried by now that we’d be gone too long from Lily and Wiggie.
“I tell you what,” said Weaver, once we’d reached the street, laying his big old hand on my shoulder. “You head on back to be wid Lily while I go talk to Mr. Rollins. You get de carriage and meet me dere, den we’ll all go home.”
I argued awhile, but in the end I did what he said. I ought not to have worried so much about Wiggie and Lily, because they were still waiting to get her spectacles when I arrived.
At the time, I didn’t consider that Weaver might have any hidden reason for wanting to see Mr. Rollins alone, but now I wonder if he wasn’t trying to keep some of the risk just for himself. He likely thought he owed it to Papa to keep watch over me. I’ll never know about that. Unless we can get the dead to speak, of course.
XLII
We reached Charleston on the morning of Tuesday, the Twenty-Sixth of August, after three days at sea. Having heard in New York that it was a handsome city cherished by its residents, I was surprised that the neighborhood close by the harbor was filthy with refuse and patrolled by packs of mongrels.
When I stopped a well-to-do man near the port to ask about these things, he told me that its impoverished appearance was due to the decline in prices paid for both cotton and rice on the Liverpool Exchange.
In the hope that Midnight had been able to find work dispensing medications in Charleston or somewhere nearby, or was still practicing this profession even today, I decided to first ask after him at apothecary shops.
I was as jittery as could be by now. I believed I might spot him at any moment — driving the carriage turning the corner, buying trousers at the clothing shop I was passing …
What stunned and pleased me most as I rushed toward King Street and the central shopping district was to discover that Charleston was an African city. Blacks performed every task around me that required physical strain and sturdiness — from the hauling away of refuse in carts to the ringing of church bells. For every person of English or Continental extraction I saw, I’d have estimated three Negroes. More than a few wore fine clothing and jewelry, having plainly achieved their freedom. The majority, however, were dressed either in soiled livery uniforms or in the rough wool and cotton called Negro cloth. Many were barefoot.
Once, I spotted two elderly white men riding horses and armed with both pistols and swords, which greatly surprised me; I didn’t yet know that I was hunting for Midnight in a city under siege.
That first morning I showed nearly a dozen clerks my sketch of the Bushman, and though three of them were only too happy to comment disfavorably on his so-called rascality once again, they all assured me that there were no Negroes handing out medicines in their city. “Only a Northern fool wanting to meet his maker would ever accept a powder or syrup mixed by a nigger,” one guffawed.
By the time the noon bells had rung, my confidence in eliciting any helpful information from any of the white residents was all but vanished. I decided to take Moon Mary’s advice once again and hail black tradesmen and merchants on the street. To do so, I approached them on the Negro side of the walkways.
Though my Scottish accent proved a difficulty, the first blacks I asked for help were able to follow me if I spoke slowly, but none could help me. Then I approached a handsome gentleman in a gold waistcoat and black trousers, perhaps forty years of age. After showing him my sketch, he informed me in the best King’s English that he had never seen Midnight, but he added, “You will find a Negro apothecary named Mobley on Queen Street, sir. Caeser Mobley is his name. He is not the proprietor, but he is indeed employed there.” After giving me directions, he then astonished me by adding, “If I may be perfectly frank with you, sir, it is plain you are a stranger here. I wish only to give you one small piece of advice: It is a trifle insulting for you to walk on the Negro side of the sidewalk, as you are only too plainly of the white race.”
Mr. Mobley was so thin that he looked as though he were made of wire. Begging his patience, I explained my purpose, adding that there was a fifty-dollar reward for any assistance that might lead me to Midnight.
Sadly, my interview ended abruptly, as he was certain he had neither seen nor heard of him. It never occurred to me that he might be lying. Nor did it enter my mind that from his point of view, I — a white stranger altering his voice to sound more Southern and tracking a black man — must have appeared a threat. Indeed, no one who might have been loyal to Midnight would have trusted me; I might have been a slave-trader or legal authority out to hurt him in some way.
It was five o’clock when, sweating like a soldier in a losing campaign, I made my way back to my hotel. Despite my determination to remain resolute, my heart sank to new depths when I passed a Negro youth loading heavy crates into the back of a wagon. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, but his nose and one of his eyes were so afflicted with oozing sores that flies were feeding mercilessly at him. I spotted lice not only in his hair but
