The Road to Reckoning Read online

  I expected the side-winder slap and tried to take it well but I flew on my back. I was light for my age.

  I rolled up and watched him pour out his boiler into the rain and pack it on his horse. I rubbed my burning face where he had struck me and watched as he kicked open the outer doors and led his horse out into the rain.

  He looked up the road where we had come and then to the new one, the rain misting off him. He went round in a circle, judging both roads, his horse feeling the ground, and then he whipped the reins and sped off into the night, east.

  He was gone, without looking at me further since the moment he hit me. I did not know that adults would leave children, but Henry Stands was a bad one, I now knew.

  I shut the doors and went to my sack. I took the wooden Paterson and slept in an empty bay on my coat, warm in the straw, and the gun with its sweet smell of oil at my chin. I was empty of tears and as I said, and as you know, you may sleep better for it.

  In my sleep I saw Thomas Heywood stalking me in the rain and the dark. The rain covering his footsteps like he floated above the road, and me now alone with a wooden gun. I saw faces covered in brown scales, their eyelids just pus. And I dreamed of horses. Mostly of the sound of them coming back or chasing me. But it was only dreams.

  THIRTEEN

  I was kicked awake by the hostler in the morning. Although it was before noon he was already harsh-breathing with drink. I dragged myself back to the wall and rubbed my rump where his boot had met me.

  ‘What are you about here?’ he demanded. I gathered he had forgotten in his drunkenness that we had paid for the night or had grown confident now that he could not see a big black horse and the man to go with it. He had some pride to take back and I guessed kicking a boy would do it; such is the way with trash.

  I stood up. ‘I am here with my horse, if you will remember.’

  ‘What about your old man?’

  ‘He is a drinker and has gone. And he is not my father if that is what you mean.’

  ‘Then you get out of here. Out with you.’ He shooed me with flapping hands like I was a turkey and I looked at him as if he was soft-headed. I took up my things and led Jude Brown out of there.

  The road was muddy from the night and already coated my laces. I looked up the road and spoke to Jude Brown like he was human.

  ‘Come on, Jude. We will breakfast on the road.’

  I talked to him all through the town as we slopped slowly and drew strange looks but Jude seemed to take comfort from it and so did I. Animals are good like that. I have to this day always had a dog and a horse and do not trust people who do not care for either and I will give no time to a man who beats either. In fact I will give him less and with my right hand and foot if I sees him beat down on one. Until you have had a horse breathing beside your ear, eating from your hand, stepping with your step, and thanking you with his head nudging against you, the Lord is your stranger.

  My path was cut by three ladies in black dress and bonnets. They were plain or old with faces like my aunt’s and had watery eyes when they looked at me. I guessed I must have looked mighty dirty and red-faced, which happens when you are hungry, for they took pity on me instantly.

  ‘Sakes, child.’ The oldest of them stopped me. ‘Where are you going?’

  I told them the truth, for the question was straight enough. ‘I am to Paterson, New Jersey, and then on to New York.’

  ‘New York?’ I might have said to Paris the way she exclaimed. ‘Why, child? Where is your family?’

  They were holding my arms and shoulders now with their chalk hands. ‘I have only my aunt, ma’am. I have a home in New York.’

  ‘But where is your father and mother?’

  ‘They are dead, ma’am. I am working back on my own.’ I tipped my hat and tried to walk on but they still had words and stood in front of me.

  ‘What is your name, child?’

  ‘Thomas Walker, ma’am.’

  ‘You are out here on your own, Thomas?’ They all shared one head and shook them and looked me up and down.

  ‘My father was killed days ago.’ These words had become easier although I noted my tongue had become common, which is what happens when you hang with Hoosiers. My next had a lower tone. ‘I am going home.’

  The oldest clutched her chest. ‘My, my! Have you made report of this, child?’

  ‘I will, ma’am. I will get to Stroud and do that.’ I tried to move on but they blocked me again.

  ‘You are a brave boy, praise the Lord! But you will need a bath and proper food. Eggs and bacon. Come with me, child.’

  Now you can judge me how you will, and I know Presbyterian women when I see them, but after my night of abandonment a hot wash and some eggs and bacon was a prospect better than a gold mine to me then. I could do with a little bit of dependence. They laid their hands on me and escorted me and Jude Brown away.

  I was taken to one of their houses, a three-story white wooden house on the edge of the town with trees and rocks in the garden and a proper fence.

  An ancient black man grinned and raised his hat at me and gently took Jude’s rein from my hand with just two fingers. He led Jude to the rear of the house and that horse never even looked back at me.

  The older of the women thanked her friends but told them to hurry on to church and to excuse her on her behalf. I realized then that it must be Sunday. I had lost all sense of the days. I took my hat off without being asked and she smiled at me, which was like a fold in an old shoe.

  She seemed intent on dragging me up the stairs, which I did not care for. I was not a baby reluctant to bathe, and I politely wrung my hand back.

  She pulled up her black skirts to her ankles as she stomped up the stairs and called out to the whole house as I followed.

  ‘Martha! Abby! Make a bath!’

  I saw two girls in white peer up at me through the balustrade from below as if I were a ghost they had only just seen.

  I was taken to a bedroom and told to undress and she left me, but only for a moment, to bring me a fresh-laundered smock of sorts. I was hesitant to undress in front of her but she told me she had three sons and not to be so foolish. I put up my sack to the bed.

  It was considered unhealthy to bathe totally then, of course, and in winter it was almost illegal in some towns, a sign of madness. So I was stood in the kitchen in a wooden tub while a black girl in ribboned pigtails and josie dress poured stove-warmed water over my head. I had twigs and bugs on me that I never knew!

  Water was quite a commodity in those days, sold door to door, but they did not spare it, and judging by all the glass and tin and cushions and rooms, this was a fine house.

  I thought it only right that I should know the name of the person seeing me naked and washing my head.

  ‘I’m Thomas,’ I said.

  ‘They call me Black Jenny,’ she replied. She was only a couple of years older than me but I guess the old lady thought I could not be shamed in front of a black girl. She had cheap tin-framed half-lens glasses. I knew the price of most spectacles. I still judge some folks by them.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’ She stopped with the water and soap at last.

  ‘Why do they call you Black Jenny?’

  ‘Because there is a white Jenny.’

  ‘Do they call her White Jenny?’

  ‘No.’ She passed me a towel and I hid my shame.

  ‘Who is the lady?’ I asked as I dried.

  ‘That’s Mrs Carteret. She wants to see you in the keeping room when you’re dressed.’

  My stomach still had plans. ‘She said I was to eat?’

  ‘I ain’ts feeding you!’ She said this as if I had insulted her mother.

  ‘What’s a keeping room?’ I had never heard this phrase.

  ‘Are you dumb, boy?’

  I reckon she must have meant the parlor. ‘Where are my clothes?’

  She handed me back the white smock. ‘Your clothes are to wash. Why do you have a wooden gun? Ain’t yo
u too old for toys?’

  I did not consider twelve too old for anything, but I was shocked that my sack had been burrowed through. We did not do such things in New York. I had come across Henry Stands’s sketchbook accidentally and had at least apologized.

  ‘It is not a toy,’ I snapped. ‘I doubt you have anything so fine.’

  ‘It don’t do nothing.’ She crossed her arms and her spectacles flashed in the light so I could not see her eyes.

  ‘It is important to me. That is what it does.’

  I had done with talking to fools who did not recognize precious things. I pulled on the smock and, as I sat clearing my head, realized a white girl had taken Black Jenny’s place. She did not acknowledge my surprise and put a plate of bread and headcheese into my hand.

  ‘Sit at the table, boy,’ she instructed.

  I took my enamel plate and sat, disappointed at my fare. I did not eat pressed pig’s feet and ears. I figured these girls were teasing me and I asked for some cheese and milk.

  She grunted at me and went to a long cupboard. She was blond and very pretty and again a little older than me.

  I was wise enough not to trust pretty girls. They will promise you a kiss if you close your eyes and then drop a spider down your shirt. Ugly girls will fight you but they do not laugh at your misfortunes that they have created such as pretty girls do. They will find a cowlick a disability and your britches will always be too short or too long and they will fun you.

  She came back with a muslin-covered jug and paper-wrapped cheese and sat with me.

  ‘What are you doing here, boy?’ she asked as if she was in charge of the whole house. She had not brought me a glass for the milk and I settled that she was holding out on me until I answered her questions. I queried straight back.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Mrs Carteret is my guardian. She looks after us girls here.’

  ‘How many are you?’

  ‘Five. My mother is a fallen woman.’ She said this as if her mother were in debt to her. ‘Mrs Carteret is making a lady of me.’ She raised herself up and flicked her dazzling hair from her ear with a porcelain hand.

  ‘Are you an orphan, boy? Is your parents dead?’

  She was not shy. I bit off a lump of cheese and bread together in one bite so that I would be too polite to answer. She pushed away from the table and fetched me a glass.

  ‘Be careful with that.’ She smiled when she put it before me. ‘It is very expensive. It came from a place called Holland. I think Mrs Carteret would have you whipped if you broke it.’

  I was not a saphead for fooling. She had guessed me for a country boy. She was ruffled plenty when I poured the jug like I did not care if I broke the table.

  ‘You are an insolence!’ She sat back down and watched me eat. ‘If you are an orphan, boy, you cannot stay here. This is a house for girls.’

  ‘I do not wish to stay here. I have a house and an aunt. I am on the road with my own horse. I have stopped here for a wash and some food as was offered. I will be gone when my clothes are ready.’

  ‘You are a liar! “House”, indeed! With your clothes all stinking! Mister Markham will see through you!’ She stuck her tongue out at me, which seemed real childish for all her pretenses.

  ‘Who is Mister Markham?’

  ‘See!’ She leaned back and folded her arms again. ‘You don’t know nothing!’

  ‘I know that if I do not know nothing, then I must almost know everything.’

  She looked at me confounded and then reached across the table and pushed over my glass of milk.

  ‘Now see what you did, boy! Mrs Carteret is going to make you safe to be hanged!’

  I was done with children, as I was at home when I watched them from my windows fighting and throwing stones at each other or dancing with dogs.

  I tidied up the glass and my wet smock with a cloth that I got myself. It was true I had cried lately and had relished it as a child might but I did not understand children’s ways. No, that is not true. I understood them. I just hated them. Hated being them.

  When I had gone along the road with my father and shot at imaginary Indians I had been quiet and felt guilty for enjoying it. Then I had seen my father killed and seen real Indians among the trees and been left by my only hope in the world. I did not entertain being a child ever again.

  Mrs Carteret came in and the girl bounced to her side.

  ‘He spilled his glass, Mrs Carteret!’

  She told her to hush and not to mind. ‘Now, Martha, he’s just shy, that’s all.’ She held out her arm for me, her palm down. ‘Come with me, Thomas. Come on, boy.’

  I put down the cloth and went around the table. Mrs Carteret took my hand and Martha waited for Mrs Carteret to look aside and leaned in on me as I passed and kissed my cheek.

  I never saw her again but I have never forgotten that sly peck, and I have forgotten hundreds of kisses. The sly ones are the best.

  I have met many men since of the like that encompassed mister William Markham. They are those middle-aged, waist-spreading, no-neck types who have lost the joy and privilege of life with the loss of their hair. They have little control in the movings of the world but rule like kings over what little they do possess. I have found that they often use charities, churches, and government as good places to hide and rule; the real world would see them for what they are and they would starve. They have education and a pen and will write to you to tell you that you are dead and inform you that you are wrong when you try to correct them.

  He was in black cloth and white collar and sat at Mrs Carteret’s parlor table like on a throne. He pulled down his glasses—eight dollars’ worth, I reckoned—and summed me up as a boy in a white smock.

  I had gone a good hour without thinking about Henry Stands and I had thought my road home was now safe and assured without him. Mister Markham did not see that it was all so simple. He asked me my name, confirmed that I had eaten, and then began.

  ‘Now, Thomas, as I understand it, Mrs Carteret informs me that you have recently become an unfortunate among us. That your poor father has been taken from you in murder and you are now an orphan in our town. Is that a truism, Thomas?’ He eyed me as if I would lie about such a thing for some headcheese.

  ‘I know I need the law, sir. My father was killed by a murderer named Thomas Heywood, but I have a home in New York and my aunt—her name is Mary Sample—will care for me. She lives in our house.’

  He shuffled his chair to show me his shiny trousers. ‘Well, can you tell me what has befallen you, Thomas, so I may have a record of it, so as we may help you, son?’

  I gave it all, calmly as I could, but got flushed at times, and he saw this and was kind enough to let me cool down and he stayed his pen and asked Mrs Carteret for some water for me.

  I told him all about the good Chet Baker, and the deceit of the Hoosier Henry Stands, not modifying anything about that villain’s treatment of me, including his swipe to my face and abandonment. I also stressed voraciously that it was most probable that the murderer Thomas Heywood was now set to find me to clear his mistakes.

  Mister Markham took this all down with a purse of his lips and shaking of his head at my tribulations. He set his pen down the moment I had finished. I do not think he could have raced his pen fast enough to write the half of it.

  ‘Thomas.’ He pulled his waistcoat to fit better. Fat as he was I would have advised he do without. ‘You do know how important it is to tell the truth, now, don’t you, son?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Is this all the truth, Thomas?’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘Where do you live, Thomas?’

  ‘New York. The city, sir.’

  ‘And what is your address?’

  I froze, and he saw it and smiled wickedly.

  I did not know my address!

  Understand that I can take you there, even today. I could guide you to that four-story redbrick house with the four stone steps off a
cobbled street as sure as I can show you my son’s graves. But I was twelve then and did not know. I did not need to know. It was my home. I lived in New York. I realized on that rug that I did not know where mister Colt’s factory was neither, other than I could probably get there from the ferry.

  ‘I … I know where it is, sir, but … but I am schooled at home. I do not go out much. It is near the river and the piers. In Manhattan. We left from Pier 18. Just a left and straight down.’

  I blurted out some names of stores and tradesmen I knew but I could see I might as well have spoke of canyons on the moon. Mrs Carteret put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed as mister Markham rubbed his chin.

  ‘Thomas.’ He sighed. ‘I must look more into this. I shall write to the council in New York with your father’s name and your aunt’s and we shall try to help you. I will also write to Mister Chet Baker to confirm your story as best he is able and—’

  I interrupted, which I never did when adults spoke.

  ‘But you can ride to Mister Baker’s in little more than a day! I will take you!’

  He adjusted himself again. ‘I will write to Mister Chet Baker to confirm. That will be the way of it, son.’ No doubt it was his pen that kept him fat.

  ‘In the meantime you must spend some days with the good folks at the orphan asylum in Philadelphia. Our church’s affiliation. They will care for you until we can find your proper place or—should you be imaginative in your current distress—a new family for you.’

  I ran to the table and he ducked from me as if I might strike him.

  ‘No! I have a horse! I can find my own way home! I have seen a map! I crossed the Delaware gap with my father! The road leads there! Mister Colt owes me seventy-five dollars! I can get home!’

  ‘Son, you have no money on you to get you home! It costs coin to cross the Delaware and fare to New York city! As it is we must sell your horse to pay for your transit and support at the asylum. You have admitted to being an orphan. We cannot permit you to ride the road alone now that we have taken you into our conscience. Your aunt will be made aware, if she exists at all, and in time we will settle the matter. You are better off than some. I assure you it would only be for a month or two once my letters are responded.’