3stalwarts (119 page)

The ferry made slow progress. It was loaded to capacity. Besides the Shaker’s outfit, there were two movers’ wagons; an old couple in the one, and a young married pair, obviously their son and daughter-in-law, in the other. At the rear, an oxcart, piled high with seasoned spruce boarding, leaned down on a yoke of somnolent red-and-white oxen, and the Dutch farmer who drove them braced his back against the outturned rump of the nigh beast and dozed himself.

Jerry turned back to face the river.

“That’s quite a notion of Mason Jakes’s,” observed the Shaker. “He trains his ferry horses backwards. Starts them with a whoa. A lot of horses coming on board the first time is nervous, and if you said ‘giddap’ as gentle as a meadow mouse they’d hop right over the rail.”

He looked sidewise at Jerry.

“Where do you aim to look for your land? Ohio? Illinois? Or do you figure to go out into Injun country?”

The boy shook his head.

“Not that far. I don’t hanker for prairie land. It’s my idea to get to the Holland Purchase. Have you seen it?”

“I’ve passed through the south bend of it once or twice— Batavia way. But I’ve never seen the northern half, which they say is best. It’s marshy ground, full of the ague when it’s opened up. But I hear there’s a fine depth of soil.”

“Which way is the best to get there, the Western or the Mohawk?”

“It depends,” said Issachar Bennet. “They both join together out in Manlius. If you had a horse, I’d say take the Great Western. But if you’re footing it, you’d better go by the river pike. There’s more taverns and farms. Beyond Cherry Valley, the Western’s scarce of settlements, unless you follow the southern companies through Otsego to the border.”

“I’m footing it,” said Jerry.

“It ‘pears to me, son, that you ain’t taking much of an outfit.”

“I’ve got nothing to hinder me.”

“Still, a man needs an outfit. Next spring you’ll need oxen or a team, and a plough. Have you got any money?”

“Yes. I’ve got ninety dollars. I aim to use fifty for a down payment on fifty acres and take out articles to pay the other two hundred. They say you have eight years’ time from the Company.”

“That’s true. They’re good folks to deal with.”

The young man stared across at the city. The ferry had made enough of the distance to let him see the men swarming on the docks. Everywhere he looked he saw sloops tied up. On one, men were deviling black bags onto their backs.

“That’s a coal boat,” said Issachar Bennet. “Wood’s coming high in Albany and coal comes from New Jersey. I’ve heard the Corporation’s offered a thousand dollars to any man that finds a mine of coal in five miles of the river.”

The sun was hot in the blue sky. The river sparkled to a warm breeze drawing up from the south. White soft spring clouds were floating over the valley. Under the continual swoop of light after shadow, the city seemed to move. Jerry saw a flock of pigeons sweep over the warehouse roofs and flutter down on the docks. Their wings glanced with a bright ripple of blue and white.

He could hear the shouts of the dock hands faintly over the water. Men were loading a sloop with wheat sacks, man after man, carrying bags on their shoulders. Behind them all manner of wagons passed, oxcarts and lumber wagons. The teams moved slowly, or drowsed between slack traces.

To the right he saw a Pennsylvania wagon under its stained grey hood swing out of a by-street behind its six-horse team and halt before the largest warehouse in sight. A moment later a second had drawn up beside it; and in another moment still a third. A swarm of men, some carrying great scoops and others bags, had invested them.

His eye roved.

“It’s kind of exciting,” the Shaker said sympathetically. “Every time I see it, it gives me a flip in my insides. It wasn’t so long ago Albany wasn’t no more than a trading post with a couple of Dutchmen practising on the Injuns.” He paused. “There’s the New York packet.”

Jerry turned downstream. Cutting a great roll out of the river with its sharp bows, he saw the packet boat. Her towering stack was belching black tumultuous rolls of smoke that the breeze snatched and carried forward. While he looked, a tuft of white, like a bursting milkweed pod, sprang out against the side of the stack. The harsh, half-human scream of steam shot up the river.

At the sound, the skipper shouted to the driver boy.

“Giddap,” cried the boy, and the ferry horses stopped their treading. The wheels and the creaking gears fell silent, and the boat drifted.

The packet loomed over them with incredible swiftness. Jerry saw passengers thronging the upper deck. In the bridge house a man leaned from a window, the white beaver on his head precariously cocked. One hand in-side the window toyed with the spokes of a wheel. The packet veered and slid past.

Jerry heard a panting in her, like the panting of a horse after a long run. He saw the walking beam above the decks tilt up and down and the boil of white foam breaking away from her paddles. On the huge wheel housing, scrolled in gold, he read the packet’s name— Olive Branch.

The ferry skipper swung his flat hulk to meet the wash, and the ferry lifted and dipped, slapping her bottom on the water.

A terrific jangling of bells broke out in the steamboat. The paddles ceased their beating of the river, and with a majestic quiet she slid into her landing.

When the ferry quieted, the horses took up their endless progress. She was past midstream now, with her slip yawning plainly before her at the lower end of South Market. Jerry was once more leaning over the rail with the water sliding smoothly towards him.

“That’s a queer-looking bunch of people.”

Issachar Bennet looked where he pointed.

A sloop was tied up to the dock. In the bow a couple of hands sat idly kicking their heels. On the stern deck a group of people made a knot, like a knot of herded cattle. There was a kind of bewilderment on their faces; they stood over bundles and bags, or held them in their hands.

“Why don’t they land?” asked the young man. “I’ve seen them since we started.”

A man in a blue peajacket and a varnished black straw hat was standing on the dock beside the sloop, talking to a knot of townsfolk. His face shone a brilliant burned red over his sandy square beard, and when he took a few steps he moved with a rolling gait.

“Looks like Henry Fearon,” said Bennet. “He’s master of a brig. They look like a load of redemptioners. Wait a minute.”

He fished in his coat pocket.

“Here’s yesterday’s Gazette.”

He turned the small pages, his sharp eyes running down the lines of fine print.

“That’s what they are all right, son. Here’s the advertisement, if you want to read it.”

The young man took the paper. On the second page he found, under the lottery advertisement, the following paragraph:

From the Brig, Bubona— Liverpool to Hudson The Passengers

At the sloop dock, April 15, 1817, at half after eleven, who are willing to defray the expense of their passage by engaging themselves for a limited time, consist of persons of the following occupations, besides women and children; viz:— 13 farmers, 1 baker, 1 butcher, 1 whitesmith, 2 shoemakers, 1 brewer, 1 wheelwright, 2 barbers, 1 cabinetmaker, 1 stockingweaver, 1 coalburner, 2 coopers.

Apply on board Honeyman’s sloop, Lady. Henry Fearon, master Bubona, present at that time.

Issachar Bennet watched the young man’s lips carefully framing the words. Jerry’s color heightened as he read. He returned the paper without comment, and the Shaker pocketed it.

“Poor things,” he said. “I feel sorry for them. It’s not so bad for the men. It’s the women and children. The young ones. They don’t know what’s in for them and they can’t choose. Fearon signs them on to any that meets his price, and if there’s a difficulty about the pounds and dollars in it, he just whacks on extra time to make it up.”

Jerry kept silent. A cloud shadow that had been passing the docks drew suddenly up the hill, and the sunlight, like a moving thing, supplanted it.

Among the redemptioners his eyes were caught by a coppery gleam. It flashed sharply before the brown warehouse walls, the dun city. In all those sea-pale faces it shone like a flower blooming, and he shifted along the rail to see it better.

A young woman was standing behind the others at the very rear of the sloop deck. A couple of bundles lay at her feet, but she stood straight. She had a mass of coppery hair carried round her head in two tight braids. Her chin was up; but as the ferry nosed in towards its slip he saw the rapid rise and fall of her breast and her grey eyes moving over the docks, the redemptioners in front of her, the captain’s jaunty figure, the city with its noon hour smokes whipping northward. She wore a brown wool dress with a dark blue shawl over her shoulders and a small black scarf, like mourning, round her throat. And he saw that she was afraid.

“It don’t seem right,” the Shaker was saying in his ear. “Up there in the Capitol they’ve passed a bill this spring to free the slaves; and they’ll tell you redemptioning is legal.”

His long sharp face grew serious.

“I’m not exactly a good man, son. But it riles me. And I’m a good preacher. And I’d like to preach a sermon against men like Fearon. He’s what his church calls an uncommon good man, goes regular on Sundays and collects money to missionate the heathen with, but I’d like to preach a sermon against him just the same, just if I knew every word of it would come true.”

“Easy, there,” the driver boy shouted behind them to his horses. “Slow.”

“We’re almost in,” said Bennet.

“What time is it?” asked Jerry.

“Fifteen after eleven, I should judge, son.”

He glanced at the boy.

“Don’t let it rankle you, son. There’s nothing you can do about it.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “I guess we won’t see each other in a minute. I’ve got some dealings here and in Schenectady afore I cut south.”

“South?” echoed Jerry, mechanically.

“Yes, I’m on a mission trip to Kentucky. We’re making a start there in the mountains. There’s one thing I’d like to know, boy. How’d you manage to get past your Pa?”

A small grin stretched the young man’s lips.

“Pa said I was crazy. But I’d served out my twenty-one years to him, and last winter I worked out for hire. So I said I was bent. And he gave me twenty-five dollars and said he was shut of me.”

The Shaker chuckled.

“I envy you, son. I mind my first trip westward on my own. There’s nothing like it in the world. Good luck to you.” His lean fingers gripped Jerry’s hard palm with surprising strength.

“Maybe we’ll meet again, some day. I’m apt to wander most anywheres.”

The boat bumped into the slip and the skipper ran forward to set the gang. Jerry picked up his bundle and stepped aside for the Shaker’s team.

The skinny old man was on the wagon seat, his knees bent sharply towards his chin. He flourished his whip to Jerry and pushed the brown team into a trot. The iron tires spun on the cobbles, and as he swung into South Market Street Jerry caught a last wave of his thin hand.

Jerry stood where he was while the movers’ wagons filed off. They were followed by a couple of amiable cows who confronted the city with staring eyes. But a small dog yapping at their heels and the stick in the younger man’s hand urged them forward. The boat tilted as they passed onto the dock, and the oxen had to draw their cart up a grade.

The horse boy reversed the position of the two horses and the captain sat down on a box and mopped his face.

“I’m a Dutchman,” he remarked to Jerry. “Yes, sir, I’m a blasted Dutchman if this ain’t the hottest April day in my remembrance. Winters ain’t what I recollect as a boy.”

“It’s real hot,” Jerry agreed.

Just up the dock he saw the sloop load of redemptioners. He had a clear view of the girl in the blue shawl now. Some of the spirit had slipped out of her attitude. Her shoulders were drooping a little. Her eyes had ceased their restless wandering and were bent downriver with a passive, hopeless stare.

Her profile was half turned to him, so that he saw the curve of her cheek and the moulding of her chin. Most of her companions were older people, making her seem younger than she probably was. Her grey eyes were large, set rather wide, and her short straight nose rather broad between them. She had a full chin, with suggestion of a dimple. The others talked among themselves, now and then pointing out buildings or people to each other. One man, who in his pink plumpness could only be the baker, cracked a joke that made his neighbors laugh. For the most part, though, they were merely accepting their situation. It meant nothing to them; for a while they would have to work without pay— that was all.

But the girl was afraid. She did not talk to the others; she kept to herself. A sailor, rolling down the dock, spied her and hailed her. The sloop hands laughed. And the girl, with a swift lift of her head, noticed him, her color deepened, and she bit her lips and moved indefinably closer to the others, as if she meant to conceal herself. As she stared round, her eyes met Jerry’s.

For an instant he felt like waving to her; but he was conscious of the ferry captain’s scrutiny, and turned his head.

“How do I get to the Mohawk Pike?” he asked.

The captain was stuffing a chew into his jaw. He spat phlegmatically into the river and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“That’s South Market Street. Go along that to State Street and turn up the hill. When you get to the Capitol, if you ask, somebody’s bound to know.”

Jerry looked back at the sloop. The girl was standing in her former attitude, staring downriver. Issachar Bennet was right. There was nothing he could do about it. He picked up his bundle.

“Thanks,” he said.

But the captain was talking to himself. “I’m a Dutchman if it ain’t hot. Not that I’d hold out against a Dutchman, but they make an honest man sick for a steady diet.”

Jerry turned away. The hot breeze, the slap of the ripple against the piles, were behind him. He was his own man, for a fact. And that, the Shaker had said, was the finest thing in the world. For years he had looked forward to this day. Having crossed the river, he felt that he had entered western territory, with Albany but a step for him to pass. He thought of the land he would square off. He would pick his piece with good timber, lowland for deep soil, with a brook, if he could find one, running through.