Soul Catcher (23 page)

^{Cain brought a plate of food over to Henry, who sat shackled to a birch tree near the horses. The spring night was cool and clear, salt scented, the sky laden heavily with stars. From where they sat atop the hill, they could see in the distance the ocean, whose sound came to them muffled, like the breath of an old man sleeping. A lighthouse shone a few miles out in the harbor, every now and then casting its light toward the shore.}

^{"I'm going to take these off," Cain said, indicating the shackles. "Don't try anything."}

^{"I sho'nuf won't," the Negro said.}

^{Cain removed the key from his vest pocket--he kept one key on his person at all times, a second remained in the saddlebags with the other shackles. He unlocked the shackles and sat near him while Henry ate the cornmeal with his fingers and dipped his fried corn pone into it.}

^{"You said this girl Rosetta went to stay with a family named Howard."}

^{"Das right," he said, hungrily shoveling the food into his mouth.}

^{"You're telling me the truth, right, Henry?"}

^{"I swear to God."}

^{Cain looked over his shoulder at the two Strofes seated around the campfire, some thirty feet away.}

^{"Here, Henry," he said, handing him his flask." The Negro took it and drank from it eagerly, winced at the taste, then wiped the mouth of the flask off on his sleeve and handed it back.}

^{"That sho warms a belly. Thank ye kindly, massa."}

^{In an undertone, Cain asked, "May I ask you something, Henry? And I want you to tell me the truth."}

^{The Negro nodded.}

^{"How well did you know the girl?"}

^{"Told you, didn't lay no hand on her."}

^{"I believe you. I just want to know how well you knew her back on Eberly's plantation?"}

^{"Knew her some. Saw her about, here and there. I works in the tannery making shoes and such. She be up in the massa house. Didn't have much truck wid her."}

^{"She have an easy life?"}

^{"What you mean easy?"}

^{"I mean up there in the house, did she have certain privileges the rest of you didn't?"}

^{"I reckon so. House niggers always does. Mr. Eberly he treat her right fine. Dress her up in fancy clothes. Treat her like a white woman."}

^{"Sounds like she had it pretty good. Then why did she run?"}

^{Henry paused in his eating for a moment and looked over at Cain.}

^{"Ever' slave gits him a notion to run now and then. 'Sides, Miss Rosetta she ain't like reg'lar slaves."}

^{"How so?"}

^{"She uppity," he said with a laugh. "Think herself better'n ever'body else. You ax any slave on massa's plantation, they tell you about her."}

^{"Did the other slaves resent her?"}

^{"I reckon some did. Like I said, she got a high opinion of herself."}

^{"Did she steal something, Henry?"}

^{"Steal something?"}

^{"Something of value from Eberly."}

^{The Negro shook his head. "I don't rightly know. If she done so, she didn't tell me nothin'."}

^{"What happened to her child?"}

^{"Chile?" he said, knitting his brows.}

^{"I know she had a child. Eberly told me," Cain lied. He wasn't even sure why he wanted to know all this. He told himself that by knowing more about her it would help him catch her. But then again, it was probably just his own curiosity. "What happened to it, Henry?"}

^{Before answering, he looked uneasily over Cain's shoulder at the Strofes.}

^{"Massa Eberly done sold him off," Henry said. "Why?"}

^{"I guess 'cause she run off."}

^{"I heard it was on account of how she'd knifed him." "Maybe so."}

^{"Was it his? Eberly's child?" Another look toward Strofe. "I doan rightly know."}

^{"I know there's talk among the slaves. What did they say?" "Some say it was massa's." "What else did they say?" "Nuthin'."}

^{Cain offered the flask again. Henry took another drink. "Why did he sell her child, then?"}

^{"Like I said, to learn her a lesson. Fo' runnin' off like dat." "And for knifing him?" "Fo' both, I reckon."}

^{"Did you know what the child's name was?" Henry considered that for a moment, screwing up his mouth. Finally he said, "Israel." "Israel?" "Yessum."}

^{* * *}

^{T
he next morning Strofe had his brother stay behind to watch Henry while he and Cain mounted up and rode into Boston. They followed The Neck, the strip of land that had once been a thin umbilical cord linking the city to the mainland but which now, due to all the dredging, was over a mile across and covered with roads and buildings. To the east, the sky over the water was overcast and}

^{leaden, the sun behind the clouds singeing the edges, turning them a fiery pink. A clipper ship was slowly being towed out of the harbor by a steam tugboat.}

^{As chance would have it, they ran into Preacher on the roan coming the other way. Half asleep in the saddle, he had a raw-looking gash under his left eye that continued to ooze blood down his gaunt cheek. From ten feet, he stank of axle grease and rotgut whiskey. Cain thought there was something else different about him, though he couldn't at first put his finger on it.}

^{"The hell happened to you?" Strofe asked.}

^{"The fuckin' whore," he said, his speech still thick from drink. "She wouldn't take three dollars, though I done told her it was all I had. So I took me three dollars' worth, which was two more'n she was worth. But the bitch sicced her fancy man after me."}

^{"Looks like you came out on the short end of the horn," Strofe said with a laugh.}

^{"He knowed he was in a scrape," he said, with a crooked smile. "And I fixed that bitch's wagon but good."}

^{"Where's your hat, Preacher?"}

^{Preacher reached up and touched his bare head, as if he'd just noticed it was gone. So that was it, Cain thought. In all the weeks they'd been together, he'd not seen him without it. Hatless, his blond head looked small and unformed, vulnerable as the head of a baby bird.}

^{"Damned if I know," Preacher said, spurring the horse and taking off. As he rode away, he teetered unsteadily in the saddle, as if he might fall out of it.}

^{The city was filled with crowds of disheveled, scarecrow-looking people wandering aimlessly about. As Cain and Strofe rode along, they were approached several times by grimy urchins with dirty, outstretched hands. "Sir, could ye spare a penny," a child would say in a frail, lilting accent. Cain was amazed at how much things had changed since he'd last been here. Back in '50, the Irish had just started to spill out of their plague-infested famine ships, fleeing the holocaust of their homeland. He remembered Eileen McDuffy telling him about the terrible hardships that she'd left back in Ireland, and that was well before the famine. She would hold his head against her soft, white breasts and sing to him sad songs of home.}

^{"Who the hell are all these no-account Jonathans?" Strofe asked.}

^{"Irish," Cain replied.}

^{"What're they doing here?"}

^{"They've had a great famine back in their own country."}

^{They were everywhere, sleeping in doorways, standing on street corners and in alleyways, pushing carts loaded with coal or fish. The worst of them were the children. Dressed in rags, their faces besmirched, gaunt and sallow skinned. Some hawked apples or roasted chestnuts, while many just stood there with their bony hands extended, waiting for a penny. Cain threw a coin to one or two, and rode on.}

^{At the City Hall on School Street, he told Strofe to watch the horses while he went inside. He spoke to a tall, thin man with muttonchops and told him he was looking for someone but didn't know where he lived. The man led him to a stuffy, windowless room and got out a large ledger book that said
Boston Directory
on the cover.}

^{"Anybody registered as living in Boston should be listed in there," the man told him. "Has occupations and addresses."}

^{Cain turned to the
Hs,
found five Howards listed, and wrote down their addresses. He suspected it wouldn't be this simple, though sometimes it turned out to be, and so he started there.}

^{They spent the better part of the morning looking up the first two on the list. The first was named Samuel Howard, a bookseller whose store was in Cambridge across from the city jail. Before they went in, Cain asked Strofe if the runaway knew what he looked like.}

^{"'Course she knows what I look like."}

^{"Then whyn't you wait around back in the alley. If she's here, I don't want to spook her. I won't be long."}

^{Cain went in and spent an hour leisurely looking up and down the shelves at all the books. He hadn't had the opportunity to do this in some time, so he enjoyed himself thoroughly. When he was a boy and his father would take him to Richmond, he used to love perusing musty old volumes in Hoynby's booksellers.}

^{After a while Strofe came lumbering up to him.}

^{"What are you doing in here?" Cain said to him.}

^{"She here or not?" he whispered to him.}

^{"I didn't inquire yet."}

^{He watched as Cain turned back to a slender volume he held in his hands. "What in the Sam Hill you doin', Cain?"}

^{"Do you know what this is?"}

^{"A book."}

^{"Not just a book. A first edition of
Rasselas."}

^{"We ain't come all this way to waste our time looking at a dang book."}

^{"I'll be right out," he told him.}

^{Strofe stared at him in disbelief.}

^{"Mr. Eberly's gone hear about this," he said as he sulked out of the store.}

^{When Cain went to purchase the book, he engaged Mr. Howard, an old man with long white hair, in a discussion about Johnson. During the course of the conversation, Cain drew the man out. He learned that Mr. Howard and his invalid wife lived above their store, and it was obvious from things he said that they didn't have the time or the inclination to be harboring an escaped slave. Cain bought the book anyway, thanked the man, and left.}

^{The next Howard, an Edward, turned out to live in Fort Hill, a poor section in the southeast part of the city. Cain went up to the door and was greeted by a pale, dark-haired young woman with a Scottish brogue. He asked if he might speak to Mr. Howard on a matter of urgent business. The woman's eyes turned unfocused suddenly, and then she started to cry. Cain gave her a handkerchief while she explained to him that recently her husband, while sailing back to Scotland to visit his aging father, had contracted ship fever and died, leaving her a widow with four young children. Cain offered her his condolences and left.}