Soul Catcher (24 page)

^{The third on the list appeared more promising. This Howard, a lawyer, lived in a grand house in the Back Bay. When Cain had made inquiries about Elias Howard in a nearby pub, he learned that he indeed had abolitionist sympathies and, on at least one occasion, had defended a runaway slave in court. Cain and Strofe took up positions on either end of the street, which was lined with linden trees.}

^{"Pull your hat down low and try not to look too obvious," Cain advised him.}

^{They watched the residence for two days. While waiting in an alley, Cain bought a newspaper from a passing boy and spent some time perusing it. He read an article about several new cases of cholera breaking out among the immigrant ships in the harbor and another about the Panic and how a number of banks had closed on account of it. He read about the recently inaugurated President Buchanan sending more troops to Kansas to quell the continued fighting out there. Mention was also made of a certain Mr. Thoreau, who had given a lecture at the Concord town hall just the week before. In it he had praised John Brown's work on behalf of "our Negro brethren" and he'd asked for financial support so that the good captain might continue to carry on his noble mission. Cain wondered whether or not they'd seen the last of Brown. At the bottom of one page was the obituary of a young woman named Maria Howells, nineteen, who had drowned in a boating accident off a place called Nahant. Her betrothed had written an elegy to occasion the woman's death.}

^.

^{The flowerlets of Summer were blooming,}

^{The pine Groves were thrilling with Song,}

^{And gay Birds on golden Wings mounting,}

^{Like Sunbeams were flitting along,}

^{While Clouds o'er the blue azure sailing,}

^{Like spirits of Beauty and more,}

^{And seemed, on the rapt Vision beaming}

^{Let down from the region of Love!}

^.

^{Cain knew the verse to be doggerel, but the poem made him think of his Indian girl. He wished he'd done something like that, written a poem to her memory.}

^{On page two he came across an article about a murder. It said the body of a woman had been found down near the docks on Atlantic Avenue. She had been viciously beaten and her throat cut. The article said that she was well known among the police as Singapore Sally, a lady of the evening. Authorities were requesting that anyone having information about the crime contact the police. Cain thought of Preacher, of how he'd had a run-in with the whore he'd been with, how he said he'd fixed her wagon.}

^{When they hadn't seen any sign of the runaway by the end of the first day, they got a room at a boardinghouse down near the Charles to save them the trouble of riding all the way out into the countryside. It was a squalid place, a haunt of tars and strumpets and men of questionable character. They had to share a bed. Strofe's stomach problems continued. He alternated between groaning and farting, and getting up and rushing to the outhouse in back. When he finally did fall asleep he snored so loudly he woke Cain up. Cain would elbow him in the side, and he'd turn over, only to fall to snoring again shortly.}

^{The next morning they returned to spying on Elias Howard's residence. Mr. Howard was a short, stout, ruddy-faced man who wore a tall stovepipe hat. Each morning he went off to work and returned late in the evening appearing shorter and more ruddy-faced; his wife, willowy and delicate, usually left the house midmorning accompanied by a servant, a young Negro girl. They'd return with the servant straining under her purchases. They had two other Negroes who worked for them, a heavy, middle-aged female cook who lived with them and a gray-haired old man who showed up to drive their cabriolet or lug coal into the house. But they saw no sign of the runaway they were after. Cain finally concluded they were wasting their time here. They quit for the evening and decided to head back to the boardinghouse. On the way, they stopped at a public house and ordered supper.}

^{"I'll break that nigger's neck he lied to us," Strofe said, sipping on a hot rum.}

^{"We still have two more names on the list," offered Cain.}

^{"Mr. Eberly's gonna be madder'n a wet hen we don't find her."}

^{"If she's here, we'll find her."}

^{"And what if she ain't?" Strofe picked something from his beard, inspected it closely, then put it in his mouth and chewed. "How come you do this, Cain?"}

^{"Do what?"}

^{"Hunt down runaways."}

^{Cain shrugged. "The money is good."}

^{"I wouldn't figure you for something like this."}

^{"No?" Cain said. "What would you figure me for?"}

^{"I don't know. Not this."}

^{That night, as Strofe lay in bed snoring loudly away, Cain had trouble sleeping. Finally, he got up and went over to the window, staring out at the darkened city. He thought about his conversation with Strofe earlier. About why he did this. He couldn't say really, no more than any man could say why he'd chosen this path or that. A combination of luck and fate. Being injured in the war. Seeing that ad in the newspaper. He supposed money did have a good bit to do with it, as it always did in the affairs of men. But in any event, this would be his last hunt. He would get out of this filthy business once and for all. He would do something else with his life. Even if he did feel old, he was still a young man, with a young man's dreams. Maybe he would head out west. Men were still finding gold out there. Perhaps with the money he got for bringing back the runaway, he could head out there and use it as a grubstake to set him up. Maybe his luck would be better in California.}

^{The following morning, they left early, heading for the next Howard on the list, a fellow named John who lived clear across the city in the North End. It was a bright spring day, sunny, with the dew already burning off and the pungent salt- and fish- and human- smell of the city already percolating. They were riding along Joy Street, a slovenly neighborhood made up of Negro freedmen and Irish immigrants. The street was crowded now with people heading off to work, carpenters and shipwrights, coopers and masons lugging the tools of their trade. Many emerged from dark, fetid alleyways in crowded, unkempt tenements. Raw sewage and horse manure and garbage littered the ground while, overhead, clothes dangled from lines strung between windows.}

^{"Do you reckon--" Strofe began, but then stopped in mid- sentence.}

^{Cain was riding ahead of him and he turned in the saddle. "Do I reckon what?"}

^{But Strofe's attention was caught by something up ahead. "Son of a bitch," he said, pointing up the street. "There she be."}

^{Cain looked where he was pointing. Walking up in front of them some thirty paces and on the opposite side of the street was a young Negro woman. She wore a blue dress of homespun, an apron over that, and on her head a red kerchief. She walked solidly in a man's sturdy dark brogans, and in the crook of an arm she carried an empty shopping basket, as if she were headed to market. She was tall and sinewy, long of neck and leg, with broad shoulders. He could tell she wasn't a field nigger by the way she carried herself, light and effortlessly, her bearing erect, someone not used to stooping to pick cotton or tobacco. Her stride was swift and agile, with the suppleness of a cat. Cain reined in Hermes, not wanting to get too close and tip off their presence to her.}

^{"What we gonna do?" asked Strofe, leaning toward Cain.}

^{"We wait."}

^{"Hell, whyn't we just take her?"}

^{"With all these people around, we'd have half the city down on us."}

^{"So what's your plan?"}

^{"We follow her for a while. See where she's headed."}

^{They trailed her at a prudent distance. She kept her gaze down, not making eye contact, and she walked briskly toward Faneuil Market, which was on the east side of the city, toward the bay. She didn't acknowledge anyone she passed but moved anonymously through the crowd with the wariness of a deer that had caught the scent of the hunter, as if she sensed danger all around her, as if she felt at any moment a hand might light on her shoulder and draw her back into servitude. In Cain's experience, when most new runaways were among the free they still walked with the mentality of a slave, head down, trying not to catch the eye of someone who might recognize them. In fact, this very caution was often a dead giveaway as to their status. She turned into several side streets and narrow lanes, and each time she did Cain and Strofe held back, not wanting her to become aware of them. Yet, when she turned onto the busy Court Street, they'd followed a little too closely, afraid they might lose her. She stopped abruptly, and the two riders almost ran headlong into her. They weren't ten feet apart. Fortunately, the street was crowded at this hour with people going to and fro, with other riders and carriages, so they didn't stand out as much as they would have in some back lane.}

^{She'd paused to gaze into a shop window at something. With the sun low and glinting off the glass, Cain couldn't see what it was. But it had obviously caught the girl's fancy. She stared dreamily, even wistfully into the shop window, her lips parted, her free hand absentmindedly playing with a loose tendril of hair. After a while she seemed to be staring at herself in the glass, for she pulled the strand of hair back behind her ear and she adjusted the kerchief on her head. Perhaps it was then that she noticed in the reflection the two men on horseback behind her. She turned and glanced over her shoulder in their direction. For a precarious moment, she seemed to look right at Cain, their eyes locking, as occasionally happens between the hunted and the hunter, right before the trigger is pulled. He was certain she recognized them for what they were, with that sixth sense runaways possessed to nose out a slave catcher even among a crowd. He was prepared, if she bolted, to run her down and take their chances with grabbing her in broad daylight. But two things worked in their favor. Luckily, Strofe had had the presence of mind to pull his hat down over his face and pretend to be occupied by a fit of coughing. And the lure of the article in the window proved too strong, for it drew her attention back into the window. She turned and continued staring at it, a vague smile slowly forming on her lips, a smile she fought to suppress but couldn't.}

^{She was a light-skinned octoroon, her complexion the color of cured tobacco, with highlights of red in it suggesting some distant Indian blood. Her face was lean and angular, with high cheekbones and a nose somewhat long for a Negro, a mouth full yet held in check, almost against its own nature. And then there were the eyes, large and of a shade of blue Cain hadn't seen before, not even in a white person, and filled with a serious expression that was both defiant and yet restrained, a fearsome sort of energy barely contained by a sheer mastery of will. He'd seen that sort of look only in certain wild-spirited horses, ones who'd been saddle-broke but retained all of their mettle, who were always looking for the chance to throw a rider from its back and stomp him into the ground if the chance ever presented itself. She was, he thought, striking more than pretty, beautiful in a fierce, defiant sort of way, the way some forces of nature--a storm or lightning-- could be considered beautiful. And she reminded him, vaguely but decidedly, of someone he'd once known. Some Negro perhaps who used to work on his father's farm. Or a runaway he'd once captured. Still, Cain suddenly knew why Eberly had set such store by her and was willing to go to such lengths to have her returned. She was not something an owner would want to lose.
Bring her back,
the old man had told him. Cain thought how vulnerable the arrogant Eberly had sounded, and now he could see why.}

^{Then she turned and was in motion again, moving amid the morning crowd down Court Street. As they passed the shop she'd been gazing in, Cain cast a curious sideways glance. In the window hung an elegant woman's dress, long-sleeved, gathered at the waist with a bustle filling out the back, and delicate lace at the sleeves and around the high-necked collar. It was blue. The shiny material-- was it silk or satin?--caught and reflected the light back into the street.}