Frederick Busch: The Night Inspector

The darkness of the Hudson was the equivalent, below, of the night under which Adam and I, side by side, toiled to sweep the oars to move the boat. Spray from the current battered the craft and soaked us deeper, if that was possible. The spume poured in upon our legs and feet; soon enough, despite the heat of this night, my limbs were nearly numb, for the water of the river was cruelly cold. Sam was in the prow, behind us, holding the lantern and warning us of no specific dangers, but only that we must be careful. At one point, he went so far as to call, “Land, ho!” We took care to avoid the boom when M drew the small sail taut. And, standing before us, one foot near the gunwale, the tiller in one hand while the other seized the gaff hook on its long pole, planted, for balance, against the ribbed flooring of the boat, his oilskins open and glinting in what light we passed or was thrown by the lantern, M, in his closed and bearded face, stared forward, over us and over Sam, toward the distant, retreating chimney that spouted gouts of fire and threw up sparks and made the sound of a railroad locomotive roaring away with a considerable portion of our dignity and hope.

“Land, ho!” Sam called again.

M, between his teeth, said, “We are in a river. Laterally speaking, land is always ho.”

“Shut up, Sam,” I said, and really could not spare the breath.

M saw the outline of a sloop anchored too far out, and he commanded that we swing to the west to avoid it. No traffic confronted or observed us, and the docks of Manhattan passed by, as did the sloop, which seemed, when we rowed next to its hull, as large as a tenement house in the Tenderloin.

Rowing toward the receding ship with the thick, heavy oars, looking ahead of me to M in the stern, I felt as though I were trying to propel us toward him. I strained, and Adam strained, and the little sail crackled, and yet he remained proximate but mysterious, detached. I wondered how much he thought I had preyed upon him, and how much of our companionship he now considered a ploy. He thought, always, of causalities, and it was not impossible that he thought me — hence his little disquisition on empiricism — a blackguard and betrayer. I rowed as if toward him, and he stayed away. He was right.

“Adam,” I panted.

“Mist Barthelmy.”

“I am truly sorry.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You believe me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But the belief,” I tried to say clearly, “brings no comfort.”

“No, sir.”

“I am , Adam.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“I will row now,” Sam called.

M said, “We need a powerful stroke, shipmate. I will row, as well.”

“No, sir,” Adam said, “with due respect. They told me you’re a literary gentleman. That’s a soft-hand business. My hands are hard.”

“Like wood,” I said.

“Like wood,” Sam whispered, maybe memorizing it, I thought.

“I am a workingman,” M said as we passed an empty wharf. “I possess a workingman’s paws.”

“A literary gentleman with paws,” Adam said, pulling hard to compensate for my having lost half of the stroke. “But that’s still a literary,” he said.

“And so I am,” M muttered.

“So are we all,” Sam said. “Ship them,” he called, and we kept them out of the water long enough to permit me to scramble forward and Sam to take my place. I lay on the deck forward of the flat cabin. “Ready,” he said, and they began. “I sculled in the Charles,” Sam said.

“I don’t know him,” Adam said.

I extended my legs to rest my knees, and I tried not to pant as hard as I wished to. I could smell myself above the smell of the river water, and the stab wound in my forearm throbbed. I thought of Chun Ho bathing me, and of Jessie, who had bathed me with her mouth. I drew the.31 from my pocket to rest beside the Navy Colt and, thinking to clean it with my wet scarf, I drew that from the opposite pocket. “Wait,” I said, but no one heard me. Under the scarf, I found folded, wet papers. “The documents,” I called louder, and M shifted at his post in response. “I never turned them over. They were fictitious, remember, and there was no real inquiry from any real policeman or Customs officer. We were so fortunate — they were so fortunate — that no inquiries were posed. Sir,” I called to him, “I can destroy these papers, and at least the forms bearing your signature will be forever lost. They can flutter back into fiction, and you may leave them behind.”

He waved his hand in the air. “Lose them forever, then, if you will, shipmate. Then I must merely contend with my anger and my shame.”

I set the pistol on the deck and tore at any proof of malfeasance — any, that is, except the dark children in the imprisoning tuns. The fragments, like a tiny snow, blew past Sam and fell upon the Hudson River and soon would sink, and M, at least, was now free to be only an official who had happened upon a crime and had done his utmost to bring some villains to brook.

I withdrew the pouch of cartridges from the croker sack and felt only four. I saw that the chambers were empty, and I prayed that I might recover my former skills, for the.31 would serve us only at proximity; our long gun, and the salvation of the children, must be what sent M’s Malcolm into the earth.

As if I soon might have a shot, I lay my gun hand on the deck and, supporting it with my left, I sighted on the smokestack and its sparks, and I thought to squeeze off. But the ship was so far ahead of us that I could not imagine our capturing her. Which her: the question I posed for myself. And why? Because she had gulled me — there is no embarrassment greater, for a New York man such as I, than to be fooled, like the country cousin, by a striking woman of Manhattan — or because she had committed a crime? The nature of the crime was very terrible, for a woman who was (probably) the product of slaves was now, herself, a slaver; like the Africans who sold the slaves to Dutchmen or the Portuguese, she was enslaving her own for the profit. She was no better, I thought, than a white. Yet it was she, naked beside me or upon me, who had whispered my name on my flesh; somehow, I became more authentically myself when she had done that. Just so with her farewell kiss, when she had intimately planted her lips upon the scarf that masked the mask beneath which I sheltered. It was as if she reminded me that I was a man in hiding — as, indeed, I had been throughout the War — and then, with her chewing and sucking at my throat, as if she reminded me that the twice-masked man was this flesh, and this blood, and he was actual.

I came forward, saying, “Adam, I insist now.”

“Your hands, Mist Bartelmy, aren’t even literary like this man’s,” he said.

But he and Sam shipped their oars, and I exchanged places with Adam, and I was pleased, in spite of the burning of my palms and fingers, to be rowing again.

Sam said, “Will we catch them? I can feel the wind rising at us, can I not?”

“Ask the captain,” I said.

“ ‘Ask the captain,’ eh?” M roared, of a sudden, as if I had inspired him. He swung the little jib, then gave up as the wind blew hard from New Jersey, and he let the sail slacken, then tied it loosely to the jib.

He took up the spearlike gaff and shifted it upon the flooring. He adjusted his legs in their stance. Lifting his chin, he said, “Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. Babies unsafe, men unsound, danger everywhere to the frailest. Billy,” he called.

I had the breath to utter, “Sir,” but little more.

“Did you fight your War for the world to come to this?”

“I did not think,” I gasped in a kind of hoarse whisper, “that it might come to too much more.”