Pete Hamill - Forever

“There’s two hundred taverns and only four of them is like this. Isn’t that right, Diamond?”

“Right, Mary.”

The British authorities didn’t like it, Sandy said, but they took Hughson’s little bribes and left him alone. Mary laughed. “John says the English captain is really his partner.” Sunday was the slaves’ day off, and because there were so many of them, the white people tried hard to avoid direct confrontations. Yes, it was against the law to serve strong drink to a slave, but this was New York. Yes, it was against the law for slaves to assemble in groups larger than three, but this was New York. After dark, no slave could move through the city without a lantern and a pass from his master; the law meant little because this was New York.

“They’re not a bad lot, the Africans,” Mary Burton said. “I pity them, kidnapped by those English feckheads and brought to this feckin’ sewer.”

There were some free Africans, she said, most of them too old to work anymore, cast into the streets by their masters, who were then spared the task of feeding them. “They’re up in the Out Ward, just above the Common,” Mary Burton said. “They’ve got their own burial ground there. They won’t let them be buried with the feckin’ whites. That’s the bloody English for you. The Jews are in their own wee bit of turf too, along the Chatham Road. The bloody English, always on their own, even when they’re feckin’ dead.”

Cormac heard that first night from Mary, from Quaco (with nods and mutterings from Diamond and sad remarks from Sandy) what he would hear for many weeks to come. For the Africans, New York was getting worse, not better.

“They see too many of us now,” Quaco said quietly. “They needs us. But they don’t want us too.” A flash of something dangerous washed through his composed, intelligent face. “They fears us too,” he said, and started to say something else, and then cut himself off.

Quaco told Cormac that he was twenty-two and had been in New York since he was twelve, working most days in the meat market for Wallace the victualer. Now that he was older and taller and stronger, and showed a gift for African languages as well as English, he was often rented to the dockmaster when ships came in. There were so many languages among the Africans, but the ones he heard most were Ashanti and Yoruba, which was the language of his part of Africa.

“I try don’t to be mean,” he said. “Try don’t to hurt a man or woman. They be scared, them from the ships. They don’t know if they still in the world. I talks to them in Ibo or Yoruba or Ashanti, calm ’em down, tell ’em they be fed soon, get them clo’s to be warm. I gets milk to some chile his mother’s dead from the ship. Cawse, a man get crazy, want to kill somebody, I have to stop him. Man he runs, I catch him. But I helps more than I harms people.”

“Ain’t always be such a way,” said Diamond. “Ain’t all times you be down there helpin’, Quaco. Just proves: Africaman got to help his own self.”

“Don’t talk no foolish words, boy,” Quaco said in warning.

“They sure to be a day,” Diamond said, staring at his small hands, and his rum. “They sure to be a day. Our day.”

“Shut down, fool,” Quaco said, and playfully squeezed Diamond’s head and sipped his own porter. But as the night lengthened, and Mary Burton worked other tables, and Quaco’s tongue was loosened by drink, he told Cormac what it was like to be a slave in New York. Slaves couldn’t ever confront a master. If they did, they got the lash. Sometimes they got the lash for no reason. “Master don’t like the way you look at him, here come the lash. Master don’t like the cookin’? Here come the lash. Silverware missin’? The lash. Africaman can’t go to school to learn to read, ’cause they might read newspapers and see stories ’bout slaves who murder they masters. Or slave rebellions in Jamaica or Georgia.” Silence. “Like we don’t know,” Quaco said, shaking his head. “Like we don’t hear.”

Slaves couldn’t work as coopers or coachmen, they told Cormac (while the music pounded and the porter flowed), because the white coopers and white coachmen couldn’t compete with them for wages. “Nobody competes with us,” said Sandy, “ ’cause we get no wages, sir.” This in an English accent (he was born in New York, and then his mother died and his father was sold to a man in Canada while he was sold to a brickmaker). “They see us as mules, sir, or horses,” Sandy said, waving a thin hand. “Sell us, trade us, rent us.” Diamond murmured, “They sure to be a day.”

Mary Burton heard this fragment of talk and said, “Explain about the great God-fearin’ dog-feckin’ shite-eating Bible-thumpin’ piss-drinkin’ Christian churches!” The three Africans laughed and so did Cormac. “We can’t be Christians,” said Sandy, “because that would mean we had souls, sir. Mules don’t have souls, sir, horses don’t have souls—”

“And if you don’t have a feckin’ soul, then they can give yiz the feckin’ lash!” said Mary Burton.

Slaves couldn’t get married in any Christian church, so they had their own ceremonies.

“I marry my wife here in Hughson’s,” said Quaco, and for the first time, his eyes looked bitter in the yellow light of Hughson’s lanterns. “My wife, she work in the fort. Cookin’, cleanin’. They won’t let me see her on Sunday, won’t let me see her at night; she have to sneak out and go with me in the trees, like the white whores by the fort. My wife! And they own her!”

Mary Burton put a calming hand on Quaco’s forearm, sipped furtively from Cormac’s glass of porter, glancing through the crowd at the bar to be sure Hughson didn’t see her.

“In other words,” she said, turning to Cormac, “these poor buggers’re treated like we was treated in the feckin’ Old Country.” She shook her head. “They don’t even have a Catholic church here. Just like the Old Country. It’s against the feckin’ law. So if you’re a Catholic, keep your mouth shut, boy. It’s a Godawful feckin’ crime to be a Catholic priest, and if they find one, they’ll strip him and whip the feckin’ life out of him. God help you if you’re a Catholic African . That’s a double feckin’ crime.”

She was laughing bitterly through this discourse, and so were the Africans. Then she glanced at the bar and her mood suddenly altered. Sarah Hughson had come around from behind the bar and her swagger made clear that she was the real boss of the tavern. Quaco looked uneasy. Other Africans nodded politely to her, not wishing to trigger her wrath and find themselves barred from Hughson’s. The fiddler played a lament, full of Irish sadness, and Sarah came over to the table.

“Ach, it’s the mud man,” she said to Cormac, hands on hips. “You look much better than you did when you arrived. And whatever you do, don’t believe a word from Mary the Mouth.” She smiled, showing her crooked teeth. “Bring the new lad a drink, will you, Mary?”

Mary Burton went to the bar, and Sarah sat down beside Cormac. Quaco, Sandy, and Diamond smiled in welcome but eased away, keeping a respectful distance.

“So what brings you to New York?”

“I want to be a printer.”

“A good trade,” she said. “But you might not find labor. The town’s full of illiterates. Starting with the people that run it.” She turned to Quaco. “How’s your wife, Quaco?”

He shrugged. “Reg’lar, Miz Hughson.”

“She’s still over in the fort?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quaco said, seething again.

“A beautiful woman she is,” Sarah said to Cormac. “A bosom’d make most women weep in envy.” Then, to Quaco: “Better keep an eye out on her. Those soldier boys can’t be trusted.”