Pete Hamill - Forever

“Water is the big problem now,” he said, “and the town can’t grow until it’s solved. How? With aqueducts, the way the Romans solved their problem. The sooner the better. Have you ever smelled such stinking people? They use incense in the churches because the people in a crowd smell like they’ve been dead for nine days. And breakfast: How is it possible, without a major effort, to eat one’s eggs when the room smells like feet? ”

Cormac started smelling feet everywhere. For two days, he could not eat eggs. Meanwhile, they looked at shops too small, and shops too large, shops that resembled prison cells, and shops made for rallies, and along the way, Mr. Partridge tried to explain the great New York political rivalry between the Livingstons and the De Lanceys. Cormac couldn’t follow its intricacies. He was too busy drinking in the variety of the town, its faces, its languages, its hand-lettered walls. Seeing it with the same joy—in spite of the stench—that filled Mr. Partridge.

“Look at all these signs, lad,” the older man said. “They’re going to feed the two of us!”

Posters adorned many walls, advertising dentists and writing teachers, elocutionists and dancing masters, goods freshly arrived from England or taken by some privateer. Shops sold cutlery, pewter, glassware, tobacco, watches, coffee, boots, trunks, tools. Sometimes their owners stood outside, shouting the virtues of their wares to those who could not read the signs. More often, posters did the shouting. Some offered rewards for runaway slaves, or runaway apprentices, or runaway indentured servants. Each of these was written in a mixture of surprise and rage. This trusted slave had stolen a horse. That Irish wench had absconded with clothing. This apprentice had lifted a master’s tools. Cormac thought the physical descriptions sounded like the Sunday customers at Hughson’s. Some probably were.

In the shops or on the streets, Cormac began seeing Africans who’d passed through Hughson’s, working as tinners and carpenters, butchers and handlers of horses, and they exchanged subtle nods of recognition. Cormac kept seeing them as runaways. Moving through the green forests to the north of the island. Heading for wilderness. And freedom. In his mind, he saw Kongo too. Wherever he was. Getting ready to run.

On days when Mr. Partridge was following his own trails, Cormac sometimes wandered down to the Slave Market at the foot of Wall Street, hoping for news of Kongo and the others. One morning he watched the landing of seventeen new Africans. Quaco was there, helping to keep them calm, but Cormac didn’t approach him. The Africans were sold at an average of fifty pounds each and then led away to a holding pen to wait for a ship that would carry them to Carolina. Forty-seven Irish men and women were also sold, their indentures assumed by speculators, and sent to separate cages. Then he saw the guard who had hit Kongo on the back with his rifle butt. He went over to him.

“Excuse me.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember?” Cormac said. “Two weeks ago, I was here and you hit an African with a rifle butt and I asked you to stop.”

“Yes, you Oirish bastard. I remember you.”

“I want to apologize.”

“You do?”

“I know that you were just doing your work. But you see, we’d all just come off the ship after thirteen terrible weeks together and I was just—”

“Forget it.”

Cormac thought: He must know I’m feigning the apology, but he’s English. He accepts the formal hypocrisy; it always makes life easier.

“Let me ask you,” Cormac said. “Did you ever see those Africans again?”

The guard’s face tightened as he tried to recall.

“Well, I don’t know, we see a lot of them here. And they’re all blacker than fecking pitch. This is the season, before the winter. They—”

“The ones from that day, were they shipped off? To the Carolinas? Or Virginia?”

“Well, I believe—I think they were divided, actually. Most of them shipped, three or four bought here. Yes. I’m sure at least three of them stayed in New York. Including that surly bastard you were so anxious to protect.”

Kongo was somewhere in the city.

“Thanks, uh…”

Cormac offered his hand and the guard shook it.

“Adams. Francis Adams. From Liverpool.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

“Aren’t we all,” he said. “Aren’t we all.”

On his second Friday evening at Hughson’s, Cormac dined on ham and roasted potatoes at the bar, sipped a porter, and then passed through the blue door and climbed the stairs to his room. The door was unlocked. When he stepped inside, Mary Burton was pouring hot water into the tub. The curtains were drawn. She nodded a hello. He noticed that her features had softened in the muted yellow light of the lamp. The tub was almost full.

“Get in,” she said, “while it’s hot.”

“Thanks.”

She paused, looking at him.

“Tonight, I’ll join you,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

“That’d be grand.”

Neither of them moved.

“I want you to take off me clothes,” she whispered. “And then squeeze the loneliness out of me.”

They made love in the hot, cleansing water and then again on the flat, open bed. She dressed and went down to work. In the nights that followed, they tried squeezing away loneliness on the floor and again on the bed and standing by the window in the darkness with the night sky of America spreading away to the south and west. They almost never spoke. They never once mentioned love. She never once said “feck.”

On the Friday morning of his third week in New York, everything changed. Cormac was finishing breakfast in the quiet bar at Hughson’s, reading the New York Gazette . At separate tables, two commercial travelers did the same, preparing for the rigors of the day with bread, butter, and tea. The knocker banged, the front door opened. Cormac heard a few murmured words. Mary Burton appeared, mop in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other.

“It’s for you,” she said. Her blank stare told Cormac that she’d read the unsealed note. He took it from her and saw Mr. Partridge’s handwriting. PACK YOUR BAGS AND COME AT ONCE. I’VE FOUND A PLACE. P

Cormac thought: At last! At last, I can leave Hughson’s and be in my own small piece of New York, doing work, learning a trade. He glanced up, and Mary Burton’s eyes were drilling holes in his skull.

“So you’re leaving,” she said.

“Leaving here. But not leaving New York, Mary. I’ll be back.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I will,” Cormac said, waving the slip of paper. “But this is what I’ve been waiting for. You know that. I told you.”

“Oh, just go, without the feckin’ blather.”

“All right.”

He packed his things quickly and strapped the sword to his hip, letting it show. When he came down the stairs carrying his bag, Sarah Hughson blocked the front door. The blue door to the bar was closed, and Mary Burton was out of sight.

“You owe us ten shillings,” Sarah Hughson said.

“I do not,” Cormac said. “I paid for my room in advance. And I’m leaving two days early. You should be returning me—”

“You owe us ten shillings,” she repeated. “For the use of Mary Burton.”

The blue door opened, and Mary Burton burst in, gripping her mop.

“How feckin’ well dare you!” she shouted at Sarah.

“Stay out of this, girl.”

“I never missed a feckin’ minute of labor for you, Mrs. Hughson! I’ve been a perfect wee slave!”

“Shut up!” Sarah Hughson said.

“I will not.”

“This is my place, you dirty wee thing. I make the rules!”