Stand the Storm (26 page)

“I would have a suit or two. Come to this house and inquire for me,” the gentleman said much more loudly than previously as he handed over a crisp white card embossed with the name
Jacob Millrace.

Gabriel looked at the snow-white business card. The address was notable if memory served. There was no information as to the profession of Mr. Millrace. The name did not include the honorific of reverend or doctor, so Gabriel guessed that Millrace was neither. What did the man do to earn his rich living?

Gabriel Coats was a quick observer and an accurate estimator. Was the fellow broad or narrow through the shoulders, taller or shorter than himself, weak and birdlike or taut and muscular in the chest and belly or barrel-shaped or beer-belly rounded, long-legged or set on stumpy legs, slumped with age or upright and vigorously youthful? The composite of these measures stamped a durable picture in Gabriel’s mind. Jacob Millrace was nearly heroic in his measures.

Among the circle of his acquaintance, Jacob Millrace was viewed as two men. With the community of free colored, he was a proud, wealthy businessman. Jacob Millrace was adequately educated. He could read well and figure and was fond of a spirited exchange on the news of the day. He did not have so much education that he felt comfortable to discuss literature and the arts. Nevertheless he attended the courtly forms of entertainment—parlor concerts at the homes of free people of stature and the gamut of lesser diversions. Essie Millrace, Jacob’s daughter, was versed in literature and the arts and held her own quite well with an educated crowd. She served as her father’s hostess.

The other half of the shell was Millrace’s lucrative profession. Jacob Millrace accumulated his wealth from a curious, unlikely source. He owned a line of highly prized English springer spaniels bred from an elite pair belonging to his late master, Joseph Pendleton of St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Jacob Millrace was the undisputed owner of these hounds following the untimely death of the entire Pendleton family and the slaves they owned—Joseph, his wife and three young sons, as well as forty-five field and house workers. All of these had succumbed to a fever in ’48. Colored and white had fallen left and right, with Essie’s mother and two brothers among them. Jacob and his daughter were the only survivors excepting the pair of hounds, Hercules and Circe.

Jacob had stood to lose his freedom to a relative of Mr. Pendleton, but no relative with claim had turned up. Some said they existed, but were fearful of the pestilence.

After Jacob buried all of the dead, he and Essie walked off the Pendleton Main. The two surviving hounds walked behind them. The four kept together and carried on. The survivors laid claim to a hunting cabin on the farthest reaches of the Pendleton tract and settled and improved upon the structure. Jacob groomed and fed the spaniels and looked after Essie. When the bitch had pups, Jacob and Essie coddled them and trained them.

The word circulated that Pendleton’s prized spaniel bitch with liver-colored splotches and his dog that matched her point for point had a litter of pups. Word was they were beautifully marked and showed real hunting promise. When the dogs matured, Jacob Millrace built a respectable, lucrative business in taking out the dogs for gentlemanly hunting of upland birds. Millrace himself became trusted as a guide and as a hand to tote and load weapons.

Jacob adopted a humble demeanor in his work with the gentleman hunters. He allowed his dogs to be the true hunting experts and behaved as though he were at their beck and call. The pups, utterly devoted to Jacob and attentive to his every mood and movement, nevertheless pretended to consider him beneath their notice when customers were about. Dogs and man worked together to create the fiction.

Jacob maintained cleverly and with suitable awe that the animals were privy to an ancient knowledge of birds and were likely of some royal stock. Thus he claimed to be the honored custodian of royal dogs. Whether or not this was true, people around understood the dogs had been bought in England some months before the fever had struck. In cockeyed local logic, people felt that the fever survivors—both human and canine—were given a special dispensation from illness. Hunters crave a talisman for luck, and upon this, Jacob Millrace built his business.

Millrace’s hunting guide and dog commerce was so successful that he and Essie could afford to live in Georgetown in the off-season, these times being the hottest summer months and the dead of winter. Jacob Millrace bought a house in town and arranged that his daughter be schooled at the home of the Dunston sisters, who taught the children of free people in Georgetown.

By comparison with the Coats family’s rooms above the tailoring shop, Jacob Millrace’s home was palatial. He employed the services of a general man about and a cook / housekeeper. Both of these were free colored persons. They deferred to Mr. Millrace, though they did not kowtow, and seemed a happy household.

Gabriel’s preliminary estimates of Mr. Millrace’s measures had been largely correct. The gentleman desired two suits of clothing of dark and modest cloth, and he requested that all of the appointments be au courant.

The parlor into which Gabriel was shown had a woman’s furnishings. There was the feeling that here lived someone who felt it necessary to add warmth to the domicile. Gabriel thought of Ellen and of his mother as he looked at the lovely pattern work of the antimacassars on the chairs in the parlor. Did Mr. Millrace and his wife entertain a wide circle?

As Gabriel took his leave, he suggested to Mr. Millrace that if there were a need for laundry service, he would gladly send his wife to fetch it and return it.

“Ah, Mr. Coats,” Millrace said with a chuckle. “You have guessed it. My Essie does struggle with the laundrywoman. And she is never satisfied.”

“My wife will come tomorrow, sir. She subscribes to the syndicates. Your wife, sir, will be pleased,” Gabriel trilled, happy to pronounce the possession of so many flowers and eager to impress Jacob Millrace.

“Ah, ah, no, Mr. Coats,” Millrace said, and Gabriel felt a jolt of embarrassment. He had jumped too soon! “Mr. Coats, it is my daughter. My Essie is my daughter, sir. Please do send your missus to us.” Jacob ended with a warm handshake and Gabriel left with a smile.

As he walked back to the shop, Gabriel felt excitement race back and forth in his veins. The sight of Mr. Millrace’s wealth, its display, he a colored man like Gabriel, a self-made, free man! Gabriel was truly jealous for the first time.

Gabriel’s warm hearth at the back of the tailor shop was unchanged when he returned from Jacob Millrace’s house. All was as it would normally be. Annie, Ellen, and Mary were hard at their tasks. But the picture felt stingy and small and, for a moment, Gabriel was not quite happy. The wide room with a large table put to many a daily task and chairs aplenty around the periphery and food stores and work tools consigned to this, that, or the other place was not quite a parlor—a fit place for a family. Gabriel yearned for something more like the parlor that Jacob Millrace had. Was this next rung so far above him?

Unaware of her husband’s tormented thoughts, Mary prepared a strong cup of coffee. She put his vexed air down to weariness and trusted the hot drink to restore his mood. Work generally made Gabriel pleased and he enjoyed beginning a new commission. After he sipped a bit of his coffee, Mary asked, “What of Mr. Millrace’s house, Husband? Is it grand?” Annie and Ellen perked their ears as well. They all were curious about Jacob Millrace’s house.

Gabriel answered in a tired voice. “His daughter keeps his household. She is young and needs laundry help. Call on her to inquire and you might see his parlor for yourself.”

Twenty-six

A
NAUSEATING MIASMA
composed of the stench of rotted bodies and the accompanying odors of embalming fluids cloaked the air. What little food Mary ate came back as soon as she left the shop to fulfill her laundry circuit. She regurgitated in the trench running next to the path from the back door to the alley at Olive Street. When she relieved herself of the burden of these vittles, she worried that not enough was left for the coming babe.

Mary had hurried to get out of sight of Gabriel—not wanting him to see her retching. He’d begun to look disappointed when she showed fatigue and discomfort. Ellen came upon Mary’s heels and wiped her face.

“Shall I fetch your husband, girl?” she asked, though she knew that Mary would say no.

Recovering her equilibrium, Mary answered, “Leave him be, Sister.”

Mary had taken on the laundry commission for the Millrace household as pressed to by Gabriel. The Millraces entertained among the town’s prominent Negroes and there were fine table linens, as well as monogrammed sheets. Gabriel ordered vinegar and lemon and rainwater and special note of every piece. In fact, Gabriel made Mary nervous over the Millrace commission. He checked and cluck-clucked in a way that peeved and tired her.

The town’s laundrywomen were an important cog in the engine for helping the waves of wounded soldiers. Sanitary Commission officers scoured the city and impressed colored women into washing service. The Ladies of Olives put themselves forth as professional laundresses and its members were given contracts for hospital sheets. Even the bawdy houses had surrendered bed linens for bandages. A premium was put on crisp antisepsis and the Sanitary Commission favored the Coats women.

Recovering herself, Mary turned from Ellen and followed the path she was accustomed to take on her rounds. A wave of folk lately off a nearby farm surged toward her at the corner of High Street and Olive. A great wide woman burdened down with belongings tied in bundles and situated atop her head herded a group of children with a rough-cut walking stick. The woman gathered the children by slashing out at their legs if they strayed from her skirts. One of the group, a mud-covered toddling child, grasped Mary’s skirt as she passed by and sought to be borne along with her. When Mary moved her leg to walk, this child swung along, riding her.

Mary halted, balanced her laundry load, and pried the babe’s stringy fingers from her skirt. His little fingers were wound tight, though his strength and endurance seemed dangerously used up. His facial features were sunken and he bore the look of an old person, with a frosting of light hair at his temples and ashy skin. A young girl with an expectant look on her tobacco-leaf face came to retrieve him.

Mary pressed a penny in this girl’s hand and bade her, “Buy milk for the boy.” The girl smiled at her good fortune and kept onward with the advancing column of contrabands. She hoisted the child on her hip with bundles tied on her back and some more bundles tied as a sausage at her waist. The group moved eastward under press of the provost marshals and headed for the encampment on
12
th Street. Mary wondered at the girl’s lighthearted step and hoped the coin would go for milk and not whiskey. Heretofore in her childbearing, Mary had tripped lightly and energetically. Perhaps this burdensome one was the boy they were all praying for.

Ellen had been reluctant to break from Mary to pursue her own customers, for her sister-in-law seemed unsettled with her babe. She had confided to Ellen that she wanted a boy for Gabriel’s sake. Ellen mused that all and too much was put before Gabriel these days. Gabriel had decided against Delia long before the master claimed her. And no plea had ever convinced him that Ellen was Delia’s mam and would always want her.

Ellen was jogged from her reverie by a stern tugging on her sleeve. The force upset her basket, and some of the precious whites she carried were tipped up and dumped in the mud at her feet. She screamed out in shock, turned toward the force grasping her arm, and set eyes on the mud-covered woman who held her. Ellen wrestled and lurched to pull herself free and to retrieve the laundry. The woman’s grip was formidable. Ellen tottered, lost balance, landed on the ground, and struck her shoulder. She thought to grasp her skirts and guard them from the gutters, and as she did so the woman snatched the laundry basket. The piled-high whites spilled out completely and the woman grunted and sucked her snaggled teeth. The woman had a hard-set face that was broad, flat, and unyielding. For the long moment that Ellen looked into her visage to gain an explanation for the woman’s actions, she saw only an implacable will. The expression caused Ellen to redouble her efforts to keep the laundry. Both women wallowed on the ground and tugged the basket between them. A small crowd of amused onlookers gathered to observe.

Ellen regained her feet. The woman next sucked in her ribs, set her strength, and pulled. Knocked completely off her feet again and her sleeve hitched on the basket, Ellen was dragged. The women’s clothes became saturated with the muddy effluvium of the roads. Ellen’s dress was as well ripped from under her left arm to her waist. She was warm with shame to imagine the look of this brawl and had at that second resolved to tear away from the basket and attempt to reclaim her honor.

What finally caused Ellen to break her hold on the basket was a solid, painful kick to her stomach. She let out a yowl. The blow came not from her antagonist but from a mountainous man standing over Ellen. He then kicked viciously at the other woman sprawled on the ground and turned to aim his foot again at Ellen.

Shrieks sounded from ladies passing in a carriage, and a gentleman called out, “You! You there, what is this, sir?” The soldier did not answer.

A woman painted thickly with cosmetic and walking abroad in the fashion of a harlot called out to the vicious kicker, “What! Hold! What’s the beef, Irish?”

The marshal loosed his grasp of Ellen then and looked at the woman. Happily, she claimed his attention momentarily and Ellen and her assailant gained their feet in the interval. As they staggered up, the partner of the distracted marshal clamped shackles on their wrists.

“Aye, is some contraband wenches causing a riot on the street, beautiful. Get along with ye!” he replied.

“Careful you don’t cause no monkey business right here on the public street,” the blond harlot teased him, and caused him to guffaw.