The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright Page A

Whelkington was even quicker, neatly sidestepping the blow and at the same time planting a hard fist dead into the middle of Mumford’s ample belly, where it made a sound like a struck feed sack. The fat man grunted, staggered back a step, dropping his hands just enough for Whelkington’s other fist to catch him on the point of his chin, and with a dry wooden crack his head snapped backward on a body already beginning to collapse into the hard pack of the road as Captain Whelkington walked contemptuously away, wiping his hands on his pants.
    “Unfortunate you and your boy had to witness that whoobub, but actualities on this here canal tend now and again toward the sinfully impolite.” Slipping back into his elaborately frogged coat, Captain Whelkington granted Liberty a sly, subversive smile whose vague complicities were obviously not meant to be shared by the father. Liberty stared impassively, blinking steadily back at him. In the street, wheels and hooves moved around the fallen man.
    “I am quite familiar with the sordid side of life,” answered Thatcher, “but I fail to see, in this particular instance, how such brutality was warranted.”
    “New to the Erie Water, sir?” the captain asked, gently guiding Thatcher by the arm. “Most likely be seeing worse than this ’fore we hit Syracuse. And tame times, these. Why, back in the raging heyday of the canal there was a murder a day along these fronts. Now we’re lucky to see a body turn up every week or so.” He paused for a moment. “And let me tell you, sir, you weren’t acquainted with the good Captain Mumford and his bestial ways. Something in that man can’t stop worrying at the natural goodness in others. Just the way some folks are, all twirly-headed from the git-go. Ain’t a blamed thing you can do about it. Way the world was tossed together.” He resumed walking. “Now, how far did you two gentlemen say you’d be traveling with us this trip?”
    “We didn’t,” said Thatcher. “But now that you ask, the answer is Rochester.”
    “Rochester, eh?” Sizing up Thatcher as if he hadn’t exactly looked at him yet. “Certainly hope it ain’t to attend that damn abolitionist jubilee they’re having over there. Won’t have nigger lovers on my boat. Or preachers either, for that matter.”
    “I’d appreciate it, captain, if you’d rein in your language some.”
    Whelkington’s thick black eyebrows began inching up his forehead. “You
are
one of them coon kissers, ain’t you?”
    Thatcher’s gaze held true and steady. “I can remove my coat, too, Captain Whelkington. I am, sir, entirely at your disposal.”
    They walked on in silence, the private tussle between Whelkington’s principles and his purse working itself out in the muscles of his face.
    Liberty, whose habit on outings with his family was to dash on far up ahead or else lag well behind, roaming at will in the general vicinity of his parents, now took his father’s hand. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, waiting for that heap of man lying facedown in the dirt to move, but it never did.
    The sun, less than halfway to the meridian, had already begun to insinuate itself into the affairs of the day, the augmenting heat like syrup poured into the works of a clock, western windows and bricks all ablaze, the very air seeming to swell visibly. Down at the wharf, amidst a soft boiling cloud of pure white, a sweating and cursing crew of men, finely powdered from head hair to boot soles, was rolling barrels of flour onto one of the easting line boats. An old lumber wagon came clattering up piled high with freshly dug potatoes. Short-tempered clerks with pencils tucked behind their ears and garters on their sleeves scurried in and out of warehouse doors. In an open space near a pyramid of hogsheads labeled “ NAILS ,” a brand-new printing press sat darkly shining and isolate at the center of all the dockside commotion, an object fabulous and inscrutable, like something dropped