unbidden from the heights of another world.
Halting before the
Croesus,
Captain Whelkington held up his fist for Thatcher’s inspection. “You see, I’ve already scraped my knuckles for the privilege of carrying you. You’re my prize, and by God I won’t give you up.”
Thatcher offered a wry smile. “Now I suppose I’ll have to fight you for the right not to be carried.”
“If that’s your style, I’m willing,” said Whelkington, coolly looking him over. “But if it’s not, all I seek is one favor.”
“Yes, Captain Whelkington, and what would that be?”
“Shut pan on the boat. There’s influential paying gentlemen of a sensitive nature who might take offense at the vinegar of your views. Do you reckon you can hold off on the nigger issue for the duration?”
“I can hold off if the others can. But I may as well admit to you, Captain, that I have found over the years that you can draw the shutters and bar the door and fire the hearth and yet somehow that darn topic will find a way in. And when that happens, I don’t deny it a place at the table.”
“Well, maybe what we need are stronger locks and thicker walls.”
“Or a bigger house.”
Whelkington’s eyes flared with anger, then he looked across the canal and said, “Six miles an hour. You’ll see. Ain’t a quicker packet on the whole Grand Western.”
Once under way, the
Croesus
’s smooth glide altered the immediate nature of the world, the tow line running out straight and taut to the trio of mules, their harnesses bedecked with fluttering plumes and jingling bells, plodding in synchronous step along the beaten towpath, the driver behind with reins wrapped about one gnarled fist and a long bull-snake whip in the other, the surrounding country dividing into perfect halves and passing—gable and brick, pond and paling, tree and meadow—like panels of painted scenery, in stately recessional. Arcs of water drew away from the bow of the boat in long, rippling wings carrying on their backs bits of broken light to a place far to the east where the sun would be eventually reassembled for tomorrow’s appearance. There was a sweet animal pleasure to this gentle onward motion and it seemed to Liberty as if the canal he floated on was circulating up along his body, bubbling playfully through his bones. The heat and the slow, hypnotic rhythms of the ride induced in the drowsy boy a sumptuous dreaminess which might have opened into states of knowledge only a certain languor can provide but for the commotion erupting periodically on the bow when Captain Whelkington would come charging from his monastic-sized quarters like a man whose hat was too tight for his head to loose a barrage of invective and abuse upon the bald skull of his driver, a lean, leathery twist of a man known as Genesee Red, twenty years tending his long-eared robins from the Hudson to the Erie Lake, a route along which he was legendary for his ability to sleep while not only standing upright but even walking forward. At the first bark of Whelkington’s voice, Red would come shuddering awake and instantly start lashing away in theatrical fashion at the poor mules’ galled rumps, piling on his own distinctive curses, “Git up, God Almighty! Go on there, Jesus Christ! Lift a hoof, Judas Priest!”—delicate female passengers turning away and covering their ears until the pace quickened and the satisfied captain returned to whatever rare business so occupied him in his inner sanctum, when inevitably Red’s gleaming head would begin to nod, the brisk beat of the hooves would slacken and out would rush the infuriated Whelkington like a frantic cuckoo in a capricious clock, the whole sorry episode repeating itself point for point, word for word, as if this were a crucial scene in a dreadful play requiring tireless rehearsal. After a couple reiterations, alert observers noted with amusement that the oaths “God Almighty!” “Jesus Christ!” and “Judas Priest!” were, in
Halting before the
Croesus,
Captain Whelkington held up his fist for Thatcher’s inspection. “You see, I’ve already scraped my knuckles for the privilege of carrying you. You’re my prize, and by God I won’t give you up.”
Thatcher offered a wry smile. “Now I suppose I’ll have to fight you for the right not to be carried.”
“If that’s your style, I’m willing,” said Whelkington, coolly looking him over. “But if it’s not, all I seek is one favor.”
“Yes, Captain Whelkington, and what would that be?”
“Shut pan on the boat. There’s influential paying gentlemen of a sensitive nature who might take offense at the vinegar of your views. Do you reckon you can hold off on the nigger issue for the duration?”
“I can hold off if the others can. But I may as well admit to you, Captain, that I have found over the years that you can draw the shutters and bar the door and fire the hearth and yet somehow that darn topic will find a way in. And when that happens, I don’t deny it a place at the table.”
“Well, maybe what we need are stronger locks and thicker walls.”
“Or a bigger house.”
Whelkington’s eyes flared with anger, then he looked across the canal and said, “Six miles an hour. You’ll see. Ain’t a quicker packet on the whole Grand Western.”
Once under way, the
Croesus
’s smooth glide altered the immediate nature of the world, the tow line running out straight and taut to the trio of mules, their harnesses bedecked with fluttering plumes and jingling bells, plodding in synchronous step along the beaten towpath, the driver behind with reins wrapped about one gnarled fist and a long bull-snake whip in the other, the surrounding country dividing into perfect halves and passing—gable and brick, pond and paling, tree and meadow—like panels of painted scenery, in stately recessional. Arcs of water drew away from the bow of the boat in long, rippling wings carrying on their backs bits of broken light to a place far to the east where the sun would be eventually reassembled for tomorrow’s appearance. There was a sweet animal pleasure to this gentle onward motion and it seemed to Liberty as if the canal he floated on was circulating up along his body, bubbling playfully through his bones. The heat and the slow, hypnotic rhythms of the ride induced in the drowsy boy a sumptuous dreaminess which might have opened into states of knowledge only a certain languor can provide but for the commotion erupting periodically on the bow when Captain Whelkington would come charging from his monastic-sized quarters like a man whose hat was too tight for his head to loose a barrage of invective and abuse upon the bald skull of his driver, a lean, leathery twist of a man known as Genesee Red, twenty years tending his long-eared robins from the Hudson to the Erie Lake, a route along which he was legendary for his ability to sleep while not only standing upright but even walking forward. At the first bark of Whelkington’s voice, Red would come shuddering awake and instantly start lashing away in theatrical fashion at the poor mules’ galled rumps, piling on his own distinctive curses, “Git up, God Almighty! Go on there, Jesus Christ! Lift a hoof, Judas Priest!”—delicate female passengers turning away and covering their ears until the pace quickened and the satisfied captain returned to whatever rare business so occupied him in his inner sanctum, when inevitably Red’s gleaming head would begin to nod, the brisk beat of the hooves would slacken and out would rush the infuriated Whelkington like a frantic cuckoo in a capricious clock, the whole sorry episode repeating itself point for point, word for word, as if this were a crucial scene in a dreadful play requiring tireless rehearsal. After a couple reiterations, alert observers noted with amusement that the oaths “God Almighty!” “Jesus Christ!” and “Judas Priest!” were, in
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