The Abduction of Smith and Smith Read online

  “Why are you asking me to do this? Am I wrong in thinking that you are more than capable of handling this yourself?”

  Gao Lin nodded at the guide.

  “This,” said the guide, “is not something we can do ourselves. The law in this city is already looking upon us with so much scrutiny. They blame us for so much already—perils that are not even real. One white man dies here and we invite risk to our entire community. Usually when one white man dies, other white men come looking for him. They would have to die too. It would be a vicious cycle and we would be on the losing end of it.”

  “It’s true that I was a soldier,” said Jupiter. “But I think our cultures must have a different understanding of what a soldier is. I am not an assassin.”

  Gao Lin slammed his fist on the table. Jupiter felt the transferred reverberations.

  “I know exactly what you do,” Gao Lin said in English. “You work for that Irish woman. You drug the sailors that come in there and subdue them somewhere off the premises, so that she will not appear culpable. And then you sell these men to the shipmasters looking to fill their crews. I believe you call it ‘shanghaiing.’” Gao Lin looked at the guide, and the two of them laughed. “Shanghai!” He put an end to the laughter and looked at Jupiter. “I know very well what it is that you do. You have proven to be skilled at it. I am asking you to do it for me. The man we wish removed is powerful in his own right.”

  “His name?” asked Jupiter.

  Gao Lin stayed quiet.

  “Hutchins,” said the guide.

  He could hear the blood rush to his head—the same sound children foolishly believe is the sea when a shell is brought to their ear. He had spent enough time in the presence of this kind of power. The kind of power that watches patiently and does not feel the need to speak. The kind of power that audaciously asks you to make a man disappear and does not feel the need to conceal it. Jupiter knew that he and Hutchins would not be around for much longer.

  8

  Fletcher had done a good job on the eyes. Jupiter remembered them being like amber: a luminous brown that stopped all things in their path. The poster was the closest he had been to Sonya in seven years.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? SHE GOES BY THE NAME ‘SONYA.’ CONTACT J. SMITH AT THE O’CONNELL HOTEL. ANY INFORMATION WILL BE REWARDED.

  Yes, the eyes were exactly as he remembered them. Seven years is a long time. Did she still look this way? He put the poster up in the colored part of town. They all watched him as he carefully applied each poster. He made sure to count out the amount of space between each bill, placing them in the usual well-passed areas—saloons, general stores, and whatnot. Even though it pained him to do so, he also put them up in front of the brothels. Jupiter cringed at the possibility. Maybe he had already found her and lost her without knowing it. Maybe their paths had crossed, but they each had changed so much that one didn’t recognize the other. Maybe in the search for her through other women he had been with her, but the reality and its absence of intimacy prevented any kind of connection or recognition.

  The eyes were just the same. It was seven years ago when Jupiter had left Colonel Smith’s plantation for the war . . .

  “Why are you going off to fight in a white man’s war?” Sonya had asked him. “You don’t believe all that talk about the war being over for us, do you? Come away with me.”

  “I’m going to fight for my freedom,” said Jupiter. So earnest, he was. Did he believe it? What did he know about fighting? Honor. Valor. Those were the things he overheard the sons of plantation owners talk about as they played soldier with their wooden swords. What did he know of it? He was simply a mockingbird with his wings clipped, singing a song in which he mimicked the sounds but couldn’t grasp their context.

  “I’m going to fight. About time I started,” he said.

  She clutched his hand then. “Don’t go. If you go anywhere go with me. If you want to leave, leave with me. North or South, what kind of freedom you think white folks’ll give us? It ain’t somethin’ that we need to be given, it’s somethin’ we have to make. It’s not something we have to prove we deserve by doing their shooting and killing for them, it’s something that we have to make for ourselves. It’s not out there on some big battlefield, it’s right here, in this little space between us— that’s where we’ll make it.”

  “What country have you been living in, Sonya? Whatever we make, they take,” he said. “I’ve learned well. I’m going out there to get what’s mine.”

  She slapped him. He immediately saw the regret in her face.

  “You’re already free,” she told him through her tears. But the anger came back and she tried to slap him again, but Jupiter caught her wrist. “You’re making a choice. You’re already free.”

  9

  He had not heard any information about Sonya. He began to accept what he must have already known. Seven years is a long time. Seven years ago, the country, even though war-torn, was a big one. Seven years later, it was even bigger. A lot of ground can be covered in seven years, plenty of places to lose yourself or someone. Jupiter knew that better than anyone. At least he had money. Wasn’t that the point, to start a life once he found her? Get a plot of land, raise some cattle, maybe a general store or something like it, start a family? Yes, that was his plan; maybe it was her plan too. Lots of people have the same plans. Maybe her plans were realized already, and the woman he was looking for was long gone, transformed in the cocoon of time. Maybe she was somebody else’s woman now, with a different name and a different look, different dreams—dreams so different from his that they camouflaged her so much he couldn’t recognize her, and she would forever remain hidden. But that is the thinking of a man resigned to reason, the kind of sense that should make you turn around, go in the other direction, see the sense in staying down. It had the opposite effect on Jupiter. It made him stand up and go down to the colored section.

  • • •

  All the posters of Sonya that Jupiter put up were gone. Someone had removed them. They were taken down, but there was no evidence of them on the litter-strewn streets. The posters had just disappeared.

  He put up more posters in the places with the most passersby. An AME church opened its doors and the congregation filed in. Since the war, maybe even before, he had felt a repulsion to churches. Why was it left up to man to administer God’s justice, only to be burdened by the aftermath? How many men can you bury under a cross until you are sickened by the sight of them? This time something was different. He felt compelled to follow the congregation in and sit amongst the parishioners in the pews. He put the remaining posters inside his coat. The pastor began his sermon by directing everyone to Mark, chapter 13. Jupiter did not bother to ask for a Bible nor did he need to, fortunately. It was one of the many passages he had committed to memory.

  No brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.

  He recalled the passage, but as the pastor spoke, Jupiter drifted into the empty space of Colonel Smith’s plantation—a memory of a place that housed other memories. There, in the dining room, he saw two women—his mother and the wife of Colonel Smith—share a look, brief but charged with contempt. In a dark corner of the kitchen where he first felt Sonya’s touch—a soothing caress on the back of his hand after getting too close to the fire. The drawing room, his own hands closing the dead eyes of the Colonel.

  Jupiter looked around the church. Within the congregation were some of the most impressive Negroes he had ever seen. Looking at the sophisticated bunch, he would not have been surprised to see Sonya beside one of the men, child in tow. He had always pictured her in that sort of company. But as he scanned the crowd, he encountered not her, but another ghost from his past.

  A part of the church needed repairs. A three-man team worked at the cracks brought on by a mild earthqu
ake. One of the men hummed a tune that took Jupiter back to hot nights on the plantation when he could listen to the singing that came from the slave quarters. The field hands were farther down the hill, but their songs could still be heard up at the main house. Jupiter turned his back to the church and hummed along. One of the slaves had made up some bawdy lyrics for it. Jupiter smiled as he recalled them. Lewd and lurid details are the easiest to remember. He mouthed the words softly, but stopped when he heard the words coming from one of the men behind him. He turned to look at the man and felt a chill.

  “Titus?” The man stood when Jupiter said his name.

  “Not here. It’s best we go someplace private to talk.”

  • • •

  Jupiter was confused. He had come all this way to find his long lost love, only to find his enemy. Somehow, it made sense that Titus was here—wherever Sonya was Titus would be close by. Back on the Colonel’s plantation, Titus had never made a secret of his affection for her. Sonya was always fond of him too; Jupiter knew that. So when he’d gone off to war, Titus was more than willing to fill the void Jupiter had left behind. He took Titus to Maggie’s. He wanted to be on familiar territory for their conversation.

  “Where is she?” Jupiter asked.

  “Boy, that’s how you greet me? After seven long years? I thought sure enough you was dead,” said Titus.

  “Well, obviously I’m not.”

  “No you not. Not yet.”

  “Where’s Sonya, Titus?”

  “Man, when you left for that war, I thought for sure you’d never make it. I thought ‘what is he doin’? That house nigger ain’t cut out to be no soldier.’”

  Titus smirked. Jupiter could tell he was trying to get under his skin. He was hiding something.

  “Well,” said Jupiter, “some of us had to stand up and be men while the rest of you scared niggers ran off to God knows where.”

  Titus shot short bursts of air through his nose. “Well, while you was playin’ dress up, switchin’ one uniform for another, playin’ tin soldier, some of us had to look after the women and children when them plantations was knocked down to rubble and the fields set on fire.”

  Titus was right. While Jupiter, and men like him, were off fighting one war, another battle was being waged in his absence. So, in a sense, Titus was another kind of veteran in his own right. Jupiter had to give that to him.

  “Titus, I know we were never what you would call friends, but I’ve been looking for her since the war ended—here for the last three years. You are the closest I’ve come to her in seven years. Now, a lot of questions are racing through my mind, a lot of feelings. There’s so much I want to say to you, none of it polite or gentlemanly. But this is a favor for me, my own piece of mind. Just tell me where she is. Is she all right? Can’t we just start with that?”

  Titus looked away. “She ain’t here no more. She left.”

  The barkeep put down two whiskeys. Jupiter finished his in a gulp.

  Titus pushed his glass away. “Some of us came here from the old plantation. Thought there’d be work—”

  “Titus, I know all that. Sonya left a letter for me with Clara.”

  “She left you a letter?”

  “That’s how I knew to come here. What about Sonya? Did she come with you?”

  “Yes, she did.” Titus kept looking over his shoulder. “You come in here a lot? Not too many colored.”

  Jupiter squinted at the crowd, mostly sailors and longshoremen. “I guess it depends on your perspective. Those two over there are Mexican. That one smothered in tits is a Laplander, I think. The one by the piano is definitely a Turk. In the back, three Irish. And those two are either Italians or half-breed Navajo. Who knows how many languages are spoken here.”

  Titus shrugged his shoulders. “Not sure, but I know they can say nigger in each one.”

  Jupiter stared at Titus. “Yeah, none of them look like us, and they damn sure don’t look like Sonya. Where is she?”

  “Well, most of us spread out after we got here. Some went to San Joaquin, Sacramento, Oakland, but Sonya . . . word is she been gone about six months now.”

  Six months. Jupiter claimed the orphaned whiskey. In his mind, he had already set out after her. He wasn’t that fond of San Francisco anyway. There was a time when their presence in the city had overlapped. He could have bumped into her at any moment. He must have known it on some level—that explained the recent intensity of the search. He could sense her.

  “Where?”

  Titus ran his hand over his mouth. “Africa.”

  Jupiter lunged at him, grabbed his throat. “Don’t play with me, Titus. It’ll be your last game. I’ve been to hell and back. I learned a thing or two while I was down in them flames. I know how to break a man. And let me tell you something, Titus . . . white or black we scream just alike.”

  “It ain’t a game. She went to Africa. Liberia. Now take your damn hand off me.” Jupiter let him go. “She said ain’t no way America would be a safe place for colored. Not in our lifetime.”

  Africa. She might as well be on another planet. “Why’d you let her go?”

  “C’mon, you know how Sonya is. She got that wanderin’ spirit. Suppose that’s why she never stuck to me like she stuck to you. Guess ya’ll alike in that way. Nah, our people been here too long, gave up too much of our blood and sweat to be runnin’ off to some place we don’t know about. This here is where I need to be.”

  Africa. At least there were plenty of ships in San Francisco. Maybe there was one bound for the Ivory Coast or Sierra Leone. But that would mean going down the coast and around The Horn. Who knew how long that would take? Six months? Maybe he should just hightail it across the country, find passage on a ship in North Carolina or Maryland. He felt his mouth getting dry as he thought about the journey that awaited him. How would he do it? Foolishly, he looked at Titus as if he had the answer.

  A man came up to Titus and kicked out the chair from underneath him. Jupiter stood as Titus fell.

  “I didn’t fight a war for niggers, just to fight Chinamen for work,” the man yelled. An empty sleeve where his arm should have been was folded and pinned to his shirt.

  Jupiter spotted the barkeep making a slow reach under the bar. He raised his hand and signaled to him to keep the shotgun hidden.

  “What was your regiment?” asked Jupiter.

  “What?” He was drunk. He turned to Jupiter with his arm cocked to fight.

  “I was in the 55th. You?”

  “The 48th.”

  “Hell-raisers, that’s what the 48th were. Hell-raisers. You saved our hides in Petersburg at Fort Elliot.”

  The one-armed man stared at Jupiter for a moment as if recalling a memory, then another man put an arm over his shoulders. “C’mon back to the table, Sam. We’ve got whiskey and women. The world’s a better place over there.”

  Titus made a move, but Jupiter held him back.

  “My apologies,” Sam slurred as they went back to their table.

  Titus pushed Jupiter away and snatched his coat from the floor. “We’ve talked enough. Hate to be the one bringing bad news. I wish you well,” Titus said, “but I got to go. Been nice catching up with you. Real nice.”

  As Titus put on his coat, Jupiter felt the urge to ask him to stay—but he resisted. His mind was assaulted by fragmented images of the past. He was brought back to the present by a seemingly innocuous sight: a folded piece of paper where Titus had fallen. As he went to retrieve it, he felt a strange calm when the paper unfolded. It all made sense when he saw the spark of the eye, captured so beautifully by Fletcher, stare back at him. Titus was lying.

  • • •

  Jupiter went after Titus. He couldn’t see him on the street. He pushed his way through the crowd, hoping that he was headed in the right direction. Someone yelled, “Move,” up ahead. Titus moved briskly t
hrough the crowd. “Titus,” Jupiter called to him. He looked at Jupiter over his shoulder and ran. Jupiter chased him through the muddy streets, down the alleys, hopping over drunks and prostitutes, through Chinatown, around the pig-pens, and hanging animal carcasses and meat shops, and, finally, to the docks. The man was strong, pushing people out of the way as he ran, but he was winded. Jupiter was too, though not as much. He still had some fight in him. The war had made Jupiter fit for such things. It had made a hunter out of him. Just not a good one. He lost Titus in the crowd.

  • • •

  Jupiter went back to the church. The men were completing repairs on the rear wall. He walked over to one of them—a young man, tall and smiling—and hit him in the jaw. The other men, wielding their tools as weapons, jumped between the fallen man and Jupiter.

  “You got trouble with him, you got trouble with all of us.” He was a large man. Jupiter felt he recognized him from the bare-knuckle circuit. He helped the man up. “You all right, Henry?”

  Henry nodded.

  “I don’t have a problem with you. Just him.” Jupiter pointed at the man nursing his jaw. “He’s bedding my wife.”

  “That true, Henry?”

  Henry spat a blood-tinted stream of saliva. “I never laid eyes on your goddamn wife.”

  “Titus told me. He said the tall one called Henry was the man I’m looking for.”

  “We’ve known Titus for some time now, and that don’t sound like him. What’d you say your wife’s name was?”

  “Sonya.” Jupiter held his breath.

  The men looked at each other. “Sonya?”

  Jupiter nodded. “When the war ended, I went back to the old plantation looking for her. Folks said Titus forced her to come with him. I tracked her here from Georgia.”

  “I know Georgia. What parts?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “Atlanta . . . I heard there ain’t much left of it. You say you tracked her all the way here?”