Persila leaned back against a crate. “Where’d Isaac go?”
“He took Mrs.Dawson a bowl of beans.”
Isaac carried a tray twice a day to a female passenger in one of the stateroom berths. They didn’t have a doctor on board, but a man from Erie was the son of a doctor. He thought Mrs.Dawson had cholera, so the captain gave the job of feeding her to Isaac. When Alden protested, the man said he would leave them at Valparaiso if the boy didn’t cooperate. They could try their luck against dengue and yellow fever.
Isaac, however, didn’t protest. He said he liked the woman in room 4 well enough. And she enjoyed listening to him read.
“You don’t treat Isaac like a slave,” Persila said.
Alden shrugged.
“What happened to his mama?”
He dipped another plate into the saltwater and added it to the stack. “I don’t know.”
“That’s sad, isn’t it?” she asked, speaking more to herself. “Every boy should have a good mama.”
“Do you have any children?”
“I had a child once,” she said sadly. “A long time ago.”
“I bet you were a good mother.”
She wiped her sleeve across her face. “He was a good son.”
She lifted the mop and bucket, but as she moved toward the door, a man with a sunburned nose and thinning black hair stepped into the kitchen, stopping her. “The missus wants her tea.”
She showed him the bucket. “Captain Crandall told me to mop the deck.”
“You can do that, after you make Missus Webb tea.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man glanced over at Alden before looking back at her. “There’s no time for socializing.”
Alden wanted to say they had endless amounts of time on this boat, but he held his tongue. Mr.Webb couldn’t whip him, but his snide comments might earn Persila a flogging.
She set the mop back against the wall. “I’ll start the tea.”
The man gave a sharp nod, then ducked out of the room.
Alden glanced up at the bare shelves. “Where will you find tea?”
“Missus Webb brought plenty in her trunk with her, along with sugar.”
“I thought Mr.Webb hired you out.”
She nodded. “My work is paying for most of his passage, but he still wants me to attend to him and his wife.”
Alden turned to stir a pot of beans on the stove while Persila began heating a kettle of water.
He clung to the hope that Isaac and Persila would be free once they got to California. He still hadn’t mentioned freedom to Isaac, afraid that someone on thePharos—a slave owner like Mr.Webb—might do something to hinder his plan. Much better to wait until Isaac was firmly on free soil to talk about the boy’s future.
“What are your plans when you get to San Francisco?” he asked the woman.
“I’ll do whatever Master Webb tells me to do, I suppose.”
“But California is a free state.”
