“Some actor. Robert Hopkins? I could have that backwards. Maybe it’s Hopkins Roberts? I can’t recall. He seemed like a good sort, though. Spent the better part of the night hauling the injured home in a gig he got from God-knows-where.”
“And he told you it started backstage?”
“Mmmmhmmm.”
“He was sure?”
“Didn’t act like there was a doubt about it.”
“Well, then, what are his friends doing trying to make Kemp believe otherwise?”
“It’s a good question,” says Marcus wearily.
“You think they know what happened and mean to make us scapegoats?”
Marcus looks him straight in the eye. “You don’t?”
Gilbert doesn’t know how to answer that, so he just rakes the coke, looking for clinkers.
From a few feet away, clinkers look just like pieces of coal, but up close they’re thick and glassy. All they are is waste—the sand and dirt and mineral deposits that don’t burn, but they are not without value. People come by all the time asking for them—if they’re putting in a footpath or preparing for the planting season. Most almanacs tell farmers to bury a clinker in each corner of their garden if they want their plants to grow healthy and strong.
Gilbert sees a clinker in the center of the fire, picks it up with a pair of tongs, and examines it in the light. He knows that, sometimes, he can be blind to people’s failings, that he’s so eager to see the good in people, he ignores their ugly centers. He thought Good Pete was a decent man because he let Gilbert hire himself out on Sundays, but now he realizes that if he’d really been as good as all that, he’d have freed Gilbert a long time ago. Same goes for Elizabeth Preston, who treats Sara like she is a beloved member of the family, but not so beloved that she is allowed to grieve for Louisa, too. It’s all a game to them, and maybe it’s Sy Gilliat who has the right idea—refusing to contribute so much as a mattress to their salvation.
Gilbert thinks about the two actors who stood before them. Had they deliberately lied to Kemp’s face? Were they really willing to let a bunch of Negroes take the blame for what may very well have been their own mistake? Gilbert knows the answer is probably yes, but it’s still hard to swallow.
He squints at the clock Kemp keeps on his writing desk. It’s almost ten. “I got to go.”
“Where?”
“Back to the green,” says Gilbert.
“Did you hear what Kemp just told you? If he catches you…”
Gilbert hangs up his apron. “He ain’t going to catch me. Not if he’s all the way out on Brook Road.”
Marcus clicks his tongue. “This still about the Mayo girl?”
Gilbert doesn’t answer him directly. “Maybe I can find someone who saw her. Someone who knows something.”
“Is it worth it? All so you can get her mama some answers?”
Gilbert can feel himself getting irritated. “I’m not doing it for her mama. I’m doing it for Sara. She’s loved that girl since she was a baby, and I can’t just sit here, twiddling my thumbs, while she’s across town, waiting for news.”
“But you think she’s dead?”
Gilbert recalls the way Louisa used to wait patiently while he sounded out the words in her primer. She never hurried him along, never acted like she had somewhere better to be. When he readKeeper’s Travels in Search of His Master—about a dog who is injured and trying to get home—aloud, she had sighed at the end. “I’ve never heard anyone do the animal voices half as well as you do,” she said, and it felt like the sincerest compliment he’d ever received. If Louisa was dead, where did all that goodness go? Surely, it couldn’t just disappear.
“I can’t give up on her,” he says to Marcus finally. “Not yet.”
JACK
Once the letter is done,Placide asks Anderson and Jack to deliver it to Thomas Ritchie.
“Put it in his hands directly,” Placide shouts after them as Anderson holds the door for Jack.
Outside, the sun is high in the sky, but the air remains frigid. Anderson is still without a coat, same as Jack, so he tucks the letter into the waistband of his trousers and crosses his arms across his chest for warmth. He looks up and down the street, which is unusually empty for a Friday, before turning to Jack. “Where are the offices again?”
“On E Street. Before you get to the wharf.”
