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When Isaac awoke next to Lenert on Monday morning, he wondered if he had dreamed their encounter the night before. He had certainly imagined what it would be like to touch Lenert, to caress his face, kiss his lips... and more. And yet, in the filtered early morning light coming in through the newly cleaned windows, what they’d done had a kind of dreamlike quality, the stuff of fantasy more than reality.
He turned on his side and watched Lenert sleep, his chest rising and falling beneath the nightshirt. Up close, his face was full of character—a square forehead with a few wisps of dark hair over it. Long, delicate eyelashes that a woman would envy. His nose looked like it had been broken in the past but that added to its appeal.
Then those lips. Full, moist and pink. If he closed his eyes, Isaac could remember their touch on his own. But he didn’t want to stop drinking in the beauty of Lenert’s face. Thinking of the way Lenert’s rough stubble grazed against his cheek was enough to make his cock stiffen.
Lenert opened his eyes and smiled. “Goot morning,” he said, his accent making the first word sound more German than English.
“Good morning.” Isaac resisted the urge to touch Lenert’s face with his fingertips. “Last night...” he began.
“Thank you,” Lenert interrupted. “For all you do for me. Is all right I show my thanks that way?”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I must,” Lenert said. “I have learned, in America nothing is free.”
Isaac recoiled. Had Lenert believed he was using sex to pay his debt? That went against everything Isaac believed. Stephen had used him in college, and that use had hurt Isaac more than anything else. He had vowed he would never to do the same thing to another man.
He scrambled to get up. “Must get to work.” He hurried out to the privy behind the cottage, sure that Lenert would see his morning hardness and try to provide more service.
The canal was always busiest on Mondays, a mix of barges whose captains had taken Sunday as a day of rest and those who had not. Isaac and Lenert were kept busy from sunrise on, operating the lock, providing water for the mules, and talking with the captains as they waited for the water to flow in whatever direction they were going. Tuesday was equally busy.
On Wednesday morning, Lenert was operating the lock for a coal barge led by a team of three mules when Isaac spotted his supervisor’s barge coming up the canal. It was much shorter and narrower than the cargo barges that regularly moved along the waterway, fitted out only with living quarters for Mr. Rayburn and his hoggee Solomon, a large man with ebony skin and an impressive chest, who often worked shirtless.
There wasn’t time to shoo Lenert inside and Isaac worried that Mr. Rayburn would complain that an unauthorized, untrained man was operating the machinery. Rayburn navigated his barge into the layby a few hundred yards before the lock, and Isaac hurried over to say hello as Mr. Rayburn threw his rope to Solomon to tie up. “Good morning,” Isaac said to the hoggee, trying to avoid staring at his massive chest and bulging arms, glistening with sweat in the bright sunshine.
“Mawnin’,” Solomon said in his slow, lazy accent, redolent of the ones of white men who came from the southern part of the country. Isaac knew he had been a slave in the South before the War to Preserve the Union.
Isaac was grateful in retrospect that when the war had broken out in 1861 he had only been eleven years old, too young to be recruited. Several of his family’s neighbors had joined the Union Army. The shoemaker who Isaac’s family had bought their shoes from had gone off proudly and never returned.
Mr. Rayburn’s barge was pulled by a single mule, an old female with a straw hat with cut outs over her ears. Solomon walked off to get a bucket of water as Mr. Rayburn stepped off the barge. He was a tall, cadaverously thin man with a fringe of hair around a bald head. Give him a long robe and a Bible and he could have passed for a monk from centuries past.
Rayburn traveled the canal once a month, checking in on the lock-keepers and delivering their pay, and Isaac always enjoyed the chance to speak with him. “Good morning,” Mr. Rayburn said as he shook Isaac’s hand. “I see you have a helper.”
“A bargeman who broke his leg,” Isaac said. “His captain left him here to recuperate.”
Isaac and Rayburn watched as Lenert expertly operated the wheel that closed the lock gate behind a red and black barge, festooned with swags of gold leaves on the sides, and the water began to flow in to float it up to the next level.
“Seems to know what he’s doing,” Rayburn said. “You trained him yourself?”
“He’s a quick study,” Isaac said. “And strong as an ox.”
“A good trait in a lock-keeper,” Rayburn said. “You could keep him as your assistant, if you want. But I’d have to give him part of your pay.”
“I’m not sure how long he’s staying.” Isaac had a brief memory of Lenert’s body on top of his, the connection he had felt to the big Prussian. Would he stay? Did Isaac want him to, if Lenert was going to treat sex as a transaction between them, a way to pay his room and board? At least if Rayburn offered to pay Lenert, that problem would be solved. Lenert would have no obligation to touch him.
And though he knew it was the right thing, a pain throbbed in Isaac’s chest at the idea that they would never recreate what they had done together.
While Lenert handled the red and black barge, Isaac took Rayburn into the cottage and showed him the log he’d kept of every barge that had passed through the lock since the supervisor’s last visit.
“You keep the best records of any lock-keeper on the canal,” Rayburn said, when they were finished. “Anyone who thinks the railroads will replace the canal has only to look at how much traffic you handle.”
“Is that possible?” Isaac asked. He remembered what Dr. Munroe and Charity Pennington had said. “The steam engines can transport much more than a team of mules.”
Rayburn waved his hand. “The railroad only runs from Philadelphia into West Trenton,” he said. “Not up to Easton, the way the canal does. How would the coal get from the mines to Philadelphia if not by the canal?”
Isaac was glad to hear his optimism. He had grown to love his life on the waterway and didn’t want to have to give it up.
Rayburn closed the logbook. “I can see that you can use your big friend’s help. Let’s go talk with him.”
“He’s still learning English,” Isaac said as they walked outside.
The red and black barge had already moved upstream, and Lenert was speaking with Solomon when Isaac and Rayburn approached. Solomon said something, then lowered his head and walked back to the mule.
“This is Mr. Rayburn,” Isaac said when they reached Lenert. “He runs the canal.”
“Hardly that. I just look after my lock-keepers.” Rayburn shook hands with Lenert. “You’re a big, strong fellow, aren’t you?”
“I haff broken leg,” Lenert said, his accent harsh. “But I work hard.”
“Yes, I can see that.” They talked for a few minutes, and Rayburn asked if Lenert was willing to stay on and help Isaac after his leg healed.
Lenert looked at Isaac, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know,” Lenert finally said. “If Isaac wish.”
They decided that Lenert would stay until Rayburn’s next visit, and Rayburn handed over Isaac’s pay, withdrawing a few dollars for Lenert. “Is not required,” Lenert said. “Isaac give me food and place to stay.”
“This is America,” Rayburn said. “You work, you get paid.”
Lenert reluctantly accepted the money, and Rayburn and Solomon left after that.
That evening, they were sitting down at dinner when Lenert said, “I do not want to be slave like Solomon.”
“Yes, he was a slave in the South,” Isaac said. “Until the war ended, and he was freed. Then he came north to Philadelphia, where he found work for Mr. Rayburn.”
“He say Herr Rayburn is good boss who do not beat him,” Lenert said.
“He is quite a handsome man,” Isaac said.
Lenert cocked his head. “Mr. Rayburn?”
Isaac laughed. “No, Solomon. Very strong.” He flexed his muscles, which though s strong, were nothing like Solomon’s or Lenert’s.
Lenert was still confused. “But his skin so black, like coal. You find that handsome?”
A blush rose to Isaac’s cheeks. In truth, he hardly noticed the color of Solomon’s skin, just his impressive body, and his jack began to stiffen as he realized how that must appear to Lenert.
He quickly changed the subject, and throughout the next week, Isaac was careful to maintain a professional distance between him and Lenert. Now that Lenert was being paid to work at the lock, there was no reason for him to assume he had to offer sex in exchange for his room and board.
Their easy camaraderie had fled as well. Lenert still studied his dictionary and the book of Grimm’s fairy tales, and he and Isaac practiced English words whenever they could.
One afternoon, Lenert made a makeshift trap to set in the woods, and they went over the words. “A trap,” Isaac said. “Die Falle.”
Lenert nodded, and said, “Der Hase. Rabbit. Then I cook like my mother show me.”
“I’m sure it will be delicious,” Isaac said.
Isaac wondered why Lenert had chosen to create a trap. Had he noticed a rabbit getting into their vegetables? Or did he feel trapped himself, stuck at the lock with his broken leg?
The difference was that a rabbit in a trap with a broken leg would end up in a stew pot—whereas a man with a broken leg could heal and move on.
It rained the next day, and the day after, muddying the towpath and making their outside work miserable. Isaac was glad to see that Lenert used the time indoors to read the book by the Brothers Grimm, both the German and the English translation, and that Lenert’s English improved sometimes with great leaps.
Around two o’clock in the afternoon the rain cleared for a while, and Lenert disappeared while Isaac was closing the lock behind a barge. A half hour later, he returned, smiling broadly and holding a fat brown rabbit by its hind legs. He had already cut the rabbit’s neck and drained its blood, so it seemed less like a cute little creature and more like food.
As Isaac watched, Lenert took a knife and expertly removed the hide. “Entferne die Haut,” he said.
“Remove the skin,” Isaac answered in English.
Lenert flipped the hide around so that the fur was on the inside and fetched a wooden bucket from the back yard. He filled it with cold water from the canal and dropped the hide into it.
As Lenert butchered the rabbit, he directed Isaac to chop some celery (Sellerie), carrots (Möhren) and onions (Zwiebeln) from their backyard garden. They worked together so easily, despite the language barriers that remained between them, and Isaac had a vision of them living like this for many years. It made him very happy—but at the same time nervous, for what if Lenert didn’t share the same dream?
Lenert poured oil into the cast-iron frying pan, coated the chunks of rabbit with flour, and browned them on all sides. He added water and the vegetables, and then said, “Now we wait.”
The rain pattered on and off for the rest of the afternoon, as the cottage filled with the aroma of the stew. By the time night fell, dinner was ready, and they ate together in the light of the kerosene lantern, sopping up the stew with thick pieces of brown bread Isaac had steamed the day before.
That night, they lay beside each other, lulled by the patter of rain on the roof. “Is bad night to be out on canal,” Lenert said. “Many times like this, I make little nest for myself on deck, out of rain.”
“Mrs. Anderson wouldn’t let you sleep inside the barge?”
He shook his head. “I never understand her words, but she think it not proper to have man on barge with her.”
“So she made you sleep out in the rain.”
“She give me a cover,” Lenert protested. “Keep rain off so I can sleep.”
“I am glad you are here inside with me now,” Isaac said, and moved closer to Lenert. They cuddled together and Isaac thought again how well they were together. But would the dream last?
