HAD IT BEEN luck? Again and again, the question confronted Edward Moody, as if it were a dissatisfied patron doubting the manifestation of one of his spirits. The train had pulled into Cincinnati and the authorities had been waiting—Joseph had pointed that out even before the train had come to a stop. But as Moody watched Joseph turning over other ideas in his head, the most extraordinary thing had happened: the police had run away.
“They’ve gone after the wrong men,” Joseph had said, “but it won’t be long before they realize that.”
Joseph and Moody simply remained on the train. Something more than luck had followed them.
It was not that Edward Moody had suddenly come to “believe”—for he had been believing, and not believing, and then believing again for many years. But Isabelle had returned in some way—through the negative, through Joseph—and he was experiencing the mounting traces of her presence like one feels the increasing warmth of a fire. For the first time Moody was undergoing the same transformation he had affected in others—the changeover from despair to hope, from darkness into light.
Part of what had mesmerized him so much about Joseph’s story was the idea that for Joseph, Isabelle had never died. Joseph had memorialized her as an angel even when she was living, and so there was little difference between the woman Joseph had loved and the one who had gone away. It was profound—what such a flame of devotion could do. Joseph might have been a blackguard, but at least he had kept Isabelle alive.
The train moved on, and they disembarked at St. Louis. There were no policemen there to greet them—just a throng of men and women, all exiting the doors of the station. The people moved in great masses into the city or toward the levee, and anyone could have been in the crowd. Joseph spotted two police officers—likely on routine patrol, he said—but still, he did not want to take chances. He and Moody lost themselves in the immense density of moving bodies, weaving in and out of the people as they made their way down to the levee.
The plan had been discussed. They would purchase their tickets as individual travelers—Moody as a stateroom passenger, and Joseph traveling on deck. It made sense because most of the steamship companies segregated their crowds, and any attempt to travel together would have attracted attention. The great disadvantage was of course the danger of their separation, for if any trouble were to arise they would be without each other.
But there was a bit more to it than that. Moody wanted to be alone with the negative.
The levee at St. Louis gradually sloped down into the river, leaving the commercial avenues and buildings of the waterfront on slightly higher ground behind it. In the water, which gave the false impression that it had come to rest in a shallow bowl, sat the endless hordes of steamboats, pressed into the levee’s edges. The north-south curve of the miles-long levee meant that one could not see where the line of stationed boats began or ended. The line was infinite—a row of smoke-stacked monsters, their fat bodies sucking at the edges of the land.
Moody was no stranger to boats or busy waterfronts; but this place was something entirely different from the jumble of wharves and tall ships of Boston. The width of the levee was astonishing, and though it had been constructed to battle the volatility of the river, the people of St. Louis took every advantage of its wide expanse. Here, for the first time, Moody saw the “business” of the revived southern economy, which, by anyone’s assessment, did not look all that different from before the war. The levee was suffocating under the burden of its bounty—great mounds of cotton bales, stacked barrels of sugar, and ten-foot high piles of fresh timber—all being weighed, measured, loaded, and unloaded by armies of freedmen. There were overseers here too, brandishing long wooden billets, and beating the workers who did not load or unload the goods fast enough.
Moody asked a drayman for the location of the nearest ticket office, and soon he and Joseph were moving toward one of the waterfront buildings. The buildings faced the steamboats, and stared out at them across the levee, their visages quite superior to the rest of the neighborhood’s chaos.
Moody purchased the tickets, and returned, and handed one to Joseph.
“And now,” Moody said, “it is time.”
Joseph nodded uneasily. He did not want to separate. And he did not want to leave Moody with the negative.
“Remember,” Joseph said, “should we fail to find each other in New Orleans, we must meet at L’Archevêché—the Archbishop’s residence. There we will find a friend—a man who helped me once.”
Joseph searched Moody’s face for consolation. There was nothing. The cold eyes stared back him—steely and gray. Did those eyes despise him, want to seek revenge?
Then a cloud shaded the levee, and Moody touched Joseph’s arm.
“I will not be far away,” Moody said.
The crowd divided them, and great swells of people carried Moody toward the boat—a massive three-tiered side-wheeler whose name was the Sotto Voce. The landing stages had been lowered, creating two paths for passengers on either side of the bow, and the crowd trampled over them, overrunning the front of the steamer. Moody ascended the central staircase, but not before noticing where the deck passengers were stationed. There on the main deck, mingled amongst the cotton bales and the lumber, a swarm of tattered travelers was assembling with chickens and bedclothes and dogs.
“Careful,” a man said to Moody on the staircase. “You stare at those mutts too long and they might bite ya!”
Inside the main saloon, which ran nearly the entire length of the upper deck, an ornamental gilt ceiling and a series of chandeliers glittered with reflections from the skylights. It was not, Moody thought, unlike the lobby of a great hotel, with travelers carousing everywhere, and negro servants making fast progress. A corps of waiters was setting a long row of tables, the dinnerware and silver jingling unapologetically amongst the voices. Toward the end of the saloon, around the bar and captain’s office, clusters of passengers had gathered to talk and drink. A thick blue cloud of smoke was rising from this crowd—the effect of so many pipes and cigars.
“Edward Moody!” a loud voice rumbled.
Moody spun around to see a fat man with his arm extended out toward him. The man was chewing on a cigar, his cheeks already rouged with too much drink.
“I’m sorry,” Moody said, “do we—”
“Pemberton!” the man exclaimed. “Pemberton—from Boston!”
Moody studied the swollen face, but he could not remember where he had seen it.
“Ah, Mr. Moody,” Mr. Pemberton said, “I don’t expect a great man like you to remember an old fellow like me. But you helped me once. It was a great thing that you did for me. I carry it with me always—see?”
And the man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a spirit photograph.
“My Anabelle … my Anabelle,” Pemberton said, almost tearing. “She is always with me now. You gave me that gift, Mr. Moody.”
“Of course,” Moody said.
And the spirit photographer smiled at him—the best sort of smile he could manage.
“Oh, Mr. Moody …” Pemberton went on, “after I lost her, I had a terrible time. A terrible time, as you know. And so right after the war, not long after I came to see you, I left Boston, looking for opportunity in the South. You see, Mr. Moody, after I received this message, and once I learned that she was with me, I knew I could go anywhere—do anything.”
Moody nodded with feigned interest. This fool could be a problem.
“Anything!” Pemberton said, grabbing a tight hold of Moody’s arm. “Anything, Mr. Moody. Do you hear me?”
Moody looked at the man’s hand, and then looked at Pemberton.
“My apologies, Mr. Moody,” Pemberton said, releasing and then smoothing Moody’s sleeve. “I am sorry—I do still get in a passion about it.”
“No offense, my good man.”
“It’s just that I know she is so happy with what I am doing now. I am doing good for the country, Mr. Moody. Good for myself, yes, but good for the country as well.”
Pemberton had obviously not been reading any of the northern papers.
“And where do you do your business now?” Moody asked. “Have you left Boston entirely behind?”
“Oh no, Mr. Moody … I still maintain my close ties with Boston. My connections there are many, and my daughters—do you have children, Mr. Moody?”
“I do not.”
“No matter. But my connections there are many, and I am—well, I am in cotton now!”
“How grand for you,” Moody said.
“Yes, cotton. It is the substance of reunification!”
And he brought his face closer to Moody’s.
“The substance of everything we fought for, if you ask me.”
Moody turned his head. The alcohol on the man’s breath was staggering. Moody would need to listen to him for awhile. He would need to treat him like every other client.
“Oh, but the negroes down here,” Pemberton whispered, “they are shamefully abused, Mr. Moody. Shamefully abused. They’ve been promised that if they’ll remain and work the plantations, they’ll have a share of the crops. But come harvest, the planters give them nothing, and so the darkies have caught on. They have no confidence in southern men anymore, and will not hire out to them. But—”
And here Pemberton paused to raise a distended finger.
“They are eager to engage with northern men.”
The crowd was growing thicker and louder all around them, and it dawned upon Moody that Pemberton might not be the only one. This buffoon—
“This is how it goes with them, Mr. Moody, let me tell you … I have hired out a plantation at Natchez from a man by the name of Taylor. Now this Taylor has four hundred sheep, seventy milch cows, fifteen horses, ten mules, and forty hogs, all of them saved when our armies raided the country, by one of his old negroes who ran them off across a swamp. Now would you believe that this Taylor never gave that negro five cents? Another one, who once belonged to him, had a cow of his own, and from that cow he raised a fine pair of oxen. Taylor laid claim to those oxen and sold them. It goes this way, round and round … Taylor promising his negroes a share of the crops, but then selling the cotton himself, and never giving one of them a dollar. He says this is how the northerners treat their laborers, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t he do the same?”
Moody looked around. More passengers were flooding the cabin. Pemberton took a large draw on his cigar, and exhaled smoke toward one of the chandeliers.
“You see, Taylor has two plantations,” Pemberton continued, “and rents one of them out to me. He told me at the start that he would take all his negroes from my plantation, but when I came to take possession of the land, I was astonished to find all of them there. ‘How’s this?’ I says to him. ‘I thought these people were going with you?’ He said that he couldn’t induce even one of them to work for him, and that he had about given up on the idea. He had offered them twenty-five dollars a month, plus board and medical attendance, but the negroes wouldn’t even engage with him for that. So I went to those negroes, who knew me to be a northern man, and said, ‘Mr. Taylor offers you twenty-five dollars a month, but that is more than I can afford to pay.’ I offered them ten a month, and I tell you, faces never lit up so. They said they’d rather work for ten dollars and be sure of their pay, than for twenty-five dollars and be cheated out of it.”
“Ain’t no cheating a nigger,” someone added, “if you believe niggers is for workin’ the land, as they ought to be.”
Pemberton at last stopped speaking, and Moody turned to see a man dressed in drab linen—one of the many southern planters in the saloon.
“You see, gentlemen,” the man said, “we may have lost the old ways, but there is still something to be made out of a nigger. My niggers here won’t work for me no more, so I’ve got to go down to Vicksburg to get me some new ones.”
And the man turned a dark eye toward Pemberton, who was chewing on the wet tip of his cigar.
“Gentlemen,” Moody said, “I’m afraid I must—”
“I can tell you’re a northern traveler,” the planter interrupted, “and I’ve been listening to this fellow here explain the ‘situation.’”
“This man is no simple traveler!” Pemberton said excitedly. “This is—”
“Please, Mr. Pemberton,” Moody said.
“I’d be lying if I said that Mr. Pemberton here hadn’t described the situation somewhat accurately,” the planter said. “But the niggers won’t work. None of you Yankees seem to understand that. And here’s a bunch of you coming down here and trying to make sure they can vote.”
“If the negroes won’t work, as you say, Mr.—?”
“Loftus—Samuel Loftus,” the man said, shaking Pemberton’s hand.
“If the negroes won’t work,” Pemberton continued, “then why are you going down to Vicksburg to try to contract with them?”
“Well everyone’s just crazy ’bout niggers right now. Have been since the end of the war. And if everybody else is going in for hiring ’em, and if there’s anything to be made, I don’t want to be left out in the cold.”
And then this planter leaned in closer toward Moody and Pemberton, his face twisted into something hideous.
“If everybody else would have refused to hire ’em anyhow, that would have suited me just fine. I’d have been willing to let my plantation go to the devil for a year, just to see the free niggers starve.”
The mighty whistle of the steamboat released its deep and prolonged cry.
“Ah,” Pemberton said, “we go!”
The crowd, with great energy and spirit, began to roll out of the saloon. The planter disappeared, and Pemberton moved toward one of the doors.
“You’ll join me on deck,” he said, “won’t you, Mr. Moody?”
“I will, in a moment,” Moody said, “but if I might ask you … I am traveling south on some delicate business, and I’m wondering if I could entreat you to—”
“Say no more, Mr. Moody, say no more. A great man like you runs a confidential business. I will exercise the utmost discretion on this journey.”
“I thank you,” Moody said, shaking Pemberton’s hand.
In truth Moody realized that Pemberton’s “discretion” would last as long as his resistance to the next drink. If at any point the man were to receive news from Boston, Moody and Joseph would need to reconsider their course.
IN THE PRIVACY of his stateroom, Moody could at last be alone with the negative. He felt weary—not simply from the relentlessness of the journey, but from the drain of so much remembering, and the inundation of so much uncertainty.
Moody lit the lamp and sat upon the narrow bed. The room’s tiny windows emitted only meager rays of light.
The negative. It had been three days since he had seen it … though he did not need to see it to understand that it had claimed him. He removed it from its leather case and held it beneath the lamplight. Isabelle. There she was again. Her face clear on the shimmering glass.
Or was it?
He looked closer. Something was different about the face. Something was in fact different about the entire stretch of her body.
What was it? Moody rose and moved closer toward the window, holding the negative just beneath the column of graying light.
“No,” he whispered.
It happened sometimes—when the silver did not take. He stared into her eyes. She was fading.
Joseph had assured him that he had varnished the negative, and the sheen on top of the portrait confirmed that that was so. And the Garretts—Moody scrutinized every bit of what remained of them. Even with the blackened damage, their figures were crisp and distinct.
It was her, only her. Isabelle’s image was—
How had he come to be in this place? On a boat down to New Orleans, on the run from the law? He remembered the days just after the war, when he had returned to Mrs. Lovejoy’s with no more ambitions beyond engraving. She had given him the stall at the back of the store. He had wanted nothing more. He had never wanted any of it.
But then he had gone on to become Edward Moody, the spirit photographer. He had done such great things. Why, even that imbecile had just told him so. He had never meant to hurt anyone; he had only wanted to help people … help people to escape from the hopelessness of their own sorrow. The sleepless nights, the heavy hearts, the horrors of the unknown. Yes, he had now and then laughed at the success of his own duplicity, but this was nothing compared to the transformed lives that departed from his gallery. He had given people something to believe in. No person deserved to live with the pain he had carried. People were not meant to survive that kind of pain.
He had saved people from despair.
He looked closely at the image again. An untrained eye would not have been able to tell. But it was clear to him that she had faded.
“What do you want from me?” he said. “Tell me what you want!”
Her face was firm, her cold eyes fixed in judgment.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “If it will quiet your ravings. I want you to stop trying to forget what happened.”
He bowed his head. He could not face his own shame.
“I cannot—” he said. “It is … too much.”
She would not excuse him. She would not let him go.
“Something is lost when you forget,” she said. “Stolen.”
Moody grew hot. He could not endure more accusation. He could not endure the accusation from her.
“I am no thief!” he cried. “It is I who have been robbed! What more do you want me to do?”
But her lips were tight—thin silver lines of unfeeling.
That was all.
The voice was gone.