CHAPTER 21

New Bedford isn’t quite the same as I remember it. For instance, I don’t remember quite as much smoke hovering in the air or soot blackening every building as there is now. I don’t remember so many grimy people walking around with moldy coats and missing teeth. I certainly don’t remember this many untended dogs with matted hair and missing limbs. The fish smell seems familiar, but it was more appetizing than the scent now wafting from the crates of rotting fish carcasses sitting in the middle of the lanes. My stomach flips again.

Eustace puts his hand in front of his nose to block out the smells. “This is the New Bedford you’ve been crowing about all these years?” he says.

I don’t say anything. I keep walking, holding the Medicine Head’s crate close to my heart, looking for places I remember and moving toward the port.

“Smells bad here,” Eustace says. “Like everything’s been dumped on with old kitchen water and then left to fester in a chicken coop.”

He might be right, but I tell him, “That is not true, Eustace!” I walk and clutch the Medicine Head to my chest. I wish New Bedford looked and smelled a little better. “You’re not used to it yet,” I say. “Kansas smells bad, too. Like smoke all the time!”

Eustace pauses in his walking, which causes Fob to nearly trip him. When Eustace steadies his footing, he says, “That’s only recent. Because of the fighting.”

I know he’s right about that, too. One good thing about Kansas is that even if it was the most boring place in the world, you could always get a good-smelling breath of clean air, before the fires started. I don’t tell Eustace I think that, though.

Eustace points to the sky. “Look at those,” he says. Seagulls are circling and cawing. “What are they?” he says.

I can hardly believe Eustace has never seen a seagull. I laugh. I can’t help it. “Don’t you know a seagull when you see one?” I say. “They’re everywhere. The sailors always know they’re close to home when they see a seagull.”

“Kinda look like the pigeons we got back in Kansas,” Eustace says.

“They do not,” I say. “A seagull is a much more dignified animal than a silly old pigeon. Seagulls are a hundred times more interesting than those dumb old Kansas birds.”

As we walk, Fob runs ahead of us, and he scatters a flock of seagulls, which were fighting over the carcass of a stinking black eel.

“Don’t seem more dignified to me,” Eustace says.

I don’t say anything. Fob comes back to us. The eel was too smelly for him to investigate.

Men of every kind—black, Indian, Japanese, and Portuguese—clog the lanes. The whaling ships aren’t particular when hiring people to sign on to be at sea for months and years at a time. They need people who are strong and courageous. They don’t care what color you are. No one gives a second glance at me, who must look like a scrubby piece of riff-raff, or at Eustace, who is a runaway slave from a burned-up town in Kansas.

Eustace is walking funny. He moves through the lanes of New Bedford with a confidence I never saw in him at home. Sometimes in Tolerone, when I was walking with Eustace, some white people would say to us that it wasn’t proper “for a white girl to be consorting with a darkie,” or something like that. I never cared what those Kansas people thought, but I know Eustace sometimes got his feelings hurt. I bet if he lived here, he’d never have to walk crouched over or ashamed ever again. And here, he’d get a whole lot of eager listeners who like to hear about abolition.

On the corner stands a man reading aloud from a newspaper. He reads to a group of people, white, black, men, and women. “We must act on this blow to liberty!” he shouts. “We must stand with our Negro brothers in the Kansas Territory, which is now burning with the wrath of God!”

I nudge Eustace. “He’s talking about Tolerone,” I say.

“Shh,” says Eustace. “I want to hear.”

The reader goes on. “The North must not cower under the yoke of the slave masters of the South. The North must now take a stand for the freedom outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Let the fires of Tolerone be a call to action against tyranny and injustice.”

I pull on Eustace’s arm. “Let’s go,” I say.

He shuffles along with me but looks back now and again.

New Bedford has churches on every corner, and many of the congregations are involved in the movement to free the slaves. I see a familiar lane, the one that leads to the church we used to go to when I was small. “Let’s go up here,” I say to Eustace. “I want to show you something.” We walk up the cobblestones to a simple white chapel. “I remember this place,” I tell him. I think back to the times when I was small, when Mother, Priss, and sometimes even Father would come here and sit together.

“Do you want to go in?” Eustace asks. He stares up at the spire going into the sky. Then he points to the sign above the door. “What’s that say?” he asks.

“Seaman’s Bethel,” I tell him. I sigh.

Mother was a member of Seaman’s Bethel Chapel, and the members there wrote letters to all the country’s newspapers about the evils of slavery. They collected money to donate to free black men to help them get places to live. They helped them find employment.

Practically every member of this church was connected to the whaling industry in some way. Sailors and sailors’ wives. Captains and captains’ wives. It was the sailors’ and captains’ wives who started the abolitionist movement at this church.

Father didn’t come with us to services often. He didn’t give much clout to religion. Superstition, he called it. “Science is where the real truth lies,” he would say. And Mother would shake her head and warn him not to make “such conceited and hasty pronouncements.” You might find it difficult to believe that Mother once spoke articulate and beautiful words, but she did. She was considered, in her time, to be quite a catch, smart and well bred. As well as beautiful, like I already said.

While Father rarely attended services at Seaman’s Bethel, Captain Greeney attended all the time. Even though I was little, I remember seeing him here, before everything went so bad. Sometimes he delivered lectures from the pulpit. Before my father swept my mother off her feet, Captain Greeney even courted her and wanted to marry her. Lots of men did, her being the Beauty of New Bedford and all. Sometimes I wonder if all Captain Greeney’s plotting to destroy my father comes from an old grudge over Mother. People sometimes lose their heads over what they think is love.

“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go in.”

We go to the door, and I open it to let Eustace step in. He hesitates, as though he’s not sure he’s allowed. “Go on,” I tell him. “Things are different here in New Bedford.”

Eustace points to Fob. “What about him?” he asks.

“Oh, he can come, too,” I say. “These people aren’t particular about dogs going to church.”

Then Eustace nods to the Medicine Head’s crate. “That thing, too? You think it’s right bringing it inside a church?”

I clutch it to me. “Well, I’m not leaving it. All this religion stuff is just superstition, anyway.” The truth is, I don’t know about that. But Father said it was, so I’ll believe him until I find out for myself what I think about the matter.

We step in. The chapel is bright white and cool. Every window is open. The breeze blows in off the ocean. Somehow, all the bad smells have been filtered out, so nothing but sweet, salty air blesses my nose. I breathe in deep and exhale slowly. I spy an open pew in the back and lead Eustace and Fob to it. Fob’s nails clack on the floorboards. A few heads turn around to look at us, but none of the faces gives us a second look. We look as welcome and normal here as everyone else. There are women dressed in the black garb of the widow. There are young women surrounded by small children, the families of sailors, probably. There are old seamen, white-bearded and red-faced. There’s a whole row of Wampanoag whalers up front. Maybe you didn’t know this, but before Europeans ever got to the Americas, Indian people lived here first. And they were whaling before any Europeans thought it up.

Eustace twists his head one way and then another, taking in all the sights of the chapel. I don’t tell him to sit still. I let him look around. I imagine it makes him happy to see white folks, black folks, brown folks, red folks, young folks, old folks, tattooed folks, scarred folks, scantily clad folks, and rich-looking folks all in one place. He relaxes and eases into the pew.

Then the pastor takes his place at the pulpit, which is interesting and unusual because it’s shaped like the bow of a ship.

“For them that don’t know me,” he begins, “I am Father Captain Mahogany.” He gestures with his right hand to his missing left arm. The coat sleeve on that side is pinned up. Then he gestures to his peg leg, which he lifts for the congregation to view. His head is massive, and he’s fully bearded. “‘Aye,’ says them everywhere’s I goes. ‘Aye, Father Cap’n Mahogany, ’tis true the sea monster took yeer left-side appendages, but yeer faith makes you full strong as any man about.’”

Eustace elbows me. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he whispers. “What’s he saying?”

I shrug. I don’t know.

Eustace says, “Huh?”

“Shh,” I tell him. Eustace has never gone to school, so I guess he doesn’t know that sometimes a kid is supposed to listen and be quiet when a grown-up is talking even if the kid has no idea what the grown-up is talking about.

“You talk funny, too, to them,” I whisper. “Now be quiet.”

Father Captain Mahogany goes on. “‘Aye,’ says I. ‘Me arm and leg been scuppered clean off by a mighty fish, ’tis true, endin’ me days prematurely as a nautical man. But dids this sink me spirit? Dids it keelhaul me heart? Nay. Nay.” He wipes his face with a handkerchief, then stuffs it inside his tattered vest, the buttons of which strain to hold the vest together. He’s so big, he looks like he’s swallowed a whale.

“And now I shall stir the congregation with a whopper of a tale from the gospels.” Father Captain Mahogany clears his throat. He uses his coat sleeve to wipe his nose. “Followin’ a lengthy bit of sermonizin’ one mornin’ into the late afternoon,” he says, “Jesus the Christ escapes the throngs by takin’ onto a boat for a bit of a rest. Now, not many of ye likely consider Jesus the Christ much of a seafarin’ chap, but I likes to imagine Jesus the Christ supremely squared away afloat on a vessel.”

“Oh,” says Eustace. “I know this story!”

I elbow him in the gut hard. I clench my lips together until it hurts my teeth. Fob whimpers.

Father Captain Mahogany continues like he doesn’t even hear Eustace interrupting all the time. “So when the men accepts Jesus the Christ onto their boat and asks him wherest he’d be happiest to venture, Jesus the Christ says, ‘Oh, hither and yon, my brothers. It matters not.’ For Jesus the Christ was weary to the bone and in need of the kind of respite only the cradling of the sea may provide.

“So the nautical fellows takes up the oars as nautical fellows are wont to do, and no sooner have they dipped ten times than has their blessed passenger Jesus the Christ fallen into a mighty snooze. Bamboozled by sleep, he was, fairly awash in a great restorative slumber, rocked as he was by the tender roll of the sea. Imagine him now, if ye can, and let the smile play upon yeer own lips at the thought of his heavenly snooze. Holy calm.

“But then a tyrant of a storm rips the peace to ribbons, and the boat is tossed like a seed on the swells. The sailors brace up and batten down the hatches, but it’s rogue wave left and right, and the sea has their vessel in her clutches.

“So the storm has the paltry boat in her clutches, and what is Jesus the Christ up to? To the sailors’ disbelief, he sleeps. Aye, like a babe in his mother’s womb he sleeps. And the sailors, lashed by wind and walloped by wave, are in complete disbelief at the sight of the sleeping fellow. And try as they might to wake him, asleep he stays.

“Finally the clattering reaches such an unholy din that Jesus the Christ awakens, rubbing sleep from his eyes with a princely yawn. And the careening sailors immediately accost his ears with fearful complaints, such as ‘What the blast’ll become of us?’ and ‘How the blaze’ll we avoid the deep slumber in this bluster?’ and ‘Today we’ll surely die! Help!’

“And what does Jesus the Christ say? Peaceful as a fluff of cloud, he intonates, ‘O ye of little faith, be still.’ And at his voice’s command, the whirling sea goes calm, and the sailors follow suit.

“What will ye glean from this tale? May it be the same gleaned I when me port side was in a whale jaw’s clench: faith. Faith so strong it can move a mountain. Faith. When your harpoon’s dashed and the ship’s on its ear and your friends are a-swim or bubbling under and your left side’s in the crunch—avast, worry! Avast, doubt! Avast, fear! Faith. Faith. Faith.” Father Captain Mahogany shakes his one good fist in the air and then pounds it down on the pulpit. He steps back and down the steps and disappears to the back of the chapel.

We leave the chapel and walk back to the main lane.

“Boy, that was some sermon,” Eustace says.

“I don’t understand it,” I say. “Faith in what? Faith can’t move mountains. There’s no evidence to support that. Sounds like thin logic to me.”

“I get it,” Eustace says. “I understand it in every way.” He looks up into the air and puffs up his chest almost like he’s floating. Even Fob is walking in a lighter manner.

I think Eustace is pretending to understand the sermon. He must be, because the sermon didn’t make sense. What is faith? A person can’t just believe something and expect that it’s true. “You do not,” I say. “You’re just saying that.”

“I am not,” says Eustace.

“Well, what’s it mean, then?” I ask.

“Uh—er,” he stammers. “It means you’ve got to believe.”

“Believe in what?” I ask. “What, exactly?”

“Um,” says Eustace. “You know… believe in faith and power and things.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. I shake my head at his simplicity. “To believe in something, you have to have evidence, Eustace. You have to have a scientific basis for belief. It wasn’t too long ago that every dummy thought the sun revolved around the earth, you know. Those dummies believed that. They had faith in that. But it was hocus-pocus and false.”

“Well, what about you?” he asks. “You believe that Medicine Head is talking to you, don’t you?”

I breathe quick, and my face feels hot. “You be quiet about that!” I snap at him.

But he doesn’t stay quiet. “There isn’t a lick of evidence that says that head can talk or do anything else you think it can,” Eustace says, “yet here we are. Away from home. Getting chased by a madman. Thinking about getting on a ship to the most far-away, freezing place on the earth. If that isn’t faith, I don’t know what is.”

I’m so angry at Eustace I could smack him. “It’s not the same!” I shout. “We’re doing research right now. We are conducting a scientific study! Just because I can’t understand how the head works doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a perfectly rational explanation. I know it does!” Then I curl up my hand into a fist, and I punch Eustace right in the arm.

He rubs his arm. Then he smacks the back of my head with the palm of his hand. My ears ring. I’m so surprised, I nearly drop the Medicine Head. I stop and clutch it close to me.

“You believe it has a rational explanation, you mean,” he says. Then he walks on ahead of me. “Don’t ever hit me again!” he yells back over his shoulder. Fob lopes after him. Fob turns back and gives me a bad look, like he’s mad at me, too.

After a while, I nearly lose sight of them. They don’t slow down. They don’t check to see if I’m following. My arms and legs feel stiff. “Go on, then,” I yell. “See if I care!” They continue walking. That’s fine by me. Let him go. Darn old Eustace. He’ll probably get lost. He has no idea where he’s going.

I look around and up and down the lanes of New Bedford. Every building is covered in the same soot and mold and is constructed like a plain old rectangle with a lot of small windows, each of which is made up of twelve smaller windows. Some buildings are painted blue. Some are painted gray. Some are painted white but have now turned gray with grime and soot. Every space is crammed with crates of wool or dippers or candles. From the way it smells, people empty their chamber pots in the lanes.

Everything has changed. I’m not sure where I’m going. I turn back to the last place I spotted Eustace and run to catch up to him.

As I fall in step with him, he turns his head to me, shakes it a bit, and then grins. Just like that, we’re not mad anymore. We walk on with Fob ambling alongside us.

In between the churches are alehouses that sell spirits to sailors. Shops are tucked in between those. People stand outside selling their hooks, fruits, fish, biscuits, boots, and ointments. Lots of other people buy those items. We walk for a long, long time in silence, simply watching the hustle and bustle of the New Bedford citizens.

Finally, Eustace talks to me. “All these folks are their own boss?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “They don’t have slavery here.” It makes me feel good to say that because I know for sure it’s one thing that makes New Bedford better than Tolerone. Eustace could never walk around Kansas and call himself a freeman.

As if reading my mind, Eustace says, “This is a nice place, even if it is dirty. Even if it smells bad, I can take a full breath.”

I try to feel what Eustace is feeling right now. I’m sure he misses his ma. I know he does. But if he had stayed in Tolerone, he’d probably have been separated from her anyway. He’d probably have been shipped off to work all day, every day, for mean old slave owners who would never appreciate a single thing he did or knew. They’d probably never realize how smart Eustace is. They’d probably never appreciate how loyal he is. They’d probably never see how strong and courageous he is. Or how forgiving he is. Even if he is a mama’s boy and hits girls.

I wonder now if he’s looking around and thinking about all the possibilities he has. All those things he had hoped for his life, about being a cowboy or a scientist, are suddenly possible. I feel happy for him. But I feel a bit of unhappiness, too. I know that at some point, our journey, successful or not, will be over, and Eustace and I will have to separate. I feel real bad we had such a bad fight. I reach out and pat him on the back nicely.

“It didn’t hurt,” he says. “When you punched me. I hardly felt it.”

I can’t decide if I should be mad about that comment or not. I decide not to, even though it does sound like an insult to me. Eustace is my friend, and sometimes you have to forgive and forget.

“My ears are still ringing,” I say. “You didn’t have to hit me so hard.”

“I didn’t mean to,” says Eustace. “Sometimes I just get tired of you, Hallelujah Wonder.”

I didn’t really ever know before that Eustace could get so mad. I guess it’s good for me to know.

“Well,” I say. “I concede that I may have been a little bit bumptious and a know-it-all at times. But that was too hard a hit you did on my head. Especially if my hit didn’t even hurt you.”

“It hurt a little,” he says. “I lied before. I am sorry about that.”

I worry that I may be leading Eustace to all kinds of bad behaviors, shouting, hitting, and lying, to name a few. I commit to being a better friend for the rest of this journey. Because at the end of all this, I’ll have to go back to Kansas to be with my family and Ruby. Eustace won’t be able to come.

I don’t want to think about that now. It makes me too sad. It’s difficult losing people, even when you’re losing them to a good life. I intend to make sure that my remaining time with Eustace puts him in the best position to live his happiest life. I can do that. And I hope one day he’ll say, “That Hallelujah Wonder was a good and true friend.”