far before. The farther north he got, the more famished his notions. How big the country was! Each town more lunatic and complicated than the last. The hurly-burly of Washington, D.C., made him dizzy. He vomited when he turned a corner and saw the construction site of the Capitol, emptying his guts from either a bad oyster or the hugeness of the thing stirring rebellion in his very being. He sought out the cheapest taverns and turned the stories of the men over in his mind as he scratched at lice. Even the shortest ferry ride delivered him to a new island nation, garish and imposing.
At the Trenton jail the deputy treated him like a man of standing. This was not scourging some colored boy in the twilight or breaking up a slave festival for amusement. This was man’s work. In a grove outside Richmond, Betsy made a lewd proposition in exchange for freedom, pulling up her dress with slender fingers. She was slim in the hips, with a wide mouth and gray eyes. He made no promises. It was the first time he lay with a woman. She spat at him when he fastened her chains, and once again when they reached her owner’s mansion. The master and his sons laughed as he wiped his face, but the twenty dollars went to new boots and a brocade coat like he’d seen some worthies wear in D.C. He wore the boots for many years. His belly outgrew the coat sooner than that.
New York was the start of a wild time. Ridgeway worked retrieval, heading north when constables sent word they’d captured a runaway from Virginia or North Carolina. New York became a frequent destination, and after exploring new aspects of his character, Ridgeway picked up stakes. The fugitive trade back home was straightforward. Knocking heads. Up north, the gargantuan metropolis, the liberty movement, and the ingenuity of the colored community all converged to portray the true scale of the hunt.
He was a quick study. It was more like remembering than learning. Sympathizers and mercenary captains smuggled fugitives into the city ports. In turn, stevedores and dockhands and clerks furnished him with information and he scooped up the rascals on the threshold of deliverance. Freemen informed on their African brothers and sisters, comparing the descriptions of runaways in the gazettes with the furtive creatures slinking around the colored churches, saloons, and meeting houses. Barry is a stout well made fellow five feet six or seven, high small eyes and an impudent look. Hasty is far advanced in her pregnancy and is presumed to have been conveyed away by some person, as she could not undergo the fatigue of traveling. Barry crumpled with a whimper. Hasty and her pup howled all the way to Charlotte.
Soon he owned three fine coats. Ridgeway fell in with a circle of slave catchers, gorillas stuffed into black suits with ridiculous derbies. He had to prove he was not a bumpkin, but just once. Together they shadowed runaways for days, hiding outside places of work until opportunity announced itself, breaking into their negro hovels at night to kidnap them. After years away from the plantation, after taking a wife and starting a family, they had convinced themselves they were free. As if owners forgot about property. Their delusions made them easy prey. He snubbed the blackbirders, the Five Points gangs who hog-tied freemen and dragged them south for auction. That was low behavior, patroller behavior. He was a slave catcher now.
New York City was a factory of antislavery sentiment. The courts had to sign off before Ridgeway was permitted to take his charges south. Abolitionist lawyers erected barricades of paperwork, every week a new stratagem. New York was a Free State, they argued, and any colored person became magically free once they stepped over the border. They exploited understandable discrepancies between the bulletins and the individual in the courtroom—was there proof that this Benjamin Jones was the Benjamin Jones in question? Most planters couldn’t tell one slave from another, even after taking them to bed. No wonder they lost track of their property. It became a game, prying niggers from jail before the lawyers unveiled their latest gambit. High-minded idiocy pitted against the power of coin. For a gratuity, the city recorder tipped him to freshly jailed fugitives and hurriedly signed them over for release. They’d be halfway through New Jersey before the abolitionists had even gotten out of bed.
Ridgeway bypassed the courthouse when needed, but not