and, I would discover, if care was not taken it drifted into homes and bedchambers.
We got off the omnibus after twenty minutes or so and entered into a brick row house on the corner, where we found Bland and Hawkins already installed. They were just past the foyer, in a small parlor drinking coffee with another well-dressed black man. Seeing us, the whole party smiled and looked up. The man whom I did not know stood, strode over, and gave a big handshake and bigger smile. I could tell from his features that he was kin to Raymond White. He had the same stone-face, but not the stoicism.
“Otha White,” he said, introducing himself. “No trouble on the rail, right?”
“Not that I can tell,” I said.
“Here, have a seat,” said Otha. “I’ll bring y’all some coffee.”
I sat while Raymond and Bland made small talk. Otha returned with coffee and then the conference began.
“Take care of this man, you hear?” Hawkins said, drinking his coffee. “He is the genuine article. This is not idle talk. Seen him buried under a river and dig himself out. He done suffered everything we could throw at him, and he still standing. Should tell you something.”
This was the kindest thing Hawkins had ever said to me.
“You know my commitments,” Raymond said. “My whole life is given to this. And we gladly welcome his aid in our business.”
“We could really use you,” said Otha. “I don’t know you, Hiram Walker, but I wasn’t raised here either. But I learned and I think you will too.”
Hawkins nodded, took a drink from his coffee. Hawkins seemed more at ease with Otha, born in slavery, than Raymond, a creature of the North. I think now, through the lens of years, that it was a matter of how we worked. In Virginia, we were outlaws, a matter that soon became our honor, so that we reveled in being beyond the morals of a world we believed to be premised in Demon law. We were not Christians. Christians plied their trade in the North, where the Underground was so strong as to not be an underground at all. I can recall now many nights, sitting in some Philadelphia tavern, listening to men, conducted only days earlier, boasting of the details of their flight. Whole city blocks teemed with fugitives, and these fugitives populated congregations, where they were organized into vigilance committees who guarded each other and watched for Ryland. In the North, the agents of the Underground were not outlaws, indeed they were very nearly a law unto themselves. They stormed jails, attacked federal Marshals, and shot it out with Ryland’s Hounds. Men like Hawkins plied their trade in the shadows. Men like Raymond shouted in the town square.
But for Otha, it was different. There was something about him, something about his implied roots and rough manner, that compelled deference from Hawkins, however deeply buried and unacknowledged, for Hawkins was a man given to saving souls, not peering into them, least of all his own. I know enough of what Bryceton was before Corrine’s transformation, of its atrocities, to know that “soul-peering” was a luxury.
“All right,” Hawkins said, now rising. “The boy don’t know nothing. I am relying on you to fill him in. We have done our part. May he serve the cause here as well as he done served it down there.”
I rose and Hawkins turned to me, shook my hand, and said, “Doubtful we’ll be seeing each other again anytime soon, if at all. All I can say is be good.”
I nodded. Hawkins shook hands with the others, Bland included, who it was decided should remain in Philadelphia a few weeks for business of his own. After Hawkins left, Otha took me upstairs to my quarters while Raymond and Bland remained below to talk. It was a small room, but after months of living in common, and before that living in the hole, and before that the jail, it was heaven. After Otha left, I lay across the bed. I could hear the muffled intercourse of Bland and Raymond floating up from below, and the sounds of what seemed to me boisterous laughter. Later, I took my supper with Otha at a local tavern. He explained that I would have a long weekend to orient myself in the city. Planning the next day to explore, I came straight home and slept. Otha slept here too, in a bedroom next to mine. Raymond stayed outside the city with