came to an agreement. Then I went out to where Percy was waiting in the carriage.
“You’ll have to sleep outside,” I said. “But I got this for you.” I gave him the wrapped dinner. “And the landlady says she’ll bring you a box breakfast in the morning, as long as there’s nobody around to see her.”
Percy nodded. None of this came as a surprise to him. He knew where he was, and who he was, and what was expected of him. “And then,” he said, “we’ll drive up to the place, weather permitting.”
To Percy it was always “the place”—each place we found.
Storm clouds had dallied along this river valley all the hot day, but no rain had come. If it came tonight, and if it was torrential, the dirt roads would quickly become useless creeks of mud. We would be stuck here for days.
And Percy would get wet, sleeping in the carriage as he did. But he preferred the carriage to the stable where our horses were put up. The carriage was covered with rubberized cloth, and there was a big sheet of mosquito netting he stretched over the open places during the night. But a truly stiff rain was bound to get in the cracks and make him miserable.
Percy Camber was an educated black man. He wrote columns and articles for the Tocsin, a Negro paper published out of Windsor, Canada. Three years ago a Boston press had put out a book he’d written, though he admitted the sales had been slight.
I wondered what the landlady would say if I told her Percy was a book writer. Most likely she would have denied the possibility of an educated black man. Except perhaps as a circus act, like that Barnum horse that counts to ten with its hoof.
“Make sure your gear is ready first thing,” Percy said, keeping his voice low although there was nobody else about—this was a poor tavern on a poor road in an undeveloped county. “And don’t drink too much tonight, Tom, if you can help it.”
“That’s sound advice,” I agreed, by way of not pledging an answer. “Oh, and the keeper’s wife tells me we ought to carry a gun. Wild men up there, she says.”
“I don’t go armed.”
“Nor do I.”
“Then I guess we’ll be prey for the wild men,” said Percy, smiling.
The room where I spent the night was not fancy, which made me feel better about leaving my employer to sleep out-of-doors. It was debatable which of us was better off. The carriage seat where Percy curled up was not infested with fleas, as was the mattress on which I lay. Percy customarily slept on a folded jacket, while my pillow was a sugar sack stuffed with corn huskings, which rattled beneath my ear as if the beetles inside were putting on a musical show.
I slept a little, woke up, scratched myself, lit the lamp, took a drink.
I will not drink, I told myself as I poured the liquor. I will not drink “to excess.” I will not become drunk. I will only calm the noise in my head.
My companion in this campaign was a bottle of rye whiskey. Mister Whiskey Bottle, unfortunately, was only half full and not up to the task assigned him. I drank but kept on thinking unwelcome thoughts, while the night simmered and creaked with insect noises.
“Why do you have to go away for so long?” Elsebeth asked me.
In this incarnation she wore a white dress. It looked like her christening dress. She was thirteen years old.
“Taking pictures,” I told her. “Same as always.”
“Why can’t you take pictures at the portrait studio?”
“These are different pictures, Elsie. The kind you have to travel for.”
Her flawless young face took on an accusatory cast. “Mama says you’re stirring up old trouble. She says you’re poking into things nobody wants to hear about any more, much less see photographs of.”
“She may be right. But I’m being paid money, and money buys pretty dresses, among other good things.”
“Why make such trouble, though? Why do you want to make people feel bad?”
Elsie was a phantom. I blinked her away. These were questions she had not yet actually posed, though our last conversation, before I left Detroit, had come uncomfortably close. But they were questions I would sooner or later have to answer.
I slept very little, despite the drink. I woke up before dawn.
I inventoried my photographic equipment by lamplight, just to make sure everything was ready.