Rowland the orphan-catcher sniffed round at dusk, dogging slouchers who gathered in fours and threes, passing stale terbacker behind their backs. A billy in his belt, chin shaved, burnsides, and a book on a string about his neck marked Rowland our solemn enemy. Under the office of white charity, he swindled us of liberty. Harper had dodged him long, a fast fleer with a hiding spot, though many others had fallen to his capture.
In a dilapidated corner of our heart, perhaps there was shelter for Rowland’s impulse to shield us from starvation and a prolonged nap in the snow? Could it ever be that sweet charity redeems the child wot—Damnation. Do ye hear yerself? Get on.
We chalked cornerstones and lantern-posts in hopes of evasion. A cross meant Immanent Capture. A dog’s head meant Caution. A crosshatch meant Friends Near. A crook meant Likely Escape if Donning a Skirt. Circle: Bribery. A staircase: Hide Within. Almost every corner orated symbolic.
Preliminary-to-crime, that’s how old Rowland saw it. Before committing a crime, the unfortunate had no fear, only a poxed conscience. After a crime they lacked hunger and, often, the proof by which they had erred. Any boy before whiskers in a mended waistcoat and stuffed boots, a dry fish on a string around his neck, was suspicioned. The debt collector-cum-redeemer claimed to save them truly from chilblains and shanty ravages. With fondness, Rowland recalled a week scraping barnacles from the hull of a sloop. Or the time he severed an elm that had crushed a fence, almost by himself. Clean air had delivered to him God’s doorstep and all he had to do was raise a bulging arm to the chime.
Rowland must have ambushed Harper at a low point, a stye or a puddle, likely away from any chalk mark or brother, for he brandished his NOTICE BOOK. If only hie’d been assigned third watch; if only the barrel had held another dipper of water...
Harriet Wilkins is entrusted to the responsible stewardship of an agency with the full backing of the State of Penn’s Sylvania, namely Blainswerd House, for Christian education and moral guidance.
She is spoiled by the following misdeeds:
▢ gambling
⌧ indecent dress
▢ earning wages
▢ truancy
▢ taking spirits
▢ snuff
⌧ oaths
▢ unnatural acts
Passers ignored hies scuffle as they would any slap or knuckle. {The Crucifixion} The signature sealed the transfer from awander in The City Of to a starched Sunday choir. And Rowland with a loud voice to warn that we oughter manner our getups and find the Lord or we would be looped like squirrels and squirrels aint good for much with their scrawn.
Poof, like a kobold’s sneeze, ‘she,’ Harriet, whiksed off to a fate that smelled like hogs and pickling vinegar. Worst than death, we mused. Two-Bit made a prayer and rechalked the spot with a bridge, meaning Many Lost, Beware.
At the corner of mud-and-dung, as the fellers liked to say, had been erected a Georgian lodge, midway between a manse and debtor’s prison. Mr. Blainswerd, answering the call of a generous God (or tax advantage), founded a charity house for those who took to drink and delinquency. From an upper window, he dispersed his army of rescuers to the thieves in Scots-town, the coal-peppered brickworks, rival churches capping the fence into Kensington, to each forgotten corner of The City of Abiding Love Between Men.
“Girl, you look a might friend to hunger. We have a place to rest,” a door-minder welcomed Harper. Harper nodded, if friend meant captor and rest meant labor from dawn to lantern-light. Hie was no stranger to labor. Harper had worked. Hie had lifted a maundril, wrestled a sow. If only the rescuer had seen hiem in Delaware, furrowing, petering, smithing, makering til hies thumbs bruised and the sun burned two medallions on hies shoulders.
‘She’ met revelers from the slaughterhouse, bottle-melters, poppy-seeders with wide eyes, pirates from Pettys Island, a one who used to poke a hole in a grain satchel and follow with a broom. {The Baptism} They directed hiem to a ewer in a dirty room with a large sign: The Path to Rightshushness is Pock-marked and Washboard. Rubbing hies clayey hands in a dim imitation of baptism. It wasn’t an unsightly house, for an admirer of pilasters and pediments. Hies cot butted against a barred window on the west-face. Below, a line of yellow box hedge hid the garden from the street.
Mr. Blainswerd sent a round-hipped feller to the corner with a tin for copper and nickel. Passersby, preyed upon by guilt, took a pamphlet.
DELINQUENCY and OSCITANT Young Sinners TURNED TO ENTERPRISE; Eliminate DEVIANCE and INDIGENCE with the GUARDIANS of the UNFORTUNATE.
How our fathers do mutter over welfare expenditures, wood relief, flour relief, and outright specie from decades past. We have learned the folly of such generosity on the dimwitted widows and mothers of fatherless children, who would sooner exchange their silver for a dram than for a filcher of cream. At the Home for Reformed, we turn idle hands to labor. Temperance requires their earnest fashioning of these wares, for we know it is not merely illiteracy, indigence, impoverished morals, nor heathenness which compels the profligate to suck upon the teat of the Guardians of the Unfortunate, but the taste for drink. Our thirty young vagrants produce twine, stockings, spindles, clappers, braces, kettles, candlesticks, knife handles, ledgers, and soles to compete with the best manufactories on the far shore of the Atlantic.
Shop open 10-2. Good Christians, save our forgotten daughters from gaol. Inquiries for apprentices accepted within.
Shop open 10-2. Good Christians, save our forgotten daughters from gaol. Inquiries for apprentices accepted within.
The decommissioned blanket at Harper’s low cot was not wide enough to tuck beneath both edges of the ticking.
*
Once initiated, Harper bent to redemption: thread the needle, scoop shoddy, bag, learn the binder, sort rags, tend the machine oil, bleach. Hie was trusted to deliver and tarry for reply, to count and add figures, to keep the turns in hies mind that brought him from Walnut to Chestnut to Elm to Willow to the Reaches south and never to the Reaches northern, to avoid the signatory’s eye, to tip hies modest hat, to respond to rory in place of lass, to defer. One fine Wednesday, hie was fetched to the Reaches with two circlets of rope on either shoulder for a shipmaster named Holyoke. The belfry’s voice wouldn’t reach hiem as far as the wharves; hie would have to swim through time without its strike.
Memories of rat tail and leather soup flooded hies ankles as the tide rose and knocked the smaller ships against their galosh, resettling. Holyoke posed with a cocked hat, a father’s bequeathal, against a sky flashing with terns. Bells used to be brass and small before Hopewell smelled iron and kicked down a mountain, before cutters leveled Markman’s Wood, before metal ran soft as milk from fingers into church pews and sat upright and tipped its head in proper reverence and leant its loud voice to to the silence of animal indolence to Wake up, you, put on your frock, and take up a sickle. Why, ye may have heared of a famous bell, eh, who hitched a ride from London to the State House here and never rang for its ragged crack and who never chortled at hypocrisy to declare, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof” with no such legislation herein.
Strays at the Guardians of the Unfortunate would never climb from rope carrier to journeyman coiler to master braider, then finally to bell-ringer, tasked to an especial pull to announce war or armistice, who loaded hiz limbs with bags of sand, who filled hiz slippers with goose-shot. Wrap a rope tied to the clapper around hiz waist and jump for caterwauling, crash the tongue into its iron cage, hiz body tossed into the air like a kitten, and by weight alone reach a cowherd with news that something has happened a long way off.
Hie lasted a mere season at the manufactory which brought in bales of sin and wove them to redemption. It was dreaming that did it. {The Temptation} Secretly and remaining secret, Harper longed for the farm of ‘her’ infancy. If not precisely for the farm, then for the entreaties, coneflower-scented, from girl-cousins, even at the cost of hies girlhood. A bonnet might cast a shadow across Marlene’s nose, nearly touching foreheads, over tangled floss. Or enrapt at a litter of pups, her coos enchanting the mother to let them pet one. On St. Lucia’s Day, Marlene had enticed a leap from a porch rail into a drift of snow by standing at the foot and opening her arms. In the burrow, hies brothers called him yellow if hie wouldn’t jump from any branch, admire lodged thorns and trickling blood. A cockerel hie had become, far from angelic arc into a billow-white drift to be enfolded in hies cousin’s gladness.
It had been this, more than britches, than muddy tag, than coin, than street-harangues, than church, or physical monstrosity, that had niggled hiem into emigrating to The City Of. Hie had not wanted to earn the affections of girls under duplicity, with the pretense of sharing something sweeter than a butterfly wing. In the guise of a girl, girls’ kindness burgeoned as a fairy ring of champignon. Hie had not guessed the Brotherhoods would be thus, as full of brothers as the marsh was smokey with midges, their brotherhoods more pronounced even than bachelors, than apprentices, than second sons, predicated on their remaining free of contamination by girl-cousins.
Still, hie kept Marlene in her chaste cap and shawl, in a flurry of early snow, in a scene where they snuck an apple to a filly and shared the nibble. (Dimmed by distance were the punishments, sore-kneed before the altar, in which Uncle threatened to send her to hell on wings of blasphemy.)
From the well-spring of segregated memories did Harper drink, nights, fondling a flannel rescued from the pile, and worried hies longing with both thumbs almost to tatters. The goddened folk seemed content as the Lord’s intimates, but hie itched.
I had not known of hies pining, nor would I have given else than a half-livered sneer, as smitten as I was in other subtle-boys, as enwrapped. If only I were a hound then, brimming with wet-nosed ardor, to find Harper harping on hies lornfulness, bedraggled by fleas, and nuzzle hies hand into an embrace, and elaborate the touch into a camaraderie, and follow hiem, dew-eyed, though hie kicks at me, and prosper by hies drippings, and, by inverting that force of domestication, tempt hiem into submission.
Houndless as a blizzard, Harper-no-longer-Harriet, in a stolen vest and beating a path from the Unfortunates, loitered middle-town’s painted facades until hie got hired as a milliner for not-quite-gentlewomen who frequented the shops. {The Resurrection} Betsy jingled her curls for a buckram bonnet and Harper obliged with panache. Bending over Felicity’s locks, hie sniffed behind her ear where she smeared eau de heliotrope, before advising a riband coronet. For Frances, hie would drape trimmings and lace across her lawn, setting off hazel eyes with eyelet, her auburn chignon with a sage caul. Flourishing a pincushion brace-lette, Harper garnished Eunice’s braids with finches, with false pearls, salting hies brogue with compliments like trè à la mode and au courant to the battery of eyelashes. Her neck (deshabille) paled beside an evergreen bandeau. A hatpin, greased with macassar, slid through her headbasket and secured its pomp. Ever comme il faut, Harper waxed innocuous on the extravagant price of petticoats, and so did secure the empathies of the feminine.
Without fail, Eunice tapped at hies window week by week, a ninny, a naif. Harper counseled with folly to keep her entertained. Eunice tore a trim. She squashed a marsh-mallow-bloom ornament. She misplaced a pin. Hie thought this dance would wear out her slippers, but no, she brought a splotch of ink, a nattered hem, a smell of woodsmoke which clung for hies expert repair.
{The Salvation} Harper fancied a—it was not a mere fancy, as an ever-splashing font of spirits, an ever-laying goose. It was philosophy. A philosophy for Eunice’s broken nails and pout which, perched at the bow, did mist hiem with foam hie could taste on hies lips, yet never drenched hiem in a wave.
They did not court, perhaps because she conjectured—no, she could not conjecture. Perhaps she admired hies reticence? Hie retreated, rallied, then advanced. Hie could not do away entirely with war metaphor. This was of a whole with the problem. Topped by satin, she was, by extension, a decoration hie’d like to pin to hies lapel. The deception of hies sex knotted hiem. Reveal the deception and Eunice might quaff hies desire. Yet all could be lost. Quelle horreur. Hie spent hies wages on bay rum and a subscription to Last of the Mohicans to scour for dull passages describing Alice always fainting and trembling and ashen-cheeked and unable to steady a rifle. Then rescued. Yes, rescued.
Near to St. Dunstan’s Day, Harper was setting the window when hie heard Eunice’s distinctive chirrup without. Hiding behind a bonnet, hie espied an exchange. In playful jest, perhaps, a goatish gentleman pushed her nearly into a horse, who shied and snuffled. Peevish, perhaps, she stabbed her finger into his face. To which offense, he took hold of her sleeve puff and ripped. To which aggrievement, she laughed or pretended to laugh as she swiped him cross the face with her doeskin glove. He caught her wrist and kissed her full on the mouth there in the lane. This served as adieu. In a moment, she’d darted between carts and arrived, composed, at the shop.
Harper feigned delight at her arrival, then seeing her odd bemusement, her flush, her pursed face, hie had had enough. “Dearest, why do you permit your beau to accost you?”
She jammed her finger into the hole at her shoulder where the sleeve had come loose. “Oh, Claude? That weren’t no spat! He says in France the girls are better behaved, but we’s rough. It’s no bother, now. George is kinder but a bore. And yer th’ kindest of all!” She brought out a busted coinpurse. “Can you mend it?”
“Excusez-moi,” Harper gestured to a tailor to assist.
Hie couldn’t face hies dandle, cherie, parfait. {The Betrayal} How many beaux did she court? It drew hies ire to see her like a common strumpet being strong-armed and admiring it. Hie sickened at her masque. Her betraying kiss a spindle in some vast manufacture of sacrifice and infamy. Hie had played the fool with the romantic novel. Hie had played a fool with—what matter to detail hies humiliations. And to think, if only he had excessive rodomontade, or insulted her bracelet. The bridge to manhood was paved with jibes and braggadocio, not, as hies pathetic mind had believed, doing for.
Harper had did for hies father (spit on his grave) until hie ran. Then hie did for traders and bargainers and hawkers and rummagers. Then, in Delaware at their nascent industries. For the Brotherhoods and their infernal pamphlets. Then at the Guardians of the Unfortunate. And under hies own purse, hie did for these curséd hats and this curséd, curséd Eunice. It did not deliver hiem to her smile or put hiem in striking distance of heaven neither. It only made hiem a do-er.
Bitter Harper stomped from the millener. I had quit of a cruel lad, so I listened to hies harping (the kind like harpies and not a dulcet strum) and willed myself a harrier to hies halter. I ascertained that daring wouldn’t do it, nor flattery, nor kicks to the shin, nor a kiss, but only this tether.
The city had nearly cleared out to Wilmington for the running of locks on the much-delayed C&D canal. “Have you climbed a tall place?” I asked. For I found that the liberty of canoes, of ponies, of comets, of too many pork pies, had nothing to offer the vertical of a bridge tower or silo ladder.
It swept hiem back to hies erranding for the benevolent society. Hie led me through two burrows and round the back of a fine edifice. There were guards of course in uniform. I had not been to the statehouse since they repaired the rotting tower and added an obnoxious clock to the steeple. I would not want ye, reader, to attempt our trespass, so I have omitted the details that brought us clambering through weights and gears into the belfry itself.
Hie had an awful knowledge of the bell-for-show with its thrice-poured hollow due to a split. From this height, the Northern Reaches smoked, the wharves warbled, ships folded like paper, roofs shrank, Kensington baaed, the Schuylkill raged, Olde Swedes’ church prayed, the Delaware wheezed, and our labor was to float in the sky. I took Harper’s hand as hie delimited pitch, tone, bronze alloy, iron clappers.
“Some say it’s the Lord’s voice that peals from them. Er, angels? In the Bible they made us read at the House of Reform, liberty had to be renewed. That if you weren’t careful, you’d be captive.”
Captive by what, I wanted to ask.
“The House of Reform did captive me to their selling. And there’s a...”
“A belonging?”
“There’s a belonging to it. Like how a drunkard belongs to his rum, or a bugle to its battle. I didn’t belong, though, to that church, nor farm, nor shop.”
I couldn’t follow hies confession. I knew about climbing, though; how you could see all round you except what was holding you up.
We stewed in our captivities. Hies inchoate, and mine a rash that never cleared, a pestering cough. {The Miracle} When we had been duly lashed with holy rules, their shalls and shall-nots, we pressed the center rope between us, legs and arms interlocked. Another Harper, one who sang out, stepped from the ledge.
Our weight dropped. Our string plucked. A clang suspended a moment before the sustain.