Chapter 3

Galveston was raw; there was no other word for it, compared with Alexandria, which had a number of fine buildings and an air of permanence. If Galveston had any such, I couldn’t see them from where we had stopped close to the customs house.

I had given Tom one of my pistols, choosing to keep the other. Now I handed the musket to Isom, along with my bag of shot and the powder horn, and went inside. The single large room had a table toward the back and several taller tables close to the front where two people were standing, writing. I marveled at how fast they worked, hardly pausing at all. An older man that was sitting at a table in back looked at me, not saying anything at first. I couldn’t blame him; after weeks on the trail surviving off what we could eat and with no chance to clean up except when we got rained on, I sure didn’t cut a respectable figure. But I straightened up and walked over.

“Señor?” he asked.

“You speak American, Sir?” I responded. My Spanish had more gaps than a picket-shed’s wall, which might lead to misunderstandings that I had no need of.

“English, French, the language of my country, and if necessary a translator of Portuguese can be found,” he said. “You have business with Mexico?”

I explained as much as I could without lying more than necessary. The upshot was that he wrote out the papers of manumission for me and I signed ‘em. He even put a nice stamp on them, which I couldn’t read but it sure dressed the papers up! Cost me more than a body would expect, but I reckon that’s how governments make money. Or maybe it was how he made a living; I wondered if he’d knowed exactly how much money I had when he decided what to charge me because at the end I had almost none!

I turned the papers over to Tom and apologized that I no longer had money to give him, but he allowed that he’d make out. I handed him the reins and he hugged Isom, while I turned away to avoid seeing tears in their eyes. If it had been anyone else except these two, I might have thought it unmanly. But I listened to Tom’s instructions to Isom, and then I worried more.

“You help Marse Jake, Son,” he said softly. “He’s got more nerve than a body would expect, knowing his age, so I ‘spect he’ll do as much or more than I could to take care of you. I’ll look for you when I get back, although it might take me two or three months. Maudie and your sisters, traveling after dark ... well, we’ll make out, Son, but we’ll have to be careful.”

“I’ll be okay, Pa,” Isom said. “You take care of Ma, and when you get back put a notice on that big board in front of the customs house. Marse Jake and me’ll keep an eye out.” Things got quiet for a bit, then I heard the creak of saddle leather when Tom mounted. I waited a while longer and by the time I turned, he was far enough away that I almost missed seeing him. But Isom was still watching, so I joined him until Tom followed a turn in the road and passed behind a building.

I reckon we made people wonder, me armed with pistol and knife, Isom half a step back of me with the musket, but nobody said anything. Maybe it was because most of the men we saw were armed, some of them better than us.

I asked around when we got closer to the port, not wanting to tell more than necessary, but we found people who knew of Captain Henry Jennings and the Eureka brigantine. “He’ll get here when he gets here, young man,” a well-dressed man said. “I know him well because we’ve done business in the past, and you resemble him enough to be related!”

I told the man I was, and that being newly-arrived, we were looking for work. He sent us off with a boy, who introduced us to a foreman who put us to work. I wound up fetching and carrying, mostly planks for siding and floors, while Isom was put to work with the roofing crew.

Work started at daybreak and except for a short pause for us to eat, lasted until dark. I ain’t sure which one of us got the worst job. Isom was working up there in the sun, nailing cypress shakes in place while trying not to fall, while I ended up with sore muscles and more splinters from those rough-sawn oak boards than a body would believe. Not only in my hands, which would keep on collecting parts of those boards until I could afford gloves, but in my shoulders too. If there was a fix for those, I didn’t know what it was!

I sold the musket to a man I noticed eyeing it, which brought in enough to keep us fed and sheltered until we received our first pay. We found lodgings that evening in a cheap boarding-house that catered mostly to sailors. Unskilled workers, which is what we were, generally didn’t stay in places like that, being more permanent. Some like us lived with family while they learned the trade, while others drank more bad whiskey than they ought to and there was no telling where they spent their nights! They might show up for work the next day or they might not. Some, I figured, probably ended up in the bay. More’n a few did, so a body had to keep his eyes peeled and his hand on his poke. If he had money enough to afford one, that is, ‘cause some didn’t and they figured to make up the lack as soon as it got dark!

I thought that after we made a little more money, we might be able to move up in the world. There were better trades that a man could learn, and masters out on the frontier were always looking for hard-working apprentices or temporary helpers. All we’d need to do was save up our money and as soon as Tom got back, work our way out west and find someone who would teach us what we needed to know.

There was also free land to be had for the taking, so folks said, good bottom-land that would grow most anything a body could want. The government would insist on us joining the Catholic Church and learning the Spanish language before they would accept us as citizens, but others had done it. As for the Indians, they could be notional and a body had to keep a close eye on his livestock, especially horses, but again, others knew the way of it and I figured I could learn too.

Five weeks later, a man with the look of the sea about him came up to me. “You were asking about Henry Jennings?” he inquired softly. I confessed that I was.

“I can take you to him,” he said. I yelled up to Isom to come on down and right then and there, we quit that building gang. The foreman didn’t much like it, but after arguing a while he paid us half a day’s wages and we set off with the seaman. I expected we’d head for the wharf, but instead, he led off on a trail through the dunes that protected the interior of the island. He didn’t want to explain at first, but after I mentioned Captain Henry was my uncle he opened up. Turns out he was coxswain of Eureka’s longboat!