Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [12]
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But first, Perth Amboy—the original capital of our emerging union of states—a green curtain beyond the waterside as we first caught sight of it. Egrets flew up at our approach and gulls soared and squawked, laughed and squealed, as if to mock my recollections of traveling here when my mother and Marzy and I sought to escape the plague—yes, some escape, when, as I have previously disclosed, Mother had already been infected.
Small boats carrying fishermen drifted in the outgoing tide from the Kill and the late afternoon sun lay limp on the southern horizon, a green line above the line of green water of the river that flowed into this bay from the west. I buried my sorrowful memories in thoughts of the national past. We New York school boys who had studied our history and news of the current day knew that Ben Franklin’s son, William, when he was governor here, had built himself a large brick edifice on a hill not far from the waterside. But the trees grew so thickly together that I could not see beyond them, and just when I was thinking that we might have an hour or two to explore this seemingly virgin place we threw down our anchor a quarter mile short of the lone pier jutting out into the water, where the only person in sight was a brown-skinned fellow, an Indian or a servant, who sat with his legs dangling over the edge, sending up large swirls of smoke from a long pipe. Whatever mail or people we might be taking on would be rowed out to us rather than have us come in to shore.
Just as well, I said to myself, so that I would never have to step foot again on that soil where my mother had perished.
I had no sooner turned my head away to look again at the sandy beach across the Kill where the borough of Richmond pointed toward the bay, when a packet boat came rushing toward us. The sailors made to hold her close and a tall man with long, flowing, silver hair, in a dark cloak and tall hat, also black, stepped from the boat onto the rope ladder dangling from our starboard bow and deftly climbed aboard, followed by a young tarry-skinned boy who dangled two bags in one hand while he followed the man up the rope ladder.
A few minutes later a second boat—bearing the mail, apparently—came alongside us, and soon after that the captain shouted his orders and we were underway once more, leaving green Amboy behind.
Medium swells met us at the confluence of river, bay, and ocean, making us mount and fall, mount and fall, like some giant horse running over a series of hurdles. With each heave my stomach climbed into my throat and then receded, climbed up and then receded.
“All the way from the Azorias,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see the tall man in the black cloak and hat, though now he held the hat in his hand because of the strong breeze blowing off the ocean that would have easily swept it into the waves. Up close his shoulder-length hair seemed so white it matched the spume of the wave-tops.
“What, sir?” I said.
“The swells,” he said. “They begin to roll nearly at the Gates of Hercules and gather strength as they move westward across the ocean. Hard to believe they do not tear apart a state such as New Jersey, but by the time they strike the beach they lose their will.”
His breath smelled foul.
“I have never been out on the ocean before,” I said, stepping back from him. “It is…a stronger sensation than I imagined.”
“But how ever did you get here,” the man said, his voice deepening, “if not over the ocean?”
I shook my head, confused slightly, at his question.
“I sailed from New York, sir,” I said.
“Not my question,” the man said. “Not how did you get to Perth Amboy, but how did you come to these shores first of all if not by ship?”
“Sir,” I said, “I was born in New York.”
“Remarkable,” the man said. “Not in the alleys and shadows of Jerusalem or old Napoli or Lisbon but in New York?”
“I told you the answer, sir, and so I am not sure of your point.”
“My point, young man,” he said, “is a blunt one. I couldn’t help but think you were foreign-born. The shape of the head, the