Free The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss Page A

assistance in finding Mr. Pearson.”
    “Why should I wish him found?” I asked. “I’d rather he went to the devil.”
    “It would be very pleasant if Mrs. Pearson were to become a wealthy widow in search of an old love, but I would not depend upon it.”
    “You are ever a delight,” I said to Leonidas. We now found ourselves outside my boardinghouse, so it was time for my man to take his leave. My rooms were cramped, and Leonidas did not choose to lodge with me. Had I larger and more spacious rooms, he still would not have chosen to lodge with me. Like many Philadelphia slaves, he had his own home, which he rented with his own money. I had in the past, for reasons not entirely clear to me, arrived at his door late at night, knocking loudly, calling out, once crying like a child. Leonidas had responded quite soundly by changing his address and neglecting to inform me of where he now resided. Indeed, all local taverners, merchants, peddlers, and landlords knew not to inform me should I come asking.
    This sense of independence was my own doing. I won Leonidas in a long and vicious card game not five or six months after my ignominious departure from the army. I was living in Boston at the time, and his owner was as compassionate and caring as a slave owner might be. Prior to his purchase, and therefore through no fault of his owner’s, Leonidas had been separated from his parents when he was little more than an infant and had no recollection of them. His Boston owner had seen to his education, and when he came into my hands he was eleven, clever and already large for his age.
    I thought it best to continue his education, and, until he concluded his studies at sixteen, I always found the means to pay for his tuition at a Negro school, even if I could pay for little else. The young Leonidas had been inclined to dark moods, and I could not blame him. Even then he expressed with hot eloquence his hatred of slavery, so I agreed to free him in ten years’ time, when he turned twenty-one. That milestone had come and gone the previous summer, and though Leonidas had been so good as to remind me of my promise, I was reluctant to let him go. I had been prepared to do so when events conspired against me and I had to make a hasty retreat from Baltimore. Then I had to establish myself in a new city, and I hated the idea that I must be made to do it alone.
    Once we reached my boardinghouse, I sent Leonidas home and knocked upon the door. My landlady had never seen fit to trust me with the key, yet she was always majestically resentful when I awoke her upon returning. There is no reconciling with some people, and I was, admittedly, disinclined to reconcile myself to this one. She did not care for me much, though I did not know if it was because of my general habits, or because I did not pay rent, or that during my late-night returns to her house I would sometimes behave unquietly. Once, while too full of drink, I had reached out and pinched her nipple.
    It was now nearly midnight, so I was surprised that my knock was answered so rapidly. My landlady, Mrs. Deisher—a stout German thing—was in the habit of answering my late knocks with a taciturn scowl, clad only in her dressing gown. Tonight she was fully dressed, and though she opened the door she did not stand aside to let me in. Indeed, she blocked me, holding a candle, her hand trembling slightly.
    “We must speak, Mr. Saunders,” she said, in her heavy accent.
    “ Captain Saunders,” I told her. “Must I always remind you? Do you not value patriotic service, or do you perhaps mourn for some Hessian officer?”
    “I am sorry to say to you this, but here there is a difficulty with your rent.”
    My rent. There was always a difficulty with my rent, perhaps because I was so very undisciplined about paying it. “Then we shall discuss it in the morning, but I must now sleep.”
    She grunted. She winced. She shook her head. “You owe me for three months, and I must have