Free Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction by Robert J. Begiebing Page A

in Barbados or the Indies?” Sanborn asked.
    â€œYes, and more again in Charleston or Bristol or Boston, or wherever you please. And their own laws, too, are productive for the ships waiting off reef and shore. Thieves are enslaved and sold, lovers of errant wives, defilers of another man’s god, even surplus wives and children are sold to a black man’s good profit.”
    Sanborn shook his head in awe. “I begin to understand the minister I once heard thanking Providence for bringing to our land safely another cargo of ‘benighted heathen,’ as he put it, ‘to enjoy the blessings of a gospel dispensation.’”
    Weeks snickered. “And why should not the sagacious merchant and the dogmatic priest join in singing the praises of this most profitable of all traffic?”
    â€œIndeed, Mr. Weeks. I’m certain it will continue to prosper.”
    â€œI’ll make you a prediction, sir.” Weeks took a shrewd tug on his tobacco pipe. “Mark my words, Sanborn. The white traders, should the supply ever diminish, will foment renewed warfare among the natives, even deep into the interiors, to insure the unchecked flow of gold.”
    â€œAnd vinegar is the solution, you say, to more Negroes surviving the passage and ensuring the flow of guineas all round?”
    â€œMany’s the shipmaster who swears by it.” Weeks tapped the side of his nose.
    â€œEvery survivor, they’ve finally come to appreciate, is one or two hundred pounds more toward the profit of their investors, themselves, and their daring crew.”
    â€œThe secret of the vinegar! Would you be interested yourself, Sanborn—even a modest investment?”
    â€œThe trade in vinegar, you mean?”
    Weeks nodded. “Ask your captains and masters all, if you like. There’s a bright future in it, mark me, Mr. Sanborn. Vinegar will not fail, I’m telling you.”
    â€œLet me think it over,” Sanborn said. “You have, I admit, led me into temptation.”
    They both laughed. What troubled Sanborn somewhat about such investment, beyond the need to carefully husband his slowly accumulating resources, was the instability of the trade in other ways. He had heard tales of the folly of trusting many of the captains of the passage, who rendered themselves debilitated by taking below a choice young black woman who, as one informant had phrased it, “kept the good master in a continual stupor of sensuality to the neglect of his duties.” But as he thought about it, the mere trade in vinegar seemed protected against individual folly, for there was no denying the enormous general profitability of the trade.
    Now Sanborn decided would be a good time to exchange such considerations for the true object of his meeting with Weeks—a growing obsession with Rebecca’s welfare on the frontier.
    By way of transition, he made a few jokes at the expense of some local dandy and official. Weeks enjoyed this new tack of the conversation. “Fools, fops, and knaves grow as rank as formerly,” Weeks said and laughed.
    â€œMr. Weeks, I thought I might rely on you for some information that could be of help to my own trade in portraits.”
    Before he could go on, Weeks laughed and said, “You take me for an idle dauber, sir!”
    Sanborn laughed at himself. “My good Mr. Weeks,” he began again, “I have decided to extend the range of my clients, as you might well understand, and see something more of New England so long as I’m here and seeking my fortune, by traveling from time to time to the towns and settlements this side of the Merrimack. Of course I would search out only the better sort in those regions—the overseers, surveyors, officers of the governor, and the like. But as I’m still comparatively new to this country and have never been west of the great bay, I wonder if you might advise me as to how one might best go about it.”
    Weeks