We all served the railroad in our own way, in the roles Pinkerton assigned. For me, he chose a grueling schedule, traveling around the slave states, ferreting out intelligence from stationmasters’ wives and daughters. With each one, I might need to be coy or charming, brusque or wheedling, brash or shy. I might pose as a local, or a confident, habitual traveler, or a panicked ingenue uncertain of my surroundings. My job was to quickly surmise what each woman knew that was worth knowing and then move on elsewhere to do it all again. Pinkerton’s old friend McClellan had expanded the Illinois Central southward and also taken on responsibilities at the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, and though no one said for sure, I suspected he was one of the people reading the reports that we gathered, looking for patterns and forms that might be meaningful. I missed working closely with Hattie and Mrs. Borowski, but the importance of our intelligence work could not be denied.
I spent three weeks in Bolingbroke, Arkansas, slowly cooking from the outside in. I took a train from there to Memphis that broke down so many times, I suspected I could have made the trip more quickly on foot. From Memphis, I made a stop in Atlanta, but the stationmaster there had sent his wife to her family’s ranch in Texas for the duration, and he looked upon me hungrily, like a hotel meal sent up to satisfy a late-night appetite. The sun did not set on me in Atlanta, and when it rose, I was halfway to Greenville.
It put me in mind of my parents and the theaters that had been a poor excuse for a home in my childhood. I grew up seeing men who drew pistols on one another onstage raising a whiskey to each other in celebration afterward; whores and mistresses on the stage became churchgoing women on Sundays, hands folded primly. Seeing it over and over again never made it feel more natural. I was deeply accustomed to using other women’s names now, playing other women’s parts, but that didn’t mean it felt easy for me. Indeed, I felt I was losing track of myself under all the disguises.
But during the six months I spent away from Chicago, seeking intelligence for the railroads, I was not the only one coming unmoored.
Chicago had lulled me into complacency. We were like-minded people among other like-minded people, and besides the rallies, little of the Southern strife had bubbled up to interrupt our daily lives. But in the cities of the slave states, I couldn’t deny the air was sour with resentment and ire. The streets were alive with militia. The headlines screamed rebellion. In my youth, the South had felt like a different country; now, it felt like a different world.
For one thing, no Negroes walked alone on the streets. If I saw them, they were trailing behind their masters, with downcast eyes and slumped shoulders. Not for a minute did I believe they truly thought themselves inferior to the men who walked ahead of them, but I was looking at them through Yankee eyes. In my childhood, I’d never known anyone who owned slaves. The people we associated with didn’t even have enough money to own a second pair of shoes.
Or perhaps my memories were all tainted by what I saw once on the street in Murfreesboro. A slave walked behind his master and tripped in the dirt. The white man turned and beat the black man, savagely, silently. Just as silently, the black man wrestled the whip from the white man’s hand and beat him with it. He got in two good strokes before someone shot him. Then everyone went about their business. I wanted to help, but what could be done at that point? The man was already dead, and I was beholden to my duty. I could not give myself away. There had been no opportunity, but I knew the more time I spent in these places, the more outrages like this I would see. And I would let them happen, because the woman I was pretending to be would never intervene. It joined the long list of things that troubled my sleep.
? ? ?
Pinkerton called me home in June of 1860, and as soon as I saw the skyline of Chicago again, a wave of gratitude washed over me. I spent a week at home, being myself. I needed it so badly.
For the first time in a long time, I could walk down the street without my neck on a swivel, trying to capture every action of every person in my mental record. For once, I could have a meal without trying to persuade my companion to disclose some kind of secret. It was unfortunate that I didn’t get to see DeForest, but I knew he was on an important assignment, and all I could do was pray for his safe return.
I dined out with Hattie, catching up as best we could, and she told me she missed our conversations, which warmed my heart. She asked my advice on her current case, an impersonation of a fortune-teller, which reminded me of the time I’d taken on a similar role. I told her the story of my stained skin, and she laughed so hard, she spat wine onto the table. This sent me into gales of laughter as well, and we both ended by wiping away hysterical tears.
My brief time in the office reminded me why I liked the operatives I liked and why I didn’t like the ones I didn’t. I fell into our old patterns immediately; it was such a relief to do so. These were the people who knew me, as much as I could be known.
Bellamy stared when I walked in, so outwardly astonished to see me that he stood slack-jawed for several seconds.
“What?” I asked. “Were you hoping I’d died?”
He began to shake his head but then stilled himself, apparently thinking better of responding. He turned his attention to other matters, tucking one case file into a drawer, pulling another one out, and opening it flat on the desk. I thought his cheeks pinked a little, but who knew the cause of that? He always did hate attention, unless it was praise, which he seemed to like just fine. Then again, I supposed the same could be said of me.
The only words he actually spoke to me the whole week were part of a conversation that Taylor started.
“Have you heard, Warne? The Republicans have their nominee for the presidency now.”
“Do they?”
“You’ll never guess who it is.”
“You’re right about that,” I said, busying myself with papers that didn’t necessarily need to be filed right that minute.
“Go on, guess.”
“I don’t know. Did McClellan jump the fence?” He’d been a vocal Democrat in our dealings with him, and he was really the one and only political animal I knew. He never had warmed to me, not even after I brought in the evidence on Mr. Vincent, so I wasn’t inclined to think the best of him.
“Not till pigs fly. C’mon, try again.”
“I really don’t follow politics.”
“You should,” chipped in Bellamy.
My best response to him was no response, which I gave.