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The barber turned to Cornelius and asked, “Young man, do you know your letters?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Cornelius from the barber chair, though he addressed his words to the girl. “And my numbers.”
“Well, well,” said Smith. “Perhaps I should hire the boy as my assistant. Can you cut hair?”
“I could learn,” Cornelius said, showing far too much eagerness and need.
Smith considered. “Maybe you should come by
tomorrow, and we’ll see what you can do.”
As soon as the barber pronounced him done, Cornelius grabbed the broom and swept up a storm of dust and hair.
After ten minutes, Smith reached for the handle. “No need to wear it out, son.”
As he left the shop, hurrying to reach the docks in time to be hired, Cornelius looked around him and realized that Boston was a beautiful place. The windows had all turned gold in the sunset, and a fresh wind out of the harbor sweetened the air. He had never been in the presence of a free African girl, so clean and bright and close to his own age. He wondered what her name was and if he’d get to meet the girl’s mother, and whether the daughter favored her. He was so suddenly full of hope, he thought he’d never last until the following morning.
When he arrived, though, the door was locked and the windows were shuttered. A man wearing the white jacket of a porter saw him waiting across the narrow street and told him that Tobias had been attacked the night before.
A gang of white thugs had clubbed him, robbed him, and left him bleeding.
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“Is he dead?” asked Cornelius.
“Not yet,” he said. “The black man takes his life in his hands walking these streets. You best be careful.”
Cornelius kept watch as people came and went. A white man carrying a black leather bag spent a few minutes inside and then hurried away. After noon, he heard the sounds of wailing from inside and started back for Cape Ann.
He worked on the docks in Gloucester Harbor for a little while, but he felt ill at ease close to so many other men.
He trusted none of them and grew weary of looking over his shoulder. His only pleasure came from long Sunday tramps along the shore or through the deserted hills sur-rounding Dogtown’s fading common, where he finally took shelter in one of the half-wrecked houses, which he made habitable. He’d lived in one hovel after another or flopped with some other poor souls, moving into Mary Lurvey’s house after one freezing winter that nearly cost him his toes.
In Dogtown, he was able to sleep through the night and if he was not happy, at least he was not always afraid.
But after he’d been with Judy Rhines, he was more frightened than he could remember. Cornelius had no illusions: failure would always conquer hope and loss would always devour possibility. Every autumn, Cornelius decided to leave Judy before she could be taken away from him.
There was more dignity in ending it himself. But with the return of the spring, his heart got the better of him, and he returned to her. Until Wharf had found him out, and fear won out.
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Cornelius felt the warmth of Judy’s body behind him, reproaching him. This is the last time I will be so close to her, he reminded himself.
Judy stared at Cornelius’s back, a dark hill in the firelight. Her throat was raw with swallowed tears. She wished he’d never come, wished he’d never shared her bed in the first place. Better not to miss him the way she would have missed her right arm.