Some Hidden Thunder Read online

  The general wandered around the rooms, now feeling guilty for having left his party guests for so long. Others would eventually come to find him, and he would have trouble explaining the situation to others.

  He touched Hart on the shoulder and pointed to the stairs at the end of the hallway. “Let’s go back before someone notices that we’re missing.”

  Hart turned to face the hall with regret plainly written across his face, and Grant was sure the reporter knew the story would literally dry up if they left. Grant, however, did not intend to let this incident go any further.

  Hart seemed almost eager to help tonight, and that made Grant a tad nervous, wondering what the young man wanted in return. However, he made no requests of Grant, and the general just let it go at that.

  Grant retraced his route with Hart, descending the stairs to the reception below. He couldn’t see any sign of Julia, who was most likely admiring some feature of the home with her hostess. However, her father, Colonel Dent, a military figure in name only, stood talking earnestly to a wild-haired gentleman. Grant winced to see the old man cavorting with potential political benefactors. In a post-war country, Dent’s old Southern views had no place in the North. And even though Cincinnati was just across the Ohio from former slave states, it was firmly rooted in the abolitionist camp—their eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

  “General Grant, may I introduce Dr. Seth Trubel?” Dent made a wide-arm gesture to point at the man with the unruly hair.

  Trubel wasn’t what Grant expected from a medical man. The doctors he’d known during the war were weary sawbones who’d seen enough death and suffering to last an eternity, whereas Trubel had the wide-eyed energy of a colt in need of breaking. His hands moved constantly, and his left shoulder twitched as if he’d been struck by a minie.

  “General Grant, how good to meet you. I’ve been explaining some of my theories on the African race to your delightful father-in-law.”

  Grant bit his lip with worry, wondering what the former slave owner and plantation dweller could say about the people freed by the war. Missouri hadn’t seceded from the Union, and technically the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to the slaves in that state. Grant was sure that the Radicals would remedy that shortly, but in the meantime, Dent technically still owned those men and women. Grant had asked him to release the slaves for his own political ambitions, but Dent hadn’t obliged until his own financial circumstances had given rise to their emancipation; the Dent family fortune wasn’t what it once was.

  Even Lincoln hadn’t freed Missouri’s slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation had only covered the states that had actually seceded—no reason to anger the border states, who could have left at any moment.

  Trubel waved his arm again in an arc. “I have to tell you, General, that my research might be of great interest to you. I’ve been studying the African, and I think I’m ready to refute the notion that he is in any way inferior to the white race.”

  Dent snorted and turned his back on the conversation, instead going off in search of his daughter. In the best of all possible worlds, Grant’s father-in-law would not have accompanied him to a city known for its abolitionist sentiments; the combination could only lead to trouble.

  Now that Dent had gone, Grant felt some of the evening’s stress lift from his shoulders. “Indeed, Doctor, what would you say to our Southern brothers about the freedmen?”

  Dr. Trubel smiled, showing a line of uneven and yellowed teeth. “Well, I’ve spent the past two years training some Africans to perform skilled labor, and I believe that inferior beings would not be able to learn such things.”

  As if on cue, a slim Negress appeared at Trubel’s side. Her skin was the color of lightly creamed coffee, and her hair had been expertly done for the occasion. Grant doubted that Julia had spent any more time on her appearance tonight than this woman.

  She blinked twice and smiled shyly at Grant.

  Trubel’s arms were in motion again, and Grant wondered how the man could sleep with this nervousness.

  “Sir, I’d like you to meet Miss Caroline Washington. She’s a well-known seamstress here. I have high hopes of setting her up in business in our fair town.”

  Grant smiled and bowed slightly from the waist. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Washington.”

  The woman’s eyes sparkled, and she reminded Grant of little Jess at Christmas time, all excitement and wonder. “It’s my pleasure, sir. May I presume that you’ve met Miz Keckley in Washington? She’s something of a hero to me.”

  Grant knew Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress. The woman was well known in the political circles of Washington, although some of the radicals had tried to claim that she was merely a figment of Mrs. Lincoln’s rather unusual and active imagination. Rivals had suggested that Mrs. Lincoln harbored Southern sympathies just as Julia had, though Grant would never dare compare the two women in Julia’s presence—she’d have his hide.

  Mrs. Lincoln was a woman from the South, and many of her family had fought for the Confederates during the war. The torn loyalties had won her no friends and plenty of enemies. Some cynics saw the president’s wife’s use of an African seamstress strictly as a political move, but Grant had heard her speak of the seamstress and didn’t doubt that she trusted Elizabeth Keckley in a city where she could trust few. Still, her high-strung tantrums hadn’t helped her cause at all. Julia had been on the receiving end of more than one rant merely because she’d talked to Mr. Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln didn’t appreciate any woman paying call on her gangly husband, and she thought every woman in Washington was out to steal him.

  Trubel’s energy was barely contained, like steam in a kettle. “You see, sir. This young lady disproves any notion of racial inferiority.”

  Grant nodded, but he doubted that training a single woman to sew would put down the nagging notion prevalent in the nation that Africans were inferior. In their hearts, Americans knew they’d been chosen by God to remake this land in their image; the Africans had only been a means to an end for the South. Those fields of cotton on which they’d built their wealth didn’t pick themselves.

  Still, he was pleased to see that men were taking steps to integrate these freedmen into society. Grant had been impressed with the efforts of the United States Colored Troops during the war. Those men had fought bravely and died valiantly alongside the Union soldiers. Of course, they’d been fighting for their own freedom then, and Grant wasn’t sure how well they’d work in the civilian world. After all, they’d never worked for wages before.

  Grant’s mind wandered back to the scene upstairs. Who was the man in the hallway? He looked over Miss Washington, but there was no way with her shapely figure and elaborate gown that she could be mistaken for a dripping-wet man. Who was he and why had he looked like a drowned rat? Grant needed some quiet time to ponder this conundrum; he was not about to be spooked by some apparition.

  Glasses clinked and voices chattered at such a level that mere conversation was more difficult than trying to cross the Rappahannock. Grant searched the room for Hart, but the dimly lit ballroom was too cavernous to find the man.

  He excused himself from the professor and the seamstress to locate Julia and found her still out in the entryway with the Duncanson murals. Grant wondered if she’d made it past the foyer yet. He took her arm gently and professed a headache, which was truer than he cared to admit; the specter of a migraine always lurked around his health.

  Julia gave an elaborate good-bye to the hosts of the party, and they walked out into the night air to meet their carriage.

  Chapter 3

  Grant didn’t have to exert much energy to find Ambrose Hart the following morning. The reporter was in the marble-paved entrance hall of the Burnet House hotel by nine o’clock carrying a piece of newsprint in his hand. He looked as if he’d been up for hours. His hair slicked back, he was nattily dressed in a waistcoat and immaculate white shirt.

  Grant had barely come down from his third-floor suite to breakfas
t when Hart accosted him. Leaving Julia upstairs, primping for another day of social events and quasi-political functions, he’d come to the main dining room in search of coffee and breakfast meats. He’d missed well-cooked food when he was in the army, and he planned on making up for it now that he was touring the country—the coffee brewed from chicory and roots was a memory now.

  “I was up early today,” Hart said as he pressed out the sheet of newsprint on the table in front of Grant.

  He immediately saw the banner, The Colored Citizen, and wondered what this had to do with Hart’s new job in Cincinnati. Surely he didn’t work at the colored paper.

  “What’s this about?” Grant looked at the lead story, but it had to do with the killing of a colored soldier in Covington, just across the river from Cincinnati. The man had been a part of the Fifth Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops.

  “I talked to Joseph Corbin, one of the owners of this newspaper, this morning. I was thinking that if the man you saw was a ghost, that meant he was dead. If he was killed or found dead, I thought the papers might cover it.”

  “But not your paper?” Grant asked, but he knew that even in an abolitionist town like Cincinnati, the white newspapers wouldn’t treat the death of a freedman as news. It would have to be a major event to garner attention in the Enquirer or Daily Gazette.

  “Not a chance. He’d have to kill someone to get there, but it would be news in The Colored Citizen, so I talked to Joseph Corbin.” Hart pointed to a place under the fold of the newspaper, his ink-stained nail touching a headline about a missing man.

  Grant leaned over and read the article. A local man, Israel Granby, had been reported missing three weeks ago, and the police hadn’t found any sign of him. Grant had heard the stories that the police didn’t put in any effort in the solutions to African crimes. After all, until six months ago, the life of a black man could be measured solely in dollars and cents.

  “What makes you think this could be the man I saw at the Belmont last night? There’s no sketch of him, and there’s no talk of what happened to him.”

  Hart pointed to the article again. “I talked to Corbin this morning; I paid a visit to him at his home to find out more. They found Granby last week. It hasn’t received much coverage because it looked like an accident, but Granby drowned in the Ohio.”

  Grant looked up, surprised. A black man had drowned in the Ohio River, just a few blocks from where he’d seen him the night before. It seemed too easy to be real. How could an apparition have appeared to him? He simply refused to believe in ghosts.

  He’d known many men who’d died in combat, and none had ever come back from the dead to visit. Some of them would indeed be welcome company. Instead, a stranger had appeared to him and vanished without a trace. What could the man have wanted from Grant?

  Hart picked up the newspaper and refolded it, sliding the paper into his breast pocket. “Corbin sends his regrets, but he can’t meet with us today. However, he sent word to a Mr. Charles Bell, who has time for us at ten o’clock. He was quite floored to learn that the Commander of the Union Army wished to have a word with him.”

  Grant and Hart walked through the lobby and out onto Vine Street. A few stray hogs ran loose through the cobblestones as a boy chased after them. Cincinnati still held the title of “Porkopolis,” the hog-slaughtering center of the U.S., and Grant wasn’t surprised to see pigs squealing through the streets at all hours.

  Hart pointed north. “If it’s OK, we should walk to the Bell house. It’s on the edge of Bucktown, and I don’t know a cab that would take us there.”

  He started at a fast pace, and Grant had to hurry to keep up with the long-legged reporter.

  They didn’t talk much along the way, Grant watching instead as the buildings of Pike Street gave way to mansions then tenements and worse. The area known as “Bucktown,” the blocks encompassed east of Broadway, and south of Seventh, was home to the black population of Cincinnati. The part of town had existed as a ghetto since the 1830s but had grown in leaps and bounds as the war produced thousands of runaways, property who had decided to seek cover in the anonymity of a big city.

  The Bell house was on the edge of Bucktown and looked quite respectable from the outside. Down the street, Grant could see mud-streaked tenements and ragged children. A rat scuttled by, nearly as big as the pigs they’d seen earlier.

  Hart gave a small shudder and started up the stairs to the stoop. “I wouldn’t want to come to this part of town after dark. That’s one reason these stories don’t get reported in the Gazette.”

  He knocked on the door and waited until a large black man answered the door with a smile.

  The man extended a hand to Grant. “Sir, it’s an honor to meet you. I’ve heard great things about you being in town.”

  Bell wore a suit that Julia would have called “dandy,” the red spotted cravat and pressed white shirt speaking of wealth. Grant was momentarily reminded of his father’s ostentatious ways and suspected that the two men would have shared some common interests.

  Bell stood aside to let Hart and Grant through. He smiled as he pressed himself against the door. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit, sir? Mr. Hart told me that you were in search of some information.”

  Grant waited inside the foyer for his host to join them and spied a young girl peering around the corner. She had a huge grin with some baby teeth missing and pigtails that defied gravity. She disappeared from sight when Bell stepped into the room.

  “Won’t you join me in the parlor?” Bell pointed to the richly appointed room to their left.

  The chaise appeared to be real leather, and gold brocade decorated the walls. Even though it was broad daylight outside, the lamps burned with full flame.

  Grant and Hart took seats on the sofa and waited for their host to join them. He sat down in a horsehair-stuffed chair and perched his fingers together. “I must admit that I’m a bit nervous. I’m not sure what a poor newspaperman could offer the leader of the Federal troops.”

  Hart looked to Grant and then began. “We’re looking for some information on a recent death, and we hoped that you could shed some light on the drowning of Israel Granby.”

  Bell’s face froze, and he didn’t move for a minute. “Sir, I can assure you that I only know what I’ve learned about that unfortunate case from my reporters, and I had nothing to do with his unfortunate demise. I’m sure that you didn’t come to Bucktown just to look into the death of a single black man in this city.”

  Grant cleared his throat and looked away; he wasn’t sure how to explain what had happened. He couldn’t exactly tell Bell that he’d seen a ghost in the Belmont. “I came to learn of the facts of the poor man, and I just wanted to make sure that everything was being done to honor a fallen soldier.”

  Bell immediately forgot his decorum. He snorted and reared back in his chair with a laugh. “Everything being done? No offense to you, General, but surely you make light of our situation here. Nothing at all will be done about this murder.”

  Grant sputtered. “I’m sure the police will handle the matter to the best of their ability.”

  Bell leaned forward earnestly and shook his head. “No, sir, I’m afraid not. Back in ‘41, during the riots, white men dragged a cannon into the streets here—a cannon! And they fired it on our women and children. The police did nothing to stop them. The officers stood by, watching and cheering. I’m told that the police don’t want to be caught in Bucktown after dark. I’m sure you can imagine how that emboldens the criminal element. They rule the streets. Israel Granby’s murder was called an ‘accidental drowning,’ even though he had a goodly piece of his skull missing when they pulled him from the river.”

  Hart looked at Bell and then down at the notepad he’d pulled out. “So is that why your paper didn’t give it any more ink? The fact that it was ruled an accident.”

  Bell nodded. “The other editors didn’t want to make any more trouble with the city leaders. There’s already enough unrest wit
hout accusing the police of negligence. The police called it an accident and said that the gouge in his head had come from hitting a log. The river is up a bit with the fall rains, and it does run fast, but Granby made it across the river to escape slavery a few years back. He was a strong swimmer, and it wasn’t likely that he fell into the Ohio all by himself.”

  Hart frowned. “If he’s a runaway, does he have any family in Cincinnati? Maybe they’d know more about what happened.”

  Bell swallowed hard and squinted at the two men. “If I may be so bold, sir, why exactly are you so interested in the death of a darkie? He couldn’t mean anything to the likes of you.”

  Grant’s eyes widened, and he cleared his throat, looking to Hart. He’d expected this question when he started asking questions of the white folks in town, but he’d expected his reputation to push him past any questions in Bucktown.

  “Well, sir, there’s a rumor that I’ll be heading up the efforts with the Freedmen’s Bureau being developed in the South. I’m sure you’ve heard of Forrest’s efforts in the South.”

  Bell’s eyes widened. “Forgive my impertinence, sir. I didn’t mean to pry, but your appointment would be wonderful news. I’ve heard stories from Fort Pillow and the like that make me ill. The thought that a man like you would be involved with the freedmen makes me proud. I knew that the plight of our people wouldn’t be forgotten now.”

  Grant winced at Bell’s assuredness; he knew no such thing. Andy Johnson’s administration showed little concern for the freed slaves. Johnson was dark to Lincoln’s light; he seemed to want to punish the South and forget about the men who’d been slaves.

  Johnson was from Tennessee after all, a part of the Confederacy, even if Johnson himself was a Union supporter and the military governor of the state during the war. He was a stubborn man, and the Radicals were dead-set on breaking him.