Read Online Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page B

dashed the circuit marked out with four-foot pegs.
    Shallow steps descended from the two wings of the Capitol, where the Houses of Congress met. ‘They barred Negroes from entering the Capitol years ago,’ said Preston, in that carefully neutral voice he had used at the train station. ‘I’m sorry for it, for I would have liked to see the laws of our country made.’
    â€˜Maybe that’s why they did it,’ January said.
    The inevitable clumps of office seekers, waiting on the Capitol steps for the appearance of Senators or Congressman who might recommend them for work, watched the ball players, too. Now and then an elected official would emerge from the halls of Congress, dignified in an elegant coat and a tall beaver hat; the office seekers would surround him, practically wagging their tails.
    The representatives of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness passed down the steps and within twenty feet of the chained men on the benches without so much as a glance.
    Many of them, January reminded himself, had probably seen slaves sold before.
    But as they walked away from the legislature of their nation, January found himself remembering the story of Jesus’ visit to the Temple: how he had become so enraged at the moneylenders who’d set up shop in its courtyard that he’d taken a whip to them, overturning the tables, scattering the coin, and driving their sacrilegious greedy asses out into the street …
    And got nailed to a cross for his trouble
.
    Jesus
, thought January,
where are you now?

FIVE
    â€˜I would not,’ said January to Darius Trigg, later that afternoon, ‘want your good wife to have wrong ideas about my sister. Hers is a common arrangement, the custom of the country in Louisiana. Henri Viellard has been my sister’s protector for eleven years. It isn’t …’
    He hesitated, seeking a word, leaning in the doorway of the shed where he’d found his host cutting kindling for the next morning’s fires.
    â€˜It’s like a marriage,’ he finished. ‘For many men in New Orleans, it
is
marriage – they never take white wives. It drives their families insane,’ he added, with a certain satisfaction.
    â€˜You know –’ Trigg drove the hatchet into the block – ‘if I had the choice to be rich and white, and barred from ever marrying Mrs Trigg … I don’t think I could do it.’
    January thought of that formidable woman, six feet tall and square and solid as a drystone chimney, and smiled at the light in the smaller man’s eyes. ‘I feel the same way about Mrs Janvier,’ he said. ‘The
real
Mrs Janvier, back in New Orleans. I was asked to pretend Dominique was my wife, for the sake of appearances, on the voyage out here … If that kind of arrangement was good enough for the patriarch Abraham in the Bible,’ he added gravely, ‘it should be good enough for us regular folks.’
    â€˜Except that Abraham pretended his wife was his sister,’ Trigg grinned, ‘not that his sister was his wife … And I don’t care if he
did
have some kind of special deal with God, that business with the Pharoah always sounded fishy to me.’
    â€˜Me, too, but I got hit with a ruler by Père Antoine for asking about it.’
    â€˜I think we musta gone to the same school.’ The landlord rubbed the back of his head reminiscently, then bent to gather up the kindling. January fetched the big willow basket from beside the door. In the yard, eight-year-old Mandie Trigg called to her sister to stop chasing those chickens before she got pecked, and help her with the eggs. ‘And this M’sieu Viellard’s here in town?’
    â€˜At the Indian Queen Hotel. With his wife – who seems to have no objection to the arrangement—’
    â€˜If he dies, can I marry her?’
    â€˜You wouldn’t like it.’ January recalled Chloë Viellard’s