Chapter 8

Vengeance is mine saith the Golden Boy

Saturday, January 19, 1861

‘Golden Boy,’ the men chanted as he fought.

‘Golden Boy,’ the barmaids whispered, teasing his forelocks.

‘Golden Boy!’ the urchins shouted in running after him in the Baltimore alleys.

For Henry Gambler’s mop of red hair shone like a crown in those days, with all the vanity of a boy with a golden future – not a fussy prosperity, for such a world never occurred to him - but of respect! And power!

The wilder the curls became, the more the girls chased, the more the men stood in awe, the more he’d laughed. He’d took what he wanted and laughed! And laughed and laughed at ‘em all!

For he was the Golden Boy! 

Four years later, a thick beard covered most of Henry’s face. His fingers began their crawl through the hair, drawn to the hidden scars, parallel twins down the lengths of his jaws, which, more than anything else, served as a reminder of a Golden Boy who no longer existed.  

Henry flinched. Inside where no one saw him. Face flat, eyes dull, carefully watching the two men carefully watching him. Around a candle on an upended crate. A flame radiating a yellow circle. Sole light in a cold, dark and dusty room in an empty warehouse near the Baltimore & Ohio railroad yards.

The other men stared hungrily at the candle. Eager for a light. Eager to hide from their fears in the dark.  

Henry had no notions of the barbarians who sacked Rome and brought a great civilization swiftly to its knees. But like his barbarian forbears he was fearless. And Henry liked the dark. Saw more in the dark. The dark brought out the real in folks. He didn’t trust words. Words were crafty. Words lied. Books and papers were filled with words that sent men to the gallows. But faces said far more than words. And when the light disappeared, the masks slipped and faces unguarded and unprotected revealed all in their panic.

And in the dark, you quickly learned what justice was. For nothing consumed Henry Gambler as much as justice.   

Tonight, he sensed the greedy desires in the other men that they confused with justice.  

 Jes Pulson. Obese. Nose fatter’n a tulip bulb. Ain’t go anywhere without his flask of rye whisky. Admiral of the Red Face, the Baltimore saloons called him. Owned Baltimore’s largest slave jail. Muttering, looking at everything and yet seeing nothing. Downing another dram, convinced the riot a failure ‘cause they’d used the wrong man, ‘cause no one listened to him, and he’d known all along it’d happen.

Men like Jes Pulson always thought they were the smartest, when they were the stupidest, and never understood fear of failure led to failure. There were no justice for Jes Pulson ‘cause he were too afraid to seize it, too afraid to pay the price of pain justice demanded. 

As for the dago Cypriano Ferrandini, all still and quiet! Who’da thought he’d whipped a crowd into a riot a few hours earlier? Believed in himself too much. Believed God gave him justice in an inevitable victory. But leading horses to the trough be easy. Men like the dago Cyp never planned for when things done go wrong. Became helpless, the helplessness of men who waited instead of balling their fists, seizing it and making it happen!   

If Henry looked hard enough, he still sensed it in Ferrandini. A twinge. Impatience? Anticipation? Or…panic?  

For Ferrandini, like Pulson, awaited a man, someone Henry’d never met and who, for some reason, had demanded his presence tonight. He briefly wondered if unlike the first two, this third person would know justice? 

Floorboards creaked outside the room. Four eyes looked up, alert. 

Henry took out a gold watch and slowly spun it on its chain. And waited. And remembered.  

Remembered how he’d once swore never to return to Baltimore. Remembered the fateful day in ’57 when he ran to the harbor, ignoring the rallying shouts, pushing away arms and hands trying to grab him, pushing back slaps of congratulations, and instead hopped on the first ship to sail. Didn’t care where it went as long as it took him out of Baltimore.  

For three long years he did run. From Cuba to Cape Horn and up to California and back down to Mexico. Then in ’60, the dago Cyp Ferrandini should go to Mexico. Learning to fight from the Mexican militias should war come with the North.

Hah! Mexicans were worthless. They’d let the Texans drive ‘em out of half their country. Couldn’t shoot, couldn’t drink, couldn’t run. Henry’d arrived from California, stopping on his way elsewhere wherever it might be. Mexico, what a shithole, he knew from first glance at the drunkards on the streets. Then he’d stepped into a dirty tavern off the plaza in Veracruz. Lo and behold, Cyp Ferrandini up at the bar, ranting against Abe Lincoln, the North, the abolitionists, against anyone with enough sense to be his enemy.

Cyp laid eyes on him. A Baltimore boy! Bought him drinks, the whole tavern drinks, woulda bought half o’ Veracruz drinks if they hadn’t already been drunk.  

Henry hung out in Veracruz, putting by a bit o’ money to move on and then one day a letter arrived from Baltimore. The Mexican whore, speaking bits o’ broken English learned from soldiers in the American invasion in the 1840s, from the sounds of it she’da slept with half o’ New York without even leaving Mexico, read aloud the letter. 

Come to Baltimore, Ferrandini invited. Men were plotting for Maryland’s secession. The South aiming to avenge the dishonor of Lincoln’s election. Justice would be sought. A role for him. He’d once led the Plug Uglies, Baltimore’s most infamous gang, and Cyp offered the captaincy back to him, if he’d help them. And promised money too.  

The whore swore at the figure, while Henry grunted and dismissed the pleas until the whore mentioned a name.

A name he’d never forgot in his long flight from Baltimore.

Never forgot in Cuba.

Never forgot in Valparaiso.

Not even in the California goldfields when claim jumpers cut up his face with a broken bottle and left him for dead. Never forgot, not even when he’d gripped the black mud in feverish shock and rain and blood trickled down his body.  

He’d long forgotten the Mexican whore wrapped around his legs, just as he forgot all them other whores from Havana to San Francisco. The Marias, Carmelas, Conchitas, what did they matter? In those years of aimless flight, nothing had kept him going but a hard, burning, yearning for justice hidden deep inside a broken man.

And now the name, first he’d heard aloud in three years, prodded at him, dug at him and ate at him, all the while lying on the sticky sheet in Veracruz, staring at the grubby ceiling, bedbugs crawling over him.

Then an idea festering in his mind during these long years leapt with a roar and that night the smoldering embers of hope and desire erupted into a bonfire once more, and the only other person to know was the whore groaning in ecstasy afterwards.  

Footsteps sounded outside the room.

Pulson twitched. Ferrandini exhaled, sharp and brief.

Henry spun the watch, the blur twinkling in the dark.  

So he came back to Baltimore. The plan Ferrandini told him be simple enough. Organize a riot to frame someone for plotting to assassinate the new president, all to distract the Federal government from findin’ out ‘bout the secret militias and their plots to take Maryland into secession. Henry raised eyebrows at the idiocy of it but still took the orders.  

The door opened. 

“Ah, welcome,” Ferrandini eagerly greeted the new arrival. “Buona. Buona. It is good we are all here. The Plug Uglies fought bravely for our cause! A great success!” 

“No, Mr. Ferrandini,” said the shadowy man.  

“No?”  

Jes breathed heavily. “I knew it!” 

“You heard correctly,” said the speaker. He strode towards the candlelight and tugged off his cloak and removed his hat. His blond hair, almost white, flowed across his forehead and down to his shoulders, in the style affected by aristocratic southern gentlemen Henry remembered too well, if from a distance. The hair gleamed from the expensive pomade and smelled of the flowery soap ladies liked to use.  

“Where is Henry Gambler?”  

“Henry? What he do?” Jes sharply demanded.  

“Step forward so I can see you, Henry Gambler.” A voice who gave orders daily, hourly, minutely. The face appraised him by the candlelight, looking over him like he be a nigger on the auction block. “You are the infamous Henry Gambler.” 

The watch came to a standstill. “Lookin’ at ‘im.”  

He were handsome, like a snake could be. The slithery splendor of the copperheads in the California goldfields. And like a snake, a face prone to sudden turns. Henry searched closer. Ah… a blank mind, a mind he ain’t make no heads nor tails out of. A rarity. The face hiding guilt? Most men hid guilt.

No, Henry marveled, not this one. This man had the coldness of those who lacked remorse. 

Bad boy, he thought. What you been up to?

Do you know justice? 

To be continued in Chapter 8 Part II

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